If you are an avid follower of the art world, you’ve no doubt heard the recent talk about how women are looked at as being lesser artists than men. Female artists make up a very small percentage of the art in museums and galleries and, just like almost every other professional field, earn significantly less money than their male counterparts. This is an issue that many women and men in the art community are recognizing and trying to correct. However, at least one critic has opposing views on the topic.

From the Independent article “There’s Never Been A Great Woman Artist”

“The art market is not sexist,” Mr Sewell said. “The likes of Bridget Riley and Louise Bourgeois are of the second and third rank. There has never been a first-rank woman artist.

“Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Women make up 50 per cent or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it’s something to do with bearing children.”

I don’t even know how one would come up with this conclusion, that only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. First you have to ask the question, what exactly constitutes aesthetic greatness and who gets to decide what these guidelines are? I’m sure Mr. Sewell would say that it’s critics like him who point out “greatness” to the rest of the world. But most people know that you can’t trust a critic’s opinion on whether they’re going to enjoy something. After all, no one can tell you your own opinion of something as diverse as art.

My second question is why does art need to be aesthetically pleasing? Some of my favorite works of art are actually quite disturbing to look at. Shouldn’t art first and foremost evoke emotion, make you think and feel, sometimes at a visceral level.

I had never heard of Brian Sewell so I did a quick google search and found that he’s pretty much a controversy whore, using it to gain attention for himself and make what he does seem more important. So you really have to take everything he says with a grain of salt. But I did think this was the perfect opportunity to spotlight some of my favorite female artist who I think have achieved first-rank status, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Louise Bourgeois

Judy Chicago

Georgia O’Keefe

Angelica Kauffmann

Cindy Sherman

Frida Kahlo

Victoria Van Dyke

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I’ve talked about my anxiety issues a bit in my zine but I’ve never discussed them here.  Some of you may know and many of you probably don’t that I have pretty bad anxiety associated with noise.  I’ve just recently discovered that this was an anxiety disorder and not just me going crazy.  I lived for years in Memphis TN where at least half of the vehicles have major sound systems with loud booming bass.  We finally had to leave because my sanity had deteriorated so drastically.

So, we moved to Manitou Springs, CO where we were assured that things were very peaceful and quiet.  And they were right, for the first 6 months here things were pure bliss.  Then we got a new neighbor with a chihuahua and things started going downhill again.  I went to the doctor yesterday and he put me on a new drug called Pristiq.  I’ve been taking it for two days and I feel like I’m on some heavy recreational drugs.  I’m jittery and tired at the same time, I’ve been grinding my teeth and I barely slept last night.

My neighbor has gotten really good lately about stopping her from barking as soon as she starts but my anxiety still takes over both when she barks and in anticipation of the bark.  So I’m going to try to stick it out with the meds, apparently this feeling will only last a couple of weeks and then I’ll even out a bit.

I’m terrified of the meds fucking up my creativity but on the other hand, when I’m anxious and panicky I can’t create either.  So I guess giving the meds a try can’t make things any worse for me.

I’m going to do all I can to stay productive over the next couple of weeks but I don’t know how successful I’ll be.  I really need to work on issue 3 of the zine and I may end up putting the second body image issue off for a bit and do an issue on anxiety and what I’m going through right now.  Maybe it would be therapeutic.

I also need to get more copies made of issues 1 & 2.  And Hannah, I haven’t forgotten you I will get the issues out to you for review as soon as I get more copies made.  And if I’ve been supposed to get back to anyone lately and haven’t please let me know as it’s probably slipped my mind in everything that’s going on.

On the up side, my mom sent me some money for my birthday which is coming up and I used it to get a surround sound system for the computer as well as a kick ass sound card.  I have a rain cd that acts as white noise to cancel out outside noise.  With my regular sound system it does a great job of canceling out people’s voices and things like that but doesn’t seem to do anything for the dog, it sounds like she’s sitting right beside me when she barks.  So I’m hoping the surround sound will do more to muffle the sound and be more help.

I’ll be keeping the blog up to date with my (hopefully) progress.  And if anyone has any advice on how to deal with the noise or how to deal with the side effects of the meds for these first two weeks I would love to hear them!

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I just realized how many replies I needed to reply to and how old some of them were. I realize and acknowledge that I’ve been a bad blog host and promise not to let it happen again. I’ve now gone back through all of the old comments and replied to each one individually. I want to make it clear that I want you all to share your opinions here, whether you’re with me or against me (I promise I can take it :p).

AND A NOTE TO ANYONE WHO’S ORDERED THE ZINE -
You should have gotten your orders by now. If you haven’t please let me know and I’ll make sure you get a copy when I do my next round of printing. I don’t want anyone to miss out just because the post office sucks lol.

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I’m about to get started on Issue 3. I got some great replies to my call for submissions on what the riot grrl movement has done for other grrls body image so those are going to take up a good portion of the zine.

I also have the next two planned out. I came across a site the other day that someone at vegan freaks linked to. It’s a set of magazines (separate ones for guys and girls) aimed at teaching middle school kids the importance of abstinence called Just for Girls / Just 4 Guys. They’re free to download from the site so I’ve already flipped through them a bit and they are so full of misinformation and in some cases just flat out lies with a healthy dose of sexism to boot. So I’m going to take issues 4 & 5 to cover each of these magazines.

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I pulled out my sewing box and found my little pink mini-vibrator that I thought I had lost in the move! Don’t ask me how it ended up in my sewing box but I opened it up and tada!

I’ve been looking around on Craftster for the past couple of days and have been bitten my the diy bug again. I just finished cleaning off my work table and pulling all of my old stuff out of the closet. Now I just need to get some machine oil for my sewing machine and get to the thrift shop for some clothes to refurbish.

I’ve already found a few projects on craftster that I want to attempt and I have an old army jacket that I want to alter. If I could get into my closet better (time to clean it out as well) I would find an old pair of shoes to alter today since I wouldn’t need a sewing machine for that but I’m already tired from cleaning off and setting up my work table and cleaning the kitchen which was a wreck. So for now I’m just going to take a break and play with my newly found toy :D.

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Here’s a direct link since Internet Exploror is being difficult and won’t show the embedded video.
John McCain Says US Is A Christian Nation

The above video shows various clips of John McCain voicing his opinion on the US being a Christian Nation, it needing to remain that way, and his views on what the founding fathers believed. I’m amazed that one of our two only candidates for president knows so little about our country’s history. Let’s break it down.

1. The constitution establishes that the US is a Christian nation. A recent poll done by The First Amendment Center shows that 55% of Americans also believe this. But is it true? The constitution makes no mention of God or Christianity at all and various quotes from the founding fathers insinuate that this was a purposeful omission. Our constitution gives us freedom of religion, granting all religions equal consideration. How far from establishing a Christian nation can you get?

2. He says that when deciding who the new president should be, citizens should make sure to choose someone who will uphold the Christian beliefs that this country was founded on. However, if he’s right and the founding fathers meant for this to be a Christian nation, even going so far as to write it into the constitution, why is it even possible for a non-Christian person to run for president? He even goes on to say that in the end it’s the people’s choice but he would prefer someone of his own faith. It sounds to me like he has his own ideas of what he wishes this nation was and what he wishes the founding fathers wanted. The fact that his wishes have no basis in reality doesn’t seem to phase him any.

3. And we get to the first statement (of a few) that he wants to make but is afraid to say bluntly. He feels that his religion is marginally better than others. That his religion, Christianity, is the only religion with the right values and morals. And that anyone who doesn’t hold these same values and morals isn’t fit to run the country.

4. And another statement that he would like to say outright but knows that he can’t get away with. “We welcome the tired, the poor and the hungry masses, but when they come here, they should, they know that they’re in a nation founded on Christian principles.” He almost said what he really wanted to say but stopped himself ALMOST in time. I feel that what he wanted to say was when they get here, they should adopt the religion of the country. I think it’s very dangerous to have these fanatical Christians in high positions of power when it seems like their ultimate goal is a theocracy.

5. The next few things he says really don’t have a bearing on his argument. He’s right, the founding fathers didn’t want a state imposed religion and they also didn’t intend for the separation of church and state to imply that there was no place for a higher power. Though I do have to recognize that this statement is cut off at the end so he may go on to say that they didn’t mean to imply that there was no place for a higher power in our government. If this is the case I would have to disagree, as I feel that is exactly what they intended when they wrote these words.

“There shall be no interference whatsoever of the sacred religious feelings in State affairs and politics.”

6. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The founding fathers did not emphasize the Christian principle. Many of our founding fathers weren’t Christian at all, they were Deists. This article is already going a tad bit too long so I won’t post the evidence here but it is out there. Do a google search for the religion of the founding fathers and you’ll get days worth of reading material.

His first example of the founding fathers emphasizing the Christian principle… In God We Trust. Pure ignorance on his part. In God We Trust didn’t become the official national motto until 1956. It wasn’t placed on our money until 1864 and was done so largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the American Civil War, after years of pressure from religious leaders. The original motto adopted in 1782 was E Pluribus Unum, (”from many, one”). So our founding fathers adopted a national motto that inspired the bringing of people together, and had no mention of god or religion at all.

And his second example… all men are created equal. This is just funny and ironic on so many levels. Yes, the founding fathers did say that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. However, since they had differing religions, they also had differing ideas of who/what that creator was, they wouldn’t have been talking about only the Christian god. And the reason I think it’s funny is because they didn’t even mean what they said. What they really meant here was that all white male property owners were created equal. IMO, not a very good example to use.

The majority of what he says here has no basis in fact. He is taking his fantasy of what he would like this country to be and molding it into a reality that doesn’t exist. However, I fear that if we keep getting right-wing fundamentalist Christians in office, they will eventually mold this country into what they want it to be. A theocracy.

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This is a new vector illustration made for a challenge at a design forum I just joined. The challenge theme was LSD and I had a great image drawn out of robert (in just black and white line art) with the tabs and words in the bottom corner (where they are here). However, when I tried to save it I was informed that Illustrator didn’t have enough memory to complete the task and it just shut down. I had been saving as I went along but apparently none of them actually worked so I lost the whole thing! So I made this one in Xara, which I prefer to Illustrator, however it doesn’t have as many features which is why I was trying to learn Illustrator. I’ll probably just stick with Xara for now until I get my new computer. This version is a bit simpler (the deadline for the challenge is tomorrow) and I like it almost as much as the other.

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Once again, I apologize for not updating my blog as often as I should. I think on of the things holding me back is that I feel every post needs to be on an important topic. So I’m going to try to let go of that a bit and post some more personal stuff as well. After all, Dissension isn’t just a topical zine, it’s also a perzine and an art zine. So I need to put more of the personal into the blog as well.

I’ve been really busy lately because I’ve been working to get Arbent off of the ground. I’ve been trying to go back to school for years now but I just can’t get the help I need. They keep telling me that our measly yearly income is too much to get a grant and I would have to go with a loan instead. So instead I’ve chosen to self educate myself in a field that I will both enjoy and get work at without a proper degree. And, overall it’s not something completely new to me either. I have years under my belt as an artist and design is just a few steps from that. Though I do realize that if I want to be the best I can be I’ll never actually be finished learning.

I also have a pretty good background in html and xhtml/css. Now I’m starting to learn sql & php. And once I get the web languages down I plan to move on to other programming languages, probably starting with python.

The past couple of days I’ve been working on a wordpress theme for my new design blog where I will document my progress in my self education. I had a lot of fun creating all of the images for the site but then I realized that I know nothing about the inner workings of wordpress or php and was suddenly flying by the seat of my pants lol. It took 2 days of hit and miss guesswork but I DID IT!! I love the design (even though many people are saying the header is too big, even after I cut it down some) and am now about to start on a matching layout for the main arbent site. Below is a screenshot of the layout, click on it to go to the blog to see it full size and in action.

It’s a very exciting time for me but also a very busy time.

I promise that this won’t get in the way of the zine though. I think I’ve got enough submissions to start the next issue and I’m hoping it’ll be finished sometime in late June or early July.

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First, I want to apologize for not posting here more often. I’ve been really busy lately trying to get my design business off the ground as well as getting everything set up for my newest project, 1 Million Mad.

1 Million Mad is a nationwide protest to get corporations’ voices out of our government and the people’s voice back in. I think most of you probably know about my husband’s podcast, The Angry Hippie’s Podcast. Since starting it, he’s had so many people write to him wondering what they can do. Eventually he decided that instead of just talking about change, he was going to try to enact some himself. I obviously immediately jumped on board and we’ve already had some great response! The website explains everything, check it out and see if it’s something you might like to be involved in.

We also have a lj community now, and the MySpace and Facebook pages will be up shortly.

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People naturally expect a level of offensive behavior at a comedy show. However, a recent performance by Johnny Vegas crossed the line from offensive to criminal, and most people just sat back and laughed at the victim’s expense.

Since When is Sexual Assault funny?

The essence of the “joke” was that he had a number of men carry a woman from the audience onstage who was to pretend to be dead and he was going to awaken her with a kiss. I’ll post a quick quote from the article to let you know where it went from there.

“As she was carried on stage, Vegas repeatedly goaded one of the pallbearers to “finger” the girl.

Once she was on stage, Vegas told her to lie very still. She couldn’t stop her nervous giggling; he threatened to kick her in the ribs. It didn’t come across to me as a joke - and near to where I was sitting, no one was laughing. Eventually Vegas crouched down beside the nervous girl and started stroking her breasts while repeatedly saying, “don’t fucking move”. Then he ran his hand up her leg and began pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she would reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up. According to Williams, who had a different view of the stage from me, Vegas ended up “fingering her through her clothes for a second or two”. What I heard was an audible sharp intake of breath from the audience as they realised that the woman was getting much more than the kiss Vegas had told her to expect.

There was an air of menace from the outset, made worse by the fact that Vegas clearly had no idea where he was going with his act. The more the young woman was groped, the more anxious one of the “pallbearers” looked. Then Vegas straddled the young woman, pinning her to the floor, and kissing her for quite a while. Most disturbing, perhaps was that around half the audience seemed to find this really funny.”

There seem to be two main responses by those who were actually in the audience. Some thought that it was absolutely hilarious which is just out and out disturbing. These people basically laughed along as a woman was sexually assaulted in front of them. Then there were those who were very uncomfortable with the performance and complained about it after the fact. This is disturbing in a completely different way than the previous group. While many people saw a problem with what was happening, they did nothing to stop it.

It’s called the bystander effect and usually the more people viewing an event, the less likely it is for someone to actually speak up on behalf of the victim. There have been a number of rape cases where there were so many witnesses, no one actually did anything to stop it expecting someone else to step in. What happens instead is that no one steps in and a heinous crime is committed in front of a large crowd of people.

In the absence of a statement from the woman who was assaulted, many have assumed that the entire act was staged and she was a plant completely in on the “joke”. First, if it was all planned and meant to be a joke, I have to ask, what the fuck is funny about sexual assault? How is staging what appears to be a real sexual assault supposed to entertain the audience? Disturbingly enough, many were actually entertained by it which I think is a huge statement on the way women are perceived in a patriarchal society. And keep in mind, even if it was all staged, no one in the audience knew this and they still either laughed along or sat by in stunned silence.

It just furthers my theory that if you ask 100 people if they think rape/sexual assault is wrong, most likely 100 people will say “of course!”. However, start to get into specifics about what sexual assault actually it (marital/aquantance rape, having sex with someone who is unconscious, repeatedly groping/fondling a woman in front of a live audience in the name of comedy) and a good percentage will start to backtrack and say “well that’s not rape/sexual assault”. The majority of the people who laughed at this during the show, and defended it as funny after, saw absolutely nothing wrong with what occurred. They see nothing wrong with treating a woman as an object for one’s own pleasure.

However, from the accounts I’ve read, I honestly don’t believe that it was staged. I think this woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had no idea what she was getting into. I also think it’s very unfair for people to say “well she willingly went on stage, no one forced her up there”. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a woman to believe that she can be called on stage by a comedian to take part in the show without the fear of being sexually assaulted once she’s up there. And don’t even get me started on the fact that she was laughing so must have been enjoying it. Nervous laughter is a very common occurrence during sexual assault, especially toward the beginning when it’s not clear what’s going on.

Bruce Dessau of The Evening Standard said this about the performance:

“Vegas may not have had much in the way of a routine but he managed to finish in unforgettable style, having a front-row fan carried onstage like the dead Snow White and serenading her back to life like a safari-jacketed anti-Russell Brand. Not the best gig ever, but definitely unique.”

So sexually assaulting a woman in the name of comedy is deemed a unique take on stand up comedy. We have to keep things fresh and edgy and keep pushing the envelope in the name of entertainment, even if it creates some victims in the process. Who doesn’t love the utilitarian notion that the public humiliation and sexual degradation of one woman is worth it to entertain hundreds? </sarcasm>

One comment posted on Chortle, which appears to celebrate the sexual molestation of a woman in public… reads: “This was the most enjoyable night of comedy I have ever experienced. The discomfort in the predominately middle-class section of the audience I was sitting in was palpable during Vegas’s set! During the bit where Vegas was sexually molesting a librarian whilst singing Shakespeare Sister’s Stay With Me Baby I overheard a lady behind mutter under her breath ‘this is hideous!’ The scene was horrifying yet hilarious and Vegas was relentless until Simon Munnery covered the spectacle with his jacket! I will be laughing about this evening for a very long time!”.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!?!?!?!?! It seems that this person knew exactly what they were watching and relished in every minute of it. Seeing a woman sexually molested on stage was the most enjoyable night of comedy this person has ever experienced! At this, I’m left completely speechless…

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