feminist blogs in english

In a fascinating essay, A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz argues that we do, indeed, play Farmville because we’re polite.  More people in the U.S. play Farmville than any other video game.

…over seventy-three million people play Farmville. Twenty-six million people play Farmville every day. More people play Farmville than World of Warcraft, and Farmville users outnumber those who own a Nintendo Wii.

(source)

The game isn’t popular, he argues, because it’s a good game.  In fact, Liszkiewicz thinks it’s a decidedly bad game.

…games offer a break from responsibility and routine, yet Farmville is defined by responsibility and routine. Users advance through the game by harvesting crops at scheduled intervals; if you plant a field of pumpkins at noon, for example, you must return to harvest at eight o’clock that evening or risk losing the crop. Each pumpkin costs thirty coins and occupies one square of your farm, so if you own a fourteen by fourteen farm a field of pumpkins costs nearly six thousand coins to plant. Planting requires the user to click on each square three times: once to harvest the previous crop, once to re-plow the square of land, and once to plant the new seeds. This means that a fourteen by fourteen plot of land—which is relatively small for Farmville—takes almost six hundred mouse-clicks to farm, and obligates you to return in a few hours to do it again…

Farmville is so laborious and tedious, that one of the rewards of playing Farmville is playing less Farmville:

As you advance through Farmville, you begin earning rewards that allow you to play Farmville less. Harvesting machines let you click four squares at once, and barns and coops let you manage groups of animals simultaneously, saving you hundreds of tedious mouse-clicks.

(source)

So why the heck is Farmville the most popular video game in America?  Liszkiewicz says, “people are playing Farmville because people are playing Farmville.”

(source)

In other words:

Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness. We play Farmville, then, because we are trying to be good to one another. We play Farmville because we are polite, cultivated people.

(source)

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* Title borrowed from BoingBoing.

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Gwen and I usually refrain from posting material that seems culturally marginal.  There’s a lot of disturbing stuff that pops up on the fringes, but we’re mostly interested in illustrating culturally dominate tropes with particularly influential cases (for example, lessons from music videos by artists like Eminem, Rihanna, and Kanye West).  My first instinct, when I received a link to a set of cartoon at The Oatmeal from Sully R., was to skip it for this reason.  But when I got to the end of the page, I saw this:

Nearly 2,500 diggs, 743 tweets, over 8,000 people on facebook sharing it, and nearly 8,000 stumbleupons.  What was this content that so many people had felt compelled to share?

It’s five cartoons illustrating hilarious ways to “use” a sex worker… eh em, “hooker.”  The message is: once you pay for a sex worker, you get to do anything you want with her, including demean her for your own entertainment.

I guess the point of this post is: I thought this was fringe.  I thought, “Oh sure, another set of sexist cartoons.  They’re everywhere.  Whatever.”  But then I was shocked by how many people had thought they were hilarious enough to share with their friends and strangers.  This is not fringe at all… it’s just everyday LOL.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Make sure you sign Al Franken's petition for net neutrality here. I hope I don't need to explain why a merger between Comcast and NBC will be a disaster for the freedom of information everywhere. If you want to preserve the Internet the way it is now, if you are terrified of the possibility that Fox will control how fast progressive sites are loading as opposed to conservative sites, you need to

Crossposted at BlogHer.

Thibaut T., Steve D., Alexis M., Tony L., and Dmitriy T.M. all asked us to write about a recent news story regarding skin lightening.  Previously marketed to women, skin lightening, bleaching, and “fairness” creams are being newly marketed to men.  The introduction of a Facebook application has triggered a wave of commentary among American journalists and bloggers.  The application, launched by Vaseline and aimed at men in India, smoothes out blotches and lightens the overall skin color of your profile photo, allowing men to present a more “radiant” face to their friends.

The U.S. commentary involves a great deal of hand-wringing over Indian preference for light skin and the lengths to which even men will go to get a few shades lighter.  Indians, it is claimed, have a preference for light skin because skin color and caste are connected in the Indian imagination.  Dating and career success, they say further, are linked to skin color.  Perhaps, these sources admit, colorism in India is related to British colonialism and the importation of a color-based hierarchy; but that was then and, today, India embraces prejudice against dark-skinned people, thereby creating a market for these unsavory products.

The obsession with light skin, however, cannot be solely blamed on insecure individuals or a now internalized colorism imported from elsewhere a long time ago.  Instead, a preference for white skin is being cultivated, today, by corporations seeking profit.  Sociologist Evelyn Nakano Glenn documents the global business of skin lightening in her article, Yearning for Lightness.  She argues that interest in the products is rising, especially in places where “…the influence of Western capitalism and culture are most prominent.”  The success of these products, then, “cannot be seen as simply a legacy of colonialism.”  Instead, it is being actively produced by giant multinational companies today.

The Facebook application is one example of this phenomenon.  It does not simply reflect an interest in lighter skin; it very deliberately tells users that they need to “be prepared” to make a first impression and makes it very clear that skin blotches and overall darkness is undesirable and smooth, light-colored skin is ideal.  Marketing for skin lightening products not only suggests that light skin is more attractive, it also links light skin to career success, overall upward mobility, and Westernization.  Some advertising, for example, overtly links dark skin with saris and unemployment for women, while linking light skin with Western clothes and a career.

The desire for light skin, then, is being encouraged by corporations who stand to profit from color-based anxieties that are overtly tied to the supposed superiority of Western culture.  These corporations, it stands to be noted, are not Indian.  They are largely Western: L’Oreal and Unilever are two of the biggest companies.  The supposedly Indian preference for light skin, then, is being stoked and manufactured by companies based in countries populated primarily by light-skinned people.  As Glenn explains, “Such advertisements can be seen as not simply responding to a preexisting need but actually creating a need by depicting having dark skin as a painful and depressing experience.”

Before pitying Indian seekers of light-skin, condemning the nation for colorism, or gently shaking our heads over the legacies of colonialism, we should consider how ongoing Western cultural dominance (that is, racism and colorism in the West today) and capitalist economic penetration (that is, profit through the cultivation of insecurities around the world) contributes to the global market in skin lightening products.

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Source: Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2008.  Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners.  Gender & Society 22, 3: 281-302.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

The New York Times has a neat interactive graph based on data from the American Time Use Survey that lets you look at hour-by-hour time use broken down by sex, employment status, 3 racial/ethnic groups (White, Black, Hispanic), age, education, and number of children (though, unfortunately, you can’t search by more than one category at once). Here is the breakdown for the entire sample:

For people age 15-24:

Watching TV and movies takes up a lot of the time of those over age 65:

You can also click on a particular activity to get more information about it:

Those with advanced degrees spent the most time participating in sports or watching them in person; I suspect that the data might look a bit different if time spent watching sports on TV went in this category instead of the TV category:

Just a note, the averages for time spent at work seem pretty low, but that’s because they’re averaged over all days of the week, including any days off, rather than only days a person actually went to work.

Presumably the amount of time you’ll spend playing around with the site goes under computer use.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Kristi P. sent us a link to a story at OMG! from Yahoo! about Christina Hendricks, who is famous for playing the curvaceous Joan on Mad Men. The article title includes “‘I Felt Beautiful’ Gaining ’15 Pounds’,” and the article discusses how Hendricks feels about her body.

Notice the contradiction in this screencap?

That’s right: throughout the article on how Christina Hendricks loves her non-waifish body there are links to stories about “incredible star slim-downs,” getting a “celebrity six-pack,” and how to get a “last-minute bikini bod.” So even in a story about a person reveling in her body, the message is clearly conveyed that your own body is not good enough, and to make it better, you probably need to make it thinner.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

While I was at my grandma’s house this week I read Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, a fascinating book by Rob Walker. There will be more posts to come in the next few weeks, but for starters, I was struck by the results of a 2006 survey Walker mentions by the Pew Research Center. The survey asked people if various items were luxuries or necessities. Here are the results from 2006 and 1996:

Clearly, over time we’re defining more and more items as necessities rather than luxuries:

A breakdown of some results by age:

If I had to guess, I’d think the fact that younger people are less likely to say a TV is a necessity than older people is due not to less concern about TV but more willingness to watch content online. Does that seem reasonable? Other explanations?

The survey found that the higher a person’s income, the more items they define as a necessity:

The biggest differences by income were for dishwashers, cell phones, computers, and high-speed internet, which are more likely to be defined as a necessity as income increases.

The Pew Center’s website has links to more detailed breakdowns, as well as full info on the question wording, methodology, etc. And as the authors say in the summary, the results show only a one-way change: in no case did they find that the overall percent defining something as a necessity decreased between 1996 and 2006. As they put it,

The old adage proclaims that “necessity is the mother of invention.” These findings serve as a reminder that the opposite is also true: invention is the mother of necessity. Throughout human history, from the wheel to the computer, previously unimaginable inventions have created their own demand, and eventually their own need.

The income data would seem to back this up: what we have, we often come to define as necessities.

I would love to see an international comparison of some sort. I’ll see what I can find.

UPDATE: I haven’t found an international comparison yet, but I discovered that the Pew Research Center conducted the survey again in 2009 to see if attitudes had changed during the recession. Quite a striking change for several items:

d

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Stacey Burns wrote in to tell us about her successful effort to fight an ad campaign that objectified women and trivialized sex work.  She explains:

USI Wireless, an Internet provider that has a ten-year contract to provide wireless to the city of Minneapolis, recently launched a new ad campaign promoting its service. The ad features the image of a young woman who we are clearly meant to read as a sex worker, accompanied by the text “FAST, CHEAP, and SATISFACTION GUARANTEED.”

A photo of the billboard was placed on Facebook, which she saw on a friend’s page, and then re-posted with a critique.  She contacted the company, whose representatives were “polite but dismissive, telling [her] that they test-marketed the ad and it did well in focus groups.”  The photo of the billboard went viral and she took it to the City Council, who “responded to public outcry and succeeded in getting the ad pulled from the 12 locations it was posted” (story here).

Burns’ story is a nice example of how collective action, facilitated by the internet, can make a difference.

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For more examples of this kind of resistance, read about fights against the Obama sock monkey, a Target ad, Mr. Wasabi, Frito Bandito, Motrin’s idea of motherhood, and the rebellyon.

For similar stories

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Google searches are (as far as I know) purely a function of their algorithm.*  A company, for example, is not supposed to be able to pay Google to increase its rank in the results.  Google does, however, sell something on its search results page.  If a company buys a search term, when a person searches for that term, Google will place a “sponsored link” at the top of its results page that is discreetly identified as advertising.  See the upper right corner of the very gently shaded link that appears at the top of search results for the word “dell.”  This is advertising purchased by Dell computers:

Keith Marsalek at nola.com alerted me to the fact that British Petroleum (BP) has bought a bunch of search terms and phrases such that, when one searches for information about the oil spill, the first thing that comes up is BP’s public relations website (selection below).  They are hoping that internet users, whether they recognize that BP has bought the top slot or not, will read their version of events and, perhaps, only their version of events.

Read nola.com’s oil spill page instead.

UPDATE: To clarify, I’m not suggesting that this is surprising or that BP is uniquely evil in doing this.  I’m simply pointing out that money buys the power to shape the distribution of information.  Many of you have commented that “sponsored links” are ads and just skip right over them.  But others might not.  The link and the shading is very subtle.  Even if a person sees the phrase “sponsored link,” they might interpret it to mean that Google thinks it’s a good link, one they sponsored.  Not everyone is a sophisticated consumer of the internet.  And, even if they know it’s an ad, not everyone is as suspicious of ads, nor of companies, as some.  So I think buying the ad will, in fact, make it so that more people will be exposed to BP’s version than otherwise.  And that’s all I was trying to say.  It’s just a simple example of the relationship between power and knowledge.

* I know there is plenty of controversy over there algorithm as well.  Feel free to discuss that in the comments as well.

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Feminist Conversations is a new feature at Feminist For Choice. We are sitting down and to chat with fellow activists to find out what kind of rabble they’re rousing in their neck of the woods.Peggy Cooke is a Canadian pro-choice activist. She works as the volunteer coordinator/office assistant at the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and volunteers as a media spokesperson for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. In her spare time she enjoys feminist gumboot dancing, cuddling with cats, and tearing down the patriarchy. She regularly blogs at Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome. I caught up with her over the weekend to ask her a few questions about what feminist activism means to her.

1. When did you first call yourself a feminist, and what influenced that decision?
I like to say I was raised feminist. I honestly don’t remember when the word first entered my day-to-day vocabulary, and I had no “a-ha!” moment where I said, yes, I am a feminist. My mother is a feminist and she models that worldview in everything she does. I basically just followed her lead without realizing that it isn’t an outlook that everyone gets in childhood.

Eventually of course I started developing a feminist lens of my own, and my mum and I don’t always see eye to eye on some of the standard stuff that I think divides a lot of second and third wave feminists. Like trans issues, intersectionality, and all that. Not that she isn’t open to it, but it’s a whole educating/passing the torch process. My mum started me on the feminist path, but then my influences were mainly women’s studies classes, and now it is feminist blogs, in a big way. I didn’t know what privilege was, or intersectionality, or how to be an ally, until I started reading blogs.

2. What does feminism mean to you?
To me feminism means, simply, equality. But I really see things through that intersectional lens, so it can’t just be gender equality. Gender equality is useless without everything else, and I don’t think it will be achieved in a vacuum. All oppressions intersect and so my feminism HAS to include other marginalized groups. Feminism is an idea that for me, is constantly evolving. I am new to the concept of kyriarchy and while it makes sense to me, it is really an overwhelming idea to digest. So I’m working on that.

3. What types of feminist activism are you engaged in?
My big issue at this point in my life is reproductive rights. A lot of the real nitty-gritty activism I do is centerd around abortion. I do a lot of the standard “second wave” style activism: media interviews, protests and rallies, that kind of thing. But I also am trying to expand the ways I can use the internet as an activism tool. Social networking kind of blows my mind. I realize a lot of it is problematic for a lot of reasons, but I love it. I love how it connects us. Right now the most time I spend on activism is spent writing for blogs and making connections with people over the internet.

There are a lot of other types of feminist activism I am interested in, but I’m not really *doing* right now. I’m just trying to learn all I can so I can be a good ally. Gender identity and trans issues are huge for me right now. I’m also very interested in cultural appropriation. And a lot of big ideas like nationalism and global capitalism. There is so much going on right now, it’s overwhelming. But really exciting at the same time. I feel so lucky to live in an age where people who are historically marginalized are able to have a voice and reach a huge audience through the internet. I am learning so much.

4. What has been your best feminist activism to date, and what was it that made it successful?
Without question, my blog. I started it when I was a volunteer clinic escort, just to blow off steam and to give myself a space to debrief. But I tapped into a need I didn’t realize existed. I live in a province that has illegal restrictions on abortion, and ours is one of the few clinics in Canada that gets regularly picketed. There are a lot of problems with access here. And most people don’t know! So when I started writing the blog, people were just shocked to know how hard it is for women in New Brunswick to access abortion. My blog became a place where people could find out what was really happening every day to women here.

The impact of the blog has been incredible. It has helped me to recruit new volunteers, it has put me in touch with other activists and led to so many opportunities for me. Writing is one thing that I know I can do well, so being able to use that skill to raise awareness about the situation here and to make tangible changes is so amazing. Not everybody gets an opportunity like that, and I am grateful for it every day.

5. People often say, “you can’t be a feminist if . . .” What is one of your “secret indulgences” that you love, despite the feminist contradictions?
So many things! Really, I can’t get behind that “you can’t be a feminist if…” mentality. I don’t feel that anyone should be the gatekeeper of feminism. It is an accessible philosophy and should stay that way. And no one is perfect. We are all coping with something, and we are all trying to exist within an oppressive system. We do what we can to get by.

That said, there is a lot of “unfeminist” stuff that I love. The main thing I think all my friends would say about me would be Hello Kitty. I know the whole concept of her is totally infantile and silly – also, how creepy is it that she doesn’t have a mouth! – but I just love her. Another big one would be beauty pageants. I don’t know why. And in terms of day-to-day stuff, I love a lot of super cliche romcoms, and I like the way my legs feel when I shave them (plus all the millions of other ways I conform to the female beauty standard). But whatever. In the end, I think you always just have to follow your heart.

Thanks so much to Peggy for participating in our Feminist Conversations, and for all the great work she is doing in New Brunswick.  If you would like to participate in the discussion, please leave us a comment below, or send an e-mail to serena@feministsforchoice.com.