Author Archive
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Aug 22, 2010
No CommentsSexing the Queen
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that a quick Google search of “chess queen” would yield a surprising number of images of the sexualized female body. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. When I think of chess, sex doesn’t come to mind, though it may from here on out. Amidst photos and renderings...
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Jul 16, 2010
No CommentsBook Review: Reclaiming the F Word
Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune want something from you. Their demand isn’t as impossible to achieve as you may have been led to think. In fact, they go to great lengths to show you how other women are already doing it and how you can, too! So, what do they want? In their book Reclaiming the...
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Jul 10, 2010
No CommentsFirst Wave Flashback: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Last month, several of you read our Facebook link to Amanda Marcotte’s Slate.com article “A Short History of ‘feminist’ Anti-feminists” and asked for the full Gilman poem we shared. While we warned of the dangers of nostalgia for First Wave Feminism because of its exclusionary vision and goals, some of the ideas and arguments still...
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Jun 26, 2010
No CommentsVagina: A Poem
The following poem came about from an intense few days of frustration and self-doubt . . . go figure. I was trying to write an article for Feminist Lab and kept hearing this voice in my head criticizing my right to “speak for women” (which is not at all how I see my work, or...
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Jun 06, 2010
No CommentsReclaiming Medusa, Reclaiming Yourself
A common critique of women’s images in consumer cultures is that they teach young girls to be something other than what they truly are (whatever that may be): from Barbie to Beyoncé, from Carl’s Jr. ads to Twilight, critics declaim that the unrealistic expectations of sexual awareness, behavior, and confidence combined with a narrowly defined physical...
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May 24, 2010
No CommentsA Feminist By Any Other Name
Feminists. Speak up, and act out. Did you read those first lines as a definition, observation, or call to action? Did you think of yourself as the intended subject? Are you reluctant to call yourself a feminist? What is feminism, anyway? Feminism enables you and I to publicly act and discuss ourselves as meaningful, valid centers of experience....
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Apr 20, 2010
No CommentsPlaying a Part: How Do We Express Womanhood?
On the Feminist Lab Facebook page, we asked you to share some of the ways you perform your experience of living as a woman. Some further discussion of the motivations behind this request seems needed. An obvious assumption behind the Wall topic is that people identified as (or identifying themselves as) women do something to encourage or perform a...