privledge and predjudice

Posted on July 23, 2007

I was thinking tonight about white privilege, more specifically, I was thinking about events that transpired some years back at an Art In Action camp I attended. It was intended as sort of a summer camp for radicals and the attendees were pretty diverse in age, class, ethnicity, and race; and for the most part people were getting along and bridging gaps until towards the end of the week when the facilitators pulled out their “anti-racist” trainings and suddenly things got very, very polarized. It bothered me then and it still bothers me because I see the same thing happening all the time in radical circles – discussions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and privilege seem to consistently have the effect of balkanizing the movement and emphasizing divisions between people, not helping them bridge those gaps and work together. To me, that points towards a major weakness in the way we approach these things – the goal of exploring these issues in a diverse setting should be to help us understand them and find was to extend meaningful solidarity to each other to support each others struggles – not to make people feel unwelcome. Read more

so bootyliscious…

Posted on July 12, 2007

Check this video, it’s somebody doing an extreme example of what photoshop and other programs are all about – image modification. This is real shit people, I should know – I use the same sort of techniques to pay the rent designing websites, except of course instead of modifying pictures of women – something I refuse to do on principle – I’m modifying houses, cars, trees, anything and everything else. Read more

Apes of Wrath

Posted on July 4, 2007

Found this article today. it examines rape and social dynamics in a range of primate species and makes some scary comparisons to human societies. As if we needed any more proof that we share common ancestry with other primates! We like to think we’re all superior to every other primate on the planet, too bad we’re wrong…