Jane Austin Fight Club

This brought me joy. Jane Austin + kick ass women = awesome. [found on Jezebel]

Quote of the Day

"If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire. We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. That would be sexual liberation"- Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

This is AWESOME

Brontesaurus? Brilliant!

Do not expect to recieve the love from someone else you do not give yourself

The title of this post is out of bell hook's All About Love, and I have found it to be a major theme that keeps coming up in my life. I recently began a job at a non-profit who believes that caregivers of children need to have support themselves in order to care for others. I've also really noticed people in my life who seem unable to love and really care for themselves, and thus are in no position to give love, or even receive it from others.
When I was in 8th grade, I worshiped the RENT soundtrack (ok, if pressed, I still do), but I remember distinctly being attracted to Roger telling Mimi, "you'll never share real love, until you love yourself-- I should know." It all made sense in my head, but I had no idea what really loving oneself looked like. Now, at 23 and out of college, I can appreciate those lines a little more, partly because I've invested some time into getting to know, appreciate, and love myself and realize how hard it is and partially because of how much I've seen it rings true. If you can't love yourself, who else is? I've seen way too many people try to use others as a means to love, rather than starting with themselves. Others are of course a wonderful means of support, but how can someone else really love you unless you put that investment in yourself?
I admit, there are days when I am not particularly head-over-heels for myself, but definitely, over time, within wonderfully supporting community spaces and growing opportunities, I have for the most part learned to love myself. It's a journey, but totally one worth the effort. I'm not perfect (which is ok) and I have taken steps back, but am proud of the energy I've made towards developing generally positive feelings about myself and trying to give myself the love and care I need and deserve. And only in that state can I be open to giving and receiving love from others.

Margaret Atwood Will Teach You a Thing or Two

The Morality of Sexuality

I recently finished reading The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti and am currently reading Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, and both of these books have me really thinking about my own relationship with sexuality. One of Valenti's major arguments in The Purity Myth is that young women's morality is based solely on whether or not she has sex, rather than being a good person. This means that any woman who isn't 100% "pure" (whatever that means) is not only considered dirty, but immoral, despite her character, kindness, integrity or any other number of qualities. Although I've found this pheomena to be true, I cannot comprehend why a woman's sexuality has anything, let alone everything, to do with her morality. These books have encouraged me to think about sexuality in a more positive light- rather than constantly thinking about "no" and what I'm not supposed to do, I feel more apt to think about what I want for myself and what I want has no baring on who I am as a persosn. Although I think it will be a process, I don't want to think about sexuality in terms of guilt, shame and fear anylonger. Rather, I want to think about what makes me happy and why, and let go of any hangups that have nothing to do with me.

You Have Got to be Kidding Me

I was just checking out the Barnes & Noble website, browsing books and decided to check out what was under the category "gender studies." First off, it took me until the very end of the first page to identify anything I would call as feminist. More disturbingly, however, I found titles such as For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men and Becoming the Woman of His Dreams: Seven Qualities Every Man Longs For.
What. The. Hell.
Since when did gender studies become cosmo? So when women (or men) want to look for gender studies, this is what they'll find. A bunch of self-help books that supposedly teach women how to mold themselves into an "ideal" for some man. This is really disheartening. Books like these not only damage women by telling them to behave in certain ways to get a man, but it also shortchanges the men who would have loved these women as themselves. It also sets up a woman's primary concern to be finding a man- not even love- but a man. As if catching a man equates happiness. Not to mention the extreme heteronormativity of the whole thing.
I have to admit, I have never opened one of these books (and, quite frankly, never plan to) because I a) have no desire to be exposed to such crap b) have no desire to contribute to the market for such crap but I do have a pretty good feeling that any book entitled Becoming the Woman of His Dreams is not going to be particularly enlightened. I am just enraged that anyone who would go out of their way to look for gender studies is going to be told that this qualifies as gender studies. I think I'm going to send a nasty email to B&N...