YO Blog Training: What is Lil Wayne Saying?

Last week, I was lucky enough to be in the Bay Area and was invited to do my annual blog training at the YO! summer program (a project of New America Media). I have gone for the past 3 years and the students and staff never cease to amaze me. The YO summer program is in part funded by the San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and is focused on youth that have been in some way touched by the juvenile justice system. They seek to give youth skills with the hope to not only tell their stories, but to stay out of the criminal injustice system. Harris has recently come under scrutiny after having been accused of ...

Last week, I was lucky enough to be in the Bay Area and was invited to do my annual blog training at the YO! summer program (a project of New America Media). I have gone ...

Welcome Chloe!

I’m pleased as punch to announce the revival of our interview series and to introduce Feministing’s new interviews contributor, Chloe! Chloe will be profiling amazing feminist women using a new format that we think everyone will enjoy: The Feminist Five. (No, you’ll just have to wait and see.)
More about Chloe:
Chloe Angyal grew up in Sydney, Australia, and credits her radical parents and her all-girls high school for raising her to think that feminism was just common sense. She is a newly-minted graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in Sociology and founded Equal Writes, Princeton’s first feminist publication. At Princeton, she worked in eating disorders awareness and prevention, and ran an all-girls dance company. ...

I’m pleased as punch to announce the revival of our interview series and to introduce Feministing’s new interviews contributor, Chloe! Chloe will be profiling amazing feminist women using a new format that we think everyone will ...

Why is there no male birth control on the market yet?


Apparently because scientists think men won’t take it. According to an article in Science Progress, outdated ideas of who’s responsibility birth control and contraception is, has put the burden on women’s shoulders.
Via Broadsheet.

Let’s pretend you are a straight couple, in a monogamous long-term relationship, and you don’t want a kid. Consider your options: A woman can choose from 11 forms of contraception — including barrier methods like the diaphragm, permanent sterilization, and that holy grail of the sexual revolution, the pill, and its more recent and even more foolproof sisters in hormonal birth control, the ring and injectibles. A man can choose two: condoms or a vasectomy.

Right, so according to science, if you are woman it ...


Apparently because scientists think men won’t take it. According to an article in Science Progress, outdated ideas of who’s responsibility birth control and contraception is, has put the burden on women’s shoulders.
Via Broadsheet.

Let’s ...

What We Missed

Elle Magazine breaks down swimsuit controversies through out history.
ESPN writer Scoop Jackson tries to slut shame Brett Favre. Seriously?
Chiara Volpato, a professor of social psychology at the University of Milan, explains why conservative ideas die hard in Italy–especially while Berlusconi is around.
Feministe reports: Since 2005, nine women who lived at the edges of the poor community in this small North Carolina city have disappeared. And the mainstream media doesn’t seem to give a shit.
Bloggers react to Chris Brown’s pop apology.
Firing woman for taking unauthorized breaks to pump breast milk is just fine, Ohio top court rules.

Elle Magazine breaks down swimsuit controversies through out history.
ESPN writer Scoop Jackson tries to slut shame Brett Favre. Seriously?
Chiara Volpato, a professor of social psychology at the University of Milan, explains why ...

I ♥ Vogue Evolution on America’s Best Dance Crew

I’m really excited about Vogue Evolution, a group competing in the current season of America’s Best Dance Crew. The crew members are black and Latino. Four are out gay men and one is an out trans woman. From the beginning they’ve been very upfront about their identities (a relief after seeing so many euphemistic referrals to queer people on TV including the insulting “Choice Fab-u-lous” category at this year’s Teen Choice Awards). Check out this video from the first episode of the season where they introduce themselves and talk a little bit about being gay and trans:

Voguing has been around since the Harlem Renaissance and has been dominated by queer people of color. Pony Webster, one of the crew’s directors, ...

I’m really excited about Vogue Evolution, a group competing in the current season of America’s Best Dance Crew. The crew members are black and Latino. Four are out gay men and one is an out trans woman. ...

Feminist vs. Humanist

I was visiting a couple of friends that I’ve known since childhood this week and my feminist identity came up. My friend’s husband, a small business owner, generally pretty conservative guy, asked me how I defined feminism. When I explained (“genuine equality, educated choice, and authenticity”) he was a bit stunned. “By that definition, I’m a feminist,” he said, incredulously.
“Yup,” I said, smiling.
“But if feminism has such bad connotations in the mainstream media and in so many parts of the country, why do you use it? Doesn’t that just alienate you from people that you’re trying to influence?” he asked next.
It’s, of course, not something that every feminist who cares about being effective hasn’t thought about. I ...

I was visiting a couple of friends that I’ve known since childhood this week and my feminist identity came up. My friend’s husband, a small business owner, generally pretty conservative guy, asked me how I defined feminism. ...

Good Hair

There’s an article in today’s New York Times about Chris Rock’s much anticipated new documentary, Good Hair, which explores black women’s complex relationship with hair and all the historic, racial, economic, gendered, and of course comedic, connotations. It won the jury prize at Sundance. The trailer:

In the Times article, Ingrid Banks, an associate professor of black studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, breaks it down: “For black women, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you’ve got straight hair, you’re pegged as selling out. If you don’t straighten your hair,” she said, “you’re seen as not practicing appropriate grooming practices.”
There is so much at stake here. Not only are black women subjected ...

There’s an article in today’s New York Times about Chris Rock’s much anticipated new documentary, Good Hair, which explores black women’s complex relationship with hair and all the historic, racial, economic, gendered, and of course comedic, ...

Quick Hit: That’s Dr. Shante to You


Roxanne Shante gets her Ph.D. on Warner Music’s dime because of a clause in her contract that said they would pay for her education for the rest of her life.
Frickin’ love that. Shante said: “This is a story that needs to be told. I’m an example that you can be a teenage mom, come from the projects, and be raised by a single parent, and you can still come out of it a doctor.”

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