Adventures In Feministory

With Top Chef boiling down to its final two episodes (go Jennifer, go!) now seems as good a time as any to delve into the history of the fancy world of professional chefs. From Top Chef (yes, a television series, but fancy nonetheless) to the James Beard Award, there are tons of impressive accolades out there for ambitious chefs to get their knives on, and we love to watch it happen. So how did this culinary world come about? And is it true that a woman is behind it all? (Spoiler alert! Yes, a woman is behind it all!)

As a radical feminist, raging homo, and recovering Catholic, I’ve rarely, if ever, felt compelled to wax poetic about any organization affiliated with the Catholic Church. Then I met a Sister of Mercy, and my dogmatic belief in Catholicism’s all-encompassing evil was shot dead on the spot. The Sisters of Mercy work internationally to promote social justice in ways that are often political and sometimes piss off the Vatican. In the United States, they are one of the groups of nuns currently being investigated by the Vatican, ostensibly because they don’t wear habits, live independently, and are committed to fixing societal problems even if it means occasionally pooh-poohing some of the Church’s archaic stances on things like abortion, condoms, and solutions to the AIDS crisis. Read on for more on the history of The Sisters of Mercy and its founder, Catherine McAuley!

The success of Senator Al Franken's anti-rape amendment is one step towards greater culpability for sexual assault and sexual harassment on the job. This week's Feministory is another case involving labor, sexual harassment, and Minnesota: the first sexual harassment class action lawsuit.

All the poets Iran is famous for – Khayyam, Hafez, Rumi – lived hundreds of years ago... and were dudes. But modernist poetry in Iran is alive and well, and its most important female poet, Forough Farrokhzad, is a contemporary Iranian iconoclast on par with former prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Although lack of adequate translations made her little known outside of Iran, Farrokhzad became famous for her work in her home country before her untimely death in 1967.

This tough woman was way ahead of her time—leaving slavery to become more independent than most women born free in her lifetime—here's the story of Mary Fields. (read more after the jump)