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

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Jill

Written something good this week? Leave a link and a short description in the comments. Link to a specific post, not your entire blog.

53 thoughts on Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

  4. Do Black Women’s Reproductive Rights Even Matter?: Looking at a pro life campaign in Atlanta that uses race to target Black women.

    Gay and Lesbian Mormon Suicides: looking at a petition that is being given to the Mormon Church in Utah that deals with those that have taken their life because they could not reconcile being gay and Mormon.

    Woman Allegedly Starves Her Baby Girl Because She Is Worried That The Child Is Fat: Looking at what happens when Fat hatred and postpartum depression intersect.

    Disability: When Accommodations Are Imperfect: Looking at when all differently abled are not considered before modifications are made.

    Is A Bikini Responsible For The Rape Of A 9 Year Old Girl?: Looking at a series of rapes of tourists in India and how victim blaming is being employed.

    The Friday Question: How do you get Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons to leave quickly when they knock on your door?

    Finally this weeks Sunday Shame is the self-indulgence edition. Pop by and share what you do when you just have to spoil yourself.

  13. This week at re:Cycling, we’ve got commentary about the ‘use by age 30’ warnings about ovaries; Vinnie’s Tampon Cases and the role of men in menstrual activism; a study that links exposure to flame retardants to delayed fertility but not irregular menstrual cycles; and the myth of ‘Baby Brain’.

  16. This week on Yes Means Yes Blog:

    This Man Was Raped, about the media’s refusal to use the word “rape” appropriately. In this instance, a police oficer shoved a baton into a man’s anus while three others held him down, in a subway station. Several of the police are on trial for sexual assault, and the medical evidence and one officer support the survivor’s account. But, despite graphic accounts of what happened, the media are not calling it rape.

    Public School, Home school, Parents and Gender Roles. This thread was created to provide a place for the off-topic discussion of homeschooling that threatened to take over the I Fear This thread. It quickly attracted a number of very long comments.

    Mama’s Boy”, my comment on overnight feminist blogosphere sensation and Saints linebacker Scott Fujita.

  21. Here’s what’s been goin’ on at Gender Across Borders:

    We just had a series of posts on Hip-hop, resistance & feminism about hip hop and its interactions with patriarchy, racism, and other forms of oppression — both within and outside the mainstream pop world. Check out all of the articles here!

    And stop by Gender Across Borders tomorrow at 1pm CST for our weekly Global Feminist Link Love, where we feature links from the news and other blogs from the feminist blogosphere. You can also shamelessly self-promote your blog in the comments!

  22. This week in Evil Slutopia:

    ~Should Bayer be using mommybloggers to promote Mirena IUDs?

    ~The American Family Association’s defense of the Tim Tebow Super Bowl is totally hypocritical. Shocker.

    ~It’s almost impressive that Cosmo manages to get away with publishing the same sex “tips” every month.

    ~For Blogroll Amnesty Day we gave a shoutout to feminist blogger The Sin City Siren.

    ~We’re back to work on our comic: Best Road Trip Ever!

    ~The fabulous blogger Deb on the Rocks has entered a great idea into the Pepsi Refresh Project: Support Brilliant Writing in the Blogosphere

  23. Three posts from the past week re: noblesse oblige and multiculturalism, the First Lady, obesity, and a Black woman’s take, and what the 40th anniversary of the Woolworth lunch counter sit-in means to me:

    http://missincognegro.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/is-the-first-ladys-message-about-obesity-a-positive-one/

    http://missincognegro.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/packing-cans-equals-a-multicultural-experience/

    http://missincognegro.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/is-the-first-ladys-message-about-obesity-a-positive-one/

  25. ‘Ugly Lesbians”? Florida Family Policy Council is raising an alarm over custody of a one-year-old boy awarded to two women. The women were described by the Orlando Sentinel as ‘All-American’– meaning blond, slim and conventionally pretty. The FPC found a photo of two other women the Drudge Retort called ‘ugly lesbians’ and used it in their agitprop. It’s so wrong on so many levels. And who are these unknown women who had their picture stolen and used to slander the cause of equal rights? What does ‘American’ look like, anyway?

    http://kmareka.com/2010/02/06/all-american-look/

  26. I wrote this update about multi-agency raids in a neighborhood in my city.

    Warning: the photos of an elderly man are a bit disturbing.

    Also, if you read any of the press coverage, most of the comments are very racist against Latinos.

  30. I wrote some good things this week:

    “Oh, Ann,”, about one of my favorite episodes of Parks and Recreation.

    I need some Dr. Tom in my life:, about the latest episode of Let’s Talk about Pep.

    Thanks for the shout out, Stephen!, about Stephen Colbert’s black audience.

    “It’s a difficult time to be a man in America.”, about Samantha Bee’s report on The Daily Show.

    and finally,

    Hooray for Scott Fujita!, about the football player’s views on life.

    Thank you!

  40. To ponder the relationship between Islam and homosexuality is to consider something that does not exist. Parvez Sharma’s groundbreaking documentary, A Jihad for Love calls this frequently held assumption what it is: a lie. A Jihad for Love is a deep exploration of Islam and homosexuality gleaned through the eyes of several gays, lesbians, and trans-genders set across the Muslim world. Filmed in twelve countries and in nine languages, it is a collection of stories that alternate between poignancy and the heart-wrenching battle between the equally challenging loves of faith and of humanity.

    Hats, tichels, pony holders, headbands, bandanas—CoverYourHair.com has it all. This month Feminist Review is giving one of our readers a chance to win a box of hair accessories valued at $50 from this fashion-conscious company.

    In his thought-provoking book, Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing, author and professor of English at Hofstra University, G. Thomas Couser, argues that with these modern memoirs we have seen an astonishing proliferation of personal narratives about disability—from personal stories about illnesses like HIV/AIDS, or breast cancer, to accounts of mental illness, narratives by people living with physical disabilities such as blindness or mobility impairments, and accounts of addiction.

  51. For some reason almost all my posts this week were about sexual pressure and gender assumptions. It’s really, really tricking talking about men and sexual assault when the world is so full of both apologists and… I dunno, whatever the opposite might be.

    Anyway, still trying to figure out how to have the conversation, with men especially, without it getting immediately shutdown is pretty imporant. Which is why I’m not completely happy with Restating a Contentious Assertion: To a Woman, Any Man Could Potentially Be a Rapist, but feel like it’s a good start. My big realization there is that there’s a very strong, almost mechanical social reflex for rejecting assertions of the form “all X’s are Y’s” because it sounds like stereotyping. So that post is about trying to say the same thing without falling into stereotyping defenses, or defenses of stereotyping.

    There’s another, more conventionally pernicious side to stereotype-style assertions like “all men are potential rapists:” the dominant paradigm conditions men to expect to be utterly mistrusted, with the result that we believe all sexual, romantic, or even non-initiate conversations with women must begin with attempts to demonstrate we’re worthy and “not like every other guy.” I talk about that paradox here: The Two Rules of Desire As a Problem With Not Restating “All Men Are Potential Rapists”

    In the middle of all that I stumbled across a post by Amanda Hess about rapper Lil Wayne who disclosed that he was raped as a child and… had a hard time getting it through people’s thick skulls (cough Jimmy Kimmel cough) that no, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t cool, and it was rape. I talk about that in the context of my own childhood experiences with sexual assault Lil Wayne and the Problem of Confusing Sexual Assault Victims With Male Sexual Role Models. One big realization that came out of that, by the way, is that thanks to the pressures of a highly-gendered society trauma of assault manifests, and is manifested up, girls and boys in very different, but no-less problematic ways.

    And finally, I came across the anonymous blogger “Harriet Jacobs” of “Fugitivus.” Some of what she writes is harrowing but wow does what she have to say about bottom-out-of-sight dropout/stoner/petty-criminal/rapist/loser culture! Which I came so close to disappearing into myself. I talk about it in a couple of posts but most personally here: Harriet Jacobs at Fugitivus Writes Awesomely About Coping With Abuse in All It’s Permutations

    One good thing about reading Harriet Jacobs is I finally got a link about privilege that had always eluded me. Because, of course, even though it’s obvious as a lemon-juice in a paper cut to people who don’t have it, privilege is invisible to the privileged. So now I’m thinking about ways to make it less invisible to those of us who need to see it the most.

    figleaf

    p.s. did anyone else get the impression that that pro-misinformation, anti-abortion ad in the Superbowl wasn’t anywhere near the most offensive one? I mean WTF is up with advertisers this year!?!?!

  52. Figleaf
    Your interesting post is simply a larger example of the very problematic question: How do you simultaneously

    (1) Use rational actions and probability to target members of a group when the group members are statistically more likely to do something; and

    (2) Avoid targeting people based on immutable characteristics; i.e. avoid discriminating and stereotyping? (Note that I am in no way complaining about targeting group membership based on MUTABLE characteristics; you can stereotype all you want against liberals, conservatives, etc.)

    I frankly think that’s a discussion which is arguably best had in the general. The reason for my belief is that when the issue comes up, it’s inevitably in a context where someone is arguing, hard, for special pleading. So instead of following the general rule “don’t discriminate based on immutable characteristics!” we end up doing so most of the time, and focusing on the few areas where things presumably AREN’T appropriate to discriminate. That’s not an especially good model if the goal is “don’t discriminate.”

  53. This week I started CBShe, a brand new blog with a focus on feminist news and analysis from a Canadian perspective. I have only been around for a few days, but I have a post on the potential that Sisters in Spirit, a NWAC initiative working address violence against Aboriginal women, will lose their federal funding. This post looks at CBC’s approach to unique challenges faced by women when preparing for retirement.

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