In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: September 2012

DNC Open Thread

So… Bill Clinton was kind of awesome, right? Like total nerd-wonk and also somehow a guy you actually want to hear go 30 minutes over his allotted time? Possibly the only person you ever want to hear pontificate on the details of the discretionary budget? One of the few politicians who is actually capable of taking policy points that are both complex AND mundane and making them both interesting and accessible? Man is gifted.

I Miss You Already.

The fish represents knowledge, obviously.
Remember when we didn’t even know each other? I was just some guest, and you were just Feministe? Without knowing it, we embarked on a journey together; what an adventure it’s been! But, like all good roller coasters, this ride has come to an end.

It flew by so much faster than I expected; I couldn’t keep up and write on the myriad topics I planned! (I was going to write every day! Twice a day! And it was going to change the world! I forgot about cooking dinner for my child, working my “regular” job, and general humility, among other time consuming happenings of every day life.) And it was simultaneously slower, too; the experience was exhausting! As much as I was intimidated to write within this space, I couldn’t feel happier or stronger for the time spent here.

The more I write, the older I become, the more I find myself listening more and talking less. This is how I found my time spent here at Feministe, but “listening” means a lot of reading—even as a writer. It was amazing to watch the conversations fly, whether comments were informative, educational, angry, supportive, or everything in between. If I have anything to offer the passionate commentariat here, I hope that it would be a gentle reminder that there are thousands of people reading this website, visiting Feministe to learn. You are educating people, whether you want that role or not, and I know that I certainly leave this space (as a contributor, anyway) far more educated than when I entered. You’ve allowed me to share my imperfect humanity, and responded with some of your own. I am grateful for all of it.

Special thanks to Jill for inviting me on over. I look forward to doing it again, if you’ll have me!

And, hey! twitter is fun: @evesturges

Note: Within the sphere of listening=reading, I may not have answered as many questions or participated in the comments as much as some of you would have liked; I assure you, I read everything. If you still have burning questions, now’s your chance; I’ll answer them here as time, and serenity, permits.

Avatars ahoy!

[Updated to add more info on uploading an image]
We have now enabled gravatars for comments. That’s what the little pictures are next to your names.

If you don’t already have a gravatar tied to the email address you use to comment, WordPress will have autogenerated a cute little monster icon and tied it to your email addy. If you want to choose your own gravatar, then please go to gravatar.com and follow the steps to upload the image of your choice to be tied to that email address – then that image will over-ride the autogenerated monster. [ETA: it usually takes only 5 minutes or so for the new image to propagate, but sometimes it’s a little bit longer. Just have patience, and if it hasn’t happened within 30 minutes go check your gravatar account again and see whether something’s playing up.]

Gravatar is fine with registering avatar icons to pseudonymous email addresses – they will just send a confirmation email so that nobody else can register a gravatar to that email address. Obviously, if you use an actual fake email address, then the confirmation email will go nowhere and you won’t be able to do that.

I know that the avatar-space has pushed the comment number to overlap with the name-space, but I’m getting rid of the comment numbers anyway because they don’t mean much with threaded comments changing the numbers as sub-threads grow. If you want to refer to another comment upthread or in another thread, then please use the comment permalink which sits under the commentor name – that link remains constant no matter how comments may subsequently be rearranged.

Whether the Duggars are a cult or not, they are damn scary

Holy moly. Especially the part about what they’re learning in their homeschool “curriculum.” Not that I think homeschooling should be illegal — it shouldn’t be! — but it really should be regulated to make sure that homeschooled kids are actually learning something approaching factual information, and not “Only ten percent of Africans can read or write, because Christian mission schools have been shut down by communists.”

Posted in Uncategorized

How to be beautiful in four excruciating steps

Toiling your whole life to be beautiful (and consequently powerful), but tired of lining your eyes with a pin dipped in lampblack after brightening them with a dropperful of perfume? Of course you are. We all are. There is a better way, free of the traditional harsh chemicals, using completely different harsh chemicals and ritualistic abrasions. In his 1889 Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, Barkham Burroughs instructs the women of his day “How to Be Handsome” and so “to govern, control, manage, influence, and retain the adoration of husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers or even cousins.”