FornicatingFeminists has moved...

After just shy of three years here at blogspot, I've decided to move the blog over to Wordpress. Why?

Because it looks way sleeker and the format is more flexible. AND I was able to move all the old content over to the new site! So update your bookmarks, and follow me over to Wordpress!

New site: http://www.fornicatingfeminist.wordpress.com

Much love,
The Sheriff

friday links

Police families are about four times as likely to experience domestic violence as non-police families. Scary!

Sad things we already knew: the modeling industry is racist.

I have mixed feelings on this NYC campaign to spread info about how teen pregnancy impacts the child, but I appreciate this one woman's POV: teen moms deserve support, not shame.

REALLY good piece on FLOTUS, cultural assimilation, and ethnocentrism.

Being scared to have a girl.

Badass Egyptian woman draws political cartoon addressing FGM.

Much love,
The Sheriff

teenagers, sex, and agency

Being a teenager is shitty. You're making terrible fashion choices, you're under pressure to figure out a life path, and you're chock full of hormones (racing at the speed of light) and unsure how to handle them appropriately. Have sex and risk being labeled as a slut and a nasty (not to mention accidentally creating a person or receiving a gift you can't get rid of)? Avoid having sex and battle your urges constantly (and GASP maybe go to college a virgin)? 

My thoughts on this whole topic are very muddy now. I've worked with teenagers since I was barely older than one myself, and as someone who became sexually active pretty early in my teens, I rarely questioned the fact that when someone decides they're ready for sex, goddammit, then they're ready.

Then I started working with teens who had babies and wildly unhealthy ideas about women. And I started to doubt all that. 

To paraphrase a Liz Lemon quote, the problem with teenage girls is that they're both vicious and vulnerable. While girls are definitely being ushered into adulthood and sexuality (or at least the appearance of sexuality) and some of them are quite knowledgeable about their bodies, the risks and benefits of fucking, and have access to birth control, I don't know if these girls are necessarily in the majority (I hope I'm wrong). Most girls struggle to figure out their own desires, versus the desires of what they think they should do, versus what their partner might expect from them. It makes me feel incredibly queasy and scared to think of them essentially going into the battle that is adolescent sexuality and life without the proper armor and know how. 

This is not to say, obviously, that girls don't want to bang--clearly, they do. I'm only pointing out that the longer I work around teenagers, the more it seems that their choice to have sex at an early age is a foregone conclusion, something they don't seem to choose so much as something that happens to them and thereby objectifies them and disconnects them from their choices. Maybe I'm just getting older and being a geezer and over-analyzing their lives because mine is one-quarter over and I can be reflective like that, but teen sexuality is so muddled and pathologized and just fucked up in this country. It is a fight for young women (and young men!) to learn themselves and establish a healthy sexuality and ability to have sexual experiences that work for them. 

Is the Sheriff being a prude on this one, or what? Tell me what you think.

Much love,

The Sheriff

friday links

High heels and class.

A cost/benefit analysis of modern womanhood. Fascinating.

Yay breastfeeding!

May have posted this before, but it's timeless: how to be a reverse racist (step by step guide!).

All of these women weight 154 pounds. A good reality check.

Upsetting but important: former air force recruit speaks out about sexual assault.

Also in the upsetting but important category: this video shows the extent of wealth inequality in the U.S.

Go Oberlin! Oberlin cancels classes to deal with hate incidents on campus.

Perfectly legitimate reasons to cry a little.

Much love,
The Sheriff

black feminism vs white feminism

According to a buddy of mine, there has recently been a HUGE blow up on twitter between black and white feminists. There have always been issues there--white women can't understand that black women's lived experiences are different/how intersectional identities impact, oh, I don't know, everything. 

So I did a little research to see if some sort of recent event had brought this out, and it seems like the Oscars/Onion dust up with  Quvenzhané Willis in which the satirical site called her a cunt on Twitter brought this up. She is a nine-year-old black girl which makes it appalling, but also appalling because the only thing she did that was even moderately less than precious was correct reporters when they misprounced her name/refused to even try (one reporter called her Annie!) and to be proud and excited about her accomplishments. Some of the commentary I read online about this adorable little girl was just this close to calling her uppity for daring to be proud of herself, and the Onion, however satirically, crossed a line when they called her a cunt. (Sidebar: I actually was going to write a post about this, but a) I was too lazy/tired and b) I didn't actually watch the Oscars so writing commentary on it too much felt weird). 

But the criticism here seems to be that black feminists feel white feminists were silent on this issue (which makes me sad I was!), and Tressie MC actually does an empirical breakdown of it on her blog (a well-written and damning read). 

So why were white feminists silent on this? I like what she wrote here on that: "There remains a cultural norm that children are off-limits. When that norm is violated and it does not elicit a social response equal to the severity of the violation, it communicates that there are invisible limits to who is included in the greater social contract. In this instance, being black and being a girl put Quvenzhané just beyond the limits of inclusion." We've sort of somehow decided that being a minority and a female means that it's okay to brush over this hideous word applied to a kid, or to give it a very dismissive level of engagement at best.

And that makes me feel ashamed and sad. It's 20 fucking 13, why aren't we doing better than this? Why aren't we working together and engaging in real dialogue so that white feminists can get a glimpse of black feminist issues and try to understand and maybe even help? I don't have any answers here, but a simple recommendation: talk to people and listen to people who are different from you. 

Did you see that disgusting tweet? Did you think it was out of line too?

Much love,

The Sheriff

a brief break

The Sheriff has several papers to write for graduate school and a trip to California this week (whoo!), so there will be no posting this week.

Enjoy your week, and see you next Monday!

Much love,
The Sheriff

friday links

Not related to feminism or body image or sex at all, but this tumblr is the shit. Period.

Despite having a lady CEO, Yahoo has some pretty lame policies regarding letting its employees work remotely (a policy that largely benefits women and their vaginas and their babies coming from said vaginas).

Sonia Sotomayor is a BAMF, tackles a racist prosecutor. Get it girl.

Is it really that hard to say Quvenzhane? People are pricks.

Things people have said to female journalists. Wildly fucked up, mildly funny.

About thigh gaps.

Much love,
The Sheriff