Fuck Yeah, Gender Studies!

month

July 2012

'Matrix' Director Comes Out as Transgender,... →

The director of “The Matrix” and the highly-anticipated film “Cloud Atlas” has become the first major Hollywood director to publicly come out as transgender. Lana Wachowski revealed she has transitioned while promoting her new film, theNew York Post reported. Lana has been transitioning for years now, the Post also reported. This new clip for “Cloud Atlas,”...

i left my dog in my dad’s care for 8 days while i was away and now she’s got fleas and so does my bed.

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America:... →

This is a brilliant essay by black writer Kiese Laymon (who currently co-directs Africana Studies at Vassar College, where he is also an Associate Professor of English and pretty much the smartest guy in the English Dept). It’s an excerpt from his forthcoming book, On Parole: An Autobiographical Antidote to Post-Blackness. Laymon is also the author of the forthcoming novel, Long...

“Uncritically framing women’s “symptoms of depression” — which are not...”

– + (via blinko) The source of this quote is, pretty unfortunately, a radfem blog. It’s a shame because this particular analysis is spot-on.

Chivalry on Sinking Ships Only a Myth, Researchers... →

stfuconservatives: deliciouskaek: this isn’t a surprise at all This story is a favorite of men’s rights activists who hold it up as evidence that women have always had it better. SURPRISE, it’s not based in reality. See also: http://fuckyeahgenderstudies.tumblr.com/post/10725251579/fun-fact-about-plane-crashes A 1970 Civil Aeromedical Institute study of three plane crashes involving...

Ending Prison Rape: A New Resource for Transgender... →

Trigger warning, obviously.

Safe2pee launches iPhone app that finds nearby... →

Finally, there is an easy way to find gender neutral restrooms while on the go. A new app,TranSquat, allows users to search for nearby gender neutral restrooms using their iPhone. … For now, the app is only available on the iPhone and costs $2.99. Other smartphone users can access the safe2pee database through the mobile site at www.safe2pee.org/new/mobile. (Thanks to Ben for the...

Currently reading:

Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel US Link UK Link It was a birthday present so i’m a couple months late getting started with it, but i’m really looking forward to it. I immensely enjoyed her first memoir about her childhood, relationship with her closeted father, her coming out and his eventual suicide, entitled Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (US link) (UK link)....

politicsartandstuff asked: Those anons reminded me of a shirt I saw the other day that said "Every woman is beautiful." Those kinds of things really rub me the wrong way because you know what? No, some people are NOT beautiful, but it shouldn't matter. Instead of saying "every woman is beautiful" why don't you [that is, the t-shirt designer] just stop evaluating women's looks?

Anonymous asked: you're ugly

According to One Comic Book Publisher, this...

dcwomenkickingass: Over on the Escher Girls blog, which does an amazingly consistent and good job of slicing and dicing comic book art featuring women, a submission was posted which blew my already cynical mind. It was about a Batwoman piece that artist submitted for a portfolio review. The artist freely admits to not being the best artist in the world but wanted to get some feedback from...

Team GB athlete faces no sanction for 'gayest'... →

Homophobia in sport, folks.

Anonymous asked: (TW rape - slipped my mind before, sorry) i see your point. i guess my mentality was that, while the kinds of rape you listed can happen to most anyone, prison is sort of isolated from the rest of society and thus the circumstances aren't what the majority of people would ever be in, but i think the point is that rape is rape regardless, and the way i was thinking about it before kind of...

Anonymous asked: do you think that rape in prisons should be factored into rape statistics for the nation as a whole? i'm personally on the fence about it - i think it's an extremely important issue that does need to be acknowledged and talked about, but i'm not sure about including it in terms of the general population since it seems, to me, to be a very different environment (although i can't...

Anonymous asked: I've got two questions, if you don't mind. 1) Who do you think suffers more frequently from rape? I've heard feminists claim the same "1-in-4/1-in-5 women" from time to time. 2) But why wouldn't those two factors affect the stats? For example, long before the change in def., rape only meant forced penetration into a vagina, so male rape victims were practically...

Anonymous asked: Since the Tosh incident, I've wondered about the frequency of rape for men and women (trans included), but Ive been having a hard time finding stats that show the whole picture. MRAs say that b/c of the overlooked male prison rape and the only recent change of legal def. of rape, men are raped in equal rates as women. Aside the CDC/FBI stats, I can't trust all the different analyses...

rattbo1: mens rights activism is sort of like a child making a mess in his own room while he is looking for a baseball bat to destroy his sisters room with after he is finished destroying her room he returns to his own room only to notice the mess he made for himself when he went to fuck his sisters room up and when his sister comes home telling him to fix the mess he made in her room he...

Distributing, Then Confiscating, Condoms →

Over the last eight months,Human Rights Watch has interviewed more than 200 current and former sex workers in New York, Los Angeles, Washington and San Francisco. The interviews were part of an investigation into barriers to H.I.V. prevention for sex workers, who, worldwide, are more than 10 times as likely to be infected as the general population. What we found was shocking: While public health...

Anonymous asked: I like your tumblr; thank you for maintaining it.

Sex, Lies and Suicide: What's Wrong with the War... →

Resisting the Cis-tem →

genderqueer: A space for non-op and/or non-passing identified Trans* people.

“A woman’s worst nightmare? That’s pretty easy. Novelist Margaret Atwood writes...”

– http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/articles/nightmare.html (via alullaby) That sums it up (via erikawithac) This reminds me of a discussion we had in school, and one girl was talking about living in fear of her safety because she is a girl, and this guy chimed in and was all “It’s hard for guys...

nerdy-nicole replied to your post: Do you think it’s right to hate people? just… don’t hate people? o.O “Just don’t” hate people who hurt you? Yeah, that’s definitely realistic and helpful.

Anonymous asked: Do you think it's right to hate people?

Currently reading:

The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo (US Link) (UK Link) I’m really liking it so far. It’s long, though—550+ pages. Here’s a quote that reveals part of Zimbardo’s primary thesis here: “Most institutions in any society that is invested in individualistic orientation hold up the person as sinner, culpable, afflicted, insane, or...

Anonymous asked: Have you heard about therapeutic communities, and if so what is your opinion on them? They advocate no use of psychiatric drugs and use peer/psychotherapeutic support in helping people 'recover'.

cityofroses91 replied to your post: [personal] We Americans usually find a way around that whole pesky “not drinking in public thing.” There’s some kind of soda machine on every corner. Buy a bottle, dump out half, fill with your favorite liquor. Cheers! Er… not that I’m trying to tell you how to break the law or… megachiropteran replied to your post: [personal] Usually you can just hide alcohol...

ms-kawesome replied to your post: It’s upsetting to me that you don’t identify as a feminist. Mostly because I believe you are one (have the views of one) but are misinformed about what it really means. This happens often and saddens me greatly. Better not to identify as a feminist than being a radfem Word.

Indiana prosecutor accused of silencing Chinese... →

socialismartnature: This country is a human rights disaster. Mean-spirited, sexist legislators and prosecutors. In China, the government persecutes you if you bring too many pregnancies to term; in the US, the government persecutes you if you don’t bring any pregnancies to term. === Prosecutors in Indiana are being accused of trying to muzzle and intimidate a Chinese woman who has been...

Anonymous asked: Wait, cosmo wrote "Apparently reading their egregiously heteronormative, sex-negative “lesbian fantasies should probably stay in your head and remember you can get STIs from girl-on-girl action too" What? Where? Oh my god, seriously?

Anonymous asked: i guess my overall point here is: what would you propose for those of us that are in the position of being not-even-functional human beings when we are not on some form of medication?

Anonymous asked: It's upsetting to me that you don't identify as a feminist. Mostly because I believe you are one (have the views of one) but are misinformed about what it really means. This happens often and saddens me greatly.

Anonymous asked: i'm the previous anon and i do have every idea about the reality of it all. i think psychiatry is fucked up beyond all recognition when it comes to teenagers, but the experience i have had as an adult (nearing 30) is a total sea change in comparison. i went through the wringer when i was a teenager wrt that stuff and stayed off meds for ten miserable years, and now i've come to terms...

Anonymous asked: A lot of things hurt people. Is that a reason to OPPOSE psychiatry? I mean, there are definitely a lot of very legitimate critiques one could make of the current state of psychiatry, but I don't think outright opposition to the entire practice is very productive. Especially when there are a lot of people out there who benefit from it in some way...

Anonymous asked: Ugh, I have to agree with on psychiatry. I'm diagnosed with bipolar II and am addicted (and recovering) from self harm and I went through 3 psychiatrists. The first one didn't really listen to me and implied that I was fat, the second one refuse to believe me when I actually found something that helped me and got me off the pills, and the third took every single chance she could to push...

blinko asked: re: your "psychiatry is relevant" post, I happen to be writing a zine on this very topic (the relevance of a critique of psychiatry to radical feminism) now, and if you'd like I would be happy to send you one when I'm done. You seem like a more 3rd wave influenced / liberal feminist but nonetheless I think it is relevant to all of us, I just happen to be writing specifically to...

This illustrates why i’m reluctant to discuss psychiatry: I say: “psychiatry hurts people”. The response: “do you not think diabetics should take their insulin?”. You understand why this is frustrating, i hope.

Anonymous asked: Do any of those books address other means to treat mental illnesses or do they mostly focus on the downfalls of psychiatry? Spending all my life being told that psychiatry is THE ONLY WAY to deal with a mental illness, I'd really like to learn about viable options.

sagacioussagittarius said: Are you a...

Not even slightly. And none of the authors of those books i listed is a Scientologist either—as far as i’m aware.

Anonymous asked: Why do you oppose psychiatry?

Anonymous asked: When you said you were antipsychiatry (ages ago) did you mean you are against drugs being used to treat mental illness or that you do not believe mental illness exists at all?

First, do no harm: Confronting the myths of... →

madness-narrative: The enduring psychiatric myth is that particular personal, interpersonal and social problems in living are manifestations of ‘mental illness’ or ‘mental disease’, which can only be addressed by ‘treatment’ with psychiatric drugs. Psychiatric drugs are used only to control ‘patient’ behaviour and do not ‘treat’ any specific pathology in the sense understood by physical...

Anonymous asked: I admire your blog i wish mine was more like it also on another note if you dislike psychiatry you might like Deleuze and Guattari although they mainly focus on psychoanalysis. Also what do you think of Sedgwick (epistemology of the closet)?

List of books about psychiatry i've recently read

Because i was asked to make this rebloggable. I don’t necessarily endorse or decry any of the views in these books. Readers can make their own minds up. Except Simon Baron Cohen. The guy is an ass and he doesn’t even get the digits of pi correct in that book, let alone anything else. I abhor him. The Myth of Mental Illness Psychiatry: The Science of Lies The Emperor’s New...

distractedandclueless asked: Would you please either add your list of psychiatry books to your 'Books books books (etc)' page or make a reblogable post?