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You Don’t Own Me: Lesley Gore, Lena Dunham, Miranda July and others fight back in the war on women
10.23.2012
12:25 pm
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1960s teen idol Lesley Gore leads the charge against Mitt Romney and the GOP—with some well-known indie female faces like Lena Dunham, Carrie Brownstein, Miranda July, Tavi Gevinson, Tracey Ross and more—with a wicked lip-dub protest version of her 1964 hit “You Don’t Own Me.”

It’s truly hard to believe that in this day and age women are still fighting to get this message across.

Mitt Romney and the Republican Party are determined to overturn Roe V. Wade. Romney has not supported equal pay for women (The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act). Romney has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood. Romney has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Romney doesn’t want health care to cover birth control. Romney says same sex marriage should be banned with a Constitutional Amendment.

snip

This election is shockingly close. Our safety is at stake. Our silence is consent and our vote is our voice. Let’s get active. Let’s get out every vote we can. Let’s make this election a mandate. A mandate to finally ensure women the respect, dignity and equality we all deserve! This is now. This is our call to action. Once and for all, let’s take back the power that is so inherently and naturally ours!

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.23.2012
12:25 pm
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Artist building giant breast on hill to raise ‘awareness’ about breast cancer
10.22.2012
09:34 am
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Artist’s rendering of the finished piece

The BBC reports that British light installation artist Bruce Munro is attempting perhaps the largest piece of breast cancer iconography ever created. His project, Beacon on the Hill, will be a “breast-shaped illumination,” 5m (16ft) by 3m (10ft), built on the dome of Long Knoll in Kilmington, in southern England.  It will be made up of 2,730 illuminated plastic bottles and is intended as a tribute to breast cancer awareness.

While the idea of a giant glowing tit is kind of awesome, I’m skeptical of projects that tout “awareness” about breast cancer. Since this is in England, a developed nation with socialized health care, everyone who sees this is probably already “aware” of breast cancer. The cancer non-profit Munro is working with, Cancerkin, is focused on emotional support for patients and their families, but I’m not sure that a giant, disembodied shimmering boob would make any of the women I know feel much better about their chemo, mastectomies, or possibly impending deaths.

There is so much low-hanging (forgive the pun) aesthetic potential when it comes to breast cancer. Bumper stickers and t-shirts can cutely and benignly proclaim to “save the ta-tas,”  and avoid conjuring images of sick and dying women (and men, who also get breast cancer).

This sort of boobs-not-women approach to breast cancer has been analyzed over and over, particularly by the patients themselves. When noted socialist feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer, she wrote in her book,
Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America:

“Something about the conjuncture of “breast,” signifying sexuality and nurturance, and that other word, suggesting the claws of a devouring crustacean, spooked almost everyone. Today however, it’s the biggest disease on the cultural map, bigger than AIDS, cystic fibrosis, or spinal injury, bigger even than those more prolific killers of women - heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke.”

But glowing arterial plaque, blackened lungs, or damaged brain tissue doesn’t look quite as pretty, does it? Munro seems more artist than activist, and that’s fine. His other work looks interesting, creating landscapes of luminescence that appear to have a lovely, strange, ethereal effect. When it comes to art that discusses disease though, I think “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) does a much better job of creating an emotional dialogue with the audience.

People like boobs, obviously—hey, boobs are great! But when we’re talking about a disease where your breasts can actually kill you, is it really particularly artistically insightful or helpful to disembody them, both literally and figuratively? Can’t we just let a giant glowing tit be a giant glowing tit?

Posted by Amber Frost
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10.22.2012
09:34 am
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Conservative PAC says women should vote for Mittens because HE can’t overturn Roe v. Wade!
10.17.2012
01:47 pm
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Pregnant Mitt by Tom Tomorrow

The conservative “Concerned Women for America” PAC is floating a ridiculous new bid to bring more ladies into the Romney fold(er): Denying that the Republican presidential wannabe can do much of anything to eliminate a woman’s right to choose in a new television ad. The spot is an “answer” of sorts to an ad featuring Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington that was produced by MoveOn.

Of course, Mitt Romney has repeatedly stated that he would choose Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade throughout the 2012 election cycle. He might even be able to appoint THREE Supreme Court justices should he best Obama in November. The thought of this turns my blood cold and it should scare you, too.  You can’t really get rid of a Supreme Court Justice, they’re appointed for life. Imagine three more Republican-appointed numbnuts joining Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the bench, and then hanging out there for a few decades (perhaps for the rest of your life on this planet). Not a pretty picture.

Lately, ignoring his own previously held positions (and the various flip-flopping he’s done on the matter during his political life, all of it a matter of public record), Romney himself has attempted this tactic, claiming that there is nothing he would do to restrict abortion rights. Today a New York Times editorialand Romney’s own website, whoops-a-daisy—blew a hole in that lie. The Romney campaign is even airing a new TV ad that portrays the “severely conservative” politician as a moderate on abortion... because… WHY NOT? At least a few dumb-dumbs might believe him!

The inanity of this ad is awe-inspiring, especially the tag line:

Don’t Let Hollywood manipulate your vote!

Nope, let some lying liars manipulate your vote, instead!

Creepy, creepy stuff. How fucking dumb would you have to be to buy into any of this, or be swayed by this specious argument? Having said that, it’s not like Republicans don’t win elections all the time by appealing for the votes of America’s ignorant masses…
 

 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.17.2012
01:47 pm
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Mitt’s ‘Binders Full of Women’ story is made-up bullshit!
10.17.2012
09:55 am
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The following was posted last night on Talking Politics by Boston Phoenix journalist David Bernstein:

Not a true story.

What actually happened was that in 2002—prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration—a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

I have written about this before, in various contexts; tonight I’ve checked with several people directly involved in the MassGAP effort who confirm that this history as I’ve just presented it is correct—and that Romney’s claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false.

I will write more about this later, but for tonight let me just make a few quick additional points. First of all, according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, as I have reported before, those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn’t care about—and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about—budget, business development, etc.—went to women.

Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)

Third, note that in Romney’s story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn’t know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?

Post-debate, James Urbaniak. the voice of TV’s “Dr. Venture,” quipped on Twitter:

 
Perhaps that’s a good thing. The Internet might have sagged and broken under its own weight with one more instantaneous meme fest like the “Binders full of Women” craze that roared out of the gate last night before the debate even ended.
 

Via reddit/r/politics

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.17.2012
09:55 am
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Eartha Kitt laughs in the face of a documentarian asking if she would compromise for a man
10.15.2012
10:24 am
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Eartha Kitt and James Dean
Eartha Kitt giving a dance lesson to her dear friend James Dean
 
It’s fair to say that actress, singer, and dancer Eartha Kitt never stood on ceremony, and fairer still to say she always gave a very blunt accounting of the facts, no matter how gauche the topic.
 
In her brutally honest autobiography, I’m Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten,‘Kitt gave every detail of the torrid love affairs that became such a part of her public persona.

The CIA kept a fat file on her romantic life after she made Ladybird Johnson cry. When invited to the White House to discuss President Johnson’s plans to combat crime, Kitt spoke so vehemently against the Vietnam War as to bring the First Lady to tears, saying, “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot…and they will get high. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.”

After that, it’s really no surprise when her CIA file refers to her as a “sadistic nymphomaniac.” But really, knowing Eartha, they could have just asked.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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10.15.2012
10:24 am
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Elizabeth Warren: Warrior princess (or grandmother, same difference) shows how to win a debate
10.11.2012
12:52 pm
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This November, Massachusetts voters have an historic opportunity to elect Prof. Elizabeth Warren to the Senate seat once held for a generation by Ted Kennedy. If elected, she’ll be the strongest, loudest, most liberal voice for reform of Wall Street and the banks in the Senate and easily one of the very smartest, highest IQ people in the entire US Congress.

In the final moments of her debate with “Senator Centerfold,” Republican Scott Brown, she blew him the fuck off the stage:

I have no doubt Sen Brown is a good husband and a good father to his daughters, but this is an issue that affects ALL of our daughters and our granddaughters. And what matters here is how Sen. Brown votes.

So he’s gone to Washington and he’s had some good votes. But he’s had exactly one chance to vote for equal pay for equal work, and he voted no. He had exactly one chance to vote for insurance coverage for birth control and other preventive services for women. He voted no. And he had exactly one chance to vote for a pro-choice woman—from Massachusetts—to the United States Supreme Court, and he voted no.

Those are BAD votes for women.

The women of Massachusetts need a Senator they can count on not SOME of the time, but ALL of the time. I want to go to Washington to BE THERE for ALL of our daughters and ALL of our granddaughters.

This one really matters. There is a LOT at stake here…

... And I want to be blunt. We should not be fighting about equal pay for equal work and access to birth control in 2012. These issues were resolved years ago until the Republicans brought them back.

Let’s assume that both Obama and Mitt Romney will see the following clip in due course, if they both haven’t seen it already! This is how it’s done.

Donate to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign here
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.11.2012
12:52 pm
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Artisanal mayonnaise is giving me a post-modern headache
10.05.2012
11:51 am
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Mayonnaise People
Mayonnaise “artisans”!
 
There is an artisanal mayonnaise shop in Brooklyn. I know I hate this—and believe me, my hate is pure—but I’m not actually sure why.

I delight in unexpected foods. I like nice things, and I like mayonnaise. I like bahn mi and euro-style fries and even the classic turkey sandwich. But it does represent something very generic, doesn’t it? Mayonnaise, I mean. Or am I besmirching a noble condiment out of hand, motivated by my own prejudices?   Maybe it’s political. I could be put off by the standard mayonnaise archetype—a wholesome Hellmann’s jar gracing the tables of 1950s suburban middle-class households—an economic position to which my family never quite ascended. Could it be that I’ve conflated “wholesome” with empty bourgeois lives? I’m sure the price of the mayo in question is also a factor—4 oz for $7? Is this the sauce of the petty bourgeoisie? Or does the current state of all mayo, luxury or otherwise, just reflect our capitalist alienation?

Maybe my objection is feminist. There is the mythos of a condiment once fine, now ubiquitous to every insipid kitchen, making a mockery of traditionally feminine labor with its diminishing quality. What was once a delicate combination of oil and water, a volatile emulsion requiring expertise to produce, now only evokes the vulgar industrial tubs of my food service days. Mass produced mayo was meant to simplify, save time and enrich the lives of women, like the vacuum cleaner. But with the vacuum cleaner came the standard of wall-to-wall carpeting—slightly differentiated dull labor and a more stringent barometer of cleanliness. Have our innovations in modern domesticity only made domestic life that much more banal and disaffected, haunting us like some sort of technocratic Betty Friedan nightmare? 

Or is it a cultural issue with these people? These… mayonnaise people. Have I assumed their pretension too harshly? Did I falsely detect a sense of irony so thick they don’t even know when they’re kidding anymore? Why do I assume they aren’t earnest in their love of mayonnaise? They look like nice people.

Why would I hate the mayonnaise artisans?  I mean, hey, I’ve often waxed affectionate over the esoteric intellectual motivations of my dearest friends.  My favorite people always have some sort of strange specialty; one friend with an encyclopedic knowledge of 1980s queercore punk rock, another a talented typesetter, passionate over fonts. How does artisanal mayo inspire such ire, while the relentless academic pursuit of a near-forgotten Marxist inspires such tenderness? Could I ever become endeared to these people, as I am endeared to my dearest of comrades? Could I really see them, as lovely to me as my own loved ones, who know every Richard Pryor routine by heart, or who would stirringly lecture you about art nouveau toilets?

No. I could not. Because it’s artisanal mayonnaise, and I have my limits.

Posted by Amber Frost
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10.05.2012
11:51 am
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Todd Akin thinks doctors are ‘giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant’

Akin
Look at that stupid, stupid face for a moment, won’t you?.

In case you forgot, Republican Senate candidate Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin doesn’t actually know how pregnancy works.

On doctors who perform abortions, he’s even hazier:

“You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: Not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things.”

Cheating on taxes??? This was all from 2008, so I’m sure we won’t get much additional insight into this particular crazy misogynist pseudo-science theory, but if I had to guess, I’m pretty sure he’d say something about how those baby-killin’ doctors just looooove a good, medically unnecessary womb-rootin’.

I admire the slavery-to-war-to-terrorism-to-abortion transition though- it’s like a Dada game of “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with insane right-wing bullshit.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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10.03.2012
11:50 am
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Sylvia Plath: A page from her annotated copy of ‘The Great Gatsby’
09.17.2012
03:24 pm
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sylvia_plath_annotated_gatsby
 
Some people like to write notes in the pages of their favorite books. Graham Greene liked to annotate the columns of the novels he was reading with notes, criticisms, and small, personal observations. They formed part of a resource for his future work.

Sylvia Plath also liked to annotate the pages of her favorite books. Here is a page from her copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:

She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool - that’s the best thing a girl can be in the world, a beautiful little fool.’

“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so -nthe most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated - God, I’m sophisticated!”

Plath underlined the first paragraph, and marked the second with a line, and the word L’Ennui.
 
sylvia_plaths_great_gatsby
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Sylvia Plath’s pen and ink drawings exhibited for the first time


 
Via Julia Fierro
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.17.2012
03:24 pm
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‘This Man Beats Women’: Warning stickers put on Chris Brown’s CDs
09.16.2012
06:03 pm
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CHRISBROWN_STICKER
 
Advisory stickers with the message: “WARNING DO NOT BUY THIS ALBUM! THIS MAN BEATS WOMEN” have appeared on copies of Chris Brown’s CD Fortune, at HMV music stores in Cambridge and London.

The stickers were first spotted in Cambridge, and were tweeted by the Cambridge University Union Student Union Women’s Campaign, the NME reported adding:

...though the [CUSU] - whose stated aim is to “represent women students in Cambridge and campaign for gender equality” - are remaining coy about their involvement in the stunt.

A spokesperson for HMV told E! News:

“It was very much an isolated incident and nothing to do with HMV or representing our views. It would appear a member of the public popped into one of our stores yesterday and stickered a handful of CDs.

“These were spotted and quickly removed, but, before we could act, the individual concerned must have taken a photo and sent it to the media. To our knowledge there are no further stickers in our stores now.”

 
twitter_chris_brown_sticker
 
Via NME
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.16.2012
06:03 pm
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