The Blue Bird

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Little Kid Permission "No means No!" as Explained in a Living Room Protest

I like how in this video they use the words "permission" which is a great alternative to "consent" and more child friendly. Also, this mother daughter duo are just so much fun to watch! They have a whole bunch of other great "living room protests" and I encourage you to watch them all!

Friday, April 22, 2016

The New Sincerity

In College I had a really amazing English prof. His name is Ryan Knighton and he has been on This American Life and is a pretty amazing poet and writer.

One of the things he taught us was about sincerity, the roots of the word. He explained that in the days of the Romans when it was en vogue to copy the Greeks and have giant Marble Pillars in front of your house, there were those who would fake it. They would get marble facades and back fill them with wax. Those who could afford to would have solid marble columns thus "without wax" or 'sin cere". In the online dictionary where I just looked it up it states that the origins, are from the mid 16th century (also in the sense ‘not falsified, unadulterated’): from Latin sincerus‘clean, pure.' I like Ryan's definition best. This always stuck with me and I try to live as the DesiDerata recommends, to be myself.

Last night I attended a film screening of a new film called "Fractured Land". It's a very well done film about Fracking and it's impacts. Moreover it's a film about Caleb Behn, who is Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne Za/Cree from the Treaty 8 Territory of Northeastern BC. He has a Juris Doctor degree and is among the first UVic Law students granted the Concentration in Environmental Law and Sustainability. Prior to law school, he was the Oil and Gas Officer for the West Moberly First Nations and a Lands Manager for the Saulteau First Nations. But he is also much more than that. We were lucky last night that he was able to attend for the movie screening and speak both to the ways in which he was portrayed, the absence of other indigenous folks in both the filming and editing of the film and the way he sees the world. What really sticks with me about Caleb is that he is very raw and so honest. He committed to the absolute pursuit of truth and justice and this means that he steps on toes, and is walking a line of difficult choices and brave action. Caleb has a refreshing vocabulary and by the end of his talk, which was self-deprecating, and full of expletives he said that what will make us remember this talk is that he is being real and incredibly honest and vulnerable about his lack of solutions, hes not claiming to know the answers, despite being incredibly intelligent and as invested and committed to the causes he's fighting as a person could be. I was reminded of this article I read recently in Bust Magazine where Amanda Sternberg spoke about "The New Sincerity" which she describes thusly:

“It’s in response to the irony that has saturated culture and humor. We feel like sincerity is so important to humanity. Sincerity is so crucial if you ever want to connect with other human beings and make a change or impact.”

I think she and Caleb are both right about this. I also think about Severn Suzuki (who also happened to be at the film screening last night) who, at 12 years old gave a speech to the and her speech at the United Nations Earth Summit. She rocked the world with her bravery and sincerity. Check out the transcript of her speech or watch the video here. She also embodies what some people feel is the "ethos of our era" and I'm grateful to be surrounded especially here on Haida Gwaii with people who embody this spirit and commitment, not only to being true to themselves and finding their gifts and what they have to share, but also a commitment to that which sustains all of us, our planet. Happy Earthday, let's keep it sincere.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Porn - It's not black and white...

Listened to an interesting podcast today with Dan Savage who was tearing apart an article entitled "is porn immoral? It doesn't matter, it's a public health crisis" which makes a lot of claims that are not backed up by science. Dan also ridicules the Mormon funded "Porn Kills Love" campaign and cited this article in the atlantic which lists some interesting studies that have been done about porn usage and it's impacts on crime etc.

OWL sexual health education

Just learned about this program for teaching sex ed, might have to investigate it a little more but sounds intriguing! http://www.uua.org/re/owl

Great one-two punch for anti-vaccers...

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/dear-parents-you-are-being-lied

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Quickly loosing all respect for Mainstream hip hop...

Yet another article about how porn, and also the sexually explicit nature of the culture including music videos is giving boys and young men a warped idea of what sex and sexuality are. EEk. Tough time to be a young person in this world. I have been working a lot in the high school the last few weeks and have been impressed, perturbed, surprised and awed but the spectrum of youth and where they are at as they try to navigate this wild west media landscape. The article makes mention of a recent Lil' Wayne and Drake video, watching it kinda made my blood boil. I've poster the lyrics below. For a song like this to be called "Love Me" it's no wonder young men are confused. When I look at the content here it seems to me that the men making this music men have no concept of what Love is, and are the last people who young people should be learning about it from in my humble opinion.

Here are the Lyrics:

Lil’ Wayne and Kanye lyrics to “Love me”

Monday, April 4, 2016

Frightening stories on the effects of boys growing up in "pornland"

Yikes! A friend just sent me a link to this article with stories from girls, mostly from Australia - poor them - in my experience Australian men can be sexist to begin with, but it seems that perhaps things have gotten even worse in the Aussie male department since I lived in Whistler which was crawling with them. At any rate it paints a pretty bleak picture of the sexual landscape of young women. http://www.collectiveshout.org/growing_up_in_pornland_girls_have_had_it_with_porn_conditioned_boys

Sunday, April 3, 2016

The Free Pits Underarm Feminist Manifesto

As someone who loves hair, and dyeing hair and cutting hair and petting hair I was pretty stoked to learn about this badass lady Roxie Hunt who started the trend of dyeing underarm hair. She has since explained her logic and the way that doing so is a way of starting the conversation about women making conscious choices about their bodies and how they want them to look. Read more here. http://www.howtohairgirl.com/2014/12/free-pits-manifesto/

Challenging the period Taboo one marathon at a time

Pretty impressed by this rad M.I.A. drummer lady who ran the London Marathon without a tampon to challenge the stigma and bring awareness about the shame that even people who can afford tampons, pads and menstrual cups live throughout their reproductive lives. To read more check out this blog http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/heres-why-i-ran-the-london-marathon-on-the-first-day-of-my-period-and-chose-not-to-wear-a-tampon-10455176.html where Kiran wrote about her experience. Pretty powerful.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Is Porn Addictive?

Here is a great video by my favourite sex positive vlogger. This is a tricky subject and I think she does a great job tackling this question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBSG98qzaPc

Banned Birth Control Books

Thanks to Yoyo for sending me a link to this great story about an information book published by University students in Montreal in the 60's.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-illegal-birth-control-handbook-that-spread-across-college-campuses-in-1968?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page

Monday, February 22, 2016

Is there such a thing as Feminist Porn?

I have been teaching lately and trying to weave in more info about the potential impacts of watching porn as I have been learning about how there are people, according to an English study, approximately 1 in 4 young men in Britain who can't maintain an erection without porn after growing up with it. I heard that on a CBC Ideas podcast called porn generation, which I would encourage others interested in this to take a listen to. Another stat I heard recently was that 1 in three women watches porn (or at least those are the ones who will admit it). So I wondered what is the feminist stance on pornography? Is all porn bad? Where can a person go to find "good" porn and as Lacie Green points out in this video, how much is too much? Studies claim that "moderate use" of porn does not seem to have negative or lasting impacts on the brain, but how much is moderate? Once a week? Once a month? Once a day? Once a year??? There is so much research yet to be done, and fortunately there is a new porn Journal which aims to study some of these questions and more and in the mean time, I am pleased to have stumbled across the feminist porn awards which give a good run down of porn that may have some value, or at the very least be less full of the shocking de-humanizing and mysoginist images that are the mainstay of free, cheap internet porn like red tube porn hub. I was pleased to see when scrolling through their list of award winners, films by Dr. Carol Queen, who writes the sex advice column for Bust Magazine which I quite like. So anyways, lots of questions about the future of our brains, the future of porn, and the beginning of a quest to find porn that might just be able to be educational, and not just a degrading shame fest that leaves us feeling not much better that a scrunched up ball of kleenex by the end. I also really loved the movie Don Jon as it deals with these themes in a really clever way.

Ironic Man-hating.

So I have been considering buying a new beer cozy for my boyfriend, because he loves them and the one that caught my eye was in Bust Magazine, emblazoned with "Male Tears" in a delightful script. This led me to ask...So what's the deal with "male tears" turns out that like most awesome things it was dreamed up by clever feminists. Check out this great article from slate which explains how joking about man-hating is a great way of making us feel like feminism may just have tipped.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Lisa Congdon

Thanks to Jaime for recommending another great artist.

http://lisacongdon.com/portfolio/

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Haida Gwaii, we're kind of a big deal

Thanks to my friend Brenna for sending along this article from Vogue about my favourite little Archipelago. http://www.vogue.com/13372113/haida-gwaii-travel-guide-canada-galapagos-island-susan-musgrave/

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

I Don't Owe You

Really like this new poster campaign http://avaloncentre.ca/campaigns/i-dont-owe-you/

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

New fave - animated organs

Just discovered a great new website that sells amazing organs and body part related arts, crafts and plashes. It's called I heart guts and reminds me a bit of my other fave stuffs the Giant Microbes, which I think I've probably mentioned on here before, but just in case...Here they are, too cute!!

Monday, November 23, 2015

Son, It's OK if You Don't Get Laid Tonight.

Here is a link to a great letter written by a mom to her teenage son. Can you imagine if all parents actually had these kinds of conversations with their kids!? It would put me out of a job!! I also really like this cartoon which, like the tea example I posted a while back, shows some great metaphors for consent.

http://angieup.tumblr.com/post/64577581035/son-its-okay-if-you-dont-get-laid-tonight

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Stuff You Should Know...about PUBERTY!

I love the guys from Stuff You Should Know. I learn all kinds of things from them! Recently they did 2 great podcasts about puberty which I thought were pretty great. Have a listen. Here's Male Puberty, and here's Female Puberty. One thing I noticed on the female puberty episode is that they use the word "discharge" which I think it gross and I prefer to use the term "fluids". Other than that pretty top notch!

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Teaching Kids About Sex? There's an App for that.

Just downloaded this a great app. Check out this video which shows how it works and read this great article from the Tyee including references from our lady of Sexual Health Meg Hickling.