Category Archives: Feminism and Culture

Mental Illness: What A Difference A Friend Makes

This is a fairly extensive educational site. Via The Trouble With Spikol.

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The Real, Real Phraseology Should Be … [expletive deleted]!

After noting that the jacket blurb for Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain, said: “Brizendine reveals the neurological explanations behind why [a] woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000…” as was mentioned in this … Continue reading

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“The Shape of Water”

The Shape of Water is a movie described at this website as follows: In an intimate encounter with five very different women in Brazil, India, Jerusalem, and Senegal (narrated by Susan Sarandon with introductory narration co-written by Edwidge Danticat) THE … Continue reading

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“As The Tumor Turns”

One of the funniest blogs about cancer you will ever read. By “Spinning Liz,” who might sound a tad familiar to some of you, if you are lucky.

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The Genders of Milk and Glue

Did you know that Elsie the Borden trademark, and Elmer of Elmer’s Glue, were married? From Elmer’s.com one learns: “Elsie the Cow became Borden’s very popular “Spokescow” in the late 1930’s. She was a big hit at the 1939 New … Continue reading

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Kimberly Raffo, Barbara V. Breidor, Tracy Ann Roberts, Molly Jean Dilts

All of the above are murder victims named in this NYT article, which reports: … In the 25 years since legalized gambling helped transform Atlantic City from a faded resort to a popular destination for weekend slots players, casino companies … Continue reading

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Disempowering Girls as Users and Creators of Technology

Justine Cassell has written a short essay available here arguing that fears such as those about girls using social networking sites arise “in part because people are fearful of women becoming empowered as technology users and producers.” She writes: There … Continue reading

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Girlistic Magazine

You can read the premiere issue of the feminism-oriented “Girlistic Magazine” online here. The publication’s homepage is here. Via Figure: Demystifying the Feminist Mystique. Update: Celina at Feministing has an interview with Girlistic founder Jaymi Heimbuch here.

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Some Posts You Should Read at Women’s Space/The Margins

I don’t agree with everything she writes, and no doubt vice versa, but I don’t think there is anybody more committed to feminism blogging today than Heart. Here are four of her recent posts you should read: “Brittany Spears Crotch”: … Continue reading

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Abortion on Prime Time

Two young doctors not in a relationship have a one night stand, and she gets pregnant. What are the odds that, whatever they decide to do about the pregnancy, abortion wouldn’t be considered, even if just in passing, as an … Continue reading

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Too Busy To Engage In Your Own Amateur Astroturfing and Sock Puppetry?

Pay someone else to do it for you! It’s very cheap! Here’s part of the pitch: FakeYourSpace is an exciting new service that enables normal everyday people like me and you to have Hot friends on popular social networking sites … Continue reading

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Ouch.

Photo available for purchase here. Caption from site is as follows: Coloured X-ray of a woman’s foot in a high-heel shoe. The construction of the shoe is clearly seen; so is the way that the foot is forced to rest … Continue reading

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And The Number One Woman On The Wall Street Journal’s “50 Women To Watch” List Is…

Melinda Gates, Bill’s wife. And while I applaud the work that the Gates Foundation is doing, I do have to wonder why she outranks the women who are running large companies. –Ann Bartow

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The Secret World of Lonelygirl15

Wired News has a long story about Lonelygirl15 here. Below is an excerpt: …Beckett ordered a pitcher of margaritas and explained that they wanted the vloggers of the YouTube community to believe that Bree was real. Flinders rationalized the deception, … Continue reading

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More Anti-Fuggery

I’ve made no secret of my contempt for Go Fug Yourself, and today I experienced a fresh resurgence of loathing. Here are just a few of the choice comments that site has recently had for actor Lindsay Lohan: … We’ve … Continue reading

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O.J. Simpson Book Cancelled

NYT story here which notes: Faced with a growing uproar, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman the News Corporation, announced this afternoon that his company had canceled publication of the pseudo-memoir/confessional by O.J. Simpson,”If I Did It,”as well as a related television … Continue reading

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We’ll Laugh When We Are Equal

“[I]t doesn’t take great courage to bash someone everybody else is also already bashing.” That is a quote from Echidne of the Snakes, in a post in which she also writes: …[S]uppose now that I could morph into two versions, … Continue reading

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Robert Jensen on Pornography

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin who writes critically about pornography. To say that being anti-pornography is a culturally unpopular view is to put it lightly, and he doubtlessy spends a lot of … Continue reading

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“The Glass Ceiling” in Washington State

Via Heart at Women’s Space/The Margins, an article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that reports: …In a state that made history last year by becoming the first to have a female governor and two women serving in the U.S. Senate, women … Continue reading

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Tab Stinks, Don’t Drink this Crap, Part 2

Part 1 is here. Now this: Full advertisement visible here. Blech! This demonstrates worst taste than the actual beverage, which is basically “pink carbonated essence of bathroom cleanser.” Via Counterfeit Chic.

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“The Myth of Black Women’s Progress: A Conversation with Activist and Filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons”

The online version of the Black Agenda Report is featuring an interview by Tamara K. Nopper with Aishah Shahidah Simmons, who made the rape documentary NO! The interview is accessible here. Below is the opening paragraph: Aishah Shahidah Simmons is … Continue reading

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Do Women Find Borat Funny?

Gail Dines, a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boson, has published a sharp critique of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat movie.   In CounterPunch magazine, Professor Dines argues: [W]hen Cohen makes misogynist jokes about rape, prostitution … Continue reading

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“Stop the Press Spree Against Working Moms”

Read Sheila Gibbons’ essay by that name here. Below is an excerpt: …Off-kilter news reporting on the reasons women leave jobs, laced with amateur psychology and traces of biological determinism, have been creating a false impression about women’s employment patterns, … Continue reading

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Ich bin kein Berliner: She is Not a Jelly Doughnut

For post title context, watch this. She has done a remarkable series of videos about mental health issues. Via The Trouble With Spikol, where Liz Spikol writes: “I admire this woman for trying to talk about her experience, and for … Continue reading

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Ellen Willis

Ellen Willis, journalist, feminist, cultural critic, and professor of journalism at NYU died of lung cancer on November 10, 2006. Her NYT obituary can be accessed here. It notes: “She was a founder of Redstockings, a short-lived but highly influential … Continue reading

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CFP: Human Rights in Child Welfare

CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue: Human Rights in Child Welfare Journal of Intergroup Relations Journal of the National Association of Human Rights Workers Guest editors: Laura Dreuth Zeman and Julie A. Steen, School of Social Work, Southern Illinois University – … Continue reading

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Are “Porn Stars” Human?

Not according to the U.S. Marines. Jenna Jameson apparently does not exude the solemn patriotic dignity that the Marines’ invited speaker “Ultimate Fighting Championship brawler Tito “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” Ortiz” does, and for some reason the Marines couldn’t … Continue reading

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Dr. Crazy Surely Isn’t

Here is an excerpt from one of her posts at Reassigned Time: … When I decided to become a professor, I was under the naive impression that I’d be entering a world in which gender didn’t determine my identity quite … Continue reading

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When the Dead Get Dissed Online

From this NYT article: …If the Internet has increased the ease and anonymity of communication, it has also weakened inhibition and decorum. “When they’re face to face at a funeral, people don’t have the guts to do something like that … Continue reading

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Elizabeth Alice Clement, “Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945”

From the book’s website: The intense urbanization and industrialization of America’s largest city from the turn of the twentieth century to World War II was accompanied by profound shifts in sexual morality, sexual practices, and gender roles. Comparing prostitution and … Continue reading

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Bob Herbert Gets It

Read his recent NYT column, “War on Women,” here if you haven’t yet. [Ed: The title of the column is actually “Punished for Being Female.”] The United Nations report he references is available here and here. Related U.N. complied information … Continue reading

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Disagreement is Fine, But Hatred Isn’t

Amananta at Screaming Into The Void has a post up about the fact that she has been taking a lot of inappropriate abuse from other bloggers. Although she doesn’t say it directly, it sounds like some stress in her personal … Continue reading

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Why You Might Not Want To Read “Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports,” by Brooke de Lench

Flea will tell you at One Good Thing: Here is a short excerpt from her detailed and interesting review: …De Lench believes that girls are being turned off sports, not only because they are perceived as being unfeminine (which is … Continue reading

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Ellen Goodman Asks: “Have you noticed how much dress and undress matter? Even to prime ministers? Have you also noticed how many women believe they are making their own choices when they are actually caught in a cultural vise?”

Read her recent column, “Undressing for Halloween,” in which she observes: Here in America, our Halloween revelers have only the scantiest — and I do mean scantiest — idea of how the market has shaped the options that they regard … Continue reading

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Not My Best Friend

Diamonds. See also. See also 2d.

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Her Rapist

Author Maureen Gibbon has an essay called “My Rapist” in today’s NYT Magazine. The courage she showed by writing this, and by publishing it in such a public venue, is incredible. Though the prose is fairly pared down, her pain … Continue reading

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She Wasn’t Human To Them

At Women’s Space/The Margins, Heart has been blogging about acts of violence against women. It can’t be easy for her to write these posts, and they are very difficult to read, but it is important that people pay attention to … Continue reading

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Pole Dancing Kit For Girls

Taking the sexualized Halloween costume for young girls to a whole new level, we have this development out of England: a pole-dancing kit being sold as a toy for young girls. After an outcry from parents, the kit was taken … Continue reading

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Halloween Costumes For Girls

Of course no one has to buy them if they don’t want to, and the option of making a Halloween costume is always available, but for parents or kids who do want to purchase commercially manufactured costumes, the ones produced … Continue reading

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Severing the Link Between Sex and Porn One Blog Post At A Time

That’s what Twisty Faster is attempting. Here is an excerpt from her latest: I am pleased to report that Broadsheet’s Page Rockwell is on the case of the slutty Halloween costume epidemic (as reported in the Thursday’s NYTimes Style section)[See … Continue reading

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How Irritating Is This?

From a NYT article entitled “The Waist May Expand, but the Libido Stays Fit”: Remarkably handsome at 70 and with a strong libido, he was talking one day about his desire for sex outside his marriage.”Women just don’t have as … Continue reading

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Condoms4Life

The text of this post was written by the Condoms4Life organization: The Condoms4Life campaign, a campaign of Catholics for a Free Choice, is circulating a letter in which we ask Pope Benedict to lift the ban on condoms. This letter … Continue reading

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Mixed Emotions About These Tees…

Available here. I know they are just supposed to be funny, but there is something weird about the messages too. Somehow they possibly embrace rather than subvert patriarchy? Or maybe I’m taking this too seriously. –Ann Bartow

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Question for the New York Times

I know why you run photographs like this: I know why you titled the associated article: “Good Girls Go Bad, for a Day.” What I don’t understand is why the caption beneath the picture is: POST-POST-POST-FEMINISM? –Ann Bartow

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“Preschool Puberty”

Today’s NYT has a story about the effects of “endocrine disruptors” on children. According to the article testosterone and estrogen can be found in a variety of unexpected places, including shampoo. The effects are most noticeable and alarming in young … Continue reading

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NYT Columnist Bob Herbert Asks: “Why Aren’t We Shocked?”

Here is his recent NYT column: “Who needs a brain when you have these?” : message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public … Continue reading

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Woman Shopping For Halloween Costume Receives Memo From The Patriarchy

Today’s NYT features an Op-Ed entitled “Halloween on Heels” by Allison Glock, who went shopping for a Halloween costume and notes: I walked past the displays for the sexy devil and the sexy bunny and the sexy leopard : which, … Continue reading

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When the Sunday Funnies Aren’t

Read today’s Blondie and tell me what year it is. See also this version for better readability.

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The Cocks and the Lady Cocks

The “Fighting Gamecock” is the mascot of the University of South Carolina. For the male sports teams this is abbreviated to “Cocks” because they are clearly the ones the mascot is meant for. Officially the women’s teams are more demurely … Continue reading

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Ugh.

This product. Via Feministing.

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