A few must-reads highlighting several very different feminist core issues from the recent posts at Feministe:

Octogalore: Opt Out, Push Out, and Pink Collar Paths

Well, it’s critical for workplaces to become more family friendly. Single parents, poor parents, don’t have the option for one parent not to work. And for women and men to have equal access to unemployment benefits.

But it’s also critical for this “family friendly” path not to become a pink collar ghetto.

Holly: Are you wearing your Feminist Lesbian uniform? – Holly’s take on that infamous froth-specked anti-feminist rant about the horrors of women wearing jeans and how it reveals a vile conspiracy aimed at essential manly juices or something. The links provided to other articles/blogs about the crisis(!) of women being unfeminine are classics.

Abyss2Hope’s Marcella Chester reposted at Feministe a post of hers from earlier this year: Advice For Rape Survivors: Personal Safety

Any person — man or woman — who talks about certain sex crime statutes harming real rape victims by diluting the definition of rape is a person I will never trust with my physical safety.

This type of person could witness a rape done without a knife or a gun and refuse to help because they believe that the victim could escape if she really wanted to or because they believe that the rape victim’s willing presence at the location of the rape is blanket consent for sex. If that rape were reported, this type of person would testify that there was no rape and that the rape victim is a liar or delusional.

If I previously trusted any man who expresses these attitudes that talk would immediately end that trust. This isn’t paranoia. Not all of these men are rapists but sharing many beliefs with rapists is a danger signal. My safety is a higher priority than some man’s hurt feelings.

Any man who demands that I put his feelings above my safety is only reinforcing my reasons to distrust him.

Marcella has two more rape survivor guides posted at her own blog:

Advice for rape survivors: Accepting your trauma as real trauma

Advice for rape survivors: Know that many police officers believe it is ethical to lie to you

Categories: culture wars, social justice, violence, work and family

Tags: feminism friday, moral panics, sexual violence, sexuality and health