Tag Archives: feminism

Is “Feminism” a Self-Defeating Label?

Posted on April 22, 2015 by | 7 comments

I’m a pretty slow learner when it comes to social media. I feel like I just mastered Facebook when it started going out of style. Unfortunately for me, social media sites are important tools when it comes to blogging. I’ve been making an effort to expand my horizons, starting with Twitter. So far, my favourite thing about Twitter is the hashtags.

Even before I started posting on Twitter, I would check to see what was trending and to follow conversations about race and gender that unfolded around hashtags like #WhyIStayed, #BringBackOurGirls, #GamerGate, #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, etc. Recently, when I went to tag a comment with “#feminist”, I noticed that the first two tags to show up were “#FeminismIsAwful” and “#FeministsAreUgly”. When I decided to make a comment about it, it wasn’t long before I got a response.

https://twitter.com/YTM1staWu1fy/status/590034450320199680

I’d like to consider what Jacob is saying. First, let’s set aside the long history of smearing feminism by calling feminists ugly for a second here.

Continue reading →

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Posted in feminism, history, internet

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Can You Be a Feminist and Still Love James Bond Films?

Posted on April 1, 2015 by | 2 comments

A teaser for the new James Bond film has hit and I am more than a little excited.

It also makes me feel conflicted because so many aspects of the Bond franchise fly in the face of much of what I strongly believe as a feminist. Below, I’ve outlined a few issues I have with the Bond movies, and below that some reasons why I haven’t given up on the franchise altogether. At this point I’m required to warn you about spoilers, although I seriously doubt I will reveal anything you don’t already know about the films.

1) Women are constantly objectified in Bond films

It’s no secret that the James Bond franchise is all about eye-candy, from the cars and gadgets to virtually every women who steps foot on set. Not only are these women present to demonstrate Bond’s power of seduction, they are also present to be viewed by the movie-goer.

And if near naked ladies aren’t enough for you, they will throw in some naked lady silhouettes in the opening credits.

One of the only women to not be sexualized in her role was Judi Dench, who played M in the last seven Bond films. Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, she was killed off in the last film.


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Posted in feminism, film, sex

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Tumblr and SJWs: The Difference Between Having a Problem and Being One

Posted on March 13, 2015 by | 6 comments

So roughly two months ago Gordon said I would be “providing some cutting observations on the state of Tumblr”, and I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’ve done enough research to finally tackle this thing. In this case “this thing” refers to “the internet’s conceptions of Tumblr and its users, specifically those who have been deemed ‘social justice warriors'”. It’s going to be a long one, so sit back, buckle up, and do one other thing you would do when riding in a vehicle.

everybodyhatestumblrEverybody Hates Tumblr

I’m not going to pretend I know where you spend your time on the internet, but chances are that you’ve come across the general sentiment that Tumblr is “all that is wrong with the internet” or “a literal cancer” or some other hyperbole. It’s gotten to the point where just invoking the site’s name in relation to anything can be, and usually is, a damning condemnation.

As far as I can tell, there exists a much stronger bias towards it than even 4chan, with the latter being heralded as the primordial ooze that the vast majority of our memes come from, a primal, unadulterated place that has stood true to its roots. That’s a conversation for another time, but the point is that Tumblr has come to carry more negatie connotations than other social networking sites, with a lot of that having to do with it being the homeland of SJWs, or “Social Justice Warriors”-

What Is A Social Justice Warrior? [Wow, Google Image Search Has Not Been Kind To That Search Term]

This YouTube video is a pretty short, funny breakdown of what one is:

If you didn’t feel like watching it, here’s what the dude defines it as, providing three definitions that get more and more easy-to-understand:

  1. a derogatory term for people who advocate for socially marginalized groups
  2. a bad name for feminists
  3. a bad name for women-are-cool people

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Posted in bizarreness, feminism, internet, lgbt, race

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Lisa Nakamura Part 2: Navajo Circuits and the “Nimble Fingers” of Asian Women

Posted on March 10, 2015 by | 7 comments

In my last post, I told you a little bit about Lisa Nakamura, her research, and the talk she gave at my university about Tumblr activism. I also promised to tell you about her second lecture the next time I wrote.

Both of Nakamura’s lectures were about digital media, but unlike her first talk, her second presentation focused on the physical material of digital technology.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, or recently time-travelled to 2015, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that most of your digital hardware came from Asia. You may even be familiar with the way Asian women have been racialized as innately predisposed to factory work because of their “supposed docility, nimble fingers and attention to mind-numbing detail”.

Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 8.39.54 PM

Click on the image to view the full infographic.

However, you might be surprised to learn that this stereotype has been applied to women of colour ever since the digital revolution. In her paper on “Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronics Manufacture”  Nakamura examines the way digital factory work is both gendered and racialized. She refers to the work of Karen Hossfeld when she insists that

“…by the eighties in Silicon Valley, electronic assembly had become, not just women’s work but women of color’s work.” (290)

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Posted in feminism, history, internet, morality, race, technology

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Lisa Nakamura Part 1: Tumblr Activism and This Bridge Called My Back 

Posted on February 25, 2015 by | 3 comments

On Thursday and Friday UVic hosted Lisa Nakamura, Collegiate Professor from the University of Michigan, to speak about her research on Digital Media and Race, Gender and Sexuality. Nakamura has been writing about digital media since 1994. While she has written several books about race and the internet, some of her shorter pieces focus on things like “The Racialization of Labour in World of Warcraft”. In order to feel qualified to write about platforms like World of Warcraft, she spent hours playing the game herself.

On Thursday, Nakamura’s talk was titled “The Digital Afterlife of This Bridge Called My Back: Women of Color, Feminism and the Internet”. She began by giving a brief overview of the book and explained why it matters so much.

As an anthology that prioritized written work by women of colour, This Bridge Called My Back responded to the whitewashing of feminism long before movements like the #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen hashtag began to highlight the problem. This book also introduced the concept of intersectionality, which has since become a key element of feminist theory.

Unfortunately, since it’s original publication the groundbreaking collection has struggled to remain in print. According to Wikipedia,

“The anthology was first published in 1981 by Persephone Press, and the second edition was published in 1983 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. The book was out in its third edition, published by Third Woman Press, until 2008, when its contract with Third Woman Press expired and it went out of print.”

The book’s struggle to remain in print made it an “artificially scarce commodity” and drove up the price. At its inflated price, the book’s authors might even have been unable to afford their own work.

Screen Shot 2015-02-22 at 9.48.27 PM Continue reading →

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There Is Neither Male Nor Female – Rethinking Gender Roles

Posted on February 16, 2015 by | 7 comments

…And for those of you concerned, Evan has mandated a cut-off for these posts. As important as they are, and as many interesting questions as they raise, there’s only so many weeks in a row we can dedicate to beating a dead horse.

I feel first that I should clarify some of my points in my original response. When I was first drafting it, I was concerned that Kat (who had written a rather personal piece) might take it the wrong way- I’m glad that she gave me the benefit of the doubt on it. Truth is, my issue isn’t with Kat (who I think would agree with most of what I’m about to argue) but with the wider implications of Deschanel’s statements (though there were a few points I take issue with in Kat’s response- but we’ll get to that).

Deschanel argued that “we can be powerful in our own way, our own feminine way“. My response was “No, you ****ing can’t”.

Not “no, you *****ing can’t be powerful”, not “no, you can’t be feminine” (whatever “feminine” means), but rather “no, you can’t have your ‘own feminine way.'”

Why? Continue reading →

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Posted in bizarreness, celebrity, fashion, feminism, history, lgbt, morality, science

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