tokenism

Happy May Day everyone! Here's what's on our radar.

• "Latina feminist," not just "feminist." On why today's modern, "mainstream" feminism has yet to prove its commitment to anti-racist projects and transnational movements. [The Feminist Wire]
• Five-year old girl in India is killed by rape. Trigger Warning.[The Guardian]
• For more extremely depressing news, read here about the recent murder of Ci Ci Dove, a trans women in Cleveland.[Advocate]
• Have you been looking for a body-positive magazine written by feminist, queer-friendly women who don't take themselves too seriously? Welcome to Ms. Fit. [Autostraddle]
• Ok, we're still talking about it cause it's so ridiculous. Female athletes have been out for decades: and here's a timeline to prove it. [BuzzFeed]
• The pursuit of more representation of diversity in comics - an admirable, intersectional attempt or just plain old tokenism? [Policymic]
• Help back this project and kickstart Assigned Sex, a documentary film tackling gender role stereotypes from trans perspectives. [Kickstarter]

 

 

Musical theatre black women are often minor characters who show up to enlighten the main (white) ones with a Big Gospel Number, and then sink once more into the background. In spring 2006, not one but two shows premiered containing songs specifically lampooning this trope. And these are what I want to talk about.

A quarter of a century ago, New York's Museum of Modern Art opened An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, a supposed international and comprehensive exhibition of the most significant contemporary artists. Every artist was a white American or European and of 169 artists featured, only 13 were women. Shortly thereafter, a group of kick ass feminists founded the Guerrilla Girls. Wearing gorilla masks to maintain anonymity, the Guerrilla Girls have been using various clever forms of activism to educate the masses about the gender and race gaps in the art world since before I was born. And it appears that the Museum of Modern Art may be beginning to pay attention...