feminist blogs

This video is a little old (I just found it on the International Women's Day website), but it is something that I would not doubt is still going on in Afghanistan. It's heartbreaking, to say the least.



You can visit the sites of organizations like Women for Afghan Women and the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan to learn more about the hardships of post-Taliban life, and to find out how you can help.

Sign the petition here.

I saw this posted on The Sexist. It's a video created by Amanda Hess, where she interviewed men on birth control and how it works. Watch!



Wow. Some of the things said by the men (the birth control pill is the same as Plan B? wtf?) are just shocking. Unfortunately, a lot of men who have sex with women don't bother to learn about birth control because they see it as something only women have to deal with. Birth control is as much a man's concern as it is a woman's, and deciding on a method of contraception should be a collaborative process.

But too many men take the birth control pill for granted - there seems to be this idea that it's this simple process involving popping a pill a day with ease, and there's no need to think or talk about it. But men should know how it works, and men should understand that it's certainly not easy for a woman to take birth control. It takes awhile to find the right brand, and with every brand comes a slew of terrifying side effects. Can most men even name one side effect of the birth control pill?

I'm not blaming men for being ignorant. I know the real reason is that somewhere down the line, men got the message from society that birth control is not a man's issue. So men, it's time to unlearn what society taught you and hop on Wikipedia to learn about birth control. It'll be one of the most manly things you'll ever do.

I just want to give all of you a heads up that posting might be sparse over the next week - I'm performing in The Vagina Monologues on my campus this weekend, and evidently have two exams next week, so I'm stretched pretty thin.

But I am super excited for The Vagina Monologues. This will be my fourth year in a row performing in them, and it's so wonderful every time. If you've never seen it before, I highly recommend you do. Granted, the show has its flaws, but overall it's a really empowering experience, and the proceeds always go to a wonderful cause. This year, the spotlight is women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Search for V-Day events near you to find a production. And if I didn't convince you to see the show, I bet the below video will.

Eve Ensler (author of The Vagina Monologues) gave a speech on TED.com about "embracing your inner girl." What does everyone think?

There's really nothing like the unnecessary sexualizing of women politicians to even further hinder our ability to be taken seriously in the political world, as well as our plights to decrease our society's objectification of women. As always, PETA continues to set feminism back and sink to the lowest of the low when it comes to advertising methods. You never disappoint, PETA.

I stumbled across a Top 10 Most Bizarre Sex Ed Videos list at Ranker.com, and wow. Compared to some of these creepy and outdated videos from 50 or so years ago, even abstinence-only education doesn't seem that bad.

My favorite was the video that tried to educate children on "the homosexual," usually an older mentally disturbed man who picks up little boys in his car and drives them to motels to force sex on them. It warns the viewer: "One never knows when the homosexual is about. He may appear normal." Shudder.

Saw this very cute and very interesting video over at Sociological Images, and I was enthralled throughout the whole thing. As a girl who grew up playing Sonic the Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat on Sega Genesis, begging my father to buy me a Gameboy to be able to play Super Mario Brothers on the go, and now obsessively trying to get the high score on Wii tennis, I can't help but be interested in why women seem to feel left out from the video game world. Daniel Floyd makes some really great points, calling the video game industry a "Boys' Club" and arguing that the sexualization of female video game characters might turn women (and certainly feminists) off from video games completely. I especially love what he says towards the end:

Perhaps the ideal solution would be to just stop drawing gender lines completely. It may be that when we stop thinking so much about "games for men" versus "games for women" and just make games for people, things will start to improve. Yes, certain kinds of products and imagery appeal to men while other kinds appeal to women, and there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to wonder if all this boundary drawing around women and games has just kept them out, rather than invited them in.

Relax, it's just The Onion. Saw this on Feministing and laughed my ass off. It just illustrates the sheer ridiculousness of "prior to an abortion, a woman must do this" laws, and exposes the fact that these laws exist solely to deter women from choosing abortion.