I know from personal experience what it’s like to be a feminist in a place that has the same amount of tolerance for change and gender equality that a teaspoon can hold. I live in a tiny town that isn’t even big enough to be called a town, go to a school where girls are afraid to use the “f word,” and by that, I don’t mean “fuck.” I mean FEMINIST. Around here, the same tired gender stereotypes are alive and well. Women cook, clean, tend to their families, and do whatever their husbands ask of them, and even work on top of all that, my step mom being an example. These same ideas seem to be imprinted in the minds of the teenagers around here too. When I told …
Despite my passion for music, I doubt I could ever succeed in the music business. My reasons for this are very simple: I am overweight, I don’t wear makeup and I don’t keep up with current trends, and I wouldn’t change these things if I was told that I needed to in order to be marketable.
Sexism in the music industry can be seen in a lot of ways—lyrics that objectify women, women being seen as sluts if they sing about being promiscuous while men are seen as “just doing what guys do”, female musicians being held to higher standards of male musicians, etc. Amanda Palmer, for instance, is an artist who has faced the beast we call sexism with Roadrunner Records, the label she was signed to. When the …
I just got a heads up about this awesome group of young feminists and performers who put together a show called “GirlPower: Voices of a Generation.” It looks amazing. Information is below:
The Manhattan Theatre Source Presents:
GIRLPOWER: VOICES OF A GENERATION
Created and Performed by the 2008-2009 GirlPower Performance Collective
Directed by Ashley Marinaccio and Elizabeth Koke
The New York International Fringe Festival – FringeNYC
A production of The Present Company
MON 8/17 at 7pm (Talkback 8:30-9:15),THUR 8/20 at 9:30pm , FRI 8/21 at 3:15pm,
I love Ellen Page. If they made a movie that consisted entirely of her eating soup and talking to a cat, I’d see it. And I’d love it. I’m weird, moving on.
Drew Barrymore directed, and joining Ellen are Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig and Alia Shawkat (Maeby from Arrested Development!)
Totally girl-centric (not just that but super-talented girls, as well) and looks like it paints these girls as passionate and powerful. I’m psyched!
The Obama administration recently created a new policy that allows foreign women who are the victims of severe domestic violence to receive asylum in the United States.
The policy outlines that to receive asylum, women must show that they are:
“treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property…and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.”
One such moving story is that of L.R. (identity protected), a Mexican woman who, according to San Francisco court documents, had an abusive partner who:
“made her live with him, and forced her to have sex with him by putting a gun or a machete to her head, by breaking …
My freshman year of high school, I was like any other shy, bookish girl. With a copy of Ariel in my hands I would dart from class to class, not daring to make eye contact with other students as we passed in the hallway. During lunch I would dive into Franny and Zooey instead of rehashing the details of my day to friends. I used books to escape wallowing in my low self-esteem and my struggle to reconcile my Lutheran upbringing with my liberal personal beliefs about LGBT rights and abortion.?
Back then, the words “I love myself” or “I support gay marriage” seemed equally inutterable. I spent my days picking apart my flaws in a mirror and biting my tongue when classmates made homophobic jokes. I barely had the …
Sonia Sotomayor. A name which only a few months ago probably would have meant nothing to us unless we were real judiciary junkies is now at the center of a hot button issue: Who will be our next Supreme Court Justice? While the Senate is spending hours upon hours questioning Sotomayor, let’s take a moment to dig a little deeper on the subject of her nomination.
(semi-rant alert): First and foremost, the biggest thing that has astonished me in my discussions with people is how quickly everyone forgets that women have barely made any headway on the Supreme Court. Sure, Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female justice; confirmed in 1980 and retired in 2006; and sure, Ruth Bader Ginsberg followed not far …
God, I love Jezebel. Last week, they addressed the hub of my own internal religious debates, by asking what being a “half jew” means.
As a technical “half jew” myself — probably more complicated than half, my Dad was raised Jewish, my Mom was half and half, and raised nothing–I’ve always struggled a little with how to qualify my religious identity. My parents tried to qualify it for me — upon the joyous occasion of my birth (I can’t speak about their feelings of my bother’s birth…I assume they were more than neutral) my parents made the choice. They decided that Judaism was the way to go.
We joined a temple! They unwillingly sent me to Hebrew School! I swore to them they’d rue the day, and …
