feminist blogs

Young women are apathetic. They're not feminists. They don't call themselves feminists. They don't know what feminism is all about.

"That," says Jessica Valenti, "was all we ever seemed to hear - from colleagues, from the media. And we just thought, who are they talking about? I know young women all over the place who do feminist work. We wanted to show that young feminists aren't crazy or mean, but cool. A lot of feminism has this academic basis that can be very off-putting. And so we thought, let's put something out there that's not dry and academic, but lively and fun."[...]

And it's not alone. In the two years since feministing started, there has been an explosion of feminist blogs, including many that have a highly professional edge, and a large, loyal readership.[...]

Now though, the third wave (a movement often dismissed as a myth) has gone online. At feminist blogs you can find women writing on a bewildering range of topics, be it the perilously high caesarean rate in India, the dearth of abortion clinics in South Dakota, or the human rights record of the Philippines' president, Gloria Arroyo.

Some of the most popular blogs include Bitch PhD, the F-word, Pandagon, AngryBlackBitch, MindtheGapCardiff and Gendergeek. A recent estimate put the number of feminist blogs at 240,000, but, given that this posited the number of "active" worldwide blogs at 4m (some figures put it as high as 27.2m), and the proportion of women who are self-described feminists at 10% (a British survey this month produced a figure of 29%) the true figure could be much higher.[...]

There has also typically been a suspicion that if younger women are interested in feminism it's of a specific variety: what's sometimes called "girlie" feminism. The mainstream media tends to highlight young feminists whose outlook is "sexy". Those, for instance, who frame pole dancing as a feminist act.

Go online, though, and you are immediately struck by the huge variety of outlook and opinions. This is most evident at the twice-monthly Carnival of Feminists, set up by British blogger Natalie Bennett, who also runs Philobiblion, a women's history blog. Each carnival (usually on the first and third Wednesday of the month) is hosted by a different blogger, who invites people to contribute articles on current events or a general theme: "radical feminism", for instance, or "1970s feminism and what it means today".[...]

"People are always saying the feminist movement is dead, but I've never believed that," says Rebecca Traister, a feature writer for Salon.com, and one of the founders of Salon's own women's blog, Broadsheet, which launched last year. "What I think is that it's taking a modern, technological form, and that, from now on, feminism will be about a multiplicity of voices, growing louder and louder online."[...]

Nina Wakeford, a sociologist at the University of Surrey, is cautious about blogging's influence. "I think the way blogs can provoke debate is useful," she concedes, "but it isn't clear how much they feed into activism. In the past, there was a clear role for women's organisations as regards representations to government, but I'm not sure whether women can affect public policy through blogging. Just who are they representing?"

This last question is interesting. As with second-wave feminism, this online movement is open to the accusation that it simply represents privileged white women. "Blogging is still somewhat limited, of course," says Georgia Gaden, a postgraduate researcher who has studied feminist blogs, "because although we take our access for granted, many women, globally, don't have that luxury."

That said, these blogs do redress the balance by highlighting global stories. And the Carnival of Feminists is trying to reach as many women as possible, with the most recent carnival held on the Indian blog, Indianwriting. "That was our fourth continent," says Bennett, "and I'm looking for an African blogger, so that we can reach our fifth."

The links between feminist blogs and activism are nascent - in January there was a "blog for choice" on abortion, and earlier this month saw mass blogs on street harassment and sexism - but they look set to grow. And for now, the sites provide both an insight into the strength of feeling among young feminists, and a much-needed alternative to mainstream women's magazines. If a young woman asked her about feminism, says Gaden, a blogosphere is the first place she'd direct her to. Traister agrees. "There are so many authentic voices out there that it's really invigorating. It just goes to prove that the internet isn't just for accessing porn!"

In their own words: The best of feminist blogs

Later this month, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is inducting Blondie. This makes Debbie Harry - only the 43rd woman out of nearly 500 people total - to be honoured by the rock hall since it opened in 1983. Hmm. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame claims you don't have to have a penis to get in ...
March 14, Ann, Feministing

The Mexican government is taking a stand against the objectification of women by running commercials that star blow-up sex dolls ... Interesting. So do I not like the ads because: 1) President Vicente Fox trivialises the murders of over 400 women in Ciudad Juarez, as well as recently referring to women as "washing machines with two legs", or 2) inflatable sex dolls scare the bejesus out of me?
March 10, Vanessa, Feministing

We should be under no illusion that the sexist attitudes that underpin (gender-based) violence are as deeply entrenched as ever. The radical notion that men should get consent before having sex has elicited a bizarrely hysterical response over at the Daily Mail, a newspaper that has the audacity to accuse feminists of being hypersensitive.
March 8, Emma, Gendergeek

Time magazine reports that colleges across the country are now offering more classes on pornography ... Whether we like it or not, porn is everywhere, so why shouldn't it be probed and questioned and studied? Maybe porn can be just as fun and educational as it is degrading. And by dissecting it in a thoughtful way, we can take back its power.
March 28, Sarah Elizabeth Richards, Broadsheet

Social conservatives are pretty damn wishful ... they are also ethnocentric and culturally homogeneous in their thinking. To assume that having a parent stay at home is universally beneficial is intellectually lazy ... my mother stayed at home. She was also a demented individual.
March 22, AngryBlackBitch

JIN THE EMCEE TO HOST WEBCAM RAP BATTLE

Get ready to enter into the next level of online freestyle battling! Starting March 1, legendary battle rapper Jin the Emcee (106 & Park Hall of Fame & 2-Time FightKlub World Champion) will begin hosting the first ever webcam rap battle, entitled “Spitcam”, exclusively on LiveDigital.com.

Over the last few years, more and more emcees have begun battling for supremacy via cyberspace. Two emcees would first each record an audio clip of themselves lyrically destroying their opponent, and people would then vote to decide which emcee they believe deserves the victory. Now Spitcam is taking it to a whole new level by introducing the first ever “web-cam freestyle battle.”

Hosted on the new media website, LiveDigital.com, contestants will battle to win the favors of the LiveDigital community. They will be able to promote themselves using the site’s powerful digital broadcasting tools, allowing worldwide participation in the contest. LiveDigital will award $1000 every month to the winner of the tournament.

LiveDigital will begin holding open calls starting April 1, and the first tournament begins May 1. Interested contestants should check out the Spitcam profile at http://spitcam.livedigital.com for more information. Spitcam is organized collectively by Crafty Plugz, Catch Music Group & Livedigital.com.

March is going out like a crazed lion. The Final Four has offered excitement at the level of delirium, while off the court the dark underside of intercollegiate athletics had found numerous modes of expression pointing to levels of madness of another kind.

Although the three cases examined here are considerably different in both seriousness and consequences, they are intricately interrelated. All three point to the incompatibility of intercollegiate athletics and the educational mission of the university, as well as the ways in which the university has been corrupted by the big business of intercollegiate athletics. The culture of privilege and exception surrounding athletic programs, departments and personnel has become deeply ingrained in university life.

The first and least egregious case involves Indiana University, the institution once dominated by its basketball coach, Robert Knight. In search of a new Mr. Knight, IU has turned to Oklahoma, where Kelvin Sampson has produced a winning program -- and amassed an envious record of a reported 550 recruiting violations currently being investigated by the NCAA.

No doubt the upside here is that Sampson has demonstrated an ability to attract good players, and through this investigation he should learn how to better hide the violations. This is the good news for Indiana.

Hiring someone under this kind of cloud sends the message that coaching integrity is something that is not all that important, or at least not as important as winning. If the IU case is tainted, then what can be said about the hiring of Bobby Huggins as the new coach at Kansas State University? The baggage carried by Huggins makes Sampson's look like an overnight case.

Huggins has been coaching for 24 years. He spent the past 16 years at the University of Cincinnati, where he took his teams to March Madness for 14 straight years.

The fact the graduation rates for Cincinnati's basketball team under Huggins were among the worst in the nation doesn't seem to matter. The fact that Huggins was arrested for drunken driving two years ago and that his firing at Cincinnati resulted from an accumulation of off-court offenses and questionable on-court machinations seems not to matter, either.

Kansas State, like so many other athletic programs, is looking for a winner, and Huggins has established himself as a consistent winner on the court.

Kansas State President Jon Wefald said that America is a country that always gives people an opportunity to fit in and start over again. "What we have here today is a coach who can do a great job as a coach and recruiter, and do a good job of bringing in student-athletes that are going to go to class and graduate." The latter comment qualifies as delusional and the president was lucky he didn't choke to death on it.

One report indicates that the announcement of Huggin's hiring came after the university president first listed any number of significant academic achievements within and by the university. Whether this provided enough cover is doubtful and probably fooled no one except perhaps President Wefald.

The third case involves the university that is reputed to have one of the best academic environments in the nation, and one that demands much of its athletes. Some even claim that at Duke the term "student athlete" is not an oxymoron.

Today Duke is dealing with an ugly incident involving a rape at a party attended by many lacrosse team members. The specifics of the case are not yet known, although one university official said that there is no doubt the rape did take place and that the party was fueled by alcohol. The lacrosse season has been suspended and the team members are under police investigation.

A number of things are worth noting about the Duke case beyond the specifics of the rape case itself. First, team members have not been forthcoming with information about the night in question and police have described them as uncooperative. Second, there has been almost no public comment from the coach of the team, Mike Pressler, who has been head coach at Duke for more than 20 years. Third, 15 members of the 47-man lacrosse team have been previously charged in cases, primarily underage drinking and drunken behavior. Fourth, the case has a racial component as the woman is black and all but one of the 47 players is white.

Student protests have taken place on campus accusing the Duke administration of not acting forcefully enough and directing anger at what some see as a conspiracy of silence by the players. The racism inherent in the case has also been an object of the student protests.

While many on the Duke campus thought this would be a week in which their primary athletic concern would be the appearance of their basketball teams in the final four, instead they are caught in a maelstrom created by another athletic team. One group of students drafted this message to the university president: "It is our impression that the University is cultivating and sustaining a culture of privilege and silence that allows inappropriate behavior to plague the campus."

This is a message appropriate to many campuses across the nation where intercollegiate athletics has become the wild elephant that no one seems to know how to tame or control. That is the unspoken meaning of March Madness.

Update April 1: The NYT today published a story discussing the alleged culture of privilege and entitlement surrounding Duke's lacrosse team.

This is The Count writing for The Countess who cannot get to the computer right now.

The last song (during the credits) of the March 30th, 2006 Without a Trace episode is, Reason to Mourn by Ben Harper. It is from the album Both Sides of the Gun. I'm happy to help my Without a Trace fans who have asked me to find this song,.

For regular readers of The Countess, she has not felt like blogging recently but she promises to blog soon.

Two Alabama legislators have introduced bills that would ban almost all abortions in the state, except those performed to save women's lives.

The bills are similar to legislation banning abortion that passed in South Dakota last month and was signed on March 6 by Republican Gov. Mike Rounds.

"I thought if South Dakota can do it, Alabama ought to do it because we are a family-friendly state," said state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, who has introduced a bill in the Senate that would even ban abortions in cases where a woman became pregnant because of rape or incest.

"I don't think you need to penalize the unborn child when something like that happens," Erwin said.