• Contact Us

  • Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire: Ultimate Fan Guide

    Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire: The Ultimate Fan Guide [Kindle] $0.99.


    Kobo Inc.
    Download_on_the_iTunes_iBooks_Badge_US-UK_146x40_0824
    I
    Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire:  Ultimate Fan Guide

    Georgiana is the subject of the movie "The Duchess" (currently on Netflix) and a relative of the young Prince and Princess of Cambridge. Get the Ultimate Fan Guide -- with plot points, history, and what happened to the historical characters -- for only 99 cents!

  • Green Party Peace Sign Bumper Sticker


    Green Party Peace Sign Bumper Sticker
    The Green Party has continually opposed entry into war and has consistently called for the immediate return of our troops, in stark contrast to the Democratic and Republican parties.
    Today we march, tomorrow we vote Green Party.

  • Occupy Wall Street: What Just Happened?

    Occupy Wall Street: What Just Happened? ebook cover

    |

    Occupy Wall Street: What Just Happened? eBook

    Occupy Wall Street: What Just Happened? eBook on Amazon

    Occupy Wall Street: What Just Happened? eBook

    Reflections on Occupy Wall Street, with photos, fun, and good wishes for the future. eBook, Occupy Wall Street: What Just Happened? (Only $.99 !) In the eBook, the Occupy movement is explored through original reporting, photographs, cartoons, poetry, essays, and reviews.The collection of essays and blog posts records the unfolding of Occupy into the culture from September 2011 to the present.  Authors Kimberly Wilder and Ian Wilder were early supporters of Occupy, using their internet platforms to communicate the changes being created by the American Autumn.

    The eBook is currently available on Amazon for Kindle;  Barnes & Noble Nook ; Smashwords independent eBook seller; and a Kobo for 99 cents and anyone can read it using their Kindle/Nook Reader, smart phone, or computer.

Hard-hitting gender story about Caster Semenya situation

KW: I have excerpted the story from The Root/repost at Reclaim the Media below about Caster Semenya and gender testing. The story itself is even more controversial. One thing is that the article seems nearly cruel, in naming the ugly ideas that other people have about Caster. Difficult to decide in a situation like this: Do you name the ugly thoughts? Does naming them conquer them? Or, spread them?

Pull quotes:

“But the tests are, of course, rigged—because witch hunts always produce witches.”

“Results of the gender investigation aside, Caster Semenya’s humanity has already been sacrificed to Western culture’s desperate, frightened effort to maintain the fiction of binary, fixed gender.”

(excerpt from) Reclaim the Media
Semenya’s race and sex struggle
by Kai Wright, The Root

It’s important to note that no one believes she has masqueraded as a woman. Rather, the hypothesis is that she’s been confused her whole life. “Clearly it was not her fault,” IAAF spokesperson Nick Davies told the BBC, in speculating about what it’ll mean if she fails her gender exam. “It’s a medical issue. … She was born, christened and grew up a woman.” She just might not be one, at least not by [The International Association of Athletics Federations] IAAF’s standards.

So now she must endure a stunning battery of tests, stretching far past a mere dropping of the trousers. Davies explains: “There is chromosome testing, gynecological investigation, all manner of things, organs, X-rays, scans. … It’s very, very comprehensive.”…

[Editor’s note: A recent news report suggests that Americans are harmed by over-exposure to radiation due to unnecessary medical testing. How could someone submit a young woman to x-rays and radiation, merely for the sake of a sport? a game? A Los Angeles Times article notes, “Radiation is known to cause cancer, typically years after exposure. By some estimates, medical testing radiation contributes 2% of all cancer cases, but experts fear that it may be higher in the future as more and more patients are exposed to these relatively new procedures.”]

…Many observers, including Semenya’s mom, have called this absurdity racism—white folks imposing their self-centered notions of femininity, once again.

That may be true, but there’s more to this than race. After all, Semenya’s South African defenders seem most appalled by the assertion that she’s not adequately gender normative…

…But the reality is that Semenya may be neither “boy” nor “girl,” or could be both. And who cares? It happens. Our social certainty about the male-female divide is not supported by biology. As Northwestern University bioethics professor Alice Dreger told the New York Times last week, “As I like to say, ‘Humans like categories neat, but nature is a slob.’ ”Children are routinely born with cellular variation on the XX and XY chromosome sets that define boy and girl status. Hormone levels vary, too, as do the secondary traits we associate with a given sex. People have large, protruding clitorises; scrotums divided such that they look like labia; inactive hormone receptors and on and on. Anywhere from 1 in 1,500 to 1 in 2,000 births require specialists to assign a child’s sex, according to the Intersex Society of North America. After these assignments are made, cruel plastic surgeries to “correct” perfectly natural physical variations are often performed for no medical purpose whatsoever. Kids are mutilated to ensure they fit comfortably inside our mythical gender boxes.

We cling to this lie of binary genders for the same reason we fantasize about the essential nature of race: to make unjust social hierarchies seem natural. But they’re not. They’re man-made, and competitive sports have long been a tool for keeping them in place…

One Response

  1. […] View original here:  Twitter […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.