Feminism: It’s Still Necessary

One week ago, I blogged a piece about the necessity of feminism, a reasonable percentage of which was given over to a selection of pertinent links I’ve been filing away since April. Since then, it’s struck me that I’d like to make such posts a weekly endeavour, so that instead of just dropping pieces into a folder and potentially forgetting about them, I can actually group them together. As the vast majority of my bookmarks get dropped into either of two main folders – Feminism, Motherhood, Sexism and Sexuality and SFF, YA and Literary Culture – it only seems fitting to present those links here in two comparable categories: General and SFF, though doubtless there’ll be multiple points of crossover.

Here, then, is the first installment of Weekly Feminist Linkspam.

General

• Two posts by blogger Naomi Dunford about the death threats she’s received and the general trend of escalating violence towards women on the internet;
• Dave Futrelle breaks down a recent post on a blog dedicated to, quote, “Promoting the intellectual Renaissance of Western Patriarchy” (and in case you were wondering: no, that’s not meant to be ironic, that’s actually what the blog is about);
• A rather sneering, insensitive piece by Bryony Gordon about celebrity women who don’t have natural pregnancies;
• A Camden hair salon runs an add campaign using the image of a battered woman to promote their products;
• A depressing Facebook thread about why girls shouldn’t have to learn about politics;
• Outrage over a four-year-old child beauty queen competing with fake (though thankfully not implanted) breasts;
• Glenda Kwek notes the lack of women on Vanity Fair’s list of ‘buccaneering visionaries’;
• A man is sentenced to six years in prison for extorting naked pictures of women online;
• Rape victims in the Congo are being forced to work in dangerous mines to avoid repeat attacks;
• A former child sex slave is trying to sue the man who owned the brothel where she was kept;
• Ellen Datlow blogs about the poor treatment of women over 60 in film and narrative;
• Asian women are having plastic surgery to meet Western beauty standards;
• Sady at Tiger Beatdown writes about the gender imbalance in online discussions of politics;
• A mother of eleven has been accepted to study at Harvard;
• Some philosophical findings about perceptions of agency, experience and suggestiveness in women;
• A report commissioned by the Australian Christian Lobby blames divorce for the decline in well-being among children;
• In France, a woman has successfully sued her husband for not having enough sex with her;
• John Scalzi on white male privilege, in reference to the greater abuse copped by female bloggers;
• An excellent post on getting over girl hate at Rookie Magazine;
• Michelle Bachmann wants to pass a constitutional amendment ensuring that every pregnancy be carried to term;
• A thorough breakdown of a report suggesting that abortion causes mental illness for 81% of women, which is currently being cited by Nadine Dorries in her quest to try and stop abortion providers from providing counselling to women; and
• A study suggesting that confronting men about sexism makes them nicer.

SFF

• Sady at Tiger Beatdown talks about sexism in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, and subsequently has to deal with sexist, mansplaining responses;
• Some background posts on mansplaining, including what it means, where it comes from and why the term is necessary;
• A discussion of sexism and bullying in geek culture;
• Gail Simone’s inclusion of a lesbian polygamous marriage  in the last pre-reboot issue of Secret Six;
• Jim C. Hines weighs in on the problem of women authors and bloggers copping more abuse than men;
• Elizabeth Bear writes about feminist problems with the singularity in SF;
• Juliette McKenna writes an open letter to SFX Magazine about the promotion of equality;  and, finally,
• A blogger struggles to find picture books for little children that feature active female characters.

You guys, that is literally how many links I’ve spotted since the start of September. ONE WEEK. Admittedly, a few of the SFF ones were written a while ago, but all of those are tied in to more recent pieces. Thats *counts* THIRTY-FIVE LINKS. In a WEEK.

Maybe it’s just been a really exceptional seven days for lady-matters, but somehow? I don’t think so.

*headdesk*