Tag Archive for "Friendship"

Posts Tagged Friendship

Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah: queer family models

In this video, Shawnta Smith and Jas Cruz, who are are ex-wives or best friends depending on which one of them is doing the telling, talk about the home they’ve built together and what it means to them and their community. It’s wonderful. They have separate beds but their bookcase is merged. I mean, that’s just poetry.

The video is part of I’m From Driftwood, a project that brings together stories from LGBTQ folks around the world. This month, they’re spotlighting stories from the black LGBTQ community. Check ‘em out.

Transcript after the jump.

In this video, Shawnta Smith and Jas Cruz, who are are ex-wives or best friends depending on which one of them is doing the telling, talk about the home they’ve built together and what it means ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 12 years ago

The power of women’s friendships: Do people really still devalue it?

This weekend, it seemed all of my lady friends on Facebook were linking to this piece by Emily Rapp. It’s a lovingly-rendered tribute to the older mentors who’ve shaped her and the current friends who’ve saved her–and a beautiful articulation of the power of female friendship.

Recently I overheard a man say at a yoga class, “Yeah, well, you get two women together and it’s like bitch central.” I could have told him he only needed one, in fact, and that would be me, but it also made me realize how much people diminish and poo-poo the real power and strength of female friendship, especially between women, which is either supposed to descend into some kind of male lesbian love ...

By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

Guest post: An open letter to my male friends who make sexist “jokes”

This is guest post is by Doreen Bloch, a young entrepreneur and author. Doreen is the author of the forthcoming book, The Coolest Startups in America, and the CEO and Founder of Poshly Inc. She is a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council and is a regular contributor to Under30CEO.

When I asked Doreen to explain what impelled her to write this post (originally posted on her blog), she told me that one of her guy friends pseudonymously tweets comedy and sarcasm, and that in addition to being a popular tweeter, he’s a leader in his offline community. “His tweets are fantastic, but every now and then, he makes sexist ...

This is guest post is by Doreen Bloch, a young entrepreneur and author. Doreen is the author of the forthcoming book, The Coolest Startups in America, and the CEO and Founder of

By Samhita • 12 years ago

Men’s egos so fragile, the wrong friendships will lead to erectile dysfunction

I know I have done something right in my life because I get to write headlines like the one above. I know there is something wrong with the world, because that headline is based on an actual study that suggests that when women are too buddy buddy with their beau’s bros, he can’t get it up. Her platonic transgressions ruin their sex life!

The NYTimes writes,

The subjects were men from 57 to 85, ages when men’s social lives contract, male identity is challenged and erectile dysfunction often sets in. When a partner was closer to a man’s friends than he was, his sex life suffered, say the authors and sociologists, Benjamin Cornwell of Cornell and Edward Laumann of the University ...

I know I have done something right in my life because I get to write headlines like the one above. I know there is something wrong with the world, because that headline is based on an actual ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection

Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection by developmental psychologist Niobe Way is a must-read for anyone concerned with the so-called “boy crisis,” anyone who is raising a boy in the U.S., and anyone who doubts that feminism can—and should—improve the lives of boys and men.

In this richly-researched book, based on in-depth, one-on-one interviews with teenage boys in the U.S. as they progress through high school, Way debunks the cultural myth that boys don’t have, need, or desire close friendships. By attempting to truly listen—through the distracting noise of our own assumptions and expectations—to what boys themselves are actually saying, she paints a reality that is both more heartbreaking and more hopeful than the myth. ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 12 years ago

The Wednesday Weigh-In: When you want to bone your friends

It’s been far too long since we’ve discussed sex in the Wednesday Weigh-In. Over the Good Men Project, Hugo Schwyzer challenges the conventional wisdom that you can’t be friends with someone to whom you’re sexually attracted.

In part, he blames the assumption that desire makes platonic friendship impossible on the myth of uncontrollable male desire: “One of our great myths about men is that lust invariably cancels out empathy.” He also notes that many of us–men and women–are taught to “mythologize sexual desire” and “sexualize emotional intimacy.”

Those last two points really ring true for me. As someone who has been attracted to many friends and has often acted on that–to different degrees, with varying levels of damaging fallout, and conflicted ...

In ...

By Courtney • 13 years ago

Feminism animates

I had the great pleasure of hearing Philly-based painter and animator, Jennifer Levonian, speak at the Santa Fe Art Institute when I was home visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago. She started out primarily doing still watercolors, but took an animation class on a whim while in art school and fell in love with the medium.

In this amazing animation, “Her Slip is Showing,” Levonian captures what I think far too many of us feel–as if the wedding industry kidnaps our otherwise amazing friends’ brains for a short period of time leading up to their ceremonies. Take a look:

Her Slip is Showing from Jennifer Levonian on Vimeo.

To see more of Jennifer’s animations, go ...