tagged w/ Feminist
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The F word. The worst one around. The one tied with unpleasantly preconceived notions of bra burning and man-hating.
Recently, after overhearing an explosively sexist comment on a lunch break, I asked a friend, “Do you consider yourself a feminist?”
“Oh, NO!” she snapped back with a level of enthusiasm that shocked me, spitting the word out like a worm in an apple, “…no no no.”The F word. The worst one around. The one tied with unpleasantly preconceived notions... more
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By Diana May-Waldman – WorldWide Hippies-I’m loud, opinionated and bossy. I know that. I am acutely aware of who I am. And at the end of the day, I make no apologies for it. I call foul when I see it or hear it. I’m a woman.By Diana May-Waldman – WorldWide Hippies-I’m loud, opinionated and bossy.... more
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Read More:
http://emilyslist.org/blog/my_path_to_emilys_list/#
When I saw burning Magnesium in my high school Chemistry class, I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. It burned with such a fierce, pure, white light that I felt as if I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. As the rest of my classmates shielded their eyes or stared off into space, I was captivated.
I’ve always been attracted to science, and loved my Biology and Ecology classes, but Chemistry was different. It was so dynamic: loud and messy. I started pursuing internships with the local university, and spent several summers identifying pill-bugs by gender and species, maintaining a colony of Asian earthworms, collecting local water samples to test for pollution, and measuring the effects of electricity and water on certain compounds. It didn’t surprise anyone who knew me when I went to college planning on getting a degree in Biochemistry. But the more I pursued Chemistry, the more I noticed how few other women there were in the lab and in my science classes. Of the eleven professors who taught Chemistry during my first year of college, only two were female. Of the seven labs I was in over the years, I only ever had a female partner once. All the labs I worked in outside of school were mostly male.
read the rest of this story here:
http://emilyslist.org/blog/my_path_to_emilys_list/#Read More:
http://emilyslist.org/blog/my_path_to_emilys_list/#
When I saw burning... more
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Lynn Hershman Leeson ("Conceiving Ada," "Teknolust") was at the epicenter of the feminist art revolution in the 1960s and has never stopped chronicling it's evolution. Now armed with over 40 years of interviews and archival footage, Leeson in her new film "!Women Art Revolution" provides names, places, dates and times that up until now have been missing from art history. Before this film many artists like Ana Mendieta, Howardena Pindell and Rachel Rosenthal would have been forgotten. Today Leeson insures that they did not live, work and create in vain.
Lynn Hershman Leeson talks about her new documentary film on ReelMATERIAL. http://www.reelmaterial.com/2011/08/interview-with-lynn-hershman-leeson/Lynn Hershman Leeson ("Conceiving Ada," "Teknolust") was at the... more
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palexb
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9 months ago
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It is a fortunate coincidence that today is both International Women's Day and the release date of Marge Piercy's The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems 1980-2010 by New York publisher Alfred Knopf.It is a fortunate coincidence that today is both International Women's Day and... more
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In some parts of the world, women are still not taught or allowed to read. And in the United States, women were not given the same education as their male counterparts until decades later. With similar policies overseas, one could think it difficult to find a female on page worthy of praise. With only eyelash batting or being tied to the proverbial train tracks, women have made up a poor part of the printed page.
link: http://librarysciencedegree.org/top-10-fictional-feminist-icons-of-all-time/In some parts of the world, women are still not taught or allowed to read. And in the... more
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eva2
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1 year ago
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This Sunday September 12, 2010 Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism, an exhibit that explores the impact of feminism on contemporary North American painting for past half century, will open at The Jewish Museum located at 92nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The exhibit will continue through January 30, 2011. Tuesday morning September 7th your New York Jewish Culture examiner previewed the exhibit, which traverses Abstract Impressionism, Pop, and Minimalism through to the present. (Also see the article's slideshow).This Sunday September 12, 2010 Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism, an exhibit... more
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Starbuck kicks ass: she smokes cigars, plays cards and likes to get into fights. And more often than not she wins. She has casual sex and enjoys it, and maybe most importantly she’s the best pilot. (Well, yeah, there’s this thing about Apollo being good too, but come on, that’s no comparison. She saves his ass several times and Apollo is just lame generally.) So we got a woman here who breaks all the rules of being a woman, she’s playing the big guys game and she is really fucking good at it. And she’s doing that without the aid of huge amounts of impeccable make up, and while wearing clothes that are a) actually covering he body and b) not skin tight but comfortable and practical. She doesn’t fight or run in high heels. She’s not using some super-human abilities, her achievements come from grit and sweat and skill. She doesn’t do flying kicks and acrobatics to show off her legs, she punches the opponent on the nose, and gets bloody knuckels. She’s doing it right and I was instantly in love with her.
[...]
But then patriarchy strikes back. She has broken all the rules and she will be punished for it...Starbuck kicks ass: she smokes cigars, plays cards and likes to get into fights. And... more
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In March, the Indian upper parliament passed a historic affirmative-action bill. If approved by the lower house, the law would reserve 33 percent of all parliamentary seats for women. You might think this would be well-received by rural women in India. But they long ago gave up on the government and have taken things into their own hands. India is witnessing a rise of vigilante groups, the most sensational of which is the gulabi, or pink gang, operating in the Bundelkhand district of the Uttar Pradesh state, one of the poorest districts of India. Some gangs have started what Indian journalists describe as a "mini-revolution" on behalf of women.
http://www.slate.com/id/2260797/pagenum/all/#p2In March, the Indian upper parliament passed a historic affirmative-action bill. If... more
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Contrary to media hype, American manhood is not in decline -- but hopefully toxic gender stereotypes are.
June 14, 2010 |
With each step that American women have taken on the road to equality, detractors have fretted about what their advancement means for men -- particularly the "manly man." The lumber jack. The quarterback. The captain of industry. Clint Eastwood.
Sure, we occasionally see articles lamenting the end of traditional femininity and the difficulty of finding a submissive woman who derives all of life's pleasure from nurturing her family. But a far more common modern lament is the demise of masculinity. In 2000, Susan Faludi explored "the betrayal of the American man" in Stiffed. In 2001, Christina Hoff Sommers decried The War on Boys. In 2005, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that "this is turning into a woman's world," and Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens published a book about "saving our sons from falling behind in school and in life." In 2006, Harvey Mansfield eulogized Manliness, and a Newsweek cover story again warned of an impending "boy crisis." Last summer, in Foreign Policy, Reihan Salam declared the economic crisis a "he-cession."
The latest contribution to the masculinity-crisis meme is "The End of Men," a cover story in this month's Atlantic by Hanna Rosin. Women are outperforming men in schools, at work, and at home, she argues. The global economy is shifting in such a way that it favors "female" characteristics, and male-dominated industries such as manufacturing, construction and finance are declining. "As thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as keys to economic success," she writes, "those societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults, not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest." What if, she asks, "the economics of the new era are better suited to women?"
It's disappointing that, despite a history of sharp observations about gender and 5,000 words to work with, Rosin makes the same oversight as all of the other hand-wringing articles about the state of the American male. She thinks the problem is men; really, it's traditional gender stereotypes. The narrow, toxic definition of masculinity perpetuated by Rosin and others -- that men are brawn not brains, doers not feelers, earners not nurturers -- is actually to blame for the crisis.
Unlike some other chroniclers of the so-called decline of masculinity, Rosin acknowledges men are not biologically predisposed to jobs that require strength and aggression, just as women are not biologically destined to be better thinkers and caregivers. Yet her underlying assumption is that the growth industries we currently consider to be "women's work" (nursing, home health care, food service, child care) will always retain that designation. Maybe it's just my feminist idealism talking, but I fail to see why these "nurturing professions," as Rosin dubs them, must forever be the province of women. Not once does she posit what would happen if we stopped writing articles that reinforced the stereotype that men are best suited to the manufacturing and finance sectors.
More at the link:Contrary to media hype, American manhood is not in decline -- but hopefully toxic... more
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Local feminist are upset over recent cleavage photo taken during a protest in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC for Boobquake Day.Local feminist are upset over recent cleavage photo taken during a protest in Dupont... more
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Christian groups are trying to create a run around health care reform by setting up alternative, unregulated religious health care bill collectives—and movement conservatives are cheering them on.
Religious right-watcher Sarah Posner reports on so-called Christian health care-sharing ministries in the American Prospect. Health-sharing ministries (HCSM) bill themselves as godly alternatives to health insurance. HCSM are groups of Christians who promise to cover each other’s heath care costs. About a hundred thousand people nationwide belong to these collectives. The Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries and its army of lobbyists convinced Senate lawmakers to exempt HCSMs from health care reform’s individual mandate.
Obliterating patient privacy
According to Posner, anti-reform conservatives are talking up these groups because they see them as a way to undermine the individual mandate. But if you think HCSM are a convenient loophole to avoid paying for insurance, think again. Posner describes the criteria for joining Samaritan Ministries International (SMI), one of the largest HCSM:
“To join the HCSM, applicants must agree to a statement of faith that they are a ‘professing Christian, according to biblical principles’ set out in Romans 10:9-10 and John 3:3. They must agree to adhere to guidelines that include no sex outside of “traditional Biblical marriage,” no smoking or drugs, and mandatory church attendance.
SMI members pay their own health care costs out of pocket and seek reimbursement from the group. What about privacy? In order to get reimbursed, they have to publish their health care “needs” in a monthly newsletter and hope someone sends cash. Lifetime benefits are capped at $100,000. Members waive their right to sue for any reason. SMI won’t cover treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, addictions, or the pregnancies of single mothers.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that this free-for-all won’t end well. You can’t just start a quasi-health insurance scheme in your garden shed and expect it to work out. Real insurance companies are subject to oversight to make sure that they have enough money on hand to cover their claims. Who knows what HSCM are doing with people’s money? These outfits have all the disadvantages of private insurers and none of the benefits. Members are a single major illness away from bankruptcy.
Bartering for health care?
Speaking of wacky alternatives to health insurance, Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) main Republican challenger, Sue Lowden, insists that patients can pay for their health care via a barter system, as Rachel Slajda reports for TPMDC. Great! How many chickens for an appendectomy?
Medicare expansion doesn’t equal bankruptcy
At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum debunks the latest right-wing myth about health care reform, that Medicare expansion will bankrupt the states. States pay part of the cost of Medicare, so it’s true that any expansion of the program will cost the states some money. However, the talking point is that the expansion will push state budgets to the breaking point. That’s false.
Drum explains that the health care reform bill exempts states from the extra cost until 2016. Even after that, the costs to the states will be minimal:
“[Health care reform] won’t cost states an extra dime through 2016, by which time our recession will presumably be over, and even after that states will only pay for a tiny fraction of the increased costs. As CBPP points out, states will pay about 4% of the total costs of Medicaid expansion over the next ten years. This represents an increase in overall state Medicaid spending of slightly over 1%.”
Abortion and ‘convenience’
Jessica Valenti of Feministing has been taking on manipulative, anti-choice ads in the New York City subway. These ads are sponsored by an anti-abortion group. They feature various distraught-looking models staring wistfully into space. The tagline is “Abortion Changes You.” The message is that if you have an abortion, you will be a guilt-racked wreck for the rest of your life. Some feminist with a wry sense of humor and a little glue pasted in another sentence on the ad (pictured above): “Now I can go to college and fulfill my dreams.”
Anti-choice blogger Lori Ziganto was scandalized by the anonymous culture jammer’s message. She sneered at the idea that women’s lives and hopes actually matter: “Want to go to college, but there is a pesky baby growing inside of you? Abort! A life is far less important than your co-ed fun and career plans, right?”
Valenti’s response: “It isn’t that anti-choicers don’t understand why women get abortions – it’s that they care so little about women’s lives that any reason given to obtain an abortion is seen as “convenient.” Some things that are convenient: Providing for your existing children. Going to college. Having enough money to eat, pay rent, keep the electricity on. Not dying.”
HSCMs and the subway ads are part of an enormous rift in contemporary politics: Opponents of health care reform say that they’re defending freedom, but in reality, they’re advocating control.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Christian groups are trying to... more
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New research suggests sexual objectification hinders some women’s cognitive ability.
April 10, 2010 |
Guys, here’s something to consider the next time you ogle an attractive woman: Your desirous gaze may be reducing her capacity to think.
That’s the startling implication of a research paper titled “My Body or My Mind,” recently published in the European Journal of Social Psychology. It suggests some women who are objectified by men internalize this perception and think of themselves as “a sexual object to be scrutinized.” For reasons that are not entirely clear, this process appears to undermine their cognitive ability.
Psychologists Robin Gay and Emanuele Castano of the New School for Social Research tested this thesis with a clever experiment that mimics and magnifies what many women experience in everyday life. The study participants — 25 women ages 18 to 35 — were told they were recruited to provide information on “the impressions people form about others solely based on their carriage and style of dress.”
Each was videotaped for two minutes — first from the front, then from behind — while they walked up and down a hall. To capture the experience of having their bodies evaluated while their faces (which presumably provide a better reflection of their individual personalities) were ignored, they were filmed exclusively from the neck down.
For half the participants, the person doing the filming was male; for the other half, the camera was held by a woman. “Although there is no doubt that women tend to objectify other women, the sexually objectifying gaze is more likely to come from a man,” the researchers write.
After the filming, each woman watched her video, reinforcing the experience in her mind. She then filled out questionnaires measuring her levels of Trait Self-Objectification (her overall propensity to view herself through the lens of others) and State Self-Objectification (her tendency to view herself through the lens of others when triggered by a specific event, such as being stared at).
To test their cognitive skills, the women were shown a series of random letters or numbers and instructed to reorder them (putting them in alphabetical order for the letters, in ascending order for the numbers). They completed 21 such tasks, which were presented in increasing order of difficulty.
The results: When women with a tendency toward viewing themselves through the lens of others were placed in a situation where they were objectified (that is, they were videotaped by a man), they made a greater number of mistakes on the cognitive test. They did just as well as other women on the easy initial tasks, but had trouble when the difficulty level went up.
After a follow-up study found anxiety and self-esteem levels were not a factor, the researchers concluded their cognitive difficulties “might be due to a split in perspective regarding the self.” (This notion was first described in a 1997 paper by Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts.)
A woman in this situation simultaneously sees herself as a unique individual and a generic sexual being. Dividing the psyche in this uncomfortable way “is likely to increase cognitive load, with a resulting decrease in the availability of cognitive resources for the tasks the individual engages in,” Gay and Castano write.
They suggest further research would be valuable to discover why some women are prone to self-objectification, while others seem protected against it. Gay and Castano’s data suggest about 20 percent of women have a strong propensity toward self-objectification and are thus particularly susceptible to triggers, such as being stared at.
The researchers propose a campaign of awareness and education regarding this phenomenon, which could help women “begin to gain control over, or at least buffer themselves against” its negative cognitive impact. They conclude “it stands to reason that the cumulative effects of objectification on the female body over a lifetime may severely disrupt cognitive processes,” at least among this sizable slice of the population.
This is your brain on wolf whistles.New research suggests sexual objectification hinders some women’s cognitive... more
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Left-Wing Icon: America Is Still Headed Towards Fascism Under Obama
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
April 1, 2010
When left-wing icon Naomi Wolf warned that America was heading towards fascism under George W. Bush, characterized by illegal surveillance, arbitrary detention of suspects, and paramilitary martial law, she was lauded, but when she continued to issue the same warning as a result of Obama’s failure to reverse any of those policies, many on the left abandoned support for her.
For Full Story...Left-Wing Liberal Icon Naomi Wolf: America Is Still Headed Towards Fascism Under Obama…VIDEO...http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/left-wing-liberal-icon-naomi-wolf-america-is-still-headed-towards-fascism-under-obama/
However, as Wolf’s recent interview with leftist website Alternet makes plain, liberals may finally be starting to understand that both political parties in Washington are part of the problem, not the solution.Left-Wing Icon: America Is Still Headed Towards Fascism Under Obama
Paul Joseph... more
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Postfeminism is that indicator that shows us the organism formerly known as feminism has grown into something far more complex than its liberal origins would lead us to expect. Cyberfeminism was born at a particular moment in time, 1992, simultaneously at three different points on the globe. Postfeminisms do not inhabit a network; they are the network of feminist discourse in virtual space and they are at their best when they are helping to forge communities of practice ...... http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/section-blog/273-from-cyborgs-to-hacktivists-postfeminist-disobedience-and-virtual-communitiesPostfeminism is that indicator that shows us the organism formerly known as feminism... more
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worrg
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