Top 100 Gender Studies Blogs

Check out this great list of Top 100 Gender Studies Blogs! I personally think they left a couple out, but there were also quite a few on the list that I didn't know about and look forward to exploring. Also, guess who's in excellent company?!

(H/T The Feminist Underground)

Gay bishop at Obama's Inauguration

Though it doesn't completely make up for the Rick Warren debacle, I suppose that having openly gay Episcopal bishop V. Gene Robinson deliver the invocation at the big Inauguration kick-off concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday is a step in the right direction.

What do you all think? Does this make up for it? Is it just a band-aid? Is Obama just covering his tracks? Or is this about as much as we can expect from a politician?

(H/T to Fred for the link)

(By the way, I'm sorry about all the short posts lately. I've been trying to schedule and organize my non-blog life and work in the New Year. I should be back on track soon.)

ETA: Nancy Goldstein at Salon argues that Robinson is too little, too late.

Not a bad word about Tina Fey

Suck it, internets!



(H/T Feministing)

Musical Androgyny

The Cliks are one of the most fascinating bands in existence - the lead singer, Lucas Silveira, in particular.


Here's why:

As someone who thinks she knows enough about music to write about it, I haven't actually been listening to popular music for very long. I'd been a classical musician since I was quite young, but I've only been listening to popular music for a few years, and one of the first things I noticed as I started to listen was the overwhelming influence of sexual attraction. And not simply as a subject of the music, but as a part of the music itself.

The vast majority of popular music is sung, and one's attraction, or lack of attraction, to the singer (either in voice or appearance) greatly influences the way we perceive the music. The instrumentalists, too - one could write books on the guitar as a phallic symbol. This isn't a bad thing, certainly! I used to wonder, though - what would androgynous popular music sound like?

Not asexual music - that's what (some) classical music is for. The question is more difficult than it seems. What does an androgynous singing voice sound like? The first thing that comes to my mind is the sound of a boy's choir - but that brings us back to the asexual problem! I really can't imagine what normal, adult, androgynous singing would sound like. (Although, it's quite possible I simply haven't heard it yet!)

There is another solution, though. I first heard the Cliks on NPR. My first thought was, I like the singer. She has a great voice! After I listened to the interview and realized that Lucas was an FTM, however, it became obvious that he had accomplished something amazing.

The combination of a female (but not overly feminine) voice with a male (but not overly masculine) appearance creates androgynous music without sacrificing sexuality. In fact, many of the Cliks' songs are rather overtly sexual. By avoiding the typical feminine or masculine attraction, we are forced to focus on the song and on the music itself - yet without losing sight of the singer.

Is anyone familiar with a comparable MTF singer? I would imagine that the effect would be much the same.

How Do You Think?

When I was in college, I took a Women’s Studies seminar. The instructor was head of the Sociology department, had written a few books, was said to be quite entertaining, and so I thought it might be an interesting class. I was an English and History major, but everyone needs electives, preferably ones that don’t add a tremendous amount of further reading to an already maxed out class load, and this one seemed to fit the bill. And after all, I attended a women’s college and was (and still am) a lesbian; surely there was some criteria written down somewhere that I simply had to take at least one women’s studies class, right?

About a week into the class, which, by the way, turned out to be one of those round-table, discussion things that had never appealed to my more linear style of learning, my instructor informed me that I, “thought like a man”. This appellation came at the end of a rather vigorous discussion, the subject of which I must admit escapes me after all these years, but I do recall being quite vocal (as those who know me can quite imagine, I am sure) and arguing several points with a classmate and my instructor. I have to say I was taken aback at the time and the years have done little to alter that reaction.

I tell this story primarily because I was accused (if that word actually applies) again recently, and again by another woman, of “thinking like a man”, and being equally flummoxed as to how to respond. What exactly does it mean to “think like a man”? What does it mean to “think like a woman”? I know that I have a very logical perspective on things, that I prefer facts to supposition, that I have a tendency to travel from point A to point B, but are those exclusively “male” traits? Or are they “male” traits at all? Are all of these things, our need to quantify thinking as being of one sex or the other, merely societal inventions designed to perpetuate male-dominated hierarchies?

Given my own dearth of answers to any of these questions, I thought that I might put it to all of you, dear bloggers, to tell me what you believe it means to “think like a man/woman”. Any opinions? I'm quite curious to hear your thoughts.

Feminist Flashback #19

Today, for your Feminist Flashback viewing pleasure, the work of artist Barbara Kruger. She began producing her feminist collage/photographic art in the late 1970s and continues into the present:

1981

1981

1982

1983

1987

1989

1989

ETA: One of her more recent, explicitly-political works, from 2004:

This is what a feminist looks like?

Um, Ms. magazine, I don't quite get this:



Are you trying to say that Obama qua Superman will save feminism? Oooh! Or is he going to save feminists from themselves? Or...or...maybe he'll achieve everything that feminists have been trying to achieve because he's...wait for it...Superman.

Perhaps within the actual magazine issue this baffling cover will become clear, but for now I'm flummoxed.

(H/T Feminist Law Professors)