Feminism | Posted by Mareike S on 11/26/2012
Buying Condoms
I guess the title already gives you a good idea what this post will be about, but bare with me while I explain how exactly I got to writing this post and chose this title.
You could say I’m a grown woman. I’m a few years older than my country’s legal age, I live in my own flat several hundred kilometers away from my parents and, yes, if I’m not in a committed relationship, I sometimes hook up with a guy if he’s my type and things click.
Now, I’m on the pill (which luckily is really, really easy to get if you live in Germany or anywhere else in Europe as far as I know), but there’s no one-night stands without condoms for me. Just. Not. Happening.
You’d think …
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Feminism | Posted by Georgia L on 11/19/2012
The Red Menace?
When it comes to competitiveness, I am the winner. I choose to be ridiculously competitive about certain things, and my fight to beat everyone else is bloody, bitter, and vaguely worrying. Of all the things I’ve fought hardest to win though, puberty was maybe not one that you’d expect. I wanted to grow up faster than all my friends, and I wanted it badly.
Maybe that’s why I never understood – and still don’t understand – the negativity that menstruation seems to evoke. Periods, to me, seem messy, annoying, and slightly nerve-racking. However, they’re also to thank for, oh, you know, just the entirety of the human race.
When it comes to the perception of menstruation, one could argue that our attitude towards it has almost regressed. In Ancient Greece …
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Feminism | Posted by Wagatwe W on 11/16/2012
Soapbox’s Feminist Camp
A few years ago I signed up for a Tumblr account, but I had no idea what it was and I only registered because it seemed like the “right thing to do” if you’re into social media. Years later, I can affirm that the creation of my blogs on that platform and the subsequent community I became a part of has provided endless benefits to my life. One of those benefits was that I got to attend Soapbox’s Feminist Camp. The camp had been something I had followed for years, but was not able to attend due to financial constraints. Thanks to my followers on my Tumblr dedicated to feminism I got many nominations to attend Soapbox’s Feminist Camp for free, and was chosen. I got to meet so …
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Feminism | Posted by Sophie R on 11/14/2012
A Boob In My Bonnet
In the United Kingdom (where I live), there is a daily national tabloid newspaper called The Sun. In it’s own words, The Sun provides readers with “the latest news and features – Showbiz, babes, celebrities, sport and racing, national and international news.” The word that I have decided to take issue with is ‘babes’ specifically because, for those who don’t already know, as well as tenuous ‘news’ The Sun regularly features a picture of a pretty girl with her bazukas out on page 3.
It’s long been an issue that has frustrated me. I am not surprised, shocked or even displeased that men – and women – like to look at boobs. Boobs are fascinating, boobs are life-giving, powerful, sexy and aesthetically pleasing, all at the same time. As a heterosexual woman, I confess that I love …
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Feminism | Posted by Talia on 11/12/2012
Phyllis Schlafly: Groundbreaker?
For today’s young feminists, the name Phyllis Schlafly may be totally unfamiliar; if anything, it triggers a distant memory of a footnote in an AP US History textbook. Those activists who lived and fought during the Second Wave are, however, all too familiar with the uber-conservative activist.
Ever since the 1940s, Schlafly has preached that women should be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. She has said things like “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,” and has called Roe v. Wade “the worst decision in the history of the US Supreme Court.” She recently endorsed the candidacy of Todd Akin, of “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” infamy. In the 1970s, …
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Creative | Posted by Tiffany C on 11/2/2012
Innocence and Experience
She was all sharp angles even in earlier innocence,
Sticks and stones,
Upright stance, finely wrought
Collarbone jut, delicate vertebrae
stuck out; a recollection of one night
Sternum solid plate of bone; no one will be able to break this part of you
that she instinctively felt in reassurance
Fragile as a bird,
False pretenses in adolescence,
Awkward
Inebriated lightweight who never knew the bitter taste of rejection
and instead, learned of too hasty acceptance—
Arched shoulders, hipbones widened from experience,
Her wrists smudged with bruises blooming like dandelions in grass;
abundant and careless
Her eyes, once starlight-bright, became
Precise in every action
Tousled morning-after hair
She was all sharp angles even until world remained empty,
because that night, casual, she went out with her friends to a club
Was …
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Awareness, Feminism | Posted by Emma M on 10/31/2012
Stand With Malala
Malala Yousafzai has spent the last 3 years of her life in the pursuit of education and equality. As a result, she has spent the last 13 days in a hospital bed in Birmingham, England.
At 11 years old, Malala began blogging for the BBC. She ran an anonymous daily journal chronicling her struggles to get the education she deserved as a young Pakistani girl. When Malala’s blog became popular worldwide, her name was added to the byline. In 2011, Malala won both the International Peace Prize and the Pakistani Peace Prize. Malala’s maturity and wisdom served her well as she argued eloquently and passionately for girls’ educational rights in the Middle East and worldwide.
However, Malala’s open activism also made her a target. On October 9, a Taliban gunman …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Celeste D on 10/24/2012
On Cougars, Catfights and Cows
Fox, cow, bitch, vixen, cougar, whale, chick. What do these terms have in common? They refer to animals. Anything else? They also refer to women.
As someone who learned to speak English as a second language and was not surrounded by these colloquialisms at an early age, I remember being puzzled when I first heard a woman called a “cougar” or “fox.” I remember finding the terms “cow” and “whale” particularly jarring and harsh, though the person who uttered them didn’t give it a second thought.
Admittedly, all human beings are sometimes associated with animals. Someone who eats quickly “wolfs down” their food, someone who is bossy “barks orders,” and someone who is dangerous is “animal.” (Not to mention the animal metaphors referring to sex or the organs associated with …
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