women

Feminism In Schools | The Frisky

by Viviane on 08/25/2008

in feminism, women

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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TED Talks: Eve Ensler

by Viviane on 06/07/2008

in sex, women

Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues, shares how a discussion about menopause with her friends led to talking about all sorts of sexual acts onstage, waging a global campaign to end violence toward women and finding her own happiness.

Eve Ensler wrote the global theater phenomenon Vagina Monologues after interviewing more than 200 women about their bodies.

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Those dirty girls (Susannah Breslin, Salon)

by Viviane on 05/30/2008

in nyc, sex, women

Did “Sex and the City” change the erotic landscape or turn the female libido into a marketing ploy? Sex writers discuss the iconic show’s impact.

By Susannah Breslin

…While “Sex and the City” freed up the possibilities for a new generation of Susies, the downside is that, in pop culture, sex is now but one more commodity. Bright explains, “It does a disservice in the same way that you see an ad for a Lexus with your favorite Rolling Stone song or John Lennon song. This used to be something. I’ve always been sad when capitalism ruins my favorite passions.”

Does she intend to see the film version of “Sex and the City”? “If someone asked me to go on a field trip, I would go to see what everyone’s so excited about. Anything that gets women out of the house, hanging out with each other and confiding in each other and how they traverse their own sexual terrain, that’s great. I don’t care what gets you going. There will be no Susie Bright picket line. I’m not organizing a boycott. I have a real live-and-let-live attitude about it. But when pressed, I will confide that, for something so wonderful, this wasn’t it. You have to laugh sometimes, how these things finally enter the mainstream vocabulary, what becomes exploitable, and what becomes lost. Sexual ecstasy is not something you buy. It cannot be bought. But we have come a long way. No question. Definitely. But it’s not because of ‘Sex and the City.’ It’s because of what real women have done in real lives, not on TV sets.”

(more . . .)

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Body Electric School 2008 Spring Programs, NYC

by Viviane on 02/20/2008

in Events, Fetish & Kink, sex, women

Safe, playful and profound workshops for women of all ages and sexual orientations. Taught by two very gifted teachers. Both Isa and Alex are profiled in Reclaiming Eros, Suzanne Blackburn and Margaret Wade, editors (2007).

See the Body Electric site for more information.

Celebrating the Body Erotic for Women
March 29-30, NYC, Sat-Sunday 9am-7pm
with Isa Magdalena (back teaching at Body Electric after many years)

• Feel comfortable in your body
• Improve your body image and self-esteem
• Expand awareness, sensation and pleasure through conscious breath,
movement, touch, and communication
• Release fear, shame and old patterns that hold you back
• Communicate your desires and boundaries more clearly
• Learn to give and receive without losing yourself
• Explore the power of sexual energy / ibido / life force / kundalini
• Learn from your own and others’ experience
• Enjoy sex more
• Have more fun
Isa Magdalena was the first woman teacher at Body Electric (1993-98). She teaches sexological bodywork at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, is author of Libido: Where Sex, Science Spirit Meet (2006). Isa is featured in several sex education videos from the New School of Erotic Touch, is a practitioner and leads classes in Taos, New Mexico. For fuller information, visit www.xtasia.info

Power, Surrender and Intimacy for Women
June 20-22, NYC, Friday 7-10pm, Sat-Sunday 9am-7pm
with Alex Jade

* Learn BDSM techniques and develop skills
* Discover and clarify issues of empowerment and liberation
* Recognize how you engage in power dynamics in your everyday life and exercise more conscious choice
* Heighten awareness of your body’s capacity for sensation
* Explore power and sensation games for fun and healing
* Experience the joy of surrender and trust

Prerequisite for this workshop is Celebrating the Body Erotic

Alex Jade has been a leading teacher at Body Electric for a decade and has developed several courses for the School. She is a gender-fluid sex activist, community organizer, shadow explorer and body-based therapist living in Seattle. She uses her training as a massage therapist, movement therapist and masters degree in social work to teach experiential sexual education classes and has a private healing practice.

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How Gender Influences Health Searches (Pew Internet)

by Viviane on 08/24/2007

in gender, internet, women

Women are more likely than men to search online for health information, search for more health topics, seek online support for medical issues, and search on someone else’s behalf. Our reports on these data sets had observed the gender difference, but this study proves the case beyond a reasonable doubt. (more. . . )

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How Much Jail Time? (Newsweek)

by Viviane on 08/01/2007

in abortion, women

By Anna Quindlen

Aug. 6, 2007 issue – Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It’s as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: “I’ve never really thought about it.” “I don’t have an answer for that.” “I don’t know.” “Just pray for them.”

You have to hand it to the questioner; he struggles manfully. “Usually when things are illegal there’s a penalty attached,” he explains patiently. But he can’t get a single person to be decisive about the crux of a matter they have been approaching with absolute certainty.

A new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive Health wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their tracks: how much time should she do? If the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail. (more. . . )

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Subjects of ‘Kabul Beauty School’ Face New Risks (NPR)

by Viviane on 06/06/2007

in culture, women

The book Kabul Beauty School has given millions of readers a window on the lives of women in Afghanistan. But it has also exposed the women to risks. And they are upset with author Deborah Rodriguez, who has since left the country.

Kabul Beauty School deals with some of the strictest taboos in Afghan society. In it, Rodriguez describes how she helped one of her students fake her virginity on her wedding night. And she writes of how some of her students were forced into loveless marriages, one of them when she was barely 14.

Although the book isn’t available in Afghanistan, word of it has leaked out there.

The book, currently No. 28 on The New York Times bestseller list, made an overnight sensation of Rodriguez, a flamboyant beautician from Michigan, when it was published by Random House in April. The book is also slated to become a movie, with Sandra Bullock playing the lead.

But back in Afghanistan, the subjects of her book say Rodriguez and her newfound fame have put their lives in danger. They say they’ve seen none of the money or help to get them out of Afghanistan that Rodriguez promised them in exchange for having their stories appear in the book. (more. . .)

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Alison Stokke vs. 5 Sexy Athletes (Sugarbank)

by Viviane on 06/05/2007

in allison stokke, privacy, women

Sam Sugar writes:

This picture, of 18 year old pole vaulter Allison Stokke, has demonstrated how easy it is to puncture the pretense of a mainstream media and bloggosphere who don’t treat every human interest story as a beauty pageant.

Stokke is, in the moment of this photo, perfect. An Olympian ideal with the kind of physique you only earn via an all-consuming dedication to top-flight athletic competition. The public response? ‘Is she legal?’ type posts from new-found fans of track and field who don’t want her to vault their poles so much as land on them.

Pathetic.

Understandable but pathetic. (more. . .)

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Getting Naked on the Internet Is Risky, but Rewarding (Regina Lynn)

by Viviane on 06/04/2007

in audacia ray, cybersex, internet, onlinedating, porn, reginalynn, sexbloggers, sexwork, women

“You know you spend way too much time looking at internet porn when you Google ‘cream pies’ and are surprised when the top results are all recipes for banana-and-chocolate cream pies,” writes Audacia Ray, whose book Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration hits stores Friday.

Ray interviewed more than 80 women, a wide selection of bloggers, chatters, daters, models, geeks and non-geeks. What she found is perhaps not all that surprising but you won’t hear it on the evening news: Women have wide-ranging sexual interests and are savvy enough to figure out how to harness technology to pursue our erotic desires — and occasionally make some money doing it.

Naked on the Internet (Seal Press) is a serious look at how women are incorporating the internet into sex, and while the occasional wry comment and the deft use of individual stories leavens the academic tone, they don’t undermine the gravity of the work.

Most interesting to me is how Ray includes sex workers as legitimate voices in the changing realm of female sexuality. The internet itself has changed sex work significantly, but it has also brought more women into the field, many of whom don’t think of themselves as “sex workers.” If you model fetishy outfits once or twice a year for cash to spend on a new tattoo, are you a sex worker? If you dance naked on webcam in an adult community but don’t get paid for it, are you a sex worker, an erotic artist or both? (more. . . )

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For Audacia’s upcoming book tour appearances, please check out the right hand sidebar.

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Women in Art (YouTube)

by Viviane on 06/03/2007

in art, video, women, youtube

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art, in about 2:50.

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Let’s Talk About Sex (NYT Select)

by Viviane on 05/19/2007

in abortion, birth control, health, women

By ATUL GAWANDE

One statistic seems to me to give the lie to all the rhetoric about abortion, and it’s this: one in three women under the age of 45 have an abortion during their lifetime. One in three. All politicians — Democrat and Republican — say they want to make abortion at least rare (as Giuliani did in Wednesday’s debate). On, this they could reach agreement. But it’s clear they haven’t been serious; the U.S. has 1.3 million abortions a year.

Reducing unintended pregnancy is the key — half of pregnancies are unintended, and 4 in 10 of them end in abortion. For a while now, we’ve had solid evidence about how to effectively do this. But it requires getting specific about two subjects that are perilous in politics: sex and contraception. That, politicians won’t do. So let me try to help with four facts everyone needs to know.

Fact one is that, with children, parents do matter. Reviews of multiple studies have shown that parents who maintain a close relationship with their teenage children, monitor them carefully, and send a certain message about sex actually do reduce unintended pregnancies. That message, when most effective, is neither permissive about sex nor focused only on abstinence, but instead combines two components. First, it emphasizes throughout high school that teenagers should wait until they’re older to have sex (because the majority regret not waiting; because having a child as a child wrecks their lives); and second, it makes it clear that when they ultimately have sex, they should always use protection.

More children are, in fact, getting this message. Pregnancies at age 15 to 17 are down 35 percent since 1995, according to federal data; one-fourth of the drop is from delaying sex, and three-fourths is from increased use of contraceptives. Today, just 7 percent of abortions occur in minors.

Fact two follows from this: Abortion is mainly an adult problem. Forty-five percent of abortions occur in adults ages 18 to 24; 48 percent occur after age 25. Most are in women who have already had a child. The kids are all right. We are the issue.

Fact three is that our biggest problem is not using contraception properly: 92 percent of abortions occur in women who said they used birth control. Six in 10 used contraception the month they got pregnant. The others reported that they had used birth control previously but, for one reason or another, not that month. (Many, for example, say they didn’t expect to have sex.) The trouble appears to be blindness to how easy it is to get pregnant and what it takes to make birth control really work.

Oral contraceptive pills, for example, are nearly 100 percent effective when used consistently. But in the real world, they fail 8 percent of the time — that is, 8 in 100 women on the pill get pregnant in a year. The lower dose hormone formulations used nowadays have fewer side effects, but missing a dose by even six hours puts a woman at serious risk. (One should add condoms for that whole month, experts say.) Miss two days and one is effectively not on birth control at all. Anyone prone to missing really needs to consider switching methods.

Birth control requires constancy, and most people overestimate how constant they can be. Fifteen percent of women who rely only on condoms get pregnant in a year, largely from inconsistency in using them. Withdrawal is even more dicey — it has a 25 percent failure rate.

The most effective methods are long-lasting: I.U.D.’s are safe and nearly 100 percent effective in actual practice. So is Implanon (the under-the-skin implant which replaced Norplant) and surgical contraception. But no method is perfect. Each has downsides — costs, risks, side effects. Every woman must weigh them. A few good Web sites have the details. WebMD is one, for example. But this is where you come to the last fact.

Fact four: you have to educate yourself. The details matter. An effective national campaign would provide the details — on television, on billboards — and actively use what evidence shows works best to cut our massive rate of unwanted pregnancies. But politics precludes this. There’s not going to be such a campaign anytime soon.

Nonetheless, there’s no reason you have to join the one in three — or as a male, contribute to it. You just have to understand: the effort is strictly Do-It-Yourself.

Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of the new book “Better.” He is a guest columnist this month.

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Short story: The Great Passover Rebellion of 1963

by Viviane on 04/28/2007

in equality, food, relationships, women

0688155901 1 Short story: The Great Passover Rebellion of 1963
With the news I’ve been reading this week about equal pay, and women dropping out of the work force, I offer up this story by writer Candida Korman about the working women who paved the way for us, and who got mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore:

“As far as I’m concerned feminism wasn’t about going out of the house to work, it was about getting respect for the work we were already doing. And, if possible, getting the promotions and raises and decision-making opportunities that men had. 1963 was the year that the Feminine Mystique was published.”

“Betty Freidan, right?”

“Yes. It was a very important book. Your mother was the first one to read it. She loaned it to my mother and then to me. We passed it on to other friends. We talked about it all the time. I was tired of the way my father favored your father over me. I was really tired of that. My Fred was dying and I was putting in late hours at work followed by trips to the hospital. I had two small children who kept asking about their father. I don’t think I slept more than five hours a week and when your grandmother sat me and your mother down to discuss the who would cook what for Passover, I exploded.

Candida (named for the G.B. Shaw heroine) is also a 2nd round finalist in Gather.com’s Chapter Writing Contest. Sort of like an ‘American Idol’ for publishing.

(Photo: Recipe Link)

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Young, Jewish and Sexual, Thurs., Apr. 26

by Viviane on 04/19/2007

in Events, Fetish & Kink, Jamye Waxman, jamyewaxman, Jewish, women

Date: Thurs, April 26th
Time: 7:30 PM
Where: Location: The JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
Admission: FREE

Women writers who walk the walk and write the talk.

Panelists include Amy Sohn, Jamye Waxman, Rachel Shukert and Mindy Raf. This event co-sponsored by Kinkyjews

More info

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Supreme Court Upholds "Partial Birth Abortion" Ban (Via MSNBC)

by Jessica Gold Haralson on 04/18/2007

in abortion, feminism, news, women

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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Stop Cyberbulling Day: When a Man Hates a Woman (SFGate)

by Viviane on 03/30/2007

in harassment, stopcyberbullying, violet blue, women

Today has been designated ‘Stop Cyberbullyinging Day.’

I am reposting violet blue’s SFGate.com column. Although I haven’t been a victim of harassment, I’ve tried to support my blog friends when they’ve been harassed and stalked.
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When A Man Hates A Woman
The ugly side of sex and the Web

Violet Blue, Special to SF Gate

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Ask any three women who publish online if they’re ever been stalked, sexually threatened or threatened with violence on other blogs or in comments. I don’t need to bet money to know you’ll get a yes from one of those women. Too busy to ask anyone? That’s OK, I’ll raise my hand for all three.

Imagine being a girl and working really hard to earn the reputation of a respected voice in the world of tech journalism and blogging — a world populated by disproportionately more men than women — and to find yourself the target object of a hate-filled Web site. The tone and content of the hate site centers around sexually threatening you, suggesting ways you could be killed and have your corpse defiled, stating that you are a “slut” and that your gender is also in question. Your straight male colleagues don’t have this problem.

Then the person running the hate site blogs about every word you say, every time you make a post or publish an article. And targets your friends. And posts the names of your family and Google satellite maps of your family’s homes. They deface your Wikipedia page at every opportunity, with sexual slurs, objectifying you at every possible chance. It’s enough to make a girl choose not to be a tech journalist.

What I described above is a true story, one I have lived through with one of my closest female friends for over a year now. She was the target; I was collateral. My friend’s fellow bloggers said, “Wow, that’s awful,” but to my recollection, the only writings about it were authored by me, on my blog — standing up to him — and the New York Times, which wrote about the hate site (free registration required) as though it were written by a rascally-but-humorous cad, and linking directly to the hate site, sending it that fat New York Times traffic. My friend chose not to address the troll, and the hate site targeting her continues to run unfettered.

Recently, a marketing professional and blogger named Kathy Sierra blogged about finding herself on the receiving end of (anonymous or identity-obfuscated) sexually hostile posts, violent threats and even a Photoshopped image on a Web site that was ostensibly set up for trash-talking but evidently took a turn into troll-topia. Her post on her discovery is here (NSFW language). The offending Web site has since been taken down. On her blog, Sierra wrote a frightened and emotional post, canceling her appearance at the ETech Conference, providing examples of what frightened her (including a screen capture of horrifying comments directed at another woman) and naming a list of people she felt colluded, or at least were complicit in the situation — I only hope no one directly implicated is wrongfully associated with the hate speech.

How the blogging community reacts to open sexual hatred of women bloggers and writers is worth examining. In the Sierra case, she describes herself as feeling so helpless as to have to run and hide, saying on her blog: “I have canceled all speaking engagements. I am afraid to leave my yard. I will never feel the same. I will never be the same. … I have no idea if I’ll ever post again.” And Sierra has received support from many.

My friend did not characterize herself as helpless at any point, and neither have I. And with my friend, there was (and still is) no “bloggers-stick-togetherness” in our corner of Blogistan. The question is, Do we women need to portray ourselves as victims to garner support when men threaten to defile our corpses if we gain notoriety?

Sierra’s haters — and the man behind the hate, in my friend’s case — are doing this not because they’re immature. They’re doing it because they want women out of their worlds. Every female tech and sex writer I have contact with knows this — every girl whose work has been Dugg, Slashdotted or commented on in a forum that allows trolls to fester. When someone goes this far, to make death imagery and maintain a 24/7 hate blog, we’re not talking about a lack of social skills, we’re talking about a desire to destroy. These are the same kind of acts of sexual hatred that Patrick Califia wrote about in his essay about the sex-murder of transgender teen Gwen Araujo in “Sex With the Imperfect Stranger”:

“This strategy relies on widespread social acceptance of the belief that this is what straight men are supposed to do when their heterosexual identities are threatened. They are supposed to murder in defense of their masculinity. Because if one of them doesn’t do this, if he does not violently repudiate the possibility that he found it pleasurable to have sexual contact with someone who was not born female, then he must be queer himself.”

In these situations, Califia tells us, “The victim in such cases is usually deliberately sought out by the attackers, hunted down and intimidated, battered or slaughtered. Violence against sexual minority people is a sport.”

When you’re female in Blogistan, you expose yourself to a whole new kind of hate, and often your male colleagues (or your community) have no idea what it feels like.

But we belong here, too.

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