In the News

Diva antics aside, Naomi Campbell is redeeming herself by picking up the feminist banner.

First, she took on maternal mortality becoming a global ambassador for the White Ribbon Alliance, an international coalition for maternal health.

Naomi stated publically that "no woman should die giving birth."  Most of us don't realize that pregnancy is the leading killer of women of reproductive age in the developing world -- more than 80 percent of them preventable. A woman dies in childbirth or pregnancy every minute worldwide.

Then, Naomi took on discrimination against black models, "Where do we see a woman of colour in an advert? It's quite blatant."

Penny and I have admired each other's ground breaking art for decades. We agree as sister artists that the best thing in the world a woman can do is to have a BAD Reputation. Carlin and I call our business BAD Media, LLC. And my initials spell BAD. Can't wait to read her book, Bad Reputation.

She was a runaway at thirteen, a reform-school graduate at sixteen, a performer in the legendary New York City Play-House of the Ridiculous at seventeen, and an escapee from Andy Warhol's Factory scene at nineteen. Penny Arcade emerged in the 1980s as a primal force on the New York art scene and an originator of what came to be called performance art.

"The pleasure is in your hands" is a new workshop being offered by the Spanish government through its Youth Council and the Institute for Women and it's quite controversial. The workshop encourages teens to masturbate and teaches them how to use sex toys. The course description includes how to use and enjoy ben-wa balls "because they help strengthen the muscles in women", and how to stimulate your genitals with oils, lubricants and all types of vibratory equipment (sound familiar).

The first time I heard about labiaplasty was about 10 years ago on the Howard Stern show.  It was right when we started seeing the "clamshell" asethetic in porn and all the porn stars who came on the show would talk about the surgery.  One pornlet had her snipped labia suspended in a clear resin block and auctioned it off on ebay.

What struck me then was that there had been no research.  No one knew what the risks were in removing sexual tissue directly from a woman's genitals.  Most women say they want the surgery because they're embarrassed of their labia during sex.  Not that far off from Betty's experience believing she was genitally deformed because she had "dangling inner lips".  It took the right lover to convince her that she was "normal".   

Finally, someone is standing up for women. Gynaecologist Sarah Creighton and psychologist Lih-Mei Liao are challenging the ethics of offering women surgery to address such insecurities, suggesting it is advertisements for a "homogenised, pre-pubescent genital appearance" which creat these anxieties in the first place. 

Current TV takes a behind the scenes look at the porn industry including my favorite site kink.com

Scientists at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Centre's Institute for Regenerative Medicine have found a way to conduct penis transplants on rabbits. So why fiddle with the rabbit's dong? Leading this research is Dr. Anthony Atala, former pediatric urologist and a specialist for regenerative medicine. His expertise has made it possible to successfully create a "tailor-made transplant".

This is a pretty incredible process for those who suffer from genital injury (*cough*), penile cancer, erectile dysfunction, and other genital disorders. There is also a chance that if a penis is grafted onto an infant, then this new sex organ will grow and develop with the child.

Laura Roberts' article was sent to me by Steven Otero to support my latest commitment to self publish my sexual memoir. It got me thinking that Nin's sexual diary was nothing like what I'm doing really. Good thing I actually enjoy being ostracized by people who don't like sex. Saves time.  Here's Laura's take on the reality of being a female sex writer:

Female sex writers often get labelled; people think they're promiscuous, flighty, frivolous, that they're porn stars or prostitutes or worse. They're often assumed to be living the impossible life of Carrie Bradshaw, a fictional character who has been the bane of my writing career since its beginning. Sorry to disappoint, but I have never in my life worn a giant vagina, er, flower pin in public. Nor do I intend to.

A Scrabble pin with the letter V, on the other hand... well, that's just nerdy-hot.

Like most figures in the media, I indirectly ignore Carrie Prejean's face on websites and newspaper rags on a somewhat regular basis. I think I heard she was one of those pageant winners who flashed for cash (or for artistic expression, or whatever the cause may be). Now, I discovered that Prejean aims her self-righteous pistols at the media and pornography for her inevitable fall from redemption.

In a "tell-all" book, Prejean bashes pornography and talks straightforwardly about what a few topless pictures has taught her:

"Our bodies are temples of the Lord. We should earn respect and admiration for our hearts, not for showing skin to look sexy... I have since learned that your outer beauty can only get you so far in life." - Carrie Prejean

The blogosphere was abuzz yesterday with the report that Duke University has a new sex toy research program.   Duke is a catholic university and the thought of a program where female students were brought together in to a passion party type atmosphere selecting sex toys that they could take home for free has panties in a bunch.  

As I was reading about the story and Father Joe Vetter's statements (he runs Duke's Catholic Center) about why they were concerned about the research, I found myself agreeing with Vetter when he said:

"I'm concerned about promiscuity also," Vetter said. "And to be honest, I don't have the solution. ... My concern is these students are in this developmental phase, and I don't think it's a good developmental practice to just tell somebody to just sit around and masturbate. I don't think that promotes relationships."

Yes, that's why masturbation is a feminist issue.

Lynn Hecht Schafran and Jillian Weinberger of Legal Momentum (a women's legal defense and education fund) say that recent reports from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) underestimate the number of rapes among persons with disabilities and women.  BJS says 182,000 rapes were committed in 2008 while Schafran and Weinberger say it was more than 1,000,000.

Speaking for people with disabilities, I am not surprsed. Rape and sexual assualt crimes among the disabled population is likely to be the most rampant of the silent crimes. Crimes occuring with people with disabilities and the elderly in institutionalized care are even more vulnerable and there are no viable data that document such statistics. Sadly, this fact would be very difficult to report since there is no unbiased support mechanism in place for many residents in instutuionalized care to even report the violent crime.

I am really starting to love Senator Barbara Boxer.  According to Boxer, the Senate has enough votes (60) to defeat the Stupak-Pitt amendment which bans coverage for abortions if insurance companies receive one penny in government subsidies:

"If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it," Boxer said. "And I believe in our Senate we can hold it."

"It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time," she added. "And it is much more pro-choice than the House."

I've been watching the health care debate and all the statements about abortion.  I do believe that Nancy Pelosi was torn about the Stupak-Pitts Amendment barring women from using their insurance to pay for abortions (if your policy is subsidized by the government by a penny then you can't use it to get an abortion) and having to concede to conservatives to get the new healthcare bill through the house. 

But hearing Obama state publically that "this is a healthcare bill not an abortion bill' has my panties in a bunch.  As a young woman, abortion is part of your health care.  No form of birth control is 100% and women choose not to become mothers because they can't afford it and they know that being a single mom relegates you to a life of poverty.  So you make the choice.  And why is that choice NOT part of my healthcare but the choice to have a child IS?

This article on sphere.com about the woman whose "vagina fell out" is eye opening.  Allison Henry didn't realize that she had suffered a vaginal prolapse during pregnancy.  It demonstrates how women do NOT have any idea what is between their legs.

"Women will suffer for years and not tell anyone," says Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, a gynecologist in Los Angeles. "They'd rather tell their doctor they have a sexually transmitted disease than say that something is hanging out of them."