“…It might also be maintained that some of the gendered aspects of the French language itself militate against certain feminist precepts.”
reblogging for future reading
TV Review: The Hour
Whoever decided to spin The Hour as the British answer to Mad Men was either seriously deluded or had never seen Mad Men. Either way, he didn’t make The Hour, the new six-part show currently showing on BBC2, any favour.
Mad Men is a brilliant show, which I love dearly, and so is The Hour. Comparing the two however is a dangerous exercise. You need more than a decade-ish in common, a media background, hips of misogyny in the work place and daily alcohol and cigarette consumption at work to be Mad Men. Matthew Weiner’s show is slowly-paced with chiseled dialogues, understated acting and historically-perfect settings. In The Hour however, as The Luxe Chronicles puts it, “the pace [is] quicker (two murders in one hour) and considerably darker (two murders in one hour)”. It takes place in 1956, Mad Men starts in 1960. I could go on and on but I don’t think it’s worth it. I could also try comparing The Hour to Studio 60, another show taking place in the behind-the-scene of a weekly TV programme, although I’m too concerned Aaron Sorkin wouldn’t win this battle…
So watch The Hour, but watch it for itself, for its brilliant 1950s costume, its rendering of a newsroom in the middle of the Suez Canal crisis and its social commentary. Watch it for its complicated plot with multiple ramifications and its acting, especially Anna Chancellor’s.
PS: With all those “haha look how hard women had it in the work place back then” discussions, it’s easy to forget that, although things have improved, we’re not quite there yet. All boy’s club and wolf whistling in the morning still exist in media and advertising as much as in the next work environment. Less smoke doesn’t mean less machoism.
reblogging for andi who introduced me to this show which is now on my “to-watch” list. i must say as someone who has been interested in vintage clothing/modern films set in the 1950s-60s it’s gotten quite nauseating to hear that anything set in or around the same time period is “influenced by mad men.”
namely i’m grumping about people who see me wearing vintage clothes and say, “oh, you must be influenced by mad men!” cue death stare. because no one ever wore vintage clothes before mad men went on the air, and now it is the only reason they do. obviously that’s not necessarily the intention but seriously, for real? i hate turning it into one of those “i’ve been wearing vintage for 10 years and i didn’t stop or start because of any one television show/i’m so ABOVE trends” but still. i could go on…
Oh, and staying on topic. Remember these from a few years ago? Posted for most appropriate use of a picture of The Raincoats.
This reminds me of someone on a feminist mailing list a few years back claiming she didn’t own any music by bands with groupies. (Because groupies, like strippers, are bad feminists, and this person owned no REM, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, L7, GoGos or Indigo Girls, to name just a few.)
HOLY FUCKING CRAP THIS IS AMAZING
when i saw these STUPID FUCKING ORIGINAL ADS when i lived in kensington market i graffitied over them any time i could. the one that said YOUR DAD WAS NOT A METROSEXUAL i graffitied to say “YOUR DAD NEVER TOLD YOU HE LOVED YOU.” i remember a few others like “YOUR DAD CRIED HIMSELF TO SLEEP” and “YOUR DAD DEALT WITH EMOTIONAL TRAUMA BY DRINKING.” definitely one of the ad campaigns that made my blood boil. i fucking hate sexism that masks its ugly face as “nostalgia.”
(via creatrixtiara)
i wish this would embed as a video here, but it’s worth clicking the link to go see this short 5 minute animation. i can waste days on the national film board website…
Maggie’s: the Toronto Sex Workers Action Project respectfully offers our condolences to the friends, family and community of Kera Freeland.
We must also condemn the recent media coverage of her death, which exemplifies sensationalistic, lurid and exploitative journalism.
Ms. Freeland was a 20-year-old woman who we believe was also an escort. So far we have no evidence that her death is linked to her work nor that she was killed by a client or anyone connected to the sex industry. We also have no evidence that Ms. Freeland was open about her work to her family and friends. Regardless, her death is being feasted on by those who are attributing her death to her work and her “lifestyle” and her privacy is being disregarded entirely.
We regard this as sexist victim-blaming and discrimination against sex workers. We’re confident that the same associations between work and violence would not have been made if Ms. Freeland were in any other profession. If her death is work related, it is further evidence that lack of rights and criminalization put sex worker’s lives at risk.
This man is the Cheif.
I met him at sonisphere. He was on our campsite and bought a red indian hat and a beer bong. You just had to stand up by your tent, hold a beer in the air and shout “BEER BOOOONG” and withing about 3 minutes he’d appear. He was such a legend, he literally kepy our entire campsite in order. Its amazing how people just respect someone they think is in a position of authority. Either way, He’s such a lovely guy, Definately the best person I met there.
DEAR GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH HUMANITY
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE.
I remember my first encounters with the sex positivity/sex positive movement, especially through the internet. I remember loving the basic principle of the thing: “Sex is awesome! No one should be ashamed of their sexuality or wanting sex! Let’s bring it out into the open so we can all enjoy a healthy, happy relationship with sex!”
I can get with that, really.
But there was this lie in the whole thing, and the lie was told by blog after blog, webpage after webpage that talked a great game about how we can be open about sex, but seemed to equate sex with the nude bodies of thin, conventionally attractive, blonde white women in male-gaze centric pornography, as though if I really pushed myself to enjoy such titles as Biker Bitches 5 and clinically lit photoshoots of a woman with her legs in improbably acrobatic positions, I’d be making the world a better place. Because that’s what the world needed, more people to applaud the open display of sculpted bodies as though somehow, that would liberate my fat, pansexual ass from the confines of sexual oppression. As though the ways in which society has pushed at me and pushed at me, telling me to keep my fat ass covered and my queer thoughts to myself is the same as what society tells a 5’8, 110 lbs, straight, white woman with no disabilities. Because it isn’t.
People have been celebrating the sexualities of attractive white people for centuries. In fact, I’d say if there were ever a time when people’s discomfort towards sex dissipates and they’re willing to accept, tolerate, and engage with sexual content is WHEN it comes in the form of these bodies, these pre-approved forms.
We actually accept a lot of sex in our society. We accept Victoria’s Secret ads and commercials, we don’t mind Calvin Klein giving us artsy black and white shots of picturesque, perfectly chiseled men in their underwear. Hell, we’ll even let those kinds of things get away with some homoerotic subtext. If two underwear models should be embracing themselves in their latest Victoria’s bra-and-panty set, we’re sort of okay with this. We accept movie after movie that might as well be porn without the money shot because the White Ingenue and White Hero Du Jour are in it.
To pretend that the level or type of repression of sex is the same across the board, or that conventionally attractive, thin, able, cis, straight white people need the same amount of liberation as others is a lie and a slap in the face to those who know differently.
I mean, just look at the shit the Lane Bryant ad got for something that Victoria’s Secret would’ve gotten no comment for. And can you imagine if they’d dared to use a dark-skinned model for that commercial, a fat Black woman or a fat Southeast Asian woman, or a fat transgendered non-white model? They probably wouldn’t have aired it at all.
When’s the last time you saw anyone advertising non-GLBT products with obviously, openly GLBT models and themes? When’s the last time you saw a butch lesbian selling you toothpaste or a transman hocking insurance or a disabled person shilling laundry detergent?
So when I take these things into account, I think of my experience with going through these “sex positivity” sites.
I looked and looked in those sex positivity blogs and sites, in their pictures and stories and I didn’t find a lot of fat people (male or female), people of color, queer people. I have yet to find a mainstream sex positivity site (yes, this movement has a mainstream) that features transgendered people in all their beauty. Forget seeing disabled people displaying their various modes of sexuality. Forget seeing their bodies displayed as revolutionary and world-changing and an example of how sex is really, really awesome.
I learned soon enough that most sex positivity is actually White Straight Thin Able Cisgendered Cissexual Positivity.
And the world is already positive enough on those traits, thank you very much.
I see so many blogs that are about how great sex is, showing sex, getting the great nudes and erotica and porn out there to the masses, showing it openly.
But outside of blogs dedicated specifically to certain subsets of people (for instance, the fabulous fuckyeahblackdykes Tumblr or fuckyeahcurvygirls feed), the mainstream sex blogs are doing what mainstream sex blogs have always done. Teaching us that beautiful sex = white, thin, straight people.
Worse yet, so many queer oriented blogs are so white, able, and cis that it hurts. I’m a pansexual/cisgender/cissexual person, and when I see these blogs I see the white, Western version of queerdom splattered across the screen. Occasionally I’ll see a white person with a partner who is non-white, but it’s rare. The usual ratio seems to be one to every fifty or so posts. Shots and stories and displays of people of color together, with no white persons involved, are limited to specialty feeds.
And I have yet to see these sorts of “Fuckyeah[insert thing]” feeds focusing on disabled, queer people of color. I wouldn’t begin to hope to see disabled, queer PoC held up on the mainstream blogs and sites or even thought of.
Why do I go on about all this? As though those who are aware don’t already know it and those who aren’t aware don’t want to deny it?
Because I’m tired of people defending porn, acting as though somehow I’m a sex negative person and a traitor to sexual liberties if I disdain and actively hate the U.S. porn industry that holds up “feminist” porn, or porn directed by a few women who have been trained in the male gaze as though it will appease me. As though women haven’t been repeating the sexist, male-centered messages we’re fed all our lives, as though most of these feminist directors aren’t white, able, cisgendered women who come with loads of their own prejudices. Women can oppress other women. And indeed, much of misogyny and rape culture in the U.S. is transmitted from woman to woman, from mother to daughter, friend to friend, sister to sister. So don’t tell me that because the person behind the camera has a vagina and ID’s as female that I should be impressed by a product that looks and feels exactly like what men put out.
Because, honestly, it’s like telling me I should feel liberated as a pansexual woman because so many men enjoy seeing two women kiss each other for their pleasure and “lesbian” (ie - female-on-female for male pleasure) porn is popular . No, thanks. That’s not liberation, that’s control by other means.
I’m tired of the lies.
If you’re sex positive and you’re not making an active effort to include and celebrate all kinds of sexuality from all kinds of people? You’re a fucking liar. There it is. You’re a liar.
Because sex positivity and body positivity and anti-racism and fat acceptance and the disability movement and queer positivity and womanism are part of the same thing.
Same with any movement. Fat acceptance? If you’re only showing fat white people or fat able people or fat straight people, then you’re not fat accepting, you’re just white supremacy enforcing and trying to bring chubby people under that umbrella of dominance.
I’m tired of the people who put up some Tumblr blogs and showcase the same old, same old and act like they’re part of a revolution. They’re not. They’re part of making sure that lots of other people know exactly who’s sex is celebrated and who’s isn’t.
So I say FUCK sex positivity. I want sex inclusivity.
As someone who’s seen what you mean with burlesque, I HEAR YA.
wow. really well-written. [bolded emphasis mine]
"Miller, an independent journalist, was on her way to the jail solidarity protest Sunday around noon with fellow journalist Adam MacIsaac. She stopped at Bloor and St. Thomas Sts. where she saw police officers searching a group of young people carrying backpacks. She says police attacked her. “I was throttled at the neck and held down. Next thing you know I was being cuffed and put in one of the wagons.” She says she was threatened and harassed by police at the Eastern Ave. detention centre. “I was told I was going to be raped, I was told I was going to be gangbanged, I was told that they were going to make sure that I was never going to want to act as a journalist again.” She also says she spoke to numerous young women who were strip-searched by male officers."
—
‘I will not forget what they have done to me’ - thestar.com
20 people arrested at the G20 tell of inhumane treatment at the hands of police
(via shakepaper)
(via curate)
(via bonesarecoralmade)
Please, tell me that rape isn’t about power.
(via sexartandpolitics)
(via withnoapology)
the thing that doesn’t come across in this quote, unfortunately, is that amy miller is SO. FUCKING. STRONG. <a href=”http://www.vimeo.com/12925239”>watch the video.</a> to talk about these things hours after being released, to put herself out there in the media that is constantly excusing rape culture and defending police violence and brutality.
courtney love, yoko ono and sexism.
The other day Brittany and I were having one of our many regular conversations about Tumblr & she mentioned feeling compelled to unfollow someone because they had posted some pretty vitriolic stuff about Courtney Love. Later on, Drew (riding the high of a recently-read Chuck Klosterman book) chose to share his less than savory opinions on Courtney & I found myself thinking about the ways in which the public has demonized her over the years, which reminded me of this fantastic piece by Sady Doyle for the Bitch Magazine website. I recommend reading the whole thing (which starts out as an exploration of the use of Cobain’s likeness in a Guitar Hero game and segues into a look at the dynamic between famous art/music widows & fans. The below is excerpted from Sady’s piece. You can read the whole thing here. (Emphasis is mine.)
But the scenario [public scrutiny of Courtney Love vs. public scrutiny of Yoko Ono] is the same: a whole bunch of fanboys angry at that terrible, mouthy, weird woman ending up in charge of their idol’s estate, getting to make decisions about it, making (oh, no!) coffee cups and T shirts and action figures and video games and money, and controlling the materials produced by a man they love. Fanboys refusing to believe, on some level, that these mere wives had a more important connection and a more intimate knowledge of their favorite rock stars (the kind of connection that comes with, say, sleeping in the same bed with someone, and swapping spit on a regular basis, and using the same bathtub, and raising a child together) than they, the fans, do - that they might have more of a vested interest, more of a right to the estate than anyone else. Fans being outraged that their attitude toward their husbands is not one of unlimited deference, that they have not become reverent priestesses of the Great Man. (In point of fact, neither of the Great Men were apparently all that reverent about their own music; Lennon didn’t believe in Beatles, after all, and Kurt Cobain thought the Weird Al Yankovic parody of “Teen Spirit” was hilarious.) It’s openly misogynist, this stuff. And I suggest to you that Cobain and Lennon, who were both feminists, would have been more disappointed in it than anyone else.
THIS IS SO GOOD.
some thoughts:
- i never really thought about how two of the women on the receiving end of so much (misogynistic) vitriol were married to two of the most famous male feminists, a fact especially important in lieu of the fact that they are two of the most famous men in music history.
- the fact that these women in question (ono and love) were not only their wives, but their artistic and creative peers is what makes the question of them having the “right” to make decisions about their estates/music rights so much more interesting. both women are artists and musicians in their own right, and were creating before their relationships with their husbands. if anything, this gives me the idea that they would have a better understanding of what their partner’s desires would have been, in addition to being able to relate to the politics of consumption and profiteering from the art/music you create…
- i think these fucked up things have so much to do with the fact that they are happening within the (very sexist, racist, homophobic, etc) music industry. we have very very rigid expectations of how men and women should act.
after reading this, i read all of the links, and watched the weird al yankovich video, in addition to the original smells like teen spirit music video, i was really struck by one thing. i mean, i really shouldn’t be surprised seeing as it is youtube comments and all, but seriously here is a brief sampling:
“These fags have like Drake and justin beiber and miley cyrus’ dirty twat. Music sucks nowadays”
“its girly ass preppy poplovin faggots like u who make people my age look bad i wish i was born in 1980 instead of over 1 year after kurt died(1995). get this through ur happygolucky head. justin queerber,nick homonas,and mr. gaga will never be music ledgends like kurt was,is,and always will be”
“my girlfriend is Courtney Love. Wheres my shotgun. Bitch ass nigga.”
aaaaand i’ll spare you the rest. basically, all of the slurs used are either homophobic, sexist, transphobic, ableist, racist, or some combination of the aforementioned. i don’t know what this says about music culture, about the argument of lyrics vs music, youtube commenting, or any other things like that, but the fact that cobain was an adamant advocate of dismantling sexism, homophobia and racism is kind of mind-boggling when hundreds of people who appreciate his music post hatefilled words like this.
let me remind you: the liner notes of incesticide state “if any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us-leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”
