feminist blogs

In the first 45 seconds of the trailer for Clueless, Cher Horowitz (played by Alicia Silverstone) gives one of the best rebuttals I have ever heard to opponents of providing amnesty on our shores for oppressed people.

Yes, I’m serious.

Let’s reexamine the language (excerpted from Paul’s Ultimate Clueless Script):

SCENE IV - CLASSROOM DEBATE

MR HALL

Should all oppressed people be allowed refuge in America? Amber will take the con position. Cher will be pro. Cher, two minutes.

CHER

So, OK, like right now, for example, the Haitians need to come to America. But some people are all “What about the strain on our resources?” But it’s like, when I had this garden party for my father’s birthday right? I said R.S.V.P. because it was a sit-down dinner. But people came that like, did not R.S.V.P. so I was like, totally buggin’. I had to haul ass to the kitchen, redistribute the food, squish in extra place settings, but by the end of the day it was like, the more the merrier! And so, if the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could certainly party with the Haitians. And in conclusion, may I please remind you that it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty?

(Class breaks into applause)

This segment was designed for us to laugh at the ridiculousness of Cher’s logic and her mispronunciation of Haitians (Haiti-ins!). But there is some truth in what she says.

Haitians need to come to America = Amnesty.

But some people are all “What about the strain on our resources?” = Opposition Arguments

And so, if the government could just get to the kitchen = Survey the situation

Rearrange some things = Reprioritize and reexamine how we use resources and we admit new entrants

We could certainly party with the Haitians = Grant amnesty, fix our selective and fractured policy.

And this line is classic: may I please remind you that it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty?

It totally does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty. It actually says:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

And yet, for the last few years, we’ve been having a debate around immigration which boils down to “everyone has to RSVP, we’ve got a velvet rope, and most of you aren’t invited to the party.” The tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Fuck ‘em!

Where are all the other voices in this debate? We’re left out. So many conversations around public policy and theory are couched in a language that makes them inaccessible to the average person with a limited understanding of the issues. And if the language that we as progressives and feminists use is inaccessible to the average reader/listener/viewer, we lose out. This is the void that has been filled by regressive interest groups - they dominate the dialogue by using very simplistic messages to summarize their position. Messages like “they are evil” or “they hate our freedom.” These messages may not even be true - but they are easy to remember. And that’s the problem. A complex, nuanced message is harder to grasp than a simple catchy statement, and thus, less likely to stick.

So, in order to reach more people, progressives need to critically examine the messages we send, what we say, and how we present them.

To this end, we need to learn to harness the power of pop culture - taking a message, shortening it, adding some spin, and preparing it for mass consumption.

Back in May, the New York Times published an article describing the efforts of U.S. Campaign for Burma to sell their cause using celebrities like Ellen Page, Jennifer Aniston, and Will Ferrell. And yet, somehow, they are still having problems getting their message to catch on.

The article discusses the strategy employed by Campaign for Burma:

To do so, the Burma campaign has decided to use some of the same brand-building strategies — simplified narratives, clear-cut imagery and, of course, the most carefully selected celebrities — used by other successful aid agencies, or even consumer-goods marketers.

“In a certain sense, you have to ‘brand’ it up,” said Jack Healey, the founder of the Human Rights Action Center, a partner in the Campaign for Burma. “It’s the nature of the business now.”

However, they are running into trouble getting the message to stick:

Jeremy Woodrum, a founder of the group, believes Myanmar is near the top of the list of global priorities, even in a world full of troubles. He says that the military dictatorship has enlisted the most child soldiers in the world and destroyed twice as many villages as the Sudanese have in Darfur. “There are a lot of situations, but really only a few that are extremely severe,” he said.

“When you’re talking about 3,200 villages destroyed and a million and a half refugees, I mean, that’s not everywhere.”

“Our challenge,” he added, “is how to convey those facts publicly.”

From where I sit, using a celebrity to convey a message about social justice issues is kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, you do pull a lot of eyes and attention to your cause, as news outlets and mainstream magazines are more willing to do a service piece if there is a celebrity hook.

However, social justice isn’t a product. It’s not Smartwater. You can’t just stick this message in Jennifer Aniston’s hand and expect that people will embrace your cause. For one thing, using a celebrity for product placement works well because there is a defined action to take - oh, Jennifer Aniston drinks Smartwater, maybe I should try this product. It’s as easy as going to the store and spending a couple dollars.

However, a situation like the one in Myanmar requires (1) some base knowledge of the issue, (2) an idea of what is at stake, (3) the inclination to become involved in the cause itself, and (4) the willingness to stay with the cause until resolution/no further action to be taken.

Add in the fact that many issues of global politics and social justice require a lot of untangling root causes and complications to understand, and we can see why most people opt to buy the damn Smartwater, and leave the social justice part to someone who actually cares.

The situation is far from hopeless, though.

It just requires a different way of thinking about how we present the information.

One of the things that is most compelling about watching the Republicans work is their strict adherence to talking points. I remember being annoyed by how people would dodge questions and keep repeating the same three crap ass sentences over and over and over. Now, I’m enrolled in a media training program, and I have learned that repeating the same crap ass sentences over and over is crucial. Why? Because you only have a limited time on air to get your ideas out there before you lose your audience. So, the goal is to get what you need to say out there. The person who sticks to their talking points controls the conversation - it doesn’t matter what the opposition says because what you are saying is being repeated, and you have already tailored your information to stick in someone’s mind.

So, there are two main tactics to combat this.

One, is the development of your own talking points, or counter talking points to that issue.

But the second, which is a bit more appealing to me personally, is reframing the issue using a different kind of spin.

So back to my original premise - Cher’s party analogy about amnesty is genius, because it reframes the issue into easily digestible bites in a memorable way. Everyone doesn’t understand the concept of international amnesty, but everyone can understand a party. And using a simple statement like “If the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange somethings” begs the question, “Yeah, why isn’t the government trying harder?”

But this is just one example of an effective reframing.

Here’s a different one:

Target Women is a segment on Current TV’s Infomania program starring Sarah Haskins. The entire purpose of target women is to skewer advertising and marketing directed at women by humorously deconstructing the inherent stereotyping and other assumptions behind these messages. With most segments coming in under five minutes, Haskin’s pithy one liners poke holes in the established narrative - and encourage you to mine commercials for your own internal punchlines.

One last tactic to take is humanizing an issue through illustrating the lives and stories of people affected. Some of the most compelling Asian American narratives arose out of the decision by the United States Government to intern Japanese Americans in the 1940s. For many people, this is just a footnoote in history, something that went on during World War Two.

When Mike Shinoda (of Linkin Park fame) released his side project Fort Minor in 2005, one of the tracks on the album was called “Kenji.” In about four minutes, Shinoda illustrates the drama and issues surrounding internment and the aftermath through the eyes of his narrator, interspersing his rhymes with actual narratives from those who lived through this part of our history. The song (with posted lyrics) is below:

Now, Shinoda’s album was not a commercial success - but over 400,000 people heard the song.

In order to progress the feminist cause (or whatever cause you fight for, really), to reclaim the airwaves, and to reframe the national conversation, we need to start looking at how we represent our messages.

Silly, but whatever. My Sawyer nickname is “Einstein.” I like that. Plus, Sawyer is pretty.

David has given Feministe a Thinking Blogger Award, and I’m quite thrilled and very flattered. Now I get to bestow the award on five others (which is difficult, since there are so many great blogs out there). The rules are:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (There is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

My five Thinking Blogger awards go to:

1. Lauren and Amanda of Unsprung. Lauren founded Feministe and Amanda blogs regularly at Pandagon, and they are two of my absolute favorite bloggers on the internets. They’re both smart as hell, funny, and probably cooler than you (and definitely cooler than me). Lauren has an amazing way of using her life experiences and her day-to-day activities as a jumping off point to discuss feminist issues; Amanda always provides fascinating, original and thought-provoking feminist analysis. I’ve learned a ton from both of them, and I aspire to be half as good as they are.

2. RH Reality Check. This blog provides fantastic information about reproductive justice, with an amazing team of bloggers who update very often. It’s a daily must-read for anyone interested in reproductive health.

3. Lawyers, Guns and Money. I started reading LGM because it has the baddest blog name around, and because of Scott Lemieux’s fantastic take on the legal end of feminist and reproductive rights issues. I stuck around for the very funny and very insightful Robert Farley, djw, and d. And now that they’ve got bean on board, I’m forever hooked.

4. No Snow Here. I don’t have the words to describe how much I love this blog, and how much I’ve learned from it. Nosnowhere is a brilliant, insightful writer who covers feminist issues that are too often silenced. She is fantastic, and if she’s not on your list of daily reads, you must add her.

5. The Silence of Our Friends. Another one of the most dynamic duos on the internet — Donna and Brownfemipower. They’re both fantastic writers, and they offer a really nice balance between interesting news bits that are flying under the radar (mostly because they affect marginalized communities) and thoughtful, longer-form commentary and analysis. They’re two of the best bloggers out there, and The Silence of Our Friends is one of my favorite (and most compelling) reads.

Thanks to David for the award!

MaryAnn tagged me with a meme, so let’s play:

THE RULES
1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Eight pointless things about me:

1. I am very sneezy — as in, I sneeze all the time. And I almost always sneeze at least three times in a row. Sometimes, I can make myself sneeze silently.

2. I think I’m going to die by falling. I’m relatively certain I’ll either be in an elevator when the cord snaps, or in a plane crash. Not surprisingly, I am a little uneasy riding in elevators and flying.

3. I have a terrible habit of pulling on and playing with my nose ring. This makes me look like I’m constantly picking my nose in public (when, in fact, I only pick my nose in private).

4. My mom wanted to spell my name Jyl or Jil. Thank God my dad shut that idea down.

5. I have a major lingerie fetish — some women loves shoes, some women love bags, I can’t stop buying underwear. I have two drawers and several storage bags full of it. I have books about it. I have to plan out my route in certain neighborhoods to avoid my favorite stores, because I am unable to walk by without going in and buying something. And while I’ll spend stupid amounts of money on fancy underwear, I almost never wear it — I go with basic cotton boy-shorts almost every single day.

6. I love the smell of ballpoint pen ink.

7. I am very klutzy, and I injure myself a lot. Yesterday I banged my head on the freezer door (it was open, and I was standing up after having kneeled down to put something in the fridge), banged my shin on a crate (wasn’t watching where I was going in a deli), hit my elbow or something or other, and tripped at least twice.

8. I cannot stand nail clippers. I have never clipped my own nails, and cannot have my nails clipped at the manicurist. Occasionally they will clip my toenails during a pedicure, and it makes me feel like I’m biting down on a metal spoon while listening to finger nails drag across a chalkboard. The feeling — but especially the sound — of nail clippers gives me the shivers. My room mate clips her nails when I’m not home, or does it in her room with the door shut. I invest in nail files.

I tag:

1. Trailer Park Feminist
2. Magniloquence
3. Kactus
4. A.H.M.K.
5. All of you!

I’m feeling a bit ill today, and not up to much in the way of, like, thinking and writing loads, so tonight I will simply show you my favourite ever animation, “The Dot and the Line”…

I did have a whole heap of gender symbolism stuff to go with this, but it’s probably is old hat anyway, and my head hurts. I’ll just do a really short summary of my Big Idea and then slump on the couch and fall asleep!

What I was going to argue was that in archetypal structures (things like divination methods - the I Ching and the Tarot are my favourites) the division of male and female can even go right down to such basic mathematical concepts as lines, and dots. This cartoon (ether consciously or unconsciously) reinforces the same gender association. And that, dear readers, is my only justification for posting it on a feminist weblog!

Via Shakes, the Face Transformer, which will suck your time away like nobody’s business.

Here’s me as a manga character:

And using a different photo, as a Botticelli:

And as a Mucha:

You can play with age, race, gender, species mixing and various artists. Some are more successful than others. The 3/4 shot’s masculinization looked freakily like my brother, who looks like a male version of me; the straight-on shot’s masculinization looked more like Seth Green. The racial transformations were more successful on the straight-on shot, though with the Afro-Caribbean option, my neck remained white, so I looked like I was wearing blackface.

Also? From these results, I don’t think Botticelli would have known what to do with my pug nose.

The fabulous Miss Jessica Valenti has tagged me with a meme — list five things about yourself that most people don’t know about you. For fun, she listed four things that are true and one that’s not, and had her readers guess in comments which was the fake.

So, here they are. See if you can spot the fake:

1. I’m obsessed by nose hair. Mostly my own (because I have a nose you can see into), but if I can see visible nose hair on other people, it drives me buggy. But I’m too polite to say anything, so I just try not to let people know that I can’t look away from their nose hair and desperately want to hand them a pair of scissors.

2. I’m actually really bad at confrontation.

3. Despite having lived no more than an hour from the beach almost my whole life, I’ve never actually swum in the ocean.

4. At some point, I realized that I don’t know half the bands people list on their Friday Random Tens. I don’t know when I lost touch with music. I like it, I hear songs I like all the time, but I stopped keeping up with the particulars years ago.

5. I once chased the manager of 2 Live Crew around a pole.

Now I tag: alla you. Share in comments, and share your guesses which one is the fake.

You all aren’t sick of random playlists yet, are you? Because I made the unforgiveable mistake of doing the FRT this week without reading Ms. Lauren first — and man am I regretting it, because she has a fantastic FRT meme up. So I’m gonna borrow it. Apologies for inundating you with my crappy taste in music. This is just too fun to pass up (plus I’ve been studying all day, and if this isn’t a great distraction then I don’t know what is).

You know the deal. Set your music player to “random,” and watch the magic happen. This time around, it’ll tell your whole life story:

1. Opening Credits: Neil Young - Like a Hurricane

2. Childhood: Le Tigre - Hot Topic
More like NKOTB, but whatevs.

3. First Day of School: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Shoot Me Down
Ha.

4. Falling in Love: The Pixies - Hey
Jesus. This thing is evil.

5. Breaking Up: Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
…or maybe just really, really good.

6. Falling in Love Again: Bonny Billy - Just to See You Smile
A Tim McGraw cover?! Either iTunes hates me, or my love life is insufferably cheesy.

7. Breaking Up Again: Portishead - Biscuit
Appropriately depressing and melodramatic.

8. Prom: Iron and Wine - Free Until They Cut Me Down

9. Birth of Child: Iggy Pop - Success
Well that’s good to know, I guess.

10. Life Sucks: Tom Waits - Metropolitan Glide

11. Life’s Okay: The Smiths - Is It So Strange?

12. Mental Breakdown: The Pogues ft. Joe Strummer - I Fought the Law

13. Driving Theme: Rage Against the Machine - Know Your Enemy
I do have road rage.

14. Flashback: Guided by Voices - I am a Tree

15. High School Reunion: Van Morrison - Melancholia
Indeed.

16. Commitment Ceremony: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Rainy Night in Soho
Never considered this for a wedding song before, but I think it’s quite an excellent choice.

17. Middle Age: Modest Mouse - Dramamine
Now there’s something to look forward to.

18. Last Years: Joni Mitchell - Woodstock

19. Funeral Song: Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates
That is fucking depressing.

20. End Credits: Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
Man. Things are not looking good for me.

I’ve been tagged! The setup, from Shakespeare’s Sister:

I was tagged by Polly at Marginal Notes to share Five Things Feminism Has Done for Me, with the hope that feminist bloggers in America can run with it as they have in Canada in response to the Canadian federal government’s funding cuts to Status of Women Canada. (Seriously, that’s quite a round-up! Well done, Canadian Progressives!) Here goes…

Here are mine:

1. My career options growing up were not limited to teacher, nurse, cook, secretary, maid, whore or nun. Granted, my great-aunt became a lawyer in the 1920s, but Aunt Peggy was still expected to give up her career when she married and had children. My mother attended a women’s college in the late 50s that offered two majors: teaching and nursing. By the time I was growing up in the 70s, there were no limits placed on what I could do, other than my own inclinations.

2. Having chosen a career, I could be assured of actually being considered for jobs in my field. That wasn’t always so. I don’t know that much about Aunt Peggy’s career (she was much older than my grandfather and they weren’t close), but I suspect she had to hang out her own shingle or work for the government if she wanted to practice law. A former boss of mine, who graduated from Harvard Law School in the early 60s with honors, could not find work as an attorney. She eventually found work as a calendar clerk, and only got to practice law when she began a romance with the son of one of the partners, who she eventually married (and I got to work for them both). Sandra Day O’Connor, who graduated from law school a decade earlier than my former boss, could not find a job as an attorney anywhere in California, despite having graduated near the top of her class at Stamford Law, where she served on the law review. She did get offered a job as a legal secretary. It’s inconceivable today that a female graduate with their credentials would not be snapped up by the biggest and most influential law firms.

3. I own stuff, and it’s mine to do with as I will. Even if I marry (though I’m not exactly beating them off with a stick at the moment), my apartment will be mine if I don’t change the title, my furniture is mine, my money is mine, my credit is mine, my debts are mine, my investments are mine, my paltry little jewelry collection is mine. Well, mine and the bank’s, where applicable. But that’s another point — I can sign a contract regardless of my marital status and it will be valid. Time was, married women’s property became that of their husbands, and they could lose everything in a divorce. Similarly, they lost their legal status as adults, because their husbands were considered the head of the family and therefore acted on behalf of the family, who all were accorded the status of children. This was what was used to deny women the vote for so long — since men were voting on behalf of their wives, there was no reason to give women the vote.

4. I’m not forced to choose between staying childless and having sex. In an earlier generation, such as that of my aunts, remaining childless would have meant either entering the convent or remaining in my parents’ home (or, like my grandmother’s sisters, with other family, in their case with each other). Because I grew up when I did, after feminists had driven the birth-control revolution, I have options for preventing pregnancy that just didn’t exist in my mother’s and grandmothers’ day. One of those options was tubal ligation, which I took advantage of 30 years after my mother was refused a tubal on the grounds that if she didn’t have nine children, she had to have permission from her mother, her husband and her priest (guess who was the problem there?).

5. More generally, feminism has allowed me to have dreams and actually feel like I can pursue them. I never doubted for a moment that I could go to law school, become a lawyer, get politically involved, own property, vote the way I wanted to, raise my voice, or make my own mark on the world. Long before I even connected the dots and realized that I owed all of this to feminism, feminism had influenced not only the way that *I* viewed myself, but also the way that others viewed me. So, for instance, despite how misogynist my father was, feminism had worked its magic on him, so that he wasn’t going to stand in my way like his father had stood in the way of his sisters. Feminism changed the culture and made it possible to imagine something different and better than what had come before.

Time to tag five (or more!) people to continue with the meme:

Ilyka
Auguste
Plucky Punk
Scott
Kactus
and, for a bonus, belledame and Tiffany.

Have at! Don’t forget to link back here.

Find your own pose!

Interesting…

Pinching Koala and Tree Traits and Tendencies:
Pinching Koala and Tree couples experience a kind of super symbiosis that other sorts of couples (especially vegan couples) only dream of. The harmony that comes from this kind of pairing would be revolting if it weren’t so inspirational, which is why Pinching Koalas and Trees are often surrounded by friends and would-be friends, and their schedules are often booked months in advance.

Comfort Zone:
Pinching Koala and Tree is one of the Wind sleepers poses. Other Wind poses you might explore include Softserve Swirl and Fireman’s Carry.

Note:
Koalas make for excellent lawyers and flea market bargainers, thanks to their characteristic tenaciousness.

via Fever to Tell, whose most recent post on Becker, Posner and income inequality I would very highly recommend.