September 2011 – Page 6

A short history (1)

I’ve been very touched reading all the comments about Detroit and different industrial cities in my intro post. As I mentioned in comments, I’m going to be doing a short background post on Detroit and Michigan to provide context for later discussions–but you should definitely read the comments on the intro post as well. They give a lot of background on so many of the issues I’ll be covering–and the great thing is, so many of those comments come from a place of deep love.

So let’s begin! As mentioned, I wanted to do a quick layout of the area I’ll be most centered on, Southeast Michigan. Please be forewarned, it is not in my capacity to do a culminative historical reading of the region. I am going to keep my perspective here narrowed down to what I feel are a few moments that still effect how the region works today.

First: Here is a picture of Michigan, a state located in the US. It has different regions highlighted. The area I’m most interested in are the ones in the Southeast (lower right hand side), or the areas highlighted yellow and red.

Outsourcing Porn

This whole article is pretty interesting — who would have guessed that porn only accounts for 4% of the internet? — but this part stood out:

So what’s the most popular porn site on the planet?

The single most popular adult site in the world is LiveJasmin.com, a webcam site which gets around 32 million visitors a month, or almost 2.5% of all Internet users!

You’re telling me a webcam site is more popular than PornHub?

LiveJasmin is the most popular adult site on the Web by a huge margin.

Basically, it’s interesting that what men prefer the most is watching women strip on a webcam and being able to talk to them while they do, telling the women what they want to see. Once this became available (through high-quality broadband streaming of webcam video) it just shot to the top of popularity; it’s even more popular than the tube sites like PornHub and RedTube.

The fact that 2.5% of the billion people on the Internet are using LiveJasmin each month is pretty extraordinary.

A global phenomenon! Where do the webcam women come from?

Almost all of the webcam girls are from eastern Europe or southeast Asia. At $8-$15/hour with no benefits, it doesn’t pay enough for American women… except teenage girls and college students.

Most of the foreign women do it without the knowledge of their friends and family and only do it for Americans so that acquaintances in their homeland won’t hear about it.

I am apparently not a very savvy consumer of internet porn, because I’ve never heard of LiveJasmin.com. And I am certainly far from anti-pornography; if you want to get naked on your webcam / watch people get naked on their webcams, fantastic, enjoy yourself. I personally find the whole concept of webcam porn kind of cheesy and hilarious and I guess sort of like the pornography equivalent of a Xanga journal, or the next logical step after some hot AOL Chatroom action? Do you start the webcam session by asking, “18/f/NY wanna cyber?” But also I am 86, so what do I know. Have fun on your webcams kids.

Oh, but.

It’s fun for a girl or a boy.

Now on sale at Bass Pro Shop: Just can’t get Sally interested in firearms? Wondering why little Lisa doesn’t seem to want to go out and plink cans with Daddy? Put down that drab airgun–hers isn’t pink enough!

In case you were concerned, like I was, that a boy might pick up the pink gun and think it’s for him, the packaging cleared that right up. Keep your hands off my weapon, guys–no boys allowed.

I looked all around the Flying Fatality section, but I just couldn’t find those cute pink safety glasses. It really bugs me that Bass Pro Shop isn’t catering to my needs as a woman. I’m writing an angry letter.

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Do your thing.

Introducing:

Hello, I’m bfp.
I’ll be posting here at Feministe for the next two weeks. A bit about me: I identify mostly as a Malinchista. A traitor to nation, to borders, to men. A worker. A mami. Queer. I have a long sordid past with Feminism that I’ll let you discover through the googles. I struggle with spelling and capitalization. I haven’t blogged much in a very long time.

Sweet Honey in the Rock is my favorite musical group.

VIDEO: Sweet Honey in the Rock singing Beatitudes. See composer Bernice Johnson Reagon’s website for lyrics.

While I’m here, I’ll be working to contextualize all the big words: “post-industrialization,” “nationalism,” “white supremacist heteropatriarchy,” “decay porn,” “borders,” “distribution systems,” etc within a framework that centers Detroit, Michigan, and the US Midwest.

Or I may just wind up posting pretty pictures. Who knows. 😀

So let me start off the spectacle by asking: What do you think of when you think of Detroit? I am asking for two reasons. First, to get an idea of where I need to start with my posts. Second, because I like to start talking with all the cards on the table. There are no wrong answers here, I already know that Murder Capital and urban decay are very common beliefs about what Detroit is. I also know that people outside of the US more than likely…heard of Detroit once. Or, maybe they interact with Detroit like so many people within Michigan do, through industry.

Whatever the case, talk about it in comments. And we’ll go from there.
P.S. My comments are on moderation.

Drunk Mooses Wreaking Havoc in Sweden

Move over bears, there’s a new animal threat in town: Inebriated mooses (meese? moose?).

An inebriated moose trying to get more fermenting apples apparently lost its balance and ended up stuck in an apple tree in Sweden, The Local website reported.

After returning home from work Tuesday evening, Per Johansson of Saro heard bellowing from his neighbor’s yard, The Local reported.

“I thought at first that someone was having a laugh. Then I went over to take a look and spotted a moose stuck in an apple tree with only one leg left on the ground,” Johansson told The Local.

Hate it when that happens.

Drunken moose are common in Sweden in autumn, when apples are abundant on the ground and in trees in homeowners’ yards, according to The Local.

Johansson surmised the moose had been indulging for quite a while.

“My neighbor recognized it as the animal that almost ran into her car earlier in the day,” Johansson told The Local. “She was pretty sure the moose was already under the influence.”

As far as drunken hijinks go, though, getting stuck in a tree is amateur hour. If that moose was doing naked leg-lifts at a bus stop, maybe I’d be impressed.

Happy Friday: Beautiful news from Nepal

I just saw this on a news alert list, and it made my morning. We work hard all week to try and uplift the idea that everyone should have access to human rights. And usually it’s exhausting work, but then sometimes there’s a little glimmer.

Today, the glimmer comes from Nepal which is undergoing a constitutional reform process as the country transitions from a monarchy to a full democracy. In May of 2010, the various political parties failed to reach a deal in creating the new constitution. More delays have ensued and the current deadline is November 2011.

Here’s the beautiful part:

The current draft constitution proposes, “citizenship rights for third gender individuals… bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; calls for government affirmative action in support of LGBT people; and proposes gender-neutral language on the rights to work, health, education, and marriage.”

In Nepal, LGBTIQ folks face widespread discrimination. And the process will certainly not be without its problems and roadblocks. But on this Friday, can we just appreciate the potential impact of a constitutional provision that names this discrimination and offers a legal foothold with which to fight it? I think we can.

Where Dark Tourism Meets Global Feminism

This is a guest post by Jessica Mack.
If you haven’t heard it before, you probably already know the concept. Dark tourism is what happens when former places of tragedy and horror become memorialized, then patronized by droves of tourists. Like Ground Zero in New York City, or Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island. It’s where dark memories, human curiosity, and capitalism mix.

Separate but equal? In Kindergarten?

Hi all, I’m Eesha Pandit, and am delighted to be doing some guest blogging here. For my day job, I do some international human rights work. And I blog over at the Crunk Feminist Collective, and recently at Feministing as well. Hello!

As happens from time to time, long-standing issues resurface in new and interesting ways. This time it’s gender segregation in classrooms.

As a proud graduate of a women’s college, I understand both the merits and drawbacks of gender based segregation in a classroom setting. However, there are clear differences between gender segregation at the college level and the same practice at the elementary and middle school level. The students’ age and ability to chose the experience, for one.

A steadily increasing number of elementary and middle schools are embracing the notion that having gender (male and female) segregated classrooms can eliminate the distractions that exist in having mixed classrooms.

According to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE) this is a booming trend. In 2003 there were 50 such classrooms. Today there are over 400. South Carolina has 100 districts offering all-boy and all-girl classes. And 39 other states are also giving this approach a shot.

So there are several interesting points of contention. Opponents of this practice liken it to racial segregation. And supporters say the practice creates a better learning environment and allows the teachers to create lesson plans that are specifically tailored.

Interestingly, “Girls will usually say that they’re able to share their ideas more in an all-girls classroom. Boys will tend to say that they’re not distracted by the girls,” said David Chadwell, South Carolina’s coordinator for single-gender initiatives.

Apparently, this isn’t about making a gendered (read: essentialist) claim that boys and girl learn differently. Instead, it seems that the rationale is nuanced. E. Mark Mahone, Director of Neuropsychology at Baltimore’s Kennedy Krieger Institute, which specializes in child brain development and disorders, says that natural differences between boys and girls combined with social factors can lead to big differences in how they act in the classroom.

“There are a lot of factors that go into learning that can either enhance it or get in the way,” he told The Washington Times in an interview. “There is a lot of evidence to suggest benefits for having single-sex education. According to NASSPE, schools that have successfully implemented same-sex classes often report more attentive students and fewer disruptions.

So, ok. I’m following the logic. Boys and girls are socialized differently. There might be some “natural” differences in the way they learn (though, I remain unconvinced about what that means, and how it is determined and measured). And so far, participation in these classrooms is optional at the schools that have instituted them. So there can indeed be benefits to this approach. For example, some schools that are using the method are finding that students are thriving – girls are speaking up and choosing to pursue math and science, boys are acting out less (to mention some of the notably “gendered” issues. Now, how about the implications of the idea itself?

It seems there are several possible concerns here. Firstly, there are only two genders represented. In addition to reinforcing the gender binary, we know that even at a young age children are aware of gender identity/expression and can begin resisting the gender identity (and related sexual orientation expectations) given to them at birth.

Secondly, it seems that by cementing the gender binary we’re not challenging the problem of gendered socialization at it’s core. Is it really a solution to just separate the folks who are being socialized differently, even if much of that socialization is happening outside of the classroom? Or might we come up with some big picture, community based solutions that address the kinds of problems that arise, i.e. that little girls are told to be beautiful and boys are encouraged to be brilliant?

I haven’t any answers, but even though I went to a women’s college (where we wrestled with issues like trans-inclusion, among others), I am reluctant to move immediately to reinforce the very binary that is at the root of the problem. I’m curious of your thoughts Feminste-as. Please share them in the comments.

Traveling While Female

This article has some pretty good tips. Especially this:

“First, strike a balance between trusting and foolish — most adventures happen when you say yes. But weigh out the options first. Does someone know where you are? Do you have cellphone reception? Do you know exactly where you’re going? Do you know the people you’re going with — even a first and last name is something.

“Second, be really comfortable with yourself. Some people can make friends easily anywhere they are, and that’s amazing. But even the friendliest of people need some down time, and when you’re all alone you can become lonely really fast. So make sure you can be okay with your own thoughts.

“And third, take a tampon everywhere. It’s not just good for your own period, it’s a bonding experience. If you’re in a crowded train, or a hostel room, or a bus ride, and someone doesn’t have one, you just made a new friend by giving yours away. They also work well to stop blood if you scrape your knee or get a nosebleed. Really, tampons are awesome.”

Also, sometimes airport security in places where tampons aren’t commonplace won’t know what your tampon is, and you can have a great uncomfortable moment where a dude pulls your tampon out of your bag, touches it, smells it, and then looks at you quizzically while you attempt to stammer out an explanation in a language you don’t really speak.

I travel a lot, and I am a lady, and I often travel alone. There are some major perks — waiters and waitresses assume you’re sad or lonely, so free wine is often involved in any dinner out. And if you are a big eater like me and you sit down alone and order half the menu and don’t bother anyone, the waitstaff also likes you and can give you good tips as to where to go out afterward.

It’s also a great way to meet people. Traveling with friends is lovely and fun, but traveling alone requires you to interact with others — and you might be pleasantly surprised at how wonderful other human beings can be. I spent my 22nd birthday in Belgrade, as part of a solo three-week trip through Turkey and the former Yugoslavia; I checked into a hostel, walked around the city, and when I came back everyone was gathered in the main room with a cake, ready to sing me Happy Birthday and take me out to the clubs — the hostel-owner saw my birthday on my passport and coordinated the whole thing. I met a girl a few days later who I traveled with for the next three days, and after she left I never saw her again; I met a boy who I talked to for five minutes on the walls around Dubrovnik and who I saw on and off, whenever he would come through New York, for years after. In Egypt, I met a group of girls who spent a whole day with me and showed me around their city, and a man who grabbed my hand and ran me across the impossible intersections on Tahrir Square; in Buenos Aires, I spent a lovely evening trapped in a restaurant with a Swiss journalist while the streets flooded outside; there are at least 10 Frenchmen in Paris who helped me navigate the subway, and as many waiters who helped me pronounce “chevre.” People have cut me slack and given me directions and taken me on rides on their motorbikes and refilled my wine glass and brought me free dessert.

People can be pretty cool, is my point, and while I’m sure men are also approached and talked to by strangers, solo women are less threatening and I suspect more likely to be invited out or chatted up or helped out by strangers — which can be a blessing and an annoyance.

The biggest downside to traveling while female is access: There are some places where women simply are not allowed, and it can be frustrating to have to go to the second-rate version of wherever the boys are (if there even is a second-rate version at all; sometimes you just don’t get to go). And of course there are people who will target you because you’re female and alone — I’ve had more than a few of those experiences, from the old naked man with a boner on a Greek beach to the pack of teenage boys in Cairo who followed me around for two hours before one of them handed me a note asking, “Do you have sex?” to the stoned hotel proprietor in Amsterdam who I almost stabbed in the neck with a pen after he followed me into my room and asked me to kiss him goodnight. Creeps, they are everywhere! But they are also in New York and probably in your home town too, so you know, you do a creep-scan anywhere and follow your gut and don’t be afraid to tell a man what’s what and don’t place being nice ahead of your own safety and realize that Bad Things actually happen fairly rarely and then hope for the best. The fear of creeps or uncomfortable situations keeps too many women from stepping outside of their comfort zones, so figure out how to stab someone in the neck with a pen and then get out there.

And always bring tampons. Always bring a scarf.