Kate Bornstein

From Madness Radio:
"Transsexual writer and activist Kate Bornstein on her book "Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws." Kate overturns the orthodox either-or labels of male / female and straight/gay/bi with her postmodern sexuality of self-definition and fluid identity. Kate is the author of the highly successful books "My Gender Workbook" and "Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us," and her new book takes a transgressive and honest approach to what it takes to stay alive in a crazy world. www.katebornstein.com"

Now I have to admit that I haven't read this book yet, nor am I all that familiar with Kate Bornstein (though I feel like I'm going to be very soon), but I read this excerpt from Hello Cruel World and I wanted to post it here:

• Sex doesn’t have to mean marriage, children, or even I love you.
• Sex can be right this minute or next year some time. You get to decide. And you get to change your mind about that whenever you want to.
• Sex can be a passionless quickie.
• Sex can be any way you imagine it can be. Sex doesn’t have to be any way you don’t want it to be.
• Sex doesn’t have to be with one person all the time or even with one person at a time. Sex doesn’t have to be with anyone but yourself. You get to control the guest list.
• Sex doesn’t have to happen with anyone of the same race, religion, gender, age, class, education level or body type as you.
• And sex doesn’t have to be for free. You can buy, sell, or trade sex for things if you need and want to do that.
• Sex doesn’t mean you’re a slut or a whore, unless of course that’s what you’d like to be.
• Sex doesn’t have to be genital and you don’t have to do it in private.
• Sex doesn’t have to end with an orgasm for everyone.
• During sex, you can be any gender, age, race, class, animal, object or alien life-form that you’d like to be as long as you both or all agree that’s what you’re safely being together.
• Sex doesn’t have to be in the missionary position.
• Sex doesn’t have to happen on the bed in a bedroom in the dark.
• Sex can be really yummy, sick-o, gross, painful, scary, bloody and/or degrading when you all or both agree to do it that way safely and respectfully together.
• Sex can be hilariously funny.
• Sex can be a lovely gift you give someone or someone gives you.
• Sex can be a blessing, a prayer, and a generous act of healing.
• Sex can involve costumes, props and a script.

I can't totally explain why, but this just kind of blew my mind. It's all these things that I already know about sex, and love about sex, that very few people in contemporary media and even Gen Sex academic literature acknowledge. I just wanted to celebrate some balls to the wall sex positivity and encourage everyone to check out the interview at Madness.

"Thin. Hairless. Nipped and Tucked. Plastic Fantastic. Is this all right? Or is it all white?"

Brought to my attention by Beet, and positively fucking wonderful

Meet the Muffia


"Frustrated by a lack of feminist debate, Sinead King and Katie O'Brien have been out on the streets flashing their merkins as the Muffia – the latest in a long line of outspoken female performance artists..."

"Under the guise of the Muffia, they started asking questions of their own. Why don't we resent the way the media portrays women? Does no one care that women are mutilating themselves with cosmetic surgery? Why do so few young women know what feminism is?"

"O'Brien explains that their aim is "to use our bodies on the street to generate ideas and engage with people.""

Check out the whole article, it's a good read and has a nice, quick history of feminist performance art.

Ditto on what Nadia said- we're not on hiatus, just very busy (and today, sick and stuffy).

I wanted to share 2 quotes that I found in a zine that I accidentally stole from the bathroom of a party.

"...and everybody wants to breathe and nobody can breathe and some people say 'We'll be able to breathe later'..."

"People who talk about Revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth."
-Raoul Vaneigem The Revolution of Everyday Life

And
THE SEXUALLY FLUID
PERSON'S GUIDE TO A
SEAMLESSLY UNEVENTFUL
COMING OUT.
BY AMY YORK RUBIN

We've had it up to HERE

Haven't posted much in a while. It's been busy at the ninja-house. Nevertheless, I thought I would write a short note assuring everyone that we're definitely not on hiatus; we're just attending to other things at the moment.

Anyway, I heard this song today and although Gwen Stefani is currently busy with other things (i.e. babies' poop), at one point in her life she certainly did her part in spreading our kind of message. So without further ado, here's No Doubt's 1995 answer to patriarchal society, "Just A Girl."