Category Archives: feminism

August 21, 2011, 3:46 pm

For Colored Only? Understanding “The Help” Through The Lens Of White Womanhood

Full disclosure: I was raised almost entirely by my white biological mother without the assistance of paid domestic labor. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing. It just is.

I decided to begin this post with a title that would make my white readers uncomfortable in a way that “The Help” (Tate Taylor, 2011), and the Kathleen Stockett novel it is based on, will not. Although I have overheard the word colored used intimately and fondly, I am outside a community that privileges me to actually speak it except when I am giving a lecture about segregation.

Which I am about to commence.

For a white person to describe African-American people as “colored” is too closely associated with the forms of thinly-veiled race hatred masquerading as civilization that characterized middle class white racism in the 1960s. White courtesies — like substituting “colored” for the curse…

August 17, 2011, 12:12 pm

“That Was The Big ‘Click!’”: Gloria Steinem and the History of Feminism

By Claire Potter

Last night, after watching Gloria: In Her Own Words (HBO Films, Peter Kunhardt dir., 2011), a short documentary about Gloria Steinem that premiered on August 15, I decided to take action. I came upstairs and I:

Joined EMILY’s List (this is completely free, but I celebrated with an initial donation of $35 + $15 for their featured candidate, Kate Marshall, a former Democratic state treasurer who is running against Mark Amodei in Nevada’s 2nd.
Joined the National Organization for Women (NOW) which cost $40.00. This allowed me to sign up for the national and my local Shoreline chapter, which I hope will call me into action sooner rather than later.
Subscribed to Ms. magazine (which Gloria founded; $25) and, for good measure, bought a snappy black tee-shirt with Ms. on the front in big pink letters ($20.00.)

But it wasn’t always this easy.

(more…)

August 4, 2011, 5:36 pm

As President Obama Turns (The Clock Back On Women’s Rights)

By Claire Potter

Is President Obama now starring in Ronald Reagan Theater?

In case you think nothing good came out of the Congressional budget ~~free for all~~ negotiations that ended at the beginning of this week, think again. You will be cheered to know that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius seized the moment. While everyone was distracted by the Tea Party and the President taking political a$$hattery to a new low, Sibelius slipped a major reform enacted under the Affordable Care Act over the transom: no co-pays for insured women seeking gynecological care. As WebMD reported: “Health care reform requires new insurance plans to fully cover women’s preventive care, which now will include free birth control, yearly wellness visits, breastfeeding counseling and equipment, and screening for…

May 23, 2011, 2:55 pm

Do Girls Rule The World? A Response To Beyonce Inspired By A Young Feminist

By Claire Potter

It’s really amazing what you can find on the interwebz

A feminist vlogger who posts to YouTube under the the name NineteenPercent is responsible for an incisive critique of the new Beyonce song “Run The World (Girls).” This young intellectual, who could give any second waver from the 1970s a run for her money, points out that putting snappy tunes out there about how girls (or women) “run the world” is diss-information since equality for “Lady Humans” is not on the agenda nowadays. Then she runs it down how bad things really are: in one state a bill making cockfighting a felony crime was passed recently but a bill that would have made assaulting your wife a felony failed.

If women are making 78 cents to every dollar a man earns, NP points out, women do not run the world. Not even close to it. Furthermore, women are definitely not running the anti-violence agenda if, when we discuss…

January 22, 2011, 12:20 am

Battle Hymn Of The Queer Tiger Aunt: Or, How Amy Chua Made Me Think About Feminism

By Claire Potter

The official logo of the Queer Tiger Aunt. Photo credit.

When I decided that instead of reading about Amy Chua‘s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother I would read the book instead, I did so for two reasons. One was because I had become interested in the Orientalist tropes that she launched in her publicity piece, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” (Wall Street Journal, January 8 2011) and that white women then expanded upon here and other places.

The other reason was that I had some Audible credits to use, and was beginning my daily commute again.

Am I glad I did! Here are some things I thought about by actually reading (listening to) the book, rather than basing my judgments of it on a few salacious quotes (or Janet Maslin’s review, which has numerous factual errors in it):

What it means to be the bridge between the immigrant generation and a generation which grows up in privilege and…

November 10, 2010, 3:23 pm

A Letter To My Students: Stop Rape Now By Doing These Ten Things

By Claire Potter

Over the past six months, we at Zenith University have been talking about rape and sexual assault. We talk in the dormitories and program houses; we talk in faculty offices; we talk in special hearings run by the deans; we talk in a committee convened to examine sexual assault on campus; we talk on the Anonymous Confession Board; we talk in the pages of the Zenith newspaper.

So enough talk, Zenith students. It is time to act. Direct some of the compassion that you so frequently exhibit towards people off our campus towards each other. It is time for you to stop rape at Zenith right now.

I have never used this blog to talk directly to Zenith students. But because I know you read it, and because there has recently been a public announcement about sexual assault on campus, I want to speak to you directly about how you can stop rape and sexual assault on campus without any…

October 17, 2010, 3:16 pm

Double, Double Toil And Trouble: Or, Why Images Of Witch Burnings Are A Bad Idea

By Claire Potter

Decades ago, feminists really cared about the casual use of images that exploited women’s bodies or that used violence against women as a way to sell a product. A billboard that went up on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975 was the catalyst for feminists to form Women Against Violence Against Women, the first of numerous groups in the United States, Canada and England that began to link the anti-battering movement to images that articulated violence against women as part of the status quo.

By the 1990′s, the feminist consciousness that promoted swift and effective action in such cases had gone under cover, due in part to profound disagreements about what constituted a radical feminist agenda and what women’s civil liberties meant. I am writing a book about why that was, so I won’t go on at length, but you will be hearing more about this topic at Tenured Radical in the coming months…

October 15, 2010, 3:28 pm

Bro’s Before Ho’s and Fraternity Hazing Lows

By Claire Potter

“Spank him hard, but after each spanking make
sure to caress his tender cheeks.” Photo Credit.

By doing things like forcing your pledges/rooks to eat human shit or do an elephant walk you are basically saying, “Hey, by learning what your fellow bros’ shit tastes like you will be better bros,” and I have to say – I really respect that….Everytime I say, “I’m going to make your fucking life a living hell,” I still get a half-chub. Bros fucking love power. You know who else loves power? Slam pieces. By hazing the shit out of pledges/rooks in front of slam pieces, 9 times out of 10 they will go down on you immediately. The other time they will give it up doggy. Bros Like This Site, July 23 2009.

Two days ago, residents of Oligarch University’s historic quad, where all first year students are housed, were interrupted in their evening activities by a line of young men chanting. As…

October 11, 2010, 1:22 am

What is Our Work? Towards A Feminist Future in Education

By Claire Potter

Ellie Smeal and Alan Alda, ERA rally
June 30, 1981. Photo credit

This concludes a three part series on feminist education: you may want to read Part I and Part II first.

Gender inequality occurs in educational, and subsequently professional, atmospheres in which we have substantial evidence that men and women are equally able. The gender gap in math testing is shrinking rapidly, and at the top levels, it is insignificant. But as New York Times reporter Tamar Lewin noted in her commentary on “Why So Few,” a lack of faith in women’s abilities on the part of those who should be welcoming them to the next level of achievement may also reduce the confidence of even the top young female mathematicians. Hence, as Lewin concluded, “girls’ lesser belief in their own skills may partly explain why fewer women go into scientific careers.”

So returning to the question I asked in a…

October 9, 2010, 6:51 pm

Feminism’s Unfinished Agenda: If Women Have Equal Opportunity, Why Are The Outcomes So Very Unequal?

By Claire Potter

Photo Credit

This is Part II of a three-part polemic about the need to sustain and expand women’s education in the 21st century. Read Part I here.

First and foremost, a women’s single-sex college — whether it is a private institution or a residential college lodged in a large public university or university system — is about an institutional commitment to the success of female undergraduates. It is about a commitment to the young woman who will want to have a career, an intimate relationship and often children as well. This is feminism’s unfinished agenda.

How to mix of career and family is one of our modern feminist dilemmas, one that extends to lesbians as well as heterosexual women as parenting has become legally and medically available to women who choose intimacy without men. This requires that those of us who are committed to creating spaces that privilege female intellects…