AGA Roll Call

According to Broadsheet:

Rutgers researchers Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan surveyed 242 American undergraduates and 289 older adults and looked at men's and women's "perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction" (to quote the press release). And guess what they found? Women who said their guys had feminist beliefs had "healthier" relationships. Men who had feminist partners reported "more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction."

I realize I was on the schedule to get this out earlier this month, but things have just been adding up one on top of another, and I just now have a little bit of time to sit down and write. Most of you know that my grandmother recently passed away, and I have decided to do my Women's History roll call on her. I realize she is not a significant historical figure, but she is part of my history. My grandmother was born in December 1940. A Californian at heart, she married my grandfather, a navy man. They traveled the world together. My grandmother, Rebecca, learned so much in her life. She earned two college degrees in her life, was part of the National Honor Society of Psychology, and was very active in her community.

Ladies, I'm so excited. My home institution's hosting a 3rd Wave Feminism Miniconference, and the guest speakers are Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, authors of Manifesta!

What's even more exciting is that I was offered a chance to speak at the conference, and I want to speak about All Girl Army. Now, sure, I have lots of things I'd like to share with the audience at the conference, but because this community is for you, I'm hoping to enlist your help.

For the Roll Call (and I know it's a busy month!), if you choose to write on this one, would you tell me what you think about AGA?

Happy (nearly) Halloween, everybody! (Well, all who celebrate it. Also happy holidays to those w/other holidays coming up.)

My friends are big costume ppl, and although I never have ideas, somehow this year I do! It got me thinking- how does the way we dress for Halloween- a holiday all about fantasy and "dressup"- reflect our feminist beliefs? So I thought I'd ask y'all, as a fun, short, but reflective Roll Call!

Things to think about:
- lol what's your costume!
- if we dress up as something we're not- anything from 'hooker' to 'punkrockgrrl' to 'cowgirl'- do we do it in a way that's respectful to women who actually live those lives? Is it even possible to be respectful?

I just got back from the coffeeshop here, and got a chance to talk to Jayne. Jayne's a workingclass, 60something, matriarchal, peacenik feminist who does a lot of work w/the local homeless population. Last year Jayne came to the annual Women Studies party, and tonight she and I reminisced about how wonderful it was that she boldly expressed her opinions to academic, upper-middle class feminists, really exposing them to some of their unexamined class prejudice that, even as feminists, they didn't want to discuss. Jayne is a revelation and a national treasure.

And I was thinking how great it would be for all of you bloggers to take a minute and try to find a woman whose life you feel is totally different than your own, and write about how this is so. Now, it may be hard to do this in real life, so think about women and girls in the movies, tv shows, or in books that you're familiar with. Maybe she's from another country, or another class, or another agegroup- but somehow you feel that she's 180-degrees different from yourself.

The current Carnival of the Feminists is up at Redemption Blues.

As for the next Carnival, post your thoughts here, and we'll forward them!

The 23rd edition of the Carnival of Feminists will be on Lingual Tremors on September 20th. You can use the Blog Carnival submission form or email lingualx AT yahoo DOT com. Submissions are due by 18 September 2006 at midnight.

Suggested Theme for the 23rd Carnival of Feminists: women & healthcare.

The now ubiquitous Our Bodies Ourselves, first produced in 1970, introduced and asserted the ideas:

So. The first day of the first weekend at the (now official) #1 party school in the country, on labor day weekend, after our football team won a game. These stipulations might point to a wild, wild weekend for most people, but I was left feeling rather unaccomplished and disappointed.

I woke up, and my boyfriend and I decided to get a few of our extra school-things over and done with. I put on some short shorts and a red top and we headed out to get our Course Packets and return a book or two. Right when we left, we realized it was a game day because there wasn’t a single person not wearing a burnt orange shirt. It was only among a crowd of people that I realized my shorts might be too short to wear in public, so I spent a majority of my outing trying to pull them down while at the same time keeping a vast majority of my stomach covered. Hmm…and I thought I looked good before I went out.

The Carnival of Feminists is a fabulous, themed, bimonthly roundup of feminist blogs. The founder writes:

The Carnival of Feminists is held (usually) on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Hosted by a different blogger for each edition, it aims to showcase the finest feminist posts from around the blogsphere.

The Carnival aims to build the profile of feminist blogging, to direct extra traffic to all participating bloggers, but particularly newer bloggers, and to build networks among feminist bloggers around the world.

My feminist experience has been comfortable and enlightening for the most part; it's shown me a new sense of personal value and taught me the integrity of women as a group. I used to identify as a "humanist" and even went so far as to call myself an "anti-feminist" before I understood what the terms really meant.

I've grown out of the other side. I believed in the greater goodness of man-and-womankind but not in the specific goodness of womankind. I didn't value women who fight the right to choose, I didn't appreciate the opinions of educated women working in their homes, and I didn't comprehend the experience of women in cultures that practice female genital mutilation. To make a long story short (ha, too late), I didn't give women's decisions the full weight and consideration that they deserved. But, as Jeyoani's signature reminds us, "Scratch any woman deeply enough and you find a feminist." And this time, a real one.

I love PDA. Granted, if you're sitting in a room with two of your friends who just won't stop making out, it's rude. But stepping out on a liberal leftist limb for a second, twinged with the 60's flavored free-love agenda, what is so offensive about two people expressing themselves? I'm not discussing public sex, I'm discussing anything up to and including first base and/or a little over the clothes groping.

In the earlier part of the century, women who smoked in public were women of ill repute. Granted, smoking is bad for you, but I'm sure the thought that goes through a lot of minds is "What kind of a girl lets herself be touched in public?" A girl who is equal to her male counterpart. I was delighted to hear a male friend complain that PDA meant that a guy was whipped, because it finally acknowledges a simple truth: women (gasp shock horror) have sexual desire equal to that of men.

Age is everything, I think, in this discussion. Recall your first boyfriend back in middle school. Let me paint the picture, and see if it resonates with you: Kissing in a dark room, in a hallway, at the top of the slide...with a half-dozen people looking on, uncomfortably close and giving all-too-audible commentary on your technique.
"Gosh, it's been like two whole minutes."
"Seriously, guys, the bell's about to ring..."
Similarly, let me describe the phase that all freshmen attending school in NYC go through: at one point or another, you end up falling-down drunk in some club from free drinks given to you by some Gropey McGrope.

I have a headshot of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara hanging on the wall in my small make-shift home office. It used to sit on my dresser when I still lived at home, but now she's found a less symbolic place. In the black and white photo, she's wearing the Twelve Oaks barbeque dress and smiling pleasantly, though it doesn't quite reach her eyes. I think, have always thought, she's the most beautiful woman ever to live.

Everyone knows her for her role in Gone With the Wind. You might not know the name Vivien Leigh, but you can misquote at least a couple of lines from the Best Picture winner from 1939. Scarlett O'Hara has become synonymous with the southern belle, however inaccurate the comparison truly is. After all, wouldn't the demure and virtuous Melanie, quiet and steadfast to the end, be a more appropriate portrayal of the idealized women of antebellum South? Scarlett's hot and cold proto-feminism and proto-antifeminism are a far cry from truly favorable in any age.

With the oversexed social atmosphere that America's, and really the world's, young people are thrust into, it's hard to find one's own happy middle ground, a place where comfort and readiness balance out the dismembered women (and increasingly men too) trying to sell us perfume and alcohol among other things. Is it any surprise that public displays of affection are so varied and audacious when "former feminist" Nelly Furtado's latest hit focuses the promiscuity of herself and the guy she's attracted?

PDA, in the general usage, is something above and beyond public decency, which makes it a very subjective matter. While some may find mouth kissing too much, others may be more offended by putting a hand in a significant other's pocket. And what happens when the PDA is committed by those in a same-sex couple? Do the rules change? And if they do, I hope there's a good reason--scratch that, I hope the speaker has a legitimate excuse; and no, "I don't wanna see no f*****s kissin'" does not qualify.

Ever since I decided I wasn't countercultural enough to refuse to go to school dances on principle and realized that I do, in fact, enjoy dances, the question of how much is too much on the dance floor has been present in my mind.

Looking around at my classmates at a school dance, I wonder: When did dancing become equivalent to dry humping? Why is that boy dancing with/dry humping his female friend while his girlfriend sits on the side looking upset about it? Why are the chaperones only breaking up a token number of couples? Why is there a girl bending over against the wall and not even really dancing at all just so a boy can hump her butt? Do the girls enjoy rubbing themselves back and forth against their partner's likely erect penis, or do they just feel obligated? Do all these people who aren't humping but are sort of pretending to be engaged in a sex act actually enjoy dancing like that, or do they just feel like that's how they should be dancing?

I left the club last weekend feeling old- also righteous in my feminist anger- but part of me worries that I'm just getting old.

The song that was playing was one by Dirty Sanchez, about people who make out in clubs. It's quite sarcastic, and I enjoy it, and like dancing to it.

But not everyone understood that it was meant as a slam; I'm afraid some people thought it was an invitation, or even a directive.

And when I realized that center stage, "dancing" behind me were two women who, if not in fact engaging in, were simulating, oral sex, I left.

I was so angry. I felt betrayed by fellow (possibly, although not undoubtedly, queer) women. My reaction to the situation, and the reaction of the women getting it on, demonstrate two very different approaches to living as a woman in public. I would argue that they were being disrespectful to each other by engaging in sex in public like that, and disrespectful to the rest of the club who didn't come to a club to watch sex (as I had not). Furthermore, it seems to me that by acting this way in public they were reinforcing hurtful stereotypes about queer women and our sexuality. Now, it is entirely possible that these women, if asked, would argue that they were good, sex-positive feminists, who were forcing an audience to recognize that queer female sexuality exists and is as valid as heterosexuality (to which the song refers).