Feminism on punk ottawa.

Right Here.

The War of Heaven

You may as well call me an athiest. I don't claim to be part of any religion and I don't have any spiritual set of beliefs. Yet I have a confession to make, I absolutely love reading the War of Heaven. I love reading about the angels. See when I went to church as a child, we didn't get to hear about the angels. We mostly just heard about Jesus. Everynow and then one of the archangels (usually Michael) comes down to Earth to deliver a message but thats about it. See the selling point for me as a child would have been to learn about the angels. But we didnt get those stories. We got stories about how you shouldn't have sex before your married and do onto others.. the holy ghost.. blah blah, and jesus healed the leapers. I half wondered if they left out all the stuff about Heirarchy of Angels because they thought people wouldn't believe in it... cause um.. devine beings and all you know.. yet somehow it was easy to believe that Moses parted the red sea and that Jesus walked on water. So why didn't we get to learn about the angels?

I really love getting into the stories from not only the bible, but the Quran, and judaism. The stories are really similar with specific diferences. Everytime I read about Lucifers fall from heaven I keep half feeling sorry for Lucifer. I mean he's sapose to be the embodiment of evil and all that but the few reasons for his rebellion against God aren't actually all that unreasonable. It also couldn't have been that unpopular of an idea since 1 third of the choir of angels saw his way of things.

Anyway, taken like a story and not you know..reality, it's a terribly interesting subject.

The sexist pencil sharpener and a bad comparison

Yesterday Jessica Valenti blogged about the sexist pencil sharpener you see above. As a regular reader, I know that Jessica often posts pics of sexist sinks, urnals and other objects that are designed to look like dismembered female bodies.. it's creepy and sexist and downright grose. She wants to address the issue.. fine right?
Well apparently some people get a bit thrown off by this and decide to try and compare apples and oranges. Here's an article I found today and sent to Feministing just in case they hadn't caught wind of it. It's good for a laugh. I don't get how peoples minds work.. totaly lack of logic. (I won't touch on the pencil pic since Jessica already covered it and it's pretty plain to see why)So lets read the article :

Feminist blogger Jessica Valenti, author of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, is angry over the pencil sharpener pictured above. On Feministing.com she writes:

"What better way to start the week than a stark reminder of how the world sees women? (It seems the perfect woman is almost always dismembered and frequently being penetrated.) Just f***king kill me now."

I don't blame Jessica for being unhappy over the pencil sharpener, but I wonder if she would be as offended by the knife block pictured. The knife block seems far more offensive than the pencil sharpener:

1) The knife block depicts extreme and painful violence.

2) The pencil sharpener depicts a conventional, common sex act which women enjoy.

I'm not saying Jessica would reject any complaints about the knife block--perhaps she would agree with men's activists that it's offensive. But it seems that Jessica and many other feminists tend to see popular culture as "offensive to women" when, in reality, popular culture is far more anti-male than anti-female. This is particularly true when depicting violence--a dozen men can die in a movie or cop show and scarcely anyone blinks, but when a woman dies, it's a big deal. To pick one example, see my blog post Pirates of the Caribbean & Male Disposability.

First off, jesus, can we stop with the "I'm more persecuted/descriminated against than you"?? I don't see why the author thought it neccessary to even compare the pencil sharpener with the knife holder! We're talking about two very different patterns of thought behind two different sexist objects. You can't really compare them except to say that they are two sexist objects. It's silly. It's so childish to go, "well the one with the knife through it is way more sexist!!" What exactly is he trying to say, that because the knife holder exists that we shouldn't be upset by the pencil sharpener?! It's very valid to be upset by both of these tools but comparing them just to try and rationalize that men are more persececuted than women is fucking dumb and irrational.

secondly, um.. okay there is a difference between people dying in a movie and people dying in real life!! How do you go from relating sexist knife holders and pencil sharpeners, to how many more of one sex dies in movies than the other!?Here's a thought- Maybe more men die in the movies because there are generally more movies directed by men, roles written for men, and actors who happen to be men? Ever think of that? Then if you wanna talk about stereotypical gender roles in movies, well thats the issue isn't it! Thats worth talking about- and men don't have it so hot, but then neither do women. Your standard, cop shoot out movie (which Mr. Up Above is talking about) is going to be chalk full of male actors in manly hero/villan type roles. He's gonna shoot people, people will shoot at him, lots of extras will get in the way and die, usually the hero's best friend dies or gets horribly injured. The average female character in one of those movies will serve as one of two things, either she's the sexy villan or love interest, who sleeps with the hero. The villian female doops the cop and audience into believing that she's "one of the good guys". The love interest female only enter scenes to have sex with the leading male role, make dinner or become a victim. THERE YA GO! So if you got a problem with men dying in movies, why not complain to the MEN who actually create those movies!? Since ya know, the larger percentage of one sex running hollywood happen to be male.

Also, if you read the comments posted under the article you get a big insight on what Men's Rights Advocates are actually worried about - women being independent and having babies without getting married! OOO all chaos would insue!! Read this:

You see the sexual notion that women hold: men like sex, and wish women liked it. This is learned behavior. We teach this to our children, boys and girls alike. It makes men believe we need women more than we really do. Women believe it too. It is patently untrue. It can be un-learned.

But it is a very useful social convention. Were men to realize how little we really need women, society would unravel. Men have not yet even gained the ability to conveniently and easily control our fertility, and women are already bemoaning the lack of good marryable men. Middle aged middle class single women are, as Glenn pointed out elsewhere, choosing to have children without benefit of marriage. There are, I believe, two reasons for this. One is the marriage strike; the other is much much more troubling to me.

"Liberated" women seem unwilling, or unable, to endure the compromise necessary to actually marry and live with a man. They will say they have been in relationships that they hoped would lead to marriage and children, but "none of the relationships worked." What these women really mean is they were unwilling to accept someone else at face value, as another imperfect human, and actually compromise some of their deeply-held beliefs in the name of making a marriage work, and for the good of children. Women have been told they can have it all, and that is what they believe. Choosing to become a mother without a father is the ultimate act of self-indulgence. The lack of marryable men is partly due to a genuine shortage; the rest is merely a reflection of women's uncompromising attitudes.

Olivia, maybe you will be able to find someone you can manipulate long term with that thing you were born with. And then again, maybe not.

I read this stuff all the time. Self-ish woman, and the poor neglected men being tossed aside because women are too self-centered to get married...god, it makes me wanna vomit. Mens Rights Groups are less about fighting for men's rights and more about taking away the freedom of women to choose their own path in life. It's painfully clear... makes me really sick actually. takes a certain kind of insecure person to wanna control someone... let alone an entire sex.

Dating trends are confusing...

Oi. I was reading some interesting posts on a blog about the courting process in different countries. How of course, in north america there is quite a woman-purues-man trend thats been going on for well, at least as long as I've been alive.

So I got to thinking about the whole dating process in general and my dating history. It occurred to me that I can actually count the number of times a guy approached me to ask me, on a date. Thats two. Every other guy was approached by me, initiated by me. Now I've dated lots of people but there is something rather strange in all this that never ceases to confuse me is whats with the lack of men approaching women for a date? or of all things, a conversation? I've spoken about this with many of my gal friends and they concure that very few men have ever initiated any sort of start out relationship. Of course, you gotta leave out the late night drunken bar assholes, because those are a dime a dozen. But that's not someone looking for a relationship. It seems that for some reason, it's become more acceptable and common practise for a man to drunkenly walk up to a gal and ask her to go home with him, than for a sober man to walk up to a gal and invite her to dinner. How did this happen ? Was it always like this? I regret that I do not know since I'm only 24.

Big dose of reality.

And they say feminism is no longer needed.

My Letter to Guitar World and Guitar Magazine :

I've been reading Guitar World, and Guitar Magazine since I was a teenager and something has always bothered me about them. So I decided to write them a letter about it in hope that they could make changes. Somehow I doubt that they are willing to change their mag after the 30 some-odd years they've been publishing. But a gal can try can't she? So here goes.

Dear Guitar World and Guitar Magazine,

I would like to take this opportunity to speak for the women everywhere who play a kick-ass guitar and rawk. With my sarcastic thank-yous, I would like to say : thank you for catering to an audience of awkward pimply male teenagers for the last 30 years and telling them with every guitar-girl centerfold that "yes", if they become a rock star, they too can earn the right to treat women like guitar stands.

Thank-you for continually objectifying the female body and reminding us girls that our place in the music world is to be naked, vacuous, blonde, under-weight and merely holding the guitar in an upright position and never, never with our hand in chord formation on the strings. Yes thank you for letting me know through my entire awkward teens that my efforts in learning to be a better guitarist were all in vain. I had and continue to see the truth in your magazine- that my place is not to rawk on stage, play chilling solos, plugged into a 120 watt amp through 2 impeccable 4 X 12 cabinets, but to place a guitar between my legs in an effort to shield my nakedness as men take pictures and ogle me.

Even though I have so much to thank you for, I know the ultimate thank-you is this:

Thank you for reminding me, that women can't play guitar.

Sincerely,

One Pissed Off SG playing, mother of a guitar goddess.

The music industry is depressing me.

So I've been really busy with music lately. Anyway, I started an ilike page so people can check out our band on facebook.. anyway I'm looking through the stats of most played songs and to my utter shock they are actually britney spears, Kayne west, fergie and avril lavigne and I'm just wondering, WTF? Some part of me was trying to believe that the vast majority of people, don't actually wanna hear this crap. but alas, I'm only lying to myself and there are a lot of retards who suck down whatever muchmusic and mtv wanna feed them.

I'm so depressed, I'm really very depressed.