-
The journey continues…
Working on ideas/stories/projects after a 2 week vacation where I was able to decompress from the last month of feverish activity. There is much work to be done (and it is being done) but while I work and before more updates or newsy items, I’d like to re-post a subtle story about what surfing might…
-
Wetsuits from plants? Yes, says Patagonia.
Patagonia is up to its old antics, forging a sustainable and responsible path forward in the surf industry. This time they tackle the fossil-based wetsuit material neoprene, replacing the majority of their wetsuit material with a rubber gleaned from the Guayule plant. I hope they plan to make women’s wetsuits out of this material as…
-
Audre Lorde: Practice Speaking
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will…
-
“quick someone shoot that… feminist dyke”
How controlling is Big Surfing? What are its mechanisms of control? Is this really the happy-go-lucky lifestyle it professes to be? I’ll leave that to the reader’s discretion to determine. 1) People who disagreed with Chad Wells’ comments are not all “dykes” 2) Asking Big Surfing to enter the 21st century does not equal the…
-
Protected: “Who is losing when sex is sold?” The future.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
-
Lesbian-Baiting, a la roxy surfing 2013
One of the most prevalent tools of sexism in the surf industry has been and continues to be lesbian-baiting. Lesbian baiting occurs most often when rumblings are felt within the sexist status quo, when women gain more power in a hierarchy, or when they are acting more self-assertive and less deferential than their male-counterparts…
-
Tell Roxy That Female Surfers Deserve Better
Dear Roxy, Roxy is the world’s most visible and well known women’s surf brand. Recently, Roxy released a trailer for the 2013 Roxy Biarritz Pro contest that showcases a style of marketing women’s surfing that is not conducive to a healthy, empowered vision of women. Instead of women surfers being presented as an alternative to…
-
Roxy, #whoamIjustguess: surf-sex w/o a face
The trend of sexualization of women in surfing has been steadily building. It has been building slowly enough that we have had plenty of time to argue back and forth about whether this is a trend that will or already has been, aggravated toward more sexualization of female surfers. Today, something has fundamentally shifted. The…
-
Vandana Shiva on Bt cotton in India (video)
[4/1/2014 edit: Since posting this, the video has been made private on youtube and only a small portion of it is now available to view on the BBC here. There is, however, plenty of info on youtube that is easily searchable about Bt Cotton and Monsanto’s desire to control seed and a video link with…
-
Reconstructing Surfing
Environmental justice, as opposed to simple environmentalism that can be co-opted by corporate consumerism to drive sales in the mode of greenwashing, understands that all forms of oppression are interconnected. That is, oppressions of race, sexuality, gender, class; oppressions that privilege heterosexuality and certain body types over others; oppressions that encourage (often in complicity via…
Cori Schumacher
State of Flux
