Why racial colour-blindness is a crock. [Daily Life]
Speaking of, Julianne Hough’s blackface Halloween costume totes wasn’t racist, says a white girl. [Thought Catalog]
Pregnancy: when your body is public property. [Daily Life]
Open dialogue about rape prevents rape, not tee totalling. [The Guardian]
48 hours in New York, in which I get a mention, you know, ’cause I’m there right now! [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman]
How does Working Girls’ feminism hold up 25 years later? [Jezebel]
Melissa Fabello makes some good points in her video about not wasting time on in-fighting about who’s a good feminist and who’s not, but you know me; I really think more people should proud to call themselves feminists and that not all supposedly feminist acts are created equal.
Speaking of, it’s no secret I’m Taylor Swift’s number one hater but over at One Week One Band the dissection of all things Swift is truly eye-opening if a bit fawning. I still think she’s a dolt with some seriously detrimental views about gender and sex, but it’s nice to look at her music from a different point of view for a change.
Anthony Weiner’s mistress, Sydney Leathers (what a name!) gives her top sexting advice. And it’s mind-numbingly mundane. [xoJane]
A call to arms for Twitter to do something about their complacency for rape threats and gender-based hatred from a woman who’s been there; the woman who was faced with a torrent of vitriolic abuse from Tyler, the Creator and his fans. [Daily Life]
Rachel Hills on Hugo Scwhyzer’s retirement from the online femisphere. [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman]
Bisexuality on The O.C. [Bitch]
Why are all TV serial killers’ victims women? [The Guardian]
Well, the 12th Doctor Who wasn’t a woman or a person of colour, as has recently been speculated, but is Peter Capaldi’s age progressive in itself? [TheVine]
Then again, maybe not. [Jezebel]
The sexual politics of Grindr. [The Guardian]
Where does Glee go next after the tragic death of Cory Monteith over the weekend? [Vulture]
Furthermore, Monteith as Finn Hudson embodied the fear of failure and being stuck in a small town with little to no prospects. Drawing on his real-life experiences, perhaps? [The Atlantic]
Got daddy issues? The ultimate TV father/lovers. [Daily Life]
I went to a Lady Gaga variety fundraising night and wrote about it for TheatrePress.
Is news bad for us? It is if it comes from The Daily Mail. [Daily Life]
Homosexuality in hip hop. [The Guardian]
Pacific Rim—the latest in a depressingly long line of films—fails the Bechdel test, hard. [Vulture]
The Pixar Theory: why Brave, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. et al are all linked together as part of the same story as opposed to different ones. The mind boggles. [Jon Negroni]
The underlying religious messages in Man of Steel. [EW Pop Watch]
Oh, goody! I’ve always wanted a system to chart how slutty I am. Gives a whole new meaning to the “slut barometre” Alyx Gorman discussed on TheVine a few weeks ago. [Slut Formula]
Why paedophiles Peter Truong and Mark Newton give same-sex parents a bad name. [ABC The Drum]
Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”: “ironic objectification” or just plain degradation? Apparently, because Thicke and collaborator Pharrell Williams are “happily married”, it makes it okay for them to derive pleasure from degrading women (Thicke’s words). While there are certainly much worse images and acts of misogyny out there, “Blurred Lines” is lyrically and visually blatantly upholding rape culture: “I know you want it, but you’re a good girl…” Does the fact that it was directed by a woman who instructed the basically—and uncomfortably—naked models and the fully clothed male artists in the clip supposedly love women make it a tongue in cheek exercise in pushing boundaries or raise some more problematic issues considering it’s this country’s number one song? What’s the point in even making such a NSFW video if it can’t even be shown on MTV and YouTube (semi-SFW video above)? [Jezebel]
Dear Julia Gillard,
Thank you for being the first female Prime Minister,
Sincerely,
Mia Freedman. [MamaMia]
The rise and rise of feminist parodies. [Daily Life]
What are the differences between women who receive abortions and those who are denied them and proceed with unwanted pregnancies? [NYTimes]
Screw the “armchair commentators”; you know what your feminism is. [The Guardian]
Julia Gillard urges us to vote for Julia Gillard in spite of the sexist attacks against her (obviously written prior to Wednesday’s ousting). Kind of like that comment about her jackets, Germaine…? [The Hoopla]
Is Miley Cyrus’ latest black culture-inspired gimmick akin to a minstrel show? [Jezebel]
This week in inappropriate fashion spreads: hoarder chic. [Jezebel]
Ranking Stephen King’s 62 books. [Vulture]
What Amanda Bynes’ meltdown says about society: we’re all image-obsessed sexists who love a celebrity train wreck. [The Guardian]
Mia Freedman interviewed Naomi Wolf about her Vagina. [MamaMia]
#FBRape and free speech. [Daily Life]
Abercrombie & Fitch < Attractive & Fat. [The Militant Baker]
In defence of much-maligned TV wives. [Slate]
Image via Twitter.
The age disparities between leading men and their love interests. [Vulture]
I’m on Twitter! Follow me @ScarlettEHarris.
Nice Guys of OKCupid has paved the way for homosexual creeps with Douchebags of Grindr.
Why was Boston “terrorism” but not Sandy Hook, Aurora or Columbine, for example? [The Guardian]
Feminist awakenings. [Daily Life]
Sexism on MasterChef. [Daily Life]
A collection of essays on Spring Breakers. [The New Enquiry]
Shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords on the recent vetoing of background checks for gun buyers by the U.S. Congress. [NYTimes]
The Tribeca Film Festival is honouring one of its female filmmakers with the inaugural Nora Ephron Prize! [Tribeca Film Festival]
If we needed a reminder of the patriarchal corners of the world women have yet to be granted entry into, there’s now a Tumblr dedicated to just that! [Boys Clubs]
How to discuss Tyler Perry without sounding racist. [AV Club]
The symptoms of and treatment for feminist burnout. [Bitch Flicks]
James Deen on gender equality and slut-shaming (NSFW). [James Deen Blog]
Gun control does not mean penis control: guns and masculinity. [Women’s Media Centre]
How much murder and rape is there on TV? [Vulture]
Image via Vulture.
In response to the body-snarking of Lady Gaga, she launches a social media campaign exposing her insecurities and encouraging her fans to overcome theirs. [Jezebel]
Until I read this profile by a reporter who spent a day with the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo clan, I thought the show was exploiting a low-socioeconomic family who didn’t know any better. Turns out they’re not as dumb nor famehungry as they are portrayed. [Gawker]
Why we love Law & Order: SVU. [Jezebel]
In defence of being ugly. [MamaMia]
Society’s paranoia about male intimacy. [Daily Life]
Yet another sermon on why hot women can’t be funny. [Jezebel]
Pussy Riot interviewed from jail. [GQ]
He who so sanctimoniously surmised that abortion is bad, even in the case of rape, which is unfortunate but, still, “everything happens for a reason”—Justin Bieber—is the subject of an article about how his mother was a drug-addicted teen who found herself pregnant but decided to have the kid who would turn out to be him and therefore grant a whole generation of tweens such important musical feats as “Baby” and “Eenie Meenie” instead of abort him. [Jezebel]
Kate Middleton’s boobs as public property. [The Guardian]
Uh-oh. Only four months after Vogue debuted its “health initiative” pledge to not “knowingly hire models under the age of 16”, the Chinese and Japanese editions will publish spreads featuring two well-known underage models. [Jezebel]
Why isn’t Mindy Kaling being as well received as her fellow women-in-comedy or male counterparts? [Racialicious, via Jezebel]
The End of Men versus the success of Girls. [The Atlantic]
Image via Jaykhsar.
In the wake of her death, Tracie Egan Morrissey discusses Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown’s feminism. [Jezebel]
Jodie Foster weighs in on the Kristen Stewart cheating scandal. [The Daily Beast]
Rachel Hills gets in touch with her vagina. [Daily Life]
When “Embarrassing Nightclub Photos” means “Embarrassing Slutty Nightclub Photos of Slutty Sluts”. [Jezebel]
In which a woman who was born from coercive sex and into the cycle of abuse and poverty contemplates being aborted objectively. Harrowing yet eye opening stuff. I wish we could all talk about abortion as openly as this. [MamaMia, via Role/Reboot]
Weird story of the week: the Vatican’s newspaper appeals to Mattel to sell the Bald Barbie in stores. You know the world is coming to an end when the Vatican is more progressive than Barbie! [The Guardian]
“The white male liberal gaze.” [Overland]
Yet another successful woman who conducts herself in a feminist manner we have to add to the list of successful women who don’t want to be thought of as conducting themselves in a feminist manner: Melissa Leo. [Jezebel]
Image via The Guardian.
A diva is a female version of a gymnast, apparently. [Jezebel]
Is a man opening a door for a woman a sexist act? [MamaMia]
Gah! A young, attractive woman and her fanatical pro-life agenda. [Jezebel]
How to be an Olympic White Female. [Jezebel, via Feministing]
Rejoice! Jennifer Aniston isn’t a pathetic single woman anymore! [The Guardian]
Ricki-Lee is the latest “B-grade artist” to fetishise mental illness. [The Punch]
Stella Young writes about Peter Singers’ views on the killing—not aborting—of disabled babies—not foetuses. While he does raise some interesting points, I’ve written before that this kind of thinking trivialises abortion and the access to it we should have in this day and age. If a woman finds out she’s pregnant with a disabled foetus, she should have the support and means necessary to terminate if she feels that’s what she wants to do. I don’t think Singer would have these views if more women had access to safe, legal and unstigmatised abortion. Furthermore, I don’t think he’d have them if the lives of the disabled were valued more by society and they had more support. To say that parents have the right to kill their own disabled children after a set amount of time of attempting to care for them is to trivialise life itself: I’m all for a humane death over a painful life, but Young raises the point that babies don’t have the autonomy to make that choice. [ABC Ramp Up]
What the Spice Girls’ Olympic reunion means for girl power. [The Vine]
Image via The Daily.
Julia Gillard is anti-marriage, period:
“After reading all of Gillard’s statements on this issue and after speaking to those who have talked to her about it, I am convinced she doesn’t believe in marriage at all, for anyone.” [ABC Unleashed]
The “Born This Way” versus choice debate continues:
“But I think the most serious problem with this argument is that it reinforces the idea that we need an excuse to be queer. As a result, using this line subtly supports the idea that being queer requires excusing in some way. Don’t use it. Don’t allow straight people to generate an understanding of queer sexuality that sounds like: ‘Well, of course Bob wouldn’t wish to be queer, but he was born this way. I guess we better give him equal rights—poor Bob, he just can’t help it. We shouldn’t punish him for something he didn’t choose!’
“Meanwhile the real reason that you shouldn’t punish Bob for queerness is because there’s nothing wrong with it!” [Social Justice League]
If you’re unfamiliar with the personhood debate, or just unclear on what it all means, this article by Jill Filipovic is a must-read. [Guardian]
Here’s another great article on Personhood and what it means for abortion laws:
“… As the Personhood message penetrates, then society will understand why women need to be punished just as surely as they understand why there can be no exceptions for rape/incest [bolded text mine].” [Salon]
Why Kyle Sandilands is a dickhead. [The Punch]
“Rethinking the Strong Female Character.” [Canonball]
Kelly Osbourne repents for her past “tranny” wrongs. [HuffPo]
And Warren Beatty and Annette Benning’s transgender son thinks Chaz Bono is a misogynist. [Super-Mattachine]
“27 & Unmarried? In China, You’re One of the ‘Leftover Women’.” Gah, only three years left for me! [Jezebel, Ms. Magazine]
What White Ribbon Day means for men. [MamaMia]
The double standards of talking about what goes on down there. [Owning Pink]
Knowing all the evils facing women in our society, would you want to bring a baby girl into the world? [Jezebel]
My, what lovely lady lumps Kristen Wiig has. All the better to be named GQ’s “Bro of the Year” with, my dear. [Jezebel]
“Eve as Literary Hero”. [Imagine Today]
Ms. Piggy as feminist and Kermit as douchefrog. [Jezebel]
Meshel Laurie on the Matthew Newton saga. [MamaMia]
On being single. [Girls Are Made from Pepsi]
Gah! “Pro-Life Feminism is the Future”. [Washington Post]
Images via Jezebel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider Costume Resource.
The Scarlett Woman 