Glam Media today is the largest and most-targeted online reach for women in the U.S. Glam Media reaches more than 1 of 10 women in the coveted 18+ demographic across the country.

Check out their executive team.

Uh, seriously?  One of the biggest women-oriented marketing companies is run by dudes?  There is one woman on the board of directors?

Really?!

And if you scroll down, you see that only the editorial team is primarily women.  So yeah, make that content ladies.  Write some girly stuff so women will come to our web properties and spend money.  Oh, but we’ll cash those checks, thankyouverymuch.

.. which pray on our fears to try and squeeze money out of us, she started posting ads like this:

Teresa points out that you can pay as little as $5/day and reach thousands of people. If you want to buy some ad space, go here.  Teresa pointed her ads at the web site for Love Your Body Day.  If you post one yourself, I’d love it if you leave a message in the comments or link to this entry from your blog so we can all hear about it!

Thank you to Teresa for being awesome, and thank you to Katt for passing along the love!

John F. Berger wanted to “have sex” with 100 women. Unable to find any women who would “have sex” with him, he began drugging and raping women. He was apparently close to his goal of raping 100 women when he drugged and raped Tressa Gross.

Unlike the previous dozens of women, the dose of GHB he gave Gross was fatal. It’s not clear if she was clinically dead before or after he raped her, and he wouldn’t really have noticed, but the drugs he gave her killed her.

On Friday, Berger was sentenced to five years in prison, with the option of parole after four.

For drugging, raping, and mudering a woman. Nearly the hundredth he raped.

…

On August 18th, 2006, a group of black lesbians were approached by a man named Dwayne Buckle, who threatened to one of them he would “fuck [her] straight,” spat on the women, and threw a lit cigarette at them. The women also allegedly spat at him, and verbally threatened him. A fight ensued, which was joined by two other male bystanders, and Buckle was allegedly stabbed by Patreese Johnson, one of the women, who testified she was trying to get him off one of her friends whom he was choking. Buckle was hospitalized for stomach and liver wounds. He was in a position to make jokes about the situation as of the 19th.

To my knowledge, Buckle was not charged. But four of the women involved were convicted of and sentenced to prison terms of three and a half years, five years, eight years, and for Patreese Johnson eleven years in prison.

For stabbing someone non-fatally in arguably self defense.

…

Rape and muder, part of a pattern of serial rape = 5 years

Stabbing someone in a two-way skirmish, arguably in self defense = 11 years

…

Not only is there sexism, racism, and homophobia evident in the distribution of justice, the media coverage is full of misogynist bias. Articles in the popular proess continually use the phrase “having sex” for what is clearly “rape”. Journalists commonly use the phrase “making advances” or “saying hi” to describe what should be called “verbal and physical assault, spitting, throwing a cigarette and threatening rape”.

The more I read, the more I am disheartened at the extent to which our justice system, a reflection of our society, is deeply, deeply corrupted.

—

Hey all -

I was complaining to my friend Erik today that reddit [EP: For those who don't know reddit, it's a site where people share interesting links] didn’t seem to like clothed, vocal women or non-digital art. We can read blogs for feminisms-friendly stuff, but I’d love a place to get the random, interesting best-of.

I called this feminisms because I wasn’t sure how else to title it succinctly, but this subreddit [EP: A subarea of the link-sharing site for a specific topic] is for anything that you might vaguely construe as interesting. Race, gender, class, sexuality, rejection of all those categories, and other are all welcome. You can then vote up the stuff you like and the more votes something gets, the more prominently it gets displayed.

To read the submitted URLs:
http://reddit.com/r/feminisms/

To submit a link (please do!):
1. Go to http://reddit.com/r/feminisms/
2. Click “submit” in the upper right hand corner
3. Choose a username and password (super easy)
4. Fill out the URL submission form

Let’s see if this can work. To get interesting submissions, this needs lots of people, so please forward far and wide to people you think may be interested!

~lilly

I saw a presentation today about some information visualization tools, and there were two goals talked about for a visualization:

USABILITY

and

UNDERSTANDABILITY

But I started to think: what kind of goals are these? Say you achieve these goals, that someone can sit down at your tool and USE it effectively, or UNDERSTAND the information being presented.

Then what?

Does it matter if they never sit down with the tool? Does it matter if they can’t USE it in the context of their lives? Does it matter if it doesn’t help them UNDERSTAND data that really makes a difference to them?

I think this is one of the things that’s seriously wrong with Interaction Design. And this is something Eli Blevis really drove home to us when I was at Indiana University. What really matters is: did things change for the better?

The world was one way before you put your software or your device or your building out there. The world will be another way after. Is it different? Is it better?

The iPhone is really usable. It’s really easy to browse Wikipedia while I’m on the bus. But how is my life different because I can browse Wikipedia on the bus? Will being able to look up what a superdelegate is change my life? Probably. Will it make the world better?

That’s doubtful.

But even if I think the world is better because I can read Wikipedia on the bus, who am I? What is it about me that made my opinion matter? Are there people out there whose values are being ignored?

This is where feminism comes in. My values are being readily encoded into the culture. I have built software that thousands of people use. The patriarchy is heaping prestige on me with a PhD and paying me to be here. I will run companies. But this has a lot to do with the fact that I’m a white, american, middle class, educated, straight-passing, cisgendered, nondisabled, gender-binary-passing, male-passing person. My definition of “a better world” is being amplified through my privilege

And that’s bogus. I think checking my privilege means not charging ahead towards what I think is a better world. It means acknowledging that because of who I am, my voice obscures other peoples’ voices. Because of who I am, I elbow other people out of the way to make my vision happen. Checking my privilege means actively working to lessen those effects.

But that won’t make my privilege go away. And inevitably, I think I have a responsibility to use my privilege to change things, to design things, and to really try to bring about a better future. But even when I do that, I need to be very careful to question my motives, and to question the ramifications of my choices from a feminist perspective.

At least, that’s my understanding. My white, male understanding. I’m almost certainly wrong about a lot of it, and missing important truths.

A gang of six to ten ethically challenged Nova Scotia upperclassmen boys recently took it upon themselves to verbally harass a 9th grade boy for the high crime wearing pink to school, calling him a homosexual.

Seniors David Shepherd and Travis Price, above, decided to do something about it. Says David: “It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something.”

What did they do? They organized a protest, using the internet to encourage people to wear pink the next day to school. They purchased 75 pink tank tops, armbands and a basketball to distribute to other boys. They guess that about half of the school’s 830 students participated.

The Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald reports on what happened:

“The bullies got angry,” said Travis. “One guy was throwing chairs (in the cafeteria). We’re glad we got the response we wanted.”

David said one of the bullies angrily asked him whether he knew pink on a male was a symbol of homosexuality.

He told the bully that didn’t matter to him and shouldn’t to anyone.

“Something like the colour of your shirt or pants, that’s ridiculous,” he said.

As for The Boy Who Was Bullied:

When the bullied student put on his pink shirt Friday and saw all the other pink in the lobby, “he was all smiles. It was like a big weight had been lifted off is shoulder,” David said. No one at the school would reveal the student’s name.

Not only to these boys seem to get bullying, they get community organizing, and they get the importance of privacy. Awesome.

Thanks to Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town, which is where I read about the story, and is one of my favorite feminist blogs.

I’m Not a Man
Harold Norse (Hidden Transcripts, page 133, copied from here)

I’m not a man. I can’t earn a living, buy new things for my family. I have acne and a small peter.

I’m not a man. I don’t like football, boxing or cars. I like to express my feelings. I even like to put an arm around my friend’s shoulder.

I’m not a man. I won’t play the role assigned to me—the role created by Madison Avenue, Playboy, Hollywood and Oliver Cromwell. Television does not dictate my behavior.

I’m not a man. Once when I shot a squirrel I swore that I would never kill again. I gave up meat. The sight of blood makes me sick. I like flowers.

I’m not a man. I went to prison resisting the draft. I do not fight when real men beat me up and call me queer. I dislike violence.

I’m not a man. I have never raped a woman. I don’t hate blacks. I do not get emotional when the flag is waved. I do not think I should love America or leave it. I think I should laugh at it.

I’m not a man. I have never had the clap.

I’m not a man. Playboy is not my favorite magazine.

I’m not a man. I cry when I’m unhappy.

I’m not a man. I do not feel superior to women.

I’m not a man. I don’t wear a jockstrap.

I’m not a man. I write poetry.

I’m not a man. I meditate on peace and love.

I’m not a man. I don’t want to destroy you.

***

I’ve encountered similar anti-masculine sentiments from other pro-feminist men. Just look at the list of John Stoltenberg’s works from Wikipedia:

Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice
Why I Stopped Trying to be a Real Man
The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience

This ties in well with the feminist notions that that gender can be decoupled from sex, giving men an opportunity to abandon their destructive masculinities and that this–male gender empowerment–is called “feminism”. I agree with both of these notions on some level, but something about this scenario feels odd to me.

When was it decided that masculinity is rape, racism, promiscuity, STDs, money, violence, and destruction? It may be that these are traits historically tied to men, but is this really the way we want to construct gender?

Sarah told me about her mother’s dissertation work, which was focused on medieval peasantry. Turns out women owned lots of land and business back then. What does it say about them that we assign “the money thing” to masculinity?

Or is the point to construct masculinity and femininity as loathesome, limiting things that no one would want to be in order to to do away with gender entirely?

***

Maybe we should just make like David Neiwert and construct new, positive, overlapping definitions of what masculinity and femininity are until they blend together into one awesome mess.

Over the last few years I’ve realized that if there’s any truth to these things, it’s because of some really ugly structure in the world. And it’s activism, not smugness, that should be welling up in little boys.

But along with that realization has come a problematic switch. The things I used to admire about men–the confidence, the wielding of dangerous and powerful tools, the independence–I find those things more and more repulsive. And I find myself jealous of this other kind of power… power that isn’t fed by entrenched cultural structures, but instead exists despite them.

After all, what’s more bad-ass? A boy wielding the confidence the patriarchy bestowed upon him, or a girl wielding confidence that couldn’t be wrested from her? It’s easier being a dude, but where’s the pride in having all of this stuff handed to you? And what right do I have to feel good about my value in a feminist space? Isn’t that just the patriarchy trying to assert its universal importance through me?

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I have a few insights, but the questions keep coming up, and I’m never really prepared for them.

It’s sort of ridiculous, but in the end, the thing that gives me the most comfort is sitting down and putting on a Rufus Wainwright record. As ugly as I think the patriarchy can be. I listen to his voice and I think… that, at least, is beautiful.

My mom told me a while back that her feelings about childbirth changed a lot after watching our cat Tod¹ give birth. Tod gave birth in a box in our closet, and she was purring the whole time. My mom said it was kind of a revelation: that birth isn’t a medical emergency, it is a normal thing that women are naturally equipped for.

Update: Thinking back, I think I misrepresented my Mom a little bit. I don’t think she said anything about medical emergencies or normalness or naturalness. I think she just said that she realized it doesn’t have to be a terrifyingly painful thing. That it can be calm, and manageable. I should ask her what she really said though.