Rihanna’s new song, “Russian Roulette,” was released two days ago, and it’s already been deemed too shocking for the sensitive ears of America’s youth. “What message do think it sends to the millions of girls who admire Rihanna as an artist?” asks Deborah Reber of Rihanna’s barbed-wire cover pic. Anna North of Jezebel wrote that “the song isn’t one I’d want my kids singing in the car, if I had kids or a car.” Despite the pearl-clutching, the main party that’s been offended by Rihanna’s dark relationship ballad is not The Children—the real concern is that Rihanna has somehow slighted the fully-grown feminist movement. How did a 21-year-old pop star get lifted to a place where she could let feminism down in the first place?

Read More “Why Is Rihanna Expected to be a Feminist Icon?” »

Last week, “Semen Facials Are Like Weddings” was the perfect storm of Sexist comments. The facial ejaculation rant drew comments from feminists wanting to blame the patriarchy, feminists wanting to defend sex-positivity, and dudes who like to describe jizzing on their sex partners’ faces on the Internet. The really weird part, though? Nobody spoke up in defense of weddings.

Anyway, here are your best facial comments. (I’ve excerpted most of them, because you all just had too much to say).

Katie says:

It’s not good for feminists to play sexual thought police, or to instill guilt in someone who likes to do someone else might find degrading. Isn’t it more progressive and feminist to say, “This is how *I* want to get off”, than to shame women by saying the things they desire sexually are anti-feminist? Shouldn’t we allow for some diversity? Different strokes, as they say.

DirkJohanson says:

I have better orgasms when I cum on a girl’s face since I know I am free to blow my load to my heart’s content, whereas when a girl asks me to cum on her tits but not on her face, I am always worried that I might not have the best aim and will end up cumming on her face, too. Since this often happens, I hold back when I cum on tits and don’t cum with as much force and often feel like, and still actually have, another load in me waiting to imminently come out. Simply put, when I cum on tits, I don’t feel nearly as finished as when I cum on a face or when a girl wants me to cum in her mouth. And I feel genuinely badly when I cum in a girl’s eye because it stings so badly.

Read More “Sexist Comments of the Week: Semen Facials Edition” »

Pre-post-post-feminism was marked by elaborate personality-based costumes

Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I were totally prepared to have a Very Serious Discussion Concerning Our Feelings on the Defense Of Marriage Act and Why Obama Was Or Was Not A Dick About It (VSDCOFOTDOMAAWOWOWNADAI) today.

But then we read this awesome piece by Steve Haruch, dude in Texas, about why post-post-feminism in pop music is just pre-feminism in disguise, and we thought, “fuck it, let’s talk about Beyonce in a cop outfit.”

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: How Beyonce In A Cop Outfit = Feminism Now Edition” »

Ooh boy, it’s National Offend a Feminist Week!

You know, as a feminist blogger, I spend most weeks out of the year not getting offended by anything. Frankly, I’m sick of raking up obscure sexist bullshit to be offended by! That’s why I always look forward to National Offend a Feminist Week, when I finally get to sit back, relax, and let the anti-feminists shower me with free sexist bullshit. Thanks for helping me do my job, fuckers!

But wait—AUUUUUUGH! AUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHH!—I’m ALREADY OFFENDED by this! The very idea of Offend a Feminist Week is offensive enough for me to write a blog post about why it offends me! The anti-feminist bloggers have caught me in an Offended Feminist Mind Meld! I can’t stop using explanation points! Nor italics! NOR CAPS LOCK! AUGH!

OFFEND A FEMINIST WEEK MALE PRIVILEGE SHADES OF RAPE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY ALEC BALDWIN SOMETHING SOMETHING ABORTION!!

Whew. That was a close one.

Photo by Rich Anderson.

To truly call myself “feminist,” must I partake of the dildo?

Earlier this week, I explained, ever-so-respectfully, why I thought sex-positive feminism was boring and dumb. In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, a chatty-thing, Tiger Beatdown’s Sady kindly explains how she came to personally identify as a “sex positive feminist” by being the only employee in a sex shop who didn’t know her anal nerve endings from the ones in her “cooter,” and I realize that a preponderance of rope restraints may be the only thing keeping me from the dark “sex-positive” side. Enjoy!

AMANDA: ok. so. sex sex sex sex feminism sex

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Sex Positive Negativity Edition!” »

“Dating a Banker Anonymous,” a self-help blog for women whose relationships have gone sour with the economic downturn, states in its introduction that it is a “safe place” that is “free from the scrutiny of feminists.” Of course, once you’ve been featured in the New York Times—sad, beautiful group photo and all—you’re no longer free from scrutiny from anybody. And so, as a feminist given to scrutiny, I saw the line as an invitation to net some quick and dirty blog content.

The feminist line comes as a half-serious inward jab—like the lamentation at a halved “monthly Bergdorf’s allowance,” it is a joke that reveals a deeper worry. And yet, as I paged through the blog’s entries, I had a hard time pinning down a feminist critique of the project. The blog seems to serve two functions for the DABAs stuck in middling relationships with FBF’s (Financial-Guy Boyfriends):

a) commiserating with other women about shared relationship problems

b) complaining about the slow erosion of luxury from one’s life

The first function—women helping women—won’t find a detractor here. The second, while annoying, is less a gender equity issue than a class one. Sure, a spoiled girlfriend who whines that she can no longer dine nightly at Manhattan’s finest restauraunts is an obnoxious narrator to guide us through this recession. But don’t claim it’s the “feminists” who are bringing you down, girlfriend. Instead of a “safe place” that is “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” the blog could more correctly situate itself as a priveledged place, free from the scrutiny of the poor.

In a major bummer, feminist centrist President Barack Obama has personally asked Democrats in Congress to drop the family planning provision in the proposed stimulus bill, the Associated Press reports. The speculation is that Obama is looking to crack down on the bill in order to fulfill his campaign promise to look out for the interests of the Republicans who did not vote for him instead of the women who did.

Let’s unpack this very uniter-not-divider decision on Obama’s part:

Read More “Obama Lobbies to Drop Family Planning From Stimulus Bill” »

My WordPress software, as if in a loyal attempt to protect me from cogent, well-delivered criticism of my work, quarantined Emily’s comment in my spam folder until this morning. Here’s what she had to say on The Feminist Mystique: How Election 2008 Killed a Notorious Word:

Feminism is not supposed to be controversial. It is commonsensical, so by virtue we would be fighting against the odds to make it naughty. The goals the movement seeks to achieve “voting rights, contraception access, pay equity” are not evermore scandalous, they are rudimentary. It’s pitiful that they must be achieved slowly, one step at time involving arduous processes of convincing those in power that women deserve the same freedoms as men. I would absolutely NOT agree that tagging our president as a feminist hurts the movement. Instead I think it’s a slap in the face to those that mock feminism as something that only hot-tempered, irrational women spout off about because they hate men or love women too much or whatever.

Read More “Sexist Comment of the Day” »

Aww, I can’t stay mad at you, “true face of feminism”!

If Sarah Palin and Barack Obama teamed up to kill “feminist” this election cycle, Kathryn Jean Lopez will have it spinning in its grave. In a National Review piece detailing her experience at last week’s “March for Life,” Lopez calls Pope Benedict XVI the “real face of feminism.” She writes:

Read More “Kathryn Jean Lopez Deals “Feminist” Another Blow” »

Still ruining everything: Palin paved the way for Obama to kill “feminist”

The death of the word “feminist” was broadcast on the evening news. In September 2008, at the height of the presidential campaign, Katie Couric boarded John McCain’s airplane, took a seat with vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and lobbed the first in a series of softballs: Did Palin consider herself a feminist? Palin’s response:

I do. A feminist who believes in equal rights, and I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed, and to try to do it all, anyway. And I’m very, very thankful that I’ve been brought up in a family where gender hasn’t been an issue. You know, I’ve been expected to do everything growing up that the boys were doing. We were out chopping wood and we were out hunting and fishing and filling our freezer with good wild Alaskan game to feed our family.

“Feminist” isn’t the only English-language word that suffered from Palin’s candidacy, of course (see “maverick,” “terrorist”). But while other terms employed by the Alaska governor withered from twisted meanings, “feminist” experienced a more symbolic death. Palin killed “feminist” not by altering the meaning of the word—its meaning has never remained consistent in a century of use—but by eliminating its taboo.

Read More “The Feminist Mystique: How Election 2008 Killed a Notorious Word” »