Welcome revolutionaries,
This is the first post of the Houston-Based Post-Feminist Organization, HAGE. Although it took us a while to set up a page here, we have been diligently working in the past few weeks/months in tandem with the online prankster collective 'Ad Busters' on a research project/community service effort. 'The Trappings of the Beast', which will be posted in full detail after its culmination, 'Buy Nothing Day' on Nov. 26th. The project seeks to interrogate the myths consumed by the masses, and to uncover how these commercial myths lead to a recapitulation of essentialist gender notions. An additional component of the project is investigating the status of essentialism on the frontiers of youth culture, where gender rules and other social mores have yet to be set to stone. By researching forums and interviewing members of those forums, where the primary discourse of that sub-culture take place, we will determine the state of gender distinctions and essentialism on the web.
When men buy products marketed for men (or women for women) by virtue of their marketing strategy, they inadvertently revive the binary oppositions that HAGE view as poisonous to progression of culture away from Old World norms. For more information on Buy Nothing day, check here:
http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd
Internet users are provided the rare opportunity to shape their own social structure for the decades to come. The Web empowers individuals and their intellectual faculties unlike any other social mechanism. However, the old ways have a way of worming their way into everything. How do users of forums, social networking sites, and aggregate blogs consider gender? How much room is left for redefinition, and how many stereotypes have we already inherited? 'Nature of the Beast' seeks to answer these questions and more.
"By stopping our machines together we will demonstrate their weakness."
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