Thursday, January 24, 2008

Two Days to the "Stop Porn Culture" Conference

Or I guess technically a day and a half, at this late hour.

The Jefferson Parish Council today voted to block hotels in the parish from renting out rooms by the hour. I know they're trying to cut down on hourly rentals to johns and drug users, but I don't know - I still feel some nostalgia for those places from when I was a teenager (well, it was better than parking at the lakefront and plus those places weren't quite as sleazy back then as they are now - or maybe I've just gotten old). Hat tip to Gentilly Girl, who points out that this will likely just send the criminal activity across the parish line.

Heavens, I love this po-boy and Barq's photo from YatPundit.

This story from Heart - "The Padlocked Vagina - Rape as Torture in the Congo" - is beyond words, so I won't say anything other than that it's graphic and you should still see it. Be sure to follow the link to the letter to Ken Burns about his failure to include women's realities in his "The War: An Intimate History." An intimate his-story...

On second thought, maybe I will say something else, the same thing I end up saying practically every day: "Why do men hate us so much?"

"A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done, no matter how strong the weapons, or how brave the warriors."
(Ines' Hernandez-Avila. "In Praise of Insubordination," Transforming a Rape Culture.)

Finally, check out these two articles from ladoctorita at her blog "unconventional beauty."
Part I: "Hear no Evil" about no one listening to women's concerns about other women or about men threatening them.
Part II: "Nobody Listens to Women" about Julie Jensen, whose 1998 death was initiailly ruled a suicide but whose husband is now on trial for murdering her - which makes sense since she left a note with her neighbor twelve days before she died basically saying, "If I should die, he probably killed me."

I'll end with a video that seems apropos and that's probably it until after Austin. Guess I'd better get packing (everything at the last possible minute as usual).

Jackson Katz in "Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity:"



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