August 23, 2001, 9:21 a.m.
Look, I'm in the Village Voice ,
talking about my website(s). For those of you visiting my site for the
first time through the above article, "hi."
(And consider visiting some of my friends: Annie Koh, Paperson, Bianca Ortiz, Chandra, Orangepeeler, et
cetera.)
The article is about "Asian artists [who] make porn sites work for them," though I don't know
that I've ever expected to "convert" anybody with the Asian American feminist
resources site (tragically outdated) and in any case, I don't have
a problem with porn per se, but more with the historical and ideological conditions that
produce a certain erotic fantasy of colonial relations, and
how this then means I have to deal with more than the usual
number of assholes. Or, as I've said elsewhere:
Anti-porn arguments bore me. Such accounts
get in bed with right-wingers, infantilize women, condescend to sex
workers, refuse to critically consider porn as a social practice, and
prescribe what gets to count as "healthy" sexuality (usually vanilla,
reproductive heteronormativity). Yawn.
But sometimes, it's true, as a critical theorist, pro-sex
politics also bore me. They sometimes (not always, sometimes) feel
limited, especially when what counts as politics is just about fucking.
And because I'm a cranky girl, I worry about the very real potential for
flattening all those uneven social relations and their histories into a
spread-around lack of mind-blowing sex. If we meaningfully consider sex
and sexuality -- especially in its regulation and criminalization--
in a dialectic with ideologies of race, gender, nation, capitalism, and
material relations, the rhetorical hard-sell of personalized liberation
[in much of sex radical discourse] falls flat.
August 22, 2001, 7:43 p.m.
Coming soon: Why The Legend of Billie Jean
is the best teen rebel movie ever, and what politics can learn from
pop culture.
9:05 a.m.
When I was a clinic defense organizer,
anti-abortion activists would reach over our heads, around our bodies,
and shout from opposite street corners (after "buffer zones" had been
established), to alternately beg or condemn the clients we were
escorting. Ranging from a high-pitched "Please don't kill me, mommy!" (a
very odd act of fetal ventriloquism) to the vicious "Baby-killer!" they
nonetheless claimed altruistic intentions, insisting
they sought to "help."
Apparently, this is no longer enough -- and neither is stalking
just doctors and clinic workers. Anti-abortion activists
have now moved on to stalking the clients, pupblishing their
photographs, medical records, and personal information on the Internet
in a tactic of intimidation that deliberately references the last thirty
years of anti-abortion violence.
_________________________
Judge bans woman's abortion information from Internet
Aug. 23, 2001 | EDWARDSVILLE, ILL. -- A judge
Wednesday ordered three anti-abortion activists to stop publishing a
woman's medical records detailing complications from an abortion.
The woman was treated at St. Elizabeth hospital
in Granite City in June after suffering complications from an abortion
at the Hope Clinic for Women.
Daniel and Angela Michael of Highland, who are
regular protesters at the clinic, admitted they took pictures of the
woman as she was taken to the hospital's emergency room. Soon after, a
copy of the woman's medical records, her photograph and an article
written by Angela Michael about the case appeared on a Web site operated
by Stephen Wetzel of Omaha, Neb.
The woman sued Wetzel, the Michaels and the
hospital for violation of privacy, seeking more than $50,000 in damages.
Judge George Moran temporarily barred the Michaels and Wetzel from
publishing the material. Other anti-abortion Web sites have also posted
it.
While her photo and medical records appeared to
have been removed from the Internet Wednesday, an article written by
Angela Michael containing much of the same information remained on a
separate anti-abortion Web site.