A gigantic, Bitch-y thank you to everyone who supported us during our Bitch 500 subscription drive! With your help, we reached our goal of 500 new subscribers/renewals in two weeks! Hooray!
We are so lucky to have subscribers and readers like all of you, who stick by us even during these oh-so-tough economic times. Together, we are keeping independent feminist media alive and kicking (even if we've gotta collectively tighten a few purse strings in order to do it), because we realize that providing a feminist response to pop culture is of the utmost importance. After all, sexist media isn't going to critique itself now, is it?
As ever, our fundraising work is far from over, and if you missed out on joining the Bitch 500 (of if you did in fact join but now find yourself with tons of extra cash, you moneybags, you) there are still lots of ways to support what you love. Make a donation to Bitch Media, become a monthly sustainer by joining our B-Hive, host a Bitch house party, or just show your support by decorating your web page with one of these bitchin' badges!
Whatever you do, we appreciate it. Thank you again for your support! Your efforts are keeping Bitch Media going, so that we can keep the feminist responses coming.
Preview our much-anticipated Consumed issue! After a summer hiatus, Bitch magazine is returning to your mailbox shortly with a brand new layout but the same great feminist response to pop culture! In anticipation, we're throwing up three articles online as a sneak peek into the Consumed issue. You can read how two Bitch contributors butt heads over the McCain Blogette in classic Love it/Shove it style, delve (trepidatiously) into the niche erotic genre of feeding porn in "Feast of Burden," and see what frequent contributor and past guest-blogger Tammy Oler reports on gender in the fandom world of wizard rock and the more recent phenomenon of Twi-rock in "Ladies' Camp Rock." As always, for other past articles check out the lower left hand column on our front page or browse our Magazine page!
Touted by its editors as "Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory," the folks at Men's News Daily strive to unveil the truth about what it means to "be a man." By reading their mission statement, I learned a great number of things about both men (the "direct sex"...I'm not really sure what this means...when I Googled "the direct sex" my first results included a "Live Video Chat with Hot Girls" and instructions on how to direct a sex scene) and women (the "fair sex"). For instance, did you know that...
--if you consider yourself a 'radical,' you probably are fond of pretending that "the birth of every boy is the moment in which a potential Manson or proto-rapist has entered the world"?
--"males are told that the only route to salvation is feminization"? Additionally, men "must parrot the traits, aspirations, affectations, and behaviors of the fair sex even though their moods are conspicuously less rosy than our own." What!? Men are supposed to be like women in every sense even though everyone knows women are bitches!? I had no idea.
--socialism is to blame for the current state of affiars (i.e., the marginalization of men in society). You know what that means: that gosh darn no good socialist Barack HUSSEIN Obama is behind the winding "road to serfdom" modern Western men find themselves traveling upon.
The mission closes with the following words of real HOPE and CHANGE:
"MensNewsDaily.com was founded in 2001 and remains a sanctuary for men. It is one of the few remaining places where a man can be a man without apology. We thank you for visiting, but encourage you to join us in our mission. Welcome brothers!"
Where a man can be a man...MND, you aren't affiliated with Ketel One Vodka, are you?
Read on for more pearls of wisdom from the wise brothers of MND.
This article was originally published on July 1 at WIMN's Voices (don't worry -- they gave us permission to re-post it!)
By Jonathan McIntosh
I usually try to stay away from the forces of darkness, but last week I killed a famous vampire – and let me tell you, it was fun! Actually, I didn’t stake him myself — I used new media tools to allow one of the strongest female television characters of our generation to do it. OK, let me back up a minute. Last week, at the Open Video Conference at NYU Law School, I debuted my feminist mash-up video, Buffy v. Edward. It’s an example of transformative storytelling which reinterprets the movie Twilight by re-cutting and combining it with the TV series Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
Read the rest of Jonathan's article after the jump!
News in tired feminist stereotypes has taken a turn for the weird in this month's issue of Harper's Bazaar. Fashion designer (and future zombie-lookalike contest winner) Karl Lagerfeld is the author of an article wherein he interviews the long-deceased Coco Chanel, playing the part of both the interviewer and subject by channeling Chanel from beyond the grave. (Hey, you were warned about the weirdness.)
At any rate, this might just be another example of extreme (and extremely creepy) fashion industry navel-gazing if it weren't for a few particularly obnoxious questions/answers by the zombie-esque Lagerfeld and his familiar, the actual zombie Chanel. (Fear not: Though Chanel is in fact answering questions from beyond the grave, there is no evidence yet to support her status as an actual zombie.) An excerpt from the "interview":
HB: Your clothing liberated women in the 1920s. Are you still a feminist?
CC: I was never a feminist because I was never ugly enough for that.
Puh-leez. Lagerfeld, are you serious? Can we EVER get away from the feminists-are-ugly attack? It looks like some people in the fashion industry are still using this insult even 38 years after they have DIED! Get over it already! And stop channeling dead people in order to take cheap shots at feminists! Not cool!
A highly circulating AP article on the increasing number of women with DUI charges sends mixed messages about women who mix drinking and driving. In the wake of a tragic car accident that killed eight people, four of which were children, media attention has focused on women who drink and drive--especially if they're mothers.
Diane Schuler was found to have consumed alcohol and marijuana before driving onto the the wrong lane of traffic. According to some studies, in recent years women have been drinking more and have been arrested more for DUIs. But troublesome quotes seem to direct attention off the problem at hand and more to why it's all of a sudden women are getting caught drinking.
"Younger women feel more empowered, more equal to men, and have been beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men," said Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety.
It does seem to be coded language for "Feminism drove Diane Schuler to drink and then to drive," an anti-feminist myth with dangerous repercussions.
I fully support an end to drunk driving and alcoholism, and my heart goes out to everyone who has ever lost someone to drunk driving. My beef is with the way the media is approaching the issue of women (and mothers) who drink. It's as if it takes the unthinkable for attention to turn on how to address women and alcoholism (this is in addition to the fact that the statistics don’t quite tell the same story). Barbara Ehrenreich got it right when she said "Gender equality wouldn't be worth fighting for if all it meant was the opportunity to be as stupid and self-destructive as men can be."
Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" could be heard 'round the world this week, commemorating the untimely death of writer/director/producer John Hughes, whose films shaped many a feminist mind during the 1980s (Molly Ringwald was one sassy teen, after all). Well don't worry John Hughes, we won't forget about you, and to prove it, this installment of feminizt LOLz was created in your honor.
If you've got some feminizt LOLz lying around to send us, or if you want to make a few, you can do just that by visiting the I Can Has Cheezburger LOL builder and sending your creations to us here. Now go watch some John Hughes movies, and have a great weekend.
We've got a new internship opening up here at Bitch Media this month and would LOVE it if you all could help us spread the word - we are seeking to fill the position as soon possible.
The "Publishing Intern" works with our Operations Director and other staff on the nuts and bolts of running a non-profit media organization. The intern gains in-depth knowledge of independent media operations, non-profit business management, as well as valuable computer and financial administration skills.
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