Hall, "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"

Link  

 

The Invention of Thanksgiving: Massacres, myths, and the making of the great November holiday.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/the-invention-of-thanksgiving?fbclid=IwAR102qvjHvIMzPqdRwy5FeamHwueqGQTourvdQuzSRcjzu4BtO4LUtcHrts

Paris as symbol in "Lilacs"

The way we think about biological sex is wrong | Emily Quinn

"Americans and Their Myths: EVERYTHING has been said about the United States," Jean-Paul Sartre

October 18, 1947

https://www.thenation.com/article/americans-and-their-myths/

Roland Barthes - How to Read the Signs in the News

An Introduction to Roland Barthes's Mythologies - A Macat Literature Ana...

A pretty good introduction to Barthes, but can you spot the bourgeois/capitalist spin?

Come again: Why ejaculating is really, really good for you

Come again: Why ejaculating is really, really good for you

Skeptical of the Porn Skeptics

Skeptical of the Porn Skeptics: Is porn viewing really changing young brains, skewing our views of “normal” sexuality, causing sexual dysfunction, and undermining our ability to relate to real sex? In this article, certified sex therapist and one of the United States’ leading experts on pornography, Marty Klein, responds to the article we published last week by Philip Zimbardo and Gary Wilson.

Utah and the war on porn: Our long national history of condemning “obscenity” as public enemy #1

Utah and the war on porn: Our long national history of condemning “obscenity” as public enemy #1

Edward Said on the The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations

What Is Privilege?

Chris Hayes Spoofs White Power Structure Has No Clue How To Stop Culture...

Lost and Found Goes to the Dogs

"Some radical animal people are critical of any human training 'of' another critter. (I insist 'with' is possible.) What I see as polite manners and beautiful skill acquired by the dogs I know best, they regard as strong evidence of excessive human control and a sign of the degradation of domestic animals... The coming into being of something unexpected, something new and free, something outside the rules of function and calculation, something not ruled by the logic of reproduction of the same, is what training with each other is about." ~Donna Haraway

Look who KLM’s dedicated Lost & Found team at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has helping passengers find lost items. Video from KLM
Posted by A Fly Guy's Cabin Crew Lounge on Thursday, September 25, 2014

Karl Marx on Alienation

The Underground Railroad Was One of America's First Co-Ops: A Black History Tour of Cooperative Economics

The Underground Railroad Was One of America's First Co-Ops: A Black History Tour of Cooperative Economics

Whitman's "I loved well those cities"—setting by Patrick J. Burns

"I loved well those cities" for narrator and band, commissioned by the Goldman Memorial Band, Dr. C. Christian Wilhjelm, Director, is based on excerpts of Walt Whitman’s poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." 

Jane Goodall on Science and Spirit: The Iconic Primatologist Talks to Bill Moyers and Reads Her Poem “The Old Wisdom”

 

Read more here.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on "Black Pathology"

"There is no evidence that black people are less responsible, less moral, or less upstanding in their dealings with America nor with themselves. But there is overwhelming evidence that America is irresponsible, immoral, and unconscionable in its dealings with black people and with itself. Urging African-Americans to become superhuman is great advice if you are concerned with creating extraordinary individuals. It is terrible advice if you are concerned with creating an equitable society. The black freedom struggle is not about raising a race of hyper-moral super-humans. It is about all people garnering the right to live like the normal humans they are."

Worth reading the whole article here.

Belle Knox Refuses To Be Marginalized

Feminism is—at least in part—about women's freedom to control their own bodies and to make their own decisions about what they want to do with them sexually. The gay and lesbian civil rights movement was birthed with the same commitment. Belle Knox pushes this conversation forward, challenging us to rethink sex negativity, the male-centered sex hierarchy, the "charmed circle" of appropriate sexual behaviors, and to acknowledge sexwork "as work," as honest work, as work that she freely chooses to do because she enjoys both the work itself and the economic rewards.

Eight Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the U.S. Crushed Youth Resistance

Theory students: As you know, we'll be talking about this Tuesday night. As you read, be thinking about Foucault, carceral networks and panopticism, about Althusser, interpolation, subjectivity, the ISA and the RSA, be thinking about Marx and false consciousness, Derrida, totalization, and "free play." All of these thinkers and their ideas are at play in this essay.

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

ANNIE - Official Trailer - In Theaters Christmas 2014

There will be racist comments (they've already started) that say Annie was white and a redhead, and that therefore she can only be played by a white, red-headed girl. Representations of Santa have to be white for the same reason. Even Jesus "has" to be white (even though we know he wasn't). Racism is, of course, alive and well in America. But there are happy moments of progress that need to be marked and celebrated!

 

Re: the "N"-Word and Who Gets to Use It

Here's why it's not okay for us white folks to use the "n"-word, while it is okay for African-Americans—and why that is not a "double standard."

Ill Doctrine: The Last Word on That Word from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

Lupita Nyong'o Speech on Black Beauty

This Little Boy With a Rare Condition Lived His Life in Fear. But Then He Met This 3-Legged Dog.

This Little Boy With a Rare Condition Lived His Life in Fear. But Then He Met This 3-Legged Dog.

The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation (KNGF) commercial for veteran dogs

Native Americans call themselves many things...

Budweiser Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial -- "Puppy Love"

Literary theory students: We aren't to the section of the course on significant others (canines, cyborgs, equines) yet, but we'll be catching up with this shortly.

A stunning degree of explanatory power in one small image.

The Power of Empathy

An animated short explains the difference between empathy and sympathy.

The Doll Test and Internalized Racism

The clear preference for white dolls in psychological experiments since the 1940s has consistently revealed childrens' association of whiteness with beauty, intelligence, and goodness. The first video is a composite of various doll tests. The second is from filmmaker Kiri Davis' recreation of the doll study in her 2006 “A Girl Like Me.”

Why Are Black Women Punished for Having Natural Hair? | Alternet

Why Are Black Women Punished for Having Natural Hair? | Alternet

Wealth Inequality in America

How to Be a "Reverse-Racist": An Actual Step-by-Step List for Oppressing White People

 

By A.D. Song and Mia McKenzie.

White people who are confronted with their white privilege and the white supremacist acts they perpetuate have been known to cry, "You're being a reverse-racist!" That is completely true: people of color have the power and control to create, perpetuate, and maintain brutal systematic reverse-racism that oppresses white people every day. As such, we have created this handy list on how to continue this oppression.

1. Enslave their bodies. Ship them from Germany, Sweden, and other exotic countries. Force them to build entire cities, roads, bridges. Force them to plant and harvest all the food everyone eats. Let an entire economic system be built on their backs, with their blood and sweat. Later, deny them access to the system they have been used to build, and accuse them of being extremely lazy. 

2. Steal their land. If they were here before you, steal their land. This is essential. Basically, just go in there and take it. If you have to kill some of them to get it…no worries. If you have to kill almost all of them to get it…shit, no worries. After you steal their land, make sure you create laws to keep them from ever returning to it. If they try to return anyway, build fences, and let bands of POC vigilantes patrol the borders with guns. If they somehow get past the borders and into your country, no worries, you can always just deport them.

 3. Enslave their minds. From these systems, build a long lasting institution of reverse-racism until all the violence and microaggressions make many white people into suspicious people with a lot of internalized self-hatred, health problems, and mental illnesses. Then deny them access to adequate mental health care. Or, adequate health care of any kind, while you're at it. ‘Cause, you know, fuck ‘em.

 4. Wipe out and/or appropriate their customs. Since many of their customs are savage and unworthy of preserving, wipe out their traditions of eating mashed potatoes and meatloaf, playing miniature golf, buying khakis at Banana Republic, and sleeping with thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets. For the customs you think are kinda cool, culturally appropriate from them. Sometimes wear a beret and lederhosen, because Swedish culture is really exotic even though it's inferior to ours.

 5. Break their espresso machines. With baseball bats or large hammers. Or, you know, just unplug them all.

 6. Call them "cracker." As people of color, we have been rightfully accused of being racist to white people, especially when we call them "cracker". As we all know, calling them "cracker" is egregiously offensive and horribly shocking because of this long, violent, reverse-racist history.

 7. Just keep being terrible to them. Do everything you can think of to make it so that white people make less money; their children are shot by cops; white women are at higher risk for assault and they are exotified until they no longer seem human; white men are beaten and thrown into jails because they look "suspicious" and "threatening"; they are racially profiled everywhere they go.

 8. Make sure most representations of them in the media are negative. They should almost always be portrayed as pasty, stringy-haired, rhythm-less, sexless, uptight, and booooring. Also, there should be very few representations of them and when they're portrayed at all, they should always only be the comic relief, the silent exotic sex object, the Debbie Downer, or the incompetent sidekick. They are only allowed to be easily forgettable, one-dimensional characters. Sometimes use POC actors in white-face to portray these white people. By presenting this ONE image of them all the time, you will be able to convince the rest of the population that all white people are like this, thus ensuring a widespread belief in their inferiority.

 9. Keep telling them how beautiful they are not. White people know they will never be beautiful with their boring sour cream complexions and blonde hair (that was actually caused because of mutations). Plaster people of color on every magazine, show them in every television show and movie, and praise them as the most beautiful. When white people cry at these injustices, bottle their tears and sell them as health creams for people of color. Nothing like a soothing lotion made from the pain of white folks!

 10. Go bananas! Force them underground and away from the sun to become even whiter, while you laugh manically like the cruel, bloodthirsty, oppressive person of color you are! Take their thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets to make POC-supremacist flags and hoods and march through the streets, spreading fear and terror. Every time a white person thinks your behavior is unfair or wrong, tell them that they should stop being so sensitive! We live in a post-reverse-racial society now! Jeez.

This post was written by A.D. Song and Mia McKenzie. Mia McKenzie is a winner of the Astraea Foundation's Writers Fund Award and the Leeway Foundation's Transformation Award. She just finished a novel and has a short story forthcoming in The Kenyon Review. A.D Song is an API student activist interested in QTPOC politics and sprinkling glitter everywhere they go.

Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) - Reverse Racism

"Divided & United": Songs Of The Civil War Re-Imagined

All Things Considered
NPR Nov 25, 2013

 A new collection of songs spans genres and generations to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Listen to the program here.

From “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era” by Michael Kimmel.

Michael Kimmel is a prominent American sociologist who writes about men and masculinity. This is a must read to understand the anger among right-wing mostly-rural white men. Of note is the blindness to issues of race and class: "Race consciousness is actually class consciousness without actually having to 'see' class. 'Race blindness' leads working-class people to turn right; if they did see class, they’d turn left and make common cause with different races in the same economic class." This is nothing new—it's how capitalism divides and conquers the lower classes, by seeding other kinds of religious and racial conflicts. But the consequences are dire as we've not learned to see this. I'm sympathetic to the right's nostalgia for the "old America" as a Jeffersonian "nation of producers"—but that America is on its deathbed, and these angry white men don't properly see how that is the work of the very right-wing polices they endorse. Click here.

I'm a Hub; You're a Node

Exploring Orientalism in Disney

Video can't be embedded. Click here.

Edward Said on "Orientalism"

from Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex"

Humanity as it Could Be

The Seven Most Controversial Erotic Novels

"In Search of Eros" students: 

Guess which novel is at the top of the list? Answer here.

Kate Chopin's "The Storm": A Plot Analysis

Rich People Just Care Less

OCTOBER 5, 2013, 2:25 PM
Rich People Just Care Less
By DANIEL GOLEMAN

A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power.

Read the full NY Times article here.

He's tough enough to be a Sissy in Wyoming

"It is creative apperception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living. Contrasted with this is a relationship to external reality which is one of compliance, the world and its details being recognized but only as something to be fitted in with or demanding adaptation..." D.W. Winnicott

Longtime cross-dresser Sissy Goodwin of Douglas, Wyo., has been anything but weak as he stands up to bigotry in the Cowboy State. His story here.