In this absolutely fascinating segment on a 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show, two members of the Women's Liberation Movement, Susan Brownmiller and Sally Kempton, argue with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner about the depiction of women in his magazine. After Brownmiller and Kempton present their argument, Hef says, "I'm more in sympathy then perhaps the girls realize," in one of his many cringeworthy self-owns on the episode.
Image: YouTube Read the rest
My friend Emily Edwards has a delightful podcast called Fuckbois of Literature, that, well, pretty much explores exactly what it promises: fuckbois, in literature.
The characters of literature other readers exalt, but you hope never to meet. Maybe they screw everything that moves (and moos). Maybe they’ve locked their first wife in the attic. Maybe they’re the author of love poetry that’s screwed up our concept of romance for over 150 years. The literary fuckboi toys with your heart and leaves you hung out to dry. Join host Emily Edwards every week to discuss the most toxic characters, writers, and tropes of literature, folklore, myths, and legend. Topics include feminist literature, toxic masculinity, gender roles, and intersectional representation in books. These are the Fuckbois of Literature.
There are lots of great and insightful episodes, from comedian Sara Benincasa talking about the Bible, to my personal favorite one on David Foster Wallace. But Emily was also kind and/or foolish enough to invite me and one of my best friends onto the show to discuss the various fuckbois of the X-Men universe — but namely, that hedonistic bald manipulator Professor Charles Xavier, and his fickle, horny protege, Scott Summers AKA Cyclops.
I have been waiting a long time for an audience to let me indulge in my deeply serious literary analysis on sex and the X-Men, and I'm just so glad that there's more than one person in the world who cares to hear my rant about the cycle of abuse and patriarchal privilege that make Professor X and Cyclops alike both treat women like crap in the pursuit of their self-righteous goals. Read the rest
Infuriate your racist Facebook uncle this Thanksgiving with a Leopard RBG shirt. Read the rest
On Tuesday, McDonald’s Corporation was sued by a group of workers in the state of Michigan who say the global fast-food chain allows pervasive sexual harassment to run rampant at its restaurant locations. Read the rest
Elly Blue has kickstarted a series of successful feminist bicycle science fiction anthologies; her latest is Dragon Bike: Fantastical feminist bicycle stories, for which she is seeking $6,000 ($10 gets you an ebook, $13 gets you a printed book, $15 gets you a book and a poster). Read the rest
Maria Farrell admits that comparing smartphones to abusive men (they try to keep you from friends and family, they make it hard to study or go to work, they constantly follow you and check up on you) might seem to trivialize domestic partner violence, but, as she points out, feminists have long been pointing out both the literal and metaphorical ways in which tech replicates misogyny. Read the rest
In the late 1800s, the American Medical Association invented the anti-abortion movement, but over time, its ceased to advocate on either side of the debate -- until a bizarre 1997 statement supporting a GOP bill banning late-stage abortions (later revealed to be a "blunder" on the part of the trustees), after which the group returned to silence. Read the rest
Volume One of Man-Eaters, Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk's scathing, hilarious, brilliant comic about girls who turn into man-eating werepanthers when they get their periods, is the best comic I read in 2019, and Volume Two, just published by Image comics, continues the brilliance with a set of design-fiction-y fake ads and other collateral that straddle the line between a serious piece of science fictional world-building and Switfian satire. Read the rest
Anita Sarkeesian (previously) is a brilliant media theorist and critic whose Feminist Frequency/Tropes vs. Women in Video Games projects revolutionized the way we talk about gender and games -- and also made her a target for a virulent misogynist hate-machine of harassing manbabies who threatened her life, doxed her, and did everything they could to intimidate her into silence. Read the rest
Writer Nicole Tersigni posted this amazing meme thread on Twitter where she juxtaposed well-known classic art images with the sort of common and clichéd sexism that modern women are all too familiar with.
"Calm down"
"There probably just weren't any qualified women for the job."
"Thanks, I'm gay now" by Norman Rockwell.
"Let me explain your lived experience to you."
See the entire thread here. Read the rest
Factor Daily's Gautham Shenoy (who reviewed the Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction) reviews Magical Women, a new Indian feminist science fiction anthology edited by Sukanya Venkatraghavan. Read the rest
Author Carol Emshwiller has died at the age of 97, after a long and distinguished career in science fiction, fantasy and other genres. Read the rest
Heartbreak, written and performed by poet and playwright Emmet Kirwan, is a spoken word masterpiece. Full of passion, rage and love, heartbreak tells the story of a young Irish woman, raised in an oppressive patriarchy and poverty, who scrambles to survive before finally coming to thrive. Read the rest
Miley Cyrus has changed up the lyrics to the 1953 Christmas classic "Santa Baby" to give them a more feminist spin in this Tonight Show skit with Jimmy Fallon and Mark Ronson. No fur, cars, diamonds or stocks for her, she's looking for equal pay, consent, and an end to mansplaining. Read the rest
Eminent science fiction scholar Lisa Yaszek (Georgia Tech Professor of Science Fiction in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication) has edited "The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin," a forthcoming anthology of science fiction (and scientifiction!) by woman writers from the 1920s published last month by Library of America. Read the rest
Film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term "male gaze" to describe the "masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer": in a paper for the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Southwestern Law School professor John Tehranian applies Mulvey's idea to the complex and often nonsensical way that copyright determines who is an "author" of a work and thus entitled to control it, and shows how the notion of authorship reflects and amplifies the power imbalances already present in the world. Read the rest
I still have Indian dust on my shoes from the city of Bangalore, where I spent almost a week at the international literary festival.
I was mind-boggled at the scale of this national Indian event: literature, politics, activism, feminism. There was music and even street art, but what a crowd. Sixteen thousand highly literate participants, roaming from one outdoor stage to another, and engaged with every atom of their souls.
Literary culture persists in this part of the world, where people still believe that leafing through books is a transformative spiritual experience that can change the world.
Authors of the first world, beset with Internet and economic crisis, often seem like plastic vanity-toys kept past their sell-by date, but maybe what they lack most keenly is a creative readership. As a passionate reader, I often claim it is more difficult to read a book well than it is to to write one. As a less passionate writer, I know that even one ideal reader is enough to motivate a decent book.
The beautiful literary carnival -- held on the broad, leafy grounds of one of Bangalore’s finest hotels, an oasis of glamor and privilege -- contrasted with the crooked streets of Bangalore where the sacred cows, pariah dogs and torrents of honking traffic live with a passion for survival. This was not my first visit to India, so I was ready for the epic scale of grandeur and abject poverty, but it was still a culture shock.
The jet-set’s digitized skyscrapers tower like phantoms over vast bazaars seething with a seize-the-day human vitality. Read the rest
