The Power of Female Friendship
A truly excellent piece over at The Rumpus about female friends:
...read moreI was reminded of the Wrinklies, of my friends, of the ways in which they carry me, when I read A Train in Winter by Caroline Morehead, a remarkable book that tells the story of women French resistance fighters who were sent to Auschwitz and who survived by doing what women do: supporting, finding a way to love and nurture in situations marked by the absence of love, tenderness, sense, sanity, or even humanity. In a concentration camp they managed to make Christmas gifts out of string and sticks; they put on plays in their barracks; they supported the weaker women, often hiding them for roll call. They were “a team.”
Daughter of the Patriarchy: Admissions
“When I was your age, my parents wouldn’t send me to college,” my mother was telling me. “I had to work my way through on my own. I don’t want you to have to stop. I will do everything I can to help you keep going to school. Your education is the most important thing to me.”
We stood in the kitchen, a printed letter lying on the counter between us. It was not good news.
I glanced up at my mother with a strained smile. I knew that if wishes could be cashed at the bank, I’d be writing my admissions essay to an ivy-coated castle. Instead, I was trying to find a way to pay the bill from my last semester of community college in time to register for fall classes. It was already August.
...read moreIt’s fun for a girl or a boy: Conspicuous consumption edition
Anyone engaged in consumerist big-box shopping this season (which ideally would be avoided, although particularly when dealing with Tinkerbell-obsessed four-year-olds it can be hard to find an acceptable Etsy substitute. Merry frigging Mithras) has probably walked into a toy store, looked at the pink section full of “girl stuff” and the blue section full of [...]
...read moreFall Into the [Reverse Gender] Gap
This is a guest post by Jessica Mack.
One of the concepts that I hope fades out as we enter 2012 – along with flash mobs and marshmallow vodka – is the “reverse gender gap.” Somehow, in the American obsession with doom and gloom, small but important gains for women have become a reason to worry. They’ve become a reason to claim that the gender gap is not just closing, but – worse – it’s reversing.
...read more“She always knew who she was.”
The Boston Globe has a sweet, heartbreaking, heartwarming story of Nicole Maines, her twin brother Jonas, and their parents. Nicole knew from toddlerhood that she was a girl, and her family and friends are supporting her in developing “a physical female body that matches up to [her] image of [her]self.” Nicole is fourteen. From the [...]
...read more“The Percentages: A Biography of Class” by Sady Doyle
Probably, a lot of Feministe readers already read Tiger Beatdown. So maybe this is redundant, but I just had to boost the signal anyway. Sady Doyle’s recent post, The Percentages: A Biography of Class, is great. It’s a very intense storytime-type post, but also highly theoretical. Here’s a snip from the end, but please do [...]
...read moreThe deficient single woman
Chally is a former Feministe staffer. She writes at Zero at the Bone. I’m really quite troubled by the centring of romantic/sexual relationships at the expense of all other ways of organising lives. Right now, I’m going to explore this in terms of single women being seen as deficient. I’ve seen so many divorced and [...]
...read moreThe Rights of Children – Yeah, I Went There
The U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child is the latest in a line of international agreements on the human rights of children and has been ratified by every member of the United Nations with the exception of Somalia and the United States. Somalia hasn’t refused to ratify the treaty, they’ve just not had the institutions in place to make treaty ratification a reality. In the US, the Convention has met staunch opposition from the right where opponents argue that it strips away parental rights, conflicts with the US Constitution and is generally bad news. So what does the heinous piece of international law say?
...read moreResonance
Jill just linked to this intensely personal piece by Jessica Valenti. In it, she describes trying to sort through the feelings of wanting to love her daughter, but being scared because it was never certain if her daughter, born almost three months prematurely, was going to be okay. I didn’t have Jessica’s experience, and it [...]
...read moreRecommended reading
E.J. Graff’s series on Slate about children who were “adopted” (quotes wholly deliberate for reasons which will be immediately clear from the article) from Sierra Leone is gut wrenching. Definitely worth reading.
...read moreMy feminist life – after childbirth. Yes, it does exist.
A friend of mine likens becoming a mother to being in a “twilight zone between human and animal.” It sounds wrong – but writing this as my son, Lev, sleeps beside me in his basket, having turned 3 weeks old today and cried for most of the morning (inspiring me to flounce off to sleep [...]
...read moreMagic Genitals (Part 1: Erykah Badu)
(or: She’ll Make You Change Gods!) I am, to the untrained eye, a hippie-dippy, no-relaxer-wearing, Whole Foods shopping afro pixie faerie princess. I research traditional African spiritual practices, keep florida water and incense on hand, I bathe with Dr. Bronner’s soaps, I eat vegetables some folks have never heard of (kale, daikon radishes, red leaf [...]
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