My fella is pretty modern-thinking. He’s well-acquainted with the necessity of my diaphragm , and he is not afraid of my period. When we camp out, I get pretty smelly and greasy, and often piss within his visual and aural range. Farts are not a big deal. He understands that I am a person and thus have [...]

I’m very emotionally tied to feminism; feminism alone got me through years when I did feel the weight of having a non-standard body. When I was a teenager, I hated myself. I was smart, but no one would listen because I was a teenage girl with non-evident disabilities. I hated my body, and so did [...]

Crossposted at Deeply Problematic In Mobile, Alabama this week, policemen used lethal force on Antonio Love, a deaf and mentally disabled man, who would not come out of the bathroom. Their excuse? He had a lethal weapon himself….an umbrella. Love was in the bathroom, a place where everyone should expect privacy and respect. . In Love’s words, given [...]

Yesterday in my blog , I covered Newsweek’s myopic list of the 50 books that define and explain these confusing modern times . To recap: the list was 84% white, 78% male, 96% straight, and 66% both white and male. Now, I’m not putting down white male writers. But there are many wonderful writers who are subject to significant oppression, and choosing [...]

Crossposted at Deeply Problematic This problematic poster is currently making the rounds   Issues: 1) The onus is placed on the women being preyed on, not the predator. The young women manipulated and hurt by older men are constructed as more culpable than the men wronging them. 2) The girl in this picture is clearly white, but is the man black? The lips [...]

In writing in a feminist vein for the last couple months, I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of feminist I am trying to be, and how to handle the privilege that blinds me, by looking at where other bloggers I admire have fucked up recently and a while back. As a feminist writer, you can’t not fuck up. People are essentially [...]

Crossposted at my blog, Deeply Problematic . Apparently the New York Times has just gotten the memo that women larger than a size eight also enjoy wearing stylish clothing in a new article by Ruth la Ferla, called "Fashion Reaches Out to Heavier Young Women" . This degrading article comes despite widespread reporting that the plus-size industry is retracting (they  allude to [...]

Cross-posted at Deeply Problematic Rock concerts are one of my favorite ways to spend time and money. However, a lot of the bands I see are pretty damn patriarchal: Widespread Panic , New Riders of the Purple Sage , Metallica , etc. Over at Female Impersonator , Amelia wrote about the discomfort she felt at rock shows :

At , I have felt very much [...]

Crossposted to my blog, Deeply Problematic I love Michelle Obama, and I love the way she dresses. But man, I am sick to death of hearing about her limbs and how they reflect poorly on American Women. Especially from execrable new blog Double X, in which Susannah Breslin tells me and Michelle Obama that if we didn’t wear [...]

Hey everyone! I was surprised to see that Feministing did not have an entry on Wikipedia while surfing this morning. So, I created one! It’s important to make sure we have a presence on Wikipedia, which is to some extent a measure of how important or notable a certain subject is. Though I work in academic [...]

I am conflicted as to how the feminist/liberal media should handle the question of Palin’s perceived attractiveness. Certainly, we should be critical of media response to her presentation, just as we would any other figure in American politics. But does it behoove us to make her appearance an issue? I think that consideration of the [...]

Good news in the battle against asinine anti-abortion rhetoric (such as that used in recent South Dakota legislature, where lawmakers cited increased risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts caused by abortion as reason to outlaw the practice): the American Psychological Organization has declared this logic to be utter bunk, saying:

"…the most methodologically sound research indicates that [...]

You know, I am really pleasantly surprised by Obama. He’s not perfect, and his backtracking on promises (rejecting public financing (over it – we need cashmoney to beat McCain)) some of his views (I was particularly disappointed in his "whatever!" attitude towards wiretapping), and I was disappointed that he refused to face McCain in town-hall debates [...]

I have been a feminist since I was eight, about around the time I began to want to move out of Kansas. My mother was reading Ms., and took the opportunity to explain feminism to me. "Feminists think that things aren’t equal between men and women and want to change that. Some feminists go really far and [...]