This is bad, but not unsurprising news (Free registration required):

This is standard care for rape victims, not a political battleground. As Rob Findlay says, anti-abortion rights groups “want the public to believe that emergency contraception — ‘the morning after pill’ — is on the same level as an early abortion.” In reality it is closer to the birth control pill, a much higher dosage of it.

Outlaw the morning-after pill and there isn’t much standing in the way to begin chipping away at our other reproductive options such as, to be alarmist, the Pill.

Though I have taken a break from the computer, I have managed to compile a list of noteworthy items.

1. Alternet brings us two retrospectives on 2004, Arianna Huffington’s list of Things to Forget and the Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2003-04. My favorite is the “conspiracy” that the war on Iraq is not about control of natural resources. In my circle, we call that propaganda.

2. The Stepford Way: a female fantasy? Amanda of Mousewords has plenty to say on the notion of the general attractiveness of female submission.
3. A guest blogger at Buzz, Balls, and Hype examines Mommy Lit, big sister to Chick Lit, and the notion that motherhood is not interesting to those who aren’t mothers. (And for that matter, that literary accounts of women’s experiences aren’t as interesting as men’s.)
4. Sixteen Tons of Fun: Dave Eggers of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” writes on Monty Python. I received Eggers’ most recent work, “How We Are Hungry,” for Christmas and it is wonderful, better than his sophomoric effort.
5. New to my blogroll is Whirled View, a blog by three highly credentialed women on liberal and progressive politics. Patricia Kushlis writes Selling Cars, Colas and Countries.
   People in the White House and Pentagon are baffled. According to The New York Times on December 13, American policy makers can?t understand why a country able to market cars and colas to people deeply hostile to the U.S. can’t also “sell its democratic ideals” to them. Madison Avenue is infamous for its ability to persuade people to buy things they don’t need and can’t afford, and yet, our leaders observe, the U.S. falls short in persuading most Arabs (or even most Europeans) that the Iraq invasion was a good idea.

   The Bush administration has been fixated from day one on the “marketing” and “sales” models for influencing foreign publics. Soon after the inaugural a successful ad woman was appointed to head up the Public Diplomacy section of the State Department. To the surprise only of those who recruited her, the lady failed to generate a love fest for America in the Middle East. So she’s gone; wanted to spend more time with the family or something like that, the usual pretext for the departure of a high level political appointee.

   Why am I not surprised or baffled? [more]

6. And finally a fun link, Bollywood for the Skeptical. I have been drawn into the glory of Bollywood this year after taking two movie-heavy classes on South Asian culture. If you don’t know where to start, begin downloading the songs from the 1950s and 60s and anything performed by Lata Mangeshkar. You won’t be disappointed. While you’re at it, rent the 2001 Academy Award nominee “Lagaan” over the new year.

Happy New Year to all! Be safe and smart, as all of you undoubtedly are, over the holiday weekend.

As I’m sure many of you have by now noticed, no one can add new comments. I’m not sure what’s wrong; I’ve emailed the admin, and hopefully the problem will be fixed soon.

Page 22 is done! Well, sort of. I’m running late, so I’ve posted the black and white art. Later on, I’ll replace it with the color image.

UPDATE: Color artwork is now online.

UPDATE 2: The cross-hatching on Fruma’s right hand looked pretty good on the black-and-white version, but looks awful and muddy in color, so I just went and removed 90% of it. Much better now.

It’s a strange day when I agree with a Tech Central Station article. But this article on exercise and weight loss (via Big Fat Blog) is interesting.

The article goes on to describe several more studies which found the same result: for many people, exercise won’t lead to significant weight loss.

What’s horrible about this is that, by presenting exercise for fat people as primarily about weight loss, mainstream media and medicine may actually be increasing deaths among fat people. Because exercise for fat people is presented as a weight loss issue, those fat people who try exercise and find that they remain fat may not see the point of continuing. After all, the exercise program “failed.”

If the major media and the medical establishment preached that exercise - not weight loss - was the key to good health, then many people (especially fat people) might exercise more, and therefore lead longer, healthier lives.

But mainstream opinion-makers won’t do that. Sure, it might save some lives, but there are more imporant issues at stake here. Talking about exercise and health for fat people, without making losing weight the measure of success, implies that we can be fat and in good health. And that view is heretical in our fat-phobic society.

Arguably, it’s not only heretical - it’s immoral. For many people, being fat isn’t just a physical trait; it’s a moral flaw. And suggesting that people should be fat and fit is suggesting that immorality should go unpunished. To the most fat-phobic people, that suggestion doesn’t just sound wrong; it sounds unjust.

Tis the season for holiday angst… about just how many calories we’ve all consumed over said holiday. Isn’t it? I mean, after all, my company found it necessary to remind all of us of the dangers of holiday poundage. CNN wrote up a whole little news story about the ::gasp:: link between consuming excess booze and inhaling excess calories. My favorite line from the CNN article?

“A drink now and then probably won’t leave you with a holiday belly, but knocking back too many six-packs can do a number on your six-pack abs.”

As if someone with six-pack abs doesn’t know how many calories are in their beer.

Looking at all of these “you’re fat” articles and the dieting craze that’s making a lot of people (most of them white men, but a lot of white female dieting gurus as well) really, really rich, I can’t help but notice the language they use: the American people are deeply stupid adolescents. They don’t know how to take care of their bodies. Everybody who isn’t a size 2 just isn’t trying hard enough. Let’s pat them on the head and tell them how stupid they are.

And this kind of language doesn’t get any of us anywhere.

First, I want to say that I agree with pretty much all of what Amp’s had to say about the Fear of Fat controversy in the US (and the bias against enormous Americans overseas). But after spending another holiday with my enormous, depressed family discussing the pros and cons of that latest rage - gastric bypass surgery - I’ve got something else to say about the weight controversy that’s really been bugging me.

I come from a family of big people who put on weight and retain it pretty easily. There’s nothing wrong with that. Twenty extra pounds is actually better for you than being five pounds underweight. The problem is, my family struggled with those twently pounds for so long that they eventually got depressed and gave up, and twenty became fifty, became eighty, became one hundred, and now we’re in some trouble, because they’re having trouble getting up the stairs, they can’t walk around the block, and listening to some of my family members gasping for breath is really scary.

I have an aunt who just got gastric bypass surgery. My dad’s scheduled for it in February. My sister’s “mother-in-law” is currently recovering. Everyone’s very excited at the idea that if you starve yourself because you’re stomach is so small, you suffer from malnutrition and lose weight. It’s like magic. ha ha

So what’s wrong with suffering from malnutrition and losing weight? It’ll make `um feel better, right?

Wrong.

You know why?

Cause most of these people don’t have any hobbies. They don’t know any other way to live. They’ve relied on food as entertainment for so long that now that they don’t eat, they have no idea what to do with all of their time.

And that was really the issue all along, wasn’t it? Finding something else to do besides eating. Picking themselves up from depression (usually incited by the fact that they had twenty “extra” pounds that were actually perfectly healthy for their size and body composition) and building model airplanes, or taking up some Jazzercise classes, or even joining a scrapbooking class. Something besides eating.

And they don’t have anything.

That’s my biggest worry about all of our quick fixes, all of those “lose those twenty pounds and suddenly your life will all work out” myths. It’s a bunch of crap. Sure, there are going to be those who find that starving themselves and being thin(ner) is a good kickstart to get them exercising and eating right (two of the biggest factors in combating depression) and may give them the self confidence to start other hobbies, to get their shit together.

But there are going to be a lot more people who find that at the end of the day, there’s less of them, and they’re still empty.

We’re stuck so much in the weight loss = happiness dialogue that we’re not interested in encouraging people to be better, to be smarter, to make the most of their talents. We’re telling them that the entirety of thier selfworth is based on their body size.

And I think that’s dangerous.

The new issue of EM is available on-line now.

The new issue includes articles by some already familiar names, such as

Echidne of the Snakes:

Flea of One Good Thing:

There are also articles on:

From HipHop and Black Participation by Shauntrice Martin:

The “Babe” Culture by regular EM columnist, David Scott:

From War and AIDS by frequent EM writer, Kamala Sarup:

Separtism: Are We Limiting Ourselves? by Hannah Austin:

And much, much more.

Unfortunately, I underestimated just how awfully slow this dial-up connection here is in backwoods Small Town America (TM), so I’ve dug up an oldy but a goodie post of mine from Brutal Women, and I’m posting it here for your enjoyment.

Cheers…

On Merit. And Sex. Of Course.

So, it bugged Amanda and Echidne, too, which I find quite funny, because when I hopped over to Kos’s place and read his justification for the lack of PC diversity among his guestbloggers, something in me went, “Huh?” too. Amanda explored the issue further, I think, in this post about the democratic party’s seeming reluctance to forward a progressive agenda for women.

Kos’s comment actually read a lot like the backlash against affirmative action. I would love it if we lived in a world where merit alone really decided whose voices we hear, but as Amanda and Echidne pointed out, we don’t live there. Bringing in a voice that comes at issues from a new and different perspective (non-white, non-male, non-Christian) is a merit in itself.

Now, I’m not going to harp on Kos, because blogs are, of neccessity, very personal endeavors, and you have a right to run them the way you want to: but if you’re looking to put forward voices for progressive change and you take out women - those bold, powerful women and minorities whose campaigns for equal rights shook up this country so enourmously and so quickly in the 60s and 70s, then you’re missing a whole lot of shit. You’re missing the whole point. You’re not looking to change the world, you’re just looking to change your own place in it. And when you’re on top, you’ll switch sides and go conservative, because you’ve altered the system so that you and your white male buddies are in charge, instead of rich guys like Bush and his buddies.

Shuffling around old white men within the same power heirarchy isn’t getting any of us anywhere. It’s got the dollar dropping, healthcare sucking wind, social security going out the window, and a backlash against women’s rights that’s been steadily getting worse (in some circles) since the 80s.

Because what are we really talking about, when we talk about these “huge issues” “dividing” the country? Sure, the war in Iraq is huge. The war on terrorism is huge. But creating Big Bad Enemies is supposed to unite a country, not divide it.

The issues that were put up front to handwave people away from the war are the two big issues that people in the US are now most passionate about, and clawing at each other about: abortion/reproductive rights and homosexuality.

Let’s get that straight (ha), once and for all. The attacks on freedoms have to do with women. Yes, yes, terrorism is a big issue, and racism, and I don’t want to forget those - but reproductive rights and attacking homosexuality and preaching Back to Bible Basics is about controlling women.

Gay men are scary because the conception of “gay men” in red-staters heads likely brings to mind anal sex (whether or not said men engage in anal sex), and the gender binary says that means one of them’s gotta be passive, one of them’s gotta be the woman. Which means any man can be passive. Any man can be the woman. And in a society whose fear and disgust for women is shared by many women who spent their childhoods believing they could grow up to be “real” people, this is a terrible revelation.

And there’s nothing scarier to people who love to argue biological and/or Bible determinism than two women who not only can support themselves, raise children together, and provide one another emotional support, but don’t need men around for sex either, cause they’re quite fulfilled all on their own.

That’s some scary shit.

And, scarier than that: women who can decide to have children or not. Women who decide, therefore, whether or not a man has children.

That’s why people are angry about abortion. That’s why the father’s rights freak-outs are freaking out.

Women control fertility. Children don’t come out of thin air. They’re created OF a woman’s body: her blood, the food she eats, the air she breathes. That’s what makes a baby. A woman. Men submit a string of DNA, which triggers a chemical reaction inside of the egg, and the egg begins to divide itself. An egg is cells. Dividing cells attach to the wall of the uterus. Attaches back to the woman. And it’s women’s bodies that take over from there. Life depends on women. Life is women.

Get over it.

This pisses people off. It’s always pissed people off.

If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, then the people who control women control the world.

That’s why controlling women is a major part of pretty much all major religions. That’s why women should be quiet in church, and obey their husbands, and not fall in love with women.

And yea, this world doesn’t benefit all men. There are lots of geeky guys who don’t want to be violent, and hurt people, and be mean to women, and play sports, and rule the world. There are a lot of guys who really do want to just have friends, and love people. In fact, I think most people are like that, male or female. If we let sex be more social and less romantic-kill-me-I’m-dying-you-must-marry-me-cause-I’m-lonely/pregnant/can’t do my own laundry, then I think we’d be getting back to what the hell sex is really about in the first place. There’s a reason women’s clitorises are outside of the vagina, and a reason 70-80% of women don’t have orgasims with penetrative sex alone.

Sex isn’t all about procreation.

::gasp::

The biological “facts” about men and women like to ignore the clitoris, and the fact that men can get off just fine without a vagina.

Sex is about keeping people together, forming social connections, it’s about showing affection. And when women are allowed to control their sexuality, when they decide that no, maybe, they’ll live in a house of women and raise children, or a house with some guy friends and some girlfriends, or a house by themselves, they have the power to cut men out of the affection loop, and eventually, the children loop, if they so choose.

This is real power. And women are raised to believe their bodies are wacky, abberant, dirty, disgusting, bloody, awful, fat things.

The bodies that could rule the world.

We’re told we don’t have merit. We don’t have voices, because if we were really all that good, obviously, someone would have noticed us. If we were quieter, prettier, if we preached violent foreign policy, men would like us, and if we parrotted their own views back at them, we’d be allowed to talk.

We would talk about what they wanted to talk about: We’d stop talking so much about those silly bloody uteruses that are so obviously so bloody fucking unimportant that the women carrying said uteruses have been the targets of rage, hatred, and Biblical control for most of recorded history.

In fact, women’s issues are so completely frivolous that men don’t even talk about them, except to harp about how women being able to take care of themselves and kiss each other is biologically abberant because it leaves men out, and how women should be forced to carry around a man’s strand of DNA until her body creates a child with it because “killing” a man’s DNA is so much more awful than forcing women into slavery for said DNA.

Yes, we’ve been over this before. Women bloggers aren’t read because in addition to screaming at the world and talking about healthcare and politics, they talk about their uteruses, and talking about uteruses doesn’t interest men.

In fact, it doesn’t interest anyone at all.

That’s why entire religions, social mores, and scientific theories have been built up to control them.

Women have no merit at all.

I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner: being a woman, and all.

Horizon Air Collectable Fine China.

Just one day and 23 hours of bidding time left!

Here it is… Sorry it wasn’t up a week ago… I’ve started drawing on larger paper. The difference is apparent to me (the larger size is letting me use a more variable line), but I’m not sure that anyone else will be able to see it.

Oh, and now that Shabbos is over, we’re back to that plot thing. Remember the plot? :-P

I read this article by Katha Pollitt earlier this year and it has yet to leave me. In Whose Culture? Pollitt responds to an essay by Susan Okin and agrees that multiculturalism and feminism are, if not in tension, often opposed to one another. Pollitt doesn’t understand how this can be considered controversial, but I find it awfully provocative.

Pollitt says,

How can this be? I wondered. Academic feminism and academic multiculturalism seem to be two branches off the same tree. Further, Pollitt frames feminism as a superior philosophical mode in a way that makes me rather uncomfortable. I want gender equality, but I don’t want to erase the cultural traditions that only I deem deserving of respect.

But in some sense, Pollitt is right. Look at sati, the French banning of headscarves, the global wish for daughters to marry rich over acquiring education.

My mentor, Dr. B, recently wrote on the practice of female genital mutilation/female circumcision:

Teacherly moments are the times in which a facilitator attempts to resolve a tension by exposing and revealing the incongruities between two lines of thought, a method employed by Lindon Barrett in his book comparing African-American pedagogy with traditional “white” pedagogy. This moment of juxtaposition between those who willingly inflict FC on themselves (and those who inflict it on others) with the Western ideal of free female sexuality is one in which it becomes far too easy to demonize and name-call the Other. In other words, it’s a perfect teacherly moment.

FC and phenomenon like it are problems in themselves, but more widely, are symptomatic of the larger propensity for an androcentric, patriarchal worldview in which women are othered and mystified, and that imagined female otherness and mystery must be contained.

For me, the education against FC and other symptoms of patriarchy is not so simple. It comes to this: the line between “education” and Western indoctrination is very narrow once it crosses the border. In addition, the difference between rightly educating a community and operating from a xenophobic, racist space is also a strong concern. We must educate ourselves to avoid the mischaracterization of the communities we attempt to reach, and as Dr. B says, “learn the other folks’ rules.”

From over here, snug in my windowless office in Collegetown, USA, it is easy to forget that in any area where oppression occurs, there is usually a counter-movement already in place working from within to change the minds and experiences of the oppressors and the oppressed. Rather than swooping down and inflicting their movement with my urgency, I lend my economic and emotional support from afar.

What, you didn’t think I’d go there?

Amanda over at Mousewords pointed to a Bitch Magazine article about the controversy among pro-choice women regarding the “I Had An Abortion” T-shirts.

Like sex, pregnancy in general, and lesbianism, it appears that abortions should stay in the bedroom (preferably the bedroom closet), too.

That way, we can pretend they don’t exist.

Makes them easier to pass legislation against.

In South Africa, on the U of Natal campus, they had the “HIV Positive” shirts. In the province I lived in, Kwa-Zulu Natal, the HIV infection rate was about 1 in 3, and there’s a huge stigma around going to get tested, getting treatment, asking a partner to wear a condom or wearing a condom, and some very real fears that the whole HIV thing was actually just a mythical disease made up by white people to discourage black people from having sex - sad to say, the latter was an understandable fear from people who’d had an entire government trying to contain and regulate their sexuality for the better part of the century.

AIDS awareness day meant breaking out the HIV positive shirts - whether you were HIV positive or not - and the day I walked onto campus and saw the shirts was the day I started to really understand just how hard-hitting AIDS was in Southern Africa. No, all of these people likely didn’t have AIDS, but there were some who did walking around with the shirts on, and statistically speaking, many, many more who knew they were but didn’t talk about it.

Because those who had HIV were ostracized and looked down on. Having HIV was seen as something shameful, and not to be talked about.

Wearing the HIV shirts wasn’t about identity, or oversharing one’s personal life: it was about raising awareness.

We are human beings. We have sex. We do human things, and those choices have very real ramifications. Look. See. I have HIV, and I’m still alive.

I had an abortion.

Look. See. I’m still here. I’m happy. Life goes one. That’s what choice is all about.

If you don’t scream things from the rafters: abortion, HIV, “those lesbians”/”those gays,” “those Jews,” are always “other people.”

Never “us.”

And it needs to be “us.”

It’s a lot tougher to tell your sister, or Susie down the street, what to do with her body than it is to tell some mythical half-imagined “desperate” woman who you imagine shouldn’t have been engaging in very real human sex anyway.

Silence is scary. Silence makes all of us “the other.”

If you want to read a book that just might piss you off, pick up Colette Dowling’s The Frailty Myth, an excellent examination of social expectations for women regarding sport, fitness & strength.

I’ve been forwarded a couple of sites from some well-meaning biological determinists and some out-right wingnuts, and their cozy talk about how naturally weak and nurturing all women are (implying that all men are strong and non-nurturing) really started to get to me. Now that I’m pursuing martial arts, and sometimes fighting in mixed-sex pairs with guys who are my same height, weight and belt rank: I can tell you right now, arguing vast biological difference is just another way to beat women over the head with how weak they have to be so they can make men feel better about being men.

The biggest biological difference between men and women?

Most women can bear children. Men can’t.

The end.

When you start talking about equal participation of women in sport - and I’m not just talking about women’s same-sex teams, I’m talking about allowing women to compete with men - you end up confronting, again, those old biological “truths”:

Men are stronger than women. Men are faster than women. Men are better than women.

Say it long enough and loud enough, you just might believe.

A little like the litany: White people are better than black people. White people are smarter than black people.

It’s biological truth. Right?

Women were kept out of institutions of higher learning because “science” said that women had smaller, weaker brains than men did. All women were incapable of “higher thought.”

That was biological truth. That was fact.

Then you sat women down in a classroom, taught them how to read and produce scholarly work, and oh, shit… wait. Women who use those little brains don’t perform half bad. In fact, they perform better than lots of men, and each other. Human differences, and all.

I hate the way we talk about strength.

Some men can throw a better punch than some women. And likely, the men can do it because they have more experience in it. But you start teaching women how to fight, how to duck, you start encouraging women to be loud, and roughhouse, and climb trees and throw ball, and you know what? Women catch up pretty quickly, to the point where those “differences” in overall strength and fitness is a difference of 2%.

How much more can we narrow that gap by encouraging women to take pride in their bodies, in movement, at an earlier age, and teach them that puberty doesn’t mean they become an object, it means they can take control of their body and their sexuality?

The first woman to swim the English Channel did it faster than the five men who’d gone before her.

When women started winning against men in the Olympic archery competitions, the yardage for men and women was staggered, so no woman could say she shot with more accuracy at the same exact range as a male competitor.

The one time a man posed as a woman at the Olympic games in 1936 (this is the Deep Fear all of those Olympic officials give when they say they’ve gotta “sex test” female participants. Could you imagine the outrage if a male boxer was made to “scientifically prove” his sex before every match?), the guy set a new world-record in pole-vaulting.

The next year, three women beat his old record, and a woman took home the gold.

The WNBA plays with different rules: a smaller ball, a shorter 3-point distance, and halves instead of quarters.

Why?

A shorter 3-point distance no doubt means that more women get 3-pointers. It would also mean more men would get them, too.

WTF?

It’s not that women topping out at over 6ft tall don’t have big enough hands. It’s not that women over 6ft tall aren’t tall enough to hit 3-pointers. Women could just as easily play a game in quarters as halves.

The deal is, no man wants to be compared to a woman. No guy in the NBA wants some hot young female player to play the same game and come out looking better than him. If she’s got a better scoring record than him, so what? They have a smaller ball and a shorter 3-point range. Of course she outscored him.

It’s a woman thing. It’s different. She’s not a real person. She can’t compete.

Why should women have different fitness standards than men, in high school, in combat?

My buddy Jenn says fit tests are a problem because men are so protective of reserving sports and combat as man-defining activities that they’ll raise the bar high enough to disqualify 60-70% of men just to prove a point: women can’t compete.

Problem would be, most men couldn’t compete either.

The army recently changed it’s PT standards, so men and women are required to do the same number of situps. In fact, the PT standards for women have risen in the last two decades as it became clear that women coming into training were performing wildly better than the previous generations - we’ve got a functioning title IX, and a growing acceptance and encouragement of women in sports. And, wow, hey, look at that: all the sudden, women are performing better.

I don’t think women “evolved” in twenty years to increase their biological capacity to kick ass.

But that’s just me.

I’m Kameron Hurley of Brutal Women, and like Lauren, am very pleased to be here.

I’m originally from Washington State, but I’ve been living in Uptown Chicago for over a year now, where I relocated after completing an MA at the University of Natal, in Durban, South Africa where I lived for a year and a half. My concentration was in the history of armed resistance against apartheid, and my MA looked at the propaganda put out by the African National Congress aimed at the recruitment of female guerilla fighters.

My areas of interest cover women in combat, war & gender, guerilla war and “terrorism” in general. You’ll also find that I have a personal interest in body acceptance, the power dynamics of abusive relationships, and a desire to take apart and examine both biological “sex” and gender, which I often do in my fiction work.

I’m a sporadically-seen spec. fiction writer (that’s science fiction & fantasy), and my stories spend a lot of time exploring the above themes in wildly different settings with wildly different rules… I have a couple of stories up here and here.

After much thought, I’ve decided to continue my posts in the same vein as those at Brutal Women. I was hoping I’d be able to do some more research-heavy posts this week… and then I realized I’m a day away from holiday madness. So we’ll save the purely academic hat for those days I have some breathing space.

All said, it’s good to be here, and I look forward to seeing in the holidays at Alas.

This is old-ish news, but I don’t want it to fall off the collective map.

One hundred and fifty sexual abuse cases are under investigation by the United Nations, and the offenders are the peacekeepers themselves.

From the NYTimes:

Accusations include rape, prostitution and pedophilia, and there is photographic and videographic evidence for some.

The NYTimes article also exposes one of the more uncomfortable aspects of this kind of widespread allegation, that some of the teen girls interviewed were comfortable with and liked the sex-for-money exchange with their foreign “boyfriends.”

Nonetheless, the most salient point is that even those designated to promote and preserve peace in war zones are not above the economic and sexual exploitation of war refugees. Even if those refugees are children. Should I be surprised?

The UN, already under extreme criticism from right-wing groups that endorse abandonment of the UN by the United States, cannot afford this loss of credibility. Most importantly, the refugees cannot afford to lose international support.

Related Reading: The UN position on women and violence.

My name is Lauren and I am an Alas addict.

Though I generally post on my own domain, Barry has been kind enough to allow me a guest spot on Alas, A Blog until I resolve my differences with my host’s server.

For those of you unfamiliar with me, I am a single mother who discovered feminism during my turbulent teen pregnancy. Blogging came to my attention right about the same time, and Alas was one of my first discoveries. I’m honored to begin writing here and hope y’all will be nice to your guest posters.

I’m interested in having some new guest posters on “Alas.” Posters must be feminist, obviously, and be more-or-less compatable with the general spirit of “alas” (not that I know what that is!).

I’m interested in “promoting” folks who write in comments here at “Alas” (don’t you hate those promotions that don’t come with a pay increase?), and also in folks who might be interested in guest-posting for a week or so as a way of publicizing their own blog.

Let me know via email if you’re interested, please.

UPDATE: Two people have volunteered and I couldn’t be more thrilled with who they are! Keep on watching…

P.S. I want to avoid “Alas” having so many posters that it’s hard to keep track of ‘em, so I’m not seeking any more guest posters right now. Maybe in the future.

Quoted with permission from The Economic Emergence of Women, by Barbara R. Bergmann (second edition, Palgrave, forthcoming in 2005)

When I started “Alas,” there were hardly any blogs that focused on feminist issues. Now I can’t even try to read them all, there are so many good ones. Here’s another three to check out:

• Brutal Woman. My favorite new (new to me) blog lately - consistantly excellent writing, great analysis.

• Volsunga.
• When you’re not around threesomes aren’t normal…

La Luba is (I’m fairly sure) a feminist as well as a kick-ass progressive, but her blog isn’t focused on gender or feminist issues, so I’ve added it in the “blogs of a feather” catagory.

I’ve also added left2right, a mainstream-democrat blog with a lot of philosophy professors contributing.

From a column in today’s Washington Post:

Remember, this sort of thing never happens anymore, and hasn’t happened for decades, if you listen to the anti-feminists. That aside, three things are particularly striking about this:

First, Viacom isn’t worried about emailing a request for collusion in breaking anti-discrimination laws to three Republican sentator. Viacom sees no danger anyone in that corner will object, I presume.

Second, a Washington Post columnist reprints the Viacom email and says nothing about the illegal sex discrimination.

And third, this is one hell of a great job, and it’s open to applicants only through back channels. And only if they’re male, of course. It’s the old-boy network in action (in this case a little oddly, since the VP who wrote the request is a woman).