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Media

Feminist commentary on American and international media, including countless dust-ups in newspapers, magazines, and TV news.

Where to Report Sexist Gamer Dudes.

Media post by Hanna White on June 17, 2013 - 8:41am; tagged Anita Sarkeesian, gaming, geek, video games.

When media critic Anita Sarkeesian started work on a series of videos chronicling sexism in video games, she was met with a backlash that proved her point.

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Facebook Promises to Crack Down on Rape Jokes

Media post by Sarah Mirk on May 28, 2013 - 3:55pm; tagged Facebook, rape jokes.

Image showing FB allowing rape jokes

 

Does Facebook ever listen?

Apparently yes. A coalition of feminist groups is declaring victory in a campaign to get Facebook to crack down on posts and groups that threaten and belittle violence against women.

 

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Teen Sex is Safer than You Think

Media post by R. Danielle Egan on May 7, 2013 - 3:38pm; tagged Parenting, sex, teen sex.

Vintage book cover: Teen vice!

Over the past several months, I have found myself increasingly depressed and enraged by what seems to be endless stories about sexual and physical violence directed toward girls. There is something that tends to haunt our culture’s thinking about girls: suspicion.

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Some Problems With Princesses

Media post by Aya de Leon on May 6, 2013 - 5:10pm; tagged Disney princesses.

 

ariel, jasmine, and pocahantas all skipping
Back in March, I wrote about my frustration with reading Disney's princess books to my daughter. Instead of reading her the actual words of the Snow White tale, I've taken to freestyling an alternative storyline where Snow White is an empowered dance instructor who also loves fresh fruit. A lot of people responded that they were also annoyed by the all the helpless princess storylines, but others noted that the princesses have evolved. “Disney princesses have come a long way in the 70 years since Snow White," wrote one reader.
In some ways, this is true. In other ways, the princesses are worse now than they were in 1940.
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Meet Reductress: The Women's Magazine Parody We've Been Waiting For

Media post by Sarah Mirk on May 3, 2013 - 1:27pm; tagged Comedy, gossip blogs, The Reductress, women's magazines.

This morning in the doctor’s office waiting room, I leafed through a copy of Ladies' Home Journal and landed on an article called,“The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Cleavage.” The article pairs tips for covering up your cleavage with a sidebar of celebrity’s “buzzworthy boobs.”

This is a real article. And it would be perfect fodder for the new women’s magazine parody website Reductress. Just launched last week, Reductress takes aim at media stuffed with “buzzworthy boob” profiles the way The Onion spoofs 24-hour newspapers. 

Among all the comedy online, Reductress stands out as genuinely fresh and funny.  Just look at these headlines:

 

Reductress headlines: "Loreal launches line of anti-bullying makeup for young girls."

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Dove Encourages Women to Stop Being So Self-Critical

Media post by Sarah Mirk on April 17, 2013 - 11:22am; tagged advertising, Dove.

Dove sketch artist drawing of a woman

Dove has a new gimmick in their "real beauty" ad campaign: Hiring a sketch artist to draw a woman as she describes herself, then as she's described by a random stranger. 

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New PSAs Treat Pregnant Women's Bodies Like Public Property

Media post by Alissa Fleck on April 12, 2013 - 12:07pm; tagged abortion, pregnancy, reproductive rights, teen pregnancy.

We as a nation just can’t seem to trust women to make their own choices, especially when their reproductive organs are involved.

It’s not earth-shattering to point out a good deal of language tossed around by our nation’s lawmakers, major media presences and religious institutions, is detrimental to the agency of women.  The wave of laws restricting abortion rights in 49 states often portray the woman as nothing more than a vessel for a fetus from the point of conception  

But recently, rhetoric has taken the issue even further. Current public education campaigns imply that we have a civic duty to tell women when they should get pregnant and reinforce the idea that pregnant women’s bodies are public property.

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Where are the Young Feminist Leaders? For Now, Right Here Online

Media post by Sarah Mirk on April 8, 2013 - 5:57pm; tagged #femfuture.

Infographic from the report

A new report released tonight by the Barnard Center for Research on Women paints a powerful picture of the future of feminist activism. The #FemFuture: Online Revolution report, put together by Courtney Martin and Vanessa Valenti with 21 other collaborators, argues that blogs and social media are the central landscape for the future of feminist action.

 

This isn’t just a bunch of online chatter. Feminist movements online are legitimate, powerful, and diverse. But what they sorely need is funding.

 

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Without Media Focus, Would Steubenville's Rapists Have Been Found Guilty?

Media post by Sarah Mirk on March 18, 2013 - 1:47pm; tagged rape, Steubenville, The Onion.

chart showing that only 46 percent of rapes are reported

Today we finally have something to applaud in Steubenville: A guilty verdict. Many people were holding their breath in the high-profile rape case, expecting that despite clear evidence of the two defendants’ guilt, our legal system would fail the victim. We thought we’d once again be talking about how a star athlete escaped prosecution.

It’s sad, but finding these rapists guilty is exceptional. According to depressing statistics, only nine percent of rapes in America result in prosecution. Though incarceration is clearly not the sole solution to rape, the fact that these two small-town stars will spend at least a year in a juvenile detention facility sends an important message that people regardless of social status can be held accountable for committing sexual violence.

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How Do We Solve Publishing's Gender Gap?

Media post by Candace Opper on March 7, 2013 - 3:38pm; tagged Cheryl Strayed, creative nonfiction, female form, VIDA, VIDA count.

The graph of gender breakdown in bylines at the New Yorker

“Who says women don’t write serious nonfiction?” ask the editors at Creative Nonfiction, the largest literary magazine dedicated to publishing exclusively high quality nonfiction prose. The meaty essay section in their winter issue, titled “Female Form,” happens to feature (surprise!) solely women writers. In a fortuitous coincidence, the release of “Female Form” dovetails with the most recent national count of the gender of media-makers, the VIDA count. 

The VIDA count is a staggering annual statistical breakdown showing the rates of publication between women and men in several respected literary outlets. This year, the count reveals that men continue to have 70 percent of bylines in mainstream media. VIDA, a burgeoning organization of women in literary arts, conducted the first count in 2011, hoping to initiate a long overdue conversation about gender discrimination in the publishing world.

“We did not go into this thinking we knew the answer to something and this was going to illustrate it, because this is a complicated issue,” VIDA co-founder, Erin Belieu, told Mother Jones last April. “But you can't deny the starkness of such an incredibly wide discrepancy.”

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