feminist blogs

Yeah yeah I’m a day late on this, but Julian & co are hilarious.

Gwen and I usually refrain from posting material that seems culturally marginal.  There’s a lot of disturbing stuff that pops up on the fringes, but we’re mostly interested in illustrating culturally dominate tropes with particularly influential cases (for example, lessons from music videos by artists like Eminem, Rihanna, and Kanye West).  My first instinct, when I received a link to a set of cartoon at The Oatmeal from Sully R., was to skip it for this reason.  But when I got to the end of the page, I saw this:

Nearly 2,500 diggs, 743 tweets, over 8,000 people on facebook sharing it, and nearly 8,000 stumbleupons.  What was this content that so many people had felt compelled to share?

It’s five cartoons illustrating hilarious ways to “use” a sex worker… eh em, “hooker.”  The message is: once you pay for a sex worker, you get to do anything you want with her, including demean her for your own entertainment.

I guess the point of this post is: I thought this was fringe.  I thought, “Oh sure, another set of sexist cartoons.  They’re everywhere.  Whatever.”  But then I was shocked by how many people had thought they were hilarious enough to share with their friends and strangers.  This is not fringe at all… it’s just everyday LOL.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Some of my favorite responses on Twitter to Sarah Palin's 100% ridiculous anti-feminist tweet.

Shakespalin: What's in a name? That which she calls a cackle By any other name would smell as rad

deliriumbubbles: "Cackle" is not a fucking unit of measurement. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cackle

feminismxianity: We cackle because we are so rad

thatmags: Remember: It took a #cackleofrads to make women's #suffrage a reality 90 years ago.

KeithOlbermann: The cluelessness of @SarahPalinUSA is astounding, panoramic. W/out feminists she'd have virtually none of the freedoms she abuses daily.

Andy Borowitz: Dear Sarah #Palin: "Gaggle" means a group of geese. "Cackle" means what we're doing at you.

Jessiebeal: What the hell is a cackle? A coven + a gaggle?

Who hijacked term:"feminist"?A cackle of rads who want 2 crucify other women w/whom they disagree on a singular issue; it's ironic (& passé)
-Sarah Palin

Well Sarah, you certainly don't speak for my cackle. Fun is at #cackleofrads and #jointhecackle on Twitter.

Regarding the end of the Cathy strip:

In spite of your negative judgment on the Cathy strip, there were many people, myself included, who liked the strip. It certainly would not have lasted this long if it did not have a following. How long do you suppose this blog of yours will last? Not 34 years I will bet you. And in case you are eager to put me down as a moron, I would like to tell you that I was accepted into Mensa. I am not bragging about this, but just providing the information so you may ascribe a level of value to my comments.

But what to make of the fact that anyone who pays the fee to take the Mensa test is probably not exactly a genius?

It’s true: Randians make the best parents (and kids!).

I’d like to start by saying that I don’t get into belligerent shouting matches at the playground very often. The Tot Lot, by its very nature, can be an extremely volatile place—a veritable powder keg of different and sometimes contradictory parenting styles—and this fact alone is usually enough to keep everyone, parents and tots alike, acting as courteous and deferential as possible. The argument we had earlier today didn’t need to happen, and I want you to know, above all else, that I’m deeply sorry that things got so wildly, publicly out of hand.

Now let me explain why your son was wrong.

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, “Have a ball, peas [sic]?” And I’m sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, “No! Looter!” right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

The thing is, in this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously. We conspicuously reward ourselves for our own hard work, we never give to charity, and we only pay our taxes very, very begrudgingly.

I can’t wait to raise amazing Objectivist babies of my own one day.

feministhulk: HULK HAVE NEVER SHOWER WITH JUDITH BUTLER, BUT FANFIC REMIND HULK OF FOOTNOTE 44 IN CHAPTER 2 OF "BODIES THAT MATTER." Twitter / feministhulk (2010-08-12).

I could be mistaken, but I believe that the fanfic in question is at: oldspice-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/460.html?thread=7372

Dimitriy T.M. and Pete L.C. alerted us to a post at Ethan Persoff about Tea Party Comix, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a comic book supposedly put out by some supporters of the Tea Party movement.  We’ve put the images after the jump because they’re aggressively racist and, well, not everyone wants to see that… there’s also a image that implies rape:

The covers of issues 1 and 2:

Sample pages:

The third issue appears to contain parodies of covers of Marvel comics, which might be a response to an issue of Captain America that mocked the Tea Party. And, um, you can buy issue 3 here.

My first reaction was extreme skepticism about the authenticity of these comics as actual Tea Party materials. Several commenters on Rachel Maddow’s website expressed the same response — that it’s actually a parody of the Tea Party. Others pointed out that the person selling it on ebay sells lots of other comics as well and thus knows enough about them to have the knowledge to create the Marvel parodies and might be the author. And I haven’t found many online stories about it.

But Persoff told the staff at Rachel Maddow’s show that he got the first two issues from  an “enthusiastic Tea Partier in Corpus Christi.” And racist caricatures of Obama, such as a picture of him as a witch doctor in a grass skirt, certainly aren’t unheard of. Here’s an example from Tea Party supporter and cartoonist Darleen Click that depicts Obama as a rapist:

It seems to me there are five possibilities here:

• It’s an actual comic put out by some Tea Party supporters (which the larger Tea Party may have no control over and may not welcome)
• Persoff is lying about where he got the comics
• Persoff was mistaken about the person who gave them to him being an actual Tea Party member
• The person was a Tea Party activist and knew it was a parody but thought it was funny anyway, or possibly an example of how the Tea Party is unfairly stereotyped
• It’s a parody but the Tea Party member didn’t realize that and is handing it out thinking it’s a legitimate Tea Party comic.

Obviously if it’s a straightforward comic series created by someone who identifies with the Tea Party, it’s classic race-baiting. If not, it brings up a frequent question: to what degree does intent matter? If you create a parody and opponents of the Tea Party take it seriously, maybe that’s somewhat irrelevant; on the other hand, given that the Tea Party has tried to distance itself from racism recently, if people take this seriously at a Tea Party supporter’s creation, it will make that more difficult for them and could shape the discourse about the movement in a way they find very problematic. And what does it mean if it’s a parody by a non-Tea Party member, but some Tea Party activists take it seriously, approve of the message, and distribute it to others as legitimate Tea Party material? Does it then become an authentic, non-parody Tea Party comic, at least among some affiliates of the Tea Party (which is a loose association of a lot of groups that take on the identity) because it’s treated that way by members themselves?

I think this comic brings up a lot of interesting questions about parodies, intent, and politics, regardless of whether we ultimately find out it’s authentic or not. But I’ll keep monitoring the story and provide an update if I get any more information from sources that seem reliable.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

If you need a random funny to get you through the last day of your work week and love Bryan Safi as much as I do, you need to see this; it's a hilarious outtake where Safi tries (and fails) to make a tasteless joke about oral fixation. Love. Him.

Transcript after jump

Murder isn't his only fixation. I've never known how to do that. Is that right? Wait, oh this way. No. Oh god. This is...tongue in the right cheek. Like that. Oh god, I don't know that I want to do that. I'll do it for this tape. Murder -- murder isn't his only fixation. You can't laugh while I'm doing it, I don't want to do it [number] more times.

If you need a random funny to get you through the last day of your work week and love Bryan Safi as much as I do, you need to see this; it's a hilarious outtake where Safi tries (and fails) to make a tasteless joke about oral fixation. Love. Him.

Transcript after jump

Murder isn't his only fixation. I've never known how to do that. Is that right? Wait, oh this way. No. Oh god. This is...tongue in the right cheek. Like that. Oh god, I don't know that I want to do that. I'll do it for this tape. Murder -- murder isn't his only fixation. You can't laugh while I'm doing it, I don't want to do it [number] more times.