Last night, I attended the AGM for METRAC, a community-based organization in Toronto working against violence against women and children. I was formally elected as a member of the board of directors, which I am sooo excited about. METRAC is an organization that walks the walk, and in doing so, offers a really impressive range of programming in the community.
And now, METRAC has joined the social media revolution. They’ve started a blog called the Megaphone Diaries. It’s brand new, so as of today, there are only a few posts, but the staff and volunteers who are going to be blogging there are keen as all hell and have got a LOT to say. I have a feeling it’s going to be a great resource for women and allies working against violence in all its forms.
Tagged as:
blogs,
violence
This past weekend, the final round of voting took place for the Canadian F-Word Blog Awards (winners to be announced on 25 April). Although Confabulous–still a babe in the woods–didn’t make it through to this last round, we’re pleased to have been invited to the party with a nomination.
I have to say, the best part about the awards has to be the publicity they generate for the many great feminist blogs Canadians have to brag about. I’ve encountered so much good stuff based on visits to the nominated sites, places I might never have known to go were it not for the nominations roll pointing the way.
Among my favourite new discoveries are two nominated in the “Reproductive Liberties Blog” category: Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome and Dammit Janet!. Few matters get me angrier than the anti-choice agenda, and it’s comforting to know our right to choose is being so staunchly (and entertainingly) defended.
The Pedgehog, Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome’s author, offers wise words underscoring how precarious our access to safe abortions can be in this country. Much appreciated is her diligence in helping women to physically get into the Fredericton Morgentaler Clinic where she works. Making her postings particularly entertaining are her dead-on amusing descriptions of the protesters who congregate near the entrance:
Tuesday’s clinic was a gong show outside, as is the norm these days. Pink Hat was agressive and awful, and the others were their usual zombie selves.
Especially of interest lately over at Dammit Janet! is their “Choice for Me, Not for Thee” series, a spirited discussion of the hypocrisy of anti-choice advocates who defend their right to abortion (or their choice not to have one) while at the same time working to deny other women the same freedoms.
If you haven’t already, visit the Canadian F-Word Blog Awards for links to more great sites–kudos to the awards’ organizers (the gang over at A Creative Revolution) for bigging up the web 2.0 sisterhood!
Tagged as:
blogs,
Politics
Okay, I was pretty excited last week when Confabulous made it into the listings at Alltop. But then I discovered an even more exciting way to glean your feminist news: Rose’s Place. Like Alltop, Rose’s Place is an RSS aggregator–but just for Canadian feminist blogs. “RSS aggregator” is fancy tech talk for saying that you no longer have to surf around, going from site to site, to read all the blogs that you want. No! Instead, all you have to do is go to Rose’s Place, and you’ll find RSS feeds (again, just a fancy way of saying “a continuously updated flow of blog posts”) from a number of Canada’s best progressive and feminist blogs.
And now when you check out Rose’s Place, you’ll find Confabulous’s posts there, too, along with April Reign, Unrepentant Old Hippie and Broadsides. Yay! My desparate search for Canadian, feminist bloggy goodness just got a whole lot easier.
Tagged as:
admin,
blogs,
web
I got this message a few days ago over the transom, and I thought I’d throw this out to the readers to see if you have any insights. It’s from Jessica Nathanson who teaches at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.
“I’m teaching our WST [women's studies] senior seminar this fall, and I would like to include as a text one of three feminist online conflicts that occurred in the last year or two (specifically, the discussion and critique leading up to and just after the publication of Amanda Marcotte’s recent book; the reaction to Jessica Valenti’s CFP for “Yes Means Yes”; and interactions between Seal Press editors and women of color bloggers).
The problem with teaching anything that happens in the context of a blog is that the discussions unfold over time, on many different blogs, and, even if we just look at a single blog, at great length (the comments can number into the hundreds on just one post). There is also the concern that a blog might disappear overnight. So, I’d be really interested in knowing how others have taught these online conflicts.”
This is a good question. Have you ever been a student or a teacher in a course that used blogs as source material? How did you go about tackling the inherently fluid nature of blogs (something that conventional university classrooms never had to deal with). If you have any insights, feel free to leave them in the comments section below or get in touch with Prof Nathanson directly at nathanso [at] augsburg [dot] edu.
Tagged as:
blogs,
feminism,
web,
women's studies
Over at Women and Hollywood, there’s a tidy little roundup of the discussion going on at various ladyblogs about the Fempire article that appeared in last week’s New York Times (whoa, that sentence is getting meta on meta). The piece is about Diablo Cody and her three BFFs, fellow women film writers Dana Fox, Liz Meriwhether, Lorene Scafaria. For a really non-controversial article, this story has a remarkable amount of staying power. Clearly there is something about professional women banding together to advance their careers that is striking a chord among some and raising the ire of others. It’s really interesting that a group of four female friends with matching necklaces who have had varying degrees of career success can be so culturally polarizing. Why is that? And why are good-looking women still having their professional success attributed to their appearances?
Tagged as:
blogs,
fempire,
web,
women
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