Posted on Monday, August 8, 2011 by Emily McAvan
“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives on by sucking living labor and lives the more, the more labor it sucks” – Karl Marx, Capital
The vampire has long been a potent metaphor for cultural anxieties of many kinds. HBO’s True Blood is a fun, sex-filled take on the urban fantasy genre, combining vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches and various other supernatural . True Blood’s vampires have been read, with various plausibility, as metaphors for gay rights, the civil rights movement, and even veganism. But though there is a persistent classed element to vampirism in the series, this has remained largely critically invisible.
The basic conceit of the series is that True Blood, a synthetic product, has made it possible for vampires to live without the need to feed on humans (this is where the vegan metaphor comes in). Yet no vampire consistently stays away from exploitation and violence–instead, the question is how long they can get away with feeding on humans, how well they can hide the bodies. Even with consensual feeding relationships with humans, sooner or later, the urge for something fresh. True Blood is nothing but the fallacy of self-regulation – there is no real possibility of vampires without violence, of “mainstreaming” being anything but a patently ideological ploy designed to facilitate acceptance and further exploitation. Exploitation is inherent to the vampire/human relationship. Hunter, prey. Capital, proletariat. (Continued)
Posted on Thursday, August 4, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan
I see many people on Twitter passing the link of a piece at Al Jazeera, Stigmatising feminism in Latin America and sure, the post makes some good points but since most people disseminating the link do not have the Latin American context (yes, yes, one of my favorite subjects to delve into), I thought I’d chime in with a few observations.
The article is centered around the fact that Latin American women in positions of power reject the label of feminism:
As encouraging as it may be to see women’s rights rise to the forefront of electoral campaigns, a closer look reveals there is less to celebrate than appears at first sight. The inclusion of women in politics has not yet led to an explicit feminisation of policy proposals in electoral campaigns. Paradoxically, it is easier for a male candidate to embrace feminist discourse because he is less easily defined as a feminist extremist, especially when he happens to be a former army officer focusing on “motherhood” issues. Rather, sexual and reproductive rights remain a taboo and the stakes of openly advocating feminist ideas remain high.
Whereas Bolivian President Evo Morales succeeded by making indigenous rights a core principle of his campaign and of government policies, female candidates still remain reluctant to advocate for gender equity. At the end of the day, feminist ideas are still perceived to be too radical, and women candidates keep women’s rights under wraps when running for office. When we recognise that gender equity is key to achieving social justice, perhaps feminism will cease to be stigmatised, and will become winning politics.
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Posted on Thursday, August 4, 2011 by Lindsay Miller
For a long time, despite urging from the various nerds in my life, I didn’t bother to get into the new Doctor Who. (I still have never watched the original series.) But about a year ago, my partner and I moved to a new state so I could go to grad school. Bereft of our former social life, we spent a lot of time snuggling on the couch watching TV, and we got a Netflix subscription, as you do, and then it turned out that the whole run of new Who was available streaming, and things took their natural course. We burned through the first five seasons in time to start watching season 6 in real time this spring. Also, as we do when we really like a show, we gave it a nickname that is far longer than the actual title—in our house we usually refer to it as “What’s-His-Fuck, M.D.”
Before I’d even started watching, I already knew the prevailing opinion of current Who fans was that the show did not become truly amazing until Steven Moffat took over as lead writer and producer at the beginning of the fifth season, the same time that Matt Smith became the new Doctor. (Up until then, the show was run by Russell T. Davies.) I was repeatedly assured that no matter how much I enjoyed Davies’s show—which I really did—the advent of Moffat would blow everything else out of the water.
It has since occurred to me that all of the people who told me this were dudes.
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Posted on Wednesday, August 3, 2011 by s.e. smith
Google recently tentatively dipped back into the social networking waters with Google+, a network based on the premise of circles; you decide who you want in which circle, who sees what, and who your ‘friends’ versus ‘people I’m adding back just to be polite’ are. It’s a concept I’m already familiar with from Dreamwidth, which has a robust filtering function that serves much the same purpose.
The company learned its social lessons the hard way with the Buzz debacle, and one of the much-touted features of Google+ was the high degree of very transparent privacy configurability. It’s possible to make almost every part of your profile private, and to fine-tune controls. If, for example, I only want people in one social circle to see where I live, I can do that. It also took baby steps; instead of a forcible rollout a la Buzz where users logged in only to realise they’d been added to a network they hadn’t consented to join, Google+ users had to actively join, through what was initially an open beta with highly coveted invitations. (I can’t be the only one reminded of the early days of GMail there…)
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Posted on Monday, August 1, 2011 by Sady
Ladies! Are you single? Don’t be silly, of course you are. Why else are you reading the Internet, and not lying in a field of wildflowers, gently running your fingers through your man’s hair? (Yes, he would be a man. Yes, he would be, SHUT UP.) Well, ladies, before the loneliness consumes your very entrails and leaves you a bitter shell (a gradual, medically documented process that I must warn you has probably already set in, what with you reading the feminist blogs and all) I would like to extend a helping hand to you. For, you see, I have read on numerous occasions, in numerous publications for the womenfolk, that people are actually meeting their sex partners and/or reasons to live… on the very Internet itself!
I know! I know! All the joy and sense of purpose that comes from searching for your soulmate, without the tiresome restrictions of having to comb your hair and wear pants! Well, ladies, never say that I don’t care about your happiness. I mean, I don’t; you are a stranger on the Internet, and for all I know you could have a collection of human hands in your freezer. But I still don’t want you to SAY it, because that hurts my feelings. And why would you want to hurt my feelings, when I am going to help you find your new man?
For, you see, ladies, I know the sort of man you want. You want a man who is on-trend, and caught up with the current events of the day. You want a man who participates in discussions about issues of social importance. You want a man who gets straight to the point, in 140 characters or less! You, ladies, want a man who Tweeted #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend this weekend.
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Posted on Monday, July 25, 2011 by s.e. smith
Sady’s post this weekend got me thinking about a series of conversations I’ve been having in my email, and elsewhere, about the state of online organising not just in feminist communities, but social justice-oriented ones in general. The State of the Internet is a topic I see coming up again and again, with a myriad of perspectives on the topic, and if there’s one thing that’s consistent, it is that the state of the Internet cannot be summed up neatly; it is not uniform, it is not universal, and people have radically different experiences with it. There’s one question I’ve been turning over of late, and it’s not something that has a neat, tidy answer:
What are your goals, in engaging with online spaces, whether you consider yourself an activist or not? What are our goals, in creating these spaces, in engaging with them? What are we working towards? Do we have a rubric to use to assess whether we’re achieving those goals? How do we know when we’ve reached them?
Online organising has a tremendous capacity which I don’t think I need to reiterate here, to amplify voices, to facilitate rapid responses to ongoing events, to exchange information and ideas that might be hard to access otherwise. People of all ages, and all walks of life, and all activisms, and all experiences, have come together online to create…something. But what are we creating? Why are we creating it? Is it doing what we need it to do?
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Posted on Saturday, July 23, 2011 by Sady
Ladies! What is the most important thing on our agenda today? Is it… fighting about which one of us is the worst feminist, by any chance? Oh, good!
So, I have actually done some research on this question, and I have the definitive answer for you. The definitive answer is: Me. I am the worst feminist. You know that time when sexism was almost over forever, but then it wasn’t, and you were still oppressed? Totally my fault. So, you know, please accept my apologies, and let’s get on to discussing the hootenanny that occurred around that one Rebecca Traister “Clumsy Young Feminists” “Ladies, We Have A Problem” article.
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Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan
I’ve been trying to find an interesting “angle” on the Murdoch Parliamentary hearings that took place two days ago. An angle, you know, something interesting to say. Mostly I’ve been waiting for transcripts to emerge so that I could base my opinions on more than my memory of what transpired and/ or third party accounts. Alas, so far, I haven’t been able to find any. The reason I haven’t been able to write about the hearings is because I have “feelings!”; actually, LOTS OF FEELINGS about this. And I really do not like to write from a place of emotional responses, I prefer to dissect events when I am guided by sharpness, not by raw reactions that amount to the reporting equivalent of shouting at a screen. I lose focus when that happens and in a case as serious as the Murdoch inquiries, one should remained focused, because a lot is at stake.
I am particularly interested in the transcripts because I thought I spotted a contradiction (that might be minor but, if true, could cast doubt about the veracity of the whole affair) between something Rupert Murdoch said and how later on Brooks responded to the same question. Namely, if I recall correctly, Murdoch claimed he only spoke with the editor of News of the World sporadically, maybe once a week to check what was going on. Later on, Brooks claimed they spoke as often as every other day (and she had to be pressured to provide an answer about the frequency of their talks). I have googled more than once in the hopes that this discrepancy was spotted by someone else (or perhaps I misheard?), but to not results so far.
But, while we are on the subject of focus and interesting angles, I’d like to bring this article from The Daily Beast, by Robin Givhan to your attention. The opening blurb to the article, Rebekah Brooks ‘Distracting’ Do, already gives us a taste of what’s to follow:
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Posted on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 by s.e. smith
Breaking political news on US shores today revolved around a Daily Caller expose on Michelle Bachmann’s migraines, complete with lurid suggestions about drug use and the implication that migraines make a person unfit to be President. (I’m glad we’re so worried about Bachmann’s fitness for the Presidency at this early stage, let me tell you.) Now, full disclosure: I think that Michelle Bachmann is a bad, bad person. I think that she is not fit to be President of the United States because her politics terrify me and the thought of someone like her with access to the nuclear football scares me silly. Should her campaign move forward, I intend to vigorously oppose it on the grounds that her stated opinions, platforms, and political positions are antithetical to pretty much everything I believe in.
But, this attack on Bachmann, and the response to it, reveals some important information about politics in the United States, and two very familiar old friends are showing up all over the Internet today; sexism and ableism. Despite the fact that there are plenty of reasons to oppose a Bachmann presidency that have nothing to do with her gender or ability status, these are the two things that people on all areas of the political spectrum appear to be zoning in on for ‘critical’ discussion. Some of the comments on this Gawker piece (h/t Annaham) provide a primo example of what liberal-minded people think about people with migraines; migraines are hilarious! They are evidence of untreated mental illness (which of course makes people, you know, CRAZY, and therefore unfit for political office)! They are awesome retribution for being an evil person!
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