A simple declaration

that addresses sexism helps spread an alternative vision of the world, one where people are judged on character, not on gender. Sharing that vision is a gift to those around us—both those who know that equality is the better path, and those clinging to old ways of thinking.
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Sometimes I'm child enough to scream

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Discretion is the name of my cement feathered bird

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Go through life with egg on your face

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Antiseptic Fashion

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What a lovely

day.

first off, i made mushroom and ham quiche and drank a pile of coffee. and then spent the day walking on the beach, watching the shorebirds, enjoying the sunshine and the smell of the ocean. and then some reading on the beach and staring at the waves - spotted a sea otter! and dolphins! - until the sun went down in a glorious sunset.

a delicious dinner of shrimp and scallops and artichoke hearts and white wine sauce over noodles. and now i’m eating coffee ice cream while orson welles is being a nazi criminal of some sort who likes to fix clocks.

and the entire day i wore leggings and didn’t put on actual pants even once.

hope you all are merry and happy and bright.

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As your heart breaks in my car

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Get to know it in the dark

here and here

It's funny how

when someone says they love you, you can't really feel it but when they say they don't love you anymore, you can feel every ounce of what was drain out of your entire being.
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15 Things You

Should Never Apologize For:

Ordering a real dessert
Someone else’s bad day
Ditching a bad lover
Having a crazy family
Buying into your horoscope
Really wanting a boyfriend
Being a self-promoter
Investing in your looks
Having a high “number”
Changing your mind
Being inexperienced
Hoping your children will be cuter than your friends’
Sticking to a budget
Only doing things online that you’d do in real life
Being happy

THE ONLY time I apologize is when I hurt someone (physically or emotionally) and I am genuinely at fault. Women need to stop apologizing for every fucking thing, like for occupying space and for yielding to their desires, for example. FUCK IT. Eat that cake, kiss that boy/girl first, laugh REALLY loud, take up space and enjoy it. Oh, and don’t regret anything.
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Yasmine Hamdan

You come to me in the dark days

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So take me to outer space

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I should start to display my shoes upon stacks of magazines.

As far as

I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.

– patti smith
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We were sitting on my bed engaged in underwear removal

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Romance Is Boring

Doritos

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As long as we're me and you

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And I will always bring you lots of do-you-good soup

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If you could only see the beast you've made of me

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And I never wanted anything from you

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Lucy Lawless

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it wrote, "but

the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."
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Marlene Dietrich

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For men who,

perhaps like Sarah’s husband, who have not yet done the vital work of learning how to establish intimate relationships with other men which do not require the objectification of women as “bonding glue”, the homosocial appeal of the strip club experience is tremendous. But women aren’t cement to hold together that which can’t otherwise be joined. Emotionally competent adult males don’t use either women’s revulsion or women’s bodies in order to establish closeness and cameraderie with each other. And men’s universal capacity to become emotionally competent — at a relatively young age — is very real. The fact that so many choose not to exercise that capacity is not evidence that they lack it.
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Am I the only one who felt an emphasis on "American men"?

Who knows what

role sex played to our early ancestors? Maybe it was something they did in groups, to pass the time, to solve problems, to play, to promote societal cohesion. Maybe one’s “fitness” in society at large was determined by the number of orgasms one could have. Maybe treaties were signed with mutual BJs!
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But you're gonna need some help out of those

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Every so often,

when I become immersed in schoolwork or a low-wage job and I’ve begun to adjust to that monotonous hum, I hear this thought that says “this is not what your life’s supposed to be.” And then: “every minute of time you waste is a minute you could spend making your whole life better.” I think of the childhood dreams I had of publishing my writing, and the voice says “maybe it will never happen.” I feel this jolt through my whole body when I realize that everything has to change, and then I work for weeks until I can’t see through my haircut anymore and my dirty clothes are lying all across the floor.
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A scrupulous writer,

in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

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She is a

fucking symphony in a droning one note town
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I pray that the water will drown out the din

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Tee

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Building on the

work of Beauvoir and Guillamin, among others, Monique Wittig has argued that the feminist goal is to eliminate sex and/or gender as a category entirely. Like the proletariat in Marx's philosophy, women are to constitute themselves as a class for the sake of overthrowing the system that allows classes to exist. One is not born a woman, except in the same sense that one is born a proletarian: being a woman denotes a social position, and certain social practices, rather than an essence or true identity.
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Gareth Pugh

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G-Star

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Being considered “beautiful”

is neither the privilege of a special few, nor a curse they can’t shake off. As one friend once told Elizabeth, “It’s funny, a lot of people become more beautiful as you get to know them. With you, you seem really attractive at first, and then when you get to know you, you become just like everyone else.”
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And even dominant

women who are out tend to observe/succumb to the same cultural norms/practices that you find frustrating, i.e., they expect the male to make the first move, even in kinky environments.
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Sexuality is another

one. Socially speaking, boys should like girls and girls should like boys, and if the playground dynamics of some of the toddler mommy groups I see some days are any indication you can’t start that one soon enough. The church nursery is a great place to pick up a date, and it had best be of the opposite flavor. Although, come to think of it, that trust that society put in closed doors as long as I only had girls in my room left so many opportunities open… Maybe some social constructs have their upsides.
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I would argue

that what Cord discovered is not that women need to be popped in the face on occasion so that everything is equal between men and women. What he learned was that when it comes to the patriarchy, sexist men will enforce the rules not just on women, but on other men who seem insufficiently committed to the art of oppressing women. There are a number of ways men keep each other in line. They call each other “pussy” and question each other’s manhood if someone objects to the sexist milieu in any way. They demand showy displays of masculine callousness to get into the club. And sometimes if a man pushes back against sexism---or even seems to---they whip out violence. Cord wants to blame women for thinking they’re “precious” for getting hit. But he and everyone else knows that it’s sexism that’s to blame. He knew it going in, because he tried to escape the violence by agreeing that women should be sexually harassed by strangers to these guys. But the mere fact that he was willing to get involved apparently dissuaded them from believing in his commitment to maintaining high levels of sexual harassment, so they popped him. The lesson here is not that women should be more eager to be treated like subhumans. The lesson is that sexual harassment is a dominance display, and the harassers will often resort to violence to maintain the dominance they desire.
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EVA Airways

She also introduced

Lindstrom to the blog as “perky,” “adorable,” and capable of cooking and cleaning. (In introducing a male employee to the blog, Chartrand described their relationship as one in which the Men With Pens “could be laid back together, chink beers and not argue over the remote control”).
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Alle Menschen werden Brüder

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I tried to give you up

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Since then, we’ve

had feminism. We have the right to vote, to own property, to be members of Parliament and Congress, to get a job, and to be the main breadwinner of the family. And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas.
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I believe it’s better to inflict than to attempt relief

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After he came

again, I went back into the bathroom and shut the door. My mind was wild, running through possibilities of who I could call before my late night date, if there were any chance of picking up some stranger. All potential consequences were obliterated in the face of such wetness. A friend once described her insatiable appetite for sex as not being sated by her appointments, as some of her peers found, but only inflamed by it. The sex she had with clients wasn’t her sex, it wasn’t what she wanted, and it highlighted the lack of what she wants. “It’s like having my face rubbed in it,” she said.
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Yes, I was

infatuated with you; I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn’t stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren’t having any of those.
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The costumes I

remember most fondly, however, were the Original Pirate Materials. Guy in a t-shirt covered with yellow neon stickers – a lit-up block of flats disguised as a real human boy – and Lucy walking around in a big cardboard box, windows drawn on her sides, a pirate hat on her head, a peacock on her shoulder. I remember Guy drawing a scary rabbit in one window, and Lucy tapping her fag on him, before everything got a little hazy. Apart from us all flailing around to Let's Push Things Forward, half-drunk, half-asleep, without a care in the world.
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My second idol

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Best of 2009: Long List

Adiam Dymott - S/T
Agnes Kain - Across the Ocean Grey
Amanda Blank - I Love You
Asobi Seksu - Rewolf
Atoi - Youthful Machine
Au Revoir Simone - Still Night, Still Light
Ayumi Hamasaki - Next Level
Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
Besties - Home Free
Bird and the Bee - Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Cinematics - Love and Terror
Client - Command
Codeine Velvet Club - S/T
Cyminology - As Ney
Dogs Die In Hot Cars - Pop Nonsense
Dragonette - Fixin To Thrill
Elizabeth and the Catapult - Taller Children
Emmy the Great - First Love
Eva and the Heartmaker - Let's Keep This Up Forever
Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Florence and the Machine - Lungs
George Pringle - Salon de Refuses
Guitar - Friends
Hirano Aya - Speed Star
Imogen Heap - Ellipse
Jemina Pearl - Break It Up
Just Jack - All Night Cinema
Kate Earl - S/T
Lady Sovereign - Jigsaw
Laleh - Me and Simon
La Patere Rose - S/T
La Roux - S/T
Lhasa - S/T
Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You
Little Boots - Hands
Lola Maxwell - Check the Rhyme
Mars Volta - Octahedron
Metric - Fantasies
Mew - No More Stories Are Told Today, I Am Sorry, They Washed Away
Micachu - Jewellery
mum - Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know
Muse - The Resistance
N.A.S.A. - The Spirit of Apollo
Nana Kitade - Bondage
Natalie Imbruglia - Come To Life
Piano Magic - Ovations
Polly Scattergood - S/T
Prince - LOtUSFLOW3R
Rupa and the April Fishes - Este Mundo
Shrag - S/T
Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul
Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
St. Vincent - Actor
Tegan and Sara - Sainthood
There Will Be Fireworks - S/T
Vive La Fete - Disque d'Or
VV Brown - Traveling Like the Light
Winnie - Headquarter
Y.A.S. - Arabology
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
You Say Party, We Say Die - XXXX
Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

You see — and

I know this will sound crazy — my libido seems to be connected to the behavior of my partner. If he respects my humanity, if he allows me to make decisions regarding sex freely and without passive-aggressive bullshit, if I feel like sex is a means to express affection rather than a bargaining chip, if I feel an intellectual and emotional connection with him, my libido miraculously increases. If he were to act like an entitled asshole and pressure me for sex, if he were to display piggish attitudes about women’s sexuality, if he were treat my sexual needs or desires as if they were of secondary concern, or if I just were to happen to not be that into him (not that I’d hang out with anyone these hypotheticals apply to), I imagine that I’d suddenly transform into Morrissey. Bizarre, I know. Should I be taking a pill?
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Andreia Chaves

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It’s amazing to

me how many men feel that women, just by contradicting them, or by not focusing all their attention and energy on them, are being actively assaulting, hostile, and conceited. Women for a lot of guys are by definition the one group of people you’re always better than, and so they live their days feeling provoked and frustrated and insulted, even thought they might not be able to articulate it. If a woman disrespects you in public, she’s emasculated you. She doesn’t even have to raise a voice or a hand. She just has to turn her back on you or refuse to tolerate being treated like shit. And then some guys go, “Oh, I WOULD HAVE treated you fine, but you objected to me treating you like shit, so now I’m going to treat you like shit.” And then I bet they say that if those stupid women would just take common precautions, they wouldn’t get raped.
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Carey Haider

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The Bathers

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Dior phone

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I am surprised it does not include color cases to match one's outfit.

Teehee

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Cosmo

here and here

Don't touch her there. She's blindfolded.

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How do so

few people realize the ridiculousness of the fact that the absolute worst insult you can throw at a woman means "YOU LIKE SEX!"

I know, indoctrination. I used to think that there was nothing in the world worse than being a “slut” or “whore,” too. Granted I was like 16, and it does kind of amaze me that more people don’t grow out of this, but I get it. When you’re told your entire life that a woman’s entire worth rests on not being a “slut” or a “whore,” it can be hard to think otherwise. But when you spell it out for what it is — that accusing someone of liking sex and (omg!) having sex acts as the ultimate insult — it just starts to look well and truly bizarre.

How I’d love to live in a world where sex was not seen as such a disgusting and degrading thing. A world in which such an insult doesn’t even begin to make sense. Because it sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me.

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The way men

and women interact on a daily basis is the way they interact when rape occurs. The social dynamics we see at play between men and women are the same social dynamics that cause men to feel rape is okay, and women to feel they have no right to object. And if you accept those social interactions as normal and appropriate in your day to day life, there is absolutely no reason you should be shocked that rape occurs without screaming, without fighting, without bruising, without provocation, and without prosecution. Behavior exists on a continuum. Rape doesn’t inhabit its own little corner of the world, where everything is suddenly all different now. The behavior you accept today is the behavior that becomes rape tomorrow. And you very well might accept it then, too.
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How do I

relax? Running. Sex. (But I hate sex on the run)
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Talking To You, Talking To Me

My bed is made for two and there's nothing I can do

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Patriarchy, as any

feminist will tell you, has historically victimized women - but what they won't tell you (or at least most of them won't) is that patriarchy has victimized men as well. Patriarchal masculinity has limited men and our development as human beings, leaving us likely to suffer crippling depression in silence, to fail at relationships because we fear intimacy or vulnerability, and so on.
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All this from

a 58 year old man whose dismembered ‘day world’, rule-book-following facade was lying eviscerated in a heap on the floor as he ranted himself raw. During his truth-telling I had to consciously remember to breathe for the beauty and rage he allowed into the room. His body heaved with such force I thought he might physically turn himself inside out in front of me, perhaps as part of the desire to be seen—‘look at my raw guts! Now there’s nothing to hide. Now you can see the carnage that lives in me’. When he had exhausted the words but clearly wasn’t finished he simply sobbed and raged with his clenched fists. For the first time in five decades, he found himself standing in front of a mirror and talking to the five year old boy alive and well inside him, who still believes in magic, in things beyond rationality or empiricism, who deeply values things only the human psyche and heart can decipher.
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It's six in the morning baby

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I want to feel you rising inside me

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And while everyone

sure as hell seems to be worried about What! We’re! Teaching! Our! Girls! that they send the photographs, no one seems to be saying a goddamn peep about what we’re teaching our boys when they think that non-consensual sexual conduct is okay. Yet again, apparently consensual female sexuality is seen as a bigger threat to society — and to girls themselves — than non-consensual male sexual behavior perpetrated against them.
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I'm down on my knees

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No one is

afraid of heights, they are afraid of the fall, No one is afraid to play, they are afraid to lose, no one is afraid of the dark, they are afraid of what's in it, no one is afraid to say "I love you", they are afraid of the response.
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And the perils of being in 3D

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I hate the way I cry when you say you miss me

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Blakroc