Feminism

Summer Reads: The Bitch in the House & The Bastard on the Couch

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Summer Reads: The Bitch in the House & The Bastard on the Couch

I’ve been reading “The Bitch in the House” edited by Cathi Hanauer. The subtitle of the book is: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage. The premise is women writing a response to the question “Why are women angry?” Cathy woke up one day and realized that she had everything she could possibly want: a house in the country, two children, a good husband, a great career…and despite all that, she was mad as hell. She talked to her women friends, who were also primarily writers, and they were all angry, too. So she asked them to write about their rage, and the book came about. Some of the essays I relate to, some of them I don’t. I mean, women writing about how they miss the boys their husbands once were, or how their children’s demands cut into their “me time” doesn’t really affect…

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An Andrea Dworkin-inspired Rant

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An Andrea Dworkin-inspired Rant

[begin rant] I was fortunate to attend one of the Seven Sisters Colleges, attendance at which would automatically enroll me in the “Feminist Club” in most minds. But when I was at college, I subscribed to Playboy, which raised a few eyebrows and prompted heated discussions on exploitation of women. I also argued long into the wee hours of the night various sides of issues like affirmative action, historically single-sex and single-race colleges, racism and reverse racism, (under)representation of women in technical fields, reproductive rights, sex education, rape awareness education, defamation of our gender in religions, etc etc. And when I was a student at my alma mater, I was privileged to meet Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Camille Paglia, and Susie Bright. Four very different women, each of them feminists in my opinion. But perhaps the most radical extremist feminist of them all, Andrea Dworkin, I never had the opportunity…

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The First Amendment, Feminists, and Our Christian Nation

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The First Amendment, Feminists, and Our Christian Nation

Image via Wikipedia I am one of those feminists who often finds herself at odds with other feminists. My mother was an old-school Andrea Dworkin-style lesbian separatist. I went to a women’s college, the same one that produced Betty Friedan (when I met her at a reunion she was a sharp-tongued, witty, and crotchety old woman) and Gloria Steinem, and, well, lets just say that the fact that I subscribed to Playboy raised more than a few eyebrows. For years I stopped self-identifying as a feminist because the young women around me demanded such conformity of opinions, particularly when it came to things like “pornography”. It always seemed to me that the distinction between healthy erotic objectification of women and exploitation of women was being missed, to the detriment of women, men, and families. On occasion I would quote Betty Freidan to my cohorts: “To suppress free speech in the…

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Fearing women

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Fearing women

Image by xjyxjy via Flickr It is my assessment that men fear women. They fear women because they do not understand us. Feminine logic escapes them and so they cannot predict us. They fear us because no matter how often they join their bodies with ours, seeking to know and be known — no matter how often they experience the shuddering release of their essence into our bodies — they know, even in that moment of ultimate sharing — of orgasmic bliss– they know they’ve never really penetrated the mystery of our otherness. And never will. And for the male of our species, the systematizers, the catalogers, the knowledge-seekers — what cannot be dismantled, discovered, or known is feared. Sure, there are other emotions mixed in there — respect, for some, and for others, dread, and a need to conquer or destroy — but for the most part, consciously or…

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Are intelligent women sexy, or just oxymorons?

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Are intelligent women sexy, or just oxymorons?

Image via Wikipedia A question rose in my mind today “Are intelligent women sexy, or just oxymorons?” I’ve made the mistake of watching television recently, trying to stay abreast of the issues playing out these days: torture, swine flu, and the economy. I rarely watch television, but given that I was out of the country for three weeks, I figured I’d risk filling my brain with bullshit, trusting that my crap-filter would sort the golden nuggets from the brown ones. A lot of what I’ve seen and heard appalls me. Especially from women. There are a lot of attractive women on TV and most of them are ninnies, apparently. Either they can’t think or they aren’t paid to think — just read the teleprompter. Regardless of which political ideology a network subscribes to, the attractive women are mostly ditzes, and most of the talking heads the networks feature are either…

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Explore Your Sexuality

From my lips to your ears

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