sisterhood is…

So much to write about today I don’t know where to begin!

First, a launch near and dear to my heart: The Scholar & Feminist Online goes live today with an issue called Blogging Feminism. The issue is edited by Gwendolyn Beetham (a founder of the Real Hot 100) and Jessica Valenti (see posts below for scoop on Jessica’s smokin new book) and features essays by feminist academics and some of today’s most popular bloggers — including Samhita of feministing.com, Bitch PhD, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, Clancy Ratliff of CultureCat, Morgaine, and Chris Nolan of Spot-on.com — sandwiched by a foreword from Salon’s Rebecca Traister, and an afterword from yours truly. This is SO the issue we envisioned when we started SFO — interactive, crossovery, and on the mark. Can’t wait to see it go live later today.

The accompanying group blog can be accessed here:
http://bloggingfeminism.blogspot.com/

For one week after the edition launches, the blog portion of the
edition will be live, giving both the contributors and the readers a
chance to discuss the issues online. Add it to your blogroll! Come leave comments! I’ll see you there.

Be sure to check this out: an armchair discussion between Ellie Smeal and Rebecca Walker, hosted by Women’s Way. And if you go, send me a comment or email and let me know how it was!

Though I more often ponder the through-lines and continuities, the differences between feminisms of different generations sometimes just kinda hit you over the head. Note the difference in these titles:

There’s feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters. (Be sure to check out Rebecca Traister’s interview in Salon this week.)

And there’s former 9-5 director Ellen Bravo’s new book, Taking on the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation.

‘Nuf said.

On other fronts, throwing a bone to those of us (ok, us writers) who are obsessed with the question of how other books actually sell, the New York Times reports today on sales figures for a number of recent “mommy books,” including Leslie Bennetts’. (thank you, Laura!) Word on the street on how they sell? They don’t.

It’s a hot week for feminism here in NYC, and particularly for two of my favorite under-30 feminist mentors:

Courtney Martin hits the road with Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, while personal hero and a founder of feministing.com Jessica Valenti goes offline this week with her first book, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters – a book she says she wished she had read as a teenager. Damn. Me too.

Excerpts of each are here:
Courtney on AlterNet
Jessica in The Guardian

For those of you not yet addicted to feministing.com, some classic, vintage words from Jess — who gets an undue amount of public flack from conservative detractors and misogynist wackos — may sway you to check it out:

Where criticisms about my loud, opinionated ways might bother me if I wasn’t a feminist, the fact that I am means that I know that there’s nothing wrong with me, but only with a world that doesn’t want women to speak their minds.

Such words have got to sound familiar to “second-wave” veterans. I’ll be eager to see what the response is from an older generation to these new, important voices. Jessica wrote her book because, among other things, she believes that “All women, especially younger women, deserve feminism in their lives – and most don’t have access to the university courses or feminist mentors who might introduce them to it.”

A third book out this week by another next-generation writer I have yet to meet but already admire: Kara Jesella’s How Sassy Changed My Life. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “a behind-the-scenes, warts-and-all look at the magazine’s office culture, including sections on the glossy’s coverage of feminism, celebrity and girl culture….[T]he book—written in a style reminiscent of the magazine itself—is a testament to a publication that changed the face of teen media.” Sounds like a fun romp through the recent past at the very least.

And as if these three offerings weren’t enough for one week, check out this tidbit from Bjork on feminism (courtesy of feministing.com)

Feminism dead my a**.

There’s a savvy read of Leslie Bennett’s NYPL LIVE event this week on Gawker, by the way, for those who missed it. (Thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussell for hipping me to it.)

Last night’s host at the New York Public Library event primed the audience for a fight. There was none, just good ‘n lively convo. So I settled in and found myself listening to the exchange between Leslie Bennetts and Elissa Schappell with an ear for marketing. (I’m working on talking points for my own book and am obsessed with framing – can you tell?) Leslie Bennetts is a master, a natural — I say that with genuine admiration.

Some highlights from the sound bite frontlines:

-ES on mommy wars: “It’s mom-on-mom violence!”
-LB on SAHMs being left and being unable to reenter the workforce: “It’s carnage out there.”
-LB laughing at her own poor paraphrasing of an expert she talked to: “He who brings home the bacon controls the bacon.”
-LB on structure: “What’s keeping women from reentering the workforce is that no one is taking them back in.”
-LB going counterintuitive: “Staying at home is high-risk behavior. I wouldn’t put my child’s welfare at risk that way.” “Working women aren’t validated as good mothers. No one ever says working women are being good moms, taking care of their kids, by working.”
-LB on motive: “I did not think this was a book about mommy wars or feminism. Boy was I dumb.” ES: “Dumb, dumb, dumb!”

It’s interesting data to learn that many people seem not to be fully understanding “The Feminine Mistake” as a pun on “The Feminine Mystique,” and instead think that Bennetts is calling SAHMs mistakes. (Jury’s still out over here on that one – still on Chapter 1…)

Be sure to check out Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker review of Bennetts. Good stuff, and balanced. (Thanks, Helaine, for that heads up!) Mead is generally laudatory (and man, talk about a gorgeously written review). Based on what I heard last night, I sense I’m going to agree with her critiques:

[Bennetts] is short on answers for women whose budgets do not stretch to hiring a well-chosen private surrogate. And she seems impatient with anyone who has failed to find, as she has, the thrill of work, particularly work that grants a certain degree of child-friendly flexibility.

Mead does a great historical tour of the title and offers a smart compare/contrast with Friedan. When I grow up, I want to be Rebecca Mead. (Don’t we all?!).

I ‘fess up: I struggled with the tone in my post below, as my live-in editor Marco, who I made read it twice before I hit “publish” can attest. My ethics dictate that I try (at least) to take issue without trashing, cause really, who needs more trash in this world. On that note, some of the best, aka most balanced, posts and commentaries I’ve seen so far: Joan Walsh on Salon and Mojo Mom , and an interesting bit about a review Mojo submitted to Amazon which Amazon wouldn’t publish.

PS. Leslie, if you are reading, I look forward to meeting you, and to engaging in conversation not only about the issues, but about reception — an issue that intrigues me, politically and personally and professionally, to no end.

Just a quick one on this snowy Friday on the Upper West Side: HuffPost has an interesting post by Leslie Bennetts about the reception of her book, The Feminine Mistake, proving once again that sisterhood is noisy whenever one writes about women’s choices and predicaments these days. As usual, I hope that Leslie’s many important points make it through the din.

I’ve added a list (scroll down, it’s on the left) of forthcoming books by savvy feminist scholars to watch out for – and will continue to try to list em as I see em going forth.

Did you catch that front page story in Sunday’s New York Times on “amazing girls”? My gal Courtney Martin has a whole book on the topic (and much more) coming out April 17. It’s called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. (Courtney and I are teaming up to do some joint speaking this summer about feminism’s daughters. Stay tuned…) For a great counterpoint to the article, though, check out Courtney’s post on feministing.com and Patti Binder on What’s Good for Girls.

The other book I’ve listed comes out around Mother’s Day and promises to clear up a lot of the annoying myths about “opting out.” Penned by sociologist Pamela Stone, it’s called Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home. Publisher’s Weekly writes, “Stone’s revealing study adds an important counterpoint to Leslie Bennetts’s forthcoming The Feminine Mistake.” I’m not sure yet how it’s a “counterpoint” (I need to read it!), but I urge people to check it out. It looks at what really happens to women who opt out of the workplace and their careers for the sake of their families and sheds light on new research about the American workplace. (Hint: The dirty little secret of today’s work world is that it is not providing work-committed women with the support they need to keep working once they become mothers.)

On a related note, and in case anyone missed it, a special March issue of The American Prospect grew out of an October 2006 work/family research conference sponsored by the Council on Contemporary Families and looks at “Why Can’t America Have a Family-Friendly Workplace.” The issue includes articles by the creme de la creme on this topic: Joan Williams, Kathleen Gerson, Heather Bousey, Janet Gornick, Scott Coltrane, Tamara Draut, Jodie Levin-Epstein, Ellen Bravo, Ann Friedman. These people are all doing amazing work and, like Pamela Stone, merit increased visibility for their solid and grounded research.

Well, March came and went, but hey, it’s never too late for a Women’s History Month post, right?

So first, my congrats to the 2007 honorees of National Women’s History Month. Very cool, I thought, that the theme was “Generations of Women Moving History Forward,” and that Third Wave Foundation’s Executive Director Monique Mehta was among the honorees.

And speaking of history, last week I contacted the scholars behind this terrific online resource called “The Second Wave and Beyond.” Check it out. It’s still under development. Lookin forward to seeing it grow.