Feminism Friday: Humour as a tool for shaming and silencing

Last week’s Feminism Friday post was on why Rape Jokes Just Aren’t Funny, based on a series from Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, and at the crosspost on Hoyden About Town Bernice made a telling comment.
Humour - the final frontier of colonialisation. You really now you’ve co-opted someone into the frame of dominance from which [...]

Feminism Friday: More on how Rape Jokes Just Aren’t Funny

Obviously, a lot of women feel uncomfortable about rape jokes because rape is an ever-present background threat to daily life for us, not just a bit of regrettable “bad sex”. Melissa McEwan at Shakesville has written quite a lot about how rape jokes bolster rape culture, and posted an excellent essay on the subject [...]

Happy Halloween

Scare us all! Open thread for creepy stories and revoltingly sexist costume links (because strangely, we don’t see superheroes in costumes like this, at this time of year or any other).

Alternatively, if you’re doing something kickarse for Halloween or Samhain, link here to your posts about it.

Open Thread: Feminism, Sexual Orientation and Social Hostility

This thread is a response to a comment from Astrodyke in the Suggestions thread:
I don’t see tags for “lesbian” or “sexual orientation”. It’d be nice to have some FAQs about lesbianism and how it relates to feminism.
There are the straw questions, “Don’t all feminists hate men?” or “Aren’t all feminists lesbians?” But there are also [...]

Feminism Friday: Occasionally Conversations with my Man Are Instructive

This is a republication of a post originally published at the author’s blog that I had linked to in the FAQs. That blog is no longer a general readership blog, but the author has given permission to repost this article here.
Author: Ilyka Damen

He came home from the store this afternoon and asked, “So, what’s [...]

FAQ: Aren’t feminists just sexists towards men?

AKA Aren’t feminists just “reverse sexists”?
Short answer: Neither feminists as a group, nor feminist theory, engages in sexism or “reverse sexism” against men. Often times the feminist focus on women’s issues, as well as their recognition and continued efforts to correct the imbalance of power (see male privilege), are seen as looking to privilege women [...]

Feminism Friday: Rape Jokes Aren’t Funny

Late, I know, and not much from me: I’m just pointing you at these three posts below from Melissa McEwan at Shakesville.
Trauma-Trigger Alert: Melissa describes her own rape in harrowing detail in order to point out how rape is not funny, and although the discussion threads start out thoughtful and interesting, they end up invaded [...]