feminism - Free For All

May 29, 2008

This Just In: The Right to Travel ... to Israel?
By Harvey Silverglate

Following up on Harvey's post about the right to travel to Cuba, a few days ago Israeli security services detained American (ex-)academic Norman Finkelstein and refused to allow him entry to Israel for the next ten years. Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald quotes a Jerusalem Post article explaining that "the decision to deport Finkelstein was connected to his anti-Zionist opinions and fierce public criticism of Israel around the world."

Post a comment

1

blacklisting, censorship, feminism

May 12, 2008

Candidate Clinton: The Girl Can't Help it
By Wendy Kaminer
By,
Wendy Kaminer

Hillary Clinton has a new excuse for continuing a campaign that is most likely doomed and clearly destructive: genetic determinism: “ I’ve come to believe that hard work, determination and resiliency are encoded in our DNA,” she declared, speaking to a group of female supporters in West Virginia, the New York Times reports.

Post a comment

2

feminism, politics, sex discrimination

February 29, 2008

A Guide to Hiring Women, Then and Now
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer

Barack Obama’s appeal to younger democratic women is a source of great frustration to many of their mothers and grandmothers but a source of pride for me. It reflects what feminists of my generation (and Hillary’s) have strived to accomplish – the rise of a new generation of women with the confidence to feel unconstrained by femininity.

Post a comment

1

feminism, equality

February 08, 2008

Pimped Out for Hillary
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer,

Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily’s List, the formidable PAC for democratic women, seems confident that she speaks for me, or, at least, millions of women like me, in her letter lambasting MSBNC for demeaning women. “I know I speak for millions across this country,” Malcolm wrote, “when I demand that you take immediate steps and publicly tell us what you will do to eliminate this sexist and demeaning culture that has become so pervasive in your network.

Post a comment

0

feminism, free speech, sexual correctness

January 09, 2008

Surprised by Sisterhood
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer

Identity politics seemed to have worked for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, after all, and given the unseemly glee with which so many pundits predicted her demise, given their gratuitous brutality toward her, I confess to feeling pleased and even vindicated by the support she received from women. I'm not a member of the Hillary fan club (I'm uneasy with her centrist, communitarian instincts,) and I recoil from the notion of voting on the basis of sex, race, or any other demographic category.

Post a comment

0

elections, feminism

January 04, 2008

What do Women (Voters) Want?
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer

It’s easy to overestimate or over-hype the implications of the Iowa caucus results, but it does seem clear that Hillary Clinton needs to re-evaluate her reputed reliance on the “women’s vote.” Reportedly, while Clinton had the edge with older women (and anecdotal evidence showed that elderly women found her especially appealing) Obama captured women under 35.

Post a comment

1

elections, feminism

November 01, 2007

Hillary Plays the Gender Card
By Wendy Kaminer
By Wendy Kaminer

Hillary Clinton has effectively focused on overcoming one of the primary obstacles to electing a female president: the association of women with pacifism, the belief that women are not tough enough to lead a nation in war. Early on in her Senate term, she gained a seat on the Armed Services Committee, in an apparent quest for visibility and credibility on military issues.

Post a comment

0

feminism, politics

October 03, 2007

Are Boys the New Girls?
By Wendy Kaminer
Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Wellesley retains a certain cachet, but most women’s colleges have suffered predictable declines in popularity and prestige since the late 1960s, when the top men’s school became coed. By the late 1990s, only 1.3% of all women receiving B.A. degrees were graduates of women’s colleges. Some single sex schools, (like Vassar and Skidmore) joined a trend they could not beat and began admitting men; others, like my alma mater, Smith College, struggled to find new raison d’etres: Smith offers an engineering program and boasts of the superior science education it provides for female students.

Post a comment

1

education, feminism, higher education

September 18, 2007

When Education Becomes Indoctrination
By Harvey Silverglate
A recent Princeton graduate, Christian C. Sahner, who just completed a fellowship at The Wall Street Journal, wrote a departing op-ed on September 5^th, titled “Sexed Up Sex-Ed”, in which he complained about a mandatory freshman orientation presentation at Princeton that dramatizes the nature and degrees of consensual and nonconsensual sex among undergraduates.

Post a comment

0

feminism, higher education

August 20, 2007

Imus: The Lawsuit
By Wendy Kaminer
Maybe I should watch what I say in discussing Kia Vaughn’s defamation lawsuit against Don Imus. Vaughn, a member of the Rutger’s women basketball team, is suing Imus for referring to her team as “nappy headed ho’s.” No reasonable person would have interpreted Imus’s remark as anything but a crude, stupid, or racist joke; and indeed Rutgers basketball coach C.

Post a comment

0

censorship, feminism, First Amendment

April 20, 2007

Supreme Sectarians
By Wendy Kaminer

At the risk of being considered impolite, I can’t help but add that every one of the five Justices who upheld the ban on a second trimester abortion procedure (in defiance of expert medical opinion) are Catholic. Four are conservative Catholics. I expect that some consider the mere mention of this obvious but salient fact an example of religious bigotry, but advocates of more religion in government who praise the influence of sectarian religious ideals on public policy should be prepared to hear it questioned.

Post a comment

0

feminism, religion, reproductive choice

April 19, 2007

Abortion Wrongs
By Wendy Kaminer
You’d think that a majority of Supreme Court Justices would be content with having climbed or kissed their way to the top of the judicial hierarchy, but, no -- they want to rule the medical profession too. Yesterday, in upholding a congressional ban on a particular abortion procedure, regardless of the ban’s effect on women’s health, five Justices substituted their judgments about medical necessities for the judgment of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Post a comment

0

feminism, reproductive choice, equality

April 12, 2007

Imus and Political Maternalism
By Wendy Kaminer
It’s easy to sympathize with Hillary’s Clinton’s impulse to join in vilifying Imus, who has so crudely and gratuitously belittled her. But must she enlist the Rutger’s women's basketball team in her presidential campaign? They’re now pictured on her web site, with an exhortation from Clinton to “Join me in sending the young women of Rutgers a message of respect and support.

Post a comment

0

censorship, feminism, free speech

April 03, 2007

Words May Sometimes Harm You
By Wendy Kaminer
When we named this civil liberties blog “free for all,” Harvey Silverglate and I signaled not just our intellectual commitment to free speech but our visceral enjoyment of vigorous debate, unbound by popular caveats about offensive speech, which both of us have frequently protested. I imagine that, like me, Harvey has received his share of hate mail over the years.

Post a comment

0

censorship, feminism, free speech

March 29, 2007

Is the ERA passe?
By Wendy Kaminer
Is the Equal Rights Amendment an idea whose time has past? With a sense of disloyalty, I confess to feeling less excited than fatigued by news of its rebirth. Democrats have given it a new name -- the Women’s Equality Amendment -- and re-introduced it in Congress. They promise to hold hearings on the amendment in the House and start a new push for ratification.

Post a comment

2

equal rights amendment, feminism, equality

Follow the Boston Phoenix

All Blogs

Laser Orgy (23)
Phlog (1,395)
Outside The Frame (299)
Dont Quote Me (511)
On The Download (2,141)
Talking Politics (1,504)

Boston Phoenix
Today's dose of feminist theory
Published 7/10/2009 by Jeff Inglis
Portland Phoenix staff writer Deirdre Fulton has a post up today commenting on a piece of feminist-theory criticism that is worth checking out. She addresses...

Boston Phoenix
A star is porn
Published 5/15/2009 by PETER KEOUGH
Adult-film star Sasha Grey makes her mainstream debut

Latest Comments

Obama's Fort Hood screw-up - Spot on, Adam. America wanted a different kind of President. I doubt that they planned on one THIS different...

By aging cynic on 11-08-2009 in Dont Quote Me

Aerosmith's Joe Perry books sneak-attack gig at small Foxboro club - awful, she sucks

By scott on 11-08-2009 in On The Download

Obama's Fort Hood screw-up - Mark: on very rare occasions, my own assessment of an event might happen to agree with the right's, at...

By Adam on 11-07-2009 in Dont Quote Me

Obama's Fort Hood screw-up - I DO NOT AGREE W/ MUCH OF THE PRESIDENT'S POLICIES. I CANNOT SEE THAT HE INTENTIONALLY WANTED TO DISHONOR...

By DAVID on 11-07-2009 in Dont Quote Me

Obama's Fort Hood screw-up - Sheesh, it's 4 hours after the shootings, he's speaking to a conference and not making a national address...

By Mark on 11-07-2009 in Dont Quote Me

Latest Comments from Free For All