Carnival of Feminists No. 45

First off I just want to say what a huge amount of great feminist writing there is out there, and how tough it’s been to put this together.   There’s just too much important stuff out there,  and I feel really overwhelmed. I’ve organized the Carnival a little artificially into categories, just to make it easier to take it all in (hopefully).  In particular, the fact that there is an “Analysis” header shouldn’t be taken to suggest that other items lack analysis.  It’s just that these didn’t fit the other categories, really! So, enough faffing, here we go…..

Current Events

1. Diary of an Anxious Black Woman chronicles recent horrors, concluding with the horrific rape and torture of a black woman by six whites, and predicting that somehow this woman will end up blamed and that her experience will be somehow trivialised.  Just days later, the predictions are borne out as theDiary and Shakesville discuss.   Stunning. And yet not.
   
2. Inside Iran reports that photos of the Iranian Women’s Volleyball Team are circulating widely, and muses on why this might be.
   
3. Miss Teen S. Carolina’s unfortunate interview: Black Looks notes that “this is how American nationalism and hegemony works; she can’t even identify the US on a map or even coherently answer a question about how Americans are geographically challenged, and yet somehow we (she) can help others because we think we are superior.” Packaging Girlhood discusses the interview in light of a study on how swimsuits affect math skills.
4. Larry Craig: some thought-provoking ruminations on outing from No Cookies For Me. The truth is that there’s almost nothing I adore more than a juicy Republican sex scandal. (This may be because I am a bad person and a rabid partisan, but there it is.) But Roy is right that there are some real concerns about what the effect of such outings is: there is indeed a worrying possibility that they only heighten the sense that gay sex is wrong.
5. Red Jenny writes about the impressive story of Ugandan women starting their own cooperative banks. 
6. Unapologetically Female writes on the recent Blog-Against-the-Telethon, and on how focusing on finding cures is like fighting sexism by trying to make women into men.
7. Women’s eNews brings us the great news that efforts to get more women and more Maya (both men and women) to the polls in Guatemala seem to be succeeding.
8. Knowledge and Experience reports on a woman who is suing to be allowed adequate break time and privacy for breast-pumping while taking her 9-hour medical boards.
9. Menstrual Poetry brings us the horrific story of a pastor getting a light sentence for incest because he was just teaching his daughters how to be good wives.
10. Goddess Musings, the blog of a feminist sports fan, discusses a pathetic commercial effort to woo women who love sports.
11. From Un-Cool: A woman who has recovered from her Borderline Personality Disorder is apparently going to have her baby snatched away within minutes of its birth for fear that she may abuse it.

Less Current Events That Need to Be Remembered

1. From Beautiful, Also, Are the Souls of My Black Sisters, an update on the apparent murder of PFC Lavena Johnson, which the army tried to pass off as a suicide.
2. From What About Our Daughters?, some updates on the horrific Dunbar Village rape case in which a woman was raped by 10 men for hours and forced to preform oral sex on her own son, and on the continuing lack of proper responses to this case.
3. A Woman’s Ecdysis suggests that there isn’t enough feminist writing about 9/11, at least not for free.
   
4. In a Strange Land tells us that on this day, 19 September, in 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Yay New Zealand!

Appearance Issues

1. A fascinating post at Just Another Angry Black Muslim Woman, covering such issues as the complex interplay between sexy clothes and abayas (as well as the experience of being excessively warm) with the wonderful title Hot Girls in Kuwait.
2. Natalia Antonova has a really interesting post on feminine clothes and makeup as a symbol of strength, drawing on her grandmother’s experiences of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.
3. Shapely Prose has an impressive tribute to Anita Roddick, Body Shop founder, for helping with body acceptance issues.

Science

1. Primate Diaries offers an interesting discussion in answer to the question of why most cultures are much more prone to punish women who ‘cheat’ than men: it uses cross-cultural and historical evidence (a lot of it) to argue that this is not simply the result of human evolution.
2. A wonderful parody of the study showing that gendered colour preferences are innate at Occultum Iter: “New Breathrough in Goth Studies” 
3. Dr Signout offers pleasingly ill-tempered criticism of “another study that demonstrates that women and men are, well, you know. The way they are.”

Reviews

1. Lonergrrrl reviews a great sounding book on the Suffragettes, and reflects on their activism versus activism today.
2. Feminist Fire examines a recent shallow article in Observer Woman on young feminists– it’s especially interesting to read both Debs’s review and the comments. One of the women interviewed writes in, and the contrast between her account and the way the article came out is striking. 

Analysis 

1. Abyss2hope has 2 very interesting posts about so-called ‘gray rape’ here and here. The second one grabs me as a philosopher– she argues that cases of high-pressure ‘senior investment’ experts who defraud seniors out of their life savings (fraud=clearly a crime!) could be understood as analogous to some of the more controversial cases of ‘gray rape’. Interesting and provocative thought.
2. The issue of men in feminism is one that many of us writing for this blog feel quite strongly about.  So I was very interested to read this post from Engage: Conversations in Philosophy on what is required for one to qualify as a feminist man.  There’s some good discussion in the comments, too.  
3.  The F-Word has an excellent discussion of claims that women love lad culture, as evidenced by their willingness to “get their tits out”.
4. From RH Reality Check, an interesting piece on the quite unfamiliar (to me) way that debates over abortion are framed in the Phillipines.
5. Feminist Law Professors writes about “how unaligned the interests of “progressive” men and progressive women can be”.
6. Piny at Feministe writes about the way that the intersection of multiple oppressions seems to make writers feel that it is legitimate to say things that they would deem unacceptable in other contexts. 
7. Broadsheet suggests that fear of pedophilia may be setting back some of the progress made in getting men more involved in childcare. 
8. Viva la Feminista offers a powerful post on homeless families and abuse.
9. Cruella points out the somewhat disturbing nature of the slogan “What Happens in Vegas Stays In Vegas”.
10. Pandagon is very insightful on another slogan, “The Personal is Political”. [Somehow this disappeared from my original post, so I’ve added it back in. Ooops!]
11. From Sex in the Public Square, a thoughtful critique of Bob Herbert’s recent column on sex work.
12. Fetch Me My Axe has an intriguing discussion of nature, nurture, and gay rights arguments, hitting on many things that have puzzled me.
13. Bernedette Muthien writes on heteronormativity (the enforcement of heterosexuality as a norm) in the African women’s movement.

Sites, Not Posts I realise I’m supposed to point you to posts, not sites.  But I just can’t resist mentioning a few sites which represent great projects that you need to know about.

1. Bangladesh from our view is a blog written by Bangladeshi women and girls as a part of Rising Voices, an effort to address global imbalances in the “global conversation” that is the internet.
2. The Women Philosophers Website, which is uncovering and publicising an amazing unknown history of great women thinkers worldwide through the millenia.
3. HijabMan’s store is the place to go for your “This is what a Radical Muslim Feminist Looks Like” T-Shirt.

First-Person Stories

1. From Objectify This, a really nice story of success in getting a biology syllabus changed to include such radical elements as discussion of the female reproductive system.
2. Female Science Professor writes of being told she was asking to be stalked by having her office door open.
3. Two Women Blogging tells the story of a woman whose doctor tried to shame her into never discussing her abortion.
4. Cara at the Curvature describes how a study of depression and smoking in pregnant women helped her to discover some biases of which she’d been unaware. This is an important sort of story to tell.
5. Hatshepsut, an Egyptian feminist blogger, offers us the revealing Overheard in Cairo. 
6. Miss Crip Chick writes powerfully of pride and the difficulty of maintaining it in the face of oppression.
7. From Writing Evolution, a tale of everyday sexism— the kind that sends the message that women are simply lesser beings (and perhaps not even that!).
8. Riverbend, the famous Iraqi blogger, recounts her very recent departure for and arrival in Syria.

And I’ll leave you with a supremely icky perfume ad, courtesy of Feministing.Many thanks to JJ, Stoat, and Mr Jender for their help with the Carnival!If you’d like to submit something to the next carnival, go here.