June 2011 – Page 7

Things to sext other than dick pics

In the aftermath of the Anthony Weiner weiner-scandal, the Washington Post asks women what kind of sexts (as they kids say) they’d appreciate receiving. Women ™ say:

“I would like a photo of a made bed,” says Kathryn Roberts, who works at a law firm in Washington. “I would take rose petals, but I want them on top of a made bed.” And not that fake kind of made, either, where the comforter is smooth but the sheets are a jumbled mess.

“Or laundry,” adds her friend Andrea Neurohr.

“Folded laundry,” elaborates Roberts. “Maybe in a wicker basket.”
…
Cindy Meston directs the Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a past president of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health. If there is something you want to know about what turns women on, she is the person you call.

“We spent six years of research on why women have sex,” Meston says. They compiled 237 reasons. Duty sex. Revenge sex. Pity sex. Bored sex, engaged in because women simply had nothing better to do. “Of the 237 reasons why women have sex,” Meston says, “not one was looking at a man’s genitals.”

Get it? Cleaning is so important to women it’s basically pornography! Haha oh women, with their clean laundry and their distaste for sexual pleasure and the male body. But they’ll have sex out of duty, revenge, pity or because they’re bored. Not once because they wanted to see some dick. Science!

To be fair, texting someone dick pictures is kind of… yuck. Which is also how I feel about up-close vulva pictures. Leave the low-quality close-ups for the anatomy books! But if you wanted to send me the photo version of this D’Angelo video, I’d be ok with that:

What do you want a sext of? DO NOT SAY LAUNDRY.

Why Wearing Mini-Skirts is a Feminist Issue

Last weekend, I sat on the subway, thumbing through a magazine and grumbling about how the train is so slow. As I sat there, more and more people got on the train. Then two pairs of feet caught my attention — one was manicured with bright red polish and strapped into a sky high silver sandals, the other was in electric blue stilettos. Both pairs of ankles were attached to long bare legs, as their owners awkwardly sat down across from me. They were wearing skirts so short that I could almost see their underwear. It seemed like any moment, one — or maybe both — of them would open her knees a little too wide and I’d be forced to catch a glimpse of her baby-maker. “What are you looking at?” one of them snapped at a man who leered at them.

These girls were tarted up. It was only 8 p.m.

Watching them attempt to cross their legs, and then try to just squeeze their knees together, I felt adrenaline rush through me. I felt like I should do something. But what? Throw a pair of sweatpants at them? These are adults. They’re just having fun, I thought. They can take care of themselves.

But then another part of me thought: how naive.

No good was going to come to these two women that night. Best case scenario: one of them would walk above a subway grate and the world would see what kind of bikini wax she was rocking, and her stiletto would inevitably catch (those subway grates are a real bitch on skinny heels) and she’d twist her ankle and end up in the emergency room. Worst case scenario: Some a-hole would take one look at them and sense an easy target.

The more I think about sluttly clothing and its relationship to sexual assault, the more I am convinced that mini-skirts are a feminist issue—one that young women in the U.S. need to think about in addition to more obvious issues like equal pay for equal work, better access to gynecological care, and the need for more women representing us in government. Extremely revealing clothing —the kind we see on “Jersey Shore,” the kind we know women wear on college campuses all across the country, the kind we see around us in bars on weekend nights, the kind that fueled “Charlie’s Angels,” the kind that inspires all those “last night, I looked so hot” stories that people like to tell—regularly puts women in danger in the name of a good time.

In an ideal world, rape wouldn’t exist. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t matter how much a woman had to drink, what she was wearing, or what overtures she had given—no man would ever consider sex without explicit consent and would recognize that a short skirt isn’t an invitation to rape. But we don’t live in that world. Unfortunately, short of some Herculean sensitivity raising effort, we do not have control over what men, drunk or sober, will do when presented with our bare legs. What we do have control over is our side of the equation — how much we decide to show.

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So right about now you’re probably like, Hold up. Did I get lost on the internet, because this is some bullshit right here. And you would be right! That is some bullshit right there. It’s exactly the kind of bullshit that’s currently being crapped out in this post, “Why Being Drunk is a Feminist Issue” (I would suggest skipping the comments, which appear to be a gathering place for the Least Intelligent People on the Internet). The piece is basically word for word what I wrote above, except about drinking instead of mini-skirts. And it’s Feminist, of course, because it’s about Helping Women.

links for 1-6-2011

All over the world, people are becoming fed up with corrupt, corporatized, unrepresentative governments, and Spain has been no exception. The recent elections there have sparked an occupation of Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Plaza. Still, capitalist, colonial heteropatriarchy has proven a tough stain to remove, both from the state and within the ranks of protest. But feminists in Spain have stepped up and spoken out.

TRIGGER WARNING: The Egyptian military is admitting that “virginity checks” were performed on women who were arrested at the protests this spring. Sadly, police and military violence that is directed towards self-identified women protestors is often sexualized, as we saw during the G20 protests in Toronto last year But women, people of colour, trans folks and queer folks continue to play a pivotal role in revolution all over the world, despite the intense danger we face.

Any of us who work in feminist and social justice knows that it’s incredibly difficult to access resources and funding for our work. What do we do when our funders are the very corporate or state institutions that perpetuate the systems of inequality and domination that oppress us? Can we bite the hand that feeds us? Colorlines features a great piece about that very dilemma facing some young self-identified women media activists and filmmakers.

TRIGGER WARNING here too, for homophobia and transphobia: A Toronto couple is trying to raise their new infant outside of the gender binary. Naturally, people are freaking. Out. The Today Show and CNN EVEN DID POLLS ABOUT IT. Because apparently this is everybody’s business? And we must defend gender and sex binaries at all costs! Shakesville pretty much captures how I feel about that. Now the mother responds to the frenzy whipped up by heteronormativity. Heteronormativity always ruins the party.

After months of struggle, queer artist Alvaro Orozco has been granted permission (by an occupying colonial state, irony) to remain in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Read about his struggle, it is both inspiring and sobering in the face of all the xenophobic, racist, colonial bullshit that goes on this colonized land, Turtle Island.

Finally, given that these links are all a bit heavy, here’s something to make you cry, but in the best way!

How to talk about Judas

This is a guest post by honeyandlocusts.
It’s pretty classic Gaga, if we can talk about “classic” Gaga already: visually lush, intricately choreographed, fantastically costumed. Also, it’s a total fucking mess.