feminist blogs in english

I’ve taken a long time to write about this because I wanted to make sure I had my thoughts on it sorted out. This article by Naomi Klein finally brought me around to the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) campaign against Israel. (Note: as you can probably tell, I’m very new to BDS, so this post is directed at other people who are new to it, too. I realize that many readers have been working on this for a long time.) This passage was what turned the lightbulb on for me:

Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work. (Emphasis hers.)

The problem, up until I read the article, was that most of the calls for boycotts I read were the dogmatic kind. Boycott Israeli academics! Boycott Israeli artists! Boycott non-Israeli Jewish business owners! Why? Because we hate them, that’s why! Because Zionism is racism! Even the ones that didn’t come off as dogmatic - or that made passing references to tactics - failed to address Jews’ concerns about anti-Semitism, and that turned me off to them. Was that irrational of me? Yeah, sometimes. But Jews have good reason to be wary.

I know, of course, that BDS will continue to attract anti-Semites, and I still fear that anti-Semitism will drown out pragmatism. I don’t know how to solve that problem - but we can address it by emphasizing, as Klein does, that it’s a tactic, not a dogma. We’re doing it because it works. We’re doing it out of love (for Israelis, too!). And, as Klein says, we’re targeting “the Israeli economy but not Israelis.” Strategy, not punishment.

Do check out the whole article - she responded very effectively to almost every concern that I had.

The Global BDS Movement’s website is here.

Thoughts? (When you comment, please remember that this is a very sensitive and complicated subject. Rude or hostile comments will be deleted.)

(Cross-posted at Alas, A Blog.)

Ron Paul lays it on the line in a very libertarian way:
*Governor Perry was restating a principle long held - right to secession.
*After the civil war no one believes in that right but it's still a legitimate issue because all the states before the civil war believed they had a right to secede, including in New England.
*Liberals say it is treasonous. (Hey, Ron, find the ones who supported it when Bush won in 200 and 2004!)
*It's an American tradition - that’s how we came into being; 13 colonies seceded.
*The U.S. strongly supported republics seceding from Soviet Republic.
*If the right to secession had been admitted the federal government would have been restrained in it's growth over the years.
*Secession is voluntary; a free society means we can resolve the secession issue voluntarily.
*Wilson drove us into WWI so every country could have self-determination; Paul believes it is an American principle and we should discuss it here.
*We’ve been preached that republic is “indivisible” - but they don’t talk about who wrote the pledge - Francis Bellamy, an avowed socialist, in 1892.
*When the feds can’t deliver and the dollar collapses, then the independence of the states will come back and it won’t be unAmerican to decide what has to be done.

Now that it's almost the weekend again, I think I can finally write a bit about last weekend.

Amy & her daughter came for a visit. This is their 3rd trip out here together. Amy's visited a few times on her own, which is awesome, but always hard to explain to the kid on why HER BFF isn't here, but mine is.

First I have to say that Amy & I joke about how the girls are twins. And spending a few days with them, they really are so alike. Amy's daughter is a rougher & tougher version of mine, but essentially they are two peas in a pod. It took a bit of time for the kid to learn that it was ok to push back - not just literally, but verbally too - when Izzy was being a bossy. So yes there were tears on both sides.

Both girls have a HUGE sense of fairness. So Izzy complained that the kid had more of this or that. The kid would cry if I scolded her for something that Izzy might have started. Essentially Amy & I were co-mothers of siblings for the weekend. AND THEN SOME, because not only are our girls heart & headstrong, but they are both only children. In reality, Izzy has a step-brother and a half-brother, but they both live with her dad in another state and Izzy lives with Amy. So in Izzy's world she's an only child and the oldest child.

For the vast majority of the time, we had a great time. Cinnamon & Andrew joined us as we took them around the city, did some touristy things, some not so touristy things and just had a great time hanging out. Friday night us grrls stayed up waaaay too late just talking, venting, sharing stories and even some crying (which was so good for me!).

Amy & I met online around the summer of 2001 I think. I can't even remember. But I do remember that she was one of the few people I told that I was trying to get pregnant. And then we were pregnant at the same time! So we were pregnant together. Lemme tell ya, there's few things that can bond ya like being pregnant together and having someone to share your fears with.

We're not twins althou we share a lot in common. She likes to say that she's not quite a feminist, but anyone who teaches women's history in a high school is a feminist in my book. Her journey thru motherhood is so not like mine (divorced single mom vs married mom with a supportive husband) but in some ways it's better that way. We don't know each other's lives, but we're always willing to listen, learn & be supportive. And sometimes we, ok mostly me, will read the other the riot act. I tease that we should write a children's book about the girls ala "City Mouse, Country Mouse."

I love that we're just alike enough to be friends, but different enough that I know I'm not talking to a yes-woman. Now to get my butt in gear to visit her in Maine!

FAMILY COURT MAYDAY! RALLY & PETITION 10.30 FOR 11 a.m. Sunday 3rd MAY 2009 Description:In memory of all the children who have died at the hands of their parents following Family Court involvement....RIPAnd the children who continue to be forced into contact with violent or sexually abusive parents by the Family Law Act which is failing to protect children.SEE DETAILS OF THE RALLY IN YOUR CITY on

I recently finished the Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti. It was amazing, definitely a 5 out of 5.

Valenti writes in a way that I like, sarcastic humour and viewing issues from both sides. Let’s start with a visualization: A world were women are not judged because of whether they have sex or not but whether or not they are good people. Sounds pretty good to me. Though the “Virginity Movement” (to use Valenti’s term) wouldn’t have it that way. They believe in retro gender roles. Surprisingly they don’t really want to get rid of the hypersexualized culture, or rather they could not exist without it. Our culture gives women one of two places, virgins or whores. No inbetween, no grey area, just black and white based on sex. Sounds like fun doesn’t it?

She spends a good amount of time talking about abstinence-only education. Did you know that over 80% of Abstinence-only programs contain lies (all her stats are for the United States).

The strangest thing is that though her book focuses on the United States and seemingly ‘radicle’ right wingers I can see the things that she talks about. I grew up in a WASPy little town and to this day I am still startled when I find out that some of my friends aren’t virgins (though after the initial shock it doesn’t matter). And I didn’t even go through the indoctrination that some people go through, just through my interactions with culture. Even my sister, who goes to a Catholic High School, receives an abstinence-only education. This means that she has no working knowledge of birth control, or even avoiding STIs, should she ever need it. Can’t say for certain if they lie, though.

Women need to be judged on moral character, not on sexual character.

Silly Site o' the Day

Wikipedia guru, William Beutler, shared this just-released survey from the Wikimedia Foundation and United Nations University. More than 130,000 Wikipedia readers and contributors completed the extensive survey questionnaire (out of more than 300,000 people total who took at least part of the questionnaire).*

Beyond the intricate ecosystem of Wikipedia that never ceases to amaze me, one thing that Bill shared, which startled me, but you also might find interesting, are these statistics on gender:

• Readers and contributors are on average in their mid-twenties, and predominantly male (75%)
• Women, with a share of 25% in all respondents, are more strongly represented among readers (32%) and less strongly represented among contributors (13%).

Additionally, the overview section on Gender states:

Though both groups are dominated by men, there are significant differences in the gender composition of readers and contributors of Wikipedia. Contributors show a substantially larger share of males than readers.

Hmm - it seems that we have yet another online example where women are not feeling very welcome to share their ideas, their voice and their intellect. Wikipedia is a naturally contentious site and while I'm sure not everyone - male or female - enjoys an online edit war, it is yet another example of how male dominated the internet space has become. I'm not suggesting there is anyone to blame for this gender discrepancy, but just as the Second Wavers fought for more voices on the Op-Ed pages of major newspapers - it is just as important to have the female perspective of history on sites like Wikipedia that inform millions of people everyday on history, pop culture, politics and geography.

I would encourage women to talk about what might be holding them back from contributing to Wikipedia and sharing their expertise; it's about time we feel comfortable expressing our opinions and facts - it's not 1963 anymore, I would hope that we've surpassed the burden of the feminine mystique. Don't let just men re-write history while women sit back and watch - it's time to get involved in the online space and help build the future of knowledge and technology.

Looks like Supreme Court Justice David Souter is going to retire. Wowza. Thoughts?

In a comment below yesterday’s brief post which quoted from a new sci-fi anthology, Luisa wrote:

A lot of sexually confident young women are attracted to nerdy, geeky guys, particularly if they’ve got that “nerdy in a hot way” thing going. I’m in a relationship with a woman, but sometimes get crushes on this sort of guy myself! Does the sexual confidence differential that favors the student somehow compensate for the academic power differential in this case?

And Hector chimed in:

It’s true that people vary a lot in their sexual confidence as well as in other, more visible axes of distinction like age, wealth, or power. Sometimes I feel like Hugo is unable to grasp that there are some of us, men and women, who have very little sexual confidence, regardless of how much ‘power’ we might have in other regards.

I need to repost something I wrote nearly five years ago: Loving the Bookish and the Cool, in which I made it quite clear that I was hardly a model of masculine confidence as a youngster:

I was an introverted, clumsy, bookish, unathletic, slightly chubby teen boy. I was teased and harassed throughout my elementary and junior high school years. I found solace in two places: books and the theater. I spent years working with a community theater group as a kid, and it was in drama that I first found “folks like me” who felt like misfits. Most of my good friends were girls — and boys who were on their way out of the closet! I was not remotely good-looking. I had unrequited crushes on several of my female friends, who thought I was “nice, but…” I had only one straight male friend in high school, and even that was often a tense and ambivalent relationship… I think my bona fides as a certifiable geek are in place!

Much as changed in the quarter century since I began to emerge from awkward adolescence, but it’s not as if I’ve completely forgotten what it was like to be paralyzed by self-doubt. And whatever later “success” I enjoyed with women did not erase the memories of what it was to feel undesirable, inarticulate, and at a complete loss as to how to negotiate romantic and sexual terrain.

One thing I learned: it was not anyone else’s job to do for me what I felt unable to do for myself. To put it another way, my geekiness wasn’t a woman’s problem to solve. It is true that my first girlfriend in high school asked me out (I was too scared to make that first move). I was a virgin, she wasn’t. But I learned quickly that fear is not a justification for passivity. While I had no reason to be ashamed of my shyness, I did have an obligation to learn to be more assertive. And among other things, I also learned that whatever frustration I had felt as a consequence of feeling unattractive and geeky and unwanted was not my girlfriend’s pack to carry. I remember feeling those brief flashes of anger, flashes which I think are quite common among those who end up as men’s rights activists, when I thought about my years of feeling unattractive and unwanted. And my first lover was blessedly assertive enough to make it abundantly clear that while I was entitled to my feelings, I was not entitled — ever — to be desired by others. I wasn’t owed the feeling of being wanted, nor was I owed any particular deference because of my fears and inexperience. (more…)

From the ABA Journal:

Last year, when law professor Joel Reidenberg wanted to show his Fordham University class how readily private information is available on the Internet, he assigned a group project. It was collecting personal information from the Web about himself.

This year, after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made public comments that seemingly may have questioned the need for more protection of private information, Reidenberg assigned the same project. Except this time Scalia was the subject, the prof explains to the ABA Journal in a telephone interview.

His class turned in a 15-page dossier that included not only Scalia’s home address, home phone number and home value, but his food and movie preferences, his wife’s personal e-mail address and photos of his grandchildren, reports Above the Law.

And, as Scalia himself made clear in a statement to Above the Law, he isn’t happy about the invasion of his privacy:

“Professor Reidenberg’s exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any,” the justice says, among other comments.

A Supreme Court spokeswoman confirmed to the ABA Journal in an e-mail that the Scalia blast to ATL “is accurately attributed to Justice Scalia.”

In response, Reidenberg tells the ABA Journal that the information gathered by his class about Scalia was all “publicly available, for free,” and wasn’t posted on the Internet by the class or otherwise further publicized. He views the dossier-gathering about a public figure as a legitimate classroom exercise intended to spark discussion about privacy law, and says he and the class didn’t intend to offend Scalia. …

Read the entire article here. There is no privacy on the Internet and Scalia invokes the gratuitously nasty “blame the messenger” response so typical of the arrogant and uninformed.

–Ann Bartow

ETA: Joel Reidenberg, who is a friend as well as professional colleague, sent me an e-mail about all this and gave me permission to post this part:

There seems to be significant misinformation circulating in the blogosphere relating to the nature of my class exercise, its instructional use, and how the exercise became public.

The exercise was part of my Information Privacy Law class this semester. The course, in exploring the origins and scope of privacy law, examined the ways technology can both invade and protect personal information and examined how the law related to those technologies. We used a traditional case book, Solove & Schwartz, and I supplemented the book with two concurrent exercises that are treated as course materials: 1) each week the students posted links on the course discussion board to news stories related to privacy issues so that we could discuss them in class and make connections to the casebook reading assignments; and, 2) throughout the semester, the students posted on a class discussion board links to information found on the web related to the class research exercise.

The research exercise is designed for class discussion to illustrate law and policy issues associated with readily available information, contextual use, social norms and the scope of legal protection. The exercise seeks to provide a first-hand experience for discussions of the boundary between public and private information, the loss of practical obscurity and the capacity of law to respond to these issues. For the exercise last year, I framed the research as a challenge to the class to find a specific piece of esoteric information about me. The class was surprised at how much information could be found readily. This year, I planned for the course to focus more attention on the blurring of public and private information and decided to frame the research exercise as a challenge to find information about a public figure. Very early in the semester, a news report about Justice Scalia’s speech was posted on the class discussion board as one of the weekly news items. He was reported to have made the comment that treating much of the information on the web as private was “silly.” As our class session began to discuss the article and the transparency of personal information on the web, Justice Scalia became the logical public figure for the exercise researching publicly available personal information. Over the course of the semester, students posted links to web pages containing information about Justice Scalia, which in turn led to information about his family. To enhance a summation class discussion on the issues of aggregation and secondary use, the loss of anonymity, and legal responses, I had one of the students compile the information in an organized dossier format. The class was pretty shocked by the results. This was one of the teachable points. Our class dossier has remained a course document- we have not published it and have not disclosed the personal information found on the web.

Last week, however, I referenced the exercise during Fordham’s privacy conference when I gave a resentation on “The Transparency of Personal Information and the Rule of Law.” Here’s the abstract of my talk:

“This presentation will explore the erosion of the boundary between public and private information on the Internet. The thesis is that the transparency of personal information available online erodes the rule of law in two ways. First, the transparency of personal information that is created by private sector activities enables government to collect and use personal information purchased from the private sector in ways that side step political and legal checks and balances. Second, technical self-help in the development of network infrastructure that seeks to assure complete anonymity online may used by individuals and groups to evade legal responsibility and the rule of law. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of governance implications and norms.”

In illustrating the point that there is an over-transparency of personal information, I described the class exercise from last year and this year, the type of information the class found and the students’ astonishment at the results. I did not not release any of Justice Scalia’s personal information.

–Joel Reidenberg