So I'm really doing homework though...but I've been reading for the past three hrs so I took a small facebook break...my filmmaker facebook friend Tiona M. (who I've also had the pleasure of meeting in real time and is uber cool) posted a link to a new film called "Still Black" about Black transmen. Def want to see it. Found a couple of clips on You Tube:
The Trailer:
Clip #1:
Clip #2:
The Website
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Momentarily obsessed with Max Dashu
From her site Suppressed Histories (see last few posts...lol), I was lead to an interview she participated in, and found this passage about European witch hunts telling, especially the last paragraph.
Q. Can you address the historic connections between pornography and the witch hunts?
A. There are several angles to this. One is that new printing techniques made it possible for pornographic engravings of gatherings of nude witches to become best-sellers from about 1500 through the height of the witch hunt Terror. This art drew on the repressive sexual fantasies of the demonologists, inquisitors, and learned professors, who were obsessed with the notion of witches having sex with devils, and with punishing women. They developed a whole story about the painfulness of this sex, the devil’s member being ice-cold, and its involuntary nature, the witches being nothing more than slaves of the demon. The demonologists also drew on ancient stereotypes of heretics holding orgies which involved ritual humiliation, especially kissing the devil’s anus. This they claimed was the confirmation rite of a satanic cult. It was all purely the invention of elite men.
This highly sexualized diabolist ideology drove the witch hunts. The old witch persecutions which had gone on for centuries at a lower rate were escalated by a papal decree in 1256 allowing the Inquisition to use judicial torture. This then spread to secular courts. It was this practice of torture that fueled the witch craze, and slashed the ability of accused witches to resist totalitarian force. A key feature of torture-trials was compelling the accused witches to parrot back the diabolist ideology with all its violent sexual fantasies. The torture would not stop until they did. The trials are full of interrogators barking, “Say it! Tell the truth! Tell how you went to the witches’ assembly and had sex with devils!” Most resisted at first and eventually gave in to stop the terrible pain, although some held out unto death.
The torture quickly went beyond the rack and strappado and water torture to torments of iron and fire directed at the sexual parts. Since the judges and torturers assumed witches were guilty of apostasy and whoring with the devil, they were beyond any protection and could be subjected to anything their captors pleased. This certainly included rape and verbal abuse, but new mechanical refinements were devised, such as the Pear, a pointed metal implement which the torturers heated, thrust into a vagina or rectum, and then screwed open inside the victim’s body. Breast-rippers were another form of torture, often carried out in public, just before the burning of a convicted “witch.”
By the late 1500s a new doctrine of devil’s marks provided a pretext for “searching” women’s bodies, especially their female parts, for marks which were taken as “evidence” of a diabolical pact. Sometimes the witch-finders stabbed suspected witches with needles or bodkins. Or they called a flap of the inner labia, or skin tags which are common on older women, to be a “witch’s teat” suckled by the devil. Unofficial forms of torture would of course include rape by jailors, torturers and officials.
The woman-hatred of all this is obvious. What we have to remember is that this history of dungeons, chains, sexualized torture, ritualized rape and coerced submission had a massive impact on European civilization (and then on its colonies and slave-states) over centuries. Why should we be surprised to find that this deeply violent sexual conditioning has burrowed deep into the cultural unconscious? More recently, it has been claimed as a natural quality of human sexuality—without ever having examined these legacies of horror ---or those of slavery---much less attempting to account for their impact.
Q. Can you address the historic connections between pornography and the witch hunts?
A. There are several angles to this. One is that new printing techniques made it possible for pornographic engravings of gatherings of nude witches to become best-sellers from about 1500 through the height of the witch hunt Terror. This art drew on the repressive sexual fantasies of the demonologists, inquisitors, and learned professors, who were obsessed with the notion of witches having sex with devils, and with punishing women. They developed a whole story about the painfulness of this sex, the devil’s member being ice-cold, and its involuntary nature, the witches being nothing more than slaves of the demon. The demonologists also drew on ancient stereotypes of heretics holding orgies which involved ritual humiliation, especially kissing the devil’s anus. This they claimed was the confirmation rite of a satanic cult. It was all purely the invention of elite men.
This highly sexualized diabolist ideology drove the witch hunts. The old witch persecutions which had gone on for centuries at a lower rate were escalated by a papal decree in 1256 allowing the Inquisition to use judicial torture. This then spread to secular courts. It was this practice of torture that fueled the witch craze, and slashed the ability of accused witches to resist totalitarian force. A key feature of torture-trials was compelling the accused witches to parrot back the diabolist ideology with all its violent sexual fantasies. The torture would not stop until they did. The trials are full of interrogators barking, “Say it! Tell the truth! Tell how you went to the witches’ assembly and had sex with devils!” Most resisted at first and eventually gave in to stop the terrible pain, although some held out unto death.
The torture quickly went beyond the rack and strappado and water torture to torments of iron and fire directed at the sexual parts. Since the judges and torturers assumed witches were guilty of apostasy and whoring with the devil, they were beyond any protection and could be subjected to anything their captors pleased. This certainly included rape and verbal abuse, but new mechanical refinements were devised, such as the Pear, a pointed metal implement which the torturers heated, thrust into a vagina or rectum, and then screwed open inside the victim’s body. Breast-rippers were another form of torture, often carried out in public, just before the burning of a convicted “witch.”
By the late 1500s a new doctrine of devil’s marks provided a pretext for “searching” women’s bodies, especially their female parts, for marks which were taken as “evidence” of a diabolical pact. Sometimes the witch-finders stabbed suspected witches with needles or bodkins. Or they called a flap of the inner labia, or skin tags which are common on older women, to be a “witch’s teat” suckled by the devil. Unofficial forms of torture would of course include rape by jailors, torturers and officials.
The woman-hatred of all this is obvious. What we have to remember is that this history of dungeons, chains, sexualized torture, ritualized rape and coerced submission had a massive impact on European civilization (and then on its colonies and slave-states) over centuries. Why should we be surprised to find that this deeply violent sexual conditioning has burrowed deep into the cultural unconscious? More recently, it has been claimed as a natural quality of human sexuality—without ever having examined these legacies of horror ---or those of slavery---much less attempting to account for their impact.
We are sick...
Nawal al-Saadawi remarked that "makeup is the post-modern veil," pointing out its near-compulsory use in certain contexts. That was certainly my experience growing up in the Midwest many decades ago. It remains so in the workplace, at the employer's whim, according to a ruling by the California Supreme Court in 2000. The judges upheld the firing of Darlene Jesperson, a longtime bartender at Harrah's Casino in Reno, for refusing new requirements that women wear lipstick, face powder and mascara on the job. This court decision also allows employers to dictate dress, hair length, and other grooming decisions for their employees....
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Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Before there was Barack Obama...
...there was Shirley Chisholm. And while I'm still deeply suspect of U.S. politics, rock on sister. Annnnd she was from Brooklyn (Brooklyn!). <3
Who was she?
http://www.jofreeman.com/polhistory/chisholm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm
http://www.africanamericans.com/ShirleyChisholm.htm
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/shirleychisholm.htm
"I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free."
"I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to be herself."
"In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism."
"My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency."
"One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian."
"Of my two "handicaps" being female put more obstacles in my path than being black."
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Desi[r]evolution
Darkdaughta says on her website that she is accepting ongoing submissions for a possible book called desi[r]evolution. While i dunno that i have enough 'life experience' to make any sort of intelligible contribution, and while i'm not sure that i would want to be that exposed at this point in my life (by exposed i mean be in a book about desire. i've also been looking, though, at robyn ochs' call for writing), i think the questions she poses are interesting. i think they're really forward thinking. i wanted to repost them here so that i could kind of think about them as i begin this process of living out my twenties. maybe i'll make an effort to make a post answering one of the questions every sunday (starting next week. i need time to think on them.) here's what i got from the site:
---
desi[r]evolution : black women talk race, gender, colonization and sexual politics.
so, i'm wonderin'...
are black gyals 'free' yet?
this is me askin':
how [sexually] 'free' are we plannin' on allowing ourselves to be?
for that matter, how sexually 'free' is it possible for us to really be?
what is free dom when we can't be sure how much of our relationship to sex is reaction as opposed to action ?
a few hundred years after the middle passage - our collective racial/social/spiritual/physical/sexual/familial colonization experience/forced dance with domination, can any of us tell the difference?
in a racist, consumerism-driven, sexually conflicted yet still sex-negative world, is it really even possible for there to be a descernable difference?
seein' as the whole dyam world defines us as pussy for sale, how much [if any] of their mess can we clear out of our minds?
what sorts of conscious, intentional sexualities are we actually planning on pursuing, embracing, claiming?
how does does the middle class conservative hetero-patriarchy still so dominant in our homes/lives/communities effect the way[s] we do/talk/experience sex?
is one lover or partner really enuff?
why does it have to be?
do you come from a space/place where a fully, openly sexual woman, clear about her needs and desires, open about her appetites needs to fear for her safety and her career? or are you from a space/place where a woman is expected to by learning and growing, naming and exploring what it means to be female, adult and ripe with the power of her erotic?
how does an experience of sexual abuse, rape, physical trauma impact on your understanding of your body, it's functions, your desires and your erotic?
why do these sorts of questions bring up so many other questions related to morality and christianity, to the sacred and the profane, to the reckless and the insane?
how are my sistren managing, sexin' in this post-emancipation 'freedom' time? is the development and liberation of our sexual selves keeping pace with our struggles to decolonize our spirits, minds, families and communities?
does a revolutionary sister still have to keep her thighs clenched in order to be seen as a worthy ally and to fight tha good fight or does she just need to be a docile wife/partner, shadow behind every/any man and baby machine for the patriarchally dominated nation?
---
desi[r]evolution : black women talk race, gender, colonization and sexual politics.
so, i'm wonderin'...
are black gyals 'free' yet?
this is me askin':
how [sexually] 'free' are we plannin' on allowing ourselves to be?
for that matter, how sexually 'free' is it possible for us to really be?
what is free dom when we can't be sure how much of our relationship to sex is reaction as opposed to action ?
a few hundred years after the middle passage - our collective racial/social/spiritual/physical/sexual/familial colonization experience/forced dance with domination, can any of us tell the difference?
in a racist, consumerism-driven, sexually conflicted yet still sex-negative world, is it really even possible for there to be a descernable difference?
seein' as the whole dyam world defines us as pussy for sale, how much [if any] of their mess can we clear out of our minds?
what sorts of conscious, intentional sexualities are we actually planning on pursuing, embracing, claiming?
how does does the middle class conservative hetero-patriarchy still so dominant in our homes/lives/communities effect the way[s] we do/talk/experience sex?
is one lover or partner really enuff?
why does it have to be?
do you come from a space/place where a fully, openly sexual woman, clear about her needs and desires, open about her appetites needs to fear for her safety and her career? or are you from a space/place where a woman is expected to by learning and growing, naming and exploring what it means to be female, adult and ripe with the power of her erotic?
how does an experience of sexual abuse, rape, physical trauma impact on your understanding of your body, it's functions, your desires and your erotic?
why do these sorts of questions bring up so many other questions related to morality and christianity, to the sacred and the profane, to the reckless and the insane?
how are my sistren managing, sexin' in this post-emancipation 'freedom' time? is the development and liberation of our sexual selves keeping pace with our struggles to decolonize our spirits, minds, families and communities?
does a revolutionary sister still have to keep her thighs clenched in order to be seen as a worthy ally and to fight tha good fight or does she just need to be a docile wife/partner, shadow behind every/any man and baby machine for the patriarchally dominated nation?
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Aqsa Parvez
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/284350
How must it have felt to have been murdered by your own father? This shit is crazy and my heart hurts.
It's kind of crazy to me that Canadian Muslim groups are simultaneously defending the importance of hijab and denouncing the murder. While I recognize the patriarchal elements that exist in each of the 3 major religions (and am against the idea that Islam is especially limiting to women in comparison to the other two), I still think that Islam should be called out on its shit when need be. I think that the Islamic practice of giving special dress codes for women is only about controlling and restricting women's sexualities, and I am against that. I don't believe in tolerating Islam's brand of patriarchy just because there are other, more mainstream patriarchies that go unacknowledged as such in the day to day. I say, get rid of them all.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Like it is.
Yesterday I was listening to snippets of Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary on Like It Is.
In an effort to draw parallels between oppressions and illustrate the fact that the white folk who used to attend lynching parties were your everyday, average whitefolk (indeed, lots were respected community members who attended lynching parties in suits), she cited a study that found that 75% of average-joe type everyday men said that they would commit rape upon a woman if it could be any woman of their choosing and there would be no consequences for the rape.
Look at how oppression harms the psyches of both oppressed and oppressor. Can I please find the 25% of men who said no? What a noble, relatively unharmed population of people in a patriarchal, white supremacist (to quote bell hooks) society.
In an effort to draw parallels between oppressions and illustrate the fact that the white folk who used to attend lynching parties were your everyday, average whitefolk (indeed, lots were respected community members who attended lynching parties in suits), she cited a study that found that 75% of average-joe type everyday men said that they would commit rape upon a woman if it could be any woman of their choosing and there would be no consequences for the rape.
Look at how oppression harms the psyches of both oppressed and oppressor. Can I please find the 25% of men who said no? What a noble, relatively unharmed population of people in a patriarchal, white supremacist (to quote bell hooks) society.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Feminism.
Looks like I'll have to read "The Frailty Myth."
I'm very strongly feminist. It can be really odd interacting with my fam, all of whom I love deeply, because of it. I go through this crisis of sorts every Thanksgiving break, when I come home from outside of the bubble of books and academia that I encase myself in (yea, it's possible to do this even at Hampton). I love my father more than anything, but our views on how women and men "should" be are diametrically opposed to one another. Consequently, he sometimes thinks that I am attacking him as a person when I speak about feminism. Sigh. It sucks. I'm very different than what he would have me be. I really do think that mainstream religions do a number on restraining women sexually, physically, spiritually, and my folks are pretty serious Muslims. So it's really difficult for me to live my life in exactly the way I was raised to do so. But when I try to express that truth to my fam, it always seems like I'm just trying to cause discord within the family ranks, when I'm not.
I just hope that one day, my parents will understand my difference.
Peace and blessings to the spirits of the indigenous folks of this country.
I'm very strongly feminist. It can be really odd interacting with my fam, all of whom I love deeply, because of it. I go through this crisis of sorts every Thanksgiving break, when I come home from outside of the bubble of books and academia that I encase myself in (yea, it's possible to do this even at Hampton). I love my father more than anything, but our views on how women and men "should" be are diametrically opposed to one another. Consequently, he sometimes thinks that I am attacking him as a person when I speak about feminism. Sigh. It sucks. I'm very different than what he would have me be. I really do think that mainstream religions do a number on restraining women sexually, physically, spiritually, and my folks are pretty serious Muslims. So it's really difficult for me to live my life in exactly the way I was raised to do so. But when I try to express that truth to my fam, it always seems like I'm just trying to cause discord within the family ranks, when I'm not.
I just hope that one day, my parents will understand my difference.
Peace and blessings to the spirits of the indigenous folks of this country.
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