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I don’t want money or sympathy or advice.

I want the combined reading history of all 3000-some of you.

I am planning on writing my Master’s thesis on the topic of “female sexual dysfunction”. Which i’m putting in inverted commas because it’s a contested and deeply problematic term.
What i want to look at are literary presentation of FSD. And i’m specifically talking about FSD as in dyspareunia, vulvodynia, vestibulitis, vaginismus, anorgasmia etc. NOT hysteria, nymphomania, or other “madwoman in the attic” type pathologies or pseudo-pathologies.

I’ve got plentyof lived-experience testimony, autobiography, sexological studies and the like. But what i’m lacking are literary presentations.

I know for a fact that the combined libraries of my followers is far vaster than my own. So—can you folks think of any literary (i.e. fiction, poetry, drama, maybe film) instances of the above?

All i have so far is The Bell Jar. And On Chesil Beach, which i’m loath to even pick up, let alone read of study.

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

rabbit-ears:

astroprojection:

asiansnotstudying:

We need to think critically about what media representations say about Asians.  http://daawg.org/the-sexual-politics-of-k-pop

I especially like this:

I keep watching in part because there is no Asian American female star I can dance to and although the Korean popstar is dancing in her underwear there is something important to be said for existing in the public eye.  As a woman who for years has consumed images of Britney Spears dance around in latex suits and much less these images of Wonder Girls’ female sexuality seem relatively mild.  I cannot name one Asian American musician in the modern mainstream the way Britney Spears is.   Hill-Collinssays the female of color has to operate within frames that other her.  For the Asian female subservience/agreeability and exoticism are often Hollywood media images I have to consume (cough, cough Brenda Song Social Network).  It’s conflicting imagery for me.  I can be all arcane sociological jargon or I can cut to the chase.  I would rather consume K-pop with its disturbing representation of female cuteness and shallow imagery than be non-existent on the American pop scene or subject to hollywood portrayals of the Asian female giving filatio to the white male she just met in a bathroom stall because he’s a potential billionaire, that does not mean as I watch k-pop I am an unquestioning critic.

This post is spot on. As a Korean American girl it gets irritating to see people, even other Koreans, talk about K-pop.

There’s one side that excuses the sexism in K-pop because apparently Asians doesn’t know any better. Then there’s that other extreme where people concern troll about how K-pop/Korean media in general is so horrendously misogynistic and how it’s brainwashing Asian girls into being mindless twigs. Asian women are perfectly capable of critically analyzing sexism in our cultures tyvm. The Wonder Girls, 2NE1, Girls’ Generation, and all the other K-pop girl groups, for all their problems, are better role models imo for Asian girls than the stereotypical shit the Western world has to offer.

Sort of tangent, but I am so tired of hearing white asiaphiles analyze -isms in Asian media. They rarely even try to understand cultural differences or even acknowledge that there are any. They think only in terms of Western concepts of social justice and philosophy. (Not like those robotic, conformist Azns would care about anything like sj, right.) They only listen to other weeaboos and act like Asians are mythical creatures. I’ve seen too many white feminists talk about sexism in Japan even though their only knowledge about Japan comes from anime.  And of course they don’t analyze how Asians are oppressed in the West. I just never want to hear another weeaboo talk about how Japan can be sooo oppressive and disgustingly ignorant and try to prove it by citing anime.

Yes please and thank you

you ought to shut the fuck up, don’t you dare complain about how Deaf people are being “badly” portrayed in the media because deaf characters use American Sign Language or another sign language. By doing so, you imply that ASL is an inferior language and we Deaf people are retarded, ignorant or stupid for not reading lips or speaking. What the fuck, assholes? That’s like complaining that French people are wrongly portrayed onscreen for speaking French! I might be oralist (trained and raised in oral schools, taught to read lips and speak orally) yet I PREFER TO USE AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE BECAUSE I’M MORE COMFORTABLE WITH IT. News flash: many of us Deaf people are HAPPY and PROUD to sign, and do not feel the need to speak in order to prove that we are “smart” by your standards. It always pleases me to see Deaf characters on TV or in films, and it gives me even more pleasure to see them communicating in sign language, because sign languages are LEGITIMATE as any other languages like French, Castillian, Hindi, Mandarin, and countless of languages out there.

This is for the BITCH who complained about the beautiful Indian commercial video of Deaf Indian schoolchildren signing the anthem of India. That bitch claimed Deaf people were being falsely portrayed, like they were viewed as stupid and ignorant. So using sign language makes us stupid and retarded? Because Deaf children are not speaking or reading lips but rather communicating by sign language, there’s something wrong with that? Fuck you and eat shit.

The core idea behind Orientalism according to Edward Said is that the West has created a dichotomy, between the reality of the East and the romantic notion of the Orient. The Middle East and Asia are viewed with prejudice and racism. They are made out to be a race, which is backward and unaware of its own history and culture. To fill this void, to bring light to the uninitiated, the West has created a culture, history, and future promise for them. On this framework rests not only the study of the Orient, but also the political imperialism of Europe in the East.

History of Orientalism

As early as Napoleon’s campaigns into Egypt, the Orient fascinated Europe. The Orient-including present-day Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa-exerted its allure on the Western artist’s imagination. Figures in Middle Eastern dress appear in Renaissance works. The opulent eroticism of harem scenes appealed to the French Rococo aesthetic. Until this point, however, Europeans had minimal contact with the East, usually through trade and intermittent military campaigns. In 1798, a French army led by General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt and occupied the country until 1801.

Depiction of Harems in Orientalist Paintings

Most Orientalist Paintings depict harems. Probably denied entrance to authentic seraglios, male artists relied largely on hearsay and imagination, populating opulently decorated interiors with luxuriant odalisques, or female slaves or concubines (many with Western features), reclining in the nude or in Oriental dress. Painters like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres never traveled to the East, but conjured voluptuous nymphs in erotic harem settings from his imagination. Beyond their implicit eroticism, harem scenes evoked a sense of “cultivated beauty and pampered isolation” to which many Westerners aspired.

Other themes

While many Europeans depended on published travelogues and officially sanctioned literature like the Description de l’Égypte for their reference of the orient, many artists actually took the pains of making one or more journeys to the region. Genre painting, the prevalent form of Orientalist art in the nineteenth century, drew from the everyday life of the Oriental cities. Orientalist Painter, Gérôme popularized the theme of the bashi-bazouk, or Turkish mercenary soldier, often depicted in routine activities or at leisure.

via Orientalism

    Most famously, the Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said put a torch to debate over Orientalism in 1979 with the publication of his book Orientalism. In it he argued that the West’s imaginary artistic and literary notions of a static, passive and even morally degenerate East abetted Western colonialism, no matter how benign the apparent intentions of the paintings or the literature. He held that the “Grand Tour memorabilia” aspect of Orientalist painting was politically inexcusable, if not actively racist. Still today, no discussion of Orientalism is complete without consideration of Said’s critique. 
        
       ”But if it’s cultural imperialism, why are the majority of buyers Middle Eastern?” retorts MacDermott, whose gallery had its own 2008 exhibition, “The British Orientalists: Eastern Views, Western Eyes.” 
        
       At Sotheby’s, Senior Vice President Ali Can Ertug responds by choosing his images carefully. “Certain images of Turkey honor me as a Turk. They are incredibly honoring of our heritage. They are historically important documentation for us because they are scenes we have not recorded, whereas in Europe that’s taken for granted. It’s lovely to have the earliest, sometimes the only, images of things that we have lost — like street-sellers, parts of Istanbul that have burned down, landscapes that have changed so radically, like panoramic views of the Bosporus. I find the Orientalists’ genuine interest flattering and valuable. I presume that people from Damascus and Cairo would be similarly honored.”

Behind Orientalism’s Veil

I don’t know about flattering, and I think he might be kidding himself. But I understand why one might buy such paintings. The same way we look at colonial photos…contextual analysis. And because it’s all “we” have got, really.

Stop calling my transition ‘courageous’. It is not a choice; if you had the dysphoric shit I had you’d do it to, regardless of what social forces were arrayed against you.  I am running as fast as I can away from a timeline where I am male because that timeline? Ends with me emotionally dead. AT THE VERY LEAST.

Please note how rarely MSM is calling her murderers white supremacists and how rarely the organization they are a part of is called a hate group.

Notice how key phrases like “hotly contested issue” keep coming up as code words for “white supremacist violence.” Notice how the Minutemen are never called a terrorist organization. Notice how Brisenia is always mentioned in context of the little white girl shot during the Giffords shooting—as if Brisenia only became important and a tragedy *after* a white girl was killed. As if the only thing that could help us to understand the tragedy of Brisenia is first understanding a tragedy through a lens of whiteness. 

Remember that Brisenia was killed first. And that she was specifically murdered because of the color of her skin. 

What happened to Brisenia was an act of white supremacist violence. White supremacy is gendered male—and sees brown children as “anchors” and brown girl children as the next generation of resource drainers. Race IS gender. Citizenship IS gender. Border crossing is a direct threat to white supremacy. 

This is the truth we miss unless we teach other how to find it.