femiseeds for thought

bell hooks is a woman who rejects the upper case letters, opression, domination and subjectification.

Feminist ideology should not encourage (as sexism has done) women to believe they are powerless. It should clarify for women the powers they exercise daily and show them ways these powers can be used to resist sexist domination and exploitation.

 

- bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

The thought of graduating so soon scares me. It scares me even more sometimes to go out and announce one my majors: Gender Studies. What should I do thereafter? Spout radical feminist theories and bare bushy armpits? Or seep right back into the comfortable patriarchy of this life? hooks encourages me. Whatever I’ve learnt shouldn’t scare me, or exclude me. Instead I should use it to be me. To express me. Whatever that fits me. After three years of this education, I think I finally have the courage to say- Yes. I can be feminist. I am a feminist.

 

And because she says it so well, here’s Alice Walker.

I love and adore the masculine as I love and adore the feminine. The masculine I love and adore is playful. The feminine I love and adore loves to play. I do not believe in, support or condone male planetary leadership. I will never believe in a political social system that does not believe in me.

 

Alice Walker, Laws of the Bandit Queens by Ali Smith

I too, will believe in anything that believes in me.

 

 

 

Filed under: daily grind, femi

sadly mistakened

The pencil invited the ruler back to its pencilcase for a jam session one night. Pencil was as usual, pensive. The ruler didn’t want to ask why, because it would spoil the night, spoil the beauty of straight lines.

You are leaving, Pencil finally said.

The ruler thought: Yes I am. Yes I know. There are a million things for me to do, more uses for someone like me, beyond the world of lines. I have grand dreams, even if I will only ever be a ruler. We’ve worked well together Pencil, and you’ve been dream company in my most angsty nights, and together we’ve raged and spewed forth angry dark lines. Other times we just did dashes. Like these. – - . We sat side by side in thoughtful bliss.

It wanted to say: We’ve sat side by side, dreaming of our carbon castles, mulling over our graphite lines that completely rule an imaginary world, a world we both understood, a world we have no need to make sense of. A world of lines. But sitting next to you Pencil, I was always Ruler. I needed you to draw our world. I had no other use, except bear your repressed weight. A jailhouse of lines.

But the ruler said nothing.

And the pencil kept breaking up. It refused to hold up. Everytime it touched the ruler, it shuddered, sighed and its nib snapped. The jam session at night turned out to be a daydream- instead of beautiful long straight strokes, all they achieved were punctured, unruly interruptions.

We should never jam together again, said the Pencil. I will hurt less, and you won’t mind, with time.

This is reality, this is how time passes. And don’t go into the future thinking you own a glorious past. You have nothing. Nothing concrete. Nothing like black lines on white space.

.

Filed under: written word

The Beginning of PG Breakfast Cereals

A history essay on Victorian sexuality threw this scrumptious flake of trivia my way:

The Kellog brothers provide an odd example of the indirect consequences of the attention paid to masturbation in the United States. John and Will Kellogg, basically men of piety and morals, set out to design diets that would avoid excitation. The result was cornflakes- and fortune.

(Stenger & Neck, p. 108, Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror)

Doing some googlework however gave me a few other more socially acceptable explanations for their geniuses,

i.e. they were radical vegans

Kellogg’s revolutionized breakfast in the USA. The Kellogg brothers were part of the first health movement in America that warned about the dangers of fatty, protein rich foods. Instead, they advocated a diet based primarily on vegetables, grains and fiber. Their devotion to this dietary regime gave rise to the Kellogg’s company and the large consumption of cereals that exists today.

(Vogel, www.foodreference.com)

i.e. one brother was a ‘bowel obsessed quack’

When Tony the Tiger says, “They’rre Grrreat!” is he talking about his bowels? As strange as it sounds, he could be…Like his cereal-developing forefather, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s vocation was the health spa and hospital business. He was the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek Michigan. While history has relegated John Kellogg’s medical professional status to that of bowel-obsessed quack (see the novel and film based on his rein at the sanitarium, Road To Wellville), in his day he was considered a very skilled surgeon.

(Breakfast Mr., www.mrbreakfast.com)

i.e. John Kellogg was a very religious man

John Harvey Kellogg was a devout Seventh-day Adventist and one of the most prominent figures in the early development of the Seventh-day Adventist Church… He was influential in the development of many of the Church’s distinctive health and dietary teachings and practices… A remarkable Adventist leader, Ellen G. White, saw a chance to expand the order through a better health campaign… Sister White realized she needed to market her program, so she selected a serious-minded youth from her congregation named John Harvey Kellogg…She paid for his education at the University of Michigan and then sent him to study at Bellevue Hospital in New York, paying him a salary while he was there.

(Zacharias, Detroit News)

I reckon breakfast cereal has got a bit of everything inside eh (including 10 000 omega vitamins yada)? Our breakfast cereal is surprisingly very politically correct, its creation the result of careful consideration of ethics, health, religion and even sex! But I kinda like the idea of it being balm for ’solitary excitation’ best. Eat cereal to control the hormones. (shivers)

Filed under: quirks

protest visuals…

Filed under: places

March 17th, a day for protest

At the State Library of Victoria today, a protest rally was held, calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and and to free Australian David Hicks, who is currently detained in Guantanamo Bay without fair trial for being an unlawful combatant serving the Taliban.

Listening to the speakers of the rally today, who urged people to know more, break the veil of silence and stand up for the things you value, acutely reminded me of the importance of a public space, one unfiltered by propaganda or the media. But I cannot help but feel that sometimes, these public outcries are in vain. Plodding their hippy sandles, drinking their fairtrade coffee, they may return home to the comforts of their house, miles and miles away from the countries of affect. Indignant, but secure. So what?

A young Negro immigrant. A penny for his thoughts.

More pictures soon.

Filed under: daily grind, musings