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Tag: Women We Love

Policing Native Identity

Apparently there’s been a big to-do over the fact that Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat vying for Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate seat, has Cherokee and Delaware Indian ancestry, and that ancestry was reflected in her listing as a minority law professor. People are mad! People are mad because Warren isn’t “really” Native American — she’s only 1/32, which is not enough Native American blood to count as “real,” I guess. Of course, as Sarah Burris points out, white-lady clubs like the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames of America don’t have percentage rules for their bloodlines — you’ve just gotta have one relative who fit the bill. And if being 1/32 Native American isn’t enough to make you “really” Native American, someone should probably tell the current chief of the Cherokee Tribe.

The Immense Barriers Between Us and Disaster

A great piece by Nicole Cliffe, about how parenting is imperfect and we try to draw lines, but we are only humans and we all make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes have terrible outcomes; sometimes they do not. Sometimes we are lucky and sometimes we aren’t.

All parents do something stupid at some point, and most of us get away with it. That’s the truth. Usually, it’s not doing meth while you’re pregnant, or putting your baby on top of a bear in Yellowstone so you can film it. But it’s something, and you usually get away with it. And if you get away with it, it’s a funny story, and you’ll eventually laugh about it with other parents. If you don’t get away with it, people will make themselves feel better about their own mistakes by pillorying you. But there’s no difference between people who do something stupid and get away with it, and people who don’t get away with it. It’s luck. Don’t kid yourself.

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There is no difference between me leaving her on the counter in that chair, and a parent who backed over their kid playing in the driveway. We pretend there is, because we want to think there’s an immense barrier between us and disaster, but there isn’t. Just luck.

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Happy Birthday Feministing!

Feministing turned 8 last week, which is a big age for a blog. Happy birthday to them! Feministing was one of the first feminist blogs I read back when I ran a tiny feminist website in some random corner of the internet, and Jessica and Vanessa where two of the first feminist bloggers I ever met. Feministing has set the bar for feminist sites since its inception, and has done incredible things for feminism in media and politics. At some point I’ll write a longer post on this, but the strength of feminism in the blogosphere has had a remarkable on “real life” politicking, and Feministing deserves a lot of the credit for that. It’s a labor of love, and Samhita and the whole team do amazing work. So hop on over there, wish them a happy birthday, and perhaps consider donating to support their work.

Hip Hop Is For Lovers

This is a guest post by Lauren Bruce, former Feministe blogger and music superfan.

Hip Hop is For Lovers is a multimedia web experience dedicated to looking at love, sex and intimacy through the lens of hip hop culture. Its centerpiece is a weekly woman-centered, queer-friendly and justice-heavy podcast that features discussions about a variety of relationship topics punctuated with the best in rap. After months as a listener, I had the privilege of talking with podcast co-hosts Uche and Lenée about the making of the show, the tentative relationship between hip hop culture and mainstream feminism, and what we should be listening to next. After the interview, tune in live on Wednesday nights from 8-10 EST to hear Uche and Lenée in action.