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"A Brown Girl's Guide to Gender" Slam Poetry

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"A Brown Girl's Guide to Gender" Slam Poetry

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An emotional attitude can be taken out of this poem because of the way that Aranya vocalizes each powerful statement. The poem is overall based on how girls are supposed to act and what their role is in today's society. Many parts of the poem are gruesome yet they help identify the problems that society is putting on the roles on women. It's harmful because it can put an emotional feeling onto so many women and how they see themselves. This poem already sort of puts a healthy perspective because it gives everyone a sense of reality about how our society is and what affect it's putting on girls.

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India. We've come to associate the place with the gang rape of young girls, acid attacks on women's faces, abused wives who immolate themselves.

We do not need to accept this.

Aranya Johar does not acccept it. She stood up and recited an uppercut of a poem. She's reaching out to men to stop this. It's a minority of men who assault women, if the good guys don't turn a blind eye, it can stop.

On her Twitter account and Instagram account she talks about how much she likes pizza.

Can we do we all can so she can eat her pizza in peace, and not have to worry about guys trying to rape her, because with her skirt cut above the knee, she must have been 'asking for it'?

You can follow her on Twitter.

Here's the full text of her poem:

'The first boy who held my hand told me boys didn't want to hear about vaginas bleeding. Younger me could smell the misogyny. Vaginas only meant to be fucked, breasts only meant to be sucked, mouths only meant to blow. It's true, I know. My waist meant to be compared to an hour glass. My voice only meant to quiver, 'Ugh, please, fast.' Yet, I am silenced. For all we boil down to is sexual interaction. Not just me, my mother, sisters, friends, all quicken their pace post 8.30 in the evening. My mom telling me to wear skirts out less often. Nirbhaya and more, left forgotten. We don't want to be another of India's daughters, do we? So I wear my jeans long and wear my tops high. Don't show my cleavage or a hint of my thighs. Don't want to be mistaken for wanting it. Cause if I wear less, I'm more than just flaunting it, I'm risking it. Risking not my virginity, but my life. My hymen seems to be sacred, told to keep it till I'm a wife. If not, I'm a whore, a slut, a skank and more. Not as pure as I was before. 15 year old Laxmi didn't like 32 year old Guddu back and Guddu dealt with it real maturely, he made her the victim of an acid attack. Laxmi could be your sister, your girlfriend, your cousin. We're girls, women, human, not a burden. I ask my male friend to drop me home because his privilege will protect mine. I'm sorry dad, for I was catcalled in my uniform at the age of 9. This isn't an all men thing I know. Trust me, I do. But the men I can trust are only a few. At the age of 12 my bra straps were sexualized. At the same time, we don't get damn sexual rights. My aunt raped by her husband, but marital rape is fine. Pucker up, it's a mad design, get in line. So what I'm trying to say here tonight is, I'm sorry I was brought up in a family where my brother taught me wrong from right. Where my mother believes in our generation to better the world. Make it slightly easier for each and every girl. Thank you. For I see men in this room. Reaching out for help, realizing the bane of the womb. Being saved by the sane of a few. We're all collectively reaching out for you. Thank you.'

Watch her performance:

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A Brown Girl's Guide to Gender- Aranya Johar

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India. We've come to associate the place with the gang rape of young girls, acid attacks on women's faces, abused wives who immolate themselves. We do not need to accept this. Aranya Johar does not acccept it. She stood up and recited an uppercut of a poem.

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The attitude that is represented in this article is mainly anger because there are a lot of people that found the song "Blurred Lines", by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, was very misogynistic. The lyrics, within themselves, can give a basic idea of what the song is mainly about. It's harmful to women because it makes us seem like we are supposed to be used to men trying to seduce us into something that we don't want to do. Overall, the whole song has a very inappropriate and sexist message towards women. Completely changing the lyrics and the message of the song would have to make this a healthier perspective towards women because just changing one line won't really affect anything that women feel towards this song if they really understand it.

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his week, University College London student union (UCLU) took the unusual step of banning a single song, Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines. It joins around 20 other UK student unions to do so. This is the latest development in the story of how the biggest song of the year became the most controversial of the decade: an unprecedented achievement, though not one that fills Thicke with pride.

It seems impossible that anyone with the faintest interest in popular culture could have missed either the song or the controversy, but here is a recap. At the end of March, mid-table R&B singer Thicke, along with producer Pharrell Williams and rapper TI, released Blurred Lines, a libidinous R&B party jam about a woman in a nightclub who may or not be interested in him. In April, one blogger branded it a "rape song", and two months later Tricia Romano of the Daily Beast described it as "rapey", a word that caught fire in other media outlets. The song might have escaped censure if the video, in which the three male performers goof around with scantily clad (and, in one version, topless) models, had not generated its own separate yet overlapping controversy.

Throughout the summer, as the song eclipsed even Daft Punk's Get Lucky as the biggest hit of 2013, debate about its sexual politics heated up. In September, contributors to Project Unbreakable, a photographic project dedicated to rape survivors, held up placards comparing words spoken by their attackers to lines from the song. Also in September, Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) became the first student body to ban Blurred Lines.

"It promotes a very worrying attitude towards sex and consent," explained Kirsty Haigh, EUSA's vice-president of services. "This is about ensuring that everyone is fully aware that you need enthusiastic consent before sex. The song says: 'You know you want it.' Well, you can't know they want it unless they tell you they want it."

By that point, Thicke's hit was part of a bigger debate about the messages of pop lyrics and videos. Miley Cyrus's performance at the Video Music Awards in August, during which Thicke popped up like some kind of sex-pest Zelig, ignited another firestorm of indignation on several fronts. Recently, Netmums published a survey claiming that 80% of parents had found their children copying explicit lyrics or dance movies from music videos, while Annie Lennox called for videos to be regulated in the same way as movies. "I'm all for freedom of expression," she began ominously, "but this is clearly one step beyond, and it's clearly into the realm of porn. How do you stop your kids being exposed to it?"

This week, a tipping point has been reached. Lily Allen launched the video to her comeback single, Hard Out Here, which takes aim at music industry sexism with specific reference to the Blurred Lines video. And three women's organisations launched the Rewind&Reframe campaign, with a four-pronged strategy: to enable young women to air their grievances about music videos, to campaign for age ratings on videos, to encourage compulsory sex and relationship education in schools, and to pressure the music industry to get its house in order.

"In music videos across the board there's widespread racism and sexism, specifically the sexualisation of black and ethnic minority women," says Lia Latchford of Rewind&Reframe. "Young women have told us that it has a real impact on their day-to-day lives. They're tired of messages that depict women as highly sexualised passive sex objects. Getting rid of one song won't solve the problem. It's a culture of racism and sexism that we need to change."

Demonstrators on a Slutwalk march in Chicago in September are in no doubt about Blurred Lines. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

The last time pop music inspired such snowballing outrage was during the rise of the Parents' Music Resource Centre (PMRC). Established in 1985 by Tipper Gore, wife of Al, after she found her daughter listening to Prince's sexually graphic Darling Nikki, the PMRC successfully campaigned to slap stickers reading Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics on offending albums. The ensuing climate of censorship reached a peak in 1992, when rapper Ice-T's rock band Body Count buckled to huge political pressure and deleted their song Cop Killer. They pointedly replaced it on the album with a new song called Freedom of Speech.

That moral panic was driven by older, more conservative campaigners, but much of the current opposition to pop's excesses stems from young feminists. If the MTV generation was the first to be exposed to the power of music videos, then the YouTube generation is the first to understand those videos in the context of social media and online discourse. Cultural consumers have never been more attuned to the messages, both explicit and implicit, embedded in popular artforms. Arguments about racism, misogyny and cultural appropriation that used to thrive primarily in academia are now mainstream. Sometimes these concerns about "problematic" art go to comical extremes - the Tumblr Your Fave Is Problematic leaves you wondering if there is anything out there that isn't problematic - but at least young consumers are asking the right questions, in the spirit of playwright August Wilson's axiom: "All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics."

Even the most prominent model in the Blurred Lines video, Emily Ratajkowski, has said: "I'm glad that people are criticising pop lyrics, because I think that's an important thing to do." It has tangible effects, too. When popular MC Rick Ross rapped, on Rocko's single UOENO, about spiking someone's drink in order to have sex with her, public outcry forced him to apologise.

Many people who follow pop music closely, however, are surprised that Blurred Lines has become such a lightning rod. "It really did boggle my mind when people started freaking out about it," says US music critic Maura Johnston. "This is just a cheesy pickup line song and everyone was like: 'No, it's about forcing a woman against her will.' There are so many songs out there that are worse about demeaning women. Maybe it's an easy target because Robin Thicke is kind of slimy. Right now there's a lot of tension between women and men online so this was a way of women taking a piece of pop culture and saying: 'No, we're against this.' But it's weird to me because I didn't see it and I still don't."

Blurred Lines is not about rape in the same way that Cop Killer is about the fantasy of killing cops, so it is a question of interpretation. If you don't think the song's narrator is willing to have sex without consent, then the song seems at worst sleazy, and the reaction overblown. If, however, you think that the concept of "blurred lines" sends a dangerous message to listeners, then it's explosive.

Thicke himself has been a woeful defender of the song in interviews, recalling Spinal Tap's response to being called sexist: "What's wrong with being sexy?" That could be because, unlike Body Count or Eminem, he didn't intend to be outrageous. In R&B, such lyrics are par for the course. But it is revealing that TI's verse, which features the inflammatory line: "I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two," has been replaced in televised performances with milder verses from rappers such as Iggy Azalea and the Roots' Black Thought.

The video is another matter. It was conceived and directed by Diane Martel, who told US website Grantland: "It forces the men to feel playful and not at all like predators. I directed the girls to look into the camera. This is very intentional and they do it most of the time; they are in the power position. I don't think the video is sexist. The lyrics are ridiculous, the guys are silly as fuck."

Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines video: 'I don't think it's sexist,' says Diane Martel, who conceived and directed it.

Martel's thoughts have received little attention, but then one flaw in the current debate is an unwillingness to credit female artists with ideas of their own. When Miley Cyrus appeared naked in the Wrecking Ball video, critics assumed director Terry Richardson was calling the shots, yet in the case of Blurred Lines the blame for the video falls on Thicke. "People have been discounting almost everything Martel says, even though she was in charge," says Johnston.

This is just one of the ways in which the battle lines are themselves blurred. Feminists were divided in their response to Sinéad O'Connor's open letters to Miley Cyrus. Was O'Connor making a valid feminist critique of misogyny in the music industry, or was she indulging in priggish "slut-shaming"?

Even more (here's that word again) problematic is the intersection of gender and race. While the members of the PMRC were affronted by heavy metal as well as hip-hop - their original "Filthy Fifteen" blacklist featured only three black artists - the current focus is overwhelmingly on urban music. Lily Allen's new video exclusively parodies black music and reduces black women's bodies to lurid props, however satirical her intent might be. One critic, who asked to be quoted anonymously, says: "The lyrics talk about the absurdity of the industry and the media but the main visual reference is black music. What about Katy Perry or Gaga or Miley? What about rock music?"

"Lily Allen's using the sexualisation of black women to challenge the sexualisation of black women so it doesn't really work," says Latchford. "It's a good concept but poorly executed. For us it's not a problem with black music specifically, but the music industry as a whole."

The complexity inherent in debating pop, where lyrics and videos are often elliptical, ambiguous and even contradictory, isn't well served by the kind of direct condemnations that tend to generate attention. In the case of Blurred Lines, many listeners came to the song via the controversy and therefore had an opinion before they had a reaction. "Once you have an opinion that can be summed up by a single word - rapey, which I think is a terrible word - it's something that people can run with in an intense and far-reaching way, even if they haven't listened to the song," says Johnston. "You have this culture of commentary online where people are pressured to constantly come up with controversial angles to stick out. They don't have to do their homework to get the desired effect, which is traffic."

Some of the rhetoric may be blunt, but nothing is blunter than a ban. Haigh defends EUSA's decision on multiple grounds. "The executive made the decision that it wasn't a song we should be promoting and endorsing in our venues. It's also about protecting [rape] victims and making them feel safe so they don't have to listen to a song that reminds them of horrific experiences. And it starts a public discussion. Nothing changes overnight, but it's about slowly and surely changing the culture." But she says that Blurred Lines was banned because it was unusually well known and widely discussed rather than because it was exceptionally offensive, which makes for a shaky precedent.

"You're supposed to have as much freedom of expression in student unions as possible," says Eve Barlow, deputy editor of NME. "How is that precedent going to be set going forward, not just for music but other forms of media and speech? I think they're getting into muddy waters."

"In principle, I'm against bans," says Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship. "Blanket bans on certain songs are contrary to what universities and life as a student should be about, which is becoming an adult and finding out about the world, and making your own decisions. It's worrying that young people seem to see censorship as a solution to complex societal issues."

He also has doubts about the efficacy of age-rating music videos. "First, ratings make these things more attractive: I remember the cred bestowed on any hip-hop record with an explicit-lyrics sticker back in the 90s. Second, I'm not sure that ratings really address the core issues of racism and sexism."

Yet however imperfect the debate triggered by Blurred Lines may be, many women are justifiably unsettled by pop's inability to outgrow its crassest tropes. New US chart rules, which count YouTube views as well as sales, provide an enhanced incentive to produce attention-grabbing videos, creating a kind of outrage arms race. "I'm a feminist, so certain things about pop music I find pretty frustrating," the New Zealand singer Lorde told Q recently. "I think pop is scarily powerful. What you do and say with it has a lot of weight. There are a lot of shock tactics these days: people trying to outdo each other, which will probably culminate in two people fucking on stage at the Grammys."

The question is whether or not the music industry has any reason to change when controversy has done nothing to blunt the sales of Thicke or Cyrus, and has probably been beneficial. "What [the campaigners] are trying to do is make some music executive alert to the fact that people are upset," says Barlow. "That's music to their ears. It seems like a domino effect: response after response after response, and that's helping the song do well and make even more people aware of it. I don't think it will change anything. If anything, it will make the actions more outrageous so more people talk about them."

Latchford is more optimistic. "Young women are tired of seeing this kind of video and they want to see a change. We hope that because it's coming from young women who are supposed to be consumers of this stuff, that will drive change."

It's more likely, and more desirable, that tangible change will be driven organically by formidable artists rather than chastened executives. Black women such as Angel Haze and Janelle Monáe don't so much resist hypersexualised imagery as behave as if it is not even a consideration. They have so much charisma and dynamism that they are riveting without having to strip down. Admittedly, they aren't yet household names, but it is only a matter of time before a truly unorthodox star emerges. If pop music has created a problem, then only pop music can solve it.

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Blurred Lines: the most controversial song of the decade

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his week, University College London student union (UCLU) took the unusual step of banning a single song, Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines. It joins around 20 other UK student unions to do so. This is the latest development in the story of how the biggest song of the year became the most controversial of the decade: an unprecedented achievement, though not one that fills Thicke with pride.

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The review that this 'professional' put about Wonder Woman gave a sense of idiocy and 'your average male'. The fact that he based his review about how Gal Gadot should have been acting more 'sexy' and 'kinky' in the movie. He mentioned how Gal is a very attractive women but in the movie, she doesn't use that attractiveness towards the other men in the movie. It can be harmful because it gives an influence about what reviewers think women should be doing and that women being more sexy in a movie will allow them to give a better review. If the reviewer didn't focus on how Gal wasn't acting as sexy as he might've thought, then he would have gave a better review about the movie overall and its message, not just about the female character.

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Last weekend, the Katwoman shared her excellent review of Wonder Woman while themis wrote about the "controversy" (among the usual mens-rights crowd) over an all-female showing of the movie in Austin, benefiting Planned Parenthood. But around the same time, a well-known professional movie reviewer - David Edelstein of New York magazine and their Vulture website - issued one of the worst and most misogynistic movie reviews I have ever seen.

Edelstein panned the movie overall while calling it a "star turn" for Gal Godot as Diana - apparently because he found her attractive. In his opening paragraph, he refers to her as "the perfect blend of superbabe-in-the-woods innocence and mouthiness." And it goes downhill from there.

Referring to Diana's origin story - her mother sculpted her from clay and Zeus then brought her to life - Edelstein can't help but tell us "I'd like to have seen that." In describing Gadot, an Israeli model-actress, he then states: "Israeli women are a breed unto themselves, which I say with both admiration and trepidation." OK ... I'm not going to touch that one.

So what next? Oh, right, he notes that the absence of kinkiness will disappoint viewers:

While this Wonder Woman is still into ropes (Diana's lasso both catches bad guys and squeezes the truth out of them), fans might be disappointed that there's no trace of the comic's well-documented S&M kinkiness. With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn't even photographed to elicit slobbers.

After all, what good is a female superhero if she doesn't make male moviegoers slobber? Clearly we were ripped off by that damned female director!

Edelstein goes on to suggest that other critics who have praised the movie (and that is most critics - the movie is rated 93% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) must be "grading on a big curve." Presumably they are giving good reviews only because it is politically correct to praise a movie with a strong woman lead and a female director. Then comes some very curious word choice that somehow made it past his editor:

the limpness of the storytelling is certainly preferable to the whacking pacing of other movies of its ilk.

Yes, he really wrote that (though the italicized emphasis is mine). He then noted that the "climax" of the movie sent him out happy. How special for him.

The review was so over-the-top sexist that Jezebel promptly published a hilarious parody of it: Wonder Woman - Gal Gadot Did Not Give Me a Hard Enough Boner which frankly is more worth reading than Edelstein's "serious" review.

Amidst everything else going on today in the war on women, a stupid, misogynistic movie review is pretty trivial, I know. But what does it say about the state of our society and culture when a major magazine and its website publish this kind of sexist crap?

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Misogyny at the movies: Wonder Woman inspires one of the most sexist movie reviews ever

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Last weekend, the Katwoman shared her excellent review of Wonder Woman while themis wrote about the "controversy" (among the usual mens-rights crowd) over an all-female showing of the movie in Austin, benefiting Planned Parenthood.

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The attitude that can be taken out from The Little Mermaid is vulnerable because of the message that little girls can be taking from it. The movie is obviously based on how Ariel found her prince charming, Eric, but the things that she gives up can give little girls a message that they should give up so many things to get a man. It's harmful because little girls could get the wrong message from them.

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In celebration of The Little Mermaid 's 25th anniversary - it was originally released Nov. 17, 1989 - Eliana Dockterman and Laura Stampler rewatched a film they hadn't seen in about a decade and a half. They were pleasantly surprised.

Eliana Dockterman: So we just watched The Little Mermaid. I expected it to be really sexist because of articles like this and this and this.

Laura Stampler: It wasn't.

ED: So, yeah, the fact that she can't talk isn't great. But it's Ursula-the villain-who tells Ariel that men don't value women talking so it won't matter if Ariel loses her voice.

LS: And yes, it's also not great that Ariel is willing to give up her voice for the chance to get a man who plays a mean flute - watch the movie again, he plays the flute a lot - but she is a 16-year-old girl. As a former 16-year-old girl, we don't always make the greatest of choices in times of crushing.

ED: And in fact the reason Eric won't marry her right off the bat is because he fell in love with her voice, not her looks. That's good, right?

LS: Furthermore, he flat-out says he believes that Ariel lost her voice as a part of some big event. So when he doesn't want to immediately lock lips with the feisty mute, it's because he doesn't want to take advantage of a recent trauma victim.

ED: Basically you think Eric is the perfect guy.

LS: A prince among Disney princes. He loves his dog, which is a good sign, and he's into it when she has the carriage jump over that ravine. He likes daring, empowered women. And, to counter stereotypes, he falls in love with his savior. Eric was the damsel in distress and Ariel rescued him from drowning during a storm.

ED: It's true. This is why The Little Mermaid is (secretly?) feminist. She saved him first in that shipwreck and then again from being zapped by Ursula's triton at the end. He ultimately kills Ursula, but she wins 2-1 in the savior competition. Now can we talk about the criticism that she's too sexy?

LS: From some angles, Ariel's cinched waist and round derriere kind of reminded me of Kim K, which is a little disturbing to see in a mermaid. But most Disney princesses are flawed.

ED: Everyone heralded Frozen as a big feminist moment last year, even though Elsa's eyes are bigger than her waist. So we haven't made much progress on realistic body image in cartoons in the last 25 years. It's obviously a problem, but let's not single out Ariel just because she has the shell bra and great hair.

LS: The hair truly is fantastic. Dinglehoppers work, guys. Also, props to Disney for going with a redhead, although it would have been nice for Triton's kingdom to have greater diversity than hair color and fish species...

ED: Yes let's just say it: "Under the Sea" is kind of a racist song, though Disney has definitely done much, much, much worse. Let's discuss the end. Specifically Ursula. Is she the best Disney villain ever?

LS: Evil? Yes. Savvy contract negotiator? ABSOLUTELY. To be fair, Ursula gives Ariel a head's up that there's a big chance she's going to end up a sea worm or whatever those terrifying creatures are. And her legalese is so good that even Triton can't find a loophole. No one is above the law.

ED: Another good life lesson. But yeah, Ursula doesn't even pretend to be good like Cinderella's stepmother or Cruella de Vil or Scar. Right off the bat, she owns her evil witchiness, and I love it! Can the next Maleficent be Ursula?

LS: Too bad she ends up harpooned. I mean, good for young love and all, but poor Ursula. Now that we've come to the end of the movie, I think we should talk about another big Little Mermaid complaint people have: the fact that she gives up her whole world to live with Prince Eric.

ED: Again, this is a thing that happens in literally every Disney princess film except Frozen-and even there Anna ends up with someone, so it's baby steps. I don't know why everyone's hating on The Little Mermaid.

LS: But really, didn't Ariel fall in love with the human world before she even knew who Eric was? She has always dreamed of being a "part of your world," which I'm worried she'll find disappointing considering my dad definitely still reprimanded me (even though I had legs).

ED: Her father doesn't understand her, and she wants to explore her own interests. Any teenager can relate to that.

LS: Also, there's a time when we all must move on from our immediate surroundings. Triton basically lives in her back yard. Most newlyweds would probably find that a little too close for comfort.

ED: And conveniently Eric doesn't seem to have parents. And who are we to say that if he could turn into a merperson, Eric wouldn't? Maybe in a more progressive version of the film they have a discussion about who moves where for whose career. But in the version we get, she can turn human. He can't turn merman. End of conversation.

LS: I smell a sequel...

ED: They made one. I think it was bad.

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The Little Mermaid : Not as Sexist as You Thought It Was

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In celebration of The Little Mermaid 's 25th anniversary - it was originally released Nov. 17, 1989 - Eliana Dockterman and Laura Stampler rewatched a film they hadn't seen in about a decade and a half. They were pleasantly surprised. Eliana Dockterman: So we just watched The Little Mermaid.