Alli Sebastian Wolf | The Glitoris

100:1 scale model,

painted gold and covered in glitter and sequins

Alli Sebastian Wolf is an artist from Sydney, Australia. She says The Glitoris was made to educate people on a part of the body that is still greatly misunderstood. “It’s political and feminist, but also a celebration,” she said. “It’s a hell of a lot of playful fun. Under the surface it’s so much more. It’s a glorious spaceship-looking creature with 8,000 nerves that can swell to three times its size in moments.”

Wolf’s “Glitoris” is set to be exhibited in Sydney bar and art space The Bearded Tit. The exhibition will also feature performances by a group of “Clitorati”, described by Wolf as “bejewelled priestesses of the clit”.

Seems appropriate on the day Americans inaugurate a giant prick.

Source

Via The Middle Eastern Feminist and One Million Vaginas

FB

How To Prevent Rape

1. If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
2. If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
3. If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
4. If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her. If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.
5. If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.
6. If a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.
7. If a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.
8. If a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her. If a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.
9. If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.
10. If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.
11. If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.
12. If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.
13. If your step-daughter is watching TV, don’t rape her.
14. If you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.
15. If your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.
16. If your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
17. If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s an unconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call the police and tell the guy he’s a rapist.
18. Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.
19. Don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
20. Don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done X.
21. Don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.
22. Don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl. 

SlutWalk Phoenix/Tempe 2012

'Chicks On The Right' Discuss 'Real' Feminism

"Daisy" and "Mockarena"

From their debut blog post in the Indianapolis Star:

... Real feminism is defined by women who can, and do, take care of themselves. Real feminists don’t look for a Prince Charming to rescue them, and they don’t look for a handout. That sort of entitlement mentality hurls women back several decades, when it was expected that someone else (a man) would pay their way. Liberal feminism has morphed into a laughable movement filled with harpies who hold up signs saying, “Hoes before embryos” while defining themselves entirely by their “lady parts.” We, on the other hand, define ourselves by our character, our passions, our loves, our strengths, our abilities and our successes.

Today’s Democratic platform has centered its messaging on a manufactured “War on Women,” which is simply a flimsy facade for the entitlement machine that feeds women a false sense of security. Well, NOTHING is free. And relying on taxpayers to pay for your “reproductive choices” isn’t strength. If you think that government should and will take care of you from cradle to grave, you’re no different than the chick who hopes to land an old, rich dude with a weak heart and flexible will. 

In other words, you’re not a feminist — you’re just pathetic. Rather than fall for the manufactured war-on-women nonsense that helped hand President Obama a second term, women need to know the truth — that they’ll fare far better in life by taking responsibility for themselves. 

Does this mean women can’t choose to be stay-at-home moms as their husbands serve as the primary breadwinners? Of course not. That’s a family’s personal choice to make. We’re simply saying that before a woman relies on a man to “win the bread” she should have a way of providing for herself should that man cease to be in her life for whatever reason. Life can be unpredictable, and women would do well to be prepared for any possibility. 

Ironically, conservative “feminists” like us are accused of being the ones trying to set women back. But we know any government (or man) powerful enough to give us something is powerful enough to take it away. Just remember that as you make your demands on taxpayers, liberal feminists. You’re the ones handing over women’s power. Not conservative women like us. 

Now if someone would please pass us our stilettos. We’ve got to get back to work.

Lost Ms. Lanny-yap at "Chicks."

Link via Jezebel

Jessica Valenti | A Letter To Her Male Relatives

Dear cousin/nephew/second-cousin,

It’s generally a real pleasure to have you as a friend on Facebook. I appreciate that I can keep up on what the kids are listening to these days on Spotify and I thoroughly enjoy eyeing pictures of high school ragers. But I’ve noticed that lately your taste in “likes” has changed. It’s out with Bieber, in with Tosh.0. 

You’ve indicated that you will be attending “Booty Slap Day” and have started to share videos of young men running up to women they don’t know in order to grope their behinds, run away and laugh -- videotaping it all for hilarious posterity.

Now, I hate to get all Aunt Feminist Killjoy on you -- but I love you and it’s my job. And I imagine you care about me too, at least enough to read on.

Here’s the thing: those guys running up to women just to grab their ass? Stuff like that happens to women all the time. It’s happened to me. When I was your age, guys -- from boys in school to men on the subway -- used to grope and touch me against my will too. I don’t know if any of them videotaped it or if they did it as a “joke” -- all I know was that it was really scary.

Once it happened on my way to school on the train. I was wearing a dress because it was my seventeenth birthday. The subway was crowded and a man -- I never saw his face -- put his hand up my skirt and grabbed my ass right over my underwear. The memory of it still makes me feel like vomiting. This was just one incident -- it’s happened to me at least a dozen times. The girls you know at school -- girls you’re friends with? -- I’m betting it’s happened to them, too.

Being touched against your will has become a twisted rite of passage for American females. It’s a reminder that you’re never safe anywhere. That your body is not really yours -- but instead public property, there to be rubbed against by an old man or pinched and videotaped by a young one.

I know that a quick click on the “like” button may not seem like a big deal to you -- but it scares me to think about the larger implications. I think about the high school kid in Steubenville, Ohio, joking and laughing about the unconscious teen girl in the next room who had just been raped by two of his classmates. That may seem a million miles away from “liking” a video -- but it’s all part of the same world, the same culture that devalues women. Even laughing at a joke about rape supports the idea that women are less than and makes rapists think that you are like them. And the more you laugh at this stuff, the easier it becomes to take the ideas you’re laughing at more and more seriously.

Listen, I don’t think you’re an asshole who thinks it’s funny to do something that women find scary. You’ve been raised to think that this sort of stuff is all in good fun. Not by your parents necessarily, but by culture. You’ve grown up in a country where a Super Bowl commercial for Audi suggests that girls your age actually like it when a guy they don’t really know grabs and forces a kiss on them. (Seriously -- they won’t like this.) You’ve been raised in a culture that positions women as existing just for sex, for humiliation, for objectification.

So please understand that I don’t blame you for partaking in the only kind of culture you’ve ever known. At least, I don’t blame you yet. Because here’s the thing -- if you didn’t realize before that this kind of stuff is harmful and hurtful to women, now you do. So think of this as a chance to make a decision about what kind of man you’re going to be.

As you continue to grow up, you’re going to have plenty of opportunities (too many) to laugh at women’s pain, embarrassment or the sexual harassment and assault we face. These moments will define you. Will you laugh along? Share a video, like a status, laugh at a joke? Or will you say “no,” tell a friend that’s a fucked-up thing to say, and walk away?

Yes, if you choose the latter -- the undoubtedly more difficult path -- your friends may give you a hard time. They could laugh, call you a “pussy” or accuse you of not being able to take a joke. I’m sure that will be a pain. But it’s still the right thing to do. And you can be secure in your decision to stand with women -- to stand with me -- because you’ll know that you’re better than all that. Media, sexism, misogyny -- all of these structures are depending on the idea that you won’t think deeply about the messages that are sent to you, that you’ll just accept them without consideration or critical thinking. But you’re better than the culture says you are. You’re smarter than that and you’re kinder than that. I know you are.

So please, the next time you’re considering sharing a video or laughing at a joke or saying something unsavory about a female peer -- take the action seriously, think about what it really means. And consider your Auntie Feminist who loves you very much.

The Nation

January 22-28, 2013 | Trust Women Week

Forty years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v Wade and legalized abortion in the U.S. The fight for reproductive rights and to allow women to make decisions concerning their own bodies continues.

Women won historic numbers of seats in Congress in the November election. Voters across the political spectrum supported women's reproductive health, rights, and justice, and defeated candidates who trivialized women's safety. Florida rejected a ballot measure that would outlaw public funding for abortions.

But many state legislatures and members of Congress continue to attack access to birth control and abortion care, and cut funds for health care providers like Planned Parenthood. In Mississippi, state regulators are working to force the last clinic that provided abortions to close. These restrictions most severely affect low-income women and women of color, and women in certain geographic areas.

Threats continue to women's long-term economic and social security and safety.

Trust Women Week partner organizations are joining together to express the powerful voices of the majority of women, men, children, families and communities who uphold traditional American values of democracy, independence, fairness, progress, innovation and pragmatism.

Sign the Trust Women Week petition.

Vote

Someecards via Slate

Implicit Bias And Sexism Is Alive And Well In Academia

Study after study finds that many women feel unwelcome in laboratories and science departments, even after considerable progress in encouraging women to study science and technology fields. As these studies come out, there are almost always skeptics who say that whatever gender imbalance exists could well reflect different choices made, on average, by men and women, or who say that individual men are rising on their merits, not sexism.

But a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers evidence of bias among scientists -- male and female scientists alike -- against female students. The study was based on evaluations by scientists of hypothetical student applications for a lab manager position, with the application materials identical in every way, except that half of the pool received applications with a male name and the other half received applications with a female name. The faculty members surveyed -- 127 professors in biology, chemistry or physics -- were told that their analyses of the applications would be used to help the students. And they were asked to evaluate the students' competence and "hireability" and to consider how large a salary they would recommend and how much mentoring they would offer the student if hired.

The scientists evaluating these applications (which were identical in every way except the gender of the "submitter") rated the male student more competent, more likely to be hired, deserving of a better salary, and worth spending more time mentoring. The gaps were significant. Female scientists were as likely as male scientists to evaluate the students this way. For instance, the scientists were asked to rate the students' competence on a 5-point scale. Male faculty rated the male student 4.01 and the female student 3.33.

Female scientists rated the male student 4.10 and the female student 3.32. On salary, the gaps were also notable. The average salary suggested by male scientists for the male student was $30,520; for the female student, it was $27,111. Female scientists recommended, on average, a salary of $29,333 for the male student and $25,000 for the female student.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed. Find an article on implicit bias here.

Via Gawker

One Million Vaginas

From the OMV FB page:

[Our mission is] to encourage and inspire women from all over America, all ages, all beliefs, all kinds of lives and experiences from all 50 states, and the friends and family that love and cherish them, to come together and stop allowing our most personal decisions to be fodder for the Neo-Con political hash mill. Our lives are not their moral crises, our choices are not their ethical lapses ... If you think you're too small to make an impact, remember how annoying it is to try and sleep with a mosquito in your bedroom. We took back the night, now it's time to take back control over our reproductive destiny: Take Back Your Vaginas from Conservative Politics!

Women In Media | Miss Representation

YouTube

Directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Miss Representation explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America and challenges the media's limiting and often disparaging portrayals of women, [making it] difficult for the average girl to see herself as powerful. In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms. The collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman's value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality -- and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States still ranks 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, depression rates have doubled among teenage girls, and cosmetic surgery on minors has more than tripled in the last ten years.

Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, academics and activists like Condoleeza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave the audience shaken and armed with a new perspective.

Take the pledge [I pledge to use my voice to spread the message of Miss Representation and challenge the media’s limiting portrayal of women and girls.] and show your support at the Miss Representation website. The DVD is available at Amazon for about $15.

Thanks, Linda

Photoshop Of Awesome | Julia Bluhm Protests Retouching In Seventeen Magazine

Julia Bluhm (center)

It's easy to make an online petition. It's more challenging to gather up supporters, go out in the rain and make your point in person. But that's what Julia Bluhm, the 13-year-old behind the Change.org petition "Seventeen Magazine: Give Girls Images of Real Girls!", did this morning. Bluhm, her mother and several representatives of Spark Media gathered in front of the Hearst Tower, home to Seventeen, to protest the magazine's use of Photoshop and deliver her signatures to the magazine's executive editor.

"I've always just known how Photoshop can have a big effect on girls and their body image and how they feel about themselves," Bluhm told The Huffington Post. "You need to see something realistic -- you need to see a reflection of what truly represents a teenage girl nowadays."
Seventeen and the media in general, she said, fails to do that. So her petition, directed at Seventeen's editor-in-chief, asks that the magazine print one unaltered photo spread in each issue.

While the negative impact of Photoshop has been discussed by adults at length, it is clear that Bluhm's peers feel just as strongly. When she and a friend brought a magazine to school to show their friends, she said, it elicited the same reactions: "They agreed. A lot of them thought that the images were fake and they compared themselves to those images -- and it didn't make them feel good about their own bodies and their own skin."

The consequences extend beyond low self-esteem. Another Spark Media blogger on the scene, Crystal Ogar, explained that the negative health impacts, proven by the American Psychological Association, include "higher rates of depression, higher rates of self-harm and eating disorders."

And a skinny body, said Spark Media blogger Kaye Toal, is just one facet of the cookie-cutter image on the pages of teen magazines:"The media that we're fed says that girls are sex objects and they have to be thin, white, heterosexual and cisgender, and that's a very narrow portion of women. Even the women who do fit that, dont fit this amazing perfected ideal because it simply doesn't exist."

Or, as Julia told us, "Nobody's photoshopped in real life."

Source

Employee Handbook | The Ropes At Disney [1943]

Click images to enlarge

From Brain Pickings:

In 1943, Walt Disney Productions’ personnel department set out to eliminate confusion for the company’s workforce with the publication of an employee handbook titled The Ropes at Disney. It was an effort to reconcile the need for organizational order with Disney’s effort to craft an image of an informal, irreverent, fun employer who seeks to “maintain a friendly relationship between Company and employee” (but, apparently, deems only the former worthy of capitalization.)

Click the link to see the entire booklet. Note the institutionalized sexism and objectification of women.

High School Sophomore Challenges Michele Bachmann To Debate On Behalf Of Women Everywhere

Source unknown

Dear Representative Bachmann,

My name is Amy Myers. I am a Cherry Hill, New Jersey sophomore attending Cherry Hill High School East. As a typical high school student, I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted. The frequency and scope of these comments prompted me to write this letter.

Though I am not in your home district, or even your home state, you are a United States Representative of some prominence who is subject to national media coverage. News outlets and websites across this country profile your causes and viewpoints on a regular basis. As one of a handful of women in Congress, you hold a distinct privilege and responsibility to better represent your gender nationally. The statements you make help to serve an injustice to not only the position of Congresswoman, but women everywhere. Though politically expedient, incorrect comments cast a shadow on your person and by unfortunate proxy, both your supporters and detractors alike often generalize this shadow to women as a whole.

Rep. Bachmann, the frequent inability you have shown to accurately and factually present even the most basic information about the United States led me to submit the follow challenge, pitting my public education against your advanced legal education:

I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.

Hopefully, we will be able to meet for such an event, as it would prove to be enlightening.

Sincerely yours,
Amy Myers

Dangerous Minds | Supporting FB page

Hollaback | Ending Street Harrassment Globally

Hollaback, the "movement dedicated to ending street harassment using mobile technology," has launched in 10 new cities today, including U.S. towns like Atlanta, Portland and Houston ... But also international locations, like Buenos Aires, London and Mumbai.

Inti Maria Tidball-Binz, the leader of Hollaback Buenos Aires, says, "For many of us in Buenos Aires 'piropos,' or 'catcalls' are aggressive and intrusive. We need a fresh approach to local issues, and knowing that the strength of the international Hollaback movement is behind us gives us the impetus to make changes."

Whether it's on the street, in the subway, or at a party, Hollaback encourages women to report comments, groping, flashing or assault; the creators state: "We believe that everyone has a right to feel safe and confident without being objectified."

Jezebel

Shut Up And Look Pretty

Pat Robertson answers a question from a woman who is concerned that her flirtatious husband may cheat on her.



Think Progress and Media Matters via Jezebel

Wage Gap

Source: Indexed

Via: Feministing

Happy Anniversary - Women's Equality Day

In 1971, Representative Bella Abzug (D-NY) started Women's Equality Day to commemorate the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote.

Read more at the National Women's History Project

Women's Attitudes Towards Domestic Violence

This graphic represents the percentage of girls and women aged 15–49 who responded that a husband or partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances(2001–2007).

Source: Unicef

Graphic: Global Health Magazine

Coloring Outside The Lines

Girls Are Not Chicks is a "subversive and playful" coloring book that examines female gender stereotypes and reinforces positive gender roles.

Website: GirlsNotChicks