10
POPSWhat is "rape culture"?
Click through for the whole thing. More: Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality… Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms." Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another ("I'll make you my bitch")… Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements.
3
POPSPolanski, rape, and the myth of "Not Like Us" More: Rapists don’t tip the homeless guy, because they have some spare change from Starbucks. Rapists don’t survive the Holocaust. Rapists don’t sit in the cubicle across from us at work, and send us funny xkcd cartoons. Rapists don’t have uneventful, long-term relationships with their college girlfriends. Rapists don’t show up on set every day, directing a critically-acclaimed movie. Rapists don’t get married, nervous in a tux at the end of the aisle. Rapists don’t spend their weekends browsing at the farmer’s market, and then stop for brunch and do the NYT crossword. Rapists don’t co-write this screenplay with us. Rapists don’t hang out at the pub with their friends, watching football and drinking just half a pint of beer, because they’re driving.… We tell these myths to ourselves and each other often, but of course, they are lies. A rapist is nothing but a man who doesn’t listen when you say stop.
5
POPSRape is never okay... unless you also happen to make Great Art More: Rape is a crime of violence. It doesn't matter who the rapist is. It doesn't matter who the victim is. It doesn't matter how hard she fought or what she was wearing or how much she had to drink. It doesn't matter whether she knew the rapist, whether she'd gone out with him, whether she kissed him or went back to his place or had sex with fifty thousand other men first. No one has the right to rape another person, and anyone who does must be held accountable, must receive the message that rape is not okay and will not be tolerated, each and every time, no exceptions. How else can we ever build a society in which a woman can move freely through her world without fearing for her physical and emotional safety at every turn? I can only hope and pray that our justice system takes this opportunity to declare loudly and without apology that no one has immunity from accountability for rape, not even Roman Polanski.
7
POPSHowl of the unhinged is scary voice of America's "culture war" More: The report provides troubling context for the outrageous behavior that has attended the election of our first African-American president. When you call them on that behavior, Barack Obama's detractors love to accuse you of equating dissent with racism. It is a specious argument. I disagree with the president's use of signing statements… but it would never occur to me to carry a sign vowing death to him, his wife and their "two stupid kids" as a protester in Maryland did, or to pray that Obama dies of brain cancer as a "minister" in Arizona does, or to heckle him during a joint session of Congress as Rep. Joe Wilson infamously did. That's not dissent. It is the howl of the unhinged and the entitled. The same folks who were complacent as President Bush spent surplus into deficit, wasted $600 billion dollars and 4,000 American lives on the wrong war, and watched a major American city drown are morally outraged because the new guy wants to reform health care?
6
POPSTim O'Reilly - Seeing our culture with fresh eyes More: What will people think of our enormous steak dinners and obese portions of food? That's on the cusp of changing. What will they think of our profligate use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources? Our assumption that the American way of life will go on forever, just as it is, much as the British thought their empire would go on forever? What about our assumptions about unlimited technological progress? Will science fiction visions of star flight or "the Singularity" seem as quaint as "the White Man's Burden"? Above all, what will they think of the appalling amount of waste in our culture? Have you ever walked through a tourist area - say Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco - and seen entire stores devoted to schlock, made in developing countries by people who must scratch their heads in wonder at a people so wealthy that they can afford to spend money on things that are so utterly and obviously useless?
20
POPSSome answers to "But why didn't she fight back?" More: If women are raised being told…that: -it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (”mean bitch”) -it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (”crazy bitch”) -it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (”stuck-up bitch”) -it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (”angry bitch”)… -it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (”dyke bitch”) -it is not okay to raise your voice (”shrill bitch”)… If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways. And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.
3
POPS"R.I.P." t-shirts becoming part of Bay Area's cultural fabric More: Cha Cha Starks' daughter, Shaneice Davis, was killed while asleep in her bed April 7, 2008, when a stray bullet went through their East Oakland apartment. Starks says, "I wear my shirt and have it done because I'm never going to forget my daughter, and I don't want anyone else to forget her. So as long as you know someone can see her face, they can hear her story."
2
POPSMark Morford: It's the best of times! No, it's the worst of times! More: Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a third option. Maybe there's a way to seek out some better and more heartening stats, to counter the negative charge and diffuse the bomb of numbness before it explodes all over your sour worldview. Surely we are evolving in some positive way? Someone somewhere has some numbers to prove it, and not just from the last election? Anyone?
2
POPSMisogynistic Mad Libs More: In which woman (bonus if not remotely a feminist) can independent act , yet Ronald Reagan is allowed to die! As the Bible says, verse (bonus points if it mentions submission, Eve, or the Virgin Mary; minus points for Mary Magdalene) . And as ill-defined group such as "some people" have warned, vague alarmist statement . What will happen to the men of the world if these weird, outdated term for "women" are allowed to take control? What will happen to our values? The only solution is for women like female public figure who is not Ann Coulter to get back in the small, restrictive space so that they can return to euphemism for breastfeeding and men can return to euphemism for bludgeoning . :lol:
13
POPSMavis Leno: tireless champion of Afghan women's rights More: My parents were not sexist, and my father thought I could do anything in the world and then some. When I was 7, I wanted to be a jockey. My father told me women weren't allowed. I couldn't believe it. I was perfectly willing to fail on my own merits, but to be flunked at birth? What kind of crap was that? That made me insanely angry. I read everything on the original suffragists, and they became my heroines, because the only women who ever did anything in the history textbooks of my childhood were Sacagawea and Betsy Ross and Marie Curie. That's it. And Betsy Ross sewed .
2
POPSBarbara Ehrenreich - Welcome to Cancerland More: The effect of this relentless brightsiding is to transform breast cancer into a rite of passage -- not an injustice or a tragedy to rail against, but a normal marker in the life cycle, like menopause or graying hair. Everything in mainstream breast cancer culture serves, no doubt inadvertently, to tame and normalize the disease: the diagnosis may be disastrous, but there are those cunning pink rhinestone angel pins to buy and races to train for… cheerfulness is more or less mandatory, dissent a kind of treason. Within this tightly knit world, attitudes are subtly adjusted, doubters gently brought back to the fold… What has grown up around breast cancer in just the last fifteen years more nearly resembles a cult -- or, given that it numbers more than two million women, their families, and friends-perhaps we should say a full-fledged religion… I know this much right now for sure: I will not go into that last good night with a teddy bear tucked under my arm.
4
POPSMedical Director John Carlo, MD: "No, no, no – swine flu was NOT created in a laboratory!" People are claiming that the medical director of Dallas County, Dr. John Carlo, has said that the H1N1 influenza virus was created in a laboratory. This is FALSE. As in, NOT TRUE. As in, a fundamental misinterpretation of what he said. What he said was "This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified." "Cultured in a laboratory" means "the doctors took samples and put those samples on culture plates under conditions favoring viral growth so any bacteria or viruses in the samples would grow into large enough quantities to be analyzed." Stop spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt, people.
4
POPSRecommendations for anti-consumerism books & documentaries Also (click through to the source for the links on these): I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs Weapons of the Weak a book called The Hidden Injuries of Class by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, and it's more about how capitalism defers and damages people's dreams definitely check out Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism by Daniel Harris. The section on the grotesque lurking within cuteness is hilarious and right-on Heath & Potter's Rebel Sell (Also known as Nation of Rebels,) which makes the distinction between mass society (capitalism as monotonous efficiency, everyone buying the same thing) and consumerism (I am what I own, I must own something new and different in order to be young and unique.) I think it's a really important distinction that a lot of books…totally miss…beware anti-massification arguments masquerading as anti-consumerism arguments Can't Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne
5
POPSRunning the Numbers - photos of American culture through the lens of statistics Couldn't clip all the descriptions. More: Plastic Cups, 2008 (60x90") Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours. Barbie Dolls, 2008 (60x80") Depicts 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006. Plastic Bottles, 2007 (60x120") Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes. Skull With Cigarette, 2007 (98X72") Depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months. Jet Trails, 2007 (60x96") Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours. Prison Uniforms, 2007 (10x23 feet in six vertical panels Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005. The U.S. has the largest prison population of any country in the world.
3
POPSGenderAds.com More (click through for links): 6. VISUAL MEANS The Gaze Wetness Reductionism Landscapes Captured/Controlled Linguistic Violence Fear Legs as Framing Written On Contorted 7. SPECIAL FEATURES Billboards A&F Rejected Ads Video Games Men's Magazines Man Show TV Commercials Progressive Ads Mock Ads UK Gender 8. OTHER TROPES Kids and Ads Ageism Racism Military Ads Global Ads Values Ads Social Class Ads Miscellaneous Ads 9. RESOURCES Bibliography Links Taking Action Educator Resources
1
POPSIs This Your Paper On Single Serving Sites? More: These sites, which writer Jason Kottke termed “single serving sites” in February 20081, capture visitors’ attention for a fraction of a minute, a tacit acknowledgement of the economy of attention in which they operate. In this space they express many traditional messages that have found an emerging new form of expression on the Internet. Dozens of tiny, single serving sites provide a venue for pop culture references, inside jokes, art displays, collective action, bids for peer approval, humor, and advice. Collectively they offer a perspective on the web as a platform for a unique brand of storytelling.
Newest Clips
see Newest Clips
1
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update