Sophianotloren

A police department in North Miami Beach made headlines last week when it was discovered they were using mugshots of black men for target practice. Now, some unlikely meme-creators are trying to break the internet with a Twitter protest campaign.

The #UseMeInstead campaign was started on a Facebook group for Lutheran clergy. The idea is for priests and other unlikely targets of police brutality to volunteer their own photos to be used for target practice instead of young black men. Initially, the Chief of Police claimed that the practice was necessary for important facial recognition drills. Critics claim that the only thing being practiced in these drills is a reinforcement to keep a single demographic in cops cross-hairs.

According to Dazed:

“It’s such a desensitization thing, that if you start aiming at young black men, and told to put a bullet in them, you become desensitized,” Reverend Joy M Gonnerman told the Washington Post. “Maybe, to change the picture, it’s you know what, dare ya, shoot a clergy person.”

Gonnerman said she intended to email all the #UseMeInstead pictures to the North Miami Beach police department to send a message about what’s acceptable. “Essentially, we’re saying: We’re watching, we’re paying attention to this.”

The use of mugshots for target practice has reportedly been stopped in Miami, but the targeting of young black men in the field will undoubtedly continue.

Dear @myNMBPolice if you insist on using photos for target practice, don’t use young black men #UseMeInstead pic.twitter.com/haCqMJKvdO

— Ruben Austria (@rubenaustria) January 25, 2015

(Photo: Your Old Pal)

The post Priests Urge Cops Shooting At Black Mugshots To Use Their Images Instead appeared first on ANIMAL.

Are you living in a financially punishing city that you can’t afford? Does no one give a shit about your art degree? Are you barely scraping by paycheck-to-paycheck only to cry into a pile of bills at night in your tiny apartment? Are you us? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, congratulations, you’re fucking broke! And if you’re as broke as we are, let’s be honest: At some point we’ve all been up late at night trolling Craigslist, weighing the pros and cons of getting paid for sexual favors, wondering whether or not if you’re cut out for dat life.

Thankfully, for those who aren’t quite ready yet to take the plunge into selling sex, selling your used underwear seems like a much easier compromise! If you’re a woman with a functioning vagina you already have a reliable supply of products to sell: your panties. There’s something delightfully subversive about knowing that you are literally sitting on a gold mine. So instead of giving someone else money to get them washed, why not stick them in a ziplock bag, throw them in a mailbox and get paid already?

Rather than put out another “it happened to me” or “sorry-not-sorry I did something sexy” testimonial, we wanted to get some answers to the real question on everybody’s minds: exactly how financially viable is selling your used panties? We asked sellers on Craigslist, Reddit, Twitter, Pantydeal.com (and others) and posted an anonymous online survey, with a total of around 90 respondents.

The results, like anything else in the world, depended on what kind of person you are, and the amount of time and effort you were willing to invest. It will not pay off your student loans. But who doesn’t like a little extra cash, right?

EVERYONE’S DOING IT (SO WHY AREN’T YOU?)

Apparently, those of us with BFAs aren’t the only ones considering the prospects. We heard from law enforcement officers; single moms with exes who don’t pay child support; corporate professionals; sewage treatment workers; married women who enjoy the attention; and one woman who works at an animal hospital and quit her job to become a full-time webcam model. It was heartwarming to see how willing people, cushioned by the anonymity of the internet, were to share their stories with no expectations of gratification. But it was fucking depressing to be reminded how broke everyone is.

Graph: Soyo Hong via Survey Monkey

“I was laid off after the business I worked for closed in October of 2013, and that job was soul-sucking and terrible and they wouldn’t give me unemployment benefits,” a 24-year-old doctorate student described. “So, that kind of pushed me over the edge and finally made me decide that I was going to do whatever I could to establish an income where I worked for myself.”

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PRODUCT

One of the main reasons why people buy used panties is for the smell. Here is a diagram of the three scent zones of used panties as outlined by Amber Nectar of usedpantysellingadvice.com, the most comprehensive guide to selling panties we’ve found on the internet. Who knew that your crotch was such a veritable bouquet of smells?

Diagram: Soyo Hong

As quoted from usedpantysellingadvice.com:

“ZONE 1: Vulva
Encases the clit, labia, and muffy
Can contain gentle yellowish markings
Depending on diet, scent can be flowery, sweet, or peppery

ZONE 2: Vestibule
Directly above the vaginal opening
It is the main discharge/moisture impact zone
Typically a more mild, sweet aroma

ZONE 3: Anus/apocrine
Glandular pheromone epicenter
Much appreciated by the refined dirty pany sniffer
Deeply sweet scented, pungent if perspired in.”

Speaking of smells, as one seller sagely advised, “cotton really holds [it] best.” Save your g-strings and thongs for your Tinder hook-ups. As sexy as that strip of butt-floss looks, the teensy surface area really lacks the ability to capture as much of your money-making pussy essence as possible. Unsurprisingly, standard white cotton bikini-cut panties are the biggest sellers.

CAN THIS REPLACE A PART-TIME JOB?

The short answer is: kind of.

The United State Department of Labor reports median weekly earnings of part-time wage for women ages over 25 in 2014 as $279, so it’s safe to say that $300 per week is a reasonable guesstimate for what many people would consider to be decent part-time income.

Graph: Soyo Hong via Survey Monkey

For the some of the most dedicated sellers this is within reach, but more than half of those who participated in our survey only averaged between $50 – $100 a week, with those earning between $100 – $150 making up about 20%. Only about 14% claimed that they were able to earn more than $300. As of now, $350 is our record-breaker for highest priced pair. Mina, the most experienced seller on PantyDeal.com, reported having sold panties with a video for $1,200.

Graph: Soyo Hong via Survey Monkey

But for the rest of us who are sadly lacking in the magical pussy department, $35 – $39 seems to be the competitive rate for the average vagina. 20% of sellers we heard from price their wares for over $50, citing reasons such as in-person transactions, extra wear, and complimentary phone sex upon receipt for the price hike.

Graph: Soyo Hong via Survey Monkey

The Labor Department also defines the average part-time work week to be between 1 to 34 hours. Almost 50% of sellers disclosed that they devoted about 1 to 3 hours a week; optimistically speaking, at least half of those who participated in the survey are making at least $30 an hour. Not bad right?

Graph: Soyo Hong via Survey Monkey

Maybe. Mostly, people reported just slight lifestyle upgrades, like buying nicer make-up, air humidifiers, and better groceries than they would’ve gotten otherwise. “It doesn’t pay my bills, [but] it lets me feed my Magic the Gathering addiction,” one seller said. Student loan debt was also one of the big items that people put their hard-earned panty money into, so when you’re riding the high off your first successful panty transaction, just remember: you’ll eat all of your fancy-ass gourmet groceries in a week, but student loan debt is forever.

And depending who you talk to, the industry isn’t exactly booming in the way that, say, porn is. “This isn’t actually an “on-the-clock” business,” Mathias, a staff member at My Used Panty Store, told us. “Sales have been very low in recent years and they only ever offer enough for gas money, unless a seller is popular. And sales are always inconsistent, never guaranteed, and buyers often flake on payments and try to get ‘freebies.’” (The site was recently sold off to an unnamed Bulgarian company).

DEALING WITH EXTRAS

As we’ve seen above, the average flat fee for panties is somewhere between $35 to $39 dollars. But what happens when someone wants more than just the standard 24-hour day rate? But what happens when someone wants more than just the standard 24-hour day wear? Over 80% of sellers we surveyed said they receive “special requests.”

Photo: Soyo Hong via Survey Monkey

“I always charge more for extra days of wear,” an anonymous seller told us, “but the amount can be anywhere from $5 – $20 a day depending on how much I like him. I call it the asshole tax.” Here’s a structured price breakdown from a seller who asked to be left unnamed:

• One-day wear: $40
• Two-day wear: $50
• Three-day wear: $65
• Cummed-in wet panties: an extra $10 surcharge
• Pee or raunchy butt smells: an extra $25 surcharge

Whether or not you decide that infusing your unmentionables with raunchy butt smells is something that you’re comfortable with, you can see that dealing with customer’s oftentimes strange requests is pretty much going to be a given.

There is a whole dessert menu to choose from, but here are some of our favorites:

• Commonly requested bodily fluids, including but not limited to: urine, menstrual blood, ejaculate, ovulation discharge (cervical mucus).
• Specific activities: working out at the gym, masturbation, sex.
• Mildly gross: skid marks, creampies
• Plain weird: “I’ve had a request to soak the panties in sweet tea before I wore them.. [it] was super sticky and uncomfortable and NEVER AGAIN.”
• Stuffing: Shove a whole pair of knickers into your box and let it soak in that fresh young pussy smell!
• Pussy pops: Use candy on a stick as a dildo then sell it back to the pervy masses! Not yet quite sure as to how much pussy flavor this would actually impart to the candy.
• Ass flossing: Giving yourself a wedgie in the ass, supposedly to impart a stronger butt smell.
• Pussy flossing: Similar to ass flossing, but with your pussy.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

The overwhelming answer to what sellers thought the biggest mistake newcomers in the industry made was that they didn’t put enough thought into it. To help save you some time, we picked out some of the most helpful tips:

• Turn off the geotag on your phone. This one is pretty self-explanatory; don’t leave digital breadcrumbs for bad people to find.
• Don’t half-ass your pictures. “I have to make sure I look presentable and trimmed and I have to [try out poses], then use a timer to recreate my pose properly,” said one seller. “For every photo I release as a finished product, I take probably 5.”
• Don’t be afraid to be different! As one seller noted: “Nothing against those white college girls! It’s just that I think that those who don’t fit the bill definitely stand out, and therefore instantly have an edge.” Put more effort into your listing and personalize it a little bit. Are you a dancer/barista/MILF/librarian/etc? Include that in your title! Or invent a good fantasy hook: “My boyfriend runs my ads for me and meets the customers. He tells them that he steals his girlfriend’s underwear to sell for extra money and that seems to get a lot of attention!”
• Know thyself. One seller told us: “I once ended up wearing panties for a week for $20. It’s a bit of a struggle in the beginning to learn how to price different things and how to deal with customers.” Do your homework and don’t let buyers push you around. Undercutting your competition to get more sales will only ruin things for EVERYONE by creating a race to the bottom. Why should anyone else benefit from your hard work? Make sure you (and your pussy) get what you deserve.
• Don’t cut to the chase too fast. “If a lady cuts right to the deal without giving me a sense of who she is,” a PantyDeal buyer told us, “I am immediately suspicious because those are the ones who have ripped me off.”
• Cultivate your online presence. “Everything is important,” the same Pantydeal customer noted. “Drawing [buyers] in with provocative pictures, showcasing their wares, listing any special services as well as showing off [your] personality! Many ladies screw this up and their lack of success ends up due to being a lack of effort in setting up their space.”
• Cross-advertise. “Selling used panties is all about exposure. You want to be everywhere,” Zoo Keeper, the founder of Panty Zoo, told us. “There is no bad place to have an ad showing. Every website has traffic and indexing by search engines, and if you post an ad for your panties anywhere it is allowed, people will see it.” In addition for pay-to-play sites like Panty Zoo, he listed free resources like Twitter with the #UsedPanties hashtag, Pantysphere, Reddit’s used panties subreddit, Facebook, and Used Panty Blog.
• Don’t jump the gun. Always, always always confirm payment before wearing in your panties. Ever run for 6 hours to sweat it out in a pair of knickers only to have the buyer back out? Yeah, it’s a letdown.
• Have fun. “Every girl is attractive to someone, so even if you have low self-esteem and body issues, someone out there wants you and thinks you’re perfect. Take pics in many different poses, show off everything confidently, bite your lip, and show that you’re having fun!”

DO YOU HAVE TO PAY TO PLAY?

Now that you’re ready to go forth and start promoting your fine ass and the cotton that clothes it, all you need to do is figure out where. Should you pay to play just like your buyers? Or are you more comfortable going DIY? Take a look at some of these websites and see which digital hood is good for you.

Photo: Sabine via Flickr

Craigslist (Free)
PROS: The anonymous nature of Craigslist is both a gift and a curse. Your buyer won’t know much more than what you’ve detailed in your post, but neither will you until he contacts you. Registration is easy, and its clinical layout may be attractive to some.
CONS: The only website with the dishonor of having more than one killer, its limited HTML support means that you can’t do much to personalize your listings. Craigslist technically doesn’t allow the sale of panties (though many still post anyway in the sales section), so be prepared to have your posts flagged and removed frequently.

Reddit (Free)
PROS: There is already a huge audience for sellers; /r/usedpanties and /r/pantyselling have over 15,000 and 3,000 subscribers respectively. Most sex work related subreddits are moderated closely, so make sure to read the rules and FAQ of your desired subreddit, get verified, and start selling!
CONS: Reddit isn’t just limited to being a community of panty sellers so you should pay attention to how much personal information you divulge. Not unlike Craigslist, the layout easy to use but pretty bare-bones. Cliques can also bury any posts they don’t agree with by downvoting it to oblivion.

Pantydeal (Paid)
PROS: I want this to be my new Facebook. Messaging and friending is essential to navigate the site; like Uber, a peer rating system guarantees friendly behavior. Within minutes, women were spilling life stories. I chatted with buyers for a full 30 minutes before getting asked about my underwear – light years in panty sites. There’s also a large customer base.
CONS: $19/month for full access to selling, video, and review options.

My Used Panty Store (Paid)
PROS: The site bans sellers from using services like PayPal, which bans adult-themed transactions. A feedback system also helps to filter out trolls and time wasters; if any buyer gets a 1-star rating twice, they are banned.
CONS: MUPS’s Web 1.0 interface is filled with confusing dead ends: the “chat lobby”, and “birthdays” section, for example – almost blockading human interaction. You also have to sign up for an annual subscription of around $25 before even getting into the site, a guaranteed barrier.

Panty Zoo (Paid)
PROS: Free to register, certain services available for a nominal fee, webcam enabled
CONS: Very similar to My Used Panty Store, nearly impossible difficult to navigate. Free to get in, but you have to pay to post ads.

GETTING THAT PAPER

Here’s the tricky part: how do you cash out on your earnings? You can use PayPal but adult transactions are banned by the Acceptable Use Policy and the service will not hesitate to screw you if they find out. Err on the side of caution and consider these alternatives:

GiftRocket
PROS: Flexible; you can use it as a universal gift card or cash out via direct deposit or check.
CONS: It can take up to 4 business days to clear and sellers reported sometimes having transactions cancelled even after redeeming their balance.

Green Dot MoneyPaks
PROS: Doesn’t require a bank account. Customers can use Green Dot MoneyPaks to top-off other prepaid debit cards online and at retail locations across the country for a small fee.
CONS: After 90 days your MoneyPak is automatically charged a fee of $4.95 a month

Pre-paid Visa gift cards
PROS: Technically a stored- value card but functions like a debit card and you can use a pre-paid Visa or Mastercard anywhere.
CONS: Requires your personal information and offers very little anonymity.

Amazon
PROS: One of the easiest and most secure options available. Personal information is kept confidential for both sellers and buyers. You can maintain a wishlist that customers can buy from in exchange for services, or have them send you an electronic gift card via email.
CONS: Though you can literally buy almost anything on Amazon, it’s impossible to convert your gift card balance to cash.

Square
PROS: Fast and convenient for in-person transactions (just swipe!). Buyers can leave you an added tip.
CONS: piss-poor customer service and common complaints include random fund-holding and account deactivation, and chargebacks with no recourse. You should proceed with caution when meeting anyone off the internet, but take some time to vet your buyers and maybe reserve in-person exchanges for regulars you are familiar with in general.

Bitcoin
PROS: Payment is instantaneous and virtually untraceable.
CONS: Initial set-up may be difficult for new adopters. Not having the option to back out of payment last minute may turn off skittish buyers, but conversely this may help you weed out time-wasters from serious buyers. It is also susceptible to inflation.

LIFE AFTER PANTIES

Despite financial struggles, most people seemed optimistic. Along with the desire for self-sufficiency, there wasn’t a single person who didn’t envision better things for the future. Many aspired to attend grad school while others wanted to expand their sex work/regular careers. More than one stated wanting to help people. For many others, panty selling proved to be a safe and creative outlet to explore their sexuality, often with their partners: “My husband knows I do this. Our sex life has never been better!” A lot of women also described feeling a sense of well-being and improvement in their personal lives in general.

“[Panty selling] has given me the freedom to work from home and spend time with my family that would’ve otherwise been spent at some depressing minimum-wage job,” one seller divulged. “I’m also so much more comfortable with my body now that I’ve had to take pictures of every nook and cranny. Before I sold panties, I seriously didn’t have a clue what my butthole looked like. I used to be really insecure about stretch marks, but now it’s like.. well, I’ve made thousands of dollars with those stretch marks, so they must not be that bad!” Not bad indeed.

Special Thanks to Panty Robbins, Mina, xxxmormongirl, Sweet Natalie, Nixxy, Belle Femme, Satin, Minx96x, Mathias, ThickSnowBooty, Little_Myn, English Rose, Belle Femme, Lamia Salina, Jamaica Pleasure Pantease, Tiny Leticia, /u/allthesidesofme, /u/velauria, /u/noreallyididnt, Missy60477@yahoo.com

(Image: Soyo Hong, Rhett Jones/ANIMALNewYork)

The post Get Cash For Your Undies: A How-To Guide For Enterprising Ladies On The Web appeared first on ANIMAL.

melthemuslim:

American Sniper review.

Can you imagine if any racialized group of people in America clapped in unison in a movie when a white person is murdered on screen by a member of that group?  Besides that it would probably start a fight in the movie theatre, it’d be in the news, people would be talking about how these people aren’t real Americans, questioning the loyalty of the entire group, accusations that they aren’t safe to be around or to have in the country, calls for the entire community to apologize or disclaim their actions, people would be saying how it makes white people feel unsafe knowing that their neighbours wish they were dead, etc etc etc…

But it’s okay if WHITE people do it.  That’s fine.  And if Muslims talk about how fearful this makes them (as it should, knowing that a white person you run into in your day to day life might be the kind of person who applauds when somebody who looks like you is murdered on screen), they’ll get the “not all white people”, “I just hate the BAD Muslims, that’s not YOU right?” excuses, and worse, they’ll probably be accused of empathizing with the “extremists” and “terrorists” and being demanded to disclaim those people, or asked “what are you doing to stop them?”

That’s white supremacy and privilege in action.

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We've previously discussed how having money can make you feel less pain. So it probably makes you happy too, right? Well, not so fast. This study used census data to test whether higher income is associated with happiness or sadness. Interestingly, they found that although people with money are not happier on a daily basis, they are less sad. Sound paradoxical? According to the authors, "happiness and sadness are distinct emotional states, rather than diametric opposites" -- that is, just be

PARIS — I have never particularly admired French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s overly familiar and obvious Nanas (French slang for “broads”) — the gaudy, plump, joyous everywoman figures that made the artist’s case for female affirmation. Nor am I a huge fan of the Stravinsky Fountain at the Centre Pompidou, her collaboration with her husband, the artist Jean Tinguely. So I was somewhat reluctant to hit the Grand Palais to see her retrospective. But I was very satisfied that I did, as I was casually bowled over with the intensity of her total oeuvre, discovering her full spectrum as an artist. For me, she is more powerful than her mighty, dancing, archetypal female figures, even though they were developed in relation to the position of women in society half a century ago. Indeed, her solo retrospective, and the concurrent Sonia Delaunay exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne, mark a fairly strong season for woman artists in Paris, albeit women who have already died.

Born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle, child of an American mother (Jeanne Jacqueline Harper) and the Count André-Marie Fal de Saint Phalle (a ruined banker), de Saint Phalle grew up in America and began her rather saucy life there. In the show, de Saint Phalle is introduced first as a very pretty and slender professional fashion model, appearing in the late 1940s on the covers of Life magazine and French Vogue. At 18, she elopes with the wonderful writer Harry Mathews, soon to be know for his association with Oulipo and the Locus Solus journal (so named after the novel Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel). They move to Paris in the mid-’50s, where de Saint Phalle pursues a painting career and has her first solo exhibition in 1956. I was particularly taken with this early work, such as “Pink Nude in Landscape” (1956-58), with its cheeky Pollock-meets-Dubuffet painting style, full of both visual noise and charm.

In the early ’60s she is attracted to assemblage after discovering the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Larry Rivers, and incorporates found objects into her pieces, such as “Saint Sébastien (Portrait of My Lover/Portrait of My Beloved/Martyr nécessaire)” (1961). It was at this point in the exhibition that I began to concentrate on the theoretical qualities of her multiplicitious lyricism.

This work was followed by the radical, breakout, creative-destructive series of Shoot pieces of the early ’60s — which incorporate elements of performance, sculpture, and painting — such as “Tir” (“Firing”) (1961) and “King Kong” (1963). With this vanguard  work she joins the Nouveau réalisme movement along with Tinguely, Yves Klein, Raymond Hains, and César.

The sexually and religiously charged Shoot pieces, full of psychic destruction, were made by embedding polythene bags of paint into bas relief sculptures of human forms and assemblaged toys that are covered in several layers of white plaster and painted stark white. She thus creates a surface that she herself will pierce with the shots from a .22 rifle, releasing flows and bursts of colors from the bags of paint, and completing the painting. This period is amply illustrated with many films and interviews shown side-by-side with the works. I was fascinated to see her murder paintings, make them bleed colors, and come back to a better life.

This work led to a series of romantic freestanding assemblage sculptures, such as “Cheval et la Mariée” (1964), where my conflicting ideas and intellectual positions about marriage were mitigated by amusement. In 1966, de Saint Phalle collaborated with Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvedt on a large-scale, vagina-themed sculpture called “hon-en katedral” (“she-a cathedral”) for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, a giant, reclining Nana whose internal environment was entered from between her legs. This piece elicited massive press coverage worldwide. The provocative feminist and psychological interpretations are too tempting to be avoided and I admit that watching a film on it tickled the clownish Duchampian in me. This work became the model for her highly complex and detailed “Tarot Garden” (1998), a huge sculpture park in Tuscany on which she worked for nearly two decades. Her lovely idealism is fully realized in these works, which often give form to an alogical visual approach based in the theoretical constructs of the feminine.

I was even more impressed with de Saint Phalle’s keen satirical eye for patriarchal bluster, which she tied to an intense alertness and a heightened capacity to sympathize with the downtrodden. She made this clear in her political activism around resistance to France’s war in Algeria, segregation in the US, the war in Vietnam, and the AIDS crisis. Undeniably, I was moved by her immersive chamber titled “Skull (Meditation Room)” (1990), an AIDS-related piece of baffling trepidation, lamentation, and mourning. It is an artwork of tragic cries and private perturbations.

All told, I was seduced by the rebellious grace of de Saint Phalle’s interdisciplinary works. What is particularly interesting about her art today is how it ties empowerment to inventive myth. It is based neither in reductive purism nor fragmentary isolation. Her pleasantly nudging work contains a poetic, passionate, and political meaning that does not rely on a logic or language of appropriation.

Niki de Saint Phalle continues at the Grand Palais (3 avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris) through February 2. It will run February 27–June 11 at the Guggenheim Bilbao.

exeggcute:

the joke is on you I love being rickrolled and I love 80s one-hit wonders

penamerican:

Fraternities do not have a monopoly on rapists: not at UVA, not at any frat, not even the deep Southern ones where upwards of 100 guys live in the house. (The plumbing; one shudders.) But: what the fraternity system does collect together is a group of male teenagers who enter their organization through rites of interpersonal physical violence, and who, military-style, reproduce this violence onto each other’s bodies. “Thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, [they] cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1785, about the male children of Virginian slave-owners. The sentiment there is still viable. Fraternities are worth examining as groups of rich, young, mostly white boys who were either born or bred into a tradition of getting away with things they should not.

Jia Tolentino, features editor at Jezebel, went to UVA to look at the culture of sexual assault on campus in the wake of the infamous Rolling Stone article.

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BRUSSELS — 7 Square Metres (2014) didn’t set out to explore the subject of failure. Belgian artist Karl Philips’s first documentary film was supposed to record the complex implementation of a site-specific action at a 2011 summer music festival.

“Sometimes I think music is an alibi for companies to do festivals,” Philips says in the opening scene of the film. “It’s shifted from an alternative culture to an exclusive culture. If the music festival were a state, it would be a dictatorship.”

For 7 Square Metres, he began with the question, “Is an underground still possible?” Rather than attempt a political action, he planned to mount a project he considered a “test case” — an experiment designed to find answers rather than prove a point. The laboratory was the festival Pukkelpop in the Belgian town of Hasselt. Founded in 1985 as a grassroots event, it has since grown to become a gargantuan, corporately funded monolith, prioritizing rules and conformity over rebellion and community. Early shots in the film show tie-dyed youth breaking through barbed-wire fence, only to be tackled by security guards — a scene Philips compares to the conditions of transnational migration.

Philips and his team set out to “hack” the festival by occupying a piece of land (7 square meters, to be exact), a tiny ”we are here” kind of gesture. They purchased a foldable camping trailer, which they buried during a covert overnight operation in the field where the festival would be held four months later. The process involved a crew of more than 30 people, including multiple engineers and a lawyer, as well as several months of training and practice digs.

The plan was to resurrect the trailer on the festival’s second day (just before Eminem’s set). But that never happened. On the scheduled date a freak thunderstorm hit, killing five and injuring 140 others. The festival was cancelled and Philips’s project scrapped. A month later the team returned, patterning their original overnight process, digging up the camper, and replacing the earth they had removed. The experiment had failed.

Excerpt from Karl Philips, ‘7 Square Metres’ (2014)

With spontaneous interventions, flash mobs, and creative protests, the art lies less in the action produced than in the conversation it stimulates. An intervention like Philips’s is designed to jolt people out of their realities (or perhaps back into reality) and ask them to observe themselves, their surroundings, and think more critically and honestly about both.

In Philips’s case, the goal was two fold: to point to the co-optation of alternative cultures for profit by the capitalist system and to suggest that participants in those cultures can actively resist the system, not necessarily by flat-out rejecting it but by embracing and subverting it. This second point is evidenced by the administrative organization of Philips’s project. The team formed a limited liability corporation and had a lawyer present through the entire action. In effect, they were using the same system that protects corporate bullies from prosecution to shield themselves in their attempted subversion.

On a more symbolic level, the notion of undoing capitalism from within is suggested by hiding the work inside the festival. As opposed to setting up a counter-festival, another event outside the official zone as an act of protest, the team literally placed its work inside, without the festival knowing it was there. The aim was to stimulate a series of conversations, both during and after the event, about alternatives, co-optation, and capitalism. But because of the storm, none of that ever happened.

While the original project makes for a provocative proposal, the film doesn’t always succeed. It takes the defeat of this specific work as its subject but resists commenting on the status or value of failure in art making, simply presenting it as a topic for contemplation. Failure can be one of the most illuminating moments in creative practice, and the team’s choice to ignore exploring it on deeper, more theoretical terms feels somewhat empty. More problematic is the film’s efficacy in storytelling. When accompanied by sufficient explanation, the narrative becomes clear, but I’m not sure whether it can stand on its own. This is largely because the most important plot point — the storm — barely makes an entry; in the credits, Philips says discussion of it was minimized out of respect for the victims’ families. The storm was a major event in Europe, so it seems fair to assume viewers there will have the necessary context to understand. But could 7 Square Metres play successfully in other parts of the world where the disaster was a minor news item at best? I have my doubts.

By downplaying this element, the film also misses the most ominous part of the whole saga: it was extreme weather — a product of global climate change, ultimately the most destructive result of the systems Philips is trying to subvert — that prevented the attempted subversion. This feels almost like capitalism fighting back and prevailing. While the film shies away from any conclusion, the viewer may be left with the lingering question: what if resistance really is futile?

7 Square Metres screens at the Image Generator festival (Eikelstraat 31, Antwerp, Belgium) through February 2, and is on view in the No Walls Expo (Fenixloods 1, Rotterdam, Netherlands) through February 17.

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Groups of protestors around the U.K. have gathered in recent weeks to express their frustration with new laws prohibiting certain sex acts from being performed in porn films. The restrictions were imposed late last year by British lawmakers.

The list of banned acts includes: physical or verbal abuse; strangulation; penetration by any object “associated with violence”; and any caning.

What’s stirring up the ire of protestors, though, is the list of banned acts deemed “most violent”: face-sitting; fisting; and—this is truly perplexing—female ejaculation.

Recently, one group staged a demonstration outside Parliament in London, where activists chanted and physically sat on each others’ faces in a simulated sex act. In another display of dissent, protestors marched while singing the lyrics to Monty Python’s “Sit On My Face.”

Many of the law’s opponents, including protest organizer and sex worker Charlotte Rose, say the restrictions not only hinder their sexual expression, but will also be damaging to the country’s porn industry as a whole.

Another protestor and fetishist, Isabel Dean, said in an interview with the BBC, “It’s a farcical thing to breach people’s basic rights to explore their sexual freedom, and it’s just so limiting to U.K. producers and performers.”

The restrictions, which took effect Dec. 1, subject all paid-for video-on-demand (VoD) online pornography produced and sold in the U.K. to the same guidelines that apply to DVD pornography (which is restricted for those under 18). According to the British Board of Film Censors, the objective behind this change is to protect minors from accessing potentially “harmful” content via the internet.

To be sure, some of the restrictions are justifiable. Concerns about instigating real-life sexual violence through pornography are certainly valid—or at least understandable. However, perhaps the most problematic aspect of the regulation is its disproportionate effect on women. The laws  eliminate viewers’ exposure to certain depictions of female sexual pleasure, while permitting what are arguably more obscene or potentially demeaning activities by men–including male ejaculation onto any part of a woman’s body.

This blatant double standard implies that an outward display of female sexual pleasure is not only shameful, but actually so vulgar that it has the power to “seriously impair” an under-18 viewer who happens to witness it online. In addition, many of the censored activities are most commonly featured in smaller, more independent spheres of pornography, especially those within BDSM and queer communities. If the British government were truly interested in safeguarding children, why institute pointed laws that will heavily restrict niche pornography and leave mainstream videos otherwise untouched?

Undoubtedly, certain aspects of pornography as an industry have proven detrimental to women. Anti-porn proponents argue that pornography perpetuates the objectification of women through demeaning and misogynistic representations of sex. The industry hyper-sexualizes women, fetishizing underage teens as well as women who engage in the ever-favored “girl on girl.”

While pornography is not necessarily created with the purpose of instructing its viewers about sex, it does have the capacity to do so. And since pornography does not always depict safe or consensual sex, learning that this is an appropriate attitude toward sex may lead to dangerous and even violent sexual behavior.

Although the latest regulations may have been Britain’s attempt to remedy some of these problems, simply eradicating female enjoyment seems a faulty solution. Many feminists who believe in sex positivity feel that porn can be an empowering sexual outlet for women. They argue that women act in pornographic videos as a means of exercising control over their physical bodies and fulfilling their sexual desires. They would point out that women enjoying sex with the same vigor as men is still considered taboo. As Ellen Willis, a writer who coined the term “pro-sex feminism” aptly stated, “The claim that ‘pornography is violence against women’ was code for the neo-Victorian idea that men want sex and women endure it.”

The underlying issue here seems to be one of misguided government control. The regulations will not eliminate the curiosity of minors, who continue to have access to a wide variety of internet porn created outside the U.K. And they won’t change the fact that women are sexual beings capable of maintaining their own sexual autonomy—despite the fact that this may no longer be showcased in U.K.-made porn.

Image of face-sitting protests by See Li under license from Creative Commons 2.0.

 

 

Emily Mae Czachor is a print & digital journalism student at the University of Southern California and the Senior Culture Editor of Neon Tommy. She is currently an editorial intern at Ms.

Restaurant | London, England, UK

(I and my girlfriend work at the same restaurant, I’m the head chef and she’s the manager. We’re both women and although we don’t hide our relationship, we don’t flaunt it either. My girlfriend has finished for the day and the owner has come in to cover her. She comes into the kitchen to say goodbye to everyone and kisses me (a very brief kiss on the lips) then leaves. Five minutes later the owner comes in to me to say a complaint has been made by a customer regarding a ‘lesbionic’ relationship.)

Owner: “This woman’s being a right b**** about it, saying she won’t pay for her meal, it ruined her night, it’s blasphemous, and everyone’s going to Hell.”

Me: “She’s one of those. I’ll go deal with her.”

(I go to the customer and introduce myself as the head chef. She’s about 30, expensively dressed (her dress looks silk but the belt, collar, & cuffs are sequined), lots of jewellery, and a tattoo on her ankle of rosary beads. She’s with a man a little older that her, clean shaven, short back and sides hair cut.)

Customer: “The food was delicious. Are you in charge? Do you know you have lesbians in your kitchen? Maybe you should tell them not everyone wants to see that sort of thing. It’s terribly upsetting and offensive to my religious beliefs.”

(I have done my fair share of reading on the subject of homosexuality and the Bible, so I have an answer well prepared for people like her.)

Me: “Have you read the Bible? Timothy 2:9 says ‘I want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not adorning themselves with gold or pearls or expensive clothes.’ That’s some nice jewellery you’re wearing. It also says, Leviticus 19:19 ‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.’ Your silk dress is beautiful, as are the collar and cuffs. In a different material. It also says Leviticus 19:28 ‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves.’ I like your rosary tattoo. It also says Leviticus 19:27 ‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.’ Your husband looks very smart tonight. It also says Leviticus 11:8 ‘You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.’ And Leviticus 11:10 ‘And all that have not fins and scales in the seas and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you.” I believe they refer to pork and shellfish. How was your ‘surf & turf?’ We only use the best pork sausages and finest lobster.”

(The man sits there with his head bowed but the woman stares at me with pure hatred.)

Me: “Now, I don’t know about you but it seems silly that you are willing to overlook all those sins about yourself and focus on one thing that isn’t even mentioned in the Bible. If I was as judgemental as you I would say you only kicked up a fuss to get out of paying for you meal. But that’s like stealing. I’ll send a waitress over with your bill.”

(I went back to cooking. I could hear a couple of other customers laughing at the woman. The husband paid, leaving a big tip. I could see them outside having what looked like a pretty good argument!)

POW!

carry-on-my-wayward-butt:

jennifermorriswan:

frog-and-toad-are-friends:

freedummring:

cubebreaker:

This helpful guide about what 200 calories looks like reminds us just how much healthy food we’re giving up each time we have a treat.

yeah, asshole. how dare you eat an order of french fries when you could have literally shoved 22 banana peppers in your fucking face-hole. what a piece of shit you are.

"Why would you eat a hot dog when instead you could eat a pound-and-a-half of baby carrots"

Let me eat what looks like 30 celery stalks, instead of a delicious muffin.

aside from the chocolate chips and the peanut butter maybe, everything on the left is cheaper than the right.

A value size mcds fries is like 99 cents and that amount of peppers is about 3.50 (I have a bag. recommended if u have the money, chop em up in ur eggs)

I really really hate posts like these because they always carry this gross “look it’s so easy to do this and it’s your fault you’re unhealthy” or whatever kind of tone. half the time posts like these completely ignore the convenience/prep time, income level/cost, and location. shit like this always, ALWAYS, whether intentional or not doesn’t matter, they always carry classist, blaming undertones.

not to mention, celery is almost entirely water. there is no flavor, there are barely any nutrients, and it’s not filling. Eat that cheap ass 99 cent gas station muffin and survive the morning while Harry Health-Kick goes and fucks himself

Reblogging (again) for commentary

Retail | Kehl, Germany

(I am shopping in a store in Germany, really close to the French border, and only one full line is open. An elderly woman with only one melon asks the cashier if they could open a second line, which they do. When the second line opens, another woman with a full cart rushes in the other line to be first. The elderly women with the melon is second, and I am third.)

Elderly Woman: *in German* “Please, I only have one item to buy. May I go through?”

Other Woman: *in French* “I don’t understand what you say. Please stay behind.”

Me: *in French* “She just wanted to go through since she only has one item.”

Other Woman: *in French* “Aw, what a shame. I was here first! And she could at least speak to me in French! Tell her she has to stay behind like everyone else would have.”

Elderly Woman: *in French too* “Are you kidding me? You French people cross the border to do grocery shopping here and WE have to speak in French? Also, I was waiting in the other line and asked for a new line. You just rushed like you were the only one in the store. How impolite is that?”

Other Woman: *still in French* “I don’t believe how rude those Germans are. You can be assured that I won’t shop here again!”

(The cashier finally let the elderly woman pass first, while the other woman was grumbling. Hopefully she’ll be more cooperative next time.)

The Center for Sex and Culture is having Valentine Book Sale, Cocktail Party, and Open Mic, Thursday, February 12 at 7PM. Nothing says I love you like SMUT! This year give your Valentine the gift that keeps on giving, erotica, literature, how to, or just some straight up porn! We will have a special V-Day Cocktail, some sinfully sweet treats, a naughty Valentine card making station, and an Open Mic- tell us all about your best or worst Valentine (performances are welcome too).

Give some love to your local sex library by buying some books!

“

Being a girl was complicated. It was swallowing rusty nails and clawing our way towards something we didn’t even know we really wanted.

When I was thirteen I told Stephanie that drinking orange juice could stop you from fainting because it raises your blood sugar. In sophomore year, she slammed her head, saw stars, and ended up drinking an entire carton in one sitting. She vomited on her kitchen floor, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the concussion or from a pint of orange juice sitting in her stomach. Her doctor told her mother, “All girls try throwing up at some point.”

I remember the first time one of my friends came to me with eyes so red I thought she’d inhaled a desert. She said her mother had died from breast cancer the night before. She said her home was an open grave, a holy space. She said she’d rather be in school than dealing with an absence so loud nobody could speak. I still think about her every time someone says “save the ta-tas” instead of “please god save our mothers haven’t enough of us suffered.”

On certain Saturday nights we’d all get dressed up like we were going somewhere fancy and then sit in and watch Disney movies. We filled ourselves up with popcorn and gossip. When Patty showed up with a black eye again, we all said nothing about it. We were too young to make fists out of fingers, I think.

A girl on the train was reading a book I love. We got to talking. She’s from the Peace Corps, she said, gave me a smile like a thousand volts. She was one of those people who make you feel good about yourself. When she got up to go, she gave me a little wave. I said “Go stop violence,” and she laughed. Hanging off the back of her bag was a little pink can of mace.

We learned to be secret defend-each-other types. We were going to hold the world down until it liked us. There is something bold about being defiant. There is something about having soft petal skin and still showing sharp teeth.

The box was little and teal and had a bow attached to it. Inside was a pair of brass knuckles in the shape of cat ears. “In case,” my father said, “In case.”

I remember my sister, body wrapped in a towel, saying, “It’s not as bad as it looks,” her shinbone a mess of blood where her razor slipped. She said she saw the patch of skin she removed. She wiggled her eyebrows while holding up her pointer finger. “This long,” she said, “And pretty thick.” She had to throw it out rather than let it clog the drain.

He was tall and gawky and if you asked him personal questions, his ears turned red. He asked if I wanted to go out to the pond in the woods. I blushed and told him I couldn’t swim, and he gasped as if he’d been stung. He picked me up so easily, like I weighed nothing. He put me in the trunk of his car. We were laughing.

Much later, a stranger the same size would say, “Hey mama, wanna come home with me?”

I remember I met this one girl passed out on a couch, her dress hiked up around her hips. She was lying in her own vomit. “Let’s keep walking,” someone said, “Don’t get involved.” I was too much empathy in a small body to let her go unprotected. She shivered in the shower we put her in. Her skin was so blue around her eyes, I thought maybe she’d slipped the sky in there. She looked terrified. I asked her how much she drank, she couldn’t say. I asked her how she got here, she bit her lip and shook her head. “My friends… Just left,” she said, “They just left.” Sometimes friends are like that, I guess.

In late nights, I heard Kathrine crying about the things her father had said to her. She once told me that if it was a choice between being born with her learning disabilities and being born without a tongue, she’d choose the latter one. I whispered something of an apology that fell as flat as I felt, we don’t talk about it ever again.

Skeleton hands never stop shaking me awake. Sometimes I think we’re drowning and sometimes I think we are just painted that way. There’s never an excuse not to be dainty. Someone once told me that beauty is pain.

I remember her lips and how they were bright pink, because the words out of them were sick green things. Maggie said she’d swallowed eighty-nine Tylenol two days before. She said they’d filled her with charcoal and had her spit back up the blackness that was swelling like a river inside of her. We were fourteen.

We flirted with people we didn’t know, we used other people’s hands to mess up our hair, we got home late. We towered in heels that hurt to look at. We felt fierce, on fire. We painted our lips blood red and kissed the mirror until we got a perfect mark out of it. We’d spend ages just getting ready. It was the fun part of parties, I guess.

Her spine cracked while she rested her head on my leg. She said, “Let’s never get old, okay?” and I told her that sounded great. Sometimes in the darkness, she’d sound serious about it. I wanted to ask her if she was fighting bigger demons than the ones I can raise, but before I found out, she moved away.

We belonged to a group that was all punchline. Someone says, “teen girls, am I right?” and laughter spreads like ripples through the room.

I remember the first time you find out that they hurt one of your friends, because that’s how you find out you’re not safe either. She looked so whole, and that was the problem. Her mascara wasn’t even running. I watched her tell the story five ten twenty times to officers who shuffled papers and sniffed at every other word and sighed often and looked at their watch even though they were the reason she was talking. They asked her what she was wearing, she gestured to her body: jeans, tee-shirt, hoodie. They asked her if she knew him, she said no. They asked her if she provoked him, she said no. They asked her if she told him to stop, she fell silent. After a while, she’d try to explain the fear that had crept up her throat until she had choked. They sighed. Asked for the story again. She had this look on her face that I still dream about. It looked like someone had sucked her soul out.

Kelly in the ninth grade with her shining face telling me, “One of us is the better person. Everyone always compares us.”

A waiter looking down my shirt and saying, “Just a water for you, huh?”

Ballet class with pin-thin shaking hands and bathrooms that smelt like a bad dream. A teacher who said, “Don’t eat unless you faint, darlings.” You get used to cigarettes in the hands of young girls. You get used to the backstage addictions of “only nine hundred more crunches to go.” You get used to seeing this stuff until one day someone asks you why you know all the calories in a grapenut.

The television saying, “Lose weight, feel great.”
The television saying, “Girls mean nothing.”
The television saying, “If you’re not pretty, you’re not worth discussing.”
The television saying, “If you’re pretty, your personality is awful.”
The television saying, “Spend your money.”

My father telling me: there’s nothing wrong with this system.

”

- Memories // r.i.d (via inkskinned)

dogblog2k15:

Ground Control: Major Tom?
Major Tom: new phone who dis?

Retail | Scotland, UK

(I work in a gift shop at a castle. A puzzled customer comes up to the till.)

Customer: “How much are your postcards?”

Me: “They’re 50 pence.”

Customer: “So 50p means 50 pence?”

Me: “Yep, they’re the same thing.”

Customer: “Okay, so, I have a certificate for 5.”

(We don’t do gift certificates to the best of my knowledge, so…)

Me: “Sorry; when you say certificate, what exactly do you mean?”

Customer: “It’s like a… bill?”

Me: “A five pound note?”

Customer: “A what?”

Me: *baffled* “May I ask where you’re from?”

Customer: “I’m from California.”

Me: “Right, well, basically, our pence are like your cents, and our pounds are like your dollars. It’s 100 pence to a pound.”

Customer: “OH! That makes so much more sense of all of your shops!”

postcardsfromspace:

desperadore:

grayskiesfashion:

Dolce & Gabbana - Cathedral Print Blazer

soyonscruels

oh god

alex-v-hernandez:

lokis-ice-queen:

BAHAHAHAHA!!!!

wormwoman

alfronz:

People were being assholes and misgendering me so my teacher just