feministe – Page 4

Christian and Feminist–Is it Even Possible?

I’ve been sitting here all day trying to think of something profound to write about. My blog is usually a pretty quite place where I write about everything that crosses my mind, so guest-blogging for Feministe is “hitting it big” for me. There were other subjects that I started to write about but something has been bugging me for awhile now and I think that means I need to write about it. The problem is, well, it’s sort of embarrassing for me.

You see, up until about two years ago, I was a member of a cult. I was born into a family where almost everyone was a member of this religious group that dictated almost every aspect of our lives. I’m not using this label casually. Cults kill. Sure, they may not wield any guns but when you’re working with true believers, you don’t need to get your hands dirty in order to control people’s lives. The one that I belonged to is responsible for many deaths and I would have been among that number had I remained a part of it. I was fortunate. I was removed from approved status with the organization because I am a serial fornicator.

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Final Post- What’s the First Album You Owned?

Well, it’s my last day guest posting here at feministe, and I just wanted to say thanks to my gracious hosts for letting me clutter up their site. I really appreciated the invitation, and it’s been a really interesting week. I’ve had several lively posts on here, so I thought I’d turn it down a notch for my final post. Nothing about children or parenting or sex-work or pornography. I thought about talking about BJ Thomas*, but, aside from my abiding love for Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, what else is there to say?

Well, there is one thing.

See, the first cd player I ever owned was given to me one year for Christmas. It was a Big Gift. I still don’t know why, but my mother thought that BJ Thomas’ greatest hits was a great gift, as well. So, the second cd I ever owned was BJ Thomas. Now, at the time, I was listening to Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Tool… that sort of thing. As you might imagine, BJ Thomas wasn’t exactly a hit with me. Much better was the first cd I ever owned- Flood, by They Might Be Giants. I still own that one, too. I’m actually a little surprised that it still plays. That was a pretty long time ago.

To this day, I still love TMBG, and Flood, in particular. If I’m feeling a little down, I can throw on “Birdhouse in Your Soul” and before the song is over, I’m tapping my foot and singing along. As more and more music is sold digitally online, I wonder if people will have as much attachment to particular albums. I really like that I can pick up the album. That I can look at the liner notes. That I can see the artwork. I like that I can remember road trips where I played that album.

So, anyone else still remember the first cd/tape/record they owned?
Have a particular album that always makes you tap your foot? That you can’t help singing along to?

Consider this an open invite to share- and thanks again, everyone!
See you around!

*Eh. I thought it was funny.

Why I hate “I hate children…”

Hello everyone!
Roy here, starting my first day guest blogging. I thought I’d start my first guest-blog here by saying thanks to my gracious hosts for inviting me for the week, and by introducing myself to everyone. The bloggers here at feministe were awesome enough to extend me an invitation to guest-blog for the week, and I can’t say how excited I am to be here. They set the bar pretty high, but I’m up to the ~~challange~~ challenge (edited 9:05 pm- thanks Bracken), I think.

My first post is actually something that’s been rolling around in my mind for about the last month. See, last month, in two seperate posts- one here at feministe and one over at feministing, people indulged in rants about how much they hate children. The complaints ranged from how annoying loud children are in movie theaters, to how children run through stores, to how obnoxious children are when they kick the seat on an airplane. The animosity towards children extended to their parents as well, but the bulk of the real venom was directed towards the children. This anger towards children is hardly reserved to these sites, but I was particularly surprised to see it on sites like these, given how much time we spend here discussing ways to end bigotry and fight things like sexism or homophobia.

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Round ’em up, move ’em out

RAWHIIIIIDE!

Ahem. Hi there. I’ve been coasting for the past week or so on the whole guest-blogger thing, which is great, because I’ve been pretty busy painting my apartment, installing new light fixtures, painting the dog, finishing the kitchen floor and stuff like that.

And now, rather than a real post, I’m doing a lazy round-up post, using emails that some of you have sent to the feministe gmail account (feministe (at) gmail (dot) com), or to my personal email. So here we go.

First, a request from Geeta, a Ph.D. candidate in engineering who’s beginning to get into literature: what are the books that inspired your feminism?

From Noelle: A calendar featuring the “Women of UW” has been pulled from the university bookstore.

Part of the reason may lie in an e-mail campaign started by some students who say the calendar objectifies women.

The whole episode has yielded some surprising lessons about business and about life for the five students who produced the work for their entrepreneurship class.

“I never would have guessed any of this going into it,” said junior Zach Meissner, who began as the group’s financial manager — and turned into its crisis manager.

Meissner said the students intended to produce “his and hers” calendars. But despite an eager group of males willing to pose, their market research showed consumers generally sought to buy only the female version.

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Project Guest Blogger Comment Policy

We’ve invited several of the most talented writers and bloggers on the internets to join us this summer for a guest-blogging stint. We’ll generally have two guest-bloggers per week (there will be a handful of exceptions, when we’ll have either one or three), and the guest-bloggers will have full reign to write about whatever they want, however they want during their week. We’ve put together a pretty incredible line-up, which will be announced very soon. But first, a PSA about the comment policy during Project Guest Blogger:

All guest bloggers are permitted to delete comments on their own posts at their discretion. They may import their own comment policies from their own blogs into their posts at Feministe. It is entirely up to them what they allow up and what they don’t, and Zuzu, Piny and I will not be second-guessing their moderation decisions.

Ok, PSA over. Just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.

Performance Anxiety

Feminists: Emasculating young men since 1973

It appears to be Performed Masculinity Day here at Feministe, and across the interwebs. First, we have this tragic story from the Washington Post about how young men are thoroughly confused about what it means to be “manly” — all because the ladies are suddenly stepping on their toes.

Swish or swagger? That’s the choice that men — particularly young men — find themselves facing today. As author Calvin Sandborn — who juggled teaching and child-raising as he wrote “Becoming the Kind Father” — says, society used to assign certain characteristics to men, including power, aggressiveness, professional success and autonomy. Other, shall we say, swishier traits were expected of women, such as the ability to create and nurture connections, kindness and communication.

Of course, you could always find some crossover. But while catching up with or surpassing men at school and at their first jobs, young women have dumped much of the feminine to embrace the masculine traits that they think represent success.

The problem, basically, is that some women are becoming autonomous, powerful, professionally successful people. Since the worst thing for a man is to be like a woman, men are forced to come up with other social markers of masculinity, and they don’t really know where to go.

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Rufus Is My Other Boyfriend

Hey y’all. It’s nice to be back at a blog people actually read, and a blog I’m actually motivated to write for. That said, I’m Lauren, founder of and former proprieter of Feministe, and I currently blog or something like it at Faux Real Tho, where I mostly post videos of cats and bad New Wave talent. I’ll be here all week while Jill embarks on her drunken vacation/internship, so tip your blogmistresses.
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I caught this cryptic article on Rufus Wainwright’s new album on Salon this Saturday, an article that can’t decide whether it lurves Rufus or wants to contemplate Rufus’ feelings on American politics. If you’re a fan of the singer-songwriter genre, familiar with the family of Wainwrights (Loudon III, Martha, and Rufus, and mother Kate McGarrigle), or like a good family drama, I suggest you skip the article linked above and check out this extensive profile of the whole family from Vanity Fair, Songs in the Key of Lacerating. Feminists, too, will be interested in slicing and dicing dickhead dad Louden since his incredible ego and entitlement clearly damaged his children and ex-wife.

Excellent musical skills from all of them aside, the competition in this family is cutthroat. For example, after a fabulous Carnegie Hall performance by Rufus, dad Louden comes backstage to give his regards:

After the standing ovation had died down, Rufus was hugging well-wishers in one of the theater’s upstairs rooms. Kate was fluttering about, and Martha was talking with a couple of musicians. Loudon stepped into the scene, wearing a hat. He had just been on a brief tour himself, playing venues much humbler than Carnegie Hall, and he approached Rufus with a certain stiffness or formality. He didn’t hug his son but did hand him a small gift, a DVD of La Ciénaga, an Argentinian film about a bourgeois family sliding into a hell of booze and adultery.

Cutting! Hilarious! And mean.

In any case, having been reminded of My Other Boyfriend, I immediately got ahold of the new album and had to share the video with as many people as possible. Presenting Rufus Wainwright’s “Going To a Town”:

Between the ennui with war, homophobia, and general malaise with the attitudes controlling American politics, I’m tired of America too. It is only slightly coincidental that I post this on Memorial Day.

Enjoy your cookouts.

Request for assistance

Any family lawyers in the house willing to answer a question or two?

Email at feministe (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thanks!

Defining Hate Crimes Shouldn’t Be Tricky Business

Allow myself to introduce…myself. I’m bean, one of the guest bloggers Jill has recruited for the week. Like Jill, I’m a New Yorker and a long suffering law student. My internet home is over at A Bird and a Bottle, where I focus on feminism and criminal justice and particularly the intersections between the two, but I’m happy to be taking up residence at hotel Feministe for the week. And away we go.

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Last week, in a flurry of chest puffing and pounding, President Bush threatened to veto the hate crimes bill passed by the House and headed toward approval in the Senate. The bill, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, would expand the definition of hate crimes to include crimes motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation, gender, disability, and probably gender identity (i.e. trans men and women), though that’s not clear in the bill’s text. Bush (laughably, I think) claims that state law already protects the rights of these groups.

The trouble is, the L.A. Times, whose editorial page is usually spot on, seems to have taken the Bush bait. In an editorial yesterday, the paper lauded the bill as it applies to sexual orientation, but claimed that it’s unnecessary to protect people from gender or gender identity motivated violence:

The problem is that the House bill goes further, by including gender and disability in its definition of hate crimes. According to the FBI, fewer than 1% of hate crimes in 2005 reflected a bias against the disabled. Although the FBI doesn’t keep count of gender-bias crimes, California does, and only 1.3% of the state’s hate crimes in 2005 involved “anti-gender bias.”

Huh? I wonder how the FBI and the state of California got those statistics. Because it seems to me that they must have relied on a very narrow understanding of what violence is gender motivated. Take rape, for example. I would argue that rape can be a hate crime (usually against women). But I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t included in that 1.3%. For perspective, according to the FBI, hate crimes based on sexual orientation account for over 14% of the hate crimes nationwide.

And what about gender identity? According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, while 29 states have laws that protect people based on sexual orientation, only seven and D.C. protect people based on gender identity. Transgender people are estimated to be 7-10 times more likely to be murdered than the national average. Yet gender identity is only implicit in the new hate crimes bill; the bill’s sponsors in the House have indicated that they intend “gender” to cover gender identity, but it’s unclear whether the Senate will agree.

The LA Times is right to point to the importance — necessity, really — of a law that explicitly protects the rights and safety of gay women and men. But by minimizing the need for a similar spotlight on women and transgender men and women, the article plays a part in the continuing normalization of violence against them.

(also at A Bird and a Bottle).

Happy Anniversary to Me

Today is my two-year anniversary blogging for Feministe. It has been an excellent run. Thanks to Ms. Lauren for inviting me over two years ago, and to Zuzu and Piny for being the greatest co-bloggers ever. Hopefully I’ll stick it out for a few more anniversaries.

Also, an anniversary announcement, which you may already know if you’ve been reading the “About Jill” section regularly (and you totally have, right?): I’m going to Hamburg in the fall to study at an international business law school. I’m pretty excited, and I will be picking all of your brains for travel tips and beer suggestions and whatnot as the semester approaches. I’ve never been to Germany (besides the airport in Frankfurt), so it should be quite an experience. And the experience will be blogged.

Plus my little sister is graduating from college next weekend! I’ll be going down to DC for that, and am working on assembling a crack team of guest bloggers to hold down the fort starting Monday. Start looking forward to it now, because they are some fantastic writers. So Feministe anniversary, semester ending, sister graduating, hot guest bloggers taking over, and preparing to go abroad in the fall. Lots to celebrate. Raise a glass, etc etc.

Na zdravie!*

*That is how we used to say “cheers” in my family. I always assumed it was Serbian because we got it from my grandfather, but a Google search reveals that it is in fact Slovak. You learn something new every day. So, na zdravie, Feministes. A very merry anniversary to us.