I’m hosting the next Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy on February 16th 2009.

This sex positive carnival highlights posts/articles promoting the sexual rights and freedom of women:

This theory of feminism is known more commonly as Sex Positive Feminism, a movement that developed in the 1980s in response to feminists against pornography and prostitution. Sex Positive Feminists (or sex-radical, pro-sex or sexually liberated feminists) believe that women’s sexual freedom is an essential part of women’s autonomy. Any legal or social control or regulation over the sexual self is an attempt to control and regulate women, undermines their freedom and infringes upon their human rights. We are interested in promoting sex workers’ rights, sex education in schools, and we encourage the free expression of sexualities.

Sex Positive Feminists recognise that not all women choose to work within the sex industry and some are grossly exploited, so it is crucial to understand that sex work must be done consensually. Otherwise, it represents another form of control. We understand too that the opposite of sex positive is not necessarily sex negative. For more information about Sex Positive Feminism, click here.

You can get an idea by seeing the current editions at Sugarbutch Chronicles. The Carnival homepage is here.

I will need your submission no later than Friday, February 15 2009.

If you’re interested in hosting a future edition of the Carnival, please contact C aroline at email: uncool [DOT] blog [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

I’m looking forward to your submissions!

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from publisher Debbie Rasmussen:

First the bad news: The print publishing industry as a whole is staring into a void. Across the board, newsstand magazine sales are in a slump, subscriber numbers are down, and paper and postal costs continue to rise. But it’s not magazines like US Weekly or Vogue that you’ll see disappearing from the newsstands—they have the parent companies and the resources to weather industry ill winds. It’s the small, independent magazines like Bitch that will disappear, because the odds are already stacked high against us. And simply put: We need to raise $40,000 by October 15th in order to print the next issue of Bitch.

Donate here.

Link

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A UK based academic says feminism should be taught in schools. As a feminist blogger, I couldn’t agree more. Dr. Jessica Ringrose at the Institute of Education in London has made the rounds recently, suggesting that feminism should be taught in schools to combat the increased sexualization of girls in the media and to give girls role models outside of celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Ringrose suggests teaching girls about historic feminist leaders, like suffragists, to balance out all the tripe they’re getting through pop culture. While I’m all about teaching feminism to younger girls (hell, start them in kindergarten!), as others have noted, I think we’re better off showing girls what kinds of amazing feminist action is happening right now.

These days, there are feminist blogs, organizations, and activists all over the place, but they just don’t get the media play that vapid gals do. That’s part of the reason I started Feministing four years ago, to provide a forum for feminists to speak their minds and to show that young women are politically engaged and active. What better way to demonstrate that feminism can change the world than showing girls the very women and organizations who are already out there doing it?

Feminism In Schools | The Frisky.

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Sex 2.0 will focus on the intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality. How is social media enabling people to learn, grow, and connect sexually? How is sexual expression tied to social activism? Does the concept of transparency online offer new opportunities or present new roadblocks — or both? These questions, and many more, will be addressed within a safe, welcoming, sex-positive space.

Respecting the confidentiality and protecting the identities of participants who wish to maintain a degree of anonymity will be a top priority at Sex 2.0.

When? April 12, 2008
Where? 1763~A Deviant Place of Decadence, 1763 Montreal Circle, Tucker, Ga., 30084 (directions)
How much? $50
Registration in advance is mandatory; no walk up registrations will be accepted.

• Sex 2.0 Web site
• Sex 2.0 Google Group
• Sex 2.0 Schedule
• Sex 2.0 Flickr photo pool
• Sex 2.0: Sexuality, Feminism, And Waffles (Fleshbot)
• Cory Silverberg interview with Amber L. Rhea, conference organizer

I’m going to be presenting about a nuts and bolts talk on how to be a sex blogger – a quick tour of key blogs, setting up your first blog, privacy issues, getting the word out about your blog, and working with affiliate accounts.

I’m going to be bookmarking pertinent sites at del.icious: http://del.icio.us/viviane with the Sex2.0 tag.

Twitter: Many of the speakers are on Twitter, and hopefully will be live twitting the conference:

Amber Rhea
Rachel Kramer Bussel
Funky Brown Chick
Cunning Minx
Melissa Gira
Furry Girl
Muse Carmona
jbrotherlove
Ellie Lumpesse
Regina Lynn
Match
Mistress Maeve
Audacia Ray
Tara Sawyer
Rusty Tanton
Viviane
Jennifer W
Elizabeth Wood

(If you’re wondering what the heck is Twitter, Match provided a link to a great explanation.)

And I’ll be posting pictures of what I eat at Waffle House, just to tease Jonno and Mr. Gimlet. ;-D

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Science Daily — Contrary to popular opinion, feminism and romance are not incompatible and feminism may actually improvethe quality of heterosexual relationships, according to Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan, from Rutgers University in the US. Their study* also shows that unflattering feminist stereotypes, that tend to stigmatize feminists as unattractive and sexually unappealing, are unsupported.

It is generally perceived that feminism and romance are in direct conflict. Rudman and Phelan’s work challenges this perception. They carried out both a laboratory survey of 242 American undergraduates and an online survey including 289 older adults, more likely to have had longer relationships and greater life experience. They looked at men’s and women’s perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction.

(more . . .)

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…This is about how me and Jack had sex the day we met. Power-exchangey sex. The full thing. In public. Standing up. With clothes on. In the rain. Every kind of d/s sex with just the mouth.I’ve told you how I love kissing during sex. What I might not have said before, is that you can do all of d/s sex with kissing.

When we kissed first I did the nod. The little head move. Darting too close to mean anything else. I had no worries about rejection. None at all. Jack had been staring at my lips for an hour. And Jack doesn’t play games.

But he waits. He wants. He waits. I move. I take. Just. Like. Sex.

We kiss.

I bite his bottom lip, quite hard and he moans very, very softly. His moan vibrates on my teeth. I’m wet. I hold his chin. Not hard. His compliance is required. He lets me keep his head where I want it.

(more. . . )

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The Carnival of Feminists is held (usually) on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Hosted by a different blogger for each edition, it aims to showcase the finest feminist posts from around the blogsphere.

Lina of Uncool is currently accepting submissions.

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WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act “have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
Story continues below ↓advertisement

The decision pitted the court’s conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush’s two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how — not whether — to perform an abortion.

Abortion rights groups have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a woman. They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, although government lawyers and others who favor the ban said there are alternate, more widely used procedures that remain legal.

(Read more…)

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Quips Jessica of Feministing.com: “My hymen gives me wings!”

The comments section is particularly hilarious.

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Two items of note for March 8th. It’s both International Women’s Day and Blog Against Sexism Day. Have things changed? Yes, but not much. Here’s some stats from the National Council on Research for Women:

• Data on women’s/girls struggle for equality has gone missing in the Bush Administration. The current administration continues to engage in a pattern of omission, distortion, and spin when it comes to information about women and girls. Data on the Department of Labor website has gone missing and the FDA continues to block approval of Emergency Contraception despite research findings that support its use.
• Women are still underpaid. Women earn only 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. (Former MA democratic Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy is doin great things to shake this up…check out www.womenaregettingeven.org) Also, can 1 million women against WalMart be hallucinating? This is serious!
• Women are still massively underrepresented in the sciences. Despite substantial gains in the number of women pursuing graduate degrees in the sciences, women currently earn only 20% of all PhDs in computer science, less than 27% in physics, and only 17% in engineering. Studies show that women in science experience discrimination and double standards (sorry Larry Summers, but its really true.)
• Women are underrepresented in corporate leadership. Women have made up more than 40% of the workforce since 1977, and are currently almost 50%, yet only 9 women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
• Too few women lawyers make partner. Women have been 40% of all law school students since 1995, and over half since 2001, but are only 15% of partners in law firms nationwide. Many female lawyers attest to double standards and discrimination.

I used to work in a business library some time ago, and used to pull stats like this all the time. What’s sad is, the numbers have hardly changed and women are as underrepresented as ever.

Blog away, my friends.

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Feisty, take-no-prisoners columnist (she nicknamed President Bush ‘Shrub’) and author Molly Ivins, passed away yesterday, after a long battle with breast cancer:

The 62-year-old writer was a rare commodity in Texas – a liberal – who wrote a twice-weekly column that appeared in at least 300 newspapers. Based in Austin, her commentary appeared in national magazines from Harper’s to Playboy, and her Texas drawl was heard parsing events on shows ranging from 60 Minutes to The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.

She did not confine her humorous skewering to Republicans. She aimed it at wherever she perceived pomposity or wrongdoing.

Of the Gore-Bush presidential race in 2000 she said, “It’s like having Ted Baxter of the old ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ show running for president: Gore has Ted’s manner and Bush has his brain.”

more from the obituary here.

[via Feministing]

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