Category Archives: linkspam

quick hit: call for orgasm essays

28 Wednesday Jul 2010

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Via the Good Vibes blog.

From sexuality educator and columnist Midori.

I am collecting women’s accounts of the physical experience their orgasms. I’m really hoping that some of you can help me out with this. Feel free to pass it on to any women or lists with women who might be interested.

Details –

I am seeking first person descriptions from women about their orgasms.

Who: You are a woman, 18 years or older, who have experienced one or more variety of orgasms. (Transwomen! I want your unique perspectives too!)

What: Essay of clear and detailed description of your orgasm, from start to finish, focusing on the physical experience, expressed in your own words. When does it start? What’s the hint of it? Where does it start? How does it move through your body? What sort of sensations? Imagine trying to illustrate your orgasm to a person who’s never had it.

If you have more than one type of orgasm, each variety would be written in a separate essay piece. (The get-to-sleep quickie, the deep one, the surprise one, the long building one, solo-sex one, when getting oral sex, etc…)

How Long? As long as it takes for you to describe it. It may be a couple of paragraphs or couple of pages.

Credit line: How would you like your essay to be credited? You’ll have one or two lines.

Editing: At most I will edit for grammar, spelling and simple readability. I want to keep it as true to your original narrative and tone as possible.

When: No later than end of August

Send to midori AT fhp-inc DOT com

Please make sure that there’s an e mail I can reliable reach you at. I may have some questions around editing or some other detail.

I’m happy to answer any questions on this.

Thank you!

Midori

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 30)

25 Sunday Jul 2010

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bisou! by madefortvmovies @ Flickr.com

Welcome! This week in sex and gender …

New Blog: Anarcha-feminism: it’s about as scary as it sounds. Complete with rainbows and happy trees and coloring outside the lines!

Michaela Borg @ Ms. Blogs | Shoulder to Shoulder: UK Suffrage Postcards! The images are definitely worth the click-through if you’re into vintage postcards + feminism … I mean, really, what’s not to like??

Anna North @ Jezebel | Terrifying weight-loss ad will make you lose sleep. Video and commentary. “First of all, it’s obviously not true that fat people can’t tie their own shoes or lead exciting lives. But what kind of exciting life is depicted here anyway? Trench warfare? A firing squad? A bleeding knife? These are the worst reasons to lose weight we’ve ever heard (and we’ve heard some bad ones).”

Jacelyn Friedman @ Feministe & Yes Means Yes | On Sex and Compromise (Feministe) and On Sex and Compromise (Yes Means Yes). Cross-posted discussion about the ethics of sexual negotiation in relationships vis a vis the concept of “enthusiastic consent” as the ethical standard for relational sex. I share both posts because the comment threads on both are crucial to fleshing out the conversation as it evolved.

Minerva @ Hypomnemata | Armed and Alarmed [No Sex as Weapon]. My friend Minerva challenges Jacelyn’s reading of sexual negotiation and compromise from her perspective as someone with an asexual orientation.

Vexing @ Feministing Community | “I wouldn’t fuck a trans person.” On why saying this is transphobic. Full stop.

Richard Florida @ The Daily Beast | America’s Top 20 Gayest Cities (in pictures!). Shared mostly because my brother and his girlfriend (Portland, OR, #8), my sister and her boyfriend (Austin, TX, #7) and Hanna and I (Boston metro, MA, #4) all make the list. Coincidence? Likely not! Also, I find it fascinating that Florida is “surprised” that Columbus, Ohio, made the list (#16). If you’re from the Midwest and in the queer community this really wouldn’t come as a surprise at all!

Thomas @ Yes Means Yes | The Slut-Shaming Kind of Feminist. Really not much of a feminist at all.

Courtney @ From Austin to A&M | ForeverGeek does it again! On (once again) why personal experience — while legitimate — is not a replacement for analysis of larger patterns. “How has this adult geek woman never considered, when she writes for a blog where she is a token lady, that she is in a male-dominated culture? Seriously.”

Tracy Clark-Flory @ Salon | Transgender widow put on trial. Nikki Araguz is being sued by her husband’s family, following is death while on duty as a firefighter in Texas. The husband’s family claim the marriage was invalid due to Nikki’s trans status. Autumn Sandeen @ Pam’s House Blend has more.

Charlie Glickman @ Adult Sexuality Education | Shame as a Public Health Issue. He’s talking specifically about trans/queer youth and safer-sex practices, but I’d say shame itself is a public health concern, given the detrimental effect self-hatred and shame have on quality of life and the ability for someone to feel worthy of sexual pleasure.

And finally, Hanna @ …fly over me, evil angel… | friday fun times. Hanna has a round-up of the photographs from Comic Con of geeks counter-protesting the Westboro Baptist Church haters, who came to rain on the Comic Con parade. When in doubt, fight hatred with laughter. Humor always wins (or at the very least, has a good time!). Just sayin’.

quick hit: "oh, inversion. how I shake my fist at you"!

24 Saturday Jul 2010

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Danika @ The Lesbrary has a fun post up sharing notes from a conversation between herself and a friend Cass about Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928).

C[ass]: The term ‘homosexuality,’ while in use in 1928, didn’t yet have its modern definition or its now understood division from gender. Inversion, on the other hand, completly tied sexual orientation to one’s gender and gender expression. A person labelled female at birth could not, by defition, be an invert without displaying masculine traits and masculine leanings. Therefore, in order to be a novel ABOUT inversion, Stephen has to be masculine. If we are using our modern lens here, then we can agree that, despite her masculinity, Stephen is not automatically male. The fact that her parents gave her a traditionally male name is out of her control. Lots of girls who continue to identify as women like to dress in pants rather than dresses because they are easier to walk and play in. Looking “like a man” or being masculine doesn’t make a person a man.

The conversation with her father is trickier, but if she has a crush on a girl, and thinks that only men and women can have relationships together, it’s logical that she would want to be a man in order to be happily in love with a woman.

D[anika]: True, but coming from a modern perspective, that assumes that you are by default the gender you were assigned at birth and only the opposite if there is overwhelming evidence. We don’t have overwhelming evidence that Stephen would identify as a man, but we have a lot less evidence than there is for Stephen identifying as a woman. She can’t stand to even be around women, except the ones she falls in love with.

That makes sense, but it isn’t just around having a partner that Stephen is frustrated at being labelled a girl. In fact, as some point she said “Being a girl ruins everything” (not an exact quote)

C: […] [H]er gender and gender expression can be on the trans-masculine spectrum without her necessarily being trans. In 1928(ish), being a girl DID ruin everything!

I think you are the gender you understand yourself to be, but sadly I can’t ask Stephen. 😉

Check out the whole thing at The Lesbrary (and if you enjoy part one, then check out part two posted by Cass @ Bounjour, Cass!).

in love with new blogs: Emily Nagoski :: sex nerd ::

22 Thursday Jul 2010

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I’m really bad about updating my blogroll regularly, but I do have this exponentially growing list of blogs I follow on Google Reader. So I thought I might do a weekly (posted on Thursday) series for a while called “in love with new blogs” in which I highlight some of the bloggers and blogs I think y’all might be interested in.

And I’m going to start with one I recently discovered (or possibly re-discovered; it looks familiar so I know I’ve come across it before but why oh why did I not subscribe to its RSS feed then?? because this blog is awesome!): Emily Nagoski ::sex nerd::

Emily Nagoski is a health educator who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and works at Smith College. In her own words

In 2006, she completed a Ph.D. in Health Behavior with a concentration in Human Sexuality. She also holds a MS in Counseling Psychology and a BA in Psychology with minors in Cognitive Science and Philosophy. She’s worked for well over a decade in the field of sexuality education and has grown into an impassioned advocate for social justice through sexual fulfillment. Politically progressive and unapologetically atheistic, Emily has strong opinions and a big vocabulary, and she’s determined to use both to make the world a better place for human sexual expression.

And maybe in another ten years I will have a job (somewhat) like hers! ‘Cause damn, that sounds like fun.

Emily Nagoski ::sex nerd:: offers one post a day, roughly speaking, on the subject of human sexuality. Combination sex column, opinion column and ideas-in-progress space, this looks to be a great (and often funny!) resource for sexuality information.

A few recent posts to give you a flavor of her style.

differential desire.

So look, I’m going to say this thing, and you’re going to listen and believe me because… I don’t know, why would you believe me if you haven’t believed it from anyone else? Because I’m clever and have a PhD and things? No, you’ll believe me because it’s just true. Because in the patient corners of your heart, you’ve ALWAYS known it’s true. It’s this:

You’re not broken. You are whole. And there is hope.

You might be stuck. You might be exhausted. You might be depressed, anxious, worn out by the demands your caring makes on you, and in desperate, dire need of renewal. You might be tired of feeling like you need to defend yourself. You might wish that, just for a little while, someone else would defend you and protect you so that you could lower your guard and just be. Just for a while.

Those are circumstances, they’re not YOU. YOU are okay. You are whole. There exists inside you a sexuality that protects you by withdrawing until times are propitious.

I completely get how terribly frustrating it can be that your partner’s body feels like times are propitious right now, while your body is still wary. And it’s even worse because the more ready your partner’s body seems, the more wary your body becomes. It is The Suck, Like Woah, for both of you.

But it’s in there, your sexuality. It’s part of you, as much as your skin and your heartbeat and your vocabulary. It’s there. It’s waiting. You’re okay. Just because you’ve had no call to use the word “calefacient” or “perfervid” lately doesn’t mean it’s not longer available to you. Should the opportunity arise, there it will be, ready, waiting. Like the fire brigade. Like a best friend.

There’s a bunch of stuff you can try to create propitious circumstances.

read the rest here.

what I got wrong about LUGs.

Now imagine you’re a person who’s always identified as straight and then you come to college and you meet this amazing person who happens to be the same gender and you just fall head over heels, even though you never even imagined being in a same-sex relationship before… are your feelings less genuine simply because they might not have occurred in a less inclusive environment?

Should you choose NOT to get into a relationship this person you’re attracted to, on the grounds that you might not be attracted to that person under other circumstances?

Is the only REAL love a love that would thrive even in a hostile, hateful landscape? Only if you can love through being egged and threatened on the street is your love real?

That’s not the standard we set for straight relationships or relationships that look heteronormative.

I can totally see where the resentment would come from, and yet… I can’t bring myself to judge a person’s individual, internal, emotional experience on the basis of its political import. How could *I* know whether or not someone really loves someone else? Can I tell from the outside whether she’s a “real lesbian” or “just experimenting?” If it not my relationship, is it any of my business?

read the rest here.

how to fall in love (if you’re fictional).

With so many barriers lowered these days, it’s hard to generate compelling and original reasons for your hero and heroine NOT to get together. I think sci fi romance, vamp stories, werewolf stories, shapeshifter stories are so popular because you can invent all kinds of rules about how risky it is for a human to mate with a whatever or who knows. And historicals, where you can use the rules of society that USED to keep people apart but don’t anymore.

Dorothy Sayers needed three novels – two of them VERY long – to disentangle her hero and heroine from their stigma. He saved her life; it’s a problem. 5 years later he allowed her to risk it, thus giving her life back to her. Her “Greater Than Themselves”? Detection, murder investigations and, under that, the truth at all costs. Her big “They Know” scene takes place in a punt on the Isis in Oxford, where they both went to school and which represents intellectual refuge from the discord and bitterness of the human world.

Me, I like writing Reunited Lovers stories because the stigma is built in: one of them done the other one wrong, enough that they split up. How are they ever going to fix it? But whatever brought them together in the first place makes a perfect Greater Than Themselves.

So now you know the trick to falling in love if you’re fictional.

read the rest here. I say she made extra bonus points there for the Dorothy Sayers reference.

Sometimes, she’s a little women’s sexuality is different and more complicated than men’s! for my taste, but I think the overall advice she gives about being open to more fluid, expansive definitions of sexuality and sexual activity is good so I’m willing to at least go along for the ride and keep reading.

reconsidering twilight fans: a couple of links

20 Tuesday Jul 2010

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Feminists have a complicated relationship with the Twilight series and fandom, as I have previously documented on this blog. this morning, I’d like to share a couple of items that challenge us to remember that, however retrograde and problematic the series and its surrounding franchise are in terms of gender and sexuality, writing off the fandom as gullible or unenlightened is hardly helpful and (I would argue) hardly feminist.

First, Mathilda Gregory @ The Guardian (thanks to Hanna for the link) reminds us that fans are not necessarily passively imbibing the narratives handed to them — and it’s insulting to the fans (primarily teenage girls and women) to assume they are.

Has there ever been a franchise whose fan base has been so maligned? It’s starting to feel like some of the male critics of Twilight are just uneasy that, for once, something that isn’t aimed at them is getting such a big slice of the zeitgeist.

Meanwhile, instead of defending the film, some feminists aren’t happy either because of Bella’s passivity and the tale’s theme of abstinence before marriage. Well, OK, author Stephanie Meyer’s devout Mormonism does give weight to that reading of the text. But it’s not really as simple as that. We can presume a lot about the author’s intent, but that’s not necessarily the message the films’ fans are taking away from it.

The second story, from Amanda Marcotte @ RhRealityCheck comes in the form of a podcast interview with Tanya Erzen about the contours of Twilight fandom. Check out the podcast or, if you can’t access audio on your computer, this recent essay by Erzen @ The Revealer about the religion of Twilight fans. Here’s an excerpt.

In my interviews and survey of 3,000 fans, the majority express sometimes contradictory beliefs in the supernatural while asserting adherence to traditional religious institutions. Yet, while Twilight won’t replace organized religion, it reflects a longing for sacred and extraordinary experiences in everyday life that are perhaps missing in traditional religious venues. In pilgrimages to Forks, Washington, the setting for the books (in July 2009 alone, 16,000 fans trekked to Forks like supplicants at a holy site, more than the total number of visitors in 2008), fans indulge the fantasy that a supernatural world exists alongside our own, searching for vampires in the woods and lingering outside the re-imagined home of Bella. Rather than fueling interest in vampirism, a concern among some Christian critics of the books, the series provides what Laderman calls “myths that provide profound and practical fulfillment in a chaotic and unfulfilling world.” It’s also impossible to separate these moments of spiritual enchantment from the Twilight franchise, which ceaselessly offers consumption to women and girls as a way to retain the feelings of belonging, romance and enchantment. There are Edward and Bella Barbie dolls, lip venom, calendars, video games, graphic novels, and fangs cleverly promoted and eagerly purchased at conventions and online stores. Yet, the shrines attest to the way fans also transform these objects into something personally vital within the messy entanglements of commerce and enchantment.

The impulse of a lot of feminists (including myself!) is to act to protect young women from narratives we think are abusive by arming them with the skills to deconstruct the Twilight series’ sexism and anti-sex messages. However, to assume that young women don’t have those skills simply because they have appropriated the stories and continue to enjoy them smacks of misogyny. That is, it plays on the stereotype that women (and young women particularly) are shallow, flighty, clueless and particularly vulnerable to outside influences. That their sense of themselves as persons worthy of respect, as persons smart enough to challenge the messages they’re being fed by the media, is uniquely endangered. As Susan Douglas has pointed out recently, there are reasons to be concerned about assertions that young women don’t need feminism. But it is also important to make sure that feminism does not become as didactic and authoritarian as the sexist culture we’re challenging: exchanging one power-over system with another does not a revolution make.

So I’d argue: be wary of attempts to deride Twilight fans because of their age and/or their gender. And be aware of how criticism of fans — even if it’s not explicitly sexist — trades on negative and stereotypical constructions of femininity. Like criticizing Hot Girls for being Hot rather than criticizing the culture that rewards them for meeting gendered expectations, making teenagers feel shamed for their reading and viewing choices does little to support their sense of agency and critical self-awareness that (I believe) so essential to feminist consciousness.

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 29)

18 Sunday Jul 2010

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I’m back this week, and I know at least a couple of people missed this list ’cause they wrote and told me so! How cool is that?

Lindsey june 101 by Ron Gibson @ Flickr.com

Anyways, here’s a bunch of stuff that’s been accumulating since the weekend of the 4th out there on the internets, and which I hope you’ll find yourself hooked by (at least a link or two).

On the family values front

While I was gone on vacation, Bristol Palin and once and future beau Levi Johnston announced their re-engagement on the cover of Us magazine. Amber Benfer @ Salon contemplates the way the celebrity family’s story matches up (or doesn’t) with the narrative conservative America wants to tell about teen sex, marriage, and parenting.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore co-star in “The Kids Are All Right,” a “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” for the queer family age, in which Bening and Moore’s two teenage children bring their biological father (played by Mark Ruffalo) home for dinner. David Edelstein @ Fresh Air offers a glowing review and Sarah Seltzer @ RhRealityCheck weighs in on the film’s limitations.

When women are pregnant, they often discover that the normal rules of personal space cease to apply, as Jessica Valenti of Feministing documents on her own personal site. “Stop touching my stomach without my permission. It’s presumptuous and it creeps me out. You wouldn’t touch a non-pregnant person’s belly without asking, so what makes you think it’s okay to just lay hands on mine?”

Sarah @ Feministing Community shares her own personal experience with the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement and challenges feminists to educate themselves on the contours of this rapidly-growing conservative counterculture, rather than just toss off scornful comments.

Dodai Stewart @ Jezebel suggests that a recent story about an interracial couple who have twins with differing skin tones is a useful object lesson in how race is culturally constructed.

Feminism is for everybody (even Hot GirlsTM!)

I’ve been reading a lot of awesome stuff lately about appearance policing and sexism/misogyny. Is it something in the air y’all?

The story about Olivia Munn and sexism and The Daily Show, which I didn’t have the energy to blog about (although I tried several times to write something from scratch and failed), has really brought out a lot of awesome posts about the difference between hating on someone ’cause they’re HotTM and calling out individual (Munn) or collective (TDS) actions that actively or passively support a system that is sexist or using power in other unhealthy ways.

For starters, there’s Amanda Hess @ The Sexist and Sady @ Tiger Beatdown (both such Very Awesome LadiesTM) talking about criticism of comedian Olivia Munn for her participation in sexist culture. And for being HotTM. Amanda: Consent and Manipulation in Olivia Munn’s Playboy Shoot Amanda: Feminism is for Bitches Sady: The Munn Paradox Amanda: Women as Gatekeepers of Sex – and Sexism. I can’t emphasize enough how worthwhile it is to read all of these posts in full, but it comes down to this: as feminists, we should call out sexism as it hurts everyone, even those who we think are enabling it, even those who benefit from it.

Not everyone sees it that way, though, specifically Emily Gould @ Slate who has a history of making controversial statements about feminists, charging feminists with being overcome by jealousy. Shelby Knox @ Feministe observes that Gloud might possibly have been purposefully misconstruing the situation for page views; Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon writes about the difficulty of blogging on body issues, and why Gould’s attack on feminist media for critiquing harmful cultural norms is so counterproductive.

See, Hot GirlsTM totally can’t win, as this post from @ Jezebel points out. “It’s not that we want or need Angelina [Jolie] to do a romcom. The universe is a much better place with her sneering, running, jumping, doing her own stunts and gunning down fools. But doesn’t calling her ‘too forceful’ imply that love is for the weak? Don’t we all have a little bit of a swooning romantic in us as well as a smidge of ass-kicker? And what the hell does it mean to be ‘too strong’ for romance?”

You don’t even have to be a Hot GirlTM to get be caught in a lose-lose type situation, as Lilly @Jezebel points out in her personal story of sartorial humiliation while serving ice cream. The post struck such a chord that it garnered Jezebel’s comment of the day (COTD) award with this list of instructions for women who find themselves shamed by the appearance police.

Silvana @ Tiger Beatdown leaps into the frey with a post about judging other peoples’ appearance. “When I hear, tights are not pants, or you should wear pantyhose to court, or I wouldn’t wear X cut of a shirt because it doesn’t look good on me, I think, who made these rules? Why are we following them? Why do we passively subscribe to an aesthetic system that requires us to daily fulfill the twin obligations of being ‘respectful’ by not doing anything out of the ordinary and looking as thin and ‘feminine’ as we can muster? I want fashion to be less about making other people comfortable, and more about personal expression and art. There is too much hierarchy. It is too top-down, from a murky top with too many leaders with too many conflicting messages.”

“She asked for it” — Not!

Of course, sexual assault skeptics rely on appearance policing big time as a way to legitimize victim-blaming (if it’s okay to police peoples’ appearance, then it follows on some level that it’s okay to punish them for inappropriate dress and behavior). Alex DiBranco @ Women’s Rights Blog points our attention toward a new PSA campaign in Scotland that points out the absurdity of laying the blame for rape on the behavior of the victim (rather than, you know, on the behavior of the perpetrator).

Amanda Hess @ The Sexist points out the problem with “hoping it’s not true” when it comes to allegations of sexual assault by someone you respect. “When we ‘hope it’s not true’ … We’re not hoping that our criminal justice system works to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent. We’re hoping that the person who reported the sexual assault is a liar. We’re hoping that people who claim to be victims of sexual assault are all lying, that it never really happens. We’re hoping, in the end, that bad things do happen — to good men who are victimized by bad women.” Seriously. Go read the whole thing.

Via Amanda Hess comes this post by Sarah M. @ Change Happens on why “drunk sex” isn’t really that easily confused with rape, and we shouldn’t pretend that it is. “Clearly people are sometimes going to get drunk and have sex. And the presence of alcohol in someone’s bloodstream does not automatically make it rape. But there’s a spectrum of intoxication. If someone is physically impaired by their drinking (or drug use), you can tell. They are getting sick, their body is limp, they’re not able to communicate clearly with you. It’s a common sense situation. If it’s less obvious, you know they have been drinking but you’re not sure how much and they seem OK, that’s where communication is key, and honestly—if it’s unclear how drunk your partner is and you feel conflicted, then maybe just play it safe and don’t do it. Instincts are there for a reason.”

If you’re a child and your parent asks you to do things like pose naked and talk about your sexuality which make you feel uncomfortable but you do them ’cause it’s your Dad and you don’t want to say no, and then those images and words are turned into artwork and made accessible for the whole world to see — do you have a right to say “no”?

Obvious answer: yes (Carolyn @ Carolyn Gage). Answer given by a lot of folks out there in the world (’cause the world is fucked): not if it’s art (Irin Carmon @Jezebel). More to come on this next week, in a still-being-written blog post about archival ethics and issues of consent.

IrrationalPoint @ queergeeks offers a succinct example of how consent and nonconsent works, starting in childhood, when bullies don’t listen to the voices of children who try and stand up for themselves.

Feminism is for everybody!

Courtney @ From Austin to A&M explains why being “apolitical” doesn’t stop you from perpetuating sexism.

A lesson that the folks over at The Daily Show could apparently stand to learn (or remind themselves of). Amanda Hess @ The Sexist explains.

Possibly also Whoopi Goldberg, who recently fell into the Ill Doctrine trap of having the “is he a racist” conversation rather than the “what he said was racist conversation. @ Bitch Blogs explains.

Feminism (in my oh-so-humble opinion) is all about treating every human being like, well, a human being, instead of a ‘bot created to fill a certain social role. zack @ The New Gay calls out straight women for expecting gay men to fill such a social role, rather than treating him as, you know, an individual.

Feminism is even for menfolk! Greta Christina @ The Blowfish Blog lays some feminist hate on the straightjacket expectations of masculinity and then explains why laying on the feminist hate matters, and might actually make the world a better place for all those wonderful menfolk we feminists love so much.

Which isn’t to say that being a feminist and, like, making that change in the world is at all easy. Harriet J @ Fugitivus explains in great, now I hate everybody.

Oh help!

This post has become MAMMOTH! and I still have stuff to share … damn it. Oh, well, I’m going to call it quits there for this week and see if I can’t work a few other things into actual legitimate blog posts.

Meanwhile, I’ll sign off with this story from Richard Knox @ NPR about a psychologist who has been studying marriage proposals on YouTube. Have fun, y’all! And I’ll be back with more.

quick hit: the myth of work vs. home life split

13 Tuesday Jul 2010

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From Amanda Marcotte @ RhReality Check comes a wonderful interview with Amber Kinser, author of a new book, Motherhood and Feminism (Seal Press, 2010). The following passage, while focused specifically on mothers in the workplace, speaks to a lot of the issues I was blogging about in my recent post on feeling guilty for wanting a balanced life (starts at roughly minute 19:00).

There is an assumption in the workplace that if you’re a mother your primary loyalty is always going to be your family even during the workday and that that’s a problem. The assumption is, for men, your primary loyalty is always going to be at the workplace and that that’s not a problem. And if you’re single and you’re … childfree and female then we don’t have to worry that you’ll be called away, you know, to go pick up a child who’s sick from school or go take care of a disciplinary matter or go the Halloween parade at school.

So part of the problem [of discrimination against mothers in the workforce] is this mythical — and I talk about this in the book a good bit — this mythical split between public and private. The workforce still operates on the assumption that home life is separate from work life. It never has been, it isn’t now, and it never will be. And so part of the problem is the problematizing of people who are invested in their families. So that if someone has to go to the piano recital during the school day or someone has to go take care of a sick child this goes up against workplace policy and norms. And so what we do is penalize — largely the women, because they’re the ones who end up doing it — who do that. That’s where that motherhood penalty comes in — instead of shifting workplace norms so that they can accommodate the fact that public life and private life are not, you know, they’re just not distinguishable. Men are better positioned to be able to pretend like they’re separate than women are and so they benefit in the workplace.

The full interview can be heard as part of Amanda’s latest RhRealityCheck podcast, Pro-Choice, Feminist Support for Motherhood.

Kinser is emphasizing the parenting angle here, because that was the thrust of the conversation she and Amanda Marcotte were having. But I would extend her observations not only toward men who are attempting to parent more actively but also to individuals who are not parenting. Being invested in family life, or private life, is a choice all of us can make, regardless of whether we are parenting. Caring for, or enjoying time with, a partner or a parent, extended family members or close friends, are equally important and a necessary part of life. They should not be something we need to sideline or make invisible in order to be valuable workers, but of course in an economic system that is built to value only efficiency and workplace productivity, those values are difficult to “sell” as a benefit to one’s employer.

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 28)

04 Sunday Jul 2010

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Because who could possibly resist gaudy patriotism like this on the 4th of July weekend? Not me!

In other, much more serious news (*ahem*), Amanda Hess & Courtney Stoker @ The Sexist talk about the highs and lows of being a feminist geek, and how to make dudely subcultures more inclusive, while Julia (also @ The Sexist) discusses how fanfic can serve as the gateway to kink (third video from the top).

The Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative @ Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University) offer up a paper (available in PDF) on “addresses legal and practical issues related to the practice colloquially known as sexting.” You can read a press release and download the paper at their website. I haven’t had a chance to peruse it, but it looks to be a good resource for folks doing research and/or advocacy in this area.

Thomas @ Yes Means Yes wrote a short post this week reminding us all that physical response to sexual stimulation does not equal consent: our bodies respond with arousal whether we desire the contact or not. What does this mean? Only enthusiastic participation can really equal consent, and that’s the golden standard we all need to be looking for in our partners.

Everyone, it seems, has opinions on whether women should breastfeed their children, for how long, under what circumstances, and the depths of “bad mother”-dome they will sink if they push the envelope on any of these parameters. Rowan Pelling @ The Telegraph (UK) describes the no-win situation

The last time I wrote on the topic, saying in the mildest terms that while I subscribed to the view that breast was best it was counter-productive to bully women on the topic, I received a torrent of abusive mail. Several people suggested that I should not have reproduced if I “couldn’t be bothered” to feed the baby myself, while one New Man denounced my laziness, saying piously that he had “made sure my wife persevered for our child’s good”. I had a vision of his poor spouse weeping with cracked nipples, while he chained her to the nursing chair.

Over @ first the egg, Molly shares her toddler’s expertise on childbirth, as well as he boundless curiousity for how babies are grown and birthed. “In the car later he was annoyed with himself because he knew that the cord provides food through the blood but couldn’t remember about oxygen: ‘What else does it do?,’ he asked urgently. Then he said he’d tell [his teacher] about the oxygen thing the next day. This child takes his duties as childbirth educator seriously, people.”

Endocrinologist Dr. Marian New is experimenting with the use of hormone therapy for pregnant women to reduce incidences of congenital adrenal hyperplasia(CAH) in female fetuses. CAH has been linked by some to a greater incidence of infertility, intersexuality, “masculine” behaviors, bisexuality, and even (gasp!) lesbianism. Kelsey Wallace @ Bitch Blogs feels this warrants the latest proclaimation of a douchebag decree for en utero gender norm enforcement! For those interested the more science-heavy details of New’s experimental treatments see: Alice Dreger, Ellen K. Feder, Anne Tamar-Mattis @ Bioethics Forum, Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb? and an update by the same authors: Prenatal Dex.

In other drug-related news, the FDA recently declined to approve Flibanserin, a drug that is supposed to increase sexual desire in pre-menopausal women. While a number of feminists have vocally opposed the medicalization of sexual desire, Dr. Marty Klein @ Sexual Intelligence asks what is accomplished by denying the drug to women for whom a medical fix might improve their quality of life. “There’s something unseemly about activists — self-described feminists, sexual health advocates, whatever –working so hard to prevent a drug from coming to market because its creators might manipulate and confuse possible consumers.”

We might say we believe in gender equality, but do our values and our actions really reflect such a claim? As SarahMC @ The Pursuit of Harpyness, equality in theory but not in practice seems to be the order of the day according to a recently-released Pew Research survey of twenty-two nations worldwide.

Elena Kagan refused to backpedal her opposition to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” according to Michael Jones @ The Gay Rights Blog, and the always-worth-reading Dahlia Lithwick @ Slate offers her take on Kagan’s nomination process, reporting how senators worried that the Court might impose a Communist regime of forced vegetables for all if Kagan is approved, while Kagan herself woos her audience with her wit and wisdom as all the justices who’ve gone before her haunt the Senate floor. Which, in the end, turned out to be a poor tactic for the opposition, since most Americans are pretty happy with what Thurgood Marshall accomplished for civil rights.

In other Supreme Court-related news, SCOTUS handed down a ruling at the end of the 2009-2010 term supporting schools’ rights to require all school-endorsed student groups to be open to all. The specific case argued involved a law school that refused official recognition to a Christian student group because they required all members to sign a statement of faith upon joining, the articles of which included condemning non-straight sexuality as sinful.

Speaking of sinful behavior, Sinclair @ Sugarbutch Chronicles tackles the question of whether enjoying porn that features sexual orientations other than your own is exploitative. Short answer: No. Slightly longer answer: It’s not the consumption of pornography or erotica that is a measure of your exploitative behavior, it’s how you actually treat actual people whose sexual orientations and predilections differ from yours.

In other words: Let that erotica increase your reserve of lovingkindness toward all beings!

And with that, I’m going to sign off and go enjoy me some fireworks. Or maybe just an episode of two of American Dad!

Happy 4th everyone!

image credit: _MG_0880.JPG by DINO212 @ Flickr.com.

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 28)

27 Sunday Jun 2010

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A quiet week in Lake Woebegone, folks … maybe everyone was laid low by the heat? Or busy watching the World Cup? Anyways, here’s a handful of links that jumped out from my feeds these past seven days.

First, a pretty picture (nsfw) which I was unable to use for today’s illustration (damn people protecting their online content!!)

Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon | How I Stopped Being A Slut, And Learned To Cash Massive Book Advances. “There are some obstacles to overcome. The largest is obviously my boyfriend, who is all about me getting lucrative book deals, but is concerned that the necessary thesis—that my wanton feminist ways have left me loveless and manless—could be construed as insulting to him. I’ve tossed around the idea of kicking him out and only seeing him on the sly, but the cats have raised objections to this, having grown quite fond of him after living with him for most of their lives.”

Aviva Dove-Viebahn @ Ms. Magazine Blog | How to Lose Your Virginity: An Interview with Therese Shechter. “Up until a certain age, you’re not supposed to be sexually active, and then you cross some invisible threshold and suddenly everyone is supposed to be having sex … And I have met so many people that aren’t and feel terrible. Not personally feel terrible—they’re making decisions about their lives—but feel terrible culturally. Like, God forbid anyone should find out about this.”

Miriam @ Feministing | Defining queer virginity. “…But for queer folks, the boundaries are less defined. When two women have sex, when have they ‘done it’? What about two men? What about two genderqueer or trans folks? Is it about penetration, or about orgasms, or nudity, or oral sex? When you expand your ideas of sexuality beyond the confines of straightness, things are more open.”

Amanda Hess @ The Sexist | Talking Sex, With Kink Educators and Anti-Porn Activists. “Since co-founding KinkForAll, Maymay has encountered some complications that don’t figure into his spreadsheets—which is why, even if there’s no live action onstage, he tapes every gathering. ‘I record myself because some people like to say I’m a pedophile, and since I’m not really a pedophile, it helps when they see video of me not being a pedophile,’ he says. ‘I’m like, “Actually, I was just showing a Google doc on the screen.”‘”

Molly @ first the egg | review: The Business of Being Born. “A little over 16 minutes into the film, an adorable doctor explains why doctors tend to prefer the flat-on-the-back-in-bed position and why that’s not okay. This part is just fantastic; I do wish every ‘parent-to-be’ would watch these two minutes.”

Miriam @ Radical Doula | New radical birth magazine: SQUAT.

and, for those looking for comment threads to wile away some time on …

erica @ Feministe | What kind of mirror did your mom make you look at your vagina with? “All this measures up very differently when I hear friends’ stories about how they only really learned about sex in their twenties, or thought that by only having oral, or anal sex they could still remain virgins. So, to expand my horizons a little, I asked everyone I knew to contribute their virginity and/or their how they learned about the birds & the bees stories. They’ll be going up all this week starting later today.”

image credit: La Grande Danse macabre des vifs by Martin Van Maele (1863–1926), made available @ Wikimedia Commons.

quick hit: more reasons to choose "queer"

24 Thursday Jun 2010

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Miriam @ Feministing takes up the question of “queer” as an identifier in a post from last week, What’s the difference between lesbian and queer? and invites readers to share in comments what the word means for them and what words they use to speak about their identity.

From my perspective, there are two main reasons to use queer as an identifier. Queer is not as specific as words like lesbian or gay, and it does not explain exactly either your gender or the gender of your partner.

Lesbian implies pretty clearly that you are a woman who partners with other women. You might identify as genderqueer, trans or gender non-conforming, so that kind of specificity might not fit well. Or you might partner with people across the gender spectrum.

If someone partners with people across the gender spectrum, “bisexual” may not feel appropriate because it implies there are just two genders (bi meaning two). Additionally, if a person might not identify themselves with a binary gender (male or female) then a term like lesbian or gay might feel limiting.

Queer is an umbrella term, it really implies “not straight” more than it implies what exactly someone’s sexuality might be. It’s also a political term and many people use it as such, to imply a particular set of political beliefs alongside their orientation.

You can read the whole post at Feministing as well as the comment thread, which is where a lot of the conversation takes place.