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Celebrities Not Needed

Posted on October 3, 2012 by thefeministcritic

I read Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide when it came out in 2009.  The book, written by writer couple Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDun, details atrocities done to women and girls all over the globe.  It focuses on rape, sex trafficking, maternal mortality, female genital circumcision, and access to education.  It is an illuminating yet frustrating book.  Kristof and WuDunn spend time in each chapter detailing the work being done in these areas to help girls and women.

This week, on Monday and Tuesday, the documentary version of their book came out.  There was a big media blitz about it on the Internet, including emails to Women’s Centers, like mine, to hold screenings.  It was too short notice for us to hold a screening, not to mention, too late for me to stay at work on a Monday or Tuesday night.  The film aired from 9-11pm ET.  But I was so disgusted with the Monday night viewing that I couldn’t force myself to watch the second half, which I’m sure will now be airing on PBS all month.

The film opens with a statement by George Clooney.  Fine.  Then there are clips interspersed with Kristoff’s intense interviews or investigations in each of the areas mentioned above.  Also fine.  Each one of the places that Kristof visits in the film, where he focuses on a specific issue to women and girls, he had a celebrity with him.  It was so odd at first, almost unsettling.  There is no explanation why Meg Ryan is with him going to a safe haven for girls who have been sold into sex slavery.  Was this an issue she was already interested in?  Was this a cause she had been working for?  As they drive up to this haven, where all these young girls welcome them in uniforms, Meg Ryan says “Aw.  They look so cute.”  WHAT???? Cute?  These girls were just sex slaves and we’re going to immediately respond to them in terms of their bodies and how they look?  Who the hell edited this thing?

When you go to the half the sky website, you can click on a drop down menu of Celebrities/Advocates.  There you can see what this person does on behalf of women.  Gabrielle Union, who visits Vietnam with Kristof, is described as

“being an ambassador for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, as well as her support for the Young Survivor Coalition (YSC) and the Rape Treatment Center (RTC) at UCLA. Union often travels on behalf of Susan G. Komen and the YSC to share her story of losing a friend to breast cancer and works to inspire others as well when she visits the RTC to talk to young women. She also helped found a program called “A Step for Success” in 2004, which helps raise funds for the economically challenged Kelso Elementary School in Los Angeles. The program holds fundraisers to help pay for books, classroom supplies and many other daily needs that teachers have fallen burden to paying for themselves. Union traveled with Nicholas Kristof to Vietnam to visit John Wood at Room to Read.” 

Nowhere in her bio does it talk about why she would be going with Kristof to Vietnam, nor her interest in John Wood’s organization.  And this seems to be the case with all these famous female actors.  Eva Mendes bio on the site lists nothing about her interest in fighting rape.  She gives a young rape survivor a necklace, which makes the viewer very uncomfortable.  This is the case with all the celebrities featured in the film.

If you click on each of the celebrities names, that page features a picture of them with one of the women or girls interviewed in the film, with a big smile on their face.  The complexities of race and class in these pictures are unsettling.

I would have been perfectly fine viewing this documentary with the clips of “experts” interspersed with Kristof’s intimate interviews with women and girls who have survived horrible circumstances, but adding celebrity women to bring viewers to the television seems forced and inappropriate.  WuDunn was an articulate and intelligent voice throughout the movie and she was all the celebrity I needed.

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Should Politicians Have to Take a Test?

Posted on September 26, 2012 by thefeministcritic

So by now we are all just sick and tired of the election.  Sick of seeing the same old commercials of how Warren is better than Brown and Romney is better than Obama and this one didn’t do this and that one didn’t do that. 

And I am certainly the last person to say I have given up and I won’t vote because our political system has become too irrational for the everyday person, but this year (or maybe it really is every year) I keep getting this nagging sense that there needs to be some kind of test or requirement or schooling that some of these people need before they start running for office.

Todd Akin who sits on the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology thought that a woman’s body rejected pregnancies caused by “legitimate rape.”  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.  Sorry, I really had to swear here.  Todd has a B.S. in Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Master’s in Divinity from Covenant Theological Seminary.  I’m not sure either of these degrees qualifies him to provide medical statements on rape and pregnancy.

Mitt Romney, my former Governor of Massachusetts, who has helped many of my friends get health insurance continues to bumble.  His latest tape revealing he doesn’t care about 47% of the electorate, as they don’t pay taxes and thus won’t vote for him makes one wonder if people running for President should have a degree in Economics.  Romney has a Bachelor’s in English and a J.D. and MBA from Harvard.  Maybe it’s the English degree that makes him struggle with math. 

We can certainly question the folks who advise these “brilliant” men.  Or question the brilliancy of men who hire people who give them terrible advice.  These same would-be politicians will continue to hire people if elected; people who might continue to provide poor advice as well as incorrect information.  Whatever the case, I’m just looking forward to Thanksgiving when all this will be behind us, for another two years. 

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Leave Sandra Fluke Alone!

Posted on September 13, 2012 by thefeministcritic

I was fortunate to see Sandra Fluke live this past April when I brought five students to the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Young Women’s Leadership Conference.  She spoke passionately about her experience testifying before a panel of men about women’s need for birth control.  She is a true reproductive justice activist.

I was thrilled the DNC invited her to be one of their speakers, not only because of her passion for reproductive rights, but also because she is a young outspoken woman who TELLS THE TRUTH.

Should I be surprised at the aftermath of her speech?  Should I be surprised that the right wing CHRISTIANS used sexualized language to critique her?  I guess I shouldn’t, as Rush Limbaugh’s horrible attack of her after her Congressional Testimony where he stated,”What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.”  (If you want to read more about the Rush Limbaugh attack, read David Frum’s article) It doesn’t make sense to me that a party who extols the virtues of Christianity would say some of the horrible things they have been saying about this woman.  Honestly, I would be embarrassed if I was a pro-choice Republican woman.  Here are a few of them:

Before the speech, the lovely Ann Coulter tweeted, “Bill Clinton just impregnated Sandra Fluke backstage.”

The rest of this I quote from David Frum’s CNN column “Slurs only Bolster Sandra Fluke’s Cause.” 

Stephen Kruiser:   “Tricky camera work to keep TV audience from seeing (David) Axelrod’s hand up Fluke’s a**.” 
Steven Kruiser: “Sandra Fluke has been blessed with a quarter-million dollars of elite education … and she has concluded that the most urgent need facing the Brokest Nation in History is for someone else to pay for the contraception of 30-year-old children.”

James Taranto:  “Seriously, the party of Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman chose to showcase someone whose claim to fame is that she demands that somebody else pay for her birth control.”

Joe Walsh: “Think about this, a 31-, 32-year-old law student who has been a student for life, who gets up there in front of a national audience and tells the American people, ‘I want America to pay for my contraceptives.’ You’re kidding me. Go get a job. Go get a job, Sandra Fluke.”

Sandra Fluke’s original testimony was about student’s having access to birth control at Catholic Universities, like Georgetown, where she is a law students.  This was not about taxpayers paying for birth control, although that’s what one would think it was about if you read all the pundits responses to her.

What remains for me, however, is what these attacks on Fluke tell us about the way women are represented in our culture.  A smart, young woman cannot get up in front of a group of men, only men, and talk intelligently about the needs of young woman without being sexualized and demonized.  Women can’t run for office without being ripped apart about how they look and what they wear.  Hillary cries a tear, she’s emotional and clearly can’t be President.  Elizabeth Warren looks like a librarian and thus isn’t “hip” enough to be a Senator.  Michelle Obama is gorgeous and has style so she should be on the 2012 ticket.  And people wonder why more women don’t run for office.  What smart woman wants to put herself through THAT kind of scrutiny, opening herself up to being called a slut or ugly or emotional, none of which has anything to do with her politics and her leadership ability.

In the years that I have observed the world through my purple-hazed feminist glasses, I don’t recall it being so crude, so mean, and so trivial.  For male conservative leaders to use sexual language to critique a person’s opinion instead of intelligent critique backed up with facts only demonstrates who is really the idiot in the room. 

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Crazy Dating Site

Posted on September 7, 2012 by thefeministcritic

I heard about this dating website on an academic listerve.  Whatsyourprice.com is a site where people bid on dates.  For example, if I was interested in dating you, I’d offer you $50 and you can accept my offer.  The site talks about “generous” people and “attractive” people.  Your photo has to be approved to allow you to register.  The site also maintains a blog.  This blog got me fired up.

Step by step guide to being a lady

I don’t even think there is any need to comment on this in 2012. 

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Don’t Scratch a Sister, Because the System Will Do It for You!

Posted on August 7, 2012 by thefeministcritic

I recently spent a three day weekend in Maine with one of my best friends and her closest friends.  There were six of us that weekend and we got along the entire time.  Someone I told about this was amazed.  Six women getting along?  Like it was impossible.  We came up with a term “banana” that we would use whenever one of us was getting pushy, snippy, or just domineering.  It always made the woman being called out pause, smile and say “you’re right!” 
A few years ago, we planned our whole semester around women supporting each other.  Recently, a graduate who experienced that semester found this list on Tumblr called “How to Be Friends With Women.”  It’s kind of sad that someone has to write about this, but much in here was so honest, I thought it would be a nice post.   Here is the original link http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/28510427080/how-to-be-friends-with-another-woman
I particularly like many of the statements in number 6. 
1. Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be toxic, bitchy or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.
1A. This is not to say women aren’t bitches or toxic or competitive sometimes but rather to say that these are not defining characteristics of female friendship, especially as you get older.
2. A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology. 
2A: The female friendship in Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? is actually awesome and powerful. If you read it as otherwise, ask yourself why.
3. If you find that you are feeling competitive, toxic, or bitchy toward the women who are supposed to be your closest friends, look at why and figure out how to fix it and/or find someone who can help you fix it.
4. If you are the kind of woman who says, “I’m mostly friends with guys,” and act like you’re proud of that, like that makes you closer to being a man or something, and less of a woman as if a woman is a bad thing, see Item 3. It’s okay if most of your friends are guys but if you champion this as a commentary on the nature of female friendships, well, soul search a little.
4A. If you feel like it’s hard to be friends with women consider that maybe women aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s just you.
4B. I used to be this kind of woman. I’m sorry.
5. Sometimes, your friends will date people you cannot stand. You can either be honest about your feelings or you can lie. There are good reasons for both. Sometimes you will be the person dating someone your friends cannot stand. If your man or woman is a scrub, just own it so you and your friends can talk about more interesting things. My go to explanation is, “I am dating an asshole because I’m lazy.” You are welcome to borrow it.
6. Want nothing but the best for your friends because when your friends are happy and successful, it’s probably going to be easier for you to be happy.
6A. If you’re having a rough go of it and a friend is having the best year ever and you need to think some dark thoughts about that, do it alone, with your therapist, or in your diary so that when you actually see your friend, you can avoid the myth discussed in Item 1.
6B. If you and your friend(s) are in the same field and you can collaborate or help each other, do this, without shame. It’s not your fault your friends are awesome. Men invented nepotism and practically live by it. It’s okay for women to do it too. 
6C: Don’t tear other women down because even if they’re not your friends, they are other women and well, this is just important. This is not to say you cannot criticize other women but understand the difference between criticizing constructively and tearing down cruelly. 
6D: Everybody gossips so if you are going to gossip about your friends, at least make it fun and interesting. As a corollary, never say, I never lie or I never gossip because you are lying.
6E: Love your friends’ kids even if you don’t want or like children. 
Just do it. 
7. Tell your friends the hard truths they need to hear. They might get pissed about it but it’s probably for their own good. The other day my best friend told me to get it together about my love life and demanded an action plan and well, it was irritating but also useful. 
7A: Don’t be totally rude about truth telling and consider how much truth is actually needed to get the job done. Finesse goes a long way.
7B: These conversations are more fun when preceded by an 
emphatic, “GIRL.”
8. Surround yourself with women you can get sloppy drunk with who won’t draw stupid things on your face if you pass out, and who will help you puke, if you over celebrate and who will also tell you if you get sloppy drunk too much or behave badly when you are sloppy drunk. 
9. Don’t flirt (too much), have sex, or engage in an emotional affair with your friends’ significant others. This shouldn’t need to be said but it needs to be said. That significant other is an asshole and you don’t want to be involved with an asshole that’s used goods. If you want to be with an asshole, get a fresh asshole of your very own. They are abundant.
10. Don’t let your friends buy ugly outfits or accessories you don’t want to look at when you hang out. This is just common sense.
11. When something is wrong and you need to talk to your friends and they ask you how you are, don’t say, “Fine.” They know you’re lying and it irritates them and a lot of time is wasted with the back and forth of “Are you sure?” and “Yes?” and “Really?” and “I AM FINE.” Tell your lady friends the truth so you can talk it out and either sulk companionably or move on to other topics.
12. If four people are dining, split the check evenly four ways. We are adults now. We don’t need to add up what each person had anymore. If you’re high rolling, just treat everyone and rotate who treats. If you’re still in the broke stage, do what you have to do.
13.If a friend sends a crazy e-mail needing reassurance about love, life, family, or work, respond accordingly and in a timely manner even if it is just to say, GIRL, I hear you. If a friend sends you like thirty crazy e-mails needing reassurance about the same damn shit, be patient because one day that’s going to be you tearing up GMAIL with your drama. 
14. My mother’s favorite saying is “qui se ressemble s’assemble.” Whenever she didn’t approve of who I was spending time with she’d say this ominously. It means, essentially, you are who you surround yourself with.
I would look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter.  I know I have always been nervous around women who say they never want to have girls because girls are so difficult.  Or that they would rather be friends with guys because women are bitchy, emotional, you fill in the word here.  My life is fuller and richer because I have some of the most amazing women in it:  Heather, Kristen, Melissa, Lisa, Kim, Nicole, Stephanie, Cynthia, Hannah, Maureen, Susan, Cullen, Susan . . . .
And that amazing weekend in Maine, while those women weren’t all MY closest friends, I can guarantee, as we parted on Sunday, we WERE close friends, even the newbie, Amy!
BANANA!!!

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What I Hate About the 2012 Olympics

Posted on August 1, 2012 by thefeministcritic

Here is one of those list blogs.  I have always loved the Olympics, particularly gymnastics, as I competed in high school and as a girl watched USSR Nadia Comaneci win all her gold medals with awe.  I wanted to be her.  But I guess I have grown up and am a bit more media savvy than I was at 12.  

Let’s just start with uniforms.  Why do many women’s sand volleyball teams wear itsy bitsy teeny weeny bikini’s but men wear shorts and tank tops?  Why do female gymnasts wear a leotard for all four events but the men change their bottoms depending on the event?  During the floor exercises, they wear shorts, during the pommel horse, the rings, and the parallel bars, they wear pants.  And above we have a picture of women running in bikinis. The men will run in tight fitting tanks and what look like bike shorts.  Are we trying to go back to the original Olympics where the Greeks competed in the nude? 

Second I reference the plethora of comments about Olympic women who also happen to be moms.  See a great article on this here.  Moms Have it All 
No one is talking about all the Olympic men who are dads and have had to sacrifice their relationships with their kids.  These comments, by the NBC Commentators, are sexist back handed judgments that mothers really shouldn’t be Olympians.  I mean, how can you possibly be a good mother if you spend the majority of your time working out and competing.  Bad woman!  Get in your place. 

Thirdly McDonalds is the number one sponsor of the Olympics.  Are you kidding me? A friend of mine said she heard someone say “that is like having cigarettes be the sponsor of cancer.”  There is nothing more to say about that.

Fourth, the NBC Commentators are horrible.  My husband and I watched men’s gymnastics the other night and they literally could not name ONE type of back flip they were doing.  The female commentator said “the energy level is very different tonight.”  That’s it. She didn’t elaborate as to whether it was better or worse, higher or lower.  I could have done a better job being specific about what was happening, rather than these vague comments that make absolutely no sense.

Fifth, this “Thanks Mom” campaign by Proctor & Gamble is also sexist.  There were no Dad’s out there shlepping their kids back and forth to the gym?  No Dad’s paying for all that training?  No, of course not, parenting is a WOMAN’S job. 

So, maybe I won’t ever be able to watch the Olympics again, wearing my feminist lens’s, but at least NBC could hire some commentators who know how to comment accurately on the sport they are watching!

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Hello world!

Posted on July 30, 2012 by thefeministcritic

Welcome to WordPress.com! This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.

Happy blogging!

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NCAA Makes a Statement

Posted on July 26, 2012 by thefeministcritic

I’m listening to the news Tuesday morning of the NCAA sanctions of Penn State.  It’s mostly good news for those of us who work for victim rights and an end to sexual violence.  But what does this say about all the sexual assaults that go un-reported and pushed under the rug under the guise of college athletics at many, many universities?
At a conference on Title IX and sexual assault two years ago, one of the keynotes, David Lisak, a Professor at UMass Boston who researches rapists, showed us a video, which is available on You Tube, on how to get a woman drunk so that you can have sex with her.  Dr. Lisak stated that if this was a video on how to get a child to submit to sexual abuse them it would be taken off the internet immediately by the Feds. 
Do you see where I am going here?  What happened at Penn State was horrible.  The abuse of children is horrible.  And our reaction as a culture to this horrific crime is appropriate.  But rape of women is JUST AS HORRIBLE as sexual abuse of children.  Until we, as a culture, begin to change our mindset that this is the case, the statistics I will quote below will continue to be relevant and perhaps worsen.  
“The National College Women Sexual Victimization Study estimated that between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 college women experience completed or attempted rape during their college years (Fisher 2000).” ~www.feminist.com
“Also disturbing is the lack of prosecution for those who commit rape; according to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) only 9% of rapists face prosecution, and a mere 3% of rapists ever spend a single day in jail. 97% odds of evading jail time are not significant enough to deter sexual violence.” span style= font-family: Georgia, serif;”>These statistics should HORRIFY the NCAA.  Imagine the cultural change that could occur should national collegiate organizations like the NCAA were to take plain-old-every-day-sexual-assault and treat it with the same concern as what happened to those boys under Jerry Sandusky.  

The Center for Public Integrity and NPR have been investigating college sexual violence over the last few years and have learned the following:
— Colleges almost never expel men who are found responsible for sexual assault. Reporters at CPI discovered a database of about 130 colleges and universities given federal grants because they wanted to do a better job dealing with sexual assault. But the database shows that even when men at those schools were found responsible for sexual assault, only 10 to 25 percent of them were expelled.
— The U.S. Department of Education has failed to aggressively monitor and regulate campus response to sexual assault. The department has the authority to fine schools that fail to report crime on campus. In 20 years, the department has used that power just six times. And the department can also find that a school has violated a law that prevents discrimination against women. But between 1998 and 2008, the department ruled against just five universities out of 24 resolved complaints.
— Colleges are ill-equipped to handle cases of sexual assault. Most of the time, alcohol is involved. Local prosecutors are reluctant to take these cases, so they often fall to campus judicial systems to sort through clashing claims of whether the sex was consensual or forced.    ~Findings of the Center for Public Integrity and NPR News Investigation
If these facts are true, and I expect they are, having worked at a university for almost 18 years, organizations like the NCAA and the Department of Education need to change their approach.  The Office of Civil Rights has recently required universities to be much more comprehensive as they address sexual violence but the movement toward change, particularly on a college campus, is slow.  State universities, do not have the funding to throw all their eggs into the sexual violence basket to quickly establish these changes.  
We need all the players, so to speak, to be at the table to end sexual violence on college campuses (and in the world).  We need the NCAA, the DOE, the OCR, and state agencies to see this issue as important, significant and horrific.  Until the culture which allows sexual violence to be quietly swept away shifts towards a world where a video on how to get a young woman drunk so she can be raped is swiftly taken off the internet and a fine or jail time imposed on the person who uploaded it, the rape of women will still remain further down the hierarchy of what is bad in our society.  And if raping women isn’t so bad, then why pay her equally for her work or provide her with adequate family leave or even allow her full participation in politics and the media.  Until women are considered equal to men, I sadly don’t think any of this will change.  

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Providence Restaurant Week

Posted on July 10, 2012 by thefeministcritic

So, yes . . . I consider this blog The Feminist Critic on all things pop, political, etc., however this week I thought it would be fun to critique our first outing for Providence Restaurant Week.  I may be a feminist, but I am also, most definitely, a foodie! 

To learn more about restaurant week, check out www.goprovidence.com We took my husband’s parent’s out to dinner on Sunday, the kick off of restaurant week, for their 33rd wedding anniversary. We looked at numerous menus on the list and decided on four places we liked. Two of them, when we called for reservations, were not open on Sundays. So we ended up at the Waterman Grill. I had just had drinks there over a week ago, which I thought were good.

We sat inside, with a water view, because it was quite warm outside. We were given the Prix Fixe restaurant week menu and their regular menu, which also has a Sunday through Thursday Prix Fixe menu for only $24.95. Restaurant week’s price is $29.95.

They brought us water. The server came over and took our drink order.Then they brought us amazing fresh baked herbed bread. I thought that was a good sign. After fifteen minutes, he came back to take our dinner order as our drinks were still being made. Jeff and his parents ordered off the restaurant week menu and I ordered off the regular Prix Fixe menu. I ordered the mussels, salmon with beluga lentils, and the flourless chocolate cake.

Twenty minutes after we arrived we got our drinks. I thought mine was a martini so I sent it back because it came served on the rocks. The server told me I should have told him I wanted it up even after I told him that was how it was served to me a week ago. I don’t take too kindly to debates with the servers.
The mussels came and they were a little underdone, kind of slimy.  I had Jeff eat one to make sure I wouldn’t get sick.  The broth they came in was very bland, just some onions and a little butter.  Jeff’s mussels are MUCH better.  But I shall try for the sake of restaurant week not to compare everything to Jeff’s talented culinary skills.  His mom had the coconut shrimp and he and his dad had the fresh mixed greens with goat cheese.  



I asked for a wine list so that I could order a glass of wine with my dinner. I ordered one. He brought me the glass and over 15 minutes went by before he returned with my wine. I said to the server, “the bar services is extremely slow.” He went on to blame it on the bartender, saying something like “she’s a nice person and all . . .” I also noticed the manager stop at the table near ours, with the upscale looking foursome and ask how everything was. I turned to Jeff and said “he should ask us.”

Our meals came. My salmon was excellent . I loved the beluga lentils. Jeff had the pork tenderloin with apple slaw and baked beans. My mother in law had the linguine and clam sauce. She thought her pasta was a bit too al dente. My father in law had the pan roasted fluke. During dinner, Jeff ordered another glass of wine and it came right out.

Dessert was simple. The flourless chocolate cake had a ganache on top that I felt ruined the richness of the torte. Jeff had a banana cake with butterscotch topping. His dad had cheesecake.

When we got our bill, I saw I was charged twice for my drink as I had sent it back to have it made up. We decided not to mention it when we noticed one of our entrees was not listed. I figured it was a bonus. But the server came over and said he thought he’d charged us twice for the drink. He brought the bill back and it was exactly the same. So we paid it and left. When we looked it over at home, we were charged for the fourth entree but it wasn’t listed. And we were charged for my drink twice, so we paid $8.50 more than we should have.

All in all, the food was pretty good but the whole process was slow and the drinks took forever to get to us. I am not sure if I will go back there. It also seems like a nice place to go in the winter as they have a fireplace and a lot of wood grilling.

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Feminist Intensive–Day II

Posted on July 3, 2012 by thefeministcritic

Day II of our Intensive, with the theme of Media, started at The Women’s Media Center. “Founded by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem–it has the goal of making women visible and powerful in the media.  The influence of the media is the most powerful economic and cultural force today.

By deciding who gets to talk, what shapes the debate, who writes, and what is important enough to report, the media shapes our understanding of who we are and what we can be. The Women’s Media Center works to create a level playing field for women and girls in media through our monitoring, training, original content, and activism.”  We spent almost three hours talking about becoming media experts in our fields and having a mini-workshop which mimics their Progressive Women’s Voices training.  I hope to apply to this in 2013.  Their website is chock full of statistics on the lack of women in the media.  I’m also planning to invite their Vice-President to be part of my Feminist Media Literacy conference in Fall 2013 as part of the Zuckerberg Leadership Award I just won!

Then we went to AOL to see the trailer for the upcoming three-part PBS movie Makers.  This documentary chronicles over 100 women who were instrumental in the women’s movement (all of them alive).  Their website http://www.makers.com/ is amazing.  You could spend a day just watching all these interviews with amazing women.  The first one we watched was Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.  Most of us teared up.  Her story truly is one of women pushing the boundaries of patriarchy and changing the world forever.  It was kind of cool to be in a very corporate NYC office, like AOL, although one of the members of our group called their 3 story office a “sad Google.”
From AOL we went to Women’s eNews.  If you don’t subscribe you should.  They are an excellent source of honest news reporting on women around the world.  I love the “Cheers & Jeers” section.  They cover topics related to women that one would rarely find in the patriarchal news media.  
From there we were off to dinner with at Gloria Steinem’s lovely home with Marcia Ann Gillespie, the former Editor of Ms Magazine, and random houseguest of Gloria’s, Sheila Tobias.   

“Marcia Ann Gillespie is a trailblazer in the magazine industry, a leader in the women’s movement, a champion of gender of racial justice. A provocative writer and thinker, hers has been a consistent eloquent voice affirming the human potential for good, challenging inequality, pushing herself and others to hope, dare and strive for a better world. She is the author of Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration, an authorized biography published by Doubleday in April 2008, and is currently writing a memoir titled When Blacks Became Americans. She has been a driving force behind two of this nation’s most important women’s magazines, as the editor in chief of Essence from 1971-1980 and most recently as the editor in chief of Ms. from 1993-2001. Marcia is the current Professor of Diversity in Residence for the Johnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute at Bennett College.” I was thrilled she remembered me from coming to campus in 1997, I think, as our keynote for Women’s History Month

“Gloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, editor, and feminist activist. She travels in this and other countries as an organizer and lecturer and is a frequent media spokeswoman on issues of equality. She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, non-violent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice. She was a cofounder ofMs. magazine as well as Voters for Choice, the Ms. Foundation, the Women’s Media Center, the Women’s Political Caucus and many other pioneering feminist organizations. She is the author of several best-selling books, including Revolution from Within and Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.” She remembered coming to Woodland Commons five years ago and being in the strange concrete building.  


What resonated most from our talk with these amazing women, for me, was her focus on female friendship and how this is such an important aspect of organizing and feminism in general.  If we can’t support each other, how can we even begin to change the world.  

 


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