Today marks twenty years since Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home. Expecting the media to revive the topic for the anniversary the Seattle Police Department reviewed the Cobain case. Which immediately led some to believe the case was being re-opened. SPD however denied the claims. They did however release previously unreleased photographs. The SPD now faces a lawsuit from a conspiracist.
"The impromptu release of the photos last week by Seattle Police Department has drawn a lawsuit from Richard Lee, a self-described investigative journalist best known for making groundless assertions that Cobain was murdered. Lee -- a 50-year-old Seattle man who has run for mayor several times and who hosted the public access show "Kurt Cobain Was Murdered" -- is repressing himself in the suit."-Seattle Pi
Rather than try to earn money from a closed case or expose photographs of Cobain's heroin kit, which were included in the newly released photographs, I'd like to remember and commemorate the musician by remembering his his advocacy of LGBT people and women's rights.
In a 1992 interview with the Advocate when asked if he everthought he was gay. Cobain said,
"Yeah, absolutely. See, I've always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl. Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls and. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all. They had really awful haircuts and fucked-up attitudes. So I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women. But I'm really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something."
In this clip from the film About A Son Kurt goes into detail about his friendship with a gay friend in high school.
PBS did an animation for an interview Cobain had done in 1993 with Jon Savage
At 1:43 Kurt mentions his inability to make male friends leading to him having many female friends and understanding sexism better. As well as his acknowledgement of the prevalence of sexism in music specially hard-rock.
At 2:50 he explains how people thought he was gay as a teenager and his problems with his homophobic mother.
Cobain would go as far as interrupting songs half-way through to stop a male audience member who was touching a female audience member. Calling out, "Copping a feel eh buddy?" while the other members of Nirvana joined in.
PS.
If you're feeling good about third wave feminism and 90's punk rock and have a Netflix account try checking out the documentary The Punk Singer about artist Kathleen Hanna.
She performed with a band called Bikini Kill and lead the Riot Grrl movement. I can explain it or you can enjoy the trailer.
The greatest myth that has grown out of the patriarchal umbrella humanity lives under is the idea that women just simply can not do the same things as men. From opening jars to parallel parking to "reasoning" women just can't seem to get a grip or so we're told.
The internet being the wonderful place it is allows people to voice their opinions to the world. Unluckily for for those who say sexist, racist and just generally dumb statements it also captures those beautiful moments for ever.
Taylor here reminds us men just can't handle seeing women die in the battle field
"Let's not forget the slogan is 'I will not leave a man behind! Not I will not leave a man, woman, military partner or whatever, BEHIND!"-The military, probably.
This tumblr user http://womenshouldntdothat.tumblr.com/ created a whole blog just to capture the ridiculousness that spurts out of men's and sometimes women's mouths when it comes to defining what women can and shouldn't do.
Makes you wonder why they call him "Zero"
A personal favorite of mine. Jason "I can cuss but you should be a lady"
Remember he's not sexist or anything he just doesn't let women make their own decisions. He also doesn't know "your" from "you're."
After our classes about WWE wrestling and how they perpetrated certain ideals of masculinity and femininity on young viewers and practically brain-washed people with the idea that men are aggressive and in power and if you're not then you are not a man. I continued to think about why people would want to watch something like that on TV.
By coincidence I came across the show COPS in which I witnessed a male officers shouting, screaming, putting down and subduing various criminals.
Well these are two different scenarios right? Fake wrestling versus actual law enforcing heroes who put an end to no good doing bad guys. Well, yeah but why do we need to watch them do that. Why do we want to watch police officers (because there are some female officers featured on the show) over power criminals verbally and physically.
Is it because they deserved it? Maybe, they were after all breaking the law.
Maybe the same sense of power and control that made wrestling so popular is making shows like COPS just as entertaining.
The show has been criticized in the past for its inclusion of mostly poor-lower-end crimes as opposed to white-collar crimes which would be perpetrated by people of higher economic statuses.
When questioned about it by Michael Moore, a far-left documentary film maker, in the film Bowling For Columbine which took a look at violence and its affect on younger minds such as the boys who committed the high school massacre at Columbine High School.
The former associate producer, Richard Herlan, basically said he doesn't know how to make a good show without violence. Or rather won't try. It wasn't an issue to him that minorities might be misrepresented. Nor was it an issue as to why viewers love violence so much, it's more money after all.
Maybe people actually won't watch a show about fixing the problem in society that cause crime. Maybe they will find way to add explosions and climatic moments to teach in more educational shows.
Or maybe we'll just watch police brutality and feel like we're fixing the world from our couches.
In a recent conversation I had with a friend the hot topic of Gay Marriage
came into the conversation when I mentioned my gay Human Sexuality teacher
being against gay marriage. My undisclosed friend supported my professors'
statement and later went on to add that same sex marriage should have a
different name.
I blatantly objected. His point, coming from a straight-white-male-Christian-middle
class family was that gays should claim their commitment to each other under a
different title. Although not actually being against homosexuality his
statement does imply homophobia in some degree.
I believe my friend fails to see that if same sex marriages were to be
called something other than marriage then they would not be treated the same as
marriage. You might assume this is a slippery slope fallacy because I have no
reason to believe it wouldn't be treated the same except for the fact that
separate but equal does not work under any circumstances.
Are we really to believe that a same sex marriage not called marriage would
receive the same civil benefits straight marriages do once law makers begin working
their way around the new word. All tax, healthy insurance, and spouse
privileges would undoubtedly be skewed against them in the eyes of the law.
