watch this hot doc!!!

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes! 

The whole thing is on youtube.com 

women's rights are human rights

"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights - and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard." - Hillary Clinton. Beijing, China. 1995.

Feminist Summer Camp

that's right. I'm going! And NO KELLIE we don't burn our bras in a campfire.
Although I laughed out loud at that joke.
I just filled out the contract and questionnaire for it and I'm getting very excited. Looking at Leslie Feinberg's blog today and finding out that Les is going through some serious medical treatment made me want to cry.



I don't have any questions but I want to know so much.

V-Men

Victory Over Violence is hosting a V-Men event at Ustler Hall on April 3rd, from 12:00 to 1:30. V-Men is a branch of the V-Day organization (Violence Against Girls Is Not Acceptable). The topics discussed will be how men fit in the movement and how they can they can help. Refreshments will be provided!
"All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke
DON'T BE A GOOD MAN WHO DOES NOTHING!!! Come to V-Men and check out the V-Day website!!! 

one love.

www.vday.org

on menopause and sexuality

"Ellen, a 53-year-old Caucasian married for 34 years, 

has vaginal dryness and pain in intercourse.  She first 

describes sex as something she 'endures'...a second 

reason vaginal dryness is problematic for some women 

is because they do not discuss what they enjoy in sex...

consequently, heterosexual women and men who do not

 discuss their preferences rely on dominant ideas about 

'real' sex, which results in some women enduring discomfort, 

pain and bleeding during intercourse...In contrast, three 

women's ex-husbands initiated discussions about vaginal 

dryness, but these men showed concern only for their own 

sexual pleasure...Similarly, two women's accounts illustrate 

how declining libido and orgasm intensity after menopause 

are also perceived as symptoms of poor relationships, not 

menopause.  For example, when Selena, a 60-year-old Caucasian 

lesbian, became postmenopausal, she was in an abusive second 

marriage during which she 'came out of a deep denial that I'm 

a lesbian.'  She attributes her decreased libido to her relationship:  

'Because he was a very bad lover, and, yeah, totally fixated on it 

[intercourse] and no skill at all.'  When she first became involved 

with a woman, she says 'the drive came well to active levels again.'"

- "Sex, Menopause, and Culture: Sexual Orientation and the Meaning of Menopause for Women's Sex Lives" Julie A Winterich

side note:  I got Abortion & Life by Jennifer Baumgardner in the mail today!  Jennifer Baumgardner, along with Amy Richards, created the Feminist Boot Camp I'll be attending this summer.  I'm really excited to read her and Richards' book Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism and to meet them this summer.  Also I can't stop thinking about Leslie Feinberg's book Stone Butch Blues, I've always had an interest in gay and lesbian culture pre-Stonewall but something about that book seeped into my subconscious and I can't shake it.  

how men oppress women #1 & #2

They deny women [their own] sexuality

or

or to force it [male sexuality] upon them

"I'm remembering the busts in the bars in Canada.  packed in the police vans...I never told you what they did to us down there-queens in one tank, stone butches in the next-but you knew.  One at a time they would drag our brothers out of the cells, slapping and punching them, locking the bars behind them fast in case we lost control and tried to stop them, as if we could.  They'd handcuff a brother's wrists to his ankles or chain him, face against the bars.  They made us watch.  Sometimes we'd catch the eyes of the terrorized victim, or the soon-to-be, caught in the vise of torture, and we'd say gently, "I'm with you honey, look at me, it's OK, we'll take you home."

We never cried in front of the cops.  We knew we were next.

The nest time the cell door opens it will be me they drag out and chain spread-eagle to the bars."

-Stone Butch Blues, pg. 8

scavenger

Remembering that time is like watching old pictures of myself in a prison camp picking edible scraps out of the garbage heap, and knowing that without that garbage I might have starved to death...How little I settled for in the way of human contact, compared to what I was conscious of wanting. 

- Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name