grumblypants:

From the article: “I consider throwing in the towel. The lack of respectful coverage, the slut-shaming and name-calling, all the girly book covers and not-my-titles despite high literary aspirations, has worn me down, made me question everything: my abilities, my future, my life. This is what sexism does best: it makes you feel crazy for desiring parity and hopeless about ever achieving it. A few months later, after delivering a lecture on the media-invented ‘mommy wars’ at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, a song pops up on my iPhone as I’m walking back to my hotel room: Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ ‘When you ain’t got nothing,’ Dylan sings, ‘you got nothing to lose.’”

katydidnot:

~~here it is~~ FEMINIST SKILLJOYS, issue one! a zine about making stuff, available ONLINE NOW FOR FREE or~ in physical copy for trade or a couple bux (covering postage basically) just message me or email me~

A BIG THANKS TO: all the contributors to the zine (allison jean, olivia, dena, stacey-marie, r.b., fiona, lonna, rose l, hannah, and ethan) plus everyone doing the in person skillshare tomorrow and also kt for giving me printing tipzzz and letting me do the skillshare at the really really free market AND begrudgingly martin for thinking up the title pun

there is already so much more i am excited to include so i am definitely planning a second issue. you should email me if you have something to contribute! I AM ALSO planning a q&a section in the next issue so if you have questions about a specific craft or skill send me an email too and to the best of my ability i will see if i can find an expert to answer your query. ~~  batselke (at) bellsouth (dot) net  ~~

(also the part where there are way too many pages of me talking is going to be fixed in the next issue, this is because this is a part of my term assignment — my ~praxis project~ — for my final women’s studies course. i feel like actually a lot of the goals are self-explanatory though so definitely future issues will be way more just about making stuff)

veggielezzyfemmie:

Feminists Install Temporary Memorial to Rape Survivors on Washington Mall

by Sarah Mirk on February 15, 2013 - 10:34am

The National Mall got a new memorial yesterday, if only briefly. As part of One Billion Rising, Baltimore-based feminist group FORCE installed a temporary memorial recognizing survivors of sexual assault. The group created giant letters out of a statement from a rape survivor and floated the eight-foot-tall words onto the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

(via problem-dogs)

"[I]magine what would happen if, instead of centering our beliefs about heterosexual sex around the idea that the man ‘penetrates’ the woman, we were to say that the woman’s vagina ‘consumes’ the man’s penis. This would create a very different set of connotations, as the woman would become the active initiator and the man would be the passive and receptive party. One can easily see how this could lead to men and masculinity being seen as dependent on, and existing for the benefit of, femaleness and femininity. Similarly, if we thought about the feminine traits of being verbally effusive and emotive not as signs of insecurity or dependence, but as bold acts of self-expression, then the masculine ideal of the ‘strong and silent’ type might suddenly seem timid and insecure by comparison."

Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (“Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism,” pg 329)

(Source: yakotta, via gettingbywithoutbreaking)

Banshee

From Gaelic bean-sidhe, “woman of the fairy-mounds.” The Irish banshee was a ghostly White Lady whose cry brought death to her hearers¹. In Brittany she was the Bandrhude, or bane-druid, or dryad of death². She was identified with Macha, Queen of Phantoms, third person of the Morrigan’s trinity. That is, she was the Crone form of the Goddess, who summoned her children to death³.

Some said the shriek of the banshee was really the nocturnal call of the loon, a bird sacred to the Moon-goddess Luna, as its name suggests.

Like the Vila or death-priestess of central Europe, and the Dakini of the Far East, the banshee could be as benevolent as the sacred women who used to sing the dying gently to sleep. “When the banshee loves those she calls, the song is a low, soft chant giving notice, indeed, of the proximity of death but with a tenderness of tone that reassures the one destined to die and comforts the survivors; rather a welcome than a warning.”⁴ To others, she came like a bad death, full of horror.

^{1. Goodrich, 177. 2. Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 493. 3. Rees, 36. 4. Pepper & Wilcock, 275.}

from The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (ed. Barbara G. Walker, 1983)

"Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist: The action lies in the gap between desire and gratification. Women are not perfect beauties without distance. That space, in a consumer culture, is a lucrative one. The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion."

from The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, 1991

marieyall:

Hey yall, the holiday issue of BTFTBG is now out at Agora, Avid, Low Yo Yo, and Bizarro. $3. I also have a few copies of the previous issue if you wanna read or get one from me.

(all of the money goes back into printing them, just for clarity)

(also this one includes the ‘erotic’ friend fiction that I was posting about a couple of months ago, as well as a bunch of other dumb things I’ve written/drawn)

If by “dumb” you mean “amazing.” I would like some back issues! I’ll trade money for them!

"This ritual use of constant surveillance is a vivid example of the real motivation behind the myth: Female thinness and youth are not in themselves next to godliness in this culture. Society really doesn’t care about women’s appearance per se. What genuinely matters is that women remain willing to let others tell them what they can and cannot have. Women are watched, in other words, not to make sure that they will ‘be good,’ but to make sure that they will know they are being watched."

from The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, 1991