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

Month: October 2013

Stop telling women not to get drunk. It gives cover to rapists.

“Young women need to avoid drinking to avoid rape” is going around as good advice again, first from Emily Yoffe over at Slate and then from a series of other commentators. Lots of feminist writers have covered this ground before, pointing out that it’s victim-blaming. If it were actually effective, there might be a better argument for it. But there’s not — and in fact, it ends up giving cover to rapists:

Spillover #10

The commenting period on the last one has expired, so it’s time for a new #spillover thread. 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.

Remembering The Feminists of Asia and The Pacific

I am a woman from Asia and the Pacific, having been born in Malaysia and raised in New Zealand; I have always straddled both sides of my vast and awkwardly constructed region. I was struck recently, when over a few beers, a friend asked me to name three feminist icons all of the names I came up with were white women from Europe or North America, and this is true for most of the young Asian feminists I know. As a young woman growing up and coming into my feminist consciousness, feminism and whiteness were all tangled together for me. For a while, being a feminist meant rejecting my Indian identity and accepting a position of ‘honorary whiteness.’ This made me deeply uncomfortable, although for a long time I did not have the anti-racist language to describe how and why this was problematic.

One avenue for justice in Maryville, closed.

Across the internet, various groups are demanding justice for Daily Coleman, the 14-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a popular high school football player from a well-connected family. But it’s unclear what that “justice” would actually look like. A special prosecutor has been appointed to the case, and I’m hopeful she’ll be able to shed light on all the facts. But were it not for conservative Supreme Court justices, Daisy could have had other options: She could have sued her alleged attacker under a federal cause of action established by the Violence Against Women Act. I’m writing about that in The Nation today:

Selfless Signal-Boosting Wednesday

This thread is for links to pieces on other people’s blogs that you have found delightful/memorable/provoking/relevant recently. 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 read, especially those on the margins of the mainstream social justice communities, who tend to not get as much exposure as they should.