voxygen.net » Feminism

I like it without pinkwashing

~LS~ — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:53:20 +0000

This week I received many Facebook messages urging me to tell my friends “where I like it” in my Facebook status. I’ve seen my friends post such mysterious statuses as “I like it on the chandelier” and “I like it on my car seat.” This morning I posted, “I like mine without pinkwashing.” Many people didn’t understand my status or why the meme makes me so angry. I have two simple answers:

1. I hate pinkwashing.

2. This is nothing but Facebook slactivism.

Put differently, I do not believe that if I post an “I like it…” status on Facebook, I have done something significant to advance women’s health.

Instead of pinkwashing, send a $5.00 check to the YWCA who will spend it helping poor women, primarily women of color, get free mammograms.

What is pinkwashing?

pinkwashing is the commodification breast cancer. I’ll let Wikipedia explain (quoting the [...]

Another reason to like Hillary

~LS~ — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 15:27:17 +0000

Nonverbal communication expresses power and dominance. In public, professional settings, who gets to touch whom and the nature of that touch plays out and defines gender relations. Because it’s typically subtle, people are often unaware of this dynamic. When it’s more obvious, those who are in the “one down” position see it clearly and those in the position of power remain oblivious as part of their sense of entitlement. The stereotypical male boss/female secretary and male customer/female waitress interactions illustrate this over and over again. However, as gender roles change, the accompanying nonverbal behaviors change with them. Hillary is the perfect example.

This clip from Mad Men illustrates my point (see :40 – :50). Mad Men is a wonderful show to use for examples like this because it does such a good job of capturing the cultural milieu of the 50s and 60s [...]

Cultural Identity Activity

~LS~ — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:56:32 +0000

Since teaching at BRCC I have struggled with introducing issues of racism and other identity categories into the classroom. Given the diversity of the campus population, I’m not sure why. As I posted previously, the responses to racial topics are completely unpredictable.

Last semester, for instance, my students claimed that black people really do like fried chicken. Although part of that discussion was intentional provocation on some of the students’ part, I think many genuinely bought into the stereotype.

Perhaps my difficulties derive from the increasing hostility in conservative rhetoric toward people of color. The “love it or leave it,” English-only mentality is surprisingly prevalent. Although many, many white students don’t fall into this category, there are enough of them to make conversations tense and uncomfortable.

If the students of color (predominantly black, though we’re seeing a rise in other minorities) aren’t comfortable enough to [...]

Allie Beckstrom is my hero

~LS~ — Wed, 26 May 2010 23:27:08 +0000

Paranormal fiction and urban fantasy books are plentiful these days and a large portion of them are vapid. There are exceptions, of course, as with any genre, but on the whole, the works of Laurell K. Hamilton and Stephanie Meyers are representative of “teh stupid” that is paranormal fiction.

Shows such as Buffy, Charmed, and So Weird made common the kick-ass female main character in paranormal or urban fantasy and opened the door for this genre’s expanding popularity. The burgeoning teen fiction/young adult market, born with the huge demographic hump of Gen Y, cemented gothy vampy werewolfy witchy faery stories as a permanent fixture at Barnes and Nobles. So despite the stupidity of paranormal fiction’s lowest common denominator, its frequent strength is an empowerment of females. Well, except for Twilight, which reduces girls to 19th century passive, pining virgins awaiting their one true love. But let’s [...]

Wannabe feminism

~LS~ — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:18:10 +0000

It is no accident that Enlightened Sexism, Susan J. Douglas’s new book, opens with a discussion of the Spice Girls. The Spice Girls represent the negation of feminism by commercial cooptation. Girl Power, which the Spice Girls placed front and center in the public imaginary in the 90s, is what Douglas calls “bustier feminism,” a frosted cupcake of an ambiguous message about feminism at the turn of the century. According to Andi Zeisler’s Feminism and Pop Culture, the Spice Girls and the Girl Power they promoted was a “shorthand for a kind of a diet feminism that substituted consumer trappings for actual analysis.” Such vacuous feminism is easy to brush aside, easy to dismiss, particularly when it fades into a distant memory that occupies a small drop in the vast ocean of popular culture.

Fast forward to fourteen years later where the [...]

Pornification

~LS~ — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:24:29 +0000

Recently on WMST-L, the Women’s Studies discussion list, someone posted a call for papers about porn culture. The call was clearly anti-porn and the posting provoked a brief but rapid pro-/anti-porn debate before the moderator shut it down for being inappropriate to the mission of the list. Those old issues from the feminist sex wars still prickle at us feminists and I’m predictably on the fence about porn. I content myself to remember the title of the book, Pleasure and Danger, because porn is both those things, a crucial point about sex that we should always remember.

But one thing that does bother me is the pornification of consumer culture. I mean this in a different way than the typical use of the term as a comment on the how advertising borrows heavily from porn’s tropes and porn itself has infiltrated every aspect of popular culture. I’m [...]

Women in rock: some things never change

~LS~ — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:09:30 +0000

Baton Rouge has a new radio station: 103.3. Well, not a new radio station but an old station with a new format. The new format is “Music for Generation X.” That’s me, of course. The old format was “Divas” — not for me.

I listened to the station for several hours today and it’s quite a Frankenstein’s monster in terms of genre. They played everything from Nirvana and Guns-n-Roses to C+C Music Factory, with pit stops at Salt – n- Peppa, and REM, not to mention mid to late 80s disco, hip hop, rock, and the weird, bad music that I forgot existed. Funny, though, I recognized every song I heard, which demonstrates the way that our (my!) listening in the 80s and 90s was rather homogeneous despite the generic differences that existed.

Still, after about four hours of listening, guess what…no women in rock. Ok, [...]

The Lady Doctor

~LS~ — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:04:31 +0000

Over Thanksgiving I had a conversation with my mother-in-law about women doctors. She explained that she had to see a woman eye doctor because her regular doctor was unavailable and that this made her uncomfortable. I recognize that some people are uncomfortable with women doctors even today. Comfort with a doctor is an emotional thing, not something you can necessarily address rationally. I expect that with each generation this discomfort will lessen. Still, when I play the very old doctor riddle with my students in class, most can’t solve it. Here’s the riddle:

A man and his son were in a car and had an accident on the highway. The boy was critically injured and rushed to the hospital. Doctors are not allowed to work on their family. After seeing the boy in the emergency room, the doctor said, “I can’t work on this child. He’s my son!”

The answers [...]

Sup?

~LS~ — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:34:07 +0000

Some things:

1. I’ve been working on another website. I find when I do that, I tend to disapper because I’m so immersed. Incidentally, the website is mygratitudes.net. There’s nothing up yet but junk and filler, but I’m having fun working away on the site design. I’m enjoying learning more about CSS, WordPress, and HTML. If there were some local classes, I’d probably be interested in taking one. I’d like to learn more about design itself, not just website design. Stuff like layout, typography, and the like. I’ve tried reading up about that sort of thing online, but I don’t really -see- what people are talking about. I think I need someone to tell me and show me.

2. Today I was looking up examples of arguments for pro-choice and pro-life positions to bring to class. I googled “pro-choice+arguments” and got an astounding number of hits that were Christian, anti-choice [...]

Randomly Musing – Madonna and Keith Richards

~LS~ — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:22:18 +0000

Here are my neuronic firings for the day:

1. I just learned (behind the loop again) that the Lilith Fair is returning! I am /so/ psyched about this. I soooo want to go with Willow. It would be like the ultimate in women’s studies kismet to do that. I am definitely driving to Dallas for this.

2. The latest Rolling Stone has a retrospective on Madonna. I am offended by it. I have always thought Madonna was beautiful. Many people have disagreed with me, of course. But I stick to my guns on this point. Lately, though, the media has treated her almost like a clown. The only explanation I can find is that she’s over 50. Fifty year old women shouldn’t prance around on a stage and spread their legs. It’s unbecoming. Rolling Stone has frequently been a participant in this [...]