gender

By Bob Johnson [XBIZ]

SAN FRANCISCO — Indie feminist pornographer Courtney Trouble announced that she will be managing adult talent through LittlePinkBook.biz.

The agency is poised to fill the need for ethical, professional casting assistance for unique, authentic performers - including but not limited to alternative, BDSM, fetish, queer, lesbian, and trans performers, according to the company.

“I have been told consistently that one of my greatest traits as a pornographer is my ability to cast the right person for the right project. Cultivating healthy working relationships with my performers has always been my biggest goal in this industry, and moving forward to promote these artists seems like the next logical step,” Trouble said.

Initial clients include 2009’s Feminist Porn Awards "Heartthrob of the Year," Dylan Ryan and fetish model Sarah Lee Sinful. Both are performers in Trouble’s Reel Queer Productions/Good Releasing films, and her own company NoFauxxx.com.

The company will also provide casting assistance to both mainstream and indie production companies through a database of over 100 established and aspiring performers.

“There has been a lot of great work done in female-friendly filmmaking in the past year, but no work done to connect the indie, “feminist,” and “queer” genres to the mainstream. I hope to achieve a working relationship between the indie and the mainstream by being a resource for casting and ethical business practices. It’s time to take this groundbreaking work behind the scenes into performer relations!,” Trouble said.

For more information contact courtney@littlepinkbook.biz.

THE INTERNATIONAL GIRL GANG UNDERGROUND compilation zine aims to document and dissect how Riot Grrrl's legacy has manifested twenty years later, as well as provide guidance for those who want to transform "revolution girl style now!" into "REVOLUTION GIRL STYLE FOREVER!"

If Riot Grrrl doesn't resonate with you or your cause, that's okay! We also want to know about all the do-it-yourself, grassroots music movements currently being run by women/girls/trans/genderqueer/queer folks today.

We want your submissions!  Talking points include, but are not limited to:

• ESSAYS ON...
  • What would a modern-day "Riot Grrrl manifesta" look like?
  • The successes and failures of Riot Grrrl and what we've learned from them
  • Your experience as an immigrant grrrl, genderf**king boy, revolutionary pornographer, Muslimah punk, working class queer, etc
• REPORTS ON...
  • What was your experience as a Riot Grrrl in the '90s?
  • What's going on in your community that supports feminist & queer DIY musicians today?
  • Scene reports from regional DIY music scenes that traditionally are lady- and queer-friendly (London, Berlin, NYC, or your town)
  • Individuals who are making a difference--musicians, activists, writers, whomever!
  • "Where are they now?" (Riot Grrrl edition)
• HOW-TO...
  • "Get off the Internet and meet in the street"
  • Reclaim feminism for the 4th wave
  • Organize conferences, protests, benefits, etc
  • Combat the "dude-first" mentality of your music scene
  • Use new technologies to organize effectively
  • Start a band/go on tour/create a zine/etc
  • Create spaces for working class, POC, international and rural women and queers
• BAND/ZINE/COLLECTIVE/ACTIVIST GROUP INFO...
  • We're creating a directory for the International Girl Gang Underground--send along info on your project to be included!
• ART...
  • Print, digital, audio, video, whatever--so long as it's in an easily rendered format for a black & white zine or can be included on an accompanying CD-R for distribution, we want it!

Queering Sexual Violence

An LGBTQ Anthology Call For Submissions

Description:

An anthology of LGBTQ writers, survivors and activists confronting heterosexual privilege and the gender binary system while creating a dialog about the limitations of the anti-sexual violence movement in hopes of creating change.

Edited by Jennifer Patterson.

Queering Sexual Violence seeks 20-25 LGBTQ writers who are interested in submitting pieces that confront the current state of our anti-sexual violence climate. Part memoir / part criticism / part call to action, this anthology seeks to address the limitations of a society that is not only unequipped to deal with rape culture but also unable to look at it without the lens of heterosexual privilege and through the interests of a gender binary system.  The anthology seeks to destroy the image of the "perfect survivor" and motivate the anti-sexual violence community to embrace a more radical perspective in order to foster sustainable change.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission's Activist Institutes are two-week-long training spaces and are each attended by 20-25 LGBTI activists. IGLHRC has held five international LGBTI activist institutes since 2005.

The theme of each Institute is chosen by activists who have attended the trainings, focusing on particular groups or challenges and considering the needs of a community.

Below, find the Memoirs of the past three Institutes, detailing their programmes and methods. They also share activists' experiences and the information presented at each Institute, so that the Memoirs can be adapted or used by other activists and groups.

IGLHRC will soon make each of these reports available in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Memoirs of Past Institutes:

Memoir of Training Institute for Trans and Intersex Activists
La Falda, Cordoba, Argentine – 2005
Spanish · English · Portuguese

Memoir of Training Institute for Lesbian and Bisexual Women from Central American and Caribbean

San Jose de Costa Rica – 2007
Spanish · English · Portuguese

Memoir of Training Institute "Strategies to Address Religious Fundamentalisms"

Guarulhos, Sao Paulo – 2008
Spanish · English · Portugese

This video contains images from IGLHRC's 2008 Latin American Advocacy Institute on combating religious fundamentalisms.

(h/t wikigender)

Organised jointly by the OECD Development Centre and UNESCO

Friday, 12 March 2010
Room (tbc), OECD Headquarters,
2 rue André Pascal,
75016, Paris (FRANCE)

The workshop will provide an excellent opportunity to improve our understanding of the linkages between gender, culture and progress in societies, as well as to take concrete next steps in this regard. It will be attended by high-level policy makers and government representatives from around the world as well as leading academics, gender equality experts and development practitioners. This should allow for a very rich exchange of experiences and viewpoints.

A preliminary programme is available at www.oecd.org/dev/gender/progress. Should you wish to attend, please register by filling in the registration form that you will find on the website and by returning it to Mrs. Pamela Marqueyrol (tel: 01 45 24 82 86, e-mail:pamela.marqueyrol@oecd.org).

As places are limited, we will confirm your registration as soon as possible.

Chicago Dyke March Collective is Looking for Local Artists!

Are you interested in designing the 2010 Chicago Dyke March T-Shirt Design and Flyler?

The 2010 Chicago Dyke March is taking in place in the South Shore/Jackson Park Community located on the south east side of Chicago.  We are looking for local artists with southside influences to submit a design for our t-shirts, flyers and additional materials that will be printed to promote the 2010 March.  Please visit us on facebook or check out our website for information and to view past year designs http://chicagodykemarch.wordpress.com.

Please submit designs, concepts or ideas to: dykemarchchicago@gmail.com by March 21, 2010 Please fell free to contact us with any questions.

“We move to create visibility, to honor our histories and identities, to disrupt oppression and dominance, to challenge silence and fear, because we are everywhere, because we must survive”

THE EXHIBITION

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery's Art at City Hall (SFAC Gallery) program has teamed up with the International Museum of Women to coordinate and present a large-scale photography exhibition at San Francisco City Hall that will include works by artists across the globe centered on the theme of women and the global economy.  As a project of Economica, the Picturing Power & Potential photography exhibition will include a global celebration of women as economic change-agents in as many as fifty photographs selected from this call for submissions. The chosen submissions will be presented in the physical exhibition in San Francisco City Hall and to global audiences on the IMOW Web site.

GUIDELINES

• ELIGIBILITY: All living artists worldwide working in a digital photography format. Because the exhibition is sited at San Francisco City Hall, we are especially interested in including works by artists from the Bay Area of California alongside artists from across the globe. All work should have been completed post 2000, and special attention will be paid to those who submit work created in the past five years. No entry fee required.

• SUBJECT MATTER: We are looking for works that demonstrate how women are participating in the current global economy as leaders and agents of positive change.

• MEDIUM: Photographic works that can be printed via a digital file are eligible. There is no set stylistic requirement; meaning that we will accept all two-dimensional works using any photographic process including photo-essays, portraits, candids and digitally derived or manipulated photos.

• PRINTING AND FRAMING: All works will be printed in either a vertical or horizontal 16" x 20" format. The prints will be produced in San Francisco by RayKo Photo Center and framed in simple black metal frames with white mats.

By Armin Rosen

NEW YORK, Mar1, 2010 (IPS) - Last fall, the push to reform healthcare in the United States was all but hijacked by one of the country's most passionate recurring cultural debates.

On Nov. 7, 2009, Congressmen Bart Stupak, a liberal Democrat, and Joseph Pitts, a conservative Republican, sponsored a stipulation in the healthcare reform bill that would severely limit federal funding for abortions in a reformed healthcare system.

If Barack Obama's comprehensive reform bill were passed, consumers would be able to buy discounted health insurance from an index of government-subsidised providers. But under the Stupak-Pitts amendment, an insurer could only be included on the index if its plans excluded abortions from its coverage.

The amendment passed, 240-194, and the debate over health care reform turned into a debate over abortion rights. Suddenly, a vote for reforming health care was also a vote for curtailing lower and middle-income access to abortions in the United States.

Wendy Chavkin, a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, is a member of a group of academics that authored a position paper on the place of reproductive health in the healthcare reform process.

If you’re a frequent reader, you may have noticed that a few weeks ago I wrote about a book I recently bought: The Encyclopedia of Erotic Wisdom. I had transcribed their definition of orgasm and today, I’m going to give you two more definitions. Hopefully, like last time, you’ll feel compelled to share your thoughts or your experiences when it comes to these words. Here we go…

Sexual Imprinting   The Islamic, Ishmailian “heretics”  known as Nizari Ishm’ilis were apparently masters of sexual imprinting, binding their “initiates” to them by creating an unforgettable erotic experience, using drugs and multiple sexual partners to create a kind of erotocomatose lucidity. Apart from such consciously designed imprints, most members of our species are subject to incidents of sexual imprinting of a less obvious and more unconscious type: our education and first sexual experiences. The techniques for, and the abuse of, sexual imprinting are described in detail in the works of Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.

Hermaphrodite   The mythical figure and/or symbol that combines the God Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite into a double-sexed personality, thought it is sometimes interpreted as being neutral and nonsexual. This must not be confused with the  concept of androgyny, in which the male and female poles do not physically coexist, but are seen as existing in an integrated way on a psychological level, with repression of neither and the one complementing the other. To the ancient alchemists, the hermaphrodite represented perfection. Symbolically this image can be compared to those of the hexagram Chi Chi and the Chinese symbol of yin and yang.