Empeach My Bush

"I wanna have a kick ass band. And I want every girl to go home with 2 guys if they want to. And I want 2 guys to impress the girl by making out in front of her. And I want straight guys to stop thinking that anything they do for a girl makes them look like they're gay."

Boo-ya Peaches! She's crass, sexy, ballsy and makes some killer tunes. Her interview in Feb/Mar 2006 Bust magazine turned me on to her (ps-thanks Natalie) with quotes like this one. She also said that not all of her songs are about sex, some are heartfelt like "Lovertits" which she claims is endearing like "my shoo shoo boo boo" or "baby honey teddy bear". She's all about gender bendin' and getting everyone to shake their shit on the dance floor. As she says: "Let a woman be a man, and let a man do the cancan." Check out her website below and enjoy the video!

Helene Cixous

Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.
-- Helene Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"

Cixous was born in Oran, Algeria in 1937, which was a colony of France, and was raised in a German-Jewish household. She received her agregation in English in 1959 and her Docteur en lettres in 1968. Cixous has taught at many different universities throughout France including the University of Bordeaux (1962), the Sorbonne (1965-67), and Nanterre (1967).

In the 1970's Cixous became involved in exploring the relationship between sexuality and writing, the same kinds of work being done by theorists like Kristeva, Barthes, Derrida, and Irigaray (Shiach). In this time period she composed such influential works as "Sortie," "The Laugh of the Medusa," and "Coming to Writing."

Since the authoring of these texts in the seventies, Cixous has become even more mysterious and complex, but has somewhat lessened her radical ideology for a more inclusive exploration of collective identities. She is currently an English literature professor at the University of Paris VIII-Vincennes where she has established a center for women's studies and is a co-founder of the structuralist journal Poetique.

What theorists like Cixous are trying to do is answer the questions that many of us may have personally struggled with throughout our studies in rhetoric and perhaps even our studies this summer. Why have women's voices been so historically absent in a rich tradition of rhetoric that spans over two thousand years? Is it simply a matter of women being forbidden the education that would allow them into the discourse community? or, is there actually a distinct woman's way of thinking, speaking, and interacting, a women's rhetoric if you will, that has made it difficult for women to communicate in these forums? These are the types of questions that Cixous is specifically interested in attempting to answer. (From "Introduction to Helene Cixous" Julie Gaskin"

And for your inspirational pleasure, a short quote from Cixous' Manifesto, "The Laugh of the Medusa" , encouraging women to Write, Write, Write!!

¡¡I shall speak about women's writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies -- for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Women must put herself into the text -- as into the world and into history -- by her own movement.

¡¡The future must lo nonger be determined by the past. I do not deny that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation is imperative.

¡¡I write this as a woman, towards women. When I say 'woman', I'm speaking of woman in her inevitable striggle against conventional man; and of a universal woman subject who must bring women to their senses and to their meaning in history. But first it must be said that in spite of the enormity of the repression that has kept them in the 'dark' -- that dark which people have been trying to make them accept as their attribute -- there is, at this time, no general woman, no one typical woman. What they have in common I will say. But what strikes me is the infinite richness of their individual constitutions: you can't talk about a female sexuality, uniform, homogeneous, classifiable into codes -- any more than you can talk about one unconscious resembling another. Women's imaginary is inexhaustible, like music, painting, writing: their stream of phantasms is incredible.

¡¡It is time to liberate the New Woman from the Old by coming to know her -- by loving her for getting by, for getting beyond the Old without delay, by going out ahead of what the new Woman will be, as an arrow quits the bow with a movement that gathers and separates the vibrations musically, in order to be more than her self.

Dare to be different

Dare Wright photographed and wrote childrens stories featuring Lonely Doll and Edith, dolls who lived in real world settings with real world problems. The photographs are finely detailed and fanciful , just as Wright, who modeled, made her own clothes, photographed and wrote the wonderful books and had a very close relationship with her mother which some saw as detrimental, probably because Wright never married.

All of her stories turn on aspects of her own childhood, the fears of punishment and being abandoned... that then came out in these children's books," one biographer says.

Due to the high cost of medical care that Wright had to receive during her last days (died 2001) much of her property and publication licenses were sold to keep her alive. There is a petition on her official web site to bring the books back into print.

Olympe de Gouges

Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne

The Rights of Woman

Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to opress my sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the Creator in his wisdom; survey in all her grandeur that nature with whom you seem to want to be in harmony, and give me, if you dare, an exampl of this tyrannical empire. Go back to animals, consult the elements, study plants, finally glance at all the modifications of organic matter, and surrender to the evidence when I offer you the menas; search, probe, and distinguish, if you can, the sexes in the administration of nature. Everywhere you will find them mingled; everywhere they cooperate in harmonious tpgetherness in this immortal masterpiece.
Man alone has raised his exceptional circumstances to a principle. Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and degenerated--in a century of enlightenment and wisdom--into the crassest ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it.

Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen

For the National Assemby to decree in its last sessions, or in those of the next legislature:

Preamble

Mothers, daughters, sisters [and] representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties; in order that the authoritative acts f women and teh athoritative acts of men may be at any moment compared with and respectful of the purpose of all political institutions; and in order that citizens' demands, henceforth based on simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good morals, and the happiness of all.
Consequently, the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is in courage during the sufferings of maternity recognizes and declares in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of WOman and of Female Citizens.

Article I

Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility.

Article II

The purpose of any political association is the conservation of the natural and impresciptible rights of woman and man; these rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.

Article III

The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially with the nation, which is nothing but the union of woman and man; no body and no individual can exercise any authority which does not come expressly from it (the nation).

Article IV

Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason.

Article V

Laws of nature and reason proscibe all acts harmful to society; everything which is not prohibited by these wise and divine laws cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do what they do not command.

Article VI

The law must be the expression of the general will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.

Article VII

No woman is an exception; she is accused, arrested, and detained in cases determined by law. Women, like men, obey this rigorous law.

Article VIII

The law must establish only those penalties that are strictly and obviously necessary...

Article IX

Once any woman is declared guilty, complete rigor is exercised by law.

Article X

No one is to be disquieted for his very basic opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not disturb the legally established public order.

Article XI

The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of woman, since that liberty assures recognition of children by their fathers. Any female citizen thus may say freely, I am the mother of a child which belongs to you, without being forced by a barbarous prejudice to hide the truth; (an exception may be made) to respond to the abuse of this liberty in cases determined by law.

Article XII

The gaurantee of the rights of woman and the female citizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must be instituted for the advantage of all, and not for the particular benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.

Article XIII

For the support of the public force and the expenses of administration, the contributions of woman and man are equal; she shares all the duties and all the painful tasks; therefore, whe must have the same share in the distribution of positions, employment, offices, honors, and jobs.

Article XIV

Female and male citizens have the right to verify, either by themselves of through their representatives, the necessity of the public contribution. This can only apply to women if they are granted an equal share, not only of wealth, but also of public administration, and in the determination of the proportion, the base, the collection, and the duration of the tax.

Article XV

The collectivity of women, joined for tax purposes to the aggregate of men, has the right to demand an accounting of his administration from any public agent.

Article XVI

No society has a constitution without the guarantee of rights and the separation of powers; the constitution is null if the majority of individuals comprising the nation have not cooperated in drafting it.

Article XVII

Property belongs to both sexes whether united or separate; for each it is an inviolable and sacred right' no one can be deprived of it, since it is the true patrimony of natire, unless the legally determined public need obviously dictates it, and then only with a just and prior indemnity.

Postscript

Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked disdain. In the centuries of corruption you ruled only over the weakness of men. The reclamation of your patrimony, based on the wise decrees of nature-what have you to dread from such a fine undertaking? The bon mot of the legislator of the marriage of Cana? Do you fear that our French legislators, correctors of that morality, long ensnared by political practices now out of date, will only say again to you: women, what is there in common between you and us? Everything, you will have to answer. If they persist in their weakness in putting this non sequitur in contradiction to their principles, courageously oppose the force of reason to the empty pretentions of superiority; unite yourselves beneath the standards of philosophy; deploy all the energy of your character, and you will soon see these haughty men, not groveling at your feet as servile adorers, but proud to share with you the treasures of the Supreme Being. Regardless of what barriers confront you, it is in your power to free yourselves; you have only to want to....
Marriage is the tomb of trust and love. The married woman can with impunity give bastards to her husband, and also give them the wealth which does not belong to them. The woman who is unmarried has only one feeble right; ancient and inhuman laws refuse to her for her children the right to the name and the wealth of their father; no new laws have been made in this matter. If it is considered a paradox and an impossibility on my part to try to give my sex an honorable and just consistency, I leave it to men to attain glory for dealing with this matter; but while we wait, the way can be prepared through national education, the restoration of morals, and conjugal conventions.

Ain't I a Woman?

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

Mary Ellen Mark

Yves Bonnefy

Rain on the Ravine

I
It’s raining on the ravine, on the whole world.
Hoopoes settle on the barn like finials
For wandering columns of smoke.
Dawn, accept us once again today.
I heard the first wasp sound
Its small alarm already in the warmth
Of mist that closes in the path where
Water shimmers. Peaceful, invisible,
It’s searching. I might almost believe
I’m there listening to it. But its hum
Grows louder only as image. Under my feet
The path is no longer a path, only my dream
Of the wasp, the hoopoes, the mist.
I loved to step outside at dawn. Time slept
In the embers, pillowed on ash.
Our bodies breathed, at peace in the upstairs bedroom,
Slowly discovered as the shadows ebbed.
II
Unforgettable, rain of summer mornings
Plashing against the window of the dream
Like first frost; and the sleeper cast
Free of self, seeking with naked hands
The warmth of the other body, still asleep,
In the sound of rain falling upon the world.
(Sound of rain in bursts upon the roof-tiles,
Fitful advance of the room
On the rising swell of light.
The storm
Has overrun the sky, the lightning flash
Ends in a great brief cry,
The wealth of thunder spreads itself abroad.)
III
I wake and see
Our boat has turned around during the night.
The fire is almost out.
Cold presses like an oarstroke on the sky.
And the surface of the water is only light.
But underneath? Colorless tree trunks, branches
Entangled as the dream, and stones
That let the rapid current close their eyes,
And smile in sand’s embrace.