Here it is! The Carnival's in town. Get your comfy boots on and throw on an old, warm jacket, it's November and we're going for a long, satisfying walk round Radical Feminist country.
First off, Holly Ord at the wonderful and thoughtful site, Menstrual Poetry, posts about Planned Parenthood and talks positively about how the organisation is a champion of woman's health issues and reproductive rights. The Truth About Planned Parenthood.
Holly also provides us with an eloquent post on the "pro-life" agenda and the hit-and-miss results that blogs get with Google ad-sense in her post Fun with My Google Adsense Holly says "Whenever looking at this site, I always find myself going through the ads Google has deemed as appropriate for my website. As most know, most of the time Google comes up with some rather interesting ads to display, sometimes having nothing to do with the content on your website." And finally Holly gives us LOL Fetus? Holly's own take on Gary Cangemi's "pro-life" cartoon Umbert the Unborn. Copy it, paste it, pass it on!
Tracee Sioux steps up with a grand post questioning the apparent Pornification of Halloween. Tracee asks "When the focus is on what girls are wearing for Halloween are we blaming Lolita for Humbert Humberts perversions? Girls walk a tight rope of acceptability now that the pornification of everything girly has become normalized." I absolutely couldn't agree more. And don't get me started on the whole "ugly" witch thing...
Felix at BayRadical presents her interview with lesbian feminist photographer Cathy Cade. The photos that accompany the post are beautiful, powerful, startling and joyful. We need more of this positive celebration of lesbian radical feminism! You Can't Stop Me – an interview with Cathy Cade
Marcella Chester at Abyss2Hope talks about the difficulties surrounding traditional police procedure and the treatment of rape victims in her post Troubling Police Interview With Alleged Rape Victim Marcella comments that "With all the emphasis on false confessions and false convictions, many people still accept retractions of rape allegations as if they can never be false and obtained through abusive tactics."
Marcella also posted about Anti-Feminism And Rape saying, "This is my response to a man who claims that feminists are like Klansmen." This is a searing response to the ludicrous and unintelligent accusation that Feminism encourages the wholesale abuse of men in a way that is comparable to the abuse of people of colour by Klansmen. Fear not, Marcella dealt with it!
Maggie Jochild got all excited and showered me with fantastic fodder for you womyn!! I loved the look of her blog, lots of photos to engage the eye and the heart. We'll start with WHO WERE THE WITCHES? a mega-post that begins with a contemplation on the meaning and celebration of Halloween and morphs gently into a wonderful historical overview of the works of Bonnie Lockhart and The Berkeley Women's Music Collective.
Maggie's next two submissions focus on living with disability. LIFE IN A WHEELCHAIR and DISABILITY 101: SOME GUIDELINES are two beautifully illustrated posts about the politics and practicalities of disability. Disability 101 is, if you'll pardon me, a fucking brilliant lesson in how to talk about and understand varied disabilities.
If I give you the technorati tags (Adriene Rich, Class, BMI, Crooked Timber, Fat, Gay and Lesbian Couple Visibility, Sexism, Title VII, Womensspace, Red Stae/Blue State Regionality) for Maggie's next post, that should give you some idea of the range of her thinking! It won't, however, prepare you for the stunning photo accompaniments. Enjoy! BROAD CAST, 8 NOVEMBER 2007: DELVING DEEPER FOR TRUTH
April Spreeman submitted Sexually Vulnerable Black Women: Can America Empathize? It's a short critique for such a massive subject, but the bones of something eloquent and important are there and April, I would really like to read more!
ISPF submitted a post that made me laugh, then made me feel sad and sorry and all kinds of love for the womyn in my (and your) history who had to fight for some dignity in employment. Read and remember to celebrate our foremothers: Guide to Hiring Women!
Feminist Peace Network gives us U.S. Board of Immigration: FGM Not Grounds for Asylum And I have to ask myself Am I surprised? Sadly, I am not.
allecto worked HARD on this next submission and it's good. Allecto discusses and deconstructs the effects of the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention into Aboriginal communities report and the "Little Children Are Sacred" report and their inherent racism. It makes for a challenging read.Will they come with guns? The military invasion of the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
The inimitable, unstoppable Ann Bartow pops up to give us Externalities Illustrated her take on what happened during halftime at the Jets/Steelers game some weeks ago, when women were subjected to the jeers, threats and harassment of a massive group of male football fans. Anne discusses the negative externalities that result for the many when the few "choose" to collude with the oppressor.
One of my favourite bloggers,Debs at Feminist Fire, takes issue with a new surgical procedure in What fresh hell is this? I'm still not convinced it's not a joke...
Binging up the rear are two fabulous posts from Maia at Touchingly Naive. Maia is absolutely an artist. I believe that she has talent beyond measure! Anyway, for a while she has been posting for Vulva Liberation Week and here are two of her VLW posts. Bleeding Over Africa is a thoughtful, intelligent response to the subtle marketing of sanitary protection to poverty stricken women in Africa. My Body, My Self! is Maia's art on show! Go and have a look. I'll leave you to guess how she did them...
And finally, because I love my front bottom, I give you Crochet Vulva!. Go and make your own!
Thanks for sticking with me on this wonderful Autumn walk. I have so enjoyed all of your submissions and I look forward to reading your responses. I'm going indoors to make tea now, can someone bring the biscuits? Pippa x
