Most articles on gender issues and feminism regurgitate the same old story and arguments, or are reports on more data and experiments with similar results popping up. Some articles or blog posts do bring something relatively new to the table, or apply a feminist analysis to something else, or explain things in a novel way that resonates better in this day and age. Upfront, to those who think gender issues and feminism is mostly rubbish, please read the parable by John Scalzi about the computer game, which is set at the lowest difficulty setting in the Game of the Real World for the Straight White Male; then read ‘those feminazi articles’ as one of pointing out bugs in the code, and of suggesting bug fixes or of a slight rewriting of the game logic to level the playing field. So, here are a few links to some such articles that otherwise may be snowed-under by the online articles on women in STEM, IT, management etc.
The feminist appraisal of Dirty Dancing over at Jezebel’s blog, or, as another one puts it “It’s the feminist sleeper agent of chick flicks” (and some class issues); after reading this, you won’t see the movie the same anymore. (Yes, I did watch the movie again, and the points made in the articles are valid, which, honestly, had escaped me when I watched it in the 80s.)
The many shortcomings of (old) white men futurology, who have a rather limited set of imaginations (fantasies?) in prognosticating. Maybe people in that (non-STEM) discipline already know about the issues and limitations, but I’m in another field of research, so it was new to me. Obviously, if futurology is a science, then it should not make a difference whether men or women do it, but that’s another discussion.
The Super-exploitation of women by Marlene Dixon on capitalism and patriarchy in cahoots to keep women as their unpaid servants and labour-producers wives. I did search for more recent analyses, but they don’t compare in content and clarity to this one.
I did not manage to find again the recent fine rant on feminist issues in Africa that are, at least in part, different from ‘the [white middle-class] feminism in the West’, but these will do on scope as well: feminism here on the continent driven by African women who really do have lots of agency (e.g., all the way up to presidents/prime ministers and Nobel Peace Prize winners) and where certain types of ‘help’ from the outside is counterproductive for it enforces dependence. An example of a currently hot topic here (and, afaik, never was in Europe) is the need for free sanitary pads for girls whose family cannot afford them, so that they can keep going to school to learn rather than miss out on it for a few days each month.
Finally, a slightly crudely formulated article that discusses a whining “pick-up artist” who is “cockblocked by redistribution” in Denmark, a socialist-like and feminist-friendly country. Squeezed between the chatter are notes on flaws on evolutionary psychology and the criticism on feminism as an individual pursuit (e.g., ‘lean in’) versus as a collective goal. Even the pick-up artist eventually notes “we can’t fulfill basic human rights for all without viewing everyone as equal”.
Keet blog 