Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Thin Line Emotions
Unjust.
This morning reality hit hard. In sainsburys they sell a disgusting FHM magazine for £6, and in mens health they have an article about men 'having' women when they want, and 'in order to make your woman want you, you need to make her jealous by flirting with other women'. Whilst outside, a man with no legs sits in a wheelchair selling coloured pens holding a sign which read 'please help me' and an 80 year old big issue seller stands selling his goods. Why does capitalism allow people to spend six quid on vile images of women wearing nothing and let old people go cold and hungry on the streets....
Its upsetting. What can we do to change things?
This morning reality hit hard. In sainsburys they sell a disgusting FHM magazine for £6, and in mens health they have an article about men 'having' women when they want, and 'in order to make your woman want you, you need to make her jealous by flirting with other women'. Whilst outside, a man with no legs sits in a wheelchair selling coloured pens holding a sign which read 'please help me' and an 80 year old big issue seller stands selling his goods. Why does capitalism allow people to spend six quid on vile images of women wearing nothing and let old people go cold and hungry on the streets....
Its upsetting. What can we do to change things?
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Judith supports student occupations
Letter of support from Judith Butler
I am sorry not to be able to come there directly to address the students and to provide my support in person. But please know that I support your efforts and hope that you have success. This is an important moment to oppose the decimation of the social welfare estate, especially its impact on educational institutions, as well as the rise of neo-liberal calculations in relation to university life. Students are threatened with becoming an acutely ‘precarious’ population, exposed to poverty, debt, and lack of educational opportunities. Please accept my strong support for your brave and just actions.
Judith Butler
Read the rest of the website including demands HERE
I am sorry not to be able to come there directly to address the students and to provide my support in person. But please know that I support your efforts and hope that you have success. This is an important moment to oppose the decimation of the social welfare estate, especially its impact on educational institutions, as well as the rise of neo-liberal calculations in relation to university life. Students are threatened with becoming an acutely ‘precarious’ population, exposed to poverty, debt, and lack of educational opportunities. Please accept my strong support for your brave and just actions.
Judith Butler
Read the rest of the website including demands HERE
Chav boxing – taking the class war to a whole new level
That disgusting Gymbox "chav boxing" thing finally seems to be drawing some complaints:
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Last additions
Narcissism-Tom says he can do a lacan on this.
Woman as seductress and original sin. Guilt.
p.s. taken from the article ibliography/ Excerpts from:
Woman as Abject: "Resisting Cultural and Religious Myths That Condone Violence against Women" Author(s): Elaine J. Lawless
Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 237-269Published by: Western States Folklore Society
The biblical narrative of Garden of Eden forms religious myths about women, that are reinforced through popular programs. As effective means of controlling and subordinating woman, guilt and shame serves the interests of the society in which male supremacy is to be maintained.
The religious and cultural significance of the biblical story of Adam and Eve and their behaviors in the Garden of Eden has serious repercussions even in the postmodern context of contemporary society. Everyone knows this story and could recite a version of it without much difficulty -whether it is part of their "creation myth" or not. What is more surprising, perhaps, than its tenacity is the continued potency of this story, one of the oldest religious creation stories that has its roots in both oral and literary art and culture, particularly in the ways it prescribes beliefs about women and what they should be like. Even as the various versions of this story are questioned, the power of the core story remains in tact. Feminists' rereadings of the story disregard interpretations that posit that Eve's weak curiosity was the ruin of humankind. It has been suggested that Eve's curiosity was not weak at all but a healthy curiosity that brought about humankind's liberation from the passivity of the pastoral. The first and most popular interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, particularly the parts that locate the blame for disobedience and the subsequent expulsion from the garden squarely on Eve. This is firmly entrenched in contemporary culture to such an extent that the view of Eve as the sinner and seductor who causes problems for men and for all of humankind pervades mental and cultural constructs. This narrative constructs of Eve as Evil. Woman as Evil continue to support a view of women as abject-that is, whatever is deemed polluted, dirty, and sinful-to such an extent that violence rendered against women is often construed, consciously or not, as justifiable given the degraded status of women within contemporary cultures. Was eating the apple a terrible misdeed that destroyed humankind's access to the pure Garden of Eden, or was Eve, in fact, courageous in opening the door to knowledge and consciousness, as well as mortality? Eve disobeyed God's warning in the Garden to not eat the fruit of the one designated tree; the snake (Satan) tempted her into taking a bite of the now totally symbolic apple. Eve, in turn, tempted Adam to eat of the apple as well. Eve is a seductress. It is also a role that society has assigned to her. She supposed to seduce as it is only 'natural' for her, as it is the role that she has subscribed to herself and it is reinforced by the Biblical narrative.
Understanding that most biblical narrative metaphorical .
that the "knowledge" Eve discovered was sexual knowledge. And she learned the mastery of suduction. She and Adam became ashamed of their nakedness, covered themselves, and fled from God's anger. It was in this manner, then, that sexual knowledge and desire came to be associated with sin. and woman represents that sin. The story has had tremendous power to shape perceptions of "women," perceptions that are imbedded in contemporary western culture and continue shaping cultures. The myth of Adam and Eve has is projected a negative image of the male-female relationship and of the 'nature' of women that is still deeply imbedded in the modern psyche" (Daly 1973:45)
"The point is simply that by its built `-in bias and its blind reinforcement of prejudice the myth does express the "original sin" of patriarchal religion. The message that this narrative unintentionally transmits leads to many the implications which are evident in our every day lives. In patriarchy, with the help of religion, women have been the primordial scapegoats." (Daly 1973:47)
The dangers of these implications are many, but perhaps most destructive for women themselves is that women who also know this pervasive myth often believe the message transmitted by the narrative of Garden of Eden is true.
Daly writes:
"It happens that those conditioned to see themselves as 'bad' or 'sick' in a real sense become such. Women who are conditioned to live out of the abject role assigned to the female sex actually appear to "deserve" the contempt heaped upon the second sex. " (Daly 1973:49)
On representation
Sally Robinson in Engendering the subject: Gender and Self-Representation writes:
"representation" is an act of violence, perpetrated by the self-present and knowing subject against, one can only assume, the Others that that subject desires to know and control. Thus, representation is a form of colonization, an imperial move on the part of the subject. Yet representation ... has another, and contradictory, meaning: representation must also be made to signify the process by which ("invisible") subjects"legitimize" themselves by inscribing their experience, their desires, and their "reality" into discourse. The difference between these two meanings of representation, both political, is in the conceptualization of the subject of representation. ... That subject is akin to the humanist "self."
[1991:190]
Solutions?!
This conscious transformation and peoples resistence to violence through surveillance and control marks the essence of the process of how women can and do redefine their roles and their intrinsic worth in ways that defy the power of the master narrative of woman as evil, sinner, and full of guilt, and in need to apologize and make up for the fact that she not “complete”..
Woman as seductress and original sin.
Guilt. Women feel guilty if they don't dress up for their husbands
knowledge of being naked. Eve nobody told eve about this and therefore she didn't know until she was told. In makeover scenario, as in Susan Boyle eg she was unaware of how people perceived her until Piers morgan then consequent beratting on youtube comments etc...
Woman as seductress and original sin. Guilt.
p.s. taken from the article ibliography/ Excerpts from:
Woman as Abject: "Resisting Cultural and Religious Myths That Condone Violence against Women" Author(s): Elaine J. Lawless
Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 237-269Published by: Western States Folklore Society
The biblical narrative of Garden of Eden forms religious myths about women, that are reinforced through popular programs. As effective means of controlling and subordinating woman, guilt and shame serves the interests of the society in which male supremacy is to be maintained.
The religious and cultural significance of the biblical story of Adam and Eve and their behaviors in the Garden of Eden has serious repercussions even in the postmodern context of contemporary society. Everyone knows this story and could recite a version of it without much difficulty -whether it is part of their "creation myth" or not. What is more surprising, perhaps, than its tenacity is the continued potency of this story, one of the oldest religious creation stories that has its roots in both oral and literary art and culture, particularly in the ways it prescribes beliefs about women and what they should be like. Even as the various versions of this story are questioned, the power of the core story remains in tact. Feminists' rereadings of the story disregard interpretations that posit that Eve's weak curiosity was the ruin of humankind. It has been suggested that Eve's curiosity was not weak at all but a healthy curiosity that brought about humankind's liberation from the passivity of the pastoral. The first and most popular interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, particularly the parts that locate the blame for disobedience and the subsequent expulsion from the garden squarely on Eve. This is firmly entrenched in contemporary culture to such an extent that the view of Eve as the sinner and seductor who causes problems for men and for all of humankind pervades mental and cultural constructs. This narrative constructs of Eve as Evil. Woman as Evil continue to support a view of women as abject-that is, whatever is deemed polluted, dirty, and sinful-to such an extent that violence rendered against women is often construed, consciously or not, as justifiable given the degraded status of women within contemporary cultures. Was eating the apple a terrible misdeed that destroyed humankind's access to the pure Garden of Eden, or was Eve, in fact, courageous in opening the door to knowledge and consciousness, as well as mortality? Eve disobeyed God's warning in the Garden to not eat the fruit of the one designated tree; the snake (Satan) tempted her into taking a bite of the now totally symbolic apple. Eve, in turn, tempted Adam to eat of the apple as well. Eve is a seductress. It is also a role that society has assigned to her. She supposed to seduce as it is only 'natural' for her, as it is the role that she has subscribed to herself and it is reinforced by the Biblical narrative.
Understanding that most biblical narrative metaphorical .
that the "knowledge" Eve discovered was sexual knowledge. And she learned the mastery of suduction. She and Adam became ashamed of their nakedness, covered themselves, and fled from God's anger. It was in this manner, then, that sexual knowledge and desire came to be associated with sin. and woman represents that sin. The story has had tremendous power to shape perceptions of "women," perceptions that are imbedded in contemporary western culture and continue shaping cultures. The myth of Adam and Eve has is projected a negative image of the male-female relationship and of the 'nature' of women that is still deeply imbedded in the modern psyche" (Daly 1973:45)
"The point is simply that by its built `-in bias and its blind reinforcement of prejudice the myth does express the "original sin" of patriarchal religion. The message that this narrative unintentionally transmits leads to many the implications which are evident in our every day lives. In patriarchy, with the help of religion, women have been the primordial scapegoats." (Daly 1973:47)
The dangers of these implications are many, but perhaps most destructive for women themselves is that women who also know this pervasive myth often believe the message transmitted by the narrative of Garden of Eden is true.
Daly writes:
"It happens that those conditioned to see themselves as 'bad' or 'sick' in a real sense become such. Women who are conditioned to live out of the abject role assigned to the female sex actually appear to "deserve" the contempt heaped upon the second sex. " (Daly 1973:49)
On representation
Sally Robinson in Engendering the subject: Gender and Self-Representation writes:
"representation" is an act of violence, perpetrated by the self-present and knowing subject against, one can only assume, the Others that that subject desires to know and control. Thus, representation is a form of colonization, an imperial move on the part of the subject. Yet representation ... has another, and contradictory, meaning: representation must also be made to signify the process by which ("invisible") subjects"legitimize" themselves by inscribing their experience, their desires, and their "reality" into discourse. The difference between these two meanings of representation, both political, is in the conceptualization of the subject of representation. ... That subject is akin to the humanist "self."
[1991:190]
Solutions?!
This conscious transformation and peoples resistence to violence through surveillance and control marks the essence of the process of how women can and do redefine their roles and their intrinsic worth in ways that defy the power of the master narrative of woman as evil, sinner, and full of guilt, and in need to apologize and make up for the fact that she not “complete”..
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