Fellow bloggers, we’ve three carnival deadlines in the next few days. Submissions for the first ever Carnival of Empty Cages must be in by tomorrow, and contributions for the Second Big Fat Carnival must be in by April 2nd. Submissions for the Twelfth Carnival of Feminists are due April 3rd.

I’m excited for the upcoming Carnival of Empty Cages. I hope the carnival will help me find and join the vegan blog scene now that Tekanji has provided me a place to discuss my herbivorism. I begin by defining vegan because it’s a fluid term. I intend this post to be a gateway to future discussions about my veganism coinciding with my feminism (and how I got here), the intersections of animal exploitation and human oppression, and even some critiques of the animal rights movement from an anti-racist feminist perspective.

Read the rest…

So, apparently the University of Minnesota did a study that found what every American atheist, and really anyone who keeps up with the Religious Wrong, already knows: Americans hate atheists. And think that religion is the only way to have morals. Because, you know, people are only interested in being good human beings when the threat of punishment looms over them.

If you’re wondering about the snarky title to this post, however, it’s a reaction to the title that UMNnews choose to put on the piece: “Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study”. While the people taking the survey apparently put atheists at the bottom of their list (below “Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups”) in terms of “sharing their vision of American society,” I don’t think that’s enough to qualify us as the “most distrusted minority”.

Just a guess, but I’d say it’s less that we’re actually the most distrusted minority and more that people feel okay in admitting they are prejudiced against us. Which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they don’t have any reason to even pretend to respect us. On the other, they, well, don’t pretend to respect us. But, really, just because someone thinks that they aren’t prejudiced against other minorities, doesn’t mean that it’s the case. So, I’ll think I’ll bow out of the “which minority is the most distrusted” game and simply say that, you know, life isn’t as simple as one survey makes it seem.

Via Bitch | Lab

Because one cannot have to many days to blog against bad stuff, blac[k]ademic has decided to start a Blog Against Heteronormativity Day. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a submission in (although maybe Ariel will *nudgenudge*), but it’s definitely something I want to do.

For those of you interested (and you all should be!), it’s going to be on April 22. See the linked post for more details, and be sure to show nubian your support!

At exactly one year ago today, OS.CB was born. Scant months after the (now defunct) Shrub.com Articles were being written, I realized that I wanted more than just one day every three months to shout from my soapbox. Couple that with my introduction to the feminist blogsphere and… well… here we are. Over the year this blog has grown and changed for the better; we’ve gained a contributor and lost one, crystalized into a site that discusses intersections between feminism and other areas, and become one of the many links in this wonderful community.

I’d like to thank Ariel for her contributions, all of my readers (both commenters and lurkers) for their support, and all of my blog friends who work hand in hand with me while we build our little niches on the net. So, thank you all, and please join with me in wishing our blog a very happy first birthday!

As part of the celebration, I’d like to highlight some of my favourite posts from this year.

Read the rest…

So, OS.CB reader darth sidhe pointed me in the direction of a fan-made flash movie of a live action RPG. It’s actually a pretty well done production and many parts of it I was nodding my head and saying, “Yep, that always happens to me!” Now, let me make it clear right off the bat: I liked this movie. I thought it was a fun, funny, and well-done piece.

But I am nothing if not a feminist interested in the intersection of gender and video games, and so it logically follows that when watching this, even through my enjoyment, I spotted areas that were problematic in terms of gender representation (the racial representation didn’t sit right with me, either, but that’s not really my area of expertise). And me, being the obsessive blogger I am (packing for Japan? taking care of last minute arrangements for school? never!), wanted to blog on it. So, watch the flash movie then come back and read what I have to say about it (I command thee!).

Read the rest…

The 11th Carnival of Feminists is out at Angry for a Reason. Topics include: Questioning our Privilege, What the hell is wrong with you?, Choice, Pornography, Our Bodies, Pregnancy and Parenthood, and much, much more.

Okay, I know all of you hate the captcha with the burning fire of a thousand suns. Honestly, I’d love to get a better one (like the one blogger has), but I neither have the time nor the skills to seek out and/or code one.

But, as a stopgap measure I updated the fonts and the noise for the captcha I do have, so most of the problems with readability should be gone. Unfortunately, I don’t think the code comes with a way to ensure that the fonts stay within the image boundaries. I’ll continue to look into it.

Question: Is the captcha now easier to read?

And if you want to be really nice to me, I’d appreciate if you find one that the background or font makes it unreadable if you could screncap it and e-mail it to me. I’d say just describe it, but there are too many that are similar.

I did some changing to my link list (the right hand one) in an effort to make it better organized. In essence, I created a “Feminism” section and split up some of my feminist blogs even further.

So, a few questions:

1. Is the breaking down of the feminist blogs into several categories better or worse than what I had before?
2. Do you think the category names are appropriate, or should they be changed? If they should be changed, what do you recommend?
3. My link list is rather large, do you find it’s hard to navigate? If so, should I:
• Leave it the way it is.
• Put some sections on the left side.
• Remove all/some links from the side and make a separate page just for links.
4. My “More Feminists” category is kind of like my “Unclassified Blogs” category. Do you have any ideas for further categorizing the feminist blogs there? I would like to make one for feminist blogs focusing on sex/sexuality, but I can’t think of a good name.
5. Do you see any blogs that are categorized wrong? Would you like your blog put into a different section? Please tell me and I’ll make the appropriate changes!

Any other comments/advice on my link list is welcome. The point is to entice people to visit the links, and if my list isn’t doing that then stuff needs to change.

So, I was driving home today and I was behind a van with a bunch of bumperstickers. The ones that caught my eye were, the yellow “Support our Soldiers” ribbon with “Support Pres. Bush!” penned in on the free side, a “Protect Life!” pink and blue ribbon (with little feet, how cute!), and a “Protect Human Life” bumpersticker with two silouetted faces (male and female, I think) on the bottom.

Which got me thinking on the kinds of bumper stickers I’d like to have on my car: “Want to reduce abortions? Support comprehensive sex-ed and free contraceptives.”; “I’m Pro-Life: I support existing people’s right to control their own lives.”; and, of course, the one that I wanted so bad I photoshopped me a picture of it.

Which Type of Gamer Girl are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Leave it to someone who thinks it’s appropriate to represent “kinds” of female gamers with large-breasted and scantily clad avatars (“girl power”, anyone?) to create a quiz that would tell me I’m a sports gamer. Not just a sports gamer, though, but one who walks around in a cutoff longsleeved tee and panties! Hut-hut, indeed.

Via New Game Plus.

Stop it. Stop invalidating me because of my reproductive choices. Stop telling me what is and is not worthy of discussion. Stop calling me names because I have a different sexual expression than you. Stop discriminating against our sisters just because they don’t have the same naughty bits as you. Stop telling women that they should not be allowed to choose their life’s path. And, for the love of little green apples, stop trying to make the only valid path in life the one you want to take.

That’s what the patriarchy does, not us. Get it?

So, stop it. Just fucking STOP IT.

Whether we recognize it or not, we all know about The Girl. Sometimes the Love Interest, or the Sidekick, or the Little Sister, or what have you, she has existed in literature and popular culture from time immemorial. Those of you who are of my generation may be thinking of Smurfette, who was literally defined in both name and action as being the (only) female smurf while all the male smurfs were defined by their actions. Later on, some female smurf kids were added, but kids tend to fit more into a “gender neutral” category than adults in our society.

Enter And Then There’s the Girl: “Women Characters” vs. “Characters that are Women”, a Blog Against Sexism post from a couple days ago that I missed highlighting. The author, kalinara, uses Cheetara (do you notice a trend in taking a word and “feminizing” it for the token women?) to represent the phenomenon of The Girl.

Read the rest…

The Carnival of Bent Attractions #4 is up over at Transcending Gender. No topics this time either, but a whole range of posts from book reviews to discussions on how concepts of sexual identity (gay, straight, bi, etc) are relatively new in historical terms.

My feminist activism is far from isolating. I meet and connect with great women and men who are my peers on campus or online in the blog network. But I sometimes feel disconnected from the people beyond my immediate circle; I feel that the ways in which I’m a participant in a global world are invisible to me. In my Global Women class this quarter, my classmates and I tried to see some of those connections. As university students in the United States, we are privileged to ignore them. For my own term project, I chose look to into who grows the organic, local produce I enjoy so much. I wanted to know: who grows it, and why didn’t I know already?

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So, yesterday was Blog Against Sexism Day. I blogged. You blogged (or should have, you bad, bad person!). We all blogged. Today, I want to highlight some of the ones that I particuarly liked. Now there are 260 posts, and I obviously haven’t read them all, so if you have a favourite post (even if it’s your own!) please feel free to plug it in the comments.

Read the rest…

The 10th Carnival of Feminists is out at indianwriting. This issue is huge! The is “Body, Mind, and Struggle” and topics include South Dakota and what’s to come, body image through the media, female foeticide, contraceptives, childbirth, prostitution, raunch culture, being a feminist, writing, and more.

Please do not reproduce this article in full on any other site! This list is modified every so often to fix broken links, add new points, and otherwise update the material. While I appreciate readers’ support in spreading this through the internet, I request that you post no more than an excerpt onto your own site, and that you include a link back to this specific page so that everyone may have the benefit of seeing the most recent material.

Read the rest…

The second edition of the Radical Woman of Color Carnival is out at Brownfemipower’s Woman of Color Blog. Topics include identity issues, voice, mamihood, and a section for allies so us white folks don’t feel left out.

I do say that with tongue in cheek–a few days ago in my Global Women class we were discussing a women of color week event called Woman of Color Fashion Show: Undressing the Other. The show kicked all kinds of ass. All types of people dressed up as a stereotype and performed to exemplify how others see them. In the second act the performers told their real stories.

In class, one critique of the show brought up was that some white women felt left out (a good third of the performers were white). In turn, we analyzed why those women felt that way, but a few classmates were sympathetic. They didn’t feel the need to make an issue of race when we discussed the necessity of our university’s anti-racist white student union. I attempted to articulate (much less eloquent on the fly) that being able to say race doesn’t matter was white privilege because our race is portrayed as the neutral norm–a nonrace, that race is something other people have but not us. I raised a few ires because white people can be discriminated against too. Well, sure. I’m oppressed for my gender, but not my race. Whites can even be on the receiving end of racial prejudice in my country, but that isn’t racism because someone isn’t having power over them based on their skin color.

Coming back to carnivals: Call for Submissions for the Second Big Fat Carnival and for Carnival of Empty Cages. I’m really excited about the latter carnival, which vegankid is starting, because I want to start blogging more about my veganism. I recently realized animal liberation prepared me for feminism and am pumped to share.

I’m sure y’all have noticed that my posting has slowed way down (even for me) in the past few weeks. Well, it’s only going to get worse for the next two months. You see, I’m about to be off to Japan to attend language school in April, so I get to do the oh-so-fun jobs of packing, unpacking, and settling into classes. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to at least finish some of the posts sitting in my draft box. If not, well, there’s always May.

To make up for my shortcomings, however, Ariel has agreed to do more posting over here and Sour Duck will be guestblogging for the duration. She should have an intro post up sometime in the near future.

Wish me luck at school and I’ll be backed to my regularly scheduled programming in May!