I might drown in it

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Future Breeds

Noc poza domem/error

Earth vs The Pipettes

This Isn’t Over Yet

A partner can

help to create a supportive and healthy environment for that to happen in, but people have to do their own healing. And laughter, joy, happiness is both tonic and bypproduct. Laughter is what happens when you find your emotional center of gravity and can experience the tidal pulls of life and people without having to FIGHT not to be tossed about or swept away.
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Vintroville

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Why don't I have shrift stores around here like this :/

Let's be clear

here - men can love, honor, and respect women, treat them as equals in every way, be open and vulnerable with them, and fuck them lovingly and passionately. In fact, if we want to have the most passionate, wild, raw sex with the women we love - and the intimacy of love is crucial to doing that - we HAVE to be open and vulnerable, we HAVE to feel the passion, we HAVE to be present in ways we seldom are in our daily lives.
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Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans

FINALLY!!!

It is NOT

because something is missing; it is because there is something (anything!) appetitive in the world and your body is attracted to appetitive things. Given adequate incentive, it will do nigh on anything to get to an appetitive stimulus. You are not PUSHED by an internal problem, you’re PULLED by an external treat.
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Maybe the real

scandal is the belief is that women’s perceptions of their bodies are indelibly linked to their perceptions of their worthiness as human beings. Contrary to common belief, self-esteem isn’t about believing that you are perfect just the way you are. It’s about believing that you are a worthwhile human being with flaws and talents, who has the ability to overcome the first and nurture the second.
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The concept of

peak oil, where the inaccessibility of remaining deposits ensures that extraction rates start an irreversible decline, has been the subject of regular debate for decades. Although that argument still hasn't been settled—estimates range from the peak already having passed us to its arrival being 30 years in the future—having a better sense of when we're likely to hit it could prove invaluable when it comes to planning our energy economy. The general concept of peaking has also been valuable, as it applies to just about any finite resource. A new analysis suggests that it may be valuable to consider applying it to a renewable resource as well: the planet's water supply.
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This image of

the “wild, impulsive, risk-taking woman” who Levitt’s apparently outgrown (for his modest and methodical wife?) associates tattoos with a young, unrefined, and attention-needy female sexuality. Katy argues, understandably, that “Not every tattoo is about sex.” I couldn’t agree more and yet I would qualify her point. Tattoos in the history of U.S. racial imperialism especially in relation to non-white women have always been about sex.
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Is capitalist consumption

integral to creative production? Is the creative process inextricably bound up in capitalism? Is this new media only a technology for enlisting gender normative capitalist conduct from women bloggers, naturalizing further the myth that “women are born to shop”? I’m not so sure which is why I’ve been pushing myself (as well as asking readers) to imagine the value of digital content and digital labor outside of capitalism.
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Imagine men on page three posing nude in the sun

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The Ghost Who Walks

Being penetrated doesn't

mean that I give my body. Being paid for sex doesn't make me more of an object than when I was working for the minimum wage. What makes me an object is political discourses that silence me, criminalise my sexual partners against my will, refuse me equal rights as a worker and citizen, and refuse to acknowledge my self-determination and the words I use to describe myself.
here
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Success is only good with consistency

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This world needs change

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Fifi Chachnil

here
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For example, if

there is no homeostasis, that means (roughly) that there is no “normal, healthy” quantity of sex. But because we have a shut-off switch, we might FEEL like sex is seeking homeostasis, so we perceive something that isn’t there – or is it? It’s like the optical illusion of the candlesticks and the profiles. Homeostasis appears to exist in the negative space between satiety and excitatory impulses. We talk about it like it’s real, we diagnose it, we feel like it’s REALLY IMPORTANT. But really it’s just empty space.
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You're made of danger

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When you get

to know someone, all their physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in their energy, recognize the scent of their skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That’s why you can’t fall in love with beauty or looks. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and your body, but not your heart. That’s why when you really connect with a person, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.
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"Women's desire for

sexual emancipation is very worthy," said Leonore Tiefer, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. "I fear that it's being hijacked by a profit-oriented industry that doesn't really try to understand women and their sexuality."
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Jil Sander & Cooperative Designs

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New Medium

Lessons Learned

If men are

learning about sex from porn – and my college health ed colleagues recently did a survey that suggests that 1 in 4 college men thinks porn accurately portrays how sex works – then, I think, women learn about sex from popular culture, from things like SitC. I believe that cultural representations of sexuality have a responsibility to participate in a healthy, factual, and feminist construction of women’s sexuality. Promoting something like the rabbit, with its phallocentric implications, does everyone on the planet a disservice.
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after all, why

would a guy consider marrying you if you’re having sex with him anyway? I don’t agree with them, but that attitude still has an effect.
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Come tomorrow, you might not be there

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Obedience - be that

to your family, school or community - is a cornerstone of Confucian culture. In contrast to the West, which encourages assertiveness, individualism and independent thought and action, Asian cultures places a high degree of importance on social conformity and personal relationships, from which filial obedience in born. (For example, as a teenager when I wanted to go out with my friends, my mother would complain: “Why don’t you just want to stay at home? Do you think in ten years time your friends will be there for you like we will?”)
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You come unprepared

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This was the

first time I touched a woman in a sexual manner. I felt like a human being, and almost cried. We moved on to the bed, but she laughed at me. She positioned her body so that it was difficult for me to have intercourse and eventually she told me to stop when I began to do it with feeling…

The experience was not pleasurable at all, but rather very nerve racking and riddled with guilt throughout the whole act. It was something to simply do it and get it out of the way, so that I would be just like other non-virgin men.

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Klara Sjons Nilsson

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They will call your bluff

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Flesh Tone

Two Women and A Bear

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After a child

has hurt someone, "we always think we should start with 'How do you think so-and-so felt?'" Gordon says. "But you will be more successful if you start with 'You must have felt very upset.'"
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It’s worth noting

here that our visceral response to these stereotypes, and our - or should I say my? - urge to distance ourselves from them, is not a signifier of some weakness in feminism. These aren’t feminist-driven stereotypes - they’re deeply misogynistic stereotypes, which I would argue have the effect of reinforcing the very behaviours they condemn.
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On my 25th

birthday, I went to a strip club.

We were drunk, but not excessively so. I was with a group of my best friends, and we had all just finished law school, and we were exuberant and relieved. It was my idea. I had been talking with one of my female friends about doing it forever, and she was about to move away, and I thought, hey, let’s just all go? Guys and ladies? I have never been a real party animal. I thought that doing something sort of off-the-hook for my 25th birthday would be kind of cool. Because most of my birthday parties have involved my drinking two beers and eating cake and perhaps convincing people that we should play the best board game of all time, Taboo. Internet ferocity aside, people, I am kind of a dork. I am a social homebody. I like to be at my home, or other people’s homes, on the couch, talking. This is my favorite activity.

But not that night.

We went to the Admiral, which is supposedly the “upscale” strip club in the city of Chicago and, in fact, the only one I knew of. It was already probably after 2 am. We paid our cover. We watched the strip show, which didn’t faze me even a little bit. Particularly at the Admiral, which has a stage and theatrical lighting. I’m watched enough pornography in my life to find images of naked ladies writhing around to be pretty banal. And that’s what this was–from afar, in the dark. It was boring, even.

I told my boyfriend I wanted him to buy me a lap dance, and he obliged. I “picked” my candidate, although I don’t remember deliberating very much. She was young, young, young, couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20. And she was sweet, or she acted it. The lap dance was bizarre–I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t know why I thought I would. It seemed so strange to be just sitting there, doing nothing, while this person rubbed her body all over me. This young woman was gorgeous. She had long straight hair. Her makeup was perfectly applied. She was thin and looked like she worked out a lot. Her skin was incredibly soft. She smelled amazing. She made jokes and was complimentary to me.

When she was done, I asked her how much I owed. She smiled sweetly and said “Oh, it’s 10 dollars.”

I felt like I had been punched in the gut.

Later, as I cried my eyes out on the couch in my apartment and my boyfriend soothed me, I tried to make sense of it. Here was this incredibly beautiful woman, who did everything, everything that a woman was supposed to do to make herself appealing to men. She was thin, she was compliant, she was beautiful, she spent probably hours every day shaving and lotioning and applying makeup and picking out clothes and pouring what was surely substantial cashflow into maintaining her appearance. She was, in a word, perfect. And then, this perfect woman would go to work, and rub her impeccably maintained and beautiful body all over any patron, at his or her request, no matter whether she liked the person or not, for TEN FUCKING DOLLARS? I mean, TEN DOLLARS? Less than I would spend on a pair of shoes. Less than I would spend on a motherfucking hamburger.

I was able to buy access to this woman’s body and (very convincing) pretend affections for less than I would spend picking up a couple of last-minute things at the grocery store. It was worth almost nothing. Less than an oil change. Less than someone cutting my hair. Less than getting a decent tailor to hem a pair of pants. Less than a bouquet of roses.

And that’s the day that I realized we were all the victims of a sick joke. A despicable charade where so much is demanded of women, so much compliance and poking and prodding, so much effort to make ourselves beautiful and radiant and perfect, so much forcing of square pegs into round holes, just so we could meet it all, do it all, get close to the apex of perfection and still be worth nothing. We would be left with alienation from our own bodies, our bodies that we squeezed into stilettos and shaved and waxed and whittled into tiny silhouettes at the gym, always striving for more perfect, thinner, prettier, more alluring. Working so hard to satisfy the cultural imperative toward female perfection–how could we have time for our own desires except to be desired?

Why don’t you love me
Tell me, baby, why don’t you love me
When I make me so damn easy to love

Why don’t you need me
Tell me, baby, why don’t you need me
When I make me so damn easy to need

Latoya Peterson writes about the video that “Once again, Beyoncé’s lyrics define her positive attributes in the context of why she should be desirable to some fool that doesn’t appreciate her. The video, however, is a lot more interesting since, with Beyoncé playing the role of “B.B. Homemaker,” it is openly mocking a lot of the ideals and tenets of womanhood.” I’d go much further than that. I’d say that the song and the video together form a radical critique of femininity, full stop. Because this is what femininity is about: making yourself appealing to men by adhering as closely possible to cultural ideals of perfect womanhood. Her lyric is not “when I am so damn easy to love,” but “when I make me so damn easy to love.” It’s effort, it’s a construct, it is something she does and not something that she is. It is performative.

This song is about the bait-and-switch that women are presented with by the femininity imperative. Because femininity is a lot of work. It is, to be frank, a real pain in the ass. If we weren’t so used to it, we’d realize that the things we are expected to do in service of perfect femininity are basically humiliating. That’s what interesting about this video–Beyonce looks extremely hot and sexually appealing, and she also seems pathetic. She is a caricature of femininity, prancing around the house dusting in an ass-showing french maid outfit and bending and sighing and fanning herself over a car engine. It’s ridiculous. She heightens femininity to an absurd level, showing us how bizarre it is. Of course, we don’t do all of the things she doing at once, thus avoiding the kind of absurd hyper-femininity on display in this video. But by going so far over the top that we smile and kind of pity her, she demonstrates how absurd all femininity is, at its core. Is the femininity performance that average women engage in before a night out at the club really so different from what she’s doing here?

And THEN. The fun part is that, after all that, after all that effort and humiliation, it doesn’t work? After all that? That’s why Beyonce’s indignation and anger in this video is perfect. She’s throwing a tantrum, almost, throwing things around and flouncing on the floor, as if to say, WHAT THE FUCK?? YOU DON’T WANT THIS? I did everything I was supposed to do, I cleaned and cooked and pranced and paraded around in bustiers and wore extremely sexy makeup! And still! Nothing? I played by the rules and the rules were A BIG LIE.

Which is basically what it’s like to be a modern woman. We perform femininity, and not only does it not succeeding in bringing about the desired result, I think it’s actually counter-productive to our real goals. Particularly when we’re talking about relationships—lots of people really do want love, and close and serious romantic connections, and femininity is supposed to help us be lovable and desirable. And sure, it might help in attracting a man, but the culture of performative femininity actually makes it less likely that men will regard us as complete human beings, thus making it almost impossible for us to have real emotional intimacy with them, the kind that comes from being able to regard each other as equals.

What’s more, the body alienation that performative femininity causes in us will make us less able to engage in those kinds of egalitarian relationships as well, because we can’t full engage our own desires. Our psyches have been warped to focus on pleasing rather than establishing our own pleasure. This isn’t just about sex. This is about constantly being a compliant caretaker, or doing the emotional work to keep a relationship working smoothly, of anticipating desires.

I was thinking earlier this week about the psychological effect that performing femininity must have of women, because in its purest form, it is not only humiliating, but kind of disturbing. I am thinking specifically of two videos that are getting a lot of attention, which present performances of femininity by people that are not adult women. One is deemed to be hilarious, the other disturbing.

The first is the Army Telephone video, where a bunch of military guys serving in Afghanistan do a video interpretation of Lady Gaga’s Telephone video. They are dancing around, doing moves that, were women doing them, would be so boring as to not even warrant 5,000 views on YouTube. Shaking their hips and swiveling around. But when men do this? It is hilarious, it is absurd, it is bizarre. You smile and laugh, and you think, man, those men are kind of awesome, because they are so funny! Would you ever think this about women doing these exact same things? You wouldn’t even notice. It’s of a piece with how women move through the world every day and how they are constantly presenting themselves as over-sexed sex objects in pop culture. It’s not even close to noteworthy.

The second is a dance performance by a bunch of 7-year-old girls in the style of Beyonce’s Single Ladies video. The performance has been roundly criticized, including some commenters saying that it is so bad that the adults in question shouldn’t have even allowed their daughters to participate. The way these little girls move their bodies is a surprisingly good imitation of how adult women who are performing “sexy” dance, and people DO. NOT. LIKE. THIS. Even worse, their outfits are supposedly more scandalous than the dance moves themselves. This is despite the plain that that they’re not particularly revealing and don’t show much more skin than a ballet leotard would. The discomfort isn’t because what the outfits reveal, but what they allude to. The lace, the stockings, the corset lacing on the “bodice” are, it seems, too much like what adult women wear when they are trying to evoke maximum sexiness. Doing this dance and wearing these clothes is, in our cultural estimation, firmly in the territory of not appropriate.

I think it’s pretty telling that when femininity is performed by non-standard actors, we either get really uncomfortable or laugh our asses off. It’s not just a bait-and-switch, as the Beyonce video so effectively argues. It’s a bait and kick-you-in-the-face. It’s toxic.

here

Yea, I just quoted the entire article. Because it's that good.

It means that

we can remind ourselves that the other person is a human being and that most of the time, we have more in common with them than we realize. It means that we can respect their humanity, even when we disagree with them, even when we feel anger towards them, even when we have been hurt by them.
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When I teach

about relationships, I say that from being attended to, being given attention, we learn that we are worth being attended to. It’s one of the gifts we give each other in relationships. When children get it from their parents, they learn self-esteem – it’s something Kendra and her peers got plenty of, and I with my problematic older brothers, maybe got less of.
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What's on your radio

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Reminds me of Lisa from Ex-Driver^_^

Pip

The ArchAndroid

Whip It

“For women….. bras,

panties, bathing suits, and other stereotypical gear are visual reminders of a commercial, idealized feminine image that our real and diverse female bodies can’t possibly fit. Without these visual references, each individual woman’s body demands to be accepted on its own terms. We stop being comparatives. We begin to be unique.”
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The world of

modeling is a strange little bubble. You work because you look a certain way, and you keep doing it because every once in a while you are told that you are the most beautiful girl in the world. The high you get from a successful photo shoot is difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. The emotional toll can be devastating too, but for some, modeling can also provide a shelter from the critique that comes from the world outside the industry. It is easier to hear "you are not right for this job because you don't have boobs" than "you are too thin to be beautiful." The girls whose confidence improves due to modeling get hooked on the industry because it makes them feel accepted. Essentially, you feel like you belong because you look like a freak. In the meantime, the rest of the world will continue telling you you don't belong because of the way you look.
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Runaway Faye

Watch it here.
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Have yet to see a feminist blog pick up on this. Specifically, the use of porn stars in fashion/pop culture.

and bury the letters left unsent

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"You can always

say no. It's the girl's fault for not saying no. There is a choice. The girl could've refused."...the girl should never be put in the position in which she has to refuse. I mean, sure, she could just not say yes, but there's another person to blame, and that would be the person who could just not pressure a girl into performing those kinds of acts. Remember him? And for what reason, other than selfish pleasure? Nevermind the emotional damage it can do to a person. I don't think its purpose is in the quality of the photos -- nudity in fashion is no longer shocking. And as for the kind of things he has asked models to do to him, you don't need to get some action in order to take a head-on picture of someone against a wall.
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When life gives

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saki ni "sayonara" iwasete

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Sometimes, most of

the time, there is a lot of shit going down in the world. And you get stuck reading about twenty different horrible things that happened this morning. And you’re reading five different opinions on some controversial subject and they all make good points and you don’t know how to feel about it. And you’re signing petitions and you even decided to email your MP about something that just really pissed you off. And you’re getting increasingly worried about the state of the world, and you’re starting to really lose faith in humanity and all that crazy shit and then you start thinking about how huge the universe is, and then you start getting scared and think maybe you should just go back to bed. Forever. And you close your internet and are about to shut off your computer when you see this picture on your screen. And you remember that there existed a moment when all you were thinking about was twisting a soft pink bra strap back into place. And sometimes, that can be all you need to restore a sort of balance in your world.
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My Labia Majora, dancin' the Hora

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Opening Ceremony

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Li(f)e

Rape-Axe completely undermines

rape and the harm it causes, treating it like a minor inconvenience or slight, rather than the soul-destroying, violent and hateful act it is (not to mention the sheer absurdity of it rendering rape into something of a pub joke). Ehlers might write on the site "don't put what belongs to you where it does not belong", but this is a laughably reductionist statement.
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Good Gracious

But just because

we’re able to make those critiques and ask those questions doesn’t mean we’re not also products of that world. Human beings are deeply social creatures, and it is not so easy to extract ourselves from 15, 20 or 40 years of social conditioning. Hence, individual women - even feminist women - might continue to engage in behaviours that are oppressive to themselves (or, more problematically, to others), even if on an intellectual level we understand the ways in which our behaviours and desires might have been socially conditioned. The process of reprimand and reward runs deep.
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A guru is

like a parent who raises a child to flourish on her own. What values does Madonna impart to us? Female empowerment. Body consciousness. Religious and sexual tolerance. Cycles of imperfection and improvement. Evolution of the self. You got a problem with that?
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Peoples Temple

And when I feel like I can feel once again

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The girl who

had a body should know this, as should all girls who have bodies: you cannot escape from your body because you are your body. You are also your mind. There is power through nudity and experimentation, and openness should not create hatred and jealousy from an audience. If that happens, this is due to fear and misunderstanding. The girl who has a body must be confident in herself, and know that she must teach those who critique her how to be beautiful.
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The fact that

anyone can be labeled a slut, at any time, with any level of sexual activity under their belt, and the fact that sluttiness is a moving target, makes it clear that slut-shaming isn't just about controlling how much sex women have*. If you can be called a slut without so much as kissing another person, then it stands to reason that your slut status must be based on something besides your level of sexual experience or activity. And often, it is. It's based on what people assume about you just by looking at you - at your body, your clothes and the way you move through the world. Once you realize that, it becomes obvious that the slut label isn't just about controlling how much sex women have: It's about controlling how we dress, how we walk, how we talk, how we dance, how much we drink, who we talk to, how we feel about our own desires and so on and so on. And crossing the invisible, culturally-determined "slut line" in any of these arenas is enough to earn you a label that, no matter how much we denounce and detest it, no matter how well we understand its purpose and its perniciousness, somehow manages to seep into our brains and eat away at our certainty and self-assurance.
here
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Feminism is not

a replacement mindset for patriarchy, which tells you what to think via media mouthpieces and politicians: feminism involves thinking critically, which is why there are such a variety of contradictory opinions among feminists.
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My clan gets vicious

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Drumbrella

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Let’s all accept

that we’re different. Let’s be terribly, terribly curious about how we’re different, and terribly, terribly critical and cautious about the results of our inquiry.
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Sometimes, of course,

we need other people’s insight and advice. There are little fashion rules that it can be helpful to know (even if only for the sake of breaking them, like the old one about not mixing browns and blacks, or not wearing dark-colored bras under light-colored tops.) Friends and family members may have suggestions for what colors or styles are most flattering to you, and sometimes those suggestions may be helpful. I’m certainly not suggesting you shouldn’t listen to those tips. But I want you to know there’s a world of difference between saying “you know, I think lime green isn’t really your color” and saying “you shouldn’t wear short skirts, because then men will think you’re easy.” The former bit of advice is rooted in an aesthetic truth (aesthetics is a fancy term for the study of what is beautiful or good), the latter in an anxiety that is based on a false assumption about male weakness.
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It doesn't interest

me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

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I like my

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Object Fetish

When speaking about fetish objects in fashion, the immediate example that leaps to mind is the cult of the 'It Bag', cultivated throughout the 1990s, specifically by Tom Ford at Gucci and the explosion of the Fendi 'Baguette' in 1998. It continues unabated - this decade has been about multiple must-haves for each season, but this is perhaps the first example from the esteemed house of Belgian Deconstructionist Martin Margiela, who has chosen rather than creating an it-bag, to create an it box. It is a Margiela tie-box, taken from their own shop stock and lined in white nappa leather to render it an object of luxury - indeed, for many, an object of desire.
here
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As long as you can try to be brave

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There is nowhere safe to hide

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With nothing to flaunt but my loneliness

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I get depressed in fancy hotel rooms

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