Dear PETA, You’re irrelevant.
Most feminists, radicals, thoughtful vegetarians/vegans, and legitimate animal rights activists have given up on PETA long ago, so harping on them seems a little superfluous, but after their most recent “direct action” campaign, I couldn’t resist. Not only is it completely offensive in the sense that the image is of a faceless woman whose only notable features are her breasts, butt, and high heels, but it’s incredibly sophomoric. Why not just paint giant tits in the middle of the road that read, “LIKE BOOBIES? GO VEGAN!”
"Move Over, Mudflap Girl"
Of course, this is just a fraction of PETA’s blatant objectification of women, and only a minute example of their complete disregard for the cause of animal oppression- capitalism, DUH.
I have to admit there was a time when I felt the need to defend PETA. It was probably sometime in high school during a stage of staunch vegetarianism when I would stand up for basically any organization attacked by conservatives. It was also a lot easier to be an apologist for an organization that mostly just showed video and pictures of factory farm atrocities. However, my sympathies had to end when PETA started to prove itself to be one of the most heinous single issue cause organizations. It bore its anti-feminist and pro-capitalist teeth forcing any self-respecting leftist to abandon ship altogether.
The Onion did a pretty excellent job at high-lighting the feminist outrage with PETA. Sadly, their parody is too close to reality to be funny. A lot of the images and videos they used for their satirical story are ACTUAL promotional ads and videos for PETA campaigns. And did anyone else see PETA’s Superbowl PSA that was deemed too racy for TV? It’s a disturbing hybrid of Victoria Secret’s commercial and food porn. PETA’s pathetic pandering to the patriarchy can leave many wondering, “PETA ad or Playboy photoshoot?”. Are their staff and campaign strategists so brain-dead that they can’t come up with any better way to get publicity than chaining up a topless girl in public? At least the Animal Liberation Front is destroying property, not women’s sense of person-hood.
PETA is also guilty of perpetuating the system that causes the animal exploitation they rail against. Whenever a fast food chain comes out with a veggie burger or patty, PETA encourages all of their supporters to go out and buy that product. They even put up buy-one-get-one-free coupons on their website. Never mind the fact that Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King are STILL FACTORY FARMING their meat products and PETA’s precious KFC veggie patty isn’t keeping any chickens from getting their beaks ripped off.
As a direct assault on PETA, Gina Pea and I are going to film ourselves slitting cow’s throats and de-beaking chickens while wearing bikinis and high heels and dancing to Lady Gaga. Our slogan is going to be “Factory Farming is M-O-N-E-Y: $O $EXY”. Anyone else want in?
THE BLOSSOMING
FEMINISM/ FEMININITY
Different hands caress different spots
All good but all different
Practice and precision dolled out to the next lover
In whose arms you attempt to forget a previous disappointment
Yet seek to conquer with newly acquired skill
The walls of guilt close in on those of the heart
Breath becomes sparse
Say What Dude?
as tears of consciousness flood your blood stream, making you blue
Yet you continue to move, trained sexy, hungry beast on the peen
To prove a point to yourself or to the owner of the penis on which you grind and halt and grind some more, hoping to get the fulfillment
And perhaps even the ring at some point
Cuz friends, family and even Ms. Beyonce advise you of your deepest feminine need to scheme, trap, mate and maybe love somewhere in the process of discovering your lost feminist femininity.
- fatu sall
http://fatusall.blogspot.com
Some beautiful people in the most beautiful city in the world have finally printed and distributed a newspaper covering historical and current events surrounding the (not so recent anymore) catastrophe that oil monsters and robber barons, BP, have unleashed on the people and ecosystems of the Southeastern Gulf Coast. In response to the severe castration of Deepater Horizon news by corporate and government PR machines, the Raging Pelican (a tribute to the brown pelican, Louisiana’s state bird, finally taken off the endangered species only last year) is the fruit of anti-authoritarian efforts in New Orleans to provide the community with a explicitly local, anti-capitalist analysis of the worst environmental disaster the united states has ever seen.
Absolutely, please, check their blog and read the articles. Of course, contribute your articles and artwork to Issue #2. And, if you can, please chip in a little to help cover the costs of printing. The people who wrote the articles are the very same who paid out of pocket to see it in print. I personally think that this is one of the most encouraging, and inspiring, projects to have emerged in Louisiana since April 20th. $500, $50, $5, 50 cents… We all need to do what we can to make sure it sustains and grows.
flies
you could keep sittin’ ‘ere lookin’
ya half grin just shinin’
actin’ like you got somethin’ I want
you ain’t.
I don’t even gotta look ya in da face
I could feel ya eyes on me
yeah, I’m surprised you came out alone t’night
but nah honey, dats a’right
I’m goin’ home all by my self just fo’ spite
an’ you could go on home to dat otha woman you kinda like
you can’t even act like you ain’t come to watch
hands wishin’ they was on my hips
‘stead you sittin’ in the back wicha hands on ya crotch
you could come sit closer baby
don’t worry about it, I want you to see
‘cause really,
you wudn’t neva nothin’ ta me
you ain’t gon’ neva be
HE BROKE YOUR HEART…FOR A MINUTE
We’ve all been there. Bumping into that ex who gave us the saltiest introduction to rejection. The one who turned us into sophisticated new media stalkers. The kind of ex and the kind of break up that had our self esteem laid out flat for days and months on end.
SOMETIMES HONEY...YOU MAKE ME FEEL THIS BIG!
In the haziness of last night’s party, I bumped into him. Roughly four years since he hung up on me, crying from the rooftops that I lived in “la la land” and that he was just toooo busy sucking ass to the clichés of a suburban brat (Subrat) transplant to the city.
He had gained weight. If ever cake donut batter from Dunkin’s were used to mold a body, my vodka/rocks goggles were looking right at it. The aesthetic of his fat was so baby butt/ cake donut mushy and so poorly distributed on his short frame, that he didn’t even appeal to me in a middle- aged, daddy complex sort of way. I was way over the bitterness hill.
The shifty eyes and body language that had gotten me excited in the past, and which I had stealthily regarded from across rooms, as a kind of pre foreplay- foreplay, now came off as straight awkwardness.
He offered me a beer and I accepted. We caught up on small talk and he eyed me up there, and sporadically throughout the rest of the night. I told him I was happy, he said he didn’t know what that meant. Happiness was a foreign concept to him. How edgy.
I was just recently unemployed, struggling in a troubled industry, balls out unsure of where my life was going. Barely had enough for the drink I was nursing. No lie though, I was happy. I had the hope of a soldier navigating warrior terrain.
That’s half the battle right? Enough of the anxiety flagellation routine, I wanted to anchor myself on more positive coasts. Done with putting up with nonsense. To actually be woken up in the middle of the night to be rudely told I was snoring! Can you imagine? Clearly a way to throw me the part of unwanted visitor in his bed, once the fucking had been done.
I nursed the beer that he had given me in the now sweltering subterranean hotel lounge, the peace of mind so long in coming. I savored the victory. I couldn’t boast of a stellar career, or fab loft etc…(admit it girls we all want THAT moment when we see THAT ex)…I had wised up though and that was largely sufficient.
He continued to eyeball me. I jostled amidst the networking partygoers, each in their own way sweating out fears of the future, shedding past baggage like a 6th grade wardrobe, eeking sanity out of an unsettling urban jungle. I settled my score and said goodnight, finally leaving him and that shit behind.
Protecting the Pretty
I don’t usually feel comfortable commenting on global women’s issues in part because I’m not entirely confident that I know or understand the complexity of women’s experiences outside the US. Despite the fact that I studied Anthropology and had a thorough education on colonialism and colonial feminism, there’s just so much in the world we can never appreciate without experiencing it for ourselves, and any approach to global issues has to be done with an open heart and mind while still staying true to your gut feelings about justice and inequality. And all that is sometimes just too fucking heavy for me.
However, I do feel compelled to comment on Time Magazine’s current cover photo and corresponding caption. The image is of an 18-year-old girl, Aisha, who was mutilated by Taliban, and the caption boldly states “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan”. 
Feministing.com did a pretty good job of critiquing Western media’s tendency to focus on women’s bodies and faces rather than their voices, especially when it comes to women as “other”. Also, a number of people have pointed out that this happened to Aisha while tens of thousands of US troops were already in Afghanistan.
The cover offends me not only as a feminist and anarchist, but also as someone who sees war as an extension of patriarchal domination. Aisha agreed to let Time use her photo because she wants people to see the very real atrocities being committed against women, and other Afghanis, at the hands of the Taliban (which is a political, not religious or cultural, institution that lest we forget was once backed by the US). I applaud her courage, as well as the courage of all women who live, struggle and organize in some of the world’s most oppressive regimes.
I take absolutely no issue with her choice to pose for this photo. What I do find appalling is Time’s choice to juxtapose her photo with a politically loaded caption. By doing this Time is ostensibly saying that women must be protected by militarism, which in the case of the US and other military-industrialized countries, is inherently masculine. This kind of paternalism denies women their autonomy and assumes that they do not have the agency to fight for themselves. Although the entirety of the article is not available online, I would hazard to guess that Time doesn’t bother to investigate what kinds of grassroots organizing women in Afghanistan are doing (RAWA is great example), and have been doing for decades. From what I could read, it focuses on the virtues of American occupation.
Time is not just using women to uphold a political and ideological view that supports militarism though. They’re also using feminine beauty and the patriarchal fear and disgust of deformed women to sell an agenda. Indeed, few things are more offensive to a society that privileges the visual than seeing a beautiful woman who has been horribly disfigured. The fact that Aisha was once an attractive girl with luscious black hair and piercing eyes adds to the uncanny and disturbing nature of the cover.
Much of this goes back to early colonial “outrage” over the hijab and the West’s obsession with the most visible and superficial forms of female oppression. In The Discourse of The Veil, Leila Ahmed details the way European men in Algeria used the veil as an example of how “uncivilized” the culture, religion and people were. They could thereby justify continued colonization and exploitation of both men and women, eventually leading Algerian women to wear the hijab as a form of resistance. Even in the early days of the war in Afghanistan, discussion on the plight of women focused on the burka, and not on the fact that women were starving in the streets because the Taliban prevented them from working. We saw individual images of women covered from head to toe, but little to no images of women rallying in the streets for their right to work.
Of course it’s also important to note some other factors at play with regards to Time and its content. Since they’re a corporately owned media conglomerate, their number one goal is to sell, sell, sell. The more horrific, uncanny, and controversial their cover is, the more likely people are to pick it up in the check-out isle at the grocery store. And the timing of the article cannot be ignored. It comes on the heels of the 15,000 documents published on Wikileaks exposing potential war crimes in Afghanistan. Occupation apologists are feeling an extra push to start covering their asses at any expense.
My Patriarch
Me and Gina P. both know a boy (boy being the operative word) who seems to have no questions about feminism other than “why do y’all hate men?” He never seems to pick up on the answer which is, of course, that we love men and that we simply desire our own space, a space where we can feel free to express ourselves without constantly being posed inane questions like, well, “Why do y’all hate men?”
He has recently posed a new question. The context was condescending but, I’ve chosen to address it despite the
fact that I’m generally insulted by it. “What do y’all think about y’all fathers?”
I work with my father 10-13 hours a day, 5 days a week. We work in the same office. After seeing my father this much all week, I often still see him on Sundays at his home. I see him for every single holiday despite the way that I feel about whatever holiday it may be. He would never tell you that he is a feminist, he would just say that he loves his daughters and wants them to be happy. My father disagrees with most of what I do personally and politically but, he still supports me. He has often questioned me about my motives but, he has never belittled me.
My father has met many of my partners that he knew were not good for me but, he has never tried to tell me anything other than “Be careful, pay close attention, and call me if you need me.” He knows when to defend me and when to allow me the space to defend myself.
My father has sat at my bedside through illness, bailed me out of jail after fist fights (then laughed at me afterward). My father has never failed to tell me how proud he is of me. I do the same for him. Knowing our tempers are similarly quick, anytime he keeps his cool I give him a smile and a pat on the back.
When we were misbehaving children, he took us to task with a black leather belt. He also took us fishing and to the circus. He took us out to the bayou and let us chase snakes and giant black grasshoppers. While my mother shrieked with terror, he beamed with delight.
When Katrina came, he took us out of this city, saved our lives, housed us and fed us. And, when those images finally came through the television screen at us in that dingy hotel room, when all I wanted to do is hit the ground like a mother who had just lost her child, my father wrapped his arms around me. He forced me to stand on my two feet through the pain. He taught me that nothing will ever hurt you more than giving up and lying down.
Now, when some terrible circumstance comes into my life I can stand and face it.
And, when a man comes to hurt me, I can look him in the eyes.
Today, I relayed to my father the question this boy posed. He grinned at me before I could get the answer out. Who the fuck do you think taught me this?
No man is worth your pride.
No man is worth your safety.
Most importantly, no man is worth your sense of self.
So I would like to say to our dear friend who has asked such a thing, so condescendingly…
I love my father and he loves me.
Wearing Makeup & Being Dominated in Bed
Recently my partner and I were discussing/arguing about the role patriarchy plays in our relationship. I had been letting some things he was saying slide despite my better feminist judgment, and it eventually built up and things got pretty heated.
Partially in jest, but also partially in seriousness, he often told me he wanted to “make an honest woman out of me”. At first it seemed so ridiculously archaic that I could only respond with hilarity. Being an enlightened boy, I figured being scoffed at was enough to make him reconsider this sentiment. Obviously it wasn’t, so I finally said something along the lines of “What the fuck is an honest woman anyway?” and “Do you really think I would let a man ‘make’ me into anything?”. Blah, blah, blah.
I expected his response to go something like, “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m so lucky to have an awesome feminist partner who will call me out on all my misogynistic bullshit and patriarchal conditioning.”
No such luck. Instead he said, “But you wear makeup and like to be dominated in bed! I’m so confused!”
Poor boy and silly me. I suppose I should shave my head, wear a burlap sack, and give male lovers bloody noses to achieve orgasm so as not to confuse anyone about my status as a feminist. I understand that when I wear a cute little dress and let my leg and armpit hair hang out, it may seem a little inconsistent and look a little uncanny, but get over it for fuck’s sake.
The thing we all know and hate about patriarchy is that it’s fully formed and completely saturated condition. The former signs and symbols of male domination and female oppression don’t even matter in a fundamental sense anymore. There are no more Don Draper’s patting secretaries on the ass, or Betty Draper’s imprisoned in their home because there are so few options for even upper class women. Today our archetypes are a lot less cut and dry. Take the left’s theoretical sweetheart, Slavoj Zizek, admitting to being an anti-feminist, or Katy Perry singing about getting her kicks by kissing a girl, but still the whole time worrying about if herboyfriend will mind.
With both supposed radicals and liberated women consumed by the all encompassing facets of patriarchy, can there be a clear intellectual and aesthetic defense against it?
No.
Scatterbrain
[this piece deals with first hand accounts of intimate violence. trigger warning.]
This may be a lot to digest for any bros who may decide to read it but, I am positive most women will get where this comes from. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’ve been in direct combat with a partner. This is the place that we are forced to exist in. Trust me. It is clear to us when you expect us to stay in our place, whether you say it politely or scream it at the top of your lungs—and follow it up with that dreaded “Bitch!”
Is it just the dudes I know? Just these guys who fool me with their fancy radical lingo?
If you’re a guy (say, born right around 1974?) and you, at some point in your
life, began identifying yourself as a “punk,” take just a fucking minute and evaluate how you are treating your lady comrades. I’m not sure what the set up was, what you motherfuckers were born into. This sort of polite violence, you seem to think is acceptable, or forgivable. I don’t know why you think you being born during a different generation, born with some inane expectation of masculinity, will translate for those young women who endure your abuse.
I’ll start with my own experience. We call him “Ike” (think: Proud Mary), a little nickname given to him by my girl in NOLA who may know well what abuse looks like (and how to stay standing). The setup has been the same for me. Twenty-something lady who is feeling, well, a little ahead of her male counterparts (for a list of reasons that would require an entirely new blog) meets 30 something “artist-radical-punk-musician-social butterfly-dj-fucking know it all.” He may talk a lot about the “new punks”and what it was like back in the day. It’s possible he mentions feminism, and an understanding about the positions women are placed in. He may even seem to totally grasp the concept of consent.
I can’t tell you why I fell for this–more than once. I can’t sit here and tell you what my setup was, that I sought out someone who may have seemed paternal. I can only tell you that this dynamic is fucked up and although I may have, at times, felt like an idiot for falling for it, I am sure that I am not the idiot here.
Two months in NOLA dating. Always total honesty about the fact that we were both seeing other folks. It started when he would try to wake me up in the morning to go out and eat breakfast. I ain’t much of an early riser. So, at first, he’d ask a couple times and then go ahead without me. Then, he left town for a month. We talked everyday, sometimes more than once a day.
He came home.
We got robbed at gunpoint that very first night back together.
I should say, I got robbed at gunpoint because he stood there while three men grabbed at me, held a gun aimed at my head, mentioned the desire to shoot me. He stood there. They didn’t take his money, his wallet. They didn’t touch or even really acknowledge him. This was their power, making me feel alone, like I was alone there with them.
They took my purse, car, and phone and something that at that point had not occurred to me as something that could be taken away so swiftly: my sense of personal safety in the place where I had grown up. You see, the gun, the threat of a gunshot was not the worst part. The man had pulled me up against him, allowed me to struggle away, only to grab me again and press his body against mine once more. The thought that I was about to be raped, that was what was really frightening to me. I’d have taken a bullet any day to avoid that fate.
They did not rape me.
They didn’t rob him.
They left with my shit.
And left me feeling like I could no longer leave my home after dark.
