August 2010
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Important
The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on...
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Pop Quiz!
Is Vivienne Westwood’s 1995 Penis Shoe:
A. A brilliant take on CFMP (Come Fuck Me Pumps).
B. An ironic wink at various dick myths, e.g. that you can tell the size of a man’s penis by his shoe size and/or that black men have bigger dicks.
C. Holding up a warped mirror to those who say that men design high heels to disempower women because these are shoes designed by a woman that...
Goddamnit, Alaska. →
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“Well I was raised to be kind to all people, so I will just say there is...”
– Best polite putdown ever, from Womanist Musings. I will totally be using it.
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“The Cultural Conversation Is Just a Fancy Term for a Tumblr Reblog”
– Doree wins today.
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“every time the faith chick calls buffy “B,” i want to chew my own...”
– RadicalHotOff.
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Support the Fight Against Homophobia in Davis...
I met James Bennion in a roundabout way. My sister sent me a copy of this article about him and his fight to start a Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) at his junior high school in Bountiful, Utah. He cited my book on teen activism as an inspiration, which is so great to hear, that it is still having an impact. As the article notes, and I talk about this in the book, people are coming out at earlier and...
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“As I speculated recently, the Brooklyn Paper has confirmed that at least one of...”
– Brooklyn 11211
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More on Charm City
Charm City Art Space advertises itself as socially conscientious. Today, it issued a draft statement with the goal of ending debate over claims of sexual misconduct on the part of one of its members. Five women accused one guy of sexually harassing them in separate incidents, including one woman who accused him of having sex with her against her will. Unfortunately for the women, members...
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In These Troubled Times
From Courtney Desiree Morris’ excellent piece in make/shift, reproduced on the Incite! blog:
Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements
Reflecting on the radical organizations and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s provides an important historical context for this discussion. Memoirs by women who were actively...
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Remapping the Revolution
If you read much about culture, especially music, you will see a lot of this type of thing — where’s the underground? what is avant-garde? what’s really bohemian now? what’s the real counterculture? where is the DIY insurgency? where’s the radical new youth movement that will make us obsolete? where is the new thing that will carry the new flag against the new establishment? what’s subversive...
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“‘Christine died of a broken heart,’ Diana says. ‘She wasn’t confused about...”
– Mike Penner, Christine Daniels: A Tragic Love Story - LA Weekly
The emphasis on being accepted by other women is important, I think. I was reading the transcript of an interview with a trans woman at work and she repeatedly noted that the most important thing to her were her straight, cis-gendered,...
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Important: Jane Doe #225: I can understand why... →
I see feminists who don’t think trans women are real women and use the wrong pronouns all the time. I see someone totally disregarding the feelings of pwd by constantly saying things like crazy . When they get called out on it all the other feminists hold their hand and try to convince they are good people but they ignore the feelings of pwd. The same argument over hijabs happen without any...
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Attention, Male Chauvinist Pigs!
The caption says “Relax. When the ‘Libs’ call us names like that, it really means they think we’re rugged, masculine, virile. Like these new Hush Puppies.”
Here’s the thing—I would so totally wear these shoes. Actually before I zoomed in and read the text, I though they were aimed at Libbers! Like, “Throw off your high heels, womyn, and wear these...
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Those Who Refuse to Cackle
Gail Collins and Stacy Schiff discussed the Mama Grizzly phenomenon (movement?) in the Times yesterday. Naturally, they took some time to talk about those traitors, young women.
Every time I go on a speaking tour I get questions from sad middle-aged women who want to know why their daughters all insist they aren’t feminists. They might be planning to devote their lives to healing fistula...
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Parking
We interrupt your regularly scheduled feminist BBC talk to share this photo someone just posted on a message board for my home town.
This was a major playground in my childhood! The pirate ship and the rocket! You can’t see it but there is a slope that goes down to another big area. I smoked in this park as a sullen teen, and spent many drunk nights sledding down the hill on cardboard we...
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Ladyness: Is "Pearl Clutching" the New...
I’ve been pondering that two of the big putdowns in online feminist (and non-feminist) circles are to accuse someone of “pearl-clutching” or “flouncing” and I’m thinking about how those are very gendered putdowns, very nicely targeted to situate the accuser as modern and with-it, and the pearl-clutching flouncer as outdated, feminine.
I get that the imagery...
The Vaselines – Sex With An X →
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Time Out Will Not Stop Our Revolution
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Isn't It Interesting
That when people started seeing images of this:
Instead of this:
Michelle Obama’s approval ratings went down?
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“Meanwhile, a nascent Positive Force men’s group, helmed by Mark Andersen,...”
– Just one of the genius moments in Sarah Marcus’ Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, which is amazing. The above is what the mens were up to during the first national Riot Grrrl convention, July, 1992.
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Think Tank
Even though I spend my time working on stories like rape in the military or finding your G spot, a little part of me still imagines working at a magazine in terms of this movie.
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We Are All JD Samson Babies
via mmmfeminism
9 to 5
I love that this photo is titled “Sad Career Woman of the 40s.” That’s me! Although I am not that sad, and I am in fact somewhat looking forward to a three-week gig at a certain publishing Death Star. I have my commuter mug and everything.
The last time I had an in-office job at this place, a friend and I had a contest to see who could wear the craziest thing and still pass...
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Birkin Bag
“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, because it’s ok to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly you’d love to know what it’s like, wouldn’t you? What it feels like for a girl?”
- Charlotte Gainsbourg in The Cement Garden (this quote/clip was also used in what it feels like for...
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Old Spice Guy + FEMINIST HULK + Judith Butler
Old Spice Guy: "Hello, FEMINIST HULK. I observe that you are using lady-scented body wash."
Feminist Hulk: "HULK FIND LAVENDER FRAGRANCE RELAXING AFTER DAY OF SMASH."
Old Spice Guy: "Wouldn't you like to smell like me?"
Feminist Hulk: "HULK WOULD RATHER SMASH GENDER BINARY OF PERFORMATIVE SHOWERING."
Old Spice Guy: "Your tiny purple shorts hanging on the towel rack now hold tickets to the Sleater-Kinney reunion concert. And diamonds."
Feminist Hulk: "HULK ENJOY CORIN TUCKER'S REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES AND CONSUMERISM. BUT DIAMONDS MAKE HULK WANT TO SMASH HEGEMONY OF POST-COLONIAL OPPRESSION. ALSO, STILL PREFER TO SMELL LIKE FIELD OF FLOWERS."
Old Spice Guy: "You puzzle me, Feminist Hulk. Your wish to use lady-scented body wash, even whilst smelling the intoxicating scent of my Old Spice, is unparalleled in my experience. "
Judith Butler: "Feminist Hulk makes a good critique, Old Spice Man. Your discourse is being circumscribed by a learned sex/gender distinction. Please pass me the loofah."
Old Spice Guy: "Hello, Judith Butler. Allow me to scrub your back. So you and Feminist Hulk are saying that my devotion to Old Spice body wash might be part of a larger regulative discourse to maintain an essential ontological gender?"
Judith Butler: "That's correct, Old Spice Man."
Feminist Hulk: "HULK SMASH EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS, WHILE SMELLING LIKE SPRING GARDEN."
Old Spice Guy: "I understand. Allow me to bake you a cake, Feminist Hulk and Judith Butler, while we discuss intersectionality and the beauty of giant green muscles."
Judith Butler: "Congratulations on making a break with compulsory heterosexuality, Old Spice Man."
Femist Hulk: "HULK IS VERY HAPPY TO SHARE TEARS OF JOY AND ORGANIC WHOLE WHEAT PASTRY FLOUR WITH OLD SPICE MAN AND JUDITH BUTLER."
Old Spice Guy: "I'm on a unicorn."
From femonster.tumblr.com
Jean-Michel, Taylor, Britney, and Tamra
I interviewed Ms. Tamra Davis, director of the above three projects and many more. Read it on Bust.com
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Pedigree Wall
By Faith Wilding, 1997. “Framed, certificate-like detourned (with drawing and text) actual sperm donor profiles and sperm donor fitness tests obtained from fertility clinics.”
Sometimes it takes me a while to get to Ms. Wilding’s work because her name is the most complex and beautiful thing. Faith Wilding. Can you imagine faith on a rampage?...
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The Seduction of Nostalgia
“The past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
—Virginia Woolf (via hootowlchild, fuckyeahlesbianliterature)
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And for the good, one hopes
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Enjoy the Silence
Someone asked Ian MacKaye a question and this is what happened.
He felt it was an unnecessary story for bloggers—and me—to write about while wars are being fought abroad and people are dying.
This is totally what I am going to say whenever there is something I don’t like or don’t want to talk about. “That is an unnecessary story.” “Those are unnecessary...
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L.A. Joan
It is all I can do to not repost every breath silk-rayon takes
