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

Month: August 2013

Weekly Open Thread with vulpine invader

This sweet little fox kit peeking out from what was originally a cat flap is part of a posse of furred and feathered critters who have taken over some abandoned summer homes in a Finnish forest. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.
* with a few netiquette exceptions

Erasing Women of Color From Mainstream Feminism

How can we expect others to elevate our voices and experiences, to let us be seen and heard, when we can’t even acknowledge and support other women of color trying to do just that?

It should never be the case that a woman of color writing for a mainstream feminist site should 1) be presumed to be white or 2) become so frustrated by the regularity of this presumption that it is one reason for her leaving the site. Here is a platform so many people believe is responsible for making some voices louder than others and then we silence other women of color to the point that they leave the site.

Marches Less Remembered

The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington got me thinking about an earlier march. It was May 17th, 1957. I was 15 and although I’d been doing activist work, it had all been near my home in NYC. My friend Pat and I had heard about the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. Her father, an activist, was editor of the UAW magazine Ammunition. He made the connections so that we could go down on the night bus with the Jamaica (Queens) NAACP. I don’t remember sleeping much. The crowd was by far the largest I’d ever been in. We were asked to wave handkerchiefs instead of applauding the speakers because it was a religious event. The intensity of the suppressed energy of the silent applause is still with me.

Support Striking Fast Food Workers

Today, fast food workers across the United States are striking for higher pay. Paltry minimum wages mean that workers are paid as little as $7.25 an hour — not nearly enough to live off of, let alone raise a family. More than 13 percent of fast food workers rely on food stamps to make ends meet, and a disproportionate number of fast food employees are women of color. Willietta Dukes is one woman who will be striking today. She writes:

Crowdsourcing: tell Feministe about your fundraiser

My friends at the Ada Initiative are fundraising for their work supporting women in open technology and culture and there’s only a few days left for them to reach their target – if what they do is relevant to your interests, please consider donating to them ASAP.

Since I don’t want to only boost my friends in this space, please use this thread to tell the Feministe readership about other projects you support for which fundraising is happening at the moment.

Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday

This thread is for links to pieces on other people’s blogs that you have found delightful/memorable/provoking recently (they can be older posts, just something you’ve found recently relevant). Please save the self-promotion links for a Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday thread – use this thread to let Feministe readers know about the other blogs you love to read, especially those on the margins of the mainstream social justice communities, who tend to not get as much exposure as they should.

Roundup: Miley Cyrus needs to stop.

Sunday night’s MTV VMAs: Miley Cyrus gets to wear and/or remove revealing clothes. She gets to put her hands and/or pelvis in assorted places. She gets to wear latex granny panties and grind up on a fully-dressed Robin Thicke. She gets to stick her tongue out — constantly — no matter how gross it is — like a cartoon dog seeing a sexy cartoon lady dog. Miley Cyrus is a grown woman and gets to use her body as she wants.

Using other people’s bodies is a different story, and a number of bloggers have commented on that crucial fact.