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There’s an interesting pattern I’ve seen over and over: a lot of people equate nudity and sexuality.
This probably isn’t news to you, but I think it has some really important consequences. One of them, of course, is that there are all sorts of laws regulating things like nudity or topless women in public, even when there’s nothing sexual going on.
I suspect that one reason that a lot of folks freak out about women breastfeeding in public (or in photos on Facebook) is that if you equate uncovered breasts with sex, seeing a mother feeding her child is going to make you think of both infants and sex. If you can’t separate breasts-as-erogenous-zone and breasts-as-food-source, then you can either avoid looking at breastfeeding …
Continue reading Nudity, Sexuality, and Censorship
Before I talk about why I don’t call myself a feminist, I want to be very clear that it’s not because I think feminism is anything other than awesome. I owe more to feminism and to feminist women than I can possibly describe. I have a deep respect for the great thinkers, writers, and teachers whom I have been fortunate to learn from. I would not be the person I am if it hadn’t been for the lessons, patience, and love that many of them shared with me.
There have been many times that someone has called me a feminist, even though I’ve never used that word to describe myself. Usually when that happens, I ask them to not do it. Since this has occurred …
Continue reading Don’t Call Me A Feminist
This came my way today. I can’t wait to read this book! See below, and pass it on.
Call for Submissions: New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law, 2 Volumes
Edited by Lynn Comella, PhD and Shira Tarrant, PhD
Deadline: July 30, 2012
Co-editors Lynn Comella (University of Las Vegas, Nevada) and Shira Tarrant (California State University, Long Beach) are seeking submissions for a two-volume edited collection under contract with Praeger.
Description: New Views on Pornography is a two-volume collection of the most current scholarship on pornography. This edited series presents empirical research on a range of contemporary issues regarding pornography’s politics, psychology, cultural and legal debates, providing a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the field of porn studies in one convenient location …
Continue reading Call for Submissions: New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law
One of the best things about my job is getting to geek out about sex with other brainy folks. So I’m really looking forward to the Sex Positive Discussion Panel at Mills College. We’ll be talking about issues of consent, how to navigate its many nuances, and ways to integrate it into our sex lives. Here’s all the info about the panel. And if you can’t make it, follow the #sexpositivemills hastag. And if you want to help get the word out, please pass the Facebook event page and the Brown Paper Tickets link along.
See you there!
Sex Positive Discussion Panel
Lisser Theater, Mills College, Oakland, CA
January 27, 7-10 pm, $7.50
Purchase tickets and find location info here
The Mills College Community Health …
Continue reading Upcoming Event: Sex Positive Discussion Panel at Mills College
I have a confession to make. Once upon a time, I was a Sensitive New Age Guy.
I suppose I should explain what I mean. As I’ve written in other posts, I’ve always been rather dainty. And in my struggles with the Act Like a Man Box, there were several years where, rather than rejecting the either/or dynamic of the Box, I tried to reject everything in the Box. This started when I was in college and many of the folks I was spending my time with were some flavor of feminist/dyke/lesbian. I got a lot of encouragement to reject masculinity, rather than the construct of the Box.
Looking back at it, I can see that this was partly because of the …
Continue reading Confessions of a Former Sensitive New Age Guy
Jaclyn Friedman, the author of What You Really, Really Want (an amazing book that I think everyone should read), has a guest post over at feministe.us about the ways that women attack and shame other women around sexual assault. It’s a great read, but then, pretty much everything she writes is.
One of the things that I’ve noticed is how gendered the mechanisms of social control often are. My experience has been that men are more likely to exert this control through violence, while women tend to use shame, although of course, those are simply trends. While men’s violence has gotten much more attention in some circles, the effects of shame are often discounted or minimized even though they can sometimes be even …
Continue reading Shame and Violence: The Mechanisms of Social Control
Back in the day, before we had this thing called the internet, options for getting information out to the world were much more limited. There was the media of course, but when it came to spreading info about HIV & AIDS, the newspapers and TV messages usually fell into two camps: panic or silence. Neither was particularly effective at sex education. Of course, the government’s silence until Surgeon General C. Everett Koop published his report in 1986 didn’t help, either.
So one method for spreading the word was posters. They’d show up in bars and community centers when non-profit organizations took the lead, wheat pasted to walls and bus stops when activists took over, and even on buses, trains and other public places when public …
Continue reading An Amazing Collection of AIDS Awareness Posters
Wow. This is exactly what I wrote about in The Performance of Masculinity. (click on the image to see it full size)
This lovely “report” was created by Pat Lynch, a high school guidance counselor and football coach from Wyoming, and given to the football team. It seems that his way of dealing with boys who have been bullied is to shame them into the Act Like a Man Box. Some of the highlights from the “Hurt Feelings Report” include:
- I am thin skinned
- I am a pussy
- I am a queer
- I am a little bitch
- I want my mommy
- I have woman like hormones
Name of “Real Man” who hurt your sensitive little feelings
Name of little …
Continue reading A Perfect Illustration of the Act Like a Man Box
I recently attended a lecture by Robert Jensen, noted radical feminist, anti-pornography activist, and one of the producers of The Price of Pleasure, an anti-porn film that I’ve written about here and here. I went because I wanted to see what he was like in person. I’ve read some of his work, and I figured it would be useful to check his talk out.
I have quite a lot to say about his lecture. In fact, there’s so much to untangle that this post is split into multiple pages, which is a first for me. But it isn’t until all of the different threads are teased out that the larger pattern becomes apparent. So stick with me and see how it all fits …
Continue reading Untangling the Gordian Knot: An Analysis of a Lecture by Robert Jensen
I’ve written before about Advocates for Informed Choice, an amazing organization that advocates for the civil rights of children who are born with variations of sex anatomy. It’s estimated that 1 in 2000 children are born with reproductive or sexual anatomy and/or chromosome patterns that don’t fit the usual definitions of male or female. And in most cases, the medical response is to perform surgeries. In fact, many doctors view children born with DSD (differences in sex development) as an emergency that requires an immediate response. This often results in pressuring parents to make quick decisions about things that they might not even have heard of before. Fortunately, AIC is working to change that and there’s been some progress.
On January 26, 2012 in …
Continue reading Save The Date! “XXXY” Screening 1/26/12
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