Community hubs

This is the global Feminist Blogs aggregator. It collects articles from many smaller community hubs within the Feminist Blogs network. For stories from particular places, groups, or other communities within our movement, check out some of these sites.

March 2006

Bitch PhD.: “Why I Write Not Of Men” by Pseudo-Adrienne, at Pseudo-Adrienne's Liberal-Feminist Bias 11:42 pm / 31 March 2006

And I don't blame her considering how every time one (usually women) starts a discussion about women's issues, some whiny little guy with a bloated sense of male-entitlement to dominate everything and trivialize women's voices and experiences, squeals something along the lines of "but it happens to men too...women do that too...what about us guys...you're being a manhater unless you allow us guys to take over the discussion and define it...feminism and feminist women hurt my fee-fees and made my penis shrink...waa-waa...I want to be the focal point of discussion even if it has NOTHING to do with me!" Whether it's conscious or subconscious, these sexist or closet sexist guys like to diminish the relevance of women's world-views and the systematic misogynist shit we put up from politicians, employers, the academia, guys in general, and the whole fucking world in general. This systematic misogyny is even worse for women of color, Queer women, young women, and women of lower socioeconomic status. And if you're simply a confident woman who doesn't lay down and take shit from our patriarchal/androcentric/heterocentric society, then oh hell, are you in for a shit-storm lecture about how you're a "bitch" who won't get a husband (who the fuck wants one anyway?!). It's about male privilege and male sense of entitlement to dominate and control everyone and everything. And mostly it's about marginalizing women, silencing and devaluing us, our voices, our experiences, our opinions, sugar-coating and shamelessly making light of the subtle and not-so-subtle sexist shit women and girls endure, and diminishing-- nay, denying our agency as independent beings who should NOT cater to the whinings of patriarchy and its whiny little closet sexist guys in tow. And it just screams of the sexist/misogynist stereotype that women's sole purpose in life is to pet and soothe the male's fragile and childish ego. Nurture and pet that my ass! Anyway, Bitch PhD., you're on....



Anytime any women get together to have a conversation about women's problems, there's always a man there to say, "That happens to men, too!" or "You just want to take away what we have!" or "You have no idea how your feminism makes me feel!" Men who say these things are not feminists. Why do we still listen to them? Why do we bother letting them catch us up in stupid arguments about whether it's worse to be forced to have babies or to be forced to go to war? No one's drawing any comparisons, sweetheart. We're just dealing with these women's issues right now, you see, and if you'd like to help us solve these problems, please do. If you want to go solve the problems of the dominant culture, you're welcome to do so any time of any day. Most men have had the luxury of dealing with their own goddamned problems for, oh, at least 5,000 years.



When feminists get together online or in person to talk about our problems, the focus is on us. If we decide to deal with a different or more specific group's problems, you can bet straight white men's problems are not on the emergency to-do list. We might talk about men of color or gay men or impoverished men, but for some reason, straight white bourgeois men rarely take up a lot of our activist time. Some of us feminists happen to be straight white women who are involved sexually with straight white men. In my love life, I do care for a straight white man and we treat each other with complete respect. In my work, I deal all the time with straight white men, and I treat them all with exactly the respect with which I treat everyone else. But in my activist life, when dealing in abstracts, I don't think, "You know who desperately needs my help today? Straight white dudes."



When men derail a conversation about feminism, they are not interrupting a conversation in which privileged little girls are sitting around bitching to hear our own voices or even to solve our own problems, necessarily. They are often interrupting a conversation in which we are concerned with the least fortunate among us, the ones who have to struggle to get through a day because of who they are. When we talk about abortion rights, it's not because each of us desperately wants to have an abortion. It's because we know that the people who suffer most from abortion bans are almost always poor women of color who don't have anything like reasonable representation in government.



Anyone who has really suffered learns to comfort themselves by thinking, "And yet others have it worse." It is the ugliest of bourgeois privileges to burst into a conversation about discrimination to talk of your own dilemmas, because, somehow, the most privileged person in the room always gets the floor while the others are expected to stand back and say, "Perhaps I've been selfish." It's what they have been told their whole lives, so why should they expect better, even in a "feminist" environment?[...]



The thing that I always must keep in mind is that no matter what happens to me, no matter how many abusive men I know or sexist guys I have to face in my career, I don't have to worry about walking down the street. The most upsetting thing I've ever "come out" about to my conservative parents is that I've chosen not to marry or have my own children. I may not be able to afford fancy rich women's clothes or tanning vacations, but I can make my rent.



[...]To interrupt a conversation about the struggles faced by an oppressed group is to become the oppressor. As someone who has never had to walk down the street afraid that my haircut will get my ass kicked, as someone who's never been refused a job for not being the right color, as someone who's never faced losing the love of everyone I know just for being who I am, I do not have the right to derail others from talking about these issues, no matter what my own problems are. In fact, it's my job as a feminist to help ensure that a safe space for those conversations exists. It is not my fucking job to ensure at all costs a space for a more dominant culture to discuss their struggles. There is a reason that Blac(k)ademic and Angry Black Bitch and brownfemipower don't sit around talking about how awful straight white men and straight white women have it. We already have representation in newspapers, the magazines, most of the internet, the government, and every public space in America. Do we really need our problems represented in every venue on the planet?



Is it that hard for men who don't care about women's problems to just let us talk? I am delighted to see that so many of the men who read this blog do seem genuinely to care about women's lives. They listen, they ask, and they have in the past listened and asked and read and thought. Thank you for recognizing that women do need to hold conversations about women's issues. I know you already know why I don't post about men.
Couldn't have said it better myself. This is why women in feminist communities throughout the internet need to stop wasting bandwidth worrying about bringing the boys into the discussion and making special room for them (seeing how they just own just about everything else in the world). Until guys revoke their male privileges that say they can interrupt and derail discussion about women's issues because of the "what about the men...you can't have a discussion unless it's 100% about men and defined by men, 99.9% won't even cut it!" attitude they've been fed all of their lives keeps coming out, and embrace feminism, and actually SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP AND LISTEN-- I MEAN REALLY LISTEN, COMPREHENSIVELY-- TO WOMEN AND VALUE US AS EQUALS, then quit fucking worrying about them, and kick them off of the threads if they keep fucking them up! Women have catered to the whinings of sexist men for too long. SO STOP IT!

Nasdaq-100 women’s final by Diane, at The Dees Diversion 11:31 pm / 31 March 2006

Udachi, Kuzzy!

Young Women, Third Wave Feminism, and Feminist Blogging by Pseudo-Adrienne, at Pseudo-Adrienne's Liberal-Feminist Bias 10:36 pm / 31 March 2006

Via Amanda of Pandagon, a very interesting article from 'The Guardian' about young women, third wave feminism, and feminists in the blogosphere...

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


It is up to us Third-Wave-Feminists to show that feminism is for everybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, religion/spirituality or lack thereof, sexuality/sexual identity, educational credentials, and gender/sex. It's now time for young women to take back feminism's message, its purpose, its image, its voice, its connotations, its goals for women and girls and the world. Society has fucked up and sabotaged feminism and feminists' message and words for FAR TOO LONG. TAKE BACK THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT AND ITS MESSAGE!

NY Congresswoman pushes for a crack-down on so called “crisis pregnancy” centers by Pseudo-Adrienne, at Pseudo-Adrienne's Liberal-Feminist Bias 9:26 pm / 31 March 2006

Of course anti-choicers view women as dumb sheep who are easily manipulated by images of fetuses, pro "slut-punishing" rhetoric, "pregnancy and childbirth are always 100% safe and an effortless walk-in-the-park" lies, and religious "Jeebus wants to be a sperm-incubator" shit. So called "crisis pregnancy" centers are run that way. On the outside they give the false impression that they're friendly, pro-women's reproductive choice, and unbiased. Hell, even Planned Parenthood provides counseling on adoption, 'how to have a healthy pregnancy and baby' and 'how to be a good parent and meet your children's needs'! And so does the National Abortion Federation . Counseling at a "crisis pregnancy" center pretty much adds up to a "you were a slut, now it's time to repent for Jeebus, learn how to knit baby clothes, and pay for your naughty, naughty ways" lecture. (Of course, there's no such lecture for the guys who are half-responsible for these pregnancies, remember "sluts get pregnant all on their own-- it's 'G*d's' punishment,"--rights?--sarcasm.) Anyway, it's false advertising all around and an insult to women, our moral agency, our intelligence, and our right to be autonomous human beings--not fucking sperm-incubators for some fucknut religious-fascists misogynist agenda! And it's outright terrorism against women! Thankfully (via Vanessa at Feministing ) a wonderful Congresswoman named Carolyn Maloney has caught on to what's going on at these centers and seeks to put a stop to it, with the support of the ACLU...



[...]Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat who represents parts of Manhattan and Queens, introduced legislation yesterday aimed at cracking down on so-called crisis pregnancy centers, which are operated by anti-abortion groups and encourage pregnant women to consider other options.



"It seems to me they're purposely trying to confuse people," Ms. Maloney told The New York Sun. "If you're a pro-life group, put out a banner that says, 'pro-life counseling.'"



Ms. Maloney said the counseling centers draw women in by using names and signs that are intended to cause confusion with Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. "The centers do not provide abortion services. They only offer anti-choice coercion," she said. "Women I've talked to are just unbelievably shaken by it. One said they closed the door and wouldn't let her get out."



Ms. Maloney's bill would require the Federal Trade Commission to adopt rules to prohibit any person from advertising "with the intent to deceptively create the impression that such person is a provider of abortion services if such person does not provide abortion services." The legislation defines "abortion services" to include drugs and surgery to terminate a pregnancy, as well as referrals for such services.



Ms. Maloney said the bill was crafted to avoid infringing on free speech. "We're very careful and worked with the ACLU so that the ACLU has endorsed it," she said.



The director of the Washington legislative office of the ACLU, Caroline Fredrickson, joined Ms. Maloney at a press conference yesterday announcing the legislation.[...]


Best of luck to the Congresswoman and the ACLU in putting a stop to this psychological terrorism against desperate women. The last thing these women need are a bunch of rabid anti-choice/contraception Stepfordwife harpies and religious zealots verbally and emotionally abusing them during a pregnancy they're trying to decide whether or not they want to continue. See Planned Parenthood's site for more on these absurd and deceitful "crisis pregnancy" centers, and the anti-women's-reproductive-freedom and fascist religious agenda behind them.

Jin the Emcee is back by Jenn, at reappropriate 8:33 pm / 31 March 2006

I got the following in an email, prompting me to wonder how exactly I got on these people's listserve in the first place. Has this blog really gained enough notoriety, or have I merely been indexed by enough search engines?

Anyways, it seems that Jin the Emcee will be hosting a webcam-based freestyle-battle starting May 1st. Interested parties should check out the LiveDigital website.

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.

For women and girls who *UNFORTUNATELY* live in a Red State by Pseudo-Adrienne, at Pseudo-Adrienne's Liberal-Feminist Bias 8:26 pm / 31 March 2006

This, in "honor" of all of those assbackward, misogynist, patriarchal, pro-forced-birth Red State Legislatures (my state being one of them). That's right, my Red State sistas. First the destruction of reproductive freedom, tomorrow-- state mandated burka dress code to keep us bitches in line. And of course they won't stop at abortion. Next contraception ( actually it already is under attack ), arresting women for having miscarriages, dissuading women from going to college and pursuing careers because there are "too many girls in them and it's scaring away all of the good ole boys," blurring the line between Church and State even more (if that's even possible), and maybe even women's right to vote because women outnumber men by a slim majority and that's "too emasculating" for the psycho-Christian, patriarchal menfolk in the Legislatures to handle. Welcome to * Pax Talibana Americana.* (Graphics from Tennessee Guerilla Women .)

A Month of Madness On College Campuses by Richard C. Crepeau, at PopPolitics.com 6:54 pm / 31 March 2006

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.

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Without a Trace, March 30th by The Count, at The Countess 5:58 pm / 31 March 2006

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.

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Healthcare, Suicide, & Unprincipled Democrats by Egalia, at Tennessee Guerilla Women 5:45 pm / 31 March 2006

Someone from the Governor's office called me the other day and asked if I would sign a petition of support for our Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen. I said, no, I can't do that, cause Phil Bredesen cut two hundred thousand people off the healthcare rolls and severely restricted benefits and access for hundreds of thousands more. Charles and Donna Primm are two more reasons why I won't be

Skipping Towards Talabama by ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES 5:41 pm / 31 March 2006



Via feministing.com, I learned that two legislators in Alabama want to join in with all the fun the South Dakotan legislators are having:

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.

No, we shouldn't penalize embryos. Let's just add further torture of the woman who was raped. This is yet another example of the Rapist's Fatherhood Initiative.