Cry-Baby #1: Lumberton Independent School District

Screencap via 12 News

The incident: Some parents complained that their children's teacher was transgender.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: The teacher was suspended.

Laura Jane Klug is a transgender woman who was recently hired by the Lumberton ISD School District in Texas as a substitute teacher. She was filling in as a teacher for a 5th grade class last Thursday when she found out that there had been complaints from the parents of some of her students about her being transgender. 

The school responded to these complaints by suspending Laura, which was a legal for thing for them to do because Texas, a state located in a first world country, does not have laws to protect transgender people from workplace discrimination. 

Roger Beard, whose son was in Laura's class, said he complained because he felt that 11-year-olds were too young to understand the (fairly uncomplicated) concept of a trans woman. "There are some things that we accept in society that children are not going to accept in the same way that we do," he told local news station 12 News. Adding, "I just don't want them teaching, especially not this age group."

Thankfully, other parents defended Laura. "My son knows who he is and I don't think any outside influence is going to change that. I'm more concerned about straight predatory teachers rather than I am someone who lives an alternative private lifestyle. I don't worry about my son," said Jammie Marcantel, whose son was in Laura's class.

According to another local news station, Laura will find out later today if she gets to keep her job. 

Cry-Baby #2: Henry County Police Department

Screencap via WSB-TV2

The incident: Some kids built a tree fort. 

The appropriate response: Nothing. Maybe asking them to stop, depending on the circumstances.

The actual response: A cop pulled a gun on them. 

Earlier this week, 11-year-old Omari Grant was playing with some friends in a patch of trees behind his house in Henry County, GA. A neighbor, upset that the boys were breaking branches from a tree to build a tree fort, called the police.

According to Omari, two police officers responded to this extremely important 911 call and approached him and his friends. He says one of them had his gun drawn. 

"I was thinking, I don't want to be shot today, so I just did what they said," Omari told WSB-TV2.

Omari says that the officer made him and his friends lay down on the ground at gun point and spread their legs. He also says the officer used "foul language." Omari was then led home by the officer. Omari's mother, Janice Baptiste, said, "[The officer] just came with such an attitude, his whole physical appearance was one of 'I'm Mr. big and bad.'"

"My son was, of course, traumatized by that," she added. 

No charges were filed, but Janice has made an excessive force complaint with the police department. Speaking to WSB-TV2, Sgt. Joey Smith of the Henry County Police Department said they were investigating the officers actions. "If it was something inappropriate or against policy," he said, "then it will be dealt with."

Which of these two organizations is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A school that suspended a girl for shaving her head vs. a school that got a concerned mother arrested

Winner: The one that got the woman arrested!!!

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The Spreedivas performing at the opening of Germany's first lesbian cemetery. Photos by Sabine Glasmeyer

Sunday was a great day to be an aging German lesbian. While the rest of Berlin was either tucking into their morning potato pancakes or trying to block every inch of sunlight from entering their comedown cocoons, around 100 people descended on a leafy cemetery in the east of the city for the opening of the country’s first burial ground for gay women.

The ladies—all members of SAFIA, a German society for older lesbians—were in high spirits, and surprisingly happy to talk about their own mortality, the importance of being visible, and the acceptance of death. One of them said the cemetery was the first of its kind in Europe, but no one was entirely sure. Nor was Google.  

“Some people might say this is historic, but today we're saying her-storic,” founder Hilde Heringer told the crowd gathered in the Georgian Perochial Protestant cemetery in Prenzlauer Berg, just north of Alexanderplatz. “We now have somewhere, for the first time, that lesbians can be buried beside those they loved.”

Germany's tabloids had a field day when the opening was announced last week. “It's pointless!” screeched some, with others arguing that it was actually quite romantic. Basically, no one knew what to think, and it's likely we were all missing the point. After all, besides maybe pallbearers and gravediggers, who can really claim to have spent a lot of time thinking about cemeteries?

But as a string of women hauled themselves up onto the cemetery's new bench to talk about why having the space was so important, and the cheers from the crowd grew louder, it began making a little more sense to the outsiders.

The 430-square-foot plot is on church ground and has room for 80 coffins and many more urns, and spaces for both are filling up fast. “I've reserved my spot already—you've got to move quick,” a woman next to me in the crowd whispered.

The four founders of the cemetery

A series of speeches from the four main founders—identifiable by their matching red baseball caps—kicked off the festivities. Following the speeches, there were a couple of rousing numbers from the city's “Spreedivas” lesbian choir.

SAFIA member Astrid Osterland has been heading up the press campaign. All smiles and lime-green trousers, she gave a clear argument for why she thought lesbians deserved a patch of land in which they could all rot away together eternally, as nuclear families have done since burials began.

“Come here—look at this, all these plots are families buried together,” said 69-year-old Osterland as she jabbed her hand towards an old gravestone. “The Müllers all got to go in together, so why don't we?”

A veteran fighter against homophobia and for the right to be openly gay, Osterland knows she's getting older: “Death is a part of life; it's about learning to live with it and accepting this. Lots of us don't have families to be buried with. Instead, we want to lie with those we've fought alongside, loved, and lived with,” she said, smiling. In fact, pretty much everyone there was smiling—even the Protestant vicar who popped by to give a speech.

Vicar Peter Stock

“We know that the way in which people live takes many forms, but connections to our loved ones stay the same,” said vicar Peter Stock, one of few men present at the ceremony. “The Lutheran church supports the coming together of people in any form.”

Osterland was keen to stress that they had had no problem getting the patch signed off by the religious authorities. It's no secret that new internments at German graveyards are getting fewer and fewer—some people have even taken to hauling their loved ones over an eastern border for a cheaper cremation. “The cemetery authorities were thrilled,” she said, laughing. Which is why SAFIA managed to secure the 30-year contract with the authorities. The whole thing costs around €15,000 [$20,800] and has been funded entirely through donations. No state money is involved, and the women are now responsible for organizing the site. In fact, they've already installed in a very nice bench, commissioned by a Spreediva singer/carpenter.

Volunteers planting trees at the cemetery

In the spirit of accepting mortality, lesbians wishing to be buried there will be able to go for a consultation with another of the founders, Usah Zachau. Judging by her speech, it seems that she has a bit of a thing for graveyards. “I spent lots of time in them as a child—they weren't something to be feared,” she said. "Anything can be taught in a cemetery.”

Presumably the main lesson here will be tolerance. One writer in attendance told me that SAFIA members were part of “an active society. We're political and we want to be visible after death”. She didn't want to be named, but was happy to shout, “Viva la vulva!” across the gravestones. “We've had bad experiences with the press,” she explained.

Slightly less prickly was a lady enjoying the new bench. After inviting me to sit, she told me the area “sets an example that this way of life exists and that it's worthy. Even now it can be hard for young lesbians to be accepted by their families”.

With everyone registered for a plot still very much alive, SAFIA might be waiting a while to christen the ground with its first casket. Until then, there's plenty of gardening to be getting on with. 

@jesscware

For last week's episode of Band for Life, click here.

Check back next Friday for part 9 of Band for Life.

A year ago, almost to the day, I watched a graffiti artist named Khalifa paint a huge smiley face onto a wall. The wall was pretty much all that remained of the house it had been part of, and every other house on the street was in a similarly bad state. The day before, the street had been hit by a Scud missile: That was Aleppo, Syria, in 2013.

Khalifa had sprayed a slogan next to the smiley face. It read, in Arabic, "Tomorrow this will be beautiful." He was wrong.

Aleppo was not beautiful the next day, or the day after that. One year later, it continues to get less and less beautiful, up to the point where using the word beautiful in connection with the city can only be ironic. I didn't think that I could see anything more severe than the destruction that last year’s Scud missiles had wreaked on the city, but it turns out that I was wrong too. Last week I went back to Aleppo for the first time in seven months and drove around the city with my friend Mahmoud, noting the places that used to exist and now don’t. When I visit London I do the same thing, but in reverse: I notice the new overpriced deli around the corner from my old house, and the skyscrapers that have shed their scaffolding, revealing themselves in all their shiny new glory. In Aleppo I noticed the street stall where I had bought a box of sweets last Ramadan, now twisted and burned and broken.

Aleppo has suffered waves of misfortune since my last visit. As the stifling summer drew to a close, a new and brutal group tightened its grip on the city: the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a militia so extreme that even members of al Qaeda have distanced themselves from it. First they started kidnapping foreign journalists, then they turned their attention to the activists and fixers who we work with. Then they started arresting and torturing anyone who didn’t abide by their literalist Islamic rules—and no one abides by those rules but ISIS itself.

In the final stage of their campaign, ISIS turned their attentions towards the other rebel brigades. The Liwa al Tawhid was once the biggest and strongest rebel group in Aleppo, funded by the Muslim Brotherhood and led by a personable and popular man named Haji Mara. The Tawhid suffered its first blow when Mara was killed by a regime airstrike in November, then his successor was killed by an ISIS car bomb in January. By that time, the uneasy truce between ISIS and the other rebel brigades had broken down into open conflict.

“They started to attack all our checkpoints, and they killed our fighters and took their weapons,” a young Tawhid rebel named Abu Mohammed told me. “Around 700 of our fighters were killed by ISIS.”

Many opposition activists believe that ISIS is working for Bashar al-Assad’s regime. They say that the two groups have been working hand in hand to undermine the Syrian revolution and to halt the advance of the rebel forces. Whether that is true or not, the outcome is the same. ISIS drove the media and the activists out of Aleppo, and while the eyes of the world were turned elsewhere, Assad’s forces unleashed the winter’s second wave of misfortune on the city. As the Geneva II peace talks went absolutely nowhere in late January, the Syrian regime was two months into a barrel bombing campaign in Aleppo.

Scud missiles are hardly cutting-edge military technology, but they are practically futuristic compared to barrel bombs, which are nothing more than canisters packed with explosives and metal shards hurled from helicopters. Their effect is largely the same, though—a single barrel bomb, like a single Scud missile, can devastate a whole street in one go. The difference is accuracy. A regime soldier will often have little idea of where the barrel bomb will land when he rolls it out of the helicopter with the sole of his boot. It could hit a school, or a hospital, or a house just as easily as it could hit a rebel base. And the barrel bombs that have been dropped on Aleppo have hit many houses—it’s estimated that 20,000 Alippines have become homeless over the past four months.

The Liwa al Tawhid lost its home in the barrel bombing too. Its base used to be the biggest and best equipped in Aleppo—a former hospital that had, by last summer, been furnished with a set of elegant United Nations–style flags at its entrance. Now those flagpoles are nothing more than burned stalks, and the Tawhid has been absorbed into a new rebel alliance called the Islamic Front. It’s an open secret that the Islamic Front is supported by Qatar, while a second alliance that was formed at the same time—the Syrian Revolutionary Front—is funded by Saudi Arabia.

“When all the groups were Free Syrian Army, nobody supported us,” said Abu Mohammed. “But now we are the Islamic Front. We are not the FSA and we are not a radical Islamic group. We are something in between. What has happened now is because of the financial connections. This situation is because of the whole world.”

The Islamic Front is still in Aleppo, but most of the people have left. The streets are empty and echoing. But the barrel bombs are still falling, up to 20 of them every day. The rebels and the regime have spent 18 months fighting over this city, but soon there may be nothing of it left to fight for.

Most of the remaining residents have no choice but to stay. They are the very poorest—the people with no money or travel documents, and therefore no means to leave. They are people like Um Mustafa, a mother of three who is living in the Firdous district. It is a front line neighborhood, but the front lines are now the safest places in Aleppo because the regime—wary of accidentally hitting its own forces—avoids dropping the barrel bombs on them. But the shelling and clashing continue. “There are no other places to go,” Mustafa told me.

Alongside the poor, there are the brave—the Aleppines who could get out but insist on staying. People like the men of the Civilian Defense Team, a group of 30 poorly equipped volunteers who rush to the sites of bomb blasts to dig survivors out of the rubble with their bare hands.

“Already this morning, there have been around ten bombs dropped,” said Khaled Hajou, one of the volunteers. Without heavy lifting equipment, their job is painstaking. “In one place we have been searching for a man for two days—he is missing under the rubble,” Hajou said. “There are a lot of people who are just missing. We have never been able to find them.”

At night we went to Mahmoud’s apartment, the same place we’d stayed in last year before ISIS forced both of us out of the city. The building was still standing but the windows had been blasted out, and Mahmoud had patched them up with cinder blocks and sandbags. They let the cold in but not the light, and the futility of repairing the place properly was revealed the next day when a plane attacked the building behind ours and ruined the one window left in the apartment.

The jets and the helicopters are terrifying during the day, when you can see them flying overheard. But they are heart-stopping at night, when all you can do is listen and try to work out whether they’re coming toward you or heading away. On my second night in Aleppo I huddled under a duvet on the sofa, attention fixed on the whine of the engines as an improvised mantra ran through my head: Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, on an eternal loop.

The walls of the apartment and the concrete in the windows felt fragile. The rubble on the streets reminded me how easily the building could be crushed, with us inside.

Mahmoud’s friend, a rebel, had other things on his mind. He desperately wanted to get a generator working so that he could contact one of his girlfriends on WhatsApp. The city's electric grid barely works in the rebel-held areas now, and the fuel that powers the generators has risen to prohibitively expensive prices, even as its quality has plummeted. A liter of diesel used to cost around 30 cents; now it costs over a dollar.

I asked him how many girlfriends he had. He told me that he had nine. Keeping them all happy was a full-time job—but at least it was distracting him from the jets overhead.

The aerial bombardment is so terrifying—it makes you feel so small and helpless—that it's easy to forget that the regime is still shelling the city as well. We were reminded of this in spectacular style the next morning as we drove along the only road out of the city. An ear-splitting crump to our left was followed by a cloud of dust and smoke: A mortar round had landed less than 50 yards away from the car.

For us it was a lucky escape, but for the people of Aleppo it is a daily reality. Doctors at one of the city’s seven field clinics told us that their ambulances are often shelled on that road as they transfer the most seriously injured patients acros the border to Turkey. One month ago the hospital itself was targeted—the top floors have been destroyed, and the only usable rooms are on the ground floor and in the basement. The staff of three doctors is treating around 60 wounded people every day.

Aleppo used to be beautiful. It had treasures, like a 600-year-old souk, one of the largest covered markets in the world—now reduced to ashes and rubble—or the Ummayad Mosque, its minaret now blasted off. While representatives of Assad’s regime took their place at an international negotiating table, his forces smashed their own country’s second city to dust, and they are continuing to do so as I write this.

One thing I remembered from Aleppo was still there—Khalifa’s graffiti, dulled and faded, but still legible on the blasted wall. That street had escaped the barrel bombs, but it was impossible to take any joy from that fact because the street had been screwed up anyway. “Last year we had Scuds. This year we’ve got barrel bombs. What will we have next year?” laughed Mahmoud.

Khalifa’s slogan seemed optimistic when I watched him spray it on that wall last year. Now it’s just cruelly depressing.

Follow Hannah Lucinda Smith on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user goldenratio

The term Kafkaesque gets thrown around a lot these days when people talk about the US government—and it's easy to see why, given everything we've learned over the past few years about the scale of the Obama administration's drone warfare program and the NSA's global surveillance regime. Kafkaesque also happens to be pretty much the only word I can think of to describe America's drug laws, which have led to minorities being disproportionately targeted for low-level arrests and are responsible for about half of the approximately 216,000 people currently residing in the federal prison system.

But things are looking a bit less bleak now that the US Sentencing Commission (an independent governmental agency) has voted unanimously to revise its guidelines (which are treated like Leviticus by most federal judges), a change the commission says will cut the average sentence for drug trafficking by 11 months and help trim the population at federal prisons. Assuming lawmakers in our beloved Congress don't affirmatively take action to prevent the change—not impossible, but, I'm told, pretty damn unlikely—the new rules will go into effect on November 1.

“This modest reduction in drug penalties is an important step toward reducing the problem of prison overcrowding at the federal level in a proportionate and fair manner,” Judge Patti B. Saris, chair of the Sentencing Commission, said on Thursday. “Reducing the federal prison population has become urgent, with that population almost three times where it was in 1991.”

The vote comes after Attorney General Eric Holder took a surprisingly aggressive step of his own in August by instructing US attorneys to not necessarily seek the harshest sentence possible when going after mid-level drug traffickers. Of course, we've quickly started hearing stories about angry, old-school prosecutors who are pissed the government doesn't want to legitimize their rabidly authoritarian impulses anymore. Essentially, they argue that the threat of decades in jail is the only way to break up drug dealing networks, as low-level couriers who face the prospect of half a century behind bars tend to at least consider cooperating with the cops. But if the war on drugs ended, presumably a lot of those prosecutors would lose their jobs—pretty much everyone who isn't financially invested in our terrible drug policies thinks these moves are good news.

"Our country is slowly but steadily reversing the damage done by the failed, racially biased war on drugs," Jesselyn McCurdy, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement.

I called McCurdy up to ask her how big a deal these revised sentencing guidelines were, and found her optimism tempered by a lot of realism. "It'll probably only affect 6,500 people," she told me, citing the Justice Department's estimate of the future reduction in the prison population.

Which is to say this is just one step in the long process of reining in the country's overly harsh drug laws. Notably, the new guidelines are not retroactive, so those languishing in jail with outsized prison terms are out of luck. More importantly, McCurdy said, was Holder's directive, and even more important than that is the Smarter Sentencing Act. That's the legislative response to the swelling penitentiary population crafted by Democrats, criminal justice groups, and libertarian-leaning Senate Republicans like Rand Paul and Mike Lee. Though it hasn't exactly gripped the national media, the bill is seen by lobbyists and sympathetic senators as having a solid shot at passage. It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, and could come up for a vote before the full Senate in a matter of months. In addition to rolling back mandatory minimums, the bill would make retroactive the reduction in the disparity in sentences handed out for crack and powder cocaine that passed in 2010.

So while we shouldn't exactly declare victory here—the war on drugs isn't going anywhere until someone gets elected president on an explicit promise to halt it—we are seeing the creaky gears of the federal law enforcement apparatus begin to show some signs of change.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Kevin O'Leary looking smug: quelle surprise. Photo via WikiMedia Commons.
TV personality, financial pundit, and terrible businessman Kevin O’Leary continued his bid for international—or at least North American—infamy on Tuesday, April 8, when he appeared on CNBC’s business talk show Squawk on the Street

The segment O’Leary appeared on was about income equality in honour of Equal Pay Day; or at least that’s what the segment was supposed to be about, and what it would have been about if O’Leary had been willing to discuss anything other than the awesome power of jobs and The Market.

Host Carl Quintanilla began the segment by mentioning a new executive order that will require federal contractors to report their employees’ wages and how they break down based on gender and race. Seemingly uninterested in discussing gender-based wage equality, or even wages (or gender) at all, O’Leary shifted immediately to more familiar ground.

“Carl, let me ask you a question that is core to America’s success,” O’Leary said. “How does this help create one incremental job anywhere in America? It doesn’t. It retards the process.”

Later on, O’Leary went back to this idea that equal pay is “retarding” the American economy, saying that with “all of these false manipulations on what pay should be, we are retarding the growth of America. Period. Period. There’s no other debate.”

Anyone who’s seen O’Leary guest as an “financial expert” will probably recognize some of his favourite talking points:

• What about the jobs?
   
• “The Market” is perfect.
   
• Being rich is always good.
   
• People who aren’t rich are either jealous or ungrateful.

He sticks to these pretty much without fail, regardless of how or if they fit into the conversation. It’s quite likely he does this because it seems he is only capable of holding four points in his brain at the same time and has chosen to stick with these ones. Whatever the reason, if you talk to Kevin O’Leary, you’re going to have to discuss the above.

What’s most bizarre about O’Leary’s Tuesday appearance on CNBC is that even there, on a show held on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, he managed to be the most conservative, wealth-worshipping reactionary by at least an order of magnitude. One would think that if Kevin O’Leary has peers, they would exist on CNBC: the network so desperate to cheerlead for JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon that they wouldn’t accept the New York Times as a credible news source.

But Kevin O’Leary is a visionary in the field of economics and business, as his every public appearance makes clear. Either that or he’s an embarrassing and incompetent blowhard who’s happy to make himself into a laughing-stock for more sweet, sweet dollars. The real question is why anybody puts him on TV; presumably the producers at CNBC aren’t doing it for comedic value, but really, that’s the only reasonable explanation.

It’s a shame he has such a large platform to spew his nonsense, but since he does, the rest of us may as well enjoy it. I leave you with a few of his most hilarious statements on Tuesday’s show:

One host makes the reasonable point that many companies create shitty, low-paying jobs that abuse workers (often women and people of colour), and it “doesn’t do anybody any good except the person getting the discount.”O’Leary responds by claiming that “companies that even try to do that go bankrupt,” which ignores all of history and the present day.

“The market determines the value of work. Let it do what it did for 200 years in America, creating the greatest economy on earth.”For a significant chunk of America’s history, the “greatest economy on earth”was built on the backs of slaves. Their work was determined to have no value. So yeah Kev, this may not be the best argument to use.

In response to the question, “You’re not arguing there’s been wage disparity between men and women in the past, right?”O’Leary throws down a completely different gauntlet: “Look: I don’t even think we should have a minimum wage.” Wait, what?


@tyelland

The model pelvis/vagina in Julia Di Paolo's office. Photo by the author.
At this point, just about everyone knows what Kegels are. They’re the kind of jokey non-exercise that women do after they’ve had a baby to try to heal their vaginas, or something older women try in an attempt to delay the inevitable need for diapers, or what young women use when they’re trying to ensure they keep their lower-half in tiptop condition.

Here’s something you may not know: there are levels to this shit. First, both men and women can benefit from exercising the pelvic floor (aka the area and muscle fibers covering the area underneath your pelvis). It can improve your orgasms and your posture, and it doesn’t involve going to the gym—unless you’re one of those people who get it in at the gym (the most effective workout for your pelvic floor is sex). Still, there’s a lot of misinformation about what Kegels and pelvic floor exercises can and cannot do, and I wanted to get down to the brass tacks of genital strength improvement.

In order to do so, I sought out Registered Pelvic-Floor Physiotherapist Julia Di Paolo—a 17-year veteran of physiotherapy world, four of which have been spent as one of Toronto’s 54 trained pelvic floor specialists—to learn more about preventing organs from sinking into your vagina, what you should do if you experience pain during sex, and why picking up an imaginary blueberry with your vagina may be the secret to better sex.

VICE: What does a pelvic floor physiotherapist actually do?
Julia Di Paolo: We are regular registered physiotherapists, but we have specialized education, so it’s post-grad education. We are the only ones that go internal, which means fingers into the vagina or the rectum to assess the musculature of the pelvis. There’s a lot of muscles you can’t access from the outside, and some of them you can access, but not very easily. Going inside is the only way to tell if a muscle is too tight or too loose, or too short.

What kind of clients do you typically see?
I see a lot of women who are pregnant or just had their babies. And then we have a subset of the mothers of the women who just had their babies, because the women I treat go home and tell grandma who is looking after the new baby what they did, and she says “well, I leak too,” and she comes to see me.

The women in menopause are at high risk because they’ve delivered babies years ago and then they have 20 or 30 years of without pelvic support, so over 50 percent of them have prolapses—that’s when the organs kind of lean down into the vagina and aren’t supported anymore.

Leaking at no point in your life is normal. The only time you’re allowed to leak is the first week or two to about six weeks post-natally. The patients I see will be like: “Well, I told my doctor and he said at six months come back if it’s still leaking.” Well, would you let someone else go around with six months of pain for nothing? No. And it’s a muscle injury that’s really easy to cure. Four to six visits and it’s cured.

Do you see any younger clients?
The younger women we see are often pain patients. They have pain in their vulva, pain in their vagina or pelvic girdle pain. A lot of these women can’t have sex without pain. And it can be really debilitating—some of the women can’t even wear underwear. They walk down the street and they get a shot of pain in their vagina for no reason. So, they’re a whole subset group of pain, and they get bounced around from doctor to doctor. A lot of them have never had babies, so they just have this crazy pain in their vaginas and some of them have had it since they were teenagers.

What causes this pain?
Lots of different things. A UTI can be one, a bad sexual experience can be another. Girls who have trouble with tampons seem to be at a high risk of developing pain. When there’s no trauma to the tissue and the tissue is technically healthy, we look at the nervous system to see where it’s coming from. It’s often from the message that the body gives the brain is off. The brain interprets sexual contact as pain. It feels like daggers being stuffed in your vagina. There’s also the unprovoked, women who just walk down the street and for no apparent reason get a shot of pain in their vagina.

If they don’t ever wear pants or underwear, what do they do?
Skirts. They just wear skirts with thigh-highs. And hope and pray they can get through their day.

Are Kegels and pelvic floor exercises the same thing?
Kegel is the name of the gynecologist years ago who thought: “This is a muscle problem and women should be strengthening these muscles,” and he’s absolutely correct. The problem is not every pelvic floor issue or pelvic girdle problem needs kegels.

You have two types of problems in the pelvic floor. One where the floor is too tight and one where the floor is too lax. Post-natally, most women will need kegels, but not all. If someone’s had a C-section and they have a really tight pelvic floor, I’m not going to give them Kegels. I teach 13 different types of Kegels. People think that’s a lot, but just think of it like this—when you go to the gym you don’t just do bicep curls.

The pelvic floor is not just one muscle, it’s a bunch of different ones. So when they squeeze, when you use the pelvic floor you have to squeeze and lift. My favourite one is the core breath. I call it blueberry.

Blueberry is when you take a big breath in and let everything release as you squeeze. After the big breath in, exhale and they pick up an imaginary blueberry with their vagina and pull it up and into their body. So, there’s two components: they have to squeeze and they have to lift.

You’re trying it now, aren’t you?
[Laughs]

Julia Di Paolo. Photo via.
So, it’s like going to the gym...for your vagina?
Yeah, but it’s not like you’re maxing out. You’re not picking up pianos with your vagina—you’re picking up blueberries, so don’t squish them and make a mess. It’s very gentle.

If you just sit and do Kegels all day, it’s only going to take you so far. If you want to run a marathon, you need to run a lot of miles. If you want to have a really good pelvic floor, then you need to need to engage your pelvic floor in other movement patterns as well. So I will check them in squats, in lunges, and bridges—all sorts of different exercises that are pelvic-floor friendly so that we can get them to engage and get everything to coordinate again.

Have you heard of Pfilates—pelvic floor Pilates? They took a bunch of exercises from Pilates and they looked at the EMG testing to see which ones had the best recruitment of the pelvic floor and they chose 10 of the exercises. I like five of them: bridge, clam, squat, lunge, one leg stand, hover. It’s just integrating the pelvic floor into regular exercises and that’s how you keep your pelvic floor healthy for life. That and having sex. Sex is the best thing for the pelvic floor. The husbands all love me for saying that.[Laughs]

It’s the best thing because when you think about the penis going into the vagina, it’s going to cause lubrication, which is super important for the vaginal walls, especially as we age and lose elasticity and estrogen and lubrication. Any muscles that are being used a lot will have good blood flow. Muscles that don't do anything get weak, atrophied, and frail.

So it increases lubrication, it increases blood flow and then you get contraction when you’re having sex, so you actually using your Kegels and often you should be or at least trying to use what we call “geisha exercises”—it’s those exercises I told you about earlier, but on a penis. So, they actually go with their partners and the partner has to call out a number for the elevator, or guess what floor they're on.

So, you get contractions when the penis is in there, and when you hit orgasm you get more contractions and then a full relaxation. It brings you through the whole gamut. It’s the most wonderful exercise for the pelvic floor.

Is that the same for anything you put in there, or just a penis?
I wouldn’t put a cucumber in there. But yes, toys are the same. Anything that goes in that’s shaped as a penis… fingers are a little more pokey, so they don’t have quite the same effect. That’s all operator-dependent. But penis and toys are usually good. One thing I don’t like are the balls—the cones and the weights and the balls. Holding balls in the vagina is not the way the vagina works.

Can you always tell when people are doing Kegels?
I can. I watch people, it’s hilarious. I can tell—no one else will be able to tell.
 

@devonlmurphy

The store is located on Santa Monica Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, across the street from the biggest health-food market in West Hollywood, a city which banned the sale of real fur last September. Inside the aged-wood and polished-metal storefront, an employee bounded over and asked what kind of dog we owned. I realized that there was no way they were going to let me buy dog food for myself, so I lied to her face and told her we owned an Akita that weighed 140 pounds. “That’s a huge dog! What does he eat?” “Mostly tacos," I answered.

She laughed uneasily and brought us over to a small freezer section with what looked like packages of blended vomit organized by meat. “All of our food is whole food, made with human-grade ingredients, so it’s all USDA-approved. Restaurant-quality meats, grains, and vegetables.” I caught myself before saying, "That sounds delicious."

This stuff looked like it was vacuum-packed in the sick bay of the USS Enterprise rather than handmade in Ellie Krieger’s kitchen. I sadly realized that my visions of carefully organized chunks of steak covered in a sweet glaze topped with baby corn were probably misguided. I also realized that this was a great place to find a rich, gullible sugar mama with a sweet-ass dog. 

Still, their selection was impressive. I picked up one of each flavor: Lamb with brown rice, fish with sweet potatoes, turkey with whole-wheat macaroni. I also got their special of the week: free-range bison with organic millet. I tried to buy something with kangaroo in it too, but apparently I needed a prescription. I also grabbed some beef-jerky-like venison and paid $50 for an amount of food an actual dog could probably finish in two sittings. On the way home we stopped at a convenience store for sliders, pizza bagels, and a spicy bean burrito, plus a liter of orange soda to wash it all down. At least I could trust that these were decidedly not good for anyone.

At home I began preparing this dodgy feast. The package suggested either defrosting in warm water or microwaving on low, so I boiled two bags and nuked the others. My kitchen quickly took on the familiar smell of cheap, preservative-filled, corn-based, canned dog food, which was exactly the smell I was hoping to avoid, and I wondered whether this wasn’t all one big scam.

Oh, wait, of course it was.

I cut open each bag and squeezed out something like undigested poop. The stink was atrocious, and worse yet, half the food was still cold. I started with the bison, which included asparagus and peaches. I forked a bit in my mouth and immediately gave up on the idea that this could be an improvement over junk food. Though I have no idea what bison tastes like, it was definitely not this; the lukewarm mush was somehow both soggy and dry, and almost impossible to swallow. I choked it down with a big gulp of orange soda. One of the many pamphlets that came in the bag suggested slowly weaning your pooch onto an organic diet to avoid digestion problems, and I became a little worried that I’d straight shit my pants in the middle of everything. This was going to suck more than I thought. I began sweating. Maybe I was turning into a dog. 

I moved onto turkey with macaroni and took a whiff. The smell of dog food came in hard, although at least the pasta was a familiar shape. I wolfed down a bite, and was immediately reminded of my grandmother’s goulash, only if it had been made with wet kibble and left on a balcony overnight. The ground turkey was the real culprit, but still somehow better than the bison. I realized that I was being unfair; to a dog I could see this being a massive improvement over supermarket-brand chow. I turned to my photographer.

"I feel gross."

"I'd be judging you if you didn't," she replied.

Next up at the plate was a mess of tilapia and sweet potatoes—dangerous territory. Luckily, this one smelled nothing like dog food, and it didn’t reek of fish so much as ooze it. Overconfident, I shoveled in a mouthful and retched immediately. It was warm, and all I could taste in my nose was starch and bitter salt. I anxiously eyed the sliders, which smelled amazing by comparison. My stomach sounded like a howling wolf. Uh-oh.

Last on the list was the lamb and brown rice, which actually smelled exactly like the undercooked, over-processed bulk meat it was. I nervously tried a chunk. Hm, not bad. I took a bigger bite. This was actually—dare I say it—barely decent. I ate another forkful and tried to savor the cooked lamb. All it needed was a bit of salt, and you could probably serve it in a dog hospital or a dog prison. I dived in and tried to clean my plate; at least this was palatable.

Thoroughly disappointed, I launched into the sliders and pizza bagels, opening my throat to let the microwaved, soggy trash enter my body. There was no comparison. Shitty human food won hands down, and not just by familiarity. The texture was right, the flavor was divine, and it occurred to me halfway through the leaky burrito that perhaps dogs have a different palate than humans. Perhaps their taste is less refined, which would make some sense. I guess that’s why the whole concept of organic gourmet dog food is almost as stupid as lying your way into eating it. 

I settled down to chew some of the venison treats, which were basically rawhide—though meat-flavored gum that cleans your teeth is a genius idea. I felt full and a bit queasy for the next hour as the rumbling in my stomach became increasingly urgent. This was not good. I worried that I was going to shit my pants. I assume that my body had recognized the dog food for what it really was and called an emergency mandatory evacuation.

I don’t want to go into what happened next in the bathroom, but it wasn’t great. What little food was left over from the night before came firing out, and my belly gurgled angrily as it took some small revenge in the form of heavy, wet dog farts. My eyes watered, and I waited out the battle as bad choices and indigestion raged on the inside. Finally defeated, I left the bathroom. My photographer disappeared while I was pooping, but not before sneaking the below photo through the keyhole. She sent a text that said, “Had to run, sorry!” I didn’t blame her.

A few hours later a strange, unfamiliar feeling came up my spine. I thought I was done having new feelings, so I’m really not sure how to describe it—sort of an unfocused clammy tension, almost like the beginning of a panic, just lingering for a while. I don’t really want to blame the dog food. Obviously my poor diet, lack of exercise, and various addictions are much easier to pile the blame on. I’ve been doing those for a long time, though, and this was something else, like an existential dread. Is this what being healthy feels like? I smoked a cigarette, and the feeling went away. I have no idea what to make of that. I guess just don’t eat dog food.

You’re welcome.

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr User Tony Donnelly

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of one to RACIST, with “one” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

–If you think you're safe at the zoo, on the beach, or crossing a scenic bridge, think again! Racist swans are on the loose! The Telegraph reported on a rash of "fowl" hate crimes* at Warwick University committed by a rogue swan. A fence had to be erected to keep the 4-foot beast from attacking Indian students. No word on whether or not the swan had a tiny black mustache or a fondness for "goose-stepping." 

Albertina Crocetti, an student at Warwick, told the Telegraph the following:

"It's bizarre, she doesn't seem to like foreigners and attacks them to defend her nest. She's a true right winger that's for sure—they certainly seem to be racially motivated incidents."

Not sure if this swan qualifies for membership in the EDL, but it does have being white as a distinct advantage if it wants to be. I'm positive that the world's first winged fascist would be a shoo-in for a guest spot on the Tonight Show.

There are studies that show that animals can develop an aversion to certain physical traits in humans. Dogs can get spooked at the sight of babies, or men, or black people. An NPR report from February of this year pointed to evidence that dogs have a part of their brain that is attuned to picking up on emotional cues from people and other dogs.

That said, is what a swan or a dog experiencing really racism as we know it? Can a swan be "right wing"? Swans can't vote—if they did, I would have enjoyed seeing Mitt Romney tell the country his great-uncle had a beak in a stump speech—and they don't have an ideology. The writer of the original article even quoted the manager of a wildlife sanctuary who said what's happening is absolutely normal. The manager, named Geoff Grewcock, states that "Because it's breeding season, it would be normal for swans to behave that way—particularly if they're in a pair, as in this case."

For some reason that I can't quite fully understand, humans want to apply their own warped logic to animals, as though the shitty way we treat each other is more acceptable because it's just "part of nature." It's past time that we, as a species, take responsibility for that fact that we invented racism, and we're the only ones who can get rid of it. 5

*Yes, I'm sorry for that joke, but I had to. I honestly had no choice in the matter. 

Photo via Flickr User Daniele Dalledone 

–Jay-Z made white people uncomfortable again this week. While attending a Brooklyn Nets game with the World's Most Popular Human Being/his wife, Hova was spotted sporting a necklace bearing the emblem of the Five Percent Nation, a group the New York Post and Daily Mail characterized as a racist religious organization with ties to the Nation of Islam. 

Zak Cheney-Rice over at PolicyMic did an excellent job of explaining what this obscure faith is all about, and I highly encourage you to dive into his article on the subject. In particular, he hits on the way in which the iconography of the Five Percent Nation is more synonymous with hip-hop than its actual ideology. That said, what Zak's piece missing is the flip side of his argument. These are the same flimsy reasons white people use to justify being comfortable wearing Confederate flags. They really, really want you to believe that it's just a cultural reference; heritage, not hate. That's complete bullshit.

I'm not exactly a semiotician, but even I know that signs and symbols can be subverted through artistic expression. I get that. Especially in today's hyper-stimulated media environment, meaning is always fluid. Unfortunately, some stains don't wash off. The Confederate flag and the Nazi swastika are inexorably linked with racist ideology. We wished they weren't so that society could move past how these images make us feel, but that's pretty much a pipe dream.

The Five Percent Nation says white people are the devil and inherently inferior. That's racist language, no matter how popular the iconography is with the hip-hop community. If we're going to collectively get grumpy about white people displaying the Confederate flag because of what it means, then that has to apply to the opposite end of the spectrum. The more we reinforce a cultural double-standard, the more resentment and anger will grow within the white community. That resentment grows into hate, which continues the cycle of racism in this country. Everyone should be proud of who they are, but finding justifications for hate speech is just about never worth it. Jay-Z is not a racist, but it's irresponsible of him to do what he did. It's even more irresponsible for pundits to rationalize it because the other side can beat us to death with our own rhetorical follies. 7

–Jeanne Moos, CNN's female Andy Rooney clone (please don't ask why CNN has an Andy Rooney clone on staff in 2014) filed the above opinion piece on Prince William and Duchess Kate's encounter with Maori warriors that had the internet LOL'ing up a storm. Yes, it was very awkward seeing two high-society white people smiling and nodding at an aggressive, vaguely sexual dance. There's even a montage of other cringe-worthy situations where world leaders have to interact with "ethnics." George W. Bush doing a tribal shuffle is particularly hilarious.

As is common with CNN these days, Moos's report doesn't take the time to acknowledge that it's also contributing to how weird this all is by comparing the Maori dancers to "Chippendales" and ogling their exposed buttocks. The bemused detachment of Moos at the sight of a man's ass seems gloriously misplaced. If we keep acting like this shit is weird, it'll still be weird. You know what's really weird though? A country that pays millions of dollars a year to support a family so they don't have to work, but still be able to afford funny hats. 7

The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:

Hillary Clinton happily worked for Obooncoon... That makes her a nigger-enabler. Reckon she cant be trusted! Plus shes a woman. #tcot #gop

— Chet Walken (@Walken4GOP) April 11, 2014

i fuckin hate sand nigger food

— Rafad Hanna (@Rafad_hanna) April 11, 2014

I can see why Ruby Gomez got hired at this McDonald's it's wetback central here.

— Austin Jones (@AustinBonees4L) April 10, 2014

I know my bf is hot. Keep your ugly chink eyes off of him. Even tho you talk to 5 other guys, in a relationship, won't mean you'll make it 6

— Carly Jo'el Johnston (@CarlyJo_el) April 11, 2014

This could be us but Jew playingi pic.twitter.com/HxlAa8hFJj

— glenn alston (@Glenn_alston) April 11, 2014

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

At the end of 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana. VICE correspondent Krishna Andavolu headed over to Uruguay to check out how the country is adjusting to a legally regulated marijuana market.

Along the way, he meets up with Uruguay's president, José Mujica, to burn one down and talk about the president's goal of a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, and six cannabis plants per household.

This week, I've been thinking a lot about women’s reproductive rights—or lack thereof, in some Canadian jurisdictions. In my home province, for example, it will soon be alarmingly difficult to access caregivers who will provide abortions. Yet doctors are also overly concerned with the state of women's bodies, pathologizing our anatomical functions in such a way that revolves around our fertility and little else. 

Aside from all that, a Toronto city councilor outed himself as a stark raving mad Men’s Rights Activist [MRA] this past week, by implying that the city has a hiring policy that discriminates against white men.



Screencap via.

Men’s Rights Activists on Toronto City Council?

This week, a notoriously crusty Toronto city councilor named Mike Del Grande expressed concern that the city discriminates against white men in its hiring policies. The fuck? Shall we break that down a bit?

This term, council is comprised of a record 33 percent women, or 15 out of 44 councilors. There are a few Asian councilors, and a single black councilor.

Del Grande made the query of staff at a recent employee and labour relations committee meeting. He read a Barbara Kay column describing the sob story of a 56-year-old white dude with lots of work experience who applied for three different jobs with the city and didn’t get a call back.

He reportedly wanted to know whether there was  “any specific policy of discrimination against white males.” Adding, “everybody should have an opportunity to apply and everybody should be treated fairly. It’s not to say white males need not apply.”

Clearly, there is an overrepresentation of white males on this city council, but because we just barely meet the UN stipulation that in order for women’s interests to be properly represented by a government, that government must be composed of 30 per cent women.

It’s ironic, in a city whose motto is “diversity our strength,” but it seems so many white people only like diversity insofar as it provides Indian, Chinese, and Ethiopian restaurants on the same street. But when it comes to relations between actual human beings, and their representation in government, it’s not so awesome, apparently.

Despite this imbalance in Toronto’s government, according to Statistics Canada, “visible minorities” will outnumber white people by 2031, which will make white people the visible minority! Hmm, perhaps the faces in our council chamber should reflect more of that?

But for now the face of municipal governance in Toronto is still primarily white and predominantly male; so you can rest easy, Del Grande.



Photo via WikiMedia Commons.

On The Menstrual Cycle, and Female Hysteria

If one more human being in puke-green scrubs looks me and drones: “When was the first day of your last period?” I am going to have to physically injure said scrub-wearing person.

I’ve been in and out of medical clinics a lot over the past few months for a variety of ailments—both physical and psychological. And every single time I go into a doctor’s office, whether it’s for the paralyzing anxiety attacks I’ve been having, or a cold that seemingly would not go away, that tends to be the first question I hear.

This is frustrating because obviously I never know when the first day of my last period was. Forgive me, but I’ve got more pressing things to think about. Don’t you?

Having a period is not a mysterious thing. It’s not a surprise. It happens every month; I am prepared for it. I even take a little pill every single day of my life to ensure that I know the exact day on which it will arrive, and I carry a Diva Cup around in my purse on that day and the days surrounding it. Voila! Period tamed, now on to the actual doing of things!

Trust me, nurse. I have been actively avoiding the implantation of a fetus in my uterus for a full decade now. Could you please just STFU and write me a prescription?

I don’t spend my days tracking my ovulation cycle and eating bonbons. I just want to work and live my life, and having a period is a minor inconvenience, at worst. Usually I barely notice it. I don’t have time to keep the first day of my last period squirreled away in the back of my head like it’s some precious, crucial data.

I understand that doctors should ask women about their periods, make sure they’re normal, and determine whether the patient could be pregnant. It’s an important aspect of women’s health, and I don’t in any way blame the medical community for checking in on this issue. I just need it not to be the first thing said to me, as if my period or lack thereof is the primary indicator of the state of my health. I have literally walked into a doctor’s office and told them I’m so depressed I can’t get out of bed, to which I received a nod, a scribble, and a: “When was the first day of your last period?”

I have never felt more like the person I’m speaking to just isn’t listening, and that includes copious dialogues with both my mother, and several one-night stands. And, in a medical environment where, as we all know, lots can go wrong, that makes me very uncomfortable.

Also, instead of assuming I’m completely uninformed about my sexual health before we start talking, you could give it a minute before you decide I’m a moron.

There’s also this alarmingly persistent notion that the most beautiful, worthy thing a woman can do is give birth to a child. While this may be true for many women, and no shade to them, it simply shouldn’t be prescribed as the ultimate in female usefulness.

So, doctors and nurses, please, I beg you—wait until the first few minutes of our date has passed before asking me this question, and let me tell you what’s bothering me. I’m more than capable.



Screencap via.

No Abortion For You, New Brunswick!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how seeking an abortion is a particularly gruesome task in my home province, New Brunswick.

Now, it looks like the only truly reliable (though possibly quite expensive) place to get an abortion, and the only abortion clinic in the province, is about to close its doors in July—because it was losing money.

In New Brunswick, Medicare only covers abortion if two doctors sign off saying the procedure is “medically necessary.” Students at St. Thomas University called bullshit on that over the past few months, creating a change.org petition to have abortions funded by the government. It has nearly 3,500 signatures, but then New Brunswick Right to Life, an anti-choice organization (clearly), launched a petition for the opposite, and it has garnered over 6,000 signatures. That should illustrate the political climate we’re dealing with here.

The Morgantaler Clinic provides about 500 abortions per year, and though they might cost between $700 and $850, I would happily find a way to pay that money as opposed to being robbed of my autonomy, forced into carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. Unfortunately, the people of New Brunswick no longer have that option in their home province.

@sarratch

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

It’s Wednesday morning, the first day of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention, and D’Juan Collins is telling me how the state took his son and won’t give him back. A slight man in a linen button-down and a Bluetooth earpiece, Collins is passing out flyers with a baby photo of his son Isaiah and a plug for his site, www.SaveIsaiah.com. Isaiah, now seven, was put into foster care in 2007, when Collins was sent to prison. When I ask what he was sent in for, he demurs. The conviction was overturned last year, he says, but Brooklyn Family Court and the foster care agency have declined to return custody of his son.

He has come here, to Sharpton’s annual civil rights confab, to get help. “I’m all about networking,” Collins explains, “because I can’t do this alone.”

If the Reverend Al Sharpton has a nexus of power, it is here, in the sweaty third-floor ballroom of the Sheraton Times Square, where more than 6,000 activists have assembled to talk shop at panels with titles like “American Holsters: How the Gun Won,” “The Role of Media in Crafting the Social Narrative,” and “Truth to Power Revival.” Outwardly, the annual civil rights hoedown is an essentially political event, a display of the influence Sharpton has aggressively cultivated over three decades in the national spotlight. But the convention is also a yearly pilgrimage for people, like Collins, who have been beaten by the system, screwed by insidious and structural racism that has stacked the deck against them. Because Al Sharpton, in addition to being a syndicated radio host, prime-time MSNBC talking head, and personal friend of the president, is still the guy you call when your kid gets shot.

Everyone I meet on Wednesday has a story. One woman at the conference tells me she’s here for the first time this year because her nephew was killed in Harlem last week, and she wants to “talk to the reverend about gun control.” Another spends the morning passing out yard signs that read: “My Civil Rights Were Violated.”

In some circles, Sharpton is considered ridiculous—a 90s race-riot relic turned smug cable-news hack. It’s easy to forget that he is probably the most powerful civil rights leader in the country, and a political kingmaker whose influence is evidenced by the parade of liberal pols who drop by his conference every year to pay their respects. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was on hand Wednesday, as was Attorney General Eric Holder and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. President Obama is headlining Friday.

What makes this year’s conference really interesting, though, is that it comes just days after a new report about Sharpton’s work as an FBI informant in a 1980s mob investigation. The piece, published by the Smoking Gun on Monday along with dozens of documents from the FBI, DEA, and NYPD, details Sharpton’s dealings with mafia bosses and drug dealers—ties the reverend has long sought to downplay—and appears to confirm the story that the FBI pressured Sharpton into fingering the mob after secretly recording a video of him meeting with an undercover agent posing as a Latin American drug lord offering to sell him kilos of “pure” cocaine. Sharpton has denied that version of events for years, saying that he approached the feds himself after receiving death threats from mobsters. “I was not and am not a rat, because I wasn’t with the rats,” he said at a press conference Tuesday. “I’m a cat. I chase rats.” As New York Daily News columnist Harry Siegel pointed out, if his story is true, Sharpton would likely be the first person in history to volunteer for a mafia sting.

Al Sharpton leads a 1989 protest after a mob of white teenagers killed Yusuf Hawkins, a black 16-year-old boy, in Bensonhurst. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The fact that Sharpton dealt in the underworld 30 years ago isn’t really news. The value of the Smoking Gun report is mainly historic—it offers a glimpse into Sharpton’s past life, before Obama and MSNBC, Upper West Side apartments, and private cigar clubs. It takes us back to a time when Al Sharpton wore tracksuits, weighed 300 pounds, and incited riots. Which gets at the real question: Why are we still talking about Al Sharpton?

It’s actually one of the more enduring mysteries of American politics: How a former FBI informant with deep mob ties and a penchant for inflaming racial tensions could remake himself into an establishment power broker who gets invited to watch the Super Bowl at the White House.

The story of Al Sharpton, the one that comes through from the FBI accounts, begins with soul singer James Brown. Sharpton and Brown met in the early 1970s, and were joined at the hip for most of the 1970s and 80s. They even had matching haircuts.

Photo via Flickr user chris

In those days, Sharpton was a young civil rights activist looking to get involved in the entertainment industry. Through Brown and boxing promoter Don King, Sharpton got involved in concert tours, developing a sort of hybrid civil rights/music industry hustle that, according to reports, involved threatening to boycott or protest venues and labels unless they hired more black promoters, which in some cases included Sharpton. In the process, Sharpton collected a circle of famous friends that included Michael Jackson, Spike Lee, and Joseph Robinson, founder of Sugar Hill Records. This proximity to fame gave Sharpton a reputation for aggressive self-promotion and attention-whoring that has stuck with him throughout his career. It’s also how Sharpton himself became famous.

But what really thrust Sharpton into the spotlight was his involvement in the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape hoax. For those of you who weren’t sentient in 1987, here’s the gist: Brawley was a 15-year-old girl from Upstate New York who claimed to have been abducted and raped by a group of white men, including a cop. Sharpton and several other civil rights activists took on her case. Sharpton subsequently accused a local prosecutor of being one of Brawley’s attackers. Six months later, a grand jury investigation found that the whole episode was a hoax and that Brawley had never been assaulted at all. (The prosecutor later won a defamation lawsuit against Sharpton and Brawley’s other advisers.)

The incident could have brought Sharpton's career in public life to a grinding halt. Instead, it raised his profile, giving him a national following among African Americans upset over the media's treatment of Brawley. In the years that followed, Sharpton turned his civil rights protests into an art form, orchestrating massive street circuses that positioned him as a national spokesman for civil rights. When Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, was shot to death by the NYPD in 1999, Sharpton organized a 13-day civil disobedience movement that resulted in 1,100 choreographed arrests. Diallo’s family was later rewarded $3 million in damages in a lawsuit against the city. That same year, Sharpton and his mentor, Jesse Jackson, shut down freeway traffic in Riverside, California, with protests against another fatal police shooting.

To his critics, Sharpton has embodied and exacerbated everything that is wrong about race relations in America. It hasn’t helped that the National Action Network, which Sharpton founded in 1991, is perennially in financial straits even as Sharpton himself has become wealthy. The organization has also been plagued by reports that it threatens to boycott corporations unless sizable donations are made.

Sharpton has been accused of race-baiting and demagoguery. It’s true that his protests, especially in the years after the Brawley case, often caused more problems than they solved. In 1991, for instance, he was accused of inflaming racial tensions during the Crown Heights riots, a four-day spree of racial violence spurred by the death of a seven-year-old black boy—killed by a Hasidic driver—and hours later, the murder of an Orthodox Jewish student who was pulled from his car and stabbed by a mob. Despite pleas from city officials, Sharpton insisted on leading a march during the riots, and later made disparaging remarks about "the diamond merchants in Crown Heights." 

Sharpton leads a "Million Hoodie March" after the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Photo by Flickr user Michael Fleshman

But Sharpton also put racial profiling on the map, forcing politicians and the media to notice police brutality and entrenched racism in the criminal justice system. Whenever there was an instance of police brutality, Sharpton—and an entourage of civil rights lawyers and reporters—usually weren’t far behind. When race riots broke out over police brutality in Cincinnati in 2001, Sharpton was on the scene, demanding federal oversight of police forces, not just in Cincinnati, but everywhere. After NYPD officers were acquitted in the 2006 shooting of Sean Bell, Sharpton orchestrated a citywide “slowdown” march that shut down every bridge and tunnel going into Manhattan.

Politicians eventually realized that it was more dangerous to ignore Sharpton than it was to deal with him. They started showing up at his Saturday-morning rallies in Harlem and inviting him to Gracie Mansion and the White House. Over time, Sharpton’s approach softened. He lost weight, ran for president, cut his hair. And eventually, sometime after Obama’s first election, the reverend became the new, skinny Al Sharpton, a vegetarian who lives in a bachelor pad overlooking Broadway and dates a 35-year-old personal stylist.

The transformation is "incomparable,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran New York political consultant who has worked for Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg, among others. “His repositioning and reconfiguration over the last 35 years is unequaled by anyone else in public life.”  

At the National Action Network conference, there is no sign that the Smoking Gun’s FBI-informant report has lessened his support among prominent politicians. "I just want everyone to know I am proud to stand with Reverend Sharpton," De Blasio tells the crowd. "Because, to borrow a phrase from our youth, Reverend, 'You're the real thing.’”

The truth is, despite the makeover and the young girlfriend, Sharpton isn't that different. For better—and for worse—he is still the first guy to show up when your husband is roughed up by the cops, or when your teenage son is killed by an unhinged neighborhood watchman. The difference is that Sharpton used to be fighting the system—and now he is the system. So maybe it's not Sharpton who changed—maybe it was everyone else. 

“If people have a problem, or they are in a situation, he goes to them, and he investigates and fights for them,” says Carole Willis, an elderly National Action Network volunteer, when I ask her why people still like Sharpton. “He’s a powerful man.” Later, Willis asks for a piece of paper from my notebook. “I want to give Eric my phone number,” she explains. “I have something I need him to help me with.”

It takes me a minute, and then I realize she is talking about the Attorney General. 

Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

On April 1, Jay Z showed up at a Brooklyn Nets game sporting a large medallion of the Five Percenters’ Universal Flag. Once white people figured out what the medallion represented—a community founded upon the notion that black men are the supreme beings of the universe—they went ballistic. As news of Jay Z’s possible affiliations with black supremacists spread, a New York Post writer named Gary Buiso contacted me for an interview. We talked for nearly an hour and he followed up with more emails and calls as he tried to sort out the story. I made it clear to him that I spoke as an outside researcher, not a card-carrying member of the community. On the subject of “white devils,” I let him know that in my decade with the Five Percent, I was never mistreated on the basis of racial prejudice. I also told him that the Five Percenters’ national headquarters, the Allah School, still stands at its original location in Harlem. Unfortunately, he never took the time to check it out. The Post article included one statement on Jay Z’s wearing of the medallion from a Five Percenter, but it’s less than five miles from the Post’s headquarters to the Five Percenters’ headquarters. This guy literally works in the Five Percenters’ Mecca (the community has renamed Harlem specifically, but Manhattan more broadly, as “Mecca”) and he couldn’t bother to meet Five Percenters in person? 

The article had other limitations. First, you’re not going to capture the heart of a community or tradition in a 600-word piece. I couldn’t do it in the roughly half a million words that I’ve written on the Five Percenters in numerous books and articles. Second, and perhaps even more obviously, you’re not going to do it in a rag like the New York Post. The article boiled down our long conversations to some quotes that became provocative when isolated, spiced up with a decontextualized statement from one of my VICE columns in which I said that “Fuck white people” was my first lesson in the Five Percent. The Post never balanced my “Fuck white people” line with my acknowledgment that there were/are actually white Five Percenters, a phenomenon that I had discussed with the writer. To his credit, he at least squeezed in a mention that I saw white devilishment as relating more to the politics of privilege than the fiction of biological race, but whatever nuance could be achieved in his 600 words was undone by the ridiculous headline: “Jay-Z’s Bling from ‘Whites Are Devils’ Group.”

The article traveled. Angry white people accused me of teaching “hate.” An angry Five Percenter wrote to me in all caps and blamed me for the article’s inflammatory spirit. A guy whose Twitter photo showed him in a “Free George Zimmerman” shirt tried to get me on his radio show to talk about my “views on race and God.” As numerous sites reposted the original article, others pasted my quotes into new pieces. My words were presented as those of a disembodied, contextless yet authoritative “expert.” These few sentences, detached from the moments of their utterances or the original texts in which they appeared, became positioned as a summary of the community’s shared principles. Perez Hilton has since commented on the Jay Z medallion story, pasting together my quotes from the Post story into a neat paragraph that he presents as the quintessential statement on Five Percenters.  Moreover, he tries to explain what my words mean and puts words in my mouth: “On the Five Percent Nation, author Michael Muhammad Knight says that its teachings are extremely anti-white.” This one stung me, mainly because the community so often quotes its founder as having said that Five Percenters are “neither pro-black nor anti-white.”

“This doesn’t sound like a very friendly, tolerant group!” Hilton remarked.

I have never called the Five Percenters “anti-white,” nor have I been troubled by the possibility that some gods could very well be; but it has since dawned on me that, yeah, if you try to summarize Five Percenter thought in a few sentences, the tradition might read as racially antagonistic. Reading the Lessons that Five Percenters study and strive to live by, some would find it hard to get around the declaration that the white man is the devil, having been created by an evil scientist to be weak, wicked, and beyond reform. But there’s also a tension between what I read in the Lessons and what I’ve experienced with the gods in real life. The Lessons talk about swords and murdering devils and suggest that for presenting four devils, you win a trip to Mecca. The Lessons, depending on which version you’re reading, call the white man the “skunk of the earth.” No one called me a skunk when I showed up at the Allah School. No one threatened to take off my head. Five Percenters politely answered my questions, sometimes exchanging contact information with me to build further. People invited me into their homes. I made friends. The insider/outsider boundary became blurry at times. Sometimes it seemed to dissolve entirely. This isn’t to say that the Five Percenters are entirely asshole-free, because every community needs its assholes, and I have had my own friction with the gods—not on questions of race or religion, but rather on gender and sexuality issues. But if the Five Percenters were anything close to the race-warrior image in which they are often depicted, I would be dead several times over. 

Yes, the Five Percenters’ Lessons call black men gods and white men devils. But what are the Lessons’ social consequences—how do people live out a statement like “The black man is God?” How do these ideas materialize in the world? For the folks who want to label the Five Percenters a “hate group,” I would ask how many white people have been injured by Five Percenter ideology. Where are all the Five Percenters dragging white guys from pickup trucks? Where are the grown Five Percenter men shooting at unarmed white teenagers? Go find them if they exist.  They don’t. Historically speaking, there is no black supremacist group that can challenge white supremacist Christians in terms of accumulated body count.

Traveling among the Five Percent, I learned early on that the community isn’t nearly as preoccupied with white people as the media has suggested. From what I observed in my decade engaging the community, the center of Five Percenter concern is less often the wickedness of white devils than the divine power of the united black family. Again, this is something that came up in my conversations with the New York Post writer as he asked me about the meanings of the moon, star, and 7 on Jay Z’s medallion, but strangely failed to make it into the article.

No, the Five Percenters are not a hate group. The New York Post got it wrong. Perez Hilton got it wrong. And while I am confident in my work with this community, putting me at its center is also getting it wrong.

Michael Muhammad Knight is the author of nine books, including The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip-Hop, and the Gods of New York; Why I Am a Five Percenter; and Blue-Eyed Devil. Follow Michael on Twitter. 

Photo courtesy of PornHub

Belle Knox is the breakout porn star of 2014, but not for anything she's done on camera. Since the Duke freshmen women’s studies major revealed her face and porn pseudonym last month in an XoJane essay, she’s appeared on The View, driven Dr. Drew to consider suicide, danced at a fancy New York City strip club, and agreed to host an online reality show called The Sex Factor.

These developments are predictable—ten years after Paris Hilton's The Simple Life, it’s routine for women involved in sex scandals to turn their battered reputations into paychecks through reality shows and media appearances—but one of Knox's latest deals is a new type of marketing stunt. This summer, Knox will leave her school books in North Carolina and move to Montreal to become PornHub's new intern.

This is a brilliant move on PornHub's part (just announcing the hire will bring the smut peddlers more press), but it's a bizarre job for Knox. PornHub’s internship program turned its first two interns into minor internet celebrities and gave them a platform to score long-term work as social media marketers when their gigs ended, but Knox doesn’t need connections or a paycheck. Unlike college students who plan to intern this summer, she already has a well-paid job.

The internship has angered some of Knox's colleagues. Although Knox told the Daily Dot she believes PornHub increases porn companies' sales, industry insiders believe the site encourages piracy. Knox has a point—most porn studios advertise on tube sites like PornHub—but right now she can't afford this kind of controversy. Her new infamy and endorsement deals have aggravated many fellow porn performers, who work in a tough industry where few actors become wealthy household names. In a harsh essay on Short and Sweet NYC, one performer, Belle Noir, even called her out for arriving late to a shoot and claimed that “Knox is actually a very tyrannical and rude person towards the performers and industry workers on most of her sets.”

Did Knox decide to intern for PornHub because she's a naive 18-year-old signing any deal that comes her way, ruining her future opportunities in the process, or, like other students planning to intern this summer, does she see the job as an opportunity to develop skills that could further her career? I called her to find out.

VICE: How did you land this internship?
Belle Knox: I realized I had become the number one girl on PornHub—the most-viewed, number one model—so I approached them about promoting [their site]. They came back and said, “We love that, but even more than that, we would like you to learn about the business, about promotion, about publicity, and about social media marketing.” So they invited me to come intern for them.

Have you agreed to the internship because you want to transition from starring in porn to working behind the scenes or because you believe the internship will teach you skills that will help you build your brand?
Knowing the ins and outs of the business will help me be a more successful businesswoman. I have a sex toy line coming out, so I think that it’s really good for me to know how to promote my brand, but my goal has always been to be a lawyer, so that’s what I’m sticking with.

What do you think about the accusations that PornHub is bad for the porn industry?
If you look on the website, PornHub actually partners with a lot of the porn companies. Most major porn companies are partnered with PornHub to run ads on their website. From what I’ve read, there’s no causal link between these free tube sites and people not wanting to sign up for porn sites. It’s like the dessert on top of the entree, you know? It gives them publicity, because you’re seeing a few minutes of a video and it makes you want to watch the whole video.

That's true. I've bought porn after watching a trailer on a tube site. Is PornHub paying you for your work?
Yeah. I’m getting paid each month for my work. Of course, all that goes to my school unfortunately.

Do you pay for all your tuition and living and all that?
Basically I support myself.

Do you have any financial aid or are you paying for Duke all out of pocket?
I got a little bit of financial aid, but that’s definitely going to go away next year because I do porn and I have an income. Tuition is going to be $60,000 a year.

Has it been weird going to school while being famous?
It’s surreal honestly. There are some days where I wake up and I just kind of am so in disbelief that this all happened. Today I was walking to my dorm, and I saw this kid take a photograph of me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Most people don’t treat me any differently.

Do you feel like you’re living a double life?
Definitely. It’s like some Miley Cyrus shit going on. I actually did porn with a Miley Cyrus look-alike.

Do you think your women’s studies classes will help you with your PornHub internship?
I think that PornHub has had some problems in the past with tweeting racially insensitive or sexist stuff. When I’m an intern, that’s not going to happen. I’ll be very mindful of that.

Do you think it’s fair when other porn stars criticize you for only working in porn to pay your tuition bills and not wanting to become a career porn star, like Jenna Jameson or Asa Akira?
Most girls aren’t career porn stars. I know a lot of girls who do porn just to make money or just for two years. They just want to have fun, and then they want to have a professional career after porn—there’s really not many career porn stars. Porn does not last forever. To say that I’m going to be a porn star for life is just ridiculous. If I had been a porn star whose entire goal was to just do porn, I would be called a bimbo, but I’m getting an education and I’m extending my opportunities and I’m trying to create a better life for myself—and I’m being criticized.

Has your new infamy given you an advantage over some of the wealthier Duke students who are going to intern for free this summer?
I mean, am I being given an advantage? I’m paying for my own tuition. The average income for a few students is $350,000 a year, so I really don’t feel like I’m being given an advantage. I think I’m very blessed and very lucky to be given this opportunity, but I wouldn’t consider myself better off than people at Duke. I really envy people who don’t have to pay their tuition—whose parents pay it for them. I really envy them.

Follow Mitchell Sunderland on Twitter.

On the second day of the self-styled People's Republic of Donetsk's existence, people gathered in the Regional Administration Building to discuss their new government and plans to join Russia. VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky attended the meeting, where things got a bit heated, and later interviewed Serhiy Taruta, the current governor of the Donetsk region. Taruta argued that those who declared independence from Ukraine have no authority to do so and are not supported by most residents of Donetsk. There's still about a month left before the People's Republic of Donetsk's supposed referendum to join Russia, and the future of Donetsk remains uncertain.