Target's New Ad

The Frisky.com

Target's new same-sex wedding registry ad is getting a lot of praise in the LGBT blogosphere, but I wonder how much was a reaction to its own CEO's questionable past, or the recent uproar over Chick-Fil-A's outright bigotry when its CEO made it known that he disapproves of same-sex marriage. From the Huffington Post:

"Still, the news comes just after Target found itself in the headlines after deciding not to sell "Channel Orange," the critically acclaimed new album by R&B singer Frank Ocean. Though Target officials claimed the decision was purely a reaction to iTunes' one-week exclusive sale of the album, many wondered if the move had actually been prompted by Ocean coming out as a gay man."

Target also came under fire just a year ago when it was made known that the company had donated money to a group that supported a vocally anti-gay marriage Republican candidate. The ad is a start, but with over half the country now supporting gay marriage , it's more than overdue.

Five singers who subvert the "prettiness imperative"

I've been reconnecting with the music of my misspent youth. And as someone whose musical musical diet relied on healthy servings of punk and indie rock, that means lots of white boys and guitars. Of all the genres and sub-genres of popular music, rock and all its permutations has been the least able to achieve some sort of parity, and, not so surprisingly, still maintains a sense of credibility among critics, It's plainly obvious whose music is considered art, while whose is considered commerce.

This week it's been Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot I've had on repeat. I've long been a fan of Wilco -- Jeff Tweedy is from just outside my city, so he's always had that "hometown hero" appeal, even though he rarely plays and lives in the windy city now. At just over a decade old, it may not be cool anymore, and singing its praises now more than marks me as an aging rock fan, but YHF is one of the most intriguing records to come out of the 00s. and I've been paying a lot of attention to Tweedy's voice. While I've never really been a fan of his singing, which stylistically wavers from a Dylan-inspired twang to a hoarse Jerry Garcia, his broken rasp fits perfectly with the music. I wondered, what would happen if a female artist sang that way?

I keep going back to this Tiger Beatdown piece from a few years ago, but it flawlessly illustrates the "prettiness imperative" that female artists face. To make good music, one must be willing to takes risks -- to sound "ugly," but not at the cost of the inherent sexiness that sells records. 

"Because for women, prettiness reigns. Being pretty, sexy, fuckable, is of paramount importance. This extends not only to appearance but to action. Which is where rock ‘n roll comes in. Because in order to make good rock music, you have to be able to do things that are not pretty. Pretty is not interesting, pretty is not groundbreaking (unless it’s juxtaposed with things that are not pretty), pretty is boring. And pretty is the thing that our culture enforces on women with a vengeance. The prettiness problem excludes women from rock ‘n roll in a three-phase process."

Earlier this year I wrote about Merrill Garbus, whose album whokill was topping every critic's best-of for 2011. While she garnered tons of critical acclaim, some pop culture pundits were flummoxed, notably Chuck Klosterman. Her vocals are noticeably un-pretty by conventional standards. Granted there have been, and are, many artists who don't rely on sex appeal, but their voices still fell into what's considered acceptable for a "girl singer." I tried to come up with a few more examples of female singers who aren't afraid to make an "ugly" sound.

A more inclusive definition of androgyny

Genderqueerfashionista has a great post showcasing androgyny outside the young, thin, and white spectrum which, unfortunately, has become the default:

"Androgyny is so much more than just a thin, white person with no breasts and short hair. Androgyny, from my perspective, is the blending of masculine and feminine elements in any and all forms. Androgyny isn’t looking male, it’s looking like a human who expresses both masculinity and creates new gender options. It doesn’t just apply white male standards of attractiveness to female bodies but works to broaden the shades of gray."

Check out the rest here.

Links & Bits: 7/27/12

From The Daily Chicana: Remembering My Brown-Skinned Dolls.

Madeline from xojane talks about being taller than her man.

Shakesville discusses the penalties handed down to Penn State.

Short attention span Thursday:Three videos I can't seem to stop watching

With the Midwestern US now well into the second month of 100+ temperatures, I'm not exactly feeling motivated to write. A handy excuse, I know, but all the global warming deniers reading this can suck it. The rest of you can watch these videos.

The Scissor Sisters - "Let's Have a Kiki"



It's like a mashup of every second tier cable station's late night programming. A buffet of campy goodness.


Boy George covering Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" (via redlightpolitics )



George's honeyed tenor is a little worse for wear, but this is a pretty cool cover.

Drag Race All-Stars Teaser

This makes me extremely happy. Can you guess the queens?

Sally Ride, R.I.P.

Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman, and the youngest person ever in space, died from cancer earlier this week. She was 61-years-old. She also posthumously came out in an obituary released through her office.

Ride's sexual orientation was confirmed by her sister, Bear, who told the New Times that Ride didn't go public with her sexuality during her life because she was intensely private person and considered sexual orientation no one's business but her own. Although she didn't make a big "HERE I AM! GAY ASTRONAUT SALLY!" announcement to the world, she didn't make an effort to hide it, either. People close to Sally and Tam [her partner of 27 years] knew; the two would go out in public together, attend events together, and Ride's family considered O'Shaugnessy a part of the gang. (Jezebel )

Because of the undercurrent of juiciness in reporting that a pioneer, though an intensely private person, came out only in death, I'm not entirely comfortable with this being the lead, not that we lost an important part of America's, and American women's, history but visibility, particularly visibility outside environments where LGBT people are overwhelmingly accepted (like the entertainment industry) is so important. But her accomplishments are the big story here, not who she slept with. R.I.P.

Earworm of the Day: ben Folds - Rockin' The Suburbs

When I first heard this song nearly a decade ago, I had to groan. I'm not a huge fan of Ben Folds "Gen-X Randy Newman" schtick, but he often gets things right and he's still one of the best wordsmiths of the last twenty years. Here's a white guying singing about white guy privilege, suburban angst, and middle-aged ennui in funny, clever way.

Frank Ocean in The Guardian

Last.fm

The Guardian has a great feature  on R&B singer Frank Ocean this weekend where he talks about his new album, Channel Orange, and coming out via a recent post on his blog, which he doesn't see as a risk:

"I won't touch on risky, because that's subjective," he says. "People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don't necessarily merit fear. Me putting Nostalgia out … what's physically going to happen? Me saying what I said on my Tumblr last week? Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me. But they could do the same just because I'm black. They could do the same just because I'm American. Do you just not go outside your house? Do you not drive your car because of the statistics? How else are you limiting your life for fear?"

Earworm of the Day: Cyndi Lauper - Change of Heart

(From the soundtrack of my misspent youth, circa mid-80s.)

I think this may have been the first music video I watched on MTV after our neighborhood got cable.

We were one the lasts to get cable tv with its "fifty-seven channels and nothing on," but more than twenty-five years ago, it was a huge deal. (Kind of in the same way that VCR that my dad paid close to $800 for was a huge deal.) Prior to MTV, the only place to see music videos was late at night on Friday, and the selection was rather paltry. (Was it me of was every other video played Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face.")

Links & Bits: 7/20/12

gudbuy t'jane talks about taking offense.

Bikini Kill starts a new record label.

This video, courtesy of Racialicious:

And this too?

I hate turning this into an "xojane petty criticism corner"™ (Bitch Magazine), but it keeps giving me new and wonderful things to be self-conscious about: if it's not areola color, or a fuzzy bikini line, it's having a hairline like The Count from Sesame Street . Can I get a WTF?

Do I think about my hairline? I guess I am now.

To be completely serious -- and I'm probably not going to gain a lot of fans admitting this -- I don't really subscribe to the idea that one must love her body at all times, or at least, one should not be shamed for not loving her body or wanting to change various aspects of it, but this is a little much.

Or like one of the commenters said quoting the movie Mean Girls (which was where my mind went), "My hairline is so weird."

Kitty Wells and Country Music's Feminism

Kitty Wells, heralded the "Queen of Country Music," died earlier this week from complications from a stroke. She was 92.

Music's royalty ranking is kind of silly, but in Wells's case, it's pretty accurate: she scored the first number one country hit recorded by a woman with J.D. Miller's song, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," written in response to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side Of Life." Says Nathan Rabin from The A.V. Club:

“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” epitomized what made Wells such a fascinating and fascinatingly contradictory figure. The song addresses the sexual double standard wracking country music, pop culture, and society as a whole by pointing out that the wild women Thompson scolded in song had often been led astray by unfaithful men themselves. (The A.V. Club )

As someone for whom country music provided a sort of aural wallpaper for her early childhood, I wanted to highlight this because it counters the image of the strong, country woman, and at the time, perfectly illustrates its contradictory nature in being a tough cookie, but also one who "stands by her man." (Plus, you know, that song was co-written by a man.) In his piece for The Atlantic , Jonathan Bogart called Wells a "feminist country godmother to Britney Spears," but I'm uncomfortable tossing the feminism label around casually. I rarely blog about country music, or can't, without pointing out its often problematic nature (and its image of being the domain of the evangelical, confederate flag in the garage, set). But its early roots offered an image of women, particularly of rural, and economically disadvantaged women, that wasn't seen in the Leave It To Beaver era, and one that I most associate with the women in my own family. R.I.P.

Defining Privilege

There's an interesting discussion  on how one defines privilege happening at Phoebe's blog. I think she raises a good point about privilege being relative, but there's an over emphasis on economic advantage -- what most people outside the social justice community think when they hear the word "privilege."

I grew up solidly working class. Neither of my parents went to college (though my mom went back in her forties); three of my grandparents didn't finish high school. Learning a trade was "making good." For most of my childhood, we didn't own a car, which isn't a huge tragedy living in a city, but when I tell people that, the overwhelming response is "Oh my god, you must have been really poor." But I never considered myself poor. To the contrary, I went to private schools and didn't want for much (though I knew not to ask for much). I know better than to call myself disadvantaged, even if I didn't have as many resources alloted to me as someone whose family had more money, greater status, and higher expectations.

I didn't write that to establish myself as some special little snowflake; I don't think my experience of having this while lacking that is unique at all. It's easy to get caught up in "all privileged" or "all disadvantaged" talk that one can forget that privilege isn't linear.

The last thing I'll say about call-out culture and pile-ons

I'm putting a temporary halt on calling out other feminist bloggers. While it's necessary to identify privilege, and correct those behaviors that are problematic, this past week I've watched more than one blogger take a leave of absence from the feminist/activist blog world because of the pressure to be ideologically perfect at all times. I don't want to be a part of this, and it's really stifling my own writing.

If I had to narrow down one aspect of call-out culture I find truly distressing is the digging up of posts made when said blogger was younger, or less aware that certain words hurt. I'm not what this is supposed to serve except to prove the moral superiority of the one doing the call-out. Granted, this is a huge risk anyone who dares to hit "publish" takes, but yikes, as someone who's been blogging for more than have a decade in some capacity or another, my record is less than spotless. This is one of the reasons I've yet to call myself any kind of activist. Writer. yes? Ally? I can't be the judge of that, I suppose, but I try. Activist? I simply don't measure up.

Shelving - On Celestial Music by Rick Moody

As a rule, I try to not write about books I haven't finished yet, but I was happy to find a copy of Rick Moody's new book, On Celestial Music , at my local library only a few months after its release and not have it land on a waiting list forever.

I'll spare you the "dancing about architecture" tropes; I really enjoy writing about music, especially from a fan perspective. He can get a little ostentatious deconstructing individual Wilco songs, but I find his prose almost achingly beautiful at times.

The highlight is a lengthy piece on The Who's Pete Townsend. Not being a fan of the Who (actually, I loathe The Who), it's hard for me to muster much empathy for Pete Townsend the man, especially after this, but it's a good exercise in writing from the point of view of a fan (which Moody is), and maintaining some sense of objectivity when one's heros fall.

I don't know an easy way to segue into "feminist writer mode," so I'll do it the only way I can: awkwardly, but I hope honestly. I wish more women wrote from the nerdy, music geek prospective, or at least, have their writing recognized when they do. I have a small collection of music books penned by women posted here , but largely when I go to a library or bookstore, music criticism is mostly written by men. And for me. As much as I love guys like Greil Marcus or Robert Christgau, I'm I'm not the one in mind when they're writing. Fandom as a whole is guys'game. If girls' fandom is dismissed as something fleeting, fickle, and unduly sentimental, women's fandom is seen as nonexistent.

Rape Jokes: Still Not Fully (Except When They Are)

Following Daniel Tosh's threatening, disguised as a "joke," rape comments directed to an audience member who challenged him, Jessica Valenti , Kate Harding , and Jezebel's Lindy West have all posted examples of rapes jokes that work, don't harm, and are actually funny. To them. I can't stress this enough: some people won't find rape jokes funny under any circumstances, and that's okay, too. I think it's also important to note that a lot of these successful rape jokes are actually providing commentary about rape culture, rather than joking about rape itself.

Daniel Tosh, Laci Green, and Tumblr Justice

(TW for rape, bullying, harassment)

I'm skipping the usual Friday link dump in light of the goings on in the Tumblr world regarding comedian Daniel Tosh's rape jokes (which I touched on briefly yesterday), and the threats made against blogger Laci Green. Jezebel has a more comprehensive post on the latter, and while I appreciate a rational take on what I'd known only through a handful of disjointed Tumblr reblogs, one thing that bothers me placing the onus on Tumblr's social justice blogosphere. Or even the notion that Tumblr's SJ blog world is some sort of cohesive whole. It isn't.

What happened to Laci was awful. No one deserves to feel threatened or bullied online. Irrespective of one's privilege, one's status, or one's popularity, it's a crappy thing to have to deal with. I don't know the entire story, but what's being reglogged (and I'm oversimplifying for the sake of this post -- the rest can be read here ) is that she used a transphobic slur, was called out on it, and apologized. The ironic Is This Feminist? even slyly referenced it:

This woman is apologizing for using an offensive word in her youth. IS THIS FEMINIST? 

Absolutely not. Real feminists come out of the womb quoting bell hooks, and come complete with a force field that keeps them from absorbing negative cultural ideas. Indeed, feminist theory and analysis are irrelevant to personal growth because real feminists are born perfectly politically correct and never need to learn and grow. We just write those analyses for fun; they certainly aren’t there to educate. Everyone should always be treated like who they were at their worst moment. PROBLEMATIC.

For anyone who's spent even a modicum of their daily lives in the feminist blog world, it's a familiar story. I even have my one game plan for when it happens. When, not if: acknowledge, apologize, and learn from it. Here's the key, though your apology does not have to be accepted. In face, there's a good chance it won't. Forgiveness is so ingrained into society that it's become common knowledge that a apology makes things all better. Sometimes it doesn't. And it's not required that you forgive everyone who has hurt you. Granted, receiving death threats is cause for serious alarm, and no one should be made to feel unsafe online or off. It's ludicrous that we still need to have this conversation.

I guess what I find disconcerting is that this is being framed as a Tumblr problem or a SJ blogosphere problem, when in reality anyone on Tumblr can call themselves a social justice blogger or be pigeonholed as one for writing polemic things. Most of the bloggers committed to change are doing a world of good as it did just days ago with the outcry over Daniel Tosh's remarks that  it would be funny if the audience member and blogger who called him on his rape jokes" got raped by five guys right now." What started with a network of Tumblr blogs found its way to larger sites like CNN and the Huffington Post, which is great for visibility.

Rape Jokes: Still Not Funny

(TW for rape; general douchebaggery)

I don't have a whole lot to add that hasn't already been about Daniel Tosh's remarks  that "wouldn't it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…" after an audience member called out his making rape jokes in his act. It was disgusting, despicable, and from reading her full account downright threatening, but I'm really tired of bloggers framing this as "heckling" incident. This should be patently obvious, but it's not heckling to tell someone -- even a marginally famous comedian -- that something as serious as rape isn't funny. I applaud her for standing up.

Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville has Viacom's  (Comedy Central's parent company and home to his show Tosh.0) info posted if you want to drop then an email explaining why this is unacceptable.

The Problem with DWMs (Dead White Males)

On one side are those who assert that raising up the traditional Western canon hides the worst sort of intellectual colonialism, one that only values the work of DWM’s (dead white males). On the other side are those for whom multiculturalism represents a creeping relativism, one that would destroy meaningful standards of artistic or literary merit in the name of political correctness, placing the output of every culture or group on equal footing. -- Riki Wilchins

This makes my second time quoting Riki Wilchins in less than a week, but this is so glaringly obvious, yet not given its due attention.

I've been out of school for a long time. I have no current connection to the world of academia, so if it's improved, if literature has gotten more inclusive on an introductory level, someone else will have to answer that question, but I suspect things haven't changed much. Twenty years ago, I was reading mostly DWMs (and the occasional DWF).  Needless to say, I'm solidly in the first camp.

However, when I hear talk of abandoning a traditional literary canon for good, I get nervous. I feel a little unmoored without any kind of guide, no matter how problematic. Questioning who gets into the canon in the first place and why is a good start, but I think -- and agree with Susan Jacoby on this -- incorporating a more diverse cabal of writers into mainstream literature classes, especially introductory ones, rather than shuffling those writers into women's or ethnic studies courses better serves students, particularly those at smaller colleges who have few opportunities to read more than DWMs.

"When I'm assertive, I'm a bitch. When a man's assertive, he's a boss"

I found this video of Nicki Minaj talking about the double standards (which have become a recurring theme around here) women in the music industry face on Feministing  yesterday. Granted, the "she's a bitch; he's a boss" trope as been around as long as someone first uttered the word "sexism," but the genuine frustration in her voice coupled with the fact that, oh, when do you ever here a mainstream pop star talking about sexism, makes me want to root for her even more.

"If a woman writes about a family, it's just assumed that she's writing about herself."

Writer Jennifer Weiner did a great interview with NPR on the double standards within fiction writing, and how female authors are often relegated to the "chick lit," while men are lauded (even when they're writing essentially the same things). She also talks about the lack of parity in genre writing, a much-maligned ghetto of the lit world, but even there genres dominated by men are given preferential treatment:

"I'd love it, sure, if The [New York] Times sort of treated my books with respect," she says. "I think The Times should make space for commercial women's fiction the same way they make space for commercial men's fiction." Weiner points out that while The Times runs roundups of crime novels, it completely overlooks romance. And, she says, even women considered to be literary fiction authors have a hard time getting recognized.

A while ago on a blog, I tried to make the same argument comparing Weiner to alt-lit wonderboy, Nick Hornby. They both write about home, family, and friends, and often draw from their own experiences, but Horny maintains his indie cool status while Weiner's work is thought of as more disposable (hey, kind of like pop music). It seems like such an obvious bias that it shouldn't need 1000-word screeds written about it, but the answer I got was, "No, Hornby's just better." Like quantifiably better or given a measurable amount of respect?

Double Standards: Female Artists and Criticism

I agree that there's a double standard in music criticism as it applies to female pop singers -- it would be stupid not to. Or maybe different standard is more apt, but I don't think that every negative thing written about Gaga or Katy Perry or Beyonce is an affront to feminism, or women in general, and I think most women would agree with this. But still, female artists see more than their share of criticism when it comes to how they're viewed in the eyes of their fans. In a post for Persephone magazine, Juniper says of current whipping girl Taylor Swift:

"The criticism can be loosely split, as I see it, into that of her music and her as a person. When it comes to how she behaves and presents herself, the criticism seems to be that she embraces traditionally defined “feminine” traits and that this is A Bad Thing. With regards to her music, it seems to be that since her lyrics aren’t exclusively concerned with furthering women’s causes, then they too, are A Bad Thing."

Here's where we differ: it's Taylor Swift's brand that is being criticized, not her. Yeah, of course the two are going to overlap, but if what she's selling is an antediluvian version of femininity -- and one that's unattainable for a large faction of girls -- it's fair game, but I think we need to focus on it and why she's rewarded for it rather than attacking femininity itself.

Earworm of the Day: The Kinks - Death of a Clown

2012 is shaping up to be the year of "dude rock" -- at least in my world.

In the past couple weeks, I've added not only the Kinks, but the Stones, Springsteen (see below), and some favorites from the late 90s like Wilco and the Old 97s to my iPod. I've always listened to "dude" music, but trying to write about music from a feminist lens above everything else has relegated a lot of it to "guilty pleasure" status. And while I know it's possible to like un-feminist (or at least, not explicitly feminist) things without having to turn in your lady card. it does feel hypocritical to write about someone like Beth Ditto or JD Samson and when I'm done listen to the same music, well, my dad does.

The Kinks: The contrarian's choice for the "Beatles or Stones" question. Artistically, I'd go with The Beatles while the drunken Karaoker in me picks the Stones. But the Kinks fascinated me in a way that neither of those two did. They were so patently British, which contributed to their less than stellar popularity stateside, and vulnerable in an unnamable way -- at least compared to Lennon's obvious ennui and Mick's posturing.

Links & Bits: 7/5/12

Tiger Beatdown's Emily Manuel  talks about straight peoples's reactions to Anderson Cooper's coming out.

Somer Sherwood explains what it's like to be a synesthete.

Latoya Peterson's piece for Raciailicious on Louis CK's casting choices

Frank Ocean and Male Bisexuality

Luke Turner wrote a great piece for The Quietus on the prejudice against male bisexuality and the press surrounding R&B singer Frank Ocean's Tumblr post about his own sexuality:

"It seems to me that this reaction to Ocean's statement is symptomatic of our lack of sensitivity and understanding when it comes to human sexuality. The media and general discourse wants to place a definition and polarising assessment of sexuality that, for many of us, simply isn't part of our reality. Despite the gradual eroding of homophobia in British culture (and there's still a lot more distance left to cover on that front, despite what we're told) it seems to me that bisexuality is still very much a taboo, for women as well as men."

How I (sort of) learned to love Springsteen

Lately this blog has become an exercise in deconstructing those aspects of pop culture I don't "get."

And I hate how "don't get" is shorthand for "don't like," or at the very lest, "refuse to see the cultural significance of," but even the most objective writer (and I am not the most objective writer), can't help but take in account her own backstory when writing about BIG INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS. Sometimes the stars just failed to line up properly.

To me, Bruce Springsteen is fossilized as part of the 80s: fist in the air, arena rock, "Born in the U.S.A." Bruce. I was maybe ten or eleven, but I was  preternaturally "cool"with an unhealthy dose of resentment toward pop music, even organic, genuine, singer-songwriter-y pop music. Springsteen's music had been co-opted by a faction of America whose identity I was trying to shrug off. The actual America in his songs -- the working-class, struggling, unhappy, trying to salvage something --  hit too close to home.

It took about fifteen years and sitting in a parking lot during a downpour listening to Nebraska in its entirety before I "got it." By then I had other "Bruces," namely the Replacements' Paul Westerberg who wrote of the same kind of working-class losers, his with a Midwestern bent and a punk rock philosophy that I found instantly appealing --  and if I'm being perfectly honest, still do -- but Springsteen's place in the canon is something I'd be stupid to challenge.

Another thing Springsteen did that often goes uncredited is write great songs about women as three-dimensional, often flawed, human beings. A few years ago Sarah Jaffe wrote a great piece for Bitch Magazine about Springsteen's popularity with feminists. She says:

He's been critiqued for his use of the phrase "little girl," but I love Bruce's women. From Mary from "Thunder Road" (my favorite) who ain't a beauty but yeah she's alright, and isn't looking for a savior but just someone else to run away for a while on the open road, to Rosalita and Wendy of "Born to Run," Bruce gives you women who are real, who you (or at least I) can see yourself in. 

He explores relationships and feelings in a thousand complex ways instead of writing the same falling-in-love or getting-heartbroken song over again. I don't have time or space here to list them all, but I think the best I can say, the best explanation I can give, is that Bruce writes of real life, of the tiny moments in it that transcend, yes, but also the struggles and heartaches of everyday existence. That he writes from the point of view of a (now quite wealthy) white heterosexual man but one who understands and loves women as people as well.

Admittedly, I'm not convinced. I'm hesitant to label something feminist simply because it shows women as more than objects of affection. It's feminism as shorthand for not being an an asshole which should be the default, not something that's necessarily rewarded. (And the creepy "Im On Fire" doesn't do much to help his cause.) This is why we need more writers writing about music through a feminist lens.

Joan Jett and Against Me!'s Laura Jane Grace Cover The Replacements' "Androgynous"

Joan Jett and Against Me! covered The Replacements' "Androgynous"earlier this month. Just weeks ago, lead singer Laura Jane Grace (born Tom Gabel) announced that she was trans and begining hormone therapy. (To any of those wondering, as I see this question quite frequently on blogs and forums, taking female hormones doesn't alter the sound of one's voice.) Laura also did a an interview for MTV that's worth checking out. She looks gorgeous, by the way.

"You don't understand what's happening to you ... though, as you grow older, you realize this isn't something that goes away," she says. "When you're younger, you have these moments where you're like, 'OK, I'm going to choose to be male. I will be male. This is it. I'm going to take all my women's clothes that I have secretly hidden away under my bed, and I'm going to put 'em in a garbage bag and I'm going to throw them in a dumpster, and that's it. I swear off this behavior for the rest of my life.'

Rethinking the Feminist Canon

Normally I don't support lists that name and catalog influential women by their flaws, but given the number of feminists who can't seem to comprehend that women's rights don't begin and end with middle-class, white, hetero, cis women,  this post from New Wave Feminism is indispensable.

She says, "google does a terrible job at providing me with the type of critiques I’m looking for. So I figured I might as well crowd-source and ask people what feminist did they once look up to but realize was not looking out for you? Everyone has that “I bought all her books & watched that documentary she made and wound up being terribly disappointed” story, or that “I don’t understand why everyone likes this person when they erase my reality” story."

The obvious offenders like Mary Daly and Janice Raymond have been critiqued and deconstructed at large, and even the most inveterate feminists admit that their work was flawed to the point of irredeemability, but where exactly do you draw the line, I mean, where (the collective) we have to remove her work from the feminist canon, ignoring the impossibility of such as task? Or, as is often the case now, stop subscribing to, reading, and supporting her blog?