feminist blogs

Today's Women's History Tidbit:
1993: Dr. David Gunn is assassinated and is the first of four women's health care providers to be murdered for providing abortions. This is why we show our appreciation today to all the men and women who help make choice possible.* 


Can you believe it's March 10th again already?

This year the National Abortion Federation is asking us to take a picture or make a video of ourselves holding up a sign of thanks. [PDF]

That's all for today's post. Just go say thanks to a provider. Send a few dollars to the National Abortion Federation or to tomorrow's providers at Medical Students for Choice. 

Edited to add something Rebecca Turner sent me:



* Source: History.com

Today's Women's History Tidbit:
1990: Dr. Antonia Novello was sworn in as both the first Hispanic and woman to be U.S. surgeon general.*


When Nobel Savage tweeted that Disney was renaming and reframing the Rapunzel story in a way that "allows" more boys to enjoy it, I thought, BULLSHIT! But as I read the LA Times piece, I started to laugh:

After the less-than-fairy-tale results for its most recent animated release, "The Princess and the Frog," executives at the Burbank studio believe they know why the acclaimed movie came up short at the box office....Brace yourself: Boys didn't want to see a movie with "princess" in the title...Disney can ill afford a moniker that alienates half the potential audience, young boys, who are needed to make an expensive family film a success.

"We did not want to be put in a box," said Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, explaining the reason for the name change. "Some people might assume it's a fairy tale for girls when it's not. We make movies to be appreciated and loved by everybody."

My first laugh was because "AHA! Princess backlash!" Perhaps it's not just parents of boys who are keeping their girls from princess movies. Then I got serious and thought, "Shit, I hope the princess takes the fall and not the fact that it was a Black princess!" Then I laughed again at how Disney might have just marketed themselves out of money by playing the princess card over and over.

Princesses and other female protagonists helped lead the 1980s and '90s revival of the animation unit with "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Mulan." The difference between those releases and "Princess and the Frog" is that those earlier films weren't marketed as princess movies.

Back in the time of Ariel and Belle, I was in high school. Not the target audience, I know, but still I was a kid. What I loved about Ariel was not just that it was a telling of one my favorite fairy tales, but that Ariel was portrayed as a headstrong teen who was curious and adventurous. I prefer mermaid-Ariel to princess-Ariel any day. Then Belle came along. Oh Belle! We bonded as bookworms. Again, when I think of Belle, I think of her sitting in that mega-library with a cuppa tea and her nose in a book. Now that's my fairy tale.

Oh yes, I know all the feminist critiques of both characters and movies, but for me, I fell in love with them for other reasons. The critiques are valid mind you. But Disney...Disney, oh how I do love you! Correction: I love Disney movies, not Disney the company that seems to be playing hard ball with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.^ You must understand that I didn't fall in love with the princess aspect of the tale, but rather the adventurousness and the intellect of the leads. Don't scrap Rapunzel, scrap the princess-centric tale and marketing plan.

While you're at it, scrap the lazy dude theme too.

If I had a boy, I would have tweeted as I walked out of "Princess and the Frog." We don't need a movie about how a woman has to kick a guy in the ass to work. Yes, the prince is lazy and he learns otherwise, but lately the media is all about telling our boys that they are lazy, they don't work as hard and yes, a lot of us joke about it. But you, Disney, have no need to wallow in that pool. Telling tales of girls and their dreams doesn't mean that the boys in the movie can't also dream big.

Cause really, in my fairy tale, my guy and I share the same big dreams of adventure and intellectual intercourse.

^ I know it is hard to split the company from the movies from the theme park. In fact it is impossible. My heart of fond childhood memories of the Big Mouse, trips to Orlando and the movies keeps me coming back for more. But my head keeps me focused on the fight. Please read CCFC's response to the latest showdown with Disney.

*Source: This Day in History and  the National Women's Hall of Fame

Today's Women's History Tidbit:
1911: International Women's Day is first celebrated in Europe. It will receive official UN recognition in 1975.*

This post originally appeared at the AWEARNESS blog.

Happy International Women's Day!

Over the past 18 months I've written for AWEARNESS, I've written a lot women's rights. For International Women's Day Gender Across Borders wants to know what "equal rights for all" means to me.

Equal rights for me means just that, equal rights. As a human being with two X chromosomes I should have the same access to education, jobs and safety as humans with only one X chromosome. That access goes far beyond any city, state or national border too.

My activism is rooted in my early education of human rights though working with Amnesty International. The U.S. Congress could pass every law feminists could think of, every judge could believe women when they ask for protection against violence and the police would enforce everything and I still wouldn't be satisfied.

I would relish that our job was done here in the U.S.A. and it left me with more time to fight for the education of my sisters abroad, for them to be free of forced marriage, for them to be healed from fistula and for their work to be honored around the world.

As long as there is a young girl trafficked, denied her education and forced to bear a child at way too young of an age, I will be there to fight for her. It's not enough for women in one country to enjoy freedom.

If you want to work on international women's issues, any one of these organizations would be happy to have your support:

• CARE
• Fistula Foundation
• Half the Sky Movement
• Heifer International
• MADRE

Have your own favorite? Please share it here!


* Source: 2010 Women Who Dare Engagement Calendar from the Library of Congress

The weekend's Women's History Tidbits:

March 5, 1974: Reporter Helen Thomas becomes UPI Whie House buraeu chief*
March 6, 1937: Pearl Buck dies. **
March 7, 1938: Race driver Janet Guthrie, the first woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500 (1977), is born in Iowa City.*

As noted last week, I was in Washington, DC over the weekend. I had a grantee meeting and then the rest of the family showed up to take in the sights. My partner & I love DC. We always feel like we're going home when we go there. It's familiar and still takes our breath away. Althou navigating the Metro is still a learning process for one of us. *glare* But we are having a great time trying to instill that love to the kid.

While she did get bored walking everywhere, she had a blast at the Air & Space Museum. She made sure we saw Amelia Earhart's plane. She made sure, I didn't remind her, heck, I forgot about Amelia! I'm such a sucker for astronauts that plain old plane pilots slip my memory.

We had a great dinner with family members I haven't seen in ages. One second cousin is in communications & teaches journalism (I didn't have the guts to talk about my own writing-I had someone close to me complain that all I do is talk about myself, so I stopped talking about myself with family) and other works in public television. Their parents are in their late 80s and still sharp as tacks.

The weekend went by far too fast and we're already planning a return trip later in the year. Heck, I think I may need to go out a few days early again just to see all the wonderful friends I missed this trip.

* Source: 2010 Women Who Dare Engagement Calendar from the Library of Congress
** Source: Today in Women's History

Today's Women's History Tidbit:
1933: President Franklin Roosevelt nominates Frances Perkins as US Sectretary of labor. The first woman in the cabinet, she will serve 12 years and will be the primary figure behind the Social Security Act of 1935.


Today I'm in Washington, DC for a NSF grantee meeting. But my great-aunt (my mom's aunt) lives in the area and we're getting together for dinner. I haven't seen her since my mom & I visited San Antonio just before my mom's uncle passed away in 1997. Yeah, a long time.

While I'm excited to see her again and at least one of my mom's cousins, I'm also excited to gain possession of a few pictures of my Grandma and some family history. My great-aunt's daughter let me know that she has been doing family tree stuff and would send that info on with her mom. She sent me a preview of the information the other day that I'm still digesting.

I won't go into everything, but let me say that while the information isn't something to boast about, it also makes my grandmother's ways make sense to me. Not justification for some of her actions, but she makes more sense to me. My mom also makes more sense to me. And I feel like I knew 80% of what my cousin sent me already. But that last 20% was critical and so missing!

I often ponder my history, my daughter's history and all the missing pieces that are glaring. So much died so long ago, not with my Grandma or my mom's death, but in their refusal to share. In what I believe may also had been their collective shame of how things went down years ago. It pains me to think of all that they were carrying around in their hearts all those years.

Obviously I have things that I ponder whether or not I'm going to tell the kid. If I do, when. How. All parents have those things and some of us bury them deep in the backyard and some of us shine the light on them as lessons for our kids. I wish the women of my family had shone the light on their history. I think it would had made for a more enlightened family life.



* Source: 2010 Women Who Dare Engagement Calendar from the Library of Congress

Today’s Women’s History Tidbit:
1962: Track and field champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee is born in East St. Louis, IL.

The Association for Research on Mothering is an organization which I’ve admired from afar. I failed to ante up the membership dues because I felt they were a bit steep for my pocketbook.

The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), founded in 1998, is the first international feminist organization devoted specifically to the topic of mothering-motherhood. Our mandate is to provide a forum for the discussion and dissemination of research on motherhood and to establish a community of individuals and institutions working and researching in the area of mothering and motherhood. 

And because York University won’t support their work anymore, ARM is closing on May 1, 2010. Talk about a May Day for mothers worldwide. 

ARM does some great work on behalf of mothering and mothers everywhere. I reviewed Feminist Mothering almost a year ago.  I’ve submitted abstracts to their call for their many journals without success, but I kept hammering away because I knew that if I could get in, I got in with an amazing piece of work. Thus a few weeks ago when I got the acceptance note for their upcoming conference in conjunction with Mamapalooza, I was in seventh heaven. But then I started to ponder the price tag for registering, traveling and housing myself in NYC for a few days. I hesitated. But over the weekend I was like, yeah, I can do this. Then the email came today. No conference. 

But the Museum of Motherhood is determined to birth this baby and I guess that means I should be determined as well. 

I’ll see what the conference fees look like once the new registration site goes live in a few days. But I’m almost certain I’ll be there. Because I really want to be there. In fact I feel like I need to be there.

You should read PhD in Parenting’s reaction to the closing of ARM. And I won’t lie. I immediately started to think, could I help save ARM? But considering the state of affairs in Illinois, I sadly need to focus on maintaining my day job and helping to save my coworkers’ jobs.


Source: 2010 Women Who Dare Engagement Calendar from the Library of Congress

Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls edited by Melinda Tankard Reist is a collection of essays/charges against the world-wide phenomena of the pornification of childhood thru advertising, marketing and pop culture.

This was a great book to read as the authors are Australian and sometimes I wonder how much of our collective reaction to porn and adult images going mainstream is a reflection of our country's Puritanical leanings. For the contributors to Getting Real, the problem is embedded in not just faux-feminism, but a twisting of feminism by marketers and others to make women believe that if they are "in charge" of their sexuality, then there isn't anything wrong with stripping, making out with other women to turn on men and so forth.


About half way thru the book I came across a few statements that made me think, "Wait a minute...This isn't a feminist book!" So I did some investigating of Reist and found that she is part of a women's think tank. Hmmm...Upon further digging, I came to the conclusion that the Women's Forum Australia seems to be what one might get if NOW and the Independent Women's Fourm had a lefty baby. If anyone has more info on them, I'd love for you to leave it in the comments. There's just a tinge of anti-sex sentiment in some essays.

While there are some essays that wade into slut-shaming such as calling out strippers and sex workers, I think on the whole it's a pretty good book. It's definitely a quick read. The essays are well cited, but avoid a lot of academic jargon. There's an eye-opening essay on street billboards and how it is illegal for people to have porn at the workplace, but we have to walk thru porn infested streets on a daily basis.

There was also one paragraph that turned the issue back onto me. The idea that many of us are Flickr'ing and YouTube'ing our children's lives that we are teaching them to perform their lives on camera. What's to stop them...are we teaching them the difference between that and performing sexually on camera? 

The best part of the book was a new term: corporate paedophilia. "Sexualising products being sold specifically for children, and children themselves being presented in images or directed to act in advertisements in ways modelled on adult sexual behaviour. (pg 42)" This goes far beyond the dress-up of our youth to performance on a daily basis. "The task for today's teenagers is to win back their freedom from the adults who run the advertising agencies and girls magazines and the 'sex-positive' media academics who insist that 'bad girls' are powerful girls. (page 93)"

There is also a discussion about the medicalization of girls' bodies. From HPV vaccines to plastic surgery, it's all there to ponder. As I said, the book is feminist, but with a dash of moderate/conservative feminism thrown in. But this topic does bring together some usually opposing forces. Thus it's always a good discussion.

Grab a copy for yourself at an indie bookstore or Powells.com.

Disclaimer: The only payment I received was the copy of the book after the publishers contacted me. And yes, when I cite passages, I kept the spelling the same, thus all the u's.

Today's Women's History Tidbit:
1989: Gloria Estefan & the Miami Sound Machine receive the first star on Miami's Calle Oche Walk of Fame.*

 Over the weekend I launched my latest project on Facebook. It's called "I pledge to attend one women's sporting event in 2010." Yup, it's that simple.

As regular readers know, I'm an avid sports fan and a delusional Cubs fan. I played softball in high school, played volleyball & ran track in middle school and played one year of Little League baseball. I still tease my husband that he got lucky because I don't mind when ESPN is on.

During the Winter Olympics, women athletes were garnering a lot of media attention, but don't they always during the run up to and thru the Olympics? But what happens afterward? It's like a vacuum comes and sucks all the energy and love for women athletes away. So how can we try to sustain that love?

Then one morning on the way to work the Goddess spoke to me thru Frank Deford:

Ladies, to help your athletic sisters, you have got to descend on Las Vegas and demand the right to lose good money betting on games, just as men have forever...There are a lot of reasons why girls from all over the country decide to go play their college basketball in a chilly little backwater called Storrs, Conn. — but a prime one is simply that UConn women's basketball is popular. The home games bang out. The glass grandstand has been smashed there. The players are celebrities. They are treated, well, like men. But UConn remains the prime exception. Even as more and more women participate in sports, not enough of us, either sex, seem to want to watch — to care — when women play in teams. (emphasis mine)

While this space and Facebook aren't Vegas, we can move from supporting women's sports in theory to reality, to action by the simple act of going to one event and sliding that $10 under the glass window and saying "One please."

In Chicago we have a women's football team, softball team, soccer team, roller derby and a WNBA team. Below are a sample of their ticket prices:

Chicago Force (football): $3 kids/seniors/students, $10
Chicago Bandits (softball): $8 - $13
Chicago Red Stars (soccer): $15 - $50
Windy City Rollers (roller derby): $20
Chicago Sky (basketball): $15 - $125

If I missed anyone, just hollar! And I didn't even attempt to list all the colleges where women play around here.

And this is Chicago. I'm going to assume that tickets are the same if not lower in other parts of the country (NYC, DC & LA excluded). I think in this economy many of us can still afford these prices.

As I said, I'm a Cubs fan, I'm still gonna make my way out to Wrigley at least once this summer. This isn't about not attending men's sporting events. This is about getting out to support women athletes as well. It's inclusive, not exclusive.

So head on over to Facebook and pledge. It's quick, it's simple and it's practically cheaper than seeing a movie. Now this is what I call easy & fun activism.


* Source: 2010 Women Who Dare Engagement Calendar from the Library of Congress

I really, really want to blog every single day this month!

In honor of March 1, 2010, I will point you to all the Chicago area Women's History Month calendars I can get my grubby hands on. If you know one I missed, just let me know & I'll add it.

• UIC Women's Hertitage Month
• Chicago Public Libraries 
• Oakton Community College 
• Evanston Public Library
• Concordia-Chicago
• Gannon Center for Women and Leadership (Loyola)
• Northern Illinois University
• Women in Journalism: Saturday, March 6, 11:45 am, Elizabeth Brackett, correspondent for Chicago Tonight and PBS NewsHour. Sponsored by North Shore Leagues of Women Voters. The Glen Club, 2901 West Lake Avenue, Glenview. Information: 847-866-7844

To find out more about Women's History Month, head on over to the National Women's History Project. 

This was originally posted at the AWEARNESS blog.

It was just a matter of time until marketers got their hands on their real desired recruits -- kids. In some social media circles, there's no need to woo mom bloggers with free samples of the latest snack chip, instead kids are doing it on their own:

In some cases children as young as seven have been offered the chance to become "mini-marketeers" to plug brands by casually dropping them into postings and conversations on social networking sites.
They can earn the equivalent of £25 a week for their online banter -- sometimes promoting things that they may not even like. Among the products being pushed are soft drinks, including Sprite and Dr Pepper, Cheestrings and a Barbie-themed MP3 player. Record labels are also using the marketing technique to promote performers such as Lady Gaga.

In a time when First Lady Michelle Obama is campaigning to help our children get healthier, this targeting of kids should make us sit up and notice. It should also demonstrate that we can rid our schools of brand-name clothes and junk food and it just doesn't doesn't seem to matter. As we continue to debate the benefits of milk, our children are online being paid to talk up junk food. And I think we know that our kids don't need to be talked into the latest concoction from a chip company.

While I don't like that FLOTUS Obama is touting BMI as a way to keep track of our children's pot bellies, I do hope that within her campaign to keep our children healthy she pushes for every school to include media literacy as a part of their curriculum. I know that each time my daughter has a project that asks for her to flip through magazines for pictures to cut out, I hover over her like a hawk due to the images that live in between the covers.

It's not enough to talk about how chubby someone is or isn't, what their BMI (I call it a bullsh!t mass index, as evidenced by Kate Harding's BMI project) is or to restrict kids from the yumminess of peanut butter cups. Instead we need a wholesale reorganization of how school lunches are funded and to teach our kids how to sniff out the B.S. in marketing and commercials. We need to stop seeing physical education and recess as something only good, wealthy and/or smart kids get to engage in.

For the record, parents should keep all their "chubby" comments in their head, and marketers should keep kids out of their chip-pushing strategies.

Now let's get moving!