Posts under ‘women’s rights’

I had a conversation with someone today. It’s my usual holiday conversation about the existence of Christ. As a gratefully recovering Catholic and now proud atheist, I did my usual dance of trying to be considerate and polite and changing the subject. As is often the case, my friend continued on undeterred with great curiosity about how I cannot believe in any god and what that might mean. I obliged by quickly employing the word delusional and said that I see no difference between one fairy tale and another. Predictably, we finished up pretty quickly after that.

This week, I attended another screening at Clarisse Thorn’s Sex+++ Film Series at Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago. Two documentary films were featured. The first one, “Sex, Disability & Videotape” (Beyondmedia Education) was about women from age 16 -24 with disabilities claiming and exploring their self image, self worth and sexuality. The second feature, “Orgasmic Women” (Marianna Beck) is a film of 13 women interviewed about masturbation, with demonstrations.

Do you write about any of these issues and communities?

LGBT
TS/TG/TV
FETISH
SEX WORK
POLYAMORY
SWING
BDSM
TRANSHUMAN

Do you work with these communities as an advocate or ally and would like to write?  Would you like to make an impact across your own affected community and reach out to other SGB communities?  Would you like to help bridge the gap between all SGB identities to increase understanding, acceptance, rights and respect?

A new collaborative community blog is being launched that will bring these communities, individuals and issues together in frank, open discussion.  Contributions will come from anyone that wants to post at the site, cross-posters from other blogs active in a community and featured writers.

We are looking for Feature Authors for this site from among the following:

ESTABLISHED BLOGGERS
ADVOCACY AND RIGHTS WRITERS / BLOGGERS
PUBLISHED SGB AUTHORS
SGB JOURNALISTS

Interested parties please contact admin @ sexgenderbody.com with the following:
NAME
EMAIL / IM / TWITTER
PHONE
SGB ISSUE OR COMMUNITY OF YOUR FOCUS
BLOG ADDRESS
WRITING SAMPLE

The site is scheduled to begin in May 2009.  The selection of Feature Authors will be completed by April 15.

Thank you

This week, I attended Clarisse Thorn’s Sex+++ Film Series at Hull House in Chicago. This feature was a film on polyamory, entitled: When Two Won’t Do. The film is a documentary created by two people exploring polyamory for themselves. There was a discussion group afterward. The response to this film series has been overwhelming and Tuesday was no exception, with upwards of 70 people crammed into a room that expected maybe 40.

This post is not about Sexism or Feminism, it is about my experience in talking about them.

I have had several conversations lately about how people engage in debate over sex / gender / body (SGB) identity issues. I am launching a blog that supports dialogue on those issues and in the communities that they create. As I frame the terms of the conversations and the goals of the site, I have begun to articulate my view on the structure of dialogue itself.

Simply put, I have been thinking about how we treat each other inside a conversation about SGB issues and identity. I noticed some patterns of how we seem argue with each other inside these conversations. This post is not about something specific to SGB issues, advocates themselves or the conversations. This is about how we speak to each other about those issues. SGB issue conversations are not somehow different from other conversations. I simply care about them more. This applies to Racism, Classism, TG discrimination or any other conversation regarding society and individuals.

There are a million reasons to be awake in the middle of the night in New York City. Something magical happens there after dark. The city changes. It looks different. It sounds different. It has different people.

When it’s 3am in New York, you can suddenly find yourself in a quiet place with your body tired and your mind awake. That place may be your car, your room or where you work. It could be a food counter or on a sidewalk seeking shelter from a downpour. Or, you could simply be lying in your bed waiting for sleep to come. In those places, there is a feeling unlike any other city in the world. In the dark quiet, you suddenly feel like the city and you are aware of each other and you catch your breath together for a moment of that deep silence.

(Image courtesy of Wikileaks)

This bulletin just came in from Wikileaks:

Wikileaks has released over 600 United Nations investigative reports, over 70 of which are classified. The reports expose sensitive matters from allegations of hundreds of European peace-keepers sexually abusing–and impregnating–refugee girls, to generals in Peru using Swiss bank accounts to engage in multi-million dollar procurement fraud.

A number of the reports have not only been marked "Strictly Confidential" but as an additional measure have had selected regions redacted before before internal distribution. Often these redacted regions can be "unredacted" by simply "cut and pasting" the blanked area. On the description page for each report, where possible, Wikileaks has provided a simple text version of the report that includes the redacted portions.

Since the number of reports is subtantial we ask that journalists, bloggers and other investigators take responsibility for those those reports closest to the month and day of their date of birth before considering the material at large.

They are looking for help from journalists and the blogosphere to help pore through this info, to further expose what the UN already knows and is hiding concerning the crimes of its own forces.  Here is a partial list of the items investigated:

• rape
• forced impregnation
• embezzlement
• extortion
• illegal weapons and ammunition dealing
• racketeering
• kickbacks
• fraud
• theft of food rations

Lest we forget that Bush & Cheney are not the only violators of human rights and public trust; there is a whole world of liars, thieves, rapists and murderers operating from the organizations that we ask to protect us from these crimes.  Someone stuck their neck out and did the right thing by exposing this information.  Let’s not waste that good effort.

If you have time and the will to help, you can start here.  The list of information is overwhelming.  Please help.

- gadfly

Is the United States of America is the world’s largest dealer of illegal drugs?  What about the world’s largest gun runner?  For years our government has used the CIA, NSA & other super-secret ‘intelligence’ agencies to cultivate drug harvest and distribution in SE Asia and Afghanistan.  We offer ‘aid’ and ‘trade’ to countries in the forms of weapons and ammunition.  The drugs come home to the US to poison and kill our own population.  The weapons we sell are used either against us directly by people to kill others, who then seek to kill Americans.  Did the founding fathers envision a country that would become the world’s largest debtor and blood merchant?

(Image courtesy of thinkvegan.net)

Sexism is the ‘gateway ‘ism”, that makes all other ‘isms’ possible.  It precedes all other forms of discrimination, setting the example that there are some people that view others as inferior and they use brutality upon them.  What I mean by that is that because our family and society models are built around the model of inequality, injustice and brutality – we accept that behavior as normal.  So, too is racism, classism, speciesism and any other oppression by one group toward another.  The behaviors of sexism are the behaviors of bullying, injustice, intolerance and cruelty.

(Image courtesy of indiesocial.com)

I walked onto the train platform in downtown Chicago today.  A woman had just finished shopping at Macy’s and had several red shopping bags.  She was trying to put everything into one bag.  The wind picked up and blew some of the empty bags down the platform.  I took off running and stopped them from blowing out onto the street. 

Then, she yells to me that: "It’s OK!  They’re empty."  Then she sits down and waits for the train with her two bags full of stuff.  The 5 empty big red bags are just out there on the platform and she makes no effort to pick them up.  I told her that I didn’t want litter for a Christmas present, picked them all up and threw them in the trash (no recycling on CTA platforms…dammit!).