plasticbag.org

Apologies about failures of service over the last 24 hours. The move to barbelith’s new hosts is going pretty smoothly, but is still relatively time consuming. The Bomb and Microlith will be up and running shortly (an hour?). The Nexus might take a couple of days more.

Mark said I could do it. Honest he did. He said I could redesign in his absence, and by christ, have I…

I’m going to see Final Destination tonight with a group of friends. I went to a press preview of it about a week ago, but it is no fun going to see scary movies by yourself. At least half of the fun is seeing what other people’s reaction is. My co-conspirator in the takeover of riothero (Katy) is coming along too. I can’t help wonder what she is going to think of it. I hope good things.

Everyone else is getting drunk afterwards, but not me. This weekend is hectic beyond measure, with at least two parties, a major web maintenance session, a hot date and a man coming around to install a phone line. And I have to do my washing. And ideally go to the gym.

A couple of days ago I was taken by the young gentleman I am dating at the moment to the bar on the 24th floor of what was the NatWest Tower in the heart of the City. After chatting for a while I dropped into the conversation that he was one of the hot topics of conversation at my place of work, as he had managed to cancel on me three nights in a row. He found this endlessly amusing and asked if there was anyone in the world who didn’t know about what we were up to. He then smiled broadly and said – “you’re probably publishing it on a website”. I changed the subject very quickly.

As moves are made in the UK to sort out the mess of the sex laws (many of which are ignored, some of which implemented savagely – at least until relatively recently), the Guardian presents a quiz that may surprise the Americans amongst us. Particularly as one of the questions is: Is it legal for two gay men to nail each others testicles to a table?

Speak Out Loud is a new blog that is just getting itself started. He admits that he has been mercilessly refreshing my page (á la prol), in order to get the pretty pictures all in a row. He’s even got a page up that proves he’s succeeded. Did I inspire him to this lunacy?

Oh. My. God. Barbelith is Blogger of the Week over at blogger.com. I’d like to thank my mother, God and the Coca-Cola company for making this day possible. I’m actually quite floored by the whole thing. Wow. There is a minor problem in that because I am changing hosts, the site will probably disappear for whole long stretches of time, and nothing will work properly. Which won’t make me look as cool. Um.

Two pieces of barbelith news:

• Barbelith Brownouts: At any moment the whole site might collapse under its weight. The site is currently being moved over to new hosts at pair.com and so I am afraid power outages, non-existing sections and the like will probably generate more than the odd error message over the next couple of days. Hopefully these will be resolved by the beginning of next week.
• Barbelith and KitschBitch eat Riothero: Katy and Tom guest star on the hottest teen soap since the Buffmeister went to college. Who will live, who will die, and will anyone take their clothes off. THIS WEEKEND ONLY…

Anyone want to be a web designer at timeout.com in London? Talent and passion a must! Check here for more details: timeout.com vacacies.

The Feminist Media Watch has been getting a hell of a lot of coverage in the weblogging world over the last few days. I myself wrote a couple of long pieces on them a few days back [have a look]. I thought it might be interesting to do a quick review of some of this coverage.

• babygrrl.com: Babygrrl wrote an article about the failings of traditional feminism from what would probably be described politically as a post-colonial bent. Her criticisms of the way in which European Feminism has (in some of its strains particularly) represented itself as expressing the concerns of all women, regardless of colour, cultural background and the like are illuminating. The same theoretical framework which takes as its subject the liberation of individuals (either from a political patriarchy or from a typology of difference) can be shown to have invested in exactly the same colonial beliefs that oppressed other groups. All the traditional “big” questions of feminism arise: What is a woman? Is there something intrinsic to Womanhood that is the same cross-culturallly? Who speaks and for whom (and who is silenced) when one speaks as a feminist? All interesting and thought-provoking questions. [Echoed and reinforced by Miss Elisabeth]
• zippygirl.org: Zippygirl found the site to be “condemning the choices other women make as not being feminist enough. I do not like them saying wanting to stay home and have babies is very wrong if that’s how you identify yourself as a woman”. As with any discourse that purports to represent a disenfranchised group (and I know this from experience), not everyone feels themselves to be represented, or agrees with the goals of the movement. Nor for that matter is a movement ever a monolith – there are many versions of feminism and many different forms of feminist (the same with queer theory, post-colonial theory, race studies etc) – and the fights between them are occasionally savage.
• ouch!: Tracy has had similar objections. She says, “I got an email from one of the Feminist Media Watch contributors telling me that the image on my site is “sick.” She suggested a site where I might find “positive images of women” for my site.” Issues of representation in feminism are as old and as well trodden as you can get – and they are still as difficult today. In this specific case, I think the idea of the image as intrinsically negative is remarkably unnuanced – questions have to be asked about who uses it, for what purpose, with what intention and in what context. The reclamation of the word queer is an example of how something created to have dubious overtones can be used in an affirmative fashion.

I feel like I have been concentrating on the negative publicity – but in a way that is inevitable since it inspires debate. However this is one of those dangerous areas where if you set yourself up as representative of a group of people you have to suffer their wrath when you say something they disagree with. Certainly many academic feminists would have considerable trouble with the site. Personally, I think anything that raises awareness of these issues is doing a valuable service – whether I agree with their specific take or not.

Lance Arthur on “Awarding”:

“The corral is closing in. Can’t you feel it? They’re rounding up the wild horses and taming them. They’re sending in the thought police. They’re closing down the library and burning any book they deem dangerous, inappropriate, wrong.”