What would you do if you were a journalist just there to take pictures of a family, and a scene of domestic violence erupted right in front of you? Sara Naomi Lewkowicz chose to continue taking pictures and thus document what was happening, in part because she feared that intervening would escalate the violence. Fair warning: the pictures linked to in the article are violent and potentially triggering. But with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) so recently up for renewal, it’s important to remind people that domestic violence is incredibly pervasive, and the people facing it should have access to resources to help them. Continue Reading →
Jeana
Jeana Jorgensen, PhD recently completed her doctoral degree in folklore and gender studies at Indiana University. She studies fairy tales and other narratives, dance, body art, feminist theory, digital humanities, and gender identity.
Recent posts
Some Thoughts On Harassment And Consent
How to deal with harassment – street harassment like catcalls, as well as persistent attempts to flirt – is an ongoing topic in feminist circles (as it should be). There are frequently misunderstandings, however, about what harassment actually means, and why it’s considered a big deal. This Brute Reason post lays out a lot of reasons why the men who say “But I’d love that kind of/that much attention!” aren’t actually talking about street harassment. They fail to understand that harassment is, by its nature, unwanted attention. Continue Reading →
Daily Sexual Violence, In India And America
The rape and murder of Jyothi Singh Pandey in New Delhi brought the world’s attention to the problem of sexual violence in India, with many calling for police reforms as well as culture-wide changes. And it is a culture-wide problem: as this article in The Atlantic demonstrates, there are a host of subtle cultural oppressions, which add up to “ongoing attacks on women, be they decisions to feed them last, marry them as teenagers, skimp on their medical care, or gang rape them on a bus.” But then read this piece, which focuses on the sexual violence American women face. With our rape rates - there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in her lifetime – we also have an epidemic of ongoing attacks on women. Sexual violence is not an isolated phenomenon, and it’s not something our modernized culture has stamped out: it is systemic oppression. Continue Reading →
Experiencing Gender Differences In Spatial/Visual Abilities
We’ve all heard it before: boys are better at math and spatial reasoning, girls are better at relational thinking and language skills. There’s always more to the story than that, however. The fact that scientists and scholars are still trying to disentangle cultural conditioning from biology means that these concepts must be treated with nuance and approached skeptically until empirical evidence is brought forward to clarify them. But what’s a feminist scholar to do when life experiences rub these supposed gender differences in her face? Over dinner with my partner once, we were playing a spatial reasoning game (Pentago, for those who want to check it out – it’s actually a pretty fun game, when I’m not constantly losing). Continue Reading →
Mandatory Name Changes For Married Women?
According to a new survey of American opinions, 70% of the respondents thought that women should take their husbands’ last names. And 50% thought that this should be a legal requirement! According to the study’s lead author, Laura Hamilton, this figure was surprising because so many Americans don’t seem to want the government interfering in their home lives: “Americans don’t want much government intervention in family life, so for 50 percent of Americans to feel this way was interesting.” Click the link above for more information on and interpretation of this study. How do you feel about making the name change mandatory? Continue Reading →
Be A Woman, Join The Gun Debate – Get Sexually Harassed!
The (female) co-editor of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffrey, tweeted about the death of a skilled American sniper who had recently been murdered at a gun range. She wasn’t mocking him or his death, but rather stating that if even a talented shooter couldn’t stop a determined gun attack, maybe we should keep discussing the gun laws in our country. The outpouring of sexual harassment on Twitter was prompt and vicious. Among gender-neutral insults like scumbag and worthless ass, she was called a whore, bitch, slut, and other derogatory names. I’m really disappointed by how unsurprising it is that women who share their opinions on the internet can expect to receive that kind of harassment pretty regularly. Continue Reading →
Just Because You’re Not Into It Doesn’t Mean Someone Else Can’t Be
I want to address a common misconception I see in discussions of sexual preferences, in part because it’s helping lay a foundation for a discussion of sex work I’m going to explore in some upcoming posts. People seem to have this idea that if they’re not into it, no one else can be or should be. Like, “Ew, I think anal sex is gross, who could do that?” Or “I can’t believe some people like being tied up and spanked, that’s disgusting.” Or “I would never, ever sell sex, how could anyone else do so?” Continue Reading →
Gender And The Marriage Name-Change
What happens when a man adopts his wife’s last name upon marriage? A boatload of trouble, apparently. A Florida man legally changed his name in order to take his wife’s last name, doing all the necessary paperwork to get a new passport, Social Security card, and so on. However, after receiving a new driver’s license, the Florida DMV accused him of fraud. His license was suspended, and only just now was the suspension lifted. Continue Reading →
An International View Of Women In Combat
The decision to lift the ban on American women serving in combat has led to mixed reactions. Some marines, for instance, are skeptical that integration on the front lines will be beneficial or realistic. However, National Geographic’s overview of 8 other nations that send women into combat shows that a variety of solutions to these dilemmas exist. Israel and Canada both provide examples of integration (the Canada link is especially worth reading since its author dispels many of the assumptions that female soldiers will be weaker or more frightened, citing the traumatic effects of war for soldiers of both genders as well as male soldiers’ underreporting due to constructions of hyper-masculinity). Of course, there are numerous examples of historical women in combat, so none of this is necessarily new ground. Continue Reading →
Protecting Heterosexual Marriage… Because Of “Unplanned” Offspring?
Lawyers defending the Defense of Marriage Act have chosen an unusual argument to make: only heterosexual couples can ”produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” and thus they need the sacrament of marriage to… I don’t know… protect them from… okay, I give up, they’ve lost me. That argument makes no sense whatsoever. Continue Reading →