There is an astonishing amount to read at these links, so there won’t be a lot:

Blogging against Disabilism Day 2010 Just read everything. No really. Read everything.

And then the BP Spill pulls up news about how Western thirst for oil plays out in one country in the Global South. First there was this:

A spill of our own

THE history of American oil spills is the history of the environmental movement. The 1969 blowout of an oil platform off Santa Barbara, Calif., gave rise to Earth Day as well as President Richard Nixon’s National Environmental Policy Act, and led to a moratorium on new drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. Twenty years later, the spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker near Alaska quashed the first Bush administration’s ambitions for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and ushered in the laws that made oil shippers liable for damage caused by their cargo.

….

Oil, however, is too complicated for simple solutions. Whether this spill turns out to be the result of a freakish accident or a cascade of negligence, the likely political outcome will be a moratorium on offshore drilling. Emotionally, I love this idea. Who wants an oil drill in his park or on his coastline? Who doesn’t want to punish Big Oil on behalf of the birds?

Moratoriums have a moral problem, though. All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria — places without America’s strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them.

Kazakhstan, for one, had no comprehensive environmental laws until 2007, and Nigeria has suffered spills equivalent to that of the Exxon Valdez every year since 1969. (As of last year, Nigeria had 2,000 active spills.) Since the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, and the more than 40 Earth Days that have followed, Americans have increased by two-thirds the amount of petroleum we consume in our cars, while nearly quadrupling the quantity we import. Effectively, we’ve been importing oil and exporting spills to villages and waterways all over the world.

The Deepwater Horizon spill illustrates that every gallon of gas is a gallon of risks — risks of spills in production and transport, of worker deaths, of asthma-inducing air pollution and of climate change, to name a few. We should print these risks on every gasoline receipt, just as we label smoking’s risks on cigarette packs. And we should throw our newfound political will behind a sweeping commitment to use less gas — build cars that use less oil (or none at all) and figure out better ways to transport Americans. MORE

Which leads to this:

Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta PDF The  report is long, 143 pgs. But read it just the same. It is comprehensive, dealing with the tribes that have been affected, the history of the region, pollution and human rights, pollution and its impact on the environment, the complicity of the government and how the problem can be fixed.

The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy’s 81st Precinct

Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.

He recorded precinct roll calls. He recorded his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter. In all, he surreptitiously collected hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs.

Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes—made between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant and obtained exclusively by the Voice—provide an unprecedented portrait of what it’s like to work as a cop in this city.MORE

Basically, if you thought the NYPD was crooked and corrupt, well. It might be worse than you thought.  Or it might confirm what you thought. Gotta read to find out!

When I saw this I practically danced with glee.  I am SO SICK and SO TIRED of the OMG YOU NEED TO GET MARRIED !!!!! drumbeat.

Quoted: Dani McClain on Fierce Single Black Women and Activism

That panic is rooted in the sense that too many professional women (of any race) not getting married means too many people pushing back on sex-based pay disparities in the workplace. It means too many people questioning the logic of tying health care benefits, property rights, hospital visitation rights, etc. to marriage. To me, these articles and “news” programs are being published and broadcast in an effort to stem this coming tide. And those of us black women who feel offended and mischaracterized by the media onslaught should take this as our cue to claim our rights and our rightful place as trailblazers in the 21st century reconfiguration of family and adulthood. Rather than take the bait and feel terrible about ourselves when some media outlet tells us we’re both cause and victim of an “epidemic” or “crisis” in the black community, let’s assert that we are grown-ass human beings, and thus deserving of the same social, economic, civil and political rights that married people can access.

A vocal segment of the LGBTQ activist community has been making this argument for a while now. People like Kenyon Farrow, Jasmyne Cannick and Yasmin Nair have long been arguing that rather than making marriage the be all end all, we should be supporting each other in creating custom-made families that work for us. They’ve pointed out the folly of fighting to mimic and reproduce the patriarchal, nuclear families that continue to be held up as the only legitimate model in this country. These writers argue – and straight, unmarried black women would be smart to join the chorus — that rather than focusing on getting more people married, we should be de-linking human rights from marriage and creating space for a broader acceptance of the cobbled together, nontraditional families that many of us came up in.MORE

And to close off:

Earl Greyhound Shotgun

Linkspam : Short and Sweet -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Sorry guys. I accidentally deleted the disabled women athletes’ post twice tonight and I am so frustrated and angry at myself right now that its probably best for me to step away from the computer, before I lose my temper and throw the contraption outside.

So while I’m recovering my equilibrium, PBS has got a series called The National Parks: America’s Best Idea Their history is absolutely fascinating.

And I’d like to congratulate Rio on winning the bid for the 2018 Olympics. May they not be saddled with cost overruns, boondoggles and debt.

…

Um. On the subject of media? Did anyone watch Surrogates? What did you think about it?

EDIT on the subject of the National Parks.

So my rec was based on watching one episode of the miniseries. Which situation has boomeranged on me. Cause I started watching others over the weekend. And as my commenters here have pointed out, it is a VERY whitewashed series. Its all about the doings of rich white people. Not a word about Native American land, a lot of which was expropriated for the parks. Not a word about any agreements which may have been made between the US gov’t and the tribes. It is not surprising, therefore that a certain Christian-centric tone pervades the documentary. This is gods country, a miracle of god, these vistas are like cathedrals etc etc. And, well I just found this:Indian Country, God’s Country :Native Americans And The National Parks

The mythology of “gifted land” is strong in the Park Service, but some of our greatest parks were “gifted” by people who had little if any choice in the matter. Places like the Grand Canyon’s south rim and Glacier had to be bought, finagled, borrowed – or taken by force – when Indian occupants and owners resisted the call to contribute to the public welfare. The story of national parks and Indians is, depending on perspective, a costly triumph of the public interest, or a bitter betrayal of America’s native people.

In Indian Country, God’s Country historian Philip Burnham traces the complex relationship between Native Americans and the national parks, relating how Indians were removed, relocated, or otherwise kept at arm’s length from lands that became some of our nation’s most hallowed ground. MORE

*sigh* Yeah. So therefore, take that as a dis-recomendation of Ken Burn’s whitewashed series.

National Parks: America’s Best Idea. -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

So I have the headache from hell, and I wasn’t able to finish the disabled women athletes post. I’ll try to get it up on Monday. In the meantime, environmentally friendly housing has been on my mind. These links are from two old posts I did last year:

Cob Houses
Pic from:Welsh Youth Forum on Sustainable Development

Cob houses are made with a mixture of clay, straw, sand, earth and water. The ingredients are similar to an adobe brick home, but, unlike adobe homes, cob houses can be built in wet areas and areas prone to earthquakes. Because the earth walls of a cob home are typically more than 2ft thick, they are naturally energy-efficient. Meaning cob homes stay cool in the summer, and warm in the winter.

Cob homes also give home-owners more control over design and construction. They are owner-built, and the unique nature of the material gives the owner-builder the ability to create nearly any kind of design. With a little help from your friends and a few free weekends, you can build your own cob home for next to nothing, often from materials that are already on site.

Useful links

1.How to build a Cob House (with loads of pictures)

2.How to build a cob house, (another website)

3.The Hand-Sculpted House, A Practical and Philosophical Guide

4.Building with Cob, a step-by-step guide

5.Cob Works: Company that helps you build one

6. Advantages and Disadvantages of Building With Cob

7.Green Home Buildings:Cob Houses

8.Building in a cold climate

9.Tons. Of. Pics. Seriously. Its a HELL of a gallery

Earthships (GLEE!!!!! I want one of these!)

More Earthship Informational Videos on Youtube

Advantages and Disadvanatages of Earthships

Article in Wired that breaks down the concept

Books, Videos, History, Facts

Earthship.net

Buy an Earthship

More books

Where they’ve been

dirt cheap builder: books, dvds available to teach you how to build homes cheaply and sustainably

Real estate listing of available earthships

Informative article in The Guardian:What a load of rubbish

Scotland’s first Earthship

Earthship Architectural Plans

Earthship:Brighton

John Kejr’s Earthship blog-get listings, ask questions find out how to make glass bottle bricks…

Container Homes

Container Homes in London

SG Blocks Container Homes in the US

SG Blocks Website

Informative Article with cool pics

Alternative Housing: Otherwise known as “I want an Earthship!” -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I’ve had a little project in mind for a few weeks but I’ll need some help bringing it to fruition. As many of you know, when engaging in discussions about contentious topics such as race, gender, politics, oppression, etc., there are always clueless and/or privileged people who whip out arguments so often used and so stock that they end up on a BINGO card somewhere. Veterans of such discussions often comment on this and sometimes even link to specific cards. And the more patient amongst us will explain to the clueless/privileged person why their argument is a cliche.

While rolling my eyes at some of the drive-bys over on Alaya’s Supernatural thread I thought that it would be useful to not only be able to point to BINGO cards and say: “Look, what you just said is on here, this is how clueless you are,” but also have that square link to a post or comment thread wherein the statement is taken apart and shredded to pieces. It’s similar to the way I tell people to read the Required Reading or simply point to coffeeandink’s excellent How To Suppress Discussions of Race. We’ve all had these debates so many times that at this point all we really should have to do is say: “Go here and click on I/3.”

First step is to find the existing BINGO cards. Liz Henry has an awesome Flickr pool with the ones she’s found here. Are there any more we should add to the list? Let me know in comments.

Next, I suggest we go one card at a time and find a link or multiple links for each square. As I said, it can be a comment or thread or a whole post wherein the statement/question is debunked or someone has taken the time to explain why it’s wrong/stupid/prejudiced/not worthy of addressing.

I think this was the first BINGO card I ever saw:

So I would like to start with that one. You can suggest links (your own or someone else’s) in the comments, just be sure to indicate which square the link is for. If you want to take part in the project by posting a card to your blog and compiling links, go right ahead. Just tag your post bingo-project in Delicious and ping me here or on another BINGO Project post so others won’t replicate your efforts.

The BINGO Project -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Before we head on the the subject of Trans women athletes, lets go back for an update on Caster Semanya.

At the beginning of this controversy, Tami asked the question What do women look like?

You magazine answered Dressed Up. Madeup. Heels. Wearing stereotypically feminine clothes. Softened. Muscles carefully hidden under stereotypically feminine clothes. And flowing hair. Don’t worry guys! Now she looks just the way society expects! Calm down now! Hair or no hair, however, even if makeup and all the other effort, her strong facial features were not “feminine enough” for some commenters. Many people tried to insult her by saying that she looked like a trans woman. News flash, trans women ARE women, and for the 10000th time, women have a wide variety of features, and there is no right way to look like a woman! I saw way too much of that piece of ignorance, so I’d like to link Transgriots piece I Repeat-Quit Using ‘Tranny’ To Insult Cisgender Women from Tami’s blog post to deal with that nonsense straight up.

Yesterday, unfortunately, Ms. Semanya’s day got worse. Delux brought this pair of stories to my attention:

Report claims 800m world champion Caster Semenya is a hermaphrodite: The results of a controversial gender test on the South African athlete Caster Semenya have been received by international athletics officials but will only be made public after they have been analysed by experts and Semenya has been informed, according to reports.

Semenya has male and female organs: Extensive physical examinations of Semenya, 18, had shown the athlete “is technically a hermaphrodite”. According to medical reports she has no ovaries, but rather internal male testes producing “large amounts of testosterone”.

Now, the first thing that smack one right between the eyes is the use of the word “hermaphrodite” to describe her. Almost all the articles use it, and I heard a BBC reporter using it today. This word is inaccuarate, outdated and offensive. Its is a definition that sprang from a medicalizing mindset from the 19th century that basically saw intersex people as deformed and in need to fixing so that they could adhere to the “proper” gender binary. And this stuff is not arcane knowledge either. These reporters have access to the same damn google that I used. Hell they could have looked at some of their peer newspapers, who were using the correct terminology. And ANY amount of googling on the issue would have brought you sooner or later to the Organization Intersex International which has websites in a good number of the world’s most popular languages. But nooooooo. Make it scandalous! Sell papers! Everyone loves a good sensational story! And to hell with making her a freak in the eyes of society! Who cares we got advertising to sell!

And then there was the second thing that shot me straight into RAGE territory.

See the Guardian had quite an interesting sentence here:

The results of a controversial gender test on the South African athlete Caster Semenya have been received by international athletics officials but will only be made public after they have been analysed by experts and Semenya has been informed, according to reports.

…

but will only be made public after they have been analysed by experts and Semenya has been informed, according to reports.

Hold, WHAT? Who the HELL was that IAAF employee/Medical doctor that carried out the test, whoever it was that leaked this info BEFORE SEMENYA WAS INFORMED ABOUT THE RESULTS?!!?!?!?! What the HELL??? What the … is the excuse this time? I mean, last time it was, “oh I sent he email to the wrong person, silly me”. And this time? What the fuck is it this time?AT least the IAAF’s president seems to wanting an investigation into the leaks that lets the entire world weigh in on her medical info before she even gets to be informed about this herself! But damn it, I LOVE the whole, it ain’t my fault tone in this article

But sports lawyers said that it would be difficult for the South African authorities to mount a case against the IAAF. “There is a general duty of care from a governing body or international federation to the athletes they represent. She could argue that they have broken that duty of care,” said Mike Morgan, a solicitor in the sports law practice at Hammonds. “But you’re talking about a South African athlete, an organization based in Monaco and leaks that occurred in Berlin and Australia. Once the dust has settled, I think they will realize it would be difficult to bring a case.”

Yeah. Yeah. See, somehow I have this nasty feeling. If this athletes were a white European or American? I just have this nasty feeling that these countries would be leaning on the IAAF to be just a bit more successful than that in making sure that heads rolled for the utter disrespect and cruel, inhumane manner in which Ms. Semanya has been treated. For daring to run fast.

An Intersex Perspective on Caster Semenya points out, among other things:

One depressing sideline of this insistence that Caster must have a definitive dyadic sex is the regularity with which the term “pseudohermaphrodite” is raised by detractors. I’ve posted on how this term emerged in Western medical science to try to define away the existence of intersexuality ( see here.) Basically, in trying to erase the challenge intersex people place to the medical ideology of sex dyadism, doctors in the 20th century decided to call all intersex individuals who did not have ovotestes as their gonads “pseudohermaphrodites,” no matter what their anatomy or experience. Somebody can be raised female, with average-looking genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics such as breasts, living a typical valorized heterosexual life, femme as can be (housewife, reader of romance novels, cookie-baker), yet all unaware, have internal testes and androgen insensitivity syndrome. If she goes to a doctor for treatment of infertility, suddenly she’ll find herself labeled a “male pseudohermaphrodite.” The medical term defines her as “really a man,” not even intersex, let alone a woman. Anyone with testes is “really a man” according to this scheme of classification–which reveals the sex politics and semantics in supposedly “objective” science.

Those same politics emerge from the mouths of Caster’s detractors. She is a “pseudohermaphrodite,” they claim–not a woman, not even intersex, but a man trying to cheat honest female competitors.

Here’s an irony for you. According to Western medical practice, the majority of infants discovered to be intersex are assigned female. This is done for surgical convenience (it being considered easier to remove an “inappropriate” penis than create an “appropriate” one), and due to a covert assumption about gender psychology, that women can deal better with gender ambiguity than can men. So we’re assigned female, told we are “really women,” subjected to mutilating infant surgery, expected to identify as female, not intersex, told to keep our medical history, if we know it, a secret, and sent out to live dyadic female lives. Many of us carefully live by the rules. But it turns out that if we do as we are told, we are still subject to being outed, discredited, mocked, and returned unceremoniously to the status of intersex oddity, as Caster’s life illustrates–accused of breaking the rules.

What Caster’s situation illustrates, from an intersex perspective, is that we exist. Dyadic sex is a myth–sex is a spectrum. Hormones, chromosomes, genitals, gonads–they are all arranged in many complex ways, and imposing a binary onto them is arbitrary. It’s as arbitrary as saying all fruit is either sweet or sour. Sure, ripe cherries are sweet and ripe limes are sour, but most fruit gets its savor from both tastes, and some fruits balance at the tangy sweet-and-sour midpoint. You can measure all the fructose and ascorbic acid you want, scientifically. You can create a rule that divides all fruit into sweet and sour categories using precise measurements of sugars and acids. But that will not eliminate the fact that the experience of tasting fruit is complex, and that this complexity is what makes eating fruit delicious.
MORE

By the way, a commenter last week asked me if gender testing in the Olympics is over. The answer as the below essay makes clear, is, for the most part.

The Rise and Fall of Gender Testing: How the Cold War and Two “Masculine” Soviet Sisters Led to a Propaganda Campaign

Myron Genel, MD, was one expert who became convinced that gender testing was a joke. In 1990 he and others accepted an IAAF invitation to get together for a workshop on “femininity verification.” Later Genel wrote in Medscape Women’s Health: “Our group concluded that laboratory-based sex determination should be discontinued…The purported rationale is to detect male imposters who would have an unfair competitive advantage. In point-of-fact, genuine imposters have not been uncovered; however, gender verification procedures have resulted in substantial harm to a number of unassailable women athletes born with relatively rare genetic abnormalities that affect development of the gonads or the expression of secondary sexual characteristics.”

In 1992, as a result of this study, the IAAF defied the IOC and stopped gender testing. The Commonwealth Games and various sports federations followed suit, as did the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and other medical bodies. But the testing juggernaut rumbled heedlessly on. At the 1996 summer games in Atlanta, there was a cumbersome DNA screening process for 3,387 women athletes, that proved to be vastly expensive for the Games. Eight women were red-flagged, then further scrutinized and discussed — and allowed to compete.

Finally, in 1999, even the IOC’s own Athletic Commission went to the executive board and demanded that testing stop. Testing was suspended on a trial basis for the Sydney and Salt Lake City Games. But the IOC hasn’t abandoned the old ideology. It reserves the right to re-apply the much-discredited test in any individual case that is brought to their attention. Meanwhile, on the U.S. political front, gender realities continue to be ignored by many conservatives — as in Texas, where the 4th Court of Appeals ruled in 1999 that only couples with standard XY and XX chromosomes could be married.

But at the latest Olympics Beijing Officials To Test Female Olympic Hopefuls For Sex Abnormalities And this is after they cause a scandal at the Atlanta Games They disqualified 8 women, who appealed and were reinstated. Seven of them were intersexed. Also, The Confederation of African Football (CAF) Initiating Gender Testing Before 2010 Africa Women’s Cup

The Women’s Sport Foundation Gender Testing – Gender Verification at Elite Sports Competitions: The Foundation Position

And dutchmarbel over at Alas a Blog has one more intersex athlete to add to our list: Dutch sprinter Foekje Dillema

Finally, because I keep seeing this. The news stories state that she has three times the normal amount of testosterone in her body. Please note that this does not necessarily mean that she has any advantage over other athletes. Many intersex athletes that have that amount of testosterone also have. This does not necessarily mean she has an advantage. Many intersex athletes with extra testosterone also have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which makes them unable to use it. She wasn’t winning in world record time. Non-intersexed people have and can beat her. With that in mind, can we PLEASE remember that we are talking about a human being, an 18 year old athletes and not social monster?

Next wek, we will finally get around to trans women athletes. Laters!

Caster Semenya: Part 2b of the Women Athletes series -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

The first thing that we are going to need to know, is, what exactly is Intersexuality?

Then we are ready for the history behind sex testing. Transgriot starts off with Gender Drama at the 1936 Olympics

Robert Ritchie, John Reynard and Tom Lewis continue with Intersex and the Olympic Games

In the following 30 years, the sporting media speculated that several other female athletes had DSDs because they possessed physical attributes which would generally be associated with the male sex. Still without formal gender verification, these rumours remained as such, fuelled by the media who were fully aware that there would be never be any scientific evidence to disprove them. Thus, journalists reported that genetically male Eastern Bloc athletes were binding their genitals and competing as females. Gender controversy also surrounded Irina and Tamara Press, two Russian sisters (Figure 2) who were dominant in a variety of female track and field events during the 1950s and 1960s. They won 26 world records and six Olympic gold medals.
As media hype [eyeroll] reached fever pitch, compulsory gender verification in the form of a gynaecological examination was introduced prior to the 1966 European athletics championship. In these so-called ‘nude parades’, athletes were forced to stand naked in front of a committee and were subjected to an inspection of their external gentalia. 243 women attended for examination and no abnormalities were reported. Neither of the Press sisters attended and they were never to appear in athletic competition again. Their absence was widely interpreted as evidence they both possessed abnormal external genitalia. It is still not known whether the Press sisters deliberately misrepresented their gender or, as seems more likely, they both had a DSD.

….

Notably, gender testing in athletics has never identified an individual deliberately misrepresenting their gender.^11,12 Testing has, however, created controversy and embarrassment for a significant number of female athletes competing, often unknowingly, with some form of intersex disorder. Indeed, there is no evidence that female athletes with DSDs have displayed any sports-relevant physical attributes which have not been seen in biologically normal female athletes.^6,12 MORE

EDIT: In the above article, there is a use of the word “psuedo-hermaphrodite” which I missed the first time. It is offensive, and I do apologize for not catching it and pointing it out. I am currently on the look out for another article that makes the same point without the offensive language.

Need a couple of examples of athletes who have been fucked over by this ridiculous system? I am so glad you asked! Thats a man:Ewa Klobukowska, Erika Schinegger, Maria Jose Martinez Patino, Santhi Soundarajan More on Santhi Soundarajan.

But there is more to it than that, although, frustratingly, I missed my chance to present it to you. There is an essay that was online up to last week. It is one of the best essays on the history of this topic that I have read, The Olympics: The Early Days of Gender Testing, by Patrica Nell. Unfortunately, she has taken it down. It is in her anthology, though, and I for one think that that essay alone is worth the book price.
Let me give you a hint. Pay attention to the bit on the Cold War

Sociological Images out with a great post The question of Caster Semenya’s sex

If you were to try to decide what qualifies a person as male or female, what quality would you choose?
I can think of eight candidates:

1. Identity (whatever the person says they are, they are)
2. Sexual orientation (boys dig girls, vice versa)
3. Secondary sex characteristics (e.g., boobs/no boobs, pubic hair patterns, distribution of fat on the body)
4. External genitalia (e.g., clitoris, labia, vaginal opening/penis and scrotum)
5. Internal genitalia (e.g., vagina, uterus, and fallopian tubes/epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate, etc)
6. Hormones (preponderance of estrogens/androgens)
7. Gonads (ovaries/testes)
8. Chromosomes (XX/XY, the SRY gene)

Most of us assume that these criteria all line up. That is, that people with XY chromosomes have testes that make androgens which creates a penis, epididymis, vas deferens etc… all the way up to a male-identified person who wants to have sex with women. We also assume that these things are binary (e.g., boobs/no boobs), when in reality most of them are on a spectrum (e.g., hormones, also boobs, likely sexual orientation).

But these criteria don’t always line up and sex-linked charactertics aren’t binary. Examples of “syndromes” that disrupt these trajectories abound (e.g., Klinefelter’s syndrome). And all kinds of practices, including surgeries, are sometimes used to force a binary when there isn’t one (e.g., intersex surgery to fix the “micropenis” and “obtrustive” clitoris and breast reduction surgery for men).

If these criteria don’t always line up, then we have to pick one as THE determinant of sex. But any choice would ultimately be arbitrary. MORE

Indeed. As links, Where’s the Rulebook for Sex Verification?

HHMI BioInteractive website takes you inside a gender test, with lots of information along the way. (Click particularly on the brief history of gender testing link.)It felt pretty creepy and invasive to me, though, so be warned. The Gender Test

The Third Lane: Intersex and the Modern Athlete contains more info about the different variations in our bodies that challenge the binary that society has, until now, clung stubbornly to.

Because of society’s assholishness in dealing with this issue, it is very hard to find a good list of intersexed athletes currently competing, or having competed until recently. That said, here are a couple:

Edinancni Silva, Brazilian judo, Sarah Gronert, Tennis (That headline writer needs to be hit with several clue by fours, by the way. It was the best article I could find, however. sigh. ) Rob Newbiggen, boxer Just decided to transition to female, hopes to get a female boxing license. You all have anymore to add?

Finally, have you noticed something with these athletes so far? One of their biggest problems come when they beat their opponents…and the opponents promptly accuse them of being men. (by the way, seriously, do read the articles. because they will state that there is NO scientific evidence that any intersex athlete has any advantage over their other competitors.) For a case of tragic schadenfreude, see Nigerian gender chickens coming home to roost: The case of Intersex football (what you all call soccer) striker Bessy Ekaete Boniface

Thats it for today, folks! Next week: Transgender female athletes.

American Women Athletes Part Two: How intersex athletes are punished by the gender testing system -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I have been watching the World track and Field Championships recently. Specifically the Jamaican team. Usain Bolt has been breaking world records left and right, and is thus getting the lion’s share of press. But the women’s side of the ledger has been way more consistent than the men’s, having racked up three gold medals, (100m Shellyann Fraser, 400m Melaine Walker, 100m hurdles Brigitte Foster-Hylton) 3 silver (200m Veronica Campbell-Brown, 100m Kerron Stewart, 400m Sherika Williams) and 1 bronze (Dellorean Ennis-London), as opposed to Bolt’s two gold and Powell’s bronze. Well, he’s breaking world records, and Flo-Jo has set the bar so high that today’s athletes cannot reach them. goes the argument.

So why are women so routinely consigned to the bottom of the page? When she was finally given the microphone, Campbell-Brown bravely broached the issue.

“It’s a touchy subject, but if I should be honest, I really believe men get more attention in this sport. It’s based on the fact that the world record in the 100m and 200m for men is reachable. For me, my PRs [personal records] are 10.85[sec] and 21.74[sec], which I just accomplished here and I only ran that once. It is hard for me to even think about the world record.”

Why so? Because since Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 1988 world records in the 100m and 200m, no female sprinter has come anywhere near breaking them – not even a drug-fuelled Marion Jones. Meanwhile, in the men’s sprints, the 100m world record has been broken 11 times in the past two decades.

But its not quite that simple. As the article goes on to state:

But perhaps unattainable records are not the only problem. Even in the days when women were breaking sprint records they still didn’t get the headlines of their male counterparts. Some may argue that personality is as much a part of the equation – and Bolt’s celebration dances certainly add weight to that theory – but Flo Jo ran in one-legged fuchsia tracksuits with six-inch nails, so why were her achievements so often overshadowed by the rivalry between Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis?

The media have a major part to play. Britain’s 17-year-old Shaunna Thompson, who won double gold in the sprints at the Commonwealth Youth Games last year, says she sometimes struggles to recall who won the women’s 100m at major championships.

“That’s one of my events and even I’m forgetting sometimes! People know all the men, but sometimes the women get forgotten about. If Usain Bolt is all you hear about on TV then that sticks in peoples’ heads. No one’s saying Shelly-Ann Fraser [Jamaican who has won Olympics and World Championship 100m gold medalist], so everyone’s like who’s Shelly-Ann Fraser?”

There are a multitude of problems that lead to the lack of esteem in which women athletes, compared with male athletes, are held. But first, a little history:

History of Women in Sports Timeline

• 776 B.C. – The first Olympics are held in ancient Greece. Women are excluded, so they compete every four years in their own Games of Hera, to honor the Greek goddess who ruled over women and the earth.
• 396 B.C. – Kyniska, a Spartian princess, wins an Olympic chariot race, but is barred from collecting her prize in person.
• 1406 – Dame Juliana Berners of Great Britain writes the first known essay on sports fishing. She described how to make a rod and flies, when to fish, and the many kinds of fishing in her essay, “Treatise of Fishing with an Angle.”
• 1552 – Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87), an avid golfer, coins the term “caddy” by calling her assistants cadets. It is during her reign that the famous golf course at St. Andrews is built.
• 1704 – Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727) sets out alone on horseback from Boston to New Haven and later New York, keeping a diary of her travels, which was published in 1825 as The Journal of Madame Knight.
• 1722 – British fighter Elizabeth Wilkinson enters the boxing ring.

Wait, what? The Games of Hera? There were such a thing? Chapter 10:Women and Greek Athletics page 113

One of the great problems that women athletes face is the idea that women are heterosexual sex objects. And the beauty ideal for these sex objects is a thin shape, with a bit of a curvy shape, (but not too curvy, thats fat), and a distinct lack of muscles. So female athletes are by definition considered deviant. And the more strength and height that their sports require, the more un-feminine, and deviant they are considered.

And so it was, that when Mildred ‘Babe’ Didrickson 1911-1956, started her astonishing athletic career, well. Lets just say she was NOT received well. Take a good look at her accomplishments:

Sports: Golf, track and field, basketball, baseball, softball, diving, roller skating, and bowling

…

Olympics:

* X Olympiad, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1932, Athletics/USA

…

Babe Didrikson Zaharias Records:

* Gold, Javelin toss, X Olympiad, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1932.
* Gold, 80 metre hurdles, X Olympiad, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1932.
* Silver, High jump, X Olympiad, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1932.
* 10 Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LPGA) major championships. Tied for third most wins through 2006.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias Honors:

* “Female Athlete of the Year”, the Associated Press, 1932, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1950, 1954.
* U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, 1983 (charter member)

This woman was one of the best athletes of her time. But what were the press obsessed with?

Perhaps the most deep-seated is the fear that women’s athletics might erode traditional femininity. The global sports world registered this concern at least three decades before the institution of sex testing and long before the Renee Richards case. In the early 1930s, when Mildred “Babe” Didrikson, the greatest woman athlete of modern times, set world records in the woman’s 80-meter hurdles and javelin throw, reporters continually remarked on her masculine appearance, and the press focused on the Olympic medalist in a campaign to restore femininity to athletics. The controversy finally ended when Didrikson married, started wearing dresses, and turned from competing in track, basketball, baseball, football, and boxing, to setting records in the more acceptably feminine world of golf. MORE

And, well, take a look at this recent article by ESPN

not until her later years did she dress and act less manly.
…

While she excelled in competition, she often alienated teammates and competitors. She frequently acted like a self-centered prima donna, a boastful person who constantly sought attention. Although she became somewhat less arrogant over the years, she still remained flamboyant and cocky – and often overbearing.

…

He would become her manager and advisor, but in the later years of their marriage, problems arose as Zaharias lost influence with his wife. Babe spent more time with good friend Betty Dodd, a young golfer who was a natural athlete and had no interest in looking feminine. She often stayed at the Zaharis’ home in Tampa.

See anything interesting? Her dress is still being critiqued, her “boastful” manner is taken as fact…really, has this dumpling LISTENED AND WATCHED male athletes lately? Wanna bet that she was just a confident person, (which women should not be?). And this article was written in 2007!

In 2009, of course, women athletes are expected to be sexy.

The Women’s Sports Foundation concurs that(Dis)Empowering Images? Media Representations of Women in Sport

What We See: The Sexualization of Women Athletes

In written texts, visual images, and spoken commentaries, women athletes are often portrayed as sexual objects available for male consumption rather than as competitive athletes. For example, the June 5, 2000 Sports Illustrated cover and several inside photographs of tennis player, Anna Kournikova, show her posing seductively for the camera in her off-court wear. When notable female athletes are not pictured, pretty models are often used to portray “ideal” feminine athleticism or represent society’s traditional notions of women’s role in sport (passive, non-competitive, weak, and emotional). Such portrayals create an image of a “heterosexy” (Griffin, 1998) female athlete who can be athletic while maintaining heterosexual sex appeal. This ultra-sexy image underscores physical beauty and femininity more so than athletic skill, power, and strength.

One way media may sexualize women athletes is by focusing on their physical appearance. Characteristics favored in visual media are those commonly associated with feminine beauty, such as smiling, unblemished skin, slender and toned physique, and long blonde hair.MORE

Wanna be a basketball player? Don’t be to muscled and strong now…Who died and made ya’ll the femininity police? The case of Brittney Griner

Cosmo warns that sport loving women would be single for the rest of their lives (the author of that piece of drivel was a male. In a women’s magazine)

Wanna be a martial artist while being a woman? Better be pretty…Superheroines, sports and sexuality: or, why can’t we be both?

Gina Carano might have appeared on the show American Gladiator, where she wore a spandex costume and goes by a superhero nickname, “Crush,” but her real job is Muay Thai and mixed martial arts (MMA). There’s no padding or trick camera angles to what she does in the ring: that’s her putting her body on the line, and only her training and skills can protect her.

Carano just had her first MMA loss to another real-life superhero, Cris “Cyborg” Santos of Brazil. The matchup was the first time two women had headlined a major MMA card, and predictably, it drew obnoxiously sexist media coverage, including the typical division of the women into “pretty” and “not pretty.” Cyborg even faced an interviewer before the fight who asked her if she wanted to beat Carano up because she was famed for her looks.

Cyborg, all class, said that she wanted to fight Carano because she was the best, not because she was pretty—and then she choked the interviewer unconscious. Not really

One writer said,

“Now the question is, can Strikeforce and women’s fighting build the sport around someone who isn’t a beauty queen? Whether that statement offends you or not, reality is there was a reason Carano was part of American Gladiators and did so many appearances on shows like Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel. That said, Carano is also far from finished. She proved even in a loss that she’s a legitimate fighter.”

Carano proved a long time ago that she was a legitimate fighter, with a 12-1-1 record in Muay Thai and now a 7-1 record in MMA. Male fighters with far worse records are never questioned on their “legitimacy,” but the idea that a pretty girl can in fact be capable of knocking someone out seems to shock the (largely male) fight press again and again. Then, of course, we get the assumption that Cyborg isn’t pretty—by whose standards are we judging pretty women, anyway?
MORE

And as I linked before in Which Women Play on the Center Court at Wimbledon? the best athletes in the world aren’t judged solely on their ability. Oh no.

Anyway, Sarah N. sent in a link to a story at the Mail Online about how women’s perceived attractiveness plays a part in deciding which matches will be played on the main court at Wimbledon. The organizers of Wimbledon don’t try to hide the fact that the appearance of the competitors is taken into account when scheduling matches:

…the All England Club admitted that physical attractiveness is taken into consideration. Spokesman Johnny Perkins said: ‘Good looks are a factor.’

And as this article in the NationSexism on Centre Court [Wimbledon] points out:

Several players, including some of these “easy-on-the-eye unknowns,” were upset with the setup. But much of the media dismissed the story as unimportant. L.Z. Granderson, a normally sane voice in the ESPN archipelago, wrote a column in which he stated simply, “I don’t see the harm.” After conceding the obvious–that the policy is sexist–Granderson played devil’s advocate: “I actually find the Wimbledon officials’ honesty quite refreshing…. last I checked, gender equity in the workplace wasn’t a beer on tap at the Kit Kat Club. Sometimes people like what they like, and accepting that also requires a certain degree of tolerance.”MORE

Sociological Images then links to an article FEMALE ATHLETES: BE PRETTY, BUT NOT SEXY. OR PREGNANT. I actually disagree with this headline, because a quick google of “sexiest women’s athletes” brings up 10 pages of results. Sports Illustrated has come up with 100 Greatest Women Athletes, but women athletes very very rarely make it to their cover. What you are guaranteed to see once a year is the fucking swimsuit edition, shot with mostly models. although many women athletes do it as well. Funny how men mostly manage to keep their fucking clothes on.

Paradox on the Pitch Part One, Two, Three a documentary by youtuber ixdeb, takes on the issues that female rugby players at the University of Oklahoma have in “managing the expectations of masculinity on the pitch with society’s expectations of femininity off of the pitch.”

And you do NOT want to deal with the comments that get made about female body builders. Suffice it to say that there is a reason for the tons of articles on google that reassure women that they will not get bulked up like those ugly female bodybuilders if they pick up some weights. Honest!

The 2008 Olympics was when I first became really aware of the problem.

Womanist Musings irately pointed out:Olympic Gymnast Alica Sacramone: Only Your Sex Appeal Counts

Hoyden about town muses that If bare midriffs and short shorts really made athletes run faster

After Ellen noted that an astonishing amount of photographers decided that women’s bottoms were the best place to park their lens.

Grazing Sheeple wrote about even more of the same phenomenon in More Olympic Porn or the never-ending wedgie

Now, ABC ran an article claiming that Skimpy but Sporty: When Less Is More. In other words, gymnastic and beach volley ball athletes want to wear skimpy clothes, cause they are more comfortable. Its only those prude POC like Locals in Somoa who requested that they be changed to something more modest for the South Pacific Games and the Indian team, who flatly refused, and got to wear t-shirts and long shorts. who complain. By the way, the ABC article is wrong, the bikinis are the RULE. and, as a commenter on Feminist law profs pointed out:

The issue here is not whether female athletes prefer bikinis — and, having had sand in a one-piece, I can sympathize — but whether they are required to wear them.

I think that this is quite telling:

The men do not like to play in tight spandex shorts only because, well it is not generally considered very flattering and can be offensive… cling to every little bump, lump, and outline everything he has (or hasn’t).

In other words, the men’s uniform is based on best performance (tight material to prevent abrasion or sand), but also male modesty (shorts to hide the naughty bits)!

The thing is though, that all is not as well as ABC makes it out, though. Austrailia has found that Tight Uniforms are turning off girls from organized sport And I am going to bet that more studies like this wil; turn up some of the same type of things in other countries.

While Westerners sexualize their female athletes, they tend to get very intrigued, and in some cases, annoyed with Muslims; Westerners, South Asian or from the Middle East who want to compete in more modest clothing.

Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, a record breaking basketballl player from Memphis has dealt with her share of issues. Bahrain’s sprinter Ruqaya Al Ghasara provoked widespread interest. More and more Muslim athletes are competing in full hijab though. In the 2008 Olympics there were half dozen veiled Egyptians, three Iranians, an Afghan and a Yemeni … competing in sprinting, rowing, taekwondo and archery. But in some cases, Muslim pay a high price for trying to follow their faith and compete at the same time. In 2007, Juashaunna Kelly, a Theodore Roosevelt High School senior who has the fastest mile and two-mile times of any girls’ runner in the District this winter, was disqualified from Saturday’s Montgomery Invitational indoor track and field meet after officials said her Muslim clothing violated national competition rules. (Note that if you want to be a casual Muslim swimmer and wear burkinis, be careful in Western countries such as France and Italy.)

Women and Sports Foundation tackles some of the problematic assumptions behind the BS:Unveiling Myths: Muslim Women and Sport

So, I’ll stop here for tonight. I’ve been working on this for four days, and the topic is much bigger than I thought. Next week, sex tests and women athletes, trans women athletes, lesbian athletes and possibly disabled women athletes. (or maybe I’ll make the disabled women athletes their own post. we’ll see)

Have a great week!

EDIT: The Brittany Grinner and Babe Didrickson links have been fixed!

American Women Athletes Part One: In which women athletes need to be sexy and heterosexual (preferably with child/ren and husband/boyfriend) -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

The Examiner’s Ed Moy inquires Does Hollywood ‘white-wash’ the casting of Asian characters in movies? Then he proves it…

After doing some research, I discovered that “The Last Airbender” wasn’t the only recent movie that cast white actors in roles that were originally created as Asian characters.

For example, the character of Kyo Kusanagi will be played by Sean Farris in an upcoming live-action feature based on the video game “King of Fighters”.

There’s also the casting of Jake Gyllenhaal as Prince Dastan in “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” along with a British actress Gemma Arterton playing his love-interest Tamina. The movie was also based on a popular video game.

And then there’s the recent announcement that Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are starring in a live-action version of the Japanese anime “Akira.”

And finally, there’s the casting of Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegel in the live-action adaptation of “Cowboy Bebop.” (Although, I do admit that I think Keanu Reeves looks similar to the character.)

This all of course pales in comparison to the fact that last year, the producers of the movie “21″ took poetic license in rewriting actual Asian American card playing MIT students as white characters.

The movie “21″ was based on the best-selling book “Bringing Down the House”, about a real-life team of mostly Asian American students led by an Asian American professor John Chang and his teaching cohorts. (To read about the real “21″ students and their professor click here.) MORE

21. Oh 21. See, 21 was when I first became aware that Hollywood was full of thieving, cultural appropriating assholes. This is a case where the fuckup is as bad as Avatar. It was Racialicious that brought this to my attention:Trans-Racialization in ‘21′

Six MIT students band together to hoodwink Las Vegas casinos for millions. It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie — and it is. But before Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishbourne were cast in 21, Ben Mezrich wrote a non-fiction book called Bringing Down the House, upon which the film is based. In that book, Mezrich documents the infamous MIT Blackjack team, which was led by Asian American — not White — students.

Huh. Let me make that a standalone link:By the time Senor Kevin Spacey was done, the only Asian Americans were playing supporting roles, one being the goddamn girlfriend! (Pics at link) And as it turns out when you read that link, they fucked up the story too. For one thing, there was no romance in real life. For another:

Was an MIT professor really the leader of the Blackjack Team?

No. In the movie 21, an unorthodox math professor named Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) leads the team. The 21 true story reveals that the real MIT Blackjack Team was led by three individuals, none of whom were professors. Arguably, the most notable is Bill Kaplan, a Harvard Business school graduate who had also done his undergraduate studies at Harvard. John Chang and J.P. Massar were also very much the basis for 21’s Micky Rosa. “While [author] Ben Mezrich has been quoted as saying that Micky Rosa was a composite of myself, J.P. Massar, and John Chang, the fact is there is little, if anything, that resembles either of us except that he started and ran the team and was focused on running the team as a business,” says Bill Kaplan. John Chang graduated from MIT in 1985 with a degree in electrical engineering. An influential member of the original team, Chang would later re-team with Bill Kaplan as a co-manager in the early 1990s. J.P. Massar (”Mr. M” in the History Channel documentary Breaking Vegas) was an MIT alum who had helped Kaplan manage the original team in the early 1980s, shortly after the first casinos opened in Atlantic City. -Bill KaplanMOAR things they got wrong

Basically, Kevin Spacey decided that he wanted a star vehicle, and decided to completely erase the people whose story it is in the first fucking place!

Oh and the response to the concerns raised about this?

Several organizations such as Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) protested the movie and “Boycott 21″ and other anti-”21″ websites sprang up on the Internet.

According to MANAA, after the “white-washing” issue was raised on Entertainment Weekly’s website, movie producer Dana Brunetti wrote: “Believe me, I would have loved to cast Asians in the lead roles, but the truth is, we didn’t have access to any bankable Asian American actors that we wanted… If I had known how upset the Asian American community would be about this, I would have picked a different story to film.”MORE

No bankable Asian stars. And dammit, the Asian American population didn’t just sit down and take it, they protested!! Shock!horror! And instead of fixing the problem, I’m just not going to film anymore of their stories. See how they like that!!!! The article goes on to list the many bankable Asian stars. And to point out the fact that Jim Sturgess was not exactly a big name Hollywood actor. They have no trouble making films off unknown or not too well known white actors either.

(By the way. Please don’t read the comments. There be idjits bringing in Asian anime and claiming that the characters thereof all look like white people. Nobody needs head exploding at 9:20 in the morning.)

In the meantime, we go to Avatar:

glockgal makes a profound statement: Over the course of this protest, I really have underestimated how insular a LOT of Americans are, especially when you get into towns that don’t have a lot of multiculturalism, like. It’s just plain ignorance.
For people who’ve never learned/seen/been exposed to anything Asian beyond fortune cookies and sweet-and-sour chicken balls, I suddenly understand that when they watched the cartoon, all they see is ‘fantasy’. All the architecture, clothing, food, writing, names, movements – EVERYTHING that is so plainly and clearly Asian to us? Is just to them….a fantasy. It’s all made-up. They don’t know that so much of the world is based on real cultures, they don’t get how much attention to detail and research the creators put into the cartoon, because they’ve NEVER SEEN THESE CULTURES, IRL.
They simply don’t know. And they’ve never HAD to learn. Gyah, it’s so crazy and sad to realize that people have lived such insular lives.

Racebending links to the first in a series about how and why POC are placed in advertising: why and how People of color are included in advertising:Including people of color so as to associate the product with the racial stereotype.Part1

They also pose the question Is racebending legal?

The costumes have been whitefied Roman and Greek armour. Roman and motherfucking Greek armour. With a bit of samurai on the side. Lovely. JUUSSSST LOVELY. More carrying through of teh myth that only goddamn Europeans had any innovations.

In the same vein:Chinese calligraphy cut from movie, replaced by gibberish language Perfectly interchangeable, gibberish and the CHINESE LANGUAGE.

Chaobunny’s Guide to Casting Failis in Hyphen Magazine Blog. Which also has the headline of the day in And you shall know us by the trail of whitewash Goddamn! I cannot believe that I have been missing this mag! *heads off to subscribe and link website to blog*

And I just saw a review… GI JOE? The good ninja is actually…white? And is a street rat in Tokyo? And somehow gets taken in and treated as a favorite over his Japanese classmate? ANd said Japanese classmate then murders master in retaliation? Really?

As an aside: District 9 needs to go up in the hottest fire known to man. And I am freaking done with Peter Jackson. In the meantime, I noticed one blog call it “progressive.” Alien cockroaches in the slums of Johannesburg are freaking PROGRESSIVE. Also, note the treatment of the actual people of color in the movie. Here, have a Cluex4. To wit…[IBARW] It’s not murder, it’s a metaphor.Abstract: If you’re going to argue about a text’s metaphorical or allegorical representations of race, you may want to take a look at how it treats actual people of color before forming your conclusions about the subversion of racial stereotypes.

Everyone should find some time to watch this. Reel Bad Arabs Documentary

via: Racialicious

If you want some new blogs, you could do much worse than these, by the way: Fiqah at Possum Stew rolls out an essay for the ages:

Jihadis”*, Skinheads and Film Representation In which Arabs are relentlessly evil, but white superemacists are not only 3 dimensional, they are shown as sexy and misunderstood, too.

Muslim Reverie. is the new blog of Jehanzeb, a Pakistani Muslim American who writes kickass essays, beautiful poetry and features astonishing art on his wordpress.

I had read his takedown of that vile, racist, waste of film, 300, when it first came out. He has updated the piece since then:

Frank Miller’s “300? and the Persistence of Accepted Racism

In the following essays, he focuses on the Hollywood penchant for whitewashing; this is…stealing our stories and retelling them with white people. Dressed in what our cultures. Which are then considered exotic.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? takes on Prince of Persia, a Disney movie based on a video game. The guy behind this one is Jerry Bruckheimer. You remember him. He did the The Pirates of The Caribbean. Which featured a rather…”interesting” portrayal of a lady named Tia Dalma who was supposed to be a Jamaican “obeah” woman. Except that according to Wikipedia she was originally the nymph Calypso from Greek mythology???? Sooooo, the character aint really black, just a white woman impersonating real Jamaican obeah women? What the … And then of course, there were the Caribs. Who were portrayed as savage Cannibals out to eat Jack Sparrow. Except that, well, they weren’t savages, and the cannibalism thing? Is something of a dispute. Naturally, Disney thoroughly ignored the Modern-day Caribs demands for accurate representation. Who gives a fuck about the movie’s reinforcing of stereotypes on Carib children? There are white people to give adventures to! And the trope is easy and familiar enough, escaping the primitive and savage POC for a laugh! *sigh*

Seeking Avalon saw the above link, and offers her own thoughts on the whitewashing of Sinbad. Like her, I find it astonishingly disturbing that I too, completely missed said whitewashing. Ai yi yi. They get you coming and going.

From IBARW comes:A night at the movies Which for a POC, is fraught with BS at practically every turn

and IBARW: On stereotypes and the use of racist terms.

and ibarw: visibility of indoctrination, particularly this comment

finally Digital Femme asks a simple question

No. Not finally. Not finally at ALL: Because tablesaw breaks down the main conceit of Warehouse 13 and does it with STYLE. Aztec bloodstones?!?!!?!? Oh Hollywood, how I hate you so!!!!

Moving on to comics turned movies: On the Green Lantern Movie casting

ANNNDDDD then we come to the problem of Non Native Americans being cast in movies. Seems lots of people wanna claim various fractions of Native heritage so that they can play Native characters on the silver screen. Friday, Tonto, Jacob Black, et al. The additional links there are pretty good. Meantime :Tinsel Korey, Ben Kingsley (my my my, he DOES seem to get around, doesn’t he? First Iranian father, now Half Native American), Johnny Depp (yeah, I didn’t know he had Native ancestry either.Funny that.) That Twilight annoyance are some of the non-Natives whom Hollywood has decided are better at playing Native than real Natives are. Speaking of Twilight both book, and by extension movie got it rather wrong about the Quileute tribe. Then again that’s not surprising. She admits to knowing nothing about the Quileute Tribe before she wrote the things. *eyeroll*

Hipanics in the movies:More roles, but more of the same

At the beginning of this article we promised some bad news, and here it is: With the exception of a handful of actors and actresses, Latinos and Latinas are rarely offered principal roles. And the roles they get typically portray the same fatigued and fatiguing stereotypes: Latinas as exotic, sexually hot, passionate “spitfires,” for example, or language-mangling comic relief. Beltrán says that, for the most part, Latinos seldom play fully realized characters. Although there may be more jobs available, they are basically the same roles that Latinos have assumed for the last 80 years.

“Look at Salma Hayek in ‘Fools Rush In’ (1997) or John Leguizamo in ‘Empire’ (2002),” Beltrán says. “Hayek plays the sultry girlfriend of Matthew Perry — she’s an ultra-sexed Latina like we’ve seen in Hollywood films for decades. And Leguizamo’s role as a drug lord hearkens back to bandito characters that first appeared in early silent films in the 1910s.”

MORE

Latinos Work To Change Stereotypes In Hollywood

This despite the fact that In 2007, Nielsen EDI estimated that Hispanics accounted for 33% of all moviegoers. That is more than double what Hispanics represent to the national population.

To understand the scale of this, Hispanics purchased 297 million movie tickets in 2007 compared to 150 million for African Americans. Hispanics also go to the movies more often purchasing 10.8 tickets per person vs. 7.9 for the general population.

In fact, here’s a Nielsen article breaking down the Latino movie habit

Is Zoe Saldaña The Mainsteam Latina Star We’ve Always Hoped For? Related: Yes Virginia, Black Latinos exist. In fact:Black, Latino and Gifted in Hollywood

So Zoë Saldaña Wasn’t the Only Latino Actor in the Star Trek Movie

Finally, Mixed Hispanic and Native American Actors & Actresses

Have a good weekend!

*Collapses in exhaustion*

The people and their cultures: POC and the movies -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

EDIT: I realize the post is long, but I am having the devil of a time cutting it. I am so so sorry.

To celebrate the fall of Section 377 in India,at teh hands of Delhi’s High Court (may it survive the challenge) here’s Human Rights Watch’s This Alien Legacy:The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism Take a look at the Naz Foundation, which took the lead in challenging this leftover piece of colonial Victorian racist, sexual prudishness. Here’s a blog that breaks down the decision: Part One, Part Two Part Three

15 Shocking Tales of How Sex Laws Are Screwing the American People What do you all think of teen sex leading to sex offender status and jail time? Why is it that sexting is being hit with the full force of pornography law? How much is too much in terms of years between teen couples? (Re the Wilson case, I must say that there are issues of consent that I am not too comfy with). Frankly as long as the sex is consensual and between people in their teens I am of the school where a strong sex education curriculum is crammed down the little darlings throats, including issues of consent, (drunk people cannot consent, in my book), contraception is made available, and what will be will be. Cause as far I can tell, there ain’t any way in human history that anyone has managed to stop sex between teens from happening, no matter what holy books say. Sexuality is intrinsic to a large part of the human species, and I believe in meeting it head on, accepting it, and working with it so as to produce the best outcome…happy healthy people.

Bisexuality 101 This article just popped up on my LJ reader today, so, I’m sharing it with you all!

This is a very interesting blog, so much so that I cannot excerpt all the stuff that I like…because I would choose every post on teh front page! So, just go read:The Asexual Explorations Blog: Thinking Critically About Asexuality. For this next blog I rec these two posts particularly Sexual, Romantic and Secondary Orientations –Summary of the Series and No More Passing from the equally splendid Rainbow Amoeba’s Petri Dish but I do suggest that you read everything else. Asexuality.org and Apositive.org exist for more info and links.

From the “Yeah and?” department, science has finally caught up with reality and come to the conclusion that :
Women like watching porn. News at 11 There are issues, though.

Now I promised a friend of mine that I would start paying attention to disability issues. I have been SORELY remiss in fulfilling that promise. I would therefore like to start doing it now…

Sex and Disability Nerve Magazine Special Edition

Disability and sexual confidence

National Resource Center: Sex and Disability

The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability for all of us

Ignorance is never a good thing. Why do people insist on propagating it? Can a book be burned at the stake, literally?

We turn now to the subject of Masturbation

Masturbation: Good Girls do touch themselves Indeed they do. And should. Especially in the face of selfish men: The Orgasm Gap Much giving, not much receiving. smh.

Why masturbate when you can have a fling? Because masturbation can be  free, and I want you to spend your money with me! Also, I am SICK of companies putting pink packaging on anything that involves marketing to women. Cut that out!

Apparently May was the National Masturbation Month? Did you all know that?

When comics are outlawed exactly who is safer? Dear Uncle Sam, please fix healthcare and stay the hell out of our private libraries, thanks!

NSFW and you probably should not be eating or drinking either. Representing Sexually Transmitted Diseases The authors book looks interesting, and here’s an excerpt (PDF) I remember those pics during what passed for sex ed at my school. Basically were used to try to scare us from not having sex as teens. Didn’t exactly work as far as I can recall.  Naturally, women’s sexual organs are the ones that they chose to make the statement with, though. Oh, double standards!

David Caradine comes and goes, and the media loves it Honestly I felt like slapping some of the more idiotic reporters.

As I wondered about the internet, I came upon funky brown chick Here are some of the posts that I like…

How to have casual sex, Cougars and Cubs: Older Women, Younger Men, Manly hot Asian Men, Manly Monday: Why Do Men Date GILFs, MILFs and Other Older Women? and How to Seduce a GILF.

And finally, in terms of book recs? S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College (Paperback) yeah it says teens but beleiv m,e, adults such as myself can learn tons from this. (Hello, fucked up sex education classes!)The author also runs a website:Scarleteen.com:Sex Ed for the real world and a blog (PS, when they say all you need to know? They MEAN it!)`Have a fun weekend!

Linkspam: The Sex Edition….Um PG 13. Viewer Discretion Advised -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

EDIT: Apologies for giving you all the wrong link for the “The Nouveau Poor, The Working Poor”. The proper link is now up!

Blame Wordpress. I didn’t intend to link race and class issues today. In fact, I was feeling much more lighthearted. Then I hit the wrong button and everything was gone. And unlike LJ, you have to actually press the draft button to get anything saved. So I got grumpy and pissed off. Went to soothe my annoyance with some kirk/mccoy slash…and when I returned, found the links leading me to a heavier theme. oops. I shall strive to collect lighthearted stuff next week, I promise….

Massachusetts decides to curtail healthcare coverage for 30,000 legal Immigrants Huh. And in a progressive state too. Funny thing how budget cuts never seem to affect the military industry, but somehow human resources are blithely targeted. Interesting priorities we’ve got here.

Generation R(ecession)

In the press this week were intriguing portraits of young people finishing high school during turbulent economic times, stories that individually — and especially collectively — illustrate the powerful ways in which starting points shape one’s life trajectory.

The Nouveau Poor, The Working Poor The New York Times has been lately consumed with profiling the straits that the obscenely rich have now plummeted to, now that they can no longer afford that extra yacht or whatever. Contrast that that, of course, with those of us whose health care is caput, or whose children are suddenly on free lunches, or who have lost their homes entirely….

Teaching With UrgencyThe difference between teaching in a school with resources as opposed to a school with little or none.

Teachers File Racial Discrimination Suit Against Obama Administration’s School “Turnaround” Plan What I want to know, is how exactly does the United States expect to remain on top when it keeps squandering all its human resources like this? Commons sense would tell you that this is BS. Then again, educating the young does not make megabucks. Unlike creating weapons of mass destruction.

On the rec list for today is RaceWire a blog that you all should be reading. Here’s a selection:

Food Inc. Shines a Light on the Immigrant Labor That Makes That 99c Patty Melt Possible [VIDEO]

University of California Regents Vote to Give Honorary Degrees to Interned Japanese American Students

Race Wire goes to teh Movies: Harry Potter Edition

What Race Really Has to Do with The CA Central Valley’s Fight for Water

While all of that is going on, Adam Sheppard, a college educated, able-bodied young white straight single American, decided to prove that you can too, pull yourself up by your bootstraps! (With a credit card in your back pocket just in case. And the ability to get off the experiment when your dad gets ill. But I digress.) Naturally, he got a book deal I, having had quite enough of the BS, dug up the following series (sparked by teh wide interest in the introduction to the priviledge checklist to teh blogosphere) by Racialicious last year.Has Class Trumped Race Part 1 Part Two Part Three And they address some of his shenanigans here.Part Three Point Five From the same period:Has Class Trumped Race? From The Rickshaw Diaries

Book of the week: Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization This is one of the best books on immigration that I have read so far. Here’s an interview with the author and here’s an excerpt. Have yourselves a good week!

Linkspam 3: The Race and Class Edition -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman