“...the Platonic nerd is invariably male. The stereotype is flexible to incorporate women and girls on an individual basis, but few people conjure up the image of a woman when they think about nerds.” Feminist blog Pandagon reviews two books about nerdiness and geekery, Jason Tocci addresses the question of why female involvement in geek culture seems to call for a special explanation, and two feminist geeks set out in search of an egalitarian future.
posted by velvet winter on Jun 26, 2009 - 142 comments

Man fell from the garden of Eden, and he planted the Garden of Herbal Evil, to justify Brutal Myths against women. Fortunately women have the Blissful Garden of Herbal Good to bind the evil herbs. (possibly NSFW, contains line drawings of genitals.) [more inside]
posted by fontophilic on Apr 28, 2009 - 32 comments

Virginity at age 22. Two approaches: 1. Sell it. "It became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that?" 2. Keep it. "It is puzzling and disturbing to me that regnant feminism has never acknowledged the empowering value of virginity."
posted by Pater Aletheias on Jan 30, 2009 - 114 comments

Friday Free Game Download: If you were presented with the concept of a lesbian BDSM video game, the first word that leapt to your mind would probably not be "adorable." But that is exactly what Mighty Jill Off is. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena on Apr 11, 2008 - 15 comments

"Don't tether her branches to the chair or kitchenette..." (mp3) This weekend many of us will buy Christmas trees. MeFi fave Nellie McKay humorously, sweetly, but a dash of "you aught to know" musically urges us not to. She's also has thoughts on dogs and zombies. And humorless feminists (at 1 minute into interview).
posted by tula on Dec 15, 2007 - 24 comments

Catherine Roraback was the only woman in her class at Yale Law School. She was a founder of the Connecticut ACLU, and a president of the National Lawyers Guild. During her long career she defended labor organizers, immigrants, civil rights organizers, Black Panthers, and maybe most famously, Estelle Griswold before the United States Supreme Court in the case that legalized the distribution of birth control. She died this week at age 87. [more inside]
posted by serazin on Oct 24, 2007 - 19 comments

Susie Bright comments on the recent NYT piece about Israeli Nazi-themed porn. Andrea Dworkin wrote about this genre almost 20 years ago. There's a new film on the topic, which is what inspired the NY Times article.
posted by serazin on Sep 6, 2007 - 51 comments

As complete a history of comedian, civil rights activist, and cross-over superstar Moms Mabley as you're likely to find anywhere , including audio, from Beware of Blog.
posted by serazin on Aug 26, 2007 - 7 comments

Paglia's back. "I had certainly assumed the Web was surfeited with more than enough material, but evidently many others beside myself find the partisan polarization of the blogosphere numbingly predictable and its prose too often slapdash, fragmentary or drearily prolix." If you like that sentence, you'll love the return of Camille Paglia to Salon.com.
posted by staggernation on Feb 14, 2007 - 61 comments

Long un-updated, but still chalk full of anarchist theory, The Spunk Library (catalog indexes on upper right). Of possible interest to metafilter users: Maybe a "group" discussion dominated by two or three people ISN'T.
posted by serazin on Feb 11, 2007 - 57 comments

Tillie Olsen, 1912-2007. "She had forced open the language of the short story, insisting that it include the domestic life of women, the passions and anguishes of maternity, the deep, gnarled roots of a long marriage, the hopes and frustrations of immigration, the shining charge of political commitment. Her voice has both challenged and cleared the way for all those who come after her."
posted by amro on Jan 10, 2007 - 15 comments

A Feminist Gaming Manifesto. (And part 2 is here.) "So wait, you’re wondering, maybe, why don’t these crazy men-folk just do that? I think the answer is actually pretty straightforward. People who themselves feel marginalized can’t bear the thought that they could be in a position of power wherein they could hurt someone in the same way that they feel hurt. Who out there hasn’t felt terribly marginalized? What happens, then, is there’s this conflation of “you’re doing something that makes me feel excluded or hurt” with “you’re a bad, bad man like those people with the bitch shirts.” You can’t handle that thought, so you try desperately to prove that it’s not the case. Guilt, or fear that you might be guilty, never did anybody any good."
posted by Bryan Behrenshausen on Apr 16, 2006 - 87 comments

“Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution” -- an online exhibit
posted by matteo on Mar 7, 2006 - 10 comments

Betty Friedan died today, her 85th Birthday. A radical activist from her youth and a summa cum laude university graduate, she was fired from her leftist union journalist job in 1952 for being pregnant with her second child. Eleven years later she turned her experiences and insights into a book, The Feminine Mystique, which changed history for women.
posted by nickyskye on Feb 4, 2006 - 55 comments

We Can Do It! In 1942, 17 year-old Geraldine Doyle spent a week working in a Michigan factory pressing metal as a early replacement worker for men who had gone off to war. During her brief tenure a wire photographer would take a picture of her she'd soon forget. That image -- re-imagined by J. Howard Miller while working for the Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee -- would soon become iconic both for the war effort and for the forever changed society it fostered. Interestingly, Doyle was unware that she had been the inspiration for this great American image until 1984. She's still alive and kicking in Lansing, MI.
posted by Ogre Lawless on Nov 4, 2005 - 22 comments

Andrea Dworkin, feminist icon and scourge of pornographers, has died aged 58.
posted by Holly on Apr 11, 2005 - 138 comments

A feminist critique of "post-feminist" fetish.
"It was bad enough when so many feminists supported Bill Clinton...'Sex positive' feminism, at its root, is really just another manifestation of patriarchy, because it fully supports men's 'rights' to seek pleasure wherever and however they wish."
(Clean site, but includes subject matter and links that may not be safe for work.)
posted by bingo on Mar 16, 2002 - 18 comments

New gender-neutral bible planned... It seems there is a lot of controversy surrounding the revised bible known as "Today's New International Version," or TNIV. The Council on Bibllical Manhood and Womanhood has released a statement on what is wrong with a gender-neutral bible translation while admitting there are a few improvements regarding changing the word men (which isn't specified by Greek text) to all people, a faithful rendering of the Greek pronoun pas According to some, this is the work of the devil and feminist groups everywhere. There have been outright denouncings of the gender-neutral bible by several Christian groups... but really, what do you think? Is it really the big deal people make it out to be? How can the church teach that man and mankind in the Bible refers to all of God's human creatures and yet, not support a genderless translation???
posted by gloege on Jan 28, 2002 - 64 comments

Feminism's Children A reaction to Naomi Wolfe's new book.....so is this really how feminists look at motherhood??
posted by bunnyfire on Nov 1, 2001 - 25 comments

The Adventures of Lacey Brazeer. [Yet Another] Feminist comic strip. Courtesy, unsurprisingly, of Charlotte. I found this screamingly funny; YMMV.
posted by baylink on Sep 22, 2000 - 9 comments