As you know, I am fascinated with graffiti. I don't like it as art. In fact, I think "graffiti art" is bullshit. But, I like graffiti that makes you think. I won't bore you with all this again, so if you haven't read my other piece on this, check out this post first.

Well, on the corner of W 71st and Columbus, some disgruntled wanderer defaced the advertisement that is supposed to keep you satisfied until you actually get to shop at the store that is coming in. While this stuff is mean-spirited, truly, it also does make you think. The sheer brutality of the "commentary" was enough to stop me in my tracks. Then, when I thought about it, I realized that I had to do some blogging.

Let me tell you about Sexy, Hungry and the True Believer.

Sexy really is. You take a look at the thigh on which the label is written, and it doesn't take much to see that she lives up to it. Her face being marred is probably an attempt to counteract her apparent sexiness, a rejection of her implict claim (made explicit by the tagger).

"I'm so sexy," now comes across as conceited and damaged, thanks to the work of an angry person who probably doesn't live in my neighborhood. After all, we're all nice people here.

But, it would be a shame simply to focus all my efforts on Sexy. You know, Hungry deserves some attention, too. Her story even has a bit of depth to it, which I bet surprises the shit out of you.

It's hard to see in this picture, but a crude word bubble is coming from blondie's mouth, "I'm so hungry." Hell, I bet she is. I'd be hungry all the time, too, if I had to live like she does. I'm much happier eatng than not, so I'll never be able to understand Hungry's lifestyle.

 As I mentioned, Hungry has some depth. "Look" is written right across her chest. Normally, I would be happy to do so, but without the lettering, there is no reason to turn your gaze there. Hey, the chick doesn't eat. She's a fucking model. That means she has no body fat, and her chest reflects this reality. Nonetheless, she's tagged as a sex object, and the word "Look" drives the point home. You are participating in objectification, and it's all the tagger's fault!

And, finally, we get to the True Believer.

She has "Love" tattooed across her forehead and a longing look on her face. She doesn't reveal much of her body and is at the bottom of the image.

How did she get off so easy?

I guess the tagger couldn't fit "Desperate" or "Lonely" across her face. Or, maybe there's some latent optimism fighting to get out. Either way, this chick got lucky compared to the others.

There's some guy in the picture (which you can see back at the top of the article). I don't know why he didn't get any abuse. Maybe, it's because he's a retard or simply is not important because everyone's looking at the ladies. I don't know if that's true, but it sure makes sense to me.

Mmegi/The Reporter (allAfrica.com) (July 24): Journalists at a Botswana conference on media coverage of HIV/AIDS were urged to keep covering the pandemic, and to make their coverage interesting, personal, and easy to understand.  They were also warned against "people walking into our media houses with stories that create false hopes" of AIDS cures.

Daily Champion (allAfrica.com) (July 24): Nigerian first lady Hajiya Turai Umaru Yar'Adua spoke at a National Coalition of Women Against HIV/AIDS event, announcing that Nigeria's women are ready and able to add to AIDS efforts in their country, in cooperation with government-led programs.

But two main things that make me squirm:

First off, I can't help feeling like Mr. Cunningham sounds like a dirty old man. A rabo verde, we'd say here in Mexico. How he laughs, where he laughs, what he says and what words he emphasizes is just a wee bit too rabo for me.

And the second thing is that Mr. Cunningham talks about seeing a woman in Chelsea, who was wearing a pair of platform shoes with crazy heels. Mr. Cunningham is sure that this person is a woman. You can hear it in his narration.

In the very next picture, Mr. Cunningham talks about a person in Greenwich Village who is wearing "the same shoes." But he says this:

"And there was, um,...a person, I think probably a performance artist." Mr. Cunnigham is clearly uncomfortable identifying this person as a woman. Big hesitations and an unsure voice.

Listen, even for someone like me, I have my moments where I screw up around gender, where I catch myself needing to identify a person's gender, or establish it. Where I put my foot in my mouth. Where I have hesitation and an unsure voice. I mess up, but clean up afterwards, ya dig?

But here's the thing-Mr. Cunningham clearly had time to edit. Why not fix the hesitation? Why not re-do the audio? Did Mr. Cunningham think that no one would notice?

And here's my question to Mr. Cunningham-why is he so sure that the woman in Chelsea is indeed his definition of a woman? Lordy loo, he photographed that person in Chelsea, for chrissakes.

You feel into a gender binary trap, Mr. Cunningham. Go look it up and take the five inch heel out of your mouth.

I tried not to look as shocked as I felt. We were sitting in the lunch room of the workplace where we were interns - both of us from the same university, but working in different departments. I think we both felt out of our league - we knew the theory behind the work, but it can be overwhelming to go straight from university into the workplace. I'd been lucky enough to have someone in the department I was working in decide to help me out. He'd worked there for years and before that had been an intern himself, so he said he knew what it was like. All I had to do to get other peoples help was ask.

Jerry (the other intern) didn't seem to have it as easy. I'm not sure if he was ignored by the people in his department, or if he didn't want to ask for work. He could see I was getting stuff to do, and perhaps that annoyed or frustrated him. At any rate, a few days before his opinions came out in the lunch room, he started making snide comments about the help I was getting.

I was aware of Jerry watching me when the guy helping me out came to check on me, and I was aware that he thought I had it easy compared to him, but I didn't know if he thought there was a reason for that.

Grateful that I was being helped, I tried to help Jerry out when I could. I suggested he ask someone to introduce him to people working on something that interested him.

"You can talk about the technicalities and show that you have some knowledge of what they're doing," I suggested. He kind of smiled and I persevered.

I told him I believed it was all about the language that you used to try and get things. When I've wanted something from someone I've tried to adapt my language to suit the person I'm talking to, like working within a different discourse. He laughed, and I asked him why he thought it was funny. That's when things got ugly.

I know the theories that girls can sleep their way to the top, that we "have it easy", especially if we're pretty. But any compliment I could take out of Jerry's statement about my looks versus my intelligence was soured by the notion that I'm only getting help because I'm a girl. But to add insult to injury, there was more Jerry had to say.

"It's so much easier for girls," he lamented, unaware of how offended I was. The truth is that easiness is relative. Within both my fields of interest - drama and journalism - it's probably easier for men because there is more demand for men. Girls have to look "right", sound "right", seem dependable (there's some kind of idiotic idea that once we're secure in a job we'll go into nesting and start having babies straight away). As well as have the right personality (that goes for both men and women though).

I don't think it's easy for anyone. I think it depends on the person, and perhaps I have to believe that to think I'll get a job when I graduate at the end of the year. I think interpersonal skills, communication skills, intelligence, initiative and determination are the values that will get people jobs, regardless of their sex or attractiveness. Otherwise why do people get on with me when they've only ever dealt with me over the phone? Oh, don't tell me, I have a "pretty" voice, right?

Do people really still think that girls only get help if they're pretty? That they couldn't just be nice people who are getting help from other nice people? That empathy from professionals is impossible for interns unless they have long hair, nice eyes and curves in the right places? I still can't figure out what offends me more - the assumption that I'm getting help because of my gender, or the fact that all Jerry seems to find validating is my looks.

I have a feeling this post will probably not make me very popular but at the same time, my regular readers know that I call it as I see it without mincing or softening words.  There is a phenomenon here in the Kingdom which I will refer to as the Prince-a$$ syndrome.  In the States one may make references to “beating or one-upping the Joneses’” whereas here so many young women want to be viewed like Princesses.  What does this mean?  In many cases these are young women who have no idea about learning values and responsibility.  Their main goal in life is to look beautiful, be perfectly groomed and wearing the latest fashions as well as sporting the recent trend in mobiles, handbags and other accessories.  Now there is certainly nothing wrong in this if a parent is able to afford it.  However what I object to is where I see families who should be allocating resources towards more necessary and needed items instead ensuring that their daughters (and the family) are saving face by having the young women maintain the image of wealth and prosperity.  These same young women usually have little to no chores to perform and therefore not learning responsibility or values.  When not with their friends they spend their spare time primping, playing on the internet usually with MSN messenger or watching music videos or Lebanese or Egyptian soap operas.

I feel like the culture makes these young women mature too quickly; mature too quickly in the sense they are allowed to wear clothes which are advanced for their age.  These are typically clothes which highlight and accentuate cleavage and normally accompanied by tight fitted jeans.  Of course the young women will also put on full make up, nail polish and perfume.  The “natural carefree” look of simply jeans and a t-shirt or other casual top is not adapted here.  It is unlikely one of the Prince-a$$ girls would be seen in such a look.

Part of where I have a conflict with this aspect of the culture is that I feel the look which is portrayed is contradictory to Islam as well.  Throughout the Quran, Islam promotes modesty.  It does not say a woman should be unattractive; in fact she is encouraged to be attractive to her husband and family.  But I wonder if the Prince-a$$ girls pass muster here?

I am so happy to see that my readers have tripled in the past few days. I am happy to see that there is a response of interest to my blog. Today I would like to add a new post and this time it's about another crazy autobiography I've read lately: "Freak Unique". Written about and by Pete Burns, Dead or alive's lead singer since the beginning of the eighties.

I first discovered him when he brought out the re-registered version of of "you spin me round - like a record", back in 2003. The new video clip that followed really intrigued to such an extent that I started immediately researching as much as I could about him. Then came his weird participation to Great Britain's "Celebrity big brother" and he just won me over with his charm, attitude, whits and intelligence.

When I first saw him on celebrity big brother, I didn't know that he had just spent over two years in Italy trying to save his face from some severe bad beauty surgery. His face was literally melting away. his lips burst open and awful yellow liquid came pouring out and it didn't stop. So the only place where they offered to save him was in Italy, in a clinic specialized in post cancer plastic surgery. Right after many months of reconstruction surgery, he was offered to try and re pimp his career a bit by participating in celebrity big brother. He was so broke after paying all the bills to save his face from total catastrophy that he was also forced to sell his nice home in London as well.

Psychologically speaking, he was a wreck and going into a crazy house filled with other wannabe and not, crazy celebrities, made him lose his temper more then once. The entire episode selection of celebrity big brother with Pete Burns is available on youtube and that is where I saw it as well. Britain loved and hated him but no matter what one thought of him, he still managed to get a decent comeback and was the unproclaimed winner of that year's edition. Right after he came out of the big brother house, he ended up in prison because he apparently hit a guy i public while having a jealousy fit towards his boyfriend. So pete Burn's manager and PR agency though it wise to make a TV show out of his prison and rehabilitation to society program. Pete was allowed to exit prison prior to his trial but only under special conditions, being him having to stay together with a crazy fan of his somewhere in the middle of nowhere and not being allowed to enter London before the trial date. Needless to say, he freaked out right after seeing the strange psycho fan of his and soon after his arrival decided to leave, stay in a hotel and see his boyfriend Micheal, even if the authorities forbid him to do so.

Pete's management got him the permission to get back to London before hand because they proved he needed important medical care he could apparently only get in London. Here we see some of the last scenes of him in his soon to be ex home. He had a cat which was in horrible conditions... it looked like it was losing all it's fur... but hey... whatever... and so the day of the trial arrives and he gets to court too late and the postpone everything and bla bla bla... until, finally, in the last episode, he gets freed from all charges and we see him in the studio trying to record a new track or maybe even album. Unfortunately, till today there has been no new album from Pete Burns in sight. He is planning on publishing his next work without his band "Dead or alive".

After the court case on TV, he started writing his autobiography: "Freak Unique" in which he wrote a lot about the celebrity big brother experience but also really went into detail about his childhood and relationship to his father and mother. His mother was German and died of cancer soon after he got famous with his band. He was supposed to go on tour with none less then Madonna on her "Who's that girl" world tour but canceled because he preferred to spend the last weeks together with his dieing mother. A brave choice and mature choice. In his book he spares no nice words for Madonna and considers her to be an unoriginal person. To be honest, after seeing what he has done in his career and how he decided to express himself, she really does come across as unoriginal. But, back to the subject...

Dead or alive were a huge success in japan and that is the country where the brought out most of their albums. Their first album: "Sophisticated boom boom" was distributed everywhere and was a success as well as the following ones: "Youthquake", "mad, bad and dangerous to know" and "Nude"... and Micheal Jackson has been said to have had to postpone his concert in Japan because Dead or alive were more popular then him and were set to have a concert too, in the same period. After "Nude", the following albums were released almost only in Japan: "fan the flame part1", "Nukleopatra", "Fragile" and "Unbreakable - the fragile remixes". 2003 came out the world wide distributed compilation: "Evolution". At the same time a beautiful DVD came out as well on which you could see almost all their video clips and the famous tour concert from Japan: "Rip it Up".

Pete Burns married his boyfriend Michael in 2007 and after just ten months divorced. In an interview to a radio station some time ago he states that it just didn't work out, without saying exactly why and what happened. In all the TV reality shows he had done in the past, right after Celebrity big brother, Michael has always been next to him and seemed to be very much involved in Pete's career. He pretty much gave the impression of being his secretary and assistant. It is sad to here that they have divorced. If that means that they are also no longer together, I do not know.

Pete is in the studio recording his next album: "GLAMPIRE". He states that he will not release it through a record company and that it will be available only on the Internet. He is also preparing a theater piece in which he will sing songs from Marlene Dietrich's repertoire but reinvented with a disco beat. He will also sing songs he thinks she would sing today if she were still alive. And as last news he will star in yet another reality TV show but he states that this time it will be "really real"... 24/7... Hmm... I am very curious.

But back to the biography... Pete states that he feels like a man and that he has no intentions to operate or change his sex. In fact, to me, all the plastic surgery he has had did not make him look female at all. He has a special look and it totally transcends gender. He himself writes in his book: "When people do perceive me as a tranny or as a woman, they're picking up on the identity I created that was part of my character as a performer, which is very different from the person that's underneath. So I am being perceived as a character that I didn't create - they have imprinted that onto to me - and, if someone creates a role for you, it's very difficult to change their perception."

He looks amazing and no matter how much one might not like his appearance and what he represents, one still cannot but be totally mesmerized by him and his absolute pride that irradiates through a touch of absolutely genuine and attractively natural arrogance.

Pete writes that as a child, he often dressed like an Indian when he was a child and that he considers makeup a natural state of life. Not using make-up is, instead, a sort of mask he does not bare. he writes about his dressing up: "It wasn't as if I wanted to transform myself into a particular look. I wasn't putting anything there that wasn't there - I was just chipping away the clay. The tattoos were already there. I just removed the film, the membrane of skin that had formed over them. It was a process of stripping naked. It was like I had a mask on."

He also writes about several other singers, mostly pop singers and sates that he has been a fan of Bobby Orlando's productions but that his record label made him work with Stock Aitken and Watermann instead. Orlando produced, among other things, some of Divine's albums and the song: "native love" and "Love reaction" which Pete loved. Pete also wrote nice things about Mel and Kim and even about posh Spice's only solo album: "Victoria Beckham", from 2001. HE again added some nasty comments about Madonna's music and some compliments about Courtney love. He clearly states that music is an essential part of his life and career.

There are a lot of other things to write about Pete Burns and a lot of remarks to add to his book: "Freak Unique". I will not add more. I will be talking more about him in my lectures though... so stay tuned to hear where they will take place.

I would like to end with a last quote that pretty well summarizes the essence of an artistic expression and statement as a struggle: "what people mean when they shout at you in the street: "faggot!", "Queer!", "Transvestite!"... all they're trying to say is, "I'm here too!"

Love,

Ivan

Answer 3: Yes, they finally realized they had hired enough mediocre men. 

Some of the questions assume you are in a heterosexual relationship.  No  one will be surprised, I expect, that we/I've used these:

Question (said to male person): Who takes care of your kids when your wife travels?
Answer: The cats.

Question (said to married/partnered female person): Who takes care of your kids when you travel?
Answer: The cats.

Question (said to academic couple): Which of you is the trailing spouse?
Answer: Our cat.

Enjoy!

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The goal typically vouchsafed... additional countries are uninvited-horseback riding among the dope verify discharged because in step with Americans- that sway bang not singular concupiscence upon explaining ahead costs now pharmaceuticals, merely in furtherance of base hospital visits?

They've reused the figures to look at men's and women's comparative progress in the profession.  Switzgebel concludes that the record shows women move through the profession more slowly than men. 

Another dismal fact emerges; the comparative perceptage of non-TT positions women occupy.  For those young women with birth dates ranging from 1970-1979, 36% are in non-TT positions!  That's compared with 13% of the guys.

Switzgebel mentions an obvious factor which may slow women's progress:  marriage and/or  children.  In addition, women are more often "the trailing spouse" in the sciences, and this might well apply in philosophy also.  Of course, we need to be careful not to conclude that sexism isn't operating.  Not only may it still be at work at a number of junctures, including what makes a male partner a hotter property on the market, but also there's the institutional sexism of the university and college structures that are still geared to male biological lives more than female.

So thanks, Eric!  For the study!

Kiernan shares David Cronenberg's fascination with the flesh. Her work ponders the mysteries of the body: anatomy as identity, the corruptibility and transmutation of the flesh, the intersection between corporeality and spirituality. Characters in "Riding the White Bull" and "Zero Summer" are corrupted bodily by an alien virus, and in turn find themselves hunted and outside the bounds of the body politic, beyond hope of acceptance or salvation.

Other stories feature characters challenged by their bodies or who find themselves transformed within by changes without. Such is the case of the character Sylvia, in "Faces in Revolving Souls,"  who finds  herself transcendence, acceptance and ultimate destruction through a process of genetic tinkering that would not be out of place on the island of Dr. Moreau.

What it means to be "human" Is questioned in an "Ode to Katan Amano" a synthetic life form comes closer to being human through experiencing human art. Even seemingly fundamental assumptions about gender are challenged and ultimately broken, as seen in the final story of the collection, "Bradbury Weather," which features an all-female Martian colony where one woman may impregnate another.

There's a streak of the noir that runs through these stories, and a fatalistic embrace of a cruel and uncaring cosmos that would make H.P. Lovecraft proud. Kiernan's characters struggle not only with the burden of their bodies, but also with an ultimately hostile universe, an implication that's made explicit in an exchange between the character Ellis and her interrogator who is trying to learn all that he can about an alien menace in the story "Zero Summer."

"-has nothing to do with mankind," Ellis says. "I keep telling you that. I've said it again and again. None of it has anything to do with any of you."

"But people are dying."

"Do storms care that rain causes crops to grow?" she asks him. "Does a volcano care if it burns those same plants to ash and causes people to go hungry?"

"A is for Alien" is Kiernan at her best. The subtle dread of her horror fiction is unshackled, free to evolve into a nightmare carnival of the flesh that will transform readers as thoroughly and permanently as the characters in these stories. I consider this a must-have for any fan of her work.

This collection will be available in February of 2009 from Subterranean Press.

Pre-order it here.

tristanetiseult

Cargado originalmente por abenyusuf

Bismil·lâh al rahmán y rahim

Al·hamdu lil·lâh, lo prometido, cumplido. Aquí estoy yo compartiendo con ustedes en directo desde mi despacho gracias al milagro de la radio lo sublime del segundo acto de Tristan und Isolde, la elaboración de Wagner del mito del amor de Tristán e Isolda. Hoy no hay problemas de retransmisión, y las frases musicales fluyen sin límites. Cuando se frena una oración, la orquesta responde con agitación de violines, de las cuerdas, y se añaden los vientos, y finalmente hasta la percusión.
Respuestas y monólogos internos. La verdad es lo que más se corresponde con el cliché del cine y las series sobre la ópera, pues va aumentando el volumen sonoro a base de acumulaciones. Es cierto que el preludio del primer acto se suele asociar con lo más delicado posible, con ese dramatismo terrible de un a llegada a los agudos para recaer terriblemente en los graves.
No me entero del alemán más que ayer ("día", "noche", "ojos", "corazón", etc.), pero se nota que la música se subordina al guión romántico, que va poniendo los acentos sobre las caídas. Bueno, vamos a seguir escuchando hasta que acabe. La ilustración es una muy reproducida miniatura medieval que alude al viaje de Tristán con Isolda durante el que beben la pócima del amor fatal. Los cabellos rubios de Isolda y el mar contrastan con la verticalidad del palo del barco, y la curiosa trompeta, que está anunciando la fama de la pareja.
Y Al·lâh decide lo visible y lo oculto.

If I had to boil this novel down to just one word, it would be claustrophobia. Dickens is looking quite extensively at that classic Victorian plot, namely, the young woman who is powerless to remove herself from her circumstances. The central plot arc of the novel focuses on Paul Dombey, head of the firm Dombey and Son, and his daughter Florence. Because Florence can't be the "son" of Dombey and Son, Mr. Dombey can't recognize her inherent worth. Florence, desperate for her father's love, spends most of the novel trapped and alone. As a dutiful Victorian daughter Florence is powerless to act without her father's consent, but his physical, psychological, and emotional absence means that such consent can't be given.

Dickens goes to a truly alarming extent to demonstrate to us just how vulnerable Florence is. Event after event proves to the reader that no matter how good Florence is, no one in the novel will recognize her. Because this is a Victorian novel, Florence's virtue is ultimately rewarded, but only after significant trauma. But it isn't just Florence who demonstrates the theme. Florence's own mother dies in the first scene, after years of a miserable marriage. Florence's stepmother is perhaps Dickens's strongest critique of the way that middle to upper class girls were indoctrinated about marriage, as her own guilty rhetoric constantly draws the comparison between her marriage and prostitution.

The novel ends happily, of course, but the happy ending is undermined by the sense that nothing has really changed. Dickens makes powerful and serious critiques about the way that women and girls were educated and the roles they were expected to fill, but those roles are not ultimately challenged. Florence finds refuge from the oppressive patriarchy of her own home in marriage. While Dickens is extremely careful to point out the Florence marries for love, not money, she never does escape the patriarchal system. The good, but unappreciated, daughter becomes the good, beloved wife. The virtues that Dickens rewards in the end seem to be exactly the ones that make Florence so vulnerable in the first place. The critique Dickens makes is important, but it isn't strong enough to challenge the marriage-plot structure of his own genre.

The head researcher Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin told the Associated Press that both teachers and parents believe that boys are simply better at math. Girls are affected by this and grow up believing that it would be easier to avoid math altogether. "It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said.

Although women have made incredible progress earning 48 percent of all undergraduate math degrees, we still lag far behind in physics and engineering. Ph.D programs in engineering currently average only about 15 percent women. 

Hyde says the next step is to attract women to the graduate and career level. "Mathematics and science departments need to work on making graduate departments more women-friendly for not just the students but for the faculty as well," says Hyde, by encouraging more women into their ranks where they can serve as role models for future generations of female students." 

---femme for thought

Girls = Boys.

A new study puts to rest one of the most widespread myths about boys' and girls' aptitude in math. After analyzing 7 million test scores, researchers found no difference.

The findings demonstrate great strides since the 1970s, when major studies showed pronounced differences in the scores of males and females. By the 1980s, younger students were matched - but girls fell behind when they hit adolescence.

Study authors at the University of California-Berkeley and University of Wisconsin-Madison offer several theories behind the improvements, including changes in educational approaches and career expectations.

"Stereotypes are very, very resistant to change, but as a scientist I have to challenge them with data," said Wisconsin's Janet S. Hyde, lead investigator of the study, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Using vast data generated by the No Child Left Behind legislation, which mandates annual testing of youths from elementary school through high school, the new study concludes that the gender gap has vanished among students of all ages.

This is an interesting tidbit:

Among math whizzes, there remain sex differences.

But they don't add up to anything definitive. For instance, there are more white boys than girls with scores in the 99th percentile. But among Asian-Americans, it's reversed: Girls outperform boys. (Reliable data was not available for Hispanics, blacks and American Indians.)

Well, you know, these girls may very well be volunteers committed to community work who just all happen to be young, slim and pretty and not part of some misguided? behavioural change communications policy.

Yes, I know I'm always critiquing the anti-AIDS messages, doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the effort. After all, those condoms may very well have saved a life on Wednesday night.

and best of all? I'm still the only princess in the castle, trust me its awesome to be spoiled by boys and treated special, even the dog is a boy ;)

here he is:  fake name: Eugene Hercules (priceless faces when we say this, we're such jerks!)

"Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives' families. Each extended family lived in a 'long house.' When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband's things outside the door.

"Families were grouped in clans, and a dozen or more clans might make up a village. The senior women in the village named the men who represented the clans at village and tribal councils. They also named the forty-nine chiefs who were the ruling council for the Five Nation confederacy of the Iroquois. The women attended clan meetings, stood behind the circle of men who spoke and voted, and removed the men from office if they strayed too far from the wishes of the women.

"The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White and Black: 'Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society."

I quote this not because I'm a huge fan of simplistic anthropological summaries of "ways of life" or because I'm now under the impression that no Iroquois woman ever hurried home for fear of being raped at night but rather because I'm a little weirded out by the way I've latched on to these paragraphs.

I'm really excited to announce that we will be continuing this potluck series through the fall and it is evolving into a class/skillshare type event with specific topics being taught by rotating teachers. There are fantastic heaps of sex-positive information in our community and room to expand it.

To get on an e-mail / phone tree list for updates about the potlucks; contact me at Clover56 (at) riseup (dot) net

Although Botswana supports a program for the prevention of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV (PMTCT), many women initially did not take advantage of the program. Using data from a 2003 survey of 504 pregnant and post-partum women, Sebert Kuhlmann and his colleagues assessed associations between exposure to a long-running radio serial drama that encourages use of the PMTCT program and HIV testing during pregnancy. Controlling for demographic, pregnancy and other variables, women who spontaneously named a PMTCT character in the serial drama as their favourite character were nearly twice as likely to test for HIV during pregnancy as those who did not. Additionally, multiparity, knowing a pregnant woman taking AZT, having a partner who tested, higher education and PMTCT knowledge were associated with HIV testing during pregnancy. Identification with characters in the radio serial drama is associated with testing during pregnancy. Coupled with other supporting elements, serial dramas could contribute to HIV prevention, treatment and care initiatives.

Editors’ note: This programme went further than public service announcements and counselling sessions to raise awareness of PMTCT services. It used two fundamental principles: modelling (showing people how to change) and reinforcement (supporting their efforts to change and to maintain healthy behaviours). The radio drama was the modelling component and may have helped some women to see HIV testing in pregnancy as a good choice supported by social norms. It is interesting to speculate whether this programme paved the way for broad acceptance of the introduction of a routine offer of antenatal testing in 2004.

Wringe A, Isingo R, Urassa M, Maiseli G, Manyalla R, Changalucha J, Mngara J, Kalluvya S, Zaba B. Uptake of HIV voluntary counselling and testing services in rural Tanzania: implications for effective HIV prevention and equitable access to treatment. Trop Med Int Health. 2008;13(3):319-27.

Wringe and colleagues aimed to describe the associations between socio-demographic, behavioural and clinical characteristics and the use of HIV voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) services among residents in a rural ward in Tanzania. Eight thousand nine hundred and seventy participants from a community-based cohort were interviewed, provided blood for research HIV testing, and were offered VCT. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression was used to identify socio-demographic, clinical, and behavioural factors associated with VCT use. Although 31% (1246/3980) of men and 24% (1195/4990) of women expressed an interest in the service, only 12% of men and 7% of women subsequently completed VCT. Socio-demographic factors, such as marital status, area of residence, religion and ethnicity influenced VCT completion among males and females in different ways, while self-perceived risk of HIV, prior knowledge of VCT, and sex with a high-risk partner emerged as important predictors of VCT completion among both sexes. Among males only, those infected with HIV for 5 years or less tended to self-select for VCT compared to HIV-negatives (adjusted odds ratio = 1.43; 95% CI: 0.99-2.14). This contributed to a higher proportion of HIV-positive males knowing their status compared to HIV-positive females.  In this setting, a disproportionate number of HIV-positive women are failing to learn their status, which has implications for equitable access to onward referral for care and treatment services. Evidence that some high-risk behaviours may prompt VCT use is encouraging, although further interventions are required to improve knowledge about HIV risk and the benefits of VCT. Targeted interventions are also needed to promote VCT uptake among married women and rural residents.

Editors´note: Both the proportion of people interested in learning their HIV serostatus and the proportion of people who actually got tested are very low for a country with a sizeable HIV epidemic. It is likely that fear of stigma and discrimination had remained an important barrier to HIV testing during this study, since the Tanzanian government had already announced on radio and in newspapers that it intended to start providing free antiretroviral treatment though major hospitals.

P.S. I still love Black and White clothing because it has its own beauty…so here’s my nod to black and white, and with my new COLOURED HAIR! 

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