Woman's Work

spn_womens work - luminosity & sisabet

I've been studying remix videos and fanvids for library school (I know, poor me), and I came across this amazing video. The remixers use scenes from the television show Supernatural to make a statement about the use (or disposal) of women in the media. I know that if you put together all the graphic and exoticized deaths of women on tv shows like Law & Order, it would be quite a collection, but I've never seen a compilation like this before.
These ladies know what they are doing. The editing is first-rate, and the emotional impact of the video really hits you in the gut. This video is a prime example of the reason why it's important that people participate in culture. We can watch shows like this, but we have to stay aware and be able to critique the cultures that we have to live in.

Mayor of Cakeville

Two things about this cake:

This cake is a bakery rendition of Audre Lorde’s awesome quote “When I dare to be powerful. To use my strength in the service of my vision – then it is less and less important whether I am afraid.”

Basically, I see this cake I am saying a big F.U. to sizist body standards that trick women into believing that shrinking to a pre-adolescent body is desirable. In cake town I am moving away from a world that is caught up on calories, fat grams and pants sizes - a game I will never win because both loosing and victory are harmful and disappearing women aren’t super alive women. This cake has got me disregarding the value of size and daring the chance to physically take up more space in the world as a woman. At the same time, as I jam out in cake town, I am shifting the dialogue and energy I send in the day as a lady away from oppressive standards/discourses placed on women and on to my voice, my power and my vision – I am helping to make a new discourse a new set of feminist standards. This cake is about manifesting more personal awesomeness and claiming the right to do it while sharing that awesome land with other ruling bitches.
Pretty much, this is a ruler feminist cake.

Unicorns & Puppies!

i posted a new blog, my friends!

slate article on the whole ingraham-mccain-coulter kerfuffle

totally digging the hell out of dahlia lithwick's feminist breakdown of this week's (stupid) fight between laura ingraham, megan mccain, and ann coulter (although the latter didn't engage).

click on the title of this entry to get to the article.

Dear Little Erin

I wrote a sappy new blog, wherein I write a letter to myself as a child (it was for a school assignment). But check it out!

Click on "dear little erin" above to go to the new post.

I can't stop talking about my body

Hello friends. I just wanted to let you know that I posted another blog. Egh, and I guess I like to promote it a little bit. Tell your people to read it. Comment! Subscribe! And, tell yourself something nice about your amazing body -- it's a pretty big part of how you're alive, right?!

Also, please consider linking my blog to your blog (if you have one). Feminist friends have to scratch each other's backs, you know? But in a consensual, healthy boundaries kind of way.

One of my 6 year old clients, a brilliant little scrapper who loves to draw and kick the "bop bag" said this the other day: "Kicking people is different than kicking the bop bag, because people have skin! But what if we didn't have skin? That would be gross -- everything would slide around." Yes, Scrapper, let's be thankful for our skin!

xo
Erin

click on the title of this blog to go to MY blog...the link down here wasn't working.

Virginity For Sale!

So, did you all hear about the 22-year-old woman who is putting her virginity up for auction (current high bid $3.8 million)? She blogs the reasoning here. This is the core of her argument:

"Like most little girls, I was raised to believe that virginity is a sacred gift a woman should reserve for just the right man. But college taught me that this concept is just a tool to keep the status quo intact. Deflowering is historically oppressive—early European marriages began with a dowry, in which a father would sell his virginal daughter to the man whose family could offer the most agricultural wealth. Dads were basically their daughters’ pimps.

When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism."

Susannah Breslin's response on Slate's XX Factor blog made me chuckle, but maybe seemed a little harsh:

"How ... feminist? How ... empowering? Whoever invented women's studies must be gnawing at her wrists at this very minute. "Are you rolling your eyes?" Dylan wonders. Why, yes, I am, Miss Dylan! "But I'm not saying every forward-thinking person has to agree with what I’m doing," she continues. Thank God. "You should develop your own personal belief system—that’s exactly my point!" Ah, the wisdom of the young. She concludes: "These days, more and more women my age are profiting directly from their sex appeal, but I’m not sure other women should follow my lead." That would make two of us.

Until today, this sexual spectacle's onlookers have been attempting to discern where Dylan is coming from, personally and politically, but her essay makes it more than clear that her pseudo-feminist blathering is little more than a misguided attempt to conceal her mind-boggling idiocy. Suffice to say, I won't be bidding on her."

I'm still working through how I feel about this whole issue, although my first instinct is to question whether this is really the most powerful and effective tool this young feminist could use to empower herself and her community. I could really give a shit what this woman does with her hymen, but touting this as a subversive feminist act is problematic for me. I mean, Queen Elizabeth had to use her virginity in the 16th century because she didn't have a lot of other options, but in this post-"sexual revolution" age, don't we have some more effective weapons in our arsenal? Wouldn't this woman's time and energy be better spent helping tween girls along a path towards empowered, self-confident sexuality? Or being an ally to rape victims or abused kids who will never get to make the choice about their first sexual encounter? Or writing a zine or a book?

Oh, yeah, those wouldn't pay $3.8 million dollars...