You Want Inspirational Courage?

I’ve got your inspirational courage right here.

Irshad Manji

If you’ve never heard of Irshad Manji, give her website a look.  If you have heard of her, give her website a look.

Hers is a courage that I will never have.

And agree or disagree with her, she is is truly an inspiration.

“I’m not a moderate Muslim, I’m a reformist”

Irshad Manji blog and official website

Irshad is founder and director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University’s school of public service. This leadership program equips students to challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship — within their families, communities and organizations.

And don’t for a second think that the world today is lacking in moral leadership and heroism (heroine-ism?).

The Skeptical OB: Homebirth midwives don’t want you to know

The Skeptical OB asks an interesting question.

Why won’t the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) release  their data on the safety of home births facilitated by their midwives?

[MANA has] publicly announced that only those who pass an ideological litmus test and sign a legal non-disclosure agreement will be allow access to the data.

Birth freedom is most certainly a feminist issue.

Withholding important information makes it impossible for women to make an informed choice about how they want to give birth.  And an uninformed choice is no choice at all.

I don’t see how MANA’s policy can possibly be compatible with feminism.

Make public the data!

The Skeptical OB: Homebirth midwives don’t want you to know.

How to Survive Scholastic Books for Girls

A plump, juicy bite of USDA Grade A prime time Sexism for your delectation:

Oh! and um…Scholastic Books.  Yeah, you.  Stay the fuck away from my daughters.

BOYS ONLY: How to Survive Anything!
Table of Contents:
How to Survive a shark attack
How to Survive in a Forest
How to Survive Frostbite
How to Survive a Plane Crash
How to Survive in the Desert
How to Survive a Polar Bear Attack
How to Survive a Flash Flood
How to Survive a Broken Leg
How to Survive an Earthquake
How to Survive a Forest Fire
How to Survive in a Whiteout
How to Survive a Zombie Invasion
How to Survive a Snakebite
How to Survive if Your Parachute Fails
How to Survive a Croc Attack
How to Survive a Lightning Strike
How to Survive a T-Rex
How to Survive Whitewater Rapids
How to Survive a Sinking Ship
How to Survive a Vampire Attack
How to Survive an Avalanche
How to Survive a Tornado
How to Survive Quicksand
How to Survive a Fall
How to Survive a Swarm of Bees
How to Survive in Space
vs
GIRLS ONLY: How to Survive Anything!
Table of Contents:
How to survive a BFF Fight
How to Survive Soccer Tryouts
How to Survive a Breakout
How to Show You’re Sorry
(and chapter 3 is where we no longer care about “survival”)
How to Have the Best Sleepover Ever
How to Take the Perfect School Photo
How to Survive Brothers
Scary Survival Dos and Don’ts
(“don’t throw things or yell at your ghost. it may react badly.”)
How to Handle Becoming Rich
How to Keep Stuff Secret
How to Survive Tests
How to Survive Shyness
How to Handle Sudden Stardom
More Stardom Survival Tips
How to Survive a Camping Trip
(“fresh air is excellent for the skin”)
How to Survive a Fashion Disaster
How to Teach Your Cat to Sit
(are you #$&^%*@ kidding me?)
How to Turn a No Into a Yes
Top Tips for Speechmaking
How to Survive Embarrassment
How to Be a Mind Reader
How to Survive a Crush
Seaside Survival
(don’t wear heels. tie your hair back. sunglasses add glamour.)
How to Soothe Sunburn
How to Pick Perfect Sunglasses
Surviving a Zombie Attack
How to Spot a Frenemy
Brilliant Boredom Busters
How to Survive Truth or Dare
How to Beat Bullies
How to be an Amazing Babysitter

(HT: http://ryannorth.tumblr.com)

Class, accessibility, and rebranding feminism

This goes to my point in the post about feminists and attachment parenting: Are feminist mothers MORE likely to be attachment parenting?

Are feminist mothers MORE likely to be attachment parenting?

This is *very* interesting.
I don’t see anything necessarily anti-feminist about attachment parenting.
But but it does seem to me that any sort of social pressure on women to adopt attachment parenting is inconsistent with feminism.
As for the study, I wonder if they controlled for things like race and class. I suspect that attachment parenting is most popular among middle and upper class women, i.e. women who are free to stay home with their children if they choose to.  See this post by Feminist Anthropologist for more about what I’m getting at.

blue milk

After all that debate around whether attachment parenting is anti-feminist for mothers this is an interesting finding:

Results showed that feminists were more likely to support attachment parenting practices than non-feminists, and non-feminists were more likely to endorse strict schedules for children. These results suggest that attachment parenting is a type of parenting that is attractive to feminist women.

Interestingly, non-feminists, and mothers in particular, held misperceptions about the typical feminist who they saw as largely uninterested in the time-intensive and hands-on practices associated with attachment parenting. Non-feminists perceived feminists as less interested in attachment parenting than they were when, in fact, the feminists were more interested.

The study, which was mentioned in PSYPOST, is relatively small but the results are noteworthy. The findings make intuitive sense to me because, anecdotally, among the feminist mothers I follow on Twitter and at other blogs more of them seem to be into…

View original post 54 more words

Next Post

Another feminist take on Prometheus.

cute girl discount

I laughed at the final scene of Prometheus. And I suspect that wasn’t Ridley Scott’s intent.

I went in really wanting to like this movie: ready to be creeped out, to feel claustrophobic, to root for the kick-ass Noomi Rapace [see above], to drool over Michael Fassbender.

But the movie was not so ready for me to like it.

Spoiler-filled feminist kvetching after the jump.

View original post 750 more words

What War on Women?

Holy shit.

And think about how much money we’ve spent on the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now compare that to what we spend on domestic violence.

Nerdy Feminist: Prometheus: We Miss You, Ripley!

I saw the film over the weekend, but I am still digesting it.  I will share some thoughts on it soon.

In the mean time, Here is some solid feminist thinking on Prometheus from a blogger I ran across.

The Nerdy Feminist.

Wait.  Nerd?  And Feminist!?

I don’t know.

That sounds dangerous.  Like a critical mass of coolness.

And it turns out that it is indeed an excellent blog.   Give it a click.

(Spoiler Alert for the linked page)

Without spoiling anything, I can say that the amazing character of Ellen Ripley, as portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in Alien does NOT have a match in Prometheus. In fact, I’m very disappointed that at least in this series, it appears we’ve quite regressed in the last 33 years. I was so disappointed and concerned that I actually started to jot down the following notes in the theater.

Nerdy Feminist: Prometheus: We Miss You, Ripley!.

Misogyny on television

“It makes me so mad that there are so many women out there that are willing to portray themselves in such a negative, archaic, and dim light and that the female leads in these shows just seem to go along with it for cheap laughs.”

This points to something I’ve been thinking about. Are women who play these roles, model for sexually objectifying ads and participate in these forms of misogyny morally responsible in some sense for their complicity?
Don’t get me wrong, I do not mean to suggest that the men involved don’t shoulder blame. They do, and I don’t mean to muddy the waters about that. Furthermore, women who want to do show business have to do this sort of thing in ways that men in show business do not.
But it seems to me that there’s plenty of responsibility to go around.

Egyptian Women Protesting Harassment Harassed by Counter-Protesting Dicks

This is disturbing and, from what I understand, fairly representative of the experience of women activists in Egypt in the aftermath of Mubarak’s removal from power.

“We were surrounded by men from both sides and by [the time we reached the corner] I saw a wave. I saw so many that attacked some men and women,” said Abul Magd. “Every few minutes there was a wave. It was definitely a coordinated attack.”

Egyptian Women Protesting Harassment Harassed by Counter-Protesting Dicks.