Bench Heart

6 elokuun, 20145 joulukuun, 2017 | Henna Timanttimetsä

cut-out from a leather jacket

Feminism tends to ban open sexuality as an invitation to sexism and abuse.

12 heinäkuun, 201430 tammikuun, 2019 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Feminism, something that cannot be answered to with respect and which is blocked away because of its stigma for hating men and hated for its anger. As Beyoncé, a feminist, but loves her husband is a an example of the strange burden feminism falsely carries in one sentence. ”Beyoncé also addressed criticism about calling her forthcoming tour The Mrs Carter Show – appropriating her married name from Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter. ”I feel like Mrs. Carter is who I am, but more bold and more fearless than I’ve ever been,” she said. ”I do believe in equality… But I’m happily married. I love my husband.” Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/beyonce/69546#VU5RPYcwXcJ0VGuj.99

It is clear since the beginning of her career independence and strength of femininity have been core issues in her music. But that is the case for many successful female artists. Focus on showing their capability as women and encouraging others. What comes to celebrities Beyoncé is the one of the few who publicly state and promote feminism and calls herself a feminist. In her videos and music she is openly sexual, feminine and posing her assets to the world as any pop star provocatively. In this way looking she is very similar to for example Rihanna, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj who all are artists and music personalities creating their image, some more and some less. Though of their image and art it is difficult to tell who is making who and does it matter what we actually know about the making of a pop star. I think we should be aware. Level and mastering of manipulation is all what being a celebrity is about. Feminism in this landscape is a curse, a word usually banned and feared. Image of a feminist is opposite to gorgeous and sexy stars. How often feminists are said to be ugly. It is like the worst thing, hideous female who does not attract anyone, but is full of hate and grudge. Ignorance and prejudice is huge upon those who seek justice. Women are not allowed to be angry for being harassed, hated, killed, diminished, put down and treated as second class citizens.

Sexual expression, what is it exactly? Where does the limit go if there is any? And why is it empowerment and not sexism? Empowerment through sexism is a strange thought. It is getting gifts via pleasing the right way. Entertainment is the ultimate pleaser. To please to get the wanted thing and impact. Pop singers and performers like to state that they are in control. It is interesting to explore that control which they refer as theirs, rules that they see as settings of theirs.

Much of what we can take and understand must be lined inside ideals. Outside are left the things unwanted.

bell hooks Called Beyoncé an Anti-Feminist Terrorist

http://flavorwire.com/456190/bell-hooks-called-beyonce-an-anti-feminist-terrorist

When is Revolution, the book

9 toukokuun, 201410 heinäkuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

When is Revolution, irrational right and wrong, essays and poems (pdf)

For me revolution is emotional and as a happening it is irrational, violent and brutal. During political revolution everything happens fast and we don’t know what happens next. Future looks like an endless fight and filled with unkept promises. Idea of political revolution is to take power from those who abuse the nation and its people. The word revolution is about something orbiting the same route without stopping. The irony is that it is what many man-made revolutions end up doing, going in circles. To throw over bad leaders to make new bad leaders and bad politics. It is the case in many current revolutions. The importance is emphasised on the event, which is a thrill, act of taken freedom, but to make the nation actually democratic is much more difficult. It takes a long time, serious work and dedication and actual will to want democracy. Reasons why democracy and peace are difficult to find and accomplish I go through in my book. Most important issue is who has got the power, how is it used and gained and held on to. Other issues closely linked to how power is used and by who are ideology, religion, gender issues, basic values on which society is built. Politics is power play and a show, but it has appeared that the ones who truly have power are hidden behind massive fortunes. World economy keeps politicians in tight leash and us as well. Finance world creates the empires we look at. Here comes the role of the consumer, voter, citizen and the part played by the individual. Do we live to benefit our own good only? To make revolution is a question of existence and how to exist.

My work consists of written text only, poems and essays. No images added other than what my texts make and a burning need to do something. I began my search and research in a tormented way, thrilled and with joy for having this opportunity. I understand what to make revolution means. It is total belief in what one is doing. It is focus. It becomes meaning. As finished, the item, my book, looks like a copy of next year’s budget. It is grim, but so is the state of the world. I did not want this book to be polished work of art, nor a clean correct scientific statement of having searched for something and reported the results. Results of human activity are in the news, in landscape, all over. If one bothers to dig deeper, evidence is there. I had to break a pattern of making and saying. Lots of patterns to be broken over and over. But then I had to also make something whole, something new, not just to break and put to pieces, but to build. One helpful thing was to start writing without thinking about the mistakes I might make. Not to think what other people might think about my work. My research method was to dive in, into the sea of information and try to find the truth and make an image of the world in need of total turn over.

I wanted to make a manifesto and do it as an artist and a writer mixed with the role of researcher. My approach to subject revolution is that everything is linked, every action has a reaction and those things happening far away affect us here. Making revolution becomes a difficult and delicate task, it becomes a task of everybody and not only of those far away. That is what I am after. Making a revolution which is not bound by borders of nations. To break walls inside people’s minds meaning prejudices, class, traditions, misogyny, racism and superstitions.

My meaning is to provoke to think, not only of oneself. What is the possible revolution, that may seem impossible, because a lot is wrong and those who have the ultimate power are truly mighty. We are surveilled and under heavy rule of capitalism, which seriously looks like totalitarianism and brainwash. Where owning as much as possible is seen a good thing. It also seems that those mighty ones’ make us feel powerless and small on purpose. It is to enslave us. Our world is filled with propaganda on how life should be lived. Media is the one powerful force, which is difficult to be defeated and changed. It is not luckily one entity. There are unbias news and neutral reports, one just have to be able to find them. We are at mercy of what is given to us if we don’t know where and how to look for information. I have been interested in finding revolution that would benefit people instead of the leaders, a revolution of information, wisdom and do it yourself. Can such revolution be found in the news via articles and columns in the net? How to connect with those who think the same? Many current revolutions have been implemented and reported by other than reporters of magazines in the internet as we know and we can follow very closely what happens in Ukraine, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain and Tibet etc. if we wish. We can choose if we want to follow what happens, what concerns us. We can choose what interests us, what makes us choose. How free and individual are we in our decision-making? Social media have become an important way to put activism through. For example Feminist organization Femen has an active online of images and videos in social media from their demonstrations around the world. Change is happening fast because information and agitation get noticed and is very much-needed. We need the courage to do the right thing.

There is something about fragmented way of doing, which interests me. It reflects the world we live in. How we put together the bits and pieces and make the picture of it all. That is one part of what my work is about. Essays and poems which talk with each other, so they have become chapters of this book. I have framed my work to grow from radical feminist point of view. It is feared and hated movement, diminished by many. Feminism is the ideology, ethical and philosophical ground from where I write and do art. Rights of women and children are my main focus, crucially important to take into consideration and pay attention to, because they are the ones violated in a massive manner. They are the weak and the powerless. That includes how we take care of the environment. It has a direct influence on lives of poor people, who very often are women and children.

Question is not what needs to be done to make a complete turnover of way of life. We have the answers but are we ready to put them in use in a scale that would make the needed impact. The means and actions to do something have to be implemented immediately, not in twenty years. It means giving up one’s comfort and winnings for comfort and well-being of someone else somewhere else.

The book I begin with introduction to poetry and a collection of poems of mine. In general in history poetry has been making social change and we can think how does it do it. Who is the poet? What is part of an artist? It is a relief to read stories and texts of people who have been through difficult times, it is to reflect. It is about sharing. Same goes with music which is poetry as well and history is filled with powerful protest songs. Music has played tremendous role in waking up, inspiring and unifying people. Poetry and truth provokes. Because truth can be ugly.

Dedication to the cause Feminism is demand for respect and dignity

23 maaliskuun, 201419 helmikuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Strange to me is how divided we are in more ways that is reasonable. Feminism and Socialism are ideologies which divide strongly and are opposed heavily. Feminism especially is put to dirt. Self-evidently it involves women. Feminism demands women to be active, stand up for themselves and their children and importantly feminists also speak for others in similar position as millions of women are treated like shit. speak for those who are treated like inferior, rejected as half-humans without capabilities, people who are tools and objects. How many times it has happened that a woman has to prove herself many times over and maybe not even then is she accepted and acknowledged as capable individual who is not dependent on men and their opinion, who has ideas of her own. One part of the problem lies in wanting to be acknowledged and accepted. Women’s need to please. It is a kind of weakness to want to be loved as one is, do everything possible for it. There is great demand for people to be encouraged as creative intelligent and capable persons.

To acknowledge someone is to honor that person. To honor someone, anyone, is and has been a difficult task. There is need for power and questions on trust. Self-evidently there are cultural differences what is to honor and does it have to be gained. Obvious also is the lack of capability to honor because there is no knowledge of what it is to honor. Respect and dignity begin from knowledge of self-worth, understand that one is valuable as one is with potential and resources. Self-worth grows from having felt respected since childhood. Respect is to be interested in other people, give space, reflect, act and listen to the other. Self-worth grows in being listened to, in atmosphere of trust. It grows when one learns what one can do, is able to accomplish. So to gain self-esteem one needs others but more importantly one needs oneself.

Feminists have been treated as lunatics and criminals. Feminism as something that will pass. Those unattractive misfits, bald angry lesbians who hate men and behave like prostitutes. Those who fear say anything to put shame on dissidents. Women who don’t and did not fit nor accept the society’s mould of proper, place of woman, continuity of males as kings nor rules of hypocrisy have been self-evidently painted malaise, harmful, insane, ridiculous and difficult.

30 tammikuun, 201427 helmikuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

We are fundamentally biological beings dictated by hormones, chemistry, our biological functions and needs. The very foundation of Feminism is that we are equal. Our bodily differences have made it so we differ much from each other, but we bleed the same. Gender does not dictate intellect, abilities, character nor value. Feminism the ideology is to benefit all on grass root level. We are more or less feminine, we all have a mother, we all have a relationship to femininity. When women are well taken care of all society is likely to do the same, be and do well. When it is ok for a man to walk like a woman, talk like a woman and wear a dress without it being strange we have come closer to gender equality. Woman can define her femininity, her body, sexuality, decide for her life we are closer to justice and truth. Feminism is diminished down by many men and women as not needed and dead old-fashioned movement, laughable and unnecessary. If women are not able to have a say over how society should work, as is the case in many countries, then society is not working for all of its members. If women are laughed at because of their gender, if they have to be ashamed of their gender and sexuality, if they have to be afraid because they are women, it is a sorry world. If men have to be afraid of female qualities in them we live by macho dream not what is true. What is Feminism now is the first and acute question. Who can be and is a Feminist? What are the results of Feminism? They are all over and pretty fundamental. It is important in this issue at hand to decide whether to take a side or not, and which one since violent gender division exists and is held tightly upon us. Decisions on what to think, how to react, how to judge and whether to judge at all. Gender is by rule problematic, always current and touchy topic where assumptions and given orders apply like an ancient legislation. Society where anything differing from mainstream is an oddity that should be covered up, silenced and removed as indecent and infernal is not living the 21st century nor being on the nerve of things nor wanting equality at all.

What do religions mean by standing on foundations of supernatural and having authority to define the natural, through belief and tradition? It is a fact that science has developed in an enormous speed and has proved evolution and shown us how nature works. What is the difference between fact and fiction must be clear for any sane person. Belief and concrete evidence of our biology do speak different tongues. That is what we are biological beings, part of nature. No I am not denying faith nor divinity, to me they speak differently than any religious doctrines and heads of churches.

17 joulukuun, 201328 helmikuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Why female body continues to remain the main object of terror and possession of man? Women are still fighting for human rights to happen on many levels. But all in all women’s rights have taken big steps forwards globally during couple of decades, lots is still to be done. It is astonishing how heavy the battle is.