Some photos from this morning…

… another book for my library on the subject of being woman, Girlhood by Melissa Febos…

… from a recent Guernica Magazine interview…

The abuse and subjugation of women’s bodies has been considered the right of men for much longer than it hasn’t. I mean, think of the resistance to affirmative consent legislation—people get really bent out of shape at the idea of men even being expected to ask before they touch you. They would rather women have sex they don’t want than have men suffer the supposed awkwardness of asking for verbal consent.¹

… and…

I used to sit in school looking at the people around me, and marvel at how perverse it was that we all walked around in makeup and plucked out our body hair and talked about bullshit all day. I was acutely aware of the fact that human society as I knew it—capitalism, patriarchy, manners—were all just one way things could have gone, a set of narratives that we collectively decided to collude in every minute of every day. I guess I wanted out.²

… pre-ordered, probably good i don’t have it right away, still trying to finish de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex… it’s an odd subject for an American white male in his 60’s to be interested in, i know… my interest in fine art photography brought me to it… as i reviewed images of women in my photography feeds, I began to wonder about the many ways women are photographed, how they make photographs, how they critique photography… i don’t know what i will do with what i learn, for now, i am just learning…

They specifically like Law and Order to be embodied in a chief. In all Olympus, there is one sovereign god; the prestigious virile essence must be gathered in one archetype of which father, husband, and lovers are merely vague reflections. It is somewhat humorous to say that their worship of this great totem is sexual; what is true is that women fully realize their infantile dream of abdication and prostration. In France, the generals Boulanger, Pétain, and de Gaulle have always had the support of women; one remembers the purple prose of L’Humanité’s women journalists when writing about Tito and his beautiful uniform. The general or the dictator—eagle eye, prominent chin—is the celestial father the serious universe demands, the absolute guarantor of all values.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex (p. 641). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.