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#they are discussing the intricacies of gender identity <3
griba · 1 year
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propaganda art from the last couple rounds of @fearforthestorm's mutuals polls!! :oD for every round i sweep, i'll draw more hermits in dresses so !!!!!!!!! VOTE GRIBA ^___^
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ID: digital fanart of Grian and TangoTek (MCYT) sitting and chatting. Grian is sitting with his legs tucked to the side. He is dressed as Ariana Griande, wearing long hair, pink eyeshadow and lipstick, loose pink and white arm warmers, and a dress that has a sheer pink illusion neckline and a body that fades from red at the top to light pink at the bottom.
Tango is sitting with his left leg crossed over the other, and he has his eyes closed and mouth open as he speaks. He's gesturing casually with one of his hands, and he is wearing blue eyeshadow and lipstick, navy blue thigh-high socks, heeled platform boots, and a v-neck dress that fades from navy blue at the top to light blue at the bottom. End ID
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selectivf · 3 months
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LGBTQ+ Surrogacy
Introduction:
In the kaleidoscope of modern family structures, LGBTQ+ individuals and couples have found empowerment through assisted reproductive technologies. Surrogacy, a transformative journey towards parenthood, stands as a beacon of hope for the LGBTQ+ community. This article explores the nuanced landscape of LGBTQ+ surrogacy, with a special focus on the comprehensive and inclusive services provided by Select IVF.
Understanding LGBTQ+ Surrogacy: LGBTQ+ surrogacy is a dynamic and inclusive process that allows individuals and couples within the community to experience the joys of biological parenthood. The process typically involves a surrogate carrying a child for LGBTQ+ intended parents, facilitating a genetic connection within the family.
Select IVF: Pioneering Inclusivity in Surrogacy: Select IVF, a distinguished fertility clinic, has emerged as a trailblazer in providing LGBTQ+ individuals and couples with a supportive and inclusive environment for surrogacy. The clinic recognizes the unique needs of the LGBTQ+ community, fostering an environment where love, respect, and expert medical care converge to create families.
Legal Landscape: Navigating the legal intricacies of LGBTQ+ surrogacy is a critical aspect addressed by Select IVF. The clinic ensures that the surrogacy process adheres to legal frameworks, recognizing and safeguarding the rights of all parties involved, irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Surrogacy Process for LGBTQ+ Couples:
1. Initial Consultation: The journey begins with an initial consultation, where LGBTQ+ intended parents meet with fertility specialists at Select IVF. This phase involves discussions about family-building goals, medical history, and an overview of the surrogacy process.
2. Surrogate Matching: Select IVF employs a meticulous matching process to pair LGBTQ+ intended parents with a suitable surrogate. This matching considers factors such as medical compatibility, shared values, and the establishment of a supportive connection.
3. Legal Procedures: Legal aspects are addressed comprehensively, including the creation and execution of contracts outlining the rights and responsibilities of all parties. Select IVF ensures that the LGBTQ+ intended parents are legally recognized as the child’s parents.
4. Medical Procedures: The medical team at Select IVF employs state-of-the-art technologies for assisted reproductive procedures, including in vitro fertilization (IVF). LGBTQ+ intended parents are actively involved in decisions about the fertilization process and the transfer of embryos.
5. Emotional Support: Acknowledging the emotional nuances of the LGBTQ+ surrogacy journey, Select IVF provides ongoing emotional support. This includes counseling for intended parents and surrogates, fostering an environment of open communication and understanding.
6. Pregnancy and Beyond: Throughout the pregnancy, Select IVF ensures regular medical check-ups for surrogates and keeps intended parents informed about the progress. The clinic supports the intended parents as they prepare for the arrival of their child.
Challenges and Triumphs: While the landscape of LGBTQ+ surrogacy has evolved positively, challenges such as legal complexities, societal perceptions, and access to inclusive healthcare persist. Select IVF, through its commitment to advocacy, aims to overcome these challenges and celebrate the triumphs of LGBTQ+ individuals and couples as they realize their dreams of parenthood.
Celebrating Diversity: Select IVF celebrates the diversity within the LGBTQ+ community and recognizes that every family-building journey is unique. The clinic aims to create an environment where LGBTQ+ individuals and couples feel seen, respected, and supported throughout the surrogacy process.
Conclusion
In the realm of LGBTQ+ surrogacy, Select IVF emerges not only as a provider of medical services but as a champion of inclusivity, equality, and love. As LGBTQ+ individuals and couples navigate the path to parenthood, Select IVF stands as a trusted ally, providing expert care, legal guidance, and unwavering support. The journey towards building families is a shared endeavor at Select IVF, where diversity is celebrated, and the essence of love knows no boundaries.
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ismirkatmidgets · 7 months
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Exploring the Spectrum: A Journey of Perspectives
Today, we embark on a captivating journey through various perspectives, delving into the minds of individuals who shape our society. In this blog post, we'll explore the intricate world of a criminal, an addict, a man, a brother, a son, a felon, and a non-judgmental carefree person. So, let's dive right in!
Below is a detailed list of things you will be able to find in my future posts and articles. If any of this seems to spark your brain into action don't forget to follow and stay up to date.
1. Inside the Mind of a Criminal:
Crime has always fascinated us, pushing the boundaries of societal norms. Through empathy and understanding, we'll venture into the psyche of a criminal and examine the factors that contribute to their decisions. Striving for clarity, we'll analyze the circumstances and motivations behind their actions, with the ultimate goal of unraveling complex truths. I will also discuss my experiences, crimes I have been accused of, crimes I committed, and time I have served incarcerated.
2. Unveiling the World of Addiction:
Addiction is an all-encompassing battle that affects countless individuals, their families, and communities. By immersing ourselves in the mindset of an addict, we hope to cultivate empathy and shed light on the struggles they face. Through compassionate exploration, we'll address the underlying factors, challenges, and potential paths towards recovery. Also, just like the criminal aspect I will not hold back when it comes to my story and addiction. So, prepare to read some pretty off the wall shit.
3. The Journey of Men:
Examining perspectives specific to gender, we'll unravel the unique experiences, pressures, and expectations placed on men in our society. From exploring masculinity and vulnerability to addressing societal constructs, we aim to foster open dialogue, understanding, and support for men navigating their complex identities.
4. Brotherhood and Family Bonds:
Family plays a crucial role in shaping who we are, and the relationship between siblings can be both beautiful and complex. Together, we'll explore the dynamics of brotherhood, the influence of sibling connections, and the delicate threads that bind us together as family.
5. The Son's Narrative:
The bond between parents and children is profound, enriching our lives with love, lessons, and memories. Taking a closer look at the perspective of a son, we'll delve into the impact of parental guidance, the intricacies of familial expectations, and the transformative power of unconditional love.
6. Embracing Redemption: The Felon's Journey:
Life is seldom a straight path, and sometimes individuals find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Through empathy and understanding, we'll seek to unravel the stories of individuals who strive for redemption, examining the challenges they face and the potential for growth and change.
7. Embracing Freedom: The Non-Judgmental Carefree Spirit:
In a world tangled with biases and preconceived notions, the non-judgmental carefree spirit serves as a refreshing reminder of our innate capacity for acceptance and open-mindedness. We'll explore the beauty of carefree living, embracing positivity, and fostering a community built on understanding, free from judgment.
On Journal With Jimmyy, we'll delve into these intriguing perspectives with compassion and respect, attributing value to each story shared. Remember, our goal is to foster a supportive community that embraces diversity, cultivates empathy, and promotes understanding.
Thank you for joining me on this enlightening journey. As we communicate and exchange ideas, I look forward to hearing your insights and perspectives, enriching the tapestry of our shared experiences.
Stay tuned for more thought-provoking content on Journal With Jimmyy!
Warm regards,
Jimmyy
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hamid6740 · 7 months
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LGBTQ+ Sexual Health: A Comprehensive Guide
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“LGBTQ+ Sexual Health: A Comprehensive Guide” dives deep into the intricacies of sexual health for LGBTQ+ individuals. From safer sex practices to navigating relationships and mental health, this article offers a holistic perspective on fostering a healthy and inclusive intimate life.
Sexual health is a vital aspect of overall well-being, and it’s important for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBTQ+ individuals often face unique challenges related to their sexual health, and addressing these issues is crucial for fostering a healthy, inclusive, and fulfilling intimate life. In this comprehensive guide, we explore the nuances of LGBTQ+ sexual health.
1. Understanding LGBTQ+ Sexual Health
Diverse Experiences: LGBTQ+ individuals have diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and relationships, each with unique considerations for sexual health.
Inclusive Language: Using respectful and inclusive language when discussing sexual health is essential.
2. STIs and Safer Sex Practices
Tailored Risks: Different sexual practices carry different risks for LGBTQ+ individuals. Understanding these risks is essential for making informed decisions.
Safer Sex Strategies: Consistent and correct use of barriers like condoms and dental dams can significantly reduce the risk of STIs.
3. Mental Health and Intimacy
Stigma and Mental Health: LGBTQ+ individuals may face stigma, discrimination, and mental health challenges that can impact their sexual well-being.
Seeking Support: Mental health support is vital for maintaining a positive body image and a healthy relationship with one’s sexuality.
4. Hormone Therapy and Intimate Health
Gender-Affirming Care: Hormone therapy is a vital component of gender-affirming care. Understanding its effects on sexual health is crucial.
Communication with Partners: Open communication about hormone therapy and its potential impact on intimacy fosters understanding.
5. Navigating Relationships
Communication: Open and honest communication with partners is key to ensuring that everyone’s needs, desires, and boundaries are respected.
Consent: Clear consent is crucial in all intimate encounters, regardless of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
LGBTQ+ sexual health is a multifaceted topic that requires sensitivity, inclusivity, and a commitment to fostering understanding. By addressing the unique challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals, we can create a world where everyone can embrace their sexuality with confidence, knowledge, and respect.
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womenswin01 · 7 months
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Comedic Talents: Women of Asian Descent in the Comedy Scene
In the world of comedy, diverse voices have been breaking barriers and challenging stereotypes for years. One such group that has been making waves is women of Asian Female Comedians List. These comedians bring a unique perspective to the stage, infusing their performances with cultural insights, personal anecdotes, and sharp wit. In this article, we shine a spotlight on the comedic talents of Asian female comedians who are leaving their mark on the comedy scene.
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1. Ali Wong: Bold and Unapologetic
Ali Wong's name is synonymous with unfiltered and fearless comedy. Her no-holds-barred approach to discussing taboo topics and her willingness to share personal experiences have endeared her to audiences worldwide. Wong's Chinese and Vietnamese heritage often takes center stage in her routines, providing her with a treasure trove of material that challenges stereotypes and offers a window into her unique upbringing. From her groundbreaking specials like "Baby Cobra" to her acting roles, Ali Wong is a force to be reckoned with in the comedy world.
2. Awkwafina: From Rap to Laughs
Awkwafina, known for her roles in films like "Crazy Rich Asians" and "The Farewell," initially gained recognition through her comedic rap songs on YouTube. Her transition from music to acting didn't stifle her comedic prowess; instead, it propelled her into the limelight as a versatile performer. Awkwafina's humor often stems from her experiences as a Chinese-Korean American, navigating cultural identity with a healthy dose of self-deprecation. Her rise to fame is a testament to her ability to connect with audiences through laughter.
3. Margaret Cho: Pioneering Comedy with Purpose
Margaret Cho's impact on comedy goes beyond just making people laugh. Throughout her career, she has used her platform to address important social issues, particularly those affecting the Asian American community. Cho fearlessly tackles topics like race, sexuality, and gender, challenging societal norms and advocating for change. By infusing her comedy with a strong sense of purpose, Cho has paved the way for future generations of Asian female comedians to use their voices for both humor and advocacy.
You Can Also Visit Us  : -
Asian American Female Comedians
Asian American Comedian Female
How To Break The Glass Ceiling
How To Break Glass Ceiling
4. Jenny Yang: Celebrating Identity
Jenny Yang's comedy often revolves around the intricacies of her Taiwanese background and the complexities of being an immigrant. Her performances shed light on the experiences of many Asian Americans, striking a chord with audiences who resonate with her stories of identity, family, and cultural clashes. Beyond stand-up, Yang is known for her podcast "Busy Being Asian," where she engages in candid conversations about identity and representation.
5. Aparna Nancherla: Quirky Observations
Aparna Nancherla's comedy stands out for its introspective and quirky nature. Her Indian heritage is woven into her material, allowing her to explore themes of belonging and individuality with a dose of charming awkwardness. Nancherla's offbeat style and intellectual humor have earned her a dedicated following, and her presence in the comedy world showcases the breadth of comedic talent within the Asian community.
In conclusion, the comedy scene is being enriched by the presence of Asian Female Comedians comedians who bring their unique perspectives and experiences to the forefront. Through their humor, these comedians are not only making us laugh but also challenging stereotypes, advocating for change, and sparking meaningful conversations. As the comedy landscape continues to evolve, the voices of these talented individuals remind us of the power of laughter to bridge cultural gaps and foster understanding.
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extremerabbit123 · 6 years
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In Progress
Introduction
I hear talking of people
The whole world has gone insane
And all there is left is the fallin' rain
And all there is left is the fallin' rain
All there is left is the fallin' rain- Link Wray
There appears to be an urgency, a strangeness, or an impending state of chaos emerging that many feel they have never felt before. Across this country and around the world, people are feeling it. Thoughts and feelings may vary from one person to another, but the common entry into this frail psychical state adjoins one subject to the rest. A footnote with no ending could be written about the disparity of consciousness that shatters itself into piece upon piece. And another footnote with no ending could be written about why this is.
Technological change has accelerated very quickly. We are now in the future, as opposed to the lukewarm digital age of the late twentieth century. Premonitions of apocalypse have crossed over from religious fundamentalism and into the secular realm. What does apocalypse really mean, though? Doomsday, or the lifting of an illusory veil? Unfortunately, God’s will and the human will to mistakenly re-enact the events of sacred texts might be adjoined after all these years, at least in their cumulative weight on the outcome of the world. But the day opens, and the heart binds itself to the garden of bondage and liberation-
under the burden of often invisible weights,
plants, humans, and other animals
are obstructed from mere sleep.
We wake and in this garden of mixed polarities, we feign survival in literal and symbolic breath. Lights go out. Some stay on- and in this space we are undone. We are still mostly hidden from each other, but the reverberations emanate as they did from day one. There is senseless suffering, sterile plateaus of non-material foundation, and the quaint disconnect as these both erupt from day to day. One looks to another, though, and all is born again. Bless this if you can. Anoint the frame. Freight trains move on in day and in night. We will meet as particles, or as intonations in music of the world unknown
I. The Presence, The Mother
1.
Nebulous nearnesses cry to me
At this timeless moment someone dear to me
Wants me near, makes me high
I can hear vibrations fly- the Incredible String Band
One of the most well known Jewish theologians of the twentieth century, Martin Buber put forth a version of Judaism that, in spite of its lack of emphasis on traditional ritual, converged with the renewed interest in Jewish mysticism, as well as various other forms of mysticism, in the mid-twentieth century. Arguably his signature work, the text I and Thou is a treatise on the relationships among humans and humans’ relationship to God. He talks about two conjunctions that define the whole of humanity’s perception. There is the realm of the I-It, and then there is that of the I-Thou.
The I-It exists in the world of objects. Once a Thou, or You, becomes a He or She for the I, then the I crosses over into the realm of the I-It. This can extend to the ways in which people perceive anything, not exclusively other humans. The difference between standing in pure relation to say, a tree, and contemplating said tree as an object to be marked by taxonomy, measurement, and other forms of classifications is great, according to Buber. The former relationship is the I-Thou relationship, while the latter is stuck in the world of I-It.
Of course, this dynamic is a model in miniature of humans’ relationship with the eternal I-Thou, otherwise known as God. Buber stresses the I-Thou relationship as being more significant than the I-It relationship, in spite of the I-It dynamic being a fact of life and consciousness, a necessity of life even. As such, Buber does not place importance on the intricacies within the I or the Thou, whether he is discussing humans or the divine. It is the space of relationship between them that is important, in which the particularities of subject and object are dwarfed by the mere fact that one entity is locked in the present moment with another. An overlooked avenue in human consciousness according to Buber as he wrote in the early twentieth century, this is the I-Thou. Within lies the true, unadulterated relationship between humans and their natural environment as well as the divine.
2.
Of course, there is an ever-undulating movement between beholding something as an object and the supposed transcendence of objectification. Generations of theorists following Buber have provided further description of the dynamic between “self” and “other,” with the term “other” providing a bit of a variation on the Buberian “thou.” For philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, we cannot presume to know the “other” at all. It is due to this very fact, according to Levinas, that we are responsible towards this “other.” This may be superior to Buber’s I-Thou in some ways, when we are to consider the fragmentation of lenses through which each subject experiences the world. Mystery fuels the altruism of Levinas’ ethics, and this could be, like Buber, extended to his view of God as a Talmudic scholar.
If we are to consider the possible pitfalls of acting with responsibility towards this other, we must take into account that there is a simultaneous presence of patterns and anomalies in this world. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben apprehends the other with using the term “whatever.” The “whatever” being is both singular and informed by factors that extend beyond its singularity. If we are to view a person, we can both see them as singular and as a product of factors often cited to be influential in someone’s perspective and experience in a way that is not informed by the person’s own volition. These factors can include race, class, gender, orientation, creed, and several other categories of identity. However, it would be going a bit too far to characterize these factors as the sole things that define a person. There is a delicate balance that must be sought in honoring the mysterious singularity of what and whom confronts us in this world, and the acknowledgement that to be born in this world is not to be born with a blank slate. Furthermore, due to this intersection of anomaly and pattern, a human being is without a doubt a complex, mysterious entity in itself.
3.
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the co-founders of the Jewish Renewal movement, drew upon the mysticism of his Chabad Lubavitch background and brought it to a more secular and ecumenical context. Drawing on the Kabbalah, other categories of Jewish mysticism, and even elements of other world religions, he tended towards outlined the multiple processes of creation and human development and the intersections between both. As the Kabbalistic tradition in particular emphasizes the interdependency and interconnectedness of the physical and spiritual worlds, Schachter-Shalomi outlines the varied realms within the mind, body, and soul of a person.
The mere level of appearance is called guf. This is the mere surface of things, the scraps of impressions one may derive from simply looking at a person. Beyond this is nefesh, which encompasses a person’s biological intricacies; nefesh, while still referring to the physical world, may evoke both the hiddenness and complexity of the systems, organs, and chemicals that operate in keeping someone alive and ticking. Ruach, meaning “breath” or “spirit,” is the realm of emotion. Here we begin to emerge into non-material territory, and we move further into the realm of intellect, or neshamah. Beyond that is hayyah, which means the very will of a person, or their intuition. Finally, we get to yehidah, which refers to one’s union with God. This may be the substance of the Buberian I-Thou relationship.
The ascension from one realm to another is mirrored in Jewish religious services, proceeding from fostering awareness of physicality to the union with the divine. There are four “worlds” that incorporate the realms of the soul. There is Assiyah, the realm of action, which contains guf and nefesh, Yetzirah, the realm of formation, which contains ruach, Beriyah, the world of creation, which contains neshamah, and Atzilut, the highest realm, which contains hayyah and yehidah. The physical and spiritual realms are interdependent, and are constantly in contact in the process of creation. “Creation” here is used to bridge the event of the universe’s creation with history itself, blurring boundaries of space and time between them. This may remind us that in the midst of the all of creation’s presence, a story is being told. Actually, multiple stories are told. But sometimes, there is a harmony out of which we can draw a holistic view of a person’s life and death.  
4.
Julia Kristeva, a Bulgarian-born French philosopher, is considered by many to be one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century. Her work spans multiple disciplines; first touching upon linguistics and politics, she then moved onward into the realm of psychoanalysis, which allowed her work, already immersed in the phenomena of avant-garde literature, to bridge the social sciences and the humanities. Like Buber’s theory of the twofold consciousness of the I-Thou and I-It, Kristeva does not separate language and subjective experience. In fact, just as Buber’s theory proposes, she classifies language as being an essential element to the mere construction of subjective experience.
But within this characterization of language’s immanence in subjectivity, more parallels between Buber and Kristeva await. Kristeva observes stages of early childhood development in which language moves from “baby talk” to recognizable linguistic structures. In the “pre-Oedipal phase,” the child’s vocalizations are a primitive attempt at expressing what is yet inexpressible in the terms the adults use. This intuitive, primal construction of language is an example of what Kristeva terms the realm of the “semiotic.” As time goes on, the child learns the structures of syntax and diction that create speech out of which recognizable meaning is derived by others. This “understandable” speech is deemed to be the “symbolic,” a word that hints at the fact that something and its common name are not linked inextricably. While the symbolic precedes from the pre-Oedipal semiotic phase, the semiotic is not absent; it underlies our everyday, common speech regardless. The interweaving of the semiotic and symbolic modes of expression produces “significance,” which according to Kristeva is the resulting product in human communication. So it goes with the I-Thou and I-It; the interplay between something pre-linguistic and the recognition of the surrounding world as separate and characterizable from oneself informs both subjectivity and language.
This aforementioned focus on early childhood is inherited by psychoanalysts going back to Sigmund Freud, but in characterizing the realm in which the semiotic utterances begin, Kristeva also draws upon Plato’s theory of the chora, an almost womb-like structure that preceded the creation of the universe itself. What makes Kristeva’s portrayal of this entity different is that Kristeva’s chora is not just the passive, immobile receptacle that Plato’s chora is portrayed to be. Plato’s chora is at the mercy of whatever fills it, but Kristeva’s is characterized by “motility,” or spontaneous movement in response to whatever fills it. In general, we see this concept of the chora mirrored in wisdom traditions spanning from Kabbalah to Taoism. In Kabbalah, the name for God is Ayn Sof, generally translated into English as “without end.” Ayn Sof existed before the creation of the universe, just as in the Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu describes the Tao as being “older than God.” These examples may be more in line with Plato’s theory of an immobile womb. Kristeva’s chora, on the other hand, deals with something more fluid and terrestrial.
5.
Kabbalah is the most well known form of Jewish mysticism, but is not the only one. Furthermore, it is somewhat of a composite of traditions that came before, whether they be mystical or of a more hermeneutic variety such as Midrash. Kabbalah concerns itself with questions concerning the nature of God, how the universe was created, how this process of creation is mirrored across time and space, and, as a result of all of those questions, it attempts to address the question of “why we are here.”
For the Kabbalists, there is a need to provide some visual aid in the process of connecting with God, despite the fact that like Moses Maimonides, it is generally agreed upon that God is ultimately ineffable and incapable of being visualized. The Ten Sefirot represent a diagram of the effects of God’s presence in the universe, the world, and one’s individual soul. They exist outside of space and time, and together in the diagram they form what is called the tree of life. Like the four worlds and the dimensions of the soul, they are interdependent. What distinguishes the tree of life, however, is the way it links the particular and universal. The Sefirot of the soul and thereby the body are akin to chakra points as described by East Asian traditions, but the Tree of Life they comprise also is, as mentioned before, a map of the entire cosmos.
The lowest Sefirot on the tree of life, Malkhut, is also related to the concept of the Shekinah, or the “divine presence.” It is the dwelling place of the creation of the universe, the world, and all life. While Malkhut and thereby the Shekinah are the “lowest” on the Tree of Life, this does not mean that they are inferior or less important than other Sefirot. On the contrary, they are merely the most worldly or, to put it more eloquently, the most terrestrial. The Shekinah is related to what is identified across many traditions as being “the Divine Feminine.” This appears in traditions such as Hinduism as Kali or even in Christianity, where the Virgin Mary fills the void of what would appear on the surface, given the Father and Son dynamic therein, to be an absence of divinity’s more feminine aspects.
Without falling into the trap of gender essentialism, it may be important to grasp what is unique to this “Divine Feminine.” Unlike the typically transcendent and otherworldly masculine forms of divinity, this Divine Feminine concerns the more material, earthly forms. It is intimately connected with these more transcendent forms; neither could exist without the other. Vera de Chalambert, a contemporary mystic who works with spiritual direction, has been deeply invested in studying the presence of “the dark mother.” For her, it is elemental to confronting the messy, seemingly unholy parts of creation that we ultimately cannot transcend or avoid. This, for her, is essential to personal healing, and while she focuses on the Shekinah, the divine presence, she also outlines some of the developments in Kabbalistic teaching in which the transcendent, ineffable Ayn Sof is feminine or womb-like in nature.
In the 16th century, a Kabbalist named Isaac Luria developed the concept of tzimtzum, in which God is said to have contracted like a womb in order for creation to occur. Furthermore, the light of creation was originally contained in several vessels which eventually shattered, leaving the light of creation imprisoned in scattered shards. Thus, humanity’s mission is to simultaneously discover the sparks of light hidden in these shards and to also re-connect these fragments- fragments of the light of creation. This process is referred to as Tikkun Olam: “to heal the world,” or “to heal the universe.”
6.
Said the garden to the airport,
"can you make my flower bloom?"
"Yes I can," said the airport,
"but you'll have to recall the way
all the flowers are indiscrete
when they point towards the sun;
every instance you create
is someone else's too."
So the lesson learned was that
the garden could not move.
But all the same it could recreate
the distance that was proved to be
an empty vessel for another memory to come-
the only thing that you can see
when the day is done.
You will not stand tall
but you will see
the promise that could quickly enter
your field,
always kept, but always free to wander,
the product of a passerby's
favor to your roots.
Said the garden to airport,
"this is not what I expected;
secretly I wanted your permission
to ride in the sky.
But I can see that I cannot do this if I try.
I guess I'll just stand by myself
and see if I can sprout my wings alone."
Said the airport to the garden,
"you cannot do this as well.
All you can do is receive sunlight
and water out the well.
But if you can be receptive you can
conquer all.
One way to look at is
you will never fall.”
II. It’s Just Meat: Matter, Spirit and the Path Forward
1.
One of the earliest texts associated with the Kabbalistic tradition is the Sefer Yetzirah, or “the Book of Formation.” Mentioned in texts such as the Talmud, the time of its composition is still widely debated. The general consensus, though, is that it predates the most well known Kabbalistic text, the Zohar, by several centuries. The Sefer Yetzirah describes how the universe was created using the numbers one through ten and the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The numbers correspond to the ten Sefirot, and this is possibly the earliest mention of them in Jewish literature. The letters of the Hebrew Alphabet were instrumental to the creation of every soul that has ever existed and will ever exist.
Not only is this process of creation, in a sense, timeless, but it is notable that here as well, the physical, the linguistic, and the non-material are intimately connected. The ten sefirot are mirrored by the ten fingers on human hands, and letters as well as the numbers are connected to both natural elements, days of the week, the planets . This includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. There is not a separate adversary, per say, who causes evil to occur. Good and bad qualities are distinguished from one another, but one may be on the same “axis” as the other.
As a metaphysics, this may sound fantastical and overwrought to modern, secular ears. In Jewish literature, there seems to be this implicit permission granted to the use of these quaint hermeneutic methods and documents as ways to get closer to or more aware of what is in the end ineffable. Despite being beset with dualisms, a text as mainstream and central to Judaism as even the Torah could be seen to demonstrate, through narrativity alone, the dissolution of many binaries that turn out to often be false. There is also the interplay between the universal and particular highlighted in mainstream and esoteric texts alike. In Kabbalah, this is exemplified by the dynamic of the supposed antinomy of the ineffable Ayn Sof and the ten emanated sefirot, which, while also deemed ineffable are conversely imbued with descriptive associations.
The Sefer Yetzirah warns against dwelling on or visualizing the Ten Sefirot, but acknowledges that to err is to be human. Thus there is the reassurance that the bedrock of the faith is that of “running and returning.” The journey is not without instances of going astray, but return is always possible. In general, the Sefer Yetzirah is a fine example of a treatise on the parallels between the physical and spiritual realms, with language and mathematics as intermediaries between the two. One thing from one realm mirrors another, and this may allow for imaginative possibilities that could promote our conscious presence in our own corporeality in an increasingly mechanized and automated world.
2.
What relevance does an arcane text like the Sefer Yetzirah have in the current world, so different from that of antiquity? Oddly enough, there are vague parallels between such a text and the most seemingly non-religious, downright blasphemous texts of the past century. One such example is George Bataille’s short essay The Solar Anus. Written in the 1920’s, Bataille’s avant-garde text fits nicely in with the Surrealist milleu with which he associated, before getting “kicked out” by movement leader Andre Breton. Bataille, a writer and philosopher who prized materiality, even, or especially, material things that people were generally repelled by lays out a series of absurd, aphoristic statements. This is what makes up the whole text. From the getgo, statements are uttered that mirror the interconnectedness of creation that a text like the Sefer Yetzirah describes. The first statement parallels it quite well:
“It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.”
Obviously, there is a surface sentiment of mockery both in this statement and the entirety of the text. Bataille writes to blaspheme the whole of the assumed Sacred, but if we are to follow the insight of feminist philosopher Donna Harraway, blasphemy of something is an indication that it is taken serious by the person blaspheming. Bataille takes a concept as general and lofty as the concept of love and connects it to things normally associated that may normally evoke disgust:
“An abandoned shoe, a rotten tooth, a snub nose, the cook spitting in the soup of his masters are to love what a battle flag is to nationality. An umbrella, a sexagenarian, a seminarian, the smell of rotten eggs, the hollow eyes of judges are the roots that nourish love. A dog devouring the stomach of a goose, a drunken vomiting woman, a slobbering accountant, a jar of mustard represent the confusion that serves as the vehicle of love.”
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner posits that unlike Christianity, which concerns itself more with the transcendence of materiality, mystical Judaism seeks to find God everywhere, even in the garbage. Concurrently, Georges Bataille deflates human hubris but finds great beauty and even love in the things that most see as disgusting. Also, The Solar Anus is populated with references that compare coitus, the rotation of the earth, and mechanical rotation, as interdependent parts of the same technology reflected at different levels. Essentially, it’s coitus that makes the world go around, and the world going around allows for coitus to resume. Animal, plant, and machine are part of an ecosystem in which the human-made technologies echo the structure and movement of natural forces. We cannot understand nature, but it may be reflected in the way we try to counter it- it is precisely here that we see paralleling mechanisms.
Stateside, around the same time as the Solar Anus was written, a mystique-laden figure in the blues tradition named Robert Johnson was performing his songs at juke joints across the delta area. Rumored to have acquired his playing ability via a deal with the devil, Johnson’s work stands out as an idiosyncratic expression of the blues form. The lyrics are often heavily metaphorical, expressing desire and desperation characteristic of the blues, but with an added element of imagistic ambiguity. Such is the case with Terraplane Blues, in which Johnson compares the process of remedying sexual disfunction with the process of trying to fix an automobile. Various parts of a car’s construction are used as innuendo for different parts of the body. It is an interesting metaphorical world as, on the one hand, we don’t want to see humans or other animals as “mechanized.” However, acknowledging the sheer materiality and structural nature associated with sexual pleasure is somewhat integral in satisfying one’s partner.
The reason why figures like Georges Bataille and Robert Johnson can be mentioned in the same sentence is that their work appears to be an effort to stay “in the body” even as the world was getting more mechanized. They both are materialists who nonetheless feel the power of what others would deem “the spiritual realm” in the objects of the modern world. Dwelling in brackets that are heretical to an almost sinister extent, they nonetheless document vivid desire while acknowledging the mechanical presence that in early twentieth century was beginning to become more prevalent in some of the world. Consciousness demands a working-through, a constant recurrence of negotiation with what Buber calls the It-World. The I-Thou, though, dwells among the machinery- even if God goes unacknowledged.
3.
If we are to identify language as being intertwined with subjectivity, then we must look to activities such as literature as avenues of navigating life, the world, and the Divine. Although a literary form such as poetry is often assumed to be unpopular and thereby irrelevant to the events of the world, major or minor, there is an argument to be made for its relevance even if its supposed obsolescence proved to be true. Art forms, not divorced from the social, economic, and political contexts in which they are contextualized, can have varying roles across time and place. Obviously, in the mid twentieth century, various art forms were integral to the emergence of assorted countercultural movements.
Robert Duncan was a poet who participated in various literary movements during this time. His singularity in these movements is to be noted; while at the forefront of the avant-garde, he took cues from the poetic tradition across many eras, in addition to the mystical elements of various wisdom traditions. Rather than writing a poem, he perceived himself to be participating in the one great poem written through history. This was an idea he shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a poet from the Romantic era. While Romanticism impacted his aesthetic and approach, Duncan was a prominent participant in the mid-century wave of poets who experimented with form, even with the placement of words on the page.
In Duncan’s case, this seemed to be integral to his particular mission as a participant in the “one great poem.” Rather than seeking to impose formal structures that would serve as an interface against a more chaotic world, whether natural or synthetic. Drawing from sources such as process philosophy, Duncan and some of his contemporaries saw nothing in the universe as inert matter; rather, the universe was comprised of a multitude of events. This outlook was reflected particularly in Duncan’s approach to writing, which was characterized by a certain spirit of spontaneity. There was not a recklessness to it, per say, but rather a way in which it mirrored the unpredictable nature of life, whether it be one’s own subjectivity or organic forms of life at large.
Another characteristic of Duncan’s work is its collage-like nature. Duncan felt it was not the poet’s job to create order but instead discover it. Seemingly unrelated fragments emerge in varying spaces on the page, but does this not mirror what’s going on “off the page?” The universe is disjointed, but within this chaos is order which, instead of being a fixed structure, may adapt to the evolving patterns of life. In this sense, while Duncan was greatly driven by the Heraclitean theory that “you never step in the same stream twice,” he also took cues from more recent philosophical developments such as the evolutionism brought forth by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century. The collage of fragments that comprised his poems mirrored the life in the universe and demonstrated a potential way of interacting with or perceiving whatever comes into our field of consciousness.
It should be noted that in a 1978 lecture at Naropa University, Duncan describes his work as a poet to be located at the juncture of Judaic prophesy, in which messages are to be broadcast if they are received from on high, and Greek poesis, in which things are “made up,” more or less. What is intriguing about the prophetic tradition, however, that books in the Tanakh such as Isaiah seem to have a Duncan-esque quality in them as they may vary from one verse another in style and subject. We see constant jumps in such texts from standard prose, telling the story of warfare and other types of conflict, poetry from a divine source, and of course, allusions to other texts in the Biblical canon. Talmudic scholar Daniel Boyarin brought intertextuality, a subset of literary theory associated with thinkers such as Julia Kristeva, into the study of Jewish texts. In intertextuality, every text ever written is in communication with all of the rest. The great poem whispers across space and time, not just outwardly but amongst itself as well.
III. We are the Cream Simulacra, We Are Emotionless Actors
1.
A spectre is haunting the hearts and minds of many. What is this spectre, though? Is there nostalgia or an empty space in the soul that requires filling? Is the vacancy in one soul indicative of that of the next, or the vacancy in the world’s soul? Whatever the case may be, we see phenomena of the past returning. Care must be taken in comparing the present to the past, though. The present is unique and complex in its own right.
Phenomena rise in a way that they hadn’t before. Reflections dance in many mirrors; cameras record the surface tension but not the sea inside. And the sea inside is lonesome; a whistle or a drone hangs over it and but does not sooth the water’s depths. We’ve clung to odd surfaces, it seems. Politics reflects this, and culture does as well. In the midst of it all stands the figure of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, both revered and scorned. He advises against the embrace of chaos, deeming his recent best-seller an antidote to it. However, he also acknowledges that consciousness itself is an oscillation between order and chaos. For him, chaos is feminine and order is masculine. He alludes to the fact that matter shares the same etymology as “mother,” and also that matter is “what matters” or the “matter at hand.” We need to be well equipped with order in, well, order to face this matter, the material world which encounters us chaotically.
What is matter, that it is so chaotic? Are we not, as Duncan suggests, confronted by hidden order to be discovered in our efforts, be they artistic or otherwise? Perhaps Peterson can see this as well, but unlike Duncan. he strongly makes the case for building order or fighting against a kind of entropy that he sees as being destructive to both the individual and society. Perhaps we can see the truth in that there is an initial chaos in the process of consciousness’ way of assimilating all it is confronted with into order. An initial shock, if you will. Furthermore, in this day and age, perhaps it simply cannot be ignored that culture, politics, and media seem to be a disarray or a cacophony of sorts, amplified by the complex instruments of technology at our disposal.
In his 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation, French theorist Jean Baudrillard proposes that there is such a congestion of signs, symbols, and other types of significance around what actually is, that this has come to replace things as they actually are. The “map” has come to replace the “territory,” according to Baudrillard. This presents a world where not only has a tangled web of signs and symbols superimposed itself the material and social realms of life, but it has also come to be these realms itself. The same goes for the sacred. What we have, then, is a situation in which collections of signs and symbols are a currency in our communication with each other, and thenceforth the stream all media communications swim. There is much information, of course, but actual meaning is scant. This that were once communicative signs and symbols are now signs and symbols for themselves and not something else in reality.
In his book The Coming Community, however, Giorgio Agamben remarks at how consumer culture and capitalism, particularly through the avenue of advertising, has detached something such as the human body from contextual meaning to such an extent that it as also effectively done away with the regressive social mores of the past which placed stigmatization on our bodies and their functions. Similarly, Agamben sees what he views to be the bourgeois state of existence infiltrate all classes of society in a globalized world; there was no more proletariat in regards to “class consciousness,” only a “universal bourgeoisie.” In both of these examples, Agamben sees the danger but also a liberating potential. Perhaps a map superseded the territory, so to speak, in centuries past, just in a way that cut deeper into embodied experience. There is a potential, then, to reclaim awareness of and agency over the “territory,” things in their actuality, due to the simultaneous homogenization and disembodiment of culture across the globe. New possibilities open up.
2.
How does one enter a world in which suppression and liberation can come from the same sources? How is one to interact with such a world? Both Georges Bataille and Jean Baudrillard deem multiple post-Enlightenment humanist projects of trying to apply an ethics or moral code to the world as misguided failures. This is because they are concerned with the non-material, or the realm of spirit. Baudrillard sees capital itself as being divorced from any kind of ethics that would inform Marxism or the liberalism of the eighteenth century seen in philosophies such as that of Rousseau. Bataille, while certainly not rejecting Marx wholesale, sees his contemporaries in the Surrealist movement as having evaded the materialism and highlighting of class struggle crucial to effective revolutionary thought and praxis. Instead, it has turned to high idealism; an evasion of a reality which needs to be communicated with on its own terms- this reality, for Bataille, should be the substance of surrealism. This perspective is reflected in Bataille’s work; things stand in their physicality to be manipulated in often grotesque ways, but none that necessarily exceed the limits of palpable reality.
What is to be said of concepts such as “reason” and “logic?” Do they warrant the same criticism as that which Baudrillard and Bataille criticized as ineffective in the face of capital’s amoral existence? Laboria Cuboniks, a feminist collective of the present day, does not think this is so. In their Xenofeminist Manifesto, published in 2015, they seek to reclaim the domains of “objectivity” and “reason,” particularly in the sciences, from patriarchal domination. Like others of the former century, they caution against a kind of high moralism which divorces revolutionary thought from the reality that it confronts. However, they contend that it crucial for feminism to embrace the evolving technologies that are out there, fully acknowledging both the repressive and liberating qualities thereof. Rather than being driven towards biological determinism, the collective seeks an engagement with the sciences that would give space for the fluidity and unpredictability that arise in the natural and social worlds.
For decades, Rabbi Michael Lerner, a founding editor of Tikkun Magazine, has been making the case for “meaning” to make a re-entry in particular into Leftist politics. For Lerner, there has been a pattern that has been cycling since the early twentieth century. In times of crisis, the Left is good at advocating for economic justice and political rights, but skims past the deeper elements of the crisis and the suffering that exists in its wake. The gap left by this lopsided focus leaves a vacuum in which the Right can entice crowds of people by way of appealing to deeper, more emotional pain that is occurring. People do not feel like the work they do has any meaning, and given this misfortune, would at least prefer to be compensated more for their mindless toil. 
On the other hand, there is an internalized desire to move up in the working world, and henceforth adapt the goals that self-help authors in the 1980’s promoted: being as effectively manipulative as possible in your environment. Suddenly, people around you are not valuable as ends in themselves but as means to get what you want. The Right appeals to both the pain of the masses and their subsequent desire to at least move up in this cutthroat world. Of course, as we may see in instances at present, what the Right does is blame this pain on the efforts of people who are at least just as marginalized as the constituency that it attracts. In the face of this, Lerner obliges the Left to look towards the realms of the spiritual and moral again, in order to address the pain that the Right manages to tap into more.
Are these disparate concerns? Those being, the material versus the emotional conditions of life? Perhaps there is a way to approach them with equal care, in the inclination that both constitute the debris that we inevitably face. Perhaps there is merit in compartmentalizing the physical and the non-physical. On the other hand, the qualities that distinguish two things from one another do not negate the possibility of the two things’ interdependence. Perhaps there is a continuous oscillation or cycle that commences. In the words of the Sefer Yetzirah, we are always “running and returning.” And in the words of Georges Bataille, “thus even though terrestrial life moves to the rhythm of this rotation, the image of this movement is not turning earth, but the male shaft penetrating the female and almost entirely emerging, in order to reenter.”
3.
During the primaries of the 2018 midterm elections in this country, UGA professor Richard Winfield ran for U.S. Representative of Georgia’s 10th District. Running as a Democrat, Dr. Winfield utilized his decades-long scholarship in Hegel’s oeuvre and its application to philosophy philosophy to build a bold, progressive platform which distinguished itself from even the more progressive factions of the Democratic party. Inspired by the social rights agenda sponsored by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt close to the end of the president’s life, the policies that Winfield proposed were founded upon the idea that without guaranteed jobs at fair wages, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were to be inaccessible to the masses. Thus, a Federal Jobs Guarantee was central to his campaign’s platform; politicians in congress, including many Democratic presidential hopefuls for the 2020 general election, subsequently began to endorse this idea. What was unique to Winfield’s proposed jobs guarantee was that it was not merely an effort towards “full employment, but rather a forum for massive societal transformation. Winfield saw that many public goods and services had been gutted over several decades, and that perhaps the Federal Government had the opportunity to foster these goods and services back into existence, along with new ones such as broadband internet access in remote areas. He also envisioned jobs related to teaching and the arts, similar to Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration.
Winfield also emphasized economic justice in his campaign for U.S. Representative. For these guaranteed government jobs, he proposed a minimum wage of twenty dollars per hour, and put forth the idea of enforcing mandatory collective bargaining rights in both the public and private spheres of the workforce. Rather than start with the enforcement of living wage in the private sector, he proposed that it could be more effective to institute a livable wage for government jobs, which would put pressure on the private sector to increase their wages. The minimum wage, once secured as a livable wage across the board, would then be adjusted to inflation in subsequent years. Winfield planned to fund programs such as this and others by imposing a two percent income or wealth tax on the top one percent. This, he felt, would eliminate the threat of going into further debt and having to raise taxes on the middle and working classes.
The Federal Jobs Guarantee, according to Winfield, had massive advantages over proposed policies such a Universal Basic Income. The later, he felt, allowed the continued exploitation and underpayment of workers. Also, class division would continue as a Universal Basic Income would still allow for a society of at least two rungs: the ones who were just barely getting by and the ones who had extra capacity for leisure and the pursuit of their passions and interests. The possibility of Winfield’s wide-spanning set of proposals be enforced as policy any time soon in the United States seems a bit slim, and perhaps many would be divided about whether all of these initiatives would help or harm the general state of things. Despite this, when one contemplates the reasons for the enforcement of such policies, we hit upon crucial issues. How can we achieve a balance of work and family life across the wide span of the work force? In a world where many jobs are being outsourced due to automation, how can we work to ensure that humans live meaningful full lives, connected in mind, body, and spirit to their daily activities?
Karl Marx emphasized the need for workers to be connected to their labor in such a way, and this is echoed in Michael Lerner’s observations of middle income earners’ lamentations on the meaninglessness of their jobs. In mind, body, and spirit, though, we always “run and return” from engagement to detachment, and in light of this Laboria Cuboniks’ championing of alienation rather than decrying it in the Xenofeminism Manifesto is fascinating. Daily life is diverse in its feelings and thoughts, and perhaps Hegel would identify various dialectical processes and tensions therein. What is important is not a “utopian” outcome but the allowance of any diversity of possibilities at all. In spite of its self-identification as the land of opportunity, for many, the United States does not quite live up to this title. Whatever process towards whatever outcome that lies before us, whether you call it a Hegelian dialectic or something else, will not be orderly or even pretty. The leveling of power between employer and employee, for example, would be a setting of major difficulties and conflicts; perhaps this goes for negotiations among employees themselves. Whether we see disaster in bold policy proposals or positive transformation, we at least are woken up to not only the variety of possibilities in subjective and collective history, but also to the importance of interpersonal engagement and its relation to personal liberty.
IV. Prolegomena to Whatever
1.
We awaken to a sea, the tides of which are suspended over us.
This does not stop us from drowning,
and the drowning, in turn, does not stop us
from living.
The sea is a whole
and the fragments of the whole contain the same seal-
it blurs and we are left
unsure of what this seal refers to.
But the seal returns-
we call it “zeitgeist,” “vibe,” “era,”
or something that also lets it be a presence
but doesn’t keep it from rising like heat into the air.
“The word UTOPIA by definition signifies “NO PLACE,” writes Taraka Larson of the musical group Prince Rama in the Now Age Manifesto, published in 2011. It is not transcendental nor of this world, it is neither here, nor there. There exists, she posits, a realm called “Hyparxis,” in which the real and the ideal, potential and actuality mingle. This puts Utopia in line with multiple concepts across wisdom traditions, perhaps yet again most noticeably concepts in Judaism and Taoism. As Julia Kristeva notes about the Promised Land in the Tanakh, it is made special due to the fact that the Jews are cut off from it. It always trails behind or looms ahead, and sometimes is inhabited. Yet the cyclical return to and exile from make it that make it so significant. The whole concept of the Now Age, its simultaneous immanence and transcendence, also hearkens back to the concept of the Tao- something we inhabit but cannot grasp.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his book The Sabbath, distinguishes Shabbat as the time of the week in which Jews work not within space but rather within time. The linearity that time has during the work week is circumvented. In the Now Age Manifesto, Larson states that the Now Age is something that is not temporally specific or, on the other hand, a manifestation of eternity, but rather “transformations in inner time.” The connection that the Now Age may have in relation to Heschel’s conception of Shabbat’s temporal uniqueness is that neither deny time or eternity as concepts; they are buttressed and receptive to both. Shabbat touches upon the Eternal, but is rigidly situated in temporal duration. Within this duration, though, lies the invitation or even obligation to exist within time as one may not necessarily have the opportunity to during the spatially-focused work week. Larson does not protect the concept of the Now Age from existence in space; she uses her theories of the Now Age and Hyparxis to distinguish her vision of Utopianism from simply a vain hope in a future state of unbreakable equanimity. It is a constant vision of the real and ideal being able to co-exist in one space.
Michael Lerner has a unique interpretation of the the Sh’ma, which is the prayer central to Jewish Tradition. The prayer, in its shortened form, translates into something akin to “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is One. Blessed is His glorious kingdom, forever and ever.” In his book Jewish Renewal: a Path to Healing and Transformation, Lerner distinguishes the two characterizations of God in the first line. While “our God” refers to Elohim, which is related more to God as God is manifest in creation, or God’s immanence, the Lord is One refers to the more transcendent YHWH- this is important as in the story of the Akedah, or when Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac, it is Elohim who gives the original order and YHWH who, in a message transmitted by an angel, calls the order off. The Sh’ma is thus, for Lerner, a reconciliation between the immanence and transcendence of God. God’s immanence infuses the real in the form of Elohim, but YHWH is the realm in which the Ideal is possible.
2.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger, a Brazilian-born philosopher and politician, feels we desperately need to break away the concept that history contains a set of “isms” that steadily morphed into one another; this includes systems such as capitalism, socialism, feudalism, and fascism. He stresses that history is a series of conflicts between different factions and interest groups, and through this multiple dialectics are formed that produce syntheses that do not conform orthodoxly to the aforementioned systems. This process-oriented philosophy, is needed, he stresses, in both activism and government. A more experimental model is needed, not to mention one that acknowledges that incremental change is sufficient enough to indicate progress. This, however, may avoid the trademark symbolic concessions that governments may make to various social movements with no subsequent structural change in the economic and political structure of their home country. Unger identifies what he sees to be the main two strands the contemporary Left: one which advocates classic redistributive tax and transfer policies and one which moves along with the current trends of globalization. Unger stresses the need for a third strand to emerge; one which favors experimentation in both market economies and governmental structure.
Behind this need for a third strand of the Left is a deeper, more subjective need in humanity. Unger essentially calls for a revival of the striving towards the realization of the Romantic Subject in each individual being central to social democratic policies. The importance of this is to be realized in innovative, fluid dynamics that involve people in participation in markets. One of the key charges from the Right at the moment towards the Left seems to be that the Left conflates equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. However, the outcome they seem to be referring to is the mere stabilization of one’s economic security. It would be a sad world, though, if economic security was the end all and be all of human existence, the strive towards that security effectively becoming the essential meaning of life. It is through the enforcement of a bare standard of living that individual talents and gifts could shine through in people. While the Right may criticize policies such as Universal Basic Income and a Federal Jobs guarantee as an attempt to bring about uniformity of outcome, the counterpoint is that these would bring about less uniformity of outcome as “realizing your dream” would cease to be such a privilege. At this point, these would seem to be measures that are not utopian pipe dreams, but, in the face of automation and various other changes that may come our way, ways to avoid an unimaginable dystopia.
3.
Roberto Unger takes some of his inspiration from the far-reaching philosophical movement known as Pragmatism. Beginning in the nineteenth century, its original American variant attempted to brake away from the abstraction of analytic philosophy on this side of the Atlantic and the idealism of German philosophers such as Hegel. Making the claim that thought and language are not mere forms of representation of objective reality, the Pragmatists saw them as tools for approaching and affecting reality. William James and John Dewey, key figures in American Pragmatism, rejected determinism, which attempts to prove that certain outcomes, be they of the natural, social, or political world, are predictable due to a fixed nature of things which may be observed through historical patterns. Like the French Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme who famously proclaimed that “a role of the dice does not abolish chance,” James in particular focused on chance as almost being more supreme than choice in the cosmological makeup of “free will.”
Locating chance outside of fate, James in particular pointed out that chance is the product of multiple factors- factors which, like the universe that contained them, were in flux and not fixative. James also coined the phrase “radical empiricism,” which stressed the interference of individual subjective lenses into observation; both him and Dewey were skeptical of the distinctions that analytic philosophers placed upon the realms of subjectivity and objectivity. Such an approach would come to inform different schools of thought in decades to come, such as contemporary feminism. Calling for a “Radical Pragmatism,” Roberto Unger allows for institutional flexibility, not just flexibility in the content of society. Perhaps this goes in line with Dewey mission of reforming education and fostering participatory democracy- seeing both as processes and not fixed systems.
Pragmatists wanted philosophy to be in touch with whatever outcome it had in the real world, so to speak. What do we face when we face the world? Chaos, calamity, and turmoil seem to be evident, even if in our everyday lives we see people “keeping it together” or keeping a calm face in public. In encountering the world, our perception of ourselves is realigned or reconfigured according to what or whom we may encounter. Like motorists who slow down whenever they come upon a car wreck, we feel repelled and compelled at the very same time by what we encounter. We open our eyes to calamity, and feel replenished as, perhaps, we may feel a sense of relative safety or composure in contrast to what we see.
Julia Kristeva had a name for this: “abjection.” In being confronted with the abject, which could be anything that shocks, repulses, or frightens us, we are thrown away from a secure sense of self. Within the process of this encounter with the abject, that which we call abjection, we find ourselves involved in complex processes of integrating this moment into our experience. Recognizing that this is a process that is intrinsic to life as oxygen, Kristeva has sought, in many forums and disciplines, to hone in on the different causes and outcomes of abjection. From there, she has sought to produce alternative ways of integrating these moments of abjection into our experiences and perspectives.
4.
In considering the connection between language and subjectivity, it is imperative to discuss the way such a connection informs both public and private life. By drawing parallels between the “free association” introduced by Freud into psychiatric cynical practice and the United States’ relationship with the First Amendment, Jill Gentile emphasizes the importance of speech in all spheres of life. She proposes that just as Freud saw the practice of “free association” and speaking as instrumental into a person’s healing, so was “free speech” instrumental to the development and preservation of a democracy. Speech allows for the revelation of the unconscious, and is furthermore an indicator of one’s relationship with one’s unconscious.
Presently there are debates concerning whether hate speech is protected speech. There is a sobering sense one may get that deep down, very few people comprehend or desire free speech. Free speech and free association, argues Gentile, require both cooperation and compromise among people. Acknowledging the power of speech, we may also witness its capacity for preserving and dismantling power structures. Such possibility understandably arouses anxiety in many. However, it does not appear that any monolithic law would suffice for simultaneously mitigating the possible harms that free speech might incur and still allow for the process of institutional, cultural, and social transformation needed to foster equity in the world.
Citing Freud, Gentile asserts that speech uncovers relationships in the unconscious between the present and the past. When we talk about speech outside of psychoanalysis, we do not step outside of a realm where the unconscious is ever-present and influential to what happens. We must understand the weight that things such as ancestral trauma have upon the unconscious, and therefore speech. In this age of tension and uncertainty, we must defend freedom of speech while remaining on the watch for those who use it as a slogan to simply gain disproportionate power and influence- for such people at heart may not believe in free speech at all.
Giorgio Agamben claims that to step into the world of ethics is to step into a world in which fallibility must be recognized. The good is only defined in its relationship to the bad, and ethics demands a recognition of imperfection in the striving for “the good.” Agamben goes on to suggest that God and the good are the mere existence or being-ness of things. That which is is Good in its ever-beckoning indication of what could be. In citing a Hasidic parable, though, Agamben warns against staying too much in the realm of what is, contained by the Shekinah. In the Epistle of James in the New Testament, it is stated that “pure religion consists of caring for the widow and the orphan while not being polluted by the world.” The paradox of going into the world and participating in such help while not be “polluted” by it may be seen to indicate the alternation that is asked of us- by God, the universe, and the world- to preserve ourselves while still venturing into the chaos of the immediate.
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fanfictionlive · 4 years
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Results of the demographic survey!
First of all, thanks to everyone who took time out of your day to respond. I've decided to share the results because the rate of responses has slowed to basically nothing, and I feel I've gotten a good chunk to comb through.
My purpose with this was not to analyze nor to draw conclusions. That will be left as an exercise to the reader. I wanted simply to gather some data and see if anything interesting popped up, and honestly, it is pretty interesting!
I'm just going to share some really broad strokes here. A lot of the questions and answer choices could have been worded better, and so please don't expect academic-level sociological presentation here. So here's a quick breakdown of the data. Forgive the messy presentation and the long post!
First off, the gender ratios:
https://imgur.com/HJKNxxO
Out of 549 respondents,
367 identify as women
133 identify as men
40 identify as non-binary
9 identify as genderfluid, genderqueer, agender, or others
Age:
https://imgur.com/FBHPyi8
Out of 548 who answered this question,
102 aged under 18
216 aged 18-24
173 aged 25-34
40 aged 35-44
11 aged 45-54
5 aged 55-64
1 aged 65-74
Ethnicity/Race:
https://imgur.com/veqe9Sa
Out of 547 responses,
386 identify as White
49 identify as Asian or Pacific Islander
30 identify as Latinx
25 identify as Black
18 identify as South Asian
16 identify as Mixed
6 identify as Arab
3 identify as Native American or First Nations
The remaining 15 responses were either covered by existing categories or were unhelpful/joke responses
Note: I'd like to say a few words about this category and the other identity-based ones. I did not intend to make any sort of sociological statement by including a question about skin color or cultural background, but merely wanted to include what is a common demographic category into the data. I definitely try to be mindful of the complexities and intricacies that come with discussions of identity in my daily life.
Country of residence:
https://imgur.com/SpW6tur
/r/FanFiction denizens come from all over! There are far too many countries to list them all here, but I'll try to list some of the areas with the highest count of us:
Out of 538 responses,
301 live in the USA, nearly 56% of the total
47 live in the UK
46 live in Canada
17 live in Germany
15 live in Australia
10 live in France
8 live in Brazil
7 live in Spain
6 live in Finland
6 live in the Philippines
6 live in New Zealand
69 live in other countries
Sexual Identity:
https://imgur.com/6wGpzQO
Another difficult one to sort the "Other" category, so I'll just try my best.
Out of 547 responses,
256 identify as straight or heterosexual, just under 47% of the total
135 identify as bisexual, about 25%
66 identify as asexual, about 12%
39 identify as gay, lesbian, or homosexual, about 7%
15 identify as pansexual, just under 3%
The remaining 36 identify as many things, from queer to demisexual to omnisexual and others
Relationship Status:
https://imgur.com/Rw6Gj74
Out of 546 responses,
384 are single, just over 70% of the total
72 are in a committed relationship
65 are either married or in a civil partnership
11 are casually seeing someone
7 are in open relationships
The remaining 7 are variations on being unsure, separated, poly, or other
Living Situation:
https://imgur.com/zE2PURX
Out of 547 responses,
321 are living with family, almost 59% of the total
54 live alone in a rented place
46 live with roommates in a rented place
46 live with a spouse or partner in a place they own
42 live with a spouse or partner in a place they rent
16 live alone in a place they own
The rest have more complicated living situations or are covered by other categories
Time Writing Fanfiction:
https://imgur.com/ErkzNac
You can see I really underestimated how many options I would need for this one, and as such there are dozens of "other" responses detailing the exact amount of time, some people over 20 years!
Out of 543 responses,
86 have been writing less than a year
64 for 1-2 years
63 for 9-10 years
45 for 2-3 years
39 for 4-5 years
34 for 3-4 years
23 for 5-6 years
21 for 7-8 years
20 for 8-9 years
18 for 6-7 years
The remaining 130 (yes, 130!) wrote in with more exact dates, though 16 wrote in to say they are readers only, and don't write at all
Most popular fandoms:
There's no way I can sift through 550 responses to these free answer questions, but I'd like to give a few highlights:
77 mention Harry Potter as being their main fandom
44 mention Marvel or the MCU
22 mention Star Wars
21 mention My Hero Academia
18 mention Naruto
9 mention Steven Universe
9 mention Supernatural
9 mention Doctor Who
7 mention Star Trek
7 mention Avatar: the Last Airbender
6 mention Pokemon
6 mention Elder Scrolls
5 mention Fate
There are so many more, but these were some of the ones I noticed most.
Things that bother you most
Another one with too many to list, but among the most noted were
Poor spelling and grammar
Bad character building
Poorly written dialogue
Poor formatting
Abandoned fics
Things you look for most
Basically as expected, these were mostly the opposite of the previous question
Good characterization
Worldbuilding
Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation
Original ideas
Well written prose
Well structured plot
Final Thoughts
I definitely don't think this survey is perfect or near perfect. I crafted the questions too quickly and, given the chance to do it again, would alter a lot of the wording and categories. I'm glad so many of you decided to participate, and I hope you get at least some enjoyment out of the results.
Of course, with only 550 respondents out of the 59k subreddit members, this shouldn't be seen as an accurate picture of the members of /r/FanFiction, but I believe that, given a grain of salt, you can view it as a somewhat helpful portrait.
Coming into this survey, I suspected that it would be show more diverse sexual, gender, and identity representations than a lot of other subreddits (though of course without metrics from other subs, I can only speak for my own opinion). I also thought that the ages would skew young, but I didn't know that there would be so many under 18!
Tell me what y'all think about these numbers. I honestly had a lot of fun learning more about this subreddit, and I think surveys like this can really help us to have a better understanding and respect for our fellow redditors since it can humanize some of the anonymity that comes with being here. Just my $0.02. Thanks for sticking around this long, and stay safe out there!
ceph.
submitted by /u/cephalopod11 [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/3eQdJFt
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chimepunk · 7 years
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What novels or book series would you recommend?
oh fuckin boy dude so many. 90% of what i read is either gay or scifi/fantasy or both, and some are technically for a younger audience but still great, so thats what most of this is which hopefully you’re cool with here goes
this got super long so i’m putting it under a cut. bolded titles are the ones that i’m super recommending, though i love them all
novels
the coldest girl in coldtown by holly black - vampires! a trans character! a bi character! one of the most novel approaches to vampires in fiction that i’ve seen! 10/10 would recommend
the darkest part of the forest by holly black - again, holly black is one of my favorite authors. this one’s got faeries (the proper vaguely unsettling kind that i’m all about) magical music, girls embracing their sexuality, girls being knights, interesting sibling dynamics, and a super cute m/m pairing
les miserables by victor hugo - ok yeah, it’s like 1400 pages long and historical fiction, but i love les mis a lot ok. it’s gotta be on this list just because it owns my ass. it’s like a old drunk french man trying to tell you about the june rebellion but he keeps getting distracted by things like people’s personal lives, the intricacies of the parisian underworld, and how much he wants to fuck the sewers. it’s wonderful
the night circus by erin morgenstern - magical circus that mysteriously appears for days at a time and then vanishes? a competition between young magicians drawn out for years? a wide variety of fascinating side characters? (i will say that the synopsis available for the book is somewhat misleading, as it’s actually less about our two protags and more about the circus itself. but that’s what makes it so enchanting)
the song of achilles by madeleine miller - retelling of patroclus and achilles story to be explicitly romantic. will make you feel like you’re floating on clouds and then rapidly crush your soul. sort of a happy ending? but it’s still a tragedy. their ending is the same as it was in the illiad so if you’re not prepared for that then maybe don’t read
good omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett - a demon who’s not very good at being a demon and an angel who just wants to collect his books in peace thank you very much try to sabotage the end of times. absolutely hilarious
fairy and folktales of the irish peasantry by w.b. yeats - the best collection of irish faerie stories by one of my favorite poets. if you like creepy and tricky faeries i would def recommend checking these out
rootabaga stories by carl sandburg - another collection of folktales, this time inspired by the american midwest. kinda weird, kinda zany, very neat
the poison eaters by holly black - a short story collection of faery stories that are sometimes creepy, sometimes touching, sometimes gay. my personal favorite is about a library science student who finds a book collection where the characters come out at night and interact, but they’re all really great
series:
alex rider adventures by anthony horowitz - teenager gets recruited by MI6 as a spy, has incredibly high success rate, gets pretty fucked up along the way but damn those one liners tho, maybe have some self preservation alex? just a thought
all for the game by nora sakavic - about a fake sport called exy that’s kind of like indoor lacrosse but more violent. contains: crime families, found families, an aspec protag, girls kicking ass, unhealthy levels of sass, wonderful slowburn m/m that you can’t even see coming for a long while, and a happy ending for everyone!! i came for the gays and ended up reading all three books in two days. also you can get the whole series for less than five bucks on kindle! (note: tw for rape, physical abuse, torture, ptsd, child abuse, drug use, alcoholism, some use of slurs, mentions of past self harm, mental illness)
artemis fowl by eoin colfer - more faeries, but this time they live underground and are way more technologically advanced than humans. the first book focuses on our anti-hero trying to catch one and steal their gold, and they quickly become allies and solve faerie related cases together!! one of my favorite series growing up, and i cried in the middle of the hallway at school when i finished the last book
camp half-blood series by rick riordan - does rick riordan write a lot of mythology books? yes. do i love them all? yes. neurodivergent kids! kids from a huge range of racial and ethnic backgrounds! queer kids! collect them all! ft. greco-roman mythology and a lot of stupid jokes
emelan series by tamora pierce - ok this is easily one of my favorite series of all time. non-western high fantasy setting (picture greece/turkey, china, tibet, mongolia, scandinavia, etc type settings), following four young mages who have unique kinds of magic as they train and grow their skills and become powerful in their own right. only one of the kids is definitely white (jury’s still out on sandry), one is a lesbian, one is ace, one is pan, all four are raised by a loving f/f couple, body diversity, one of the best found families i’ve ever read, feminism, discussion of racism, classism, cultural identity, war, and so much more. it’s so so good and so under-appreciated please read all of the emelan books 
the dark is rising sequence by susan cooper - full disclosure i have not finished this series yet but i’ve re-read the first book a million times. it’s a neat take on arthurian mythology, with dark forces trying to take over and kids getting shit done
diviners by libba bray - psychic teenagers in 1920s new york! i’m a slut for prohibition, but these are also super fun and have likable and real characters, and doesn’t only focus on wealthy white people having parties which is nice. the occult! government conspiracies! historical references! genuinely scary situations! it’s rad!
the enchanted forest chronicles by patricia c. wrede - i adore this series so so much. it’s about a princess who’s father keeps telling her that she can’t have hobbies like fencing or cooking or conjugating latin verbs because they’re unladylike and insists that she marry this doofus prince that she couldn’t care less about. so she runs away and volunteers to work for a dragon and proceeds to send away all the princes that try to rescue her. it’s genuinely funny, has a really neat magic system in the later books, great female friendships, cats, dragons who have no time for your gender roles, and wizards who are the most ridiculous group of antagonists you will ever see
the infernal devices by cassandra clare - i really really do not like the author of this series but it also broke me so it must go on the list. if you’re familiar with the mortal instruments or shadowhunters on freeform, it’s set in that universe in the 1870s in london and it’s very steampunk and very angsty and it made me cry a lot
the kane chronicles by rick riordan - see: camp half-blood series but egyptian
fablehaven by brandon mull - oooooh fuck me up i love this series. this is another one meant for slightly younger readers but all of brandon mull’s series are so wildly imaginative and i’m a slut for world building so. the premise is basically that there are secret preserves all over the world that house magical creatures, and five of these preserves have vaults with artifacts that when brought together make a key to this massive demon prison. an evil society called the society of the evening star is trying to get the artifacts to open the prison, and a different group who is allied with the preserves called the knights of the dawn is trying to get to them first to prevent this from happening. there are dragons, light and dark powers, crazy convoluted vaults to get through, and some really cool creatures and characters
beyonders by brandon mull - this guy again! this one’s about a parallel world called lyrian that people on earth can only get to through small liminal windows, and usually can’t get back through. the story follows two kids, jason and rachel, who get stuck in lyrian and end up becoming major members of the resistance against the evil emperor maldor. just like fablehaven, the world building is insane and you’ll fall in love with all the characters. this is yet another series that made me cry in the middle of class when i finished it
the kingkiller chronicle by patrick rothfuss - this is series is long as all fuck and the last book isn’t out yet but it’s my #1 favorite series of all time. i found out about it bc a cashier at a local grocery store held up the line to write it down for me and i never went back. parts of it are achingly, hauntingly beautiful, other parts are hilarious enough to leave you in stitches, others make you want to pull your hair out. there’s sass, recklessness, beautiful and deadly girls, an overwhelming love and emphasis on the importance of music and storytelling, magic that’s more like science, ethnic adversity, student loans, a thing that might be a cow or might be a dragon depending on who you ask, and more quotable lines than you could dream of. the audiobook by nick podehl is also fabulous, and lin manuel miranda is producing and adapting it for the screen and maybe stage at some point in the future!
a modern faerie tale by holly black - guys. i love holly black. almost everything she’s ever written is on this list. this one is fairly self explanatory by the title, but it’s gritty and dark and has those lovely creepy faeries that she’s so great at writing. also a surprising m/m couple in the last book, both of whom are characters in the other two installments. (tw for drug use/addiction, brief sexual assault, and probably other things that i can’t remember right now)
the raven cycle by maggie stiefvater - also in my top 3 favorite series of all time, i cannot begin to describe this series. i first read it while up in the nc mountains which improved the experience to a surprising degree, but it’s stuck with me for the last several years. basically 5 teenagers go in search of a dead welsh king, but along the way there is magic, psychics, ghosts, a sentient forest, dreams becoming reality, curses, teenage shenanigans, classic cars, swearing, church, kisses and not kisses, illict hand holding, a baby crow, bisexuality, a death list, hitmen, and nicknames and it will consume your heart before you know what’s happening to you (tw child abuse, implied sexual assault, substance abuse, dissociation, mentions of past suicide attempts, body horror, gore, and disturbing scenes esp. in the last book)
six of crows by leigh bardugo - a team of criminals band together to break into an impossible fortress, fall in love, con an entire city, and get rich. set in the same universe as the grisha trilogy (which is also good but not as good as soc), this is basically a heist followed by a con, but pulled off by ruthless teenagers and with the help of magic
curseworker trilogy by holly black - crime families, magic that can only done through touch so everyone wears gloves, moral ambiguity, and a twisted romance. one of holly black’s best and most underrated series
baccano! by ryohgo narita - this is a japanese light novel series which has been adapted into an anime, but is much more extensive in print. the plot is extremely convoluted, but an absolute ride spanning several centuries, although the bulk of it is in the 1930s in nyc and chicago. there’s an elixir of immortality, crime families, trains, a solipsistic assassin and his mute assassin gf, serial killers, a demon with a catch phrase, murder, explosions, adorable couples, gambling, a gang leader named jacuzzi who is always terrified, killer corporations, and much much more
no.6 by asuka asano - another japanse series, this time focusing on two boys, one who grew up in a utopian city, the other who grew up outside the walls after the city destroyed his life. they meet when they’re 12 years old, and several years later, they’re reunited when the outsider rescues the city boy from arrest. they, along with a pimp and a nonbinary dog hotel owner, try to expose and overthrow the government. also ft. drag performances, mice who like shakespeare, killer bees, and boys falling in love.
the merlin saga by t.a. barron - my favorite take on arthurian mythology, chronicling merlin as he comes into his power. there’s a vividly magical island, giants, amulets, talking trees, stones that will try to swallow you, a swamp witch, celtic deities, huge wicker hats, poetry, new kinds of fruit, people that are also deer, and human’s long lost wings.
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mikemortgage · 5 years
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Anita Hill opens up about Me Too, her testimony, Kavanaugh and the ‘resistance’
TORONTO — Stories of women who have been sexually harassed, assaulted or mistreated have dominated the headlines and social media for more than a year as the message of Me Too has spread across nearly every industry around the world.
But now one of the movement’s most prominent icons says society needs to learn to recognize and address situations that could lead to sexual harassment long before they become full-blown lawsuits and crises.
Anita Hill, the U.S. attorney and academic who accused a Supreme Court Justice nominee of sexual harassment decades ago, spoke with The Canadian Press ahead of a Dec. 3 visit to Toronto to deliver a speech at the Canadian Women’s Foundation annual The Exchange breakfast.
“Often managers don’t want to address these issues in these workplaces so they send everyone to HR, but I would love for a manager to be trained to identify behaviours that are likely to escalate to more egregious behaviour and to not only identify but know how to respond,” Hill said.
“When you don’t prevent gender harassment it creates this permissive culture in the workplace and in many cases that permissive culture becomes an incubator for much more serious behaviour.”
Hill became a household name in 1991, when she testified against Clarence Thomas, saying he sexually harassed her while was her supervisor at the Department of Justice. She also alleged that he asked her out several times and often discussed sex at the office.
Following Hill’s testimony, the Senate confirmed Thomas to the Supreme Court in a 52-48 vote. A CBS and New York Times poll conducted just after the testimony found 54 per cent of respondents thought Hill’s accusations were untrue and she faced significant public backlash.
Nonetheless, she galvanized the women’s movement, which drew comparisons between her case and the recent accusations levelled by Christine Blasey Ford and two other women against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which were not enough to prevent him being named to the Supreme Court.
Following her testimony Hill said she saw the number of sexual harassment complaints more than double, legislation pass allowing for recovery and compensation for victims of sexual harassment and an openness around discussing the problem.
“We had a record number of women who were willing to come forward and share their stories and many of them raised a generation of children who understood that sexual harassment was wrong, that it was illegal and that they did not deserve to be treated in that way,” Hill said.
“Unfortunately things like the Kavanaugh hearing set us back…but I think we are much smarter now, much more informed and there are much more people working on this than there were 27 years ago and that is why I think we can make progress.”
However, Hill stressed that progress cannot come without paying particular attention to those who face added barriers because of their ethnicity, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation.
Hill said research has shown that minority women who come forward with claims of sexual harassment are sometimes treated differently from their majority peers.
“Sexual harassment can impact any woman, but it will not necessarily impact all women in the same way,” Hill said.
Several women have reached out to her over the years seeking advice on how they can come forward with sexual misconduct claims. The volume and intricacies of their situations and her busy schedule mean she refers them to organizations and people that can likely help, but Hill said there is never a simple answer as to what these women should do.
She said it is hard to know why some industries have been rife with sexual misconduct accusations against public figures, while others, including Canada’s Bay Street, have been much more quiet since the Me Too movement began with a wave of allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein last October.
Hill argues that coming forward is difficult for anybody, especially because research she’s read suggests 60 per cent of those who make such claims will face retaliation.
Many also face difficulties navigating non-disclosure agreements — a silencing tool that she noticed was rampant after her testimony. Violating such an agreement can trigger legal implications and make it difficult to find another job.
“There is still a lot of resistance. I don’t think there is smooth sailing for anyone,” Hill said. “My situation is different because it was so public and was politically driven, but I don’t know that anyone who comes forward and makes a charge of sexual misconduct, harassment, can have an easy time in a system that often assumes that they are not being truthful.”
That system is also grappling with stories of unintended consequences stemming from Me Too, including men who are refusing to take meetings with or mentor women for fear of being wrongly accused of misbehaviour.
Hill hasn’t heard of any instances of this kind of backlash, but said it “worries” her because it could “become an excuse for not doing the things they weren’t doing anyway.”
She feels it also shows why men need to be part of the Me Too conversation.
“We need men to be on board with us, not only because in many cases they are the decision-markers, but also because sexual violence affects them,” she said.
As Me Too moves forward, she said it’s important that its proponents do not underestimate “the resistance,” which she saw in full force following her own testimony.
“As much progress as we have made, there were efforts to reduce that progress or nullify that progress,” she said.
“I am hoping at this point, we can move and work in our spaces, whether it be the private or public sector, to become problem solvers, to see sexual harassment not as something you want to address as a risk or a lawsuit, but because it occurs in your workforce and is causing institutional damage.”
from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2zD4N2V via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage
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2017mdia4120-blog · 7 years
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Kimberly Reynolds- Week 5 Assignment- without pictures because Tumblr isn’t allowing me to post with my pictures
1. The author is aiming to reframe and challenge the majority thought and consensus among researchers and citizens alike about the interpretation of selfies. The author contends that from major thought leaders and researchers to newspapers from The New York Times have perpetuated a narrative of the selfie that characterizes the practice as narcissistic, superficial, and reflective of thoughtlessness and triviality. This often comes at the expense of women as women are most often the gender who shares selfies. The author doesn’t delve into gender politics or discussion as to why the act of sharing photos of appearance are most permissible for women, but she does use the empirical data from major newspapers to contend that as selfies are continually linked to narcissism and superficiality, women continue to be attributed with such characteristics.
The author believes this is not only unjust, but overlooking the immense political implications of the selfie in the context of feminism. In a world that is becoming more and more image and video dominated, selfies should be taken seriously. Some women are actively working to reclaim their image for themselves (refuting the male gaze) and dismantle beauty standards. And even without intentional or individual politics, when read with feminist politics in mind, the massive presence and abundance of selfies from females can be interpreted as agency and celebration of self.
The author then cites several essays written by other female authors that discuss selfies as tools used toxically by young women with low self esteem. The author believes this kind of image is just another social scapegoat that relives the anxiety of the practice. For example, the author cites that just as Black women have been singularly blamed for parasitism on the welfare system, white women serve as the social scapegoat for a practice that has subsequently been deemed as trivial- therefore relieving everyone other demographic from triviality because at least they are not the trivial white girl. While I agree with the author’s argument of ideological scapegoating, I do not agree with her equated examples because she lacks intersectional nuance. Black women have been and continue to be treated with incredible hostility and hate and while it is true both genders have suffered social scapegoating, Black women have and continue to bear much more discrimination from far more systems outside of newspapers and researchers and it often results in more complex oppression and violence. I think intersectionality could be expressed in a more nuanced way in this example.
2. I don’t believe the author convincingly or justly describes the selfie in a post-feminist perspective. The author demonstrates knowledge about feminism and the intricacies of and politics of vocabulary, but then decided against employing this knowledge. I was intrigued and assuaged with the intent of using post feminism as a “space-clearing” gesture, however, she then began to use condemning language that was void of the ideas of feminist reclaiming or even the basic notion of freedom of choice. This is exemplified by the sentence, “The production of the self takes center stage, but also a contradictory mix of vulgarity and radicalism; one where a young girl will post a sexually provocative self-portrait and then defiantly follow-up with an impassioned written diatribe about rape and the abuses of women”. The choice of dictation in the word vulgar demonstrates the lack of understanding of feminism- women have been and continue to be scrutinized for expressing sexual agency by their own definitions. Therefore, if advocating for a feminist understanding of the selfie, one would understand that vulgarity is a hetero-patriarchal condemnation that silences and shames women for using, having, or expressing their bodies. Secondly, the author then again scorns women as she sets up sexual agency as mutually exclusive from criticism about sexual assault. The author is suggesting that once a woman posts a “vulgar” or nude photo, she is then invalid in discussing rape or sexual assault. This again drastically and dangerously overlooks the principles of feminisms by continually putting women in a double bind.  By stating that young women on Tumblr and sites similar “enthusiastically perform patriarchal stereotypes of sexual servility in the name of empowerment”, the author again picks the more problematic interpretation to illustrate her point. While I don’t disagree with the notion that patriarchy works itself into reclaiming ideas or still dominants popular conception, I think there is room to read these selfies as reclaiming of the stereotypes entirely, especially for queer women who do not post with an imaged male audience in mind. Rather than criticizing women for expressing their sexuality wrong, perhaps we can delve into a larger critique of social systems or the perpetuation of patriarchy through male owned fashion magazines or media corporations or ad agencies. The criticism should not be singularly on the young women who fail to completely eradicate patriarchy from their understanding at age 14, but should instead be focused on how patriarchy fragments are found in selfies and what in fact causes that and focus on that dismantling work.The author again delegitimizes young women and their developing sense of self and reclaiming in saying, “To image what for many may be perceived as the intimacy of personal hygiene is an act of willful defiance and a means to claim agency – despite the fact that one’s distaste for images of blood may arguably stem from an array of other issues.” The author also contends that the selfie phenomenon is non discriminatory (contradictory to her earlier assertion about social scapegoating), but then proceeds to name three “heroes” of the movement, two of whom are white, and with the third looking to be of Asian decent. In total, however, this is absent of Black women, as noted before, a brutalized demographic that deserves prioritization.  Lastly, while both “post” visual art movements connote a diversion from pigeon hole labels, not from the social context and politics, this is poorly equated to post –feminism. The author fails to examine selfies from a less gendered perspective and instead harshly criticizes women for what she perceives as acting out heterosexual patriarchal stereotypes in a time that is considered to be the most progressive for women in the United States. From my understanding, post-feminism focuses more on the language used to discuss feminism and the oppression of gender. It navigates a modern world where sexism is less blatant but just as insidious. These are different mediums whose general overarching philosophies could be compared, but the execution of the goals and populations require much more complex understanding. Again, race and gender are both oppressive systems, yet they have separate and different social repercussions and therefore separate means of dismantling that cannot be generalized or lumped together. The author fails to understand the false equivalent of racial politics and gender politics.
Strength: Therefore, in a best case scenario interpretation of post-feminism, my image Lorna Simpson’s “Five Day Forecast” because she uses identity politics to discussion intersectionality
Weakness: A negative interpretation is an Amber Rose selfie- I think the author’s definition of post-feminism, which again is hyper focused on gender and no intersectional concerns of race, class, or sexuality, would condemn Amber Rose for acting upon the male gaze. I think I more align with what was said at the beginning of her discussion- perhaps is women weren’t completely and regularly objectified, then perhaps such system wouldn’t produce phenomenon and commodification of female images.
3. The author distinguishes from self portrait and selfies by measuring and evaluating intimacy. The author cites Francesca Romeo’s work as revelatory in terms of creating images that are construction of self, but communicate different meanings. In self-portraits, the image and message are constructed in a way that intimate and public and artistic on a larger social scale. It is to be interpreted and evaluated in a more intentional manner. Their impact is meant to be a larger impact than that of selfie. A selfie is also intimate and artistic, but the closeness of the medium, both for the artist and the viewer, creates a different level of directness. The selfie can also be more casual as other people can be in the selfie or is used in a documentary style.
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