Your Friday Awesome: Gertrude (Beer) Stein

As an English and Women's Studies major, and a lover of Amy Poehler I think this might be the most awesome thing ever. scATX of Speaker's Corner made this and shows you how you can to via Zazzle. 

Music Monday: Fuck You, So Much

Satah Cameron got pissed enough about one of the side effects of warm weather that she wrote a pretty kick ass song about street harassment in 20 minutes.  You can read the full lyrics on her Tumblr.

via The Sexist.

Your Friday Awesome: Fun with Feminism!

It's funny because it's true.

1. Thou shalt not see a sexist, misogynistic ad, say “that sucks” and leave it at that.
2. Thou shalt view all media through a critical lens.
3. Thou shalt watch every movie while wondering if it will pass the Bechdel Test.
4. Thou shalt critique media when it portrays women as one-dimensional, second-class citizens.
5. Thou shalt vote with thy wallet (also known as the “I will not pay $12 to see ‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell’ commandment.”)
6. Thou shalt consume shitty forms of media (i.e. tabloids, reality TV) to be aware of what the “mainstream media” is saying about (and to) women and girls.
7. Thou shalt write letters, make phone calls, and send emails to let Dodge know you won’t buy their cars or to tell GoDaddy.com that you’ll look elsewhere for a domain (or ? or ?).
8. Thou shalt utilize social media to get the message out.
9. Thou shalt not feel bad for still being influenced by the barrage of unattainable images.
10. Thou shalt criticize the culture, not the women (employ the pro-woman line).

And, also: #6 is my excuse for reading crap like Twilight. No, seriously.*

 *That, and I'm totally Team Jacob.

Your Friday Awesome: Word To Your Mutha

Besides the fact that they ruined this with the descriptor, and this looks more like an under-division history class than an actual gender studies class - which in my experience are filled with eager, well-meaning, if a bit hetero-normative students...its still pretty awesome. And timely.

Quote of the Day - A Five Year Old on Erykah Badu

That’s OK. It’s just her body. I have a body. Daddy has a body. You have a body and boobies.

 Amazing.


Via Feministe.

Quote of the Day - Choice and Healthcare

"Denying a woman her right to choose is sex discrimination: Burdening women with unplanned pregnancies leads to systemic economic, social and psychological gender inequalities."

Yeah, I never thought I'd link to DoubleX either, but that is concise and accurate.

Your Friday Awesome: Woman's Last Stand

Could it be that the Super Bowl was such a pinnacle of anxious masculinity that we might as a society begin to dream about a world that does not celebrate a triumph in capitalism and misogyny?

...a girl can dream.

Your Friday Awesome: Providing Care

As Vanessa points out, this is not just the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It is also the first day of opening statements in the murder trial of Dr. Tiller's assassination.

I'm a woman-educated physician. I don't know how many abortions he did, but the women in my father's practice for whom he did abortions educated me and taught me that abortion is not about babies, it's not about families, it's about women's hopes and dreams, potential the rest of their lives - abortion is a matter of survival for women.

Full transcript at Feministing.

Blogging for Choice

Remember when the the Supreme Court made good decisions?

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

Thirty-seven years ago, the US Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, recognizing the constitutional right to privacy and a woman’s right to choose. Our supporters, the millions of people we serve, and those who serve them – we are Planned Parenthood, we stand in support of Roe, and we will continue to stand strong in the years ahead. - Planned Parenthood

While in graduate school in Texas, I had the privilege of meeting Sarah Weddington. She argued Roe v. Wade in front of the Supreme Court at the age of 26, because as she told me "no one else would take the case."

As I've said before, living in Texas was part and parcel of my education. Growing up the in San Francisco Bay Area, raised by a feminist mother, and born six years after Roe v. Wade, the right to complete reproductive health was simply part of the fabric of my life. But, that does not mean I took it for granted.

In my experience, it was very clear just what Planned Parenthood and other women's clinics, offered to women and girls. Going to a Catholic college, Planned Parenthood was a place to get treated for a UTI without a lecture on the pre-marital sex you weren't having. It was the place I drove young women who came to the college's Women's Resource Center, because if I wrote down the address or phone number I would be expelled.

Once kicked off your parent's healthcare plan, in the middle of the post dot-com recession, Planned Parenthood was a place to receive basic medical care, your birth control, and your annual pap smear for free (or for the cost of a thankful donation as you left).

Which is why before leaving for Texas I volunteered as a community outreach member for my local affiliate. It was then that I learned just how fragile the necessary services Planned Parenthood provides were, even in California. I also learned how few women knew that they even existed (even outside my Catholic school bubble).

But when I moved to Texas, I truly learned just how hard people are working to strip women of their ability to access basic services.

The first day I volunteered at Planned Parenthood in Austin, the staff asked to see my teal Medical card (the program that allowed me to access services for free in California). You would have thought it was made out of gold. I soon learned why.

When I arrived in Texas, Title X funding had been reduced so only women 18 and under could access services on a sliding scale. Six months later only women under the age of 16 could.

I volunteered in the downtown clinic - the only one that could then accept what few patients could access the sliding scale, but could not provide abortion services. The North clinic could, but only medical abortion. Surgical abortions could only be performed in the South clinic - a feat of community organizing and architecture created after a fierce battle to provide services despite the efforts to make building it nearly impossible.

But, I knew a lot of this going in. I knew that there are counties in Texas without a clinic of any kind for miles, and that the efforts to limit access were immense. What shocked me most was how few young women in Texas knew that services like these even existed anywhere. The UT campus has an amazing women's clinic that provides basic women's healthcare. But once I stepped foot off the campus, whether at work or at Walgreens, I continually found myself, not an abortion counselor, but a biology teacher.

Young women quietly asked me about STI symptoms they were experiencing, not knowing they were an STI. Or they quietly asked me about normal changes in their body that they were sure were a sign that something was wrong - because they had no knowledge of their own anatomy. At 20 or 23 or 28 they had never had a pap smear. These women were not just experiencing a culture that made abortion a bad word. The extremely conservative lawmakers that had not only made women fight to access basic services had also succeeded in keeping them ignorant of their own bodies, thanks to abstinence only education and the pervasive culture that a woman's body was dirty and abnormal.

All of this is to say that the efforts to shut down clinics, make it impossible for them to provide services, difficult for women to actually obtain services, or perpetuate acts of violence against providers for providing a basic medical procedure, are not the only actions taken to strip women of their ability to choose.

The theme of this year's Blog for Choice day is "trust women." But, in order to ensure safe and legal access to abortion, it is not simply enough to trust that women can make the decision to have an abortion or not, to access Plan B or not, to take birth control or not. Denied access to abortion is a symptom of a greater mistrust in women. A mistrust that limits our ability to understand the biology of our own bodies, to know how to keep ourselves healthy and to be able to seek preventive services.

Read more posts as part of Blog for Choice day, here.

Image via PEP.

Modern Day Mad Men Channel Pete Campell

So, Method (that designy home care line that smells of cucumber and first gained market share at Target) made a really really dumb ad:

People Against Dirty - Shiny Suds - (2009) :70 (USA)

Melissa McEwen of Shakesville (and the rest of the angry feminist blogosphere) pointed out that the ad was very unfunny and supported the culture of sexual exploitation and assault of women.

Method responded saying "we're sorry you're so sensitive, but oh well it's funny! Exploitation is bad...but, funny!" (I paraphrase).

Madison Avenue then found out that one of their own was being criticized by those angry overly-sensitive feminists and freaked out. Not once, but twice.

What did we learn from this little exercise? A few things:

1. It's not just PETA that thinks the protection of the environment should leave women to be (ahem) washed down the drain.

2. The big wigs in advertising have not progressed much past 1963 in their understanding of gender.

3. Perhaps the reason they refuse to move on is because it makes their job easy. Its much easier to remain within the status quo (even if exploitative and supportive of a violent culture) than to actually be creative.

Of course, we can always assume that Method didn't actually see how offensive the ad was to begin with, since you know, they work in an industry where this (WTF Michael Bay directed! No, seriously.) crap is the norm:



But, you know what? There is a pesky little thing called learning and until they figure out what they did was dumb, sorry Method, but I'll get my biodegradable cucumber scented fix somewhere else.

Myths and Venn Diagrams

We are all clear that the bra burning was a myth, right?


I heart Indexed.

This is What a Feminist Family Looks Like

This was originally going to be a post about ridiculous, sensationalist art projects, be they a hoax web page or an actual rape tunnel (Yeah...wait a minute I'll get to that).

Instead, this is a post how awesome my family is...and how their awesomeness energizes me and gives me hope for the future.

This afternoon my brother-in-law post a link to this on my Facebook profile:

Please describe the project.

In the 4D Gallery main room, I’ve constructed a 22 ft tunnel out of plywood that leads into the project room. There is no way in or out of the project room except for this tunnel. As you travel through the tunnel, it gets smaller and smaller, making it so that you have to crawl and put yourself in a submissive position in order to reach the tunnel’s destination. At the end of the tunnel the subject will find me waiting in the project room and I’ll try to the best of my ability to overpower and rape the person who crawls through.

Why rape?

Because as an artistic gesture, it’s one of the most impactful I can think of...In 2007 at the Seward Projects Space in Columbus, I had my first breakthrough with an installation that was to be the prototype for this current one. It was called THE PUNCH-YOU-IN-THE-FACE TUNNEL. It was the same set-up as THE RAPE TUNNEL except at the end of the tunnel I’d punch the subject in the face instead of raping him or her. The impetus was completely reactionary to the current state of art, and motivated by pure frustration...

Rape seemed like the next logical step.

Yeah...my brother-in-law's reaction? "Seriously? This guy should be [insert method of death here]! How do people become so twisted?" Good question, bro.

But putting aside the "art" for a moment...most people would never expect this little digital exchange between my brother-in-law and I to take place. My brother is a practicing Mormon (like many other religions, not really known for its feminist principles) and me, well, I'm a raging feminist with a Master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies with a blog that I use to critique systems of oppression enforced through everything from policy to pop-culture.

But, my brother is smart, and thinks critically and we respect one another so we can have really critical conversations about politics and religion - all the things you aren't supposed to talk about in polite society. But we do. Not all the time, sometimes we play video games, but this is also the guy that totally got why I bought his three year old a pink soccer ball. And so I am really excited by the fact that I can be one of his outlets for questioning the patriarchy.

But, back to the "art." I saw this on my Facebook page this afternoon while I was in the middle of a project at work (what? I'm actually supposed to be online at work - hi, boss!) and couldn't really formulate a response other than a "WTF!?! This is so gonna be a blog." But on the way home, I started thinking, "The first thing I'm going to do is validate that this crap is actually real." But guess what? I didn't have to. By the time I got home and logged into my email, my mom had emailed me two stories from totally obscure sources that called it out as fake.

The fact that my mom would be enraged by this isn't surprising. This feminist apple didn't fall far from the tree. But it was only in the last six months or so that my mom created a Facebook account and got herself a shiny new Mac and a Gmail address, and today, in sixty seconds flat, she used them all to delve into the interwebs and give her daughter fodder for her blog.

(My husband also called it out as fake in the Facebook thread, noting that it was no less upsetting that it was a hoax, but duh...that is just another example of why I married him.)

So, I'm sure by tomorrow all of the blogs will be going "ZOMG! WTF?! It's a fake and here is a really in-depth analysis of the bullshit that is passed off as 'controversial art'!" I, however, was way more interested in how my family responded to it.

Here is to my awesome social critic brother-in-law and my technologically advanced mom - and all of our virtual and real life feminist conversations. See you at Thanksgiving!

Okay, One More Thing About Roman Polanski

But, I'll let the Women's Media Center say it:

The Women’s Media Center (WMC) calls on the media to focus their coverage of Roman Polanski’s recent arrest where it belongs: on the crime he committed, the rape of a child...Too often, the media is complicit in misrepresenting or silencing the victims of sexual assault. The Women’s Media Center calls on the media to report the unfolding story of the Polanski arrest and possible extradition with clarity and specificity. The rape of a child is at the heart of the case. That is not disputed, and should not be represented as subjective.

Read the entire thing here.

PS: Really, Peg Yorkin? Really?

Your Friday Awesome

“I call myself a feminist. Isn’t that what you call someone who fights for women’s rights?”


Image via.

Daily Mail: Wear a Girdle and Reject Modern Medicine or You're Gonna Be a Fatty

According to the Daily Mail British women have become fatties in the last 50 years:

We found that hips were an inch-and-a-half bigger, as were busts; then when we got to the waists and found six-and-a-half inches difference, it was: "Wow - everyone, man and woman, has a belly now"

A whole inch-and-a-half! Geez, that is huge! Never mind that British women are also two inches taller. And why are they taller?

It's partly down to nutrition - a better and more plentiful diet, explains Bernard Harris, professor of the history of social policy at Southampton University.

But, more surprisingly, our increased height reflects the lessening demands of the environment. Now, with warmer homes, better medicine and improved sanitation, our energy - significantly in childhood - can be devoted to growth.

There is also the cleanliness of our environment to consider. Antibiotics did not become commonplace until the mid-Fifties.

'In unsanitary conditions, you'll suffer diarrhoea more frequently and therefore retain fewer nutrients in the body. If you suffer repeated infections, you use up energy fighting them off, while you may also feel less like eating.'

I'm sure if British women had known that being healthy enough to gain two inches of height was going to lead to bigger feet and a whole two more inches in the boobs and six in the belly, they probably would have rethought things like fresh vegetables, antibiotics, indoor plumbing and central heat. Oh, but nutrition isn't the only problem:

It's not just a case of what was being eaten: post-war women also expended many more calories through housework and having to walk or cycle everywhere. It's been estimated that Fifties woman burned more than 1,000 calories a day doing her everyday activities (such as housework) compared with 556 today.

Ah, there we go. The reason Britons are lard-asses? Feminism. And technological advances like dishwashers and swiffers.

Frankly, I think the change in waist size that the Daily Mail chronicled is not only because British women are turning into the healthy, non-diarrhea-having, non-valium-popping, fatties the article suggests. They do mention that what we eat has changed, due to companies' tendency to shove as much cornsyrup and saturated fat as they can into our food to make sure it is tasty enough for us to keep buying it. But, considering that the the article is about the results of the UK National Sizing Survey, produced by clothing companies and department stores, it might be worth considering how clothing sizes and undergarments have changed.

My generation's bodies are different from our grandmothers and mothers simply because we don't constrict our waists with belts or girdles. It used to be that when you went to a department store, there was a "Foundations" department. That's because while we may have dropped the corset in the 1920's we very quickly picked up girdles. And that hourglass figure that the Daily Mail misses so much? That was poked and prodded and sculpted and shoved into place by a bunch of elastic and boning.

As the waist-belt and high-waisted pants have come back into fashion, those of us raised in the age of 80's casual, and who came of age in grunge, have realized one side effect of the trend. To put it mildly, those 70's inspired high-waisted pants, make a girl a little gassy. One friend finally got her mom to try on a pair of jeans that sat below her natural waist and her mom thought it was a breakthrough - her digestive system worked better!

Also, we need to say something about the idea that boobs are bigger. Yes, its true, they are a bit bigger, we are bigger everywhere else and we eat a hell of a lot more artificial hormones. And, there is that pesky little friend of women's liberation - the pill. But, since I've never written a study on a direct correlation between these factors and increased bust size (though lets say I've got more than enough anecdotal evidence to prove the point) all one needs to do is watch Mad Men to see that comparing 1950's and 60's bra sizes to today's is like, well, comparing apples to oranges...or maybe apples to missles.

So thanks Daily Mail, but I'll take my antibiotics, birth control, and undergarments that let me take a full breath over a couple of inches any day.

Via Jezebel.

Update: Hollaback - War Zone

This weekend I went out with a female friend of mine to a friend's show. It was another indie venue where one wouldn't expect the unapologetic douchebaggery of other clubs - just that pungent aura of hipsterdom (a little stale PBR, danger dogs and vintage clothing musk).

The venue is technically within walking distance of my house, but it becomes much too far a walk once the sun goes down. Which is why we spent a little while searching for parking. We initially saw a spot about three and a half blocks from the club, but my friend determined that it was "too far" from the club. At first, I thought that three and a half blocks was too far because she was wearing a skirt and the night had gotten chilly. But, when we left the show I was reminded that going out with my husband has resulted in me letting down my guard too much.

We ended up finding a spot about two blocks away on the side of the venue that has officially become gentrified, instead of the side that is still considered "transitional." But, before we could even cross the street, we were confronted by a young man blocking our path, asking "how we were doing," and how old we were. We had to dodge past him, while keeping watch on his two silent but lingering buddies, once the light changed. It was a pretty shitty way to end the night.

Which is why I think this documentary by Maggie Hadleigh-Wes is fantastic. Made in 1998 it is a precursor to Hollaback, but it also takes it a bit farther. Armed with a Super 8 camera, she confronts the men who make comments and leer at her and other women. Some are belligerent, some embarrassed, and some aren't even aware of what they had done. I wouldn't suggest confronting men as a daily practice, but it amazing how powerful a camera (or two) can be.



You can buy the entire movie from the Media Education Foundation, along with a bunch of other amazing documentaries.

Thanks to Ann at Feministing for the heads up.

No, You Don't Need to Speak with My Husband

One of the people I met in Austin was the amazing Starr C. who has started the insightful and funny Suburbtopia. Some might call it a mom blog, but really it is about living as a feminist when you are also a wife and mother and graduate student and a veteran and work full-time and you do all of those things awesomely. Really. In the middle of Texas.

She recently shared her experience of trying to find a realtor whose gender norms were not firmly planted in 1952. After setting up the initial process on her bank's website, the bank-assigned realtor called and said this:

I'm sorry, I thought Starr was your husband's name. Should I discuss the selling of your home with him or is it okay to talk with you on these matters?

When Starr C. told her that she could more than handle the call, the realtor then questioned whether or not it made sense for her to work in addition to her husband, because could her salary really cover the cost of day care?

Yeah, that is how you start a good client relationship. By being totally intrusive and condescending. Oh, and the realtor was a woman. Who obviously works, and who works in real estate. But, of course she assumed that she makes more than Starr C. and understands real estate better. Obviously she hasn't met Starr C. That woman is probably smarter and more skilled than most people on the planet. Needless to say, she got a new realtor.

In a recent post, I talked about how I chose not to change my name when I got married, and that it has not caused the end of civilization. But, regardless of the fact that I did not change my name when I got married, the assumptions tied up in the grand idea of "marriage" are so ingrained that most people assume you have taken your husband's name, regardless of whether or not you have. Built into that assumption is the belief that along with taking your husband's name, you also relinquish your power to your husband, particularly your economic power.

Starr C.'s post reminded me of my first experience of working against this assumption. As I said, most people assume we have the same name. The only reason they know we don't is if both of our names our on a document. And in that case, there have never been questions of why our names don't match, but of whose name should go first.

The most jarring example of this, was when we filed our first taxes as a married couple. Since it was our first time filing, we figured it would be a good idea to talk to a professional to see if we should file jointly or separately and to make sure we got it all right. We gathered all our paperwork and went down to visit a very jolly man my family has known for years. All was going well. We asked if we should file separately or jointly. He said jointly would be our best bet. He asked if I changed my name. Nope. Okay, moving on. Then he asked who should be the primary name and social security number on the return and who should be the "spouse". Both my husband and I said I would be.

You would have thought we said to make our cat the primary. For a good five minutes the accountant tried to dissuade us and make me the spouse, "because that is what he IRS is used to." Really? I thought they were used to processing things by social security number. Oh, and they are also used to seeing my tax returns because I hadn't gone straight from being my father's dependent to my husband's, since you know coverture is over.

My insistence (backed by my husband) that my name be first on the return had nothing to do with asserting our feminist principles to the federal government. It has to do with the simple reality that our relationship is egalitarian to begin with. Each of us have different strengths and interests, and based on those strengths and interests we divide up the household responsibilities. Sure, no one likes doing the dishes, so we try and do our fair share. However, when it comes to the economic front, I am the one that makes sure bills are paid and we are getting the best deal on our cell phone and internet contracts.

Not because I am better and handling money, we make decisions jointly and my husband has managed his own finances and that of his touring band for years, but because I am more comforatble dealing with people on the phone when things having to deal with money don't run smoothly. A wierd charge on our credit card? I call to clarify it. Our internet is down? I call to see what the problem is. Our renter's insurance needs to be adjusted? I call to talk to them about it. Why? Mostly because I am more comfortable asking to speak with someone's manager when I don't get the answer I need or they continue to try and up-sell me.

So, if I am the one handling all this on a daily basis, wouldn't it make sense that I be the one to file our return? Afterall, the world revolves around social security numbers, or at least the last four digits. When we merged a few accounts where it made sense to keep my husband as the primary, it has been a pain to try and remember the last four digits of his social security number in order to get anything accomplished. And god forbid if something was wrong on our return, it would be me that ended up talking to the IRS.

Of course, I didn't share all of these details with our tax guy. Instead, I resorted to framing the discussion in terms of finance-speak and asserted, "I am the CFO of this household!"

It worked. My name is first. Now lets just hope I never have to talk to them.

My Name Might Just Cause the End of Civilization as We Know It

Evidently 70% of American's think I am a bad wife and 50% think the government should put me in line.

No, really. My most recent post for Mother Jones is about a national study on family and gender issues, the results of which shocked even the researchers.

Frankly, I agree with Jessica at Feministing who originally linked to the article. I think choosing one's name is a personal decision and marriage may or may not be the catalyst for why someone chooses to change it. There might be many reasons a woman chooses to drop the last name she was born with. And people change their name all the time for other reasons. Call yourself Princess Sparklebutt - if that is how you identify, more power to 'ya.

In my case, I am the daughter of a feminist who decided to keep her last name and adopt my dad's. She then passed down the convention to both my sister and I. I think its great. My middle name is pretty damn interesting and unique (at least in this country). So when it came to what I was going to do, it wasn't necessarily an either/or option for me. I didn't necessarily want to adopt my husband's last name, but in the end the decision was pretty easy.

We were sitting on the couch one day before the wedding - not actually talking about anything having to do with the wedding (for once), when he said:

You're not going to change your name are you?

Turns out, in his view, the person he fell in love with was the person I was then, name and all, and that is who he wanted to marry - and that, is one of the many reasons I wanted to marry him.

We toyed around with other options: making a new combo one, or both of us adopting my middle name. But, we eventually decided (after all of ten minutes) to stick with the names were already had. It might just be because I'm lazy, but it seems like that is the easiest decision. Correcting well meaning in-laws and friends a few times is much easier than having to make sure my last name is changed on every sort of official documentation, work correspondence, and online account.

And guess what? The world has not come to an end.

A Crime Against Women

When an awful crime, like the recent shootings in Pennsylvania, occurs I am not one to obsess over coverage. I usually wait for the initial media blitz to pass and then find out more information a day or two later.

So, it was not until I saw this post at Shakesville that I realized that the fitness center shooting was not just a random act of crazed violence, it was a gender-based hate crime.

Even if I had been paying attention to the headlines, I would not have known that it was specifically women that were targeted. Yesterday, all of the headlines were in the similar vein of "Four Dead in Fitness Club Shooting." In fact, when I specifically Googled "women killed in Pennsylvania shooting" I only had two results on the first page that mentioned women in the headline - from Canada and Australia.

But, all one had to do was to read any article to realize that the shooter was the only man that was killed or injured. Three women are dead and nine are injured, but it seemed almost impossible for reports to underscore that this was a gender-based crime, even as they quoted the killer's hate-filled blog. As a commenter at Shakesville noted:

I also noticed that the opening paragraph lists the women as "people", then later mentions that they were all women. It does have the disorienting effect of erasing the misogyny of the killer, doesn't it?

And she is right. Headlines make a difference. They are how we frame events and decipher the onslaught of information surrounding them. Which is why I was relieved to see that just as I started putting two and two together so did all of the smart feminist bloggers.

This morning, this post at Feministing also pointed out that this is not the only gender-based shooting in recent years. And as Jessica pointed out, very few people connected the misogynist dots then, as well.

It is important to note that this is not a new phenomenon. A similar hate-crime was committed in Canada in 1989 at the Ecole Polytechnique - in that case, the shooter was convinced women were stealing his job, in this one they were denying him dates. Which is why I was relieved to read the article Jessica pointed to in The Christian Science Monitor.

Not only does the article identify this horrific act as gender-based violence, it provides a context and history of misogyny:

Misogyny has been around since almost as long as men and women have. The first poem written in Greek that still exists is called "Woman." Its author is anonymous, and it amounts to a harangue against the female sex.

While the gender-equality movement has made strides in the past century when it comes to some of the more blatant forms of societal misogyny, such as banning women from academic and professional settings, misogyny persists in American and other cultures around the world, according to historians.

"This killer fits into a long pattern of males who harbor hatred towards all women, the image of 'woman,' and towards individual real women, and who take out their frustration on a female scapegoat," says David Gilmore, an anthropology professor at Stony Brook University in New York and author of "Misogyny: the Male Malady."

Thankfully, the headlines have changed today. Hopefully they mainstream media will begin to connect the dots between this and other gender-based crimes, as well. One can dream at least.

Megan Fox , Megan Fox, Megan Fox

Did I ever think I would write a blog post in defense of Megan Fox?

Nope.

But the interwebs are full of a special kind of misogyny today. Thanks to Asylum, AOL's men's lifestyle site - yeah I didn't know they were still around either, or that they needed to expand into "men's lifestyle" - August 4th has been declared A Day Without Megan Fox.

That's right, the very same dudes (and some ladies) that couldn't get enough of her are now saying they have given too many pixels to her. Even Reuters has gotten in on the act. But don't think for a second that they have had an epiphany about media overexposure, exploitation, voyeurism or the invasion of privacy. Nope, they just want to make sure they don't exhaust their page views too soon, "Sure she’s one of the sexiest young female actors, but in order to preserve both her sexiness and her freshness, we need to tone down the over foxposure."

So don't worry. Images of Fox will continue to grace the computer screens, but in the meantime these sites are suggesting nominees for "the next Megan Fox." It is so nice of them to point out how contrived and constructed celebrity is. According to these bastions of intelligent thought, Megan Fox is the poor man's Angelia Jolie and Odette Yustman is the poor man's Megan Fox. So, I get it. Women cannot be just themselves - or even a whole person - unless they are Angelina Jolie. Unfortunately, I'll venture to guess it is not her work with the UN, but rather her embodiment of a video game character, that provides her personhood.

But, does the timing of this "media blackout" seem a bit suspicious to anyone else? It comes on the heels of Fox identifying herself as a feminist and the release of the trailer for Jennifer's Body, a movie in which Fox's character literally eats men and excuses by saying she is not killing people "just boys."

While being aware that as a woman in Hollywood you are "You’re merchandised, you’re a product," is not necessarily a feminist understanding, she is very savvy about Hollywood and how she can capitalize on it. But, who knows, maybe hanging out with Diablo Cody more than Michael Bay will foster her feminist awakening.