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

For Your Reading Pleasure

Jill

I’m finally back in New York after a long, long few days of traveling. It’s good to be back, even if I’m going to be leaving for Seattle the day after tomorrow. I have about 6,000 messages in my inbox (689, actually), many of which are emails from you all sending me links and tips on great articles and blog posts. While there is nothing I’d rather do more than post on all of them (seriously — I’ve missed blogging), real life calls, and I need to spend my scant time in the city running errands, getting my life together, and seeing my best girls. In the meantime, check out the bits below. And a big big thanks to Linnaeus and DonnaDarko for guest-blogging!

Lauren on Jamie Lynn Spears and “taking responsibility.”

Miss Belgium can’t speak Dutch, but at least no one called her ugly. Thanks to Jeffrey for the link.

Muslim Hedonist on being “Islamic Like Me.”

Why in the world could Tad Saffron possibly be single? Don’t his articles on how “lard-butt British frumps” insult the male gaze (especially when compared to American women who spend insane amounts of time and money on their appearance) endear him to the ladies? Thanks to Sumana for the link.

WalMart yanks what my mother would call “nasty panties” from its shelves after feminist outcry from bloggers at Feministing and elsewhere. Thanks to Sean for the link.

Panic time! Girls are going wild on Facebook! Now, I’m personally of the opinion that posting pictures of yourself puking or passed out on a site that employers will almost surely look at is a spectacularly stupid idea if you actually want someone to hire you. But the moderator of the “Thirty Reasons Girls Should Call it a Night” Facebook group hits it on the head when she says, “[They think we’re] sloppy, unladylike, low class,'” she wrote in a recent instant message conversation. “[But] I’ve noticed when college boys do stupid things when they’re drunk, they’re just being boys.” Thanks to Fauzia for the link.

Carol Jenkins is looking for a few good women. Tell the Women’s Media Center “Who are the great women out there whose voices deserve to be heard, but who are not yet a part of the national dialogue?”

The ACLU has released a damning new report about the impact of race and ethnicity on justice in America.

We wrote about this before, but the rape of Jamie Leigh Jones by Halliburton workers in Iraq deserves another mention. Prosecuting the rapists is going to be difficult, since the Bush administration has so thoroughly protected them from any legal consequences. Thanks to Sean and Michael for the link.

At least 40 women have been killed in Basra by religious vigilantes.

Hillary Clinton, the B-word, and why verbal misogyny matters. Thanks to Michael for the link.

Want a bit of religious nuttery? Click here.

Feminist lawyers secured a big settlement for the victim of sexual harassment at the University of Colorado.

Honor killings persist in Iraq. Thanks to Matt for the link.

Tell Keith Olbermann to cover the Pretty Bird Woman House.


Does early sex portend a better future for young women?

War and sexual violence is an issue of security.

Divorce is apparently ruining the world. Literally. Color me skeptical. Thanks to Exholt for the link.

For your holiday crafting pleasure.

Enjoy.

10 thoughts on For Your Reading Pleasure

  1. Thanks for the link to the “honour” killings posting at our place. We had already decided to take advantage of the proximity of Eid and Christmas to upgrade the forum facilities for members add extra functionality etc etc etc Now following some very detemined hacking attacks we’re having to do a lot of hardening and restoring of posts very very slowly as well. So the site is up and down like a yoyo.

    Your readers might find this tag Women’s Rights useful to keep an eye on. The main category is Women and Children there are various other tags such as “rape” and categories such as “Human Rights” that are relevant also. All of them have feeds.

    Erdla

  2. Oops I forgot to add that as most of the team are Iraki (We have 3 non-Iraki members, I am one of that 3) you’ll find a lot of Arabic language postings together with bi-lingual postings and English language postings.

    Erdla

  3. Oh man the religious nuttery was great. It’s like the man in the video has never even heard of Hanukkah or New Years, and if he has heard of them, he refuses to believe that people actually give presents on those Holidays.

    The amazing level of entitlement that some people feel is spectacular.

  4. “Even in areas with declining population size, we still see a dramatic increase in the number of households,” Liu told LiveScience.

    “People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered,” Liu said.

    Erm. Sure. Way to confuse cause and solution. Perhaps, additionally, they should set up a dating service for all those dirty singles in one-person households so that they all start living happily together? ‘Dating against global warming’, mmm, gotta think of a good name for that…

    It’s a fact that households are shrinking and more differentiated in structure now, but isn’t that part of a larger trend with a complex of causes (and I bet those results have nothing to do with growth in wealth and general growth in energy spendings from all those fancy new appliances developed since ’85, either. )? Singling out divorce seems rather short-sighted, and stating that changing household structures have its effect on the environment is hardly revolutionary. What’s next, blaming feminism for global warming?

  5. The divorce article is a ridiculously subjective analysis of a basic concept, with a basic lack of comprehension of defaults and standards, along the lines of “those who complain that roses have thorns ought to be thankful that thorns have roses.”

    In other words, it is not that divorce increases the number of smaller households, but that marriage decreases them. Divorce isn’t a net negative, it’s a return to the status quo after a net positive has ceased to work properly for the people providing said net positive.

  6. Tad Saffron’s a big a douchebag as his name suggests, but he makes me want to move to England. Sounds great over there!

    Although his argument that American women have this great tradition of beauty being passed down while English women flounder makes me think of Rona Berg’s Beauty book, in which she points out that it’s the French who have a great tradition of beauty treatments being passed from mother to daughter and it’s Americans who have to learn on their own.

  7. I knew that article didn’t pass the BS test.

    IMHO, if we really want to solve some environmental problems….we’d probably have much more of an impact if we invested more in alternative renewable fuel sources, increase fuel efficiency standards, aggressively implement pollution reduction technologies/measures, and change the mindless consumerist mindset in the US which causes it to consume a disproportionate amount of natural resources.

  8. Welcome back!

    Ha—minus the travel update in the beginning, reading this post felt like I had taken a wrong turn and ended up at Wonkette.

  9. Jill-
    Welcome back. If your study abroad experience was anything like mine, your return is decidedly bittersweet. I clearly remember sitting in Ataturk Airport in Istanbul dreading my return to the U.S. while already missing the friends and country I hadn’t yet left behind. I am way too drunk to coherently comment on the many worthy stories you posted. The Spears story and all of its implications and double standards have been occupying my thoughts so I will talk about that as soon as I can (and considering the holidays this may not be as soon as I would like). In any event, because I cannot comment, I just want to say I love this site and its commenters for the nuanced and sophisticated discussion it inspires.
    Happy Holidays to all of you. And regarding the Christmas religious nut posting? I will leave with Jon Stewart:
    I suppose you could say ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’
    but you probably have other shit to do. You shorten it to ‘Happy Holidays.’

  10. I had a bunch of tabs open, so by the time I got to the religious nuttery video, I’d lost context for it, and completely mistook the message that was going on there until nearly the end. For a while there, I thought that their issue with the generic ‘holidays’ was that it was still completely transparent that christmas was the only one they were concerned with, and that the inclusion on offer is superficial and petty.

    I was so much more sympathetic to that argument, even if did turn out to be imaginary in this case. I don’t think I could have interpreted them more wrongly though, so I’m sort of impressed on that count.

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