Porn may well be one of the most divisive issues among feminists today. Personally, I have an incredibly difficult time deciding where I stand. Like most feminists, I am all for the healthy expression of sexuality, which may manifest itself in a variety of forms. However, it's pretty darn hard to conceptualize a hierarchical sexual interaction as 'healthy,' particularly when it eroticizes violence and/or humiliation.
Anyway, no matter your take on porn, it is an undenaiably feminist issue and definitely worth examining as such...which is why I'm super-excited about the Media Education Foundation's new documentary The Price of Pleasure, which takes an in-depth look at the porn industry. The film includes voices from critics and supporters alike, from Female Chauvinist Pigs author Ariel Levy to award-winning pornographer Joanna Angel.
Here's the (strangely short) trailer (contains some explicit material)...
According to a recent Entertainment Weekly article:
'''Tyler Perry understands that much of his audience is African-American women — the most ignored group in Hollywood — so he's doing movies that speak to them,' Bogle says. 'You could see these films as parables or fables. There's a black prince figure who shows up for black women who've been frustrated, unhappy, or abused.' That's the real reason critics don't like Perry's movies, says Nelson George: They're made for churchgoing, working-class black women, not urban hipsters (or tenured professors)."
I'm neither an urban hipster nor a tenured professor, but I'm not a fan of Tyler Perry's movies either. Are you?
I've been feeling kinda stressed lately—and it shows with my BitchTapes mix. I collected a group of tracks about the external pressures we deal with day-to-day. You know, stuff like: Am I pretty enough? Tough enough? Smart enough? and on and on. The genres I've chosen are each so different, but the themes all come back to same stuff we all deal with at some point in our lives. Have a listen:
There is an article by Linda Hirshman on Slate's women-centric XX Factor today entitled "Crazy Love, Crazy Choices" that deals with domestic violence. In it, Hirshman posits that present-day feminists are too easy on domestic violence victims because "the current love affair with understanding stops feminists from calling victims on taking responsibility for their own well-being."
Sarah Maple isn't afraid to be provocative or stir up a bit of controversy now and then. Born to parents of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds (her mother is a Muslim from Kenya and her father is a Christian from the U.K.), much of her work deals with her own identity. From Islam to race to gender and sex, Maple's works touch on everything you aren't supposed to talk about at dinner.
I have been struggling all morning trying to decide if your new video is worth blogging about. While I understand that you consider yourself to be a satirist from whose biting commentary no celebrity is safe, I personally find your methods of cultural critique to be boring, trite, and always misogynistic. For those readers who have not yet seen the video for your new song "We Made You," here it is:
American mainstream media has been a wee bit obsessed with the happiness of Denmark this past year. Since I'm an American currently living in the supposedly blissed-out Scandinavian paradise, I've been trying to uncover why this (somewhat incorrect) assumption has been made. Are Danes the happiest people in the world because they're simply more flexible when it comes to gender identity?
Why aren't the women doing better on the Sci Fi Network's new video-game competition reality series, WCG Ultimate Gamer? Gaming seems like something where women should be able to compete on fairly equal ground with men -- there's no real physical strength component to it; it's a fairly objective standard (numerical scores); and if a woman's interested in getting into it, there's no real historical barriers to entry. The show also seems to have gone out of its way to be gender-inclusive in the setup and in the editing -- so what's the deal? Is it sexism in the gaming industry, sexism in reality TV shows, or are women just not as comfortable in a purely competitive setting?
During the '08 campaign season, I cringed at comments made about former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s “hotness” and at the idea of the porno “Nailin’ Sarah Palin”--even though Palin's politics, her demeanor, and pretty much everything about her, made me throw up in my mouth a little. And to be sure, if Palin had become vice president, continued objectification of her and ongoing commentary about her of sexual nature would have bugged me to no end--even as I packed up and headed to Canada. And yet...
Why aren't the women doing better on the Sci Fi Network's new video-game competition reality series, 
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