Artist is the art.

Who is afraid of a beaver?

Kuva | | Henna Timanttimetsä

Experts on gender and what is sex of anyone.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Body parts, feelings, sensations, sexuality and expectations how these issues and things can be seen and will be tolerated. Dress and behavioral codes into which to grow and be comfortable with, but to grow up to be a woman or a man is a struggle whether you are transgender man or female or not. It is a struggle with beauty standards, measures of manhood and womanhood. Very much those measurements stand on shallow ground and stay the same to the core, are extremely difficult to alter. So who is to say who anyone should be? All of society that relies on traditions, gender roles and how we perceive opposite sex and sex of ours, how we are supposed to express ourselves and can not. What to censor of ourselves because it is too much for others to take. It is totally not a free zone or neutral issue as we know and never will be. To feel compassion for transgender people does not mean all criticism must be wiped out and what a human truly is, who is to decide for anybody in the end is the person in question. To identify with gender and what is needed to belong since we are to belong or to be tossed aside quite brutally when we are too much to take or not enough. Fight is when we do not fit in our bodies, our society rejects us, our family rejects as well the oddity. Those who do not want to live by the policing codes and models given to us shall have a fight.

Am I trying to be objective about transgender people’s cry over their right to choose their sex and gender? Maybe. Though I happen to be of opinion partly it is not one’s decision which sex we are but one can live by the idea of the sex one feels belonging to, and people must be free to do so. To be completely of some gender and stick to that ideal of gender is a social construction and is consciously build. We either believe it or we do not. What does free will have to do with deciding since we are not free and decision is not partly ours? Is it a question of owning one’s body and right to choose nevertheless? Ideal man and woman is an echo of past generations and unwillingness of letting go of those ideals is clear. We should be able to follow a perfect image of a woman or a man, to follow and believe norms for expressing and living gender. To be completely of some sex means to be with DNA, organs and bone structure of either sex thinking there are two naturally. What about desires and needs of women and men how do they differ and what kind of desires and needs do transgender people have in this picture? What is the bodily person in comparison to emotional and chemical person and sex? Does body win and dictate who we are and how we must manifest ourselves? Do transgender people follow traditional gender roles, imitate masculine men and feminine women? You feel you are a woman in a man’s body, nature doing tricks with us. How to live with this equation when the rest of the world does not understand or want a freak? How are transgender people to cope with this task and obvious dilemma which is mostly dilemma for those who have bias and strict views on how women and men are? Society wants us to follow nature although we do not respect nor follow nature in our ways, we disrespect nature still we justify our morals and perspectives into human sex via nature and nature being the ultimate guide to how we should see each other and our part in society.

Sex the body, sex the mind. Gender the fucking complex: how to address and dress who we are inside? Who gets to decide? Gender and sex are a big part of our identity, identity which is partly not up to you to decide, our body and emotions do a lot of deciding which is not rational. When gender is a curse or a blessing? It is difficult to be a standard representative of male or female as there are ideals which we like to imitate, there are models for us what a gender looks like and what do they do in their lives, genders, sexes, boys and girls. Which points of views do we take and what kind of aspects affect how we see female and male, how we feel in our bodies? It is clear many don’t feel good, body is always the wrong kind. Sexuality dominates, hetero sex, male desire wanting female body justifiably. Yes we are not just biological, we are not only natural. To simplify issue of how men and women are is unjustified and simply wrong as it is the complex of all complexes. To simplify is the easy way wanting to ignore complexity and being unable to face something weird nature has made. Our instincts do not, hopefully, dictate over us, but is sexuality which is very much an urge of natural origin, the biology, physiology, body and mind deciding for us? Nature is what we are afraid of. How much does society decide for us concerning gender and to what sex we belong, a lot. Fluidity is not something we can just takeover no matter how trendy it is. It is a shame.

http://www.andrewlilico.com/2015/10/24/on-why-a-feminist-will-find-it-problematic-to-describe-mtof-transsexuals-as-women/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11955371/Germaine-Greer-is-a-dinosaur-powerless-against-the-new-feminism.html?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1445875736

They don’t care if your sensibilities are upset. That’s the point, in fact. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/confronting-the-ghosts-of-feminism-in-a-lesbian-haunted-house?utm_source=broadlytwitterus

 

 

What is art fighting for or is it the institutions that choose the proper fight for the context for the eyes of the privileged and easily traumatized?

| Henna Timanttimetsä

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2015/10/youth-advisory-board-discuss-censorship-of-art/ ”When we reach a point that art depicting toy to depict a terrorist threat is considered too dangerous for public consumption, one has to wonder what we are really fighting for.”

Censorship is the one that has always been there for me whether it is in form of self-censoring which women do instinctively, or the authority has done the censoring and called it curating or editing or just looking away. Usually it is disapproving without discussion and show of contempt for the artist. Something that must be only perfect has a perverse side to it. Art is not about depicting a perfect world, perfect people looking perfect doing perfect things and being great, only great and wonderfully glorified. World glorified, artist glorified, art something that matches the interior and appeals to aesthetic taste is a trend which is forcing itself still as we are given big names and stars, proper contents packaged, expensive gladly, not bad light on rulers, not politics, not ugliness, not cursing, business-likeness which has taken the art world is obvious. We are here to sell and please.

So art on menstruation, female genitals, sex, pornography, bombs, terrorism, art world pretense and phoniness, cleaners, garbage, dirt, prostitution often are banned, scrutinized or at least artist’s mental health is questioned and her intentions. Those topics may be more suitable for male artists too, but still daring. He is so daring and brave, she is just odd and dangerous. To say the word clitoris aloud is difficult, so I am interested why so, to watch pornographic images which are on the net for all to see displayed in art context cause a stir. Scandal is why art scene is so conservative, still sexist and prudish, still perverse. I also wonder what kind of people art is for and what is expected of art, why these expectations do not match with desires of an artist to explore openly, discuss and show what world is like.

For artist to do what is expected is dangerous.

To lose femininity, to be without that characteristic of yours which is a stigma, which puts you in to a group and frame. To me it is impossible and stigma I refuse, stigma of weakness. I am first a person not my gender and sex.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
It is strange to think that women who do manly jobs which for some reason are majority of jobs, that imitate men to make it in their branch of expertise would mean losing their femininity. Femininity is still something that does not speak up, seduces, does not take over other than sexually and women have to learn how to physically defend themselves since feminine women do not know how to. Or maybe they know but the ban is so strong they are paralyzed and scared that punch on them is lethal. Something that is lost may be visible and a tradition we like to be used to, that is expected to be there, be found and it strikes as odd when it is replaced with something that does not belong there ’naturally’. Femininity is seen a natural characteristic and women are expected to bring that natural element in them forward appropriately: caring, submissiveness, beauty and fragility, helplessness, posing and being wanted, loved, looking for love forever. When women begin to help themselves they are easily viewed as to rough, outsiders, too active, outspoken which is not good for them and not having time to pay attention to their outer bodies and beautify themselves, not giving attention to their families enough, forgetting to keep themselves smelling good for joy of others.
Women’s naturalness versus beautifying is the paradox, too much or nothing at all? Finding likability as women, that niceness, kindness and gentleness which are virtues, of course, such things in a person are good to have but such unchanging obedient category where women very easily are put in and they put themselves in is not working anymore if it ever has. To be able to choose and have variety is what is good for the whole of society. Societies develop on many levels much quicker and wider when women are applauded for courage to make change happen for them experimenting their limits and limits of all in society because it is other people who have the opposition and hold up the wall for women to climb up, to fight against. Preconceptions hold on tight also in Finland. To try to work in a field which is usually for men only, not because to make a feminist move but out of pure interest for the craft, is in many ways demanding, it is adjusting and feeling the atmosphere. Bias is strong and women are seen as physically and mentally weaker which is interesting, incapable even evidence of otherwise is there and to talk with women, what topics are there that bunch of men could ever find interesting to talk with women.
When gender is not fluid and expectations are build solid thinking how things should be means exactly that, nothing much changes especially when society is very gender bound, when there are jobs specially for women and men. And how slowly things change in that area. What are women capable of and do we have to compare to men since we can do both, things that men do too.

http://review31.co.uk/article/view/353/uncategorised-freedom ”Mechanics of language and gender are performative in the Butler-sense (‘gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original’)”

Observation point: How observations made with help of drones are analyzed? Data collected and used.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

 

My recent sketches of drones with watercolor.

Importance of remembering Suffrage movement and what it has meant.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
http://time.com/4079176/suffragette-word-history-film/ ”The word suffragette, however, was used to describe strictly women, the type who were disrupting local meetings and spitting on policemen, the type who were getting arrested and going on hunger strikes in prison and, in one case, taking an axe to a famous Spanish painting of Venus admiring herself in a mirror, which happened to be hanging in London’s National Gallery.”
It is an important movement for me personally as I identify with them and their cause which is a cause for all women and their children, generations to come, message so important that it lives on. I compare Femen with Suffrage movement. They are both powerful, they both make me proud and emotional, proud that such people exist. Suffragettes were and are so important it is a crying shame they haven’t been more widely applauded and are easily forgotten. This I gather is due to their gender, straight forward message, hostility towards oppressors, methods which were direct, uncompromising and fearless action without avoiding self-harm. And harmed they were, mentally and physically, to fight for women’s equal rights was so appalling an idea that at the time there were women and men who openly showed their disrespect and hate. Suffragettes were treated like criminals. The amount of influence Suffrage movement accomplished globally to achieve is something we can’t deny. It is monumental and lasting. The power women can have, the determination and will to change living conditions and unjust ruling of women out of the politics when it is lives of women and children that are used and abused without them having a say over. It is still intolerable that child labor has not been abolished, that 2/3 of the illiterate are women http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/worldswomen.html, that religion dictates women inferior to men turning them into sex slaves, home bound maids who have nothing else to expect or protect than be obedient and have honor which is the most prized possession. When woman loses her honor she becomes worthless and can be killed. This is what is the religion of ISIS and it is the case of online bullying, sheer misogyny where women are not capable thinking people but objects of sexual fantasies and abuse who do not have any business in entering areas and places dominated and ruled by men.
There are people who say feminism and women’s right movements do not have a job anymore, that they are old and worn out. What kind of people say that? In what kind of world do people who do not see how women are treated today live? It is good to pay attention and yes it is good to change tactics and ways of protesting when old ways do not do the wanted visible mark and make change, because there is a lot to do.

Dear diary, my hair.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Forming image, bodies online

Kuva | | Henna Timanttimetsä

Satin organza shotgun lace

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Strive to be better and better is to love yourself. It is strange for a woman to be labelled weak when she is stronger than most. Thinking pattern of which people are not willing to let go because it empowers them and enslaves those who need to be seen as weak. That is a wall to climb and people to walk over because that is what they need to be made understand and feel in their bodies. Body remembers and gets if mind does not.

When those who should love you are your worst enemy situation is something you cannot escape, physically yes but not mentally. People are compelled and forced not to love because loving makes them vulnerable admitting to emotion that is delicate and caring, soft, profound, open, accepting and feminine almost childish and naive. Love becomes nonexistent and meaningless words when you are betrayed by those who you think should love you unconditionally. Love is used as an excuse to exploit, a misused emotion, misused way to fool and fake, get your way, manipulate, to act the a way which stands opposite to love. Love is misunderstood and loathed, put to dirt the same as people who are seen as not worthy of love. There are people who think love is something to bargain with and people who think they are not worthy to be loved. The opposite of love in everyday life is there to be endured, understood as normal, so common it hurts, love a word and world which is upside down looking like a monster, love untrustworthy statement, people filled with hate, distrust and ill talk, violence the best tool just as despair, illness to have. When one grows up in such a climate lovelessness is a rule and seeing through people’s intentions and people themselves on daily basis a normality which in its accuracy is scary.