Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday April 4, 2010 Jill Post a short description of something you’ve written lately, along with a link. Make it specific – don’t just link to your whole blog. And for those celebrating, happy Easter!
Over at Freedom and Weep: As part of my Women’s Firsts series, I wrote a blurb about Lorraine Hansberry, the writer of A Raisin in the Sun I also created a guide to feminist sex toy shopping for those of us who don’t live in a city with a feminist sex shop Happy Sunday!
As a response to Marianne Williamson’s open letter to Sarah Palin, I wrote this post on the power that women are: http://ow.ly/1tW3r Thanks for the opportunity to self-promote. Love your blog!
http://animeg.blogspot.com/2010/04/weaksauce-from-broadsheet.html Weaksauce! Why fantasy lives can and should be criticized.
As a response to Marianne Williamson’s open letter to Sarah Palin, I wrote this post on women, power, and coming together: http://ow.ly/1tW3r Thanks for the opportunity to self-promote. Love your blog!
What is it with Republicans and eagles? You have Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, The Young Eagles spreading their wings with donors money at a bondage club, and former attorney general John Ashcroft forcing his staff to listen to him singing ‘Let the Eagle Soar’ (lyrics by John Ashcroft, anyone caught laughing will feel the beak). This is the party whose anti-conservation lobby almost extincted our national symbol. Have you no shame, Republicans? For God’s sake, find another bird. http://kmareka.com/2010/03/31/find-another-bird/
This is a video rather than a written piece, hope that is OK within the boundaries of Shameless Self Promotion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuVrXxfLczs and then the followup http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l18xcicfHUA
I wrote two posts this week. The first, “An Education” seems to have attracted a pretty positive response and some really great comments. The second, Statutory Holidays and Christian Privilege” only just went up, but, I mean, *I* think it’s good.
This week at femonomics: Sassafras reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the amazing story about the patient behind HeLa cells. I write about “straight-washing”, the way hetero-normativity both removes gay men and women from our consciousness, and makes us hyper-aware of others’ sexuality, instead of just taking it as given that some people are straight and some are gay. We discuss the implications of a rape video game going viral in Japan, its link to torture porn and a culture of violence against women, and how to confront the menace without censorship. I argue church officials who covered up child abuse are themselves criminal, and call out CNN on a major media fail regarding the Moscow bombings. Hope you’ll come check it out!
Over at TNTG we talked about: NY State Senator’s “Stop the Sag” Campaign Groupthink, Nudity, and Assassinations: Erykah Badu’s New Video Has Everyone Talking! Spotlight RapeLay: Outrage Over Japan’s Rape Video Game Caller Respectfully Critiques C-SPAN’s Abundance of Black Callers
Over at Dare Not Speak?, I wrote about a pleasant surprise from Livejournal. A bit of lesbian visibility: just the thing to make you smile on a Sunday morning, right?
This week at SexGenderBody: K.Sosin discussed gender pronouns, their usage and navigation – The Pronoun Problem: How to Say it Right. Maymay informs us of the sex-shaming campaign orchestrated by Donna M. Hughes & The Salvation Army – Stand Against Stigma: Don’t Succumb to a Fear of Sex, Sexual Speech, or Sexual Freedom. I did a bit of parent blogging – “Dad, I’ve been meaning to ask you: What’s a ‘slut’?” and I talked about sex – People fuck – all the time.
Two language-y ones this week: A note on terminology and objectification: in which I touch briefly on some problematic terminology in debates on sex work. Happy factor, and more on naming and necessity: a slightly more academia-oriented post, on supposedly “generic” gendered language and examples. –IP
Some guy named Doc Thompson claimed that taxing tanning booths was discrimination against white people. I feel sorry for all the pale people who have not yet learned to love their authentic selves. Let me share my journey to self-acceptance and wrinkle-avoidance through discovering my ethnic heritage… ‘White Like Me’ http://kmareka.com/2010/03/30/white-like-me/
The Economics of Blogging: Looking at the way that women remain marginalized economically in the sphere of blogging. Dan Savage Engages in more Transphobia: Yes sex advice columnists once again decided to share his bigotry with the world in the name of so-called activism. All Lesbians Are Redheads: Talking to you children about playground myths. RapeLay Speaks About More Than Japanese Culture: Looking at the tendency to point to other cultures as sexist to avoid owning the sexism in the Western World. Kola Speaks: “The Third Eye Report: Israel Vs. Palestine”: Looking at the the conflict through the eyes of a Sudanese Black woman…(great guest post and thought provoking) Monstrous Musings: Gender Norms, White Privilege, Ableism, and Commodification in Manga Monster Form: Twilight:The Graphic Novel Volume 1
This week at re:Cycling, we wrote about the parallels between prescribing statins to healthy people and contraception for menstrual suppression, Kotex’s last ad campaign, some new research on Yaz, and as usual, we recommended some links on Saturday morning.
My reaction to Twisty’s latest posts about beauty. A feminist version of those memes we all count as guilty pleasures. Which stereotypically feminine accoutrement do you need? Which do you not even own? And this one’s not feminist/political, but I know folks around here like Lost, so here’s a small post on language acquisition in Lost.
Since unemployment is still a problem out there, I share my thoughts about how traditional job-search tools like networking or personal contacts can work against women.
My main contribution to our blog this week was about trans people and othering, sparked by a troll comment I had to reject. http://impersonated.blogspot.com/2010/04/troll-patrol-trans-people-and-othering.html I also tried to promote an awesome site I recently discovered called Genderfork. http://impersonated.blogspot.com/2010/03/recommended-daily-reading-genderfork.html
What a nice day out. Let’s read books part 4 – More Sex is not a Natural Act – Part 4 in our continuing series (you don’t have to have read parts 1-3 but it might help with context) in which I read and analyze a feminist/sexology book. All of the posts relating to this book get kind of long so get ready to hunker down for some afternoon reading.
I wrote a letter about my daycare subsidy’s new policy that no longer gives me time to find work after I finish school before I lose my children’s daycare spots. I also commented on a park bench with an ad for an expensive private school which claims to give every child every chance. And I wrote about bad gal mascara and some of it’s implications.
I’ve been getting CRAZY e-mails lately because I ousted an asshole who wrote me racist fan-mail. So assholes from all over the world are making it their business to tell me how to “show fans love”. Also, this week I hit a record for the number of times I’ve heard “Women can’t write sci-fi”. All of that had to be ranted and raved at in my blog post (http://jaded16.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/the-c-word-and-doing-austen-proud/) ~ Jaded16
I wrote about my experiences at the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston, particularly the “Girls and Games” panel, as well as two posts (one a guest post at Shakesville and a followup at my own blog. I also had a few quick posts: on Scott Roeder’s sentencing, on the new CAFE standards, and a fluffier post about a nerd band I just rediscovered.
(Apologies if this ends up being a double post — can’t seem to get my comments to go through.) Some Thoughts On Privilege, Sexism, And Actual Vs. Potential Victims.
This week on Eugenia de Altura, I remark on a campaign to vaccinate 30,000 Bolivian girls against HPV–and the ironic placement of this campaign so soon after the Easter Holiday. Cervical cancer is the leading cancer affecting women in Bolivia, and only 28% of women in the country have ever had a pap test.
This week on Yes Means Yes Blog: Old School about American University rape apologist Alex Knepper, whom Jill covered here, and his false assertion that the pro-sex position is the pro-rape position. The Opposite Of Sex, a follow-up about Knepper, and how his position assumes that someone is inherently lessened by sex, and how that constitutes a commodity model view of sexuality. Oddly, Knepper is a gay man, and his position imagines gay male sexuality through a particularly heteronormative and self-hating way. Lisak & Miller Online, posting a link that a helpful commenter on this thread supplied for Lisak & Miller’s groundbreaking 2002 paper, which is the starting point for all my writing about Lisak’s research. I was previously unaware of a free online source for it.
Who gets to out you? and You don’t get to out me – Two posts on when (if ever) friends should be allowed to out you Sex, please! – On the difficulties of dating while trans Heinlein, fictional universes, and fan fiction – I geek out and talk about some of my favorite fictional universes
I wrote about my reactions to reading <The Women's Room: http://ontoberlin.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-reading-womens-room.html …which links back to a post I wrote a few weeks ago about privileged women and their attitudes towards equality: http://ontoberlin.blogspot.com/2010/03/equality-and-privileged-woman.html
A critique of the way the media presents models as the faces of all ED survivors Discussion of language that’s commonly used and misused when talking about the Church and sexual abuse Rape culture and the drinking age – on not making excuses for school administrators
I wrote on “Casual Sex and the Orgasm Gap,” which got some really interesting comments. This week I discovered that my college students seem to be using “rape” as slang for the most trivial things. I was dumbfounded, and I’d love to know how widespread this is.
As I continue to study math, I find it disappointing that a sloppy, unprofessional teacher gets a lot of respect from the young men in class because he’s a bro like they, yet the foreign, strict, excellent teacher gets nothing but grief: http://onefemalegaze.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/mathochism-bro-privilege/
I wrote the following post: “You should change your name from C-SPAN to Black-SPAN.”, about a unfortunate caller who was highlighted this week on The Daily Show. Enjoy!
This week, I made two different versions of a song written by an acquaintance: Ladybird Year: Cover versions. I still need to write the post about the (my) body image issues the song talks about.
There have been a number of articles in the gaming blogosphere lately about how female characters cost too much time, money, and resources to include in games, so for April Fool’s Day, some of the Border House crew did a gender reversal in order to show an alternate universe where it’s too much of a bother to put in male characters: http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2027 (Most of these quotes are direct from developers with genders and sometimes other details switched.) Also, we debuted a new feature called Casual Fridays, where casual games correspondent Jonathan takes a look at a few online flash games and lets us know which ones are worth checking out and which ones are absurdly racist: http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2034 Last weekend was the PAX East convention, so I wrote about the sadly disappointing panel about women in games: http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2072
I talked about networking issues with DC organizations designed to promote gender parity in the media, and other worthy enterprises. Congressional Problems are DC problems
I updated my post on Scott Roeder after his sentencing this week. I’m a long-time reader, but first-time commenter. Scott Roeder: CONVICTED MURDERER (updated)
My friend maymay the incredible sex-positive, pro-BDSM activist was viciously, publicly attacked — labeled a predator and a pedophile! — by Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks at the Salvation Army’s anti-trafficking group. http://clarissethorn.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/salvation-army-attacks-sex-positive-activist-through-its-human-trafficking-email-list/
This week at Happy Bodies: Notes from P.E.: “Panic is a physical response, and it has a physical solution.” Breathe. So, I hate the whole ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ thing.: Reflecting on a recent panel about masculinity and “Oppression Olympics.” serious about dancing: Adam, a friend of Happy Bodies, writes about how dancing makes him feel about his body.
I wrote “Words matter” about the Irish Prime Minister using a slur to put down another party leader. I found a disgusting ad for scent of vulva and blogged about it Some paraphrases from Leviticus And finally how the government, media and newspapers are conspiring to redistribute blame for the recession.
I should be on deadlines more often. Clearly it stimulates something. Realism in Romance How do we balance reality with reader expectation? How much realism do readers really want? The Script of Normal For a blog tour, I wrote about The Holy Fool Today’s basket of Easter Treats or, what a Protestant middle-American Easter of the 70s and 80s looked like in a small (read: sundown) town.
I had a rant about the perils of being a female gamer (partly inspired by the Border House post mentioned upthread).
In preparation for reviewing Peter Watts’ Rifters trilogy, which I read most of over Spring Break, a bit on how feminist analysis works for me: …And the way of all good things: Gender analysis, art, and cliches
Reading patriarchy in the Passover Haggadah and how Orthodoxy needs to foster women’s roles in Judaism in order to survive
Okay, I evidently screwed up the link: http://cyberpunksnotdead.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/and-the-way-of-all-good-things-gender-analysis-art-and-cliches/
Sydney-based readers may already know about the ‘F’ feminist conference scheduled for next weekend (April 10-11), but if not, they should check it out. I published a post yesterday about the workshop I’ll be co-facilitating, about new ways of discussing consent. Why is the public so quick to turn on women who speak out against sexual assault? How can we better speak about experiences that don’t fit neatly into the legal framework? What does consent look like? This workshop, facilitated by Rachel Hills and Nina Funnell, provides a supportive, safe space to discuss the limitations of the way sexual assault and consent are framed in the media and in daily social life, and to begin to develop a new, ethics-based approach to sexuality. You can read the full post here. It references a fantastic recent post by Feministe’s own Jill, as well as the brilliant Yes Means Yes anthology.
Another feminist conference, as reported in the MSM by an antifeminist. Of course. http://castironbalcony.media2.org/2010/03/29/douchebag-attends-feminist-conference-with-predictable-result/
I ranted about Jack Cassell, a Florida doctor who is “refusing” to treat Obama supporters, and also mused about doctors’ assumptions and the ways in which they affect patients.
I’m late posting to here on this topic, but back when the Kevin Smith/Southwest Airlines debacle went down, I wrote about Flying the Fat Skies. And this week, unrelated to the Sandra Bullock/Jesse James situation, I watched “The Proposal” and wrote about all the reasons it upset me.
N talks about feeling disengaged from the world: http://ethecofem.com/2010/03/31/disengagement/ How close are you to your food? I talk about macaroni and cheese. http://ethecofem.com/2010/03/30/how-close-are-you-to-your-food/ I shamefully bought a product to “defy my age” and crap, and after a talk with my chemistry-nerd husband about the actual product, I became enraged at the false advertising and blatant attempt to make customers buy more of their product than necessary. http://ethecofem.com/2010/03/30/838/ Seriously, go watch this video about whether or not science can answer moral questions. It’s interesting. http://ethecofem.com/2010/03/30/can-science-answer-moral-questions/ I got drunk and bought a bunch of fucking Glenn Books. Ugh. http://ethecofem.com/2010/03/27/i-need-a-breathalyzer-for-my-laptop/
This week in Evil Slutopia: We wrote about how Combat Barbie is going to save the day, we went to the WAM! It Yourself New York mini-conference, and went crazy over an old video (What is Love?) and a new one (Johnny Weir does Bad Romance). Also, Cleofaye of Sex Etc… wrote us a great guest blog about YA writers for Women’s History Month.
Wrote about a very common way American men view women and sex: http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/afterhours/american-tube-sock-theory/ XX
Weddings are expensive. CNN Money states that, even with the recession, the average cost of a wedding in 2008 was $21,814. Paper goods, like invitations, save-the-date cards, and guest books can add up—so why not make them yourself? Esther Smith’s instructional how-to book, The Paper Bride: Wedding DIY from Pop-the-Question to Tie-the-Knot and Happily Ever After, goes over absolutely everything you need to make a wedding the way you want. It’s not like someone would seek out this book looking to find advice on how to damage their marriage, but it definitely piques the curiosity of anyone trying to understand how easily a marriage can go awry. How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage is Sascha Rothchild’s personal tale of her short-lived marriage. Surprisingly, it’s not a man-bashing book picking on her ex-husband (some of his faults are mentioned, but not focused upon). Instead, Sascha tells her story by explaining how the various events, influences, and personal insecurities in her own life led to her choosing a relationship that seemed to fill her needs, but resulted in feeding her flaws. I am happy to report that Feminist Review raised $3,000 during the I ♥ FR Campaign, an amount that—though a little shy of our goal—is laudable for our first fundraiser.
I wrote a short missive to the abuse apologists in the Catholic Church who still don’t get it: vicwelle.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/the-good-friday-victims
How Orthdox Judaism needs to work to include women in order to survive and finding patriarchy in the Passover Haggadah.
Enlightened Easter Reading: A brief remembrance of my favorite childhood book, that dealt with racism, classism and sexism…and also Easter.
Grappling with bell hooks’ From Margin to Center and the concept of intersecting oppressions – http://kristinking.livejournal.com/11913.html Grappling with the question of accessibility of feminism – who feels like they’re “in” the feminist club and who feels like they’re “out” – http://kristinking.livejournal.com/12094.html
This week I took to task my campus newspapers for fat-hating and slut-shaming: http://austintotamu.blogspot.com/2010/03/fat-hate-and-slut-shaming-all-in-one.html http://austintotamu.blogspot.com/2010/03/fat-hate-and-slut-shaming-all-in-one_30.html
This week on Beauty Schooled is all about celebrating the amazing-ness of the feminist blogging community: 16th Feminist Carnival: Beauty Edition!: http://beautyschooledproject.com/2010/03/31/feminist-blog-carnival-beauty-edition/ Awesome cross-post from Gender Across Borders’ Emily Heroy: http://beautyschooledproject.com/2010/04/02/guest-post-gender-across-borders/ And, PS, a little Lady Gaga too: http://beautyschooledproject.com/2010/04/01/beauty-overheard-somebody-get-lady-gaga-a-sandwich/
On being a ciswoman mistaken for a man: http://thedelphiad.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/on-being-a-ciswoman/
A post about victim-blaming on the site Learn From This Fail, in which I attempt to explain the comment to a man in the comments. http://impersonated.blogspot.com/2010/04/learn-from-this-fail.html The comments/photos on this Facebook fan page are horribly sexist. http://impersonated.blogspot.com/2010/04/post-in-which-i-question-my.html