The Carnival of Feminists, Issue 3

Welcome to The Carnival of Feminists!

Issue 3 is split into two sections: “1970s into 2000” and the “Editor’s Feminist Cafeteria.”

And I hope you’re sitting comfortably, because it is a whopper!

First, though: why feminism? (The question, of course, should be turned on its head: why not feminism?) Here are a few blog posts—old and new—that answer that question.

A Bird’s Eye View remedies the inadequacy of the Pocket Oxford Dictionary’s definition of “feminism” in “Why I am a feminist.” Rox Populi offers a purloined list of “Reasons to Thank a Feminist” (a great piece to hand to those showing their hostility, ignorance, or naiveté).

For more textual meat on the bone, try the formidable “101” at A View from A Broad. This ambitious treatise takes an historical approach, and is reminiscent of the uncompromising feminist writing of the 1970s. Along similar lines but in a lighter vein, I Blame the Patriarchy’s scathing “The Maiden Aunt Explains Patriarchy” does just what the title promises, with the added bonus of a whole lotta cussin’!


1970s into 2000

I asked for your thoughts on 1970s feminism, and you delivered!

Pen-Elayne on the Web balks at my “no nostalgia” directive and reminisces about consciousness raising groups at Rutgers University. I’m glad she did, as she concludes with a bloggy solution to avoid reinventing the feminist wheel.

Did you know in 1979 some college bookstores refused to stock “Our Bodies, Ourselves”? I See Invisible People divulges this tidbit and others as she reflects on a ’79 Women’s Consciousness course. She contrasts that positive experience with today’s marketing of “designer vaginas.”

The Happy Feminist reviews her personal history with the ’70s feminist text, “The First Sex,” by Elizabeth Gould Davis. Although today she finds some of Davis’ ideas “laughable,” in the end she embraces the text, recognizing that its importance lies not in its historical accurancy but in its symbolic meaning.

Philobiblon gauges progress in Australia by revisiting the 1974 publication “Media She” in “How far have we come?” (Don’t assume too much progress has been made. She concludes, “what has really not changed is in the nature and use of the visual images of women.”)

Carrying on with the booky theme, midlife mama cites “The Second Sex” in a piece about teaching second wave feminism to 18 year olds. Her astute analysis of how cultural environments limit students’ awareness of the need for equality is adroitly handled. (More, please, midlife mama!) Read her piece, titled “Second Wave Feminism, Beauvoir, and me.”

Moving to the politics of advertisements, Culture Cat conducts a side-by-side study of magazine ads for deoderant. She compares a 1973 Mademoiselle ad and a more recent ad. The differences are startling. She solicits your thoughts for the comments section—you are all invited!

Finally, Lingual Tremors focuses on fashion in an essay that contrasts the 1970s to the present-day political/cultural climate that demands women dress as sophisticated sex-bots while remaining sexually ignorant. Her piece is creatively called “Wear Your Red Pumps, but Don't Use Them!”

Editor’s Feminist Cafeteria

A selection catering to many tastes. Step right this way for a variety of entrées!

Priority was given to blogs that haven’t appeared in previous issues of The Carnival of Feminists, as well as to lesser-known blogs.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

Much feminist energy is rightly devoted to researching and preserving women’s historical contributions. In this spirit, I offer Natalie Davis’ All Facts and Opinions tribute, “Rosa Parks: She Sat, She Inspired,” a deft handling of Parks as historical giant. (I was also educated by the description of the Montgomery bus system under Jim Crow laws.)

For an impressive history post that manages to pull research threads into one cohesive whole, see bayprairie’s “The Montgomery Bus Boycott” at Our Word. The author’s addendum in the comments section is also of interest.

Continuing with the historical genre, Marian’s Blog interweaves Black intellectual heritage, the riots in France, gender, Technorati tags and more in her compelling essay, “Frantz Fanon and France’s Wretched of the Earth.”

Threats in the U.S. to the Right to Abortion

Rad Geek People’s Daily puzzles over how some progressives paint abortion as a cultural issue affecting only a minority in “Goodbye to All That. Again.”

Bitch Ph.D. summarizes Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s record and recommends a filibuster. (She also includes excellent links at the end.)

At the community blog MediaGirl.org, Media Girl herself offers an incisive analysis of women’s temporary status as human beings in “Tag, you’re it! (And no longer a person.).”

In “Not a baby-machine,” Redneck Mother describes her pregnancies in a beast of a post that has a political sting in its tail. Don’t cut yourself on her wit. (One line could easily become a slogan: “If you want to control an organic process, brew your own beer.”)

More current events

The Nigerian Times blog celebrates Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's victory in winning the Liberian election. She's now President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Meanwhile, Black Looks wrly notes that the world is acting excited at the newly-discovered “strong African woman,” but, “African women have always known they posses strength even when they are being portrayed as victims of patriarchy, tradition, violence and poverty by the media, academia, NGO reports and the rest.”

Elsewhere in the world the prospect for women in politics is more bleak. The promised changes for women in the national agenda for Jordan has some bloggers skeptical. Mental Mayhem lists the reasons for her skepticism in an essay tht asks, “Will Jordanian women ever dream of becoming prime ministers? Will a patriarchal society ever be able to digest this idea?”

Echidne of the Snakes comments on Maureen Dowd via a Katha Pollitt article in “The Voice of Sanity.”

Rhetorically Speaking examines the reaction to Tony Blair’s equality commission, outlining the CBI’s minimization of a some monolitic problems blocking the right to equal pay for equal work.

Intersectionality

Some of the following pieces do not explicitly call attention to multiple oppressions, or intersectionality. Nevertheless, I’m including them here as they fall under the general rubric.

What An African Woman Thinks talks candidly about working in a largely white, largely male office culture. “I am a black woman standing at the edge of belonging, watching as male speaks to male, white speaks to white.” Read on in Part I and Part II.

The Penkill Papers reflects on her previous work regarding the Ontario government’s proposal to include Islamic family law; but now she’s revisiting the issue in light of the French riots. She refers to the political activism of Muslim-Canadian women, as well as high-profile Ontarians such as Margaret Atwood and Maureen McTeer. Read all about it in “Paris Burns: ‘It’s not about football’.”

Reappropriate takes a hard look at Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls in “Little Yellow Pets.” She’s responding to a piece at Margaret Cho’s blog. Reappropriate’s analysis is nuanced, touching upon race, gender, and media representation, and ends defiantly with, “I’m not about to be anyone’s damn pet.”

Milwaukee resident and Our Word contributor kactus writes in “Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office” about a form of marginalizing the poor: treating them like their time has no value.

Austin, Texas resident Dru Blood describes intersections of ageism, sexism, and economic class in “Safety Net.” Her glimpse into what may be her future leaves her with a temporary depression of spirits, which she nonetheless expresses poetically in her post.

Bridging Difference

Moment to Moment writes from a first-world, Australian perspective about the complexities and pitfalls of engaging with third world women. She recognizes that she “cannot force my version of feminism upon non-western women.” Read more of her thoughts in “Islam and Feminism.”

Can Jewish and Muslim women connect? When feminism is present, the answer is yes, as Jerusalem Syndrome joyously records in her notes from a Dartmouth conference. The blogger enthuses, “Dude, Muslim feminists rock so hard.”

Geek Women Rule, OK?

When women refuse traditional gender roles, attempts to control them are usually employed via the subject/object dichotomy. (Guess which one women are.) An obvious tool for maintaining these roles is the concept of “beauty.”

Here are some recent examples and responses to this patriarchal form of “get back in line.”

A calendar shows women in technology in various sexualized poses and outfits. Burningbird casts a skeptical eye, stating, “Personally, I would rather have seen a small, stylish photo of each woman, and then fill the page with code or other results of their work.” Read more in “Beauty is Only Geek Deep.”

A call to all geeks: start new memes! Ones that destroy myths that split women into “types.” Annalee Newitz says geek networking—among women and men—is the answer. All will become clear when you visit Beth's Blog and read her liveblogging notes to Newitz’s talk, “Revenge of the Female Nerds: Myth Busting.” Nice bit of video at the beginning as well.

Third Wavin’ It

A Cat and Twenty puts third wave feminism under the microscope in a piece that questions the validity of denying victimization. She wants to know: “why is it so bad to be a victim?”

You’ve read the book, you’ve seen the film

…now see the play. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, is a strongly feminist text that has had a huge cultural impact and generated much academic study. Allied by Jeneane Sessums celebrates the broadway-bound version with photos, insider knowledge, and sound and video links.

Ladyfest Brighton

The Ladyfest Brighton event in the U.K. yielded some blog entries. Here are just a couple.

Chickennnnugget writes that returning home from a “really energised feminist environment” leaves her with “post-ladyfest depression syndrome” in an informal and completely charming post.

MCLD blog documents “an incident” at the Candy Club. You’ll have to visit the blog to find out what happened.

Academe

If an academic approach is your bag, check out a joint paper published (in part) at Diary of a Mad Kenyan Woman. The paper, co-written with a fellow student when the blogger was “a baby intellectual in graduate school,” uses a dispute between two scholars to highlight the tensions between different but related disciplines (feminism, Africa, and African Studies). One juicy sample quote to whet your appetite: “Claims of authenticity, in all their various formations, are about power, and more pertinently, about power differentials.”

Quite often, acadmic feminism is a student’s first clue that there are alternatives to normative patriarchy. Jill, one of the dynamic duo at Feministe, discusses New York University’s Graduate Student strike, giving an intimate account of how critical teachers were to her formation as a feminist.

Australian blog home cooked theory airs her academic research questions in “Smart is sexy: Studying gender, work & technology.” She discusses her work on blogging and gender, as well as some ideas she has. A robust debate about the poltics of the grant application process ensues. The awareness that knowledge production is subject to political interference sometimes plays upon graduate students’ minds; nowhere is this anxiety more apparent than in this comments thread.

Let's get personal

Feminist African Sister takes her Nairobi, Kenyan self to a Bangkok, Thailand, and experiences several epiphanies. She shares reflections on her feminist life and work (along with some rather nice photographs) in “The Travelling Thoughts of a Feminista.”

What is a typical day like for a mother working a paid job in the U.S.? In one of the best mommy blog posts I’ve read, Meghan of Mommy Bloggers describes the fear, the guilt, the worries, the organization, and the sheer hard work that goes into child-rearing. A must-read.

Socio/Political Bodies

Quod She reassesses the value of PMS with regards to her depression, musing that she should be “kind of thankful for that little pre-menstrual calling-card.”

Jessica at Feministing dissects a press release from a surgery in New York, sarcastically observing, “Apparently it’s empowering to cut up your genitals.”

The Well-Timed Period felt something wasn’t quite right when she read that the USFDA was proposing draft guidelines for male latex condoms. (Turns out she was right.) Witness her picking apart government-speak in “The Story Behind Proposed Changes to Condom Labels.”

Women’s disapproval of other women’s taste in clothing is the subject of Bald Marys’ “dimwits, sluts and the media.” Enjoy the bonus misanthropic preamble. (I know I did.)

The Media

The Guardian sees fit to poach comments from Cruella-Blog, but when it comes to giving feminists a platform to speak, the newpaper turns deaf and dumb. In “What’s wrong with Lad Mags?” Cruella-blog gives The Guardian a deliciously understated telling-off, and goes on to give them the feedback they so carefully avoided.

Jess at The F-word Blog looks at the handling in the papers of a recent celebrity domestic violence case, where the man was beaten by his female partner. In her feminist survey, The Sun, The Times, and The Guardian all get slammed for acting as if this were an opportunity to write glib copy.

Ancrene Wiseass attends a movie and is treated to a sexist ad by Jaguar in the trailers. Read her excellent feminist media critique, “Jaguar: Hideous, not Gorgeous.”

Who Owns the Media? (I’ll give you one guess…)

When Elizabeth mentions at Bookslut blog that bylines are weighted toward the male, her readers inform her about a feminist working project that gathers statistical evidence. The same project gets Generation Debt wondering about the media's byline gender-gap in the context of her own journalistic career.

Images of women in politics—as portrayed by the news media—are deconstructed at BagNewsNotes. This particular entry features two photographs: one of Geena Davis and her on-screen husband in the TV series “The Comannder in Chief,” and the other of Hillary and Bill Clinton in… er, real life. To those unfamiliar with this photo-analysis blog: readers are invited to throw in their two cents’ worth in the comments section. Join the conversation at “Fact Follows Fiction Follows Spin Follows… Huh?”

(Mis)Perceptions

Commeo describes working at her laptop in a coffee shop and being interrupted by a man trying to hit on her. “Every time I get hit on and the guy gets pushy, it reminds me that public places are male places, and not really for the public at large.”

Opinionistas has an office tale of mistaken identity, triggered by a man’s prejudice based on her age, dress, and gender.

Finally, your host for this issue of The Carnival of Feminists, Sour Duck, experiences a surprise at a face-to-face meeting with a well-known blogger, and confronts some of her own assumptions in “How long does it take your race switch to click back to ‘White’?”

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Finis. Thank you for reading my issue of The Carnival of Feminists. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed compiling it!

Notes:

Issue 4 of The Carnival of Feminists will be published on December 7th at The Happy Feminist. Send submissions to veryhappyfeminist AT yahoo DOT com with feminist carnival in the subject line.

The Carnival of Feminists is issued the first and third Wednesday of each month. An archive list is maintained at the official blog, which also has information about upcoming hosts and future dates of publication.

For this and other carnivals, see The Blog Carnival.