if you listen to one thing from Iran

http://tinyurl.com/mwy6zn

There is a transcript at the site for my hearing impaired friends; if you can do the audio though, I encourage you to do so, and I wish my ASL was good enough to do an ASL video of this, because the tonal quality is pretty amazing, but my skill just isn't there without devoting the entire day to it.

Video that the audio is with is not graphic -- just shows Iran maps and stuff.

The audio is very, very hard to listen to, both for its descriptions of violence and for the emotion in this woman's voice.

The material is from CNN. Please do not be unwilling to listen to it, because of where I've linked you to (a blog called "Liberal for Life").

sundries

A few days ago I posted a link to Top 100 Hot Butches. Since that link went up the list has been changed, due to significant communication its creator, Sinclair Sexsmith, received as regards his inclusion of transmen in the list in a way that could very much be perceived has his not truly acknowledging their gender and self-identification.

As bifemmefatale notes, this is how you fail gracefully on the Internet.

So take a look. It's instructive: both on how we can respond when confronted with the biases existant in our own actions, and on the very complicated landscape that gender is. This is the 201-level course, kids.

Argh, plants! So many issues, a constant narrative. Birds must stop attacking tiny peppers. Luckily, the big first pepper continues to do well.

I still have those Metropolis tickets for Saturday night in NYC -- $30 for the pair!

I've been really frigging sick for the last few days. It's been really annoying.

You've seen it before, but hey -- Queer Eye Candy.

Busting ass at work. Looking to July, which is going to be my month of writing essays for publication/submission, as I've a long list of good potentials and specific requests that have been sent to me.

My wacky world journalism adventures continue, now reading lots of English language newspapers from India. And I adore them.

May I express my deep love for Varsano's yet again? The owner has agreed to make gluten-free chocolate-covered pretzels for me. I drop off the pretzels, pick up the results 45 minutes later. He's even considering offering it as a product in-store if it goes well and he can find a good source for the pretzels other than at the terrible retail prices.

kill the women first

Many years ago, I was in a bookstore and saw a book entitled Kill the Women First which posited, among other things, that in any military action against terrorist or other movements, women involved with the movement must be targeted (e.g., killed) first, as a woman who engages in such activities is likely to be exceptionally dangerous motivated as she is by emotion, her own oppression and an instinct to commit action in a manner theoretically atypical to the female gender. Additionally, the elimination of such women would demoralize the others in the group being combated.

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From what we can tell about what is going on in Iran, women are central to the demonstrations, the protests, the revolution -- whatever it is that is happening over there.

Maybe they are the leaders of it, maybe not. But they are its icons. And its participants, in what seems to be massive numbers.

Reports coming out of Iran today seem to indicate that the Basiji and others are specifically targeting women for the more extreme ends of violence. There have been reports of limbs hacked off with machetes, amputations due to severe beatings, murders, shootings and more.

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We, the West, we romanticize this, all these brave and bloody girls.

We talk about how beautiful they are. We talk about the timbre of their voices. We talk about their hair. I think it is nearly impossible to avoid this, as a Westerner, no matter how hard we try.

We talk about how they pick up rocks and hand them to those with better arms to throw at the Basiji.

The rocks are all that are available, but I've become fixated on them; unruly women are so often stoned.

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My father told me, when I was a little girl and like to watch Private Benjamin on the television, that a country that sends its women into war has lost its will to be civilized.

I was no more than eight years old and very angry with him.

I wonder what he thinks about the women in Iran.

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My mother always used to tell me that because I was Jewish, I could not lash out at those who bullied me as a child, for we who were once treated as animals must not act as animals.

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To be a woman, I think, is to always be some sort of animal: roaring or butchered.