Staff picks: Our favorite in-house posts from 2012

While we understand traffic is an important indication of what’s resonating, it’s not the whole picture. Sometimes our favorite posts don’t necessarily go viral but manage to inspire, provoke, or comfort us in a way that the traditionally popular posts do not. The following posts are our favorite in-house posts from 2012. Stay tuned tomorrow for our favorite feminist pieces of 2012 published elsewhere around the Interwebs. It’s about to be an end-of-year lovefest y’all.

Samhita

It’s hard to pick any few posts, since every single writer at Feministing brings something special and unique (just like a snowflake d’awww) to the site, whether it’s humor, analysis, facts or just some much needed anger.  It’s an honor to work with these ladies day in and day out and this year our team has expanded! I’m most excited about our new contributors and am looking forward to seeing more of their content since Alexandra, Sesali and Amy have gotten off to a pretty great start so far!

Vanessa

Lori’s post on the German dad who wore a skirt in support of his gender non-conforming son. These are the personal stories that often have the ability to make the most meaningful impact on people’s lives compared to our more newsy news, and Lori highlighted it brilliantly by pointing out that this is so much more than an “aw” moment. This father is a reminder of how we all can and should be more supportive of the gender non-conforming people in our lives.

Chloe

The return of Ann Friedman with her amazing Weekly Feminist Gif posts. Ann was a wonderful Editor, and we miss her, but it’s been great watching her other work at The American Prospect, GOOD, Tomorrow, Editor Real Talk, LadyJournos, New York Magazine, and the Columbia Review of Journalism. Her writing about politics and pop culture is required reading, but so too is what she’s written about mentoring and networking among young journalists, especially women. That she was part of the Feministing family makes me proud to be part of it, too.

Jos

I’m a total Maya Dusenbery fangirl. She’s had a lot of amazing posts this year, which is why I’m cheating and linking to a bunch in this sentence. It’s hard to pick a top post, but her recent piece on the overwhelming link between violence and masculinity in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting blew me away. I still haven’t been able to write about the tragedy; Maya nailed the ways our culture of violence and culture of patriarchy are the same thing, and the reasons we can’t talk about violence without talking about masculinity.

Maya

Todd Akin’s infamous “legitimate rape” comment was arguable one of the most important moments of the election season–not only sinking Akin’s campaign but also spurring a media firestorm as a seemingly endless stream of other GOPers revealed their true colors to a blogosphere ready to pounce. In her “Thank you note for Todd Akin,” written just after Akin’s comment, Chloe wrote a well-timed, scathing takedown–one that proved to be the definitive answer to all the GOP’s absurd rape comments for months to come. Fuck you, indeed.

Lori

I loved Samhita’s post on Lena Dunham’s casual racism and whether or not it matters. She managed to take a complex, touchy subject and boil it down intosomething clear and definitive. I love that she was able to employ humor (in a post about a comedian) while also holding the right people accountable for diversity and anti-racism. Honorable Mention for my fave post of the year goes to Katie’s “Three reasons I wish I could quit you, Susan G. Komen!” for making me laugh the hardest.

Katie

Maya’s Weekly Feminist Reader is the place to be/ think to read. She covers all the important stories, has a great eye, and is a tireless investigator.

Syreeta

Twin posts from Maya and Eesha in response to the mass shootings and male violence this year.  Particularly, this gem from Maya: ‘But I’d argue that, to some extent, all violence is “about” masculinity in our culture. Male violence is so pervasive–and violence so closely connected to our definition of “manhood”–that I don’t think it’s possible to separate them.’

Amy

Sesali’s post on our obsession with and endless opining on celebrity pregnancies. It named what’s so disturbing about our fixations with motherhood as a definition of womanhood with an example that most everyone could relate to. I mean, who isn’t curious what kind of child Queen B and the Hov would raise?

Sesali

Do quick hits count? If so, Maya’s post about the Nice Guys of Ok Cupid was one of my favorites for a couple of reasons. For one, I’m always down for a good laugh and I haven’t stopped looking at the tumblr since. But more importantly, the rhetoric of these nice guys and the heinous commentators is (ironically) complex and engages popular ideas about partnership & dating, intimate partner violence, gender, sexuality, etc. I like when we cover topics that people who aren’t necessarily followers of feminism can identify and begin to dissect. This is all, of course, part of our broader plan for world domination I’m sure.

Alexandra

Jos’ open letter to Elizabeth Warren, following the then-candidate’s comment that paying for a trans woman in prison’s reassignment surgery was not “a good use of taxpayer dollars,” powerfully coupled righteous anger and compassion. The piece called Warren out on her ignorance but still expressed faith in the senator’s capacity to change and use her “compassionate, caring voice… to cut through the bigotry.” I’ve had the letter on my mind through my recent writing: how do we use criticism to encourage, rather than alienate, potential allies?

Ed note: This is the second in a series of posts summarizing the year in online feminism. View the most highly trafficked posts of the year here and check back tomorrow and every day through the New Year for more end-of-the-year content.