society

I found this on STRASS and think it bears repeating.

-arvan

Whore Feminism is :

1. Dictate terms to men in the sexual contract before talking, either about the length, practices, prevention and rules of consent.

2. To work with other women and queer people and thus reduce the risk of suffering sexist and homophobic jokes from colleagues.

3. Being economically independent of a father, a boss or a darling.

4. Occupy public and night spaces traditionally reserved for men.

5. Combat whore stigma that hinders freedoms of all women, by reclaiming the insult in pride in order to break the original meaning.

6. Knowing, loving, being comfortable with our body and our sexuality and take care of it.

7. Defending the free disposal of our body and not only for abortion rights.

8. Knowing that sexuality and gender are defined by power relationships and that identities are neither natural nor immutable but socially constructed and as such we perform them like actresses.

9. Educating men and to change their behaviour because we have access to their privacy.

10. The right to say yes as much as to say no. Fighting for the recognition of rape as a crime, including those committed against us and which our complaints are rarely recorded.

11. Awareness of the intersection between different forms of discrimination and being in solidarity with other minority women.

12. Respecting all women voices. Refusing paternalism that infantilises women and judge them unable to express their own will under the false pretext that we are manipulated, yesterday by the priests to deny us the right to vote, or now by pimps to ban soliciting.

13. Making visible as work all services rendered for free or extracted within the family and demanding financial compensation for this, unless to refuse them.

14. Fighting for the unionization of sex workers and change the sex industry, including being aware that gendered asymmetry between men as clients and women&queers as whores is the result of a long tradition of patriarchal sexual division of labour .

15. Refusing to be a victim.

I recently finished reading The Edge of the Bed: How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life by Lisa Palac, which I highly recommend, because I agree with almost everything she writes.  The part especially sticking with me has been Chapter 6, in which she analyzes her kinky desires that don't just deny, but appropriate her anti-sex Catholic upbringing:

At its core, my Daddy fantasy isn't about my father but about Our Father Who Art in Heaven.  I'd taken the dynamic of love and punishment, which terrorized me as a child and made me feel helpless -- kneeling down and sticking out my tongue to receive his body, whispering my most sinful transgressions in a dark confessional, doing penance to show my love -- and turned it into a powerful source of erotic pleasure.  It wasn't a conscious decision, but then, sexual fantasies rarely are.

...Despite my fear that all of my intellectual processing would ruin by best sexual fantasy, it didn't.  It's still a turn-on because I'm still struggling with the after-effects of Catholicism and I always will be.

Personally, unlike Palac, I was never raised with the idea of God as an old man who would send me to hell for sexual adventurousness.  Instead, the messages that my sexual desires were wrong came from pop-psychology and a specific strain of feminism.  Without God or hell, wanting men to dominate me sexually was a sin against Women's Liberation and a transgression against my Mental Health.  My sex-negative clergy got most of its ideas from Andrea Dworkin.  And I consciously rejected it years ago.

Bita Haidarian, an Iranian American filmmakersets off on a journey around the world to find out where she is from and who she is.

Born in America to Baha’i refugee parents from Iran, Bita tells the tragic-comic story of her family coming to America, her childhood in Texas, trying to fit in, and competitive cheerleading – all part of the quest of a girl who knows more about MTV than Al Jazeera.

Bita wanders through the US, Europe, the Middle East and Pakistan examining the cultures at play on her life and the lives of women in these places.  It looks thoroughly engaging and we're lucky, I'll have an interview with Bita here in the near future for you all to read.

The overwhelming trailer response has inspired us to build an organization around the movie.  Our goal: to bridge the gap between east and west by sharing the compelling stories of women - some empowered, others seeking empowerment - from both hemispheres. (website)

And Bita’s plea to public – please watch my film!  If it doesn’t succeed, I’m going to have to get married.

They have a website, a facebook page and a twitter account.

-arvan

Pack Your Bags and Book Your Trip to Germany – Be A Part of It!

Cologne, Germany – Even if you can’t spike a volleyball, play the trumpet, or get a “perfect 10” off the high dive, the 2010 Gay Games has a way for you to “Be A Part Of It!” Gay Games VIII, 31 July to 7 August 2010 in Cologne, Germany, is recruiting volunteers from around the world to be part of the globe’s largest LGBT sports & cultural event.

“At the heart of the Gay Games are the approximately three thousand volunteers who make the Gay Games run like clockwork,” said Emy Ritt, Co-President of the Federation of Gay Games. “Volunteers are the ones who are ‘backstage’ organizing, managing, supporting and assisting at the sports and cultural events all week long. Gay Games volunteers get to meet people from all over the world, and gain valuable experience at this week-long festival. It’s truly a great cultural experience!”

Volunteers are needed in all areas, including:

• Medical care for athletes
• Supervising facilities
• Ushering spectators and guests
• Officials and referees
• Hospitality services for VIPs
• Support cultural events
• Official photographers
• Language interpretation
• Accreditation staff
• Support for the Opening Ceremony
  

A brand new feminist 'zine is out, aimed at kids.  It is called Spratz and you can download it here for free.

spratz_readable.pdf2.11 MB

spratz_printable.pdf1.95 MB

It is published by the CRAP! (Child Rearing Against Patriarchy) Collective over at their blog - Feminist Childrearing.

It includes contributions from kids and adults.  It is free (as in free beer).  This issue includes a nice send-off of Barbie, some musings on Cinderella, defining sexism & feminism and a crossword.  I definitely suggest you look it over.  We don't get much in the way of child-ready study or workbook material, based on feminislm and even less in the new media formats.  My favorite women & children / lesbian bookstore has much to offer, but it's still the old school printed formats of paperback and hardcover.  This zine gets the conversation out into the spaces that a great many, if not most young people are spending most of their time.  Plus, it's fun.

If you would like to join the collective or contribute to their blog or their zines "Raise Some Hell! a feminist childrearing zine for everyone" and "Spratz! a feminist kidzine", please email them at feministchildrearing@riseup.net.

-arvan

From: 19/03/2010 - 20/03/2010

Location: The Windsor Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya

Contact: Pénélope Pontet

Summit objectives and outcomes:

•  The Africa Women’s Economic Summit will:
  • Identify the issues that limit women’s access to financial products and services
  • Explore the business opportunities and innovations to expand the reach and scale of financial services to women at all income levels.
  • Cultivate the leadership required to introduce new ways of thinking, and build an African financial system that is more inclusive of women.
  • Identify measures that will ensure women take their rightful place as decision makers within the governance and management structures of national, regional, continental and global financial institutions.

• Programme (520 kB)
• The Gender Policy (333 kB)
• Media registration

There are some really neat things and people that I find on teh Internetz every day.  Today, I found something exciting and new in the form of a new play, set to open in NYC this April. 

This is so right up my alley, folks: body image, self, identity, culture, gender.  There's nothing about this that I don't want to hear more of.

Firstly - you need to go see this.  Next, I need someone that attends to come back here and post about it for us all to hear.

-arvan

Bodylogue: a play about color, body & being a woman, a one-woman show.

BodyLogue is Sonu's story of growing up in India, surrounded by negative messages about dark skin, weight and being a woman. Follow her as she travels to Singapore and America where the messages become even more complicated.

View from the railroad bridge in Rosendale, New York, 2007. Photo by Eric Francis.

Planet Waves by Eric Francis
 
The other day, an email came floating into my inbox from a website called Care2, a green-styled corporate site purportedly dedicated to saving the world, claiming 12.5 million subscribers. The subject header of the email read, "Monogamy vs. Polyamory: Do Open Relationships Work?"

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/monogomy-polyamory.html

Naturally, I thought: this ought to be interesting.
 
The writer titled her analysis like a boxing match or a legal case. Mono versus Poly is now in session! All Rise! The article commenced as such (literally, its first words): "Non-monogamy is about one thing -- sex. And sex is good."
 
(You can tell she learned her writing style from The Bible.)
 
It went downhill from there, fast. Faster than I thought possible without jet propulsion and a lot of lube. "And sex with different people -- either concurrently or over the course of a lifetime -- is good too. Sex is so good that some people are addicted to it. Sex makes people do crazy things and it makes people feel amazing things. I love it just as much as anyone else, but there is more to life than sex."

In this panel discussion moderated by Robert Kane Pappas, director of To Age or Not to Age, distinguished panelists debate the future of anti-aging research.

Panelists include: Dr. Robert Butler, Gerontologist, Psychiatrist & Pulitzer-Prize Winner, President and CEO of the International Longevity Center; Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Biomedical Gerontologist, Chief Science Officer, SENS Foundation; and Dr. Leonard P. Guarente, Novartis Professor of Biology, MIT, Director, Paul F. Glenn Lab for Science of Aging.

(h/t aubrey de grey)

Transsexualism is no longer considered a mental illness in France, the first country in the world to leave the list of psychiatric disorders by a decree published in the Official Journal. The decree of the Ministry of Health removed "early problems of gender identity" of an article of the Code of Social Security on "psychiatric long term."

Roselyne Bachelot, Minister of Health, announced May 16, 2009, on the eve of World Day of the fight against homophobia and transphobia that transsexualism is no longer considered a psychiatric condition in France.

"France is the first country in the world no longer regarded transsexualism as a mental illness, welcomed Joel Bedos, head to the French Committee IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia).

(Original post, in French)