Signal Boosting: spruik your social justice events in July-August

Events posted so far:

SlutWalks continue around the globe – check out the SlutWalk Toronto website which is keeping tabs on the Satellite Slutwalks.

---

This post is open to any social justice activist to spruik any upcoming event/activism outreach: protests, vigils, petitions, fundraisers, film nights, book launches, festivals etc.

Guidelines:
1. Please include links to websites with full details (Facebook pages are fine).
2. Keep your plug brief! Date/place/time name of event and 100-200 word summary, please.
(2a. if your event is already being well plugged elsewhere, please be extra-brief!)
3. Please confine the plugs on this post to events occurring in July and August 2011 only. I’ll do another post next month.
(3a. Exception made for books/films launched any time and still available for purchase. Keep on plugging them so that people still hear about them if they missed out on the launch.)
4. “Nothing About Us Without Us”. If an event is challenged by others for lacking inclusion/actively marginalising groups being discussed at the event, the event will be reviewed and subsequently the promotional comment may be deleted. e.g. events centering transphobic opinions without balance from trans voices, or centering whorephobic opinions without balance from sex worker voices, will not stand.
5. The place to complain about these guidelines is on the Complaints page, NOT on this signal-boost post.

---

 

Signal Boosting: spruik your social justice events in June-July

A bit late this month – apologies.

Events posted so far:

SlutWalks continue around the globe – check out the SlutWalk Toronto website which is keeping tabs on the Satellite Slutwalks.

---

This post is open to any social justice activist to spruik any upcoming event/activism outreach: protests, vigils, petitions, fundraisers, film nights, book launches, festivals etc.

Guidelines:
1. Please include links to websites with full details (Facebook pages are fine).
2. Keep your plug brief! Date/place/time name of event and 100-200 word summary, please.
(2a. if your event is already being well plugged elsewhere, please be extra-brief!)
3. Please confine the plugs on this post to events occurring in June and Julyl 2011 only. I’ll do another post next month.
(3a. Exception made for books/films launched any time and still available for purchase. Keep on plugging them so that people still hear about them if they missed out on the launch.)
4. “Nothing About Us Without Us”. If an event is challenged by others for lacking inclusion/actively marginalising groups being discussed at the event, the event will be reviewed and subsequently the promotional comment may be deleted. e.g. events centering transphobic opinions without balance from trans voices, or centering whorephobic opinions without balance from sex worker voices, will not stand.
5. The place to complain about these guidelines is on the Complaints page, NOT on this signal-boost post.

---

This June spruiking post is brought to you by the recently published novel Last Chance Cafe by Liz Byrski:

The novel centres on a group of older women asking themselves questions about the personal and political lives – past, present and future – negotiating their own feminist journeys while both mentoring and learning from younger women undergoing their own.

With aching empathy, Liz Byrski assembles a fallible cast of characters who are asking the questions we ask ourselves. What does it mean to grow older? Are we brave enough to free ourselves from the pressure to stay young? And is there ever a stage in life when we can just be ourselves?

Signal Boosting: spruik your social justice events in May

Events posted so far:

Saturday, May 7th is Boston’s Slutwalk

---

This post is open to any social justice activist to spruik any upcoming event/activism outreach: protests, vigils, petitions, fundraisers, film nights, book launches, festivals etc.

Guidelines:
1. Please include links to websites with full details (Facebook pages are fine).
2. Keep your plug brief! Date/place/time name of event and 100-200 word summary, please.
(2a. if your event is already being well plugged elsewhere, please be extra-brief!)
3. Please confine the plugs on this post to events occurring in May and June 2011 only. I’ll do another post next month.
(3a. Exception made for books/films launched any time and still available for purchase. Keep on plugging them so that people still hear about them if they missed out on the launch.)
4. “Nothing About Us Without Us”. If an event is challenged by others for lacking inclusion/actively marginalising groups being discussed at the event, the event will be reviewed and subsequently the promotional comment may be deleted. e.g. events centering transphobic opinions without balance from trans voices, or centering whorephobic opinions without balance from sex worker voices, will not stand.
5. The place to complain about these guidelines is on the Complaints page, NOT on this signal-boost post.

---

Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the academic industrial complex of feminism

This May spruiking post is brought to you by the recently published anthology Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the academic industrial complex of feminism, edited by Jessica Yee.

When feminism itself becomes its own form of oppression, what do we have to say about it? Western notions of polite discourse are not the norm for all of us, and just because we’ve got some new and hot language lately in equity-seeking movements like feminism — such as “intersectionality” — to use in our talk, it doesn’t necessarily make things change in our walk (i.e. actually being anti-racist).

Confronting the sometimes uncomfortable questions feminism has made us ask about what’s going on FOR REAL paved the many paths that brought the contributors of this book together to share their sometimes uncomfortable truths, not just about feminism, but about who they are and where they are coming from.

Changes

I’m about to update the template to something that is more accessible to more readers. Bear with us if a few things look wonky until the adjustment has been fully sorted out.

Netiquette

It’s pretty obvious from the structure of this site that there are some information pages that we wish people to read before they go on through the op-eds and FAQs contained in this blog-section. If what you write makes it obvious that you haven’t read the Introduction frontpage and the recommended links there before commenting on a blog-post, you will not be considered to be posting in good faith. Just some polite advice.

Action Alert: Women for Women International needs help

From my inbox:

Friends, help Women for Women International with your vote for our Members Project “Help Women and Children Survivors of War Rebuild”. With your support it could share in $2.5 million in funding from American Express. We need to get into the Top 25 projects by September 1 so please nominate this project for potential funding, go to Help Women and Children Survivors of War Rebuild.

Please click the link to the project and click Nominate. If you do not have an American Express website login, just click “Guest Member” provide a little information and you can then Nominate and vote.

Please show your support with a Click and Share this with as many friends as possible. We need at least 500 more votes in the next week to be in the running.

[link]

No thanks, random incompetent shill

Just received this in mail. WTF?

[snip product spiel]

We know your are big in the beauty blog world and we would love to send over some free product that may inspire you!

I’d LOL if it wasn’t so difficult to do when my jaw is on the floor.

There’s been a noticeable uptick in such mails around the blogosphere lately – the idea of sending bloggers freebies in order to get a favourable review. In one way it’s logical, and if one likes a product why not recommend it to others? Yet I have concerns about the level of transparency about some of these freebies that bloggers are reviewing positively, an issue that appears to have hit the “mommy-blogs” primarily amongst women bloggers, because they have such a large readership of people with little kids to buy stuff for, but I’m sure some of the larger feminist blogs are also being offered a steady drizzle of freebies.

I doubt anyone has an objection to review copies of books relevant to certain blog’s core issues, but what about other stuff? Where does the line get drawn, especially for feminists who regularly criticise consumerist commercialism as a fundamental aspect of the commodifying of women’s bodies and the marginalisation of women’s choices? Where does the co-opting of activists and critics begin? Has anybody stopped reading someone because the freebie-blogging became intrusive?

At least it’s unlikely to become an ethical dilemma for me just yet so long as the only freebie offers I’m getting are so laughably ill-matched to my writings.