There’s an interesting article in the Guardian today about social networking and privacy, written by Cory Doctorow who runs Boing Boing.

He points out that adults wax hysterical on young people’s cavalier attitudes towards privacy, while staying absolutely quiet on the increasingly scary amounts of surveillance our governments are placing us under.

“For centuries adults have been deriding young people for their laziness, venality, sexuality, shallowness and lack of moral fibre. Now they’ve added another item to the classic list of youthful failings: a lack of respect for their own privacy.

For years a procession of paedo scare-stories have warned us that the youth of today fail to grasp the importance of maintaining their privacy online. Kids blithely hand over their personal information to sites like MySpace and Bebo and Facebook, take naughty pictures of themselves, MMS them to their friends’ phones, and engage in saucy chat with mysterious older men.

But if kids are careless with their personal information, can we blame them? A deadly combination of universal surveillance, a prohibition on protecting your privacy (“No hoodies allowed near the CCTVs!”), and a relentless focus on the consequences of dangers (as opposed to their probability) has placed the world in grave danger. Tomorrow’s leaders will have been raised in an environment where any rational assessment of security has been rendered impossible by a shrill and terrified public discourse.”

And he’s absolutely right. How can you criticize your kids for telling the world via Facebook or Twitter where they’re going on a Saturday night, if they’re just going to leave a CCTV, debit card, and soon, ID card government papertrail all the way there?

I want to point your attention to Thea’s great post on racism at Hallowe’en over at Racialicious:

“Mainstream North American culture likes to define itself as cultureless, but Halloween is a very cultural practice. Not only is it a little weird (Just look at it from the point of view of an outsider. Send your kids out to strangers’ houses and tell them to ask for candy? Decorate your house like a graveyard? Dress up like a sexy version of a public health worker?) it is also based on difference - the point of Halloween is to dress up as “something different.” So how do people who are often made to feel visually different - you know, like people of colour - experience Halloween? The average Halloween costume tells us a lot about what we culturally consider to be abnormal.

It tells us that dressing up in an overtly sexy way is taboo - in other words, that we’re a pretty sex-negative people. It tells us that we are obsessed with strict gender categories - because most little boys and girls have to choose very gender-coded costumes, but also because for many young people Halloween is the one time they can experiment with gender in a socially sanctioned way.

And if dressing up as “something different” can typically involve wearing geisha make-up, a Native headdress, bling, or a turban, Halloween tells us that our cultural norm is a middle-class, North American, white person.”

Go over and read it. And Thea, where did you find that photo of the child dressed in terrorist costume? Unbelievable!(more inside…)

I realize that Shameless is Canadian and very, very few of us (cough) can vote in Tuesday’s election. Having said that, that doesn’t mean that some of us (um, me?) aren’t completely and totally obsessed with it, much like our American friends. Yesterday I broke down and cried like a baby in the final ten minutes of Obama’s Closing Argument speech (he said the word “Gay” in a positive way), laughed my ass off during Obama’s Jon Stewart appearance last night (he made a joke about how sharing toys in kindergarten made him socialist), and am frantically putting together an election party (the Obama family chilli recipe!)

I’ve been tear-jerkingly, curse-word swearingly, irrationally emotionally invested in this election for well over a year now, and in the final week I’m really starting to panic. It’s foolish to believe that this election just effects Americans and not the entire world, and I think so many of us outside of the US watch in fear that, despite how well everything is going, something might go terribly wrong.

(more inside…)

I said it last year and I’ll say it again: Halloween is the time of year when everyone lets their hidden fantasy loose, their inner demon out, their freak flag fly… and the next day we wipe off the eyeliner and fake blood and shaving cream and go back to business as usual. But for some people, grappling with the dark side is what they do every day of their lives.

You can bet Diamanda Galas is one of those people. She’s an American singer who was trained classically but has put her three-and-a-half-octave range voice to making records that will more or less make your blood run cold, in a good way. Some things you should know about her:

Galas publicly criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not caring about AIDS victims in her performance Plague Mass, and she has spent much of her artistic career speaking out against general indifference to the epidemic. She has we are all HIV+ tattooed on her knuckles, okay.

Her songs deal with murder, genocide, the death penalty, and Aileen Wuornos. You really can’t get any heavier than that, and I’m not surprised that she’s not better-known… after all, I’d rather dance than have a panic attack most days. Still, once in a while it’s good to light some candles, drink some wine and put on a record that will frighten you to within an inch of your life, and then bring you back with its beauty. More or less.

Here is a video of her performing Billie Holiday’s Gloomy Sunday; the video begins with a pretty righteous commentary on both pop music and Galas’ disposition.

Happy Halloween!

Call me a humourless feminist who can’t take a joke, but I think marketing Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 software on university campuses via posters that resemble community alerts about sexual predators is bad practice. Just sayin’.

Jonathan Goldsbie at Torontoist explains:

You could argue, we suppose, that the ad isn’t necessarily alluding to that particular sort of criminal, but the composite sketch, the “This man has been spotted on campus,” and the way the physical description is structured certainly play to the phrases and imagery associated with a specific type of bulletin. These posters, spotted on Spadina Road just north of Bloor, are especially tasteless in light of (multiple U of T campus sexual assaults) within the last two months.

Now I know why I own a Mac.

Every Thursday I profile a new incredible woman, each from a different walk of life. Different professions, causes, backgrounds, ethnicities, orientations, and anything/everything else!

So without further delay, let me introduce the brilliantly bytchy Carolina Smart…

Photo credit: Viki Ackland www.2-mile.com

Carolina Smart admits herself that she never sleeps. When would she possibly have time? The creator and Editor-in-chief of Shebytches.com, she also runs Lipstik Indie Reviews, AND is in the midst of writing her first novel, a screenplay, and a book of short stories. Determined to give women an honest, uncensored voice in the male-dominated world of writing, Carolina took time out to answer our questions and tell us why being a bytch is brilliant!

(more inside…)

I love it when “girly issues” refuse to be glossed over and come exploding out in everyone’s face.

Dancing with the Stars contestant Julianne Hough left the show this week due a ruptured ovarian cyst. She has been diagnosed with endometriosis and is sharing her story on her blog. Endo (who has time for six syllables?) is a little-understood and often extremely painful condition that affects the female reproductive organs.

People Magazine and TV Crunch quote Hough, who personally blogged on Fancast:

“Last week my management and the other people around me were trying to think of something else I could say that was wrong with me, but I was like, don’t worry. I want to be a good role model. I want to be honest. Maybe some girl out there won’t wait too long like I did. I’m just glad I’m taking care of it now because I want to have babies some day. I don’t want to jeopardize my health.”

When Hough’s illness was first reported, we heard she had stomach pain and a burst appendix. I understand there are a few reasons why they wouldn’t want to come out with the truth.

For one, endometriosis is a gateway word. Say it out loud and before long you’re also saying things like “ovary” and “uterine tissue” and “internal bleeding” and “ruptured cyst” and “I black out from pain that feels like burning shrapnel is expanding endlessly throughout my entire pelvic region.”

It’s not pretty.

(more inside…)

Earlier this year, my friend Veronica wrote eloquently on her struggle To Wear or Not To Wear make-up (“The makeup junkie speaks”). I loved it, and thought y’all might enjoy it too.

V writes about her new-found (and conflicted) addiction to make-up: fear of having to “put her face on”; what make-up means to her gender presentation; and the looming threat of the make-up police.

Read her full post here.

What about you? What are your make-up thoughts?

Market Watch reports that the children have spoken:

Senator Barack Obama has been declared the winner of Nickelodeon’s 2008 Kids Pick the President “Kids’ Vote”. A record-breaking number of votes — upwards of 2.2 million — were cast in the network’s online poll. Nickelodeon has held a “Kids’ Vote” every election year since 1988, and kids have correctly predicted the winner in four out of the last five U.S. presidential campaigns.

Image from Yes We Can (Hold Babies) http://yeswecanholdbabies.wordpress.com/

Via elle, phd.

Also, check out this Girls 4 Obama post at Shakesville for some (adorable and tear jerkin’) pics of, dare I say, Girls Who Get It.

How excited about, obsessed with, or completely over the US presidential election is everyone?

(Psst, there’s a bonus pic I couldn’t resist posting after the jump.)

(more inside…)