feminist blogs

The lovely Renee of Womanist Musings and Monica of TransGriot hosted Amanda Marcotte and I on BlogTalk Radio last night to discuss the divide between white feminists and womanists/feminists of color. It was a great conversation, and you can listen to it here. Enjoy!

Dear Readers:

we now have a nasty troll who is regularly visiting this blog and leaving disgusting, hateful comments.

As a result, I have enabled comment moderation. This means that from now on, there will be a short delay between the moment you send in your comment and the time when it appears under the relevant post. It's sad that one angry, vile individual who has nothing better to do with their sorry excuse for a life should force us to change the way in which we operate. When a blog's popularity grows, trolls start appearing. This is a reality of blogging, and we need to adapt to it.

Hopefully, the troll would soon get tired of sending in comments that never get published and will go away. Then, we will be able to return to our usual mode of operation.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience!

-Clarissa.

Recently I was taking a trip through the Feministe archives when I came across this post of Jill’s from 2007, Feministe All Over The World. She took a look at the Sitemeter stats, which show you where in the world the most recent visitors to the site are.

I’ve been taking looks myself at different times of day over the past few weeks; we have visitors from all over! Most of you are from the United States, much as you might expect, and there are also a fair few folks from Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. We’ve visitors from New Zealand, India, Slovenia, South Korea, Germany, Norway, Morocco, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Yemen, Ukraine, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, and that’s only a sampling!

It’s a marvellous thing to know that you’re tucked away in front of your computer in your little corner of the world, yet you’re in community with so many people. So let’s see where we’re all from!

Leave a comment telling us where you’re from and, if it differs, where you live. Also, what’s the time where you are as you’re commenting?

I myself was born in Sydney, Australia, and live here still, though I keep threatening my family with moving to Denmark. It’s 8.17 on Sunday morning.

As many of you know, Gender Across Borders is planning the first-ever Blog for International Women’s Day [IWD] and it’s just around the corner.  Blog for IWD is only three days away–this Monday, March 8. The U.N. theme for International Women’s Day is “Equal rights, equal opportunity: Progress for all/” Based off of that theme, [...]

I’m very pleased to be named BlogHer “voice of the week” for this post from Monday last.

The advertisements running on the right side of the page are coordinated through BlogHer, and are producing a tiny but welcome income stream.

Check out the “Voice of the Week” archive too!

On April 1, 2010 - one month and one day from now - I will celebrate my first real blogging anniversary. My blog will be celebrating the first year of its existence. In order to thank all my readers for their continued support and interest, I promise to answer all respectfully worded questions that you always wanted to ask but never did. Feel free to leave the questions in the comments section of this post or send them to clarissasblog@hotmail.com.

Angie Jackson is live-tweeting her abortion this week, and it seems to have brought a lot of woman-haters out of the woodwork. She has, predictably, been accused of everything from trivializing the procedure to baby-killing. But it seems to me that what she’s doing is brave, and a pretty generous service to other women. One in three American women will have an abortion in her lifetime, but it’s not something that we usually talk about in public — or at least, that we talk about beyond political debates and platitudes. A lot of women who go in for abortions don’t actually know the details of what happens, and have been properly terrified by anti-choice propaganda.

Angie also seems like a pretty good spokeswoman for the cause. She is, in a lot of ways, a woman who a lot of people in the middle would say should be “allowed” to have an abortion (she’s a mom, she has health complications, she was on birth control and it failed, she’s in a monogamous relationship), but she doesn’t use those qualifiers to argue that somehow she’s special, or that other women aren’t just as deserving of medical care as she is. In this interview, she points out that even given all of her “extras,” she’s still been subject to tremendous amounts of abuse, and can’t imagine how women branded less deserving must feel:

I’ve been astonished. I had imagined, naively, that people would accept it because I’m in a committed relationship. I was monogamous. I was using protection. I had a kid. I have health risks. We paid for this out of pocket and not out of any taxpayer means. If I can’t talk about my first trimester abortion, which was legal and in my case life-saving, then who the hell can talk about her abortion? Or his abortion story, from the women he was with? … I’ve just been astonished by the level of hatred and death threats and threats of violence against my son. It’s been a very ugly side of people to see.

She’s still out there, though, telling her story. And her reasons why are quite poignant:

I think any time that we are silent about things or secret about things, it is unhealthy. I say this as a sexual abuse survivor. When I stopped keeping secrets [about the sexual abuse] and starting telling somebody, life got better. I have kept that throughout my life And I’m an autobiographical blogger. I am very open with the internet about how I am. I am very open about who I am with parenting and mental illness … For me, this wasn’t very different. This was about me talking about who I am openly. For me, talking about things is just how I approach all the taboos of life. I think that secrecy is unhealthy. We don’t get help when we don’t talk about things. For women who do need counseling or support or love or understanding after an abortion, if they have to stay quiet out of shame, then they won’t get that help. I think talking about things really can make a huge difference.

I feel that I was reasonably responsible. This is a possible responsible answer to this problem. In my case, I do feel like this is the best decision. I talked it over with my son and my boyfriend, who are the only people besides me who get a vote. It’s still my choice, but I’m going to talk it over with the people that I love — not that my son understands it much. But I don’t see why I should be ashamed that I’m saving my life. I don’t think that I’m being a killer; I don’t feel like I killed a person. And I’m sure if I did, I would feel guilt. And that’s why [anti-abortion activists] try so hard to convince you that it is.

Mark March 8 on your calendar, as it's International Women's Day. The United Nations theme for the day this year is "Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all."

Are you planning anything for the day? Attending an event, writing on the theme, or something else? I'm really hoping to make it to a local viewing of "Half the Sky," a one-night event at the movies that is related to the book. (Or that's my understanding of it, at least.) You can read more about it here, and there's also a link there to find a theater near you that will be showing it. You can even buy tickets there.

Also, Gender Across Borders is hosting something of a blog carnival for International Women's Day. You can sign up with the site if you intend to write something, and they have graphics you can download and use on your blog. I hope a bunch of people sign up, I know I am.

Be sure to check out Reuters' site for the day, too, at www.internationalwomensday.com. Tons of information there, and they have posted lists of events broken down by country.

What else is going on? I'll add to this as sites and events come up!

Comments on my most recent posts are reopen.

I’d love a tip from some Word Press whizzes. About every two or three months, with no warning, the comments sections on all my posts are closed, and overnight, the little box that says “must be registered and logged in to comment” gets checked. I then need to uncheck the box and reopen –individually — posts for comments. Is there any way for me to reopen all my previously published posts for comments automatically without republishing them? Shoot me a comment or an email at hbschwyzer@gmail.com if you have any suggestions. Thanks.

We are! Yay!

I am really excited about being nominated in the category of Best Political Blog (Liberal Leaning). I love that…”Liberal Leaning“! It’s like it might be offensive to say that we are Liberal, all the way. Or worse, Progressive. It’s like Liberal-ish. Or Liberal Light. Or Liberal and probably not 100% straight nor 100% enamored with the idea of being simplified and categorized. Whatever! It’s cussing cool that we’re mentioned on a list with some other great bloggers who make us feel more at home as freaks on the prairie:

Alternative Tulsa
Conium
Erudite Redneck
Lawyer and Engineer
Mainstream Baptist
Okie Funk
Peace Arena
Progress on the Prairie
Progressive Okie
Red Dirt Blog From a Blue State of Mind
The Lost Ogle

Go us! Now for our broader agenda: shut down Fox News, delegitimize Rush Limbaugh, and take-over the world!

Seriously though, if you read us and like us, please consider voting for us. View the rules for voting and see the nominees in all the other categories here. Oklahoma really does have some great bloggers!

Thank y’all,

Spring