Electric Paper

"I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:54:27 +0100

“I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent. After a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up. I then asked the same gay men to raise their hand if in the past week they offered a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or her fashion. Once again, after a moment of hesitation, all of the hands in the room went up.

These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign.””

- Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies by Yolo Akili (via plightofthepretty)

I’m really happy I live in a world where this picture...

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:33:52 +0100

I’m really happy I live in a world where this picture exists.

feministdisney: ookay I know I’ve posted it before but I...

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:50:52 +0100

feministdisney:

ookay I know I’ve posted it before but I really, really recommend this video and I don’t recommend a lot of videos! I also reference this video like once a month so you might as well know what I’m talking about

“What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.”

Chimamanda Adichi: The Danger of a Single Story

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

This was so wholly fascinating and important than I’m now forced to go look up Chimamanda Adichie’s books and buy them with money I don’t have.

danceadicklessjig: If you ever wanted to learn all of England’s...

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:37:33 +0100

danceadicklessjig:

If you ever wanted to learn all of England’s Kings and Queens… here you go

I’m only reblogging this so that can continue watching it on repeat, as I have been doing for the past three days. It’s exam season, can you tell?

life: Caption from LIFE. “Hungry at drugstore after a day’s...

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:33:34 +0100

life:

Caption from LIFE. “Hungry at drugstore after a day’s work earning money for nursing school, Dorothy envies slim girl’s milkshake, orders lemonade without sugar for herself.”

See more photos from the March 1954 article, titled “The Plague of Overweight.”

(Martha Holmes—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

That caption is a masterpiece and this whole thing is fucking fascinating.

Photo

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:47:38 +0100

"Stop telling women that we should find ourselves beautiful and that we should love ourselves when..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:07:00 +0100

“

Stop telling women that we should find ourselves beautiful and that we should love ourselves when you are standing right there, judging us on how our knees look in short skirts and how prominent our boobs are in a sweater and how much makeup we are or are not wearing.

Instead of us working harder on “love your body” and “find your inner beauty”, the rest of the world should be working harder on “stop telling women their bodies are a shameful place to live but that if they’re strong enough, they will learn to embrace that shame.”

This is my body. It’s not “beautiful”. I don’t “love it”. I don’t have to. I don’t have to have any strong feelings about my body. And whatever feelings I do have are not somehow invalid if they’re not glowing reviews.

”

- Elyse Mofo, “Don’t Tell Me to Love My Body” (via nightrevelations)

Photo

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:19:36 +0100

Celebrating the successes of my morning by buying Allison Weiss' new album.

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:34:03 +0100

These successes include being up before 8am, showering, going to the library, buying a new travel cup, attending a dissertation lecture and handing in my last piece of coursework of the semester - and then returning home to find my super-organised, super-early-rising flatmate is still not up (because she was on shift until 2am last night BUT STILL).

If you too have minor successes to celebrate, Say What You Mean comes highly recommended as a method.

I hope Sarah gets up soon though, otherwise it rather puts a damper on my actually listening to the celebratory purchase.

"And my primary problem with this Dove ad is that it’s not really challenging the message like it..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:26:38 +0100

“And my primary problem with this Dove ad is that it’s not really challenging the message like it makes us feel like it is. It doesn’t really tell us that the definition of beauty is broader than we have been trained to think it is, and it doesn’t really tell us that fitting inside that definition isn’t the most important thing. It doesn’t really push back against the constant objectification of women. All it’s really saying is that you’re actually not quite as far off from the narrow definition as you might think that you are (if you look like the featured women, I guess).”

- I couldn’t agree more with this post about that Dove advert. Jazz makes some really excellent points about the representation of women of colour and other troubling aspects of this campaign.

(From “Why Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind of Makes Me Angry”)

An abridged history of Western music in sixteen genres. This....

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:06:34 +0100

An abridged history of Western music in sixteen genres.

This. Is. The. Bomb.

usatodaysports: Examples of overwhelming kindness following the...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:09:28 +0100

https://twitter.com/RedCross/statuses/323901009795629056

https://twitter.com/billy_baker/statuses/323940448513163265

https://twitter.com/rm/statuses/323906359005429760

https://twitter.com/ElPelonTaqueria/statuses/323920515184078848

https://twitter.com/NBCSN/statuses/323902959257808896

usatodaysports:

Examples of overwhelming kindness following the Boston Marathon explosions.

"You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers,..."

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:31:12 +0100

“You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.”

- You don’t have to be pretty. (via colporteur)

dailybeatles: Across The Universe - The Beatles

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:22:00 +0100

dailybeatles:

Across The Universe - The Beatles

thecatwhisperer: Hey Rosa. YEP

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:44:31 +0100

thecatwhisperer:

Hey Rosa.

YEP

alecshao: Maciej Ratajski - Is This Art?, 2010

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:52:22 +0100

alecshao:

Maciej Ratajski - Is This Art?, 2010

Sara complained that I wasn’t blogging enough, so here is...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:46:05 +0100

Sara complained that I wasn’t blogging enough, so here is a blogging.

This is a picture of me and some charming human beings I know (L-R: Claire, me, Alannah, Heini, Roisin) dressed as the Spice Girls. It took me two hours yesterday to paint that Union Jack onto a t-shirt. This morning I feel like absolute death.

In other news it seems I am one of the first to get the new Facebook profile layout, but one of the last to get the new Tumblr posting thing, which is fine by me.

In the process of writing this post, the leather bracelet I have worn since it was given to me by my then-girlfriend in the summer of 2008 (when I was 17, christ), has finally given up the ghost and broken off my wrist*. I feel like I should be finding this event symbolic or something, but I’m mainly just aware that my left wrist feels quite cold and naked, and that it’s probably a good thing because that shit was looking decrepit and pretty gross.

*Please note I am not as sentimental as this makes me seem - I mostly carried on wearing it because I just got used to it. Plus it was tied on tight enough to last five years, so I would have had to cut it off, and I’m exceptionally lazy.

I have to go to an a capella rehearsal now. But this has been a post.

dailyotter: Sea Otters Get Colored Ice Egg Treats for Easter at...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 14:36:42 +0100

dailyotter:

Sea Otters Get Colored Ice Egg Treats for Easter at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Considering Easter is not a “thing” in my family (not only are we not religious, my mother has also never thought that encouraging my sister and I to eat chocolate is appropriate. Hard life etcetc), this otter video is my only celebration this year* and it is GLORIOUS and MAGNIFICENT and EVERYTHING.

*Except for the fact that I don’t live with my parents any more and can now buy all the Easter chocolate I want because adulthood.

"The “wives, sisters, daughters” line of argument comes up all the fucking time. President Obama even..."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:00:31 +0000

“

The “wives, sisters, daughters” line of argument comes up all the fucking time. President Obama even used it in his State of the Union address this year, saying,

“We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence.”

This device, which Obama has used on more than one occasion, is reductive as hell. It defines women by their relationships to other people, rather than as people themselves. It says that women are only important when they are married to, have given birth to, or have been fathered by other people. It says that women are only important because of who they belong to.

Women are not possessions.

Women are people.

”

- The Believer Logger: I am not your wife, sister or daughter

One of the most incisive responses to some of the rhetoric we’ve been hearing in the wake of the Steubenville rape verdict is this blog post over at The Belle Jar. (via drinkyourjuice)

This article is really really excellent and I recommend you all take five minutes to read and process and apply it to your lives.

You know when you see something and it makes you laugh massive...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:17:15 +0000

You know when you see something and it makes you laugh massive big belly laughs that actually sound like “HA HA HA HA” in real actual life?

Uh huh, that’s when you know that the person who made that happen is your best friend and you never ever want her to change a hair on her ridiculous head.