Tuesday news
Today is the 22nd of March, 2022. Selection of news to read and listen (links), short resume from my morning search and yesterday's visuals.
Following my yesterday challenge to find news that goes further than the Ukrainian-Russian conflict I looked into depths and dug some articles. I think those stories are quite interesting to discuss, or at least to look at them as a rough sketch of the issues that are on the surface of our social reality and that define or are going to define the future changes.
I start with the questions about body and sexual identification, even about the justification of the sexual interests and behaviour. After the time of sex positivity you’re about to fall into the sexual negativity. That’s the point of a “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation” review (A Manifesto Against Sex Positivity - The New York TImes). The book is written by the Washington Post columnist Christine Emba. I can’t judge the book, only the observations made by the article author, who resumed her text:
“What passes for sex positivity is a culture of masochism disguised as hedonism. It’s what you get when you liberate sex without liberating women”.
I agree to disagree, because there’s much more than our inability or a taboo on exchanging opinions and private information about our needs. I don’t think it’s just a women's issue. I think that exaggerated sexual positivism promoted in social media became much more a cultural trend than just a social. Practices that were open for the minorities with a particular psychological background suddenly became popular if not fashionable among people that don’t need those.
Mythology about what the partner needs is based on the huge amount of publicly available pornography. Fantasies are mixed with different home produced philosophies, including the socially biassed versions promoting misogyny and racism. So even good old sadomasochism now has a political program under the violent compound. The major problem as I see it is the educational aspect young people source from such data. They accept as a norm something that isn’t. And when they experience those norm in action the disillusionment in their sexual satisfaction and desires became a problem of building the permanent relationships. And the problem of their sexual identity.
The next subject is the place for transgenders in professional sport. There’re two news that attracted my attention: “Lia Thomas: Lord Coe warning over 'fragile' women's sport” on BBC site (original text is on the Times) and “Bucking Republican Trend, Indiana Governor Vetoes Transgender Sports Bill” on The New York Times. Both are from the American agenda, but it doesn’t make the subjects less important in other parts of the world.
You can learn about the moral part of the lawmaking practice from the second text, it is important. There are obvious two sides of the discussion - you either let people be, or make them suffer for being different and condition them to the archaic system of gender division. I want to talk more about the practical side of the solution, whatever it will be, - in sports particularly. Sport is defined by biology. I have a very concrete question: Should transgender women compete among men or among women?
What is a fair decision? As for me, I think if we allow sportsmen to use prescribed drugs that help them concentrate or become stronger and tolerate pain and stress values (so we consider a competition between sick and healthy people as fair), I don’t see reasons to prevent people from competing on the basis of their self-identification. What do you think?
The next subject is about anti-abortion polemics: “Anti-Abortion Groups Once Portrayed Women as Victims. That’s Changing” on The New York Times. What is the point here? It’s not about the anti-abortion laws that were introduced lately only, but about the status of the women who decide to have an abortion. If before the responsibility was put on the doctors, pharmaceutical companies and clinics, now it’s suggested to be applied on women. They, according to the legal initiatives, choose to do something completely unnecessary for their private interests (choosing career or other matters), so they should be more socially responsible and accept their “biological purpose”. I guess that’s the expression they don’t use, but they mean. So women should be prosecuted for abortions - that’s the main message now. Welcome to the The Handmaid’s Tale prologue.
Speaking about Margaret Atwood’s creation. Did you know that it was banned for the school libraries in America? Well, then it was excluded from such lists but its graphic adaptation was banned instead (as simplified as the YouTube clip you can watch above) among other adapted and graphic novels, most of which are about racism, dystopian world orders, social injustice and, of course, sexual orientation and LGBTQ rights. You can read more about it in the Guardian: “‘It’s a culture war that’s totally out of control’: the authors whose books are being banned in US schools”.
Though it’s applied specifically to American cases, there are examples of the same prohibition strategies in other countries. I can say that Russian reality no matter how bad it seems right now is far more tolerable. The only matter that is off the discussion in schools is LGBTQ. It’s prohibited by the law. In all other senses the choice for reading is way broader, the main problem is that teenagers choose not to read, but to watch.
What I find particularly strange is the explanation for the bans in America: such literature “might upset people”.
Here’s what says Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of the free-speech organisation PEN America, which has led the resistance against book banning for more than a decade:
“We used to hear about a book challenge or ban a few times a year. Now it’s every week or every day…It is part of a concerted effort to try to hold back the consequences of demographic and social change by controlling the narratives available to young people.”
Moving to another area of reading - the press. More precisely, the glossy media. We all know that those are in deep crisis. Even if you didn’t know that the major publishing houses shrinked or closed completely their printed editions - from Instyle to national Vogue issues, you can relate to the lack of interest for reading, I don’t mention, buying of printed magazines. So publishing houses need to invent something to survive. They moved to digital. Meanwhile, originally digital media is going in the opposite direction and pretty convinced that paper copies have much bigger value than digital content. According to the article on the Business of Fashion - “A Survival Strategy for Fashion Magazines”, advertisers are more attached to those and ready to pay more to be printed. In digital content it’s easy to get lost while glossy paper lives much longer.
Creativity is the matter of success here. As well as in any business it’s important to think differently and to stay connected to the true personal identity and background. That’s the major statement Vanessa Kingori, the first Black female publisher of British Vogue, shared during her speech at Voices 2021. You can listen to the essence of it on the Business of Fashion podcast. She speaks from the point of her personal story and the insights she got, that explained her success in the business and in the publishing industry in particular.
Moving to business as a subject of study right now. I don’t want to share numerous market analytical stories, opinions and research. Of course those are tightly connected to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict and sanctions consequences. I chose just 2 articles to share. The first one is “How war is changing business” on Financial Times. And the second is “U.N. Chief Warns of ‘Catastrophe’ With Continued Use of Fossil Fuels” on The New York Times. Both are about less obvious than raising gas and oil prices and inflation problems. I think it’s quite interesting to see how one or two particular countries' economies in numbers doesn’t look like defining the world’s or even Western economic conditions, in reality are much more meaningful.
The first piece is built around the trend to fortify local production and storage options for all sorts of brands including the major players on the different markets, like New Balance, for example. It’s cheaper now to move the production from Asia or the Far East closer to the customers as international logistics become unpredictable and too expensive. At least part of it. And to use new technologies like 3D printing instead of old fashion manual manufacturing.
All that leads to the release of the working force. The author doesn’t accentuate the fact. I do it. And my point stands with the factories in developing countries, that will definitely decline in numbers. So many people will lose their jobs, no matter how low they were paid, there’s no quick replacement for those. And keeping in mind that the prices on wheat, corn, and meat will rise after the sanctions on Russia and inability of Ukraine to export this year, the poorest populations in the world starve. All that will lead to new humanitarian crises that are much less manageable than the one we are having right now in Europe. Of course, the possibility of the most negative scenarios depends on the time the conflict will last.
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, in the second article pointed out the other “side effect” of the sanctions on Russia. He says that the policy of substitution of Russian gas and oil will lead to a bigger problem than just raising prices. The effect on climate change will be pretty heavy, and that will speed up global warming. The USA plans to increase fossil fuel production to stabilise the energy market.
“President Biden and European leaders have said that the short-term needs will not upend their longer-term vision of shifting to wind, solar and other renewable sources that do not produce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions. But the U.N. secretary general said he fears that strategy endangers the goal of rapid reduction of fossil fuel burning”.
Here I will stop today. The only thing that is left is to remind you about the fakes we tend to share and believe in when we find those on our social media especially on the blogs of people we tend to trust. It’s an actual problem right now. It’s not even the manageable propaganda plans from the enemies, it’s the side effect of the social media nature. We do it. So here’s a guide from the New York Times on “How to Avoid Sharing Misinformation on the War in Ukraine”. It can be used on different occasions. Before you share something, check the sources. And remember that only big news media, mostly news agencies like Reuters, have their fact checking departments. Plus those are the main resources of the information that newsrooms base their story on if they don’t have journalists working in the field. Those are the most local and national newspapers.
A digest from my Instagram for March 21st, 2022
6.30am zakharova_kaetano Good morning 🌞 How are you today? #haveagoodday After a week of intense writing and sitting on news I feel emotionally drained. Monday doesn’t feel like Monday. It’s just another day of endless week started a month ago. Don’t see what I can do, only a list of things I need to do. So here we are. I wish us good news and a good, productive week. My #goodmorningart post for #morninginspiration@david_alvarado_ #womanportrait #artofportrait #morningmood#artasinspiration #contemporaryart #goodmorningpost
7.30pm zakharova_kaetano #finding a Boulder opal ring by @atelierzobel and @petergold #artofjewellery#beautyofjewellery #jewelleryasinspiration#contemporaryjewellery #colour
11.00pm zakharova_kaetano #nightmood #fashioneditorial#fashionportrait @mar_______vin @vivica @peter.silv for @kinfolkissue 43 Photography and CD: @mar_______vin Styling: @maikamano Art Direction and Set Design: @josephinecho_ Makeup Artist: @suabreup Hair Stylist: @sttefone #artofphotography #beautyoffashion#fashionasinspiration #colour
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