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Transgender activist Agnes Torres found dead in Puebla, Mexico.
this is the sixth unsolved homicide of an LGBTQ individual in puebla this year. please sign this petition to demand the government there take hate crimes more seriously. click on agnes’ picture to read more about her story.
also, please reblog/repost to spread the word.
(Source: heidicomestolife)
“Women, like everyone else, have been duped. We have been persuaded over the past 50 years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean. Life may have become a little easier in that time for white women who can afford to hire a nanny, but the rest of us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution. Instead of equality at work and in the home, we settled for “choice”, “flexibility” and an exciting array of badly paid part-time work to fit around childcare and chores. Instead of sexual liberation and reproductive freedom, we settled for mitigated rights to abortion and contraception that are constantly under attack, and a deeply misogynist culture that shames us if we’re not sexually attractive, dismisses us if we are, and blames us if we are raped or assaulted, as one in five of us will be in our lifetime.” —
-Laurie Penny in The Independent.
(Thanks to Amy Klein for sending this to Permanent Wave listserve)
[video]
from NYULocal’s showlistings:
Amy Klein and the Blue Star Band at the Hive
8:30 p.m., Free All Ages
Amy Klein, former member of the intense and beloved Titus Andronicus, will be playing some feminist benefit. Amy Klein is one of those people who can be all bra-burning and feminist, but not annoying about it. The show is technically free ($5-10 suggested donation) so there’s really no reason not go.
First of all, the show is not a benefit concert, but if it was (the band plays many), I’m glad you trivialize the idea of people giving back to their community by donating their time and art. Secondly, sliding scale is not free, so you are wrong again.
But most of all, that is an incredibly sexist description of an incredibly talented all female rock group. What exactly is being all bra burning and feminist mean to you? Are you referring to the time Amy organized a rally to protest the acquittal of Officers Franklin Mata and Kenneth Moreno? Or maybe last week when the band’s cello player Heidi organized a benefit concert for Sister Somalia, the only organization in that country helping survivors of sexual violence. Or is it that keyboard player Kiri tirelessly works to book shows showcasing female musicians in an effort to create a space for woman that is supportive and not sexist, a space, unlike your column, where they be will taken seriously for their craft. You are right. These things are feminist, and they are important and necessary.
Does my standing up against your sexist, trite cliches annoy you? If so, I’m not sorry.
PS. I’m not even wearing a bra today, so bwahahahahaha. (But if I was, I wouldn’t burn it. That shits expensive!)
PPS. tweet @NYULocal if you don’t think sexist show listings are okay either.
“
Recognize that you are not the center of the universe.
Figure out how the idea of winning and losing fits into your relationships.
Recognize vulnerability and empathy as strengths.
Don’t allow the fact that other people have been assholes to you make you into a bitter and abusive person.
Commit to the revolution as a method of psychological and physical survival.
” —riot grrrl zine #2, 1991
(reprinted in Girls To the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus)
Via Nancy Pelosi’s Facebook:
“Right now at a House Oversight Committee hearing, House Republicans have called five men to testify on women’s health. My colleague Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) who is on the committee, looked at this panel (from which a woman who was the Democratic witness was excluded by the GOP) and asked: where are the women? That’s a good question.”
And I would like to add, GET YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY!
[video]
Oh, my. Michelle Williams at the BAFTAs.
(source)
[video]
When I was younger, I thought I was related to Sigmund Freud. A black and white picture of the father of psychoanalysis sat perched in our living room for as long as I can remember, so I always assumed he was some relative. I am not sure at what age I realized this was not the case, but I’m sure the confusion would be a nice anecdote in my unwritten memoirs. As the granddaughter of the psychiatrist, Dr. Brandt Steele, and the daughter of a psychiatrist and a clinical social worker, much of my formative years and opinions were shaped by the psychiatric discussions and thought that surrounded me; I could point out a typical anxiety dream from a very young age.
In turn, A Dangerous Method traces the formative years of psychiatry and is filled with philosophical discussions that would long shape the field, but the film is made poignant by the confusions and missteps the main characters bring to life. What struck me most about David Cronenberg’s new film was how it seemed like a Wild West of Psychiatry, and I believe it seemed that way because it was. The field was new, as were the methods, and especially in the depiction of Jung, the doctors seemed to be struggling to treat themselves as much as their patients. The film centers on the mentor relationship between Freud, played by Viggo Mortensen, and the younger heir apparent, Carl Jung, played by the currently ever-present Michael Fassbender, and Jung’s relationship with his patient, then lover, then colleague, Sabina Spielrein, played by Keira Knightley. If you’ve not taken Ms. Knightley seriously as actress based on her roles in The Pirates of The Caribbean franchise, you are sorely missing out. For me, Ms. Knightley’s turn in The Duchess and now A Dangerous Method prove that she does not merely look good in period costume, but that she has the capabilities to portray the women of the time, who look proper and were often limited in their choices, but who have much deeper desires and limitless nuances burning below the surface. Isn’t that the human condition as a whole, the film asks? What do we repress in order to live in an ordered society, and how does the resulting repression play havoc on our psyches?
In A Dangerous Method, we first find Spielrein in a bout of hysteria, resembling more wild animal than well-bred Russian daughter, and Ms. Knightly is in full possession of her character much as her character is possessed with anxiety, inner demons, and confusion. While she recovers from her hysteria, she manages to be at once both composed and prone to do or say anything at any time. One could argue that her character is the most emotionally and intellectually free of all the three main characters, and Ms. Knightely captures this essence. I think it has been pointed out that she might be overplaying at the beginning of the film, but that misses the point; we are animals, which we in many ways have to repress in favor of a functioning, ordered society.
As Freud, one of the first minds to try to understand our natures from a psychoanalytical perspective, reduces everything to sexuality, the film goes on to explore the increasingly sexual relationship between Spielrein and Jung. While it is absolutely unforgivable in this day and age for a doctor to sleep with a patient, and for good reason, it is so incredibly forgivable in the film, for Spielrein not only allows Jung to find a freedom in himself, she turns out to be a great psychiatric mind herself. As Spielrein and Jung go on to to have increasingly masochistic sex, you almost feel as if they are discovering masochistic sex for the first time in human history.
While Freud and Jung fall out by the film’s end based on Jung’s desires to explore more non-conventional scientific thought, which Freud fears will jeopardize the nascent field, the viewer is first treated to Jung’s descriptions of his dreams for Freud – and it’s fascinating to be in the inner sanctum of these great minds, to see their vulnerabilities, through their inner thoughts and personal relationship, as they continuously strive to understand the vulnerabilities in others.
The film is beautifully shot in Zurich and Austria, and Croenberg masterfully sets up shots that mirror the inner state of the character’s minds. I can’t get this shot of Jung and Spielrein in Jung’s sailboat out of my mind. Vincent Cassel also does a great turn as the psychiatrist, Otto Gross, who actually recommends sleeping with his patients and comes to be treated by Jung, only to end up having more of an effect on Jung. All the actors deserved nods for their portrayals, and it increasingly speaks ill of the Academy for failing to recognize truly great performances each year.
It’s a remarkable film that I highly recommend because it really makes one think, as the best art should. That it is a film about some of the great thinkers is such an added bonus. While the field of psychiatry has come a long way since The Talking Cure – the first name for psychotherapy and the name of the book upon which the film is based – was first proposed, psychiatry is still looked at rather dubiously by some who don’t trust it and also by a society that vilifies mental illness by refusing to understand it. The field may not be in its Wild West stages anymore, but each of our minds is our own personal Wild West, and A Dangerous Method will leave its viewers with much to explore about themselves and the human condition.