Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed-reader. What did I miss? Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.

• Ceci N’est Pas Une Mommy Blogger

– “A mommy, in the estimation of those who look down their noses at ‘mommies’, is a woman who couldn’t possibly have anything serious or interesting to say. And a mommy blogger? Is a woman who makes a daily practice of forcing her unseriousness and uninterestingness upon the world. That, at least, seems to be the view of commentators on stories like this one, at Jezebel, which took a serious and unsettling issue – sexual harassment – and framed it condescendingly as an oh look what those silly mommy bloggers are up to NOW story”

• Who Me? I Couldn’t Be Homophobic, I Live in a Blue State!

– “Frequently, we assume that homophobia is binary: either someone is homophobic or is not. This is another way that we let ourselves off the hook and avoid looking at our role—it’s those people[…] who fear or detest or objectify gays and lesbians, not us. […] Presumed heterosexuality (the idea that everyone we meet is straight) and a fear of homosexuality have seeped deep into our brains and hearts.”

• The Feminized Medal Of Honor

– “Second, he equates masculinity with killing and destroying things and femininity with saving lives and preventing killing. That, my sweet readers, would be called misandry if a feminist did it. But when it is a wingnut it is to be taken as — what? A compliment? A fact? Not sure.”

• If Women Posted Videos Every Time a Pat-Down Went too Far…

– “Imagine what would happen if every woman who has experienced an invasive body search by a so-called security or law enforcement professional posted a video of it on YouTube. The server would crash.

“Don’t touch my junk” might be the “anthem of the modern man,” as Krauthammer says, but the emphasis is on man. And white man at that. Black and brown men have been experiencing involuntary body-checks by police officers for years.”

• Propaganda and the politics of personality

– “My immediate reaction was, “Jesus, with crap like this, why would anybody feel the need to go for the sexist slur?” [Palin’s] politics are the exact same GOP hash we’ve already damn near choked to death on: more guns, less butter, praise jesus and pass the ammunition. It’s ridiculous. Why would opponents even need to get personal?”

• Oh I see: Blame Students for Ableist Decisions!

– “Every single person in the class signs a petition saying she’s not disruptive. The student union votes to back her inclusion in the class. There have been student protests saying she’s not disruptive. But hey! Let’s kick her out of school 3/4s of the way into the term because …. Why exactly?”

• First anti-feminism meeting takes place in Switzerland

– “Ulf Andersson, a member of the group has written up a statement for last month’s meeting drawing up the five key beliefs of anti-feminists.

“Opposing the feminist hatred of men; valuing the nuclear family; believing in the child’s rights to both its parents after a divorce or a separation; looking at the individual and not judging people by their gender; and accepting that men and women are different and counting that as assets.””

• Disney Swears off Princesses

– “The part that pisses me off the most is the Disney of all places, is totally playing into this perverse cultural construct that boys won’t go see movies about girls and girls will go to movies about boys.”

• Formspring and Feminism

– “When I went to deactivate it, it asked me why I wanted to. I chose the button, that said “I don’t want people to find me on here anymore.” That wasn’t entirely true, but none of the other options satisfied my reasoning. Formspring did, however, give me the option to submit additional comments or feedback. I decided to write that I believed that formspring creates an environment where bullying can thrive through its inherent anonymity.

While thinking about this more, a lot of things occurred to me, especially as a feminist. A lot of girls I know have Formsprings and I often look at them to see what types of questions they get. Sometimes I am absolutely horrified. There are questions interrogating them on what drugs they’ve done, their sex lives, their sexuality, their weight – and those are just a few examples.

The feminist in me is beside myself with the amounts of slut shaming that I see daily on other peoples’ formsprings. “

• Pope: Condoms OK for women too

– “Hold on to your habits: The Vatican says condoms can be a moral choice for women as well as men.”

• A Very Special Episode of Grey Areas: Privilege Denying Dude Edition

– “In social justice, not all tactics that are divisive are effective, but all tactics that are effective are divisive. That doesn’t mean we should set our phasers to “divide,” but when a tactic is labeled as “divisive” or “radical”, there is a chance it might be one worth considering. Effective tactics are divisive because the majority is most comfortable with activism that is ineffective.”

• Why don’t women just leave abusers?

– “The overwhelming majority of domestic violence happens when someone tries to leave, is getting an order of protection, or filing for divorce — somehow resisting his control,” noted Ellen Reed, executive director of Lydia’s House, a shelter for abused women. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a woman say, ‘I can’t get an order of protection, he’ll kill me’.”

• Two Americas

– “Deregulation, privatization, corporate personhood, the veneration of avarice, the conflation of wealth with morality, and the myth of a market that solves all problems. That’s what got us here.”

• Study: Too Many Fat Women Don’t Even Know They’re Fat

– “Interestingly, they didn’t have a category for “Women who knew their bodies were fine just the way they were and thought we should go fuck ourselves.””

• Just a quick political generalisation, don't mind me.

– “For me on the other hand, social and cultural norms are comparatively arbitrary: they’re not a good unto themselves, but rather, something that I should question, determine the source of, and only apply to my life if they match with my own set of values and beliefs.

This isn’t a question of selfishness or a lack of concern for other people: it’s simply a manifestation of my belief that whatever the majority – or the people who shout the loudest – believe and valu
e might not be right.”

• Seven Points On Rape, Prevention, and Blame.

– Holly’s follow-up to her “The People You Meet when You Write About Rape” post

• Super Happy Fun Post: Symptom.

– TRIGGER WARNING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: “I could go on with the various ways a context for abuse develops. The specifics do vary. But the commonality in abuse is that the actual physical violence is just one part of an all-encompassing milieu of psychological violence. Abusers just about never only hit. The physical attack is almost never the whole problem and often it’s not even the worst part. “Wife-beater” may be the epithet, but wife-terrorizer is the real crime.”

• The People You Meet When You Write About Rape.

– I meant to link to this weeks ago – you’ll recognise most of these people if you write or read feminist blogs

• The Coming Wave Of Oppositional Sexist Panic

– “Jos at Feministing has the story of the football player in Mississippi thrown off the squad for wearing pink cleats. He was wearing them for breast cancer awareness, not for gender nonconformity, and to most of us this reaction makes no sense.

Get used to it. This battle has already started.”

• Senate Republicans Tell Women: You Are Mere Pawns

– “In the great game to topple the President and beat the Democrats, every Republican Senator voted as a united bloc this week to stop the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act for women.”

Categories: culture wars, gender & feminism, linkfest, social justice

Tags: ableism, anti-feminist, cinema, contraception, homophobia, interblog, parenting, propaganda, Read-ems, religion, social media