Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Soundtrack

...and half of learning how to play
is learning what not to play
and she's learning the spaces she leaves
have their own things to say
then she's trying to sing just enough
so that the air around her moves
and make music like mercy
that gives what it is
and has nothing to prove

she crawls out on a limb
and begins to build her home
it's enough just to look around
to know she's not alone...
-Up Up Up, Ani DiFranco

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Pornography Happens To Women




Pornography plays a big part in normalizing the ways in which we are demeaned and attacked, in how humiliating and insulting us is made to look natural and inevitable.

...

And think about pornography as a new institution of social control, a democratic use of terrorism against all women, a way of saying publicly to every woman who walks down the street: avert your eyes (a sign of second-class citizenship), look down, bitch, because when you look up you're going to see a picture of yourself being hung, you're going to see your legs spread open. That is what you are going to see.

Andrea Dworkin
Pornography Happens to Women