Writer Teju Cole twittered that if paintings of war are hot, those of the War on Terror are cold. Bush’s palate is as icy as Lucian Freud’s. Inside the cellblocks at Gitmo, where men have languished for more than a decade, not charged with any crime, the palette is cold too—fluorescent bulbs on concrete. I wonder if Bush ever sketched there. Abu Zubaydah did. He was rendered by the CIA, tortured and locked forever in the secretive Camp Seven. Documents obtained through recent Freedom of Information requests reveal that Zubaydah drew the torture inflicted on him. The drawings, however, are classified.

I recently gave a lecture on Guantánamo at Rutgers University. I shared the podium with James Yee, Muslim chaplain to detainees at the prison from 2002 to 2003. After objecting to torture, Yee was held in solitary confinement on a naval brig for 76 days, subjected to the same shackles and sensory deprivation he’d seen used on detainees. The government told the media he was a spy for al Qaeda. He was later released without charge.

Since last November, Yee has been drawing. He works as an outreach coordinator for Combat Paper, a series of workshops by and for veterans, who pulp their old uniforms into paper. On this paper, they grapple with their military experiences. Eighty percent of them served in Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Carefully, Yee showed me the paper. It’s rough, heavy, colored like grass and sand. “This was a battle dress uniform,” he said. “This was a dress shirt.” “This was desert camouflage from Operation Iraqi Freedom.” He wants to make paper out of an orange jumpsuit from Guantánamo.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/george-bushs-paintings-arent-funny-105664_Page2.html#ixzz2ys3Wcis7

There are three things you should know.

First: I'm not biracial.

"What are you?" people ask, and they expect me to say something thrilling and tribal. I answer, but still they press. "Where are your ancestors from?" people ask, and they want answers that aren't San Antonio and Wheeling, West Virginia. But that's all I got. My story is both simple and untold.

The bones of it, of me: I'm black, despite the skin that goes virtually translucent in the winter. Despite the thin unpredictable curls. My mom and dad are black, as are my grandparents. That's all she wrote. That's all there is, even as I write this sentence. My parents, usually liberal employers of nuance, have always been militant-clear about drawing that line. We aren't biracial.

When I tell people I'm black, they find it unsatisfying. "That's no fun," one girl joked to me recently. "I thought you were going to have a story."

Second: I'm 44% European, 49% African. Not exactly an equal split, but pretty damn close.

Let's go back.

They had land the size of which a city brain like mine can't fathom. Southern men with pale skin, the kind of men whose job it was to oversee the overseer.

These women – my ancestors – were the opposite. Not boss of a solitary fly. Exhausted from all the work they'd done and the years of work that laid ahead. Cleaned and cooked and picked, squinted and bent over and limping, working, working so hard for so long that they must have been sore in places they didn't know they could be sore— their bone marrow, their blood. Nothing to show for it but the injuries. Not a hint of a thing resembling victory.

The women must have known rape was coming. Dread has a taste, you know. It must have crawled up their throats. But by all accounts there was no fight. What would be the point? The sharp cut of a whip across your back? What a man like that wanted, he got. No one could save the women. If he wanted it, then eventually his pale hands would be forcing open her thighs. Eventually he'd force himself inside.

It's an idealistic image. Lagarde, who is not a declared candidate for European Commission president, has already been lauded by the Economist as being "the best woman for the job" if elected, and the prospect of Clinton in the White House already has polls buzzing and super PACs forming, despite no official campaign announcement. Nevertheless, Friedman's fantasy about Clinton breaking the Western political glass ceiling roused the audience, leaving behind a palpable sense of empowerment.

But coupled with this excitement is the reality that we haven't come that far in terms of women's and human rights across the board. Amid a culture of technological innovation and industrial modernity lurks a society still plagued with gender injustice. We're really not as progressive as we think.

Since 2006 the World Economic Forum has annually released the Global Gender Gap Index to provide a perspective on economic, political, educational and health-related gender disparities around the world. Since the United States is, after all, the land of the free, one would think that we'd rank highly. Yet the U.S. was ranked 23rd out of 136 countries in 2013, far behind five-year front-runner Iceland.

This post was sent to us few times now, asking to post it here, it’s pretty good, funny and got a lot of truth in it, we hesitated…but when we saw the writer is actually a man who wrights normally about men issues, we went for it full power!

Here are the 18 things females seem to not understand because of female privilege:

1. Female privilege is being able to walk down the street at night without people crossing the street because they’re automatically afraid of you.

2. Female privilege is being able to approach someone and ask them out without being labeled “creepy.”

3. Female privilege is being able to get drunk and make love without being considered a rapist. Female privilege is being able to engage in the same action as another person but be considered the innocent party by default.

4. Female privilege is being able to turn on the TV and see yourself represented in a positive way. Female privilege is shows like King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond where women are portrayed as attractive, competent people while men are shown as ugly, lazy slobs.

5. Female privilege is the idea that women and children should be the first rescued from any sort of emergency situation. Female privilege is saving yourself before you save others and not being viewed as a monster.

6. Female privilege is being able to decide not to have a child.

7. Female privilege is not having to support a child financially for 18 years when you didn’t want to have it in the first place.

8. Female privilege is never being told to “take it like a man” or “man up.”

9. Female privilege is knowing that people would take it as a gravely serious issue if someone raped you. Female privilege is being able to laugh at a “prison rape” joke.

10. Female privilege is being able to divorce your spouse when your marriage is no longer working because you know you will most likely be granted custody of your children.

11. Female privilege is being able to call the police in a domestic dispute knowing they will take your side. Female privilege is not having your gender work against where police are involved.

12. Female privilege is being able to be caring or empathetic without people being surprised.

13. Female privilege is not having to take your career seriously because you can depend on marrying someone who makes more money than you do. Female privilege is being able to be a “stay at home mom” and not seem like a loser.

14. Female privilege is being able to cry your way out of a speeding ticket.

15. Female privilege is being favored by teachers in elementary, middle and high school. Female privilege is graduating high school more often, being accepted to more colleges, and generally being encouraged and supported along the way.

16. Female privilege being able to have an opinion without someone tell you you’re just “a butthurt fedora-wearing neckbeard who can’t get any.”

17. Female privilege is being able to talk about sexism without appearing self-serving.

18. Female privilege is arrogantly believing that sexism only applies to women.

By MARK SAUNDERS , Source: thoughtcatalog.com

Sexual violence has always been racialized (as well as gender-biased), and there is no one narrative that can fully capture the diversity of experiences. I reject the idea that there is a "universal womanhood" and universal experiences that all women share. Aside from the fact that these universal ideals exclude non-cisgender women, they ignore complexities of race and class discrimination, which many of us cannot afford to do.

I don't believe in trickle-down effects, and mainstream American rights movements have always been just that. Especially in feminist movements, more marginalized groups of women have been overlooked, while being promised that effects gained by the largely middle class, married White women activists would spread to those groups. Time and time again, the intersectionality of race, gender, and socioeconomic status (and so many more axes) are ignored in these movements and we are delivered empty promises.

Much pushback after highlighting race in issues, especially sexual violence, is due to the fact that White women have expressed that this is somehow demeaning their experiences. This is entirely false; recognizing that women of color experience more sexual violence and silencing than White women is not demeaning the traumatic experiences of White women. It is important in any situation to examine and understand how this situation manifests differently for different people. Still, the sexual assault of a woman of color isn't any more heinous than that of a White woman.

Breaking down the statistics of sexual violence by race, you will find that women of color experience higher rates of sexual violence than their White counterparts. While it is believed that as much as 60 percent of sexual violence goes unreported, in public discourse of sexual violence, the statistics put forth are those averaged out between all groups of women. Thus, the intersectional lives of women of color are ignored.

While the wives of most of Israel’s senior ministers are hardly mainstays in the country’s public discourse, Lihi Lapid, wife of the Jewish state’s finance minister, is an exception. Perhaps surprising for someone who actively champions a particular brand of feminism, or post-feminism, that celebrates imperfection.

“My goal in life is that women would stop trying to be so perfect,” she said simply, in a recent interview with The Algemeiner.

Lapid, an accomplished author, columnist and photographer, said that her theories are inspired by Jewish tradition and biblical characters, and have been proven in practice by women in modern Israeli society and those who helped found the state of Israel.

“Women did it. The feminist revolution succeeded, we can live lives which are radically different from our mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives,” reads an introduction to her latest book, Woman of Valor.

The struggle for many women today, she said, is that they “need to be perfect at home, at work, the way they look, as mothers, as daughters and girlfriends.” On the other hand, men only “need to be perfect at work. It’s not a big thing.”

Instead of giving up on one responsibility or another, the solution, she says, is for women to embrace all of their roles but to accept “that it’s okay if I won’t be the best mother” and “It’s okay if I won’t be the best-selling author in the world.” It’s a message that many women feel relieved to hear, she said, not least in the weeks leading up to Pesach.

Hair removal company Veet has attained a trifecta of offensiveness with their new ad campaign "Don't Risk Dudeness," which manages to be sexist, homophobic and transphobic in 30 seconds flat.

The spot opens with a man lying in bed, reaching out to caress what he thinks will be his girlfriend's baby-smooth leg. Alas, she has literally transformed into a big, hairy dude overnight because she went one day (one day!) without shaving. Hate it when that happens.

Said dude, who is dressed in a pink tank top and still has a girl's voice (because men displaying any femininity is hilarious), says sheepishly, "Yeah, I know, I'm a little prickly. I shaved yesterday!" The ad then closes with the tagline, "Don't risk dudeness! Veet Wax Strips: Feel womanly around the clock."

Nothing like a little body shaming to make a gal never want to buy a Veet product again.


Marketers regularly pray on women's insecurity to sell them beauty products, but this is ridiculous. For one thing, showing two men in a bed together for laughs is a tired, homophobic joke. Even worse, equating body hair with "dudeness" (plus poking fun at a guy in a cami) is more than a little transphobic. Last time I checked, waxing doesn't make you a girl, and going natural doesn't make you a guy. In the words of India Arie, we are not our hair.

The government’s conservative agenda has downplayed the issue of gender violence, despite some very disturbing numbers. In the last ten years, up to 700 women have died in Spain because of domestic violence. And up to 22 percent of women reportedly have suffered abuse at the hands of their partners, according to a recent survey by the European Union. Clearly, this problem persists but rarely appears in Spanish conservatives’ public discourse.

But, without a doubt, the biggest setback we are experiencing, the most disturbing, is the attempt to suppress the right of women to freely terminate a pregnancy. After experiencing years of progress under progressive governments, in 2010 Spain passed a law that bans abortion after 14 weeks’ gestation. This law, similar to those passed in the United States, has reduced the number of abortions practiced in Spain and has significant public support. Also like in the United States, among medical professionals there is a widespread opposition to the restriction on the right of women to safe, legal abortion.

The conservative government now intends to repeal this law and replace it with a new one that would make abortion a crime, except in cases of rape or to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person. Women, then, are treated as minors in that their decision to terminate a pregnancy must be approved as appropriate by a judge, doctor, or psychiatrist, a humiliating process for someone who already is suffering enough.

According to reports, 90 percent of abortions currently practiced in Spain would be illegal under the law the government wants to pass. The only alternative that a Spanish woman with resources would have is to travel to neighboring countries—Portugal, Great Britain, or France, for instance—where abortion is not a crime. But in a country with 26 percent unemployment and a third of children at risk of poverty, many women would be forced to risk their lives—again, like during Franco dictatorship—in a clandestine clinic.

From the Drexel University Archives and Special Collections.

The photograph -- doing rounds this time thanks to Jaipreet Virdi-Dhesi, a Ph.D. student who posted the photograph on her blog after stumbling on it while researching 19th century ear surgery -- is remarkable enough to warrant the fuss. The three magnificently dressed ladies were students at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, snapped at a Dean’s reception, in 1885.

If the timing doesn't seem quite right, that's understandable. In 1885, women in the U.S. still couldn't vote, nor were they encouraged to learn very much. Popular wisdom decreed that studying was a threat to motherhood. Women who went to college, wrote the Harvard gynecologist Edward H. Clarke in 1873, risked “neuralgia, uterine disease, hysteria, and other derangements of the nervous system,” such as infertility. “Because,” went Clarke's reasoning, in a classic bit of mansplaining titled "Sex In Education," a woman’s “system never does two things well at the same time.”

So how did our seemingly non-hysterical trio wind up inside a medical school? And that too, from thousands of miles away?

In a report last year for PRI’s The World -- which seems to go viral annually -- Christopher Woolf credits unsung heroes for making the situation possible: the Quakers, “who believed in women’s rights enough to set up the WMCP way back in 1850 in Germantown.”

"It’s a reminder just how exceptional America was in the 19th century," Woolf writes. "We often spend so much time remembering all the legitimately bad things in U.S. history. But compared to the rest of the world, America was this inspirational beacon of freedom and equality."

Inside the uterus we have a thick layer of endometrial tissue, which contains only tiny blood vessels. The endometrium seals off our main blood supply from the newly implanted embryo. The growing placenta literally burrows through this layer, rips into arterial walls and re-wires them to channel blood straight to the hungry embryo. It delves deep into the surrounding tissues, razes them and pumps the arteries full of hormones so they expand into the space created. It paralyzes these arteries so the mother cannot even constrict them.

What this means is that the growing fetus now has direct, unrestricted access to its mother's blood supply. It can manufacture hormones and use them to manipulate her. It can, for instance, increase her blood sugar, dilate her arteries, and inflate her blood pressure to provide itself with more nutrients. And it does. Some fetal cells find their way through the placenta and into the mother's bloodstream. They will grow in her blood and organs, and even in her brain, for the rest of her life, making her a genetic chimera.

This might seem rather disrespectful. In fact, it's sibling rivalry at its evolutionary best. You see, mother and fetus have quite distinct evolutionary interests. The mother 'wants' to dedicate approximately equal resources to all her surviving children, including possible future children, and none to those who will die. The fetus 'wants' to survive, and take as much as it can get. (The quotes are to indicate that this isn't about what they consciously want, but about what evolution tends to optimize.)

There's also a third player here – the father, whose interests align still less with the mother's because her other offspring may not be his. Through a process called genomic imprinting, certain fetal genes inherited from the father can activate in the placenta. These genes ruthlessly promote the welfare of the offspring at the mother's expense.