The B**** is back

Just when you thought we were getting cozy with Women's History Month and other niceties, Ellen Snortland of AlterNet dug up for us our pet controversy: that over the B word. Snortland's is a powerful, provocative and convincing argument that if being called a Bitch means you're no more Mrs. Nice Guy, that's as it should be. She says, I would like to see the word "bitch" elevated to its proper place in the English language, transformed from sexist epithet to a word of adoration and awe.
Read the piece, "Is 'bitch' the new Black?", and let us know what you think.

Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex

DATE: Saturday, March 15, 2008
TIME: 10:30 AM - 5:00 PM
LOCATION: Michigan Union, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
For more information & to register online: http://www.woclockdown.org/

Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex The Campus Lockdown Conference is organized by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Michigan. Its aim is to promote dialogue on the politics of women of color scholarship in a post-Proposal 2 (anti-Affirmative Action) environment. Women scholars of color from universities across the country will participate in critical discussions of a host of issues relating to politics, pedagogy, and campus climate for women devoted to pubic scholarship. The conference is intended as an organized community forum space and all attendees are encouraged to contribute to the day's ongoing conversations.

Statement of University of Michigan students and faculty in support of UM Native American Studies Director Andrea Smith's tenure case. | Action alert.

Speakers:
Piya Chatterjee, University of California, Riverside
Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz (via teleconference)
Rosa Linda Fregoso, University of Southern California
Ruthie Gilmore, University of Southern California
Fred Moten, Duke University
Clarissa Rojas, San Francisco State University
Haunani-Kay Trask, University of Hawai'I

CO-SPONSORS: University of Michigan Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program, Center for the Education of Women, Department of History of Art, Department of Women’s Studies, Division of Student Affairs, Michigan Student Assembly, Museum Studies Program, Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs, Students of Color of Rackham Native Caucus, William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center, Women of Color in the Academy Project

March 8 is International Women's Day

Visit the official IWD site to learn more, support it, get a logo link to display on your site.

Also added this week at IMDiversity.com:

Women's History Month Profile 2008

Annual Census release paints statistical portrait of U.S. women at work, school, home, business and beyond

More readings will be added to our women's village news section and in other villages throughout the month, including updates to the annual Asian Pacific American Wall of Fame at the Women's History Month @ Asian American Village and the Women's History Month - Latina Wall of Fame at Hispanic American Village, and more...

BLACK COLLEGIAN Profiles NASA Astronaut Joan Higginbotham

Of interest at our sister publication, THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online, new features have been from the paper magazine's first semester edition, including its engaging cover interview with NASA Astronaut Joan Higginbotham, discussing her career path en route to becoming only the third African American woman astronaut.

The interview is part of the edition's theme section on Careers in Science, Engineering & Technology.

Incidentally, for flight buffs, the upcoming edition will include a Black History Month section feature commemorating Vernice Armour – The First African-American Woman Combat Pilot.

Addendum--The Steinem stew

Just minutes after posting my op-ed rejoinder to Gloria Steinem and the other second wave feminists for their blinkered view of America’s race-torn society—for those not caught up in the fray, Ms. Steinem posits that women are a more aggrieved minority than African-Americans in Why Women are Never Front-Runners —I received an email from a friend, a woman of “good politics.” With a subject line, “How it would feel if Hillary is elected president,” I opened to a video of a woman standing over a man on the floor; she is kicking him repeatedly in his private parts while he doubles up to shield himself from the assault, groaning in agony.
It gave me great pause. Although I still think Steinem’s argument skewed, divisive and inappropriate, the video made me realize that what many of us see as Senator Clinton’s unpleasant and aggressive personality has been used by Hillary haters of the Stone Age and the Right to evoke and legitimize deeply-held misogyny. What’s very often relegated to personal bad behaviour—and misogyny--in personal relationships has been projected onto Clinton as a very, very dangerous emblem of “all women” or all women who don’t know their place. Yep, along with the racists, this campaign is bringing them out of the woodwork.
So, heads upped, I’ll have to give Steinem’s victimization some wiggle room. But, I must still ask her to talk to women of color, not just from Smith or Smith-Barney, and to African-American men of all stripes, before she again sets back the cause of progress.

Weekend Focus: Race, Sex and Hillary Clinton

Starting this weekend, a couple of features on the Women's Village and elsewhere across the IMDiversity network attempt to look back at the week's hub-bub surrounding the race-gender split arising in the Democratic Presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

First, we track a series of Clinton-Obama analyses of from the Associated Press that provide different takes on the tit-for-tat between the campaigns, and looking at how race and gender, racism and mysogyny, play into the coverage. It also looks at the impact of women voters, as well as the importance to the campaigns of parsing out that vote by generation, class, race and philosohpy.

In another feature, Hispanic American Village Editor Carol Amoruso reflects on the (false?) dichotomy threatening to divide voters' loyalties in the party, in Race and Gender at Odds Again as Steinem Wades into the Clinton-Obama Fray.

On the African American Village, frequent contributor Kam Williams looks back at the N.H. results and seeks to put the focus elsewhere: on the Diebold Corporation. "For, while the punditocracy has been busy dubbing Hillary Clinton the Comeback Kid and attributing her surprise victory to women rallying to her support in the wake of her eyes welling up on camera, no one’s looking for a more plausible explanation than that overly-publicized Muskie moment.," Williams writes. Suspicious of dubious vote tallying, Williams concludes "we’re again in dire need of U.N. observers during the 2008 primary season, just to give an the democratic process a chance to unfold untainted by fraud."

Additional features will unfold, as our editors and visitors try to interpret the events in what is becoming an unhappily tense time in an otherwise historic election. One reader said that she liked Obama and Clinton "almost equally," and would support either in a general election, but "as a woman, I have to go with Clinton now."

Another wrote that she "resented having to choose" between candidates who each represented a historic political milestone she'd been "waiting for my whole life."

And, should it matter?

We ask in our blog poll for the week: Would you lay issues aside and vote for Hillary Clinton for president for the historic precedent of having a woman in the White House?

What do you think?

Is the "B-Word" Ever Okay? Part 2

Good responses to last month's post's question, "Is the B-Word ever okay?" and some further looking around and asking around gave us additional food for thought.


So far, the general consensus answer seems to say, "Maybe". Or, more precisely, perhaps it's that it's not "okay," but society is becoming more resigned to the idea that its widespread casual use is a little distasteful, but above all inevitable. Some respondents (most of whom chose to post anonymously, so far) seem to suggest that we must try to read between the lines, divining when real mysogyny is intended, and when it's more just a ironic stance that a younger generation takes "to shock us."



For what it's worth, I agree. In real life, conversing with people -- with friends, coworkers -- we can tell a lot about intended meaning from their expression, tone, an ironic smile, a wink.


But, looking around last week, it still occurred to me that it's not always so easy to decipher in other forms of communication -- say, corporate brand communications.



In the last post, I mentioned Bitch Magazine, which clearly announces itself as representing (or seeking to represent) "a feminist response to pop culture," right there in its subtitle on every cover. And within, it often carries through with thoughtful and substantive content.


But the other day at my local wine shop, for example, I was surprised to come across a case of Bitch wine, an Aussie import distiguished for being "loud," pink and cheap.


As Carl S. Taylor, an urban culture expert from Michigan State, observed in the AP article by MEGAN K. SCOTT, which inspired this discussion thread, the playful woman-to-woman use of the word is “like a family affair. Family members can talk about each other, but if someone outside the circle says the same thing, it's offensive.”


If this is true, maybe the question is: Can any corporate entity really count on being "a member of this family," or is it just asking for trouble by -- even inadvertantly -- propagating a term that is inherently mysogynistic? Can a company give a "knowing wink"?


What do you think?