It's Friday and The Question Is.....

Since it is the Friday before Halloween, I thought this week we could chat about Halloween.  What is your favourite part about Halloween and what costume are you planning on wearing?  Feel free to share what candy you are looking forward to pigging out on as well.

Speaking of Fetish: How To Attract Asian Women - Secrets & Tips to Pick Up Oriental Girls

The following image comes from an Amazon E-Book.

For a mere 7.95 you can find out how to attract Asian women.   We'll just have to ignore that Asia is a huge continent containing various cultures.  It's easier to slot them all into one big group and assume that there are tried and true methods to get into their panties.

Thankfully no trees were murdered in the creation of this racist and sexist nonsense but that does not make it any less offensive.  I suppose a book that simply said don't be a racist, sexist asshole would have been to obvious and hard to live by.

Carol Creswell-Betsch: A guardian angel comes forward quietly

This is a guest post from Gemna of Gemnaspeaks




Ellen Pryor making sure her dear friend is flawless on the day of the shoot!

Now that the world knows what I knew back then, I can blog about it! Tennessee’s attorney general, Bob Cooper, announced on Friday, October 22, 2010 that Fisk Alumna, Dr. Carol Creswell-Betsch, stepped forward with funds to keep the Stieglitz collection at Fisk University. To the shouts of many on the outside of the Fisk bubble, a Fisk alumnus was doing what alumni around the country do daily, support their school.

Let me give you a few behind the scenes snippet of what I have permission to share. On Monday I discovered, after much thought and prayer, Dr. Carol Creswell-Betsch decided to establish a fund at the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to help maintain the collection on the campus at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery. She did not announce it with a ticker tape parade or send press releases to shout it to mountain top. She did it Carol’s way that I have come to admire so deeply, with quiet elegance. After seeking counsel from others, she informed the Attorney General of her plans. I got a call from her to share with me her decision to establish the fund that would provide for the upkeep of the art at no cost to the school. She asked for my support which I gave immediately. I was flabbergasted that I was entrusted with such precious information. She was seeking input from others about her decision and building a pool of donors who believed in her mission. I thought the idea was extremely bold and courageous.

Dr. Carol Creswell-Betsch had thought long and hard about her convictions. She is deeply connected to the collection. Her mother, Pearl Creswell, was the first curator of the Stieglitz collection at Fisk University. Pear Creswell met and corresponded with Georgia O’Keeffe for many years. “This art has been a part of my life since I was young girl,” she told me once. Dr. Carol Creswell-Betsch is a 1955 graduate of Fisk University and she cares profoundly about the future of the school. Visit her home and it is evident that she has been raised around Fisk’s Art Collection which includes works by Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Marsden Hartley and Diego Rivera as well as O'Keeffe and her husband Alfred Stieglitz all her life. The influences are in every nook and cranny. As she points to what knots here and there, her sentences usually start with two enduring words, “My mother”. Her love for her mother and art is everywhere. Whenever I have come to “sit for spell”, I have been taken aback about the lessons in culture and life I have received on each visit. Her love of family and art is matched by her love of teaching even though she cries,” I am in retirement” often. My visits are lead by a teacher with much compassion and I am not allowed to leave until my teacher-friend has finished my life lessons for that day.

Cartologising Contraception Edition Of Cemented Stereotypes

Jaded16 is a Radical Feminist from India. She writes a humour blog ‘Oi With The Poodles Already’, attempting to make her world a little woman-friendly using healthy doses of irony and sarcasm to de-condition the Indian masses. It is at times like these when she loses all her sense of humour and starts looking for a rock big enough to live under.

 

Since the advent of the industrial revolution, there are apparently only the two sects of people in the world, the People With Machines and the People With Farms and Dung if I were to believe Marx for every word he ever wrote -- and I don't -- between all the fine print where he justified colonisation as a system that would oppress the MudSquatters to the level that they'd achieve the level of the European proletariat to fully become human and worthy of attaining the shiny badge for unbourgois workers and other places where he seems downright uncritical of imperialism. But it seems that the world does endorse this view, so we have extremely clear dichotomies that pit these two kinds of people against each other to the extent they become different species and even speak different languages. After about 150 years (and more) we still relish these manufactured differences a tad too much; not because Marx still drives us so but because of the underlying ulterior motive we've planted in there, facelessly¹.

I remember reading the words, "India is an agrarian economy" from my school years in almost every geography book, at the same time being unable to imagine more than 80% of the population slaving away on the fields, having never seen a field myself, outside of a Bollywood film that is; till I realised most of these fields are located somewhere in Europe as well. As a member of the privileged class who has never had to do any manual, back-breaking physical labour in her life, or ever worry about meals; as a child I'd have a tough time imagining how the villagers must look like, what they must sound like and so on. For quite a while, media representations were my primary and the only source to form deeply tilted view of 'them'. Typically the bumbling village idiot, speaks in broken English, zie represents Old India or Orthodox norms and then the city would civilise him -- raise your hand people of the Olde Interwebes if this sounds ridiculously close to colonisation -- or an urbane protagonist would, disseminate proverbial knowledge and wisdom akin to the (ironic) role of the 'Good Native'. Where the villagers are plot devices to further the UberLiberalHumanist tendencies every urban character inherently is born with; sort of like a DesiDoucheColonial enabler on zie's own and the villagers welcome this taking over of bodies and idea with vapid simplicity. Some 'liberal' films will show the villager as a loyal servant to his ImperiallyKind Babu to the extent that boundaries between Master and Servant are blurred and they hop and skip all over the realities of bonded labour, zamindrai exploitation and systematic bankruptcy in the span of a two-minute dance number. Conversely, 'edgy' films made from the villager's point of view -- produced, written and directed in the city, of course --  place the urban antagonist in the coloniser's shoes, critique the 'loss of Indian-ness' and 'our values' while lamenting in the previously mentioned European fields where the scenes are shot. Any way this LadyBrain looks at the dichotomy, both groups are determined to lock each other out, only to the satisfaction of the Center that openly rejoices and engages in further wall-building.

This week while watching T.V. with my mum and her progenitor, we saw a contraceptive ad furthered by the government to educate the masses about the safety and availability of contraceptives . Here the discourse of contraception takes place between two rural women, drawing water from a well -- for what is more stereotypical of the village native than the Olde Water Drawing Trick? People in cities have taps and other modern things. Apparently -- talking about not taking responsibility for the next child one of them is carrying. Then her friend suggests a visit to the DoctorLady (because a dude doctor would be so uncouth in a situation like this, obviously!) for a box of trusty contraceptives. At first, I came very closely to cheering loudly as having women firmly stating they didn't want further children reeked of agency to me and was enough for my uterus to sing. Only on further analysis, I remembered a similar ad from a while ago and the problems came rushing back.

This Week in Blackness: Black Men Prefer Drug Dealing to Going to College

To anyone that pays attention, it is obvious that the Tea Party is racist.  In the latest example, Al Reynolds, who is considered the Tea Party candidate in Illinois’ 52nd District decided to share his opinion on Black men and college.

“I’ve been in the city and the dichotomy of the women and the men in the minorities, there is a difference in the fact that most minority women, either the single parent or coming from a poor neighborhood, are motivated more so than the minority men,” Reynolds said, when asked what he would do to increase diversity at state colleges. “And it’s a pretty good reason. Most of the women who are single parents have to find work to support their family. The minority men find it more lucrative to be able to do drugs or other avenues rather than do education. It’s easier.”

I’m Sorry Whiteness, You Can’t have Everything

I'm a 23 year old Sinhalese woman in Minnesota by way of Dubai by way of Sri Lanka. I am a Womanist, and part of my womanism is figuring out how to be in solidarity with my transnational sisters worldwide. I'm a daughter, a sister, a partner and a writer. I'm a brown girl who knows Shakespeare by heart and devours anything Toni Morrison. I believe in radical, revolutionary living and loving.  I blog at Irresistible Revolution.  

Cultural appropriation. The race-relations hotbed of our time. We've all been guilty of it at some point. When we live in a globalized marketplace that's constantly revamping its buffet to pique our capricious consumerism, it's hard not to be.

Even though many a blogger has tackled this issue numerous times, I have to say my piece because, despite numerous bloggers cited above, white folks in the general western hemisphere still INSIST that cultural appropriation is either  a)harmless

b) just POC being oversensitive

c)paying a compliment

Before I plunge in, I'm going to offer a general explanation of cultural appropriation: it's when the dominant culture adopts symbols, iconography, customs, crafts etc created by a subordinate culture, without either gaining permission, giving credit, honoring the true spirit of the culture or ensuring that members of the subordinate culture are equally represented in the mainstream. It's like hey, we like the yoga stuff, but not so much the brown people that created it. 

 Now, a personal example to illustrate. Last week, the boyfriend and I were hitching a ride with some folks.  Myself, the boyfriend, and our friend Y were the people of color in the car. The other girl, whom I shall call Genteel White Lady, continued to speak Spanish almost the entire time to Y. My partner, who identifies as Latino, grew up in a Midwestern white family, and therefore is not fluent in Spanish.

For those who are wondering where this is going: for many people of color, language is a painful, poignant issue. Many of us have had our parents’ languages forced out of us through English-privileging education systems. Or, we have internalized so much shame and hatred about our native languages from the white colonial legacy,  that reclaiming our mother tongues is a lifelong, painful, complex process. Language anchors our history, our memory, our connection to community; the loss and dispossession of language entails a lifetime of anguish. For the Latin@/Chican@ community in the US, English-only programs and corporal punishment by white teachers ensured that entire generations grew up without the words to speak with their grandparents. Reclaiming language and celebrating bilingualism is therefore tied to the collective decolonization of communities of color.

When Genteel White Lady proceeded to blithely showcase her Spanish skills, ignoring the fact that my partner could not participate in the conversation, she was appropriating cultural prerogative. She was displaying her ignorance of the history of the Spanish language in the United States.  So here’s someone who’s studied Spanish for years, without ever considering the issue of appropriation and privilege that reap her Genteel White Lady self adulation for being ‘well-rounded’ while stigmatizing the same language in brown-skinned people.

Classic Fat Hating At Marie Claire But Anorexia is Important as Well

First, let me state that I am not a regular reader of Marie Claire and I stumbled upon Should Fatties Get a Room? (Even on TV) quite by accident. Apparently, the author Maura Kelly has a history of anorexia, but that did not stop her from going on a fatstravagnza of hate.

Hmm, being overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese! And while I think our country's obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy, I also think it's at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity! Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy. And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.

So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk. And I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down.

Here we go again with marginalized bodies not being allowed to take up space.  She doesn't believe that she is size-ist, but had no problem saying that fat people are repulsive and giving out diet advice because of course all fat people want to be skinny.  Who ever heard of a happy fat person away from a Baskin Robbins store?  To make sure she hit every single anti-fat meme, she reminds us that she has "plump friends."  How could she be hateful when she chooses to associate with some people that are supposedly outside the norm?

I think this piece at Marie Claire is a great primer in just how blatant fat hatred is, but the lesser discussed issue is the anorexia Kelly is dealing with.  In her apology she stated:

Mosques and Partitions: The Participation of Muslimahs

WoodTurtle is a Canadian Muslim feminist currently using her extended maternity leave to explore developments of Islamic feminism in the Western and Muslim world.  As a woman who wears the hijab (owns several abayas and a niqab monogrammed with her initials in pink, sparkly sequins), she writes frequently on genderized Islamophobia. She also works toward dispelling myths and stereotypes about women in Islam for both Muslims and non.
There's a barrier in front of me and it's covered in orange felt. An unknown brown stain sits right in front of my face. Coffee? The imam is talking about supporting our community -- I think. I can barely hear him over the din of women gossiping about their children or that new muslimah who wears her hijab in a bun. I wonder if it's me they're talking about. What is that, coke? When I put my forehead against the carpet in prostration I can smell feet. The men are just on the other side of the barrier, and no one bothered to use odor eaters. Seriously, is it a dirty water stain? That's disgusting.

Partitions dividing the women's and men's sections is just one of many contemporary additions to our North American mosques. But unlike water fountains and basketball courts aimed at providing needed services, the barrier aims to silence and shut women out of the community under the guise of sacred personal space.

Islam has always had some form of sex segregation when it comes to communal ritual worship. For obligatory prayers, men and women have their own prayer sections -- with women either praying behind the men, or beside them with a separating aisle. Religiously suggested and sanctioned modes of dress and behaviour intend to help the sexes mingle chastely outside of worship situations.  When there are social requirements for the entire community to work together Islam encourages mixing.

Traditional, cultural and political appropriations of these logistics have not only lead to partitions, making us feel like second class citizens, but have also forced praying women into mosque basements or kept them hidden at home.

Over the past 30 years partitions have crept slowly across the face of North America.

A Father's Abortion Story

Abortion is never an easy choice to make.  It is particularly tragic when one must make the choice to abort a wanted child. Aaron Gouveia and his wife, at 13 weeks of pregnancy were told that their baby had Sirenomelia. Otherwise known as Mermaid Syndrome, it’s a rare (one in every 100,000 pregnancies) congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together. Their child had no bladder or kidneys. Thier doctors told them that the survival rate was zero.  I cannot imagine the searing pain that must have ripped through this couple.

On what was probably the most painful day of their life, they arrived at a women's health center only to be accost by pro-life birth activists, "You're killing your unborn baby!," they screamed at the already heart broken couple.  Without knowing the back story of the Gouveia's, they had tried and convicted them because the pro life movement isn't really about helping women -- but forcing their bodies to perform like brood mares -- even in the most untenable situation.  Aaron helped his wife into the clinic and while she had the procedure, he went outside to confront the two with his camera phone in hand.

6 Months For Beating A Woman In Public: Has Justice Been Served?

Last year I wrote about the beating Tasha Hill. Ms. Hill is a U.S. service member and she was out having dinner with 7 year old daughter, at Cracker Barrel restaurant, when Troy Dale West decided to beat her while screaming racial epithets.  She curled into a ball desperately trying to protect herself, while her daughter screamed. Dale outweighs Hill by 100 pounds and is more than a foot taller.  Witnesses stood by and watched the brutal beating without coming to her aid.

Throughout the trial the defense engaged in victim blaming.  

Defense attorney Tony Axam portrayed Hill as a hothead who used her military status to intimidate people. Her temper got her into fights with neighbors and strangers, Axam said, citing a 2005 incident at Southlake Mall in which Hill was arrested for, in her own words, making “terrorist threats” against a woman.

The defense also played a 15-minute recording captured on Hill’s cellphone by 911 operators involving an explosive, obscenities-laden exchange between the reservist and her neighbors. Hill supposedly threatened the neighbors and their teenage sons after her home was burglarized.

"Her character is unbelievable,” Axam, an Atlanta criminal attorney from Atlanta who is representing Troy Dale West, told the jury.

What did any of that have to do with the fact that West chose to beat Ms. Hill while he called her racial epithets in front of her 7 year old daughter?  How did her "character" influence West's decision to beat her in an initial interaction that lasted seconds? Axam made it seem as though she deserved to be beaten because of prior actions.  In the name of defending his client, he put the victim on trial.  This is a common tactic seen in rape trials or when men engage in some form of violence against a woman.

West did not deny that he beat the victim, he asserted that it was a response to her allegedly spitting on him.  Hill denies that this is what occured. He saw his actions as justified.  Each day men physically and sexually assault women and then seek to erase the harm they have done by finding some reason to support the violation. Because we live in a patriarchal society, which teaches us that women do not have the same value as men, this faulty line of reasoning is believed.