feminist blogs

I recently interviewed Cate LaBarre, a life coach based out of Central New York, on her work -- especially during these difficult times. I hope her words are helpful.

Here's Cate...

How would you describe the position -- "life coach"? And what are some common misperceptions?
The brief answer is life coaches help people move forward in their lives. Usually people seek a life coach because they are stuck. Something is static and they know they want to create movement and don't know how. This might be a special project, reaching financial goals, changing jobs or getting an education, changing something in their environment, improving communication with family and friends, healing from a broken relationship, serving their community, or any number of areas!

I help my clients by providing a sounding board, listening and giving feedback on their ideas or how to get from point A to point B. Sometimes it's to help my clients figure out what point B is! Then I provide the structure and accountability a client needs to move forward. Coaching isn't counseling. I don't give my clients advice, but rather help a client figure out for themselves what the next step needs to be. Coaching is not therapy, which deals with past issues and trauma. A coach may look back with the client to see patterns of behavior; we are where we are because of the choices we've made in the past. Coaching is present and future oriented. It is definitely not hand holding. My clients will tell you that being in a coaching relationship with me is hard work!

Do you have an overall goal as a life coach that you aspire to meet or measure yourself against?
My mission is to assist people in reclaiming their birthright of self-acceptance and unconditional self-love, using emotional education and a structured coaching process. My goal is not so much for me as it is for all of us. Can you imagine a world where everyone was living in their highest integrity, taking impeccable care of themselves and caring equally about the people and world around them? This sounds like a huge aspiration, but truly it is my vision to reach as many people as I can, which is why in addition to coaching one-on-one with people all over the world by telephone, I send out an e-newsletter, write articles for regional journals and teach workshops in the Northeast. I also plan on creating teleclasses (group teaching and coaching by phone) and have a book in progress.

How did you become involved in life coaching? And what are some examples of works you are proud of?
I knew I wanted to be a life coach some time before I actually took the training. I was (still am, but no longer practice) a licensed massage therapist and Reiki master since the mid 1980s, and realized that I am a natural coach. I would ask my clients questions that would challenge their limiting thoughts and beliefs about themselves and the world and caused them to shift their perspective. Usually this meant that they were looking through a disempowering lens and the questions I asked created a sense of empowerment and movement forward for them.

I am an Integrative Coach certified by the Ford Institute for Integrative Coaching. I first met Debbie Ford, the founder of the institute and best selling author, at a workshop at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies (in Rhinebeck, NY). The workshop, called "The Shadow Process," was a life altering, deeply healing weekend for me. When I realized she trained life coaches, I enrolled!

I am proud that I was willing to make a mid-life career change and that I have faith that I am on my path. Coaching is my calling and professional purpose. More than that, I live what I espouse. I work for the institute as a mentor and reviewer for coaches in training and I assist Debbie Ford and her staff in San Diego and in New York.

From your work as a life coach, what are the most common challenges people seek your help with? Is there a common theme or obstacle?
This is a great question. To be successful in business it is important to have a niche market. My niche found me! I have worked mostly with women: an entrepreneur and designer, a dairy farmer, an attorney, financial consultants, social workers, hairdressers, a chiropractor, a salesperson, other coaches, a songwriter and performer, a CFO, an inventor, a private detective and writer, to name a few. And all of them, without exception have had a common challenge. They all had trouble saying NO. They tended to put others' needs first and be at the rock bottom of their "to do" list. By the time they came to me, they were exhausted, spent.

Examples of their complaints include they needed to quit their jobs, leave their partners, sell the farm, or otherwise drastically change their lives. But in all cases what needed to change were their boundaries. They all needed to learn to say NO to others more often and YES to themselves a lot more. Not to say that some of them didn't make a drastic change in their lives, like selling a business, leaving a partner or changing their work, but it all started with making conscious choices and taking full responsibility for those choices. They explored what it means to fully accept and love themselves exactly as they are. This began the process of creating healthier boundaries, which lead to taking much better care of themselves. Once that was in place, they had the energy to look at their lives through the lens of empowerment and create exactly the future they most desire.

Do you feel women often need help in certain areas in comparison to men. Why or why not?
I work with more women then men, probably a ratio of 20:1. This is only my observation of the coaching world, but it seems women are more willing to reach out for coaching than men, unless it is corporate coaching for team building and better employee relationships.

In most cases, women have a lot more on their plates than men. Working or not, they are the center of any household, even one without children. Women are amazing multi-taskers. Even single women not in relationships are more likely to have trouble saying NO because of their ability to care for others and handle everything simultaneously. The educational component of the coaching I do gives women "permission" to put themselves at the top of their lists, finally realizing that if they don't take care of themselves, they won't be around to take care of anything or anyone else! They already have the tools they need because they have been doing it all for these years. Though men are definitely way overstressed in today's world and I know they are in need of just as much help as women, they are less likely to call me for personal coaching. Some of the calls I get for men come from the women who love them!

It's a difficult time for many of us across the country and around the world. What are some everyday things we can all do to keep moving forward amidst all the dreary news and circumstances?
I love the saying by Wayne Dyer -- "If you don't like the way something looks, change the way you look at it." We are headed for a complete turn around in the way we do business, do everything, as a global community. We need to let go of the old paradigm. It's like standing at a padlocked door and pounding on it, knowing full well you'll never get in. Accepting and letting go of our expectations of the way things "should" be takes faith that there is something more, a greater purpose for your life. It takes courage to turn around and look for an open door.

What can we do on a daily basis? Not watch the gloom and doom on the news. Radical, I know. But negativity breeds negativity and we are hearing mostly bad news. I don't mean stick your fingers in your ears and sing, "La, la, la, la..." but temper all the negativity with some empowering thought and action. We are all a part of this mess and we all need to take part in our recovery! Stop complaining and see yourself as part of the solution. Sometimes there are only small things we can do, even if we are secure in our jobs and homes. But we CAN do something. Look around your community, make donations of your time, expertise or money (if you have to think about whether you can afford a donation, you probably can!) Your neighbors, your city, your country, your world needs your talents, your expertise, right now. Nothing feels better than giving to improve another's circumstance, (remembering to take impeccable care of yourself at the same time!) Pay it forward by sharing your gifts and blessings with others.

If someone just found out they lost their job during this economic crisis, what do you think are some helpful first steps that person should take?
Mourn the loss. Grieve it like crazy for a while. Then accept the loss. Face the facts, the job is gone!

Pray for guidance. If you don't believe in God or a divine presence, pray to your higher self -- that wise part of you that has all the answers you need.

Instead of choosing to be a victim, choose the high road. You may not have chosen to lose your job, but you can choose how to respond. Make the decision that every event has a lesson and gift.

Be willing to ask for help! There is support available from your family and friends, I guarantee it. You would be amazed at how grateful people are to be asked for help, not rescue, but a helping hand. And many coaches and counselors from different backgrounds and trainings are willing to take a certain percentage of their clients on a sliding scale or "pro bono," with the commitment that the client will pay it forward when they are back on their feet by sharing their unique talents and gifts!

Kathleen Sebelius will be the Secretary of Health and Human Services according to White House sources. Obama will make the announcement on Monday.

This is a win-win. We get a highly qualified WOMAN, and Phil Bredesen doesn't get to do harm to the nation like he did to Tennessee.

Raw Story reports:

Since Daschle withdrew his nomination, Sebelius – a former Kansas health commissioner who is currently the Democratic governor of a largely Republican state – had been a top contender for the position. But while Daschle was to also head a new White House Office of Health Reform, Sebelius will only become secretary if her nomination is approved by Congress, the administration official said. Someone else will oversee the White House's effort to reform health care, which Obama focused on during his ambitious address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday.

[Governor Sebelius] is the first daughter of a governor in U.S. history to be elected to the same position her [father] held.

Gender Politics News Obama Tennessee HHS Phil Bredesen TennCare Cuts

Lately I've been obsessed with this book. As a New Yorker who watched the Twin Towers burn and collapse from the Brooklyn Promenade, I am sensitive and critical about the use of it in fiction. To my ear, many attempts fall flat, including my own. I was one of the writers commissioned by Brave New World to write a short piece for the first anniversary of 9/11. It premiered with many others at Town Hall in 2002. I sat in the audience, driven insane by anxiety, surrounded by hundreds of people, as the curtain rose. I was so sure I had gotten the right amount of anguish, of humor. But I didn't. The plays that were the most successful dealt tangentally with the tragedy. Those that dealt directly sounded melodramatic. There just wasn't enough distance.

Cut to six years later and Ms. Messud's story of five New Yorkers rings true and poignant, funny and profound. The narrative swirls around a well known journalist and his coterie of daughter, wife, friend and nephew. The time is late spring, early summer 2001. The characters are drawn sharply, incisively. This is Sex and the City, but with a vengeance. I know these people or variations of them. They are confident, ridiculous, and insecure. They are ambitious, brilliant conversationalists, and well educated. The town is its usual chaotic, gorgeous hot stinking mess. The characters are almost adolescent in their desire for renown, to have fun, to make their mark on the world, have great sex.

I've read this book five times in the last year (it was published in 2007), and I've finally figured out why---in the specificity of the characters' transformation after 9/11, Messud brilliantly illuminates the universal. Before and after: irreducible, trite, cliched, yet nonetheless, powerful. It's hard to put into words. It's very easy to map the singularity of my own neurosis from the days that immediately followed; the nightmares--- I dreamt that people were standing outside my bedroom window, discussing how they were going to poison the water supply. Or, simply, a plane crashing into my building. I wasn't the only person dreaming these dreams.

What wasn't so easy to catalogue or articulate was the inchoate sense that nothing would ever be the same again. That we, as individuals, would never be the same again. That New York City would never be the same again. And every time a film or a book would attempt to parse this, put it into words, it fell flat, sounded forced. Until I read The Emperor's Children. I know that people in other cities, other towns, other states were horrified and saddened. But this was outside my bedroom window. This was my backyard. Messud translates this and its mysterious repercussions into a story that is neither exploitative or mawkish, just very, very true and very, very wise.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the next part of The Story of Blog. This series of somewhat navel-gazing posts is Feministe’s contribution to an ongoing conversation in this neck of blogland — a conversation about the nature and ethics of the kind of blogging we do here. This perennial topic was re-ignited by concerns raised by Mandy Van Deven and Brittany Shoot that the emerging structure of what’s known as “the feminist blogosphere” has become problematic and exploitative.

The Feministe bloggers decided that these topics are very much worth discussing, regardless of how we feel about the specific claims and arguments made in Mandy and Brittany’s post. I feel it’s quite overdue, and just as necessary as ever, to investigate and poke at the operation of power and economic distribution of various kinds of resources. Plus, there was one thing we definitely agreed with in their post, the need for and benefits of transparency, which we’ve tried to cover in Part I of this series.

As a collaborative exercise, we asked ourselves a series of questions, about five in all. The answers got so long that we split them up into one question per post.

Although I’m putting this post up, nearly all of the regular Feministe bloggers have contributed, and you’ll see everyone’s name after the cut. Because we all wanted to participate, it’s taken us a while to get this post up. That’s one of the first facts of blogging life that’s important to understand: what we do and the decisions we make are haphazard, because writing can’t sustain any of us materially, we all have day jobs, and we drop in and out of engagement with the blog. Adding to the inevitable complexity of having this conversation, Mandy and Brittany also posted an apology for their original post earlier this week. Like many apologetic follow-ups, it addresses some issues, and raises or exacerbates some others. Because of varying availability, some of our comments below were written before the second round, some of them after.

Question 1: Are women of color who guest-blog or post regularly on larger blogs being tokenized?

Holly: We’ve already talked about transparency. Now let’s cut to the chase. This was one of the critiques leveled by Mandy & Brittany that got the most response. Quite a few women of color bloggers have spoken out on individual blogs. The Big Blogs (including this one) have been largely quiet, but we feel it’s a pretty important subject to discuss — not least because two of us are women of color and because we’ve invited a lot of women of color to contribute guest posts in the past couple years.

My gut reaction to this, just like a lot of other women of color, was pretty much what bfp said: “I think it’s bullshit that ANY white woman would tell ANY woman of color that she’s a token. This is NOT about women of color–and even if they are complete and total 100% Clarence Thomas golden coin tokens–it is NOT the place of ANY white person to question or challenge how ANY person of color negotiates survival in a racist, white supremacist world. Ever. Period.” Yeah, no shit. It’s not really about women of color. It mostly strikes me as yet another case of white feminists using women of color as a football to kick back and forth, playing who’s-the-best-white-ally. Yet another classic racism-avoiding maneuver.

Look, WOCs know when you guys are doing this, when we are just being batted around as ammunition to go after some other blogger you don’t like. It’s blindingly obvious especially when you are the one being loaded and fired like shotgun pellets. Update: Even in the apology, it’s clear that a large part of the authors’ goal was to prove that they are the Good Ally White Women, not like Those Other White Women who are just pretending to be your allies, and really exploiting you. Wait, who are you again? Do we know you? Oh, you are here to play football against the Racist Whites, I get it.

Here’s the thing: this isn’t exactly a mercy mission to speak on behalf of the voiceless oppressed who can only sob wordlessly. Mandy & Brittany chose to speak on behalf of women of color BLOGGERS. You know, bloggers. The people that like to run our mouths off on the internet and get angry in public? It’s not exactly science to see why the response has been vocal, and it wouldn’t have been much research to actually, you know, TALK TO some WOC bloggers about what we think, or ask us co-write on the subject.

Update: This is one thing that I still don’t see in M & B’s follow-up: the idea that they might have done work with, instead of for, WOCs/RWOCs. You might be surprised how simple the answer to “how do I not step all over people’s toes and prove that I’m actually an ally to WOCs” can be. It starts with listening and reading to what WOC bloggers are saying, and educating yourself on the varying issues and positions those bloggers take. It continues by talking and asking questions and engaging, showing that you’re committed. And maybe it eventually gets to the point where you can collaborate WITH women of color to address issues of exploitation, tokenism, colonizing of online spaces. I didn’t see much of that process happen.

Instead, Mandy seems to miss the point of working together instead of as a white woman, alone, commenting about what WOCs are doing, and says “I feel like I’m in a double bind: If I don’t stick up for WOC, I will be seen as a conspirator in and condoning racism, but when I do point out racism then I’m further marginalizing WOC and racist too. That makes me feel confused: Maybe I’m not supposed to speak about any group of which I am not a member to point out injustice? Am I only allowed to speak about and defend my experience of oppression, as though it’s got nothing in common with the oppression of others?” Talk to, engage with, ask if you should, before you speak about. Speak together. That’s all, really. This is anti-racism 101 here. If you don’t get this, you are a little too wet behind the ears as a white ally to start publishing papers about how POCs are oppressed.

I hope we are all totally clear that there is still a hell of a lot of work to do around race and the feminist blogosphere. There are still many women blogging who have been vilified unfairly for speaking the truth about racism and about how women of color are marginalized in this space. It is good that we’re not letting this issue dwindle away quietly; we have to struggle to keep the conversation happening and marginalized voices heard. But labeling a bunch of women of color as “tokens” is not the way to do it, trust me. Look, people of color are pretty damn hesitant to throw those kinds of accusations around. It starts all kinds of fights–between Democrats and Republicans, between reformers and radicals, you name it. This is not a molotov you white people want to be throwing into the mix, because someone who knows a lot more about being racially tokenized is going to grab it, everyone is going to stop, and all our many-shades-of-brown eyes are going to be staring at you.

It strikes me that maybe the original authors didn’t realize they were hurling a belittling insult at a bunch of WOC bloggers when they used the word “token.” Let’s talk about what a token is. Say there’s a group, or a publication, or an elected body, or a workplace. Like many institutions with any degree of authority in the English-speaking world, it’s mostly white. Most anti-racist ideologies agree that this is not so great for fighting racism — at the very least, better representation is needed. Of course, people differ on how much you have to do to change after that, but you gotta at least have some warm bodies. So how do you tell the difference between representation and tokenism?

My answer is pretty simple: tokens aren’t intended to actually have any real effect. They’re just there for show. They don’t really have any power, any real say in what goes on. They’re window dressing. Now, there are many reasons to let yourself be tokenized. I have done it dozens of times. I belong to enough marginalized groups — female (in the sphere of video games especially), trans, POC, queer, multiracial — that some colleagues refer to me as “the triple word score of tokens.” Sometimes we do it to survive, like bfp said. Sometimes it’s because you can actually get more done and make more of an impact, effect more change, than anyone thinks you can. Sometimes it’s just about being able to help one other person get a leg up or a foot in the door. When you’re able to make a difference and start to effect change, that’s where tokenism begins to end and real representation begins. But it’s a very fine line indeed, and I respect people who don’t want to have anything to do with it.

Mandy & Brittany didn’t really go into any of that. I wonder how much they understand first-hand–women get tokenized too, but mostly in heavily male-dominated fields. Maybe they thought they were standing up for the oppressed, but isn’t it a bitch when the oppressed are like “hey, quit using me as a football in this game?” Seriously, we don’t need more champions telling us that we don’t realize we’re being exploited. (Exploited by being able to write whatever we want for larger audiences, via links or guest-posts or regular stints, with no editors telling us what to write or what not to write, I guess.) Didn’t we get over that some time back in the second wave? You know, the whole “you don’t REALIZE it because you’re so NAIVE but the fact that you put LIPSTICK on when you go to a JOB INTERVIEW means you are OPPRESSED, sister, now WAKE UP!” Either in the second wave, or for some people maybe in the second semester of sophomore year. Or the equivalent here in the pubescent blogosphere: 18 months ago when everyone got thoroughly sick of the “lipstick and shaving your legs” flame-wars.

This is not a real conversation about race. It may be the start of a good conversation about attention inequities in online social economies. It was a fairly reasonable call for transparency. But it was not anything like a real conversation about race. It was just another kick of the football back to the other side of the field. We need real engagement, the kind that hurts and makes us vulnerable — because I don’t believe there is any serious, hard-core way to deal with racism that avoids that. Certainly not for me — I am still nursing a fading ulcer from that damn “racism-avoiding maneuvers” post, but I am basically a chicken-shit when it comes to deal with racism online. It’s enough of a fucking nightmare in real life.

Jill: Mandy and Brittany’s accusations of “tokenism” and naivete were among the most irritating and offensive aspects of their post, for all the reasons Holly lays out. M&B have issues with the Big Feminist Blogs (which I assume means Feministing, Feministe, Shakesville, Amptoons and a few others, although who knows since they don’t bother naming names), which is fine — there are certainly a lot of issues worth taking up.

But first they use bloggers of color to make the point that “elite, white” feminist blogs are bad, and now they’re “hurt” that some female bloggers of color haven’t taken kindly to being told that they’re naive tokens pretty much wherever they go or however they write (they’re tokens when they’re linked to, tokens when they guest-blog, and tokens when they’re part of a large group blog). When some WOC bloggers respond basically with, “Hey, I know you’re talking about me, and FYI you’re full of shit,” M&B deflected criticisms by saying it’s “fascinating” that some WOC bloggers think that the post was about them even if it didn’t name them — the point seems to be that maybe these WOC bloggers are making some sort of logical leap in understanding exactly who Mandy and Brittany were referencing. After all, M&B didn’t use their names, so who knows who they were actually talking about?

Jack: So let me be real here: resident bloggers of color at Feministe and the other big feminist blogs are in the minority, and there’s a reason for that - racism. Not specifically racism on the part of the white bloggers who started or dominate these sites, though I ascribe to the racism = power + prejudice model, so like all white people, including the white people I know, like, and even love, they’re racist too in the “racist because we’re all prejudiced and you have white privilege” way though not the “racist because you’re a virulent fucking bigot” way. In the blogosphere, in the feminist blogosphere, and specifically here on Feministe, white voices and white people continued to be privileged. White people have to work and fight less for attention, for legitimacy, for the perks like speaking gigs and jobs and writing gigs and publishing deals that can come out of blogging.

I also am not foolish enough to think that my presence here as a Feministe blogger was not purely based on me being a good blogger. I know that my race has something to do with it. I know that Jill, Lauren, and the other white bloggers here are racially conscious enough to notice the racial skew on Feministe, and I imagine that when considering new bloggers they are probably attentive to whether or not they’ll be exacerbating that skew. Maybe deep down inside bringing me on (and Holly earlier) helped alleviate some of their white guilt. Hey, it happens - they’re white. I’m not going to condemn them for that, nor am I going to condemn them for making a good faith effort to take the whiteness of Feministe down a few notches.

Does all of that have a tinge of tokenism to it? Yeah, I think it does, honestly. But I’d frankly prefer a tinge of tokenism for the sake of including a more diverse set of voices than avoiding any risk of tokenism at all costs and therefore remaining lilly white. In the United States and other white supremicist societies, unless an entity - be it a single blog, or the larger feminist blogosphere, or an organization or conference or whatever - specifically and actively structures itself in a way that keeps people of color in the majority both in general and in positions of leadership, yeah, people of color are probably going to be tokenized to some degree or another.

Could the big feminist blogs restructure themselves that way? Yes, they could. Should they? Yes, they probably should if they want to get REALLY REAL about anti-racism. Do I expect them to? No. Am I going to completely write them off for not doing it? No. Because you know what? We don’t live in a world of political purity, and I’m not going to hold the white bloggers of Feministe and other big feminist blogs to those standards. Being truly anti-racist is extremely important, yes. But for me, that doesn’t overwrite the facts that Lauren, Cara, Jill, and the other white bloggers of Feministe have worked their asses off for this blog; that their voices as women are also marginalized and are also important and should be heard. Yeah, their white privilege has helped them get where they are in the blogosphere, but fuck, my class & education privilege, my able-bodied privilege, my American/Western privilege have helped me get here, too. And while I think that puts the onus on me to own up to my privilege and to do all I can to work against my privilege, I’m not going to take myself out of the game for it. And if I’m not going to, I don’t expect them to, either.

Lauren: It seemed that one of the reasons the white bloggers’ names weren’t named (if the “digital colonialism” post was in fact argued in good faith) was to implicate everyone without actually having to draw the specific ire, and presumably the traffic, of those criticized. Then again, as Kai argues in our comments, Mandy and Brittany did name names, but the only names that were visible in the post itself were women of color, effectively forcing them to address the bungling analysis while letting the real subjects of criticism, white feminist bloggers, off the hook.

As far as tokenism at Feministe goes, I will admit to wanting to diversify the roster whenever it’s time to invite regular writers. It’s not an issue of wanting to assuage my own white guilt, or maybe it is, but that after listening to Feministe’s critics I was convinced that we should do more to get more kinds of voices represented, and tend to ask people to join whose perspectives aren’t exactly like mine. I suppose you could call that tokenism, but a token to me just seems like a warm body there to take up space, an accessory intended to say something explicit about the accessorized. When it comes to race and the feminist blogosphere, I think one funny, astute critique of this frame was in Sylvia’s post, which asserts that there is a tendency by white feminists to view WOC (”it”) as a monolith. This tendency in white women’s feminism to revert to the us-and-them, subject vs. object mindset is incredibly problematic, and moreover, quite telling of where we are and how far we have to go to get specific on some of our anti-racist platitudes and make amends as friends and as feminists. Still, I think one of the strengths of the blogosphere is that it’s awfully hard to objectify a vocal, active participant, so you do get folks who can say, “That looks nothing like my experience,” or, “You’re wrong, I’m pissed off, and here’s why.”

Smita Satiani examines the different levels of privacy or respect accorded to Rihanna and accorded to Chris Brown and then provides a sober assessment of our male-dominated culture's rationalization of terrorism or violence against women. They say, 'we've come a long way baby,' yet the culture continues to operate on the assumption that boys will be boys and violence against women is not terrorism, it's not a hate crime, it's just something we have to live with. Besides, she was probably asking for it. The video clip of Rihanna under the microscope serves as Exhibit A. I recommend reading the entire post. Here's an excerpt:

Holed up in an 8th floor suite of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Chris Brown managed to stay reasonably clear from the majority of press and public following his alleged attack on girlfriend Rihanna. Not until days later did he release a statement of apology, and according to the LAPD, we will likely never see his mug-shot . While it is fair to say Brown’s image has been criticized, his privacy, in many instances, has been preserved.



We cannot say the same for Rihanna. Going where no major news outlet had yet gone, The LA Times revealed Rihanna’s identity as the victim, calling it “fair game.” Immediately, many charged Rihanna to report and prosecute, claiming she had to do it for the “restoration of her own self-esteem.” A week later, a bloodied and beaten picture of her was leaked on TMZ with the appearance of an official investigation photo, probing a LAPD internal investigation . And when I didn’t think it could possibly get any worse, yesterday, the NY Daily News ran a story entitled “Chris Brown learns anger management; could Rihanna use it too?,” inferring that Brown’s violent attack might simply have been a reaction to Rihanna’s temper.

TGW: Battered Rihanna Photo: Hate Crime Evidence

Terrorism Misogyny Chris Brown Feminist Politics Gender News Violence Against Women Hate Crime

NOVELTY AND CHOICE: After having a terrible 2008, Chen Xiao decided to let go, and let China’s netizens decide how she spends her days for the price of a small fee. She won’t do anything she considers illegal or immoral, but she will pick up dinner for your family, or deliver a hot lunch to the needy, or attend your baby’s birth. It’s an interesting experiment in autonomy and the social workings of the internet, and probably the only feel-good story you’re getting from me in this post.

SEXY OTHERNESS: At Muslimah Media Watch, guestblogger Cycads uses an offensive conversation about an “orientalist fantasy” to discuss the feminization and colonization of foreign bodies and lands.

BORDERS, BOUNDARIES AND RAPE: The presence of “rape trees” — “places where Mexican drug cartel members rape female border crossers and hang their clothes” — proves that this brand of sexual violence is officially present in the United States. Mexican and North American bureaucrats mostly deny this is true.

IT’S CALLED A SHIT SANDWICH, AND YOU’LL EAT IT AND LIKE IT: Schools across the country are “cutting budgets” by giving plain cheese sandwiches to children whose parents cannot foot the bill for a hot lunch, “singl[ing] out poor children in the most storied location of school-aged social hierarchies - the lunchroom.” My boy, Ethan, is terrified of being a cheese sandwich kid since they instituted this policy at his school. Sybil and Renee bring the outrage.

PORN COMES CALLING: Also from Renee, some entrepreneurs have offered Nadya Suleman another way of paying her bills — starring in a full-feature porn movie.

FIRST!: Last week King Abdullah threw out a bunch of reform-blocking cabinet members, and among other sweeping changes, named Norah al-Fayez as Saudi Arabia’s deputy education minister for women. She is the first female minister in Saudi Arabia.

ANTI-ABORTION ANGST: The right-to-life movement is feeling some angst about the ineffectuality of their activism so far, especially now that there is a general consensus that the movement is a political puppet in a panned Republican play.

RT @RANDOMDEANNA: Deanna Zandt’s “non-fanatical begginers’ guide to Twitter.” For people like my mom who still don’t understand what Twitter even is, and me, because I can’t explain it to her either.

DENSE: A quick wrap-up and analysis of feminist blogosphere drama that is far less wordy than what you’re about to get from us. Bonus: Read the comments.

Welcome to the first edition of our new series, Ask Professor Foxy. If you have questions, send them to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

Hi Professor Foxy,

I've been married for about eighteen months now, and my husband and I have yet to have intercourse (there may have been a few times when he got in a quarter of an inch or so, but it really hurt and I'm not even sure, which is telling). Admittedly, I'm very ignorant about sex. No matter how much I read about it or how many diagrams I view, I still feel clueless and incompetent.

I don't have any sexual trauma in my background (except maybe my first gynecological exam; they haven't stopped being painful). But I guess you could say I was a typical abstinence fan. I was raised with the expectation that I wouldn't have sex till I was married, and it never really occurred to me to seriously question it. One thing I haven't seen mentioned on Feministing yet is how the abstinence movement gives you the impression that sex will be perfect if you can just wait till you're married. Now, of course, I feel like a gullible idiot. My husband (also a virgin at marriage) has been completely supportive and understanding (and thinks it's somehow his fault), and our marriage is great aside from this, but it's incredibly frustrating, and it makes us both reluctant to even try. I don't know if it's just that we're both clueless or if there's something worse going on.

As much as I don't "get" books about sex, I'd also appreciate any reading recommendations you may have for people like me.

--Not Doing It in Florida

Hey Florida -

I want you to stop thinking about having sex. Just stay with me here...one of the things that the abstinence-only movement, and frankly most of our culture teaches us, is that sex is VERY, VERY, VERY SERIOUS. And I am going to tell you a little secret - sex, really, really good sex is fun and funny and involves intimacy and laughing and oops moments and funny noises.

So this is what I want you and your husband to do. I want you to take the pressure of penetration off the table. First, learn how to enjoy each others' bodies. Practice sex not being serious.

I want you to spend one week, a minimum of an hour a day, kissing and cuddling. Nothing more. Week two - I want you to have a week of nipples. His or yours or both. Enjoy them, see what you like, are either of you ticklish? Week three - keep up the kissing and exploring, but go below the belt line. And by below the belt line, I mean you for you: masturbation. You may have never touched yourself, but it is hard to tell someone what you like if you don't know yourself. No need to penetrate, find your clitoris, look at it with a mirror, move in circles or back and forth. Find what feels right.

Then, if you feel ready, week four, below the belt with him but no penetration. Half an hour you, half an hour him. Play around, see what works. Do you see where I am going here? Stop worrying about penetration. Practice sex not being boiled down to penetration.

Once you feel relaxed being naked and touching him and maybe even yourself, I want one of you (which ever of you has the courage) to go out and buy some water-based lubricant. They sell lube at drugstores now. I want your husband to insert one, heavily lubed finger into your vagina. I want you to breathe deep and I want you to relax with that finger in you. Throughout this entire process, I want one of you to be playing with your clit. When you feel like nothing is in, I want him to go to two. And repeat until you are up to about four fingers. This may feel uncomfortable, but keep adding more lube, relax and breathe. When you are relaxed and comfortable with this level of penetration, try with his penis.

And you know what? If it doesn't work, stop punishing yourself for it (same for him). Start again. Tickle each other, have another hour of nipples. Stop taking it so seriously and eventually, with the love that you clearly have, it will work. You've made a commitment to him and he to you and you have time to make this work and you can discover great things along the way.

Phil Harris has written a chilling dystopian fable, about a time not long from now, in which the Obama Revolution has been accomplished.

It's about an old man -- formerly a preacher and a hunter -- who dares to tell his grandson about the Good Old Days, when churches existed, and there were still some restrictions on abortion and faggotry, and you could own...well, not as many guns as you wanted, maybe. But a lot.

This quote will give you a general idea of the tone:

“But Grandpa...the statues of Mother Pelosi, Father Frank, and Father Reid looking up at the Leader all look very happy,” insisted Max.

“That’s because they are happy Maxy,” Grandpa John replied.

Unfortunately, the narrator's dim view of Teh Leader has come to the attention of Timmy's Two Dads, who believe themselves to have been charged, in this topsy-turvy world, with upholding the moral order:

“Why were you talking about me with Timmy’s two dads? Don’t you remember when I told you it would be best to keep our little talks between us?”

“Sorry Grandpa,” Max replied, “I forgot.”

“It’s okay Max,” said Grandpa John, “don’t worry about it.”

But the damage is done. Obama's goon squad is already at the door:

“You have been charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor child,” answered the officer. “Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself for filling this boy’s mind with hateful thoughts. Now he will have to undergo retraining.”

John closed his eyes and sighed. He knew that Timmy’s two dads had probably called him in.

It's easy to laugh at this little story; it's kitschy, maudlin, and jaw-droppingly stupid. But given that sentimentalism tends to be a prelude to violence, I think it's worthwhile to look beneath the veneer of silliness, and consider why the story is actually pretty effective on its own terms.

Its theme is the loss of power over other people. Timmy's two dads should be quaking in fear that their perversion will be made public. Instead, they're sending the authorities to a Christian's house, with the aloof arrogance of people who feel themselves to be perfectly secure. It's not the violation of privacy that's the problem, or the fact that a man whose way of life is thought to endanger children is hauled away by the state; the problem is that it's happening to the wrong people. The freedom that has died is the narrator's freedom to do to gays and women what gays and women are now free to do to him. Harris actually goes to some trouble to underscore this point:

“Shut your mouth old man,” replied the female officer, who was now standing at his side. “Speaking of the Leader in a disrespectful manner can be a capital offense. If you keep talking like that, we will add it to your charges.”

For all his griping about the passing of the Glory Days, the narrator is not a hero, by any means; he's quite passive when the officers come into his house and take him away. What's missing, obviously, is a gun; without it, the narrator is feminized and weak, and "tears fill his eyes." This is castration anxiety with a vengeance: Not only has Grandpa forfeited the moral right to lay down the law to queers and women, he's also lost the physical ability to defend himself, as an individual, against the diseased collectivity represented by the statues of a woman, a homosexual, a black man, and their pathetic white male courtier.

Both these problems boil down to a lack of firepower; the moral of the story, pretty much, is "don't wind up like this loser; get them before they get you." (Or as James Adkisson put it, "If life aint worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.")

The other thing that's worth noting is the assumption that as soon as you stop oppressing people, they'll seek revenge. This echoes white fears about what might happen once the slaves were freed, as well as this remarkable argument from the London Times, in regards to the perils of Irish emigration:

[N]o longer cooped up between the Liffey and the Shannon, he will spread from New York to San Francisco, and keep up the ancient feud at an unforeseen advantage...To the end of time a hundred million spread over the largest habitable area in the world, and, confronting us everywhere by sea and land, will remember that their forefathers paid tithes to the Protestant clergy, rent to absentee landlords, and a forced obedience to the laws which these had made.

Thus, oppression in the past mandates oppression for the foreseeable future...unless, of course, you'd prefer to live out your days as the plaything of Timmy's Two Dads, by order of Mother Pelosi and Father Frank.

Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!

Silly Site o' the Day

In the video clip below, Deputy Paul Schene assaults a 15 year old girl. The deputy is 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 195 pounds. Deputy Schene has the assistance of another cop because, as everyone knows, it takes two big strong men to overpower one little 15 year old girl. Paul Schene's problem was that when the girl kicked off her shoes, one of them struck his delicate ego-inflated leg. That's on the tape too. Gawd I hope macho Deputy Paul Schene is impotent.


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