By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD “Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you’re so creative. You don’t know what it’s like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you. All you know how …
Read More »Lost in Transition: Mackenzie Davis and Friends, between Marketing and the Male Gaze – Part II
By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD “We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge.” — Freud “A woman is a mystery to guide …
Read More »Gender Benders: A Follow-Up on Mackenzie Davis and the Remakings of the Female Other – PART II
By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. …
Read More »Gender Benders: A Follow-Up on Mackenzie Davis and the Remakings of the Female Other – PART I
By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, …
Read More »Outside the Pale: Science Fiction and Sexual Politics beyond the American Quarter
By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD I advise you to throw out altogether § 3—the “demand (women’s) for freedom of love”. That is not really a proletarian but a bourgeois demand. — Vladimir Lenin, in a letter to Inessa Armand, dated 17 January 1915 For once I’m …
Read More »Pop art representation of Muslims still falls short of expectations
In 2017, Emmy-winning actor and activist Riz Ahmed gave a speech in Parliament about diversity on screen. “Representation is not an added thrill [because] what people are looking for is a message that they belong,” he said. Soon after, the Riz test – the equivalent of the Bechdel test for the representation of Muslims in …
Read More »Trump strikes blow against gender-neutrality with Navy SEAL decision
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that a military decision to make the Navy SEAL ethos gender-neutral was “ridiculous” and vowed to overturn it, his latest move to intervene in lower-level military affairs ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Earlier this week, the Navy said it would be making the …
Read More »Feminists, Lesbians face up to Transgender lobby as J.K. Rowling controversy cascades
Author JK Rowling, who has come under fire for statements about trans activism that many have called transphobic, promoted an online store that sells items with offensive, anti-trans phrases. The website, called Wild Womyn Workshop, advertises pins with quotes including the phrases “Transwomen are men,” “Transmen are my sisters,” “Transition = conversion therapy,” …
Read More »EU trying to force Poland to adopt gay, transexual rights
The European Union’s chief executive said on Wednesday there was no place in the bloc for so-called “LGBT-free zones”, a pointed criticism of Poland’s nationalist government pushing to curb the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “LGBTQI-free zones are humanity free zones. And they have no place in …
Read More »Lessons from the Flophouse: Late night cinema and picking on the wrong species of helpless white male – Part II
By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD “An artist should be as impartial as God.” — Wyndham Lewis “The summary of the advice of all prophets is this; Find yourself a mirror.” — Shams Tabrizi Well, as luck would have it, some time ago I’d written a review …
Read More »Netanyahu government caught in ‘gay’ controversy
Israel’s education minister voiced support on Saturday for so-called gay “conversion therapy”, drawing a disavowal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government’s religious-rightist tilt has worried liberals a home and backers abroad. Conversion therapy, an attempt to alter sexual orientation or gender identity through psychological, spiritual and, in extreme cases, …
Read More »George Takei, Richard Dreyfuss respond to allegations of sexual misconduct
George Takei took to Twitter on Saturday to deny groping a male model and Richard Dreyfuss said he never exposed himself to a female writer helping him with a TV script, both back in the 1980s. Takei, the 80-year-old “Star Trek” icon, said in a series of tweets that events …
Read More »Kevin Spacey accused of sexual harassment
Actor Kevin Spacey said on Sunday he is “beyond horrified” by allegations that he made sexual advances on a teen boy decades ago. The two-time Oscar winner posted on Twitter that he doesn’t remember the encounter. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest …
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