feminist blogs in english

I'm preparing this completely new course for the Fall semester. It's the kind of a course that has never been taught not only at my university but also at any other university where I worked. It's going to be completely innovative and contain a number of very original activites that I worked on all summer. In short, I am very proud of this course and can't wait to start teaching it. When some of

This week the New York Times reported on the death of Nirupama Pathak, a high caste woman recently married and pregnant with her partner, a lower caste man.  Honor killings, though illegal, have been a chronic practice in India (and a number of other countries) for some time. But recently, the antiquated stain fell upon [...]

A week prior to its July 13th release, M.I.A.’s new album, /\/\/\Y/\ (or Maya), was made available streaming on the artist’s MySpace page. The agitprop-meets-cyberpunk video for “Born Free” is the most inspiring thing I’ve seen all year (a clear indication that M.I.A.’s message is as much visual as it is aural), and my guess [...]

One of the most persistent myths that women-haters love to spread is about women surreptitiously getting pregnant in order to keep men in their lives and get access to their money. It has always been obvious to anybody with an ounce of common sense that this is nothing but a ridiculous chauvinistic myth. Research demonstrates that it's men who engineer unwanted pregnancies. Lynn Harris analyzes this phenomenon in her incisive article "When Teen Pregnancy Is No Accident":

Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women’s health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. (“Control” may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.) Together with earlier small-scale studies and reports by those in the field, the new figures help fill out the picture of a long-known, but under-addressed, phenomenon now referred to as "reproductive coercion,” in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. The new data confirm that we must expand not only our assumptions about who’s forcing whom to get pregnant but also our understanding of the meaning and causes of “unwanted” pregnancy. “If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it,” says Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which has been a leading advocate on the issue.

Reproductive coercion is often the result of violence and abuse in relationships. Of course, how can we be surprised that this happens so often when there is an entire political party dedicated to promoting reproductive coercion on a planetary basis? Any politician who engages in an anti-abortion campaign or measure participates in a large-scale reproductive coercion.

There’s a recent post over on Womanist Musings that slams the TV show “The Biggest Loser.” The main argument in the post is that shows like “The Biggest Loser” promote unhealthy views about weight loss and self image. While I agree with the general crux of this argument, I also have to add my two cents about obesity, weight loss, and the connection to feminist politics.

I have a very complicated relationship with dieting and body image. I was an anorexic throughout high school, but I am now currently overweight. I would love to be able say that feminism has helped me learn to love my body, but that isn’t the case. There is no outside to patriarchy, and as much as we would like to believe that embracing feminism means that we will learn to love ourselves exactly as we are, that has not happened for me. I am learning to love my body every day, but this will be an ongoing struggle for me until the day I die.

I joined Weight Watchers several months ago, because I want to lose weight and feel better about my body. I am not doing this because I think that I have to fit into some patriarchal standard of beauty. I am doing this because I want to make healthier choices about my food and create a positive self-image. So far, I am doing well. I go to my meetings every week, and meet other people who are facing the same challenges that I am, and I have lost an average of two pounds a week since I joined. This post is not meant to be an endorsement of Weight Watchers. But it is meant to give an explanation of why I feel like weight loss is a feminist issue.

There are many feminists who embrace their body fat, and I applaud them for it. I think women are fabulous at any size. But I also think that we should support people when they choose to make healthier eating decisions in order to improve their overall well-being. Dieting is not anti-feminist – even though I have taken many Women’s Studies classes that would have me believe otherwise.

What’s your experience been like? Do feminists have just as many problems learning to love their body as anyone else? If you’ve gone on a diet, have you felt like a sell out to the cause? I’d love to hear your voice.

When I think of music’s, or specifically singing’s, liberatory potential, one voice immediately springs to mind: the earth-shattering, shiver-inducing, bone-chilling instrument possessed by Aretha Franklin. Aretha’s amazing talent is intimately linked for me with freedom, not only because of her own, very real struggle to express herself as a black woman artist, but also because [...]

The India society is patriarchal to the core – simply stated, men rule the roost. The society in general seems to have resigned to this, while women have been forced to reconcile to be the ‘fairer sex’. However, we are a society that worships women. Our goddesses of strength, wisdom, love, and power, are all personified as women. I cannot understand that irony here; India has one of the highest rates of female infanticide and dowry-deaths, while the society and the government claim to vigorously promote the girl-child and women’s emancipation. How can a society that boasts of a rich, ancient, and varied culture simultaneously glorify and dehumanize women – how can mythical womanhood be celebrated and worshiped in the form of a goddess at the temple, while helpless women are subject to eve-teasing, torture, abuse, discrimination, and unspeakable indignity.

These fascinating observations come from a post from my dear colleague and friend Catherine Xavier. What Catherine observes is very true not only of India but of all patriarchal societies. Putting women on a pedestal, worshipping women, idolizing them - these practices do not contradict patriarchal values in the least. Just the opposite, these are some of the techniques that the patriarchy relies upon for its very existence.

The main goal of any patriarchal system is to keep women subjected to the needs of men. Female choices, desires, the multitude of differences each individual woman represents have to be reduced to one clearly defined set of roles and expectations that the patriarchy imposes on women. Putting women on a pedestal achieves this goal admirably. Idolizing somebody always translates into imposing a very high set of expectations on this person. As a result, the idolized group of individuals cannot live freely, according to their own desires and needs. They have constantly to  render accounts to the society that places them on a pedestal as to whether their actual behavior is in keeping with the set of expectations imposed on them.

There is another role that this women-worship plays in patriarchal systems. In order to exist as long as the patriarchy has existed, every system, no matter how oppressive it is, has to offer some compensation, some benefits to each of its members. Women are compensated for their participation in the patriarchal system in a variety of ways. This is simply one of them. Your life choices are limited, your mind and body are not your own, but in return, you are worshipped and told you represent the "fairer sex."

On June 1st, we’ll begin discussing Infidel, a memoir by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Hirsi Ali is one of the most well-known Islamic dissidents of the 20th century. Born in Somalia, Hirsi Ali grew up in Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Kenya and Sudan before fleeing to Holland as a refugee in the early 90′s.  She provides a [...]

This post is by Renina from New Model Minority, and is cross-posted here. Yesterday,  I had a conversation on Twitter with @harryallen, about Black nationalism and Black and White feminism, It all started when I tweeted: If White feminist examined the ways in which they were dominated by white men more closely, they would have [...]

As I mentioned earlier, I was attacked on another blog for expressing my opinion about what feminism is. I created this response to allow readers to discuss amongst yourselves as to what feminism is and who it should include. I thought the discussion went pretty well (compared to the discussion over at FAB blog). The [...]