http://animeg.blogspot.com/2010/04/weve-been-hearing-about-racial.html a short quiz on racial resentment
I have a blog at http://quietriotgirlelly.blogspot.com where I write about feminism, especially third wave perspectives, sexuality, pornography and identity. Also can be found on twitter.com/quietriot_girl
http://quietriotgirlelly.blogspot.com/ my blog on gender, third wave feminism, pornography, sexuality, sex work and more!
My job is caring for a woman whose breast cancer was not caught early–a sobering experience. My state has a screening program, which became so successful that the money ran out– we have over 10% unemployment and women are losing insurance. A financial rescue is on the horizon– a quick patch on the safety net. We need health reform yesterday… http://kmareka.com/2010/04/11/womens-cancer-screening-program-a-cut-we-cant-afford/
This week at re:Cycling, we’ve got a company that will put your name and a pink ribbon on anything you want; a guest post from Barbara Brenner of Breast Cancer Action about the judicial decision invalidating the patents on breast cancer genes; why women aren’t permitted to be sushi chefs; the IUD making a comeback; Saturday Surfing (our weekly recommendations); and a research study published in a medical journal affirming the superiority of menstrual cups over disposable products.
Continuing my multipart review of Peter Watts’ Rifters science fiction trilogy, I talk about gender relations in the books, in which victimization and abuse are a prominent theme [trigger warning and spoilers should go without saying]: http://cyberpunksnotdead.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/rifters-and-feminism-love-or-stockholms/ And, incidentally, an iPad review: http://cyberpunksnotdead.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/and-look-an-actual-ipad-review/
Dr. Phil Takes on the Fatties: Looking at fat hatred and how it perpetuated in the media. Newsweek: Reclaiming the Dark Skinned Earth Mother: Looking at White images of the virgin Mary men. The Strange Case of Kat Stacks & Fifteen Year Girls Who Sell Themselves (Who Is Looking out for Our Daughters?): Looking at the case of a 15 year old girl who handed over her 7 year old step sister to be raped. Westboro Baptist Church Rejected By The KKK: How do you know your organization really sucks? The Pain is real even though you can’t see it: Looking at the difficulty of living with chronic pain. Jamaica Holds Its First Pride: After years of persecution Jamaicans finally have their first pride parade. Great video. I’m not a feminist (and there is no but): Looking at the exclusion of WOC in feminist spaces.
Very, very cool– The Full Life Christian Fellowship Church is donating classroom space to an Islamic school that was damaged in our 500 year floods. http://kmareka.com/2010/04/09/a-sunny-day/
I wrote a letter about a used book store and the books that I found in the “women’s issues” section. I also commented on another facebook status update that sets unrealistic standards of what it is like to be a new mother.
How testosterone influences risk-taking (read:men), and some speculation about how that plays out in Judaism.
Infantilizing Men, Cont’d I have written before about the current trend in mass culture that legitimizes and celebrates male immaturity. Two recent commercials by At&T (I think) fall squarely within this trend and don’t cease to amaze me by the incredible double standard they promote. . . http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com/2010/04/infantilizing-men-contd.html
Guest post – Heteronormativity and FSD – this is a guest post by Flora, who looks at heterocentrism in diagnosis and treatment of female sexual dysfunction.
This week @ Tattooed + Pierced: We discuss an article titled Are Working Moms Abusing Their Kids? If we’re approaching or in another era of backlash for feminism And, finally, comment on Schrödinger’s Rapist
Oh I forgot to mention this weeks Sunday Shame: What do you do for your pet. You know you spoil your baby, pop by and share.
“Inspired” by a poster a troll linked to on the Feministe! Facebook page (“Feminists: because not everyone can be beautiful”. How deeply original): A list of why assholes think feminists are ugly You are invited to contribute your own items to the list (and I bet you can think of lots)
Here’s what’s been goin’ on at Gender Across Borders this past week: “Re-inventing the f-word” with Guerrilla Girls on Tour! an interview with Aphra Behn of Guerilla Girls on Tour! Is modern motherhood oppressive? Marlee Matlin Brings us a Glimpse of Deafhood, like Womanhood This past Tuesday, April 6th, we celebrated Gender Across Borders’ one-year blogiversary. Check out how we got started, and even a top 10 list of the most popular posts on GAB!
Addressing Amanda Marcotte’s bizarre attack on the menstrual cup Feeling sad about my little brother’s indoctrination into sexism
This week I managed to eek out The Importance of Being Bellatrix Lestrange, about how things might have gone very differently had anyone bothered to listen to someone deemed too crazy to be taken seriously. Read it there or at FWD/Forward.
From Whitewashing to Equality Casting: on the whitewashing of The Last Airbender, equality casting in BBC dramas, and how the myth of colour-blindness is used to stifle discussion about racism. More Thoughts on Gender, Education and Income: in which I continue to be obsessed with the gender gaps in education and the workforce. Specifically, is the income gap closing? And what does education have to do with it?
This week at SexGenderBody: Christina Engela discusses how pornography is used as cover for religious intolerance in “Family Policy Institute” – Deciding For You What You Can And Can’t Have Access To. Rabbit White goes over the The Fuck-Buddy System and birth control choices / education in Under the Influence of Ovulation or Getting an IUD. I posted my discussion with a new filmmaker Interview: Nancy Schwartzman, Director of “The Line” and was a podcast guest Driftglass & BlueGal podcast with special guest…me!
I am a feminist starting a female-focussed sex toy website, electricladylounge.com, designed for and by women. Our stock will be selected with quality, durability, safety and utility in mind. We will not rely on unrealistic hype or exploitative images of women and their sexuality to sell our products, but aim to provide women with a feelgood experience as well as product advice and sex education information to help them get the most from our products. Please bookmark the holding page, (we are due to launch in June) and if in the meantime you have any thoughts, questions or queries, I would love to hear from you: nancy@electricladylounge.com
This week at Yes Means Yes Blog: Personal Attacks and the Anti-Kink Crusade, my entry in the response to Professor Donna Hughes’s attacks on MayMay and the KinkForAll un-conference. Keeping America’s Children Safe, a folow up about KinkForAll, and the disingenuousness of those raising concerns about a conference that offers accurate information about sexuality to people of all ages. There is plenty of conversation to be had about what information is appropriate at what age; these people are not trying to have that conversation. They’re just using the issue as a flag of convenience. Constance McMillen and the Fake Prom, the unbelievable true story of how the school district that was busted by a judge for discriminating against a lesbian student created a fake prom to keep her from attending the real, privately organized discrimination-fest prom. I’ll be surprised if they don’t end up in serious contempt trouble. Rape Culture: Aiding And Abetting, which follows up on Amanda Hess’s great, great reportage in the Washington Citypaper. Jill covered it here: Howard University Hospital, the DC police, and other area hospitals willfully and clearly stonewalled a young survivor’s efforts to report a rape and have a rape kit performed. Feministing caught the story years ago when she first sued, and now Hess has the full story from the depositions taken in the case — that’s sworn testimony. My contribution is to discuss the roles of those who aided and abetted the rapist — the guy who blocked the woman’s friends from helping her when the rape was in progress, and then the DC cop who was supposed to take the report but decided that he didn’t believe her. Direct Line, where I extend the ideas I’ve explored about the mechanics of how rape culture helps rapists — like the cop and the bouncer in the prior post — to the way the culture of hatred towards sex workers operates to do the same thing to them. There’s a direct line, in my view, between facebook groups about cutting up hookers, and juries that won’t convict a man who physically abuses and rapes a woman working in a legal brothel though he admits his violent acts.
Still feeling frustrated about my community’s response to the deaths of two teen girls, and how it seems indicative of the systematic neglect of laws that protect (primarily) women and girls. http://noticingthegap.com/2010/04/05/actions-speak-louder/
TWO CONTESTS: Feminist Review is giving ONE of our readers a chance to win a unique keepsake from the groundbreaking Gilmore Girls: a coffee mug from Luke’s and the Dragon Fly Inn. And courtesy of AdultSexToys.com, SEVEN lucky readers will win an eco-friendly sex toy during Earth Week! The Baby Formula manages to achieve something many queer films haven’t: a certain universal appeal. By introducing us to the couple’s (very different) families, we are reminded of the ever-shifting dynamics every family faces when dealing with pregnancy and children. Hester Eisenstein has offered Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World, which, as promised and despite its flaws, maps elements of the neoliberal project to some “feminist” initiatives…[and] explains…how the radical women might have kept the momentum of the women’s movement going and in the right direction. One need only read a single page of Talmud to understand that contradiction, upheaval, and the search for a more just and inclusive Jewish society are at the sacred core of textual interpretation and generation in (at least rabbinic) Jewish tradition. Thus, Torah Queeries is both boundary-crossing and radical and squarely traditional…[T]he book seeks to root itself firmly in history while simultaneously contributing to the continued dynamism of a modern, evolving Judaism.
The Shame of Honor: Global Activists Resurrect the Voices of the Dead Asma. Rukhsana. Zakia. Duaa. Fereshteh. Somayeh. Heshu. Samera. Amneh, Zahra. Semse. As an investigative journalist, Rana Husseini had no intention of shifting careers to become a human rights activist until she was given an assignment in 1994 to cover the intentional death of Kifaya, a sixteen-year-old girl in Amman who had been poisoned by her older brother after being raped and forcibly married. The town’s ambivalent response to Kifaya’s murder shook Husseini to the core, and so with the backing of her editors at The Jordan Times, she began to investigate such deaths in order to expose the unconscionable crimes to what she believed was a willfully ignorant public. Ignoring threats of violence that followed each of her published stories, Rana Husseini became the voice of the dead. The Bay Area’s Safetyfest Queers Anti-Violence Activism Folks in the Bay Area are in for a ten-day treat this month with the community focused Safetyfest, a “celebration of all the fierce ways queer and trans people in the Bay Area stay safe and strut our stuff.” Beginning on April 8th, this cooperative effort will bring together anti-violence artists and activists from groups like Community United Against Violence (CUAV), Mangos With Chili, The Bikery, EL/LA, and the Self-Defense for Self Determination collective to provide innovative workshops and community building events focused on LGBTQ safety. Part fun and part fundraiser, all of the offerings at Safetyfest are either free or sliding scale, and no one will be turned away.
defending a ban on professor-student sex examining the harm we do when we trivialize body image and ED issues
Candidate Obama: Jailing Americans without charge is not acceptable. President Obama: Killing them is. http://errport77.blogspot.com/2010/04/state-sanctioned-murder-we-can-believe.html And George Stephanopoulos believes it to be his job to instigate a high school slap-fight between Sarah Palin and the President: http://errport77.blogspot.com/2010/04/profiles-in-turdage-snuffal.html
Topless while Trans – The inanities of ‘public indecency’ laws: Why was it OK to show my nipples in public before I transitioned, and illegal after having been on hormones? Rape is a four letter word – A play about rape makes me think about my loss of male privilege Hosting ads while using an ad blocker – What are the ethics of ad blockers? What are the practical consequences of hosting ads? Trans Fiction: Easy as Falling off a Bike – A review of the 950+ chapter trans fiction epic
I wrote about Sinead O’Connor, the ongoing clergy abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, and why she’s like a prophet in the biblical tradition of taking action against injustice: “remember what i told you”
Having reproductive choices is even more crucial when you have a chronic illness that requires taking medicine that could severely harm a developing fetus: http://onefemalegaze.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/ra-diaries-its-my-tough-choice-not-yours/
This week: A piece on consciousness raising and what we mean when we tell other people to “do their own homework”. A tiny wee short one about men in feminist and consciousness raising. Not a hero, not a tragedy: on models of disability. And finally, some lighthearted happiness: Big Sky. –IP
This week at Femonomics we entered the fray on the birth control pill, covered UConn’s champion women’s basketball team, and remembered Yom HaShoah. Coca Colo discovered that Jessica Simpson is more likeable than she remembered, and Mad Dr discussed Erykah Badu’s music video and whether responses to her nudity overwhelmed a really positive message. Also, you have got to try these s’more brownies!
I short piece on a blog about tween TV: Big Time Rush, covering my delight at the show’s wacky hijinks, and disappointment at its sexism.
Dynasty Week: Ugly Betty’s Justin comes out, and it’s adorable. This show is setting up to go out on a high note!
Guest Post – Heteronormativity and FSD – This is a guest post by Flora, who looks at heterocentrism in diagnosis & management of female sexual dysfunction.
This week at Eugenia de Altura, I remark on the murder of another Bolivian migrant woman in Spain, and lament the lukewarm sex advice given by the Bolivian press.
Over at Freedom and Weep: I read a personal story at stuff white people do and next thing I know, I’m writing this reaction – thinking about speaking out when it’s seemingly not your fight – when I’ve done it and why I do it and why it matters. Also, I wrote about hair – in particular, that shaving my head is a personal statement – and what it’s like interacting with strangers as a female with a shaved head.
Some thoughts on the Feminist Icons post of a few days ago. Natalie — I loved that Ugly Betty episode as well!
Spoilers here – I wrote a feminist analysis of the newest Doctor Who companion for the Doctor Who livejournal community. Part of my goal was to bring the word “feminist” to a place where feminists are mostly lurking & not using the word much, and possibly inspired somebody else to write feminist critiques. http://community.livejournal.com/doctorwho/5808627.html
This week I wrote about domestic workers in New York State, who are still working to get a bill passed giving them basic labor rights, like requiring notice of termination, paid sick days, and the right to organize. I haven’t been able to face the one delightful comment I’ve gotten yet…something about me feeling a “white man’s burden” toward the “unwashed masses” and how if domestic workers’ jobs were so bad, then they should just get different jobs. Ugh.
Not sure if this went through before, but I blog on the Huffington Post about, well, life as a new mom. I try not to think of mine as just another “mom blog,” and include interviews and conversations with people I find very interesting. My most recent piece last week was a conversation with a woman who wrote a book about going green without getting overwhelmed. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/meredith-lopez/go-green-stay-sane_b_526592.html
I recently directed a short film that I am currently editing. The trailer went online this week. It’s a dark look into a friendship between two young women. Watch the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/10741300
This week at Happy Bodies: Penises and Vagina and Festivals Oh My!: About festivals in Japan that worship sexual anatomy. Inhaling food?: Oh HELL No. Why food should probably have calories. The ‘Fatso’ gene: More in Science! The “obesity gene”.
Wrote a post this week musing about the how possible it is to live out feminist values in the real world.
This week in Evil Slutopia: ~We’ve cracked the Magic Tween TV Formula, and we’re working on pitching some shows of our own. (This was also cross-posted over at WIMN’s Voices.) ~Our Johnny Weir obsession continues and has even made its way into our dreams: I Dream of Johnny (Weir) ~The One Million Moms are at it again. This time they’re protesting the upcoming Lady Gaga episode of Glee: Breaking News: The One Million Moms Don’t Like Lady Gaga, Glee, Or…High School Musical?
Continuing a long-running theme, several posts on how anti-feminists hate men worse than the most stereotypical feminist ever has On Anti-Feminist’s Exasperating Fear That Men Can’t Compete, Part #76,300 On Exasperating Anti-Feminist Excuse-Making For Men Who Commit Rape Holly Puts the Evolutionary Psychology Bingo Comic in Proper Perspective plus a long one on how anti-feminism keeps ruining efforts to do authentic men’s studies Let’s Hope These Pains In the Asses Represent Birthing Pains of an Authentic Men’s Studies Program. Because Otherwise… Also, K at Feminists with FDS liked Oral Sex is Sex: Since Pleasant Associations Aren’t Reminder Enough, Jayme Waxman Takes a Different Approach, and Ampersand liked Sexism in coverage of female and male suicide bombers
I got annoyed all over again with 30H!3. (Summary: I hate when suburbanites think performing hip hop is a great big joke.) Then I wondered if every “lapsed Catholic” should demand excommunication after reading Paul Constant’s letter in The Stranger, because I stupidly didn’t realize I count as the billions of Catholics in the world. (Crap.) On Tuesday I taught my mom how to delete Facebook friends and two days later bemoaned the loss of the mighty brontosaurus.
You Gotta Take the Hetero Out of it….Like This On language and what same-sex couples may or may not call themselves because of our heteronormative definitions.
Someone keeps littering the bathrooms at work with Avon catalogs. Continually throwing them away hasn’t helped, so I am getting revenge: http://ethecofem.com/2010/04/09/i-dont-multi-task-peeing-and-shopping/
I wrote a post in response to Sexual Assault Awareness month, When fighting rape culture means changing birth culture. Fat Goddesses is a personal rant about the need for doctors to adopt a size acceptance approach. Another rant, this time in response to the Fashion Police and their body-hating, slut-shaming tactics was If you’re part of the problem, you’re not part of the solution.
I wrote about body-image and growing up, in What was my ‘Ladybird Year’? I picked out a little something that caught my eye in Dr Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves about consent: Make sure the yes… I reviewed/responded to Philip Pullman’s new book retelling the Gospel story and also explained what annoyed me most about it, both as a Christian and a Pythonist!
“I Give a Damn” About Queer Equality http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-give-damn-about-queer-equality.html Has Gay Inc Been Rendered Useless? http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2010/04/open-forum-has-gay-inc-been-rendered.html Great Global Kiss-In Scheduled for International Day Against Homophobia http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2010/04/great-global-kiss-in-scheduled-for.html CNN’s Kyra Phillips Questions Whether Homosexuality Needs a “Cure” http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2010/04/cnns-kyra-phillips-questions-whether.html
Anyone interested in a Pacific Northwest Fat Acceptance Gathering? I also wrote: Beauty for Ashes: Wealthy Americans Say No to Tax Breaks You are welcome here; your diet talk is not
My city’s police department promotes its first female supervisor in five years. And more about that useless probe of the scandal involving the last police chief.
This week, blogging for happiness, Reflecting on alternative economic ethics and systems, with some help from Lewis Hyde and Khalil Gibran: The Erotic Life Of Blogs And Condos. And the ever-relevant topic of the uses of anger, illustrated through my experience confronting an uninvited man-style guest: Thich Nhat Hanh Helps Us Out With Anger.
I’ve been quite obsessed lately with the need for progressives to understand how our brains work. How our minds use metaphors to reason, that there is no such thing as pure logic as it is all informed by emotion. I use the Tea Party movement as a dramatic example of how we on the “left” (false dichotomy that is) are missing the boat. The Tea Party movement has been brewing since the late 60s through the conservative framing machine. Progressives are so stuck in the Enlightenment view of the mind, we’ll never really get anywhere. http://www.serenebabe.net/2010/03/freedom-isnt-free.html is one of many of the posts I made in the last few weeks. It’s about taking back the word “freedom” that the radical right has stolen over the last decade. I’m also TsaphanBabe and at my other blog (away from the eyes of my parents) I recently wrote about (what you all probably know but I’m 40 and it came out after I was in college so I missed it) The Beauty Myth and #baldvulvas and how I’m not going to shape my eyebrows. My personal activism: http://www.tsaphanbabe.net/2010/04/pubic-hair-eyebrows-and-squishy.html
This is a new project that aims to recognize and praise the work of female and LGBT artists. It is image based and straightforward: bad-ass artists that deserve the exposure that mainstream culture doesn’t give em. Please take a peek. Thanks!
Hello! I just started a blog about blossoming from an awkward child into an equally awkward adult. http://thefatalfoxtrot.wordpress.com/ Thanks!
This week I mainly blogged about why feminism pisses me off, and that it is all about privileged women. The Feminist Revolution is about the rampant ableism and classism I encopunter in almost every feminist space, and Strange Fruit which is about the white woman’s experience that dominates feminist spaces.
Watching for Botox by Julia Lesage. An analysis of the effects of botox on TV’s standards of beauty, and how it is disciplining lower classes with makeover shows. Excerpt: “Currently, for many people in the upper-middle class in the United States and perhaps in other parts of the world, face lifts and the cheaper alternative, botox, have become the norm, a regular medicalized procedure they undergo to increase job potential, gain status or erotic opportunity, and achieve control over their social mobility and class position in a constantly unstable world. If Lily Tomlin no longer has the wonderfully expressive face she had as a comedienne, in Damages her appearance well matches her role as a tastefully coiffed and botoxed rich-man’s-wife. In this show, most of the characters are upper-middle class, so that the actors’ cosmetically worked-on faces fit well with the narrative’s entrepreneurial psychology, one that neoliberalism now imposes on the managerial class: work on yourself, develop yourself, make good choices, take charge of your life—especially in terms of services you can buy.”
A look at the way that gender socialization begins from DAY 1 through children’s media, alongside a look not at GENDER privilege, but the persistant problem of AGE PRIVILEGE. http://www.youtube.com/user/ChildMediaAnalysis and deconstructingchildmedia.wordpress.com
I wrote about the linking of blackness and disability: http://thetroubleisme.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/black-bodies
I give a point-by-point response to Pegah Patra’s piece on HuffPo about how the sexual freedom brought on by feminism has killed romance, turned women into sluts, and makes men not respect us. Content warning for language and some links to NSFW pictures (modeling pics from Pegha’s website): http://cubicalgirl.livejournal.com/747985.html
My Unified Theory of Being a Douchebag, complete with handy flowchart to avoid doing something ill-advised. http://seamonkey-mags.livejournal.com/48190.html
Check out some sweet Feminist Media Events happening in the greater Los Angeles Area. http://lafemmedia.blogspot.com This blog is a new and consistently growing project. If you know of something great going on, please contact me via Twitter @LAFemmedia, and I’ll Blog/ Tweet about your event! La Femmedia