Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/03/ ... _self.html

Today’s Self-Love: Letter to a Teenage Past, On Hair and Sexuality





If you could write a letter to your younger self, the teenaged you who’s growing up biracial in the South and struggling with your untameable curls and sexuality, what would you tell yourself? What would you say about the desperate loneliness of adolescence, and the big questions about love and the source of your longing? What advice would you give your young heart? What tips would you give about dealing with your hair?

Jasika Nicole decided to try it out. In this comic written as a letter to her teenaged self, the actress explores all these questions, and the result is a beautiful, tender comic full of empathy and kindness and all the hard-won wisdom that can only be gotten with time, experience and not a little pain along the way

Nicole returns to her childhood bedroom to meditate on her teenaged struggles with self-acceptance. “I wonder if I would scare you with how unafraid I am today,” Nicole writes, her voice hovering over scenes of her younger self brushing her hair in the vanity mirror of her bedroom, or laying on the floor of her closet.[/i]



[i]

Nicole mentioned the scene that would show up in her comic to SheWired.com last year: “I had to be 13 or 14 years old, and I was in my room, and I was thinking, ‘There’s a very strong possibility I’m gay, but there’s no way I could be biracial and gay.’ I just knew I wasn’t strong enough to be able to carry both of those things in Birmingham, and so I just—I didn’t think about it.”

A decade later Nicole’s a got plenty to say to her young self: “You convinced our hair that it wasn’t actually curly, and you convinced our heart that it was out of the ordinary,” Nicole says in the comic. “The truth is that it was, and is, extraordinary.”

[American Dream]

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... -a-virgin/

MARKETING THE TAMPON: “WILL I STILL BE A VIRGIN?”

by Lisa Wade, Jul 12, 2009, at 10:00 am


Remember the hymen? The hymen is that flap of skin that “seals” the vagina until a woman has sexual intercourse for the first time. Supposedly one could tell whether a girl/woman was a virgin by whether her hymen was “intact.” (It bears repeating that neither of these things are true: it doesn’t “seal” the vagina and is not a sign of virginity at all.)

Because an intact hymen signaled virginity, and virginity has been considered very important, preserving and protecting the hymen was, at one time, an important task for girls and women. You can imagine how tricky this made the marketing of that brand new product: the tampon. Early marketing made an effort to dispel the idea that sticking just anything up there de-virginized you. It worked. (In fact, some partially credit tampon manufacturers for the de-fetishization of the hymen that’s occurred over the last 60 years.)

We still see tampon marketing addressing the question. Here’s a link to a website where it’s a FAQ and here’s an example of an advertisement from the ’70s ’90s:



Selected text:

I really wanted to use tampons, but I’d heard you had to be, you know, ‘experienced.’ So I asked my friend Lisa. Her mom is a nurse so I figured she’d know. Lisa told me she’d been using Petal Soft Plastic Applicator Tampax tampons since her very first period and she’s a virgin. In fact, you can use them at any age and still be a virgin.

See this post, too, on the marketing of tampon to women in the workforce (wearing pants!) during World War II.

[American Dream]

ON BEING GENDERQUEER



Transcript:

So, I teach in a preschool. Hehe… I make a goddamn difference, now what about you. That’s one point I had to make before I read this poem. The second point is, I usually have hair that is much much shorter than this. That’s all you need to know.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” he asks, staring up at me in all three feet of his pudding face grandeur, and I say “Dylan, you’ve been in this class for three years and you still don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl?” And he says “Uh-uh.” And I say “Well, at this point, I don’t really think it matters, do you?” And he says “Uhhhm, no. Can I have a push on the swing?” And this happens every day. It’s a tidal wave of kindergarten curiosity rushing straight for the rocks of me, whatever I am.

And the class, when we discuss the Milky Way galaxy, the orbit of the Sun around the Earth… or whatever. Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and kids, do you know that some of the stars we see when we look up in the sky are so far away, they’ve already burned out? What do you think of that? Timmy? “Umm… my mom says that even though you got hairs that grow from your legs, and the hairs on your head grow short and poky, and that you smell really bad, like my dad, that you’re a girl.” “Thank you, Timmy.”

And so it goes. On the playground, she peers up at me from behind her pink power puff sunglasses and then asks, “Do you have a boyfriend?” And I say no, and she says “Oh, do you have a girlfriend?” And I say “No, but if by some miracle, twenty years from now, I ever finally do, then I’ll definitely bring her by to meet you. How’s that?” “Okay. Can I have a push on the swing?”

And that’s the thing. They don’t care. They don’t care. Us, on the other hand… My father sitting across the table at Christmas dinner, gritting his teeth over his still-full plate, his appetite raped away by the intrusion of my haircut, “What were you thinking? You used to be such a pretty girl!” Frat boys, drunken, screaming, leaning out of the windows of their daddys’ SUVs, “Hey! Are you a faggot or a dyke?” And I wonder what would happen if I met up with them in the middle of the night.

Then of course there’s always the somehow not-quite-bright enough fluorescent light of the public restroom, “Sir! Sir, do you realize this is the ladies’ room?” “Yes, ma’am, I do, it’s just that I didn’t feel comfortable sticking this tampon up my penis in the men’s room.”

But the best, the best is always the mother at the market, sticking up her nose while pushing aside her daughter’s wide eyes, whispering “Don’t stare, it’s rude.” And I want to say, “Listen, lady, the only rude thing I see is your paranoid parental hand pushing aside the best education on self that little girl’s ever gonna get, living with your Maybelline lipstick after hips and pedi kiwi, vanilla-smelling beauty; so why don’t you take your pinks and blues, your boy-girl rules and shove them in that car with your fucking issue of Cosmo, because tomorrow, I stop my day with twenty-eight miles and I know a hell of a lot more than you. And if I show up in a pink frilly dress, those kids won’t love me any more, or less.”

“Hey, are you a boy or a — never mind, can I have a push on the swing?” And some day, y’all, when we grow up, it’s all gonna be that simple.

[American Dream]

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ciousness/

HOMOSEXUALITY AND OUR COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

by Lisa Wade, Oct 4, 2011, at 10:33 am


While men have always had sex with men and women have always had sex with women, the idea that a person could be of a particular homosexual type (as opposed to someone who did homosexual acts) only emerged in the late 1800s (in Western culture anyway). Even then, it took a very long time for the idea that gay people might be among us to filter through popular culture. Only after an active gay liberation movement made homosexuality more visible did people actually start to look for it in people they knew.

Accordingly, things that look very “gay” to us today, didn’t look that way before homosexuality became part of our consciousness. In a previous post on this topic, I discuss a vintage soap ad in which two naked men in a public shower have a conversation about “hard” water and “lathering” up. It seems to have clear gay undertones today (maybe overtones), but it wasn’t meant to suggest homosexuality then. Likewise, a series of military recruitment posters, sent in by Katrin, might very well trigger the “specter” of homosexuality today, but likely would not have inspired giggles at the time.











More at Scribd.

[American Dream]

GENDER ROLES HURT BOYS, TOO

[American Dream]

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ern-women/

ORIENTALISM AND THE REPRESENTATION OF MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN

by Guest Blogger Adam Schwartz from Sociological Images, Aug 9, 2011


Edward Said famously argued that the West uses the East as an inverted mirror, imagining them to be everything the West is not. In a book titled Orientalism, he showed us how this perceived binary separating the Semitic East and the Christian West has traditionally manifested itself in art through romanticized scenes of Eastern cultures presented as alien, exotic, and often dangerous.

European painters of the 19th century turned to backdrops of harems and baths to invoke an atmosphere of non-European hedonism and tantalizing intrigue. Ingre’s 1814 Grande Odalisque , for example, depicts a concubine languidly lounging about, lightly dusting herself with feathers as she peers over her shoulder at the viewer with absent eyes. The notions of hedonistic and indulgent sex are bolstered by hints to opium-induced pleasure offered by the pipe in the bottom right corner. Images like this prompted viewers to imagine the Middle East as a distant region of sex, inebriants, and exciting exotic experiences.




Orientalism continues to inflect popular culture, but because we see ourselves differently now, we see them differently as well. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the East, and the corollary Islamophobia of the West has shifted the focus to violence coupled with religious fervor. Take for example an image from a February New York Times article entitled “Afghan Official Says Women’s Shelters are Corrupt.”





The story is about the Afghan government’s desire to take over all Western-established shelters which they claim are “more concerned with the budget than the women.” It’s an article about bettering women’s support, community and safe havens, an act many Westerners would deem progressive in a way they wouldn’t usually view the region. However, the photo that was chosen for this article offers all the classic stereotypes held about the Middle East by depicting entirely veiled women who are shut indoors surrounded only by symbols of religion. The viewer sees two women, in both a hijab and niqab, separated onto two beds with looks of utter despondency; one looks down at her hands while the other stares off into the space ahead of her. In the center of the room is a young girl, blurred by the long exposure of the camera which attempted to capture her in the act of seemingly fervent prayer. Behind the praying young woman is an even younger girl sitting on a bed with a baby on her lap. Rather than depicting the officials who are rallying for female empowerment and institutional improvement, the photo that was chosen paints an image of silenced religious females.

Often imagery is more powerful and memorable than words and in some cases the photographs chosen to accompany the news are less than representational of the story at hand. This instance is typical of the Western media’s predilection for reinforcing Western notions about the East through imagery, instead of finding common ground between two regions that many believe are naturally separated by ideology. Thus orientalism lives on, transformed from its roots but maintaining its destructive stereotypes.

————————

Adam Schwartz is an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley entering his final year in the Media Studies program. He is currently preparing to write his thesis analyzing the gender and racial implications of the American Apparel advertising campaigns. When he isn’t in school he can be found biking along the beautiful California coast or working for the Berkeley Student Cooperative.

[American Dream]

http://suenoscongelados.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/mzcla/

MZCLA


Mixed race people are walking violations of racial segregation. We are the reminders that people of different races do interact intimately and, historically within this country, there has been a certain amount of taboo and confusion connected to us. We are the result of something that wasn’t supposed to happen. Something that, for a long time, was straight up illegal. We have been the products of the rape and colonization of the colored woman– the Indian woman, the African woman, the Asian woman– by the white man who exercised his dominance over an inferior people. We have been the products of those who have tried desperately to escape themselves – escape the horrible oppression of being black or brown in this society by trying to find validation through white lovers and light-skinned children, carrying a desperate hope that those children would live easier lives. We are the products of people who found themselves in love with each other and were told that their love was wrong and illegal. We are the products of many different situations period.

In a society where our identities are so defined by race the people who we are attracted to are situated in relation to racial hierarchies and meanings. Who we chose to couple with can be motivated by our desires to assimilate, to affirm racial pride, to exercise power and domination over another, to explore the “exoticism” of the “other” etc.. The children of those couplings are constant reminders of interactions based on inequality of status, wealth, social privilege and power.

Many mixed race children (particularly those mixed with European ancestry and non-European ancestry) have grow up to be perceived by others and themselves as walking reminders of conquest, assimilation, racial insecurity, racial exotification and racial hatred. Mixed race people threaten the idea of race itself because race has been historically constructed within the United States out of a binary-logic which defines communities of color in opposition to whites and people of mixed race illuminate the inability to designate characteristics to one or another group of people. If whiteness is deemed pure, good and intelligent while blackness is deemed impure, evil and stupid then, what is the offspring of these two peoples to embody? Both sets of ideas? It doesn’t make sense. The mixed race person does not fit into either of these boxes and their existence is proof that these binaries never made sense in the first place. Legally, that mixed race child would have been labeled black but within the black community and within society in general, they will not be seen as just black. They will carry the privilege of lighter skin and white features and they will likely experience episodes of narcissism and guilt as well as confusion and shame.

Over and over again people of mixed race descent may receive some of these messages from the rest of society: YOU ARE WRONG, YOUR EXISTENCE IS WRONG, YOU DON’T EXIST, WE ARE NOT ABLE TO PROCESS YOU, PICK A SIDE AND STAY THERE, FIT INTO SOMETHING, YOU AREN’T FULLY APART OF US.



:: A Border Separating Salt Water from Fresh Water
:: Sueños Congelados

Now what?

In interacting with people we may find that people treat us in lots of different ways. There are those POC that have internalized white supremacy and want to assimilate into the white world. If you are mixed with white they may interact with you as if you are better than darker skinned people of color. There are those POC that fear the loss of themselves and their culture and desperately hold onto ideas of pureness; they want to hold onto ideas of pure culture, pure traditions, pure language and pure races. Many times they will reject you because you embody impurity and loss. When they look at you, they see how their people have lost so much and they see how much of them has been molded by colonization and white supremacy. They seek to reject this colonization within themselves and they see you as being closer to the evils of colonization. There are POC who embrace you deeply because they understand the “otherness”, the pains of this racist society and they give you space to be who you are.

When it comes to interacting with white people we are distinguished from them by our brown and black features. There are some mixed race people who can pass for white though. Although I do not want to speak for them, I would imagine that their knowledge that they are not white would constantly separate them from white people. I am interested in hearing more of their stories though.

There are, however, those moments with people where we can look past the categories and truly connect with each other. Race, gender, sexuality, class and every other difference always lurks in the background though, and we can’t just pretend like these differences do not exist. I have hope though. I think the first steps are acknowledging the differences and then working towards accepting them and each other.

What about the experiences of mixed race people that aren’t mixed with white?

I am very interested in learning about the experiences of other mixed raced people and understanding the differences in our experiences as well as the commonalities. I am labeled Black and Salvadorian within this society. Oftentimes within the Black community I am either lumped in with people that are Black and White or I am just labeled Latina and not considered Black. It is very rare that people even guess my ethnicities correctly. People have thought that I’m Asian and Black, Dominican, Mexican, Pacific Islander and Black and, of course, White and Black. My experiences, however, are those of a womyn of African descent through my father and the child of a mother born and raised in Latin America.

I consider myself culturally, biologically, nationally and linguistically mixed.


I consider myself as being mixed in these ways because I understand that anyone who has parents and other family members who are immigrants to this country and speak different languages can understand what it feels like to be nationally, culturally and linguistically mixed. My first language was Spanish but when my mom started working and my dad started caring for my brother and I, he wasn’t able to understand us. My brother Luis and I only spoke Spanish and my dad only spoke English. After a while English was the only language spoken in our household and the Spanish faded away until I took agency in reclaiming much of it later on in life. Since my mother is from El Salvador we have visited the country several times together and I feel a deep connection to Latin America. I definitely am a person of African descent as well and my African ancestry has shaped so many of my experiences in life. I have felt self conscious about every African feature of my body; scrutinizing my hair, my ass, my thighs, my nose, my skin! It’s too African, it’s not African enough; so much back and fourth between wanting to be what people wanted me to be. My mother is very light skinned and clearly is predominantly of Spanish ancestry. I know this allots me privilege because I come closer to white supremacist beauty standards and I see myself represented (in media, text books, universities ect.) much more so than people of darker skin. My mother, however, does not pass as white in this country (by no means) and her experiences in this country have been of an immigrant Latina womyn.

I understand that my racialized experiences have been gendered and my gendered experiences have been racialized. There is no way that I can separate race from gender. I am a womyn identified womyn. The ideas that people think of when they think of me, and the ways that people treat me, are a result of the racist and patriarchal identity constructions that have been imposed on me. I also know that the idea of what a “womyn” is supposed to be within the Black community is very different than within the Latin@ community. Swishing back and fourth between the gender expectations of each community and trying to conform to both of them (but never being able to fully do so) has been exhausting! From an early age I could see that these were roles I had to play in each space and that the amount of masculinity that a womyn is allowed to display within her gender presentation is completely cultural. Now I understand that these roles are very much embedded into an international, capitalist division of labor as well as cultural and material remnants of prior modes of production.

In terms of understanding myself as a mixed race queer womyn I find an interesting relationship between being mixed race and being queer. I feel this urge to be authentic. Being mixed race, I have struggled with feeling “authentically Black” or “authentically Latina” and now I can choose to identify myself as something authentic: lesbian. But…am I a lesbian? What does being authentically lesbian mean? I’ve dated men before but…at this point in my life I definitely prefer being with womyn so…what does that mean? Hmm…it means that I now find myself having to choose, once again, between a set of boxes to fit myself into which never made sense in the first place. I don’t feel the urge to identify as either bisexual or lesbian. Both terms are constraining to me. I don’t feel the urge to identify as anything to be honest, but, for now, I will fit myself under the umbrella of queer.

When it comes to culture and purity I understand now that culture and traditions have never been static. They’ve always changed and that people have always mixed with each other. I also understand that ideas of what authenticity means are completely cultural and always are subject to change. Although it is extremely important for POC to try to preserve our cultural pride within a white supremacist society, I understand that the goal is to abolish race altogether. Why? Because race is a historical invention that arose to give certain meanings to physical differences in order to exploit and steal land from certain groups of people. Yes, we have physical differences but those differences do not correlate to internal character differences, which is what the idea of race relies on. The identities imposed on us are for the purposes of placing us into certain positions within capitalism. The work we are expected to do within capitalism and the identities imposed on us by our oppressors are one.

In, La Frontera/Borderlands (one of my favorite books ever), Gloria Anzaldúa writes about acknowledging and accepting each part of ourselves: the colonizer, the colonized, the queerness, the darkness, the masculine, the feminine; and, not just simply putting all those parts together, but moving into a third space: a mestiza consciousness. The necessity of creating a space for ourselves removed from the lies about our identity that we are taught to believe, removed from the imposed self-hatred and shame, removed from all of the abuse inflicted upon us by everyone and by ourselves is vital to our psychological, spiritual and physical health. Oppression is a collection of systematic and interpersonal abuses. When we have many different forms of abuse coming at us all at the same time we need to take a step back into a separate space in order to regain a sense of agency and self-esteem. I also don’t want to feel split in half all the time. I am not just these two halves of something I am a whole person and it is up to me to define that space of wholeness within myself. How do I create this space within myself? That is one of my ongoing struggles. I know that understanding, being able to identify, and putting a language to these abuses has been a major step in beginning to try to heal and care for myself. I also understand, however, that healing must be collective and, living in a racist, sexist, classist, exploitative as fuck capitalist system, no one can fully heal within the realm of all this mess. There must be collective healing and collective structural change that is global, that is revolutionary.

[American Dream]

The secret of beauty revealed

[American Dream]

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... sculinity/

“SOME MEN JUST NEED TO BE SLAPPED”: POLICING MASCULINITY

by Gwen Sharp, Apr 27, 2011

Mimi S.-L. sent in a Brut ad that is a particularly non-subtle example of the policing of masculinity and denigration of things associated with women:





The text:

If you’re thinking it might not be so bad to go curtain shopping instead of shooting hoops, you may need a quick masculinity check. Hurry over to facebook.com/BRUT to clear your head before it’s too late. If you’re trying to get the guys together for a game of badminton, then it is too late.



I had no idea badminton was so feminized that playing it is a sign a man is truly beyond repair. Learn something every day.

For more on this ad campaign, see our earlier post on Brut’s “Slap Me” game on their website, which allows you to slap men who don’t meet masculine norms (their Facebook page lets you slap everyone from a hippie to a Star Trek fan to guys meant to represent Kelsey Grammar and Tiger Woods.

[American Dream]

DESCRIBES SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... onformity/

ONE FAMILY’S EXPERIENCE WITH “CURING” GENDER NON-CONFORMITY

by Gwen Sharp, Jun 9, 2011

Katrin and Danny sent in a heart-breaking video that highlights the damage that has sometimes been inflicted on children, with the guidance of researchers, because of adult concerns about behavior that deviates from socially-accepted gender norms. In this segment with Anderson Cooper, two siblings and their mother discuss the treatment their brother suffered, with the approval and encouragement of UCLA researchers, as a form of “anti-sissy” therapy:





It would be nice to be able to write this off as completely debunked practices of an earlier time, based on premises that would never recur today. But as the video makes clear, the publications that resulted from this study continued to be cited by those who argue that through therapy, gays and lesbians can be “cured.”

Here’s the second part of the story:





Third installment:





Transcripts:

First Video

Narrator: Keeping them honest. Every night AC360. CNN, weeknights 10 eastern.
Mark Murphy: This is my brother Kirk Andrew Murphy. [Indicates picture.] This is when he was supposed to be…[unintelligible].
Cooper: [Narrating] This is the last time Mark Murphy remembers his brother, Kirk, as a happy child. The photo was taken when Kirk was four, a year before he was placed in experimental therapy at UCLA to treat what doctor’s identified as “exaggerated feminine behavior.”
Maris: It left Kirk just, totally stricken with the belief that he was broken—that he was different from everybody else.
Cooper: [Narrating over] Kirk’s sister Maris and brother Mark say that Kirk was never the same after therapy.
Mark: The only thing they did was destroy our brother. I mean they took him away from us. He was, empty. There was nothing there.
Cooper [narrating]: In 1970 Kirk Murphy was a smart, outgoing five year old growing up near Los Angeles. His mother, KT Murphy, however, was worried about him.
KT Murphy: I was becoming a little concerned about playing with the girl’s toys, and stroking the hair, you know, the long hair and stuff. I was seeing effeminate mannerisms that bothered me because I wanted Kirk to grow up and have a normal life.
Cooper: [Narrating] Mrs. Murphy says she saw a psychologist on a local TV program talking about behavior like Kirk’s.
KT: He was naming all these things. “If your son is doing five of these ten things. Does he prefer girl’s toys instead of boy’s toys?”
Cooper: [narrating] The psychologist was recruiting young boys for a government funded program at UCLA, part of which was designed to reverse perceived feminine behavior. What one doctor involved with the program later called, “Sissy-boy syndrome.”
KT: Him being the expert I thought, well, maybe I should go ahead and take Kirk in. In other words nip it in the bud.
Cooper: [narrating] For nearly a year Kirk was treated at UCLA, mainly by a man named George Rekers. Rekers was a doctorate student at the time, but went on to become a founding member of the “Family Research Council” which lobbies against gay marriage, adoption, and laws that seek to protect the rights of gays and lesbians. Rekers has also been a prominent proponent of the belief homosexuality can be prevented.
Cooper: [Narrating] To treat Kirk’s so called “sissy-behavior” he was repeatedly placed in a room with two tables. He was observed through a one-way window. He was given toys to play with, and could choose between traditionally masculine ones like plastic knives, and guns or feminine ones like dolls and a play crib. He could also choose clothing to wear: an army hat and military fatigues or a girl’s dress, jewelry, and wig. Kirk’s mother was brought into the room and told to ignore him when he played with feminine toys or clothes, and compliment him when he played with masculine ones. In a case study he wrote George Rekers noted that when Kirk’s mother ignored him he would beg for attention from her, cry, even throwing tantrums. But Mrs. Murphy was told to continue to ignore him.
Maris: And in this particular incident they write that he becomes so upset he’s just beside himself, that they actually have to remove him from the room. And after they remove him from the room they come in and tell my mom “It’s working” and then they bring him back in and start all over.
Cooper: Having read this report… I keep coming back to the word “experimenting.”
Maris: Oh absolutely, without a doubt.
Cooper: Because it doesn’t seem like this is some proven treatment. This is…
Maris: No.
Cooper: This is experimenting.
Cooper: [narrating] Experimental therapy even continued outside UCLA. In Kirk’s home his parent’s were told to us poker chips as a system of reward and punishment to make Kirk act more masculine.
Cooper: Do you remember these chips?
Mark: Yes I do. Oh, yes I do.
Cooper: Were you awarded them as well. You got—were you a part of this?
Mark: Yes I was. My parents added me to it so that they could reinforce that big brother’s doing it too so everything’s okay.
Cooper: These are the actual chips?
Mark: Yes, the actual real chips.
Cooper: So the blue chips were for masculine behavior?
Mark: Yes.
Cooper: And the red chips were penalty for feminine behavior?
Mark: Yes.
Cooper: So if Kirk played with one of your dolls he would get a red chip.
Maris: Yes.
Cooper: [narrating] According to George Rekers’ case study the red chips resulted in physical punishment by spanking from the father.
Cooper: Do you remember the beating?
Mark: Oh yes sir, I do. Many times did I move the stacks around.
Cooper: What do you mean?
Mark: [crying] I took some of the red chips and put them on my side. I did see the beatings and it was just like, you know?
Cooper: You would take Kirk’s red chips—
Mark: Yes, sir.
Cooper: Things that he had been given for feminine behavior, you would take them yourself so that he wouldn’t get the beating?
Mark: Yes.
Mark: We would come home from school and it turned into that was the first thing that you did when you walked through the door was that you looked and what was the chip count today? What happened? What changed? And it was always bed. A whipping every Friday night.
KT: I do remember one time he spanked him so hard that he had welts up and down his back and on his buttocks. And I remember Mark saying, “Cry harder and he won’t hit so hard.” Today it would be abuse.
Cooper: [narrating] According to Kirk’s brother and sister his outgoing personality changed, and he began to behave in a way he knew his parents and George Rekers wanted him to. His family says the impact of this experimental therapy lasted his entire life.
Mark: He had no idea how to relate to people. It was like someone just walked up and turned his light switch off, “we got what we wanted and, well, see you later.”
Maris: He actually ate his lunch in the boys bathroom for three years. [crying] Where he didn’t have to put himself out there, even just to have a friend.
Cooper: [narrating] In his case study of the UCLA experiment George Rekers called Kirk “Kraig” to protect his identity. He considered his work with Kirk a success. Writing, “Kraig’s feminine behavior was gone.” Claiming Kraig became “indistinguishable” from any other boy. In numerous other published reports and studies in his nearly three decade career since, George Rekers has continued to write positively about Kirk’s treatment. Using it as proof that homosexuality can be prevented. Kirk’s family has only recently discovered Rekers’ writings and they’re outraged. They say Kirk was gay, but because of the treatment he was subjected to as a child, struggled with his attraction to men his whole life.
Maris: He acknowledged himself as a gay man 1985 on. He never had a committed, loving relationship. Because he wouldn’t allow himself to.
Cooper: [narrating] Unable or unwilling to have a committed relationship with a man, Kirk focused on his work and chose a career where being openly gay wasn’t even possible. He spent eight years in the U.S. Airforce, and then held a high profile position with an American finance company in India.
[Home video] Maris: Kirk what do you think of your nephew?
[Home video] Kirk: Are we on camera? Or just taking pictures?
Cooper: [narrating] This visit home in June of 2003 was the last time Kirk’s family saw him alive. Nearly six months later he took his own life, hanging himself from a fan in his apartment in New Dehli. Kirk Murphy was 38 years old.
Maris: I used to spend so much time thinking, why would he kill himself at the age of thirty-eight? Doesn’t make any sense to me. What I now think is, I don’t know how he made it that long.

Second Video

Narrator: Keeping them honest every night: AC360. CNN, weeknights 10 Eastern.
Maris: Kirk what do you think of your nephew?
Kirk: Oh we’re on camera? Or just taking pictures?
Cooper: [narrating] Kirk Murphy killed himself nearly six months after this video was taken in 2003. He was 38 years old and had struggled with being gay for most of his life. A struggle his family blames on experimental therapy that Kirk was subjected to as a five year old child. Experimental therapy that identified him as effeminate. A so-called “sissy-boy,” and tried to fundamentally change his behavior. Kirk’s mother enrolled him in the experimental therapy at UCLA in 1970 because of concerns he was playing with girl’s toys.
KT: And I trusted these people because they were supposed to be the experts.
Maris: What they really told him was that the very core of who he was, was broken.
KT: I think that my husband and I and Kirk were manipulated by this program. I think Kirk would have been better off if I hadn’t have taken him.
Cooper: [narrating] Kirk’s family had no idea George Rekers has, for the last three decades, used Kirk as an example of a child who’s effeminate behavior was successfully altered. In numerous publications George Rekers has written about Kirk, calling him “Kraig” to hide his identity.
KT: I blame them for the way his life turned out. If one person causes another person’s death—I don’t care if it’s twenty or fifty years—that’s the same as suicide in my eyes.
Cooper: [narrating] Of course the actual reason someone commits suicide is difficult if not impossible to know. Kirk’s family’s allegations that George Rekers therapy caused Kirk to take his own life are just that—allegations.
CNN Interviewer [sorry, his name is unintelligible]: [says name] I’d like to talk to you about your therapy that you did with “Kraig.”
Cooper: [narrating] George Rekers didn’t respond to CNN’s repeated requests for an interview, so our producers tracked him down in Florida to ask him about the Murphy family’s allegations.
CNN Reporter: Would you just talk to us about your therapy with a patient named “Kraig?”
Rekers: It’s published.
CNN: We’ve interviewed Kraig’s family recently. They say that the therapy you did with him as a child lead directly to his suicide as an adult. What do you say about that?
Rekers: I didn’t know that. That’s too bad.
CNN: You’re not aware of his suicide?
Rekers: No.
CNN: What do you say to the family if they say that the therapy that you did with him as a child lead to his suicide as an adult?
Rekers: Oh. Well, I think scientifically that would be inaccurate to assume that it was the therapy. But I do grieve for the parents, now that you’ve told me that news. I think that’s very sad.
Cooper: [narrating] Rekers pointed out that his work with Kirk took place decades before his suicide.
Rekers: That’s a long time ago. You have a hypothesis that a positive treatment back in the 1970s had something to do with something happening decades later. That hypothesis would need a lot of scientific investigation to see if it’s valid. Uh, two independent psychologist from me had evaluated him and said he was better adjusted after treatment, so it wasn’t my opinion.
Cooper: [narrating] One of those psychologists has since died. But the other, Larry Furgusen, told us he did evaluate Kirk Murphy as a teenager. He told us the family was well-adjusted, and that he didn’t see any red flags when evaluating Kirk. But a psychiatrist that followed up with Kirk when he was 18, Dr. Richard Green, wrote that Kirk told him he tried to kill himself the year before because he didn’t, quote, “Want to grow up to be gay.”
Cooper: [narrating] Rekers insists the therapy was intended to help Kirk and his parents.
Rekers: I only meant to help. The rationale was positive. To help children, help the parents, who come to us in their distress. Asking questions, “What can we do to help our child be better adjusted?”
Cooper: [narrating] George Rekers has had a nearly three decade career as a champion of the anti-gay movement. In addition to being a founding member of the Family Research Council, he was also a board member of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH. An organization whose members attempt to treat those who struggle with what they call “unwanted homosexuality.” Just last year, however, in a surprising twist George Rekers days as prominent anti-gay activist abruptly ended. Rekers was caught with a young male escort he’d hired to accompany him on a trip to Europe. This photograph was taken of them in the airport in Miami. Rekers says he’s not gay and denies and sexual contact with the escort. He says he hired him to help him carry his luggage. The escort says he gave Rekers “sexual massages” while in Europe. Rekers resigned from NARTH after the scandal, and the Family Research Council says they haven’t had contact with him in over a decade. Rekers’ reputation among those who oppose homosexuality may be tarnished, but his research is still being cited. In this book he co-authored “Handbook of Therapy for Unwanted Homosexual Attractions,” he continues to cite his work with Kirk, whom he calls “Kraig,” as a success. He writes that the case was, quote “The first experimentally demonstrated reversal of a cross-gender identity with psychological treatment.” The book was published in 2009, six years after Kirk Murphy took his own life.
Marisa: The “research” [finger quotes] um, has a post-script to it that needs to be added. And that is to acknowledge that Kirk Andrew Murphy was Kraig, and he was gay, and he committed suicide.
Cooper: What do you want people to remember about Kirk, to know about Kirk?
Marisa: That this was a little boy. Who deserved protection, respect, and unconditional love. And I don’t want him to be remembered as a science experiment. He was a person.

[American Dream]

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... good-hair/

RACE, GENDER, AND “GOOD HAIR”
by Gwen Sharp, Aug 6, 2009

Tracy R. sent in the trailer for the movie “Good Hair,” a documentary by Chris Rock:




This movie looks awesome. It humorously addresses the social construction of “good” hair, which means, of course, straight hair. As we see in the trailer, African American women often feel pressured to wear their hair straight in order to be seen as attractive; this is similar to how lighter skin is often defined as more attractive than darker skin, even by other African Americans (and Latinos). It’s also interesting that the pursuit of “good” hair has created a global market for human hair.

[American Dream]

[Allegro]

The secret of beauty revealed

[REFER.]

_________________
SOME PHOTOSHOP DISASTERS

[American Dream]

Thanks, Allegro for your contributions to this thread (and in general)- much appreciated.


http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... rostitute/

HOW CAN YOU TELL IF YOU’RE A PROSTITUTE?

by Guest Blogger Laura Agustín, May 18, 2009

Most of the heat in conversations about commercial sex goes to the idea of prostitution – whether it can ever be a normalized profession called “sex work” or whether it is by definition “violence against women.” Some people think marriage is prostitution; others think all paid work is. For myself, I wonder how people imagine there to be a clear line between commercial and non-commercial sexual transactions, since all of life seems saturated with both.





My curiosity was piqued when I saw the above photo from Zapata’s, a middle-class bar-restaurant located in Tongren Lu, a popular Shanghai nightlife area. It’s not the kind of place where I’d expect to see a sign about prostitution. Trying to figure this one out led me into the expat world, where only insiders— most of the vocal ones men— understand what’s going on. I hung around Internet forums where this sign made the rounds and explanations ranged from “it was the bar manager’s private joke” to “the place is filthy with prostitutes; decent girls won’t go there.” …

Discussants at forums like Shanghaiexpat say too many “pros” get past bar bouncers and warn each other about falling into the clutches of girls who try to get you inside talk-talk bars, where they will only flirt and promote your buying of drinks.

Some call such bars fronts for prostitution. Others make a class distinction between talk-talk bars and hostess bars, the latter being more upscale…

So, what have we got? A commercial bar scene where men with money want females to be available to them for picking up, flirting, and perhaps going somewhere to have sex. Yes? Those women may accept gifts of drinks, food, taxis, and flowers without losing their shine…The taint comes when women do exactly the same things with the addition of asking for cash.

It’s subtle and confusing, isn’t it? When is it legitimate for women to take money or accept drinks? What about the customers— why is there no distinction amongst them? They take out their wallets in all kinds of situations— and that’s considered fine— except when they position themselves as victims of predators…

What if I go to Shanghai alone, get dressed up, and appear alone at Zapata’s bar? Is it okay as long as I don’t talk to any men or am seen to be paying for my own drinks? What happens if the barman brings me a parasol-decorated margarita on behalf of the guy across the bar, who’s already paid for it? Should I now feel worried about being bounced?

———————-

Laura Agustín writes at Border Thinking on Migration, Trafficking, and Commercial Sex! Laura wrote the book Sex at the Margins and investigates the complexities and contradictions of commercial sex.

[Allegro]

Thanks, Allegro for your contributions to this thread (and in general)- much appreciated.

Thank You for the work you’ve put into this thread, AD. Many times I’ve relaxed back into my chair reading and pondering subjects in here, realizing in another moment how really wonderful life on Earth is with visual and performing arts. And I know you know that others know that, too. The arts and quietness are my personal balance to economic aspects of love. Sincerely said.

~ A.