What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take an entire article, one that's almost a parody of itself, and add my own little comments to it. The article in question is about- you guessed it, Ladyfest. I wouldn't have done it since I've already talked about it, but this one was too hard to pass up. And keep in mind too, that I'm only doing this because I find all of this really, really silly considering what's going on in the world- an Al Queda training camp discovered in Alabama, the Administration preparing to invade Iraq despite the fact nobody can come up with any good reason too, the economy still tanking and one after another corporate entity admitting they cooked the books, and a new Get Tough on White Collar Crime bill that if would have been enacted years ago would have resulted in the President and Vice-President being in Prison.
And not only am I so going to hell for doing this, but I better hope I don't have a date for the next couple of months and some woman stumbles upon this. Remember, send your nasty comments to hoorayforanything@yahoo.com, but considering what most of my traffic is looking for, I'm probably not gonna get much.....
Italics are mine
Feminism
can be fun
BY GINA ARNOLD
"Hey, lady!"
Yell that in public if you dare -- you'll get a dirty look from most women,
since "lady" has long ceased to be a compliment. Has it? But if you shouted
it at Ladyfest -- the four-day festival of art, music, workshops and panels
in San Francisco last weekend -- you'd have gotten a cheer. There, "lady" is
a positive epithet, as are other hot-button words like "bitch" and 'feminist.
So when Snoop refers to his bitches and ho's, he's showing his respect to
women?
It's the latest take on feminism -- and judging by Ladyfest, which took place
Thursday through Sunday at the new Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Center on
Market Street and other venues around The City, it's a lot more fun than the
last go-round. Yeah, heard last one was a huge-snooze fest.
Instead of earnest conversations about menstruating and a lot of tears
now that sounds like a party, Ladyfest was about self-expression I'm
coming up so we can get the party started!. It featured an eclectic mix
of goofy girly stuff (knitting and doll making forums) wow, politics (a presentation
by a foreign correspondent who has reported from the Gaza Strip) and that
has what to do with feminism? Wasn't there a well-documted gang-rape in Pakistan?
Oh wait, it's because the far left is borderline anti-semitic. Know something
else? My guess is there's not gonna be a Ladyfest in Israel or Gaza mainly because
they're too busy trying not to be killed than going to dollmaking forums,
and how-to workshops on hitchhiking and starting one's own record label.
There also were many parties. All weekend, ladies ran amok in the Mission
and the Castro, and were having a gas. Some were punk rockers, with combat books
and tattoos. Some were feminist studies majors with cute bobbed haircuts and
adorable clothing. There were workers, activists, teachers, mothers, teenagers
and transsexuals. What about, say, black/Asian/hispanic women. Or poor women.
Or, say, Vice-Presidents of some company?
There were flame-haired girls with glasses, like 25-year-old Katherine Hodges,
who flew in from Chicago to attend, hoping for inspiration for her work as an
activist back home. Hodges said she was interested in this version of Ladyfest
because many of her favorite writers and activists -- like Bitch magazine founder
Lisa Miya-Jervis and fat activist Marilyn Wann -- come from the Bay Area.
I got no joke here. Sorry.
She was also inspired by cable TV star Dee Dee Russell?, who told the
audience at her workshop, "How To Become A Cable Access Television Star," oooh.
You know how you do it? You contact the local cable-access people and ask them
if you can have a show. Then they give you a time your show will air and you
film it. How do I know? Because I know people who did it. It's fucking easy.
"I'm known for bragging and being self-aggrandizing. I really advocate that.
You're going to get called a bitch no matter what you do, so you may as well
do what you want and brag about it." You go girl!
In addition, each day featured numerous workshops and discussion groups, with
themes ranging from doll making and knitting Gloria Stienem will be so proud
to menstrual extraction lovely and self-publishing umm, sign up with
blogger.com and start blogging?. There also were forums for discussing fat
and body image problems, transgender health issues and "contemporary femme identity."
Didn't Bush just stop funds to a
U.N. population control fund? Didn't he submit for the Judicial
ship someone whose pretty anti-abortion? Don't you think that stuff's kind of important?
At that workshop, 25 pretty young women As I walked around the 'hood this
weekend, I can assure you that there weren't a lot of pretty young women walking
around. More like fat, tattooed, and spiky dyed haired. affirmed each other's
liking for lipstick, heels and other feminine accoutrements which, they say,
gets them branded weak, apathetic, apolitical, vulnerable, and worst of all,
straight. Oh no! And what is "affirmed each other" Does that mean they sat
around and said "I affirm you?" Isn't that pretty much what happens in your
average Ladies Room?
"It's like a tree falling in the forest," see below comments already
posted complained Devon, a stripper and drag queen from Berkeley hopefully
not at any of the strip clubs I go to. "If no one identifies me as a femme,
but I identify myself as such, then am I one?" And I care because…..
Women in the audience nodded with appreciation, wondering out loud how --
and why -- we take visual cues to define ourselves. Reverand!.
Some participants were actively hostile to men Oh my God, men hating radical
feminists, there's a shocker. "When I wear lipstick," said a French woman
named Miriam, "I feel like I am using one of their weapons against me, against
them." Stupid French. Was that the explination behind Vichy France?
"I really enjoyed discussing that," Erica Sagrans, 19, a student from Brown
University, said afterward. "It's great to bring your personal experiences to
a discussion. At school, that's not really an accepted source of knowledge."
Yeah, Brown is such a stuffy, conservative college. They have no grades people!
In addition to providing a forum for controversial issues, many of the workshops
focused on ways to increase women's independence and sense of adventure. Again,
isn't there anything else to be worrying about?
That was the idea behind "The Idiot's Guide to Hitchhiking and Train-hopping,"
at which a mysterious man named Xarick told participants how to recognize which
types of boxcars were potentially rideable, how to grab them, and what to do
if caught. ("You can climb in the wheel-well, if you need to be real secret,
or ride in the axle for super-stealth!") And this is feminism because....
Sounds kind of fun, though.
Another fun activity was stilt-making. "Stilts aren't feminist in their own
right," shrugged workshop leader Leonie Newhouse, "but women making them is
kind of feminist." Remember, people are getting gang-raped in Pakistan. And
if I made stilts, would that not be political because I'm a guy or would that
be too patriarchal?
So is her use of the word "feminist," which in mainstream America has become
synonymous with adjectives like radical, lesbian, humorless and unpleasant never
heard that criticism before. Here's a joke- how many feminists does it take
to screw in a light-bulb? That's not funny.. Ladyfest would like to change
that perception, Judging by the level of fun at the fest, and the youthfulness
of the constituency, it already has. I'm sure women in Afghanistan and Pakistan
are probably feeling better right now.
Still, its message reflects that of classic feminism: Women are excluded from
the power structure of mainstream culture -- or they're degraded and ignored
and objectified when they get there. Ladyfest argues that the way to fight is
to take control of culture and the media. Alright, they got a point there,
but stilt-making?
Krause, the Chicagoan who attended the "How To Be A Cable Access Star" workshop,
said she hopes to start a cable show at home. That's it? That's all she got
out of it? All that affirming and talk, and her big motivation is to start a
Cable Access show? Susan B. Anthony would be so proud.
Calling the energy at Ladyfest "incredible," she added, "Being here is like
the opposite of being immersed in mass culture. This is like taking a mini-vacation
from the fight." The fight against bad Cable Access shows?
Keep on rocking in the free word….
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