Thank you to Shark-Fu, Miriam, and all the bloggers who have responded to the recent discussion of the feminist blogosphere and “digital colonialism.” It’s critical that we stay conscious as feminist blogs carve out a major space in public debate, personal actualization, and political analysis. We must continually ask ourselves: Where is the power? Where is the potential for transformation? How can we make our voices heard?
I think these friends have some deep answers:

How precious it is to be made invisible by authors who are challenging a system they say is making women of color invisible.
Shit.
A bitch might not be all about the ego, but my ass sure as shit isn’t some little blog that the ...

Ninety four year old Flora M. Crater died February 1st. Crater led a group of women known as Crater’s Raiders to lobby for the ERA during the 1970s and 1980s, and still held out hope until the day she died that their fight would one day, finally, be won. She didn’t see it as symbolic. She saw it as entirely possible.
In fact, Crater still published a newsletter called The Woman Activist at 91. Throughout her career, she was a champion for school integration and the advancement of women in general. In 1999, she received a Human Rights Award from the Fairfax County Human Rights Commission. She was also the first president of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the ...

I’m moonlighting on the Thank You Thursday post today to take some time and give a shout out to a blog that Feministing just discovered our mutual love for: The Kitchen Table.
This blog is written in the style of letters/conversation between two African-American Princeton professors, Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Dr. Yolanda Pierce.
Today I want to say thank you to those two dynamic women for creating and maintaining a truly refreshing and cutting-edge blog. First off, I love the concept. Harris-Lacewell and Pierce utilize the importance of the kitchen table and its role in families to create this space for their dialogue. From their first post in July 2008, Yolanda explains:

I remember when I “graduated” from the ...

The Girls Education and Mentoring Service (GEMS) deserves some major props for the work they do day in and day out. GEMS is “the only organization in New York State specifically designed to serve girls and young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking,” according to their website. It was founded in 1999 by Rachel Lloyd, a young woman who had been sexually exploited as a teenager. So amazing.
GEMS helps girls (ages 12-21) get out of the sex industry, heal from exploitation, and find their own voices and define their own dreams. It takes tireless mentoring and mothering, often resulting in girls who were former prostitutes becoming counselors for the next generation.
Check out this ...

Need I say more?
RIP.

We’re going to be taking the day off next week at this time, for one big serious Thank You Thursday (i.e. Thanksgiving), so I wanted to take this time to reflect on my own feminist legacy that I am so deeply grateful for. Feel free to write your own…
Thank you for the centuries of women who have listened to their own deep wisdom, even when society in various sexist forms tried to drown out their innate knowing.
Thank you for my grandmothers, Maryanne (pictured on the right) and Joan. Thank you for giving me the chance to live out some of Maryanne’s unlived dreams and for the special time I had with Joan, her opening and softening and ...

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I read Margaret and Helen’s best-friends-for-sixty-years blog, not because they’re really old, but because I love old ladies and don’t get to interact with them very often. My own grandmothers have passed away, and I don’t run into too many blue hairs here in Brooklyn.
If, like me, you’re hankering for some old lady interaction, do not stop go, do not collect one hundred dollars, but instead go directly to Margaret and Helen’s awesome blog.
When 82-year-old Helen was recently called out by her readers for using foul language when talking about respected government officials, she writes:

New rules:
I will stop calling George Bush a jackass when he stops calling ...

I was so moved by the New York Times Saturday profile of Jenni Williams, “Zimbabwe’s hell-raising practitioner of nonviolent civil disobedience.” Williams is 46-year-old high school drop out, mother, and strategic activist who has taken on Zimbabwe’s totally corrupt government through organizing women to do nonviolence sit ins, marches, jail time etc. From the piece: “Dozens of times, she has led seamstresses and maids, vegetable sellers and hairdressers onto the streets in Zimbabwe’s struggle for democracy. They sing gospel songs, carry brooms to figuratively sweep the government clean and bang on pots empty of food.”
She also has a bawdy sense of humor and an unbreakable belief in the power of citizens organizing. I know this wasn’t exactly what ...