This just in: B-Word, publishers of acclaimed independent magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, is pleased to announce the launch of its redesigned website, www.bitchmagazine.org. Bitch, of course, is the whip-smart, groundbreaking national magazine of feminism and pop culture critique that since 1996 has informed, challenged, and entertained generations of supporters. Why the new site?

“Because brainy feminists need more intelligent, independent media in their lives!,” says the B-Word team. “And with this website, we’re able to continue critiquing all that’s wrong (and the few things that are right!) in the world of pop culture.”

As they describe it, thanks to the generous support of more than 400 individual donors B-Word and Bitch were able to expand upon their mission and take the first step in evolving into a multimedia organization that, like the magazine, is supported by readers. The site will be noncommercial and offer content free of charge because “In accordance with its mission of critiquing advertising-driven models of media, B-Word seeks to prove that even in this world of hyper-commercialism and consumerism, a reader-supported publishing project is possible.”

The website will feature blogs from founders and staff, an online version of the Love/Shove column, and an organizational blog sharing the happenings at B-Word and Bitch. And due to popular demand, all content from sold-out back issues and will be posted, along with selected content from issues still available.

Very, very cool.

GUEST POST: Elizabeth Curtis recently graduated with an M.A. in women’s studies from George Washington University, where her M.A. thesis focused on blogging and the creation of feminist networks online. (The full text of her thesis is available at
here.) Currently, Elizabeth continues blogging and serves as Program Coordinator at the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership. Elizabeth has been one of my bloggy mentors, and for that, I’m forever grateful. Here’s Elizabeth!

My V-day

To celebrate V-day this year, I read the latest collected “writings to stop violence against women” – A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer edited by Eve Ensler and Mollie Doyle. Written in a style reminiscent of the monologues featured in the Vagina Monologues, this anthology is filled with short pieces from a wide range of accomplished authors, poets, playwrights, and reporters.

I read this collection in two sittings – which is not something I would necessarily recommend. Although the writing is easy to read given the diversity of provocative styles, the content of many of the essays is heavy. For those who have experienced physical violence or sexual assualt, some of the narratives could be triggering. The call to action that these pieces create, however, is powerful. The message of
the V-day movement is clear in this collection – until the violence stops. Until, because there are so many activists working towards making a world without violence against women a reality. Until, because there still is a long way to go (as the FAQ in the appendix makes clear with useful statistical references).

The piece that most resonated with me was Ensler’s “Fur is Back.” This essay humorously illustrates what it’s like to be that girl at the party who is seen as such a “Debbie Downer” because she just can’t see the humor in sexist-racist-homophobic-classist-jokes or shut up about the current crises facing the world. As someone who has frequently been accussed of being a mood killer because of my insistence on not taking off my feminist hat (which means I can’t laugh at anything! because feminists have nooooo sense of – patriarchal – humor), I appreciated Ensler’s meditation on this topic. For me, “Fur is Back” was also good food for thought about how it is important to consider the best way to connect with different individuals based on their standpoint – humor sometimes trumps straight talk, questions sometimes trump answers, dialogue sometimes trumps lectures, etc.

A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer was definitely the best V-day gift that I’ve ever received. When you are looking for something for that someone special next year in mid-February, consider getting this text gift-wrapped!

Cross posted on A Blog Without a Bicycle

Well, I’m getting ready to leave town for a few days and feel honored to be leaving Girl with Pen in the able hands of a number of wonderful guest posters who span that popular/academic divide with grace and style! Stay tuned this week for posts from bloggers extraordinaire Elizabeth Curtis, Joie Jager-Hyman, Helaine Olen, and Renee Ann Cramer, plus some of the usual fare of research/popular reality thrown in in between.

I haven’t quite figured out that auto-post feature, but I’ve found a solution in the meanwhile — his name is Marco. While I won’t be able to respond to comments while I’m gone, I’ll be checking in from time to time and look forward to responding upon return on Sunday. Have a great rest of the week, all, and a heartfelt thank you in advance to you amazing guest posters!

Maureen Dowd’s “A Flawed Feminist Test,” which appeared last Wednesday in the NYTimes, generated much heat, of course, in the feminist blogosphere. I am only just catching up. But I am thrilled–thrilled!–to share this letter published in the NYTimes last week by “Making It Pop” graduate Alisa Guthrie! GO ALISA! On so many levels.

CNN now has a 3 minute video up from their 1-hour exploration of race, gender, and politics on Friday. In it, CNN’s Randi Kaye talks with a group of women about the “unavoidable issues of race and sex over Clinton and Obama.” And speaking of spectacle, on March 31, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at my alma mater (the University of Michigan) will be offering one of theirs. The event is called “Status and Spectacle: Stagings of Gender, Race, and Class in U.S. Popular Culture” and I wish I could teleport and attend. The poster they sent me has this amazing image of the Hollywood Canteen for Service Men, white service men casually strolling in on one side, “colored” service men rigidly lined up on the other, waiting, it seems for the white boys to go in. Among the topics to be covered: southern culture, white manhood, and the 1956 assault of Nat “King” Cole; Gretchen Wilson and the country rhetoric of the “virile female”; and clashing configurations of class, race, gender, rank, and celebrity at the Hollywood Canteen.

(The event will take place from 4-6pm at the Michigan Union, for those in the area! For more info, call 734.764.9537)

Hope everyone had a good weekend (or is still having a good long one!). Thank you for all the sweet bday wishes last week. My birthday eve was spent in my favorite Turkish restaurant, where 3 lovely Turkish men sang me Happy Birthday.

More before I leave, though, I promise…

Check out this article in the New York Post for the latest on intergenerational tensions among women and the Obama-Clinton divide. Aside from the racy headline–“LIPSTICK JUNGLE: WHY YOUNG WOMEN ARE VOTING FOR OBAMA — AND LEAVING OLDER HILLARY SUPPORTERS FUMING”– I thought the article was actually quite thoughtful. I was interviewed for the piece but fear I safe-talked my way out of being quoted. I was concerned that the piece was likely to offer more of a catfight angle, which as a personal policy I adamantaly refuse to play into. Kudos to reporter Maureen Callahan for her coverage, I say! See if you agree, and let me know what you think.

‘Vagina Monologues’ playwright Eve Ensler is planning a star-studded V-Day 10th anniversary performance in New Orleans (“the Big V-easy”) in April. I recently had the chance to meet Eve’s amazing young assistant (loved her!) and just wanted to publicly thank her for the amazing work she’s doing getting the word out about V to the Tenth. It’s the V-Day event of the decade!

More deets:

Join Salma Hayek, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Hudson, Glenn Close, Julia Stiles, Ali Larter, Sally Field, Marisa Tomei, Calpernia Addams, Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington, and musicians Common, Eve, and Charmaine Neville on Friday and Saturday, April 11 – 12, 2008 for V-Day’s mega two-day anniversary celebration in New Orleans at the New Orleans Arena and Louisiana Superdome – V TO THE TENTH. And to learn about the Katrina Warriors Network, click here.

After all that Valentine’s Day posting yesterday, thought I’d share some red of a different sort today.

On Feb. 28, six of the amazing teen women from the collection Red: The Next Generation of American Writers—Teenage Girls—on What Fires Up Their Lives Today will be at the Tenement Museum Shop here in NYC. Many of these girls, daughters of immigrants and daughters of New York, will read from their published work and be introduced by their editor, Amy Goldwasser. I heard the girls read at the book’s launch party a few months ago, and agree that they are strikingly honest documentarians of their own lives. And, as the event description notes, “they believe they can effect change, stop cutting themselves, stop global warming, stand up to bullies and racists, be president. They are the best shades of red (not pink), a little bit angry, a lot passionate, fired up, primary-color invested in their causes.”

Thursday, February 28, 6:30 PM
Tenement Museum Shop
108 Orchard Street at Delancey
212-982-8420; events@tenement.org

Free!

That gal Courtney has done it again. Though we don’t necessarily agree on choice of candidates, we’ve been having a great offline discussion about it all of late. And today, Courtney’s beautiful ode to her dude Obama, which is really an ode to interracial love, has been published in the New York Daily News. Read it and, with me, get misty.

And while I’m on it and feeling all Valentiney today, thought I’d share something I wrote last spring, when Marco moved in with me and bought me a mezuzah as a gift:

IMAGINE my surprise. You, a Puerto Rican from the South (let me say it) Bronx who had never attended a seder, never set foot in a synagogue, who knew Judaism as H&H bagels, Hollywood moguls, and odd looking men in black hats. You, a curious blend of cocoa bean, Cuban rhythm, good ole American diner, and deco movie palace. With you, I find myself able to share — and dig into — my Jewishness in a way I hadn’t with the earnest parade of appropriate Jewish suitors and boyfriends and yes, one highly appropriate husband, who preceded you. One marriage down, a Jewish divorce behind me, and a life of wonder ahead, I consider you, oddly, my guide….

(Love you, babe!)