Friday, November 22, 2013

Make Love Not Porn, Cindy Gallop's Voyage of Discovery

I've just posted on Body Impolitic about Cindy Gallop's Make Love Not Porn

She makes the point that porn has become the primary form of sex education (nature abhors a vacuum and commerce expands to fill it, right?) But what are the real world consequences of modeling actual sex after what we see in the movies?

Gallop started with a TED talk and launched a website so popular it almost crashed the first day, and it even became a TED book (which is how I found it). Now it seems to be morphing into a participation forum.

Friday, November 8, 2013

30th Anniversary of Shadow on a Tightrope - taking back our lives

Many activists are joining in a blog carnival today honoring the anniversary of this groundbreaking book

Shadow on a Tightrope, Writings by Women on Fat Oppression

I don't have a post to contribute myself but my wonderful publisher, Peggy Elam at Pearlsong Press posted this eloquent appreciation

A hundred years from now, or more, people will have the collection of writings in Shadow on a Tightrope as a record of the early days of and need for fat liberation. By that time I hope fat oppression and its many manifestations are extinct. But they're still alive and kicking now, so I recommend arming yourself with a potent weapon. If you don't have your own copy of Shadow on a Tightrope, get one. Now.

I'd like to end (after thanking Substantia Jones for use of her marvelous photo above) [LM note: wonderful photo can be seen on the Pearlsong Press post] with an excerpt from the poem from which the title of the book is taken, "whoever i am i'm a fat woman" by Sharon Bas Hannah:

certain truths

will make your heart beat fast

when you hear them from a fat womon

you'll grow pale

get chills

disbelieve

but she's marching toward you

she's here and she's taking back her life.

Happy Birthday, Shadow on a Tightrope. Thank you, and your editors and contributors and publisher.

Also here's a link to Golda Poretsky's list of links! Noting that this was something that couldn't be done 30 years ago!

Other Cool Carnival Posts!