This is just a story.

“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time…write yourself. You body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth�
-Helene Cixous

--------------
“As human beings in the developed world become more and more blind to the signals sent out by the body, they become more and more dependant upon the silver screen (…) it is only real to them when they see it on TV.�
-Germaine Greer
---------------
“Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression�
-bell hooks

.................................................................

I’m angry. I’m tired, but mostly I’m just pissed off. Its time to be angry again. I’m having a difficulty, a difficulty that comes with the realization that I am not in control, the difficulty that accompanies the unpacking of an internalized structure of thinking, a patriarchal construct of knowledge.

Existing to deepen my sadness is the knowledge that the institutions governing traditional representations of women in the media not only know that these representations are harmful, it is an intentional harm. “A woman’s body is the battlefield where she fights for liberation. It is through her body that oppression works, reifying her, sexualizing her, victimizing her, disabling her� (Greer). How is it possible to come to a state of peace in a media driven culture that turns a profit on female self-hate? “Multi-million dollar industries exploit both her need for reassurance and her need to do something about the way she looks� (Greer).
______________________________________

“Imagine you’re a girl
Just trying to finally come clean
Knowing full well they’d prefer you were dirty
And smiling�
-ani difranco

No matter how beautiful, how successful, how joyful, how giving, how loving, how radiant, how glorious a woman may be, it will never be enough. If there was an end point, a point where finally we could breathe, we could laugh, we could say “look at us! Look how beautiful we are! I’m so glad we invested in all those name brand expensive beauty products and trendy outerware�, if such and endpoint existed, consumerism would suffer. If you are never good enough, you will never stop buying, buying products, buying ideas, buying the dream of acceptance and love that you pray to find in the packaging of your exfoliating cream.
_____________
We are bombarded with “images suggesting that male sexual domination in no way threatens female autonomy or independence� but we know in our bodies (our good bodies) that this in simply not true.
________________________
This shit does matter. _
________________________

Rationalizing and perpetuating images of domination over women negates the possibility that love and liberation will ever exist for women. Justifying abuse with love (The Piano), with religion (Water), with political statements and priorities (No), should no longer be tolerated. These are not arbitrary or innocent representations. (hooks). What do you do when you realize that in truth, there is more profit in perpetuating self-hatred rather than self-actualization?

The world wants us prostituted, silent, and shopping.

________________________________

I’ll tell you what I want.
It’s quite simple.

-I want a space where I am not drowning in representations of love that have taught me to internalize an eroticization and acceptance of abuse under the guise of sexual liberation.
-I want a space where multi million dollar companies who turn a profit by first creating, then exploiting my insecurities do not determine my self worth.
-I want a space where I see women’s bodies represented in a fashion that doesn’t invite consumption, assimilation, and obliteration.

-I want a space that wants me in it.

“What more could women want?
Freedom, that’s what.
Freedom from being the thing looked at rather than the person looking back. Freedom from self-conciousness. Freedom from the duty of sexual stimulation of jaded female appetite, for which no breast ever bulges hard enough and no leg is ever long enough. Freedom from the humiliating insults heaped on us by the top shelf of the newsagents; freedom from rape, whether is is by being undressed verbally by men on the building site…greasily teased by our male workmates, pawed by the boss, used sadistically or against our will by the men we love, or violently terrorized and beaten by a stranger.�
-Greer

“Female power will rush upon us in the persons of women who have nothing to lose, having lost everything already�
-Greer

Take back power, take back control, take back your body.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Text from "Off with her Head: The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture

The head: the anatomical part of the female body that gives woman a voice and an identity and that thereby threatens to unmake and disrupt the classic gender distinctions that have linked men to speech, power, identify, and the mind.

Decapitation is one way of solving the dilemma. Removing the female head relieves woman of both identify and voice and reduces her to a mere sexual and reproductive body.

The Eroticization of the female head extends the body, turning the head into an allureing and sexually provocative organ. In this way, the female head becomes part of a woman’s genitalia. To see a woman’s face, to look at her hair, to hear her voice, is imagined as an erotic experience. Eroticization of the head is thus a form of beheading, since it depicts women as nothing more than a sexual and erotic body.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To be silent, to have no subjectivity, is to be decapitated

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From ancient myth to contemporary culture, the metaphor of beheading has been used to express the dehumanizing of women. Beheading involves a double darkness: it ensures not merely the blindness of the beheaded person (deprived of the power of vision) but the invisibility of that person (deprived of the face which reveals his or her identiy to the other), which amounts to the blindness of the other person, the one who views the beheaded person. The mythological beheaded woman is seen (or at least partically seen) but does not see; she is blinded and those who have beheaded are blinded to her real nature. She is transformed from a seeing subject to a merely seen object, a demeaned and faceless body.

----------------------------------------------------------

It is no accident that movies sometimes depict women as more erotic when they remove their glasses.
To wear glasses is to be a viewer, to remove them is to become the object of the gaze. A woman becomes a “looker� when she draws the attention of the desiring male gaze.

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses
-dorothy parker

---------------------------------------------------

She responds to the limitation of her powers of sight by letting loose the powers of her destructive tongue.

From the woman’s point of view, she is unjustly treated by various men, and driven to become a fierce goddess.

Beware my tounge.
My kisses are fatal.
My truth is unspeakable.
Your ears will burn.

I would that i were a violent eruption.

"I want the world to die with me. When you pass on, there's joy in taking everything with you"
-Seneca

"Wherever you may go, you will be proof that gods do not exist"
-Seneca

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rebecca and I found this in the skyway market on the west bank.

Normally, I think i would have walked by.

But today we couldn't.

I need and demand an alternative space, a heterotopia if you will,
a space without the presence of derogatory media
that pimps female bodies for profit.

I don't know how this space will ever exist.
But I can hope,
because isn't that the goal in the end?
To create a world in which we can exist? a world that wants us in it?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Womb Wolf
- Z
Ferocious beast woman scratching behind clenched jaw
Stop fighting my lock down steel sinuses
Don’t you know,
Your meat in this world.

Pandora showed mercy.
There is none of that here.

Damn inner animal,
Don’t make me see you in slices;
Sectioned off into cutlets;
Your tender bits poised and quivering on the lips
Of some butcher entrepreneurial lover;

That’s what they do to meat in this world.
Stay quiet and caged.
That’s what happens to food.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

and the music industry mafia is pimping girl power
sniping off their sharp shooter singles from their styrofoam towers
and hip hop is tied up in the back room
with a logo stuffed in its mouth
cuz the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house
but then

as i get closer and closer to home
and the difference between you and me baby
is i get fucked up
when i'm alone

-ani difranco

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 4:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

" I had to leave the house of fashion
go forth naked from its doors
cuz women should be allies
not competitors"
-ani difranco

My thoughts on my recent media exposure....

Consider this:

A Painting, a stopped movie frame,
(pause)
a man and woman stand.
Muted blue tones.
Dusk blueblack sky.
snow.
cigarette.
a slight downward angle

Wrapped in cascading fuzz flakes
her silhouette disappears behind a gauze of smoke
(ashy)
expelled from his lips.
cold. brittle. breaking.
And I can only see you.
I mean,
I can only see him.
and the light of his face
(encased in embers)
issues from the corner creases of his eye smile.
that look (of lovelaughter)
is the focal point.
(glowing.)

he is so obvious.
active.
He stands in pieces against the snow.
hat neck cheeks scarf

who is she?
The woman shroud in nicotine haze.
with a hint of sway in the hip
the suggestion of snow hooked in her hair web
she is almost absent
transparent.
The trick is amazing.
I am intrigued.

and then I realize
this woman,
her identity is irrelevant
to the pictures metaphorical purpose.
For her single function
in life
I mean,
in the painting, movie frame
is to pull from his eyes crease
that look of lovelaughter
(the focal point.)

I could go on.
I could tell you that
the blue snow shadows represent
sexual passion.
that the red gloves
are his destructive capacity.
The angle and light
impressionistic
fuzzy focus
symbolize the giddy uncertainty of youth
of immaturity.

But this would only bore you
and myself
because we both know
nothing could possibly capture more metaphor
than a woman's silhouette
(angled)
obscured in smoke gauze.
Who's only purpose is to pull from a man's eyes
a look of lovelaughter
as it is this look that draws the eye across the canvas
(giving it intent.)

and how frightening to realize
that upon viewing the painting

no one will care

who she
is
was
will be

as long as she aesthetically completes what we see.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)