Last summer, Avital Norman Nathman wrote about feminist video blogger Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter proposal for a web series, Tropes vs. Women, and briefly mentioned the alarming backlash aimed at Sarkeesian for venturing to dissect sexist trends in video games. After receiving vicious YouTube comments, including “I hope you get cancer” and just about every misogynistic slur in the book, [...]
And the two best friends lived happily ever after. It’s not the typical ending for a romance story, but The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (LBD) isn’t typical in any way. The web video series that just aired its final episode is a modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, following fictional vlogger “Lizzie” Bennet, her [...]
Without a doubt, food is an inherently feminist topic. Women are inundated on a daily basis regarding food—whether being told how to properly (and perfectly) prepare it, or how to control our intake of it for “ideal” weight purposes. While there is no shortage of both men and women who write about food online, what [...]
“I let him film us having sex, Lizzie. I let him do that. … He never made me do anything, so just tell me that I didn’t get what I had coming Lizzie, just try to tell me that!” A sobbing and self-abusive young woman named Lydia Bennet is speaking to her older sister Lizzie [...]
Like many subgenres within the Feminist blogosphere, online content from Latina feminists is growing by the day and reaching more people than ever. These writers, of various ages and backgrounds, are focusing on topics that, despite best intentions, don’t always make it into the spotlight of mainstream feminism: immigration, racism, violence and indigenous women, and [...]
My gender studies class at Cal State Long Beach discussed online harassment and came up with its own guide on how we can all work together to make online spaces safer for women. We know that most men do not harass women online. We know that many men are willing to stand up to harassment [...]
This past Wednesday, the judge presiding over the “rape crew” trial in Steubenville ruled it would remain in town, open to the public and commence March 13. Rape, Steubenville and social media are already inextricably linked in both real life and cyberspace. A question remains: What ending will be etched digitally into history? It began [...]
“I want. To. Meet. Darcy. Now!” “When are we going to see darcy gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?” “ohmygosh i haven’t even met darcy yet, and i’m already madly fangirling over him.” So commented the viewers on the 57th installment of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a YouTube modernization of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, produced by Hank Green and [...]
(Trigger warning: for abusive, woman-hating language and threats of violence) When I write about feminism and men’s violence against women, I often receive supportive comments. While some of the praise is earned, much of it gives me a lot of credit for doing very little. When women write about those same topics, it’s a different [...]
It’s no big secret that both the fashion and beauty industries have significant issues that make them a challenge for many feminists. While there are certainly hosts of concerns within the two connected industries when it comes to race, body image, age and the promotion of sexist stereotypes, there are also aspects that are inherently [...]
