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Hey folks, we'll be taking the day off to enjoy the long weekend full of barbecues and debauchery. We'll resume regular posting on Monday. I'll leave you with one of my old school favorites...
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Please give a warm Feministing welcome to the fabulous Lori Adelman, who will be blogging at the site for the next few weeks while I'm on vacation. More about Lori...
Lori, 22, currently works for the International Women's Health Coalition, blogging for Akimbo, among other communications-related duties. Previously, she worked in the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch in NY, where she is most proud of lending support to a U.S. tour raising awareness about the obstruction of legal access to abortion after rape in Mexico. She has also been involved with the Abortion Access Project in Cambridge, MA, working with healthcare providers to strategize the best ways of providing safe and comprehensive healthcare for women. Lori graduated from Harvard College in June of 2008, where she wrote her senior thesis on highly bad-ass (and highly effective) contemporary student social movements in Chile.
All of us at Feministing are really looking forward to Lori's posts (and I'm really looking forward to a blogging break!) and we're sure you're going to her love her stuff as much as we do. Say hi in comments!
For those who are seeing ridiculous weight loss ads, we're working hard to get them down. Sorry about that folks, and thanks for your patience!
This is what success looks like-my teacher orientation bag, was a condom bag and yes, that is a condom with my name on it.
Yesterday was the first day of my summer class at the National Sexuality Resource Center's Summer Institute and it was awesome. If you don't know what NSRC is or what they do, check them out here, there work is truly amazing. My class is full of superstars, activists, organizers, academics, direct service professionals, writers and hip-hop heads. It is a dynamic group and I am so excited to teach the class. I will post updates on the things we discuss and hopefully get some of the students blogging on the community site as well.
The name of the course I am teaching is called, "I Am Not Who You Think I Am: Identity Politics, Activism and the Internet." I have put together a series of readings on feminism and the internet, technology and identity, racial identifications online and a lot of studies about who is actually online. It is rare I get to totally geek out on internet theory so I am pretty psyched about that.
Some key questions I am asking that I feel you as readers of mine might find interesting include:
- What is the difference between using your own identity online verses being anonymous?
- Do race, class, gender and sexuality differences reproduce themselves online or is the internet a free-space?
- What does privacy mean on the internet?
People have divergent and detailed answers about all those questions, but I think for me the one that always resonates is how do race, class, gender and sexuality difference reproduce online? Many internet theorist talk extensively about how the internet is a free and democratic space, but as feminist bloggers we realize that it is a highly mediated space of privilege that is deeply influenced by market forces. The question is how does that affect what we write about and is it even possible to create social change using tools that are so complicated?
Anywhoo, I am really excited about the class and hopefully all my live-blogging won't bore you!
Congratulations to our own Miriam, #68 on "Top Hot Butches: The 100 hottest butch, masculine, androgynous, genderqueer, transmasculine, studs, AGs, dykes, queers, and transguys." (For those with concerns about how hot lists objectify, I think Sinclair's explanation here is really great.)
Check Jessica out on CNN talking about whether feminism is obsolete! (Can you guess what her answer is?)
At long last, our five year anniversary party pictures! Thanks to Nik for the bad ass shots.
(Just as cool - the one and only Jay Smooth took video of the party as well. We're working on putting that together and getting it uploaded to the site soon!)
Vanessa and I had the opportunity yesterday to meet with Former President Bill Clinton along with a group of fabulous bloggers to discuss his work around the Clinton Foundation including his work with his many global initiatives that deal with climate change, HIV/AIDs, health care, agriculture and education. He answered a series of questions from us on a variety of topics including health care, education, reproductive rights and even a bit on identity politics. Scott has a good post on Clinton's suggestions to push for health care reform and Chris Bowers on the climate change bill being held up currently.
Emily Douglas at RH Reality Check has a nice recap of everything he talked about including his response to her questions about reproductive rights and women.
When I asked what the Clinton Foundation does to promote women's rights and reproductive rights as a cornerstone of global economic development, Clinton observed that the "practice that has worked uniformly across all cultures and religions" to depress the birth rate, the rate of unintended pregnancies, and of abortions, is "universal access to education and universal access to the labor market for women.""Part of the world's instability is rooted in inequality," Clinton observed.
To add to that, his consistent message was for us to push in the places we can actually affect change including on the issue of women's rights. It would have been interesting to hear what he has to say about access to reproductive health care in the United States where pushing where we will be most successful is not always an option.
Finally, it was so interesting to hear him talk about what he feels is the role of identity in politics and what I would call theories of nation building. He asked the question, "how do we build our own identity without making others look or feel bad?" in response to Armando from Talk Left asking, how do we continue to talk about diversity in the current historical moment. He said that the shift in power from oppressed to oppressor to a more interdependent form of state control allows disenfranchised greater access to the means to overthrow regimes, but is difficult to do if the tools are consistently hijacked by what he called "evil." I don't have his direct quotes, but this is what I took from what he was saying.
It was a very interesting experience and I felt honored to be alongside such amazing bloggers.
UPDATE: Another post from Eve at Daily Kos on the obstacles ahead for passing the health care bill and some other observations from the meeting.
I am very happy to report that I will be back in the Bay Area as I have been graciously asked to guest lecture at the National Sexuality Resource Center's prestigious Summer Institute through San Francisco State University. I am teaching a seminar on the role of new media in identity formation, specifically around issues of race and sexuality. I am so honored to be joining an amazing staff. You can definitely expect updates as I teach the class and a Bay Area Feministing happy hour or two.
If you are interested you can find the syllabus here (you have to sign up for an account).
As all of you probably know, we had our five year anniversary party on Friday. It was amazing - thanks in no small part to the incredible amount of work that Vanessa and Samhita put into planning and executing the evening.
I also want to make sure to give props to the wonderful volunteers from Rutgers who ran the registration table, stuffed gift bags, and hauled music equipment - you all rock. In terms of folks volunteering their time, though, we can't thank Feministing intern Marlee enough - not only did she coordinate all of the Rutgers volunteers, she also helped tremendously with planning and even brought the gang cupcakes to keep our spirits up as we got ready the day of. Thanks, Marlee - you are the best!
Big shoutouts also go to our sponsors, who generously gave to make the party as rocking as it was: Babeland, Solstice Studio, KM Stitchery, Early 2 Bed, Tarot Card Reading by Karen, Bluestocking Bonbons, Lunapads, Feminist Press, On the Issues Magazine, Willie Mae Rock Camp, Bitch Magazine, Ice Magazine and Select Vodka.
And of course, the evening wouldn't have been complete with out the kick-ass performances by Murray Hill, Saffire, DJ Tikka Masala, Boy Skout, and an awesome talk from Kathleen Hanna.
We're going to have great pics of the night coming up (thanks Nik!) as well as some post-party highlights. (Like Kathleen Hanna giving us a trophy. For real. Proof of our love of said trophy after the jump.)
