We Celebrate David Bowie, Freddie Mercury And Prince For Their Gender-nonconforming Amazingness As We

Claudia Bueno is an artist born in Venezuela, now based in the USA, whose light art installations will tease and tantalise all your senses. Bueno works with circuits and motors to create ethereal installations which play with light, sound and touch, creating immersive art which is psychedelic and magical in nature.

Kept reading stuff about blood types and stumbled upon this from the Ascension Glossary. It's complex, but its pretty interesting

"The computer's processes have unwittingly advanced the cause of women and images, even though these aspects of computer operation have nothing to do with the computer's content, which is the manipulation of information. The world of cyberspace is a computer-generated extension of the human mind into another dimension. The computer has carried human communication across a threshold as significant as writing, and cyberspaces's reliance on electromagnetism and photographic reproduction will only lead to further adjustments in consciousness that favor a feminine worldview. Irrespective of content, the processes used to maneuver in cyberspace are essentially right hemispheric. The World Wide Web and the Internet are both metaphors redolent of feminine connotations."

-The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain

A pretty interesting read. It analyzes the advancement in literacy throughout time and some of its pros and cons. It also brings up how we have become predominantly left brained due to the (often forced) use of our right hands, and how this has promoted linear thinking. It may not be a common practice anymore, but I've heard stories of educators hitting left-handed kids with rulers until they learned to write with their right hand. It's a strange thing to enforce, and it really makes one think...

The advancement in technology has a dark side, but the author suggests that some good will emerge in a new "Golden Age" where both right and left brain thinking reach some sort of equilibrium with the use of the internet. This is also interesting since I've been seeing parents, educators, and whoever else talking about the decline in reading amongst children. I'm starting to wonder if there will be a larger shift from text and back to image. Picture books/graphic novels seem to be grasping the attention of adults and children alike more and more throughout the years (if they weren't already). This is an observation of the English language, of course, since there are places that utilize symbols and characters in their writing.

Virgins and heroes: The socialization of women thru literature.

In early 1970s romance novels, no sometimes meant yes and a rapist could figure as a hero. And if you are in your middle ages, this is what planted in your mind those sexual scripts of "rape fantasy'. The Hallmark Channel only makes it softer.

Forty years ago public discussion was just beginning about equality in the workplace, domestic violence, sexual harassment, reproductive rights and other issues affecting women. Romance novelists quickly joined the discussion, grappling with these same issues through the lens of love.

Heather has no understanding of her sexuality and no power of consent. She has two bad choices: First, she can either be raped or kill her sexual aggressor; later, when Brandon rapes her, she can resist or learn to love her rapist. From this unpromising beginning, romance narratives quickly shifted in their exploration of women’s sexuality and the nature of consent.

In early 1970s romance novels “no” sometimes meant “yes” and a rapist could figure as a hero. By the end of the 1970s “no” meant “no” and a rapist could no longer fill the hero slot.

Keep reading

A compilation of some useful graphics and illustrations that show some of the theoretical basis of Radical Feminism, in comparison to Liberal Feminism and Conservative ideologies.

I’ve been seeing my mutuals (on my main) reblogging that “transwoman transition masterpost” over and over and it finally hit me what was bothering me about it, especially the passing socially tips section that summarized went somewhat like;

“Emulate your ciswomen friends, choose a friend you like the most, how they talk, act, walk, stand, how women they act in movies, choose what woman you want to be, elegant, sexy? Makeup is a must, shaving is a must, women talk with emotion, Look at how women act in their idle time etc”

It consisted of all of the stereotypes in the book, all of the concepts we as feminists have been fighting for years to stop associating with womanhood being once again being romanticized and normalized and promoted under feminism

And it just reeks of male gaze male gaze male gaze, it profits off it, validates it’s enforcement on us, tells males how to mimick us and continue to perpetuate so many actions we do subconsciously and compulsory because of our own female socialization and gender roles, our “mannerisms” and “habits” etc i get flashbacks from reading the Reddit tips on “how to pee like a woman where it’s advice was to listen in on ciswomen urinating in public bathrooms, and how it echoes the way some men fetishize women peeing.

Then they have the audacity to tell us it’s us that are demeaning ourselves by knowing it’s our body that makes us women and not these compulsions? It’s misogyny and sexism plain and simple, And it just makes me so much more hyper aware now that not only do we have the sexual male gaze from straight non dysphoric men to deal with but now the transwoman male gaze, looking for the best way to mimick our behaviors and enforce gender stereotypes in a way we are not allowed to question or be bothered by

“The more we blame speech for violence, the more likely we are to use violence to stop speech.”

— Dan McLaughlin (via beyondthesleep)

hideji oda’s miyori’s forrest || 小田ひで次の『ミヨリの森』

On femininity

I believe in spirituality and feminine religion. I'm a female separatist to the best of my abilities. I believe femininity is essential but I approach this topic very differently from the majority.

Femininity is love and care, that's it. There are many ways to be loving and caring so there are many ways to be feminine. I do not believe that femininity is what the patriarchy says it is and I see a lot of women of faith who rightly worship the feminine but mistakenly confuse it with something that it is not.

Man comes from woman, masculine comes from the feminine. They are not opposites, they're not complementary, what people often consider masculinity is actually a brand of femininity and the ones who understand this will get what I'm trying to say.

When people talk about the Divine Feminine I am very often put off because we have such a different approach to this. If they saw me, they'd think I'm the farthest thing from feminine and this is where all their mistakes start.

As I said, femininity at its core, is loving and caring. The destructiveness of certain masculine behaviours is simply a twisted and egoic form of femininity, a degraded form of femininity. Traits like assertiveness, confidence, action, willpower are not inherently MALE traits and yes in fact, they are one of the many ways of being feminine.

Being a fighter and protector because you care, being confident because you love yourself, having willpower because you want to see a change in this world are all feminine; the traits I listed are fueled by love and care. Fighting because you want to kill, being confident because you feel superior, having willpower to fulfill selfish desires are the same traits but masculine.

Is beauty feminine? Yes, it is. Beauty is viewing something from the eyes of love. But, a frilly dress is not inherently feminine, or makeup, or painted nails, or long hair; these are social constructs attached to the name of femininity. What I find beautiful is a woman who exists in her natural state so how are you going to tell me that the way I present myself is inherently masculine?

I wear clothes I like, I express myself the way I desire, I do not wear uncomfortable clothes because I believe that I deserve to be comfortable, and the common sentiment of beauty=pain is the farthest you can go from femininity. People conflate the feminine with so many things that it is not.

Obsession about looking good, hurting yourself to look good, trying to change your nature to fit a standard of beauty are not behaviours fueled by true love. Beauty is natural; a flower does not have to try to be beautiful. Beauty is not only external but internal too.

What a lot of people consider feminine is actually the degraded feminine, it's not the true essence; it's a twisted version of it. I am not masculine and I will never call myself that because I know what femininity actually is and I see past my conditioning.

Femininity and masculinity are both separate and non-separate. This is because of the illusion of separateness that exists in our universe, a knowledgeable individual understands that ultimately everything is one even though we don't perceive it so.

A man is actually a brand of woman (there's scientific research of this) and masculinity is a brand of femininity. Ultimately, the feminine is the original true essence but it is also true that most people today aren't aware of what femininity actually is. What we call the Divine Feminine is simply "The Divine" because femininity is love and care, God is Love and care.

Although misogyny necessarily plays its part into the whole JKR debacle, I think the 'vitriol' as you said is mostly caused by the fact that a large portion of the haters grew up with the Harry Potter books whilst they haven't, for example, ever seen a Polanski film in their life. And JKR in a way could be a sort of parental figure to them. You know, as ~problematic~ as Freud may be, he was onto something when he spoke of one's need to symbolically kill the father; and the same people who practically worshipped the HP novels growing up had already begun dismissing them as child's play when the Rowling vs. Transactivists affair started. To quote another writer here, the issue crystallised at that point.

@helshades

It's so funny that you're bringing that up because I had this exact conversation with my man around a week ago. As I said in the tags of the post that prompted those couple of rants of mine, he's currently reading them for the first time at the rip old age of 35. A result of him giving Philosopher Stone to his pupils this year (HP so bad, primary schools use them to get kids to read, apparently) and making a point of doing everything he asks of them and that include learning all the poetry by heart, and therefore reading all the books as well. After finishing PS, he asked for the rest since he was surprised at how much funnier it was than the movie.

Anyway, I don't exactly remember how we ended up talking about JKR and the discourse currently surrounding her, but he made the exact same point as you, he mentioned how interesting it was that Freud might actually have had some interesting ideas hidden in his work somewhere in there, and that some people do need to "kill the mother / father" in order to grow up and leave childhood behind. I pointed out to him that it was rather obvious and blatantly observable all around us, but that, as per usual, people took that point way too literally, imagining that it meant killing your actual mother/father and marrying the other one so to speak; when a father or mother figure doesnt even have to be someone close to you nor someone you know at all - just a person or even a concept that shaped you enough when you were younger, that you are now feeling the need to "rebel" against in order to mature.

Which really goes back full circle to the point I constantly make when it comes to HP and how people are unable to read (just because you can decipher doesn't mean you can read, I will stand by that, always), and how really, most discourses and analysis surrounding it are people fancying themselves smart by what they believe is "deconstructing" something they loved in childhood, when in reality it's 8 grade level analysis (if I'm generous) and honestly just look like they're going through their teenage phase of explaining to mum why she actually sucks.

Still though, I'll keep believing that if Joanne Rowling had been Jonathan Rowling, there wouldn't be quite the same level of vitriol directed at her and that her being a woman plays a role in how confortable and justified people feel in robbing her of her achievement and devaluing her work.