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Move over, Carrie Prejean — a new pageant winner is sharing her views on marriage equality.

Image courtesy of colorlines.com

Last week, Jimena Navarrete of Jalisco, Mexico was crowned Miss Universe. On the night of the pageant, she was asked a question about children and internet access, to which she responded, “I do believe that Internet is an indispensable, necessary tool for the present time…[but] We must be sure to teach them the values that we learned as a family.” The term “family values” is one often used by opponents of marriage equality, but as it turns out, that interpretation is far from what Navarrete meant.

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Nina Hartley, image from Humanist

This past week, Jezebel posted an item that used two seemingly contradictory terms to catch the eye: feminist and porn star. To me, the undeniable shock value was a bit gratuitous, since the woman didn’t mentioned one thing about feminism, nor could we verify that her “self proclaimed” title had any meaning at all. The post was a stupid video about a retired pornstar who gave her exotic cat testicle implants after neutering him. She was a buffoon.

Too bad they didn’t call attention to a more thought-provoking and articulate “feminist pornstar” interviewed for Humanist Magazine, Nina Hartley.  In the interview, Hartley discusses her religious views (she’s a devout atheist), her views of human rights (she is a staunch feminist), and her views on sexuality (she’s a pornstar, duh).   She is a picture of articulateness, thoughtfulness, and contrast for many feminists who find porn deeply troubling. I, for one, am not one of those.

Nina Hartley is whip smart feminist and someone who has sex on camera, for money, and has done so for decades. To her, those ideas are entirely compatible. She decries “radical feminists,” whom she describes as basically a group of crazy man haters, for lashing out at porn and making her special brand of pornstar-feminism that much harder to peddle. “Radical feminists” (who is she talking about exactly, I wonder?) give feminism a bad rep for everyone else, says Hartley. They hate men, they hate pleasure, they hate the voluntary entrance into anything which has at one time been co-opted by men to objectify women.  Say wha?  Hmm, now we are left with a short list.

I’m intrigued by her words about radical feminists. On the one hand, I think the very essence of feminism should and has to be radicalism. There’s a distinct value in having radicalism in a field such as feminism, that hinges on the push back against the norm, against the box, against the accepted and moderate. I like that Hartley has the guts to offer this feminist critique as a feminist herself, from within a field that is so often loathed by feminists – porn, that is. I like that Hartley is also an atheist which, I think, also takes a certain feminist chutzpah. She is a powerful symbol of both empowerment and confound. Read the rest of this entry →

Image via Wikipedia

Reality television is an international phenomenon. The Big Brother franchise, in particular, can be found in different incarnations around the globe. Because reality television is now such a recognized and popular mainstream format, it is easier for programs and individual contestants to sneak in subversive or provocative messages for the purpose of education and awareness. The question is: Do such messages work?

On a recent episode of Africa’s Big Brother All Stars, contestants Sheila and Meryl were found sharing a bed and being intimate under the covers. The precise degree of intimacy is unclear — some reports mention kissing, others mention sex. Only one housemate, Mwisho, walked in on the activity, and he handled the situation respectfully. Overall, there has been little to no backlash on the show itself, aside from the fact that Sheila was later eliminated, and it is unclear whether or not her relations with Meryl had anything to do with her eviction.

The backlash from Big Brother‘s viewers, however, is another story. Read the rest of this entry →

Nadja Benaissa Photograph courtesy of Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Nadja Benaissa, of the popular German all-girl pop group No Angels, has been charged in criminal court with grievous bodily harm and attempted aggravated assault. Her crime? Having unprotected sex with three men without informing them of her HIV-positive status. One of the men has since become HIV-positive as well. (The other two tested negative for the virus.) Although the singer is now 28, she was tried in juvenile court because her crimes allegedly began when she was only 17, the age at which she became infected with the virus. She faced a prison sentence of between six months and 10 years, but was given a two-year suspended sentence and 300 hours of community service working with those who are HIV-positive. Has this case educated the public to take strides against infection or further increased the stigma against HIV-positive people?

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Interviews! Round table discussions! And much more!

To listen to the podcast, you can become a subscriber on iTunes by clicking here or you can copy the podcast feed (http://www.genderacrossborders.com/?feed=podcast) into your local media player to automatically download new episodes.

Check back on Mondays for new episodes/content (on a bi-weekly schedule to start–we’ll see how things go).

Annnnnd, the first episode featuring the Guerrilla Girls on Tour! is already live and below this post!

On the first episode of GAB’s new podcast, we are joined by several members of the Guerrilla Girls on Tour! But who is this touring theatre group really? What are their aims and aspirations? And did Justin Bieber really write their theme song? Listen on to find out!

Full transcript after the jump!

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 Enhanced Podcast [16:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

This post is a part of the THIS IS WHAT A YOUNG FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE blog carnival.

According to some (ahem, Newsweek and the New York Times), young feminists do not exist. Those same people also say that young people don’t care about reproductive rights and equal pay for women. As a young woman myself, and a self-proclaimed feminist, I find this hard to believe (hello! *waves* right here!). Those who are fighting for women’s rights, whether in the U.S. or outside of the U.S., they–and by “they”, I mean “we”–are the young feminists. We are the young feminists who travel to Washington, D.C. to protest for equal rights. We are the young feminists who volunteer for people running for political office. We are the young feminists who escort women into abortion clinics. We. Are. The. Young. Feminists.

But I don’t need to tell you this–because most likely, if you’re reading Gender Across Borders, you’re a young feminist, too. And that’s awesome. Read the rest of this entry →

Blog del Narco screen shot

The website WikiLeaks made headlines last month when it posted classified documents chronicling a futile and misled war effort in Afghanistan.

Now it seems Mexico has its own version of WikiLeaks: a secure site chronicling another futile and misled war effort.

Blog del Narco tracks the Mexican drug war with posts of bloody bodies, videos of beheadings, autopsy photos, and images of crime scenes accessible only to Mexican police and the military. The blog’s author — who claims to be a twentysomething computer security student — is anonymous, but the site’s content indicates that both drug cartels and police are using Blog del Narco to publicize their respective messages of fear. An invite on the site calls for material from anyone who wants to send it and promises total anonymity. Some posts include statements by President Felipe Calderon and other public officials condemning the violence. But narcotraffickers have also posted warnings on the site for attacks that have later been carried out. In one instance, a video posted to the blog may have led to the arrest of a prison warden who was allegedly releasing inmates at night to commit murders.

The images are evidence of the failure of militarization to end violence in Mexico. Like the WikiLeaks video post of U.S. soldiers in a helicopter killing Reuters journalists and civilians, Blog del Narco shows the horror of the Mexican drug war in full color.

There is much to show.

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Recently, Change.org‘s Michael A. Jones covered a “public relations” misstep by the highly-recognized corporation, Target. It was revealed that the chain had donated $150,000 to a known antigay political figure in Minnesota (home to Target HQ). The matter of whether or not Target officials will work on rebuilding the their image is up for debate. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t look like they are conducting a whole lot of self reflection.

Target has had a gay-friendly history, and many have cited egalitarian hiring practices when discussing the recent scandal. It is hard to imagine that such a playful and youthful corporation brand would be aligned with an “aggressively antigay” political figure, as described in a New York Times editorial. The editorial also offered a business-minded opinion on the matter, which noted that,

The Target experience should be a lesson in the value of disclosure. The company, which insisted it supported Mr. Emmer solely for his pro-business views, discovered that it is bad business to back a candidate so out of step with the rest of its values. Presumably, it will be more alert now, knowing that customers are watching.

This is good business advice. But that’s not what is striking about the professional wisdom–instead, it is the last sentence that caught my attention. It seemed so odd that such a public organization would have to remind itself that people are watching.

Target’s image owes much to the Pop Art sensibility–their famous logo even resembles a Jasper Johns (an artist credited with influencing the Pop Art movement) painting, Target, which was created in 1958 (four years prior to the original logo design). Pop artists tended to be playful and cheeky, mixing the suggestive wit of a dirty joke with the language of advertising.  By doing so, the interdependence between consumerism and voyeurism was illustrated. Read the rest of this entry →