2010 March Archive | Feministing

White House website highlights senior level female staff

A new series on the White House website, started by the Council on Women and Girls (which President Obama created), will be highlighting senior level female staff in the Administration. It’s being called Meet the Women of the Administration.

About the series:

One of the goals of the Council on Women and Girls is to call attention to the inspirational women working in the Federal Government and to learn more about their paths to their current positions. In the first of this series, Meet the Women of the Administration, we asked Dr. Rebecca Blank to reflect on how she developed an interest and expertise in economics and to weigh in on how she balances work ...

By Samhita • 14 years ago

On the Newsweek “All the Women Are White” Fail

The failure for mainstream feminism, as it is framed in the mainstream media, as in places like Newsweek, to acknowledge the diversity of feminism as it is, is something I have written about a lot. And so I guess it is frustrating to read this dialogue between Latoya and Raina Kelley about feminism at Newsweek depicted as white in this article.
Latoya pretty much lays out the arc of the interactions and all the different variables and considerations at play along with a justifiably frustrated chat with Thea Lim. I feel a couple of different things reading the different reactions, but one of them is definitely that they could do better. I can stand here from Feministing ...

By Chloe Angyal • 14 years ago

Overcoming shame by sharing your story

Trigger warning
As some of you may already know, April is Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Month. As the month goes on, you’ll probably be hearing a lot about sexual assault, both online and off. If you’re on a college campus, you might be attending, or even organizing an event. If you are, I tip my hat to you. If you’re not, get on it! One of the most important parts of raising awareness of and preventing future assaults is humanizing it, connecting the statistics and the abstract concepts with a name and a face and a story. To do that, we need as many people as possible to publicly demonstrate that they care about ending sexual assault, ...

By Samhita • 14 years ago

Get Opinionated: A Progressive’s Guide to Finding Your Voice (and Taking a Little Action)

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon fame has a new book out and this one I am pretty excited to read. It is a snarky guide on how to be a liberal. She writes,

I put together the proposal during the election season, and as I wrote it, I thought one thing was for certain, which is that after November 2008, things were never going to be the same for liberals. Sitting at my desk in fall 2008, I thought two things: a) it seems there are a lot more self-identified liberals around now than there was 8 years ago! and b) our unity as a movement is deeply threatened by this upcoming election. The reason for both ...

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon fame has a new book out and this one I am pretty excited to read. It is a snarky guide on how to be a liberal. She writes,

I put together ...

By Samhita • 14 years ago

Should Spouses Be Allowed to Sue Their Ex-Partner’s Lover?

Newsweek has a piece up about a few leftover laws allowing partner’s to sue their ex-husband or ex-wife for emotional humiliation, lack of morality and what they call, “alienation of affection.” And while historically, the law has been used by men to sue their wife’s lover, it has most recently been used by women, to sue their husband’s lover.

While the alienation-of-affection laws have been used by men to sue their wife’s male lover, today they’re more often used by women to go after mistresses. That’s how Cynthia Shackelford, 60, a former teacher, recently won a mind-boggling $9 million judgment against Anne Lundquist, her husband’s lover, whom she accused of “alienation of affection” that resulted in the end of her ...

By Lori Adelman • 14 years ago

Erykah Badu’s New Video for “Window Seat”: Feminist Art or Shameless Publicity Stunt? (NSFW)

This weekend, the blogosphere was taken by storm when Erykah Badu released a music video for “Window Seat,” the first single off her brand new album. Definitely check it out if you haven’t already, although please be warned that this is most definitely Not Safe For Work.
In the video, Badu is seen stripping down from a hoodie and pants to her birthday suit on a public street. I won’t spoil the rest of the video for you, but let’s just say the ending definitely caught me off guard. A surprise “plot twist” turns this video into something much deeper than your average music video “striptease”.
Or does it?
The video was meant to be a statement against “groupthink” ...

By Miriam • 14 years ago

What We Missed

Our girl Chloe has a piece in HuffPo about why media literacy isn’t enough to improve women’s feelings about their bodes.
WaPo had an article last week about queer weddings in Washington DC and gender non-conforming wedding attire.
The women involved in the Newsweek gender lawsuit have started a blog called The Equality Myth.

Guttmacher Institute has a rundown on the new health care reform bill and what it will mean for reproductive rights.
Ricky Martin finally comes out.
The anti-choice “race and sex selection” bill passed the Georgia Senate on Friday. It remains stalled in the House.

By Miriam • 14 years ago

Guest post: On how I became an American

This is a guest post from someone who preferred to remain anonymous.
After fifteen years of living in the United States, I’ve embarked on the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. It’s important to me to write about this in this forum because immigration clearly is a feminist issue – one that has to do with everything from reproductive justice to political oppression to global capitalism to education justice. This is my immigration story, and how it has connected with these issues.
The first few months I was here are difficult to remember in anything other than broad strokes – I was lonely, culture-shocked, going through puberty, and angry at my parents for moving us from Venezuela to ...