The award for best critical book review this week goes to Ashley Sayeau @ The Guardian writing on Laurie Gottleib's Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough. She gets points for historical analysis ("The book's jacket claims this is all new – the author, it states, has said "the unthinkable" – but of course nothing could be farther from the truth") as well as attempts at finding a kernel of worth in an otherwise painfully anti-feminist screed ("This is frustrating for many reasons, but especially because Gottlieb's subject – the question of compromise in modern relationships – actually deserves attention, just not of the sort she gives it"). Bianca M. Velez @ RhRealityCheck wonders about the wisdom of consent laws which dictate to young women whom they can and cannot consent to sexual relationships with in Consenting to Sex: Yes, No, Maybe?
PhDork @ The Pursuit of Harpyness blogs about how olympic "human interest" reporting has subjected female athletes to shaming comments about their body weight and health in Female Olympians are Fat!(TW).
Ann Bartow @ Feminist Law Professors highlights the official opening of the Feminist Theory Papers at Brown University's Pembroke Center. I seriously considered applying for a year-long processing position with the FTP a couple of years ago, and they are definitely on my watchlist as an Archive I would love to work with/at someday.
My "new blog" discovery of the week (well, one of them: the list of feeds on Google Reader is getting scary long!) was Sex and the Ivy, authored by Lena Chen. On said blog, I found this delicious analysis of a talk given last November by faux feminist Christina Hoff Sommers on why modern feminism has supposedly failed. I have a sick fascination with people who look at the world and see the things I believe are amazingly awesome as a sign of deep pathology.
Kinda like this guy (and his audience), posted by Melissa McEwan @ Shakesville who seem to believe that courses in feminist theory that incorporate issues of race and class are . . . antidiversity?
(Speaking of Melissa McEwan @ Shakesville, this week she also posted a thoughtful critique of the assumption that it takes having kids to become a family.)
Thanks to Sex and the Ivy I also discovered a couple of older (2005) blog posts on the subject of sex-positivity and pornography which I enjoyed reading. One is by Susie Bright @ Susie Bright's Journal in which she responds to a Slate.com book club discussion of Pornified and Female Chauvinist Pigs which took place in 2005 involving Wendy Shalit (another faux feminist whom I find it easy to fixate upon), Meghan O'Rourke, and Laura Kipnis. The other is one of Laura Kipnis' contributions to said bookclub discussion in which she points out that "people may like making their own preferences into norms, but that's a bit monstrous in itself." Well said, Ms. Kipnis. Read the whole thing over at Slate.
MandyG @ Feministing Community cross-posted an op-ed by Nancy Willard, Sexting: A Rational Approach, which discusses the adult hysteria over adolescents engaged in the exchange of self-created sexual images online.
A Georgia bill revives tired stereotypes about connections between family planning and eugenics. Planned Parenthood's Kelley Robinson @ RhRealityCheck points out that, far from "targeting" minority women for abortions, clinics like Planned Parenthood are often the only sites where minority women are offered affordable reproductive healthcare.
Cara Kulwiki (of The Curvature) comments @ The Guardian on the results of a recent study showing that women are more likely then men to blame victims of rape for their assault. "When we say that women are less "forgiving" of rape victims, we ignore that being raped is not something for which one needs to be forgiven. And while being blamed for your own rape is an incredibly traumatising experience, we forget in this discussion that there would be no victim to blame if there wasn't a rapist committing assault first."
And just so we're not ending on that important yet not exactly uplifting note, I will end this thread by introducing you to the mind-bending concept of cupcakes for men. You didn't know cupcakes were a girly thing? Click through and gwen @ Sociological Images will enlighten you.
*image credit: Life Drawing by henrybloomfield @ Flickr.com. Thanks to Hanna this week for selecting the featured picture.
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