Please pass this along to blogs and other lists if you are so inclined. Thanks! If you want to write on the topic, but no blog, you can guest post at Bitch | Lab. Just let me know.
Bitch | Lab will be hosting the 17th Carnival of Feminists on June 21. The deadline for submissions is June 20. You can use the form at <http://feministcarnival.blogspot.com/> or send them to BL at mailto:carnival at pulpculture.org
Suggested themes for the Carnival include:
1. Given what Carol Hanisch originally meant by the phrase, "the personal is political," how do you see your work as a continuation of what Hanisch and some of our early second wave foremothers envisioned?
You can learn more about what Carol Hanisch wrote in her
new introduction to her original essay here,
http://scholar.alexanderstreet.com/download/attachments/2259/Personal+Is+Pol.pdf?version=1
As Carol says at the end of the conclusion, she feels her
words were used to mean something other than originally
intended. I thought we should honor her by thinking about
how we could and do reinvigorate her original meaning.
You can see her question to today's feminists
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/05/29/this-rocks-ii/
2. The virtues of being mouthy, talking back, refusing norms of politeness, etc.
The philosopher Hypatia was appointed to the highest
academic position in Alexandria. When sexually harassed
in her classroom she got mouthy and flung "the 5th century
version of a sanitary napkin at him, exclaiming that the
joys of sex rather than those of philosophy were what was
on the student's mind."
Hypatia, of course, didn't get away with it. Cyril, Bishop
of Alexandria, hired or encouraged a group of Nitrian
monks to punish her by stripping her, razing her, and
rending her skin with sharp shells until she died. (from
Mary Ellen Waith's _A History of Women Philosophers, Vol. 1_
in Bell and Klein's <em>Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed.)
Hypatia's story might make us think that being mouthy, talking
back, and resisting norms of politeness might not be such a good
idea. But, we keep on finding ways to mouth off, talk back, and
be as impolite and impolitic as we wanna be.
3. Finally, it wouldn't be a party at Bitch | Lab if there wasn't some talk of sex positive feminism.