Opengender

Miriam already acquainted you with the Wanderlust Reproductive Justice Bike Tour with the fabulous Nora Dye and the Pro-Choice Public Education Project. Well, this week they're holding a fundraiser in NYC to support the awesome bikers taking part in this trip for justice, so get your wallets out and drinking hats on and show Wanderlust some love. (Or donate if you can't make it!) In the meantime, check our their travel blog.

* Wanderlust 2008: A Benefit *
featuring Mint Juleps and Southern Burlesque

Thursday, May 15th
from 6:30 to 11 PM
@ Stonewall Inn
53 Christopher Street at 7th Ave South

$10 - $20 Sliding Scale donation requested
(all proceeds go directly to the Wanderlust bike tour)

9 PM raffle with fabulous prizes from yoga studios, Good Vibrations, and more!

Click here to see full flyer.

Threatened, intimidated, bullied, violated: this is hospital birth as many mothers experience it. Amity Reed reports on the little-recognised crime of birth rape

All over the planet women are denied the most basic rights. Ruthie Samuel asks: where is the outrage?

Jo Legg asks, when will feminists take over the Home Office?

Alex Gibson considers the harm done by stereotypes of men as beer-swilling, emotionally-stunted brutes

The self-hating mindset, if not the medical condition, of anorexia is frighteningly common, argues Katie Muller

This week Tracy and Angela from Lesbiangamers.com review the new WiiFit and give a sneak peek into a demonstration of it from Tracy. They discuss the merits and flaws of WiiFit as a fitness...

Whether you loved it and didn’t understand it, or hated it but claim to “get it” all, the film Donnie Darko is undeniably a cult classic. The 2001 indie film starring Jena Malone and both Gyllenhaals...

A woman in Burma. Photo: Will Baxter / WPN

With recent devastating news of the cyclone in Burma (where the official death toll tops 30,000 and 2 million people face disease and starvation) and the earthquake in China (more than 12,000 dead so far), Suzie at Echidne's blog reminds us:

When a disaster occurs, don’t forget the gendered aspects. During the chaos, women can be more vulnerable to rape and violence by intimate partners. They may trade their bodies for aid. Because women often care for the young, the old and the sick, they may have greater needs or different needs than men. In many cultures, women have to protect their honor or dignity in different ways that may hinder their ability to get help.

With extensive community ties, women also can have an advantage in distributing aid after a disaster.

Cara also links to this research showing that, in countries where women do not have equal rights, they are more likely to be killed by natural disasters:

Professor Neumayer said: 'The feminists got it right. Natural disasters are a tragedy in their own right but in countries with existing gender discrimination women are the worst hit. While most disasters cannot be prevented, policy makers, international and humanitarian organizations must develop better policies to address the special needs of women in the wake of large-scale natural disasters.'

To Help:

MADRE: "MADRE is working with the Women's Human Rights Defenders Network and Burmese women's organizations. We learned from our work with women's organizations in the aftermath of the tsunami that, in order to best identify and meet the communities' needs, we must rely on the local women's organizations." Donate here.

American Red Cross International Response Fund: Every day people around the world are suffering from countless crises, like the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China. Your gift to the American Red Cross International Response Fund helps provide them immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance and other support. Donate here or call 1-800-HELP NOW.

I don't really have to say anything, this image really does speak for itself.

Some people are just better listeners. Audiobooks have been giving lit fans another way of getting into an author’s work for years, but they still haven’t quite reached the popularity of an actual...

Michelle “Cookie” Concepcion works with Justice Now for the benefit of all prisoners by exposing Correction’s lies of discipline, security and rehabilitation with the truths of abuse, fear and indoctrination.

Wearing boxers makes women less female and more violent. Well that’s the perception by officers and staff at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). I know this because I am an inmate at CCWF and have been harassed because of the type and sizes of the clothes I wear. I also prefer to wear boxers instead of panties. This is a rule violation. I have been verbally counseled, written up and charged money for possessing the less female, more violent boxers.

How does the size of my clothes or the type of underwear I have on change my character of affect my behavior? I have asked staff that question numerous times. The answer I receive is usually, “you are a female you should dress like one.” I promise, if allowed to wear boxers, I will not fall prey to their negative influence on my femaleness.

Lately a lot of time and money has been spent on mandatory “Gender Responsive” training for all the officers and staff. The objective of this training is to define differences between female and male inmates. The basic ideology is that females commit crimes because they are victims, whereas males are just bad and mean. This must be where they learned how dangerous it is for females to wear boxers.

To contact Cookie, email jeremy@jnow.org

I am very very excited this week to present our Voices of series for May featuring the amazing organization Justice Now. Justice Now is located in Oakland CA and works at the intersection of violence against women and incarceration and prison expansion. They are one of the amazing organizations that fights for prison abolition.

In their own words,

Our mission is to end violence against women and stop their imprisonment. We believe that prisons and policing are not making our communities safe and whole but that, in fact, the current system severely damages the people it imprisons and the communities most affected by it. We promote alternatives to policing and prisons and challenge the prison industrial complex in all its forms.

This weeks posts will blow your minds both from women inside the prison system to advocates working alongside them.

Thank you Justice Now for joining us in our Voices of series! Give em some extra love feministing fam!

In their latest review of Bravo's lesbian reality series, Jenn and Dee take Erika to task for her self-image; Renessa for pretending she didn't have a good time on the lesbian cruise; and Tyra for...

ByThe publishers

Hi Metamute readers,

The Metamute.org web site will be read only from Wednesday 14th of May, while our technical team carry out scheduled maintenance.

An exact time will be annouced Wednesday, this slight fudge in terms of an exact time is due to the Debian SSH security issues that we have to deal with instead, see;

This is a guest post by Simone Brummelhuis. She’s co-owner of Iens and European Museum Guide. Currently, she works and lives in London. This is a series of Four Guest Posts which will be posted one a day.

As the second of the series ‘Where are the female web heroes?’ I describe the situation in the UK, where as of 2003, a rise in female-owned net ventures have been seen. The government’s newly formed Women’s Enterprise Task Force seeks to encourage female enterprise across the nation to help close the gap in female entrepreneurship between the US and UK. Because, although the number of women-owned businesses has recently topped one million, the rate of female start-ups in the US is much higher. Also, with girls outperforming boys at school some predict that by 2020 the majority of UK millionaires will be female.

The UK female entrepreneur is in her early 30s, tech savvy, well connected and thrives on risk, according to a survey by Aurora, the UK’s largest business women’s network. This network is owned by Glenda Stone, who herself won the Blackberry Best Women in Technology. One of the women who fits this profile is Martha-Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com. As the time she stepped down at 31 years, the share price had recovered from the dotcom crash valuing Lastminute at £667m. In 2005 she sold the company to travelocity.com, of which Michelle Peluso is the CEO. In those days also Julie Pankhurst of Friends Reunited sold her company, to ITV.

For most Internet female entrepreneurs in the UK, entrepreneurship appears to be a mid-life choice. Between the ages of 35 and 50, women leave successful careers to start their businesses. They are driven by innovation, a strong commitment to entrepreneurial ideals and autonomy in their work lives. Examples thereof are Sian Sutherland, founder of Mama Mio, skincare for super mamas, and Marcelle Speller founder of holidayrentals.co.uk, which has in the meantime been sold to Homeaway.Inc.

Female Internet entrepreneurs are mainly clustered in electronic retail and electronic community ventures. Examples of the latter are: Sarah McVittie CEO and co-founder of Texperts, an online Q&Q site, Karen Darby founder of Simplyswitch.com, an online comparison site and Ann-Marie Slavin, the Irish managing director of Opt2 Vote, an online voting system. Examples of online retail successes are: Glennys Bird, founder of lovethoseshoes.com, Bec Asthley Clarke founder of asthleyclarke.com, online expensive jewellery and Natalie Massanet of the highly successful net-a-porter.com.

Some women are serial entrepreneurs, like Karen Hanton the founder and CEO of toptable.co.uk, an online restaurant booking service expanding to Europe. I also include Xoici Birch, founder of Birthday alarm, an e-card business with 47 mio users, founder of Ringo.com and most known as the co-founder of UK’s Bebo, which was just sold to Time Warner/AOL for an amazing amount, but she is actually American.

Women in the UK make up just three percent of business angels for Internet start-ups. However, there are a growing number of high net worth women and female investors, such as the power woman Julie Meyer, co-founder of First Tuesday (sold to Yazam) and now founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, which invested in an early stage in Skype, eBay and Zopa.

About the author: Simone worked as a successful lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur by setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. Thereafter as co-owner and managing director IENS she developed this start-up into the no. 1 user generated content database publisher of restaurant guides in The Netherlands (online and offline). With the Europeanmuseumguide.com, she intends to do the same. these posts are written as contributing editor for the nextweb.org and are re-produced to reach a wider audience.

(inspire.girlgeekdinners.com)

Reader Katherine Chun Eriksen, who is graduating from Washington University in St. Louis this week, wrote us to ask about what action we'd suggest to respond to her school's decision to "honor" Phyllis "Martial Rape Doesn't Exist" Schlafly. Katherine writes,

The "honorary" degree being presented to Phyllis Schlafly has caused quite a stir on campus and we are in the process of trying to decide how to protest the presentation during Commencement. I was wondering if you would be able to help us out by asking your readers to submit ideas for our protest. We would like to maintain the dignity and solemnity of the event while still making our point clear to those in attendance. We are looking for something that cannot be labeled at "juvenile" or "immature".

So we thought we'd take a cue from Feministe Feedback, and pose the question to you, dear readers. Do you have activism suggestions for the feminists at Wash U?

Stripper Cuddy! Stripper Cuddy!! Stripper Cuddy!!! There, now that we have that out of the way, we can begin this week's House mini-recap. Stripper Cuddy! Oops, sorry, guess there was one more left...

ByDavid Burrows and Simon Sullivan/Plastique Fantastique

This comic 'Staabucks Fukkee is Your Enemy' ran between articles by John Cunningham and Stewart Martin in the print edition of Mute Vol 2 #8

Can we please stop calling every attempt at analyzing pop culture "outrage"? Kthx, moving on.

Annalee Newitz's piece from the San Francisco Bay Guardian last week embarks on the task of justifying the violence and misogyny in Grand Theft Auto 4.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is lobbying to get the video game rated "adults only" (effectively killing it in the US market, where major console manufacturers won't support AO games) because there's one scene in the game where you have the option to drive drunk. Apparently none of the good ladies of MADD have ever played GTA, since if they had they might have discovered that when you try to drive drunk, the video game informs you that you should take a cab. If you do drive, the cops immediately chase you down. Which is exactly the sort of move you'd expect from this sly, fun game, which hit stores last week.

I actually stand at a different point than MADD and I don't necessarily support the censorship of the game, I don't really think censorship works. The more ratings and labels you put on something, the edgier and sexier it becomes. Censorship doesn't change the fact that violence and misogynist sex scenes make up the bulk of edgy popular culture or that violence is a serious problem for youth today and so is the sexualization of women, along with violence against women.

On some level, I do agree with proponents of GTA 4. Several of my friends have said, "but it is just fun." I don't deny that advances in video game technology are in fact mind-blowing and down right incredible and the they are fun. Hello, I am a blogger, I get the nerd new-cool-fun-fangled-technology thing.

What I can't get down with is justifying blatant misogyny by calling it art.

If GTA4 were a movie, it would have been directed by Martin Scorsese or David O. Russell, and we'd all be ooohing and aaahhing over its dark, ironic vision of immigrant life in a world at war with itself. But because GTA4 is a video game, where players are in the driver's seat, so to speak, it freaks people out. Earlier installments of GTA-inspired feminist and cultural-conservative outrage (you have the option to kill prostitutes!), and concern over moral turpitude from Hillary Clinton (you can beat cops to death! Or anybody!).

I think it is really problematic to lump all criticisms of GTA4 together. I believe at some point, I was written about along with a conservative writer (shudder to think) and that is not giving the full range of view points space to air their concerns. I am pretty sure if a movie had prostitute killing in it, I would write about it, but that is besides the point. GTA4 is not a movie, it is bigger than a movie. In fact, movies switched around their release dates for the release of GTA4. In the first week out it has grossed 500 million dollars. Furthermore, it is played, repeatedly and it is a role playing game, where you are the person engaging in violent acts. It is a fantasy, your fantasy. Perhaps there is a moment of identification like this with movies, but it is different then actually acting something out yourself.