Feminists mourn Patrick Swayze.
It is race. "News flash, we ain't even close to a post-racial America." Plus, "A funny thing happened on the way to PostRacialLand."
The "happiness gap," debunked.
Why the woman in a wheelchair onstage with Lady GaGa at the VMAs wasn't progress -- she was scenery.
I'm excited to see that there's a new website for pro-feminist men. I'm not excited that, like Double X, they've named it after chromosomes.
Naomi Wolf and Phyllis Chesler really need to stop talking about Muslim women.
The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research has a new blog.
A new film looks at human trafficking.
On the response to Michelle Obama's speech about women and health care.
Universal health care is an LGBTQ issue.
How Twilight exposed the power of marketing to girls. Aaaand now the studio says the third Twilight film is going to be boy-friendly.
On Katie Kessler as a spokesperson for victims of sexual assault.
Bill Gates: "When a man partners with a strong woman, everyone benefits.... What I find remarkable is that more men around the globe don't realize how much stronger they would be if partnered with a strong woman."
Teen birth rates are higher in more religious states.
Amanda on the motivations behind the murder of anti-choice protester James Pouillon. (And hiis son alleges he didn't care about abortion.)
On the infant mortality rate and racial health disparities.
The Chicago Transit Authority is pulling ads for the rape-y new Tucker Max movie.
On "twilight sleep," shackles, and other realities of childbirth in the pre-Lamaze era.
"The ideal of feminine beauty in Mauritania ... is like America's cult of superthinness in reverse."
A Spider-Man comic features a rape scene, but writers refuse to acknowledge it as such.
Tell your Senators to stand up for women's health!
What have you all been reading/writing this week?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Weekly Feminist Reader.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/16082
I compared Pete and Don's racism on Mad Men and talked about how Betty's delivery made me understand why my mother was in favor of natural childbirth. Then my co-blogger and I had more lighthearted talks about Marissa Cooper and the painful deterioration of the OC in the 3rd season and wondered if we're supposed to read Vanessa on Gossip Girl as non-white, and given how sad sack she is, are we offended?
Racist Sheriff Arpaio greeted by angry, militant protest: Undocumented workers protest and tell the Sheriff the harm he has done to their community.
The Gay Best Friend: Looking at the relationship between straight women and gay men.
international reproductive rights, birthing injuries, and "the fistula foundation: Looking at the medical damage that occurs when young girls are forced to marry before maturity. Rape and long childbirth leads to fistula.
Dr. Alveda King Attacks Planned Parenthood: Looking at the challenge By MLK's niece Alveda that planned parenthood is targeting black women thereby resulting in a genocide of black infants.
A Black Woman Gets Beaten In Public And Not One Helps: A Black service woman is beaten and called an N@gger B@tch in front of her 7 year old daughter and no one helps.
Kanye West is not a N@gger: Looking at the racist attacks aimed at west after the incident at the video music awards.
A sampling from Feminist Review...
The A Case of Olive Jade Filigree Earrings mentally transport me to the time I sat in front of the tomb of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau in New Orleans studying the repeated trio of black X’s, cigarettes, coins, and candy left on her final resting place. (For those of you who haven’t been there, imagine something out of Kate Hudson’s The Skeleton Key.)
Though this unconventional romance is the main focus of An Education, the film’s issues become much broader when, in the wake of her seventeenth birthday, Jenny turns to her parents and asks, “What if I got married instead of going to college?” It is here that the film takes a sharp turn from intimate coming of age tale to rumination on the M.R.S. degree syndrome of the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Reverend Jen Miller—artist, troll museum proprietor, elf-ear wearer, and reverend in the Universal Life Church—reprints and adapts the essays she wrote during her two-year stint as the writer for Nerve.com’s "I Did it for Science" column in Live Nude Elf: The Sexperiments of Reverend Jen. Experiments include becoming a “dude for a day,” attending fellatio school, watching a Sex and the City marathon, experiencing female ejaculation, babysitting (babies being the outcome of sex), and holding a sex toy Olympics.
On the night that I attended, the audience ate up such irreverence, cheering openly when Lizzie spattered her parents’ blood all over the white backdrop upstage. As with Rocky Horror, though, Lizzie Borden isn’t just about the gimmick; the music is fantastic too.
This week on the Bitch Magazine blogs...
In Your Facial: Queer Feminist Pornographers, two of North America's leading ladies of lasciviousness engage in a discussion that is pro-porn, pro-queer, and pro-feminist.
Whole Foods Tells Me What I Need, What does good health have to do with $$$? Whole Foods knows!
Man Pad, Is the Tampax campaign transphobic, sexist, subversive, or--somehow--all of the above?
A Hook-Up Deferred--Shameless Tales of Reconnecting with High School Crushes, in which we explore what Time Magazine dubs "the retrosexual"
In Which I Gingerly Criticize Jon Stewart, every once in awhile, his show displays all the symptoms of having been written by Liberal Dudes Who Don't Quite Get It - It usually being women, or women's rights, or women's issues.
Sin and the City: A Q&A With Not That Kind of Girl Author Carlene Bauer, Ingrained from an evangelical upbringing in New Jersey, Carlene Bauer’s religious leanings kept her from living an unexamined life of artistic debauchery in New York City. Not That Kind of Girl isn’t simply a tale of how the “good girl” lost her faith through drinking at raucous parties and romps with unfamiliar men, though you will find a bit of that here. Instead, it’s a thoughtful memoir about a young woman’s slow and arduous attempts to break up with God, a task at which she finally succeeds with a little help from the city.
While The Smiths, Jane Austin, and Søren Kierkegaard provide Bauer with much fodder for questioning the righteousness of the Lord, the final, ahem, nail in His coffin actually comes from the Bible itself. (How Marx!) Unable to resolve the Good Book’s many irreconcilable contradictions, in the end Bauer chooses to opt out of the flock and join her fellow city dwellers in the realm of the spiritually unknown.
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman. Various crappy grad school text.
texts
On elder abuse: my grandpa is being verbally abused by my grandma, and it's just a whole miserable situation...
Fuzz Therapy. a week is not complete without kitty pics.
Filthy movie reviews: 9: SPOILER ALERT. my quick review of the movie 9.
What's new on Women's Glib this week...
[Insert witty party name here]: You MUST Get Laid Tonight -- Ruth on college party culture.
Applying to College As a Woman -- My messy thoughts on gender in the college admissions process.
Glee FAIL -- Ruth explains how Glee's stereotypes cross the line.
Me & My Notebooks -- Public high school is expensive!
Just thought I'd point out--though many universities have a slightly higher percentage of females, this situation is reversed when one considers science/tech schools. For example, M.I.T. has a 53/46 m:f ratio. And that doesn't say it all--m:f ratio of the applicant pool is even more skewed (3:1 I've heard), sadly.
This week at Adventures of a Young Feminist...
Watchmen 2: Dissecting the Silk Spectres: a guest post from Amanda at The Undomestic Goddess about the differences between the Silk Spectres for Movie Monday.
Career Women and Their Love Lives: why is it that on tv shows (and in movies) we never see the love/social lives of women who have strong careers? And if we do, it is always portrayed as dysfunctional.
Some Thoughts on Marriage: I am trying to figure out for myself if the institution of marriage (which the potential of is very far off) can fit with my feminist values.
Why Does the Media Hate Megan Fox?: Megan Fox is starting to grow on me, but not because of her acting skills.
Glee: Acafellas: even though I think that I want to like Glee so much I miss some of the problematic aspects of the show, I attempt to remedy that in this weeks review of Glee.
Reading Persepolis: my review of Persepolis and why I think it's a feminist text.
Feminist Science Fiction [Feminist Flashback Friday]: a look back to the turn of the century to examine the history of feminist science fiction.
Bones: Harbingers in the Fountain: my review of the season premiere of Bones.
I know it's standard internet protocol, but for the love of crap, don't read the comments on the Twilight article. Unless you really, really like rape jokes.
Thought I'd throw out a warning there, in case anyone else reads the comments, too.
I wholeheartedly second this.
God, I wish I had read this comment before venturing over there. I simultaneously feel like vomiting, crying, and punching something.
Wow. Just. Wow.
I can't even describe how depressing and horrifying those comments were.
I emailed the site. I'm hoping to get a decent response back.
Bu...seriously. Those were some of the most viciously, proudly hateful comments I have ever read. Just so clear and open about it. Wow.
I feel so so sorry for the poor actress they were referencing when they started their "jokes". As an actor, I cannot even begin to express how fucking sick I am of "fans" reacting this way. Way to try to kill my passion there, guys. Thanks.
Wow. I need a hug. :(
i just read the comments on this page and i can't even express how i feel. i'm so angry i can barely type this. totally blindsided.
Wow. I *did* get a good response.
Alex Ginzburg, the head editor, wrote me back. I feel iffy about posting the email itself, but to sum up -
He mentioned that they're working on ways to block certain users, or let people turn off comments, and that some users had been banned and others warned (not sure if in reference to this particular incident). And he promised that in the meantime, they would do a better job monitoring the comments. He was incredibly understanding, and respectful, and apologetic, and seemed as bothered as we are.
I honestly did not expect that response. I was bracing myself for being attacked. I sincerely feel so relieved and grateful that I could cry. And I am totally viewing this site more often now.
I love unexpected positive moments...man, needed that right now.
This week in Evil Slutopia:
We went a little crazy over True Blood this week (we're obsessed!)... We reviewed the season finale, discussed our theory that Michele Bachmann is a maenad, and created a True Blood diversion program for other addicts.
We also wrote some ESC Reviews over on the Good Authority, told Kanye West to suck it and came up with an idea for a bestselling book (yes, it has vampires).
We realized that the handjob controversy isn't over and made fun of Cosmo, not once but twice.
We also had three guest blogs - one on the campaign to celebrate Wonder Woman's 600th issue, one on the painter Tamara de Lempicka, and one responding to a majorly bizarre comment that someone left on one of our old posts.
And we took apart the latest action alert from the One Million Moms - they're protesting the new show Glee because they've decided that it's offensive and inappropriate.
Applying to College As a Woman -- My messy thoughts on gender in the college admissions process.
Wow!...affirmative action for men, has it gotten that bad?
I think you misread the post. The author was describing the higher expectations placed on women in order to get into college that arent placed on men. She is fed up with people calling it 'affirmative action for men' because as she puts it:
"I’ve heard this called “affirmative action for boys” — which is ridiculous, it’s women who have been denied access to education throughout history. The comparison of men as a group to, say, African-Americans, who rightly benefit from real affirmative action is less than logical."
Maybe affirmative action isn't the right word, but I didn't understand it to mean higher expectations for women so much as lower expectations for men. In other words, if the didn't care about a male presence on campus, there wouldn't be such high expectations for women and most of them would get in (and consequently, there wouldn't be any men).
The "happiness gap," debunked.
That's not what the article says. What the article says is that the journalistic reporting on the original research used language which implied that a) the gap is much bigger than was found and b) applied to every individual rather than the aggregate. Feministing just used language that implies that the gap doesn't exist. You are all wrong, and the link explains why.
The article at the link corrects journalistic language to more accurately state the finding results, and also links to another article which explains the analysis. In summary, the difference between men's and women's aggregate reported happiness is small, statistically significant and has changed over the years.
I want to see Tucker Max get beaten up by women. That I'd PAY to see. Not his how-to-date rape movie-pat-myself-on-the-back-for-being-douchebag crap-flick.
I liked XY. At first I was a bit weary because I thought it'd be some sort of MRA thing that was just pretending to be enlightened so that it could push its anti-feminist agenda. But when I saw how they were opposed to the MRA's and fathers rights groups I started becoming interested. When I have time I wouldnt mind looking around more on their website. I did find however that they were wrong on a couple of points (such as most religions dont condone domestic violence) but its agood effort (and a rare one). Lets hope they dont turn into a Warren Farrel (who used to be lauded by feminists as progressive back in the later 60's and 70's before becoming an MRA).
This week on Gender Across Borders:
Race, Class, and Serena’s “Outburst”
Recycling Feminism–Lilith Fair Returns With Plaid Shirts and Environmentalism on the Coattails of a Nineties Revival --- bring back Lilith!
Film Review: Inside the Koran
...and more posts including transgender people in Iran, feminist coloring books, and going to jail for having an abortion.
I wrote about an encounter with a street harrasser jerk who messed with my mom:
http://sideoftheroadblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/walking-while-female.html
(Sorry, not great with the link formatting...)
" I didn’t know this at the time, but one of the Classy Guys™ was actually stepping on Mom’s heels as she walked"
I'm thinking tazer, nads kick and pepper spray!
"So I stopped, turned around, and poured what was left of my Coke on the nearest Classy Guy"
Made my day!
About Chesler and Wolfe...
They are getting slammed for being non-muslin and discussing Muslim feminist issues...
But many feminist are not Christians, nor were they ever, and it seems quite vogue to slam the Christian patriarchy.
So, aggressively going against one Abrahamic religion is OK, but not another? Ok to say one bunch of women are being brainwashed by a pervasive patriarchy but not the other?
Y'all feminist come out swinging hard all the time... across geographic, cultural and religious boundaries all the time, arguing how else are y'all going to change the world...
But there's a big difference between critiquing the religious practices that are dominant and mainstream in your culture, and critiquing those that belong to a different culture.
I'm not a big fan of naomi wolfe. She's too much of a CNN, talking head brand of feminist for me, and she tends to oversimplify any subject she touches. I haven't heard of Chesler and she seems even worse from what was posted, but I get very confused when people make statements like the one you just made.
I think most western feminists agree that we should express solidarity with women in muslim countries and with their struggles (which sometimes include struggling against the domination of the U.S.). But i can't see how we can do that without forming an opinion on muslim cultures. Some feminists in muslim cultures believe that Islam is a tool for reaching feminist goals, and others believe that Islam is inherently anti-feminist (and obviously there are probably many who are somewhere in the middle).
So considering that women of muslim cultures are on all sides of this debate, I don't see how being critical of Islam can be automatically less helpful than embracing Islam, or vice versa.
I don't think the only two choices are to be critical of Islam or embrace it. But I do think that whenever you're speaking about an artifact of a culture to which you don't belong, it's important to be very careful and make sure you understand the significance of that artifact in their context, not to talk down to people or other them, etc. And in this area, western feminists don't have a great track record.
Regarding a post-racial society, and I hate to put it this bluntly, but if you thought that just voting for an African-American man made you and this society post-racial, then you need to think again. Being anti-racist requires introspection, effort, and a desire to be unafraid to voice your opinion openly. File under: work.
By way of contrast, at meeting today we discussed ways to be more environmentally friendly. A fellow Friend mentioned that when she was contemplating the matter herself, before she realized the irony, the first thing that came to mind was, "I wonder what I can buy to reduce my carbon footprint".
Strong women are not scary to me, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone considering how much I hang out here. :)
As for what I am writing, I will risk self-promoting once more, if only to provide a link to a personal anecdote that proves conclusively that Pharmaceutical companies are not out to voluntarily help those without insurance coverage, regardless of their advertisments to the contrary.
Another Health Care Horror Story: Big Pharma Edition
No there isn't. By your logic, only people living in societies that have FGM should comment on it.
I'll say this much: I'll take Naomi Wolfe in spite of her faults over a lying, deranged Holocaust revisionist like Phyllis Chesler anytime. Chesler claimed in her book "The New Anti-Semitism" that India and Burma are Arab countries. She also wrote an article claiming that "true feminists" should support the war in Iraq (as if the war had anything to do with feminism). Where did this bright, shining piece of lunacy appear?
Playboy -I bullshit you not!
Loved these:
Stuff What Boys Can Do
and
What makes a "birth defect" a defect? on Cester Semenya and the way we conceptualize intersex.
Thanks for the link love.
You may also love like this post as well entitle
All My Trans Skinfolks Ain't My Trans Kinfolks
http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2009/09/all-my-trans-skinfolks-aint-my-trans.html