Feministing

What We Missed.

2009-11-20T22:41:53Z

Sexual harassment is a big problem on the NYC subway.

Just a sad story about a young man released from prison after wrongfully serving 17 years for a murder he didn't commit.

Students at UC Berkeley are striking because US Regents has approved a 32% tuition increase.

A study from UNFP about why women are hit hardest via climate change.

Latoya on what is being taught in college rape protection programs.

A ten year old in Arkansas is refusing to stand up for the pledge of allegiance until gay marriage is legal. In solidarity my brother.

Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah: National Women's Studies Association Conference

2009-11-20T21:20:20Z

**Also, something I didn't mention-a shout out to my undergraduate adviser at the Women's Studies Department at SUNY Albany, Vivien Ng, who I saw after 10 years and facilitated me in finding my feminist courage to speak on intersectionality.

This weeks Friday Feministing Fuck Yeah goes out to the National Women's Studies Association Conference which was last weekend in Atlanta, GA and I was there with Miriam and Courtney, and we have a really good time. I had a really transformative experience this year meeting several really well known feminist theorists that have influenced my work over the years including Angela Davis, Kimberle Crenshaw and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. If you haven't read any of their work please check it out as soon as possible. This years theme was intersectionality, which is a theme that is very close to my heart and very much at the core of the work we seek to do at Feministing and I myself seek to do in my academic work and in my professional work at Feministing. There was a lot of talk about ways to integrate intersectionality into the different kinds of work we can do as feminists and really moving to this understanding that we are all located at different places and how we can bring that to a collective feminist consciousness.

So to had the opportunity to really think about that and being around young people that are really engaged in this topic was invaluable. I am so thankful for all the academic feminists that came before me and cleared the ground for me to do the work I do now. So fuck yeah to the NWSA and thank you so much for continuing your commitment to academic feminism and bridging the divide between gender, race, sexuality, ability, age, gender identity and feminism. Without that work we would have nothing to build off of, so fuck yeah.

Suicide ends transgender lives too

2009-11-20T20:23:00Z

The focus of Transgender Day of Remembrance is on those killed by others because of anti-trans fear and hatred. However, it is worth noting that too many trans folks lose their lives to suicide as well. The number of trans folks who have attempted suicide ranges from about 30 percent to over 50 percent in studies. One study found that 83 percent of trans folks have considered suicide. According to another study:

the risk factors associated with attempted suicide among transgender people were younger age (under 25), depression or a history of substance abuse, forced sex, and gender-based victimization and discrimination (Clements-Nolle, Marx, & Katz, 2006).

LGBT youth are up to four times more likely to commit suicide than their straight peers, and that number balloons to nine times more likely if they are rejected by their family.

I turned 25 this week, a day I thought I would never see for much of my life. For me birthdays have become a time to reflect on how grateful I am to myself and everyone who has supported me in staying alive. I understand this may sound like a pretty depressing way to spend a birthday for someone who has not struggled with suicidal ideation, but for me it is honestly the most positive and affirming way I know how to celebrate.

I've had a lot of conversations with other trans and gender non-conforming folks about our histories with suicide. It's proved a surprisingly easy conversation to enter into with trans folks I hardly know. We have our own unique experiences, but what we share makes having a history with suicide easily understandable.

Trans youth face high rates of exceptionally cruel harassment in school, even higher than lesbian, gay, and bi youth. That's in addition to all too common rejection by families and broader communities. And that's for the youth who are able to come out in some way. I could not have been counted in a study about trans youth in high school because I lacked any words or concepts to understand my gender identity. Now I look back on my childhood and teen years through a gender lens and gain a much greater understanding of my life experience. Back then I didn't know how to process my reality. I knew I didn't fit into the world around me as everyone around me seemed to understand it. I felt the psychic pain of knowing people didn't see me as myself at the same time I didn't know how to express who or even what I was. I didn't know I shared these feelings and experiences with anyone else, so I felt isolated, alone, and wrong. Verbal bullying was the more common experience, but getting beaten up were the only moments I felt recognized and seen. I hated my body (and again, didn't understand why) and bruises felt like the only accurate physical representation of who I actually was. I remember the hurt when friends said, for example, that they saw me as "asexual." Their intent was not malicious - they were trying to process their experience of my gender without needed concepts just like I was. And like me they processed the fact I didn't fit into an unquestionable gender system by effectively erasing my identity.

It's very hard to live when you and those around you are convinced you don't exist.

Lowering the suicide rate among trans folks requires the same sort of work that will best combat violent crimes committed by other people against trans folks. We need to do a lot of consciousness raising work to spread awareness of the very existence of trans folks. Sadly knowing we exist is not enough - we must also convince people that trans folks are human, that our lives have value. And this requires convincing people that their limited conceptions of gender are not all there is, a massive undertaking given the widespread unquestioning acceptance of the compulsory gender binary. In other words, we need to change our cultural understanding of and approach to gender in order to bring about social change. Because no trans person should die at their own hands or anyone else's because of their gender.

For more information, resources, and help staying alive:
Kate Bornstein's Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws
The Trevor Project

Precious, my Precious: Black Female Citizenship, Complexity, and the Politics of Unrelenting Survival

2009-11-20T18:53:42Z

[Editor's Note] I haven't seen Precious yet, but I have read about it endlessly and already cried just reading reviews. One of the most powerful interpretations I have read so far on Precious comes from my good friend, colleague and mentor Malkia Cyril from the Center for Media Justice. With her permission I am posting it in full here (cross-posted from the CMJ blog). It was also posted at WIMNblog.

As I sit against the florescence of the television screen, watching the conservative Fox News pundit Glenn Beck drive political nails into progressive leaders using the fear of U.S. blacks and immigrants of color as his hammer, my memory harkens back to the year in which the book Push was set, 1987. During that time, eugenics theories about the inherent laziness and criminality of black teenagers was rampantly resurgent in the news. Conservative research was cementing stereotypes of the black welfare queen, the crack baby, the HIV infected black woman as the truth that justified the destruction of the safety net as we knew it. Since then, health care has become increasingly privatized. Welfare has turned horrifically to an indentured servitude of workfare. The numbers of black women with HIV have skyrocketed. And the movie Precious, based on the book Push by Sapphire, was released.

Caricatures or Complex Characters?
Clarice "Precious" Jones is an extreme character, meant to shock the senses and unveil the underbelly of the brutality of racism and capitalism in the patriarchal land of the free. In the film and in the book, Precious is a dark-skinned teenaged girl who experiences multiple forms of oppression and violence at the hands of multiple perpetrators. In the movie, her sexually brutal father is an invisible or blurry character at best, while her mother, whose victimization as a woman was only alluded to, is cast as the primary perpetrator. It is only through the extreme telling of an extreme story that this dichotomy of inequity is revealed. There is only one man in the story as told in the movie - a male nurse- and the welfare and education systems which oppress black womanhood and subvert black female resistance are cast as saviors. Questions have been necessarily raised by black audiences -is this story the best way to reveal these contradictions? Is the mother the real villain? Does the story reflect reality or is it more of a caricature? And if a caricature how does that shape the impact of the film on the representations of black women in media and in the public psyche?

I have known many black girls afflicted by multiple forms of abuse, compounded by addiction and illness. I have watched black women beat their children to bloody pulps in the street, cursing them the whole time. I have heard black mothers threaten to cut their daughter's pussy out to prevent them from having sex. I have witnessed black women trade their daughters for crack. I have heard and seen so many things. And I have also seen those same exact women place themselves in front of a fist to save their daughters. I have watched those black mothers walk the hoe stroll for hours to make enough money to feed and house and clothe their babies, as they struggled to overcome addiction. I have watched, in my own home, my own beautiful black mother struggle with the decision to keep her man and have an adult life or protect her daughters and live for her children. Eventually, she chose the latter, though not soon enough. My mother was alone from the time I was about 14 to her death in 2005. That's almost 20 years of intimate solitude in an effort to stand between her black daughters and the world of violence that waited for us in and beyond our home because she did not know how to manage both the safety of her children and her needs as a woman. These characters, Precious and her mother, are not simple caricatures, and yet the film chose some truths over others, and must be interrogated. This is by no means an exhaustive review, or a review of any kind. It's what came for me after watching the film.

Black Womanhood and Complexity
Can you imagine that patriarchal colonialism and a generational experience of slavery can result in an experience of powerlessness and shame that can twist the mind and give rise to the belief that your three-year-old child has stolen your man? Can you imagine that there are black and brown girls, and boys, all over this world, that have HIV, have been raped by their father, sexually and physically abused by their mother, failed by the school system and exploited by the welfare system. And that these girls are brilliant and beautiful and full of unrealized promise- as are their mothers. These women are two sides of one coin, mother and daughter. Both trapped in different ways, both villainized by "culture of poverty" research, and exploited by the economic system and the civil institutions that touch and shape the daily texture of their lives.

The Narrative of Black Female Citizenship
This set of contradictions, this opening of an unhealed national and international wound, is not a mere regurgitation of racist and sexist images. There is a real untold story here, and the voice of that child and the voice of her mother need to be heard. They need to be heard because it is our silence on issues of sexual abuse and systemic violence that allows the space for the empire's story about us to be the only one told. We do not control our media and cultural systems or the institutions of civil society, and therefore the narrative of black female citizenship has been used in so many ways as the lynchpin to justify the most brutal democracy in the world. The lies that our citizenship is somehow a gift and not a right, that our mothers are responsible for the socialization of black children and therefore the cause of their incarceration, and that our daughters have drained and massacred the economy, have justified mass incarceration, war, the privatization of social services and health care, and the defunding of public education. The same has been done to black men, using different stereotypes. But this, right here, is about black women.

Let's talk about education. It was a strong thread that bound this plot together through the realization of the unrelenting power of words. In the book Push, the transformation of Precious occurs over the course of more than a year. Her increasing sense of pride and self-worth is tied directly to her increasing ability to read. Literacy is a powerful thing. It increases one's ability to navigate and transform the physical, political, and economic conditions we find ourselves subject to. The ability to express one's story, to know that it will be witnessed, is as powerful a motivation for transformation as any. Why did the leaders of the Cuban revolution begin by increasing the literacy of the poor? For the same reason that Venezuela has placed so much import on democratizing their media system. Because the power of literacy, media or otherwise, is foundational for social change. The fact that the conductor of the orchestra in this case was a black lesbian added depth and complexity to the story of black women being told in the film. The depiction of black lesbians as allies to heterosexual black women was a blessing that brought tears to my eyes.

Hollywood vs. Our Stories
All this being said, the Hollywood version of the book absolutely invisibilized patriarchy, cast the system as a hero and not an actor responsible for the conditions of oppression in which Precious lived and survived, and over-simplified Precious' mother as an animal who fed her child to the wolves. The movie's flaws are real, and knowing that the film was being viewed by white middle class audiences whose ability to discern the notes in this song was minimal, was painful to experience.

It doesn't make the story less powerful, less revealing, or less necessary. But it does leave room for the next telling to make these contradictions less nuanced, the complexity more stark. For U.S. born blacks mitigated by a history of slavery and colonial violence, complexity is the name of the game. And though I am tired of our black mothers, whose internalized shame and experience of powerlessness sometimes results in extraordinary brutality, being cast in roles that are either victim or villain, and never as the complex intersection of both, never as victor- I was stunned to joyful silence by the numbers of young black girls and boys I saw in the theatre. This is a complicated conversation that is rarely had in our families or classrooms, and even more rarely had in public. And it needs to be had.

Unrelenting Survival
In 1987, I was 13, and the book Push changed my life. I identified in some ways with the experience of Precious. I remember the tenements, the crack houses, the emergence of AIDS and the way both devastated family connection. I recall the news, the myth of the teenaged super-predator, the labels of crack baby, welfare mother, the images of addiction and violence that shaped so many black children's understanding of themselves. and then there are things I won't talk about, that make me proud to watch Precious survive, and her mother repent, on the screen. Because I understand the untenable choices black girls and women feel, and are, forced to make.

Today I am 35, and I am grateful for those precious black and brown children, those daughters of this nation's dust, those human queens subjected to -and the perpetrators of-inhuman cruelty. Because with each individual survival there is a greater chance of our collective survival and transformation. And that is a story, a historical legacy that is the journey in my feet, the ancestor at my back, and the bitter at the bottom of capitalism's cup. We are our mothers' daughters, more than the sum of empire's history, and our mothers are no worse than human. That is the story that needs to be told. Sapphire is one of hundreds of writers who pull back the veil on black female citizenship to reveal the abject bullshit of this democracy's contract, place humanity back into the narrative, and open the door for complexity. Tell the truth, in all its complexity, regardless of the dominant group's watchful gaze. And even when Hollywood distorts the tale, we will, by our own honest hands, set ourselves free.

Cause we are watching too. And this, precious, is for you.

--Malkia Cyril

Kate Moss, "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels..."

2009-11-20T16:44:26Z

What a sad state of affairs. Well, I disagree Kate! But then again, I don't make millions off of being thin, so I guess starving does feel good for her, since she is paid to do it. Seriously, sad! Food is good and we need it to survive.

This makes me feel sad for Kate Moss, I mean, even though I know she is rich and famous and got to make out with Johnny Depp, but she is the product of a system that values thinness over her other attributes. And a pretty high value at that, since she is one of the top paid super models. It would be nice to think that maybe privately her self worth is not also based on what she looks like, but if her motto is, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," one would think the opposite. I also can't believe she is so detached from reality that she doesn't realize that young women that are already plagued with eating disorders look up to her and has no sense of public responsibility. Young women don't need to hear that eating less will make them skinny and therefore a super model. Bad. Bad!

As community blogger minerva put it,

Moss may or may not be intelligent, I neither know nor care. But at some level, she must realize that young women aspire to be like her. It saddens me that she truly believes that her motto is something to be emulated.

Food is good. These types of comments do have implications for young women since we are already inundated with the self hating culture of starvation to attain absurd levels of thinness instead of being taught to love ourselves. And then, often women are rewarded for their self hating behavior. It is an endless cycle that must stop and we need role models to help us.

National Day of Action Against Stupak-Pitt Amendment

2009-11-20T15:10:32Z

Courtney mentioned in yesterday's What We Missed that the Senate HCR bill does not have the same vicious right-wing vitriol of the Stupak-Coathanger Amendment. mcjoan at DailyKos has a full break down of some of the key provisions in the Capp Amendment which is replacing the Stupak-Pitt Amendment.

Tracy-Flora Clark at Broadsheet tells us,

The key details of the Senate bill are as follows: Both public and private plans are allowed to offer abortion coverage. It empowers consumers to use government subsidies to purchase insurance that covers abortion, but requires that their premiums (and not federal funds) pay for the actual procedures. The Health and Human Services Secretary is charged with evaluating plans to ensure that taxpayers do not pay for abortions. And, while the bill requires at least one plan in each state to cover abortion, it also includes a conscience clause stating that healthcare providers cannot "be discriminated against because of a willingness or an unwillingness ... to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions."

This move is a much better option, although as mcjoan mentions it feels hard to celebrate the continuation of the Hyde Amendment, but it is not as aggressive as the Stupak-Pitt Amendment. Our reproductive rights will be used as bargaining chips and some are saying it is unlikely that Stupak will be in the final version of the Bill.

But to prepare for any impending disaster, There will be a National Day of Action on December 2nd in D.C., along with a November 21st Rally in PA, November 23rd in DC and December 4th through NOW-NY to stand up against the Stupak-Pitt Amendment.

Leave any actions near you in comments.

Study: Stupak will end abortion coverage "for all women"
From Hyde to Stupak, over 30 years of limiting access to abortion
Beyond Stupak: The next phase of the abortion debate
Whose health care victory?

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2009

2009-11-20T13:56:47Z

Today is the 11th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. This day was created as a time to grieve trans and gender non-conforming people killed over the past year because of fear and hatred. It also serves as a time to raise awareness about violence against trans folks. The event was started by Gwendolyn Ann Smith following the murder of Rita Hester on November 28, 1998. Every year since the day's founding vigils and memorial events have been held in the US and increasingly all over the world.

This year the TGEU Trans Murder Monitoring project TDOR 2009 update has collected information about over 160 people killed because of other people's violent reaction to their trans presentation or identity. These numbers represent only those people we know about. We don't know how many trans folks were actually murdered this year - our identities are so rarely recognized and there is still so little awareness about trans issues and the violence trans folks face that it is safe to say many murders of trans folks went unreported.

Finding accurate information to identify murder victims as trans or killed because of their gender presentation is a consistent challenge. Just this week the brutal murder of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was reported as that of a "gay teen" with male pronouns used when referring to Lopez Mercado. There has been very little coverage of the fact that Lopez Mercado was a sex worker with a female presentation. Murder suspect Juan antonio Martinez Matos said he thought Lopez Mercado was female but then "realized that the teenager was actually male."

I don't know how Lopez Mercado identified, but Martinez Matos' statement tells us that they didn't conform to his strict understanding of gender: Martinez Matoz thought Lopez Mercado was female and then changed his opinion, the reason given for the murder. So Lopez Mercado's name has been added to the list of those we remember.

Many of those we have mourned over the years originally had their murders reported as the killing of a gay male. For most we still don't know how they identified. But Lopez Mercado's murder reflects those of too many others killed when presenting a gender other than that assigned to them at birth. Some may not have identified as trans but all were killed because of hatred directed towards those who break the strict rules of the compulsory gender binary. They were killed because they did not conform to what someone else thought their gender should be.

The media's consistent failure to accurately identify trans folks reflects the erasure of and refusal to recognize our identities, lived experiences, and even our very existence. Information that identifies a murder victim as the target of anti-trans violence is often presented in the same way Martinez Matos' story has been reported: the murderer thought the victim was a woman and killed them when they realized they were actually male and panicked. This narrative erases trans identities, legitimizes perceived physical sex over gender presentation, and paints trans folks as desceptive and the murderer as tricked, suggesting possible justification for murder. Media narratives end up contributing to the culture of violence and hatred targeted towards trans folks by legitimizing this "trans panic" narrative that gives the responsibility for explaining the murder victim's identity to the very person who killed them.

Based on the murders we know about traditional sexism plays a huge role in who is killed: most people on the list each year had a feminine gender presentation. Other intersections of oppression seem to increase the likelihood of being targeted by anti-trans violence as well. Most of the people on the list are black or Latin@. And many were sex workers, a job that is often the only option for trans folks facing employment discrimination, rejection by family and friends, and high drop out rates from school because of harassment.

As a trans person I know I am a potential target of violence. However, as a person with white privilege not engaging in potentially dangerous work to survive I know I am less at risk than many other trans folks. This certainly gives me pause on Trans Day of Remembrance. I am lucky enough to have access to a pretty big platform when I want to raise awareness about the trans-related issues I care and know most about. Most of the people killed never had the opportunity to share their stories in such a public way.

I share something with everyone who was killed, but there are also major differences between my life experiences and those of most of the people we are remembering. I raise this point because I often feel a degree of appropriation in Trans Day of Remembrance. Many people are entering this day remembering lost friends and loved ones, people with whom they share life experience. But even many trans folks like myself have a very different life story from those killed. While I feel a strong personal connection to this day I also know the stories are not my own. I can mourn but also recognize important power differentials that make other trans folks more likely targets of violence. We must avoid using the stories of those killed to advance consciousness raising projects and a political agenda that is about the needs of trans folks with more relative power and privilege. Instead, we need to be continually working to build a politics that centers the voices and needs of those who are most vulnerable, even within already marginalized populations.

This year there are Transgender Day of Remembrance events occurring in over 120 locations. A list of events can be found here, though there may be an event at a city near you that is not listed so I recommend searching for "Transgender Day of Remembrance" and the nearest city if you would like to participate in a vigil or memorial.

What We Missed

2009-11-19T22:17:16Z

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's health care overhaul package, released last night, doesn't throw women under the bus.

Jessica Wakeman over at The Frisky: "Really, Vogue? I don't care that Clinton does her own makeup and (still) wears brightly colored pantsuits."

"A Zambian newspaper editor was acquitted Monday on charges of distributing obscene materials with the intent of corrupting public morals, a case filed against her after she sent photos of a woman in childbirth to government officials and other prominent figures."

"Police on Wednesday arrested a woman who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit)."

"The suspect in the brutal slaying of a gay teenager in Puerto Rico was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder and four other counts."

One hate crime is too many. Two is almost unfathomable: 15-year-old Jason Mattison Jr. was buried in Baltimore today.

An open letter to the ladies of The View about their dismissive reaction to rape.

Apparently Palin isn't the only Alaskan woman who is into victim-blaming.

Kiki Smith at the Sackler Center for Feminist Art

2009-11-19T21:06:41Z

I just went to a really cool event at the Brooklyn Museum of Art where Kiki Smith, artist, and, Catherine J. Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, had a conversation about Smith's work, it's intersections with feminism, themes of the body, the personal as political etc.

If you aren't familiar with Kiki Smith's work, you should definitely check it out. She's dealt with a wide range of fascinating themes over the course of her career in all sorts of mediums (many of them previously positioned as the "manly" variety).

I was so struck by her stage presence. She was truly in her body, so authentic that I was a bit disarmed. It was clear that she didn't feel any compulsion to play the part of the highly articulate, beyond-it-all artist; she just was. And in her "just being," she said some really profound, simple things. Given my recent experience of being criticized for my voice, my idealism etc., it felt awesome to be reminded how refreshing and critical it is to be comfortable with your own authentic identity in public.

Here are a few of my favorite quotations from the afternoon.

On the personal is political vibe in the 70s:
"You realized what was happening outside your house was also going on inside your house."

On art making:
"Embrace the fragility. Embrace what is tentative."

On resisting hegemonic art norms of what's hip or trendy:
"I don't want to be owned by ideology."

Feminist Masculinity Round Up

2009-11-19T20:00:00Z

I got so many amazing emails after publishing my column last week about masculinity and pro-feminist men and plenty of blogs picked up on the analysis and added their own, as well. I wanted to share some of the excerpts here:

From Joe Samalin and Joseph Vess of Men Can Stop Rape:
The thousands of men and boys that we engage every year show us daily what healthy masculinity looks like. It is a group of high school boys volunteering at a local domestic violence shelter, it is straight and cis-gendered college men partnering as allies with LGBTQ student organizations, and it is the enlisted men and officers in the Air Force who come to us for training on how to create safer workplaces. These boys and men are all moving deliberately toward who they want to be.

Putting the support and encouragement of healthy masculinity at the center of what we do has taught us two key things. First, there is no single definition or ideal of healthy masculinity--there are as many definitions as there are men. Second, developing healthy, authentic masculinity is a journey, not a destination.

Jonathan Grove:
I was presenting at that very conference, and perhaps the most interesting conversation was in the last session, which was a talk back type session to adopt a statement about what happened there and what our mission is. The conversation eventually became about whether to continue the practice of men naming the violence as "men's violence against women" and focusing on what men can do, or whether to name it as violence perpetrated by male people who identify with and try to emulate the hegemonic model of masculinity that is the tradition in our culture. While I realize in the context I've described it seems very unwieldy to talk about it in that way I described last, I think there's an important point there.

Jonathan also told me about this amazing post by Ronan, who was also at the conference.

Hugo Schwyzer:
The solution is both obvious and problematic: we need public role models who are willing to show through their actions as well as their words what it means to lead a feminist life while in a male body. We need men who are willing to walk the walk publicly, allowing themselves to be scrutinized and questioned.

AJ from Feminists for Choice:
Although I agree with a large majority of what Courtney is saying, part of me thinks we should cut the guys a little slack. I mean, we have to start somewhere, don't we? In fact, many great feminist thinkers have made the argument that it is necessary for us to reject old systems of thinking before laying out a blueprint of the future. Revolution isn't easy, and it most certainly doesn't happen over night, however; I do understand where Courtney is coming from. As feminist men, if all our time is spent on problematizing masculinity and defining what we are not, then when are we going to decide what we are?

Alex Dibranco of Change.org:
This is the same kind of argument I often hear from young women who, despite fully supporting gender equality, don't want to be "labeled" as a feminist. Which makes me wonder: Do men really lack an alternative to "toxic masculinity"? Or is it just that even these gender-conscious youths still have trouble fully identifying themselves as feminist--balking, like too many women's rights supporters, from a conception of themselves that should be empowering? Moreover, the concept of a "feminist masculinity" seems unnecessary, and if anything detrimental, to the goal of combating sexism and homophobia in that it continues to present men and their "masculinity" in opposition to women. What if everyone just worked toward being a decent (feminist) person?

Jeff Ryan:
While I agree that it seems there was a lack of vision, perhaps the recognition of this performative nature of being a 'man' is something to celebrate. The men there were choosing not to perform as a Tucker Max or Bill O, and are instead acknowledging the façade and further admitting their lack of one. If all the problems are due to the fact that the sexist masculine stereotype is simply an act, then not acting is actually quite an accomplishment, and it seems like the students you were with have realized this. What I believe they are acknowledging is that what Max and the others espouse is not, in fact, natural to the male sex, but instead a symptom of the male gender. What you discussed in your article was the definition of 'man' and how they were trying to recreate that properly, to define the new, modern man. They certainly did not do that, but they did take us back to being male--a man without the pathetic and desperate act for approval, if you will--, and from there we can recreate what a 'man' truly is.

Tal Peretz:
So, then, why do we need masculinity, if all the positive traits associated with it are just as easily associated with humanity, and all that's left as decisively masculine is harmful?

David Pitcher:
My boys thank me often because young ladies are amazed at their fresh perspectives regarding gender. I raised them by example to honor and respect women as a great balancing force. I try to do so with the math classes I teach as I insist that girls are treated with respect and that boys who choose to show openness rather than machismo are respected.

Boys are so paranoid about appearing feminine that they adapt a "culture of cruelty" and retreat into the common male role. How can we raise our boys to break this pattern?

Libyan Leader Stages Strange Conversion Soiree

2009-11-19T19:17:03Z

File this under WTF. From the New York Times:

The 200 women who answered a Rome modeling agency's advertisement for tall, attractive party guests thought they would be attending an elegant soirée on Sunday. They were -- only the host turned out to be the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and instead of hors d'oeuvres he offered them copies of the Koran and urged them to convert to Islam.

Colonel Qaddafi, by the by, was in Rome for the World Summit on Food Security of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. While Qaddafi was trying to convince young Italian cuties of his political and religious philosophies over glasses of wine and fancy apps, international leaders were pledging to substantially increase aid to agriculture in developing nations, where the majority of the world's 1 billion hungry people live.

Be warned Italian supermodels, according to ANSA News Agency, Colonel Qaddafi is cooking up similar bizzaro schemes with other groups of women through out the week.

Girls Comment on Social Media

2009-11-19T18:05:02Z

The Women's Media Center (WMC) and Girls Learn International are collaborating to launch Girls Investigate: Our Views on Media, a four-part multimedia series that explores girls' ideas about popular culture, social media and the intersections between the two.

Check out the first one:

A transcript wasn't provided, but you can read more about the 17-year-old producers' perspective here.

New Mammogram Guidelines Could Disproportionately Endanger Black Women

2009-11-19T17:01:56Z

In Tuesday's What We Missed, we briefly mentioned the new USPST mammogram guidelines, which now recommend that women begin getting regular mammograms at age 50 rather than at 40, and that the frequency be reduced from annual to once every two years.

The guidelines have been criticized for being "patronizing" and "dangerous" for women's health, but there's one community that is put at particular risk by the guidelines but isn't receiving as much attention: black women.

My colleague and former classmate Ashton Lattimore writes on News One that "the potential impact of these guidelines on black women is a really important piece of the puzzle that so far hasn't gotten much discussion."

In her piece, she interviews Dr. Marissa Weiss, a leading breast cancer specialist and founder of BreastCancer.org, who confirms that African-American women are more likely to get breast cancer than white women when they're under age 40. (The U.S. Department of Health reports that Black women ages 35 to 44 have a breast cancer death rate more than twice that of white women in the same age group.)

The new guidelines, then, as Weiss points out, "would pass over the time of greatest risk for African-American women."

Lattimore also points out that triple negative breast cancer - an aggressive form of cancer- disproportionately impacts Black women, and that Black women are already diagnosed with later stage breast cancers more frequently than other groups.

Looks like perhaps the only good that will come out of these guidelines is increased awareness about the importance of ignoring them completely, as well as the importance of women- especially black women- undergoing regular and early mammogram screenings.

Washington Post Pundit Contest Continues

2009-11-19T16:00:00Z

Alright folks, I just finished round IV in this wild Washington Post Next Great American Pundit Contest. This time we had to do a panel on video with Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart (who was awesome).

This is the second to last round, so please hang in there with me and spread the word. Vote here. You've got until 5pm EST TODAY. I promise that if I win I will do my damnedest to get undercovered stories pertaining to intersectional feminism and activism into the ol' WaPo.

What I'd rather be doing, than asking you to vote for me. Again.:

Dancing with Ann Friedman.

Not Oprah's Book Club: The Good Soldiers

2009-11-19T14:00:15Z

Pulitzer Prize-winner David Finkel has written a truly heart breaking book about the war that just won't end in Iraq. In The Good Soldiers, he follows the 2-16, a battalion of army infantry soldiers nicknamed the Rangers, as they head into "the surge" in January of 2007. He follows them as they say goodbye to their girlfriends and two-year-olds, as they arrive at the base and face the football field-sized trash pit that surrounds them (especially disconcerting in a war where IEDs are so rampant), as they grow anxious and bored, as they get injured and killed, as the lucky ones return home. The Good Soldiers is truly in a class with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a vivid, nonpartisan portrayl of what real soldiers are facing in this war.

Much of the fifteen-month narrative is built around Ralph Kauzlarich, a U.S. Army Liutenant Colonel who is known for his catch phrase, "It's all good." Well, of course, it's not "all good" in Iraq circa 2007. Insurgents are planting IEDs in trash heaps on the side of the road so powerful that they rip through vehicles and tear off limbs. The moral force of the war feels lost on most of the soldiers. Attempts to do nation-building within Iraq--schools, a sewage system, build up the local police force--are all slow at best and impossible at worst.

I have never understood the war so well, despite reading quite a bit about it. The Good Soldiers paints a living, breathing picture of what the 19-year-old kids who put on the American army uniform actually face, and in turn, gives the reader a sense of her own responsibility like nothing else. It's not all good. And we're all to blame.