she who the river could not hold

I saw it briefly performed in a scene in Click whilst shantirosa  was here last weekend and I finally found the full version last night. OMG *sways*. I'm a sucker for swing-versions of pop songs anyway.

Aaaanyway... has anything much else happened today? umm... well, there's the EvelynEvelyn debacle with Amanda Palmer (starting point is here; I would say some fairly legitimate criticism here, response by Jason Webley here, response by  Amanda herself here, and another post on it at feministing here). Oh dear - I don't think Amanda realises what kind of can of worms she's opened... on the one hand, I adore her - her music, her look, her general ethos - and I follow her on twitter and read her blog so I GET her and hate seeing her get so torn apart and misunderstood by lots of internet anons... but on the other hand, I completely get where the acusations of ableism are coming from. The disabled feminist activists are right - this IS a fuck up. People have real cause to be hurt and offended by the whole EvelynEvelyn schtick. And I love her, I do, but AFP's response seriously misses the point. She REALLY should have owned that people were hurt and apologised for hurting them; apoligising 'if people were offended' places all the responsibility on those who were hurt to begin with - basically implies that they were being over-sensitive - which is NOT a good way to sound sincere.

Of course I also understand WHY she doesn't (or doesn't want to) 'get it', which is simply that this is clearly a project that has been very close to her heart for several years. It's never crossed her mind that it could upset people and she's upset herself that it has - she just wants other people to see the fun and joy she's got out of it and share in that, and she's too close to it to be able to take a step back and see the bigger issues at play. So this doesn't make me like her any less - but the whole thing is just kind of saddening, for all involved. It's sad that PWDs still have to put up with this kind of shit in this day and age, it's sad that AFP wasn't educated enough on these issues to see that this was going to upset people, it's sad that, once the shit hit the fan, she couldn't react particularly well (partly because of not knowing enough about the issue itself and partly because of being unable to get any proper emotional distance from her work). *sigh* oh dear.

...of which Djaq once spoke so highly:





(I heart you, Sarah Haskins... I heart you like I heart the funnest yoghurt ever.)

(Oh, and this one is funnier). I AM JUST A LADY! WITH A SIMPLE LADY MIND!