Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #7.

Todays feminist fare is brought to you by boobs. Why? Because God knows that the sight of any part of one gets the whole damn internet/media/complete strangers in a crazy uproar! So without further ado. I give you the boobs of....

1. Amanda Palmer. This past June, the UK's Daily Mail reported on her little nip slip (and practically nothing else) after her show at Glastonbury. Amanda wrote this lovely little ditty for them.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/RRWp4B0qsW8[/youtube]

2. Tina Fey. It seems that last weeks Emmy's were so far from exciting that the only thing anyone wanted to talk about the next day, aside from Bryan Cranston being ROBBED, was Tina's nipple. So, talk all you want people, IT'S JUST A BOOB!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NEqG---qVp0[/youtube]

3. Breastfeeding Moms Everywhere. It is World MilkSharing Week and human milk donations all over the world are helping to feed babies. Whether it is in our own informal milk sharing mother communities or through donations to milk banks, for some of these babes, every drop counts and is a labour of life and love! In honour of that, and for breastfeeding in general, I'd like to re-post this beautiful spoken word poetry from Hollie McNish.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/KiS8q_fifa0[/youtube]

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

XO

natasha~

Feminist Fare Fridays: Edition #5

This week kind of kicked my butt. I fell completely off the Summer Blog Challenge wagon and managed to only publish a couple of picture posts of my kids being super adorable. And yes, this post is now 2 days late, something I vowed not to do. {le grand sigh} Oh well. My husband keeps telling me I need to be more liquid and just to go with the flow (also, he may have been watching a bit of You, Me and Dupree earlier this week.). So while I may not have been writing a whole lot this week, I was still reading and here are my thoughts on a few compelling posts I found this week!

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1. A few weeks ago we were downtown enjoying our wonderful City Centre farmer's market. We had just picked up some watermelon iced tea (yes, it was as good as it sounds) and the kids and I were sitting on a bench enjoying our treat and taking in the sights and sounds of the market. A man in his late twenties walked up to us, went up to my 6 year old son and motioned for a fist bump (which C kind of shrugged off) and then pointed to my 4 year old daughter and said in a booming voice, "YOU, little girl are GORGEOUS!" and then he walked off. The kids both looked at me wondering how to react to this and I was a little taken aback at that moment and just shrugged it off too. But maybe I shouldn't have. Had I read this post about street harassment by Soraya Chemaly earlier I may have even used it as a teachable moment for my kids. A moment to teach them about respect for others and about respect for themselves. Because all too often I have been subjected to various forms of street harassment and...

"After the thin veneer of flattery wears off, what is left is a sometimes-daily awareness of vulnerability, sexual objectification, shame at being targeted, and shame at not fighting back." 

2. And GOOD NEWS everyone!! In case you haven't heard.... the Patriarchy is dead!!!

No really, according to writer and "The End of Men" author Hanna Rosin, we killed it. For reals!

And if you can't read my dripping sarcasm in the above lines, then you are on the wrong page of the internet. I still am wrapping my head around Ms. Rosin's essay (an updated epilogue to her book) and in doing so I have come across some great commentary about her {ahem} take on our current feminist world. One very compelling post is from Nora Caplan-Bricker at The New Republic;

"There’s a long and storied tradition of people (usually men) telling women what they think—“You may be under the impression you think this, but it’s really that.” In recent years, this has been referred to as “mansplaining,” but it used to go by another word: “patriarchy.” And women can be instruments of the patriarchy, too. Rosin isn’t the first to tell members of her own sex that there’s a simple, right way to go about things, and to scold them for doing it wrong."

3. Speaking of people telling other people how to do things and trying to LEGISLATE their tyranny too...

The Parti Quebecois and its leader, Premier Pauline Marois, have devised a plan called the "Charter of Values" that calls to secularize (is that a word?) all public sector workers and make it a law that they can not wear any garment or jewelry that symbolizes their religious beliefs. No turbans, no hijab, no Star of David, no kippah and supposedly no crucifixes either (but the big one at Quebec's Legistlature building is still OK).  Here is a quick FAQ post for you to get up to speed on this bigoted ridiculousness and then please read this beautifully written post by Fariha Naqvi-Mohamed, who has a lot to say to Premier Marois about HER Quebec.

"Despite the ludicrous nature of this proposed charter of values, I refuse to be ashamed of my Quebec. You see, somewhere along the years it became excusable to not discuss the staggering debt of our province, the moon-like roads, the ingrained corruption that has permeated most levels of government, the future of our healthcare system. Instead you have opted for us to focus on a piece of cloth and other religious symbols."

4. My last book club book was 'The Red Tent', by Anita Diamant. I had never read it before and was completely enthralled with the world of Dinah and her mothers and the traditions and rituals of their lives. As I read the book and afterwards I longed for a red tent of my own, of a celebration of womanhood and of time to retreat and not worry about everything and everyone. And it seems I am not the only one...

"What I wouldn’t give for a red tent. An excuse to withdraw and release and be weepy and mopey in peace, and in communion. To stop pretending that my monthly cycles don’t affect my emotions. To stop pretending I am stronger than the need for good sleep and consistent meals. To allow that physical pain stops me in my tracks and makes me want to curl into a ball, and to do so. To acknowledge that bleeding between my legs makes me want to slow down instead of doing a tampon commercial showing how I can still swim and teach aerobics and run a marathon. To admit that, sometimes, I get cranky when I’m on the rag, and that that’s OK. Because it isn’t a contest, and I haven’t let our side down.

That's all I've got for this week everyone. I kind of had too much sangria at our annual block party last night and I told a whole bunch of my neighbours that I am a feminist writer/blogger. I am all about making friends and influencing people.... Let's just hope I get an invitation to the party again next year.

Otherwise who is going to build one heck of a wicked fire for everyone to roast marshmallows over!!

 

'Til next week,

natasha~

Feminist Fare Fridays: Edition #4

Phew! Is anyone else exhausted after the first week of school? And I don't mean the kids! This was my first week of making lunches everyday, of walking to school and starting to figure out our new one in full-day and one in half-day routines. And so, with school in mind, I give you somewhat of an education-based round up of feminist fare this week!

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1. I have a couple of blogging heroes and one of them is the wonderful Annie Urban at Phd in Parenting. (She is one hell of a dance partner too!) And just in case you need to know why, just check out her post on all the back to school and back to gender-role stereotyping that we are inundated with at this time of year. I personally have made a strong effort to stay away from and not buy clothing that turns my kids into walking brand advertisements and reinforces the pink/blue world that we live in! And while I may have favourited a bunch of those "what to make for my kid's lunch" posts" for future reference, the assumption and reinforcement of parental gender roles by mass media is maddening! And PLEASE, make sure you also click on that last link in her post and read up on why mothers shouldn't have opinions.

2. And speaking of mothers and their opinions. There were PLENTY this week in the world of the "mommy bloggers". One particular blogger, we'll call her Mrs. Hall, had a lot to say to all the girls tempting her teenage sons with their racy pyjama'd and {ahem} bra-less Instagram pictures. And then the internet quite literally exploded with various other "open letters" to Mrs. Hall, to the teenage girls she is supposedly addressing and to anyone and everyone who read her post and had an "Uhh, what the...?" kind of reaction to it.  I don't have much to add to the conversation that has not been said in the above posts, but suffice it to say I believe that it is this kind of perpetuating of our sexual stereotypes that leads to....

3. THIS! A university's frosh week with 80 student leaders, "leading" 300-400 students into their new lives on campus with a chant about rape. Seriously people, I wish I was kidding. I wish the St. Mary's student union president had not called this chant an "oversight". I wish that just because something has been done "for years" doesn't mean that is is OK and should be continued. I wish that sending a daughter to university didn't mean having to send her with a rape-whistle and a talk about NEVER walking back to her room at residence alone at night. And I hope that this is indeed a teachable moment for these students and for all of us about the pervasiveness of sexism and rape-culture in our {children's} worlds!

4. And then I read something like this and my faith is somewhat restored and I know that the daughters we are all raising will be stronger. That one day very soon, they will be the confident, wonderful, intelligent and fierce women that this world needs!

5. This one has nothing to do with feminism. I just think that this might be the most ridiculously awesome thing I have seen on the internet in ages. And I like foxes!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/jofNR_WkoCE[/youtube]

Happy Friday everyone!

natasha~

(Update: If you have a few hours, Jenna Hatfield at Blogher did a nice round-up of most of the responses to the original post in #2.)

Feminist Fare Fridays: Edition #2.

Summer is winding down at our house and the kids and I are trying to squeeze in the last of our city's summer festivals, beautiful weather and lazy days of doing whatever we want before school starts and schedules and routines take over. I have been spending more time away from the internet because of this, but don't worry, I still managed to curate some of this past week's feminist fare for you!

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1. I like the Onion. Satire makes us look at our world and realize how incredibly worked up we all get over a lot of silly things. And I will admit that a few times I have been almost fooled by their articles....almost. Last week though, they crossed the line with a post titled, "Adolescent Girl Reaching Age Where She Starts Exploring Stepfather's Body". I don't care if it is supposed to be satire, this was NOT FUNNY. As a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted neighbour when I was 12 years old, this post made me sick to my stomach and was incredibly triggering. How many times does this need to be said? Sexual Assault is not funny, RAPE is not funny, ABUSE is NOT FUNNY!!!  Please stop trying to make it funny. It is never going to work. {Sigh}

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2. Do you know what the Bechdel Test (for movies/TV/literature) is? I actually didn't until early this month. In a nutshell it goes like this:

To pass the test your movie must have the following:

1) there are at least two named female characters, who

2) talk to each other about

3) something other than a man.

Think about it for a bit. Pick your top five favourite movies and see if they pass. NONE of my favourites pass (Sound of Music, Dirty Dancing, Highlander-don't ask!, Breakfast Club and Shawshank Redemption). And it seems that there is a reason for that. This is an older post, written in 2008 by Jennifer Kesler, but as you can see, writing male leads FOR a target male audience with female roles serving only as props for these men, seems to be the norm in Hollywood. And as far as I can see from the last few movies/television series I have watched, (with the exception of breakthrough series like Netflix's Orange Is the New Black which feature a mainly female cast) not much has changed in the past five years. Definitely something to think about next time you are spending your life's savings to go see a movie at the fancy new theatre.

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3. Blogger Nate Pyle wrote an incredibly compelling post about a future conversation he is going to have with his young son. I think it is a good reminder to all of us about how we 'see' those around us; man or woman, black or white, gay or straight and everything in between...

"Humans objectify the things they love in effort to control them.  If you truly love a person, do not reduce them to an object.  The moment you objectify another human – woman or man, you give up your humanity."

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4. My wonderful online friend, fellow fabulous feminist and all around really cool chick, Avital Norman Nathman has complied an incredible list of essays from mothers of all walks of life and written a book called "The Good Mother Myth:Redefining Motherhood to Fit Reality". As of this week, the book is available for pre-sale on Amazon.com. Go ahead, be one of the first ones to get this book in your hands and maybe, just maybe we can all stop trying to live up to some great mythological deity of perfection!

'till tomorrow my lovelies,

Natasha~