I have an interview to volunteer for women's crisis services next week (battered women's shelter). There is a lot of training for it, with interferes with my gender and visual culture class, so I'll probs drop the class. The other classes I have are violence against women, analysis of social issues, feminist philosophy, and the african diaspora. I'm actually debating dropping a couple, but I'm definitely keeping the violence against women and feminist phil.
In the past month, I've been reading about: serial killers/rapists torturing hundreds of women in Juarez, Mexico; eating disorders and patriarchy; a novel about a boy raped by two men, then becoming anorexic and otherwise traumatised; articles, mostly from Adult Video News, on the porn industry and the fucking fucked up, but normal, tortures they call sex, like rape, trafficking, forced street prostitution, racist conceptions of black men, etc. in good news, also a book of poetry by alice walker called
a poem traveled down my arm. walker is fantastic, i'd quote half the book if i could, so will just make a near-future post of around a dozen of my fave poems from it. also, julian real's blog:
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot… he's awesomesauce.
I also see that my wordpress blog (demonista.wordpress.com) is getting hits from men looking for child porn, rape porn, bestiality porn, etc. underage photos of dorothy stratten (killed and raped by her pimp husband at 20), "men violating women," "dog violates woman," even a search for a specific "man-girl sex" website *BARFS*
I'll be posting the Alice Walker poems to my other blog, as well as an article I'll write about how the Vancouver 2010 Olympics will effect people in prostitution, esp in the downtown eastside, but also "escorts" and whatnot. native women in the downtown eastside get the worst of it (eg abusive johns, pimps, drug addiction, homelessness, ptsd, physical health problems...)
In *squeee* news, interspersed the stuff that is depressing: my fangirliness for the nuke (luke and noah from as the world turns) fanfic, and the gay storylines of roman/deniz and christian/oliver on german soaps (subtitled storylines, of course). Here's a couple vids of the latter two. Tis lovely.
http://www.youtube.com/v/EHqYdg898…http://www.youtube.com/v/DMd1dKqqW…(for the second, feel free to skip to about 2:50, wink wink, nudge nudge :P)
And a song that goes well for both couples
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZO… (Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Lastly, lest anyone think that I believe male-female sexuality irredeemable and always cruel or mindnumbingly dull, there is an indie Canadian film called Dirty that has decent representations of het sex (graphic, but not explicit, I guess is how i can explain it). Although, a few aspects of the story were problematic, a lot of it was pretty damn good. Also, anything by Jeremy Podeswa is really good, and he represents a lot of forms of sexuality: gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, triad relationships, etc. Just sayin' :P And he does come across as anti-prostitution, at least based on Eclipse (one white guy who is portrayed as an asshole uses a native man in prostitution, as well as his latina (i think) maid), as well as his film of patrick roscoe's excellent short story, "my lover's touch" called touch. fucking traumatising to see and read, but needs to be seen/read.
Lastly, lastly, Blue October does EXCELLENT songs about trauma, esp child sexual abuse, mental illness, self-harm... like Razorblade, HRSA, Crazy Man/His Name Is Crazy, Overweight, Drilled a Wire Through My Cheek, Angel, etc
Gotta run! Library computer is kicking me off in 2 min!
groggy
revolt!
gotta pee :P