Anyhoooo, I do have a bit of a critique.  Jessica tells young women to never, ever sleep with a guy who is pro-life/ anti choice.  I don't have the exact quote the book is not currently in front of me and I'm at an internet cafe so, I'm not digging it up.

This irked me.  I think that doing away with the women=sex=vagina thing is fundamental to feminism.  and I just feel that it's not appropriate to use your sexuality to reward men.  or rather it's not ok to tell other people to use their bodies to reward men with good politics.  I mean, shouldn't sex be about what *I* want?

Maybe what I want is to convert people to my political way of thinking, but maybe, just maybe, I want an orgasm. Or to be physically close to someone because I need that every so often in life.  And I personally probably wouldn't be attracted to or feel safe around anyone who was anti-choice, so I personally probably wouldn't sleep with them.

The whole idea of it seems just a bit too much like PETA telling us that we should use our bodies as a form of outreach which is something most feminists condemn....

If an individual wants to use sex as outreach, good for them, but don't think it's cool to suggest I SHOULD do the same.

I've had many more people take it than I expected at this point in time:

• 679 people have answered at least one question on the 1st page (which only asks things like your age and sex)
• 486 people have answered at least one substantive question on page 2 and beyond
• 402 people have taken the full survey.
• [also, across three days an additional 51 people took a runner-specific street harassment survey I posted on a runnersworld.com forum]

I'm very close to my original goal of collecting a minimum of 500 responses and I am surprised at how quickly I was able to achieve this. I thought it would take months. The downside is that soon I'll have to go through all of the surveys and then actually write the book proposal (the scary part)!

I had a long list of people I wanted to thank who've helped make this happen by not only taking the survey but passing it along and posting it on listservs but this entry got eaten up once already (despite the fact that I clicked save) and I don't  have the time... But quickly, here are a few people I want to thank because they told me they posted or forwarded the survey: Emily @ HollaBack NYC, Brittany @ HollaBack Boston, Jasmeen @ Blank Noise, Joseph @ Word Warrior, Cara Ellison on her blog, Emily @ Advocates for Youth, the Feministing Community, various friends & family & coworkers of mine, and especially my parents and sister. THANK YOU!

I'm brainstorming more conservative leaning listservs and blogs to send this to, any suggestions?

And if you haven't taken it yet, please do!

In the post, Shark-Fu talks about "taking back words", like the word that starts with a b and rhymes with "witch".

[Ed note: it sure is hard to keep swear words out of this blog.  I'm starting to annoy myself. At the same time, I want people who are offended by swear words to read about feminism & not be turned off by language, thus my severe editing...]

She states, "Both my nickname and the name of my blog are the result of my deliberate claiming of language and words previously used against me." [emphasis mine] and, "The label was meant to diffuse their power and shut them up...it being built on an understanding of the so-called benefits of conformity and silence that my family passed down like other families passed down good glassware."

No doubt about it, Shark-Fu is

• Awesome,
• A talented writer &
• Totally inspiring

So click over to Angry Black B&*#$ and see what else she has to say.

1. The Logo: The first thing that caught my eye was the logo. While later on I learned that using the curvy sillhouette of a woman flipping the bird was a way of reclaiming the "objectified" woman's body (like the silhouttes we see in James Bond movies), I just don't think it successfully conveys a feminist message.  After all, the silhouettes we are used to seeing aren't reflective of most women's bodies... they're disproportionately curvy, tall, and thin. If we really wanted to reclaim the "silhouette" wouldn't we show an average-sized woman standing up, looking at us directly, and flicking us off? The way this silhouette is positioned to emphasize those sexual curves and the way she's looking off to the side still inclines us to look at her and not that finger in the air.

I also think it's worth mentioning that this silhouette is probably white. Since I've been learning more about race lately, I've been trying to bring my new understanding of it to everything. And I wonder if Feministing would have been as popular among white feminists had the logo sported an afro instead of long, straight hair. I do think by using a straight-haired silhouette as the Feministing logo, there's the assumption that either all feminists are white or that's the norm.

2. The Comments: I frequently walk away from the comments on Feministing wondering, "Wait, was that a pro-feminist site?" According to the Feministing comments policy, "We view Feministing as a platform for not only discussion among feminists and allies, but for reaching (rational, not hateful) people who may not agree with every word we write." I don't think their purpose of reaching out is successful though when people just storm into threads and dispel feminist ideas. I'm too lazy to point out a specific thread, and maybe it's not as bad as I'm suggesting, BUT I do always walk away with that somewhat uncertain feeling that I don't get from, say, Shakesville or Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog.

Also, recently on Racialicious a lot of commenters have been expressing their frustrations with white feminists at Feministing. Apparently, many of them get defensive or wave off POCs that come in to express their ideas. Considering my experience as described above, I don't doubt this is happening even if my privilege hitherto has made me blind to it. And ignoring race in feminist discussions is NOT something I endorse.

3. Feminism is a "cool" thing: Now you may be thinking this is a strange reason to oppose Feministing, especially considering I'm a young "hip" thirdwave feminist. But it really annoys me. Like Jessica Valenti's book "He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know," the site seems to encourage young girls to join the feminist movement because it's the "cool" thing to do. Not quite the same as the Bratz/Barbie doll "girl power" cool (which we all know is not empowering at all), but not quite the "I'm really interested in joining the battle against sexism and other oppressions, teach me more! *drool*" cool either. Like, I get that they're trying to dispel the idea that feminists are hairy-legged bra burners with no sense of humor, but making feminism "mainstream" and "accessible" actually seems counterproductive to me. The whole point of feminism is that it challenges mainstream ideas about who we are, how we define ourselves, and how we view the world around us, particularly when it comes to understanding sex and gender. It's not about creating the "feminist" clique at middle school and it's not about making feminism "cool." Feminism is cool in the first place for anyone who thinks sexism is bad; we need to find ways to destroy myths about feminism as opposed to worry about "jazzing" up our image.

So, I may be removing my link to Feministing in a few days. Not that I won't check back in from time to time. Occasionally, there are interesting articles to read. And I certainly won't judge anyone to linking to Feministing on their own blogs. But I just don't feel it's the kind of "feminist" site I want to recommend to readers. Feel free to agree or disagree. :)

i have this philosophy teacher who i've actually known for years so he's familiar with all my gender/queer/politics beliefs and something came up in class about democrats being bad?  and after class i decided to ask him what he thought of sarah palin.  this brought up a discussion of how we feel about abortion (with his sarcastic comment that i want to kill babies) and whether or not sarah palin is a feminist, or isn't one, or if she just isn't My kind of feminist.
then today feministing beat me to the punch.  and they covered it better than i could even have guessed how.

Note to the Mainstream Media: Sarah Palin is NOT a Feminist

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Jay Smooth said it pretty damn well, but I still feel a feminist obligation to talk back to the Republicans who made fun of community organizing last night.

Thank you to all the community organizers, past and present, who have recognized the ways in which the personal is the political, hearing--in the individual stories of ordinary people--a common thread of struggle deserving of action and resolution. Thank you to those who jump started whole movements (feminism, civil rights, labor) with their audacity and daily, hourly, minute-by-minute courage to knock on doors, sit down with friends and strangers alike, educate, and most of all, listen. Thank you to the community organizers who have targeted environmental racism--making sure that folks aren't poisoned in their own neighborhoods just because they don't have the resources to fight back. Thank you to the community organizers who have targeted civil rights, educational failures, classism, racism, sexism, ableism etc. etc.

Thank you to my friend Daniel, who has done community organizing from Harlem to LA to Boston. Thank you to Biko Baker of League of Young Voters, who I once interviewed and was immediately impressed by. Thank you to Saul Alinsky, largely considered the father of community organizing (pictured above). Thank you to all of you I don't know, who every day, make the choice to listen to ordinary people's stories and help them link these stories into a template for honest-to-goodness social change.

And, yes, thank you to Barack Obama, for making the choice to be a community organizer so many years ago and for continuing to be proud and loud about the importance of the role of the community organizer for our nation's wellbeing.

Marc's wonderful blog:

Much like China jailing a bunch of protesters during the Olympics, and the US complaining, and then the US arresting and jailing a bunch of people who were planning on protesting at the Republican convention beforehand, on charges like "fire code violation"[1].

And the US isn't protesting. And the mainstream media aren't covering it, unless I missed it. Read more about it at feministing, their followup, and of course, Glenn Greenwald, who is always worth reading.

And since you're playing Syncronicity[3]...

Changes - Yes

And an appropriate followup for my last post would have been "Sweet Transvestite", from the Rocky Horror Show, Sean. Since you weren't sure how to follow that up... :)

[1] You see, having a door that's been bashed in, and is hanging off the hinges breaks the fire code[2]. Even when the police ( & FBI ) were the ones that bashed it in (without showing a warrant).

[2] Honestly.

[3] Which I do really like.

I read the Palin forums on several conservative and liberal sites today, and I checked Facebook updates all day to find out how my friends were reacting to McCain's choice, but the most interesting comments were at Feministing.  Good arguments all around.

hm.
how 'bout that.

this guy.
thanks to my favourite feminist blog, feministing, i now know reverend hagee is the yo-yo trick MASTER of right-wing christianity.

i'm glad i will never be a stay at home dad who happens to encounter rev. hagee.  with any luck, i will never be the sole provider of income for my household or, you know, be in a lesbian relationship and encounter this man.
his interpretation of scripture is perverted nonsense.  he says paul discusses in 1st timothy that lazy bum dads are going to hell.  really?
i can understand his view, kind of, if i was completely supporting my husband and there were no children.  but i don't plan on marrying a starving artist or a pot-head musician, you know?  and even then, he's utterly condemning and irrational.
but rev. hagee isn't referring to those men, although i'd love to hear the hell-fire they've got in store for them.  he is completely referring to men who stay at home taking care of their children.
first, it's becoming common knowledge that paul didn't actually write 1st or 2nd timothy, but that's not the point.  for convenience let's say he did; even strict, sometimes harsh paul the apostle never said anything about men being providers of the household.  just because mr. hagee's sensibilities are jarred by a little gender liberation and role reversal does not mean he can direct the scripture on laziness at husbands who are supported by their wives.
second, stay-at-home dads aren't lazy.  point blank period.  him accusing them at that is saying stay-at-home MOTHERS are lazy as well!  apparently he's never been in charge of raising children.  because being a mother is an intense, taxing, never-ending, no sick days, no sleeping in on the weekends kind of job, not to mention all the things i don't know about being a mother being that i'm not one.
clearly, rev. hagee is under the impression that child-rearing is beneath him.  that's a humble man if i've ever seen one.  humility is having a level-headed, rational, generally objective outlook at your station in the world among God and men.  i think that rev. hagee has a slightly grandiose idea of the responsibilities God has 'placed on men.'
i don't believe that God ever meant for there to be gender roles in the first place.  ever.  they came with the fall, and as society evolves, as it's transformed by the renewing of our minds (romans 12:2), i firmly believe they will become less and less prevalent in society.

It comes as some surprise then, that Jessica Valenti is the face of third-wave feminism. Here I was, thinking we're all unorganized and we have no direction. Silly me.

I found out about Jessica Valenti and her newest role from this blog post discussing post-feminism and Jessica Valenti's response. The author of the post, Bondo, invited Ms. Valenti to respond to his critiques of her work and post-feminism, and she respectfully declined, as she runs one of the largest feminist websites on the internet and has published several books and is teaching a class at Rutgers this fall. She's a little busy.

So here's the thing: why is she the face of feminism, the one that non-feminists go to, when there are other feminists out there with differing beliefs, or more articulate writing styles, or more time on their hands to educate the non-feminists about feminism? Is it because "might is right," and since she has the largest website/most books, she gets the coveted status? After all, she is doing a lot of publishing and talking about feminism today.

I'm not going for sour grapes, here. It's just that I seemed to have missed the memo about our newest leader. So what do you do when you don't always agree with the leader of your movement, but you know that people are going to point to her when you tell them you're a feminist? Dissent within the ranks is allowed, of course, but it tends to weaken the message of movements like feminism. In thirty years, are kids in high school going to learn about only Jessica Valenti in their history textbooks?

Dear Courtney,

I read your opinions about the MTA raising awareness about sexual
misconduct on the subways and found it very naive and written from a very
white-middle-class-women-studies-privaleged perspective. You are correct
that women have been dealing with this kind of stuff from guys for years,
but what about how women dress in the subways? Today (after reading your
opinion) while on the subway, I saw a woman sit near me with a very low cut
shirt and very large tits...she looked hot! I totally stared at her tits
any chance I could get...which is probably why she wore the shirt right? I
also see scores of women with those cotton summer dresses on and just a
thong underneath, so you see their asses bobbling around under the skirt.
That sounds like blaming the victim right? Well when you leave almost
nothing to the imagination, it doesn't take much for it to run wild. This
is not to say you whip your cock out at any moment or press your boner on
any tart that wears a hot outfit, but where they "asking for it"? I know
you are probably fuming by now, but from the looks of your picture you
probably don't get sexually harrassed much, so maybe you are jealous of all
of the hot-ass bitches with the big titties, shaved snatches and round
asses that get some action underground.

hells to the motherfuckin' yeah!!!!

Chance Noble

His e-mail address is snhca@exit3.com if anyone would like to know. :)

Yearbooks are another great example of this. I agonized over what to write for my grad message, quote, pet peeve and hero. This was, after all, the little snippet by which people were going to remember me forever. You flip through your yearbook and look at these things, and think "oh yeah, Jane would say something like that... and that did bug her a lot." In the end, I said Raine Maida was my hero (I honestly remembered writing someone else down, and though I do love the man, at the moment I would choose either Matt Good or Jessica Valenti), my pet peeve was "serious conversations at 2 in the morning" (in response to something that happened once a couple days before I wrote that, and is no longer the least bit relevant or funny) and I can't even remember my quote. It was probably "Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember" by Oscar Levant. That or "There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line," also Levant. Actually, I think it was the latter. These days, I usually quote Chuck Pahlaniuk. The autograph page is just as guilty on this front. How many of you fought to find the wittiest, funniest, most profound things to write in your friend's yearbooks? Inside jokes, moments that you shared, little things that would capture you in that moment. I believe most of my comments this year were about how no matter how hard I tried, I would never capture the reality of the year and I hoped they were able to remember me for who I was and how we interacted.

This just goes to show that nothing is immortal, is it? I've changed immensly since October or whenever it was that I wrote those things. It hasn't even been a year and I am not the same person. My yearbook profile is a shallow little snapshot of who I was that week at best, with a literal picture next to it.

And what about photographs? They're meant to visually represent a life, event or place. Family pictures are the worst. They show happy, posing families with smiles on their faces. Even candid shots are nice. No one ever takes pictures of the bad times. Even journalistic photographs have an agenda. They are taken to get a point across, whether that point be devastation, resourcefulness or joy.

In the end, there is nothing we can do to permanently imprint ourselves on another's life, save be a part of it. That's it, just interact with people. I still remember the kid with the rat-tail that hit me in the face with a wooden train in kindergarten. He certainly never wrote anything funny in my yearbook. While I hope my blog will represent me with some degree of accuracy, I know that it and I will change. It's already changed in the few weeks I've been writing it. I started it hoping to be some sort of blog messiah and write about the state of affairs of our society, et cetera et cetera, much in the style of Waiter, Jessica and Matt. While I do have commentary on the election, politics and the like, I've found and I think demonstrated that my heart lies with movie reviews. That really surprises me. Reflecting, I see that it is comfortable for me as media (not TV, radio in news, rather books, music and movies) have always been a very important part of my life. In the end, that was my goal, to have an outlet in which to find my voice. I'm glad I have.

I'm sure I'll return to this subject in the future, as my views will change or deepen, no doubt.

Edit: I wrote this a while ago (August 6th) and somehow failed to click "publish". That's why it's only coming out today.

This is not entirely unexpected, but so bothersome when you hear about how calculated TV news is in a real instance. News media must make money. Sensationalism brings in the viewers and the money. Blaming individuals and framing a debate as a cat fight is sensational. Legitimate, boring explanations that have to do with money and social inequality...meh, we'll pass. This really is so frustrating.

With stakes like these in the mainstream media, it's hard to imagine real social change being instigated in these traditional forums...This is part of the reason I'm so grateful for alternative media (like Democracy Now! just as an example), and especially for the existence of blogs. I know we always question just what kind of impact or influence blogs have, but just think where we'd be without them. Though the audiences for blogs are self-selected and certainly more limited than the audience that would be watching the morning news show Courtney was asked to speak on, the very fact that we can turn to Feministing to hear about this instance and to hear the very arguments Courtney wanted to share on TV is a huge step forward. It's progress, and I think an essential part of the path to positive social change.

A lot of the time when I can't sleep, it's because I'm obsessing on one particular thought or series of thoughts.  Sometimes it's because I'm excited about something.  Tonight it seemed like I just had the vague sensation of having forgot something.  Like, maybe I had forgotten to think of something or obsess over it.  Maybe there was some future conversation that I hadn't imagined yet and run through twelve hundred times in my head.    One of these days, I'm going to be better at meditating that stuff out.   Well, actually, I can meditate it out, but meditation doesn't put me to sleep.   Me'da says it works for him, but for me, it sort of heightened relaxed state, so it's like I'm too focused on being relaxed to be relaxed enough to fall asleep.

Whatever.  Rambling.  See this.  This is why I don't sleep.  This is exactly what goes through my head.

Anyway, so I'm sitting here on the computer, and I'm reading blogs, and I see this one blog on Feministing about a documentary, and one of the people interviewed in the clip is an author.  Next thing you know, I'm looking her up on Amazon, and buying three books.   

Aarrrggghhhh!  I need to go to sleep before I buy any shoes.  I don't need shoes.  I don't.

Anyway, here's the trailer for the documentary that started this all:

Why are middle and upper-middle class families and their precious Disney vacations the face of the rising cost of gasoline and not the working class families who lived month to month as it was before the exponential price increases…who maybe have to skimp on food or medical services, and for whom a Myrtle Beach trip isn’t even on their radar? Instead of moping about being stuck at home, maybe some of these families should spend part of their summer volunteering for charities who help those who will only ever hear about DisneyWorld in the stories told by other more fortunate kids.

Really, though, how did it get like this? No wonder right wing assholes certain people think Americans are babies about the economy -- because they don't stop to think about how these rising prices affect people already barely getting by, and few people in the mainstream media seem to care to show them.

Honestly, if I ever hear about the tragedy of the "staycation" again...no, no, make that, if I ever even hear the word "staycation" again, I may have to take a permanent vacation from reading travel and leisure newspaper sections.

Also? A few more books that look worth reading are mentioned in the trailer, including Leslie Talbot's Singular Existence and Jerusha Stewart's A Single Girl's Manifesta. I imagine you'll be hearing more about these books here once we get our hands on them, but if any of you happen to have any info/thoughts/reactions about these books or others, we'd love to know!

- L

"Value yourself for what the media doesn't--your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it's not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, it's an improvement."

Full Frontal Feminism's text skips along while it imparts knowledge--a rare enough combination. The book condenses the contents of a thirteen-page bibliography into colloquial prose, presenting vivid example after vivid example of why we all (women *and* men) need to identify as feminists and buck the ridiculous stereotype that feminists are always hairy-legged man-haters. (Not that it isn't sometimes delightful to forego shaving for weeks on end during the winter.)  

Don't open this book if strong (some would say "foul") language offends you in and of itself. But if you're ready for a dose of hard-core truth about women's ongoing struggle to even the playing field with men, then you'll love this book. Valenti speaks her mind, but her style is not so much "in-your-face" as, "Hey, you're a smart reader--once I tell you this shocking story, you'll have the awareness and incentive to do better, to change things".

I remember when the media were ragging on Hillary Clinton because of her headbands. As a frequent headband wearer myself at the time, I felt indignant. I didn't scale back on my headband-wearing, but when I did wear them, a niggling part of me wondered whether they were as stylish as I had thought. So I was thrilled to see Valenti bring up the headband issue and carry it through with this example: "While all women are subject to being judged by their appearance, women in leadership positions get it like crazy. . . former governor of Maryland and 2006 state comptroller William Donald Schaefer told a Washington Post reporter that his 2006 opponent, Janet Owens, is a 'prissy little miss' who wears 'long dresses [and] looks like Mother Hubbard--it's sort of like she was a man.' He said in an interview, 'She's got these long clothes on and an old-fashioned hairdo. . . You know, it sort of makes you real mad.' Uh huh. Can you imagine someone talking about the hairdo and clothes of a male candidate?"

Here's another good one:

"In the same breath, President Bush managed to talk about his Healthy Marriage Initiative (the program that tells women on welfare that they don't need a job, they need a man) and define marriage as a heterosexual institution. . . Clearly, romance has become the domain of the dollar--and the government. So I say let's take it back. There's no reason we can't have fulfilling romantic lives without adhering to bullshit standards that are set before us. Mix it up. Create your own standards and your own romantic norms." 

That's Onely!

Above I said that Valenti's style, while strong and direct, is respectful of her readers' intelligence and decision-making capabilities. (A metaphor for feminist culture as a whole?) I only noticed one instance in the entire book where this style falters:

Background--Valenti firmly believes that women should keep their last names when they marry. So, as it happens, do I. I'm astonished that this remnant of the women-as-property days remains so ensconced and pervasive in society. However, my friends who have taken their husbands' names say they do it as a loving gesture, a way to commit. So I was wondering how they would react to this in-your-face part of Full Frontal Feminism:

"While at the end of the day I'm not going to fault someone for wanting a ring, there are certain things (and maybe because they don't have anything to do with jewelery) I can't get over. For the life of me, I will never understand why a woman today would change her last name. It makes no sense whatsoever. You want future kids to have the same last name as you and your hubby? Hyphenate, bitch! Or do something, anything, but change your last name. It's the ultimate buy-in of sexist bullshit. It epitomizes the idea that you are not your own person."

My reaction was to laugh hysterically and add "Hyphenate, bitch!" to my not-yet-online quoteboard. Then I wanted to tell someone about this awesome line I read in a book--but all of a sudden I wasn't sure whom to tell. Lisa, my Onely co-blogger, for sure.

But most of my friends are married, with changed last names, and of those who aren't, I'm not sure how they feel about the whole issue. I could bring up the topic with them, but not necessarily the (to me) fabulous wording. The strong wording of the above paragraph, which so pleased me (because I happen agree with it), might have antagonized the people I wanted to share it with, if they weren't on my same page about namechanging.

I guess that's always the question--where is that line between straight-talk and and talk that puts people on the defensive so that they actually rebel against absorbing what you're saying? Where is the line between refraining from saying something because you're chickenshit afraid to offend a friend, or refraining from saying something our of respect for your friend's judgement?

FFF walks that line but never crosses it except, maybe, just that once. However, I'd be interested to see what other readers think--especially readers who don't necessarily *start* reading as Full Frontal Feminists already (which probably has skewed my impression of the book). So, comments anyone?????

Thanks to Penny for giving me this book! 

--CC