For Visual Artists:

Images are welcome, whether digitally created images, photographs, video, or photographs of paintings, drawings, or sculptures. The only requisite is that the artwork is original. Forget the Spin is not a blog that grabs images off other sites without permission. Please send any images in jpeg format.

For Writers:

Forget the Spin was born of a desire to provide some counterspin to common assumptions or assertions that are originally based on a motivation to manipulate rather than elucidate. In the age of information we are fed mountains of claims and beliefs by those who wish to futher their agenda or spread their perspective, but these pronouncements or allegations often crumble into rubbish when compared to the facts and examined with the rational mind.

The initial inspiration of Forget the Spin was to counter the overwhelming spin relating to women's rights and women's issues. For example, assertions that women have equality, feminism is dead, feminist are a bunch of humourless man hating shrews who want to crush men, culture and religion are more important than women's equality.

Some of the facts: equality laws do not apply to religious hierarchies or religious laws, women still do not recieve equal pay, sexist humour is considered acceptable although racist humour is not, women are the largest groups of oppressed people in the world, atrocities and crimes particular to women happen every day all over the world, oppressive laws that would be considered outrageous if the target was a group that is racially different are considered acceptable if the target is women: in short, women are not yet considered to be fully human and deserving of human rights to the same extent as men.

However, Forget the Spin is not at all restricted to women's issues, many of the articles or commentaries focus on politics or issues to do with poverty and wealth, and it is a venue through which any topic that counters a common or aggresively promoted belief can be discussed.

Forget the Spin is open to various writing styles, from the satirical to the deathly serious (or satirical about deathly serious issues), from fact based articles to fictional stories, from autobiographical accounts to poetry. Please send any writing in the body of the email. Though it should go without saying, the work must be original. I will republish work that has been previously published, ie., if it has already been published on your blog, or in a publication that does not own the copywright. If necessary, I will edit for clarity, but I prefer to spend my time otherwise, so please do not send pieces with masses of typos, spelling errors, or incoherent sentence structure.

What's in it for you?

Forget the Spin provides a venue for those of you who do not have your own online publication, or provides links for those who are already online: to your website, blog, or to a page that you may have on a site that includes many artists. You will get a link from the image, from your name beside the image, and a brief blurb that you may write youself, if you so wish. You will also have a link in the side bar of the home page under Links to Artists and Writers. Writers will receive a link from their piece of writing and a link under Links to Artists and Writers.

IMPORTANT:

Due to masses of spam, I will not open any emails that do not have Forget the Spin as the subject of the email. If you don't hear back from me, that means I haven't opened your email.


Wishing great success to all other artists and writers that roam the internet,

Natasha Lukanovich