We can’t always blog about the stories in the news that catch our collective eyes, so here is this week’s open thread for discussion and our regular round-up of those we missed. They are links and blog posts that we found interesting, thought-provoking or newsworthy, rather than necessarily things we agree with, so please don’t take a mention here to mean agreement, or indeed disagreement, with the content.
If you have a link or comment that doesn’t fit anywhere else and would like to share it, feel free to drop it in the comments here.
TRIGGER WARNING: External links are to websites which are not necessarily safe places, and may contain material that some people find triggering. Please use your discretion and approach them with due caution.
- Lesbian The L Word actress thrown off Southwest Airlines flight for kissing her girlfriend was the Daily Mail’s original title of this story – it has since been changed to “Was it all a stunt? Lesbian actress denies claims she was thrown off flight for kissing girlfriend just to publicise her tour”.
- From Amnesty International, Flogging Sentence for Saudi Arabian Woman After Driving ‘Beggars Belief’. The Guardian also reports on this case.
- Advertisers could learn a lot about gender stereotyping from Lego in 1981 (tumblr)
- Kathy Sierra: Take back the comments: stop online harassment, about a dangerous assault on an epilepsy forum (Geekfeminism)
- The Telegraph reports on the first daytime sex toy TV ad to run in the UK. Lovehoney, the company behind the ad, hope to “bring the message of sexual happiness to the UK”.
- Harassmap is is a new social initiative that will help restore Egypt’s tradition of public safety for women using an SMS reporting system for sexual harassment to change its social acceptability, spread awareness and revitalize the public movement.
- Backing the Habit: Life as a Nun Today, in Standpoint.
- Anna Blundy writes No need to hack phones- we stitch ourselves up in the Collective Review, about her experience of writing for the Daily Mail.
- From Women’s Web, 5 Ways to Diss Feminist Writing.
- Some soaps have been accused of being sensationalist or inaccurate in their portrayals of violence against women in the past, but in regard to the most recent storyline, Jane Martinson writes How Coronation Street captured the truth about rape.
- From The Frisky, How to Teach Boys to be Feminists has suggestions for lessons to teach both young boys and young men.
- The Monstrous Clitoris: two stories about gender and sexuality in colonial Latin America, from Tiger Beatdown
- A 7-year-old girl responds to DC Comics’ sexed-up reboot of Starfire, and very insightful it is, too!
- From Spiked, Why Fairtrade is an unfair deal, about how while buying Fair Trade products might ease our consumer conscience, they actually “amount to a PC-form of bonded labour”.
- Tavi Gevinson writes about first encounters with the male gaze, at Rookie.
- French Feminists Call for ‘Mademoiselle’ to be Banned, reported in The Fresh Outlook.
- In Arts Beat in the New York Times, Sylvia Robinson, ‘the Mother of Hip-Hop,’ Dies at 75.
- Melissa at About Face writes about the pressure to lose weight quickly after giving birth, in Raising the Bar on Bouncing Back After Baby
- The Telegraph reports that “primary school pupils will be shown airbrushed images of a scantily-clad Britney Spears as part of an attempt to show them the “impossible standard” set by advertising and media”.
- Maria Popova in Brain Pickings presents four inspirational and influential self-made women, in Hall of Femmes: The Female Icons of Graphic Design.
- Photographs from the first Polish Slutwalk, from Demotix.
- An article by Allison Moon in Her Circle, Self-Publishing as a Feminist Act.
- From Pharyngula, PZ Myers describes how some students should not go into a health profession.
- Should we mourn the end of chick-lit, if the report that sales have fallen by 10% is true? (Guardian)
- Soph, from Half the World is watching, asks, Why do I keep doing this to myself?, about the abuse she gets online for being a woman and a feminist.
- Eva Wiseman in the Guardian writes, Manland: Ikea’s new creche for mollycoddling men, about an Australian Ikea store that has set up a man creche…
- Amr Emam in the Egyptian Gazette writes about the women without political rights after Egypt’s revolt.
- And a nice one to end, as good news has seemed a bit thin on the ground in general lately, Afghanistan has held its first music festival in more than 30 years, from BBC News South Asia.
[The image is a close-up photograph of some Dolly Mixture sweets. It is by Josh Roulston and is used under a Creative Commons Licence]
