Weekly Feminist Reader

By Maya | Published: July 3, 2011

Join the Right 2 Wear campaign and support the rights of Muslim women to play sports, regardless of their clothing.

A GOOD infographic on women in the military.

Mara Hvistendahl responds to Ross Douthat’s column on her book about sex-selective abortion. More great rebuttals from Michelle Chen and Adam Serwer.

Breaking Boundaries: A gallery of stories and images of transgender Americans.

Our own Shark-Fu: “Slavery was slavery…and, to the world’s shame, slavery still is slavery.”

At the Awl, novelist Kate Christensen discusses male muses and inner dicks.

An app from ProPublica analyzes new government data to show the education “opportunity gap.”

Melissa McEwan on policing femininity: “What I want is the freedom to fuck up, and the right to be wrong.”

Real Women

On new voter ID laws: “Under the guise of protecting elections, the integral democratic right to vote is being transformed into a privilege and a prize.”

An exploration of Dan Savage’s theory of non-monogamy.

Jill defends the popular new “children’s” book Go the F*ck to Sleep from some humorless critics.

At Black Coffee Poet this week, a series of posts celebrating queer indigenous voices.

Some scary maps of abortion restrictions in the states at Mother Jones.

What have you been reading/writing this week?

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11 Comments

Tori

Posted July 3, 2011 at 12:09 pm | Permalink

Shakesville and What Tami Said are coordinating a My Planned Parenthood blog carnival for July 7.

Observation — Teacher observations as a form of support/evaluation, what the supportive version was like for me, how it would have been different if I’d perceived it as antagonistic.

Bound and Determined (TW for body image issues) — Coming to the realization that there are some movements in yoga that my body is too big to do, at least in a way that serves me.

The Wrong Way to Be Assaulted (TW for rape and victim blaming) — Reacting to some of this week’s developments in the DSK assault case and how some folks are quick to disregard rape culture as an influence.
Brüno

Posted July 3, 2011 at 1:00 pm | Permalink

Some people in Europe think they do women a favor by putting pressure on the veil. But they totally lack an understanding of the culture in that country. Many things said about the veil might be true, but it is also true that asking of many women used to wear the veil in public to take it off or go home, to them is as if an western women is told to show her tatas on the field or go home.
davenj

Posted July 3, 2011 at 1:50 pm | Permalink

“Lesson of DSK? Be careful who you’re alone with”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/02/schwartz.dsk.sex/index.html

Victim blaming 101 on CNN’s front page.
Larkin Callaghan

Posted July 3, 2011 at 2:04 pm | Permalink

I also wrote a response to Douthat’s column last Tuesday: http://larkincallaghan.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/abortion-isnt-that-simple-mr-douthat/
And a commentary on Duke Nukem’s advertising: http://larkincallaghan.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/duke-nukem-seriously/
aLynn

Posted July 3, 2011 at 2:40 pm | Permalink

I wrote about Michael Bay’s treatment of Megan Fox in the new Transformers movie: http://www.nerdyfeminist.com/2011/06/transformers-3-girls-are-totally.html
Thunder Maker

Posted July 3, 2011 at 3:08 pm | Permalink

I disagree with your support of Right 2 wear. While I sympathize with the female athletes of Jordan and Iran, the hijab is meant to hide women and “protect” them from harassment. These ideas, refashioned under the guise of modesty, run counter to what feminists should be supporting. While it is difficult to stand by and see anyone be the victim of discrimination on the basis of religion, we cannot forget what the hijab represents.
- MadGastronomer
  
  Posted July 4, 2011 at 11:51 am | Permalink
  
  First of all, because of the laws of the countries in which these women live, if they cannot wear their scarves they cannot play at all, which is discriminatory. Second, as feminists, we need to trust women to make their own choices, even when we think those choices aren’t good ones.
- F.Toth
  
  Posted July 5, 2011 at 8:16 am | Permalink
  
  ThunderMaker, well said!
FeministWhore

Posted July 3, 2011 at 5:12 pm | Permalink

I made 2 vids for my youtube channel, loosely about the Village Voice vs. Kutcher situation:

On The Numbers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT5hiB3bL14

and

On The Training: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTncdkjtl4s
MadGastronomer

Posted July 4, 2011 at 7:33 am | Permalink

Wow. Thanks for linking to that Kate Christiansen interview. Now I know not to ever buy her books. Seriously?

At the end of the essay, I explain that I’ve relinquished my “inner dick,” at least for now. I spent my late twenties and early thirties in a state of hotheaded fury—at the way things were, at the unfairness of it all, at the wrongheadedness of my species—you name it. I think that, over the years, this white-hot, male-feeling rage has mutated into another, different, possibly purely female mode, one that will likely inform my next books—but I can’t know until I’ve written them.

Gender essentialism. Thanks, Christiansen, but my white-hot rage is “purely female.”

The payoff for musedom is slight enough (as I see it) to be nonexistent; you have no control over whether you’re portrayed at all, let alone in what light, and, worse, you have to live with a moody, insecure, egomaniacal workaholic without a secure income or any benefits. When it’s a woman, throw in PMS, and any gambler could tell you the odds against that horse.

PMS joke. Holy crap.

I created Luz out of my own extreme distaste for, and desire to expose in writing, whatever that mechanism is in certain women that causes them to spy without permission on their lovers’ or husbands’ emails or texts or conversations (or poetry) to gauge whether or not they’re being unfaithful, and then to interrogate them obsessively and rip them to shreds and declare vengeance on the so-called “other woman” and throw things and stamp around screaming.

Because that’s only something that women do.

There is something in that loony, pathetic, deranged behavior—most of all a delusional sense of entitled ownership of another person, but also a grasping, desperately insecure possessiveness—that makes me cringe.

Ableism.

Luz’s character is based on the wives and girlfriends of men I’ve known. I’ve never behaved that way, and I’ve never been in a relationship with a man who behaved that way. (It wouldn’t last long, to put it mildly.)

Myth of Self as Exceptional Female, with shades of victim-blaming for women in relationships with sexually controlling men.

When the book opens, he’s floundering toward something else, some other way of being that involves growing a spine and a set of balls, as it were.

Do I even need to state the problem with this?

The internalized sexism, the ableism, the gender essentialism: yeah, not reading this author. I’m curious why this is linked to as part of the Weekly Feminist Reader. I don’t see anything feminist about it.
Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz

Posted July 4, 2011 at 2:58 pm | Permalink

A friend of mine posted a link on Facebook, about various states bringing charges against women who have had miscarriages or stillbirths. It’s a disturbing read:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/07/01/256823/pregnant-women-criminal-charges/

As for writing, here’s the latest text I performed, it’s a bit of an acerbic take on the idea of “It gets better”, a promise I’m not entirely sure our society can quite make just yet, as well intentioned as that campaign is:

http://jennydevildoll.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/it-will-stay-stupid/