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The kingdom of women

A while back I did a post on the Mosuo women, who live in South China. This is known as 'The Kingdom of Women'. Check out this video to learn more about one of the world's last matriarchies.

Real Men Don't Buy Girls

I love these videos! The Real Men Don't Buy Girls campaign was the brainchild of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. The campaign supports the fight against human trafficking.

For more, visit:
http://thecoffeebreaknews.com/ashton-kutcher-real-men-dont-buy-girls.html

The value of men and women

According to a lot of these people, men are no longer needed by women. This is, of course, a very heteronormative statement. Many of these people also claim that men have been emasculated by man-hating feminists, which might be true, but there is definitely more to it than that...

The new Timbuktu

I have always thought of Timbuktu as a very mysterious place.  Never have I actually taken the time to learn about it or look at some photographs of this beautiful place. That's why I found these images taken by Brent Stirton so interesting. They were taken in 2009 and 2010, while he spent a month in total documenting life in Timbuktu, Mali for National Geographic magazine.

He says:  “This is a modern essay on a legendary city, historically one of the wealthiest in Africa and for centuries strictly forbidden to non-Muslims. Strategically situated at the northern apex of the Niger River and the southern shore of the Sahara Desert, for hundreds of years Timbuktu dominated the trade for gold, ivory, and slaves from the African interior as well as spices, cloth, and books brought by caravan from the Mediterranean coast. It was a city of considerable scholarly endeavor. In the tenth century Timbuktu contained one of the greatest universities in the world. It was home to hundreds of learned tutors, who maintained extensive libraries of manuscripts concerning history, science, religion, literature and the study of the Koran. . As its wealth grew, the city erected grand mosques, attracting scholars who, in turn, formed academies and imported books from throughout the Islamic world. As a result, fragments of the Arabian Nights, Moorish love poetry, and Koranic commentaries from Mecca mingled with narratives of court intrigues and military adventures of mighty African kingdoms. Today’s Timbuktu is a very different place...the people of Timbuktu are once again piecing together the history that once filled vast libraries in the city’s heyday. There is also a darker side to modern Timbuktu. She is a city on the frontlines of a new war on terror, with Al Qaeda in the Magrib (AQIM,) operating freely in the desert wastelands to its north. A struggling tourism industry and an ill-attended annual music festival are testament to the ripples of fundamentalist attacks throughout the North Africa region."

Transgender inmates

Louis Theroux, BBC 2 journalist, investigates the relationship between a transgender and a male inmate at a male prison in the U.S. They seem to be pretty infatuated with each other... But I wonder how much of it is the male inmate's willingness to look past biological sex and genderbend; or is it just circumstantial 'love'?

Meeting strangers

Here is a beautiful reportage taken by my good friend, David du Toit. These pictures of strangers were taken in and around  Cape Town's Gardens area. He beautifully captures the vibe of Cape Town and its colourful people - from young to old, from the shopkeeper to the homeless...

The Love Magazine

Here are some beautiful pics featured in LOVE Magazine, a British publication that always tries to push the boundaries of that which is usually perceived as fixed (like gender). 

This cover of LOVE, featuring Kate Moss kissing trans supermodel Lea T., got a lot of attention. I love how they gender bend here and really question what we see (two women kissing), whilst making the point that it really doesn't matter how we were born (since Lea T. was in actual fact born 'male') or how we make gender more fluid...

For more visit: http://www.thelovemagazine.co.uk/

TUSH magazine - A true gender bender

 

TUSH Magazine has some amazing pictures. It is one of the only magazines whose photographs portray the fluidity of gender... 

 For more visit:
http://www.tushmagazine.com/

The art of getting a phone number

This is a clip from Louis Theroux' documentary on hypnotists in the U.S. Here he is with a hypnotist who says that he can hypnotise women to give him their phone numbers... Hmmm, I don't know about that, because that should be considered as some form of abuse or rape; but basically I just think this guy is a massive misogynist...