Quick Post -California Overturns Gay-Marriage Ban

Posted by mellissahughes on

The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory. The long-awaited court decision stemmed from San Francisco's highly publicized same-sex weddings, which in 2004 helped spur a conservative backlash in a presidential election year and a national dialogue over gay rights. Several states have since passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Today, 27 states have such amendments. The reaction to today's ruling outside the courthouse in San Francisco was one of jubilation as couples, once denied marriage, hugged, kissed, shouted and shook their fists at the sky. Holding up a sign that says, "Life feels different when you're married," Helen Pontac said she was beyond words.

While I view marriage as somewhat arcane, far be it for me, or any state legislature to prohibit anyone their right to happiness in the institution of marriage.

Via LA TIMES

Catch me if you can…..

Posted by mellissahughes on

Co-ed 5k. Werd. Sounds like fun…… except here’s the spin:

The ladies wear little skirts and are given a head start, and the men chase them. $500 bucks to the winner, male or female. Hey! it’s a fun way to keep in shape and potentially get laid especially if your gym selection is a little lacking, right??

The site seems innocent of intentional sexism surprisingly. I don’t know if all the spring-ness and catcalling in the air is affecting my reaction to this or not…. I’m just not digging the female as the dangling carrot image….and as Salon puts it “…. this is entirely routine — “edgy” and “innovative” would be putting men in skirts and having women chase after them.”

In my opinion it’s a poor attempt at gathering a bunch of women in the name of “empowerment’, (and exercise) and turning a blind eye to the fact that they are still being treated as objects. The whole thing just kinda confuses me.

Oh, and for the little ones, there’s Skirt-Chasers in training…… Really?

A Mother in Mourning

Posted by mellissahughes on


This story will break your heart. While Honor Killings are nothing new in the news, the cold and composed manner in which this father talks about killing his daughter, who he describes as a mistake he should have destroyed at birth, I couldn’t shake.

Her crime? “Falling”for a British soldier. Rand Abdel-Quader was thrown to the ground, stomped and then stabbed by her father, brothers and uncles for speaking with the British soldier. Her shrouded body was then tossed into a shallow unmarked grave, much like an animal, and then spat on. Her mother, who divorced her husband immediately after the killing, left him, and had her arm broken during her escape. She is now in hiding, dodging death threats from her own sons, and working for an organization which fights for woman’s rights in Iraq.

Something about this story brings Antigone to mind. Probably the bloodiest of Greek Tragedies, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, is in my opinion a brilliant attempt at expressing grief in situations where society does not deem it appropriate. For those of you not familiar with Antigone, to boil it down in a chick-pea sized nutshell, Antigone’s brother Polynices is killed during war. However, Polynices fought for the bad guys, (traitor to Thebes) and is therefore not to be buried, but to be left where he fell and picked apart by scavenger birds. Well, Antigone isn’t having it, and gives her fallen brother a proper burial, and is imprisoned in a cave and hung for her doings. She dies, a virgin (suspended in a sealed cave, or a big vagina if you’re into signifiers and decoding myth…… a womb within a womb within a womb) her fiance Haimon, the King Creon’s son, stabs himself and dies at her feet, and the son’s Momma Eurydice stabs herself in the tummy and rips our her own entrails….. Everyone dies! It’s fun for the whole family!!

So, Antigone…. Anti- against, opposed to, gone- seed or semen….. or a more modern usage gyne- gynocology, having to do with all things lady.. A modern translation – in place of mother…Ah those Greeks! So crafty with the etymology. What’s a girl to do? What society and your king say, or what her nature is screaming? And so bravely, she disobeys and willingly confesses her crime when caught.

Anywhoo, what’s my point? As American’s there are very, very few instances when we as a society might feel shamed by our desire to mourn, this is in large part due to our need to see people as individuals first, and criminals second. Don’t believe me? How many 20/20 specials have you watched tearful parents lament the loss of their children turned mass-murderers, serial-killers, cult-leaders, pedophiles? Plenty. This is not true for our Iraqi brothers and sisters. They are dismissed as evil and written out of the family, and even more figuratively, snuffed out of history. This woman,and her sisters, like Antigone left hanging in a cave, are trapped in their own sex.

Mothers Day Reflections…..

Posted by mellissahughes on

Even though Jack is four and a half years old, this is my fifth Mothers Day. My first was spent in the hospital when I went into labor 14 weeks early. I sat in a hospital bed with a fetal heart monitor strapped to my belly as they fed me intravenous drugs that made my contractions stop, but every muscle in my body shake like a crack addict going through withdrawal. I tried desperately for the next few days to keep Jack inside me. Every three days inside was a huge developmental milestone for him.

On that Sunday morning an older woman entered my room and game me a corsage. I looked at her confused and asked her what the flower was for. She explained to me that even though I was in the Anti-partum wing, I was still a Mommy this sunny Sunday morning, and that the hospital was honoring all Mommies with these corsages. She pinned it on my fugly hospital gown and whistled her way down the hallway.

I cried when she left the room. The day before I had to tell the doctors and midwifes that I wanted Jack circumcised, I planned to breastfeed, and had to face the very true reality that he may be born ridiculously premature….To my incredibly immature 23 year old brain, Jack was not a reality, not just yet……

and somehow, all of these profoundly important choices I was verbalizing, although they were heavy and somewhat immediate, were still not real to me.

Something about that flower on my hospital johnny was though……

Melly gets memed

Posted by mellissahughes on

I knew it would take something like this for me to resume posting…. I actually saw this circulating around the blogosphere and thought to myself, it’s kind of just a tech-geeky chain letter, or one of those annoying forwards your natural-light-starved cubicle-imprisoned friends send to you…. but here goes…

To play the game:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Here we go:

But Shalit’s most egregious move is to set up a startling new blame-the-victim paradigm: Not only does a woman deserve individual blame if she’s attacked, but, by extension, all women are to blame due to a general lack of modesty that leads to wanton male behavior. Even if her dubious claim that modesty protects against sexual violence were true, she ignores how modesty’s complement, shame, has historically served to imprison sexual-assault victims in a mire of guilt and social condemnation. Furthermore, Shalit leaves no room for personal choice: A critical mass of women, she implies, must join the modesty club if men are to be browbeaten into civilized behavior (otherwise, modesty will simply be mocked by men who can still get free sex from loose women).

From the essay “I can’t Believe It’s Not Feminism! On the Feminists Who Aren’t.” Published in Bitchfest.

Confession: This was the second book I picked up. The first book had only one sentence on page 123, and I was left in a conundrum….. scanning the bookshelf quickly, I saw Bitchfest, my favorite Feminist Reader, and thought, well hell, I’m sure when other bloggers were memed they thought really hard and carefully before picking up the “first book” lying around……

However, I find it easy to believe that David really did have an Anarchist Reader at his fingertips, (he seems to have an endless supply of indie Anarchist mags and Soy Potato Chips on his person at all times…..)

And so I tag my five victims: Actually, I’m only tagging two, as I can’t really find other friend bloggers who haven’t already been memed.

Mafoo

Gurf

Rzewski and Newspeak at the Lyceum

Posted by mellissahughes on

Please go over to the WNYC site and read/listen to the interview with David T. Little and Rzewski…. it was quite possibly the most awkward 15 minutes of my musical life, but hey, my new motto is, if you don’t leave an audience uncomfortable after viewing concert, you’re not doing your job…..

In the post are video footage of the interview, as well as two audio clips of Newspeak performing Coming Together ( and rocking the fuck out, I might add- listen with good speakers/headphones) and the Price of Oil, which I’m beginning to love more and more…..

I think we performed very well, but the awkwardness of the interview to come, and performing post- interview and not letting the no-one-knows-why-birds-sing bullshit influence our playing was a bit too intense after a long week of late night rehearsals. Bottom line: we knew it would be tough to get Rzewski to talk, but we had no idea that when he did, he would talk ad nauseum, ad infinitum et ad insanitum…..that part was real fun.

Mad props to David for organizing this concert, and giving me a shout out on his blog

Let me smell your……

Posted by mellissahughes on

A month ago Jack, Matt and I grabbed a very quick bite at a Wendy’s near Atlantic Center in Brooklyn. While quietly feasting on our fries, music played on the restaurant stereo system when I suddenly looked up and locked eyes with Matt, and had a mutual “did you just hear what I heard?” moment….

Yes, yes i did…. “Let me smell your dick” was playing oh so softly over the Wendy’s speakers. Below rapper Riskay’s video. Be sure to hang in there until 2:52 where girl throws i phone over apartment railing. My heart skipped a beat, I swear. Break shit, throw shit, burn shit, bleach shit, just don’t mess with the tech gadgets.