Lady J In Lotus Pose

Happy 51st Birthday Henry Rollins

2012-02-13T20:42:00.000-08:00

(source)

February 13, 1961

What Would Jesus NOT Do?

2012-02-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

What Would Jesus NOT Do?

Harass Single Moms

Beat Homosexuals

Picket Their Funerals

Shoot Doctors

Shoot Anyone
Join a Militia

Run a Network

Own a Weapon

Run for President

Burn a Cross

Hate His Enemies

Attack the Poor

Side With the Rich

Put His Name on Merchandise

Dark Chocolate & Raspberry Buttercream Cupcakes by Sweetapolita

2012-02-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

Genius. Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Buttercream Cupcakes with Chocolate Glaze by Sweetapolita. To get the recipe, click here.

Winter Delight Peppermint Cake by Sweetapolita

2012-02-12T19:50:00.000-08:00

Who cares that Christmas has passed. I want this.

To get the recipe, visit Sweetapolita.

Neapolitan 5 Layer Birthday Cake by Sweetapolita

2012-02-12T19:45:00.000-08:00

Neapolitan Birthday Cake. To get the recipe visit Sweetapolita.

Chocolate Party Spoons by Sweetapolita

2012-02-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

Check out the recipe at Sweetapolita.

The Help: A Critical Review from Feministing

2012-02-12T18:16:00.000-08:00

There have been so many articles within the feminist blogopsphere that address the racism of The Help. The film has received praise but there is a discussion that hasn't been had in mainstream media.

Below is a great critique of the film from Feministing.

(source)

The Help: A Critical Review

By April | Published: August 9, 2011

To be released in theaters on August 12, The Help speaks to some of the oldest tropes in Hollywood as it relates to the relationship between Black women and white women. The Black maid/slave/servant-white “employer” narrative is so convoluted, rich in history and meaning, that it seems Hollywood has to keep making these types of movies just to encompass them all. There is the narrative itself, both as book and film; there is the personal narrative of the author, Kathryn Stockett, whose wealthy Jackson, Mississippi family employed their own Black maid growing up; there is the south’s nostalgia for the antebellum past; there’s also Hollywood’s general obsession with whitewashing history. Of course, all of that can be summed up by simply acknowledging that the commercialized mainstream media culture is only able to address racism and the United States’ racist past if it absolves white guilt/complicity, valorizes whiteness, mythologizes history, or ignores historical accuracy all together.

While the delusional marketing powers that be pose this story as a tale of sisterhood (instead of servitude), where “three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step,” more realistic people have recognized it as another example of the “white messiah” appointing him/herself as the savior of the poor, oppressed, uneducated Black people. As Hollywood and other large cultural outputs have made it known they love a good “white salvation through Black (brown, red, yellow) liberation” narrative, it is not surprising that The Help continues to be successful (still high on the New York Times Best Sellers list). Nor is it surprising that it was made into a major motion picture. Even less surprising is the fact that Touchstone Pictures, a Disney entity, is responsible for distribution. Disney, as we all know is the reigning champ of purveying a white, heterosexist ideology where Blacks and other props of “diversity,” including women, are only as useful as their ability to maintain the status quo.

Evident in the successes of Gone With the Wind, Imitation of Life, Driving Miss Daisy, Fried Green Tomatoes, Tyler Perry’s the Family That Preys, The Princess and the Frog, Steel Magnolias, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Blind Side, and many more, Hollywood eats up movies based in the south and/or movies that involve the close “relationship” between Black women and white women. If a movie can combine the two, like The Help, it is guaranteed box office gold. These movies are how Hollywood and the dominant culture deal with the United States’ violently racist past. The benevolent relationship between Blacks and whites in these movies generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing, Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting whites work out their awkwardness regarding race. Eventually both groups realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person also hurt by life’s misfortunes, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.

Very much aligned with the book, The Help attempts to dismantle some of these idealized tropes that run rampant in popular culture by showing what was actually lost and who gained from sustaining the image of Scarlett O’Hara and her Tara. What detracts from that noble goal are covert ways the movie eclipses historical white racism through the absence of white men, the blind innocence of white women, and the religious obligation of Black people to heal white people’s wounds and forgive.

The Men

The passivity and near absence of white men in this movie diminishes the influence, impact, and existence of white male power and domination during that time. While the assassination of Medgar Evers occurs during the story, there is a distinct separation between the white nationalist group who committed the murder and the innocuous husbands of the women in the Junior League. Naturally not every white man living in Mississippi between 1954 and 1968 was in the Ku Klux Klan or a white supremacist, but these indifferent, acquiescent men paint a grossly different picture than what was shown in the nightly news footage we’ve all seen where countless, nameless white men (women and children) venomously screamed and terrorized the lives of anyone working toward social progress, integration, and human rights. Hilly Holbrook, the hateful antagonist in The Help mentions Ross Barnett, then governor of Mississippi, as someone worth listening to because he’s “the Governor.” Ross Barnett was one of the most hateful politicians of that time who strongly supported segregation and ordered the Freedom Riders arrested and sent to the Parchman State Prison Farm to work on a chain gang. It’s unclear whether the screenwriters referenced Barnett to be tongue-in-cheek or to revise one of the most tumultuous times in Mississippi history for mass audiences, but whatever their motivation, it treads on dangerous territory.

The (white) Women

There are five white female characters that propel The Help. One is the savior, Skeeter Phelan; another is Hilly Holbrook, the racist “Queen Bee”; Elizabeth Leefolt, Holbrook’s lapdog; Celia Foote, a hapless Marilyn Monroe-type, teetering around in stilettos; and Skeeter’s mother, Charlotte, the quintessential Southern mother. Again, a common characterization in Southern themed movies, The Help uses Hilly Holbrook’s character, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, as the vehicle through which all racism and intolerance are enacted. The other women, minus Skeeter and Celia, are so overcome by desires for class elevation and acceptance from Hilly that they cannot express their discomfort with her need to terrorize “the help.” As Hilly pushes for white families to build separate bathrooms for their Black maids (because “they carry different diseases” than white people despite those Black people cooking their food, cleaning their houses, and taking care of their babies), her fellow bridge club members and Junior League hopefuls awkwardly avert their eyes or nervously titter alongside her instead of speaking out. Like their husbands, these women are not to be judged as prejudiced, racist, or bigoted against the Black citizens of Jackson because the inequality they profit from and perpetuate is not labeled as such. Instead, they are going along with simply how things are, which we are led to believe is no fault of their own.

It is important to note that as a Black woman, Aibileen could not tell the stories of other Black women and the book be received as well as The Help has. If a Black author wrote the book, or if the story allowed for Aibileen to be in charge of her own freedom, The Help would be relabeled as “African- American fiction” or a “Black movie,” marginalized by its topic and not half as successful. Having Kathryn Stockett express her interpretation of Black southern dialect to channel these women sells more; it’s more fascinating to that dominant culture to see a privileged (through wealth or class status) white person engage in “Black things,” like seeing Gwenyth Paltrow rap. Allowing for Miss Skeeter Phelan to opt out of whiteness in favor of the truth is much more shocking to our culture systems. Unfortunately though, this construction is self-serving for those who buy that story, including Stockett, because while Skeeter gets to leave Jackson, move to New York, and presumably begin a fabulous life, Minny, Aibileen, and all the other maids are stuck to face the wrath of her doing.

The Help

Originally conflicted over risking her life and her job to assist Skeeter, Aibileen is persuaded by a moving speech from her pastor about loving thy enemy as the way to healing. To a packed congregation, the young preacher asserts, “If you can love the enemy, you have your victory.” Not completely a stereotype, it is common knowledge that the mass of Black Americans are faith-based people. Playing on Blacks’ religiosity in this way is very intentional, and again, treads on dangerous territory. Not only does this scene suggest that it is the moral responsibility of Black people to move past race and racism, it also frees white people, in and outside of the movie, from self-accountability and equally investing in the fight against systemic and individualized racism and prejudice. It becomes dangerous for Black people to buy into these narratives of moral obligation as Christians because it creates a false sense of importance that only the dominant culture profits from. Offering forgiveness is not generally bad advice on its own, but what’s done in The Help suggests that Black people are morally obligated to love, accept, and in essence, cherish, white people, especially the ones relishing in all their oppressive, supremacist, prejudiced glory. When the movie shows Aibileen having a moment with her “last white baby,” May Mobley, telling her, “You is kind; you is smart; you is important,” the audience is so overcome by the clear love “Aibee” has for this baby (and vice versa), that it eclipses her other lived experiences as a Black maid living in Jackson, Mississippi. The message then becomes, “Black women are all of our mothers. They loved that responsibility and took pride in caring for whites.” These images are what propel this notion of an inherent sisterhood or bond existing between Black women and white women that The Help tries to promote. Obviously Black women and white women can, have, and continue to build lasting, sincere friendships and allyships, but not under the pretenses that the movie offers. That “natural” or “inherent” bond often propagandized in Hollywood only exists in movies because in real life the supported superiority of one cannot be at the expense of another’s assumed inferiority.Kathryn Stockett’s current lawsuit is evidence of that mentality, even if on a subconscious level.

Conclusion

The comment section of any article speaking on The Help shows dozens of people expressing their excitement over the movie and how “This is the story people need to know.” While I am not the resident authority on the lives of Civil Rights era Southern Black women, I can confidently say, this is not the story people need to know because while thoroughly entertaining, it gives the audience the message: “See?! Things weren’t really that bad. There were just a few bad seeds who made it rough for Blacks, but it’s really because they were hurting inside, not because they were racist. White people really did care about Black people; and black folks loved taking care of those white babies.” And maybe some of them did, but walking around thinking that The Help somehow adds to a national conversation about race and that history in this country is trite and grossly optimistic.

There was, and continues to be, an undeniable nostalgia for the antebellum south maintained by a number of white people; a kind of nostalgia that can be seen on almost any campus at a large southern university. For those caught in the rapture of that nostalgia, where slavery has been made to look like a little dark spot (no pun intended) on the otherwise glorious south, I believe exists a particular level of complacency where the common sentiment is, “that’s simply how things were back then. That has nothing to do with things now.” I believe it is safe to label these folks as apologists. Aside from the obvious racism, prejudice, and bigotry of some, that nostalgia and reframing of history is a product of the romanticized idealism of “the South” supported by Hollywood in movies (and books) like The Help.

Everyone’s favorite character out of that Hollywood construction is the illustrious southern belle. Her panache has been so completely mythologized that it’s provided the South with a PR campaign so effective that we can watch these movies or read these books, and thoughts of slavery, Black women being pulled away from lunch counters and protest sites by their hair, Black men being marched to their deaths, young, hopeful college students murdered on dark Mississippi roads, oppression, gross inequality that still affects us today, and violence as a way of life easily never enter our minds. We’re too lost in the costumes, accents, fried chicken and Crisco, sweet tea, magnolia trees, and a big-bosomed mammy to reflect on the lives of those actually affected.

It is important to question this type of work while we enjoy it because mainstream culture keeps looking for these kinds of stories to tell. The more of these stories we hear, the more historical accuracy becomes a non-issue. The Help is neither groundbreaking nor revolutionary in what it offers. This is the only way popular culture wants us to talk about history. The more we see these stories the more we run the risk of becoming complacent by the seeming progress of today. Instead of slavery, the KKK, Ross Barnett, segregationists, the underlying message of the tea partiers (including the misinformed Black ones), tales of campus racism, gross wealth and education disparities among Blacks and whites, gentrification, etc, being seen as problems symptomatic of a larger societal ill that continues to permeate our culture, many people look at racism as something of the past.

While I understand the desire to indulge these types of movies, we as consumers must be mindful of who is selling us these products and what their motives and intentions are. Like the straight male blogger who decided to create “Gay Girl in Damascus,” Kathryn Stockett, Disney, and others who’ve helped The Help get to where it is, enjoy taking on the struggle of Black/brown people without actually handing in their whiteness; without distancing themselves from the problem that is at the root of nonwhite folks’ oppression. These people often say, “I just wanted to shed light on the situation,” yet they do not even share the financial wealth and recognition resulted from their “altruistic” deeds. Instead, they valorize themselves where they become the heroes and not the people who have worked for progress and continue to live that experience every day of their lives. I’m not completely confident that well-meaning white people will stop making these kind of movies or writing these kind of books (and blogs), but I hope at some point they do what a Salon.com reader suggested upon reading about Stockett’s lawsuit: “From now on all authors should simply contribute a portion of all profits to some black [sic] charity. We’ll call it the Sally Hemmings [sic] Tax.”

Vintage Fascinators from Etsy

2012-02-12T16:59:00.000-08:00

Etsy is brillant. Creativity is endless. Sometimes I find it to be marvelous and on other occasions I'm furious that there are so many things that I want to buy.

Bridal Feathered Fascinator by Hems and Bustles

Vintage Rhinestone Champagne Ivory Feather - "Amour" - By Hem and Bustles

Vintage Art Deco Head Piece by Rose of the Mire

Birdcage Veil by Snow White Studio

HANA Olive Green Feather - Percy Handmade Accessories

Something Blue - By Mod Wedding

Tea Cup Fascinators by Fascinating Vintage

2012-02-12T16:42:00.000-08:00

Vintage style tea cup hair fascinators by Fascinating Vintage.

Wonderland Tea Cup - "Clockwork Bird"

Wonderland Tea Cup - "Polka Dot Rose"

Wonderland Tea Cup - "Vintage Rose"

Wonderland Tea Cup - "Jacquard Flower"

Wonderland Tea Cup - "Vintage Lace"

Hand Made Hair Fascinators by Now, Voyager

2012-02-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

Fascinators from UK website Now, Voyager.

Kiwi Cake

Peaches and Cream Cake Slice

Glitter Red Rose

Strawberry Chocolate Cake Slice

Strawberry Key Lime Cake Slice

Cherry Cupcake

Light Blue Bird

Silver Glitter Snowflake

Queen of Hearts Linzer Tarts by Cupcake Rehab

2012-02-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

These creations are from Cupcake Rehab. These may be some of the prettiest images I have ever seen. Glistening jelly and magical powdered sugar.

Tell me the above heart doesn't look like a magical pool of jello?

A smattering of snow art.

For the recipe visit Cupcake Rehab.

Glitter Bacon on Peanut Butter Cupcakes by Amanda Cupcake

2012-02-12T15:23:00.000-08:00

By Amanda Cupcake! amandacupcake.blogspot.com

Occupy Valentine's Day PART II

2012-02-12T14:33:00.000-08:00

Introducting Occupy Valentine's Day. The tumblr website tag line reads, "Down with couple-talism!" The tumblr site was created by Samhita Mukhopadhyay author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life and Executive Editor of Feministing.com.

From the website:

The yearly celebration of Valentine’s Day—defended as an innocent and harmless tribute to love—often serves to remind us that either our romantic situation is not good enough or our single status is a tragedy.

Most people, coupled or otherwise, can’t stand Valentine’s Day. It puts pressure on couples to be a certain way, it privileges one type of love (think heteronormativity!) and it makes single people feel incomplete.

Celebrating love and romance is a wonderful thing, but it shouldn’t depend on buying certain products for the perfect experience (hello, romantic industrial complex) or on your gender, sexuality, race, class status or marital status.

This year, let’s Occupy Valentine’s Day! You could….

Blog about how traditional ideas of romance perpetuate gender inequalities and hurt people of all genders

Share statistics about the growing majority of singles

Raise awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault like others have

Not be that douche-y couple on Valentine’s Day—maybe hang out with your best friends, single and otherwise

Shout about the lack of queer visibility in sexual rights politics

Have a sexy conversation by candlelight with your partner about structural inequity

Make a commitment to have fulfilling, accountable and loving relationships in all parts of your life

Commit to never settling for anyone that is not good enough for you just because you are afraid to spend another Valentine’s Day alone

These are just a few ways we can use Valentine’s Day to raise awareness about the limited ways we think about romance. Occupy Valentine’s Day is about changing the culture of romance.

Occupy is a concept and action popularized by the important Occupy Wall Street protests that continue in cities all across the world. The language of occupying has opened a critical moment for us to radically re-envision the kind of world we want.

Celebrating love is wonderful and romance can be great too. But we don’t need corporations to dictate how we should do it, a mainstream media chastising us for not doing it right or traditional ideas touted over and over by our friends and family. That shit is oppressive and hurts us more than helps.

Share your love freely, daily and with your community—everyday. Occupy Valentine’s Day!

#OccupyVDayCommercials: Because every kiss does NOT begin with Kay, emeffers!

(Alt caption: Um, gee, no, she won’t blow you for a blood diamond.)

Thanks Washington state senate for believing everyone should have the right to get married. via Feministing.

“25 years with myself and still going strong. I love me.”

” *still* not in a relationship on Facebook with my partner of 3+ years… “

MEH
I’m a diabetic in a long distance relationship. Not only am I far from the man love but even if he was here couldn’t marry him due to him being the same gender I am.
And thanks to the diabetes, I can’t even console myself with cheap candy

I have never had a Valentine. If you feel bad for me you can mail gifts to: 130 Hicks ST #LA Brooklyn, NY ATTN: JG

To view more visit Occupy Valentine's Day.

Don't

2012-02-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

Cheeseburger Salt & Pepper Shakers

2012-02-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

This is awesome. I'm ordering this.

This can be purchased at Modcloth for $12.00

"Gluten Sensitivity Intolerance Self Test. Diagnosing Gluten Sensitivity & Celiac Disease"

2012-02-11T23:18:00.000-08:00

I've been eating gluten-free for 8 months now. I decided to try it for a variety of reasons. I wanted to address certain issues and possibly alleviate some symptoms. I will not mention all health issues but I will say that my focus was my struggle with depression. I've dealt with depression since as far back as I can remember and I am glad to say that I've reached a level of stability with medication. "Stability" in no way translates to "cured."Living Gluten Free has assisted with my health, assisted in lifting sluggishness and increased my ability to concentrate.

I don't know where I first heard that a gluten free way of living could assist with mood, but the more I read the more I thought I should try it. Below is an article that I believe explains the motivation for gluten free living on a very basic level.

An important article from Gluten Free Society.

February 12, 2012

Gluten Sensitivity Intolerance Self Test. Diagnosing Gluten Sensitivity & Celiac Disease

The proper tools must be used to accurately diagnose gluten sensitivity. This is where a lot of people and doctors get confused. Traditionally lab testing is only designed to diagnose celiac disease. Remember that celiac disease is only one medical condition caused by gluten. Many people have other diseases caused by gluten. If you doctor uses a test to diagnosed celiac disease on you and it comes back negative, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have gluten sensitivity. The intestinal biopsy and serum blood tests are examples of inaccurate medical tests for gluten sensitivity. Genetic testing offers the greatest degree of accuracy and when combined with a patient’s history and examination a diagnosis can be made early and accurately. Gluten Free Society offers genetic testing and educational services about gluten.

Gluten Free Diet is Not a Trend

Because going on a gluten free takes a great deal of education and commitment, it is recommended that proper testing be performed to identify whether the diet is right for you. Remember going gluten free is not a trendy diet; it is a permanent lifestyle that should be taken very seriously as even small amounts of gluten exposure can cause problems. To accurately diagnose gluten sensitivity, the right lab test must be used.
Genetic testing is the gold standard for diagnosing gluten sensitivity. Unfortunately, many doctors still use antiquated and inaccurate tests. Examples of these include

Anti-gliadin antibodies – this is a blood test that measures for antibodies to one of the types of gluten found in wheat. It is not very comprehensive and often times gives false negative results.
Anti-tissue transglutaminase – this test is only specific for celiac disease and also has a tendency to come back falsely negative.
Intestinal Biopsy – this test is also only specific for celiac disease and comes back with a lot of false negatives.

Am I Gluten Intolerant?

Some people feel so much better after going gluten free, that they forgo any testing and just stick to the diet. Some people need a black and white answer – Am I gluten sensitive or not? Without a solid answer, they have trouble justifying the diet and usually cheat on a frequent basis. The problem with cheating is that gluten can cause damage to the body in very small amounts (20 ppm). The best way to get this black and white answer is to have genetic testing performed. If you cannot afford to have genetic testing performed, the following is a quick self test that you can use to help determine whether or not you are gluten sensitive.

Take The Quiz…

Gluten Sensitivity Self Test:
Check the symptoms you are experiencing.
Gut Symptoms:

Craving baked goods (cake, cookies, brownies)
Craving high sugar foods
Frequent intestinal bloating or gas especially after eating
IBS – irritable bowel syndrome
Acid reflux – GERD (aka heartburn)
Indigestion
Constipation
Diarrhea
Frequent nausea and or vomiting
Difficulty gaining weight (children under the growth curve)
Iron deficiency anemia

Head &Nervous System Symptoms:

Frequent headaches
Sinus congestion
Migraine Headaches
Poor memory
Difficulty recalling words
Brain fog
Poor concentration
Been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD
Suffer with frequent vertigo (dizziness)
Depression
Anxiety
Irrational irritability
Mood swings
Restless leg syndrome
Diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis or Parkinson’s

Muscle and Joint Symptoms

Frequent joint pains with or without activity
Chronic muscle aches
Migrating joint pain (without injury)
Frequent muscle spasms (especially in the legs)
Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia
Diagnosed with autoimmune arthritis (RA, lupus, psoriatic arthritis, reactive arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, Sjogren’s)
Bone pain
Growing pains
Osteoporosis or osteopenia

Hormonal Symptoms:

Fatigue
Inability to lose weight
Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
Infertility
History of miscarriage or spontaneous abortion
Menstrual problems – PMS
Thyroid disease
Diagnosis of hyperprolactinemia
Diagnosis of Diabetes (type I or type II)
Hypoglycemia
PCOS (polycystic ovary disease)
Endometriosis

Immune Problems:

Chronic urinary tract infections
Chronic respiratory infections
Asthma
Vaginal, oral, or nail bed yeast infections

Skin Problems:

Fever blisters or mouth ulcers
Skin rash
Eczema
Psoriasis
Dermatitis Herpetiformis**
Vitiligo

Other Internal Diseases/Problems:

Gall bladder problems
Elevated liver enzymes
Non alcoholic fatty liver
Autoimmune hepatitis
Lymphoma
Platelet disorders

Results:

If you checked 1 to 3 items, you should be genetically tested for gluten sensitivity

If you checked 4 or more items, you are most likely gluten sensitive. Genetic testing is still recommended to confirm the need for a permanent diet change.

If you checked any red item you are most likely gluten sensitive. You should be genetically tested for gluten sensitivity immediately. Remember that recent research has discovered that ignoring gluten sensitivity leads to early death by 20 years or more.

**Dermatitis herpetiformis is a skin condition known to be caused by gluten. If you have been diagnosed with this disease, you are gluten sensitive.

For more information visit Gluten Free Society.

This article explains that there is a difference between Celiac Disease, an allergy to gluten and a sensitivity to gluten. I have no idea if I have a gluten sensitivity. Sometimes I tinker with the idea of getting tested but ultimately I would continue to live gluten free regardless.

If you're going to go gluten free it's important to do it right. I don't eat gluten free desserts. For those who are just starting to eat gluten free, it can be tempting to load up on gluten free cookies and cakes. From the get-go I knew to stay away from them. Not only are gluten free products expensive but the desserts are often more caloric. It is possible to gain weight on a gluten free diet so one must be careful.

I eat mostly chicken, fish, veggies and fruit. I have greatly reduced my sugar intake and I've learned to go without bread for the most part. That was a tough one for me. Sometimes I feel that I could live on toast or good bread with butter.

Gluten free bread is scary. A loaf is more like a brick. It's heavy. I only use it if I'm in the mood for a grilled cheese. In my opinion gluten free bread tastes like thick cardboard unless it's toasted.

I've learned that there are over 200 symptoms related to a gluten filled diet. Some of these symptoms are unnoticeable but can affect your health. Being that there are so many symptoms it is hard to say that one is not affected in some way. So ultimately, living gluten free can be beneficial for anyone and everyone.

Foods that have gluten in it, are wheat, barely, rye and malt. If you are beginning a gluten free diet you'll immediately learn that there is gluten in almost everything. You really will have to learn how to cook with alternative ingredients and watch out for ingredients that are fattening.

Although, so many thing wheat is healthy, the truth is the body often has a difficult time fully digesting it. White bread is one of the worst foods you can put into your body. It turns into sugar and can be mineral depleting. Startling enough wheat flour exists within it.

You'll begin calling restaurants ahead of time to inquire about their menus. Be prepared to be met with confused voices on the other end. Some establishments are becoming more familiar with identifying gluten free foods.

My guess is that this is due to the fact that gluten free diets are starting to get some attention from the media. I find it laughable and quite strange that some consider gluten free diets to be a trend. Living gluten free is not fun! Not for me anyhow. I've become more accustomed to it over time, but there are some things I have a hard time living without.

Those who are getting on the bandwagon are most likely not eating foods that are completely void of gluten or they are not eating gluten free consistently.

Being that I do not have painful symptoms that often come along with Celiac Disease it is difficult to know if I've actually consumed the slightest bit of gluten. I have to be extra careful. To be dedicated to eating gluten free means to avoid even one crumb of gluten. I'm not exaggerating. A spec of gluten can cause discomfort if you truly have an issue with gluten. Being that I do not experience discomfort when I consume gluten, I am always on guard.

I've spent time emailing Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to ask about their drinks. I've gotten some straight answers from Coffee Bean and around-the-bush answers from Starbucks. I tried to get Starbucks to tell me straight out if their drinks have gluten in them, but all I got in the end was, "We cannot guarantee a gluten free environment." They will say this til' the cows come home. There is a risk of cross contamination. Many food labels will state things like, "Made on equipment shared with wheat" or "May be traces of wheat." I've visited various forums which have helped me figure out what I can drink at Starbucks and Coffee Bean.

I was practically jumping up and down with excitement when I learned that I could drink Coffee Bean's Red Velvet Hot Chocolate. It debuted during the Christmas season of 2010. I was thrilled when it came back in 2011. Not only was it sold on the menu but the powder was offered for the first time.

I remember asking a barista if the powder was gluten free and I was told that it probably wasn't because the managers would have told them if it was. I wasn't satisfied with this. On another occasion I asked another barista and she went to a back room and told me that the drink was not gluten free. On yet another occasion I saw that the powder was being sold with a mug. The items were wrapped in plastic wrapping. I asked a barista if I could unwrap the items so I could read the contents of the powder. She wouldn't let me and asked a manager who said it was filled with gluten. Being that so many don't fully know what gluten is and the fact that I reeeally wanted to be able to drink this hot coca I emailed the company. The response email came with the ingredients of the powder. It is gluten free!

So, know that you're really going to have to do your home work and put in time and energy to figure what has gluten in it and what doesn't. It can be frustrated at times.

Some feel the positive effects of eating gluten free right away. For others it takes months. Ultimately, it's about health so figure out what works for you.

"Bon Iver's Justin Vernon vs. Fugazi's Ian Mackaye"

2012-02-11T21:49:00.000-08:00

Justin Vernon of Bon Iver

Ian Mackaye

Interview originally posted in music magazine Under the Radar - 2011

Ian Mackaye: So how does this work?

Justin Vernon: I just have a bunch of questions that I've anted to ask you my whole life. In this selfish way, I feel like I could maybe be a little better of a person afterwards maybe.

Ian: Are you not a good person?

Justin: I'm a good person, but I feel like you can always get better.

Ian: Oh, word.

Justin: I got so far back with your music and what it means to me and how it shapes me continually, I didn't want to throw you into such a weird situation, but I'm going to anyways.

Ian: Totally understood, but one think you should know is that you can't throw me into a situation, because, ultimately, I decide. This is not by fiat. It was a request, and I checked it out, and I thought, this guy seems like a nice guy, an interesting guy. His work seems interesting. If someone is genuinely curious and they want to talk about something, I'm always up for a conversation. When it's people want my name for their resume, well, fuck that. Every day I have things I like to do, and I have things that I have to get done. I'm not trying to mess with people. I don't have a PR person. I don't have a lawyer. It's just me. I'm in the phone book. I'm accessible, and I get a lot of calls... There's music to be made. There's custodial work to be done. I have an enormous amount of responsibility in terms of the Dischord catalog. This is music that has been important to a significant number of people, and it's definitely important to me. I have a responsibility to these musicians who have entrusted me with their music to make sure that as long as there's an interest or demand for that music that it's available in one form or another. And it's a lot trickier than people would think. I basically work every day on it.

Justin: And you have for a long time.

Ian: 30 years.

Justin: Um...let me see here. Your history is well known, and I feel like I understand the Dischord thing as a student of whatever you want to call it, American rock and roll or whatever it is. But there's decades of evidence that point to your ethic, and I'm going through this shit right now where I was just a musician from a small town in Wisconsin and not really having any success but knowing that music is what I needed to do, and then all of a sudden being thrown into this current state of "indie music" and not really feeling like I had stopped to make choices on my own. And I feel like I'm in the middle of it now, so I wanted to ask you about what these words mean, like the word "indie band." When you hear that term now, it's got to make you feel weird, right?

Ian: [Laughs] It's funny. I listened to your record yesterday, the new one, which I thought was quite interesting.

Justin: Thanks, man.

Ian: Me, I've got to live with things for a little bit, but I was interested, because I had no idea. In reading a little bit about your work, I was kind of expecting the guy with the acoustic guitar, which I like. Don't get me wrong. But I was really interested in the texture of your music. The thing about a lot of music today that I head, I fell like there's so many references. It's the same for me. Don't forget, I grew up listening to music, and even in Minor Threat, for me, I was Janis Joplin. That's where I was coming from. So hearing your music, obviously your command of sonics and your ideas of layering and how you work, you're obviously channeling something that you've been consumed with. It's very interesting, but I was wondering, what kind of music I was wondering, what kind of music is this? Because it sure as fuck doesn't sound like anything I know. I thought, "I guess this is what people call "indie," which is kind of tragic in my mind. But the thing is, indie or hardcore or punk, the delineations are really connected to the market place, ultimately.

Justin: That's what I'm getting at, the whole thing. Because I didn't grow up a communist or a socialist or anti-socialist in any regard, but Fugazi was one of the first bands that I ever went deeply into and went to the records for personal advice....in your eyes, what line do you see yourself behind in comparison to other labels that made your label a model and have gone on to have bigger market place shares. Where do you see Dischord fitting in this whole American capitalist thing?

Ian: Well, I'm not an expansionist. That's the general the general model -- growing and getting bigger and bigger. And the thing for me personally is that I did not want to have a record label. What I wanted to do was play music, and I wanted to do it in a way where I would decide how, when, where, and why. No one else was going to tell me how to do that. Along with the fact that no one else was going to put out of Teen Idles record -- I mean, why would they? We were from Washington D.C., and we were broken up. No label was going to put that out, and at that time Washington D. C. was so completely off the map in terms of the music business. To some degree in current times you can live virtually anywhere, and because of the nature of the interconnectedness with computers it's a little easier. You can be a part of the music business even if you're not an established artist. But back then you had to move to New York or Los Angeles -- somewhere there was a record business because there wasn't one here, that's for sure. But I didn't care about that. I wasn't interested in the record business. I hated the record business. When I got into punk, I turned off the radio forever.... The radio -- that's advertising. You know the music that gets on the radio, it doesn't get there because the DJs want to play it.

Justin: Even with the "independent" music labels, there are things you have to do to be nice to the radio stations. I find myself putting up with it, but I wander what part of me is dying slowly be dealing with it. I start to wonder if it's just a fucking waste of my time after a while. That word "expansionist" at the beginning of your answer said everything. What are you looking for? An expansion of what? Basically, it's money and recognition for something that started out as a pure expression of yourself. Like you said, you are a part of music, and it's part of you, and you're going to give it and it will give to you.

Ian: I have to say, thought, it's tricky. For instance, you said that you were a fan of Fugazi. For instance, you said that you were a fan of Fugazi as a kid, and there's a possibility, at least, that you would have not thought it was possible to call and ask these questions. The fact is, your work has connected with people, and it has grown for you. And I imagine you've had some really incredible experiences. I'll give you an example for myself. I'm not an expansionist, but I've toured all over the world with Fugazi. It's not like there's no growth or that nothing changes and we'll only play the 9:30 Club from now on. It just had to be natural, and I wasn't interested in artificial growth or the traditional thing. If 50 people, and if 5,000 people want to see, let's find one that holds 5,000. And then we'll figure out how it works once we get there. In the same way, I never would have gone to Iceland or Malaysia if people didn't want to see us, but, boy, am I glad I went. It was an incredible experience. It wasn't my aim when I started the label or started playing in bands, but there's a natural trajectory.... People often ask me, "What do you think about the download thing?" And I think, well, I want the song to be heard, so that's fine with me if people are sharing my music. However, at some point, if people feel that they should never have to pay for music because they can either steal it or some car company is going to pay for it, inevitably there's going to come a time where the only music that's available for free is music that's already been made, because no one can possible afford to make music for free. That's an interesting equation that people will have to contend with. I'm actually not that worried about it.

Justin: You could sit and worry about it forever, I suppose, but it doesn't really freak me out. Maybe I"m in the minority as far as musicians who are really all about understanding the industry, but I feel OK. If I didn't own my own music, there would have to be a lot of fights. Ray Charles had to fight for his publishing, which I think there was no way he shouldn't have had his publishing. But, at the same time, the idea of owning music is pretty bizarre.

Ian: Well, you can own it all you want. But once it's in the air, there's nothing you can really do about it. Their question with ownership has to do with who's exposing it. That's a different issue. I think you should be mindful of that, because it's not a question of the money, it's a question of the use. I'm a little startled by the propensity with which people seem to have n problem whatsoever for selling things. I think, wow, what an insult to music, in my opinion. But I think it's a fallacy, too, that the only way you can make money in music through advertising. I think that's a bunch of bullshit. I think the advertising lobby has bee n promoting that. I think that the idea that a song is merely a vehicle with which to draw attention to another product is a real shame. But that's nothing new. It's been going on at least since the days of the snake oil guys going around the country selling various potions and stuff, and musicians played to and stuff, and musicians played to get the crowds to come out.

Justin: So if an indie band has a song, and it was made completely independently for themselves, and then they got picked up by people and their music blew up in this age of the internet, and then, afterwards a company wants to give you a bunch of money to use that song to sell a product of theirs -- what is that conundrum? Because if they want to use it to sell Toyota Priuses --

Ian: Well, for me, it's not conundrum whatsoever, because I would never fucking do it. And if other people would do it, it's no conundrum for them, because they would do it. I have to say, I'm not that judgmental of the people. I do think everyone has their own circumstances and their own thinking about it, and I think, "fair enough."

Justin: But why wouldn't you do it?

Ian: Well, name a song that meant something to you. A Fugazi song for instance. One that I'm singing ideally.

Justin: Uh...wow, there are so many. You put me on the spot.

Ian: Anything. Just an example.

Justin: "Five Corporations."

Ian: Okay, "Five Corporations." When I Wrote that song, I knew what the fuck I was singing about, and and it meant something to me. SO the idea that that song could then become just the soundtrack for maybe a floor cleaner or a cell phone or something, it just feels terrible to me. It seems completely bizarre, because the music itself is just a decoration. But it's not a decoration for me.

Justin: It's not a decoration for something that you didn't imagine. Or it didn't feel like a good place for that music.

Ian: The thing is, it becomes part of the ad. When you put music and visuals together, it's provocative. It really affects you. I know this because I've seen movies where a song comes in, and I can't hear that song without thinking about that movie.... No matter how you work on your songs -- and I don't know how you work on your songs or where they come from -- but I assume they come from some place that's really intimate for you, and that's the same for me. It's the same for video games. Like using a song like "Suggestion" chattering away in the background while zombies run around, it just seems totally fucking insane to me. People say, "Well, it's a great way to get your music out." No, it's not. It's away, not a great way.

Justin: I feel that.

Ian: But, I have to be really clear, that's just me. I respect people and I have a lot of friends who have done many different things, and I think, "Right on. That's you. You do what's right for you." I really try to respect other people's choices and decisions. I live with my own. I work all the time. I'm essentially on my own at this point. I struggle to find time to write music, because my life at this moment is very structural because I'm trying to deal with all these things. It's not as if I'm just taking time off from a creative session to talk on the phone. I'm just not doing other work to do this work. This is what I've got, and this is my decision. I've got friends who are genius musicians who every day they can work on their music, and they've done that because they've allowed other people to facilitate for them. And I didn't do it that way, but some of my dearest friends. Their situations are different than mine, and there are some things some of them might feel bad about, but that's all right. They're living their lives the way they want to.

Justin: Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you. Because I can live with every decision I've made. I haven't done any strict advertising stuff. It's not like I'm feeling weird or guilty talking to you about it. I'm literally curious. I grew up in Wisconsin, and I feel lucky that [because of] my family and friendships with people, I'm a grounded person. I'm not doing anything for any reason that I feel cautious about. But it's cool to talk to you about this stuff, man, because I think there's something really evident in why music is the way it is and what it isn't.

Ian: I think that you experiences are probably very similar to mine. Igrew up in a very connected family. Totally crazy, but connected. Very grounded. And, culturally speaking, it's a very small town, Washington, D.C. Go and study up on some mid 70s D.C. rock bands if you can find one. Good luck.

Justin: With Fugazi, or any of your bands, there's this energy that's there, like accurately placed aggression. Positively placed aggression. So I was just wondering, for you, how has your relationship with music changed as you've gotten older and wiser. What is it to you now when you write music? You were talking about how you've always been emotional, but does music do different shit for you now? Are you using it differently?

Ian: "Aggression" is a tricky word, and I use it. I don't mind. But it's something has to be qualified, because, honestly, I was trying to be free on strage. I wanted to be free. I used to say, "How many settings are there where you get to completely drench yourself in sweat and jump all over the stage. It's so insane." But I often think when the word "aggression" comes up, it's like you're attacking the audience or something. That wasn't really the mission, to attack the audience. Though I've often said, "Don't ever go on the stage unless you intend to destroy it." And obviously, I don't intend to hurt the stage. But take full advantage of what's given in that moment. Just take it. Go. Really lay into it. And, for me, it's no different now. With The Evens, and I don't know if you've listened to that stuff or not...

Justin: Yeah, I know The Evens.

Ian: For me, in many ways that music is as confrontational, if not more so, than anything. It's not music that's hiding behind volume or setting. It's pretty naked. It's just there. So I don't feel any less passionate or, I guess, aggressive. When I play I intend to destroy. I want the evening to transcend. I'm looking for the moments. So it has never changed for me, ever. If we lived in a static world, and everything stayed the same, and it was 1981, I might still be playing in Minor Threat or music that's like Minor Threat. But that's not the case. The world is perpetually changing, and we are perpetually changing, and what the constant is in my world is creative response and thinking about, "Ok, here's what's happening in the world. How do I respond to it?" For instance, with Minor Threat, we were responding to the circumstances. In The Teen Idles, we were responding to the circumstances. In Embrace, there was a response to what was going on in Washington in 1985. We're working on this live site, this crazy Fugazi live series site. We have 850 recordings, and we're going to post them all. I've been working on this for two years. It's going to be pretty comprehensive. They're good recordings, and there's a lot of craziness. There's a lot of stuff between songs. And I was saying that it's going to be interesting to hear this, because they're going to be wondering what's going on, like, "Why's he yelling at people" Why doesn't he want people to jump off stage? It seems so fin." But it's contextual, and for people who were going to shows in 1989, 90, 91, 92 -- especially after Nirvana really hit the airwaves, and suddenly there was this explosion of videos showing people what to do -- every show we played was a video reenactment. And it was absolutely mindless, and it was because of that that so many people were injured. And they were people injured. And they were not the people doing the jumping around; it was the other people. So the idea was to respond to those circumstances, and I'd say from the stage, "If you're going to fight, get the fuck out of here," or "stop jumping on people's heads. That's it; your ticket's punched." That's just the way it was in that moment. Sometimes when I hear it, I'm like, "Oh,man. I'm really giving those guys a hard time." But I have to give myself a break, because I was having a hard time." But I have to give myself a break, because I was having a hard time too, because the context of the time was so nuts. But now it's a different time, and what I'm trying to do now, I'm just doing whatever music is around me. And I think that's the plan right until I die.

Justin: That's really great. Hey, I want to let you go, and I really want to say thanks. Everything you said made a lot of sense, and it's still inspiring to me, and I appreciate it all.

Dessert Themed Custom Made Jewelry Boxes from Holley Tea Time

2012-02-11T18:44:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of jewelry. Not one piece I own would be considered "bling". My jewelry choices range from vintage styles to "arty" to ethnic cultural styles to food themed. I've been trying to fin a jewelry box that is large enough and pleasing to the eye. I think I've finally found it.

Check out these Deco Den boxes from Holley Tea Time. These can be custom made! If you want a candy theme, fruit theme, cake theme or whatever give them a reference to what you want the box to look like.

Years ago these would have seemed a little to foo foo. Lately; in addition to the 1930s/40s styles that I love so much, I've been getting into what I call, "Quirky Girlie." The boxes below are a good example of that.

As you can see these boxes come in different sizes. There are 2 sized boxes available small and large. The small is 3-4 inches wide. The large boxes is about 7-8 inches wide and has a mirror followed by a 2 drawer spaces.

Ooh, the cake looks amazing.

Rainbow and glitter. I can never get enough of glitter. My love for it will never die.

Cherries, strawberries, chocolate, cookies and whipped cream.

Chocolate sauce all over.

Whipped cream galore! Studded with jewels.

sour hearts

2012-02-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

Whitney Houston Passes

2012-02-11T17:28:00.000-08:00

Whitney Houston

(1963-2012)

The invention of the Heterosexual: The History of Straightness is Much Shorter Than You Think. Hanne Blank Explains in Her New Book "Straight"

2012-02-11T16:09:00.000-08:00

Admittedly I have yet to read the book, but I am very excited about it. It sits on my coffee table and I'm about to dive in.

I came across this article and enjoyed it immensely. I can only imagine how great the book is.

A detail from the cover of "Straight"

The invention of the Heterosexual: The History of Straightness is Much Shorter Than You Think. An Expert Explains Its Origins.

By Thomas Rogers

If you met Hanne Blank and her partner on the street, you might have a lot of trouble classifying them. While Blank looks like a feminine woman, her partner is extremely androgynous, with little to no facial hair and a fine smooth complexion. Hanne’s partner is neither fully male, nor fully female; he was born with an unconventional set of chromosomes, XXY, that provide him with both male genitalia and feminine characteristics. As a result, Blank’s partner has been mistaken for a gay woman, a straight man, a transman — and their relationship has been classified as gay, straight and everything in between.

Blank mentions her personal story at the beginning of her provocative new history of heterosexuality, “Straight,” as a way of illustrating just how artificial our notions of “straightness” really are. In her book, Blank, a writer and historian who has written extensively about sexuality and culture, looks at the ways in which social trends and the rise of psychiatry conspired to create this new category in the late 19th and early 20th century. Along the way, she examines the changing definition of marriage, which evolved from a businesslike agreement into a romantic union centered around love, and how social Darwinist ideas shaped the divisions between gay and straight. With her eye-opening book, Blank tactfully deconstructs a facet of modern sexuality that most of us take for granted.

Salon spoke to Blank over the phone about the origins of heterosexuality, the evolution of marriage and why the rise of the “bromance” is a very good thing.

Men and woman have been having sex for as long as there have been humans. So how can we talk about there being a “history” of heterosexuality?

We can talk about there being a history of heterosexuality in the same way that we can talk about there being a history of religions. People have been praying to God for a really long time too, and yet the ways people relate to the divine have specific histories. They come from particular places, they take particular trajectories, there are particular texts, and individuals that are important in them. There are events, names, places, dates. It’s really very similar.

So where does the term “heterosexual” come from?

“Heterosexual” was actually coined in a letter at the same time as the word “homosexual,” [in the mid-19thcentury], by an Austro-Hungarian journalist named Károly MáriaKertbeny . He created these words as part of his response to a piece of Prussian legislation that made same-sex erotic behavior illegal, even in cases where the identical act performed by a man and a woman would be considered legal. And he was one of a couple of people who did a lot of writing and campaigning and pamphleteering to try to change legal opinion on that matter. He coined the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual” in a really very clever bid to try to equalize same-sex and different-sex. His intent was to suggest that there are these two categories in which human beings could be sexual, that they were not part of a hierarchy, that they were just two different flavors of the same thing.

But the term took quite a while to catch on. How did it spread?

Thanks to psychiatrists in the 1880s and 1890s — a part of the medical profession that was deeply unscientific at that time. It meant that somebody with a medical degree and all of the authority it brings could stand up and start making value judgments using specialized medical vocabulary and pass it off as authoritative, and basically unquestionable.

Psychiatry is responsible for creating the heterosexual in largely the same way that it is responsible for creating the various categories of sexual deviance that we are familiar with and recognize and define ourselves in opposition to. The period lasting from the late Victorian era to the first 20 or 30 years of the 20th century was a time of tremendous socioeconomic change, and people desperately wanted to give themselves a valid identity in this new world order. One of the ways people did that was establish themselves as sexually normative. And it wasn’t the people who were running around thinking, “Oh, I’m a man and I like to sleep with other men, that makes me different,” who were creating this groundswell of change; it was the other people, the men who were running around going, “I’m not a degenerate, I don’t want to sleep with other men, I am this thing over here that is normative and acceptable and good and not pathological and right, that’s what I am. That’s what I need people to understand about me, because I need people to understand that I am a valid person and I need to be taken seriously.”

This also has to do with the popularity of social Darwinism at the time.

Social Darwinism comes into play in a big way. It became important to prove that you were part of the solution and not part of the problem in this pell-mell, hurly-burly, crazy new social order [of the late 1800s and early 20th century].

So how did this change in terminology play itself out in the real world?

I actually talked to my grandmother about this. My grandmother is 88 and she came to consciousness in a world that didn’t have heterosexuals in it, where nobody knew that word, and certainly nobody used it to refer to themselves. And she associates this change with Freud, whom she’s never read but whom she’s heard a lot about. So there was this sort of culture-wide game of telephone, if you will, in which these authoritative medicalized ideas coming from very rarefied circles trickled down into the larger culture. I think that for people of my grandmother’s generation particularly, heterosexual simply became a synecdoche for normal. And that’s certainly the way Freud talks about it, that you know, you attain heterosexuality. There’s this process of attaining normality. When you manage to develop yourself, or to become developed, in the proper way, in an appropriate way, in the way that Freud says you’re supposed to, what you end up with is a heterosexual.

In his book “Gay New York,” George Chauncey writes about the flip side of this, how previous to the invention of “homosexuality,” men’s sexualities were much more fluid. Do you think that’s the case?

Oh, absolutely. When you start operating on the principle that you indeed can divide people into sheep and goats, then there’s also the idea that you must divide people into sheep and goats and there are certain boundaries that cannot be crossed without reclassifying.

As you point out in the book, for much of human history, marriage had absolutely nothing to do with sexuality or sex.

It’s more that marriage didn’t have a lot to do with desire. Marriage has always had to do with sex, and the ability to have marital sex and preferably procreate has always been central to marriage. But what was not so important was whether or not you necessarily wanted to have sex with that person. It was your duty, it was paying the marriage debt, and you were gonna do it, by golly, but this was a co-worker, this a partner in business enterprise — not a person you chose to satisfy your own personal whims and desires with. If you happen to also like them and think that they were swell or pretty or handsome then that’s great. But that’s not what you were in it for.

And now everything has changed, because we now prioritize attraction, desire, love, romance, over the strictly economic and community-building aspects of marriage. We live in a culture now where we find it very odd when women don’t support themselves, if somebody chooses to be a stay-at-home mother. That is a huge change, and that’s a huge change just in my lifetime. I’m in my early 40s and I know that when I was a very small child those discussions were not happening in the same way. The economic and legal enfranchisement of women has gone hand-in-hand with both women’s and men’s ability to choose marriage partners based on their own desire, desires for sex, love, companionship, all of those things, and to put that first.

How do the successes of the women’s movement impact our concept of heterosexuality?

I think that referring to it as the success of the women’s movement is a little bit of a misnomer because there’ve been multiple women’s movements, and also because it’s not entirely to be credited to or blamed on organized feminism. There’s been a lot of other enfranchisement of women that’s gone on as well that has actually been not identifiably feminist, but definitely comes out of a very 18thcentury spirit of egalitarianism. But in general I think that equal rights egalitarianism has had an enormous amount to do with changing heterosexuality. Simply because once you give women and men equal or nearly equal rights to their own economic autonomy, political autonomy, social autonomy, you change the playing field, you change the dependency relationship.

Over the last decade, there’s been a lot of science arguing that there are physical differences between gay people and straight people, in their brains and even the direction of their hair whirls. You’re skeptical of this research. Why?

I question their validity primarily because nobody has established or in fact attempted to establish that there is a canonical straight body. And if you don’t have characterized control, you can bet your bottom dollar I am not going to believe your hypothesis. It’s really that simple.

All of this research that is purporting to look for physiological material differences between gay bodies and straight bodies: What are they comparing it to? Their assumption that they know magically what a heterosexual body is? When no one has actually established what that is. That’s bad science.

OK. Then do you think it’s possible to establish what a heterosexual body looks like?

Well, you know, if you’re going to stipulate that it’s possible to establish what a non-heterosexual body is, it better damn well be possible to find out what a heterosexual body is. And if one of those things is not possible, then, chances are, the other is not either.

I’m quite attached to my identity as a gay man — and, to be honest, I would feel a little troubled having my category taken away from me.

See, that’s the thing, no one is going to take that away from you. No one can take that away from you. The only thing they can take away from you is the illusion that this is not something that is constructed. And that’s very, very different. Just because something is constructed as a social category, doesn’t mean that it’s not enormously meaningful. It doesn’t mean that we haven’t built a whole damn civilization on it. Doesn’t mean that we don’t live our daily lives on it, doesn’t mean that we don’t use it all the time every time we’re walking down the street. This is real. It’s stuff that has physical manifestations in the real world. But that does not mean that it is organic.

Or innate.

Or inevitable.

But these categories have also been very practical. Gay rights wouldn’t be imaginable without them.

Well, you know, minority politics has been a lot easier to sell than to just say, “Being human ought to get you human dignity,” full stop. If you can pin down the difference, if you can make the difference the salient issue, it somehow makes it easier for people to stomach the fact that they can’t go out and just beat people over the head. I don’t know why that is. I find it intensely frustrating.

Do you think the success of the gay rights movement is helping broaden our ideas of sexuality?

I think that it is having an interesting effect of making the boundaries of the categories more permeable. Simply because we now have this doxa [omnipresent acknowledgement] of gayness in our culture where we believe that gayness is a thing, we believe that it exists, we believe that we know what it looks like, we believe that we know what it acts like, and therefore, when we see it, we’re actually very likely to say, “Hey, that over there, that looks really gay,” regardless of whether or not that person may be, in fact, gay.

Those boundaries are becoming more porous. The term “bromance” cracks me up, but it is also promising. For the past hundred years or so, a lot of men have found it very difficult to express affection and love for other men without having it assumed that that love is necessarily sexual. And now we’re actually coming around to a place where at least some people, some of the time, are able to avail themselves of a category in which they can say, “Oh, OK, here’s a way that men can be affectionate toward each other and one another and love one another and we don’t have to assume that we know more about it than that.” I think that that adds something to the conversation.

Women, in particular, seem to be eschewing the traditional between binaries of gay and straight these days, at least in pop culture. The same thing doesn’t seem to be true of men.

There’s a reason for that. Every queer woman I know — and I’m a queer woman — understands intuitively that a lot of people don’t consider what two women do together sexually as sex. It’s a whole lot easier to fly under the radar when what you’re doing is not something that a lot of people are even going to consider as sex.

But men, for various other cultural reasons also seem to be more attached to categories. It functions partly as a sort of safety mechanism.

I think there is a lot of safety in categories. And there’s a hell of a lot of safety in a binary. When you can just say, you know, anything that is not this is automatically that. You know, it frees up a lot of spare time.

I have a number of friends who are negotiating the reverse of this, in that they for a long time identified as lesbians and have now started dating transmen and now have to negotiate the awkwardness of being in what ostensibly looks like a heterosexual relationship. I’ve been around several friends who, when they mention their boyfriend in a queer setting, reflexively say, “Oh, but he’s trans.”

And I think that really points as well to the fact that these are constructed categories. This is about your subjectivity, it’s about your allegiance, it’s about where your social networks are, it’s about the kinds of cultural priorities that you embrace and that you endorse. This is not just what gets you hard or what gets you wet. This is not just about what kinds of sex you have, or the congenital configurations of the people you have sex with. It’s very much about what cultures you participate in. What cultures you ally yourself with, you know, whose flag you fly.

It’s interesting that transgender men and women could marry their partners long before gay people could get married, even though they are probably far more despised by conservatives in this country, simply because they fit into this heterosexual idea of marriage.

Although, that’s not uniformly true and there have been cases, like Littleton v. Prange in Texas — which still to this day breaks my heart — where jurisdictions refused to uphold the legality of marriage or partnerships involving a trans person, because they basically take the stance that you can’t change genetics and this is person was never a whatever. And therefore the marriage is not valid. So it does cut both ways. I do think that the issue ofgay marriage is a very interesting one to look at in the context of the history of sexuality, because what I think it testifies to is not so much the tendency that non-heterosexuality has to destabilize heterosexual culture, but the incredible depth of the investment that our culture and our government have in regulating the kinds of relationships that people have in their lives.

For more information visit the official website of Hanne Blank.

Teapot Island!

2012-02-11T15:17:00.001-08:00

"Man Up"

2012-02-11T14:30:00.000-08:00

Tears welled up. Please watch, pleas share.

Guante's poem about why the phrase "man up" and its popularity. Guante a two-time National Poetry Slam champion, founder of the Hip Hop Against Homophobia concert series and a long-time social justice activist and educator.

http://www.guante.info for more.

P.S. Snapping? I didn't think that this still happened at poetry readings. I vote we get rid of it.

Challenge Accepted

2012-02-11T13:57:00.001-08:00

when we resist

2012-02-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

Photo by retardoricardo via tiny buddha

There are times when we do not recognize that it is time for us to move forward. When life is ready for us to move and we resist, life will move us by any means necessary. What may feel like a disaster is actually a graduation. Remain open to being guided, supported and protected by the universe.

~Iyala Vanzant

Sh*t Crunchy Mamas Say

2012-02-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

I do not want children of my own but I recently came across this and immediately shared it with some of my own hippie mama friends.

Sh*t Crunchy Mamas Say

By http://MamaNatural.com

Ellen Degenres stands up to homophobic critics who say she shouldn't be a JC Penny spokesperson

2012-02-08T20:45:00.000-08:00

Since the announcement that Ellen would be a new spokesperson for JCPenney, there's been an outpouring of support. There have also been a handful of critics. Ellen addressed them in her opening monologue.

Hello Kitty and Hooters? Nooooooooooooooooo!

2012-02-07T21:10:00.000-08:00

Oh how I could cry. Sanrio and Hooters Restaurant have apparently teamed up in Tokyo.

For whatever reasons Hooters in Tokyo thinks Valentine's Day should be celebrated at their establishment. Apparently the way to do that is to promote it with Hello Kitty.

Hello Kitty in Hooters garb is tragic. Excuse me while I scream into a pillow.

round and round it goes

2012-02-07T20:48:00.000-08:00

The stories behind the Dr. Seuss stories

2012-02-07T20:47:00.000-08:00

"Ryan Gosling, Lindy Hopper" meme

2012-02-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

The Ryan Gosling meme is ridiculous. But now that there's a new Lindy Hop themed tumblr site, I admit I'm a wee bit interested. The meme started out as "Feminist Ryan Gosling". Being that I'm a feminist you'd think that would have struck a chord with me. I was turned off by it because I knew what it stemmed from.

When the film Blue Valentine came out, Gosling made a great feminist statement about the fact that the film was initially rated NC-17, which was unfounded. It was later changed to an R rating, which was more appropriate. Gosling's feminist statement, had swooning feminists insisting that he was a feminist. The truth of the matter is, we have no idea if Gosling claims to be a feminist. It'd be great if he is a feminist, but it would be equally grand if the most unattractive men on the planet were feminists as well. I find Gosling to be a handsome man, but I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that he's a feminist when there's no way to know for certain. It's rude to assume. Even if the assumption is towards something positive, it is rude to assume.

Aaaanyhoot. Lindy Hop has been a passion of mine since I was 17. My love for it is not going to die anytime soon. Don't get me wrong, the meme is still ridiculous but now it's got a novelty that makes more sense to me. Heh.

To view more visit, Ryan Gosling, Lindy Hopper.

Which Mona Lisa?

2012-02-06T21:04:00.000-08:00

Curators have spent the better part of a year removing black paint from another Mona Lisa painting, thinking for years it was just a copy of the original. Turns out, it was dates back to the original and was painted alongside DiVinci's possibly by an apprentice.

IR also revealed the copy’s underdrawings, sketches that painters make before they start with the paint. The Louvre took IR images of the Mona Lisa in 2004. When the Prado curators compared the two sets of underdrawings, they found that they matched, suggesting that the copy was made contemporaneously with the original, following the changes to the composition as the master drew them before the final version was painted. There are documentary sources that attest to Leonardo having his students paint alongside him in the studio, but this is the first time we have IR evidence that strongly indicates contemporaneous painting.
--------------Description by Warholian

For more information visit The History Blog.

Web MD

2012-02-05T22:19:00.001-08:00

ECT Not for Me

2012-02-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

(source)

"Maybe you need ECT", she said to me a little too casually. It was two years ago, at the age of 29 that a therapist suggested that Electroconvulsive Therapy (formerly known as Electroshock Therapy) might be beneficial in treating my depression. She said it in a tone that was as casual as a strolling walk.

I no longer have this therapist. Not because I didn't like her or the services she provided, but my employer switched insurances at the time and so I had to drop her.

I remembered leaving that session stunned. No, not shocked. But stunned. She had silenced me, she had worried me. Am I that bad off? My depression was crippling me and yes, things were bad. It was that year that I found a VERY good shrink and was prescribed meds that gave me room to sigh. I've had Dysthymia for years. Since childhood. The DSM-IV-TR defines Dysthymia as a low-grade chronic depression. Don't let the "low-grade" fool you. Dysthymia can often be more powerful than Major Depression. A person with MDD must experience at least one major depressive episode for at least two weeks in order to meet criteria. A person diagnosed with Dysthymia must carry depressive symptoms every day for at least two years to meet criteria.

Some therapists have diagnosed me with "Double Depression" which is not an official DSM diagnosis but is often used within psychology and psychiatry. It is considered Dysthymia but with bouts of Major Depressive episodes. Constant depression but with major dips that can last a couple of weeks. After those dips, a person returns to a baseline of Dysthymia. There is never a break from depressive symptoms.

Once upon a time I referred to the DSM as "the bible." Many folks in "the biz" called it that as it held the diagnostic criteria for all recognized disorders under the American Psychiatric Association. I no longer refer to it as "the bible" as I believe that is quite insulting. When I was a student I was infrequently reminded that the DSM is meant to be used as a "guide." But really, any mental health position is going to require an employee to go by the book, so to speak.

I am a psychiatric social worker. I entered graduate school in 2006 (graduated in 2008) so as to become a therapist and work with the "worried well." I shifted my sights during grad school and now I offer therapy, but for the "severe and persistently mentally ill." Mainly individuals who experience Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder. Individuals who are high functioning enough to undergo therapy.

For insurance purposes, clients must be given an immediate diagnosis. Drives me crazy. The diagnosis may not be accurate as it can be difficult to know a person's true diagnosis until a clinician is able to meet with a patient over a period of time. Schizophrenia Undifferentiated Type? Schizophrenia Disorganized Type? Schizophrenia Paranoid Type? Schizoaffective? Schizoaffective Bipolar Type? It takes time to figure it out.

I had been against the idea of medication until the age of 23. It was not just that I was depressed but my memory had deteriorated to the point where I couldn't retain anything. The journey was a long one but I am happy to say that I am stable on meds. "Stable" means different things to different people and in my case it certainly doesn't mean "cured."

When I underwent an internship at a psychotic hospital I was exposed to some very sick people. I continued to work in hospitals and saw the sickest of the sickest. It always pained me when I would work with a patient who was so sick that the meds just wouldn't touch them.

During my internship I had a patient who was going to receive ECT. It was a last resort and rarely used. The patient never went through with the treatment as he eventually felt the effect of the medications he was prescribed. When the patient was initially going to receive the treatment I asked the attending psychiatrist if I could observe it.

He said that he would and explained to me that the process is not as dramatic as it once was. It's no Cuckoo's Next. The person is put to sleep and does not feel the shock. ECT causes a seizure in the brain, that reboots the emotional wiring.

Treatments are to be carried out a few times a week over the course of two weeks to a month.Electricity is administered to the head for about a fraction of a second and a seizure may last about as long. The body is mostly calm. A person's foot may wave back and forth a bit, but that is usually all. When a person comes out of it they might feel a little foggy but it subsides.

Although the treatment is supposedly very effective, there is a risk of memory loss. When a person is depressed, memory loss is a symptom. It certainly was for me. So, ECT would potentially worsen my memory if I had decided to go through with it.

Not only that, but ECT is not long lasting. A person would need to continue treatments in order to maintain relief. Some feel that ECT has changed their life for the better. I for one, am glad that I never went down that road.

I've got a couple of people in my life who are going through some pretty tough stuff. As a friend I continue to do my best in supporting them. I've recommended therapy to both of them and they are heeding that advice. I've suggested medications and they are heeding that advice as well. It is their struggles that brought me to the memory of my former therapist and her suggestion.

Desperate times may call for desperate measures and sometimes we experiment and fail. But hopefully we learn from our failures and keep on keepin' on. I did and I'm glad I did.

Esther Horchner

2012-02-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

Visit her website here.

damn the elephant

2012-02-05T00:29:00.000-08:00

fruity pebbles splat...from nyan cat

2012-02-05T00:26:00.000-08:00

that's what I'm calling this anyway...

fruit nestled in ghost

2012-02-04T23:49:00.000-08:00

marshmallow and strawberry. what a grand idea.

an ode to the chelsea

2012-02-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

Why? Just cuz.Cuz it's pretty. Cuz I had straight hair, I'm sure I would have done this in high school, when I dyed my hair various colors.

Photo 1: source
Photo 2: source
Photo 3: source
Photo 4: source
Photo 5: source
Photo 6: source

James Deen is Not the Nice Guy of Porn - PART II

2012-02-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

(source)

Just this week Nightline featured an interview with porn actor James Deen. To watch it visit ABC News or Hulu. The links will take you straight to the video interview, provided the sites have not taken them down by the time you read this.

I first heard of James Deen through a gender studies professor who was preparing for a course about pornography and its cultural impact. I did some digging and came to learn a bit more about Mr. Deen. To read my January 2012 post, James Deen is Not the Nice Guy of Porn, click here.

In that post I report that there are many who have deemed Dean to be a sensitive man within porn. Deen has been labelled "The Ryan Gosling of Porn" by some. He's become the heartthrob of porn for young girls. He's a 25 year old man with a laid back appearance and a laid back vibe. This seems to be one of the reasons as to why so many women are flocking to him.

Fans believe that Deen has earned his fame as he is much more gentle in his scenes than some of the other male actors out there. He will hold the hand of another actress and he will spend time kissing her. Nightline failed to mention that he also has sex with them while "gently" choking her with one hand.

For some this suits them just dandy. Deen performs different types of porn. He's heavily involved in BDSM scenes for Kink.com and will walk naked women in public before having sex with them before a live audience for Public Disgrace.com. Depending on the company and depending on the scene, you will find women with their breasts tied tightly with ropes and the rest of their bodies tied and then suspended from above. Some are put into cages and then penetrated. Some are ordered to pee in a bucket or secured to the floor by metal pipe contractions. Not your average BDSM. Others are bound and gagged with clothespins snapped all across their legs and breasts.

I don't mention this out of attempt to shock. If you're a BDSM fan I imagine none of this is shocking. There are many who truly enjoy watching or being a part of BDSM. Humiliation and degradation is a turn on for some and Deen is one to oblige.

Deen also does a lot of "alternative" porn where he has sex with women who sport tattoos and piercings. It's amazing that the word "alternative" is still being used. I thought it was a 90s thing. Back in high school when some of the music I listened to was considered "alternative".

When I was in high school and in college, I was sometimes tagged as "punk" or "goth". I didn't appreciate either label, because it was just that. A label. But it seems that the women at Burning Angel not only love to be called sluts but they are content to be pigeon holed as emo, punk or goth.

Below is an transcript excerpt from ,Nightline. Here Nightline expresses their concern about Deen's work.

From Nightline 2/2/12

Voiceover: Today the voracious, unstoppable American porn industry, by some estimates a $13 billion business, has now targeted and reached a new demographic: teenage girls. Evidence of that? Deen has become something of an internet sensation for fans much younger than 18, a fact that many parents may find disturbing.

Nightline reporter: You have this massive following of young women, some of them teenagers, what do you say to that?

Deen: If there's a 15-year-old girl, an underage girl, an underage guy, an underage person that is viewing a scene I'm in or some kind of porn, chances are they're curious, they're horny. Whatever it is, they're sexual enough that it is something that they desire, that they crave, that they want. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

Nightline reporter: Parents might not think so.

Deen: Why? Everyone has sex.

I agree with Deen in that there is nothing wrong with craving sex. There is nothing wrong with sex. Desire, curiosity, and sexually charged hormones are all good things. So, what's my problem? My issue is patriarchy. That's my problem.

"I would like to think that I'm, you know, opening up their sexual experience they'll be able to take their boyfriends and say, 'hey, I saw this in a porno, I want to try this. I don't think porn should be used as an actual learning guide."

As you can see Deen just contradicted himself. He tells us that he hopes a man who sees his films will want to try something new in the bedroom with his girlfriend but then says one shouldn't learn from pornography. For many porn is indeed used as a teaching guide. I do not want anyone assuming anything about my sexuality based on what they have viewed from porn. I know plenty of women who would agree with me. I imagine that there are plenty of women who disagree as well.

The problem is that porn doesn't just offer ways in which to experiment but it tells us how to have sex, how to react to sex. How women are supposed to moan, how obligated they should feel and how they should look while having sex.

Nightline's piece focused on the fact that Deen's popularity stretches across age groups. It's not just women in their 20s but teens as well. Deen tells Nightline that he thinks minors should stay away from his blogs and films. He encourages them to find him when they turn 18.

Deen claims he first became interested in becoming a porn star when he was in kindergarten when he found porn magazine. "I picked it up and I'm like, 'oh my God, this is the cool, this is awesome,'" he said. "It was this weird moment that I will always remember where I was like, this is what I want to be when I grow up. I want to do this."

According to Nightline, Deen said he was once suspended for telling a school teacher he wanted to become a porn star one day. He has now starred in 4,000 movies and is the youngest person ever to win porn's "Male Performer of the Year."

The person who directed me to the Nightline interview also lead me to a June 2011 article. Gaby Dunn from 100 Interviews sat down with Deen.

"The origin story I’d read online about James’s porn career was that someone gave him the advice that if he could have sex in public, then he could do porn. James says this is mostly true.

It actually started one day when he was listening to ‘Love Line’ on the radio. The guest was porn legend Jenna Jameson. When they opened the lines for callers, a bunch of men called in to say things like, ‘I could fuck you better’ or ‘I could do porn. I have a huge dick.’ Eventually, Jenna snapped.

“If you wanna do porn,” she said on air, “get a folding chair and jerk off for 45 minutes with twenty people around you. When one of them yells ‘Come!’ then you have to come within 30 seconds.”

Instead of being intimidated like Jenna probably meant, James thought that was something he could do. He started going to parties and hooking up with girls in full view of the rest of the party-goers, sometimes having sex right in the middle of the action. He considered it practice."

I don't know Deen. He might be a really nice guy, truly intelligent, and approachable; just as his fans insist upon. I don't like or dislike Deen. I don't know him. My concerns aren't so much with Deen but with pornography as a whole.

When I wrote my first post James Deen is Not the Nice Guy of Porn, I had done some research which included taking a gander at his blog that his fans speak so highly of. There I found him talking about what he wants to eat for lunch, how drunk he is, and then who he "banged" that day. Each entry is about a paragraph or maybe two at the most and is accompanied by a close up photo of a co-workers vagina or anus.

It's difficult to view Deen as the nice guy of porn, when he talks about how he wants to "jizz" all over some woman's face or how he wants to "ass slam" her or "fuck her til' her eyes bleed."

I don't fear that Deen is going to corrupt the purity (so to speak) of women as the Nightline piece seemed to suggest. But I do think that Deen is just another guy in porn. His fans point out differences which they believe makes him unique. My belief is that there aren't enough differences to make me think of him as a more nurturing character within porn. But when it comes down to it, there isn't anything about porn that I could embrace.

Within my pieces about pornography I find it important to emphasize that I do not speak for everyone. Porn is a big-ig-ig industry, so obviously there is a fan base waiting for it. That being said, I also find it important to emphasize that pornography harms women and men alike. My post has focused on heterosexual porn, which is mainstream. Although, there are other types of porn out there, the variety has not erased the fact that, sex for pay, has become fashionable.

People use to want to "party like a rock star" and now people strive to "party like a porn star." The whole purpose of mainstream porn is to enhance a man's ego. The women in porn "love" everything that is happening TO them (not with them) and are always wanting more. They are willing to accept anything that man wants to do. This is not real life. Some may argue that, porn is meant to be about fantasy and not real life. Understood, but as a woman, I know what it is like to have men in my life (friend, foe, or romantic interest) who believe that life would be grand if women would give it up like the porn stars do.

It's this kind of mentality that has me weary about any man I allow into my bedroom. Even the most sensitive of men may adheare to the myth that men give and women receive.

Porn stretches farther than the screen. A man could detest porn but we have a porn saturated media that continues to tell women how to be women and men how to be men. Deen's supposed "nice guy" flare doesn't reverse any of that.

to owe

2012-02-04T18:15:00.000-08:00

Photographed By Matthew Evrard

"One of the things you have to do in this world is keep track of the people that you owe."
----"Shoot or Stab Them" from the album Fellow Workers (1999) by Utah Phillips and Ani Difranco

I disagree. The words above are no doubt profound but they miss the mark. These words were birthed by the great folk singer, poet, storyteller, anarchist, activist, ex-Wobbly and labor organizer, U. Utah Phillips. A man born on my exact birth date and month and a man who died too early. The year was 2008. He is missed.

The concept of "owing" and "deserving" is fascinating and complicated. I do not believe that we owe anyone anything in this world. Unless it is contracted, there needn't be any pursuit of payback. If you make an agreement to pay someone back money, being that you borrowed it to begin with, then you will owe. If you borrow, you give it back. This is where the concept of owing stops.

Despite the fact that we live in a competitive and often selfish world, we also live in a world with a lot of joy, love, perseverance and patience. Phillips often told stories that didn't make it to the history books. The struggle of laborers, the struggle of women. The blood, sweat and tears that might make history class a little too serious. Phillips placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of listening to one's elders. Union workers, anti-war heroes, poets, hobos, musicians and anyone who has graced another with friendship and education.

As a feminist, I have many people to give thanks to, past and present. Susan B. Anthony, Mother Jones aka Mary Harris Jones, Gloria Steinem, Bell Hooks, Eve Ensler, Robert Jensen, Hugo Schwyzer, Jackson Katz, and Michael Kimmel, just to name a few.

As a psychiatric social worker I am thankful to Carl Jung, Dorothea Dix, Irvin D. Yalom, and R.D. Laing to name a few.

As a dancer I am grateful to Frankie Manning, Dean Collins, Jewel McGowan, Norma Miller, Misty Copeland and Gregory Hines to name a few.

As an evolving person I am grateful to God, Dr. Wayne Dyer, The Dalai Lama, Gary Zukav, Abraham-Hicks, and Eckhart Tolle to name a few.

I could expand these categories and name many many more. We all have our lists of people who have influenced our life, be it in passing or those who have sat in our very own living rooms.

I can't imagine that any of the individuals I mentioned could look an admirer in the face and suggest that they owe them anything. I do not owe the women who underwent the hardships of the suffrage movement. I do not owe them thanks but I give it willfully and joyfully. I do not owe Irvin D. Yalom for being the best psychotherapist there ever was. One who's work I continue to study to this day. I do not owe Mary Harris Jones aka Mother Jones for being "the most dangerous woman in America", as she assisted in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. I do not owe, Frankie Manning for being the "Ambassador of Lindy Hop." I do not owe God a damn thing, even though he has guided me through all my years. I give thanks humbly. I give thanks, I give thanks, I give thanks.

Sometimes a person gives of themselves to help either just themselves or for the sole purpose of helping others. Sometimes a person may seek to do something that they enjoy and it just so happens to influence others in a positive way. This is truly wonderful. In the end it seems that all benefit and this big blue ball (or tiny, depending on how you see things) becomes a better place.

I'd like to believe that those who have offered such gifts to the world have done so benevolently. Why do something if you are only hoping to get a thank you in return?

This seems simplistic but for some it can be a hard one to choke down. Can you imagine giving someone a present and not hearing a "thank you" in return? I think at some point in our lives we have heard that it's important to give without expecting anything in return. But when you feel snubbed what are you to do?

The fact of the matter is; that if Person B does not thank Person A for a gift, Person B is being quite rude. Whether Person B likes or dislikes the gift makes no matter. If Person B were to be truly humble, Person B would be thankful that Person A was thinking of them. Person A can go forward knowing that Person B was impolite but could benefit from reminding themselves that they didn't give the gift so as to receive a "thank you."

There are different ways in which the rudeness of Person B's behavior can be addressed. The point is that when it comes down to it, Person B did not OWE Person A a anything.

So, the next time you help someone out of a jam, or you go beyond the call of duty, think twice before shouting something like, "You owe me!" Chances are they really don't.

Yes, Utah, tells us that, "One of the things you have to do in this world, is keep track of the people that you owe." I disagree. I think, one of the things we all should do in this world, is keep track of the people we are grateful for.

Let us remember those who have done great things. Let us remember those who inspire us. Those who give us energy and give us motivation. Those who we emulate, those who have guided us. Those who are so benevolent that they have rubbed off their greatness onto us. Let us remember. Let us be thankful and let us pass on their stories so that others can be thankful as well. And let us continue to give of ourselves benevolently. Amen.

Cake on Cupcake

2012-02-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

This is from Sweet Cupcakes in Boston, Massachusetts, celebrated the National Chocolate Cake Day (January 27th) with a mini slice of chocolate cake on top of ac cupcake!

I will consider these my, "I don't care about football" Superbowl Cupcakes. Blue Velvet Cupcakes by The Avid Appetite.

2012-02-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

The Superbowl is one of those things that I have no connection to. So, when I see sport themed cupcakes I usually keep on truckin'. But these you'd never know where meant to help celebrate the day. BLUE VELVET cupcakes. I imagine they are just as yummy as red velvet, but minus the red food coloring.

These cupcakes are dyed blue in honor of The New York Giants football feam.The official name of these cupcakes is Blue Velvet Giants Superbowl Cupcakes made by The Avid Appetite. Visit the website to get the recipe and view more photos. So, yeah..go Giants...or whatever.

rubbers

2012-02-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

Photograph: Digital Vision / Alamy/Alamy

grrrr..

2012-02-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

Cherry Chip Cupcakes by The Nonpareil Baker

2012-01-31T20:40:00.000-08:00

This delightful beauty is from The Nonpareil Baker. Visit the website for the recipe for this Cherry Chip Cupcake with cherry vanilla buttercream!

yeah, man..

2012-01-31T20:37:00.000-08:00

Unedible treats from etsy

2012-01-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

My new DIY treats from etsy! All below images are directly from the etsy pages. Click on the etsy links below to visit the sites.

Cherry Jam and Bread Necklace
By AllartsKitchen

Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake Ring
By Neat Eats

Milk and Cherry Jam Cookies Ring
By AllartsKitchen

read the turquoise dot

2012-01-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

Minty was always my favorite

2012-01-29T22:08:00.000-08:00

Now, I'm missing My Little Pony play. Oh, to be young.

Sweetberry (2003)
Photo from Ponytopia

Minty (2003)
Photo from Ponytopia

Cupcake (2004)
Photo from Ponytopia

Cinnamon Breeze (2004)
Photo from Ponytopia

Triple Treat (2004)
Photo from Ponytopia

Kiwi Tart (2005)
Photo from Ponytopia

Fizzy Pop (2005)
Photo from Ponytopia

Apple Jack (1983)
Photo from Summer Hayes' My Little Pony Collection

Cherries Jubilee (1981)
Photo from Museum of Childhood

Peachy (1981)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Moonstone (1982)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Blossom (1983)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Fizzy (1984)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Sweet Tooth (1986)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Sugarberry (1986)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Twinkler (1986)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Sweet Blossom (1991)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Strawberry Scoops (1991)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Chocolate Delight (1991)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Raspberry Jam (1987-88)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Cranberry Muffin (1987-88)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Cherry Treats (1987-88)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Blueberry Basket (1987-88)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Boysenberry Pie (1987-88)
Photo from Ponyland Press

Strawberry Surprise (1987-88)
Photo from Ponyland Press

looks like a galaxy cupcake to me

2012-01-29T20:50:00.000-08:00

(source)

9 planets

2012-01-29T20:45:00.000-08:00

I'm in love.

(source)

My Little Pony in ink

2012-01-29T20:40:00.000-08:00

Talk about commitment..

(source)

treats n' ink

2012-01-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

pic source

Happy 60th Birthday Tommy Ramone

2012-01-29T14:35:00.000-08:00

(source)

~Born January 29, 1952~

Cynthia Nixon says she chose to be Gay. Should we be upset?

2012-01-29T13:44:00.000-08:00

(source)

Actress Cynthia Nixon (probably most well know for her role as "Miranda" in Sex & the City) was recently featured in The New York Times. Nixon explained that she believes her homosexuality is a choice. This left me flabbergasted. She readily admits that being gay may not be a choice for others but it has been for her. Below is the direct quote from The New York Times article.

“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.” Her face was red and her arms were waving. “As you can tell,” she said, “I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”

What's difficult here is that so many of our gay brothers and sisters have been struggling to exist peacefully in this heterosexist world. We have all been told that being gay is not only sinful but it is a choice. Neither statement could be farther from the truth. Many of us know this.

So, understandably Nixon's statement is concerning. She's already received much criticism from various media outlets from LGBTQI communities.

Although, Nixon's views seem really out there, I was not quick to dismiss her. This is HER life, her journey. I am not gay and I do not know what it is like to be gay in a heterosexist world. I am privileged as a straight woman and have the luxury of having known all along which gender I am attracted to. Some gay individuals know this from the get-go and others do not. Being a straight woman I have never been shamed by society for desiring men.

So, basically I allowed the initial shock to subside, I picked up my slack jaw from off the floor, and I told myself to sit down and shut up. I allowed myself to respond rather than react. That's always important. I read her words again.

The first time I read the above piece, I felt shocked, confused and upset being that I have always whole heartedly believed that being gay is not a choice. It's important for us as a collective to understand that those born gay, are born gay.

Nixon's story appears to be unique, and because of this, it might be easy to just foist a new label onto her and insist that she is actually bi-sexual. It certainly would make things easier for us to understand. But ultimately we do not know if she is bi-sexual and when it comes down to it, it is not our business. It's not her job to make her words easier for us to understand.

Nixon did choose to speak up about her choice. She chose to share this with the world. But she has told us all she wanted to, it seems. She has not elaborated as to why she made the choice to be gay. So, in other words, we don't have the full story and we may never. We can scratch our heads and try to make sense of it for our own piece of mind. I think it's perfectly okay to be confused, but I think it's even more important to understand that she is a person in love who knows what she wants. As I said earlier, it is HER journey, not ours.

In 2010, The Advocate ran a piece on Nixon:

Nixon said of her fiancee: “She’s like a short man with boobs. A lot of what I love about her is her butchness. I’m not saying I fell in love with her in a sexually neutral way. I love her sexuality — it’s a big part of what I love about her — but I feel like it was her.”

Since coming out, the actress has been honored for her work campaigning gay rights, recently winning a GLAAD award.

She said: “I identify as gay as a political stance. If anybody, prior to my meeting and falling in love with Christine, had asked me about what I think about sexuality, I would have said I think we’re all bisexual.

“But I had that point of view without ever having felt attracted to a woman. I had never met a woman I was attracted to [before Christine]. And maybe if I’d met her when I was 20, I would have fallen in love and only dated women. But maybe if I’d met her at 20, I wouldn’t have responded at all. Who knows?”

In a 2008 interview with The Telegraph, Nixon divulged that, “In terms of sexual orientation I don’t really feel I’ve changed. I don’t feel there was a hidden part of my sexuality that I wasn’t aware of. I’d been with men all my life, and I’d never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn’t seem so strange. I’m just a woman in love with another woman.”

I don't think that Nixon is necessarily setting the gay community back, but I do think that it will take some open minds to understand what she is telling us. And the gay community knows better than a straight person such as myself, that open minds are hard to come by. So, it makes sense to me that there is some controversy. Asking questions about gender and love is always progressive. Hopefully it will lead to a better understanding of ourselves. We have the freedom to agree or disagree with Nixon's statements just as she is free to make those statements. If we are to get anything out of this, I hope this prompts an explorlative discussion.

when you saw this

2012-01-29T12:23:00.000-08:00

Right before entering a classroom, I was able to sense the television in the room. It boggled my mind for a while but then I came to learn that I was sensing the high pitched sound of a TV turned on to the blue screen.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm wishing to see a TV rolled into my place of work. It'd also be great if I could leave each day at 3pm.

"North Carolina Republican Calls For Publicly Hanging Abortion Providers"

2012-01-29T00:15:00.000-08:00

Word for word article from Addicting Info

January 28, 2012

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

Republicans have a long love affair with executing people. They enjoy it so much that a conservative audience at a GOP Debate cheered for executions this past fall. Republicans also have a deep hatred for doctors who perform abortions. They hate it so much that they, led by Bill O’Reilly, actively targeted Dr. George Tiller until one conservative nut job murdered him inside a church. GOP lawmakers have sought to make it legal to kill abortion providers in several states such as South Carolina, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Iowa. Now a Republican lawmaker in North Carolina not only wants to executeabortion doctors, he wants to hang ‘em. State Rep. Larry Pittman wants to bring back public hangings as a form of execution, and he wants to tighten the noose around the necks of abortion providers. In an email sent to all the members of the general assembly, Pittman said:

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner. If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

Just another bloodthirsty “pro-lifer.” Abortion is a legal procedure, one protected by the United States Constitution. If, in 2013, a Republican President takes office and the balance of the Supreme Court stays the same, there’s a chance that Rowe vs. Wade could be overturned. There’s a chance that abortion could be made a capitol offense in some states.

Hanging is one of the crueler forms of execution. When a person is dropped through the trap door of a gallows, their neck can snap. If the neck does not snap, the person is literally left hanging and writhing while they slowly get strangled to death. It’s rather gruesome and is a throwback penalty associated with the Old West.

For now, Pittman is just another crack-pot, determined to drive all OBGYNs who perform abortions out of the state (and probably succeeding), but the more crack-pots we allow to be elected, the better the odds that right-wing bloodlust will extend beyond abortion providers and onto women.

Senators

2012-01-28T21:34:00.000-08:00

"Birth Control For Men? For Real This Time?" - by Jessica Mack for Ms. Magazine

2012-01-28T21:08:00.000-08:00

Ms. Magazine article by by Jessica Mack word for word.
January 13th, 2012

When the birth control pill hit the U.S. market 51 years ago, the hope had been for a male method to follow close at its heels. Yet, despite decades of research and periodic hopeful headlines, progress has been largely indiscernible.

Now, researchers are touting new developments: a reversible vasectomy, a “dry orgasm” pill and a miracle plant from Indonesia, to name a few. The demand appears to be there, considering that 1 in 6 U.S. men over age 35 has had a vasectomy. But with so many false alarms, should we believe that this time’s the charm?

Research on male contraception began in the 1970s, initially focusing on the use of hormones to manipulate sperm production. But while trials demonstrated efficacy, results were marred by nasty side effects and onerous administration (one potential method combined an implant below the skin with monthly injections).

A decade later, Elaine Lissner was just graduating college with a big idea: She founded the Male Contraception Information Project (MCIP) in the late 1980s to track progress and raise awareness of male contraception. Lissner says, “I thought everything would change quite quickly, [but] the world wasn’t ready…for male contraception in 1992. Everyone was focused on HIV and [the abortion pill], and nobody had time for [this]. I couldn’t get any funding.”

“Only nonprofits and universities continued to work [on this],” says Regine Sitruk-Ware, executive director for research and development at Population Council and a veteran researcher in the field. Then, in 2003, the mapping of the human genome enabled a change in gears. Instead of tampering with the body’s hormones overall, researchers could zero in on specific mechanisms to affect sperm viability. Now research is focused mainly on nonhormonal methods, as well as those with added benefits such as protection from HIV or baldness.

One such method, likely to be the first on the market, is RISUG, or the “reversible vasectomy.” Currently in Phase III trials in India, it entails a one-time injection into the vas deferens of a harmless chemical solution that deactivates sperm passing through it from the testes to the penis. So far RISUG has proven to be effective, safe—and reversible with a second injection.

Several other methods are just around the corner. Plant-based pills, like one being manufactured from the gandarusa plant in Indonesia, may offer natural, nonhormonal options. Researchers in the U.K. are working on a “dry orgasm” pill based on medications that restrict sperm from becoming semen—thus orgasm occurs but ejaculation does not. Other methods, such as the use of moderate heat or ultrasound on the testicles, are noninvasive and relatively simple ways of inhibiting sperm production.

But obstacles still loom. Contraception is about many things—reproductive choice, personal freedom, partner trust—but perhaps mostly about money. In 2015, the global contraceptives market for men and women will reach an estimated $17.2 billion, yet industry players have done little to sustain male-method development (beyond or even including male condoms) because they still don’t see potential demand or dollars.

“Market research has shown little interest from males, so companies have continued to [bow] out,” says Sitruk-Ware. The problem with such research is that it’s based on a premise that could change once an actual product is available. That was the case with the vaginal-ring contraceptive NuvaRing: Initial projections said women would be uninterested. Yet recent NuvaRing sales in the U.S. are up more than 40 percent.
Luckily, the odyssey for a male method is benefiting from recent broad momentum around contraception globally. “The difference now is that we’ve been through a lot of years of consciousness raising,” says Lissner. “There’s a reason I stuck this out.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2011 issue of Ms. Magazine
Image copyright Sarah Richardson, 2011. All rights reserved.

2012-01-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

I've never EVER been one for New Year Resolutions but I came upon this a while ago (and am just getting to posting it now) and I was inspired.

Below is a New Year’s resolutions list written by Woody Guthrie in 1942 at the age of 30.

1. Work more and better 2. Work by a schedule 3. Wash teeth if any 4. Shave 5. Take bath 6. Eat good – fruit – vegetables – milk 7. Drink very scant if any 8. Write a song a day 9. Wear clean clothes – look good 10. Shine shoes 11. Change socks 12. Change bed cloths often 13. Read lots good books 14. Listen to radio a lot 15. Learn people better 16. Keep rancho clean 17. Dont get lonesome 18. Stay glad 19. Keep hoping machine running 20. Dream good 21. Bank all extra money 22. Save dough 23. Have company but dont waste time 24. Send Mary and kids money 25. Play and sing good 26. Dance better 27. Help win war – beat fascism 28. Love mama 29. Love papa 30. Love Pete 31. Love everybody 32. Make up your mind 33. Wake up and fight.

I imagine I'm biased as I believe Woody Guthrie is the true King of folk. Bob Dylan I suppose is the Prince. I reviewed this list and imagined that I didn't know how brought it into being. It's the simplicity that I love. It's the big goals and the little goals that add up to our day, our week, our year, our lives.

To learn more about the wonderful Woody Guthrie, visit the official website, here.

Occupy Valentine's Day

2012-01-27T22:22:00.000-08:00

Just came upon an awesome concept. Introducting Occupy Valentine's Day. The tumblr website tag line reads, "Down with couple-talism!" The tumblr site was created by Samhita Mukhopadhyay author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life and Executive Editor of Feministing.com.

From the website:

This year, let’s Occupy Valentine’s Day! You could….

Blog about how traditional ideas of romance perpetuate gender inequalities and hurt people of all genders

Share statistics about the growing majority of singles

Raise awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault like others have

Not be that douche-y couple on Valentine’s Day—maybe hang out with your best friends, single and otherwise

Shout about the lack of queer visibility in sexual rights politics

Have a sexy conversation by candlelight with your partner about structural inequity

Make a commitment to have fulfilling, accountable and loving relationships in all parts of your life

Commit to never settling for anyone that is not good enough for you just because you are afraid to spend another Valentine’s Day alone

These are just a few ways we can use Valentine’s Day to raise awareness about the limited ways we think about romance. Occupy Valentine’s Day is about changing the culture of romance.

Share your love freely, daily and with your community—everyday. Occupy Valentine’s Day!

I am in love with this idea. The Occupy Valentine's Day website allows viewers to submit their own take on the holiday. Below are some sample submissions from the website.

She’s Straight. I’m Queer. Who the fuck cares.
The attached photo is of me and my best friend. A few years ago, we started referring to each other as “platonic girlfriends.” Somewhere between the dates, cuddling, constant affirmations of adoration, and the assurance that she will always be there to get me out of whatever sadness cave into which I’ve dragged my poor-ass self, I realized that while our preferences may not quite add up to playing doubles in the tennis match of sexytimes, she’s pretty much the only romantic partner I need. In fact, she’s even flying out to San Francisco from Cape Town so we can spend Valentine’s Day together.

It’s not from a man. I bought it myself. It’s not even real. I bought it so I could travel the world alone without being hit on. Diamonds don’t always mean what you think they mean.

Former Nice Guy (tm) Says:

Never again will I expect a woman’s body or love solely because of the way I have treated her
Treasure Friendships
Love Free
Love Often

My love is not pink…..

If taking the time to give a shit

feels like a fucking holiday
UR DOIN IT WRONG.

To make your own submission visit the Occupy Valentine's Day tumblr website.

Synthesizers

2012-01-27T21:55:00.000-08:00

shadow art

2012-01-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

(source unknown)

awesome

2012-01-27T21:52:00.000-08:00

(source unknown)

Farmacy

2012-01-27T21:51:00.000-08:00

Now, these are the types of Christians I'd like to be associated with

2012-01-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

A Christian group shows up to a Chicago Gay Pride parade holding apologetic signs including "I'm sorry for how the church treated you".

(source)

Makes me happy. I don't know why.

2012-01-26T21:08:00.000-08:00

Purple Gradient Cake With Rainbow Sprinkles

2012-01-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

From blogger Raspberri Cupcakes. Get the recipe here.

Rainbows n' Chocolate

2012-01-26T20:59:00.000-08:00

Starbucks Cupcakes

2012-01-26T20:58:00.000-08:00

Portlandia featuring Ani Difranco

2012-01-26T20:20:00.000-08:00

Extremely funny. AND this skit mentions my favorite music artist, Ani Difranco. And Eddie Vedder ain't too shabby either.

Perhaps the most glorious tattoo I've ever seen

2012-01-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

I can not explain how much joy this tackiness brings me.

From Moden Salon

I don't drink but sometimes I search for stability as if I were

2012-01-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

First Lady

2012-01-26T19:45:00.000-08:00

Oooh la la..

Such bravery

2012-01-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

Eeek.

Tattoo by Brian Dollar

"Shit People Say in LA"

2012-01-24T20:59:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm guilty of some of this.

Shit People Say in LA

Written by Heidi Niedermeyer and Elena Crevello

If I drank alcohol, I'd be all over these. Cupcake Jello Shots!

2012-01-21T22:05:00.000-08:00

You can find the recipe for these at the blog Sweet Tooth.

The official description: "These adorable concoctions are jello shot 'cupcakes' with bases made out of cake-flavored vodka, cream soda, gelatin, and cranberry juice topped with fresh whipped cream and pretty sprinkles."

Nothing Beats a Nice Cup of Tea and a Really Great Book

2012-01-21T21:56:00.000-08:00

I am in bliss. Tea, Cupcakes and Books. Three of my obsessions come together.

Behold a sculpture from the 2011 Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Quaint with an air of Alice in Wonderland.

Oh how I love thee.

"By leaves we live."

Me & the Pea

2012-01-21T21:30:00.000-08:00

(source)

Sense and Sensitivity by Andrea Bartz

2012-01-21T20:59:00.000-08:00

I'm usually not a fan of the magazine Psychology Today. I find it to be a pop psych magazine. Every now and then however, I will find an interesting article.

Sense and Sensitivity
By Andrea Bartz, published on July 05, 2011 - last reviewed on December 15, 2011

They tear up at phone commercials. They brood for days over a gentle ribbing. They know what you're feeling before you do. Their nerve cells are actually hyperreactive. Say hello to the Highly Sensitive Person—you've probably already made him cry.

Settling into a chair for coffee with a friend, Jodi Fedor feels her heart begin to pound. Tension creeps through her rib cage. Anger vibrates in her solar plexus. But she's not upset about anything. The person across from her is. Fedor soaks up others' moods like a sponge.

On a walk through her neighborhood in Ottawa, Canada, her attention zeroes in on the one budded leaf that hasn't unfurled; it brings a lump to her throat. The cawing of a far-off crow galvanizes her attention. An abandoned nest half-hidden amid the treetops fills her with awe.

Less lovely stimuli can have equally powerful effects. As a child, a casual schoolyard taunt led to "sobbing and histrionics." Nowadays a small slight can ricochet through her entire body "like I'm actually wounded."
Fedor is sensitive—an adjective usually preceded by too. "I'm like an exposed nerve," she says. "At its worst, my sensitivity turns me into an emotional weather vane at the whim of my environment." But at its best, it's a gift, a fine-tuned finger on the pulse of every flutter of her surroundings.

The Highly Sensitive Person has always been part of the human landscape. There's evidence that many creative types are highly sensitive, perceiving cultural currents long before they are manifest to the mainstream, able to take in the richness of small things others often miss. Others may be especially sensitive to animals and how they are handled. They're also the ones whose feelings are so easily bruised that they're constantly being told to "toughen up."

Today, science is validating a group of people whose sensitivity surfaces in many domains of life. Attuned to subtleties of all kinds, they have a complex inner life and need time to process the constant flow of sensory data that is their inheritance. Some may be particularly prone to the handful of hard-to-pin-down disorders like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Technology is now providing an especially revealing window into that which likely defines them all—a nervous system set to register stimuli at very low frequency and amplify them internally.

We all experience shades of sensitivity. Who isn't rocked by rejection and crushed by criticism? But for HSPs, emotional experience is at such a constant intensity that it shapes their personality and their lives—job performance, social life, intimate relationships—as much as gender and race do. Those who learn to dial down the relentless swooping and cresting of emotions that is the almost invariable accompaniment to extreme sensitivity are able to transform raw perception into keen perceptiveness.

Dan Nainan, a full-time stand-up comic based in New York, gets tunnel vision after every show: "A thousand people stop by and say they enjoyed it, but one person says something negative and I take it so personally," he says. "It's led to some fights and has almost come to physical blows." He appreciates the irony in hating criticism yet voluntarily getting in front of a packed auditorium every night. "In a regular 9-to-5, no one's walking up to you and yelling, 'You're terrible!' "

The Outside, Amplified

Highly sensitive people are all around us. They make up about 20 percent of the population, and likely include equal numbers of men and women. All the available evidence suggests they are born and not made.
You would likely spot them by their most visible feature, their overemotionality. Shari Lynn Rothstein-Kramer, who owns a marketing firm in Miami, Florida, cries almost daily. The sight of a beautiful outfit or exquisite handbag can choke her up. She recently found a note from a neighbor on her windshield that read, "Park in the middle of your space!!" and teared up on the spot. She had to persuade herself not to let it ruin her day.

The proverbial thin skin of HSPs covers a highly permeable nervous system. Gentle ribbing or an offhand jab can leave them brooding for days. But just as likely, an unexpected compliment or kind exchange can send their mood soaring, while the sight of a dad playing adoringly with his child can bring on tears fueled by a rush of warmth.

A news segment about a disturbing event—a death, a rape—can upset them deeply. Reading about a recent gang rape, New York actor and writer Jim Dailakis became "overwhelmingly emotional. I couldn't stop thinking about what that poor woman went through and how it affected her loved ones. I felt sadness mixed with unbelievable rage toward her attackers." Given their extreme ability to sense and internalize the moods of those around them, the presence of an agitated person, even a stranger with whom they never interact, can make them uneasy.

HSPs often have a heightened sense of smell or touch and, say, zero tolerance for itchy fabrics or sudden sounds—reflecting their low threshold for sensory input. They complain about things no one else notices; a colleague's deodorant or a scented candle gives them headaches. And there's that damn light buzzing in the otherwise quiet office. An hour or two into a party or other sensory-rich event and they've withdrawn to a corner, a prelude to announcing they need to go home.

Above all, HSPs are defined by their internal experience. "It's like feeling something with 50 fingers as opposed to 10," explains Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist and author of Emotional Freedom. "You have more receptors to perceive things."

Highly sensitive people are often taken for introverts, and, as with introverts, social interaction depletes them. But in fact they react strongly to everything in their environment. As a result, they need and typically seek extra processing time to sort out their experience. About one in five HSPs are actually extraverts, social sensation seekers who derive pleasure from chatty interactions. But they, too, draw unusually heavily on cognitive horsepower to digest their experiences.

Rothstein-Kramer considers herself a highly sensitive extravert. "I'd even go with 'gregarious,'" she says, chuckling. "When people are positive, it inspires me to be more outgoing and energized." But negative interactions send her spiraling south: "People give me the highest highs and lowest lows."

In general, the heavy cognitive demands on all HSPs predispose them to a more reactive than boldly active stance in life. All that sensory input consumes psychic resources for thinking before they take action. Any risks they face are carefully calculated.

Delicate Subjects

The notion that there is a whole category of people whose nervous systems overreact to ordinary stimuli grew out of the personal experience of psychologist Elaine Aron. In 1991, she began seeing a psychotherapist for help coping with her intense response to a medical issue. On Aron's second visit, the therapist nonchalantly suggested that Aron's outsize reaction to a minor physical problem was "just because you're highly sensitive."
"I had noticed I was different," she says, "but I didn't have a way to conceptualize it. The term stuck with me, and I set out to see what we really mean by 'sensitivity.'" The short answer: nothing like the acute emotional responsiveness she had in mind. An in-depth search of the literature turned up only an occasional reference to chemical or medication sensitivity and vague references to sensitivity as a key dimension of mothering.
Aron's search led her to the work of Ernest Hartmann, a psychiatrist at Tufts University best known for his dream research. Around the same time, he was solidifying the concept of boundaries as a dimension of personality and way of experiencing the world. Life, he observes, is made up of boundaries—between past and present, you and me, subject and object. And people differ in the way they embody and perceive boundaries.

In his schema, people with thin mental boundaries do not clearly separate the contents of consciousness, so that a fantasy life of daydreaming may bump right up against everyday reality. It's as if those with thin boundaries have porous shells that allow more of their environment to penetrate and "get" to them—and into their dreams. Hartmann's concept of the thin-boundaried seemed to suggest that there indeed exists a group of people who take in a whole lot more than others.

Too, Aron saw intimations of highly sensitive people in Jerome Kagan's now-classic research delineating infant temperament. A Harvard psychologist, Kagan had found that about 10 to 20 percent of infants begin life with a tightly tuned nervous system that makes them easily aroused, jumpy, and distressed in response to novel stimuli. Such highly reactive infants, as he termed them, run the risk of growing into "inhibited" children, who tend to withdraw from experience as a defense and are at high risk for anxiety.

Kagan says his "high reactives" have only one specific kind of sensitivity—"a sensitivity to events in the environment that imply a new challenge." And brain imaging studies show that their reactivity reflects a distinctive biological feature: a hyperresponsive amygdala, the brain center that assesses threats and governs the fear response. Unexpected events—from a blizzard to a pop quiz—set off the alarm system embedded in their naturally touchy amygdala, keeping them on the constant lookout for danger.

Relieved to find indications that there existed people governed by sensitivity, Aron was disappointed that the feature, however defined, was associated only with pathology. As a psychologist, she says, "I decided to start at the ground and see what people who identify with the word think of it." Thirty "grueling" three-hour interviews later, she was on her way to creating a 27-item questionnaire that is the benchmark for sensitivity. "I have a rich, complex inner life." Check. "I am made uncomfortable by loud noises." Check.

Born to Be Mild

Advancing neuroscience research suggests that the kind of emotional sensitivity Aron had in mind might be linked to specific variations in gene expression in the nervous system, notably genes related to production of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine.

One gene variation, the short-short allele of the serotonin transporter 5-HTT, has long been associated with a vulnerability to depression and anxiety. Recent data indicate that the very same gene variant brings an array of cognitive benefits—including better, and more profitable, decision-making in gambling situations. Aron suspects the allele may be present in HSPs and could account for their tendency to assess risks thoroughly.
"It's hard to imagine this trait enduring in the gene pool if it led only to negative emotions like depression," Aron says. "The problematic outcomes are just easier to observe than more positive interactions with the environment."

Brain imaging studies suggest real differences in the brains of HSPs versus everyone else. Cortical areas linked to attention and processing perceptual data show higher activation in response to all kinds of stimuli. Further, the possibility of reward sparks an outsize response in the reward circuit, and fear-related regions are particularly stirred by threats.

In his own research on thin-boundaried people, Tufts' Ernest Hartmann has found a strong link to creativity that Aron believes applies to HSPs as well. Of hundreds of student artists and musicians he has studied, nearly all test positive on his thin-boundaries questionnaire. Many fewer do among those who are able to make a profession of the arts—suggesting that it takes more than practice to make it to Carnegie Hall.
A 2003 study reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the brains of creative people appear to be far more open to incoming stimuli than those of the noncreative. During a simple task, they experience little latent inhibition—they do not screen out irrelevant data from consciousness and more of their brains are highly activated from moment to moment.

Their extreme responsiveness to all situations, Aron believes, makes HSPs prone to anxiety and depression in the face of a distressing situation. But it also makes life richer; sights, sounds, flavors, images of beauty are more vivid. It's as if HSPs alone see the world in high-def.

A Basis in Biology

Yet another facet of sensitivity is the focus of independent research by Michael Jawer. A decade ago, Jawer was an investigator for the Environmental Protection Agency looking into reports of sick building syndrome and preparing air-quality guidance for building owners. Why, he wanted to know, did only a handful of people complain about indoor environmental conditions?

"Some said that in everyday life they've been disabled by exposure to colognes, paints, pesticides, trace elements in the air," he says. "And some went on to tell me they'd been emotionally sensitive for many years. Perhaps the same factors that were disposing certain people to complain about their environment suggested a broader aspect of sensitivity than just the emotional kind."

When he surveyed people Aron had identified as HSPs, he found unusual susceptibility to an array of conditions long thought to have a psychosomatic component. Much more than others in the population, they suffered from migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, allergies, and fibromyalgia. Jawer felt the findings point to wide-scale biological differences in HSPs.

"Take migraines," he says. "We know they're triggered by a number of things in the environment—sights, smells, even changes in the weather." Moods, too, can act as a catalyst: "Strong feelings, even ones people don't realize they have, can bring migraines on," says Jawer. He believes HSPs are unusually touchy to both emotional and tangible irritants—to mean-spirited comments as well as pollen or dander in the air.

Behind it all, says Orloff, is likely a hair-trigger flight-or-fight response. A lower threshold of activation of stress hormones would leave the body flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. Chronically elevated stress hormones are linked with a host of health problems, from heart disease to decreased bone density to impaired memory.

To Aron, the evidence adds up to a distinctive personality type. The HSP's touchy nervous system leads to a touchy temperament. Like the princess sensing the pea below her tower of mattresses, HSPs perceive the slightest sensory or emotional provocation, then respond with a flurry of brain activity that begets an outsize reaction—rumination, tears, histrionics, on one hand, or unbridled enthusiasm on the other. Their personalities may run the gamut from moody to dramatic—all the product of their unique biology.

Missing Men?

In crafting her questionnaire, Aron was determined to include only those questions men and women answered in equal proportions and calibrated it so that 20 percent of males and females registered as highly sensitive. But once she started administering the test to the general population, far fewer than 20 percent of males came up HSP-positive. Where did the guys go—or were they never there to begin with?

Aron insists that males and females are born highly sensitive in equal numbers—but some men grow up actively hiding it. "They don't want to identify as sensitive."

Kagan's "reactives," too, were male and female in equal measure—at 4 months of age. But "the male peer group is very harsh with shy, timid boys," he explains, and by young adulthood, the highly reactive males were very difficult to pick out from the non-reactive population.

The neural basis of sensitivity appears no different in men and women. But the resulting behaviors—tearing up in joy, getting upset by a ribbing, feeling overwhelmed at a concert or sporting event—may violate even contemporary Western standards of masculinity.HSP males may look effeminate to potential mates. (No, there's no evidence that HSP males are disproportionately homosexual.)

"In North America, in particular, we expect boys to be tough and to be risk-takers," says Ted Zeff, a San Francisco psychologist whose in-depth interviews with more than 30 highly sensitive men in five countries resulted in a book, The Strong, Sensitive Boy. "Boys are told to hide all emotions other than anger. This is especially hard on sensitive boys, who have to repress their natural tendencies."

New York's Jim Dailakis admits "I definitely hide my sensitivity from certain people. Wearing your heart completely on your sleeve leaves you open to ridicule."

Double-Edged Effects

Internalized by a highly sensitive child, ridicule can snowball into depression. Likewise, a "Nice job!" atop a book report might not seem like a game-changer, but to a sensitive child a little encouragement can have outsize effects, motivating a child to reproduce that behavior—say, by studying well for the next test. School and parenting practices can dramatically shape the development of highly sensitive children, who can thrive spectacularly in a mildly encouraging classroom or struggle endlessly in a slightly discouraging one, while a non-sensitive child would wind up about the same regardless of slight variations in the environment.

The possibility of opposite outcomes—downward spiral or rocketing success—underscores the double-edged nature of sensitivity. Neither flaw nor gift, it is, rather, an amplifier of an environment's effects. Sensitive people who happened to have troubled childhoods may wind up with high rates of anxiety and depression, but HSPs who were loved and encouraged as children can grow into well-adjusted adults.

"You Won't Make Me Sound Crazy, Will You?"

Fedor and Rothstein-Kramer both ask the same question, out of the blue, mid-interview. Connoisseurs of small slights, study partners who cannot focus with that stupid jackhammer roaring outside, HSPs are subject to a constant influx of criticism exhorting them to toughen up or to grow cojones. That message—that they're somehow unacceptable as they are—resonates with intensity.

Aron would like to see HSPs focus more on what they have to offer. They make compassionate friends who truly care about others; they channel beauty from the world into art and music; they notice things others miss. Ensconced in safe environments and steeled against the negativity of others, they can flourish.

HSPs inhabit a teeming world of vibrant colors, sharp smells, striking sounds, and powerful tugs at their emotions. "I am, and I always will be, extremely aware of my environment and the people within it," Fedor says. As CEO of a successful beauty company, she surrounds herself with supportive people. "I tried toughening up, rooting myself in taxing situations," she says. "Then I realized I was spending my time coping instead of thriving. Now I know that I can choose to respond or to let something go." For her, it's a purer way of savoring this piquant world. —Andrea Bartz

Tips for the Touchy

Highly sensitive? "You've probably gone through life assuming you're like the other 80 percent of people," Aron says. "The truth is, you need a whole different instruction manual." Here are a few adjustments you can make to sync your life with your mode of sensory processing.

Designate downtime. Your brain works overtime processing input and soaking up others' moods, so it needs a chance to recover. "Limit stimulation when you can," Aron suggests. "Turn the radio off when you're driving. Use a sleep mask and earplugs at night." Meditation is also a powerful way to tamp down stress hormones. Orloff prescribes quick, three-minute meditations during the day: Sit quietly, put your hand over your heart, deepen your breathing, and focus on something beautiful—a picture of your child.

Talk yourself calm. Sensitive people aren't doomed to spend life reeling from rejection. It's possible to rein in a response before it spirals down to depression. Fedor carries a checklist in her wallet and runs through it when she feels under attack: "Is this about me? What is the intent of the other person? Am I reacting because this brings out fear in me?" Similarly, Rothstein-Kramer asks herself, "How can I interpret this situation in a different way?" "Practice controlling your reactions," she says; "eventually a little dig won't throw you."

Change your interactions. Kindly but firmly cut off energy drains. Say your friend is midway through her umpteenth rant about her job. "You have to lovingly but matter-of-factly say, 'I see you're going through something; when you want to get into solutions, I'm here for you, but right now this is hard for me to listen to,'" Orloff explains. "Tone of voice is everything."

Arm yourself. Sometimes, you'll be forced into a situation that sucks you dry—a conference you must endure for work, a business lunch with an insufferable kvetch. Protect yourself: "Visualize a shield around your body, keeping negative input out," Orloff says.

Rewrite history. Think back to the decisions you've regretted and the things you dislike about yourself: "Very often, they have to do with sensitivity," Aron points out. The surprise party where you wound up crying in your room and the promotion you turned down because it involved too much pressure make much more sense through the lens of your sensitivity. Acknowledge this.

Dealing with Delicate People

Since 20 percent of the population is highly sensitive, "you're probably working with or are even friends with one—you just didn't realize it," Aron says. Now that you know the hallmarks of this personality, adjust your behavior to make your interactions smoother.

Skip the tips. HSPs are mighty sick of hearing, "You really shouldn't let it get to you" from well-meaning friends. They experience it as a put-down, a suggestion that they've done something wrong. Say something more reassuring—such as, that whatever situation is causing them stress will improve shortly.

Modify your view. In a close relationship, you may discover you've been making wrong assumptions about your partner. You may hear things like "I never liked going to those sporting events or concerts," Aron warns. Forgo the temptation to respond with grief or anger. Just accept it.

Respect their space. A common mistake HSPs' loved ones make: hovering. "They promise their partner an hour of recharge time," Orloff says, "and then they hang around waiting for you to come out." Better to tell them, "Fine, go replenish, I'll be out mowing the lawn"—and do it.

Who Increased The Debt?

2012-01-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

If only..

2012-01-21T19:46:00.000-08:00

(source)

So Let's Get This Straight...

2012-01-21T19:43:00.000-08:00

Calling Bullshit on Religious Misogyny by Hugo Schwyzer

2012-01-21T19:35:00.000-08:00

While I have plenty of posts on this blog that I have written on my own, lately, I've been finding articles that are so great in their entirety that I have been wanting to post their opinions rather than mine. The article I am posting below is called, Calling Bullshit on Religious Misogyny by Hugo Schwyzer. I should mention that Schwyzer is a Liberal Christian as I am and a feminist as I am. Schwyzer is also gender studies and an activist whom I respect greatly. He and I don't always see eye to eye, but for the most part we do. Here, I am posting his Jezebel article in it's entirety.

Calling Bullshit on Religious Misogyny
By Hugo Schwyzer

As the clash between modernity and fundamentalism grows more intense worldwide, women's bodies are a key battleground. Last month, ultra-Orthodox Israelis spat on an 8-year-old girl as she walked to school, calling her a whore. In all three major Western religions, the voices demanding "modesty" and concealment for women are growing louder and more aggressive.

But to say that this is a straightforward struggle between religion and women's rights doesn't tell the whole story. Some religious leaders are pushing back against the ever more pugnacious modesty police. To that end, there's "sing it from the rooftops" piece in today's New York Times written by an Orthodox Rabbi and yeshiva dean Dov Linzer. The op-ed is a powerful denunciation of the myth of male weakness and the perversion of religious texts to support enforced modesty codes for women. Rabbi Linzer writes:

At heart, we are talking about a blame-the-victim mentality. It shifts the responsibility of managing a man's sexual urges from himself to every woman he may or may not encounter. It is a cousin to the mentality behind the claim, "She was asking for it."

So the responsibility is now on the women. To protect men from their sexual thoughts, women must remove their femininity from their public presence, ridding themselves of even the smallest evidence of their own sexuality.

All of this is done in the name of the Torah and Jewish law.
But it's actually a complete perversion. The Talmud, the foundation of Jewish law, acknowledges that men can be sexually aroused by women and is indeed concerned with sexual thoughts and activity outside of marriage. But it does not tell women that men's sexual urges are their responsibility. Rather, both the Talmud and the later codes of Jewish law make that demand of men.

The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze - the way men look at women - that needs to be desexualized, not women in public. The power to make sure men don't see women as objects of sexual gratification lies within men's — and only men's — control.

Rabbi Linzer's message is entirely congruent with that of the SlutWalk movement that spread around the globe last year. Created in response to Toronto police officer's suggestion that women could best prevent rape by wearing less revealing clothing, the SlutWalks spread the simple message that no matter what wears, no woman is "asking for it." Women are not the gatekeepers of civilized behavior. Men are not so weak that they can be tempted to rape or cheat merely by the sight of bare skin. It is a misunderstanding of both biology and psychology to suggest otherwise.

Rabbi Linzer rightly points out that the Talmud makes it clear that men — and men alone — are responsible for their lustful thoughts. It's worth adding in a Christian perspective as well. Though the New Testament does call for "modesty", that modesty (the koine Greek word is kosmios) refers only to avoiding flashy displays of wealth. The most explicit statement about women's dress in the Christian Scriptures comes in 1 Timothy:

I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

In a New Testament context, modesty is only about not arousing envy of your wealth. It has nothing to do with arousing sexual desire.

Rabbi Linzer reminds us of a simple truth: Pushing back against the most misogynistic impulses of religious fundamentalism doesn't require the rejection of faith. In many instances, particularly around issues of modesty, women's bodies, and the myth of male weakness, pushing back involves reminding the modern modesty peddlers that they have distorted the original meaning of the term. They have outsourced men's self-control and empathy to women, and in doing so have given wives, sisters, and daughters a burden that is not theirs to carry. Men are not as weak as we imagine, and perversions of the Talmud and misunderstandings of testosterone cannot be allowed to obscure that basic truth.

For more information about Hugo Schwyzer visit his official website/blog, here.

Briohny Kate-Smyth practicing Asana Yoga for Equinox

2012-01-21T19:05:00.000-08:00

Equinox posted a short video of the Briohny Kate-Smyth practicing asana yoga in her lingerie. The video went vial and the video was met with admiration as well as disappointment. As an anti-porn feminist I can tell you that I had no problem with this footage. Kate-Smyth offered her viewers an example of inspired yoga. What she was wearing allowed us to witness the lines and sculpt of Kate-Smyth's art.

Yoga by Equinox

Video by: Project Dstllry
Directed by Brody Baker
Scored by Sanford Livingston and Jamie Biden.

In a recent Huffington Post article, international yoga instructor Kathryn Budig, posted an interview between herself and Kate-Smyth. Within the article Kate-Smyth describes her struggles with an eating disorder and addiction which she has conquered partly due to yoga.

A Talk with Briohny Kate-Smyth
By Kathryn Budig

K: You were a child pop star in Asia with a platinum album by the age of 13. How did this experience affect your body image?

B: Because I was so young, I didn't have the tools to navigate the press and attention that came with this stardom. One thing that really stuck with me was how people made fun of my weight. You see, I'm 50 percent Thai, 50 percent Australian and apparently my Australian roots gave me "big bones." Now that I look back, I see how ridiculous this all was but at the time, it affected me tremendously. Thai women are very petite. From the age of 13, I had everyone from my record label to my make up artist suggesting various ways to lose weight which at the time was "baby fat." I did acupuncture on my thighs and cheeks because they were too chubby. I took diet pills that turned out to contain traces of speed, I even had people suggest that I go to China to get knee surgery that supposedly adds inches to your height! All before I turned 14. My spirit, heart, soul and mind were in such a bad place. No matter what anyone said, I always felt fat and inferior.

K: How did you escape this negative cycle with your body image? You mentioned yoga was a key tool to finding an outlet to this pain?

B: Despite my efforts to recover on my own, my eating disorder continued and I was hospitalized for an ulcer at 17 and put on bed rest. I started to treat the disorder as a way of life. I finally found help within 12-step programs and began to attend AA meetings along with practicing yoga. When I identified with the fact that I had a disease, my mindset started to change. I slowly began to build new values within my belief system. I surrounded myself with supportive people who shared similar experiences. Day by day, minute by minute, I fed my mind with affirmations and started to heal.

During my pregnancy in 2004, I cleansed my body of all of my old habits. It didn't feel right to treat my body badly when it would affect my daughter. I always tell students that my daughter changed my life but it feels more like she saved it. She is seven now and continues to teach me something new about myself every day. We practice yoga together almost every day. I thank all divine powers for such a wonderful gift.

K: What was your experience like shooting the Equinox video? What was your intention?

They gave me full artistic freedom and allowed me to express "My Yoga." We all agreed that minimal clothing was the best way to show the lines of the body. I felt very comfortable with that since most of my female teachers have been photographed in the nude by Jasper Johal. Equinox explained that the concept would showcase the home practice of Woman of our generation set inn NYC. I loved it!

Once on set, I put my outfit on and had a brief moment of panic... a relapse of old thinking. But when I revealed that to my fiancé he told me, "You look beautiful." And that stopped the chatter in my mind.

No one expected or hoped for controversy but I understand and respect all views.

This situation reminds me of an exercise my sponsor gave me during my recovery in OA. I made a list consisting of the names of those who I felt hurt me. I read the list to my sponsor, and to my surprise she tells me to think of ways to practice compassion for the people on this list. This exercise helped me learn that the way we react to something is a reflection of the way we feel inside. It helped me look within for the answers to my eating disorder issues rather than blame others for my pain.

It felt incredibly liberating to be confident in my own skin. So, thank you to Equinox, Q Blog, and to everyone who was inspired by the video.

For more information about Briohny Kate-Smyth, click here.
For more information about Equinox, click here.

Sex Educator Charlie Glickman Responds to Hugo Schwyzer's Interesting Piece, "He Wants to Jizz on Your Face, but Not Why You Think"

2012-01-21T18:34:00.000-08:00

On January 15th, I posted The Appeals of Facials. Hmm.. The post was a response to an intersting article put forth by Hugo Scwhyzer entitled, He Wants to Jizz on Your Face, but Not Why You Think. Within this article Schwyzer mentions an interview with sex educator Charlie Glickman.

Glickman wrote a follow up article entitled Where Does Validation Come From? I enjoyed it so much that I felt the need to post it in its entirety for you here. I should note that I do not agree with every statement made by Glickman but I will not point out what I disagree with here. I'll let you take away what you will from this article.

WHERE DOES THE VALIDATION COME FROM - by Charles Glickman
January 17th, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by Hugo Schwyzer for his article He Wants to Jizz on Your Face, but Not Why You Think. Without stepping into the latest internet uproar about Hugo and the various things people are saying about him online (feel free to google it, if you like), I think there’s actually more to be said about the topic of that post.

Hugo’s thesis was that, while facials can certainly be an act of degradation, they can also be interpreted as “men’s desire for that same experience of being validated as desirable, as good, as ‘not dirty.’” For some people, male sexual desire and male bodies are seen as dirty, disgusting, or unpleasant and men who have internalized these ideas might seek a variety of paths to redeem them. Those can take a variety of forms.

Some of the responses to that post have argued that US culture glorifies penises and denigrates vulvas and vaginas. They claim that the premise that some people feel disgust towards penises is a falsehood, at best. There are at least two problems with this argument, though.

First, there are many different subcultures within the larger US society and there’s a lot of variation in how they view male sexuality. As a sex educator, I can tell you from years of professional experience that there are plenty of people who see penises and male desire as shameful or gross. Whether that’s due to personal experiences, religious backgrounds, familial influence, or anything else is relevant to the individuals, but the important thing to remember is that these different beliefs exist.

Second, the construction of masculinity that is commonly presented is constantly reinforced precisely because it is so fragile. Without in any way excusing or mitigating the very real harm that this dynamic causes, the fact that it’s effectively omnipresent is a sign of its weakness, not its strength.

But even so, there’s a key point that I think is missing from Hugo’s analysis, though he’s touched on it in some of his other writing. He ends his post with this anecdote, taken from one of his classroom discussions:

A female student turned to the guy who’d brought up the topic of semen and validation and asked him, “So you’re saying that when a man comes on a woman’s face, it’s not about making her dirty — it’s about making him feel clean?” The young man blushed, the class tittered. “Yes,” he said, “that’s it. And that’s what makes it so hot.”

If I were talking with this man, I’d ask him what he’s doing to overcome or change his belief that there’s something wrong about his sexuality. I’d ask him what messages he’d been told that made him think that his semen or his penis or his body were dirty and that they needed redemption. I’d ask him what makes him think that the way to change that and to get the validation he seeks is to get it from his sex partner.

The notion that it’s women’s job to civilize or redeem men is nothing new. And ironically, there’s a parallel between the idea that women’s virtue is responsible for saving society and the belief that a sexual act between men and women can give men the validation they seek. Both of these are examples of coddling men and absolving them of any responsibility for their own self-determination and ethical conduct. So while I have sympathy for the guy who seeks cleanliness from his female partner, my sense of fierce compassion inspires me to call this out.

Getting validation from someone else makes you dependent on her. It means that you never have to learn the skills of emotional self-regulation and responsibility. It limits you and requires you to seek your value from outside, instead of building up a solid core of self-worth and self-respect. And ultimately, it’s doomed to fail because the only place that validation can truly come from is within.

That doesn’t mean we can’t get support from others. I’ve certainly had times when I was stuck in a shame spiral and needed some validation from a friend to help me out of it. But that process is only effective to the degree that we can explore the reasons we feel shame or self-disgust and process through them. We need to be able to lean into those painful edges and heal those wounds. Otherwise, we’re likely to create a situation that “almost works”. It feels like it should make us feel better and when it doesn’t, we try harder or we escalate. This is one way in which addictive or self-harming cycles form.

I still have no problem with two (or more) people doing facials if their consent, pleasure, and well-being are attended to. There are different reasons that people might enjoy it and I think it’s the height of arrogance to tell them that their desires are wrong. Some people have a kink for body fluids. Some people get a thrill from getting dirty or nasty, without demeaning their partners or disrespecting them either in or out of sexual contexts. Just as some people enjoy the sensation of vaginal fluids on their faces after cunnilingus, some people enjoy the sensation of semen on theirs. There’s never just one reason why people do anything sexually.

I also know that a lot of people do facials because they’re copying things they see in porn. That might be because they don’t realize that porn is terrible sex education. Or they actually do want to demean or degrade the other person. That’s why it’s useful to be able to talk about what our fantasies mean to us and decide if they’re compatible with our partner’s desires.

But in the end, if you’re trying to get validation or you want to overcome your feelings of shame, a sex act isn’t going to do it. Neither, for that matter, is your partner. If you really want to change how you feel, you need to stop dodging and do the work. And you need to stop laying responsibility for your validation on anyone else.

Jay-Z goes poetic. The rapper is a new father and therefore vows to drop the word "bitch" from his lyrics.

2012-01-21T18:07:00.000-08:00

(source)

Well, isn't this great. I feel better now. A bandaid to my boo-boo. Hopefully you're noting the sarcasm. Not all hip hop artists refer to women as "bitches"and "hos", but it's fair to say that a lot of mainstream artists do. Although, I'm more of a folk/punk/indie rock kind of gal, I enjoy a lot of underground hip hop.

I find it disappointing that Jay-Z has been a rapper who spews such hate filled lyrics. It's a shame because I believe that Mr. Z has flow. He often executes his lyrics with intelligence and swagger.Except of course, when he's rapping with rage towards women.

It's hard to know if Jay-Z truly believes that women are or can be bitches. Perhaps it's all for show. Either way, he embraces patriarchy. According to WENN, Jay-Z wrote a poem to express his recent thought change -- in light of the recent birth of his daughter Ivy Blue Carter. According to The Huffington Post the poem many not have been written by Jay-Z but his people have not confirmed or denied it. The HuffPo reports that Slate has pointed out that so many of Jay-Z's fans find it hard to believe that he would actually abandon the word, being that it so many of his "bitch" ridden songs have boosted his fame. Yes, patriarchy can actually boost one's career. Slate points out that songs like 99 Problems, and Bitches & Sisters
are classic examples of how he has utilized the word bitch.

Below is the poem that is zipping across the internets.

"Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/I didn’t think hard about using the word bitch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it"."No man will degrade her, or call her name. I'm so focused on your future, the degradation has passed. I wish you wealth, health and insight. Forever young you may pass. Blue Ivy Carter, my angel".

Better late than never doesn't quite fit. Jay-Z has embraced misogyny for many many years. Although, he has dropped the word "bitch", we do not know if he has truly reformed. We do not know if his mindset has changed or if he's simply eliminating the word "bitch." It strikes me as odd and unfortunate that he only decided to change once he had a daughter. What about when he entered a relationship with Beyonce Knowles? Why not stop then? Was there truly no motivation? Ultimately it is none of our business but I am speaking to the larger picture.

Change is possible. It is indeed possible for men to leave sexism behind. For those who decide to do so it is a work in progress. I am not unsympathetic to that. Each man embarks on his own journey. And often when a man decides to change the circumstances need to become personal in order for him to do so. The birth of Jay-Z's daughter is a perfect example.

I don't expect other rappers to follow suit. I'm confident that there are plenty of rappers that will glorify patriarchy, plaster it onto a CD and then charge you $18.99 for it.

Sing a lil' something for me Barack!

2012-01-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama singing a little Al Green at Harlem's Apollo Theater.

He did a great job. Maybe when he's out of office and looking for work I can get him to sing me lullabies at night.

Candy Button Chandelier

2012-01-21T15:52:00.000-08:00

(source)

Fancy.

I see a bird.

2012-01-20T22:29:00.000-08:00

Nomenclature by Andrew Bird - Performing for the Pitchfork Cemetery Gates series.

For more information about Andrew Bird visit the official website, here.