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

Month: April 2013

We Are Not Your Afterthought: responding to LGBT Soup

There are some phrases that, when you see them in an article, you know aren’t going to lead to anywhere good. “Political correctness gone mad”, for one. “Some of my best friends are…”, for another. “I’m not a ___, but..” is definitely one. One of the phrases that takes the proverbial biscuit (and a lot of other proverbials), though, is this one:

Now, before you run off to compose a face-meltingly indignant email to the editor..

When the writer already knows that they’ve written something to get their readers face-meltingly indignant, things can only go two ways. It could be that they’ve come up with something so new and wonderful that it’ll take the rest of us years to get our heads around. Far more often, though, you’re about to read something that will have you facepalming so hard you end up with permanent dents on your forehead. If you’re unlucky, you might not be able to stop yourself from muttering obscenities at the screen in the middle of your office.

Welcome to Neverland, Inc.

Losse rightly calls out Sandberg’s vision as a kind of business feminism that doesn’t look much different from regular boys’ business for girls; as she says, Lean In “teaches women more about how to serve their companies than it teaches companies about how to be fairer places for women to work.” Losse seems to be holding out for something closer to a feminist business. But there may be an even bigger problem than this, since Silicon Valley’s tech industry isn’t just Neverland–it’s Neverland, Inc., a place where Peter Pan CEOs carry out corporate-centered policies and politics that are bad for all workers.

Spillover #3

It’s time to set aside a third #spillover thread as part of our comment moderation system for keeping other threads on-topic.

“A Mere Male”: Mansplaining Women’s Art

Consider the status of women in the art world: often considered the “muse,” rarely the artist; lauded as the pinnacle of beauty but having no worth otherwise: the Venus forever looking in her mirror, the object of the (male) gaze, not the subject of her own agency. Should a gallery or museum try to strive for the inclusion of women artists (and artists of color, queer artists, and so on), there may be criticism of ignoring the masters, so-called “female privilege,” and the desire for a gender-blind meritocracy that simply does not exist at present. If you were wondering what such an article might look like, look no further than C.B. Liddell’s “The diverse works of Asian women artists,” a special to The Japan Times.