Women Born Transsexual

From the language usage I suspect the author of this article is a Brit.  I have never been terribly impressed by the level of sexual sophistication shown by most British males, who seem firmly lodged in the poke-poke-nudge-nudge Benny Hill level of arrested development.

I wouldn’t have posted this except it is an example of how women get jerked around by the social construction of gender.

Without a ton of money to waste on keeping up with the latest fad that the self-image industrial complex has manufactured and sold as the ideal women will always be out of place.

Women who opt out of purchasing and pursuing the latest social construct of gender are labeled as mannish, dirty or dowdy.  This was the real sin of hippie women and feminists, just as not having the wealth to engage in this futile pursuit of the sin of working women and the poor, especially redneck women who shop in stores like Walmart.

I watched the anorexic appearing women on the Golden Globes the other night and while I am loathe to endorse the fat food industry most of them could use the addition of a couple Big Mac to their weekly diet.  What ever happened to Jane Fonda’s fitness craze and the idea that women should look like they might be able to lift a small child or in a pinch change the tire on their own car?

Now photographs of women are Photoshopped until the subjects appear to be plastic androids with empty heads and pore-less skin as well as inhuman body dimensions.

As a photographer I never gone out of my way to show people, especially women in a harsh light.  I’ve used kind light and even soft focus lenses.  But I do not retouch other than to remove a zit or other temporary skin condition.

I find too much Photoshop to be dishonest.

But there is something else I have noticed.  Whether fashion dictates a highly contrived gendered social construct look that defines women or a “natural look” it is going to cost ya’ big bucks.

I was an unreconstructed hippie.  I only wore a bra when it was part of the employee dress code. I have never worn “foundation” although I will plead guilty to wearing blusher, eye shadow, mascara and lip gloss.  I used to joke that my make-up routine was fooumph, foomph and outta here.  I was always puzzled by women friends who took ten-twenty minutes to do what I did in a minute or two.

Lately I have had a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of women having molten wax poured on their coochie snorkers followed by the ripping out of their pubic hair. I want to ask, “At what point is this followed up with a beating and water boarding.

The whole thought of having my pubes ripped out is very cringe inducing.

I consider the fashion industry to be a huge rip off.  Honestly I sort of like being able to wear the same clothes year after year.  They are called classics for a reason.  I hate the bizarre twisted sense of humor that makes the dete4rmination of women’s clothing sizes seem to be the result of picking numbers out of a hat.

BTW breast size shouldn’t be a fashion choice.  There is just something truly fucked up about treating it as such.  Small breasts are not a disease no matter what the douche nozzle cosmetic surgery peddlers say.

From Slate:  http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonan/2012/01/small_breasts_could_they_make_a_comeback_.html

Could small breasts make a comeback?

By Simon Doonan
Posted Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012

The larger boob became the norm around the turn of the century, and it shows no signs of deflating. Radical rack augmentation is now ubiquitous, and to hell with the consequences. So what if you knock yourself unconscious while running to catch the bus? So what if you can’t fit into any trendy clothes because your waist is a zero but your bazongas are the size and weight of cantaloupes? It’s worth it to be the focus of male attention. Right?

An aggressively burgeoning trend in restaurants—foodie insiders are already calling them breastaurants—is playing directly into this craze for mammoth mammaries. Examples include Seattle-based Chicka Latte, where the waitresses are dressed as firefighters, cheerleaders and racecar drivers, and The Tilted Kilt, which has more than fifty—count ‘em!—locations nationwide plus one in Canada. And then there’s the Pink Taco… But let’s not get distracted by vagaurants. Let’s stick with the topic at hand: With their phalanxes of liberally endowed bikini-clad serving wenches, these breastablishments are poised to make even old-school Hooters appear tentative, restrained, and genteel, to mention nothing of causing my feminist counterculture sister to have a seizure.

Despite the worldwide embrace of enormous knockers, I remain convinced that the pendulous pendulum will, at some point, begin to swing in the other direction. Style is, after all, cyclical in nature. I know what you are thinking: Only a gay man could seriously posit the notion that big boobs might “go out of fashion.” However, being d’un certain age, I am old enough to remember when tiny titties roamed the Earth.

Continue reading at:  http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonan/2012/01/small_breasts_could_they_make_a_comeback_.html

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/fashion/imperfect-makeup-is-a-trend-for-2012.html

You Can Fall Out of Bed and Look Good

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: January 18, 2012

GOODBYE, lip liners, brow pencils, spackled-on foundations. The hottest beauty trend of 2012 is imperfection.

The new look for the new year is effortless, minimalist, just-out-of-bed-with-your-lover, according to leading hair and makeup artists. They say that stiff coiffures, overdone eyes, defined lips and matte skin are out. Tousled hair, smudged eyeliner, dewy lips and luminous skin are in.

The look is “coming home from the party,” not “going out to the party,” said Terry Barber, director of makeup artistry for MAC Cosmetics. “Perfection got slightly boring.”

And the must-have tool to achieve perfect imperfection is recession-friendly: your fingertips. Use them to smudge eyeliner, smear bronzer, press bright stains into your cheeks and lips. The application of the makeup is as relaxed as the overall look.

“Pout your lip and just push it into the lip,” advised Matin Maulawizada, the global artistry director for Laura Mercier whose handiwork will be on display at the Pamella Roland runway show next month during New York Fashion Week. “It should look underdone.”

(Notice how this requires “The Fashion Industry” to tell you and sell you the expensive proper way of doing this.)

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/fashion/imperfect-makeup-is-a-trend-for-2012.html

From Cracked.com:    http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-baffling-things-about-womens-clothes/

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/keystone-pipeline-obama-administration_n_1213136.html

Lucia Graves and   Joshua Hersh
1/18/2012

WASHINGTON — The State Department on Wednesday recommended that President Obama deny a permit for the Keystone XL, arguing the pipeline does not serve the national interest.

“The President concurred with the Department’s recommendation, which was predicated on the fact that the Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest,” the State Department wrote in a statement to the media on Wednesday afternoon.

The news comes after White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced at a Tuesday afternoon press conference that Obama cannot approve the pipeline by the Feb. 21 deadline imposed by Congress.

It also comes after House and Senate lawmakers signaled they would introduce new legislation pushing the permit forward even if the Obama administration rejected the pipeline proposal. That bill, drafted by Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), would have shut the White House out of the Keystone decision-making process, leaving Congress with full authority to approve the pipeline, which would stretch an estimated 1,700 miles from tar sands in Canada to oil refineries along the Gulf Coast.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/keystone-pipeline-obama-administration_n_1213136.html

From The Vancouver Sun: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/topics/city/akron/Agitators+oilsands+debates+working+companies/6001621/story.html

I’ve been visiting Canada all my life, but I’m a little worried about my upcoming trip.

In late March I’m supposed to come to Vancouver to give a couple of talks. Youth Action Canada invited me to come, to speak to college students from across the country; I’m also planning to do a benefit for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. But now I read that Joe Oliver, the country’s natural resources minister, is condemning “environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block” the Northern Gateway pipeline from the oilsands of Alberta to the Pacific.

I think he’s talking about people like me. I’ve spent much of the last year helping rally opposition to the Key-stone XL pipeline from the oilsands to the Gulf of Mexico. I was arrested outside the White House in August, and emceed the demonstration that brought thousands of people to circle the White House in November. When I come to British Columbia, I’ll urge everyone I meet to oppose the Gate-way project. In fact, Youth Action is paying me to come. And the money will end up at 350.org, the international climate change campaign, helping fight projects like Gateway around the world.

Since a majority of Canadians, according to the polls, also oppose the pipeline, I’ll be in good company. But Oliver, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the organizers of the Ethical Oil campaign don’t want any out-side voices. As the latter explained on its website, “It’s our pipeline. Our country. Our jobs. And our decision.”

Fair enough. But you know some-thing? The atmosphere belongs to all of us. There’s not some wall at the 49th parallel that separates Canada’s air from everyone else’s. Since the oilsands is the second biggest source of carbon on the planet, that makes their development everyone’s business. As NASA’s James Hansen, the planet’s premier climatologist, put it recently, if you heavily develop the oil-sands, it’s “essentially game over for the climate.”

From Reader Supported News: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/9507-president-obama-stands-up-to-big-oil

Robert Redford, Reader Supported News
18 January 12

Let’s face it: Big Oil is used to getting its way. But not today… and we have President Obama to thank for standing up to them in spite of the political risk.

President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline – a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us.

His decision represents a victory of historic proportions for people from throughout the pipeline path and all across America who have waged an uphill, years-long fight against one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time.

But make no mistake: Big Oil is going to fight back hard and fast.

Why? Because this was a prime-time fight. The oil giants made sure of that.

Big Oil had their Congressional boosters put the president to an election-year test by forcing him to decide the pipeline’s fate within 60 days. Then, the oil lobby itself rolled out its biggest PR guns to get the job done.

The head of the American Petroleum Institute sent the White House a very public and blatant warning: Approve the Keystone XL or face “huge political consequences.”

Because Big Oil lost, this is not the end of the fight. This is the beginning of the real battle for America’s energy future.

Continue reading at:  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/9507-president-obama-stands-up-to-big-oil

From Robert Reich:  http://robertreich.org/post/16027950443

Robert Reich
Tuesday, January 17, 2012

After refusing for weeks to release his taxes, Mitt Romney now says he’ll do so — by tax day, April 15. But the real news is what Romney has now admitted about his taxes.

It’s not how much Romney earns. Everyone knows he’s comfortably in the top one-tenth of one percent.

It’s how much he pays of it in taxes. Romney says he pays a tax rate of “about 15 percent.”

That’s lower than the tax rate most of America’s middle class face and far lower than the 35 percent top rate after the Bush tax cut. (To put this in perspective, recall that the top income tax rate under Dwight Eisenhower was 91 percent.)

Newt Gingrich immediately pounced on Mitt’s admission as evidence that Newt’s proposed flat 15 percent tax is ideal, and wants to call it the “Romney tax.” Newt’s flat tax is a fraud. It would dramatically lower the taxes of most of the top 1 percenters and increase the taxes of most of the rest of us.

Continue reading at:  http://robertreich.org/post/16027950443

From World Socialist Web Site: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/pers-j17.shtml

Peter Schwarz
17 January 2012

The downgrading of nine euro zone countries by Standard & Poor’s is a politically motivated decision. The rating agency represents the interests of an international financial elite for whom the destruction of working class living standards is not proceeding far or fast enough. This is clear from the official rationale for the downgrade.

“Today’s rating actions are primarily driven by our assessment that the policy initiatives that have been taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the euro zone,” the agency declared.

Italy, whose government has just whipped a draconian austerity package through parliament and is now set to deregulate the labour market, is threatened with further downgrades by Standard & Poor’s if “we see that the technocratic administration fails to implement structural reform measures due to opposition from special interest groups.” By “structural reform measures” S&P means the elimination of legal and contractual provisions that give workers a measure of protection. “Special interest groups” is a euphemism for the working class, i.e., the vast majority of the population.

The same fate is threatened for Spain if the government does not rapidly deregulate the labour market even further and take additional measures to reduce the budget deficit.

European politicians from all parties have expressed outrage at the actions of Standard & Poor’s. French presidential adviser Alain Minc grumbled, “It’s worse than pyromaniac firemen, it is seriously perverse.” German Economics Minister Phillip Rösler of the Free Democratic Party accused the agency of pursuing “its own aims.” The chair of the Left Party, Gregor Gysi, spoke of a “war against the peoples of Europe.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/pers-j17.shtml

As far as totally corrupt and exploitative industries go the porn industry is the worst of the worst.

They demand people risk contracting AIDS as part of their terms of employment.

LA has the right idea and should be applauded for caring enough for the lives of the workers to stand up to the brutal exploitation of the corrupt porn industry.

From Frontiers:   http://www.frontiersla.com/Blog/FrontierBlog/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10336955

By Stephan Horbelt
Editor
1/18/2012

Bigwigs in the L.A.-based porn industry are understandably considering leaving their homebase of Southern California. L.A. City Council authorities are attemting to push through a regulation that would police adult film sets and would require that all adult film performers wear condoms during scenes.

According to this article:

[The] effort took a serious leap forward Tuesday when the Los Angeles city council voted 9-1 to grant final approval to an ordinance that would deny film permits to producers who do not comply with the condom requirement. The measure now goes to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for approval.

Before the measure can take effect, however, the council has called for the creation of a committee of police officials, the city attorney, state health officials and others to determine how it might be enforced.

Currently, Los Angeles is known as “the porn capital of the world,” with over 90 percent of American porn films currently shot in the San Fernando Valley, inside Los Angeles city limits. It is said to be an $8 billion-per-year industry.

Continue reading at:  http://www.frontiersla.com/Blog/FrontierBlog/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10336955

From Talking Points Memo:   http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/new-batch-of-ron-paul-newsletters-just-as-racist-as-the-first.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

Benjy Sarlin
January 17, 2012

A brand new batch of Ron Paul newsletters raises questions for the libertarian Republican — as well as a host of embarrassing fresh passages to go along with such classics as “the coming race war” and “the federal-homosexual cover up on AIDS” from earlier reports.

Ron Paul claims “probably ten sentences out of 10,000 pages” were objectionable in his long-published newsletter series, even as he denies having ever written the content in question (or even having seen most of it). But, as TPM has reported and a new collection of Ron Paul newsletters posted by The New Republic confirms, racism, homophobia, and fringe conspiracy theories seem more like the newsletters’ raison d’etre than a rare aberration. In fact, even short promotional letters for the publication name-checked many of the most toxic passages.

Once again, contempt for African Americans and warnings of a “race war” are central themes in the most recently released materials. One issue warned “every honest American should be armed” to prepare for the coming violence.

“Today, gangs of young blacks bust into a bank lobby firing rounds at the ceiling,” one issue read, continuing: “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held as responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult, and should be treated as such.”

Another issue from 1993 defended Marge Schott, who used to own the Cincinnati Reds, after she notoriously referred to her players as “million-dollar niggers.”

“Remember the thought crimes from the novels of Orwell and Huxley?” the article reads. “It’s not fiction in America if the case of Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott is any evidence.”

Continue reading at:  http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/new-batch-of-ron-paul-newsletters-just-as-racist-as-the-first.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

From The Independent UK: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/16/it%E2%80%99s-a-girl-the-three-deadliest-words-in-the-world/

By Ram Mashru
Monday, 16 January 2012

It’s a girl, a film being released this year, documents the practice of killing unwanted baby girls in South Asia. The trailer’s most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters.

The statistics are sickening. The UN reports approximately 200 million girls in the world today are ‘missing’. India and China are said to eliminate more female infants than the number of girls born in the US each year. Lianyungang in China has the worst infant gender ratio on record with 163 boys born for every 100 girls. Taiwan, South Korea and Pakistan are also countries in which unwanted female babies are aborted, killed or abandoned.

Gendercide in South Asia takes many forms: baby girls are killed or abandoned if not aborted as foetuses. Girls that are not killed often suffer malnutrition and medical neglect as sons are favoured when shelter, medicine and food are scarce. Trafficking, dowry deaths, honour killings and deaths resulting from domestic violence are all further evils perpetrated against women. This femicide has led the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces to report in ‘Women in an Insecure World’ that a secret genocide is being carried out against women at a time when deaths resulting from armed conflicts have decreased.

The brutal irony of femicide is that it is an evil perpetrated against girls by women. The most insidious force is often the mother in law, the domestic matriarch, under whose authority the daughter in law lives. Policy efforts to halt infanticide have been directed at mothers, who are often victims themselves. The trailer shows tragic scenes of women having to decide between killing their daughters and their own well-being. In India women who fail to produce sons are beaten, raped or killed so that men can remarry in the hope of procuring a more productive wife.

Continue reading at:   http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/16/it%E2%80%99s-a-girl-the-three-deadliest-words-in-the-world/

From The Telegraph UK:     http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9020632/Crimes-of-passion-defence-restored-in-murder-cases.html

Sexual infidelity can now be used as a defence in murder cases after the country’s most senior judge criticised laws banning it.

17 Jan 2012

It restores a defence in so-called “crimes of passion”, although Lord Judge insisted infidelity cannot be the sole reason for the murder and other “triggers” must be shown.

The last Labour Government changed the law surrounding murder defences to exclude sexual infidelity in so-called “loss of control” cases.

The ruling came as the Court of Appeal quashed the murder conviction of a man who killed his wife after she admitted she had slept with five men and then goaded him about it.

Jon-Jaques Clinton, 45, from Bracknell, Berkshire, was last year found guilty at Reading Crown Court of murdering his 33-year-old wife Dawn, who died from head injuries and asphyxia.

However, Lord Judge, sitting with two other senior judges, today ruled the judge had been wrong to discount Mrs Clinton’s sexual infidelity and withdraw from the jury the “loss of control” defence, which could have reduced her husband’s conviction to manslaughter.

Continue reading at:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9020632/Crimes-of-passion-defence-restored-in-murder-cases.html

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/18-7

by Thomas S. Harrington
Published on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 by Common Dreams

In an article in Sunday’s New York Times co-signed by Isabel Kershner and Ethan Bronner, the readers of the “Paper of Record” were informed that, “…Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected – the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews — has erupted into a crisis”.

So, the Israelis have suddenly become aware of the social problems provoked by the rise of state-coddled authoritarian fundamentalists in their midst?

Funny, my friends and contacts from Israel have been talking obsessively about the problem for over 15 years, with many of them predicting quite openly during all of this period that, if left unchecked, the rise of the haredim will eventually lead to the destruction of any remaining semblance of democracy within their society.

But if Kershner–an Israeli citizen–and Bronner–whose son has served in an Israeli Army which has been in daily contact with the gratuitously violent behaviors of the fundamentalist settlers on the West Bank–are to believed, this sense of alarm surrounding the issue of the religious right is a brand new phenomenon.

Their pose of being “shocked, just shocked” about the rise anti-democratic fundamentalists in the society they have inhabited for years, is nothing short of mendacious.

If the two reporters had a modicum of intellectual honesty they would have said something like this.

Continue reading at:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/18-7

From Straight.com Vancouver Ca.: http://www.straight.com/article-585371/vancouver/david-suzuki-whats-so-radical-about-caring-earth-opposing-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline-project

By David Suzuki,
January 17, 2012

Caring about the air, water, and land that give us life. Exploring ways to ensure Canada’s natural resources serve the national interest. Knowing that sacrificing our environment to a corporate-controlled economy is suicide. If those qualities make us radicals, as federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently claimed in an open letter, then I and many others will wear the label proudly.

But is it radical to care for our country, our world, our children and grandchildren, our future? It seems more radical for a government to come out swinging in favour of an industrial project in advance of public hearings into that project. It seems especially radical when the government paints everyone who opposes the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project as American-funded traitors with a radical ideological agenda “to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth.”

It’s bad enough when our government and its “ethical oil” and media supporters don’t tell the truth, but it’s worse when they don’t even offer rational arguments. Their increasing attacks on charitable organizations and Canadians from all walks of life show that if they can’t win with facts, they’ll do everything they can to silence their critics. And we thought conservative-minded people valued free speech!

The proposed Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipeline projects and the massive, mostly foreign-controlled expansion of the tar sands are not about finding the best way to serve Canada’s national interests. If we truly wanted to create jobs, we would refine the oil in Canada and use it to reduce our reliance on imported oil, much of which comes from countries that government supporters say are “unethical”. If we really cared about using resources for the national interest, we would slow development in the tar sands, improve environmental standards, increase royalties and put some of the money away or use it to switch to cleaner energy, eliminate subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and encourage Canadian companies to develop the resource.

Continue reading at:   http://www.straight.com/article-585371/vancouver/david-suzuki-whats-so-radical-about-caring-earth-opposing-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline-project

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/whore-the-anti-obama-bill_b_1214282.html

Robert Greenwald
Posted: 1/18/12

Billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch were stopped today. The Keystone XL oil pipeline will meet its end today in a Washington DC press conference. The pipeline would’ve been one of the largest oil developments in American history. The pipeline would’ve destroyed American homes, farmlands and sensitive ecosystems along the nearly 2,000-mile path from Northwest Canada and through six U.S. states to the Gulf of Mexico.

But it also represented a win for brothers Koch, who’ve used their net worth to influence politicians and the media to support policies that would make them richer.

The Koch brothers helped fund and start the Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity. It’s Nebraska chapter has actively promoted and organized around the Keystone pipeline despite numerous concerns voiced by the Republican governor of Nebraska and thousands of Cornhusker residents. Many activists in our Koch Brothers Exposed network have said they’ve seen Americans for Prosperity commercials in their communities supporting the pipeline.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/whore-the-anti-obama-bill_b_1214282.html