feminino plural

“What is Riot Grrl Anyway?”, várias autoras, 1993

Riot Grrrl was an underground feminist movement that began in the early nineties, which was closely tied to punk music, radical politics, and a DIY aesthetic. Riot Grrrl activism involved meetings, the creation of zines, and a nationwide network of support for women in music. While some say the movement lasted until the mid-90s, others contend it never ended. With the popularity of Sara Marcus‘s recently published book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, it seems there may be some truth to that statement. And there are many zines, which tell the tale of the origins of the movement. In 1993, according to a Canadian newspaper (as mentioned in Girls to the Front), 40,000 zines were published in North America.

(fonte)

“Bikini Kill” #1 e #2, de  Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail e Kathy Wilcox, da banda Bikini Kill

“i’m so fucking beautiful” #2 de Nomy Lamm, c. 1990

“Gunk” #4 de Ramdasha Bikceem, c. 1990

“More Than A Feeling”, de Bridie, 2001

Flyers de Kathleen Hanna, 1989

cartaz/anúncio de “Julie Ruin” (um dos projectos de Kathleen Hanna

“Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle- and upper-class, married white women—housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.'" That "more" she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife. ... When Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, more than one-third of all women were in the work force. Although many women longed to be housewives, only women with leisure time and money could actually shape their identities on the model of the feminine mystique.

... From her early writing, it appears that Friedan never wondered whether or not the plight of college-educated white housewives was an adequate reference point by which to gauge the impact of sexism or sexist oppression on the lives of women in American society. Nor did she move beyond her own life experience to acquire an expanded perspective on the lives of women in the United States. I say this not to discredit her work. It remains a useful discussion of the impact of sexist discrimination on a select group of women. Examined from a different perspective, it can also be seen as a case study of narcissism, insensitivity, sentimentality, and self-indulgence, which reaches its peak when Friedan, in a chapter titled "Progressive Dehumanization," makes a comparison between the psychological effects of isolation on white housewives and the impact of confinement on the self-concept of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.”

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In fall 1977, Sherman began making pictures that would eventually become her groundbreaking “Untitled Film Stills.” Over three years, the series (presented here in its entirety) grew to comprise a total of seventy black-and-white photographs. Taken as a whole, the “Untitled Film Stills”—resembling publicity pictures made on movie sets—read like an encyclopedic roster of stereotypical female roles inspired by 1950s and 1960s Hollywood, film noir, B movies, and European art-house films. But while the characters and scenarios may seem familiar, Sherman’s “Stills” are entirely fictitious; they represent clichés (career girl, bombshell, girl on the run, vamp, housewife, and so on) that are deeply embedded in the cultural imagination. While the pictures can be appreciated individually, much of their significance comes in the endless variation of identities from one photograph to the next. As a group they explore the complexity of representation in a world saturated with images, and refer to the cultural filter of images (moving and still) through which we see the world.

When Ms. was launched as a “one-shot” sample insert in New York magazine in December 1971, few realised it would become the landmark institution in both women’s rights and American journalism that it is today.

The founders of Ms., many of whom are now household names, helped to shape contemporary feminism. According to founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Ms.’ authors translated “a movement into a magazine.”

Ms. was a brazen act of independence in the 1970s. At the time, the fledgling feminist movement was either denigrated or dismissed in the mainstream media — if it was mentioned at all. Most magazines for women were limited to advice about saving marriages, raising babies, or using the right cosmetics.

When the Ms. preview debuted-carrying articles on subjects such as the housewife’s moment of truth, “de-sexing” the English language, and abortion, the syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick jeered that it was a “C-sharp on an un-tuned piano,” a note “of petulance, of bitchiness, or nervous fingernails screeching across a blackboard.”

And after the first regular issue hit the newsstands in July 1972, the network news anchor Harry Reasoner challenged, “I’ll give it six months before they run out of things to say.”

But Ms. struck a chord with women. Its 300,000 “one-shot” test copies sold out nationwide in eight days. It generated an astonishing 26,000 subscription orders and over 20,000 reader letters within weeks. By the time Ms. celebrated its 15th anniversary in 1987, Reasoner, media soothsayers, and the nation had all been pressed to change their tune.

Ms. was the first U.S. magazine to feature prominent American women demanding the repeal of laws that criminalized abortion, the first to explain and advocate for the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], to rate presidential candidates on women’s issues, to put domestic violence and sexual harassment on the cover of a women’s magazine, to feature feminist protest of pornography, to commission and feature a national study on date rape, and to blow the whistle on the undue influence of advertising on magazine journalism.

Ms. was the first national magazine to make feminist voices audible, feminist journalism tenable, and a feminist worldview available to the public.

Today, the magazine remains an interactive enterprise in which an unusually diverse readership is simultaneously engaged with each other and the world. The modern Ms. boasts the most extensive coverage of international women’s issues of any magazine available in the United States.

And the magazine’s time-honored traditions-an emphasis on in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis, the Ms. Women of the Year Awards, and the renowned “No Comment” section-have been supplemented with discussion of such subjects as environmental feminism, women’s work styles, and the politics of emerging technologies, bringing a new generation of writers and readers together to create the feminism of the future.

(making of e entrevista da VICE)

Pussy Riot. Feminists. Prisoners of Conscience. Russian riot grrrls. These are the signifiers, plucked from their Russian socio-political context, that have come to represent this women’s art collective in the Western media. Robbed of any historical or cultural continuity, Pussy Riot have been used to fuel the various narratives of the Feminist movement, the human rights community, and rebel musicians who proclaim themselves defenders of free speech. This simplification of foreign political causes is nothing new in America, but why does it happen and what is lost in the process?

Here, Diana Taylor’s description of the theory of transculturation is helpful in understanding the discourse that arose in the West concerning the Pussy Riot trial. Taylor writes: “The issue in transculturation…is not only one of meaning (what do symbols mean in different contexts). It is also one of political positioning and selection: which forms, symbols or aspects of cultural identity become highlighted or confrontational, when and why.” In the case of Pussy Riot, two central elements of their Russian cultural context seem to have been lost in translation, or simply ignored in the construction of their rebel martyrdom: a) their relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church and b) their relationship to the tradition of Soviet dissident art.

Aside from the celebrification of these women, there has been a general failure on the part of the media to closely read Pussy Riots’ closing statements as richly nuanced cultural texts. On the contrary, their words have been turned into slogans (e.g., Nadya’s “People can sense the truth. Truth has an ontological superiority over lies”), or have been deemed insincere. In a recent appraisal of the Pussy Riot cultural phenomenon, Sara Marcus accuses the women of  “a certain tailoring of a message under pressure.” While Marcus astutely differentiates the kind of feminism represented by Pussy Riot from the kind that manifests itself in America today—whereas American feminism focuses on “women’s issues,” Pussy Riot’s feminism “shows up here as a focus on the repressive ideas about sexism, sex, and family life that so often show up as ideological linchpins of authoritarian regimes”—her analysis falls short when she insists that Masha’s depiction of herself as a sincerely confused Christian believer is a mere posture for publicity.

- excerto do artigo de Elianna Kan para The American Reader

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A conferência da passada terça-feira, que contou com as intervenções de Bárbara Coutinho, Aurelindo Jaime Ceia, Victor Almeida, Victor dos Reis e José Brandão, foi um momento inevitavelmente interessante para mim, enquanto finalista do curso em que me integro. O diálogo tocou em vários temas relevantes para qualquer estudante de Design, particularmente de Design de Comunicação na FBAUL, desde as considerações históricas acerca das origens do curso, relatadas na primeira pessoa por vários dos oradores, até às intervenções a propósito do lançamento do livro José Brandão, Designer.

Ficha Técnica

Título: Cléo de 5 à 7 (Original)

Ano de produção: 1962

Realizadora: Agnès Varda

Argumentista: Agnès Varda

Duração: 90 minutos

País: França

Elenco principal:  Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray, Dorothée Blanck

Banda Sonora: Michel Legrand

Em "Cléo de 5 à 7” o espectador observa cada passo, cada expressão de Cléo durante a sua deambulação por Paris. Cada plano é meticuloso, exacto e o posicionamento de personagens e objectos por vezes comunica mais do que o próprio diálogo e enredo, ou não seria Agnès Varda treinada em fotografia. As imagens poderiam ser as de um quotidiano despreocupado, quase lânguido, mas sobre cada instante da tarde de Cléo, até ao momento em que encontra Antoine no parque, existe uma inegável sombra, uma ansiedade. 

É a náusea da consciência da mortalidade face à banalidade e frivolidade da vida urbana de uma jovem cantora parisiense. E face à morte, Cléo não é uma heroína. Cléo está aterrorizada com a ideia da sua própria morte, de uma forma que chega a ser narcisista, não apresentando nem uma tentativa de coragem, mas antes oprimindo todos os que a rodeiam com o seu pavor. Não tenta, no entanto, resistir à futilidade da sua própria vida, como quando se deleita na adulação de vários homens no café quando está a chorar, quando se encontra com o seu amante para aquilo que parece uma cerimónia vazia de cortejo, e, mais notavelmente, na cena em que visita uma loja de chapéus com Angèle. 

Nesta cena, assistimos à indulgência materialista de Cléo, e à sua descarada vaidade. À partida esta seria uma atitude incompreensível de alguém que espera receber uma notícia terrível e fatal. No entanto, se tivermos em conta a frase pronunciada em frente a um espelho por Cléo numa cena anterior, torna-se óbvia a forma como esta auto-obsessão é justificada: "Tant que je suis belle, je suis vivante et dix fois plus que les autres.”. Cléo crê que a beleza é a sua salvação da morte, que de alguma forma esta a vai proteger. É uma mentalidade supersticiosa, e a superstição é outro tema muito presente no filme. Desde a sequência inicial da leitura de um baralho de tarot, passando pelas várias superstições apontadas por Angéle, e que são respeitadas (ou não) por medo mais do que por vontade, e terminando com a própria vivência ritualizada e agendada da protagonista (apenas quebrada na sua deambulação no parque), é evidente uma lógica obsessivo-compulsiva de levar a cabo certas acções como forma de evitar que algo de mal aconteça. 

No entanto, Cléo tem certas atitudes desafiantes, como a compra do chapéu negro fora de época, um chapéu de simbologia ominosa, e que revela o seu estado subconsciente: fúnebre e negligente da aprovação exterior, visto que esta aprovação se torna irrelevante face ao abismo da morte. Esta interacção da vida interior de Cléo com o mundo exterior que continua indiferente à sua crise é explícita nos planos em que imagens da rua projectadas nas janelas se sobrepõem à sua figura, caminhando sozinha pela loja.

Esta cena está também repleta de arquétipos femininos, contrastando-se a Cléo jovem, alta, loira, de feições suaves e indumentária alegre e elegante, todo o estereótipo de beleza convencional feminina, com tanto Angèle como a dona da loja, ambas baixas, escuras tanto na compleição como no traje e sobriamente modestas. Mais uma vez toca-se na questão da beleza equivalente à vida, que aqui é subvertida, pois apesar da vaidade triunfante de Cléo, esta é a de saúde mais duvidável, facto de que está dolorosamente consciente.

Cléo é assim uma protagonista improvável, e que só poderia ter sido imaginada por uma realizadora. Agnès Varda apresenta-nos um retrato de uma mulher em extensão, em tempo real, não uma versão sintetizada ou idealizada. Cléo não é misteriosa, é apenas superficial, infantil e revelada em toda a sua cobardia. Não é imaginada como objecto de desejo mas como sujeito que ocupa toda uma narrativa com a imensidão da sua existência e a tensão de esta poder acabar. Não é uma mulher que admiremos, mas é uma mulher imperfeita, complexa, multi-dimensional e egoísta como poucas mulheres retratadas no cinema alguma vez são. 

Segue-se um excerto do livro The Handmaid’s Tale, de Margaret Atwood, de 1985. O livro narra, na primeira pessoa, a história de Offred, num mundo distópico regido por estruturas de poder apoiadas em interpretações fundamentalistas da religião cristã, especialmente no que toca ao género e à sexualidade. Neste universo, no qual a fertilidade dos seres humanos foi reduzida devido à radiação emitida pelo uso de armas nucleares, essa falta de fecundidade é atribuída unicamente a pessoas do sexo feminino, carregando assim todo um peso de culpabilização da mulher, especialmente quando apoiada por narrativas religiosas.

A condição da mulher é de pouco mais que um objecto, cujo valor se associa directamente com a sua capacidade de ser fértil, ora como Wife, uma posição de relativa dignidade enquanto esposa de um dos Commanders, os homens com cargos de poder; ora como Handmaid, o caso de Offred, uma mulher reduzida ao papel de ‘parideira’ sem qualquer agência sobre o seu próprio corpo, associada a cada família servindo apenas o propósito de ser ‘fertilizada’ e aumentar as chances de concepção de uma criança para o casal.

Neste excerto, Offred encontra-se num centro de formação de Handmaids, no qual é exibido um documentário acerca do tempo antes da implementação deste regime distópico, supostamente para mostrar os horrores dessa realidade. São mostradas imagens de uma marcha do movimento Take Back The Night, que iniciou nos anos 70 e foi muito relevante no movimento feminista, e Offred inclusivamente reconhece a sua mãe, uma personagem que durante todo o livro é descrita como feminista aguerrida e em geral como exemplo do tipo de mulher auto-afirmada, sexualmente livre e contestatória que o regime condena, persegue e efectivamente tenta destruir, sendo até denominadas de Unwomen.

First come the title and some names, blacked out on the film with a crayon so we can’t read them, and then I see my mother. My young mother, younger than I remember her, as young as she must have been once before I was born. She’s wearing the kind of outfit Aunt Lydia told us was typical of Unwomen in those days, overall jeans with a green and mauve plaid shirt underneath and sneakers on her feet; the sort of thing Moira once wore, the sort of thing I can remember wearing, long ago, myself. Her hair is tucked into a mauve kerchief tied behind her head. Her face is very young, very serious, even pretty. I’ve forgotten my mother was once as pretty and as earnest as that. She’s in a group of other women, dressed in the same fashion; she’s holding a stick, no, it’s part of a banner, the handle. The camera pans up and we see the writing, in paint on what must have been a bedsheet: TAKE BACK THE NIGHT. This hasn’t been blacked out, even though we aren’t supposed to be reading. The women around me breathe in, there’s a stirring in the room, like wind over grass. Is this an oversight, have we gotten away with something? Or is this a thing we’re intended to see, to remind us of the old days of no safety?

Behind this sign there are other signs, and the camera notices them briefly: FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. EVERY BABY A WANTED BABY. RECAPTURE OUR BODIES. DO YOU BELIEVE A WOMAN’S PLACE IS ON THE KITCHEN? Under the last sign there’s a line drawing of a woman’s body, lying on a table, blood dripping out from it.

Now my mother is moving forward, she’s smiling, laughing, they all move forward, and now they’re raising their fists into the air. The camera moves to the sky, where hundreds of balloons rise, trailing their strings: red balloons, with a circle painted on them, a circle with a stem like the stem of an apple, the stem is a cross. Back on the earth, my mother is part of the crowd now, and I can’t see her anymore.

Excerto do texto Sex and Buildings: Modern Architecture and the Sexual Revolution (2013) de Richard J. Williams.

“Drop City was a sexy place. Its inhabitants were young, good-looking, keen to throw off as much of the baggage of ordinary society as possible, and its members (some of them, at least) set exploiting the erotic potential of the new arrangements. Rabbit [Peter Rabbit, autor do livro ‘Drop City’, de 1971] wasted no time, writing pornography with his commune partner Poly Ester, which he had printed up (with some reservations from other commune members) in the first issue of the Drop City Newsletter. He also made a short art film depicting Poly Ester performing fellatio on him, which along with communally made painting, was one of the main exhibits at a San Fe It gallery in 1966, an event Rabbit also masterminded. Its screening at the opening led to the immediate closing of the show by the police, an action that gave the event a notoriety out of all proportion to its scale.

Meanwhile, back at Drop City, Richert (now become 'Clard') was given to speak of the ambitious Theater Dome in erotic terms. Speaking to John Curl ('Ishmael') [autor do livro ‘Memories of Drop City: The first hippie commune of the 1960's and the Summer of Love’, 2006] on the occasion of the latter's arrival in Drop City, he described an immersive environment of strobes, electronics and film loops, designed to produce 'constant orgasm'. Curl, fresh from New York's Lower East Side, was mightily impressed. Aspects of the design of Drop City at least help frame this impression: the domes themselves were tiny for the population they eventually housed, and barely subdivided — privacy barely existed in conventional terms. Rabbit's dome in particular was densely populated, with a steady turnover of sexual partners. The informality of Drop City was conducive to libidinal thinking, with no explicit pressure to organize, just a vague sense of being part of an art experiment. And as Curl reported, there were certain sexual experiments involving multiple partners — though these were few, and seem to have arisen as much out of necessity, as the result of the shortage of available partners, as anything else.

For the most part however, Drop City conformed to sexual convention. A BBC2 documentary of 1964, fronted by Jacob Bronowski, described an earnest bunch of idealists, pioneers in a historic sense, re-invoking an old American tradition. They were earnest, resourceful and hard-working; nothing at all was said of either their drug use (unexceptional, it turned out) or their sexual behaviour. Bronowski rather approved. Accounts of the sexual politics of Drop City paint a picture a long way from any kind of libidinal excess. In fact the close proximity of residents coupled (in the case of female commune members) with some half-digested feminist theory seems to have produced some awkward moments for visitors expecting the ready availability of sex. This was certainly Curl's initial experience: the production of new behavioural norms not wholly unlike those that they ostensibly replaced. Reflecting on the awkwardness of his first interactions with the Drop City women, he described how 'primary relationships seemed unaffected by the commune environment. 'Everybody still maintained, or wanted a special relationship with one other person, just like in the big outside world, Gene Bernofsky wrote: 

 It was kind of a straightforward middle-class deal. The sexual politics were pretty conservative and strait-laced. We talked about how we wanted to keep that part of our lives simple. Not to get involved in fiery cross-relationships. We disciplined ourselves so that it didn't go on. We were mostly college graduates and had a little maturity. and we realised how complicated and difficult life would be with any partner trading. That was one of the disciplines we had that helped us in our achievements on the land.

If Drop City reproduced some helpfully stabilizing characteristics from the outside world, it also reproduced a lot of its more negative characteristics.. for female droppers, the sexual revolution could simply seem fraudulent - a means for otherwise undesirable males to get laid, claiming refusal of sexual advances as refusal of the revolution tself. this is a major theme of Curls’ history. He quotes a commune resident, Miss Margarine: 'the truth is, this whole so-called sexual revolution is really something made up by guys and for guys. It tells women we're suppose to feel liberated by having sex with all of you. It just doesn't work like that, at least for women.