trying to catchup

wow, haven't felt like posting in awhile. still don't, but feel i should just so...well, just so.

in any case, these are the things i'm interested in today.

jessica, over at feministing, is publishing a book. go here to check out the cover.

nubian, at blackademic responds with some of the things i was thinking.

why not just call it a young WHITE womans guide to WHITE feminism?

as feminists, i feel we should all try to be aware of...well, we should just try to be aware. and if i'm going to subtitle a book "a young woman's guide..." to anything and then put a white body on the cover, emphasizing the naked skin of it, shouldn't i be conscious of how women of color will view that?

secondly, why the need to put a sexy, headless female torso on a the cover of a book about feminism at all? don't i get enough of that on ads for lotion, for nail products, for underwear, for...well, everything and everywhere? i can look everywhere to see female commodification. now i can even get it with my feminism.

*********************************

reclusive leftist posts the entirety of a column by bob herbert in the NYT. which kinda made me cry, so i'm linking to it.

these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

**********************************

and finally, this morning, there is some hubbub about michael j. fox ads supporting democrats in several races across the country. cnn reports:

The risk, Jamieson adds, is that the ads could appear as using Fox's hopes for a cure for political gain, as some claimed was the case when the paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve lobbied for stem cell research before his death in 2004.

oh, right because the republicans never use human life for their gain (hello, terry schiavo). i guess it's only bad to do this because it's for democrats, who are actually supposed to have morals, which no one expects of the republicans.*

*let's note that i'm not a democrat, and don't actually think they have very much political moral principle, but it is my general perception that the "left" is considered to behave more ethically in these sorts of things.