Thanks for the interview Janka Gerritsen-Intribusova!

(in het Nederlands zie je beneden..)

1. What is your involvement in the SET & Buurt Community Garden?

It is my child, if I can put like this. I was the initiator of a plan to make the garden more than a few vegetable garden boxes and create a big community garden for social integration. Where people can not only grow their own vegetables but become connected through all kinds of activities. I had a vision about a place where we have a playground, sitting places, a herb garden, insect hotel, an open kitchen, a greenhouse, space for workshops… where we can literally get into the soil, can learn about herbs, flowers, but we can make art, can make paintings, work with wood. Or where we can do nothing, just having a picnic or to stop to have a chat with a neighbor. I imagined a place which somehow belongs to the people who use it. Not the municipality or some outsider professionals would come to maintain but we, neighbours take care of it.

• How did you come across the garden?

working and living together in a multicultural environment

Here comes an article about the first year of the implementation of the IRIS project in Amsterdam.

Pilot sessions are often isolated experiments with a random group of participants gathered just for that purpose. But that is not necessarily the case, as shown by our case study from Amsterdam.

Read further…

The garden may be the place of various births; birth of ideas, desires, inspiration…the garden is a metaphor but also real, physical full of smells of dirt, rain, flowers. I am proud being on board of the Art and Act – Marie Marzloff Award 2020: ´2020 has globally redefined our common lives as we have been forced to reconcieve them both in terms of time and space, leading us to a profound reflection on the social changes which will follow. As crisis exacerbates inequalities, new perspectives on dialogue and cooperation are emerging just when they seem more necessary than ever. ´More about the contest: http://cesie.org/en/artandact/.

It is so important!! Please listen carefully to her!

Magda Kay: A Call To All Man: Please Understand A Woman’s Sexuality Is Her Most Vulnerable State.

It’s so different than yours. You give, she is the one who receives it. She takes you into her body.

So if she asks you to slow down, or not to go all the way – honor that. That voice is coming from deep inside her. It is not the voice of rejection, of manipulation or of being cold.

Please don’t take these as a personal rejections and shut down. She is asking you to help her open up. This is a gift, not a slap in your face.
Please see the beauty in her opening up, slowly, like a flower. Don’t push her. Let her unfold in her own time.

In his second book, photographer Ralf Mitsch investigates another subject that has fascinated him for most of his life. Puzzled by the overwhelmingly negative messages in the mainstream media about the erotic industry and the people who work in it, he decided to talk to people who have chosen a wide variety of ways to embrace eroticism in their life and work, and truly love what they do.
Over 50 people from all walks of life contributed their portraits and stories to the project. Mitsch wants the book to create awareness about the positive, life-affirming side of the erotic industry, and help shift people’s perceptions.
Why I Love Sex is a must-read for anybody who doesn’t work in the industry.

whyilovesex.com

“As early as 1952, Czechoslovak sexologists started doing research on the female orgasm, and in 1961 they held a conference solely devoted to the topic,” Katerina Liskova, a professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, told me. “They focused on the importance of the equality between men and women as a core component of female pleasure. Some even argued that men need to share housework and child rearing, otherwise there would be no good sex.”

Agnieszka Koscianska, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Warsaw, told me that pre-1989 Polish sexologists “didn’t limit sex to bodily experiences and stressed the importance of social and cultural contexts for sexual pleasure.” It was state socialism’s answer to work-life balance: “Even the best stimulation, they argued, will not help to achieve pleasure if a woman is stressed or overworked, worried about her future and financial stability.”

Source: Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism – The New York Times

Did the project make her think differently about men? “Yes, there was a feeling of falling in love with men. It was really lovely.” A couple of months before she started Manhood, Dodsworth split up with her husband, the father of her two sons. “So there was something interesting about going through the process of separation and divorce from somebody I’d been with for 20 years, then meeting 100 men and stepping into this very intimate conversation with them all.”

What surprised her most? “A lot more men feel a sense of shame or anxiety about their size, or an aspect of their performance, than I would have thought. What really moved me is how much that shame and inadequacy had bled into different parts of their life.” She says many were teased as children about their penis and never recovered from it.

Source: Me and my penis: 100 men reveal all | Life and style | The Guardian

´Always wanting sex is the mark of manliness for many.´  – It is always interesting to see how conditioning works. But it´s even more interesting to be able to see, reflect on, and understand how it works in our own personal life. What does sex mean to me? Being a man or a woman, doesn´t matter. Right now, in this very moment…

That´s why it was worth reading a man´s opinion on male sexuality. I would be curious about other personal views, stories on the same topic…

´From the time I was a young I learned that wanting sex was synonymous with being a man. In high school I remember overhearing a girl I liked talking about a guy we both knew. She wasn’t complaining that he was preoccupied with sex, but that he “didn’t come on to me like other guys do.” She went on to tell her girlfriend, “He’s not being very manly.” The message was clear, “real men” want sex and if you don’t “come on” to a girl, you’re not a real man.This early lesson was validated through the years: Always wanting sex is the mark of manliness for many. It’s better to be turned down again and again and be seen as a jerk who is totally preoccupied with sex than to want something more than sex and be seen as “less than a man.”

Always wanting sex” is part of the male persona we wear to show we’re manly. What we really want is a safe harbor where we can take refuge, relax, and be cared for. In other words, we want the feeling of being nurtured that most of us didn’t get enough of when we were children. But admitting these needs makes us feel like little boys, not big strong men. Better to be manly with our sexual desire and then once we’re inside her body, we can relax, be ourselves, and be infused with love. That’s the hidden desire we have when we have sex.´

continue to the article…