feminist blogs

The following is a new book review by Richard C. Crepeau, posted at PopPolitics magazine. Those who heard the voice of the late Jim Corder, professor of English at Texas Christian University, will hear it again in these five essays and one poem contained within “The Heroes Have Gone: Personal Essays on Sport, Popular Culture and [...]

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So you think sipping that mint julep today — Southern bourbon, sugar, mint and crushed ice — connects you to tradition? Jeff Burkhart, a bartender and writer, notes that the recipe for the first mint julep was quite different: Professor Jerry Thomas, the original celebrity bartender, took on the subject in his 1862 bartending treatise “The Bon [...]

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I recently came across Newspaper Rock, which blogs about Native American issues in popular culture, and last week they posted about Miss Navajo, a documentary about the real-life "beauty" pageant for Native young women.

A welcome antidote to the dominant society's soulless spectacle of the female sex object glamour girl gladiators scrutinized so brutally in the feature film Little Miss Sunshine, Miss Navajo has much to enlighten and convey to American women about self-respect, gender consciousness, honoring historical memory, and collective unity versus ruthless competition.

Of course this type of event has special significance for Navajo women, but it's not a bad point to make that other American women could benefit from such a model in their own lives.

Republican candidates don't get the internet at all, it seems:

Conservative bloggers associated with the “Save the Debate” petition seem to be unconvinced that Republican candidates have really grasped the significance of the YouTube debate. George Ajjan, writing in New Jersey’s Herald News, takes Republicans to task for their failure to understand basic aspects of the political internet:

The comments of those skeptical about the YouTube debates sadly exemplify many of the traditional and stereotypical shortcomings of Republicans. The GOP has got to shatter the image of country-club elitism that plagues the party. Giuliani’s campaign prioritizing fundraising over a one-day commitment to appear before millions of viewers and answer tough questions directly from the electorate is deplorable and plays right into that regrettable typecast….

As far as YouTube itself goes, the issue is not that national Republicans don’t want to use new technologies. Both Giuliani and Romney have invested heavily in their online efforts and have specifically touted their embrace of YouTube as a campaigning medium. But their behavior seems to indicate the belief that the internet is a switch they can turn on and off, depending upon whether they’re in the mood to communicate. But the internet is always “on,” although it’s not always “on your terms.”

Until our party truly grasps that, we will continue to alienate voters and activists, especially young people for whom the internet is not “new,” but an integral part of their political upbringing.

The Republicans don’t have a technology problem, per se. They have an arrogance problem, and it’s spilling over into their online outreach efforts. Coming at a time when polls show young voters abandoning the GOP en masse, this bodes ill for the elephants.

The Right Field.

This is more than just arrogance, though. The internet is a medium that lends itself to free speech, egalitarian values (at least as far as right to ones own opinion goes), empowering the people.

The internet might have made sense in the old Republican party of Barry Goldwater, but it is really nothing but a threat to (or at best only a tool to be exploited by) modern day neo-Republicans who have ditched libertarian values in favor of big government as big brother.

In other words, it is not modern Republican arrogance that puts them at odds with the internet, but rather modern Republican culture that is diametrically opposed to a medium that gives us peasants a way of talking back at them ... and talking amongst ourselves.

Can the neo-Republicans and their vision of authoritarian government keeping the people in line succeed in the internet age? I doubt it. The party is already fraying and showing serious signs of breaking. They are going to have to reinvent themselves or destroy the internet to preserve their privilege.

I stumble across The Secret website and think, "Well, I've heard of this pop concept, so I'll go take a look," and click past the splash screen (hello!) and see that they list "Featured Teachers."

Well....

It seems that women don't have much to offer in the Featured Teachers department. Well, four out of twenty-four people happen to be women.

Funny how this happens. Women don't innovate, and now, it seems, women have nothing to teach, at least about "The Secret." [cue dramatic music stinger]

So what is The Secret? Apparently a penis helps answer that question.

Is this the commercial manifestation of Chinese fears of powerful women?

Chinese tourism authorities are seeking investment to build a novel concept attraction -- the world's first "women's town," where men get punished for disobedience, an official said Thursday.

The 2.3-square-km Longshuihu village in the Shuangqiao district of Chongqing municipality, also known as "women's town," was based on the local traditional concept of "women rule and men obey," a tourism official told Reuters.

"Traditional women dominate and men have to be obedient in the areas of Sichuan province and Chongqing, and now we are using it as an idea to attract tourists and boost tourism," the official, surname Li, said by telephone.

Maybe the government officials responsible have been enjoying a bit too much their pirated copy of Seven Beauties.

I mean, imagine! Men? Obeying? Women? What an exotic notion! Oh the horror! The fear! The eroticism!

33 dead. It's a tragedy. It's shocking. Why? Perhaps only because what we consider so routine we ignore it on a daily basis happened all in one place, on one morning.

Some 16 thousand murders happen each year in the United States. That's about 45 people murdered each day.

45 people.

Killed.

Each day.

Every day.

In our country. In these United States of America.

Where's the outrage about that? We hear about the troubled student and oh, what are we going to do about that? -- that kind of stuff. But what about all the troubled men -- and they are mostly men doing the killing -- what are we going to do about them?

Since that tragedy at Virginia Tech, how many more have been killed? When is that going to be a story within the United States?

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Insight from the man at PC magazine:

Nastiness is an earmark of many bloggers, podcasters, and members of
the herd; a few insane people; and those who feel that being an
out-and-out mean and profane presence on the Internet is cool or funny.
The level of nastiness that floats around the Net in various forms,
forums, and Web sites is incredible. When O'Reilly first proposed his
rules of the road for bloggers, I thought it was silly at worst and
wishful thinking at best. Nothing would come of it except a debate and
various columns like this one and the one from Tennant. The thinking is
that once all this is brought to light, maybe people will rethink the
way they act online.—next: It's Hopeless >

It's hopeless. Nothing will come of it. After the Kathy Sierra thing
blows over, the meanness will continue unabated, with all sorts of
dispossessed and borderline psychopaths blowing off steam online in one
way or another—usually by calling people names or being hypercritical.
This seems to be a reflection more of society as a whole than of the
psychological problems of a few individuals. There are too many people
who go online searching for validation of their life choices. Anytime
they run across anything that questions or counters their decisions,
they see it as a personal attack, and they'll often strike back,
attacking the perceived "enemy" in a personal manner. It all seems so
ridiculous, since these people likely don't know each other at all....

...But no matter, the whole thing is hopeless. Let's just go back to work.

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What is it that drives men to do this, anyway?

There is something else at work in America than the culture of mean.

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Must see: the (not quite) official Bodygroom website. (Warning: Adult material. Not recommended for children under 13 -- or men with sexual orientation anxiety disorder, unless they're safely protected by healthy doses of righteous homophobia, in which case they actually might enjoy some vicarious pseudo-homosexual visioning in a safe and totally virtual and completely heterosexual manner. If you are a man who has felt onset of effeminate symptoms, there are treatments available. Ask your doctor, but only after you've put your clothes back on. Not valid in Canada or the Virgin Islands.)

[via Suzanne Reisman]