Another social network launches and another kerfluffle about gender and privacy is born. This time it’s Google+, it’s must-be-public* gender drop down, and the choice to identify as “Male,” “Female,” or “Other.” Randall Munroe sums it up nicely. For a discussion about why “Other” is problematic as a category, see Sarah Dopp’s piece from November, [...]
[22 Jul 2011]
I am tired of people having this debate about the relative impact of pejorative words on their target minority group. If injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, then the relative power of an antigay gay slur is irrelevant, it is simply a threat to human dignity, and that should appall us all. That’s [...]
[15 Apr 2011]
But this isn’t about sex positivity. Look at the terms of the bet. How can any three men ever determine what “all women” like? At the moment that this becomes about generalizing female sexual practices under one banner, it no longer becomes about women, but about men’s idea and projection of who they would like [...]
[7 Dec 2010]
Also see Forever I Love Atlanta: A play list Note: I would have included the Eagles’ version as well had they not tracked down and disabled the audio on like every YouTube clip of it ever. Except this one apparently. Give it time.
[3 Dec 2010]
WARNING: The videos below contain a lot of profanity. It seems the Baracka Flocka Flames controversy has heated up since the October 26 publication of Prez N the Hood: A Hip-Hop Parody Stirs Up Issues in the New York Times (video below; article requires log-in). America’s foremost old cranky black man, Stanley Crouch, had nothing [...]
[31 Oct 2010]
The show appealed to my belief that art only got better once the boundaries between high and low culture were relaxed, most famously by Andy Warhol, then by countless others. It also satisfied my hunger to try new things; my demons that demand I dance naked in public; and my desire to see if art [...]
[18 Sep 2010]
Big Freedia and Galactic at the Fillmore from Big Freedia on Vimeo. As far back as the ’40s and ’50s, it was a really popular thing. Gay performers have been celebrated forever in New Orleans black culture. Not to mention that in New Orleans there’s the tradition of masking, mummers, carnival, all the weird identity [...]
[24 Jul 2010]
We often talk about how stories change the world, but we should also see how the world of identity politics affects the way stories are being circulated, read and reviewed. Writer Elif Shafak in her TED talk The Politics of Fiction (embedded below). Shafak was prosecuted for her novel about a family’s women set against [...]
[19 Jul 2010]
Elaine Brown, a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. I attended a screening of 41st & Central last night, as part of the National Black Arts Festival. It’s a quite moving documentary about the rise of the Los Angeles branch of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, especially [...]
[17 Jul 2010]
Obviously we went through a period where models reflected the Twiggy phenomenon, but that didn’t have much to do with what actually was attractive to the opposite sex. Hugh Hefner just gave me the giggles with this quote from an interview with Deborah Solomon in the New York Times. In it, Solomon asserts that the [...]
[11 Jul 2010]