feminist blogs

Last night Ryan Sorba, an "anti-homosexual activist" spoke at Smith College. Sorba, the author of the upcoming book, "The Born Gay Hoax," (yes, seriously) can been seen in action here. The awesome feminists of Smith forced Sorba out after a mere twenty minutes of speaking, when he was drowned out by protesters.

Pam has more.

Thanks to Diana and Anne for the heads up!

In one of our threads, commenter atheistwoman cited an article I was quoted in, writing that I said I "don't post more serious stuff because no one commented." I've seen this repeated elsewhere, so I just wanted to set the record straight - because it drives me insane when people take my quotes out of context. (And this is not a jab at atheistwoman at all, just the nutty game of telephone that is the blogosphere sometimes.)

From the Utne Reader:

Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing, says she’d like to see some of the “less trendy issues,” like poverty and international concerns, get more space in the feminist blogosphere. “But what happens with us is we put that stuff up and no one comments,” she says. “You put up a blog on abortion, and people do.”

I never said we don't post on an issue because it's not "trendy" or because it doesn't get a lot of comments. I was expressing my disappointment in how posts dealing with more serious issues weren't commented on as much as lighter posts. I was criticizing how so-called trendy issues get all of the attention and talking to the reporter about how we could change that. (In our case, we post on everything we think is important, whether we think it will get traffic and comments or not.)

In any case, thanks, and back to your regularly scheduled blogging...

Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the sex worker in the Spitzer scandal, has filed a lawsuit against Girls Gone Wild, which notes that Dupre was underage when she exposed herself on video.

GGW founder and known asshole Joe Francis' response: "But I think it's ironic that she charged Gov. Spitzer $2,000 for sex and she wants to charge me 10 million for taking some naked pictures of her...I feel like I'm getting a raw deal."

Warms the heart, no?

Thanks to Hilary for the link.

It has not exactly gone unreported that the casting of 21 is racist. (One widely linked critique is here. I found another here but I feel like there must be a whole body of WOC coverage of this story that I missed. If I did, my mistake and I will gladly update if anyone brings it to my attention.) Since I read the light but fun book on which it is based, Ben Mezrich’s “Bringing Down the House,” I thought I should add my voice.

It’s not just that the film took a bunch of really interesting Asian characters and made them white. That’s the traditional Hollywood racism. This is much worse. Some folks may have already read elsewhere that in Mezrich’s book, that the team was majority Asian worked to their advantage, so it was important to the plot. But it’s even worse than that.

In the book, Mezrich reports the main character’s own view of the interplay of racist stereotypes and his livelihood: that dealers and pit bosses and casino security are creatures of stereotypes and assumptions, so they only see what they believe. They believe only middle-aged white men count cards; they believe that Asians are all basically compulsive gamblers. In order for the team to effectively make money from the numerical advantage that a rich deck offers the player during a blackjack game, the players had to be able to bet heavily while the shoe was full of face cards; the kind of betting that might raise suspicion. But, Mezrich tells us, in the experiences of this team of Asian professional counters, the casino workers don’t see anything unusual about college-aged Asian males betting like they have all the money in the world to lose. Because their lens is racist.

The book doesn’t put a lot of weight on this, but it is a plot element; and more than that, it’s a critique. So Hollywood, by casting the Asian characters as white, has also erased a critique of racism. So that’s, to my mind, several levels of not okay.

Posting on this at the request of my spouse. At 20 seconds, is that the most transparent metaphor for breasts to sell orange juice? (It might not be so clear if it were not for the voice-over, which contextualizes the images.)

We’re surrounded by the commodification of the female body. The drumbeat is so steady that it’s hard not to tune it out, but it needs calling out every once in a while.

I can see the thinking. Orange juice is a kids’ beverage. Charging a premium requires rebranding. Rebranding requires that they make a sharp break with what people think about orange juice. It can’t be simple and yummy, it has to be sophisticated, sensual … erotic … and, cut to the thinly veiled metaphors for women’s body parts. Not women, not women’s bodies, but women’s body parts.

Some het guy in creative is probably geeking out about how slick this is. But it’s not. It’s annoying.

(While I’m on the subject of ubiquitous women’s bodies as superfluous ornaments: Stop with the “ring card girls.” I don’t need some woman I’ve never met holding a sign with a round number on it; I know what round it is. I’m keeping a scorecard.)

Some bad news via Female Impersonator:

At the beginning of the semester, there was an incident here at Yale involving a "fraternity prank" and the Women's Center where 12 members of the Zeta Psi frat stood in front of the Women's Center chanting "dick dick dick dick" while holding a sign saying "We Love Yale Sluts." Quite the incident.

On Monday, the Executive Committee of Yale College found the members of this group not guilty of intimdiation [sic] and harassment charges. No charges of sexual harassment were ever filed, even though complaints were issued with the Sexual Harassment Grievance Board.

The men also intimidated women trying to enter the center. But I guess that's not harassment, huh? One of the harassed women penned an article for the college paper, noting that she has no recourse to appeal the decision and that "all 12 brothers of Zeta Psi were allowed to read my written affidavit before they wrote their own — 12 iterations of the same collective story." Charming.

Thanks to Kari for the link.