don't ya wish your girlfriend was smart like me?: Carnival of Feminists

Friday, April 11

Carnival of Feminists No. 57

Check out the 57th Carnival of Feminists at Pandemian. I'm going to highlight two posts on an issue close to my heart: female body hair as a (highly oppressive and repressive) cultural taboo.

Two posts about the fraught relationships women have with their body hair, the first from The Jaded Hippy and the second from Anji at Shut Up Sit Down.

Body Hair
"Women have body hair. We choose to manipulate it or get rid of it. But pure and simple, WE HAVE IT. And I have always been of the opinion that we should be able to simply HAVE it, and should not feel obligated to do anything about that."

The Politics of Body Hair
"Put down the damned razor and love your body the way it is naturally, not the way you've been taught it ought to be. By refusing to participate personally, but becoming one more woman who challenges the status quo by loving her body hair, you become one more soldier in the army fighting towards making women's bodily self-esteem and equality a reality."

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Thursday, March 27

Carnival of Feminists no. 56 is up

Carnival of Feminists no. 56 is up today at Redemption Blues.

The articles featured focus on the U.S. Presidential Race, reproductive rights, gender roles and rights, rape, transgender and other issues. A sampling of posts from Carnival 56:

A victory for either candidate (not the nomination, but the Presidency itself) would be symbolically extremely potent, as Holly Ord of Menstrual Poetry acknowledges in Voting for Hillary Just because She’s a Woman?, roundly rejecting the idea of gender-based partisanship: “Are people counting on the population of feminists to secure Hillary’s standing in the presidential election? Are people counting on the population of women as a whole to secure Hillary’s standing? I think some are, but in a way I feel that that specific way of thinking is doing nothing but addressing women as nothing but sheep who believe that just because a woman is looking to find her way into the white house that other women will help her get there. I do not believe that by being a woman, or by being a feminist, that I am trumped to vote for Hillary no matter what just because she’s a woman.

Staunch Hillary supporter Christine of Me, My Kid and Life in Think Before You Vote asks: “As a man, would you rather have any man in office than any woman? Be honest. Would having a woman as president put your old boy’s club status (which all men belong to regardless of race) in jeopardy? For a lot of American men I believe the answer is yes.

Desiree of Baser Instincts in My Own Private Hillary likewise ponders media depictions of Hillary’s perceived personality defects: “It must suck to have people doubt your capabilities for no other reason than you were born with a slit.

From Rage Against the Man-chine’s MRAs: A bunch of fucking crybabies? “(…) these men see a zero-sum game when they look at relations between men and women. When women gain, they lose. MRAs are expressing the kind of anger that comes from feeling threatened but not being able to say clearly why. They feel entitled to the privileges they have come to see as their birthright, and when women want the same kind of treatment that they feel entitled to, they feel that their territory is being encroached upon. That mental process is understandable (though not excusable), but it’s intellectually weak and dishonest to argue that men’s “rights” are in danger. What these guys are doing is fairly transparent: they’re arguing for the maintenance of male entitlement and privilege and for the limitation of women’s rights vis-à-vis men, not for the protection of men’s rights."