Category: Urbana

Panel: Does Sex Matter? Gender Identity vs. Material Reality

Guernsey_Women_at_the_Stake

Saturday, March 23rd, 3-5pm
Urbana Free Library, Lewis Auditorium (downstairs)
210 W. Green Street, Urbana IL 61801

A transwoman, a detransitioner, and a radical feminist walk into a Library…. Speaking from different perspectives on modern gender identity politics, these three panelists agree that all people broadly deserve civil rights protections. But should gender identity replace sex as a legal category? Women – particularly marginalized, imprisoned, lesbian, and abused women – pay the highest price for this trend, as sex-based protections and resources are rolled back in the name of “inclusivity.”

Despite their unwavering support for individual expression, each speaker has faced repercussions for critically analyzing gender identity, including threats of violence, professional blacklisting, and loss of friendships. They join for this event in the hope it will encourage wider civil and respectful discussion.

No lives will be harmed or erased while exploring these topics.

Panelists:

Corinna Cohn is an adult transsexual from Indianapolis. Having undertaken hormone therapies and sex reassignment surgery as a teenager, Corinna addresses the responsibilities accrued by a male inhabiting the social role of women, and what young people should know before making an irreversible commitment to transition.

Carey Callahan is a detransitioned woman and family therapist from Ohio. She  explores the role of sexism in the rise of youth referrals for gender dysphoria and the portrayal of detransitioners in the media.

Nina Paley is an animator from Urbana, best known for feature films Sita Sings the Blues and Seder-Masochism. An outspoken critic of both censorship and sexism, she has been no-platformed and blacklisted locally and abroad for saying penises are male.

Moderator:

Traci Nally is Executive Vice President & General Counsel for News-Gazette Media. For over 30 years, she has worked in the areas of defamation, access to public records and meetings, protection of reporters’ newsgathering privileges, and other first amendment and free speech related matters.

This program is not sponsored by The Urbana Free Library.

fecebook link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1089114847927752/

website link: https://blog.ninapaley.com/does-sex-matter/

Poster: print ‘n’ share:Does Sex Matter? flyer

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Blacklisted

Update: Chaz Ebert confirms Ebertfest’s decisions had nothing to do with my no-platforming in Urbana and Beligium, and they were unaware of any controversy.

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Ebertfest (Roger Ebert’s Film Festival) is the big film festival in my town (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois). In October, its director told 2 film critics/scholars I know that my new feature film Seder-Masochism was “at the top of our list.” Which makes sense, since it’s by an Urbana filmmaker (me) whose last film was a star at the festival (Sita Sings the Blues) and contains my late father’s voice, which is known to much of the fest’s audience (he used to be Mayor of Urbana, as well as a math professor at the U of I). I emailed Ebertfest in January to ask if they were going to screen it, because I have to make plans in April. They didn’t reply. I emailed them again over a week later (Friday). “Sorry, we don’t have room for it.”

A week earlier Seder-Masochism was the target of a de-platforming campaign in Belgium. The women’s film festival that programmed its Belgian premiere removed all traces of it from their web site after transactivists threatened them. A few days before that, I was the target of a Twitter mob for sharing opinions with Graham Linehan.

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Ebertfest’s decisions are made behind closed doors, and I’m certainly not entitled to be at any film festival. But it is my opinion that their decision is very much related to my defamation and condemnation as a “TERF“. Much of the witch-hunt against gender-critical feminists comes from Academia, and Ebertfest is an extension of the University of Illinois College of Media. Last Fall the self-described “Chair of Gender Studies” Mimi Nguyen led a campaign against me to have my film de-platformed at a local cafe.

Mimi_Nguyen1Mimi_Nguyen2

I am blacklisted, but I will not shut up.

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Bicycling from Urbana Il to Indianapolis IN

I have done it, and it is paved. Some parts are terrifying, but at least there’s no gravel. Let’s begin:

1. This is the way cyclists from Urbana get to Kickapoo State Park. County Rd 1700 N is quiet and pleasant and even scenic in places.

01 Urbana to Ogden

2. Continuing to Kickapoo. There’s a bridge here that’s closed to cars, but you can walk your bike over it. You can also walk your velomobile over it, though it’s a bit trickier.

02 Ogden to Kickapoo

IMG_6891 Continue reading “Bicycling from Urbana Il to Indianapolis IN”

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March 1: Seder-Masochism Work-In-Progress Screening

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Tuesday March 1, 7:30 pm
The Art Theater
126 W. Church St., Champaign IL

All singing! All dancing! All 40+ minutes of my feature-film-in-progress, Seder-Masochism! This is not the finished movie, but the core musical scenes animated in Flash. While I take a production break to learn new software to make the rest of the film, let’s watch all these crazy scenes together in a theater. Featuring:
Goats!
Egypt!
Plagues!
Death!
Idols!
Commandments!
Unsubtle phallic imagery!
…and MORE!

$5 suggested donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. FREE MATZOH!

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What Is Copyright?

Which picture best depicts Copyright? Vote in comments.

©Talk2015_10001
A.
©Talk2015_10002
B.
©Talk2015_10003
C.

I’ll be asking this question tonight at this talk:

Questioning Copyright: Sharing or Stealing?

Date: 5/11/2015
Start Time: 7:00 PM
End Time: 8:30 PM

This event will be at Pizza M, 208 West Main Street, downtown Urbana. Delicious snacks from Pizza M will be provided.

Description:
 Does copyright protect creative work? What impact does copyright have on censorship? And what would happen if we abolished copyright? Join us for a provocative conversation with two guests: artist and copyright abolitionist Nina Paley and UIUC law professor and activist Paul Heald.

Nina Paley is the creator of the animated musical feature film Sita Sings the Blues and the short This Land Is Mine. Her adventures in our broken copyright system led her to joinQuestionCopyright.org as artist-in-residence, where she produced a series of animated shorts about intellectual freedom called Minute Memes. As half of PaleGray Labs, she develops techniques to combine animation with her other passions of quilting and embroidery. Nina is a former syndicated cartoonist, a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, and currently making a new animated feature called Seder-Masochism.

Paul Heald lectures on patent, copyright and international intellectual property law around the world. He is the University of Illinois Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Professor of Law and is currently a fellow and associated researcher at CREATe, the RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy, based at the University of Glasgow. He’s also the author of a recently released mystery novel Death in Eden.

 

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