VIDA count

Here's some news to help you over the hump that is Wednesday!

• Think you're living a sexism-free life?  Think again.  Andrea Grimes reveals the implications of the everyday choices feminists make and defends them. [Hay Ladies!]
• An open letter to Michelle Williams on dressing up as and equating Native Americans with Munchkins. [The Nation]
• Colorlines covers the heartbreaking death of 16-year-old Kimani Gray who was shot by the NYPD this past weekend after allegedly attempting to adjust his belt. [Colorlines]
• Defense attorneys of the recent Steubenville case will be pleading that date rape does not exist. [The Atlantic Wire]
• The new stats on gender disparity in publishing were released last week by VIDA.  Here's what the editors at the least sexist publications had to say on their practices. [Flavorwire]
• Monica Roberts of TransGriot is the first transwoman keynote speaker at the 2nd Annual Black Transmen Conference which starts today, March 13, and goes through March 17.  [TransGriot]
• Tell your stories of identity and gender to The Bandit Zine by March 15 for consideration in their upcoming issue. [Autostraddle]
• With all the awkwardness and realness Girls is servin' up, it leaves some wondering what's up with the lack of condom talk on the show.  [Slate]
• Sure, things are mostly casual on Grindr, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't take it seriously.  The app is actually changing the way people connect in more ways than you might think. [The New York Times]

So that's what we've been reading up on.  Did we miss any links?  Send 'em our way and let us know in the comments.

“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.”