Amophrast's blog

Here's a shameless plug for an upcoming event. It's a hilarious and fantastic program, and here is the write-up:

Join us to laugh and learn about the "big O," the most popular topic sex educators Marshall Miller and Rachel Dart teach about! Orgasm aficionados and beginners of all genders are welcome to come learn about everything from multiple orgasms to that mysterious G-spot. Whether you want to learn how to have your first orgasm, how to have better ones, or how to help yourgirlfriend, they cover it all with lots of humor, plenty of honesty, and an underlying message of sexual health and women's empowerment. Are you coming?

Come by yourself, come with a friend, come with all your friends!

Wednesday March 21, 8 PM in BMC's Goodhart Auditorium

This event is un-ticketed, open to Tri-Co plus guests, and open to people of all genders and orientations.

RSVP at: http://www.facebook.com/events/220556264708529/

• Jeffrey Longhofer, Ph.D., LCSW Associate professor from Rutgers school of social work
• April 9th, EEO on LGBT population
• Interactive session.
• Philip Lichtenberg
• Encountering Bigotry
• Cheryl Parks
• White, out lesbian
• Dr. Christine McGinn
• Transgender plastic surgeon
• Queer white man
• Does this affect perspective?
• Anti-LGBT Activism: A Social Movement or Paranoid Fringe?
• A handful of images from Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995, 9:02 AM
• On the first floor of a building was a childcare center. 72 children. By the end of the excavation there were 16. 168 fatalities (bombing)
• When I speak to undergraduates, I find that memory of this is quite distant
• Quite right
• Timothy McVeigh – news media tended to present him as a homosexual
• Estes Park, 1992
• YMCA, 200 or 300 people. National meeting of the …?
• Opposition researcher
• New right, old right, neo vs. paleo
• Can’t mobilize unless you can really grasp the historical significance of divides in American conservatism
• The Rise of the Old Right
• AR Conference
• http://vdare.com/
• Amren.com/conference2012/
• “Ours is an era of fear and self-censorship.

When I was in NYC for my externship, at the public library I saw a talk on this book: Typography Sketchbooks. It contains (amazing) sketches, discarded works, and preliminary ideas by typography artists, who design typeface.

After going over "Lifting Belly" in class (February 16th), I was thinking about language, feminism, font, words... I was thinking (which I tried to convey in class with the help of French feminists) that there's something about the form which makes some things feminist; content is indeed important, but I do not know if I often see anti-feminist (which I recognize as different than non-feminist) sentiments expressed in the same forms I see feminist sentiments  expressed in. Maybe there is something more effective about communicating in these forms rather than trying to speak the language of the patriarchy, or using phallocentric language...rigid formats and rules. I think that feminist thoughts and ideas are most effectively communicated and received when they are in certain forms.

• Monika Treut - Female Misbehavior 4 perspectives
• get too caught up in otherizing communities
• bridge them into complicating the mainstream
• Buck Angel etc might be too "special interest" - not related to academics? bridging the gap
• Posse Plus retreat - gender and sexuality
• usually very rejuvenating --> exact opposite
• What do we really know?
• gen/sex for straight girls
• queering the retreat

• How would we make this useful for intro studies and interesting for the more experienced students
• pretty difficult already - studying literature is different. used to looking at things in a different way
• anti-feminist to give power to theories
• "i don't know anything, i'm ignorant" --> that's not the POINT
• people getting too caught up in definitions
• reinforcing structures of expertise and power
• terms good, but don't want to get bogged down... 
• not very empowering.
• things like women-centered language...personal interest...important to bring up, but may unnecessarily derail the class
• no empowerment, product of whatever (teaching, learning, background)
• Not productive to get upset about it, to deny it.
• The most helpful thing you can know is you're not unique.

Here is what I think is an excellent advertisement for doing self breast exams:

http://i.imgur.com/aCoPs.jpg

Here is some more background.

It brings to mind a lot of thoughts about how women's bodies are used in advertising, and while most of the time it seems very objectifying, I think that this is fantastic. It's using women's bodies because it's about women's bodies. Yes their eyes/faces are cropped out, but I thought it would look weirder or even more pornographic for their eyes to be there. I also don't think that that is a terribly uncommon attribute for ads or information about breast cancer screening.

But one of my friends brought up the point of: who is the target audience?

Nonetheless, I really like the idea of "You are not immune."

Read this:

http://www.smithsophian.com/opinions/letters-to-the-editor-1.2792404#.T0bPBfEgenk

EDIT: Taken down on Smith's website due to technical difficulties. Read it on Jezebel instead:

http://jezebel.com/Anne-spurzem/

And read the responses here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/182294368547549/

Incredible, shocking? I feel fear/shame knowing that it is statistically likely that there are BMC alums like this. I know that BMC has changed a lot over the years, and somehow I wonder how the first decade of graduating classes would react to or interact with the last decade of graduating classes (GOLD - Graduates of the Last Decade).

So I was taking a survey sent out by BMC's library services, and I just wanted to publicly appreciate their acknowledgement of gender diversity.

Hey all, these are the notes I took at the Feministing talk at Haverford College last night. I hope they are useful, or at least amusing.

1st speaker:

• Australian
• "stealth feminism"
• feminism that doesn't call itself feminism
• BAGGAGE --> some is completely deserved
• Doesn't deserve baggage by those who want to see it fail, who don't want to see women have equal pay, etc (right of who to have sex with/how often, right to have children, etc)
• Poverty, democratic representation, sexual assault
• STEP ONE: Pop culture
• The Ugly Truth: "No one wants to fuck comfort and efficiency" (re: clothes that feminists wear"
• View with a critical eye
• Meeting people where they are and using language they understand (re: stealth feminism/how to explain feminism)
• If you need proof that sexism is "alive and well" in America, look at pop culture
• "You take [pop culture] too seriously"
• Pop culture is a gateway drug to feminism
• Start with: Dancing with the Stars, rap songs, romantic comedies (romcoms) --> very clear to see faults
• Then move to: politics, literature, own relationships
• Feminism is alive and well and it needs you

2nd speaker:

With all of this talking of "Breast-Giver," I thought it would be relevant to reference Jess Dobkin, a performance artist.

The Lactation Station

Note: the image for the ad is not an accurate representation of the exhibit. It was not as if people were coming up to women and receiving breast milk directly from them. I think that one of the reasons why this exhibit was so impressive was because of the formality of it. Dobkin got several women to donate samples of their breast milk, which was then pasteurized. Samples were given to visitors of the exhibit. Sometimes a woman would offer commentary on her diet throughout pregnancy, as some noticed differing subtle tastes.

I started out with questions about porn: Can porn ever be feminist? If so, what makes it feminist? Is kink contrary to feminism?

After reading MacKinnon, however, I realized that this was turning into a conversation about feminism and BDSM/kink, not just porn.