feminist blogs in english

experimental documentary about black trans men. please visit stillblackfilm.org

I just came across this blog while browsing. I really like it. The blogger writes about things that I can really related to right now, like persistent insomnia, loneliness, and the mysterious nature of relationships with other people, but mostly with the self. Speak it, write it, a friend of mine demanded that I do for a project we are collaborating on about childhood sexual abuse. We've both

I was in the airport yesterday, returning home from a visit with the family for the holiday, when I noticed a lengthy news report about her. Shocked to understand it was because she'd been assassinated. I have long admired this woman, who exemplified what it means to stand firmly on the land that gave you birth, carve your name into the earth, and then give your life for the liberation of it's

While participating in an email discussion on hair care products and cancer links, I just learned that upwards of 65 to 80 percent of us African-American women routinely relax our hair, spending nearly 200 million dollars a year on chemicals and related products. This is astounding to me given the damage done to our skin and our health that we've understood for a very long time now, and been very

a visual portrait of black trans men. a film by kortney ryan ziegler this is a quick preview of my current experimental film project which is the first documentary to investigate the lives of black transgender men. contact: kortney@blackstarmedia.org for more info or visit stillblackfilm.org peace -krz

Yoga and sex. They simply go hand-in-hand-in-foot.

The West has taken a liking to its earthiness and its body-toning possibilities, but hasn’t really take to the whole ascetic deal.

Just look at the way it has “developed”. We no longer bother with Sanskrit names like Ashtanga or Iyengar for schools of yoga. We just take whatever’s at hand. That’s because they seem to be taking other forms of exercise, adding a Namaste or two, and calling it yoga, in the hope that yoga’s sexy charm will draw in the crowds and give it the stamp of coolness.

A few years ago Monkey Yoga arrived. Because cosmopolitans just don’t have the time to sit around and gain spiritual peace and body tranquility. They need a tight ass and time is of the essence! So they do a barefoot workout with yoga-like movements speeded up to trigger aerobic burn-off capacities. Well, a good aerobic workout does boost the libido, but why do they have to call it yoga?

Another recent addition is Bikram Yoga. Sure this is yoga, but it’s done in a room at 40˚C (105˚F) and 40% humidity. And if you were wondering, it didn’t come out of Southern India where that’s the temperature out on the streets on a mid-summer’s day (and where you wont see people practicing yoga in such conditions), but it’s straight out of Beverly Hills. It has even been copyrighted! 

 This past week, we’ve learned of the new thing in New York City. It’s called Face Yoga. They say it can do from the inside what the plastic surgeon does with her knife. OK, then...      
  
                   
                    Courtesy of Reuters

I can’t help wandering why you need to go togged out to the gym to do what the Maoris in New Zealand (and of course their co-national All Black rugby team) have been doing for generations as a war dance. 

          

My suspicion is that someone was looking to put a new spin on yoga, and the imagination was running thin. Although breathing has been well covered, the facial muscles have been only minimally explored. Now our facial muscles are not only about youthful looks; they are also very much aligned with sexual nuances. Tongues, lips and eyes are nothing if they are not the most direct indicators of sexual interest and explicit sexual acts.

So don’t think you’re fooling us with anti-aging rhetoric. Facial muscle exercises can’t give you the elastic skin of your youth. They can, though, do a lot for suggesting new and improved oral techniques. 


More about how yoga improves your sex life

Sometimes I think that there are too many academics with not enough to do. Like the good people in the Psychology Department at the University of Austin. They set out to elucidate all the reasons why people have sex.

They unearthed 237 reasons. That doesn’t surprise me at all; what surprises me are the researchers’ comments about the unexpectedness of the large number of reasons given. I thought we understood by now that there are more motivations for sex than babies and orgasms. I definitely thought that psychology graduates knew that. 



OK, so what did we learn from their long, long list? Apparently the most popular reasons are:
 Pure attraction
 Physical pleasure
 Expression of love
 Feeling desired
 Making the relationship more serious
 Curiosity
 Celebration
 Uncontrollable circumstances
 Because the opportunity exists

Some of the less orthodox reasons included:
 Revenge
 Burning calories
 Impressing friends
 Punishing oneself
 Breaking up another relationship
 Getting closer to God
 Getting rid of a headache / menstrual cramps
 Reaffirming sexual orientation
 It was the only way my partner would spend time with me
 As a favour to someone

The not too bashful list of reasons for having sex is certainly entertaining, but I’d say its main contribution is to suggest to the psychologists that they spend less time making lists and more time doing couch work.

Efforts to lift every voice in discussions and strategies to address climate change is long overdue, and it's about time we call out the structural oppression in its impact on communities of color. Here's an effort and there are others which need to be cited: Joint Center Forms Partnership to Bring More African American Voices Into Climate Change Debate

Last month 12-year old Budour died after her family chose to have her clitoris surgically mutilated. This little Egyptian girl is only one of the estimated 6,000 girls who undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) every single day, but her death has triggered the slowly working cogs of progress towards eradicating this vicious cultural practice meant to control and condemn women's sexuality. 



I just wanted to point out the ludicrous. The Ministry of Health in Egypt has pretty much banned the practice in its many forms, but it’s never a problem to find doctors who will perform it, even in the most modern clinics. Remember the Hippocratic Oath that they pledged to never to harm? 

The Grand Mufti of Egypt, the head of the religious establishment, has outlawed FGM. The head of the supreme council for Islamic affairs has gone on record saying that “female circumcision” is a non-Islamic tradition and there is nothing in the Islamic law enforcing it. But the extremist Islamic Brotherhood and some of the more radical Muslim organizations consider banning it to be a smear of their beliefs. 

With women finally placing themselves in the forefront of the battle, women like Egypt’s first woman, Suzanne Mubarak and Somali supermodel, Waris Dirie it has become ever more apparent that this war of liberation is being fought and resisted by women. The establishment has realized that FGM cannot carry on, but it is the women, the generation that had it done to them, that are refusing to budge when it comes to their daughters. 

Polls in Egypt have shown that 80% of women in rural areas and 73% of women in urban areas still support FGM. Does it matter that there are fines or jail sentences or that doctors and nurses stand to lose their licenses? No, there will always be a willing barber or midwife, who will rise to the call when they believe that Mother knows best. 

Listen, mothers, this may just sound like culturally-insensitive noise pollution a la Western bleeding hearts and secular lawmakers, who don’t have very much sway in your world. But it is not only us doing the shouting. Listen to the voices of those victims that have stepped out of the societies that did this to them, and are rewarded with the security to have their say. They are telling us of their suffering and they are telling us how they mourn those parts of their sexuality that you pillaged from them. So you have disabled them but you did not managed to de-sexualize them. You have failed. 

So stop it. 

i'm reading a book on the involuntary release of kundalini, the energy lifeforce that is within in all of us, but starts at the base of the spine. Apparently, I've been experiencing this release all year because 2007 has been a challenging one for me, and a lot of other people i know and don't know all that well.