Enough is enough. So goes the resounding message of contemporary feminism in 2013. An exasperated call for equality from Grimes ("I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living&quot , a vocal condemnation of Greg Wilson's patronising defence of Nina Kraviz's sexuality and an unsubtle message from Planningtorock noisily declaring her objective in 'Misogyny Drop Dead'. Even CocoRosie, usually defiantly numb to heteronormative authority while frolicking in a self-created gender queer bubble, join the chorus of change while promoting their latest Tales of A GrassWidow with Bianca Casady’s frank declaration, "Patriarchy is over".

There's been a solid half-decade of relative quiet from women, politically, in music. Le Tigre fizzled out and Peaches' influence dwindled sharply since her macho parodies Fatherfucker and Impeach My Bush mingled politics with electroclash. The insidious reach of sexual gender violence has continued to infiltrate the mainstream, with the exoneration of Chris Brown being one of many insidious examples. For too long the oblique strategies of neoliberalism have been suppressing society's margins through atomisation, implication and ridicule.

Cue: The Knife, whose new album Shaking The Habitual is probably the most visible example of this current resurgence of feminist militancy in music. Explicit references to Butler, Foucault and Winterson abound, while Dreijer-Andresson hisses through the crackle of distortion, "not a vagina. It's an option / the cock, had it coming" in 'Full of Fire', before dropping a 19-minute stream of uneasy, droning ambience under the revealing title 'Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realised'. No longer the pop infiltrator of the past – licensing 'Heartbeats' to José Gonzáles, Sony and Entourage – The Knife seem to understand that collusion is not only futile but detrimental within a late capitalist system that thrives on co-opting and depoliticising its opposition. We've had a long run of marketable, and ultimately unhelpful, brands of "girl power" thanks to the Spice Girls and Pussycat Dolls, continuing to this day with Ke$ha's sexy feminism and pole dancing classes. So, what changed?


Could it be that the blunting method of what Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism describes as a consumer culture of constant "sugary gratification" is no longer effective in the face of a bleak economic outlook, leaving its citizens to question free market capitalism's very legitimacy as a system to function within? It was recently announced that the Eurozone recession would only get worse, the United States' recovery from economic malaise has been described as the weakest since the Great Depression, and governments have responded with isolationist foreign policy and restrictive austerity measures. When times are tough the people who suffer most are those at the bottom, and it's fairly apparent who they are. Ethnic minorities, the economically disadvantaged, queer groups and women are the ones victimised by rightist ideologies catering to the inevitable reactionary conservatism that comes with economic crisis. US Republican Todd Akin's comments on "legitimate rape", conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh's outrageous remarks equating contraception with promiscuity and David Cameron's anti-immigration rhetoric would do nothing for their popularity amongst their scapegoats, and it's showing. The Occupy movement, civil unrest and marriage equality marches are a response to a deep-seated discontent, and are building momentum as a social and political force.

Increasing numbers of Australian women are asking their doctors for a designer vagina. So many, in fact, that the government is reviewing whether such surgery should be publicly-funded via Medicare.

Over the last ten years, claims through the medical benefit scheme (MBS) for labioplasty have increased from 200 to over 1,500 per year. The resulting cost, rising from $40,000 to $740,000 annually, has led to a government review questioning the procedure.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists strongly discourage labioplasty, unless there are compelling medical reasons. They cite a range of potential complications, including scarring, permanent disfigurement, infection, pain, and altered sexual sensations.

So why are so many Australian women demanding labioplasty, a surgical operation that involves reduction of protruding labial tissue surrounding the vagina? The main reason given is dissatisfaction with the appearance of the genitals.

The FW created nine posters that call bullshit on Disney's original titles, and deliver the Truth. Filed under "Wish I would've thought of that first!" and also, "More, please!"

Related: Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting (and things that are interesting to screenwriters!) (and other people, too!), has a super fun and interesting breakdown of Little Mermaid. They go into detail with the original fairy tale vs. the Disney version, and let me tell you: the original is FUCKED (ALL CAPS). Plus, plenty of talk about how Ursula is tops, and maybe the greatest, fattest, sexiest sea bitch villainess of all time. Anyway, the whole episode is highly recommended — I listened to it on a drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco and didn't fall asleep once! A++!

Roosh’s Return of Kings blog recently posted a list of “7 Brilliant Songs To Make Love To,” to help all the would-be Romeos (and possible rapists) who read his blog to more easily manipulate drunk women into bed.

I would like to provide a somewhat more whimsical service to readers here of all genders. So here are 9 Amazing Songs That It Is Probably Impossible To Have Sex To (Unless You Have Them Playing At Extremely Low Volume).

Because I gotta tell ya, the ones that are posting here are letting me down. Consider this latest comment, expunged from its original place in a comment here but presented for your delight, from “ManCaveThrust”:
This place is horseshit. Anyone who tells the TRUTH about alpha game or feminism suddenly becomes a prime target for Scalzi’s black helicopter squad. Take your self-righteousness and stuff it. You and your rabbit poops can stay far away from me and my tight ass life.
Notes:
1. Tired rhetoric — “rabbit” references been done to death in terms of me, handwringing about feminism likewise, all this “alpha” stuff, game or otherwise, is just boring. Yes, yes, alpha this, rabbit that. Where’s the originality? Where’s the pop? Where’s the craft?

2. For that matter, this fellow is clearly not keeping up with current events, otherwise he’d know that at the moment I’m (fairly, to be sure) not exactly in the finest possible odor with many feminists. I want my ranting comments fresh and contextually aware, thank you.

3. A single all capped word? If you’re not going to commit to an all-cap lifestyle in your comment, don’t bring the all caps at all. And again, here we are with the craft issue.

4. Metaphor usage is not up to snuff. “Black helicopter squad?” If this dude was paying any attention at all, it would have been “pastel helicopter squad” — most people would have realized it was a play on “black helicopters” but the “pastel” bit would have more in line with the attempt to frame me as an emasculated tool of the matriarchy; real men won’t ever be seen in pastels, they’re clinically proven to shrink one’s testicles.

The Fannish Misogyny Fairy
So it went down like this.
SFWA announced that they’re putting a task force on fixing the Bulletin RIGHT NOW and that’s a good thing. We are hopeful!
John Scalzi said, somewhat ruefully, on Twitter that this is what he gets for thinking that the last month of his tenure as SFWA president would be quiet.
I told him that he had tempted the Fannish Misogyny Fairy with such thoughts.
He said he wanted to see an illustration.
There are very few people for whom I will whip off a spontaneous illustration, and I have to be in the right mood (my buddy Mur is still waiting for her sugar cube golem!) but all the stars aligned, I found photo ref of Hoary Marmots (because A) these are very hoary attitudes and B) if you google them, there are some marvelous shots of hoary marmots sitting around in groups, looking like grumpy old men) and…well…

http://www.redwombatstudio.com/blog/?p=5539

Prints are available! And if you want to post this around to fight the forces of People Saying Stupid Things, you are more than welcome–give me some credit in the comments or link or whatever.
Filed under: art by admin

Lostutter may deserve more credit than anyone for turning Steubenville into a national outrage. After a 16-year-old girl was raped by two members of the Steubenville High football team last year, he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim. He now admits to being the man behind the mask in a video posted by another hacker on the team's fan page, where he threatened action against the players unless they apologized to the girl. (The rapists were convicted in March.)
A 26-year-old corporate cybersecurity consultant, Lostutter lives on a farm with his pit bull, Thor, and hunts turkeys, goes fishing, and rides motorcycles in his free time. He considers himself to be a patriotic American; he flies an American flag and enjoys Bud Light. He's also a rapper with the stage name Shadow, and recently released a solo album under the aegis of his own label, Nightshade Records. The name dovetails with that of his Anonymous faction, KnightSec.


Lostutter first got involved in Anonymous about a year ago, after watching the documentary We Are Legion. "This is me," he thought as he learned about the group's commitment to government accountability and transparency. "It was everything that I'd ever preached, and now there's this group of people getting off the couch and doing something about it. I wanted to be part of the movement."

If convicted for hacking a Steubenville football fansite, he could face 10 years. The rapists got 1 and 2.
He'd read about the Steubenville rape in the New York Times, but didn't get involved until receiving a message on Twitter from Michelle McKee, a friend of an Ohio blogger who'd written about the case. McKee gave Lostutter the players' tweets and Instagram photos, which he then decided to publicize because, as he put it, "I was always raised to stick up for people who are getting bullied."

Shira Tarrant, co-editor of 2012's Fashion Talks: Undressing the Power of Style, a treatise on the politics of contemporary style, believes these newfangled attempts at arming women have symbolic importance. “Things like camouflage and body armor and ninja fashion, these have all been used in warfare—and rape is the everyday war that women face,” she tells The Daily Beast. “The fact that our fashion designs are beginning to reflect this means that we're shifting awareness about how seriously we're taking these issues.”


A collection of Yves Saint Laurent's Le Smoking female tuxedos are displayed at his retrospective in Denver in March 2012. (Ed Andrieski/AP)

Still, she accedes that what you wear can serve as a shield without the garments being literally rigged. “There are ways that I might clothe myself that are aesthetically pleasing, but also don’t highlight certain aspects of my sexual body. That’s a form of armor. It’s like armor lite,” she says. One of the examples she offered was the uniform worn by ’90s riot grrrls, the feminist punk rockers whose bands, including Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, regularly spoke out against rape and in support of empowerment. These were the women who made flowing “tentlike” baby-doll dresses and “kick ass” combat boots fashionable.

Along those lines, Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, dismissed protective clothing as being outside the realm of fashion. Instead she thinks contemporary fashion’s “psychological aspects of protection” are more pertinent than its physical aspects. “The early theories of fashion tended to focus on the idea that dress was originally and primarily about protection, meaning essentially physical protection,” she tells The Daily Beast, and gives the example of shoes protecting feet. “Later theorists pretty much rejected the functional origins of dress and suggested instead that dress is much more about symbolic communication, particularly to display gender, sexuality, position in society, et cetera.”

Fashion can empower, even if it can’t protect. The little black dress is “like armor” in the sense that it bestows confidence on its wearer, Steele says. Not to mention Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic pantsuit, which started the ball rolling toward equality couture. In 1966 the French designer created a tuxedo suitable for women, called Le Smoking, which, according to Vogue, for the first time positioned the so-called second sex “at glittering galas standing lapel-to-lapel with a roomful of men in black.” In the 1980s Le Smoking became the power suit, and those glittering galas became executive offices. All this is not to say that men’s clothing has not historically served a physically protective function.

An Israeli judge sparked an outcry during the hearing of a 19-year-old Israeli woman who was raped by four Palestinians when she was 13. The woman was petitioning the court for the rape to be considered “an act of terror” which would make her eligible for government compensation.

“Some girls enjoy being raped,” Judge Nissim Yeshaya of the District Court in Tel Aviv said, according to Army Radio.

The rape victim was not in the room for the hearing. Her attorney, Roni Aloni-Adovnik described the scene to Army Radio. “In the midst of the passionate debate he (Judge Yeshaya) suddenly said aloud, in earshot of everyone present, “There are some girls who enjoy being raped.” The room fell into silence….And he didn’t even get what he had just said. He didn’t understand why everyone became silent all of a sudden.”

Israeli press reports said the plaintiff collapsed after her lawyer told her about the judge's remarks and was hospitalized.

Judge Yeshaya said his remarks had been misconstrued.

“This isn’t serious,” he said after the remarks became public. “They are trying to gain publicity off me. I do not believe a rape victim is not hurt or that rape is not a serious offense.”

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the remark “unfortunate” and “unacceptable” and said he was withdrawing his support for the judge’s appointment as the head of the Likud Party’s Court.

When I first listened to the new album by Savages, I knew nothing about them. The singer sounds like Geddy Lee. Then I read about them being an all-female band. All the comparisons were with other female bands, which is almost always the case no matter what they sound like. Is that kind of categorizing frustrating?

Part of what we’re doing is females doing this misogynist music. But when people say our guitarist is really incredible and that she does all the Jimmy Page solos, they’re not just saying it because she’s doing it, they’re saying it because she’s a female guitar player doing it. People like to categorize.

Like Heart being called the female Led Zeppelin, it’s a back-handed compliment.

Right. The one that triggers me the most is Courtney Love, who to me is an incredible musician. Say what you want about her personality. No man has ever been held accountable for who they are as a person, but she has, and she’s been crucified for it. When she and Hole came out with Live Through This, there was conspiracy-theory talk that she killed Kurt Cobain and that he had written her album. Why can’t people listen to Nirvana’s In Utero and say that Hole had a big influence on Kurt Cobain’s work?

Who else besides Courtney Love has inspired you?

Patti Smith. And my ultimate is Sinéad O’Connor, another artist who was crucified. There’s a whole legacy of female artists. In the end, if they survive it, they get their due. But you have to really live through it all to even remotely get your due in the end.

Vag Halen was included in a piece in The Guardian about all-female cover bands. It was written by a female journalist, who I thought was a bit sensational with the topic. What did you think of it?

There was a lot of that article that was a bit off. The whole “semi-nude” thing. To be honest I thought it was written by a man at first. I understand that writers like to fetishize what we do. Male writers do that more than women with us. They’re trying to be supportive. We get it.

You’re known as a feminist band. Is that an overt, political thing, or is it simply unavoidable?

As soon as you step on a stage, you’re a feminist. The struggle is inherent in what we do.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/summer-entertainment/vag-halen-part-of-what-were-doing-is-females-doing-this-misogynist-music/article12348149/