feminist blogs

If so, take the survey (or just click the button on the right-hand side of this site — the one that says “Have You Used Plan B?” in huge letters). The details:

AED, a nonprofit organization, is conducting an anonymous, on-line survey of women in the U.S., ages 18-44 years, who took Plan B after January 2007. This consumer survey will help us learn more about women’s experiences getting and taking Plan B. The results will be used to help make the medication more accessible to women who need it.

It’s totally anonymous. And if taking the survey is triggering for you, or if you just need someone to talk to, try checking out RAINN.

About a month ago, I wrote a post about Guitar Hero III. The main gist was that as a big-time previous fan of the series, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the the changes that have been made to the game, which are quite misogynist, exploitative of women and completely insensitive to the fact that the game has a female audience. To my great surprise, the post became a big hit (and troll target) and was linked to in all kinds of forums and blogs that would normally never give me a second glance. This was also to my slight dismay, because I didn’t spend much time on that post, and frankly, I don’t think that it’s very good. Anyway, lesson learned.

The point is that I now feel compelled if not required to say a few words about Rock Band.

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Hey everyone. My name is Cara and I’m the latest in the round of guest-bloggers. You may know me from my blog The Curvature. Or you may know me from a guest-blogging stint that I did a couple of months ago at Feministing. Or, I could be totally brand new.

I know that lots of Feministe guest-bloggers have interesting personal circumstances that they blog about. I’m more of a news analysis type of blogger — like the regular Feministe bloggers but less famous. I imagine that this will cover the majority of my posts, but in any case, here’s everything important and interesting that there is to know about me:

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A well-timed entrance, if I do say so myself.

Hey y’all, hope your week’s wrapping up nice like Saran. My name is Katie, and I’m an undergrad at Harvard surviving writing my senior thesis on whiteness in U.S. feminist and pro-feminist blogs. Evidently my interview with Jill the other day wasn’t too traumatizing: she’s generously offered blogspace to let me solicit reader participants — a.k.a. you! — for the research. Thanks again, Jill; it’s a trip to be posting on a blog I’ve read and loved for years.

A little bit about the research, then. In a nerdy sense, I’m fascinated by the process of “performing” racial identities and constructing selves (in this case, white racial identities and selves) in disembodied online spaces. How do people read each other racially in feminist blogs? What white racial cues, if any, do bloggers and blog readers (white or otherwise) offer each other? Do offline experiences of whiteness and white privilege translate into blogging practices? If so, how?

Academics are publishing some exciting stuff on whiteness these days: the current issue of Feminist Theory has a whole crop of articles on the subject, and a few works have popped up that deal with whiteness as “habit.” In another vein, there’s a wealth of cool scholarship on “cyberfeminism” that investigates questions of identity, power, and anti-sexist social action on the Internet. Unfortunately, at this point there’s not much overlap between the whiteness and cyberfeminism fields.

Scholastic geekdom aside, I want to learn more about white feminist bloggers’ and blog readers’ experiences with race and racism online. It’s a topic that’s dear to my heart: for the past two years (what’s that — a decade in blog years?) I’ve been writing on a group blog for progressive Harvard students, a process that’s been tremendously exciting and, as you might imagine, incredibly frustrating. (Flame wars + Ivy League entitlement + Harvard Republican Club trolls = “Why am I at this school, again?” Q.E.D.) My blogging teammates and I have sparred with campus conservatives, but also had some tough conversations among allies, especially regarding “identity politics.” So my interest in U.S.-based feminist blogs, and how they relate to anti-racist whiteness, also comes from a practical, personal connection to this fine little corner of the blogosphere.

Okay, now for the requesting bit. If you’re white, if you’re feminist or pro-feminist, and if anything about my project appeals to you, I would love to interview you over the phone. It only takes an hour and, as Jill and I learned after conquering an international calling obstacle last weekend, it can happen even from a location far, far away from Boston. Comments you make in the interview will not be connected with you whatsoever in the final publication: for blog readers, I’ll be using pseudonyms in order to maintain confidentiality, so nothing in the thesis will reveal your name or individual identity.

If you’re interested in participating in the research, email me at kloncke at fas dot harvard dot edu, and we can set up a time to talk. If not, I hope this note finds you in good health and high spirits — and, perhaps, that it might spark some reflection and strategy sharing. Jill shared some insights in her post update yesterday, so maybe they can serve as a starting point. How can we be ever more responsible, accountable, conscientious, and creative in our anti-racist feminist online communities? Among white folks, what’s working well, and what needs improving?

Thanks, y’all, and take care,

–katie

We have a talented and funny commentariat here at Feministe, as evidenced by the comments here in the Feministe’s Next Top Troll thread. One concept I’d like to pick up from that thread is the Christmas Pussy carol that got started with micheyd’s comment: “Fiiiiiive golden Nuvarings!” and went from there.

It’s not finished, though. We need your help filling in the blanks. So I ask for your assistance in completing “The Twelve Days of Christmas Pussy.”

Sing along, won’t you?

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my pussy gave to me…

Twelve _______s ______ing,
Eleven _______s ______ing,
Ten _____s a-_______ing,
Nine tampons dripping,
Eight abortions and counting,
Seven bras a-burning,
Six knotted assrags,
Fiiiiive Nuvarings!
Four _____ing _______s
Three ________ _____s
Two ________ ______s
And a cat sleeping in the bed with me!

Lines should scan to the original (lyrics here, should you have forgotten), which is why I altered the Nuvarings and omitted Lauren’s Nine tabby cats line. Though cats, of course, must make an appearance. No bitter, lonely feminist would be caught dead without one, after all.

One of the roles I think feminist blogs can play in our lives is what the “Women’s Libbers” liked to call “Consciousness Raising.” While the phrase evokes a coven of Farrah-Fawcett-haired women in an avocado and harvest-gold living room, I think the concept still has feminist legs. In short, we tell our stories about living while female in the world, and over time relate the individual stories to the systemic misogyny of our culture.

What I’d like to focus on today is stories of our professional lives. There are many people who think that while there still may be battles to be fought on the home front and within our individual relationships, the fight to win equality at work is mostly won. After all, nobody would dare to show sexism at work; it could get them fired!

In a comment to my introductory post, AJ writes:

I haven’t experienced too much as a female student in such a male dominated area, but every now and then I get somebody doubting my credibility because I was born with two x chromosomes.

This comment reflects my feelings as well. I have had some great mentors of both genders help lead me to where I am now. I don’t live in a chilly climate, I’m not being sexually harassed at work, and most people I interact with treat me and others appropriately. But the second half of AJ’s comment is telling: “I haven’t experienced much, but…” There’s always a but. And we tend to minimize the “buts,” the incidents that go against our belief that everything is perfectly fine in this beautiful post-feminist world.

Often it’s only in telling our stories that we see how egregious they really are. I was interviewed by a professor of women’s studies as part of a project she’s doing on gender relations in aerospace engineering. “Everything’s great!” I told her. “My gender hasn’t held me back at all. Although, the lab director gets a female junior faculty member to send his faxes when the secretary is out. And guess whose job it is to clean out the lab fridge…” Her eyebrows went up and she started scribbling. Everything is perfectly fine, except when it isn’t.

I have two stories of my own, and then one secondhand story, because it’s just that good.

Story 1:

This is way back in my undergraduate days, my first year of university in fact. My calculus professor was an older man, a metallurgical engineer. He liked to tell stories of the good old days when he was a student. Somehow these stories always got around to how there weren’t any women back then. Example: “I would like to encourage you to work together on your homework. Back when I was a student, all the guys…” (hesitates, looks around uncomfortably) “I mean, back then, they were all guys, see. Not that I have a problem with there being girls in engineering school! In fact, I think it’s great! It’s wonderful! Women bring so much to engineering, they’re so much more nurturing and caring. Engineering needs a softer touch!”

Story 2:

As a student, I was attending a dinner for a professional society in my field, at which one of my friends was going to receive an award. The keynote speaker was an engine designer, who had decades ago worked on a famous, historically important aircraft engine. (Yes, there is such a thing as a famous, historically important engine!) After he was introduced, the first thing he said was “I would like to apologize to the ladies in the room. I’m afraid my presentation has many formulae and graphs and other mathematical details.” And he didn’t stop there! Every time he came to a slide with charts or numbers, he apologized “to the ladies.”

Now, I actually understand where he was coming from. It was a dinner: there may have been non-technical spouses present, and they would have been understandably bored with numbers they were not trained to decipher. And in this older man’s life, the majority of technically-trained people were men. But he failed to notice that the woman who introduced him was… an aircraft engine designer! I was glad to see that she didn’t take this slight lying down. When thanking him afterwards, she made sure to mention that as an engine designer she was fascinated by the charts and numbers, and was glad to see he had included them.

Story 3:

This did not happen to me, but to a colleague. Mary (not her real name) is also an aerospace engineer, and she got her doctorate the same time I did. This may not be relevant, but unlike me, Mary is a “girly girl.” She performs femininity much more than I do, with her expensive haircuts, omnipresent makeup, and feminine mannerisms.

At a professional conference, she went out to dinner with a group. There was one senior professor, a few junior professors, and a few graduate students. She, a student, was the only woman. As is usually the case in this kind of group composition, the senior professor was “holding forth,” dominating the conversation while his academic juniors listened respectfully. The topic of conversation was his daughter’s roommate. Apparently this roommate was very attractive young woman, in this professor’s opinion. She was an aspiring model and actress. Unfortunately, she wasn’t particularly good at managing her finances. So the professor gave her money. “And just so you knowhow truly beautiful this young woman is, I gave her $2000. She was that beautiful. I mean, take Mary here. Mary is pretty. But she’s only worth, oh, about $100.”

I notice now that all three of these stories are about older, powerful men, mostly just bumbling in their attempts to relate to others. The standard response is a shrug. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. We’re just going to have to wait until these dinosaurs retire or die (mostly the latter, since academics tend to never retire) and then we can live in our beautiful post-feminist utopia. There’s some truth to this response. But it’s foolish to deny or minimize these incidents. It lets us think our work is done. It minimizes the magnitude of our accomplisments: not only do I have a PhD, I have one despite being repeatedly (if not constantly) told I don’t belong in this world. The stories are important, because while they seem like exceptions to us, taken together they have a systematic effect.

Your turn. Tell a story about sexism you’ve encountered in your own workplace.

To try out this thing:

It’s the Faveo Freedom Bra, and its inventor, Joanne Morgan, swears it’s comfortable and supportive for large breasts. It just, well, it looks weird. And entirely counterintuitive.

But if it’s really true that it’s supportive and comfortable, I’d shell out the $90 it’d cost me to have the thing(s) shipped from England. One of my biggest problems with bras is the band digging into me at one particular spot, probably because one of my breasts is bigger than the other, so the bigger one pulls the whole bra off-center and the band on the other side digs.

So this is where you come in, dear readers: if you have large breasts and live in the British Isles or Australia (currently the only places where these things are available in person), please go try a pair of these things on and let us know if they’re really all that. I’m also curious to know if your boobs still swing around, even if they’re supported.

Thanks!

Not to mention: if this works, halter tops!

H/T: Kristen

Hi y’alls. Thanks to Jill for asking me to participate in the summer o’ guest blogging, especially since the only thing I write regularly these days is e-mail. I’m excited to be kicked in the pants to write more, and also to be part of the conversations here. A little bit about me: I used to work at Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, and now I procrastinate, mark time at my professional-hairsplitter day job, and “work” on “researching” a “book.”

This week I’m going to be writing about a random assortment of topics that have been rattling around in my brain lately.

The first is postfeminism. Or, rather, “postfeminism.”

Postfeminsm, both the term and the concept, has pissed me off since I became aware that there was such a thing. As I see it, the history of the term, most of its usages, and the communities that have sprung up around it suggest, its primary meaning is that feminism is an unattractive buzzkill and also so very over, so it’s past time to move on to more fun, carefree matters. Or, as a friend of mine recently put it, “Let’s forget liberation and go shopping; mmm, yay big cocks.”

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Way back when I was tagged to be a guest-blogger here, I said that I would write some race-relations 101 posts.

I have some ideas (and I’m hoping to flesh out at least one of them today), but I’d like to know what there’s an interest in too. I know there isn’t a race equivalent of tigtog’s brilliant Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog, and this series is probably not going to get anywhere near that involved… but I’d like to see what we come up with nonetheless.

Are there any questions you’re just burning to have answered? They don’t actually have to be 101, they just have to be questions.

(Of course, I’m not claiming to speak for all Brown people when I write this. But I’m wicked good with a Google search, and I like research better than I like my job.)

Well, it’s been quite the week, hasn’t it?

My time here at Feministe is coming to an end, and I just wanted to say a quick thanks to Jill et. al. for handing over the keys to the Porsche. I hope I didn’t put too many dings in it.

In all seriousness, this has been an awesome (though also occasionally terrifying and/or overwhelming) experience. Y’all — commenters, readers, bloggers, everyone — have consistently surprised me in the best of ways with your generous contributions and challenges and support. I’m a girl who likes to stir the pot on issues I care about, and y’all stirred it right back at me, in ways I couldn’t even have anticipated. That was the best part.

In gratitude, and because I can’t resist, I leave you with three parting gifts:

1) A Call to Action

Some of you may already know that the Elizabeth Stone House here in Boston suffered a devastating fire this week. Stone House has been doing heroic work for over 30 years and is the only domestic violence emergency shelter in the state that allows women to stay with their children while they get help, and it also houses a groundbreaking program for women with mental health issues which empowered them to take a strong role in their own care. These losses are devastating for the displaced women and children, who obviously are already at a major crisis point in their lives, even before this fire. Check this quote from The Boston Globe:

But for Erika, who had just set up the playpen for her infant and was hauling the last of her goods into the apartment Tuesday afternoon when the building started to burn, the loss was impossible to quantify.

“I’m just devastated,” said Erika, 34. “I just know my life was starting over . . . [now] I have nothing — nothing, nothing, nothing.”

No donation is too small to matter in a crisis like this. If you’ve got anything at all to spare, here’s how to give.

2) A Shameless Self-Promotion

If you enjoyed my blogging, you’ll probably enjoy my performances. The best way to keep track of when & where I’m on stage next is by joining my email list. (Mostly I perform in New England/NYC, though I definitely get to Montreal sometimes and I take gigs anywhere I can find them, so you never know. I do have stuff coming up for the Fall, it’s just not on my gig calendar yet, sorry.) You might also check out Big Moves, as a lot of what I do these days is make theater & dance-style trouble with those broads.

You can also make some trouble of your own by buying & wearing my Sticks & Stones Clothing tshirts, all of which feature insults usually used to shut us up (i.e. lying, man hating whore, angry black woman, hairy-legged lesbian, etc.).

Because words can’t hurt us if we make tshirts out of them. You can get them in a wide variety of styles, sizes & colors. Plus, every purchase you make supports a struggling feminist writer/performer. (That would be me.)

While I’m at it, let’s call this the Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday thread, since no one else seems to have started one. Promote away!

& finally:

3) Some NSA Love for Everyone, Even The Trolls.

(Be sure to watch through to the end, there’s an extra payoff. H/t Flea.)