Comedy Skit: The Lesbian Interview

This is intended to be a comedy skit but is really more of a dramatic representation of the misogynistic attitudes of a crossection of societies the world over.

more about "Comedy Skit: The Lesbian Interview", posted with vodpod

Robert Jensen’s Address to the National Feminist Antipornography Conference

more about "Robert Jensen’s Address to the Nation…", posted with vodpod

Rebecca Whisnant addressing the National Feminist Antipornography Conference

more about "Rebecca Whisnant addressing the Natio…", posted with vodpod

This Brave Nation – An Activist Series

The Brave Nation Young Activist Award was designed to celebrate a next generation of progressive activism. Five incredible finalists were chosen amongst many nominees. We’re proud to announce after counting all the votes that Cristina Lara is the winner.

CRISTINA LARA Cristina Lara started her own organization, Society of Young Leading Women, which is currently awaiting non profit status. She started an underground newspaper in her high school, called Uncensored which is composed of 10 student writers with Cristina as the editor in chief. They write articles focused on the issues with their administration in addition to her underground newspaper – Cristina also writes for her local newspaper.Take note that Cristina joined the Fair Lawn High School’s football team. She lifted weights with the rest of her all-male players, while having to endure the awful stares and criticism. While her coaches tried to undermine her abilities, Cristina made it clear that she is tough by showing up to every practice, and every game. She’s a feminist; a football player; a writer; and a straight A student. What more can you ask for?

EPISODES

Carl Pope & Van Jones Environmentalism, New Media, Civil Rights, the Economy Watch the full episode!	Bonnie Raitt & Dolores Huerta Hudson River, Urban Renewal, Protest Music, Civil Rights Environmentalism Watch the full episode!	Anthony Romero & Ava Lowery Union Organizing, NAFTA, Human Rights, Feminism, Nuclear Energy, Environmentalism Watch the full episode!	Pete Seeger & Majora Carter New Media, Iraq War, Bush Admin, Civil Liberties, Youth Activism, Gay Rights Watch the full episode!	Tom Hayden & Naomi Klein Journalism, Global Economy, NAFTA, Iraq War, Feminism, “The Sixties” Watch the full episode!

The Oldest Stone Carving Reference To The Goddess

Neolithic Malta

Gigantija

Malta is associated in the public mind with many images, holiday beaches, The Knights of St. John, The Grand Harbour of Valletta, grandiose churches but few are aware that it has some of the earliest and most developed Neolithic sites extant including at Gigantija on the island of Gozo the world’s oldest stone building. The list of Malta’s heritage sites is dominated by the Islands’ prehistoric megalithic temples and underground chambers. This small island of 243 square kilometers has a far greater importance in European prehistory due to this extraordinary collection of megalithic temples. Situated 90 kilometers south of Sicily and 370 kilometers east of the Tunisian coast, the island of Malta appears to have been first settled during the early Neolithic period by a wave of immigrants from the island of Sicily. Several thousand years before the arrival of the Phoenicians, the Maltese Islands were the home to a remarkable culture. These people acquired the skills, and had the strength of spiritual devotion, to mobilise men and resources to build megalithic structures and hew out living rock into burial chambers. This culture was to vanish from the Islands whether through famine, fire, natural disaster or routed by invasion no one knows. The remains seen today are both fascinating and perplexing for there are no definite answers to how and why they were built or for what they were used.

Malta’s temples and the Hypogeum are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The ruins which remain are the bare skeletons of once magnificent structures, mostly roofed over, paved, furnished with doors and curtains, and beautifully decorated with sculptures and paintings. Some archaeologists assume that the period in which the early Maltese progressed from their first rock-cut common graves to their last massive temple complexes was between 3800 and 2400 BC. Around 2300 BC this extraordinary megalithic culture went into rapid decline. A major cause seems to have been the extreme deforestation and soil loss that accompanied the increase in population and the attendant clearing of land for agriculture. Other causes may have been famine, social disruption in response to an oppressive priesthood, and the arrival of foreign invaders. Following the decline of the temple culture, Malta may well have been deserted until the arrival of Bronze Age peoples around 2000 BC.

Sleeping Lady

On the islands of Malta and nearby Gozo, the remains of 50 temples have been found, with 23 in various states of preservation. Nearly all of the Maltese temples are constructed in the same basic design: a central corridor leading through two or more kidney-shaped (ellipsoidal) chambers to reach a small alter apse at the far end. The earliest interiors were plastered and painted with red ochre. Later interiors were decorated with intricately carved spirals on steps and altars, friezes of farm animals, fish and snakes, and a simple pattern of pitted dots. Still evident are wall sockets for wooden barriers or curtains and niches for ritual activities. Some of the relief decoration is of such delicate work that it is difficult to understand how it could have been carried out using only stone tools. Artifacts and furnishings (now removed from the temples and placed in museums) indicate ancestor worship, oracular and fertility goddess cults. The temples seem to have been used only for ritual activity and not as cemeteries, for no burials have been found. Sacrificial flint knives are among the artifacts discovered in the temples but no human bones, indicating that sacrifices were solely of animals and not humans.

A good place to start the exploration of Neolithic Malta is the National Museum of Archaeology in the Auberge de Provence in Valletta. This is one of the “inns” or Auberge of the eight Langue or tongues of the Knights of St John which are represented on the eight pointed Maltese Cross.

National Museum of Archaeology.
The National Museum of Archaeology displays an exceptional array of artifacts from Malta’s unique prehistoric periods starting with the first arrival of man in the Ghar Dalam phase (5200 BC) and running up to the Tarxien phase (2500 BC). The collection is housed in the Auberge de Provence, one of the first and most important buildings to be erected in Malta’s baroque capital city, Valletta, after the Great Siege in the late 16th century. The main hall is devoted to temple carvings, in particular the giant statue and altar blocks of Tarxien Temples. The collection continues with representations of animals, temple models, and the remarkable human figures. Of particular note are the exquisite figures of the ‘Sleeping Lady’ from the Hypogeum, and the ‘Venus’ of Hagar Qim.

‘Mother Goddess’ from Tarxien

Heading from Valletta to the “three cities” on the far side of the Grand Harbour just outside the Cottonera Line, the defensive bastion encircling the cities you come to the suburb of Paola where a short distance apart you find the Tarxien Temples and the Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni.

Tarxien.

The Tarxien site (pronounced “tar-sheen”), discovered by a farmer in 1915 comprises three temples, one of which contains a famous statue of the lower body of a standing figure. Sometimes interpreted as a goddess statue by feminist writers (there is really no way of knowing this as the gender is indeterminate), it is one of the world’s earliest known and most powerful representations of a deity.

This site, dating from 3600 to 2500 BC, is the most complex of all temple sites in Malta and consists of four megalithic structures. The temples are renowned for the detail of their carvings, which include domestic animals carved in relief, altars, and screens decorated with spiral designs and other patterns. Of particular note is a chamber set into the thickness of the wall between the South and Central temples, which is famous for its relief of two bulls and a sow.

The site seems to have been used extensively for rituals, which probably involved animal sacrifice. Tarxien is also of great interest because it offers an insight into how the temples were constructed: stone rollers left outside the south temple were probably used for transporting the megaliths. Remains of cremation have also been found at the centre of the South temple at Tarxien, which indicates that the site was reused as a Bronze Age cremation cemetery.

Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni.
Another important temple, the Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni, departs from the norm of Maltese temples. Located close to the Tarxien temple complex in the modern suburb of Paola, it was discovered by chance in 1902 during the digging of a well. The Hypogeum is a multi-storey underground labyrinth (25 x 35 meters) consisting of chambers, halls, corridors and stairs, which over the centuries were extended deeper and deeper in to the soft limestone. Constructed (according to the orthodox chronology) between 4000 and 5000 years ago, the Hypogeum was both a sanctuary and a cemetery, and the bones of some 7000 humans have been found. The most impressive chamber, commonly called “the holy of holies” has pillars and lintels that are architecturally remarkable. With its walls coated in red paint, it has been suggested that the chamber was used for animal sacrifices. Another chamber, the so-called Oracular room, has a square niche cut into the wall that may have been used so that a priest’s voice could echo around the temple. A mysterious quality of this particular room is that a man’s voice will powerfully reverberate around the chamber while a woman’s voice is all but absorbed by the ancient stones.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/02/neolithic-malta.html

The Human Sexes (Part Six) – The Gender Wars

more about "The Human Sexes (Part Six) – The Gend…", posted with vodpod