feminist blogs

They give out awards for incredible acts of sexism.

An Australian outback mayor’s plea for lovelorn female “ugly ducklings” to move to a remote mining town to reverse a shortage of eligible women has won him the country’s yearly award for outrageous sexism.

Mount Isa Mayor John Malony infuriated women in August with a suggestion that “with five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa,” in northwest Queensland state.
…
Malony earned his top golden Ernie award with a defense that “The protesters are blaming me for their looks.”

Runners up include a policitician who was accused of sniffing a female staffer’s chair and snapping a bra strap; a TV network that sacked a reporter when she became pregnant and then said that female reporters need to be sexy to succeed; and a female politician who taunted female Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard for being childless.

The Ernies also honor good, pro-feminist acts:

Rugby Union international Brendan Cannon won the yearly Good Ernie “for boys behaving better” after saying: “I don’t want my daughter Phoebe growing up in the country where almost all women will be victims of physical violence or sexual abuse during their lifetimes.”

I think they’ve got the right idea. Plus, hey, awards are fun.

Who would you (dis)honor with an award for outrageous sexism? Who would you honor for promoting a feminist message in an unexpected place?

The long-awaited 2007 Femmostroppo Awards have been announced!

Head on over to read some really great feminist writing.

The Femmostroppo Awards honor (what this group of judges deems to be) the best 40 feminist or womanist blog posts of the year. Congratulations to everyone who made it in. I’m happy to see several of the posts that I personally nominated, and so many bloggers whose work I regularly read.

I’m also happy/proud to see so many Feministe writers and alumni. Special congrats to Jill, Zuzu and Jack . . . and thank you to the judges for including me.

Give yourselves a pat on the back, everyone — and then get back to work!

Bonnie Richardson was the only athlete from her high school to go to the state track competition — and she won the team title, alone.

Richardson’s title march began with field events on Friday when she won the high jump (5 feet, 5 inches), placed second in the long jump (18-7) and was third in the discus (121-0).

On Saturday, she won the 200 meters in 25.03 seconds and nearly pulled off a huge upset in the 100 before finishing second (12.19) to defending champion Kendra Coleman of Santa Anna. Richardson, a junior, earned a total of 42 team points to edge team runner-up Chilton (36).

Pretty awesome.

Thanks to Veronica for the link.

Feministe has been nominated in the Best International Feminist Blog category in the Canadian F-Word Blog Awards at A Creative Revolution!

We, of course, are shamelessly appealing for your vote, but we certainly wouldn’t have a problem should you check out the many, many fine blogs listed in a plethora of categories.

Just as long as, you know, you vote for us. This is just the first round.

Image from The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

Great news from Women Make Movies: “Although only 25 percent of the films in the festival’s four feature-length Documentary and Dramatic competition categories were directed by women, they won 50 percent of the top prizes.”

The full press release:
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w00t! Wait a second… the Merriam-Webster word of the year is w00t?

Expect cheers among hardcore online game enthusiasts when they learn Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. Or, more accurately, expect them to ”w00t.”

”W00t,” a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the Springfield-based dictionary publisher’s online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.

Right. OK, so I play a lot of online games–and have since the early 90s, which is when I remember first seeing people type “w00t!” after something good happened in the game. And I realize this whole “word of the year” thing is not much more a press-release opportunity anyway, based on an online poll; last year’s word was Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a whole bunch of gamers mobilized to vote for “w00t.” But as frivolous as it is, the news coverage kind of makes me cringe. It’s halfway to suggesting that “w00t” should actually be in the dictionary, which would make me bury my face in my hands.

I mean… I really love the fact that languages are living, evolving entities that change over time. I even wrote papers on diachronic linguistics and online language patterns when I was in school, and I’m one of those rare people who doesn’t think “ebonics” is a ridiculous or morally bankrupt idea at all. I’ve never been part of the William Safire school of thought that we ought to turn up our nose at incorrect usage and raise an eyebrow in a genteel manner at new words that might not stick around.

Still, though… w00t? Come on. I’ve said it myself any number of times, but it’s not even that great of a slang term. I suppose I wouldn’t have put pfft in the dictionary either, and apparently that’s in there. (Well… I would have defined it as “2. An interjection used to express disdain or dismissal.”) Maybe I’m just getting all twitchy at the thought of l33t speak words, all mixed up numbers and letters and punctuation, finding their way into the dictionary? Maybe I’m just remembering all the annoying gamer dudes yelling that while greedily scooping up their latest helm or gauntlets or gigantic sword or whatever. And maybe I’m just getting old and boring!

I did find this very amusing post on the origins of w00t–the comments are especially entertaining. (If you are a huge nerd.) For the record, I’m definitely with the people arguing that the current usage originated in hacker culture, spread via UNIX and early text-based online games (of which there are few if any written records), and then maybe gained wider currency and broader meanings after “Whoot! There It Is” became a popular refrain.

Polls close tomorrow, so go vote Feministe!

Vote Feministe in the 2007 Weblog Awards.

Vote for us in the Weblog Awards. You can vote once every 24 hours, so vote often, and vote Feministe.

First, congrats to Michael Hussey for his Best Local Political Blog award! It is very well-earned.

He passes on the message that Lorna Bracewell performed at the awards ceremony, and that she brought down the house. Check her out — she does sound pretty great. I’m not sure if she’ll ween me of my love for Michael Jackson, but she gives him a run for his money.

Also ead over to Pushing Rope and give Michael much-deserved congrats.