Assuming that you’re a female undergraduate, that is.

The IWF, a partisan think tank that specializes in hewing to the GOP party line (the “I” stands for “independent,” which I assume is a joke) and attacking feminism, is holding a student essay contest. To enter the contest, you have to be a full-time undergraduate in the 05-06 school year, and a woman.

I think it would be great if dozens and dozens of undergrads from the feminist blogosphere entered this contest. Here’s the theme:

Please discuss your experience on college campus as an independent woman. How has your college or university helped or hindered your intellectual and personal growth? Please describe what you think it means to be an independent woman in the year 2005.

They only want 750 words, which is nothing. $5000 first prize, $3000 second prize, $2000 third prize, and $500 for 10 honorable mentions.

Since this is the IWF, I predict that the winning essays will frequently touch on these four much-beloved IWF themes (or variations thereof):

1. It’s so sad how the bitter drones who teach Women’s Studies think that they’re independent, when they’re actually sheep. But by standing up to bullying feministas, I learned how to be truly independent.

2. Our Adventure in Iraq/reading about women under Islamic law/women under Saddam has taught me that my independence is a priceless treasure. (Bonus points if you personally served in Iraq - or claim you did - before attending college).
3. I’m a person of color, to use a PC phrase I personally find silly, and boy do liberals strike me as condescending and racist! Affirmative Action is even more racist and insulting than liberals are! Only conservatives treat me like a person, instead of a skin color. I just want to be independent and free, like my hero, Laura Bush.
4. My best friend thought that “hooking up” with lots of guys meant she was independent, but really she was just being used by men who wanted to avoid commitment. My real independence lies in waiting for the right guy, even though liberal students and profs make fun of me, because they’re all so elite and insensitive.

Nothing in the rules requires the essays to be non-fiction or even sincere, so make up stuff the IWF wants to hear. There’s no entry fee, and no limit on the number of times you can submit essays. Midge Decker is one of the judges, so being subtly homophobic won’t hurt your chances.

Don’t be too obvious about it, and who knows? Maybe early next year, you’ll have $5000 anti-feminist dollars to help with tuition. Or if you’re in a giving mood, give a big chunk to the Feminist Majority Foundation or Emily’s List - and ask them to send a thank-you note to the IWF.

Just came across this passage on another blog and it cracked me up.

A ragtag bunch of ignorant losers who want to have sex with 72 virgins against a military increasingly de-balled by an effete media and seemingly intimidated president. No contest.

For some folks (not exclusively men - this blogger is a woman, I think), invading Iraq really is all about masculinity.

Recently I have had an interesting question put to me, first in terms of trying to understand the origins of feminism or an overlook of feminism, and now more specifically ‘why feminism?’ Bean offered the suggestion of a book called ‘Feminism is for Everybody’ by Bell Hooks, which I in turn offered to the young man questioning me. He has since directed this question at me, and I’m curious to hear others reactions and opinions to this question.

So besides the obvious answer of valuing equality as a societal virtue, what are some good solid answers for this question?

I picked up that book you said I should, Kim. I am on page 50. It is not answering my questions. It is discussing problems with the advancement of feminism, but it is not discussing why feminism is right.

My question:
Why not domination by men?

It’s true that not all societies have had this kind of domination, but in almost every society I have read about, including primitive hunter-gatherer ones, ones allegedly “egalitarian,” there tends to be greater access of men for power positions and the like. I’ve had feminist friends point this out. They despair of this. One friend said something like, “It’s like it’s human for men to dominate. It really makes me depressed.”

So why not domination? Why is feminism right in putting forth its agenda?

THAT is what I would like to understand. And if anyone can point me in the right direction of this, I would be grateful, but this book has done nothing to really grapple with a deeper philosophical problem. It said, “egalitarianism is good; feminism promotes egalitarianism.” But why is egalitarianism good? Why is it right? I need this question answered.

I am completely open-minded, but I am simply very skeptical. I really want to see all points of view, but I am having difficulty. This makes me think I am missing something. Feminism is one of the few political positions that I cannot personally identify with, and I want to change that. Not because I want to be a feminist, but I want to feel what it’s like to be a feminist. I hope this makes sense.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

Mind the Gap is one of my favorite new feminist blogs (new to me, at least!). Check out Winter Woods’ post on the Dove Beauty Campaign:

But at the risk of sounding like a humourless, spoil sport, never satisfied feminist I’m now going to come out and say “I’m not happy.” What’s not to like? Well I don’t like the fact that the empowerment is very little, very late, and I don’t like the questions about my own feminist thinking which this campaign raises. What really bothers me is not the fact that the Dove campaign is not radical, it is the frightening probability that, in the context of our current culture, this campaign is extremely radical. As feminists, this is what we should be worried about.

Exactly. (There’s lots, lots more to Winter’s post; you should read the whole thing.)

Let’s not forget how very little Dove is giving us. All the women in the Dove ads are conventionally attractive; all of them are below the average dress size of American women. No one in Dove-land is fat, no one in Dove-land is disabled, and no one in Dove-land has any wrinkles. It’s as if a prisoner was allowed out of her cell and into the prison yard. Well, yes, after a long confinement to a tiny cell, the “freedom” of an exercise yard might seem something to celebrate; but let’s not forget that she’s still in a prison.

The essential purpose of Dove’s campaign is the same as all ad campaigns for beauty or diet products: to make money by convincing people that they are unattractive and insufficient the way they really are. In Dove’s case, what’s being sold is “firming cream,” which as Lindsey at Majikthise points out, is just another word for snake oil. So Dove is trying to exploit women’s insecurities to convince them to waste money on products that don’t even work, but because they’re using models who are not actually anorexics, we’re supposed to see this as a feminist victory?

Winter Woods is right - if that’s radical, then we’re in deep trouble.

As a fat activist, I’m struck by how much the Dove ads - and also Nike’s recent bandwagoning ads - are less about body acceptance than about setting a boundary between acceptable and unacceptable weight. It’s okay to be bigger than a bundle of sticks, the ads tell us, so long as you’re firm. So long as your fat isn’t, you know, jiggly. Keep it in control, and you can keep those thunder thighs. Nike’s “my butt” ad features a picture of a butt that you could bounce a roll of quarters off of, with text that says:

My butt is big
And round like the letter C
And ten thousand lunges
Have made it rounder
But not smaller.

Ten thousand lunges! It’s under control, see. No loose, unruly fat running around here, no sir.

Similarly, Nike’s “Thunder Thighs” ad is sure to tell us that the thighs in question aren’t just large; they are “toned” and “muscular.” Not fat, that’s for damn sure.

These ads aren’t about body acceptance, so much as they’re about regulating the borders of what bodies are and are not acceptable. You will never see a body that is soft, or that has ever jiggled, in a Dove or Nike ad. We’ve been let out of the cell, but we’re still in the prison.

POSTSCRIPT: You must see the “repair work” some kick-ass anonymous artist did on the most offensive of Dove’s ads. Via Big Fat Blog.

From yesterday’s New York Times:

Iraqi leaders said they had also reached a tentative agreement to relegate marriage and family matters to adjudication by clerics, an arrangement opposed by secular leaders and women’s groups here, Iraqi leaders said.

The tentative agreements on Islam were brokered by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, according to a Kurdish negotiator who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the delicacy of the talks. The Kurdish leader said that in both cases, Mr. Khalilzad had sided with Shiite leaders in backing a more expansive role for Islam. That, the Kurd said, angered many of the secular-minded Iraqis who have been fighting for a stricter separation between Islam and the state.

According to the Kurdish leader, the secular Iraqis had pushed for language that would have narrowed the circumstances under which legislation would be deemed to be in conflict with Islam. And, according to the Kurd, the secular Iraqis had wanted marriage and family disputes to be adjudicated by civil courts, not by clerics.

“Your American ambassador is giving an Islamic character to the state,” the Kurdish leader said. “You spent all this money and all this blood to bring an Islamic republic here.”

(So why did the oh-so-liberal Times bury this deep in a story about the assassination of 3 Sunni election workers, where almost no one will see it?)

Pam’s House Blend is on this story, as well (and probably many others).

What is there to say, really? We came, we conquered, we screwed over women’s rights, and soon we’ll declare the whole thing a victory and leave them to their religious fundimentalist tyranny.

This post was removed by request of the author.

Amanda Marcotte fisks an offering from Not a Desperate Housewife that veers between the risible and the disturbing - a letter to a young woman from her vagina. Although the notion of a literate vagina invites mockery, it strikes me as a perfectly reasonable framework on which to hang advice: the problem only arises when the advice boils down to “save me for your future husband and all will be well”.

So I’ve shamelessly stolen the format, widened the focus so that the letter is from the whole body rather than just one part, and present my own version, possibly just as risible but hopefully not nearly as disturbing:

Greetings!

From what you read and hear, you might be forgiven for thinking that I belong to advertisers, or the government, or to your hypothetical future husband. I don’t. I belong to you and to you alone. Sometimes you need help or advice from other people about what’s best for me, but if you listen to me, you will understand me in ways no-one else can ever hope to understand me, and you must never let someone else’s opinion of what’s right override your own experience of me.

Don’t be in too much of a hurry to share me with the rest of the world. I’d like us to get to know each other first, just the two of us. We can have lots of fun together, and all the while you’ll be learning about me and what I can do for you. When the time comes to share me, you’ll enjoy the experience far more for everything you’ve learned. Have the courage to use all that knowledge to make us both happy: anyone who tries to make you ashamed of knowing what you like is not someone you should be sharing me with.

Remember that you don’t have to share me with anyone who asks. Sharing me with one man doesn’t mean you have to share me with every man, and sharing me with a man once doesn’t mean you have to share me with him every time he wants me. And if you find you’d rather share me with women than with men, you don’t have to try out any man who thinks he can change your mind. No-one has an automatic right to me except for you: you always have the final say on how and with whom you share me.

Take care of me so that I can stay healthy and useful to you for years to come. Information about diet, exercise and so on is easy to come by, but when it comes to sexual health you’ll find yourself surrounded by myths and misinformation. Until we’ve got to know each other, I can’t tell you exactly how you should go about protecting us, but as a general rule, when there’s someone besides the two of us involved, latex is your friend.

The time may very well come in the future when you want babies. We’ll go through every step of it together, and you’ll get to know me better than you ever did before, but remember that making a baby is hard work. Please don’t think you have to go through it until we’re both good and ready. There are many ways to keep yourself from getting pregnant when you don’t want to be, and I trust you to choose one that works for us both. Don’t let anyone tell you that pregnancy is my job - I have many jobs, most of them quite unrelated to child-bearing.

I’ll do my best to be everything you want me to be, but remember that I have my limitations. Please be patient with me when I can’t do what you want straight away, and don’t be frustrated that I don’t look the same as the women you see in the adverts. It’s sometimes hard to love and accept me the way I am, especially in the face of pressure from the rest of the world, but if you can do that, we’ll both be happier than if you try to force me to be what I’m not.

I can’t make decisions on how to run our life together, so I’m trusting you to do that. Believe in yourself and remember all the lessons we learn together, and you shouldn’t go too far wrong.

Thank you

Your body.

This is an edited version of an essay that first appeared on The Iron-On Line

Although my baby’s still a few months away from eating anything other than amniotic fluid, my midwife has already asked whether I’ve decided how I’m going to feed him or her when the time comes. Knowing several mothers who fully intended to breastfeed but found they couldn’t, I’m not willing to carve a decision in stone until I have experience to draw on, but I’ve made my provisional decision. It’s at once straightforward and complicated: unless it proves physically impossible, I’m going to breastfeed.

Of the many benefits of breastfeeding, the one that sways me most is the amount of equipment I could then manage without. Bottles, teats, sterilisers, bottle brush - on my budget, anything I can cross off my shopping list is one less thing to worry about. By contrast, I already have the equipment I need to breastfeed, and it seems wasteful not to use it.

Convenience is also a factor. Making up a bottle sounds as though it needs a great deal of care and precise measuring, which is not at all my strong suit. Breastfeeding, once you’ve mastered the technique, doesn’t require any preparation, and your body adjusts the supply without conscious effort. And if I want to continue with activities I’ve enjoyed pre-parenthood, my baby carried along in a sling, I don’t need to haul the full bottlefeeding kit everywhere I go. I just need to find a comfortable place to feed, preferrably out of sight of people who are offended by the sight of a breast being used for the purpose nature intended rather than to sell deodorant.

The complications only come in because of my gender identity. I don’t enjoy having larger breasts that can’t easily be hidden, but the swelling is a result of pregnancy, whether I choose to breastfeed or not. Now they’re swollen, I can put them to good use, or I can have them sitting uselessly on my chest. Not the most difficult decision I ever made.

Other people insist on seeing difficulty there. I can understand why breastfeeding is seen as such a female thing, but men can breastfeed too. Breast tissue is pretty much the same in both sexes, so with the right hormones, anyone can theoretially produce milk. I know most men would be disgusted if they lactated, but how much of that is simply down to the fact that breastfeeding has “girl cooties”?

And in any case, I’m hardly a typical man. I’ve considered taking hormones to make me look and sound a little more male, but I never wanted surgery. I was born with a female body, and no matter what surgery I undergo, it’s never going to be capable of all the things a male body can do. I’ve made my peace with that fact, and I can appreciate all the female things it can do as a kind of compensation. If it weren’t for my female parts, I wouldn’t be getting this baby, and I happen to believe that being able to feed said baby using just my own body is a skill worth having.

Other people, of course, will see me differently. When they look at me, they’ll see a classical picture of mother and child, a symbol of femininity and motherhood in action. And within their own heads, they’re perfectly welcome to see that. It’s only if they start forming expectations of me based on that image or getting angry because I fail to live up to those expectations that there’s a problem, and I see it as their problem rather than mine.

Deciding how to feed my baby shouldn’t be a big deal. I shouldn’t have to explain myself to psychiatrists who can’t break out of the pink-box/blue-box view of gender for long enough to understand that gender dysphoria is not incompatible with a healthy pregnancy. There shouldn’t be any suggestion that my gender identity and the best interests of my baby are somehow in conflict. That the suggestion recurs so often makes me both angry and sad, but I see it as a problem with the world and not with me.

For myself, and for my baby, I know which way I want to go. And at least for the time being, that’s good enough.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

From BitchPhD:

In comments to the crumpet post, frequent commenter Sarah in Chicago let on that (1) she’s homesick for New Zealand; (2) she hasn’t been home in 4 years; (3) her sister’s getting married next month; (4) she can’t afford a plane ticket.

So I thought. Hm. What if we did a blog fundraiser to see if we can buy Sarah a ticket back to New Zealand for her sister’s wedding? This blog gets about 5,000 readers/day. I did some googling and found a round-trip ticket from LA to New Zealand for under $800 (if purchased by Friday), and another round-trip from Chicago to New Zealand for a little over $1300.

I bet we can do it. If you can help Sarah get home for her sister’s wedding, even if only with a couple of bucks, please click on that paypal “donation” button over in the near right sidebar. Everything I get I’ll forward to Sarah (who I’m actually going to meet this weekend). Sarah says that if, in the end, we can’t raise enough to buy her a ticket, she’ll donate it to Planned Parenthood. But I’m sure we can do it. What do you guys say?

Sarah is also one of my favorite comment-writers here at “Alas,” and letting her see her long-lost sister seems like a worthy cause. So let me encourage y’all to go throw a buck or two into the “make a donation” button at BitchPhD.

No cool theme this week, just a couple of cute Sydney pictures that I haven’t found occasion to put up before now.

I love this photo of Sydney and occasional “Alas” comment-writer (and my housemate/life partner/whatever) Charles. Clearly they belong to a club that’s far too cool to include a shmuck like me…

Nothing to say about this pic, really, I just think it’s a good picture of Sydney looking pensive.

By the way, for those whose desire for bloggy photo cuteness runs more in the “kitty” direction - and Sydney herself definitely falls into that category, she shrieks “kitty” with high-pitched joy every time she sees a cat (much to the consternation of the cats) - go check out the kitten pictures on Obsidian Wings.

One of the things I love about blogging here at Alas are the insults. Wholehearted agreement is pleasant, but nothing strokes the ego like the knowledge that you’ve made such an impression on someone that he wants to hit back any way he can.

And insults are such good sparking-points for new essays. Consider this screed:

“I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem…”
And there’s another issue - you’re so stuck up your own rear-end you can’t see beyond your own nose. Other people are less important to you than your ’self esteem’. “Hey hunny, I just had a real hard day at work.. I’m ready to flake out, could you make me a drink please?” - “Hell no, that would lower my already oh-so fragile self-esteem, and I’m not here to bow to your patriarchial demands of coffee-making, you chauvinistic bastar…”

I suspect this comment was born out of hostility towards all feminists - or maybe all women - directed at me simply because I made a convenient target. But beyond the inflammatory phrasing, notice the way I’m quoted in a misleadingly selective manner. Notice how a general comment is extrapolated to a situation completely unrelated to the situation I was discussing. And above all, notice how the mere mention of “self-esteem” serves to light the blue touch-paper of this guy’s hostility.

The full sentence of mine that he partially quotes is “I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem and my plans for the future on the altar of his personal convenience.” My plans for the future are immediately dismissed as unworthy of consideration, perhaps because they don’t arouse the same fury as my self-esteem. After all, intelligent people can make plans for the future, but only silly, selfish women care about their self-esteem.

I used the ill-defined term “self-esteem” to stand for a whole host of wishes and desires that would have unbalanced the structure of the paragraph if I’d listed them in full. My desire to explore my gender until I can find an expression of it that seems honest. My desire to express my emotions without being told I was “too intelligent to believe that”. My desire to enjoy my favourite foods and drinks without being made to feel as though I was committing some bizarre kind of self-abuse. Little things which, taken together, make me the person I am as opposed to a robot or blow-up doll.

I haven’t always seen my self-esteem as important. Many times in my life, I ranked it below the approval of others, hiding who I was or giving up what I wanted for no better reason than that friends, family or society in general felt it was inappropriate. It’s only after this last year of hardship and introspection that I’ve come to see that what I am and what I want matter: that my self-esteem is not something to be sacrificed lightly.

It struck me, while contemplating that hostile comment, that self-esteem isn’t a word the privileged need to use. If you have the power to impose your desires on those around you, with society’s seal of approval, your desires aren’t a matter of your self-esteem, they’re simply the natural order of things. It’s only if your desires are minimalised and brushed aside by those around that you need a word to stress the importance of being yourself.

If a man wants sex with a woman, if he wants to decide for her whether she should continue or terminate a pregnancy, if he simply wants her to attend to his wants before her own, he doesn’t use the language of self-esteem. Instead, he states outright or, like the commenter above, implies, that he deserves this, that he’s earned the right, that it should be that way. If the woman wants to assert herself and claim back the right to make these decisions for herself, the language of “rationality” won’t serve her. She falls back instead on the language of self-esteem.

So it’s hardly surprising that someone so openly hostile towards a woman who claims those rights would be filled with contempt for self-esteem. It’s in his interest to undermine it and make it appear frivolous and without value. For if we’re allowed to start believing that self-esteem is something worth defending, something too valuable to sacrifice to the convenience of others, his power starts to crumble. I must be put in my place, mocked and accused of rank selfishness lest anyone begin to take my self-esteem seriously.

I was having lunch with Shoshanna, the blogger behind Dreams Into Lightning, last week, who mentioned that children’s book illustrator Trina Schart Hyman had died of cancer late last year. I somehow hadn’t known that.

Like most Americans of my generation, I saw tons of Hyman’s illustrations while I was growing up (she was a mainstay at Cricket magazine during its heyday) (”heyday,” in this context, is a word that means “when I was a kid”). But I first became aware of her as an artist to study when my friend Jenn Manley Lee mentioned Hyman as an influence on her work.

Hyman has become one of my favorite illustrators; I love the way her strong linework interacts with soft colors, letting her work be both misty and rock-solid at the same time; her always-spot-on body language; her amazing way with textures and patterns. In recent years, she also showed a strong feminist streak in her work, a change which (predictably) pissed some folks off but which delighted me.

From Katha Pollitt’s current Nation column (and via Tennessee Guerilla Women):

It is indeed feminist to say no woman should have to abort a wanted child to stay in school or have a career–FFL’s line is thus an advance on the more typical antichoice position, which is that women have abortions to go to Europe or fit into their prom dress. You can see why their upbeat, rebellious slogans–”refuse to choose,” “question abortion,” “women deserve better”–appeal to students. (But what do those students think when they find that the postabortion resources links are all to Christian groups and that FFL’s sunny pregnancy-assistance advice includes going on food stamps or welfare?) Exposing the constraints on women’s choices, however, is only one side of feminism. The other is acknowledging women as moral agents, trusting women to decide what is best for themselves. For FFL there’s only one right decision: Have that baby. And since women’s moral judgment cannot be trusted, abortion must be outlawed, whatever the consequences for women’s lives and health–for rape victims and 12-year-olds and 50-year-olds, women carrying Tay-Sachs fetuses and women at risk of heart attack or stroke, women who have all the children they can handle and women who don’t want children at all. FFL argues that abortion harms women–that’s why it clings to the outdated cancer claims. But it would oppose abortion just as strongly if it prevented breast cancer, filled every woman’s heart with joy, lowered the national deficit and found Jimmy Hoffa. That’s because they aren’t really feminists–a feminist could not force another woman to bear a child, any more than she could turn a pregnant teenager out into a snowstorm. They are fetalists.

There are two approaches to reducing abortion - supply-side, which tries to reduce abortion by making it unavailable, and demand-side, which tries to reduce abortion by making women less likely to want abortion. In my view, the only genuinely feminist approach to reducing abortion is the demand-side approach. If you favor banning abortion, then you favor a system in which fetuses are saved by eliminating women’s rights; you’re weighing women’s rights and fetal rights, and deciding women’s rights matter so little that it’s not unreasonable to dismiss them entirely from the equation. Rather than seeking a solution that respects women’s rights and fetal rights, they say that women’s rights are so totally overwhelmed by the presence of a fetus, they might as well not exist at all. That view is simply not compatible with feminism.

A coherent pro-life feminism would, in my opinion, take a demand-side approach to reducing abortion; this approach respects both the need to reduce abortion and to protect women’s rights.

(There is, by the way, absolutely no evidence showing that the supply-side approach actually works. In practice, demand-side approaches work better; the countries with the lowest abortion rates are countries in which abortion is legal, the use of birth control is strongly encouraged, and there are generous government programs supporting single parents (usually mothers) and their children. So giving up on banning abortion does not mean giving up on protecting the greatest number of fetuses. If pro-lifers were both sincere and evidence-based in their approach to reducing abortion, that’s the sort of policy they’d be arguing for.)