feminism

When Kathryn Bigelow nabbed the Best Director Oscar in March for The Hurt Locker, critics such as The Guardian's Richard Adams wrote perceptive analyses of the film's erasure of Iraqi voices.

In 2008, 58 teenage girls published their take on body image, family, politics, and pop culture in the anthology Red: Teenage Girls in America Write on What Fires Up Their Lives Today. Page Turner caught up with five of them to talk about feminism, teen-girl falsehoods, and what's happened in their lives since their essays left off.

Welcome to Page Turner, a new blog on feminism and books here at Bitch's online headquarters. Here's my goal with Page Turner: to make it a collaboration between you, Bitch's readers, and me, your biblio-obsessed blogger. Page Turner is all about our love of books and feminisms, and all the many ways we interact with authors and their work in our daily lives. Read on for more!

Welcome to "Rave On," a new Page Turner series that asks feminist writers, artists, musicians, activists, leaders, and scholars to talk about a book that completely rocked their world. Our series kicks off with writer Jennifer Baumgardner, who raves about The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, by Ann Fessler. Read on for more!

Feminism 2.0 is holding a caregiving blog carnival July 13th:

Fem2.0 Blog Carnival: For Women, the Other Side of Work Is NOT Play… It’s Caregiving

Women take care of children, spouses, parents, family members, friends. We dominate the caregiving professions, like nursing or social work. Ask anyone receiving care of any kind and he or she will most likely tell you that the primary caregiver is a woman.

Caregiving is a job for which women usually don’t get or expect monetary compensation. It is a critical aspect of work/life and healthcare issues. How can caregiving be made easier to make our lives easier?

CNN: The Most Boring Name in Yesterday's News

When I was asked to guest-blog for Bitch I knew I wanted to cover the mom angle. It's not so much that after becoming a mom that it's all I want to do, but rather, I still see a need to cover and promote feminist mom stuff. While there was quite a controversy last month on whether or not there is a divide between feminist blogs and mom blogs, I want to use this temporary soap box to point out some of my favorite feminist mom blogs. Some are obviously feminist mom blogs and some will be a bit more subtle.

With scientific studies, mainstream media often seems to be playing a massive game of telephone. Figuring out what a scientist actually reported means back tracking through headlines that one-up each other in exaggeration, simplification and pure sex-upification results to snag readers. The game ended last month with the UK Telegraph declaring, "Women with brains have more fun in bed than the average bimbo." Oh gawd. How did this get started?

... cuz we need you.

On May 1, a pair of tennis-playing girls—sisters Karli and Tonya Timko—won the won the boys AA Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League doubles title. Let me take that back: They didn’t just win. They freakin’ dominated. As singles players on the boys team, they rolled over their opponents all year, dropping only two sets between the two of them. When the season came to a close and titles were on the line, the sisters teamed up as double partners again and hammered their finals opponents, Tin Chu and Drew Gallatin of Thomas Jefferson High, by a total of 6-2, 6-1.

According to their own statements in the press, the sisters, who play for Chartiers-Houston high, have been playing on the boys’ tennis team because there haven’t been enough girls to field a girls’ squad. That dismal state of affairs is a worthy enough topic for conversation, but let’s save that for another time. What I want to take a look at is the media coverage of the sisters’ victory.

WOW (The Women on the Web) has a lengthy Q&A with feminist icon Gloria Steinem.  Here's a snippet:

wOw: What do you think is the greatest achievement in women’s rights in your lifetime?