For a look at Ellen Willis a little less New Yorker- and rock-critic-centered, check out The Nation's memorial for her.

Willis is one of my favorite writers. Five years ago, when I was putting together an independent study in graduate school on feminist theory, I emailed her to ask for specific suggestions on a certain topic (I no longer remember what) and she was very, very kind. I confess to being a little miffed at the "What a shame she left her rock-critic job here at the all-important New Yorker merely to write about women and gender" tone of the NYer piece.

That story of police crackdown of oglers is good. I'm surprised, but it actually seems like the law enforcement is handling it in a responsible, not over or under-reacting way.

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That comic is terrible. Besides the horrid choice of subject matter, it's got an incoherent message and is just not funny.
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On a side note, I think you may want to review the ads that are running on your site. I don't particularly see the humour in this: http://img.blogads.com/595879918/img.jpg

Thanks Miranda, this was the shirt shown when we accepted the ad. I'm looking into it now...

A response to the video game article:

-Desperate Housewives
-Charlotte's Web
-Bratz Forever Diamonds
-Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses
-Lucinda Green's Equestrian Challenge

This is why girls will not buy video games. If these are the only titles targeting females then there seems to be a misconception to what, to quote the Spice Girls, a girl really really wants. 4 of 5 of those games are obviously targeted for an age group that needs help with their multiplication table whereas the other only generates shallow stereotypical female values.

Females will not really start buying games until it is the females that are creating them. Playing a video game based solely on 40-year-old drama-queens or 10-year-old Britney-Spears wannabes is not exactly an achievement for the feminist movement.

A few thoughts on the Dartmouth story:

First and foremost, I agree that the comic treats the topic of sexual assault with an offensively flippant tone.

Playing devil's advocate, why is the situation in the comic considered sexual assault? The apperent logic is something like the following. A man and a woman have been drinking. The woman decides she wants to have sex with the man, the man then decides he wants to have sex with the woman. However, the woman is a mindless automaton and cannot be expected to be responsible for her actions, while the man bears the burden of superiority, and is solely responsible for anything that happens.

Getting serious again, what I find most offensive about the comic is its attitude towards alcohol abuse. In fact, I find the student response equally offensive for neglecting to mention alcohol at all. Alcohol is a factor in a large number of sexual assault cases. However, it's not one many feminists speak up about, perhaps because it's one for which women are often partially responsible. A disturbingly large number of college students rely heavily on alcohol to overcome inhibitions when attempting to meet potential partners. People need to know that intoxication is not consent and act accordingly, but that can't happen until both men and women are able to give consent without being intoxicated.

Finally, asking Dartmouth to censor the comic is a step in the wrong direction. Doing so puts pressure on higher level administrators who are likely to be more concerned with the image of the university than the actual issues involved. This leads to censorship of art/speech involving any controversial topic and destroys the rational discourse necessary for social change. For instance, I'm sure that at the university I attended, such a comic would result in disciplinary probation for the author. However, that punishment is worse than any given to the offenders in the many sexual assault cases I know of at the same university. To punish sexual assault is to acknowledge it, and to acknowledge it is bad publicity. For sexual assault on college campuses to be dealt with properly, administrators need to be pressured to pay less attention to moderating discussion of the issues and more attention to the issues themselves.

Wow, there are some seriously irritating shirts on that site. "Picked last in gym" cracked me up, though. I was TOTALLY picked last.

I used to live in the UAE, and the staring is exactly how they described it. They just stand around looking at you, without any shame at all, and it's like it's YOUR fault for daring to have breasts and venture out in public. I'm sure it's worse on the beaches when women are in bikinis, but it really doesn't matter what you're wearing. My mom tells me that she even got it in Pakistan as a college student when she was wearing a burka. It's freaky as hell, and I'm really glad they're doing something about it.

I remember that our parents were horribly skittish about letting us young teenage girls do anything alone because with the men staring like that, who knew what they would try to do to a little girl who couldn't really defend herself?

I actually have a horrible, scarring memory from when I lived there. I think I was about eight, and my family was driving along a busy main street with the windows open when I heard a horrible, terrified, scream. I couldn't even tell where it came from, and it still haunts me when I remember it.

"On a side note, I think you may want to review the ads that are running on your site. I don't particularly see the humour in this: http://img.blogads.com/595879918/img.jpg"

I see the humor in it. They make one for guys, too, which I think is really cool -- there doesn't seem to be a gender bias in their products. That's awesome, actually. Plus, that is why some people work out.

I might grab an If It Was Easy Everyone Would Look Like This for myself.

On a side note, I think you may want to review the ads that are running on your site. I don't particularly see the humour in this: http://img.blogads.com/595879918/img.jpg - miranda

As someone who does exercise not to get any stronger (I'm no weakling, even if I look like one) but rather to look better naked, I agree ... I fail to see the humor here ;)

I also loved the way the article, which complains about people photographing bikinied women on public beaches, is headed by a photograph of bikinied women on a public beach. That really says it all - one rule for the Westerners another for the Colonials.

Wow. You've a police state arresting poor Indians for for looking at rich white women in the interests of keeping up tourist revenues and you lot don't see a problem with that? I found the whole thing offensive on so many different levels. Where does Feministing go from here? How about a piece celebrating the good work the Klan used to do in defending feminine virtue?

"Wow. You've a police state arresting poor Indians for for looking at rich white women in the interests of keeping up tourist revenues and you lot don't see a problem with that? I found the whole thing offensive on so many different levels. Where does Feministing go from here? How about a piece celebrating the good work the Klan used to do in defending feminine virtue?"

So, what, lee? It's okay for men to be sexist pigs if they also happen to be minorities? Women can be objectified if they're rich and white? Give me a break.

"You've a police state arresting poor Indians for for looking at rich white women"

It's not just rich white women who go to the beach in Dubai. The person who did the report is Arab and one of the two women interviewed in the report is Moroccan.
I have been to Dubai; It does bother me to be stared at, and I am not white. Plus the reporter seems to be quite sympathetic to the plight of the workers. It’s just that the fact that they are working under very exploitive conditions doesn’t make it ok for men to leer at women.

Anyone else notice the list of "gay items" sold in WalMart? what does that even mean?

"...looking good naked" is a quote from Spacey's character in "American Beauty," no?

I say funny.

I say funny.

As too oppressed leerers, they aren't exactly being worked over in the basement of the police station, that the NY Times knows of anyway. Their third strike is being barred from the beach.

I dunno. I'm a guy, so I don't pretend to know the feeling the women on the beach are going through, but isn't there somethign to be said for a public beach being public? It would seem to be a situation rife with possibilities to harass the workers in general, for beachcombing while Bangladeshi, or whatever. Hopefully it'll teach these guys to be a little more polite.

It probably wouldn't help anything with this problem, but Dubai is a good example of why we shouldn't go down the road of guest workers in this country, because they'll always end up being exploited.

isn't there something to be said for a public beach being public?

There seem to be more problems than at your average public beach due to the exploitation of imported workers.

"Thronging right alongside them are Dubai’s “beach pests,� the gangs of men who trudge through the sand, fully dressed, to ogle the women. Mostly laborers at the front lines of Dubai’s building boom — they flood the beaches every weekend to leer at women, photograph them and occasionally try to grope them in the water."

"I'm a guy, so I don't pretend to know the feeling the women on the beach are going through, but isn't there somethign to be said for a public beach being public?"

Well, I think the idea is that at places like a beach there's kind of an implied mutuality of attire. Like, I doubt anyone would go to the beach in a speedo/bikini if he/she thought that most people would be fully clothed. It's kind of like with a locker room. If other women in the locker room just stood around, fully clothed, and stared at me while I got changed, I'd be totally weirded out and would sneak into a toilet stall to change. There's an implication that you're only exposing yourself in roughly the same way others will expose themselves. If I understand correctly, this is why (most?) nude beaches are restricted access -- it's a laxer code at public beaches in part because, obviously, people will wear different kinds of suits (e.g., in general, you won't find as many out-of-shape people wearing string bikinis, though even then...).

As a Nicaraguan-American and the granddaughter of an ex-Senator who lost everything because of Daniel Ortega. Let me just say that on top of him being re-elected I'm f-ing furious that instead of sticking to his liberal moral ideals (which I can recognize despite all of the horrible things he has done) he sold out the right to choose/live for women instead, just to gain votes. *Sigh* he was going to win anyways since his opposers split up instead of working together and they split the vote too much as a result.

"On a side note, I think you may want to review the ads that are running on your site. I don't particularly see the humour in this: ">http://img.blogads.com/595879918/img.jpg " - miranda

I am not sure when this line was first used, but I remember in particular its use in American Beauty by Keven Spacey:

Lester Burnham: "I figured you guys might be able to give me some pointers. I need to shape up. Fast."

Jim Olmeyer: "Are you just looking to lose weight, or do you want increased strength and flexibility as well?"

Lester Burnham: "I want to look good naked."

When said by a man, at least, it doesn't seem remotely sexist.