feminist blogs

So I've been looking into daycare programs for little Bamm-Bamm, as I've been told that I need to get him on waiting lists ASAP. We wouldn't need daycare very many hours a week, and not until late August/early September, but obviously we want good care.

Yesterday, I called a Methodist church that has been highly recommended to me by people I trust, only to be told that their daycare program (called Mother's Day Out, which doesn't seem to be an uncommon name for daycare programs) is "only for non-working mothers."

Mmmmkay.

Now it could be that the person on the phone just told me that because they don't keep babies past 2:00 in the afternoon, and for most people who work, those hours aren't feasible. I think Jonathan and I may be able to swing it, though.

But -- what if it really is "only for non-working mothers"? Where do I start? There are so many problems with this, even if we're just talking about heteronormative households:

• I object to the very idea: there's no such thing as a non-working mother (or parent in general, for that matter).
• What if the mother works and the father stays at home? The at-home dad would still need days out to run errands. Would this kind of family be ineligible?
• What if both parents work (say, for the sake of argument, the mother works part-time) because they have to in order to pay the bills? Would this kind of family be ineligible?
• What if the mother works from home? Would this kind of family be ineligible?
• What about single-parent households in which the parent (father or mother) HAS to work, or the family has NO money? Would this kind of family be ineligible?

I want to join this church and use this daycare, but if they would actually ban us from the daycare program because I am employed, that's a huge red flag. I don't want to be put in a position of concealing the fact that I have a job.

for thinking this article is hilarious?

Ever since reading Hollywood Babylon recently, I've been on a silent movie kick, mainly watching Clara Bow movies from Netflix. The following stills are from The Show-Off and The Plastic Age. I find it interesting that Bow, the original It Girl, the hottest of the hot in her day, isn't as skinny as most celebrities now.

Also, I'm intrigued with how queer and alt these women look. I think of a post Margo, Darling wrote a long time ago about getting her hair cut really short:

I cut it because my building has very weak circuits and my blowdryer kept knocking the power off. I cut it because I teach an early class this quarter and this requires no fixing at all. I cut it because I lost about twenty pounds last year and I promised myself that when I got my cheekbones back (sharper, stronger, bolder now, because I'm older) I could pull it off. I cut it because I didn't want to look preppy, or upwardly-mobile. I cut it because I wanted more queer visibility, because it seemed important that I not acquiesce to the tyranny of socially-normative standards of white female beauty (watch for women with short hair on tv tonight. You will not see one, unless she is an old woman in a posture-pedic bed commercial, or a crying contestant on a rerun of last season's America's Next Top Model.)

She's right. I know, for example, that my family -- not Jonathan, he would like anything I did with my hair -- would be horrified if I got this haircut (Louise Brooks):

But in these films, literally all the women have haircuts like those of Bow and Brooks, and it was fine. I wonder what happened to make this look so fashionable, then what happened to give it the queer cast it has now.

Wow. I'm not sure how to change the animation to make it a little slower, but there the image is. Via Jezebel, and here's the annotated guide. I had noticed the arm resizing and the trimming down of her back, and obviously the removal of wrinkles, but I hadn't noticed some of the other stuff. I need to start reading Jezebel more often.

Edited to add a link to their manifesto.

Read Mandolin's mashup poem based on pro-life rhetoric from some threads on Alas.

The great folks at First Run Icarus Films
sent me a DVD of the excellent Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind several months ago. I watched the film recently, and I'm finally getting around to writing a brief review of it.

High points: Butler walks through an art gallery discussing photographs by Cindy Sherman, who is one of my favorite photographers. She points out how Sherman's images critique gender categories and norms, and her comments are illuminative.

Butler also talks about violence and hate crimes, and while I was always convinced that the whole "Judith Butler doesn't pay enough attention to what's happening on the ground" argument was misguided and inaccurate, I think anyone who sees this film would recognize that Butler cares very much about real, material bodies and what happens to them.

One point of criticism, though. This has nothing to do with the content of the film, but rather the copyright policy (my emphasis):

We send review copies of First Run/Icarus Films releases with the understanding that if a review is published or posted (on-line), the reviewer may then retain the review copy sent for his or her own personal (but not classroom) use.

It's too bad that classroom use -- even, it seems, just showing a clip of it in class -- is prohibited. I had considered ripping a short clip as a sample so as to help sell the film, but I don't want to get a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney.

Bottom line, I would recommend that research libraries purchase the documentary. At $390 for the DVD, it might be a tad expensive for individuals, but if you're doing work on Butler, it might be worth it, especially if you have some grant funding.

I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I'm addicted to Hot Chicks with Douchebags, but let me explain. The writing is often clever and hilarious, and there's actually quite a bit of revealing cultural commentary. For example, DB1 offers this explanation of the douchebag phenomenon:

At its essence, if I were to attempt to make a generalized definition, douchebaggery is simply about the affected performative role-playing of the peacocking male in an utterly false and constructed way. It is about the adoption of cultural signifiers of "the stud" as an attempt to woo the female by inverting attraction, by making the male douchebag perform as the object of the female's gaze -- to feminize himself. This attempt at gender inversion, an almost mythic reinvention, allows the male to become the object of attraction through invocation of the tropes of gender masquerade. In this way, the male douchifies himself in the hopes of hiding his true self. Douchitude is the mask, the role being played, which hides the douche from his true reality in hopes of, well, getting jiggy with the hot.

I'd actually love to be in a room where Judith Butler is sitting in front of a computer analyzing these images in a think-aloud protocol way.

Plus, a commenter in this post claims that douchebaggery is about the hyperreal, as DB1 had pointed out that the three guys in the post actually looked more like drawn cartoons than people.

Collecting articles about the John Edwards campaign will have to wait for another day.

A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs, by Brad Stone, New York Times, 9 April 07

Sexual Threats Stifle Some Female Bloggers, by Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, 30 April 07

Fear of Blogging: Why women shouldn't apologize for being afraid of threats on the Web, by Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, 4 May 07

A couple of projects I've worked on are now live:

1. My article "Attracting Readers: Sex and Audience in the Blogosphere" is now live in the new issue of Scholar & Feminist Online. The issue has a companion blog for discussion of the articles.

While I stand by what I wrote, I am somewhat concerned that Daniel Drezner comes off sounding like a bad guy. That isn't actually true at all; he is very nice and collegial, and I reference a couple of posts on his weblog simply as examples of discourse.

2. A Conversation: From "They Call Me Doctor?" to Tenure is live in the Professional Development section of Computers and Composition Online. Cheryl Ball and Kristin Arola composed the piece, but I am one of the people interviewed. My contributions can be found here and here, but I encourage you to interact with the whole thing.

Call for Papers

The 2007 Feminism(s) & Rhetoric(s) conference invites proposals on civic discourse, feminisms, and rhetorics. The conference draws inspiration from the 50th anniversary of Little Rock’s Central High School integration, the Clinton Presidential Library, Heifer Project International & the Clinton School for Public Service.

For conference information, go to http://femrhet.cwshrc.org

NEW EXTENDED DEADLINE: April 27, 2007

Submit your abstracts online—http://femrhet.cwshrc.org/submissions.php

Register for the conference online—http://femrhet.cwshrc.org and click Conference Registration

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Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Krista Ratcliffe

Invitation Pending Keynote Speaker/not confirmed: Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton

Featured Speakers: Hui Wu, Shirley Wilson Logan, Malea Powell, Carol Mattingly, Jessica Reyman, and more.

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This conference asks us to explore civic discourse and how civic discourse, feminism(s) and rhetoric(s) interact with, for, and against each other.

What is civic discourse? What counts as civic discourse?

How has civic discourse changed over the years for women? For feminism?

How can we expand the definition of civic discourse?

What does it mean to participate in civic discourse in the 21st century?

How do women participate in civic discourse?

How has the internet/electronic discourse affected civic discourse?

How has civic discourse become corporatized?

How has globalization impacted civic discourse?

What does it mean to be a feminist and/or rhetorician participating in civic discourse?

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We look forward to reading proposals from a wide variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, history, ethics, new media, political science, social justice, pedagogy, law, literature, art and art theory, queer theory, international studies, cultural studies, race studies, economics, environmental studies, science, social activism, communication studies, technical communication, visual design, philosophy, and engineering.

Questions--contact Barbara L’Eplattenier (bleplatt@ualr.edu) or Marcia Smith (mmsmith@ualr.edu).