feminist blogs

Super Bowl Sunday is over, but the advertisements live on around the internet. The misogyny certainly rolled; my fav is Dodge Charger's Man's Last Stand, which you can read a great Feministing commentary summing up. But since we've been chattering about Focus on the Family's Tim Tebow ad for a while now, I'll weigh in on that (hopefully) one last time.

The ad was surprisingly cutesy and innocuous (if also vague and confusing), but Michael Jones over on the Gay Rights blog writes that even though it turned out not to spell out the extreme anti-choice message FoF is famous for, CBS was still wrong to air the advocacy ad. From the beginning, Michael's concern was the organization behind the ad, a homophobic organization that calls same-sex marriage a perversion and thinks queer people will "destroy the Earth." The founder of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, has also suggested that abortion had a hand in 9/11.

With the content as aired, what still bothers me is the pesky little double standard that never went away -- in the past, CBS wouldn't add a United Church of Christ ad in support of diversity. Oh, wait, how convenient: once the network began taking heat for accepting an ad from an anti-choice, anti-queer group, they discovered policy had changed. Even Focus on the Family didn't know there had been an explicit policy change, as Dana Goldstein reported at The Daily Beast, quoting a FoF spokesperson: "It was only last week that they [CBS] indicated that they changed any policy." But, gosh, you already knew they were running your ad.

If you follow the commercial's goal and go to Focus on the Family's website, you can see a follow-up to the ad, where Mr. and Mrs. Tebow talk about praying for "Timmy," promising God they would raise him to be a preacher man to fight for aborted fetuses. Pam Tebow urges pregnant young women to go to (lying) crisis pregnancy centers, who will "encourage" them to make God's "choice." Bob Tebow tells women outright, "Don't kill your baby."

I truly appreciate one commentor's thoughts on Jezebel: "What bothers me is that the women who did not make it through a high-risk pregnancy can't come speak to us about that decision. ... Of course a success story means your decision was right - but those who weren't so lucky, are they satisfied with that outcome? Would they do it differently? We'll never know, will we? "

While I respect Pam's individual decision not to have an abortion, I also kind of think, how dare she and her husband tell other women what to do?

I don't respect the Tebow's decision to give support to an anti-choice organization, and thereby give support to taking away a woman's right to choose. It doesn't matter how overtly mild the ad on CBS was: Focus on the Family's intent is to turn back Roe v. Wade. Supporting them doesn't mean being pro-life; it means being anti-choice. If a woman in Pam's situation -- already a mother to four children, facing a life-threatening pregnancy -- chooses to have an abortion and not risk being taken away from her kids, that seems pro-family and pro-life to me. Who has the right to condemn or deny her choice?

Photo credit: acaben

Everybody must have heard by now about the nasty remarks made by the former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo about his desire to see the literacy tests for prospective voters brought back as a legal practice. You have to be an obtuse, illiterate racist in order to fail to realize that these vicious literacy tests were used as a tool of excluding black voters from expressing their political will.

However, I believe that something good can be rescued from this practice. Let's administer literacy tests to politicians aspiring to high elected offices. If somebody had thought of this before, a simple literacy test could have saved us eight horrible years with George W. Bush.

P.S. We were going over new vocabulary in my Spanish Intermediate II class. I don't allow students to speak English in class, so when they had to remember what the word "analfabeto" ("illiterate") means, many of them were stumped. One student came up with the following great definition of the word: "Es Presidente Bush!" ("It's president Bush!"). Immediately, everybody understood the meaning of the word.

Silly Site o' the Day

I've been browsing Amazon for suggestions for a St. Valentine's Day gift for my husband. One of the first two recommendations Amazon gave me was the curious product you see on the left. I have absolutely no idea what in my shopping history with Amazon could have given them the idea that this is a good recommendation to give to me.

Another question I have is how this is a good gift for St. Valentine's Day, of all possible festive occasions. If a man is getting a gift for St. Valentine's Day from his partner, this surely must mean that he has an access to . . . erm . . . the real thing. Even though the real thing is not a vibrating one. So why would he need a "Vibrating Deluxe Masturbator"? Maybe I'm not enlightened enough to get the point of this. Also, it's kind of annoying that when I checked out the "For Her" section of Valentine's gift recommendations, no women-friendly suggestion was made to me.

I wonder if any male is actually getting this pricey gift for St. Valentine's Day this year and what his reaction will be.

I sincerely hope my blog doesn't get tagged as pornographic again because of this post (as happened with this post.) My interest in this device is purely academic. It's bad enough that now I will not be able to blog while administering an exam in one of my classes tomorrow. The students might misunderstand the intellectual curiosity that motivated me to post this and include this particular picture.

After years of grad school penury and a gruelling two-year-long job search process, I finally have a permanent academic postion and can indulge in my love of periodicals. Here are the journals and newspapers I subscribe to:


The Nation magazine is my absolute favorite. It is an example of truly superior progressive journalism. The Nation comes out every week and I practically dance around my mailbox every Monday, waiting for it to arrive. The writing style of The Nation's journalists is really good. After the feeble attempts at writing that come out of the so-called journalists writing for The New York Times and Washington Post, the style of The Nation's contributors is a breath of fresh air.

The articles address the most pressing political, social, economic, and cultural concerns. Last week's issue, for example, had (among other great things) a really good article by Sasha Abramsky on the current crisis in California. It finally helped me understand what is going on in that state and why it is falling apart. My favorite journalists who regularly contribute to The Nation are Alexander Cockburn, Katha Politt, Naomi Klein, and others.

At the end of every issue, there are very good reviews of interesting books of cultural studies, literary criticism, history, philosophy, etc.

A Kindle subscription to The Nation costs next to nothing, so I recommend you at least give it a try. Keep in mind, however, that the Kindle edition doesn't have the beautiful cover art, the great crossword puzzle, and the hilarious classifieds. For this reason, I overcame my Kindle-dependence and this year switched from a Kindle subscription to a paper version of the magazine.



El País is the leading daily newspaper in Spain. I started subscribing to it a couple of months ago and can say that it was a fantastic choice. Spanish journalism is truly superior to its US equivalent. It tells you a lot about the sorry state of the US print journalism when I always go to El País for the news on the events in the United States.

The most prominent Spanish and Latin American writers regularly contribute articles to El País. Juan Goytisolo, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rosa Montero, Almudena Grandes, Antonio Munoz Molina, Juan Jose Millas, and many other bestselling authors publish their articles in this fantastic newspaper. The equivalent of this would be seeing articles by Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates in The NY Times every single day. Instead, NY Times regales us by badly written inanities from Douthat, Dowd, and Brooks.

Very well-written, progressive, well-organized, El País is also available on the Kindle. The day's issue is delivered to you on the stroke of midnight of the previous day.

The New Left Review is not available on Kindle. However, don't let this prevent you from checking out this great journal. The most prominent philosophers, journalists, cultural and literary critics, and academics write for this journal. Jean Baudrillard, Alain Badiou, Terry Eagleton, Perry Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Franco Moretti, the list of the eminent names that appear on the pages of New Left Review goes on and on. If you want to keep in touch with what these leading thinkers are doing and writing, this journal is for you.

Some people might get scared by the word 'Left' in the journal's title. Remember, however, that the very fact of being a thinker and a philosopher in itself means that you are on the left of the political spectrum. A conservative philosopher is a contradiction in terms.

Narrative is an online magazine of literary fiction available on Kindle. Its mission statement says that "Narrative is the leading online publisher of first-rank fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A nonprofit organization, Narrative is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging readership around the world and across generations. Our online library of new literature by celebrated authors and by the best new and emerging writers is available for free."

I only started subscribing to it recently but the experience so far has been highly enjoyable. The amazing Joyce Carol Oates (whose fantastic, beautifully-crafted short stories I can read all day every day), Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, Amy Tan, Jhumpa Lahiri, and lesser known but still very good authors have published in Narrative. If you want to keep in touch with what is happening with the English-speaking literature today, check out this magazine.


I first subscribed to St. Louis Post Dispatch in order to support journalism in this economically devastated area and to keep touch with what is going on locally.

It turned out that this newspaper isn't half bad. Of course, I have to skip letters from the readers that often exhibit the depths of bigotry I never encounter in real life. The 'Law and Order' section about the local crime is also very depressing. Still, it does the job of keeping me informed about the economic, political and cultural developments in the area.

Of course, I subscribe to the Kindle version in order to save paper and bring down costs. Before Kindle subscriptions appeared on the market, I always felt horrible about taking out a daily because of the obscene amount of paper it wasted. Now I subscribe to two dailies on my Kindle and as soon as I get a raise I am subscribing to Canadian Globe and Mail. Or maybe to The Montreal Gazette. Or both.

Of course, nobody can be all about politics, literary criticism, and intellectual stuff all the time. Even an academic needs to have fun and relax. My way of doing that is detective fiction. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine are sister editions that offer great selections of short stories in the mystery genre.

I also subscribe to them on Kindle, which is beyond cheap, and once again, allows you to save paper.

I haven't seen much difference between these two magazines so far. This is why I subscribed to both. They compliment each other very well and offer stories for all kinds of tastes in the mystery genre.

Of course, give it to an academic to spoil even the most innocent kind of fun. Recently, I have been thinking of taking up a research interest in the mystery genre, so that all this detective novel reading I have done over the years doesn't go to waste.

But more about that in later posts.

by Amanda Marcotte

Warning: spoilers.

I finally got around to watching this movie over the weekend, after watching it basically sink at the box office and wondering if that meant that Diablo Cody had failed to write in a genre that begs for her goofy willingness to overwrite any script or any character.  Well, I can assure you that the box office doesn’t reflect what’s in this movie.  It’s really a fun, inventive spin on the trashy horror flick.  Now, if you’re not generally a fan of horror films, you’re probably not going to like this movie.  It does flout some horror movie conventions, but probably not the ones that horror movie haters would need done away with in order to see it.  It’s still filled with gore and over-the-top evil and tasteless jokes.  But if you were staying away because you didn’t want to watch Megan Fox suck as an actress, rest assured that she is not the one who has to carry this movie.  That honor belongs to Amanda Seyfried, who really can act, and who plays Jennifer’s best friend, who has the anvilicious name Needy. If you were worried that the much-ballyhooed girls kissing scene was nothing but exploitation, I can actually say that it works really well with the plot and feels natural for the characters. 

The question on a lot of minds is, “Did Diablo Cody write a feminist horror film?” And the answer is, “Depends.” There’s no overt political agenda, but there is exploration of parts of young women’s lives that are usually ignored in horror movies to advance the “OMG SEXY GIRLS DIE” plots.  It even tries, in a light-handed way, to subvert the horror movie trope where sexually active women get killed---we see a teenager lose her virginity, and she doesn’t end up dead, but ends up the hero.  So, the Final Girl who survives in most horror movies is clearly marked as virginal, and in this movie, she’s not only not virginal, but her attachment to a sexual relationship is what moves her to act against the monster.  That’s a straightforward subversion of the trope, but arguably, Jennifer’s character isn’t subversive at all---she becomes a demon because she wasn’t a virgin when she is kidnapped and used as a sacrifice in a Satanic ritual, and she works by seducing her victims.  The movie even hits you over the head with this stereotype, flashing the word “succubus” on the screen during the inevitable research period.  That’s a straight up vagina monster, right there---the nightmare of the sexually desiring woman turned monster.

And yet, Cody actually does take a stab at subverting the type.  One, she gives Jennifer a real relationship to her friend Needy, making her seem a little more human, even if most of what you get from her is her post-human phase.  She uses Needy and treats her like shit, but they really do feel for each other in ways that are hard for outsiders to understand.  Because of this, you really start to feel bad that the real Jennifer is gone and replaced by a demon.  In that anvilicious horror movie way, they make the underlying theme of watching a beloved friend drift away and become someone you don’t know work onscreen.  And so the actions Needy takes to kill demon Jennifer are muddled and loving towards the long-gone Jennifer, and the real bad guys in the movie end up being the rock band that sacrificed Jennifer to Satan in order to make it as a rock band. 

Mostly, I just dug the character played by Seyfried, who is cast perfectly.  The blood spattering and weird sexual stuff that characterizes a horror movie is attention-grabbing, and you don’t realize how quietly this character of the nerdy wallflower comes into her own as a grown woman with confidence until the end of the movie.  And that’s probably the biggest subversion---nerdy girls coming into their own is usually a story about how they learned to be attractive to guys, as if that’s the only power a woman can have.  But from the beginning, Needy has a boyfriend and isn’t particularly worried about that kind of power.  The power she gains is to act in the world, to learn to trust her own instincts and not let her friend Jennifer keep telling her what to do and how to be.  But lest you think all that girl power stuff is going to get sentimental, it comes at you on a sea of blood and gore and Cody-style wisecracks.  And a story about a woman learning to act with confidence probably suits Cody’s style more than Juno’s story, which is about a girl learning to lower the emotional walls in a rather dramatic fashion, by having a baby. 

This was originally posted on the AWEARNESS blog

Erica Watson is fat and she isn't afraid to tell you either. In fact, her one-woman show is called "Fat Bitch" and if you attend you'll learn a lot more than just how big she is. You'll learn about her 21st birthday party with a major stripper fail and how she thinks that being a cute fat chick is just too much pressure. "People are always telling me that if I just lost weight, I'd be sooo much prettier." I could see the eye roll from a dozen rows back when I saw the show in November.

Watson and other "new wave" black comics don't "relentlessly rip audience members who sit too close to the stage" the way one might see comedians do on Comedy Central. Now don't read that wrong: if you do sit close to Watson, she just might put you on the spot to ask if you like to date fatties. Her destruction of our fat/size-obsessed society is the foundation for the show, but she goes further...much further.

What I loved most about Watson's show was how feminist the show was, even without uttering the F-word. One segment was about how she had penis envy and the whipsmart conclusion is straight out of hundreds of women's studies dissertations. I laughed and chuckled my way through that bit and almost died laughing at how funny and spot-on her analysis was.

Her race analysis through a character "Super Mammy" was just as brilliant. I want to tell you everything funny about "Super Mammy" but it'll ruin your trip to her show. And if you are in New York, you're lucky because "Fat Bitch" is opening on February 11th.

Watson is brilliant and brilliantly funny. Not bad for a woman who flunked out of her first college. Yes, her analysis is amazing, but don't think that makes the show dull or academic - the attendees at the sold out preview show were hooting and hollering like nobody's business. She is one funny woman.

footnote: The best part of this review is that Erica loved it!

From the Toledo (Ohio) Blade:

Scantily clad dancers were the draw at a downtown men’s entertainment club over the weekend for an event that raised nearly $1,000 for victims of the earthquake in Haiti. * * * Although the billing may be misleading – lap dancing is illegal in Ohio – the intention isn’t.

General Manager Kenny Soprano said Sunday the club donated all the money from the day’s regular $10 cover charge to International Services of Hope, or ISOH/IMPACT, of Waterville. * * *

That’s the amount needed to send a container of relief supplies to Haiti, said Linda Greene, ISOH/IMPACT’s chief executive officer. Ms. Greene said she has not been contacted by the club regarding the event.

The organization is grateful for any donations it receives to aid the people of Haiti.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” she said.

The full article is here.

According to the recipient organization’s website (here), the group has a religious-based mission:

The mission of ISOH/IMPACT is to Reach Out & Serve Others in the name of Christ through disaster relief and development projects at home, across the United States, and around world.

The organization pushes a “financial accountability” message (here):

We believe that each one of us should use whatever gift he has received to serve others (1 Peter 4:10) and that our acts of compassion will touch the hearts of those we serve. Furthermore, we believe that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. (1 Corinthians 4:2)

Next we know, the charity will spin this with a press release describing the women working for the “men’s entertainment club” as using their gifts to “serve others.”

-Bridget Crawford

H/T David Cassuto

Daniel Dae Kim, of Lost, is the first member of the cast to find work after the show’s much-touted May series finale. (And you’re crazy if you’re not watching this show. Last week was mind-blowingly-oh-my-god-they-did-not-just-do-that awesome.) DDK’s going to play Detective Chin Ho Kelly on CBS’ remake of Hawaii Five-O.

And, hey, maybe he’ll even get to speak English, and not pidgin, in this new show!

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