All posts tagged: Feminism

‘The Look of Shame’ | Beatrice Loayza

‘The Look of Shame’ | Beatrice Loayza

Published by skeptic

The French filmmaker Catherine Breillat was in her mid-twenties when she met Roberto Rossellini. She had already published four novels and played a small role in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972); now she was about to direct her first film, A Real Young Girl (1976). In a 2022 interview with the critic Murielle Joudet, she recalled having a tense conversation with the Italian filmmaker on the day before shooting began. When she boasted about her skill as a director, Rossellini challenged her. “What else can you bring to the depiction of young girls that men haven’t already captured?” he asked. “The look of shame,” she answered. “Because it’s you who gave us shame, and we are the ones who carry it.” Shame is ubiquitous in Breillat’s work; her women often seem to actively court it. Alice (Charlotte Alexandra), the teenage protagonist of A Real Young Girl, staves off boredom with self-degrading fantasies: she imagines the local dreamboat tying her up spread-eagle with chicken wire and placing the severed bits of an earthworm in …

Ahead of the Diminishing World | Sarah Schulman

Ahead of the Diminishing World | Sarah Schulman

Published by skeptic

“Why does somebody create an image of anything?” —Hartley Neel “Art could be called ‘the search.’” —Alice Neel A witness sees other people from a safe distance. A participant shares their vulnerability. Alice Neel (1900–1984) painted portraits that often sat precariously between the two positions. Unlike many of her American peers, she didn’t visit Europe until she was in her sixties. It was instead in Havana where, living with a rich Cuban husband in the 1920s, she was first exposed to the contrasts of extreme wealth and extreme poverty—a shock to which she attributed her Communism. Thirteen years later, estranged from her husband and living in East Harlem as a single mother, she herself experienced brutal poverty, making paintings of all her parallel worlds, including artist friends, patrons, her Puerto Rican boyfriend’s family, and her Latino neighbors. That she sustained her art-making as a mother, amid obscurity and privation, already makes her remarkable. She thought she might have become a portraitist from studying her mother’s face, “which had dominion over me,” to detect any sign …

Abortion Isn’t About Feminism – The Atlantic

Abortion Isn’t About Feminism – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

One of the greater indignities of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision—besides stripping millions of American women of their bodily autonomy—was how deeply out of step it was with the majority of Americans’ beliefs. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, a record-high 69 percent of Americans believed that first-trimester abortions should be legal. Considering this statistic, it’s surprising that Democrats haven’t more robustly rallied people around this issue. One reason may be that they just don’t know how. Roe gave American women decades of false comfort: Abortion access and reproductive rights could remain firmly in the dominion of feminist causes. Keep Your Hands Off My Reproductive Rights T-shirts became nearly as ubiquitous as Girl Boss tote bags. But although most Americans support abortion access, feminism remains more polarizing. Only 19 percent of women strongly identify as feminists. That number is far higher among young women, but among young men, the word has a different resonance: Feminism has been explicitly cited as a factor driving them rightward. Democrats might not like how this sounds, but what they …

Is this the Brat girl summer? Marina Hyde predicts a sticky end for Trump-Vance, how to be a Norwegian parent, and Ask Philippa on sibling rivalry – podcast | Life and style

Is this the Brat girl summer? Marina Hyde predicts a sticky end for Trump-Vance, how to be a Norwegian parent, and Ask Philippa on sibling rivalry – podcast | Life and style

Published by skeptic

Never doubt the instincts of Donald Trump, warns Marina Hyde, who just appointed a ‘never Trump guy’ as his running mate. Let your kids roam free, stay home alone, have fun – and fail – Norwegian style. Charli xcx’s new album, Brat, highlights how many young women now aspire to live – dirty, hedonistic, happy and bra-less. And ‘My brother’s mental illness hovers over my family life’ – Philippa Perry answers a reader. How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know Source link

I’m A Radical Feminist, But I Also Experience Internalized Misogyny

I’m A Radical Feminist, But I Also Experience Internalized Misogyny

Published by skeptic

Due to internalized misogyny, I associated masculinity with value. I wanted respect, growing up in a patriarchal society devoid of it for women. And the only model I had for achieving that goal was to ascend above my permanently “inferior” social role. The most common advice for overcoming internalized misogyny is to educate yourself. I have read Andrea Dworkin, Simone de Beauvoir, Catherine MacKinnon, Germaine Greer, and almost any other feminist perspective I could understand. Yet intellectual awareness does not provide a solution for deep, ingrained, and unfulfilled emotional needs. I was raised entirely by my mother, who had to act as a substitute father figure on behalf of my absent father. My mother had to act like a man, perhaps due to a survival mechanism. We grew up in a conservative region of an already very conservative country, leading to an extremely patriarchal environment. Her parents cut her hair short as a child because they wanted a son and got her instead. Growing up, she often scolded me for crying, having learned through experience …

L.A. Times Festival of Books 2024: Poet Victoria Chang on feminism, grief and art

L.A. Times Festival of Books 2024: Poet Victoria Chang on feminism, grief and art

Published by skeptic

Poet Victoria Chang stood on a stage behind a podium, setting up a timer before reading several poems from her new book “With My Back to the World,” which touches on issues such as feminism, art, depression and grief. The idea for the book, she explained to the small crowd at her poetry reading, was inspired by one of the screenprints in Agnes Martin’s series, which is titled by the same name. Victoria Chang, author of “The Trees Witness Everything,” in the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books photo studio at USC in Los Angeles on Sunday. (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times) Chan began with the reading of “On a Clear Day,” which made reference to a gunman’s mass shooting at three Atlanta-area spas in 2021 that left eight people dead, mostly women of Asian descent. On some clear days, there are only forty eight birds and forty eight people and forty eight houses. And forty eight wars. And forty eight apples. I keep counting grids. But no matter how I try, I still get …

Hindu women look to ancient goddesses for guidance on modern feminism

Hindu women look to ancient goddesses for guidance on modern feminism

Published by Sam

(RNS) — Preity Upala has lived more than a few lives. After a career as an investment banker in Australia, Upala moved to the U.S. to pursue her dream of attending film school, eventually landing roles in major Bollywood films like “Bahubali” and in the Hollywood production “Sex and the City 2.” Now, in Los Angeles, Upala is a film producer and podcast host. And if her resume is not varied enough, Upala is also considered a global strategist, called upon by news organizations worldwide for her expertise in international diplomacy and foreign policy. But Upala, who is Hindu, sees these multiple pursuits as compatible, inspired by the many facets of the divine feminine in her tradition. “The goddess worship is so prevalent in our culture,” said the Dubai-born Upala, “but the goddess has many faces. There are many goddesses. It’s not just the devout wife or devotee, it is the fierce Kali or the Saraswati, who is all about knowledge.” In common, she says, all goddesses and women hold a part of Shakti, the …

What is intersectionality and why does it make feminism more effective?

What is intersectionality and why does it make feminism more effective?

Published by skeptic

The way we talk about society and the people and structures in it is constantly changing. One term you may come across this International Women’s Day is “intersectionality”. And specifically, the concept of “intersectional feminism”. Intersectionality refers to the fact that everyone is part of multiple social categories. These include gender, social class, sexuality, (dis)ability and racialisation (when people are divided into “racial” groups often based on skin colour or features). These categories are not independent of each other, they intersect. This looks different for every person. For example, a black woman without a disability will have a different experience of society than a white woman without a disability – or a black woman with a disability. An intersectional approach makes social policy more inclusive and just. Its value was evident in research during the pandemic, when it became clear that women from various groups, those who worked in caring jobs and who lived in crowded circumstances were much more likely to die from COVID. A long-fought battle American civil rights leader and scholar Kimberlé …

Claudia Sheinbaum launches her presidential campaign, intertwining themes of environmental stewardship, feminism, and the perpetuation of AMLO’s transformative legacy

Claudia Sheinbaum launches her presidential campaign, intertwining themes of environmental stewardship, feminism, and the perpetuation of AMLO’s transformative legacy

Published by skeptic

Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum greets supporters upon her arrival at her opening campaign rally at the Zocalo in Mexico City, Friday, March 1, 2024. AUREA DEL ROSARIO / AP On Friday, March 1, the Mexican Left occupied not only Latin America’s biggest square, Mexico City’s Zocalo, but also all the adjacent streets. The occasion: the launch of Claudia Sheinbaum’s campaign for the June 2 presidential election. Thousands of activists from the National Regeneration Movement (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, or MORENA), the political party founded by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) in 2011, waited several hours before being able to hear, mostly through a giant screen, the woman everyone now calls “Claudia,” who was greeted with shouts of “la presidenta,” Spanish for “(female) president.” Brenda Suarez, with a “Claudia” cap on her forehead and a “MORENA” flag in her hand, drove three hours to attend what she considers “a historic moment: cheering on our future president, who is, moreover, a scientist! My two daughters already see Claudia as a role model,” said the 43-year-old shopkeeper, …

Catholic women working to change the church take inspiration from female saints

Catholic women working to change the church take inspiration from female saints

Published by Sam

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Women in key roles at the Vatican and Catholic universities in its close orbit have been leading an effort to raise women’s standing and visibility in church governance, creating a growing network of experts, diplomats and scholars like them around the world. “Today we still have a lot to do to promote women. There are still many areas where women continue to be discriminated against,” said Gabriella Gambino, a professor of bioethics and undersecretary of the Vatican Department for Laity, Family and Life. Gambino appeared at a press event on Wednesday (Feb. 28) in Rome to promote “Women in the Church: Builders of Humanity,” a conference scheduled for March 7 and 8 at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. The conference will focus on the lives and legacies of 10 female saints, who despite the challenges of their times and cultures left a meaningful mark in the church. Among better-known canonized women such as Mother Teresa and Elizabeth Ann Seton, the conference is examining the life of Sister Josephine Bakhita, …