feminist blogs in english

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a great segment by Rachel Maddow on the difference between living in a democracy and living in a constitutional democracy. The subject: military segregation then (race and religion) and now (sexual orientation). The take-home message: we don’t get to vote on rights.

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Rob Walker, who blogs at MKTG, sent me a link to Nadine Boughton’s The Pleasures of Modern Living series. As Boughton describes the images,

Using vintage magazines and materials, I scan and compose digital collages, piecing together fragments of memory into new narratives.  My intention is to blend the nostalgia for the past with the darkness beneath “the pleasures of modern living.”

I am interested in the portrayal of women and domestic culture; the illusion of security; food as an object of desire and comfort; and the grip of materiality.

Here are a few:

Also check out Boughton’s True Adventures in Better Homes series, a commentary on the images of femininity and masculinity represented in ’50s men’s adventure magazines and Better Homes and Gardens.

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After this silly commercial, history professors across the country will have a tough job convincing their students that Lincoln was never really filmed. I wonder if the people who made the commercial realize that they are messing with the minds of citizens whose knowledge of history is fantastically low as it is.

Last week I linked to the first episode of the 1972 BBC documentary, Ways of Seeing (thanks again to Christina W.).  The second episode, partially embedded below offers an art historian’s perspective on the objectification of women in European art and advertising, starting with paintings of nude women.  “To be naked,” he argues, “is to be oneself.  To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A nude has to be seen as an object in order to be a nude… they are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.”

And there’s a very provocative statement about hair and hairlessness (down there) in the midst.

Parts One and Two of Four:

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Rob Walker (author of the fascinating book Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are) sent me a link to a post at Drinkin’ and Dronin’ of a 1954 Levi Strauss brochure about “western Indian lore.” It’s a nice round-up of stereotypes and appropriations of Native Americans. We start off with an angry, bare-chested (and Levis-clad) man with a tomahawk, shield, moccasins, and headdress; I’d guess he’s supposed to be a warrior doing a war dance:

Then some descriptions of items associated with different tribes and the obligatory broken English (“just want ‘um”) familiar to anyone who watched The Lone Ranger and paid attention to Tonto:

I have no idea how accurate their descriptions of “unusual Indian weapons” are, but the overall tone of the brochure doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

And we have a lesson on “the Indian sign language,” the origins of which are “lost in the mists of time”:

Related posts: Potowatamis didn’t have a word for “global business center,” “discovering” Newfoundland, appropriation of Native Americans in fashion, teaching kids how to be American Indians, marketing the Vancouver Olympics, ice skaters dress up like Australian aborigines, native cultures in Avatar, Poca-Hotness, Indian costume for your dog, Indian Halloween costumes, Disney depicts Native Americans, “my skin is dark but my heart is white,” American Indians on t-shirts, sports mascots, Playmobil’s American Indian family, Howe Nissan’s American Indian statue, the “crying Indian” anti-litter PSA, Native Americans in Italian anti-immigration posters, and more American Indian dolls.

Also check out Adrienne K.’s blog Native Appropriations for lots of examples.

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The other day, I woke up and threw on running shorts and a sports bra and went for a jog. I’m in Boston for the summer, so I headed towards the Common which takes me by Copley Square. There’s a big marble circle in the ground with all the names of the Boston Marathon winners and for some inexplicable reason (read: it was 90 degrees at 7 a.m. and I couldn’t breathe), I decided to stop and look.

So sometimes there are moments when completely ordinary facts jump up and hit you in a totally extraordinary way. This was one of those times. Looking at this circle, I was suddenly struck by how old the Boston Marathon was (1897!) and the long list of winners names threw something into stark relief: women’s names only began appearing 45 years ago.

Obviously this is something I knew, but standing there in just a sports bra and running shorts, with people rushing past on the way to the T, I was suddenly struck by how much has changed in such a relatively short period of time. I couldn’t help thinking to myself: Holy shit, 45 years ago, I could definitely NOT have just walked out my door in a sports bra and shorts and gone for a jog. Or been one of those women in a suit on their way to work. Or a lot of things really.

This is not to say that I then picked myself up, jogged home smiling, declared feminism a WIN and resigned my membership. On the contrary, I can’t even begin to list all the work yet to do for gender rights. And more than these kind of moments, I usually have “My God, did he/she really just say/do that incredibly anachronistic sexist/misogynist thing? Don’t they know it’s 2010?” But, BUT, I’ve found that sometimes it’s nice to remember how far we’ve come, while gearing up for how far we have to go.

Anyone have similar stories?

The fact that the two main candidates in the 2008 Democratic primary were a woman and an African American were a welcome sign, Chomsky acknowledges, that the country has managed to get at least somewhat civilized. Still, we cannot expect the joy from this reality to keep us perennially blind to the numerous ways in which Obama has not been living up to his promise. Chomsky reminds us that "

In New Orleans sidewalk corners are adorned with delightful blue-and-white tiles, originally dating from the 1870s, telling you the name of the street you are crossing:

As I stepped over some of these, it occurred to met that they told a story about city planning.  Unlike the street signs in most cities (including New Orleans) that are attached to poles and displayed high, these can’t be seen by drivers.  These are designed for pedestrians, and perhaps bikers, using sidewalks.  They reflect a time when planners were designing the city for people on foot.

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I'm not usually a huge fan of Chomsky but his new collection of essays Hopes and Prospects is really good. The first part of the book deals with Latin America. Chomsky outlines the colonial past and present of Latin American countries and their valiant efforts to rid themselves of neo-imperialist domination by the United States. He states correctly that today's struggles of Latin American

Anna M., Naomi B., Amanda C., Ben Z., and SpeZek sent in a new PETA ad campaign, the latest in a twisted story of objectification metaphor.

Feminists in the ’70s protested the objectification of women by metaphorically linking meat and female bodies (e.g., “we should not be treating women like pieces of meat”).  Meat is meat, so the argument went, but women are human beings and should be treated as such.

In mocking response, in 1978 Larry Flynt put a woman being chewed up by a meat grinder on the cover of Hustler magazine. We will treat women like meat if we want, was the message.  And we did, and we do, seemingly endlessly.

Forty years later, Pamela Anderson submits to being symbolically carved up for butchering by PETA in order to metaphorically link meat and female bodies again.  But this time, in an ironic reversal, it’s designed to condemn the way we treat animals, not the way we treat women.

And, forty years later, feminists are still saying “Please, can we not do the women/meat thing?”

So Canada denies PETA a permit for the launching of this new ad campaign.  An official explains: “…it goes against all principles public organizations are fighting for in the everlasting battle of equality between men and women” (source).  What a nice thing to say, feminists think.

But Anderson fights feminism with feminism:

How sad that a woman would be banned from using her own body in a political protest over the suffering of cows and chickens… In some parts of the world, women are forced to cover their whole bodies with burqas—is that next?

Yes, Pamela, I’m sure that’s next.

But I digress.

So PETA and Anderson must think that Canadians super-super-respect women like totally and never-never-objectify them to the degree that saying that animals are like women will suddenly inspire horror at the prospect of using animals for food?  Or is it that they think men will see the image and be like “oooh I’d really like to rub up against that rump” and then suddenly find cows too sexy to eat?  Or they don’t give a shit about women and are willing to use whatever attention-getting tactic they can to save animals from going under the knife (including using the body of a woman that has, um, gone under the knife)?

I submit this for discussion because I just don’t know.

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More from PETA: women packaged like meat, and in cages, women who love animals get naked (men wear clothes), the banned superbowl ad, and a collection of various PETA advertising using (mostly women’s) nudity.

See also my post on leftist balkanization, or the way that leftist social movements tend to undermine each other.

If you’re interested further, you may want to read Carol Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Pornography of Meat.

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