New blogs at Hathor - Feminism and Books
I was going to wait a while to announce this, but it looks like the search engines have already stumbled onto our little secret, so we might as well tell our friends: we’re building new blogs on Hathor.
The first is a general feminism blog about discrimination, feminist theory, language, the law and violation against women worldwide. The second site will be critiquing books from a feminist perspective, just the way this one critiques film and TV. The book site’s off to a bit of a slow start, but you know, it takes a lot longer to read a book than to watch a TV show. 
If you’re interested in posting as an author on either blog, comment here or email me.
We’re also considering a couple of other topics for future blogs: (1) gender issues in music and the music business and (2) weight issues, which would be less women-oriented and more about how perceptions of “fat” and “skinny” affect and influence the lives of most of us. I’m trying to get a feel for how much interest there is in either topic, so comment or email me to “cast your vote”.
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17 comments
I’d be interested in writing on the book blog, if you’re looking for people. I read mainly SF/F, but a good deal of the “literary” stuff as well.
OMG, is that a pic of Mara Jade in your header?
I’ll send you an email in a couple of minutes!
Man, we are never going to pass for normal.
Of COURSE it is.
I never have, so it would be odd if I started to now, LOL.
Dare I risk making myself the odd woman out by asking who Mara Jade is?
One minor point:
As someone who has been a “victim” of domestic violence (I wrote about it in detail here),
it’s kind of disturbing for me to see “violation against women worldwide” listed as a general feminist topic instead of (not even alongside) empowerment of women worldwide. The way to help women avoid becoming victims or escape from dangerous situations is to ensure that they have the resources to help themselves. Even in the most horrifying foriegn cases (which are what I assume you mean using the term “violation”), the most effective solutions involve getting education, health care, and loans to women.
Using the term “violation” was actually intended to recognize the fact that we wouldn’t just talk about physical/sexual “violence”, or about the most blatantly horrifying stuff, but rather to try to expand what may generally go under that category into the emotional, psychological and verbal stuff (if I’m remembering correctly).
You make a good point about at least mentioning something solution-focused, though. I would maybe want to avoid the word “empowerment” (the misuse of that term was fairly well covered in the recent post on the Lifetime movie “Judicial Indiscretion”).
CL, maybe I didn’t phrase that well - “worldwide” was the end of the entire sentence, and was meant only to imply that I don’t want the site to be hopelessly US centric (despite the US origins of several of the authors).
“Violence” refers to physical violence against women, as Purtek explained, and “violation” refers to emotional and mental abuses that sometimes defy categorization under the law or in most people’s minds.
I would think the topic of solutions for women would just naturally flow into every topic on the blog, however. We may set up a category called “solutions”, but in addition to what Purtek offered on why “empowerment” isn’t a great word, I’ve also argued that it implies women are lacking power, and I don’t think that’s what we (or other minorities) need to hear. It’s not that we’re weak and our oppressors are strong. It’s that we have morals, and our oppressors do not. That we aren’t willing to do whatever it takes to overpower the pitiful minority who wield the most power in the world.
Recognizing that we have the power, but it’s tempered by morality, is IMO the first step to realizing maybe there are indeed moral ways we can force the oppressors to stand down. On both an individual and group level.
Both of these blogs look awesome. *adds to bloglines subscription*
(I would volunteer to write for the Book blog, but having just opened Active Voice, most of my reading/reviewing is going there.)
Maggie, Mara Jade is a character from the SW novels that take place after Return of the Jedi. And the comics, and I don’t know what all. I felt like that whole post-Jedi storyline got pretty screwy after enough authors dabbled in it without much attempt at consistency.
And Jade is far from a perfectly written character, even by her original author, but I dig her all the same. Think Jack O’Neill as a woman. Really.
Reb, that’s cool. I’m going to be working on updating all our blogrolls sometime soon, and I’ll be sure to put Active Voice on there.
The thing about Mara Jade is that Timothy Zahn wrote her best. And agreed, she’s not the perfect female character even then (actually, that is the problem– she’s a little too perfect)… but other authors really screwed her up in the future, in my opinion. Every once in a while Zahn comes back in and retcons the stuff other people have written. It gets confusing.
Sarah, that’s a perfect summary. But my initial sense of her - as this totally unlikeable unsympathetic character - stuck with me. I’d never seen a woman written that way. Granted, she was supposed to kick more ass than the original characters combined, LOL, but Zahn never portrayed her as easy to like or even get to know, and that struck a chord with me.
In regards to the books site - are we talking ALL books or just fiction books? Because history books & biographies make up about 60% of my reading (I could totally make us the #1 feminist site for Anne Bolyn!) and I’d love to be able to comment on the way history has written women, as well as the way fiction has written women.
Scarlett, there is a non-fiction category. The historical category is actually for historical fiction. Non-fic includes bios, historical, topical, etc. Unless it gets big and we decide to break it down later.
Well that answers another question, because another 30% of my reading is made up of historical fiction, some of which do a better job of historically contextualising women while still giving a strong heroine then others :p
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