Teen and Transgender Comparative Study - The Morning News

Teen and Transgender Comparative Study - The Morning News

Teen and Transgender Comparative Study

Essay by Andrew Womack

The series is a correlation of two stages of transformation, pairing teen girls (12-14) with like adult male-to-female transsexuals. The Teen and Transgender Comparative Study is currently showing at The Hammer Museum in Nine Lives, curated by Ali Subotnick. The series is part of a larger project titled The Girl Studies, which includes a short 35mm film titled American Minor that was featured at Director’s Fortnight at Cannes 2009 (also on view at The Hammer) and an animation titled OMG BFF LOL that can be experienced online here.


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In the images in White’s series, both figures are blossoming into womanhood, though each along a different path. As observers, however, we have been taught to view the subjects in much the same way: with sheer terror.

For just as the original 1950s Invasion of the Body Snatchers warned of Communism’s impending doom, and stories of men with hooks were concocted to frighten young girls from riding in cars with boys, so often have Hollywood summer comedies acted as cautionary tales for the male who would cast his desire toward either the pubescent or transgendered woman. Because in the right skirt or the right application of makeup, each has proved alluring to our hero—or more frequently, his best man, whose idea it was to move the bachelor party to Tijuana.

So while, socially speaking, White’s subjects may represent a threat to our libido, his photos present only their innocence, and hint very strongly at a sense of our own “guilt.”

Jane: An Abortion Service

Jane: An Abortion Service

Jane: An Abortion Service A documentary film reveals the story of a secret women-run collective that took matters into their own hands when abortion was illegal and created a safe underground network in the Chicago area. (San Francisco, CA, 1998) – In honor of the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Independent Television Service (ITVS) presents JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE, a fascinating documentary about a secret, women-run abortion service that flourished in the midwest in the late '60s and early '70s during a time of illegal, and often deadly abortions. A Sundance Film Festival selection, JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE was produced and directed by Kate Kirtz and Nell Lundy, and will be broadcast nationally on select public television stations in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973). For the first time, the story of JANE is told by those who operated and were served by the collective, most of whom have never spoken publicly about JANE before. "If you needed an abortion, for whatever reason, you took your life into your own hands – and you were terrified, absolutely terrified,” recounts a member of the collective of the late 1960s. “All you knew is that you might die, that this person didn't know what he was doing and you were going to pay hundreds of dollars...to bleed to death in some hotel room." Heather Booth, then a student at the University of Chicago involved in civil rights and antiwar movements, found herself sought out by a few young women who were pregnant, scared, and desperate. They had somehow heard that Booth knew of a safe abortionist. Soon others began to call, prompting Booth and several other young feminists to found JANE, an anonymous abortion service that provided counseling and acted as the go-between for pregnant women and doctors willing to perform the procedure. Appalled at the exorbitant procedure fees and upon discovering that their main abortionist wasn't a licensed physician, the women of JANE learned to perform illegal abortions themselves. Eventually, the underground collective performed over 12,000 safe, affordable abortions. Word of the illegal alternative was spread through word-of-mouth, cryptic advertisements, and even by members of Chicago's police, clergy, and medical establishment. Little remains to document the organization's clandestine existence. Most of JANE's records were destroyed to protect the participants, leaving the women themselves to tell their stories. JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE utilizes in-depth interviews, archival footage, and the few remaining personal effects to bare witness and illuminate this once-hidden refuge. JANE was comprised of a cross-section of the political community of the early 1970s. They included members of the National Organization for Women, student activists, housewives, and mothers - a diverse group that shared one conviction – that access to safe and affordable abortion was every woman's right. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE powerfully documents a group of courageous women who were willing to translate their politics into action by providing safety and dignity to women of all backgrounds. With the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973, JANE gradually disbanded. By then these ordinary women had assisted thousands of other women from all walks of life: matrons and teenagers, radicals and government wives. JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE was made by Kate Kirtz and Nell Lundy, both of whom grew up after abortion was legal. Says Kirtz, "For us and others of our generation who grew up with choice, it's hard to comprehend both the reality of living with illegal abortion and the atmosphere that fostered as direct and radical a group as JANE. This film is a way to get us talking about our past and our power at a time when feminism has become a dirty word and choice remains fragile in the extreme." JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE was produced by Kate Kirtz and Nell Lundy in conjunction with Juicy Productions for the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. About ITVS The Independent Television Service is a unique creation in American broadcasting, created to increase the diversity of programming available to public television audiences, to bring vision to a medium often dominated by convention, commercialism and formula. ITVS supports and promotes programs that expand and energize public television and beyond. Established by Congress “to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities,” ITVS has more than 115 single programs and 17 limited series in production or distribution on domestic public television, foreign television, and domestic cable markets. ITVS works include Making Peace, The United States of Poetry and Positive: Live with HIV. Single programs include The Fight in the Fields: César Chávez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle, Pharaoh’s Army, and the recent Peabody Award-winning documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace. For information contact ITVS at 51 Federal Street, Suite 401, San Francisco, CA 94107; or call Cathy Fischer at Skype" href="callto:+1%204153568383">(415) 356-8383, ext. 224. E-mail: itvs@itvs.org; or visit the ITVS web site. About the filmmakers - KATE KIRTZ (Co-producer, interviewer) is an artist, writer, and independent video and filmmaker. Her 1992 Message From A Young Woman Who Is Growing Older, a video about young women's relationships with their bodies and sexuality, earned an Honorable Mention at the 1992 Atlanta Film and Video Festival. She also associate produced Fair Game, a documentary about the press coverage of the 1992 Democratic presidential campaign. She is currently seeking funding for a documentary project and is working on a feature screenplay. Kirtz received her BFA in film and video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. NELL LUNDY (Co-producer, videographer) is an independent videomaker living and working in New York City. Her 1990 documentary, No Rights Implied, received a first prize from the American Film Institute/Sony Visions of US Contest as well as a Best of the Festival at the 16th Illinois Film and Video Festival. Her 1992 video What's Missing has been shown nationally as part of Deep Dish TV's "Idiot Box Savant" and Video Shorts 11. Lundy also served as associate editor on Rosa Mystica and assistant producer on Times Beach, Missouri. Lundy received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA in English from the University of Chicago. Laura Kaplan, the author of the book, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service, is featured on radio/audio, part of a Marketplace radio series on Underground Economies. You can hear/read it at http://www.marketplace.org/features/underground/ "It was women's needs that drove us and the sheer exhilaration that it had such a dramatic and immediate impact on people's lives."

Feminist Wire Daily Newsbriefs: U.S. and Global News Coverage

Feminist Wire Daily Newsbriefs: U.S. and Global News Coverage

March 1, 2010

Pentagon to Review Combat Restriction US Army Chief of Staff General George Casey told the US Senate last week that the Pentagon will reassess the ban on women in the Army's infantry. He said, "I believe that it's time that we take a look at what women are actually doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and look at our policies," reported CNN. The United States currently restricts women from direct combat roles in infantry positions or in the Special Forces. A 1994 Department of Defense directive banned women from units "whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground," reported CNN. Despite official military policy, women's participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has increasingly included direct combat. In contemporary warfare, there are no front lines. John Nagl, an Iraq veteran and retired lieutenant colonel, told Agence France Presse "my best combat interrogator was a woman soldier, my best tank mechanic was a woman soldier." Army Sergeant Jennifer Hunt, who earned a purple heart in Iraq, told CNN "I do feel like I was in combat...I was engaged by the enemy when they exploded an IUD near my Humvee. You can't hit the pause button and say 'You know, I'm not supposed to be here, you know, don't shoot at me.'" US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced last week that the United States Navy plans to allow women on submarines for the first time. The policy will go into effect as early as mid-April unless Congress objects during a 30 day waiting period.

Transgender Beauty In India

Transgender Beauty In India

By Sharon Haywood

For women and men alike, self-image and self-esteem are often intimately linked. For transgendered people, positive self-image and high self-esteem can be elusive at best. In India, the combined efforts of activists and businesses attempt to alter this reality via the country’s first-ever transgender beauty pageant. The force behind the search for the Indian Super Queen is Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a popular transgender activist and the CEO of Twelve Noon Entertainment. She states:

It is not about who is the best and most aesthetically beautiful, it's about who is willing to proudly display their character, take pride in who they are and to prove that they are just as human as all of us.

Transgendered people in India, known as hijras or kinnars, find themselves targets of discrimination, ostracism, and hate crimes. Until recently they have not been afforded basic human rights. It wasn’t until late 2009 that Indian law recognized transgendered people as a third gender. Prior to the legislation, they could not obtain a passport or even vote. The beauty pageant, scheduled for February 21^st in Delhi, takes a step closer toward their full inclusion in Indian society. Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley agrees:

It’s time for the much oppressed kinnar community to come up on the stage and show the world that beauty exists in all human beings.

Yes, it most certainly does.

Read more about this story at www.sexgenderbody.com

Dear France, Smoking and Sexual Abuse are NOT Comparable. Thank you.

Dear France, Smoking and Sexual Abuse are NOT Comparable. Thank you.

Posted by: Jamie Doak in Feminizzle on Feb 24, 2010

In an effort to cut down on teenage smoking in France, an organization called Droits des Non-fumeurs (Non-smokers Rights) is launching a new ad campaign targeting young people. The tagline: "To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco." Innocent enough- it even makes sense. But apparently the only images they could think of to pair with the slogan are these ridiculously offensive images of young boys and girls sucking on the cigarette dicks of creepy older men. He's pushing her head down, she's looking up in submission. Get it? Because she's his sex slave like the youth of France are the sex slaves of tobacco. It's like a really pornographic analogy! Right? Uh.....

Seriously, these ads are problematic on so many different levels:

1. Trivialization of sexual assault. I get that the point of the campaign is to show that smoking isn't some right-of-passage to adulthood. It's trying to show young people that smoking is simply another childish way to conform. The VP of the advertising firm that created the ads said: "Young people think they're invincible. They like to flirt with danger" and the ads were trying to show that smoking is "an act of naivete and submission."

And of course, if you want to demonstrate naivete and submission, you're going to depict a young girl being forced to go down on a middle-aged pedophile. This is not acceptable. Smoking is bad for you but smoking is a choice. Because sexual abuse is not a choice it isn't on the same level and any comparison between the two is inexcusable.

2. It blames the victim. The ads are telling teenagers that if you choose to start smoking you are choosing to become a "slave to tobacco" and thus, choosing to submit to its influence. Someone who is forced to perform oral sex did not choose to be in that submissive role and by juxtaposing these ideas the ads are insinuating that the victims are partly to blame for their abuse.

3. Imagination deficit. I think Florence Montreynaud, the president of La Meute des Chiennes de Garde (Pack of Female Watchdogs) said it best: "It is terrible to represent in the public space this kind of image restricted to pornography. I'm appalled. It's a poverty of imagination. When people have no ideas, they use female bodies." While I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with celebrating women's bodies in the media (provided it's in the right context, women friendly, etc.), I do have a problem with violence and sexual violence against women in the media. Wanting to shock people out of apathy is not an excuse for exploiting survivors of sexual abuse. Period.

Article from the NYT, Photo from ABC

Supermodel Diversity Does Not Include 36-Inch Hips | Adios Barbie

Supermodel Diversity Does Not Include 36-Inch Hips | Adios Barbie

Supermodel Diversity Does Not Include 36-Inch Hips

8 Naked Supermodels = Body Diversity by Sarah Menkedick at Change.org

Three of the eight covers for LOVE's diversity issue.

This just in! Diversity has apparently been reduced to the millimeter of difference between Kate Moss and Amber Valleta's naked hips! Love Magazine is patting itself on the back for issuing eight separate covers for its third issue, each with a different naked supermodel holding her hands above her head in a not-very-subtle pose that, when laid flat on the tabletop, suggests something other than body diversity.

The issue, according to editor Katie Brand, is meant to show that "perfection is not fixed, timeless, or transcendent. It varies, as the measurements of our cover girls show." Yep. Varies kind of like the way honey blond varies from sunny blond.

Read the full story at Change.org

Freaked Out By Fashion Week - Tell Me More Blog : NPR

Freaked Out By Fashion Week - Tell Me More Blog : NPR

5:06 pm

February 19, 2010

A 1993 portrait photo of then-supermodels (right to left) Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Lauren Hutton, Beverly Johnson, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell. (Frank Micelotta / Getty Images Entertainment)

By Monika Evstatieva

Fashion Week is over and I am officially over it, too.

Fourteen years ago, I was a teenager and obsessed with models. My friends and I were in love with Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. We exercised to their fitness videos, dyed our hairs to match their hair color, hung posters of them on our walls and dreamed of looking like them when we grew up. They were our idols and the muses of designers like Valentino, Versace and Yves Saint Laurent.

Now, fast-forward to the present. The models of today do not look anything like those grand ladies. I wonder why? The IT girls of today look awfully alike, as if they were manufactured in bulk by the same company and distributed at a reduced rate to a global market.

For instance ...

Models present creations by Dutch fashion designer Josephus Thimister during the spring-summer 2010 haute couture collection shows in Paris. (Francois Guillota / AFP/Getty Images)

What does today's supermodel look like? Here is the checklist:

1. White and preferably pale.

2. Skinny, almost painfully so.

3. No butt

4. No breasts

I am certain the models themselves are simply conforming to these standards created by the industry. These girls are just working tirelessly to fit impossible clothing sizes that don't fit very many real women.

And don't get me started on the photo spreads in the fashion magazines. Arms and legs twisted in painful-looking poses, the girls lying on cold surfaces looking drugged or as if they'd been choked - blue lips and distorted ankles. That's artsy, some say. But, I can't even see the clothes.

It is no wonder models have disappeared from the covers of Vanity Fair, Vogue and Cosmopolitan -- replaced by celebrities. They sell more. But why? Maybe, it is because despite the plastic surgeries celebrities still look more like ordinary people than the models. And many celebrities do have curves.

Designers like to say their models are blank canvases that they paint on. I am ok with the canvas part. But BLANK? No woman ever wants to be called that. Ever.

Like I said, I'm over it. And I hope teenaged girls nowadays never get into it.