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Yasmin Gasimova writes that shaving is “unfair” to women.
Via Rob Duke
profeminist:
“Who’s your pick?
Here Are 7 Redesigns Of The $20 Bill That Honor Women
"If you could choose any historical woman to be on the $20 bill, who would it be?
A nonprofit campaign called Women...
We need our sisterhood. #feminism #WarOnWomen @MsSarahPaulson @MarthaPlimpton @AIsForOrg pic.twitter.com/fMW8QWyGa6
By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
(CNN) – Kate Kelly, a lifelong Mormon who’s spearheaded a fight for equal opportunities for women in her church, was convicted of apostasy Monday and excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The verdict, decided by a panel of male judges who convened Sunday, came to her by way of an e-mail sent by her former LDS Church bishop in Virginia, Mark Harrison. Kelly described the verdict as “exceptionally painful.”
Via Community Village Sites, Deanna Dahlsad
"We are witnessing a very slow and painful cultural shift," explains Anita Sarkeesian, the brains behind "Feminist Frequency."
A 2013 study conducted by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism shows that in the last decade there has been no sustained increase in female directors of independent films shown at the Sundance Film Festival. In Hollywood, it’s worse: of directors of the top box-office films from 2002 to 2012, only 4.4 percent were female. Amid those dismal statistics, director Mary Harron’s perseverance in the industry is an inspiration for female filmmakers, and she is an example of how to endure an artistic life packed with both praise and controversy.
Maybe you don't want to call it a "war on women". Maybe you find the word "war" to be over-the-top, despite the facts regarding bombings, shootings, rape, and other violent attacks against women, i...
Melissa Harris-Perry has a conversation with famed author bell hooks on the evolution of the black feminist movement in America.
Raise your hand if you think it’s time for us to un-teach Google some of these things.
The biopic tracks Arendt's experiences reporting on the trial of Nazi SS-Officer Adolf Eichmann, unapologetically centralising her role as a public intellectual. Relationships with friends and her husband, including notable author Mary McCarthy, are also rather sensitively depicted. But they are subplots to the real deal, Arendt's ideas.
Unlike the majority of films or television shows when they deign to give airtime to women, “Hannah Arendt” refuses to replicate the stereotypical territory of acceptable-woman-characters. It is not about Arendt the lover (see: almost all women in films), Arendt as a writerly version of the oh-so-“normal” woman hung up on weight and boyfriends (see: Bridget Jones), or Arendt the supposed high-flyer beseiged by mental health issues (see: Scandinavian drama).
“Hannah Arendt” is, instead, about Hannah Arendt the thinker. It rightly credits Professor Arendt, responsible for some of the most publicly enduring theories in 20th century philosophy, with an intellectual interiority mostly reserved – at least in the public eye – for white men.
France has launched a five-point gender equality charter for its film industry, put together by Le Deuxième Regard, a Paris-based ‘lobby’ (read ‘activist’) group founded by Bérénice Vincent, Delphyne Besse and Julie Billy, who will circulate it for signature, to all segments of the industry.
As you can see in the photo, all the first signatories of the charter were women, powerful women: Veronique Cayla, the head of Arte France the public television channel and Le Deuxième Regard's marraine, or 'godmother'; Najat Vallaud Belkacem, the Women’s Rights Minister; Aurélie Filippetti, the Culture and Communications Minister; Frédérique Bredin, president of the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée (CNC) – the state film funding body. It remains to be seen who else will sign the charter. The Cannes Film Festival, perhaps? Its full name is Charte Pour l’Égalité Entre Les Femmes et Les Hommes Dans Le Secteur Du Cinéma and it's there in all its glory at the bottom of the page. Impressive.
Why is this charter necessary, when in France women directors' participation in feature filmmaking is among the strongest in the world? Well, there are problems there that are similar to those everywhere else. According to the Screen Daily article, the CNC reports that in 2012 women directed just 25% of the 77 first features approved, even though French film school annual intake has a gender split of 50:50.
This charter is, I think, unique. Feminists often work behind the scenes for change. But has a feminist group ever initiated and helped to write a charter that key government ministers and industry figures signed in support, in the arts or any other context? And then circulated it for signature, to an entire industry? Anywhere? The charter and its evolving signature process are very different, for instance, from the framework that the Swedish Film Institute uses to advance women directors’ participation in filmmaking, perhaps because the Swedish Film Institute – unlike the CNC – works within an established regulatory context that explicitly promotes gender equity and has monitored gender statistics in film for some time.
Curated by Kelly Doley and Amanda Rowell, the exhibition – which follows Janis, an earlier exhibition at a small artist-run gallery – features the work of female artists not represented by commercial dealers including Bonita Bub, Jenny Christmann, Sarah Goffman, Gail Hastings and Sarah Rodigari. Alongside the show is a publication with contributions from women in the arts, including artists, gallerists, arts advisors, broadcasters, academics, and writers. The efforts of the curators to create a sense of identity and purpose for contemporary female artists that also looks back to the history of feminism has produced a palpable wave through the Sydney art world. People are talking about the show: debating its ambitions and potential outcomes.
...Feminism remains one of the most important philosophical and ideological movements of the 20th century, changing the way we think about the making and understand of art, amongst other things. Despite all this, the very real inequalities of the contemporary world mean that a return to basics is required every decade or so. While nostalgia is often defined as a kind of cultural malady, it can also have a positive effect when it empowers a new generation to self-awareness and realisation.
History, politics & culture as this woman sees it. The serious, the kitsch, the opinionated.
A place to connect with Herstory at Facebook.
An exhibition showcasing six female abstract artists poses questions about the real impact of gender on output and perception in the art world.
...The exhibition raises two questions (amongst many) that I want to address briefly here. Is there anything specific to say about women and abstraction: does gender matter when art sheds all references except to its own processes and potentialities as colour, line, space, surface, rhythm and so forth or when it seeks to commune with abstract forces and effects we call nature?
And what do these specific and highly diverse artists in the show bring to the debate about the continuing relevance of abstraction in painting now?
...'Female artists need feminism like a hole in the head'
Yet Riley is also the artist who commented in the early 1970s, that women artists needed feminism - attention to gender issues - like they needed a hole in the head. Understandably she belongs to a generation of artists for whom modern art offered the wonderful opportunity to ‘be an artist’, simply and firmly engaged with artistic questions. Yet when the great American abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler died in 2011, the obituary writers repeated over and over again her disdain for feminists even while it was feminist writers who wrote some of the most interesting and appreciative analyses of her work, taking her much more seriously than the art historians who simply allowed her work only to be a ‘bridge between Pollock and what came after’.
Emily Wilding Davison’s actions made her one of the most famous suffragettes of her time. A century of speculation about her death has focused on her possessions at that time. In particular, the return railway ticket in her purse has led many historians to suggest she had no intention of committing suicide that day. However, Elizabeth Crawford’s latest research strongly suggests that ‘special offer’ return tickets were the only ones available on Derby Day, and so this piece of evidence can be discounted. However, other recent research into her death has largely favoured the view that she did not commit suicide on that day, but was instead aware of the possible consequences of her actions and was ready to face them: this being arrest, injury or death. Like FEMEN protesters a century later, she was using her body as a means of protest. Whatever her motivation, Davison’s death remains one of the most iconic moments of the militant suffragette movement, caught on camera, in the years immediately before the First World War. Thousands of women, and some men, took part in the women’s suffrage campaign in these years, with hundreds of them being arrested as their demonstrations became more imaginative. The 1911 census boycott, for example, saw many thousands of women physically absenting themselves from being ‘at home’ on census night by taking part in all-night roller-skating, midnight picnicking in parks, and camping out in caravans. Davison herself hid in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons, thus enabling her to put this exclusive address down as her place of residence. After the failure of successive governments to pursue the women’s suffrage agenda, the campaign became more militant. Mostly, the actions were aimed at property, such as setting fire to post boxes (a crime for which Davison was imprisoned), breaking windows and burning bastions of patriarchy such as cricket pavilions. The State dealt with these actions, not by engaging in dialogue, but by throwing the women into prison. The more militant suffragettes appealed to be made First Division prisoners, the category afforded to political prisoners rather than common criminals. When this was denied, they started hunger strikes...
One should also note that this is not simply a matter of “feminism having won, so just let it all go away.” For the findings also reveal that “total family income is higher when the mother, not the father, is the primary breadwinner.” Thanks, pink collar ghetto, unequal pay, and continuing notions of gender inequality in the workplace. Not to mention all the BS traditional notions of motherhood. Never mind the facts, however; let’s just get to the million dollar subtext question Liza Donnelly put forth regarding the 37% — the married mothers who have a higher income than their husbands: Can Husbands Handle Being Outearned By Their Wives? ...If you want to dismiss all this as the ramblings of irrelevant talking asshats on Fox (for which I will gently remind you that their rhetoric is often too dangerous to be dismissed), you’ll need to also know about this other study, called In Sickness and In Wealth...
An outspoken evangelical leader preached a potentially controversial sermon this weekend, saying "nagging wives" are like water torture.
Via Religulous
On the occasion of the publication of an anthology of her writing and the accession of a NY Wages for Housework archive at Mayday Rooms in London, Marina Vishmidt interviewed Silvia Federici on her extensive contribution to feminist thought and recent...
The women born between 1905 and 1909 were the same young girls who grew up during the years of the women’s suffrage movement in the US. They would have seen the struggle, heard the talk, and knew they could have greater freedom of choice in living their lives. They too would see, if not quite be, part of the flapper movement. Activism and parenting being almost completely at odds with one another, some may have opted not to have children — and at this time, birth control, thanks to Margaret Sanger, was becoming a realistic option. And, just as these young women were perhaps thinking of starting a family… Along comes The Great Depression — the one of that started about 1929, not the one some say we are approaching now — and the birthrate fell about one-tenth globally from the rate during the “prosperous” 1920′s. In America, the birth rate dropped below the replacement level for the first time in history.
Download These Slides and Take Your Picture with Them To Help Raise Awareness
A child of the 60's and a product of the 80's, I never quite outgrew my love of pinback buttons and political/social propoganda. A few snapshots and closeups of some of my favorite buttons and bumper stickers.
I always knew this was the longest revolution, one that would take a century or more to unfold. It's upended most of our lives, and significantly improved so many of them. Nothing will ever be the same. Yet there's still such a long way to go. I doubt I'll see full gender equality in my lifetime.
By Ruth Rosen, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, is Professor Emerita of History at the University of California at Davis and a Scholar in Residence at U.C. Berkeley. She is the author, most recently, of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America.
Let it be this one. This Is My Body makes me weep — with joy, sorrow, hope, and fear. If you like, Like.
Today we celebrate Valentine’s Day. I wrote about why many collect old Valentines at CQ; but wanted to share this one from my own collection. As a feminist, I obviously...
by SID, Make Me A Sammich Why do we do this? Why do we write about our experiences and talk about misogyny and women in today’s society and put all this out into the world? I used to wonder that. Why bother? The only people reading are a) people who already agree with you or b) people who honest to God just want to fight with you. The people who should be paying attention usually aren’t, and if they are, it’s only to argue. Most misogynists don’t even realize you’re talking to them, because no one self-identifies as a misogynist. Even the most ardent among them love women, you see. They have mothers and sisters and everything. Some of their best friends are women. You can’t change the mind of someone who can’t hear you, so these are obviously—as much as we might wish otherwise—not the people we’re talking to. [MORE]
Via J'nene Solidarity Kay
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Curated by Deanna Dahlsad
An opinionated woman obsessed with objects, entertained by ephemera, intrigued by researching, fascinated by culture & addicted to writing. The wind says my name; doesn't put an @ in front of it, so maybe you don't notice. http://www.kitsch-slapped.com
Other Topics
Antiques & Vintage Collectibles
Crimes Against Humanity
From lone gunmen on hills to mass movements. Depressing as hell, really.
Cultural History
The roots of culture; history and pre-history.
In The Name Of God
Mainly acts done in the name of religion, but also discussions of atheism, faith, & spirituality.
Kinsanity
Let's just say I have reasons to learn more about mental health, special needs children, psychology, and the like.
Nerdy Needs
The stuff of nerdy, geeky, dreams.
Readin', 'Ritin', and (Publishing) 'Rithmetic
The meaning behind the math of the bottom line in publishing and the media. For writers, publishers, and bloggers (which are a combination of the two).
Sex Positive
Sexuality as a human right.
Vintage Living Today For A Future Tomorrow
It's as easy to romanticize the past as it is to demonize it; instead, let's learn from it. More than living simply, more than living 'green', thrifty grandmas knew the importance of the 'economics' in Home Economics. The history of home ec, lessons in thrift, practical tips and ideas from the past focused on sustainability for families and out planet. Companion to http://www.thingsyourgrandmotherknew.com/
Visiting The Past
Travel based on grande ideas, locations, and persons of the past.
Walking On Sunshine
Stuff that makes me smile.
You Call It Obsession & Obscure; I Call It Research & Important
Links to (many of) my columns and articles.
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