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

Month: September 2013

Where are the women’s voices on Syria?

When it comes to “hard” news issues like foreign policy and national security, male voices dominate. It’s not because there aren’t women with views and opinions though — it’s because we read more competence and authority into the male voice, and we socialize women out of feeling that they’re entitled to an opinion. In the Guardian:

Is patriarchy dead?

Hanna Rosin wrote yesterday that the patriarchy is dead. And yet, in the world I live in, the patriarchy is far from dead.

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.

Don’t make apologetics if you don’t want to be called an apologist

[Content note: links to material discussing rape culture, victim blaming, rape myths, sexual harassment]

There’s a fellow over at Jason Thibeault’s blog who haz a sad because he felt singled out by mention of how nice it might be to have an Index of Rape-Apologist Claims for easy reference. This is happening on a post which is part of the continuing sexism and misogyny fallout in the skeptical and secular communities, ever since Rebecca Watson said “Guys, don’t do that”, in case you weren’t already aware that that particular cyberstorm is still raging on.

Spillover #9

New #spillover thread, since the last one is up to 250 comments. Some reminders:

1. #spillover is part of our comment moderation system for keeping other threads on-topic by providing a separate constructive space for side-discussions.
2. Commentors are encouraged to respect the topic of each post and cheerfully volunteer to take off-topic side-discussions into #spillover.

The Moderator Team will enforce topicality where necessary, and off-topic commentors who ignore invitations from others to take their tangents to #spillover are one of the reasons commentors might consider sending the moderators a giraffe alert.

Feministe now has a Mission Statement

Firstly, we never thought we would ever need a mission statement. It seemed rather self-aggrandizing for what has always been just a multi-author personal blog which prioritises women’s voices, where the bloggers express opinions on whatever is currently engaging their interest. We thought that our seat-of-the-pants attitude was obvious enough that we didn’t need to make it explicit that there was no mission other than being openly opinionated women. The freedom to be openly opinionated in a space of one’s own was an uplifting experience, and that was enough for us. We thought it would be mission enough for our readers too.

However, over the years since Feministe started in 2001, as our readership and commentariat has grown, there have been many assumptions made …