Suggestions, please!
Open Suggestion Thread
Please add suggestions for questions that have not yet been addressed, hopefully with links to articles that address those questions, in the comments to this post.
Note: Comments left here are to suggest further posts rather than begin a debate. If you wish to generate a discussion, then your question might be more appropriate on the Ask A Question thread.
What sort of suggestions could you make?
Firstly, links that cover basic material for the benefit of the genuinely curious.
Secondly, links that debunk common anti-feminist myths and address common arguments from trolls.
The model for all efforts of this kind to emulate is the marvellous Index to Creationist Claims associated with USENet newsgroup talk.origins. The wonderful zuzu, who has kindly seen fit to widely promote this project, nails it:
Got a troll asking you disingenuous or stupid questions and don’t know where to tell them to go (other than hell, of course)? Drop on by the open suggestion thread and make a suggestion for a post to which you can later refer trolls (or the genuinely clueless). With a sweet smile and a suggestion to come back once they’ve covered the first-year course material.
As a general rule I’d prefer people to nominate other people’s articles rather than their own in this thread, but it’s fine to link to your own writing in other threads.
If you have an article you’d like to suggest as a link to be added to an existing FAQ post, please add it in the comments to that post. That way the comments thread becomes a user-generated “More Reading” list even if I decide against adding the link to the body of the post.
Thanks in advance for contributing to this feminist resource.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- Updates and mea culpa « Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog
- Open Thread: Feminism, Sexual Orientation and Social Hostility « Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog
tigtog
tekanji
shakesville
Will you please write a post about the power of language and why casual use of words that are misogynistic (or even the word “misogyny”) is bad and damaging? Thank you!
Hi Becky, I didn’t mean to ignore this question, it just fell through the cracks of my to-do list.
There’s a little coverage of the topic in this post:
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/feminism-friday-when-women-who-advocate-for-womens-rights-reject-the-label-feminist/
There’s a few blogs from WOC that reject or at least challenge the “feminist” label in that post. It was written before the excellent Womanist Musings blog was begun, and Renee has lots and lots of material on this.
I do feel a little tentative on writing too much about this from my perspective rather than sharing what WOC-bloggers are saying for themselves.
I like this suggestion.
There’s a couple of related ones:
“Someone just said I’ve done something sexist. I don’t think I have. What should I do?”
“I’ve just done something sexist, it was pointed out to me, I agree, how do I apologise? What do I do about the huge Internet pile-on I’m now squashed under?”
“Shouldn’t we be really careful about allegations of sexism? They create these huge pile-ons and people can harm their enemies just by pointing the feminists at them and saying ’sexist, go get him!’”
The first two are more genuine and there’s lots of links in particular for the first one about not going bananas when your privilege is pointed out and using criticisms for a good long look in the mirror. Some of the stuff about http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_men is relevant here.
But I don’t know of anything good yet for “but the POWER of accusing people of sexism, it DESTROYS LIVES” and the related “oh the accusation of sexism is a convenient mask for your real LIFE DESTROYING agenda isn’t it?” This mostly comes out of http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke in which discussion of sexism was read by a lot of people as a front for the real agenda of silencing critics of the Mono programming framework.
Did anyone see Conan O’Brian last night, joking about a prison inmate’s interview/rape of Bernie Madoff. The jokes were actually more about rape, than about the idea of Madoff getting “punished” in prison for his fraud that ruined countless lives. I found the segment so damaging and obscene in it’s humor about rape that I will never watch Conan again. And I’m sure it’s a trigger for survivors of sexual assault. I literally could not believe that this was made, no less aired on TV
Was Madoff easy to talk to?
“He was tight lipped at first”
“he was a little hard to pin down, but eventually I got him to open up”
The segment is from the Tonight Show, 7/30/09, found at 11:00 to 12:00 on the linked broadcast below. I think it could be really helpful to have people write to the show in complaint.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/86341/the-tonight-show-with-conan-obrien-thu-jul-30-2009
Why?
Idiot late-show hosts like Conan, Letterman, Leno & Kimmel frequently make distasteful comments about women (Letterman’s jab at Sarah Palin’s daughter comes to mind) and they pretty much shrug off any complaints they receive.
Also, keep in mind that they are pandering to a particular demographic that actually finds this type of thing “funny”. This same demographic is their base audience. IOW, they don’t care what the “bitches” think, especially if it concerns distasteful humor directed at another member of their own gender.
I’d like to read more about what feminists envision as the (good) future. I’ve read plenty of posts about reading that this or that is misogynistic or otherwise wrong/offensive.
I realize that feminism has lots of different schools of thought–Is there such a thing as feminist porn? Can a feminist be a stay at home mom? At various points in time, feminists have argued passionately yes and no to both questions.
So, realizing that feminism is a non-monolithic ideology–what are we aiming for?
I’d like to read posts about the world we are aiming for. Describe this future world for what it is, and not what it isn’t.
I’d love to have something about Street Harassment, for why it’s not a compliment when some dude whistles at me from his car, or catcalls me, or whatever.
I know you folks are super busy, but please consider this question if you have the time to spare. I have run into several people who are completely ignorant of how sexual harassment in the workplace fits into a system of oppression, and they seem to be disgusted and outraged that it’s considered “such a big deal.” I can’t find anything addressing this topic on your website, and the 2007 post titled “Sexual Harassment” is nothing but dead links.
I just don’t know what to say to guys who think that sexual harassment is a silly thing to get worked up about, that it’s “just flirting,” and that men are sooo oppressed because women can sue them or make them lose their job just because they “feel uncomfortable.”
The assumption that making disciplinary action against workplace harassment is so common and so easy drives me insane as well, as it most definitely does not match my experience. But even more important to me is the question of why sexual harassment in the workplace is something that matters. How does one explain workplace harassment to someone who thinks it’s no biggie and just “political correctness gone mad”?
Thanks for the heads-up on the dead links, lala. I’ll see if I can come up with something better on sexual harassment.