Tag Archive for "Analysis"

Posts Tagged Analysis

Events, Tents, and Assemblies: Promoting Gender Justice at the US Social Forum

Guest Post by Marina Karides, member of the Gender Justice Working Group. This is the second in a series of pieces on the US Social Forum and the activities of the Gender Justice Working Group at the forum.
For anyone remotely interested in grassroots activism and promoting social justice internationally, transnationally, nationally, and locally the US Social Forum is the event for you. To be held in Detroit, MI June 22-26th, the US Social Forum will highlight the economic troubles of Detroit following its long history of capitalist greed that used Detroit workers as cheaply as possible and then left them high and dry for even cheaper labor in the Global South.
And the Global South is where the ...

By Samhita • 13 years ago

Feminism and Masturbation

Andrea Plaid has a piece up at Bitch on feminism and masturbation with a series of quotes from feminists (including myself) about what feminists aren’t talking about when it comes to feminism.

Twanna Hines–
I fucking love masturbation. Solo sex is absolutely a political issue because taking control of your own pleasure is liberating. Too often, when we talk about restricting women’s pleasure, the topic turns to female genital cutting in other countries. However, our homegrown variety of no-whacking, abstinence-only education can be equally repressive. I want more of us– women and men–to dialogue about access to healthy information about all forms of sex.
Tami Winfrey Harris–
From a black woman’s perspective, I’m not sure ...

Andrea Plaid has a piece up at Bitch on feminism and masturbation with a series of quotes from feminists (including myself) about what feminists aren’t talking about when it comes to feminism.

Twanna ...

By Samhita • 13 years ago

Vintage Ads: Domestic Tropes Then and Now

The Weburbanist has a series of ads up clustered in themes, such as smoking ads, weigh tloss ads, food ads and cooking ads. One set of ads didn’t have a content theme in common, just that they were making fun of domestic violence as a way to sell products.

Had enough, there more. Check out these housework ads,

The Weburbanist has a series of ads up clustered in themes, such as smoking ads, weigh tloss ads, food ads and cooking ads. One set of ads didn’t have a content theme in common, just that ...

By Samhita • 13 years ago

Awesome Documentary Alert: DESIGIRLS!

It can be said that homophobia is a universal experience, but plays out differently based on culture, ethnicity, history, class and race among other factors. As a South Asian women who is openly feminist, I have experienced first hand some of the very specific views of my very loosely defined “community,” (which would be middle class South Asian most of which immigrated in the early 1970’s) on gender and sexuality, which to be frank, leave a lot to be desired.
Historically, within the South Asian cultural context, gender and sexuality have often been represented as more fluid. But something about the transnational circulation of the idea of “coming out” seems to be understood to be in opposition to the South ...

By Lori Adelman • 13 years ago

“Queer Sex Doesn’t Count” And Nine Other Myths Uncovered- And Debunked- at the Harvard “Rethinking Virginity” Conference

Yesterday, Chloe and I had the privilege and honor of speaking at the Rethinking Virginity Conference at Harvard University. The conference was organized by Lena Chen, blogger extraordinaire and recent Feministing Five interviewee, and brought together an incredibly diverse and impressive group of feminists, who dropped some serious knowledge on all things virgin-themed. One of the most interesting parts of the panel was learning how much misinformation exists around issues of virginity, sex, and our bodies. This isn’t exactly breaking news- in fact, our very own Jessica Valenti wrote an entire book about it. But the quest to educate and rethink harmful cultural norms and standards is never finished. So I’ve compiled ten myths ...

By Samhita • 13 years ago

Are Black Women Being Used As Scapegoats?

Why, you wonder, why Samhita do you ask these rhetorical questions? But, I haven’t had much of substance to say about the new mainstream media obsession with black women’s marriage options since it is so frustrating and as you may know I am writing a book on dating, marriage and romance, so I don’t really feel like blogging about the topic. I mean there was the OKCupid study that Ta-Nehisi debunked quite effectively, but everyone from Nightline to the Economist has something to say about it. And all of a sudden Steve Harvey is a relationship expert? Give me a break. Of all the issues affecting black women today, marriage rates are what we are going ...

By Samhita • 14 years ago

AskMen.com Cares Not Gay or Straight; Their Mission is to Highlight Macho.

luggageandsouls wrote on the community site yesterday about this really interesting list that AskMen.com put together about the Top 10: Toughest Gay Characters. I certainly did a double take since AskMen is so unapologetic about hating women and giving off the cuff advice on how to be the biggest misogynist possible that this also meant they hate teh gayz. But as you read through the list you realize, it is not “gays” they hate, it is femininity, so even their list of highlighting “gays in Hollywood,” is clearly an attempt to highlight men that are not too gay as to destabilize their idea of masculinity and then by extension their own sexuality which is potently, exaggeratedly, ...

By Lori Adelman • 14 years ago

In Today’s Alternative Advice Column, What Lies Behind “Slut”

A while back, Chloe wrote a terrific piece about the gap between increased awareness about unhealthy beauty standards in the media, and the unhealthy messages they’re actually internalizing. I think a similar gap exists regarding sexuality; many of us are able to articulate pride in our sexuality or pontificate about sex positivity, but we’re still internalizing harmful messages about sexuality and what these messages says about us and our value. We still buy into the Madonna/whore complex. We still believe purity and goodness reside with virginity, and dirtiness and badness reside with sex. We still feel shame about our desires, and feel less and less proud of ourselves as our “number” climbs higher and higher (and I’m not talking ...