Category Archives: Feminism

Can Hillary Clinton Kill Feminism Wholesale? | Dame Magazine

Who is saying feminism is dead, anyway? Dowd’s piece doesn’t even answer this, despite her (or her editor’s?) headline. What is this bizarre assumption that voting for a cis-man or a cis-woman is an expression of one’s feminist ideals? Feminism isn’t dead—feminism is alive and kicking: kicking because it’s still fighting, still trying to be seen in a less tawdry light, still trying to shake the stigma around it, still trying to define itself and redefine itself because of the various historical connotations that follow it around, rightfully so, and cast a shadow over it. This isn’t Clinton’s fault. But by accusing Clinton of taking the women’s vote for granted, she may as well also imply that Sanders is seeing the Jewish vote as a given. But the fact is that it really doesn’t matter what either candidate expects: Just like Sanders can’t destroy Judaism, a millennia-old religion, by assuming Jews will vote for him, Clinton can’t destroy the decades-old feminism, no matter how many NYT headlines claim that she has.

Source: Can Hillary Clinton Kill Feminism Wholesale? | Dame Magazine

They Mad: Beyonce’s Middle Finger Salute to White America | Dame Magazine

What’s really behind the backlash to Queen Bey’s Super Bowl performance

They’re not just mad at Bey – they’re made at the Black women leading the Black Lives Matter movement.  They’re mad at #SayHerName.  They’re mad at the recent news that Black women activists refuse to endorse a political candidate for the presidency.  They’re mad because we be all up and down these fiber-optic streets clapping back and engaged in wig snatchery when racists come for us.

White anger is rooted in a long, deep history of needing to control the Black female body, mind and output. White America likes its Black women to be downtrodden, preferably subservient, suffering from any of the countless maladies and dysfunctions they create and maintain through racist and economic oppression, and coddling their fragile emotions.

This moment of White anger and down-by-the-riverside tears reveals deep-seated need to control our blackness. To dominate and define everything we say and do to serve their agendas. And Beyoncé brilliantly slayed all of that history and exploitation in “Formation.” She issued a clarion call to celebrate our Black selves in all of our diverse glory, and to connect to the fight for justice, be it via Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the Civil Rights Movement or Black Lives Matter.  The sight of leather, berets and Afros, not to mention Bey displaying her body on top of a police car and drowning it in the video, compels White panic.  Worse yet, she brought the unapologetic politics of Blackness into the Super Bowl, the yearly celebration of white masculinity.

– See more at: http://www.damemagazine.com/2016/02/12/they-mad-beyonces-middle-finger-salute-white-america#sthash.a20OLyAV.dpuf

Source: They Mad: Beyonce’s Middle Finger Salute to White America | Dame Magazine

Katya Kazbek: Discourse in Danger – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

By Katya KazbekIt’s hard to imagine a time when Russia was not in a state of political tempest. And it’s even harder to imagine a time when the tumult was not creating exquisite lite

Source: Katya Kazbek: Discourse in Danger – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

When asked about his attempts at publishing books that would not be welcome by the nomenclature, Ilya Danishevsky only managed to give an example of an upcoming work: a book on Petr Pavlensky, the Russian artist who gained prominence by nailing his scrotum to the ground in the Red Square. Pavlensky is currently detained at a criminal psychiatric ward after he set fire to a door leading to the FSB (formerly KGB) headquarters. This publication is an admirable pursuit. The main problem in Russian publishing, however, is not the impossibility of putting out more books that challenge this paradigm. It’s more likely the fact that there are not many of such books at all. And with all due respect to the panelists who do their best to create the new Russian avant-garde, it may be up to the new generation of millennials, born with Putin already in power, to actually change the literary dialogue on a larger scale.

There’s a Pussy Riot movement just waiting to happening in Scotland (From Herald Scotland)

So young women, and, increasingly, older women, are adopting feminism as a shield against torrents of psychological abuse. Many people don’t understand this. Old fashioned liberals complain that the new feminism is “intolerant”, and actually, they are right. Some things, though, shouldn’t be tolerated. Women today have been told that, when faced with online trolls, the best answer is simply to ignore them. But is that really good advice?By ignoring it, you’re experiencing a social problem alone. By saying, “I am a feminist”, you’re refusing to let them isolate you, and you’re refusing to play by the rules of the global frat house. That’s why today’s feminism is no passing fad. That’s why our protest, originally called against Roosh V’s own brand of misogyny still went ahead. Our protest represented this new generation of young women and men refusing to play by the rules of men who’ve been able to invade our cyber space for far too long. We’re coming offline, and we’re going out onto the streets. The internet is expanding to take over, commercialise, and sexualise our everyday lives. That’s happening whether we like it or not. But as the internet becomes ever more natural for each new generation, so will feminism, because we need a practical means to protect our minds, our careers, and our bodies from creeps and bullies.

Source: There’s a Pussy Riot movement just waiting to happening in Scotland (From Herald Scotland)

Here Lies the Abyss: Xenophobia and Gender After the Cologne Assaults

Yet, as one might expect, such people project a fantasy onto us, ignoring the fact that this crime has sparked ample condemnation from feminists around the world. Local German feminists took to the streets of Cologne to highlight not only the police’s lackadaisical protection of women that night, but the larger plague of sexual violence (committed by white German men as well as non-white) throughout the country, refusing to scapegoat refugees and immigrants for a wider social problem. It was, after all, the city police (hardly in the thrall of poor refugees) who suggested a “code of conduct” for women who wished to avoid being raped.As two German feminists, Stefanie Lohaus and Anne Wizroek wrote in Vice recently:“Sexual assaults and even rape happen every year at big events like Oktoberfest. ‘The way to the toilet alone is like running the gauntlet: within 50 feet, you can be sure to tally three hugs from drunken strangers, two pats on the ass, someone looking up your dirndl and some beer purposely splashed right down your cleavage,’ wrote Karoline Beisel and Beate Wild in 2011, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. An average of 10 reported rapes take place each year at Oktoberfest. The estimated number of unreported cases is 200.”

Source: Here Lies the Abyss: Xenophobia and Gender After the Cologne Assaults