Sexing the Already Sexed Body

.jnf.: The Best Comments from a Fox News Story on Obama's Birth Certificate

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:06:33 -0400

.jnf.: The Best Comments from a Fox News Story on Obama's Birth Certificate:

Does everyone here understand the Fed Reserve has not had a press conference in 90 years and they are having one today!!!!!
This BC is being released today to distract from the real bad news we are about to get from the bankers. This is merely another “bait and switch” from this Admin. It has…

The Monday Night Mixtape Does Tumblr

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:14:01 -0400

The Monday Night Mixtape Does Tumblr

I'm Sorry, What? Toxic Version

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:44:23 -0500

I'm Sorry, What? Toxic Version:

i grew up with and later despised britney spears, so i’m usually not interested in seeking out her music. however, i’ve decided that beneath the outer layer of wtf,lady? there’s something vacuously charming and sinfully sexual about her. this cover of ‘toxic’ by yael naim turns that ‘umph’ up a notch-with pseudo-harsh notes and intoxicatingly slow beat, it’ll rock your world

Preach!

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 02:57:48 -0500

Preach!:

Bernie Sanders speaking some sense, filibuster style. Nearly nine hours of goodness.

hilores: Paper Heart

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:23:32 -0500

hilores:

Paper Heart

Digital DJ: Our Powers Combined

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:13:00 -0500

Digital DJ: Our Powers Combined:

I make mixes. This one features Cudi, Kanye, Gaga, Common, Atmosphere, Diplo/Amanda Blank and more

WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:10:29 -0500

Streets. I remember being in a car, and seeing streets. I don’t know where they are, but they’re quite familiar.

Porn: Surveys, Research, Slut-Shaming

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:39:28 -0500

Numerous institutes are attempting to use incomplete research practices in order to comment generally on pornography. This fact may contribute to the need for both sound new research and the filtering of overly homogenizing and false data. For instance, the most recent articles containing pornography research demonstrate massive inconsistencies in both survey methods and results. One journal article attempting to affirm Malamuth’s description of the theorized correlation between pornography and sexual aggression (porn as sexual violence towards women) had only 102 males from an Introductory Psychology course at UCLA answer questions as part of their grade in the class. General academic norms indicate that survey participants need to be numerous, representative of the general population, randomly chosen and taking the survey of their own free will in order for the data to be useful; the UCLA survey met none of these requirements. The same survey limited the 102 UCLA men to describing experiences with pornography in only three magazines: Hustler, Playboy, and Penthouse. (The article admits that only 33% of pornography sales are from magazines, a fact which is contested in other porn studies which say the Internet is the new superhighway to pornographic material.) Furthermore, no mention was made of class or ethnicity—key analytical elements in questioning intersecting hierarchical oppression of women, painting a completely incomplete picture of porn viewers and sexual aggression.
Surveying one potential trigger of domestic abuse: “Impersonal Sex” practices, the same researchers asked these young men ideologically pointed questions about their sexual practices, like how often they masturbated or found women they didn’t know sexually attractive. The answer was then supposed to decide whether or not men were unattached to sexual experiences and thus more likely to be sexually aggressive.
Both women and men participating in porn surveys are questioned about their sexual experiences and number of sexual partners. It is important to study the impact (if any) of pornography on the lives of those who consume it, but surveys run the risk of slut-shaming their participants into non-accurate statistics. First is the example of “Generation XXX,” which uses statistical linkages between pornography and “substance use” and “family value” development to theorize about pornography’s affect on U.S. culture. Difference-based analysis (feminist studies, queer studies, ethnic studies) immediately produces a ‘red flag:’ “family based values” are defined very normatively and hetero-patriarchally. Positive development of “family values” is indicated by whether or not participants engage in sex before/out of wedlock, or whether they would choose to have children without being married. For those who contest traditional notions of family or who legally cannot be married, the survey’s wording is dangerous. Those who choose to participate in consensual sexual activities outside of the bounds of Judeo-Christian doctrine are marked as failures or deviants obviously tainted by pornography. And there is also the assumption, hidden deep inside the questionnaire, that if a woman enjoys pornography or has multiple partners, that she is a whore who is not properly developing the correct ‘family values.’
It’s no wonder the numbers tallying the females who regularly watch porn are so low. It IS a wonder that not many surveys consider this point.

Photo

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:31:11 -0500

Reproductive Rights: Oklahoma, HB 2656

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:29:00 -0500

Oklahoma has never been the bastion for women’s rights in terms of reproduction. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, 96 percent of counties in Oklahoma do not have access to an abortion provider. The organization gives the state an ‘F’ for it’s inability to protect a woman’s right to choose. Recently, the Republican controlled legislature passed two bills, HB 2656 and HB 2780, which, according to the group, correspond directly with the pro-life agenda. Hailed as the strictest in America, these two bills are the latest in a long history of restrictions on reproductive rights in the state.

HB 2656 would prevent women from suing doctors for withholding crucial information that would have potentially affected the decision whether or not to abort. Specifically, it protects physicians from being sued by women with disabled children for withholding information about birth defects or when they had high likelihood of stillbirth. The usual suspects are in support of the bill. Beyond the Republican Party, groups like the National Right to Life and Oklahomans for life laud the bill for its potential to curtail abortions. They argue that this measure is one of many, which, together, can protect the sanctity of life. Further, they say they must champion the cause of the unborn, who cannot advocate rights on their own behalf. The arguments in the debate against reproductive rights repeat themselves: when the legislature considered increasing access to Plan-B, by making it over-the-counter, many leaders spoke about relieving the moral dilemma of a pharmacist who was religiously or ideologically opposed to the so-called abortion pill. Pharmacists were granted the right to deny sale of Plan-B for any reason. This bill uses similar logic and bestows similar [if not increased] power.

Many on the left are worried about the implications of the law, not only on women, but also its effect on the standard in medical practices. Pro-choice advocacy groups charge that the bill encourages doctors to withhold information from their patients—the bill is a breach of freedom of speech of the patient and doctor and invites government intervention into that relationship. The bill also protects doctors who provide inaccurate information about the patient’s pregnancy. Staff Attorney for one pro-choice advocacy group, New York based Center for Reproductive Rights says “This is really a measure aimed at manipulating women.” Opponents of this bill claim there are also dangerous medical consequences of protecting doctors who lie: women can never be sure if they’re truly making informed decisions about their healthcare, putting both women and potentially viable fetuses at risk. Giving doctors the power to lie to a patient based on ideology sets a terrifying precedent, one that removes a woman from decisions about her own body. At what point does her body become a tool of the state? At what point is the doctor no longer acting in the best interest of the patient? At what point do the bills become state-mandated coercion?

feminism and porn as contention

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:23:07 -0500

The territory of feminist thought is, at a foundational level, concerned with sex and sexuality. It is concerned with equality, the rights of women and other feminine bodies, the voice of alterity, and the systematic domination of one group by another (I use hooks’ definition of white, capitalist, heteropatriarchy as a description of the dominant group.) More than a movement, it has become a near-ideology, a set of ideas which express goals, visions of the world, expectations, values, and actions. Despite being sometimes militantly anti-establishment and vehemently anti-institution, feminism itself has become an institution based on identity, practice, and sex/gender. The movement is rife with divisions that are inherently political, polarized and, at times, hierarchical. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the discussion of feminism and pornography, or in the debate over whether or not feminist pornography exists. Susie Bright, in a podcast on the topic, says:
“What I didn’t expect is that feminism would ever get wrenched apart over sex. I never saw that coming. I never thought that people would think that because I was a feminist, I was a prude or a square or that I wasn’t on the cutting edge of sex radicalism.”
But feminists have been defined based on their sex/sexuality for decades. Their sex organs have been the determining factor of everything from public policy to religious practice to law. Childbearing, menstruation, estrogen, the very facets of the inner working of women’s sex and sexuality have come to name women in the public and private sphere. For a few decades, [liberal] feminists tried to downplay difference. They argued that women were equally capable to do anything a man could, and demanded to be considered and labeled as such within society and in law. This move left a bad taste in the mouth of some [cultural] feminists, who argued that women and men were precisely NOT equal. Women, these groups of feminists argued, were distinct and those differences were to be celebrated and supported, even promoted. They pointed out that women’s ability to bear child, to rear those children, to form sharing groups, to think beyond so-called masculine rationality, to end conflict peacefully and so were the distinctions that were rejected up by patriarchy, which supported individuality, dominance, aggression, efficiency and reason. Yet another facet of feminist thought is wary of the essentialist binary that determined one set of characteristics as ‘male’ and one set of characteristics as ‘female’ and critiqued the notion the division of man and woman as entirely too simplistic. There were and continue to be feminists who maintain the grey area between these sects of feminism. All the while there were discussions, papers, poems, documentaries to communicate about the best ways to achieve the goals of feminism. This all happened inside the sphere of feminism and women/gender studies.
Outside of the community, there was no shortage of commentary. Perceptions about feminists as bra-burning hippies, as whores, as prudes, as lesbians, as angry man haters etc. abounded. They’re still around. And they affect the way our society thinks and feels about women and in relationship to women. Many young men and women may share the same goals as the feminist movement but refuse to call themselves feminists because they’ve been conservatively socialized to believe many of the myths about feminists. Some men and women believe that feminism is no longer needed, that equality has been achieved. Still, some others are disheartened by perceptual ‘in-fighting’ in the feminist movement and choose to remain outside of the movement.
To get the point, feminism is contentious. It is passionate, it is deep, it is personal, it is political. All at once it is public and private. It asks questions that others would rather not ask. It takes the underbelly of society and asks why it is so. And the world of pornography is deeply contentious for many of the same reasons. It is passionate. It is personal. It is political.