I'm off to synagogue today and hence it will likely be quiet over here from me. But before I go, I wanted to share this eerie yet haunting song by Leonard Cohen that I heard on NPR's Speaking of Faith Days of Awe special the other day and haven't been able to get out of my head. It's a riff on a prayer (Unetaneh Tokef) that is said on Rosh HaShanah as well as on Yom Kippur. Though sad and a little creepy, it sure gets stuck in your head.
The text of the prayer that it draws from is translated as follows:
On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted.
Terrifying. Yet what I like about these holidays is that they are pretty much full of hope. The liturgy tends to emphasize human responsibility and the possibility for change.
May this new year bring change for us as individuals, communities, and nations. And may our leaders in Washington DC come together on some kind of plan before things get much worse.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Strategic Blogging Webinar with GWP
For all those of you who've had a taste of the blogosphere and want to learn more, either on behalf of your organization or as an individual, this one's for you.REGISTRATION NOW OPEN! REGISTER BEFORE 10/7 AND RECEIVE THE "GWP/EARLY BIRD" DISCOUNT.
Girl w/ Keyboard: Making Waves through the Feminist Blogosphere (Strategic Blogging for Advocates, Experts, and Organizations)
In this 5-week bloginar offered through the Women's Media Center, author and blogger Deborah Siegel (aka moi) will lead participants through the basics of blogging—both logistical and philosophical. Participants will leave with an understanding of how blogging is changing the media landscape—especially for women—and the tools needed to start a blog or improve one that's already off the ground. Topics include: State of the Blogosphere, Tour of the Femosphere, Finding Your Niche, Creating Your Blog, Rules of the Road, Bells and Whistles, and more.
About the Instructor
[ok, this is weird posting this part here on GWP, but what the hey -- Kristen writes the nicest things about me!] Transforming her own blog, Girl with Pen, into required reading for the up-to-date feminist, Deborah has successfully created a presence in the world of Web 2.0. Deborah now keeps a daily web community in dialogue on the latest debates surrounding intergenerational feminism and research on women and girls across academic and popular realms. In this online workshop, Deborah, a graduate of the first class of the WMC's Progressive Women's Voices program, will take you on a guided tour through the blogosphere and teach you how to get your voice and ideas out there, too. For more on Deborah, visit www.deborahsiegel.net.
Details
5 Tuesdays starting in October 14, 7-8:15pm ET, via conference call / online
Cost: Register early and receive a discount: $335 before Oct. 7; $350 after Oct. 7
For More Info
girlwpen@gmail.com
Here a Webinar, There a Webinar
This just got passed along to me: The National Women's Law Center is hosting a series of webinars (yep, that means, online! you can participate from anywhere) on how to negotiate for yourself in the workplace:WORK$MART: Pay Negotiation for Women (Two-Part Series)
Did you know that men are four times more likely to initiate salary
negotiations than women? And that a worker stands to lose more than
$500,000 by age 60 if she fails to negotiate her first salary?
Two-Part Webinar:
1:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008, and
1:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008
During these workshops you will learn:
* How to benchmark the salary of your current job;
* How to determine whether or not you are paid fairly; and
* How to negotiate a raise or promotion.
Register Here
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Pics from the Road
Live, from George Washington last Thursday, it's Girl w/ Pen and two of the young women from the Women's Leadership Program. (Am I really that short?!) Those WLP gals are not only gorgeous, they're whip smart. The WomenGirlsLadies and I had an amazing time during the Q&A part of our panel that evening -- the questions we got could have kept us all going all night.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Notes from the Road...
Deborah here. Last night Gloria Feldt, Kristal Brent Zook, Courtney Martin and I spoke together at George Washington University's Elizabeth J. Somers Women's Leadership Program and I have to say, we all feel tremendously encouraged by the amazing women we met there and just a bit proud of our own little quartet for prompting such great questions and reflections from the audience. Topics of conversation during the Q&A included: race vs. gender in the election, work/family balance, public policy approaches to rape and sexual assault, "opting out," dealing with anti-feminist crap from insecure boys, beauty standards and their sources, abortion, equality vs. elevating women above men, women in politics, intersection feminism etc.Thank you to Dean Heller, Sam, and all those that joined us in the conversation. The future is looking pretty bright...This pic is from a previous talk, but photos from GW coming soon!
(crossposted at WomenGirlsLadies)
Sex and Sensibility: Quick Takes
Sex and Sensibility: Quick Takesby Kristen Loveland
Hi to all from your Sex and Sensibility lady here. Here are a few things that caught my eye this past week:
1. The Truth About Teen Girls: Belinda Luscombe has an awesome article in Time Magazine talking about how, despite the proliferation of sexual imagery in the teenage world, maybe we shouldn't be twisting our knickers in such a knot over their alleged sexual promiscuity. To wit:
"With the pornucopia of media at teens' disposal in the past decade and a half, on cell phones and computers as well as TVs, early-adolescent sex should be having a growth spurt. But the figures don't necessarily support one. Despite a minor increase in 2006, the rate of pregnancies among teen girls has been on a downward trend since 1991. Another indicator, the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, is alarmingly high: nearly 1 in 4 girls ages 14 to 19 and nearly 1 in 2 African-American girls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But this is the first year such a study has been completed, and the study doesn't separate 14-to-16-year-olds from 17-to-19-year-olds, so it's still unclear which way that trend is heading."Keep reading this fantastic article here and thanks to Deborah for sending this to me!
2. I Am Charlotte: The Series: While on the one hand it appears that there are finally a number of voices asking us to put on the breaks for a second and contemplate what the actual sexual experiences of teenage girls are, it looks like Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons is going to be made into an HBO series. Charlotte Simmons the book has often been noted as over-stated and over-bearing in its condemnation of college sexuality. As the New York Magazine Book Review put it at the time:
"Wolfe’s vision of eroticism is ultimately too dark. When, in Charlotte Simmons, an older man has sex with a younger woman, it is, of course, cynical. But when a younger man has sex with a younger woman, it is equally cynical. Indeed, all the sex in Wolfe’s imagined university is rotten. All intimacy is rotten. At the end of the novel, Charlotte falls in with a new man. He comes from a very different walk of life than Charlotte does, and to all appearances he adores her. One might reasonably see this turn of events as a triumph—love conquering differences, love opening doors. But Wolfe intends for us to see it as a defeat: The man is not suited for his clever country heroine; she has forgotten, he suggests, that “she is Charlotte Simmons”; she has lost her identity."To put it mildly, I'm not overly-optimistic about the way the series will portray yet another young woman who has lost her character to the hedonistic offerings of that Gomorrah now known as the American university.
3. The Old is New Again: And finally, on a slightly different note, Ann over at Feministing recently wrote about John LaBruzzo, a state legislator from Louisiana, who wants to pay low-income women to be sterilized. Something that is consistently overlooked in mainstream's take on what it means to be Pro-Choice is that it is just that: the choice to have or not to have a child. As a political position, it is both concerned with those woman who, for x, y, and z reason, choose not to have a child, and with those from whom the right to have a child is coercively taken away. There have been a number of studies and histories done on sterilization abuse which, particularly in 1970s America, targeted poor and minority women, and included everything from outright nonconsensual sterilizations, to unclear statements signed on the hospital bed before an abortion, to, well, something like LaBruzzo's brilliant idea. The government has no place in coercing a targeted group of women into permanent reproductive decisions.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
CFP: Get Your Feminist Anthology On
One mo' from Courtney...
I think for me it was a slow process, starting from when I was in the womb...We were reading the Great Gatsby in high school English, and I came across this line: 'That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' I felt enraged, but none of my classmates even seemed to notice.
It was a rainy Take Back The Night rally my first year of college... I looked around at the women on every side, and thought about how strange it was that I'd ended up here, given my conservative Republican upbringing. I realized that if I don't identify as a feminist, no one really does.
One movie: Girls Town. Amazing.
A generation ago, feminists talked about their "click" moments: those split-second experiences that led them to join the women's movement. Today's young feminists come to the movement--which is looking less like a protest march and more like a blog--in myriad, often piecemeal, ways. It can be as simple as reading a book or attending an event or talking with one person or witnessing a horrendous act of sexism.
Deciding to identify as a feminist often requires a lot of learning and unlearning these days; so many of us have been exposed to the well-oiled machine of the anti-feminist movement. According to Newsweek, feminism might be dead. Charlotte Allen tells us that we're stupid, via the Washington Post. Some older women within our own movement wonder if we even exist.
J. Courtney Sullivan and Courtney Martin are editing a new anthology for Seal Press on the topic, and we want your ideas. Send us a couple of paragraphs--in the style and voice that you'd use in a full-fledged essay--proposing what you would write, along with your name, email address, phone #, age, and ethnic background (we understand that this might seem a little reductive, but we are committed to including diverse authors). We'll look them all over, then get back to you once we've accounted for a range of moments, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds.
We hope it will be a historic document, a totally entertaining gift, a course adoption text, and, most of all, a collection that makes young women who already identify with the movement feel seen and heard, and welcomes all those just growing into the still unfolding story of feminism.
Send your ideas to: clickmoment@gmail.com
DEADLINE: October 15, 2008
Bonus: We've already got some great feminist writers on board that you may have heard of, including (in no particular order):
Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan (well, obviously)
Jessica Valenti
Miriam Perez
Samhita Mukhopadhyay
Curtis Sittenfield
Rebecca Traister
Anna Holmes
Rachel Simmons
Winter Miller
Deborah Siegel
Alissa Quart
Hannah Seligson
Latoya Petersen
Shelby Knox
Jennifer Baumgardner
Amy Richards
Cookies and Heros and Dreams
One of my favorite things about traveling with my intergenerational feminist panel is the slumber party. Courtney and I are here holed up in the hotel with chocolate chip cookies and Airborne and I've promised her I'd post this event. It looks SO FAB!The American Hero and the American Dream:
Reflections on Our Contemporary Political Narratives
Date: Sunday, September 28
Time: 2-4 pm
Location: The Forum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum
In this interactive panel, academics, journalists, and comedians discuss the dominant narratives--perpetuated by both the campaigns and the media--during this unprecedented election. As they explore the ways in which these two presidential candidates and their VPs have been framed, they will also be examining the way the American public still thinks about race, class, and gender, and how this election has served to defibrillate so many beating, bleeding political hearts.
Moderator: Courtney E. Martin
Panelists:
Charlton McIlwain, Assistant Professor of Culture and Communication, NYU
Gloria, Feldt, author and blogger at Heartfeldt Politics
Ramin Hedayati, associate producer at The Daily Show
Got Economy?
To make up for the quiet over here today, I bring you a late-night newsbreaking post from our very own Virginia Rutter. With all the chaos down on Wall Street these days, I'm finding it hard to maintain a sense of the larger larger picture. Virginia offers us that. Read it, and, well, weep. -GWPHow ya doin'?
by Virginia Rutter, PhD
Framingham State College
There's an awesome new report out from John Schmitt and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), called "The Reagan Question." It starts like this:
In his closing remarks during the final presidential debate of 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked the American people: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
The CEPR report reprises the question for us today. And, besides having higher blood pressure and a lot of irritatsia, CEPR tells us, on 23 out of 25 economic indicators, we are doing worse.
Among the indicators is employment for women—which is down. So is employment for men. But check this out:
Inflation rate—up from 3.3 to 5.4 percent.
Unemployment rate—up from 4.0 to 6.1 percent.
Uninsured—we got millions more now.
Poverty—we got millions more now.
Personal savings—that we've got a lot less of now.
Even the good news isn't really good news: Family income is better now than before, by a whopping 262 dollars after 8 years. That's not the irritating part. Here's the irritating part. Under Bush, our productivity is the other indicator that is up. Our productivity grew by 22 percent in the past 8 years. In 2000, our productivity was up just 16%. That's good! (Our "fundamentals"—the workers—per McCain.) So, we have become more productive! We're doing great! But wait, where are the profits? Where are all the advantages? Not with us. Check out "real wage growth": under real wage growth wages were up in 2000 8.2 percent. In 2008, wages were up 1.8 percent. Feh. Feh. Feh.
Do take a look at this report. It is carefully constructed (lots of great citations to the data at the end) and above any of the particulars, you get the point. How ya doin'? Not so great.
Girl with Survey
GWPenner Elline Lipkin is trying to collect girls' responses, as well as responses from their mentors, for her forthcoming book with Seal Press on Girls Studies by October 15th. Please take the survey for girl mentors, pass it on, and pass the other survey links onto the girls in your life!"Survey for Girls Mentors
Survey for Girls ages 6-10
Survey for Girls ages 11-18
Girl Gone MIA Today
Apologies for the lack of posting today! A GWP anomaly, and I missed you all!I spent the day traveling to Washington DC, where my intergenerational feminist panel spoke tonight at George Washington University before the Women's Leadership Program--and an amazing group of women those WLPers are. Pictures coming soon. Tomorrow, we're keynoting at the Association for Women in Communications conference, and I'm excited to attend some of their sessions (and swim in the hotel pool) as well.
More from me tomorrow, I promise!
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
President Barbie Is Back
This just in, via The White House Project:Just in time for the first presidential debate, The White House Project is thrilled to announce that President Barbie is back on shelves! Exclusively at Toys R Us, this is President Barbie's third term in office since Mattel and The White House Project joined together in 2000 and 2004 to let both little girls and boys know that a woman can be President. As Marie Wilson says, "To make change, you've got to go where the people are. More and more girls think they're going to grow up to be president and call a join session of Congress because their dolls can." To give a child in your life their very own President Barbie, click here.
Have any of the mamas out there bought Prez Barbie for their girls? Would be curious to hear your thoughts!
(Tina Fey glasses sold separately.)
Authors These Days...
I recently received an advance copy of a new book by Alix Kates Shulman, To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), which is excerpted in Salon this week. Many of you will know Alix from her much earlier novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. Her latest--a gut-wrenchingly true-to-life memoir this time--is breathtaking in its poignance. That's all I'll say. You can read from it right here.And from a book publicity perspective, I'm fascinated at the way savvy authors now are doing video trailers. Alix has a wonderful one--check it out, here. And to hear Alix on writing, check out this podcast. Kudos to the ex-prom queen on each and every front.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
So Not a Woman Thing
And speaking of adding 2 cents to the HuffPo forum on women and Palin (see previous post, below), here's Virginia Rutter chiming in already with 8 cents of her own! -GWP
Not a Woman Thing
By Virginia Rutter, PhD
Framingham State College
Last week I kept getting those emails, "women against Sarah Palin." Though I am a woman against Sarah Palin (and McCain), I did not join. Believe me, Palin is a problem: As Deborah put it in HuffPo today "I firmly believe that Palin is unprepared and find McCain's choice,and logic, insulting to any Clinton supporter worth her salt."
Still, I didn't sign, I didn't forward. Why? Palin's policies and positions are anti-feminist and anti-woman, so why shouldn't women stand up together against her?
Here's why. Because I believe that the "women against" gambit feeds into the identity politics of Sarah Palin that make her so damn scary. Ironically, by mounting a "women against" campaign, we make her a "woman's candidate." And that is what is driving us f-ing crazy. (At least one poll shows a boost in support from Republican women.) Maybe I read too much Foucault back in the day (or perhaps have more recently seen too much Rove?), but I am telling you this looks like a tough one to handle.
Her identity politics are about "I'm a hockey mom so respect me." "I am an authority figure, so don't question me." "I'm a Christian, so don't doubt me." "I am a woman, so don't get feminist with me." On the facts, womenagainstpalin are totally right. On the politics of it, it doesn't work. So, I am not going with womenagagainst. Instead I'm sticking with "she's more Bush than Bush." (Pun intended? Oh gosh, no.)
New HuffPo Forum: Women on Palin
Do check out this forum compiled by Feminist.com's Marianne Schnall over at HuffPo today. Marianne asked a number of women (and I'm honored to be one of them!) to answer 3 questions about Sarah Palin and the election. Explains Marianne,As a woman, I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed and shaken by this election season, the highs and lows of it all. On the one hand, I have been feeling powerful -- everyone is talking about women and our decisive influence in this election. Even the cover of the September 22nd issue of Newsweek is asking, "What do women want?" It's a good question. So many important themes and dialogues have been raised during this election season -- about identity politics, what we expect from a woman leader, sexism in the media, diversity in the feminist movement, what masculine and feminine values are, and about Sarah Palin and the "Palin effect." It all made me want to talk to other women, to get clarity, to gain insight. I tried to think about what I, personally, could do to contribute to this dialogue.I can't wait to read what the others wrote--the others being Isabel Allende, Joan Blades, Eve Ensler, Melissa Etheridge, Gloria Feldt, Kim Gandy, Elizabeth Lesser, Courtney Martin, Kathy Najimy, Amy Richards, Deborah Siegel, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem, Loung Ung, Alice Walker, Jody Williams, Marie Wilson.
Come stop by and add your 2cents!
XY Files: Sexist Earners, Boomerang Boys, and Teenage Dads
Today's tidbits on a new generation of men:1. Men with sexist views earn more dough. According to a new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, sexist men in the workplace are likely to out-earn their more modern thinking counterparts. Um, really? The BBC reports, and feministing and Broadsheet respond.
2. More single men live at home with Mom and Dad than do single women. While as recently as 1980, only six percent of men reached their early 40s without marrying (compared to five percent of women), by 2004, that percentage had increased to 16.5 percent of men (and 12.5 percent of women). Even more telling, 55 percent of American men aged 18 to 24 live with their parents and 13 percent between 25 to 34 years of age still live at home, compared to only eight percent of women. Read the rest in HNN.
3. Teenage fathers are on the decline. But boys who become Baby Daddies face unique challenges as young men thrust into responsibility. As reported in ABC News, Levi Johnston, the expectant father of Bristol Palin's unborn child, joins a small minority of his peers by becoming a teenage father. Overall, only 1.7 percent of teenage males were fathers in 2002, a decline since the early 1990s. In fact, the majority of teen mothers are impregnated by men age 20 and older. And ABC News reports that while there are many support services for teen mothers, teen fathers are often left out, despite studies showing that they are more prone to delinquency, reduced educational attainment, financial hardship and unstable marriage patterns.
(Thanks to CCF for the heads up on items 2 and 3)
Literary Fundraising for Obama
Via Bitch PhD comes news of an Obama fundraising campaign engineered by Ayelet Waldman (writer, DNC Blogger, former HipMama) whereby you donate $250 through this link, forward your email receipt to Ayelet along with your mailing address, and she'll send you ten randomly-picked signed books by one of these authors.Free books AND support for Obama (who, unlike SOME presidents of ours, actually reads)? It doesn't get much better than that!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
