movies

An uplifting story about female genital mutilation, who would believe it?

I really don’t like to watch depressing movies, even for a good cause. But Ebert promised that it was uplifting. But here, read his words that convinced even me:

“Moolaade” is the kind of film that can only be made by a director whose heart is in harmony with his mind. It is a film of politics and anger, and also a film of beauty, humor, and a deep affection for human nature. Usually films about controversial issues are tilted too far toward rage or tear-jerking. Ousmane Sembene, who made this film when he was 81, must have lived enough, suffered enough and laughed enough to find the wisdom of age.

It has it’s sad moments, but I liked it. I think you can watch it without fear. Do it for your girls; all the women and girls you love. Do it in affirmation of women’s right to pleasure. Do it in honor of courageous souls and to honor and increase your own soul’s courage.

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This month I’ve decided to post topics that relate to or are inspired by National Women’s History Month. I went over to the NWHM site to see if they had a badge. They didn’t, so I made my own.

I would love it if you would join me in blogging for Women’s History Month. For the artists among you, this looks like a fun year to blog for Women’s History. The theme is art.

Other ideas for posts:

What are some pro-women books, movies, and music you like? Who are your heroes? What is your experience being or relating to women? Men, this includes you too!

(Oh yeah, and don’t worry if you don’t actually blog for all 31 days, as we are already 6 days in to the month!)

If you would like to add this badge to your site, just copy and paste the following code in your blog code:

<a href=”http://authenticthreads.org/blog/2008/03/06/join-me-31-days-of-blogging-for-womens-history-month”><img src=”http://authenticthreads.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/nwhm_badge.jpg” /></a>

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I think movies reviews should be based on mood rather than plot. I don’t want to know what is going to happen- that’s why I go see the movie! What I want to know is: “Is this the movie I am in the mood to see right now?”

If you are feeling like a loser, I recommend: Sideways. People taste wine in this movie, which sounds about as exciting as playing golf to me. That, and lukewarm reviews from friends is why I never watched it. But, I was feeling sick, asked for a comedy, and took what the library guy gave me. It was good. I cried at one point when the main character described wine. You’ll see. I only laughed once, but it was a good laugh. Mostly, I cried.

For other Movies To Watch When You Feel Like A Loser, you only need to watch the movie ads at the beginning of Sideways! They include:
Garden State: For when you are feeling like a young loser.
Napoleon Dynamite: For when you want to feel jovial about being a loser and look back on your younger days of being a loser and decide that being a loser might actually have been cool.
(The ultimate feel good loser movie, of course, is Little Miss Sunshine.)

However, if you are not feeling jovial about being a loser and are feeling like an old, rather than young loser, I still recommend Sideways. It’s middle aged loser with a hint of redwood, maybe some asparagus, with a slight taste of sunshine, a note of desperation, …

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I haven’t been able to write for awhile because my computer at home won’t pick up the neighbor’s wireless that we are “sharing.” And I can’t write from work because I don’t want anyone from work ever reading this. or this. or even this. But I borrowed a lap top from work, so here is my shout out and my one minute, or so, review.

So, I work with a cool girl who is a temp and thus gets all the crappy jobs. We started calling her the red-headed step child, but of course, we are all red-headed step children in one way or another, so now we are all the red-headed step children. Red Headed Step Children Unite! Is our lunch club motto, and “Where’s my stapler.” is one of our many inside jokes.

Today I didn’t have lunch, and get my once a day belly laugh, with my girls; my stupid friend who I can never count on so I don’t know why I thought he would come through today didn’t come through which reminded me that I am really all alone in this cold, cold world; and everyone flaked out on 80’s night tonight. My new roommate and I went to see Little Miss Sunshine instead, and all I can say about it, because I don’t like to tell people anything about movies because I am almost fanatical about not hearing anything about movies before I go, is:
If you are or were ever actually or metaphorically a red headed step child, I think you will like this movie.

Oh my gosh I want to tell you all about it! Hurry and go see it so we can talk about it!!!

Ps: I actually was a red-headed step child.

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Written December 22, 2005

There is an interesting study in the book How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton. It talks about POW’s becoming hopeless just because they lose a sense of camaraderie. So, to prevent curling up in a corner and dying (POW fate) this book is exhorting people to fill each other’s buckets, to uplift, and encourage each other.

I read the entire book in Borders last night. I left my house when everyone in it was having dinner together but me. I walked out, said a cheery “Ciao!” and pretended I had somewhere to go. It was late, I started driving, and wondered where I should go. I was crying so it had to be somewhere dark. I stopped by the movies but it would be over an hour until the next one started. I had gotten a slightly manic email from my mom earlier in the day saying we had 6 Christmas parties to go to and that you never know when you will meet a man! Umm.. am I in the middle of Bridgit Jones’s Diary? Suddenly the vacation I was looking forward to didn’t sound so cheery. Then my best friend went off and went skating without me, and, to top it off, there was the cheery Christmas scene at my house that I was left out of. So, I went to Borders.

I bought one book and read another. I felt immensely better after hiding in the craft section and reading How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life. I highly recommend this very simple book and might get a copy for everyone I know. I also made an interesting sociological discovery: Business books are just self-help books that use the word “business” in them and are in the business section!! They are self-help books for men! I just discovered a whole new place to browse. Then I went and got me some onion rings.

My roommate’s parents are here. They look at me and speak to me. They are sweet and it feels really good. Like my roommates, they eat my food. Unlike my roommates, they also share. I finished school today. I am now a “master.” I gave my 30 days notice to my roommate/landlord. I’m going to the movies tonight with friends. Yesterday my bucket was drained. Today it is filling up again. Goodnight! I hope someone is loving you and filling your bucket. If not, I hope you can do something extra sweet for yourself. Sometimes onion rings help.

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Do you ever just feel so much compassion for people and our plight as humans? Me too. It’s a good thing we have movies to distract us! And TV, lots of TV! I’m writing tongue in cheek, but also being serious. So many people, (including me!) do things that I don’t approve of, like spend hours watching TV, but sometimes I just look at all of us and think, “whatever gets you through the night.” All I ask is that you take the Buddhist and medical oath approach and first do no harm. At their best, movies can serve as modern day sit-around-the-campfire stories that make life less raw and a little less scary by giving us all a pattern to observe and a connection to each other.

Some movies I might want to see

1. Isn’t this a Time?
2. Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story (R)
3. Bubble (R)
4. Cape of Good Hope (PG-13)
5. Christmas in the Clouds (PG)
6. Eight Below (PG)
7. The Family Stone (PG-13)
8. Last Holiday (PG-13)
9. Munich (R)
10. The New World (PG-13)
11. The Producers
    

Movies I certainly want to see

1. The Real Dirt on Farmer John (Not rated)
2. Syriana (R)
3. Transamerica (R)
4. Something New (PG 13)

Movies I have seen
This year I most highly recommend Brokeback Mountain. Please see it and be amazed at the universality of love.

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I watched a Gilmore Girls episode on TV last night. (I love the Gilmore girls) and Lauralai’s love came back. The thing I liked about it was that she wasn’t crying, there was no drama. She was watching movies she liked and going to the diner and hanging out with her friends and going to work. It was almost strange to see someone acting like that on TV who broke up with their boyfriend just two episodes ago. BUT it felt so real. So grown-up. When you are past that crying/drama phase and are just quietly, achingly longing. Anyway, she was watching a movie, just fine at her house, and he knocked on her door. I don’t know how she did that, but you could feel the quiet longing. They had the moment in the movie she was watching be about losing a man, which was unneccesary. I could already feel the ache. Then there was a knock. Just like there would be a knock in real life and the hairs on the back of your neck would stand up, “Could it be him?” But you wouldn’t get excited or even check how you look, because you know very well by now not to expect anything, and then you go to the door and it is him. And it is a miracle and you just hold each and kiss as hard as you can and don’t say anything.

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I love reading Andrea’s real life updates over at Roundy Wells. I wish all my friends and family had blogs! So, today I am going to treat you to a real life update.

Men: Nada. (Wow, this is quick!) I theoretically want to get married and if I happened to meet someone that I clicked with, I’d be all for it, but I’m putting no energy into looking. The only reason it has a little half-hearted place on my to do list is my biological clock. Mental calculations of biological clock: “Let’s see, I’m 31 [now you know :)] If I meet someone now and marry them in a year, the earliest I will have my first child is 33. If I want 4 kids, spaced two years apart… ARGHGGGH!!!” That’s how those internal conversations usually go, followed by a panicked: “I must meet somebody now!” or a tremulously reasuring, “Well, people are getting younger all the time, if you just stay in really great shape, it will be almost like you are in your 20’s when you are having kids!” Yeah right!

Job: Just quit! Yay me! In my job-life, I really feel like the airplane motivational speakers always talk about, on the wrong path most of the time but continually making adjustments so that it does eventually get where it intended to go. I know what I want to do: create blah, blah, blah, blah. (That information is part of my secret identity- or actually, my known identity, but this site is part of my secret identity, so my known identity is… this gets so confusing.) But how do I get there? I started drafting a letter to send to a well-known writer and Ph.D to share with him the research paper I wrote that involves his work. Ach! It scared me to even draft it. Do you double-dog-dare me to send it today? It is great thinking, in my humble opinion, but really stilted writing. I haven’t figured how to make research paper writing flow. I HATE that method of writing. eek.

I’m considering going to school some more to get a Ph.d and doing research there, applying for a grant to get my research funded, or… working at a regular job while I work on my own research on the side? This is all up in the air.

For the near future, I have a student loan coming in, so I won’t starve. However, I do want a job during this last semester and I will definitely need a job when the semester ends. As the very talented Andrea has shown, getting a job in a particular field can be challenging. I won’t have any welcoming arms letting me stay somewhere, I’ve already used that option up post bachelors degree. Unless something changes in some other area of my life. (See “Men:” above.)

Jobs I am considering: low paying student job on campus- hey, it’s money, actual full time job in my field if I can get it, or get an internship in my field. In addition, I AM starting my hypnosis practice back up. The website is in the works.

Other dreams: I want to sing and play the guitar and write songs. My grandma has agreed to pay for me to get singing lessons! Yay, Grandma!! I am soo excited to have a more consistantly performance worthy voice. Also, I am going to learn to play the guitar better and learn more music theory. As you know, I don’t want to become famous in that I don’t want my face to be broadly recognizable, but I DO want to be rich and talented. I would love to make money selling my songs and be a slightly known singer in my community- at church and in a local band. That would be sooo fun.

Housing: I want my own house. But I went driving around yesterday and I realized, even if something magical happens, I don’t know exactly where I want to live yet. However, being in a temporary place that is someone else’s house just sucks. No, I am not pleased with my roommates. Today I realized that I just have to clean in front of my other two roommates so they can WITNESS ME CLEANING, then they see that I am contributing my fair share of cleaning. My other roommate, the owner of the house, who I will call Fantasia, just got home today. Disclaimer: all of these roommates are nice. They are not horrible, but still, I am not pleased. So, Fantasia and Tina are chatting about the trip she just got back from and I say, “Hi! How was Florida?” And she says, in a measured voice usually reserved for pre-schoolers, and irritating even then,”Braidwood, I had a nice trip, but I don’t want to talk about it now. If you’d like, I will tell you about Florida later.” What the hell! I wanted to turn all Hustle and Flow * on her and tell her, “Yo, bitch, I couldn’t care less about your trip to Florida! I was just asking to be nice!” Then I fantasized about coming up with something socially acceptable yet funny and mean to say back to her. I could think of nothing. When I am displeased I turn very sincere and tend to say things like, “I really don’t like being spoken to like that.” I did think it would be funny to make up a song about Fantasia to the tune of “I’m living in my own private Idaho” and call it “I’m living in my own private Ashram!” (Fantasia teaches yoga and gives astrology readings and doesn’t think farting is funny.)

*I saw Hustle and Flow with my Grandma when I was in Hawaii, her choice, and the only reason I went. I usually stick to my Mormon heritage and skip rated R movies. Especially if there is the chance that there will be something in the movie that I just wish I had never seen. However, while Hustle and Flow had the trappings of banality, it was not banal. It was an awesome movie and I could totally relate.

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1. Crash
2. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe (Even though it is so going to be anti-witch. ;) I loved these books when I was a kid! Loved, loved, loved them.)
3. Rise
4. Me and you and Everyone we know
5. Batman Begins
6. As you like it

Probably:

1. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
3. Bridge to Terabithia (This is a good, but sad children’s book. I gave it to my cousin when he was young and after reading it and crying, he asked his mom, “Why did she give me that book?!” :(
4. Charlotte’s Web (Another children’s book. I love the old animation)

Maybe:

1. Mysterious Skin (might be too sad)
2. The 40 Year old Virgin (I like the premise, but possible too stupid for words?)
3. Beautiful Country (Haven’t heard anything yet)

And more. Wow, there are a lot of upcoming movies.

Categories | Movies, Links

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I have so much to tell you, but I guess I’ll just do a short post about a movie today. I wish I had one of those programs that automatically posts. It would make my urge to communicate seem more regular and steady. Hey! I just thought of a way to write about the movie without spoiling it for those of you who haven’t seen it. One of my proffessors came up with this nifty technique: Where there is blank space, just triple click to see the writing. [Update: the triple click doesn't work well here, just highlight.] If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t triple click!

So, today I go to get drug tested for my new job, because I’d been acting kind of funny and all… (Ok, I just decided that the rest of this story will have to wait, until I’m not working there. It may be awhile. I’ll keep writing about it, but I’ll do a post-job series of posts. I want to keep my new job. So, skipping to the movie, I went to see it while I was waiting for my drug results.)

I liked it! I put it in the category of movies that have suprisingly good messages, like Bourne Supremacy. Tom Cruise was not the rugged, never-phased, can-think-of-every-imaginable-thing-that-amazingly-saves-the-day hero. Thank goodness. He was this sort of everyday, crappy father guy. Yes, he thought of a few good things, but his situation still seemed hopeless. And my favorite thing, unlike so many disaster movies, is that the people actually seemed phased by the things that happen to them. I often notice the psycological unreality in movies. Where other people are screaming, “That could never happen, that 60 foot Gorgon would never be able to fit into that cavern!” I am yelling, “Those people need therapy! There is no way they would be acting like that if their Grandma just melted in volcanic water!” This action/disaster movie showed the most realistic psychological reactions I have seen. Yes, I too have heard of Tom Cruise’s latest nuttery. However, I love him in movies like this.

The story of the alian invasion is definately secondary and clunky. Like Ebert, it did cross my mind that the alians sure made a lame plan, but unlike Ebert, I like that the story focuses on one person’s experience. It was more humanizing and interestingly, more scary. If you can help it, don’t read Ebert’s review before you go, or anyone else’s for that matter. I made a decision at the beginning of the movie to go with it, to be immersed, and the storytellers didn’t let me down.

Categories | Movies, Post-Job Series, Links

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I just saw Star Wars. Quickly turn away if you haven’t seen it!
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I don’t know if I’ll write any spoilers in here, but I hate to hear anything before seeing a movie. Wow. It was better than I expected, and better than some people told me it would be. Now that I’ve seen it, I can finally go read Roger Ebert’s review. It was intense and I felt more sad after seeing it than during the movie. I’m just so sad that Anikan turned bad, and I’m sad that he had to burn up like that. I think the reason it really pulls at me emotionally is because it mirrors many of the feelings I’ve had as our nation has gone to war and as people have voted for less freedom. It just hurts that people can get so caught up in a fake enemy and resort to killing people to “liberate” them.

Padme was just about to say, “There’s still hope.” Sometimes when I have felt down about political decisions people have made, I take the long view. I think, “well, there will be another ice age and it will all be wiped out. Not to worry, the damage isn’t permanent.” That sounds really fatalistic, huh. It reminds me of a quote I read in Finding Flow, attributed to Buddhists:

Act always as if the future of the Universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.

I think that’s a little heavy. (you think) But I do think that everything we do can have an effect and that an effective way to think of that is with hope- that even the little things you do make a difference, and not with guilt- that’s where the laughing at yourself needs to come in.

Oh yeah, the special effects were really cool too. :)

Categories: Democracy, Movies

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I’ve been waiting and waiting to write this post! Happy Valentine’s Day!! I woke up happy this morning, it must be all the love in the air.

I went to the Vagina Monologues for the first time on Wednesday. It was so good I wanted to go back again on Friday! My best friend where I live is a boy, so I was surprised and reminded of girl energy at the show. In college I often had one main male in my life and was surrounded, inbounded with lots of women. I loved all that female energy. I helped to start a feminist group at my small town college, where it was a pretty radical group to be in.

The show was just a montage of women’s real life interviews about their Vaginas! Pretty simple format and unusual topic. When I told my guy friend about it, he assumed it was about sex. No, it was about vaginas, front and center, with all vagina activities and interests, including sex, on the periphery. The thing I realized after the show is that there is a lot of talk about penises. There are many shared cultural images and there is shared knowledge. Just think of all the urinal scenes in movies, all the ball bashing scenes that inspire a collective ”ooohh!” Some men think of their penis as their other head, some name their penis. We know a lot of about the life and times of the penis. The vagina? Not so much.

That is what made the show so interesting. Because there isn’t a lot of shared cultural metaphors about vaginas, all the women’s vagina metaphors and images were soooo unique. How they thought about their vaginas was unique and surprising, but their experiences elicited understanding nods, laughs and groans from the audience. It was a great, interesting, entertaining show. But the most amazing part is how I felt when I left. It brings tears to my eyes just typing it. And again I’m surprised and bemused by my strong reaction. I felt so good, and happy and proud. And yes, I did have to have my own mirror episode a few days later when I got home. Yep, just like I remembered it! :)

I had a confusing and often painful childhood. And yet, somehow I came into adulthood with healthy and wholesome attitudes about my body, vagina included. My mom, along with all her bad mothering, did do some positive things. I’ve been remembering with gratitude that my mother taught me how to clean myself, and answered my questions honestly and always seemed to revel in her own body. As if it was good to be a woman!

Wow, this a pretty darn honest post. I hope you find healing from other people’s stories, like I do. If so, check out the Vagina Monologues which is really a fund raiser to promote kindness (stop violence) towards women. Start with yourself. A related site is Men against Rape, which again I’d like to rename in the positive, Men promoting REAL masculinity and respect towards women.

Happy V-Day all ya’ll!

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I don’t know why I am so interested in seeing good movies right now. Here is the intro to Ebert’s year of movies. He talks about the solace of watching movies during a time of illness. I have felt my mortality for awhile and am feeling it more keenly all the time. I seem very aware that I’m on limited time. Are you?

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Speaking of movies and secret messages, I just found a website using the Matrix to introduce people to less official views about the U. S. government. I lifted these quotes from the site:

“I’ve got enough anger for ten people. I work as hard as I can, and when I can’t take it anymore, I go to the beach.”

Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange (personal communication, 2000)

“The fearsome social and global environmental crises from which we mentally flee are not unbearable additions to our already extreme weight of personal problems; they are the key, the answer to those problems.”

David Edwards. Burning All Illusions

“The peace movement is filled with anger and hatred. It cannot fulfill the path we expect from them. … That is why it is so important for us to practice meditation, to acquire the capacity to look, to see, and to understand. … Peace work means, first of all, being peace.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

“Despair is suicide of the imagination. … to voluntarily close a door that has not yet shut.”

Sam Smith, Why Bother?

“People with power are perfectly happy for the population to be cynical, because that tends to paralyze people and leads to passivity. Those same powerful people also do their best to derail critique — the process of working to understand the nature of things around us and offering judgments about them — because that tends to energize people and leads to resistance.”

Robert Jensen, “Critical Hope”

“Many people feel quite unjustly discouraged and gloomy about the opportunities to do things, but there have been really remarkable victories in the last couple of years.”

Noam Chomsky (1998) from the CD, “Case Studies in Hypocrisy“

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I’ve been in a stew. My aunt said it best, “When you are sick, everything has portends of doom.” Yesterday, I talked to a school advisor who said I would probably end up working in a coffee shop, (or was it a gas station?) after hearing my professional plans. Asshole. For some reason, knowing that I was going to ignore his advice gave me the same feeling as Allison running from the cops. I felt like I stepped into another reality, without the protection afforded by following the sanctioned rules of the group. I saw my reflection in the blank TV, with my matter of fact eyes, and could see the little girl I used to be, with no respect for authority for authority’s sake, no respect for rules that didn’t make sense. I used to refuse to call adults by their last name and would call them by their first name, as they did with me. Are some of us just born that way, or is it a product of my childhood where I was inherently an outsider, so I could see with more unsocialized eyes?

I went to the library to get more videos to ease my at-home-with-the-flu boredom. I was looking for videos that would make me feel better and change my darkening world view. It’s interesting how many movies have the theme of the individual vs. the group. I checked out Cold Sassy Tree and Clueless, among others. I watched Cold Sassy Tree. The main character is trying to find a home and is shunned for her non-conformity by the townspeople. I can relate. Luckily she finds a stand up man, so she has a framework of safety around her different ness. I can relate to that too. No matter how weird you are, if you have a stand-up conformist-seeming man, you are still acceptable, not dangerous as you might be on your own. Yesterday it seemed to me that so much art, like movies and music, was made by non-conformists who were sending secret messages out to us other non-conformists telling us, “It’s alright, keep following your dreams, you can find a way, a path, no matter what the herd says.”

Seemingly paradoxically , I am finally discovering how important having a group is to me, and am learning to reach out to people when I need help. It’s a very healthy thing for me. Yesterday I could viscerally feel the safety in it, especially after watching the Net! (It’s not the video to watch when you are feeling jumpy from running from the cops, or sick.)

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Right now I’m in the mood to see a movie, and I’m about to go see one. So this idea for a goal is probably just based on my current mood. I think I would like to see Roger Ebert’s list of 100 great movies. (Here’s his book.) Then, (always thinking about how I can incorporate something into my blog,) I can blog about it! We’ll see. It may happen. I need to figure out how to archive my posts by topic.

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I saw Kinsey last night. It’s the true story of Alfred and Clara Kinsey who, along with a team of researchers, did scientific studies of human sexual behavior in the United States. I thought it was well done, thought provoking and disturbing, and I recommend it. It was sexually graphic, so I wouldn’t recommend taking your kids, although you might want to talk to them about the ideas in it.

Concerned Women for America are planning to protest the movie. I find this interesting since there are so many lascivious movies out. Why did they decide to protest the Kinsey report? It can’t be the sexuality shown, even though this movie was very graphic by my standards, there are much more sexually graphic movies. [The 82 year old woman next to me said she liked the pictures.] Is it the story? Are they protesting telling the true story of the people who studied human sexual behavior in America? Is it because they think he shouldn’t have done the study or because they are upset by what he found? Do they dislike his lifestyle and disagree with his views?

I highly disliked several aspects of his lifestyle and disagree with part of his philosophy about sex. Splitting sexual debate into two simplified camps; there are the prescribers and the describers. Kinsey was a describer. He falls into the camp of anything goes. This group prides itself on being open minded and sexually free. They avoid prescriptions at all costs saying that anything is alright as long as no one gets hurt. They won’t tell the truth about how sex affects them. I know many people who say sex can just be for pleasure, we are animals and it is only societal convention that makes sex emotional. Of course, we are animals, we are animals that bond through touch, and when sexual bonds are broken, it hurts. In the movie, Clara gets it right when she says, “Did you ever think that societal norms are there for a reason?”

The other group prescribes sexual behavior. They have a set idea of what is ok sexually and what isn’t ok. Of course, there is variety in the prescriptions. They don’t want to hear about the actual sexual behavior that people are engaged in and they are often hypocrites, spouting theory that their behavior doesn’t match up with. This group doesn’t want sex ed taught or condoms handed out because teenagers SHOULDN’T be having sex, ignoring the fact that they ARE.

I find either type of viewpoint equally repugnant for the exact same reason. Maybe it’s the scientist in me; I’m annoyed when people ignore reality for theory. I consider both groups to be publicly dishonest, even when they are honest people at home. This is often the trouble when people start getting off into theory, ignoring their own and other people’s experiences. My anecdotal evidence of people I know who prescribe certain sexual behavior is that none of them live up to their ideals, me included. My personal experience of the people who say that anything goes sexually is that they are all, I mean ALL, affected emotionally by their sexual relationships, just like everyone else.

Why deny reality publicly? Maybe it is the adversarial way we debate issues in this country. Perhaps both sides fear that if they give a more nuanced view, the other side will use it as a weakness to promote their agenda. Boy, have people used Kinsey’s research to promote agendas. The most disturbing agenda I found while researching the anti-Kinsey articles, is that a group of pedophiles have used the report to justify molesting children. It made my skin crawl just reading this article. Labeling something common or rare doesn’t take away how good or bad it may be for you. Even something common may be very unhealthy.

So, why do I still recommend the movie? Food is often equated with sex these days and I’ll continue the analogy here to make my point. If you were in favor of a very particular nutritional plan, would you therefore be against finding out what people currently eat? What if the people who did the study had a different nutritional ideal in mind? Would you then be against the study? What if the people who did the accurate study ate very unhealthy meals? If the study was done well and accurately, to my mind it benefits anyone interested in nutrition to know what people are currently eating. From an organizational standpoint, you can’t change if you don’t know where you are starting from. If you are really for sexual reform, it benefits you to know what people are currently doing, so accurate sex studies will only be a benefit to you. The only agenda sex studies threaten is secrecy. (If you are a great big hypocrite, then that might be the way to go.)

Alfred Kinsey was of the non-prescription, only description camp. I think the movie accurately portrays that he got it wrong. And, I still think it’s a good movie. The movie may make you uncomfortable. Being honest with yourself while you watch it may make you even more uncomfortable.

Here’s Paul Clinton’s review of the movie. (His review has some spoilers.)

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