Another round-up

By Jess McCabe | 9 February 2010, 13:37

Bikini Kill are collecting stories for their archive. The former riot grrrls ask:

Please add your Bikini Kill story to this blog! It can be totally off the top of your head and doesn’t need to be fancy. Maybe it’s your reaction to a song we wrote, something weird that happened at one of our shows, a personal anecdote or just WHATEVER. Feel free to send images too!

Last month I wrote briefly about Staying, an art project by 12 lesbian asylum seekers and refugees, with artist Oreet Ashery. There’s going to be a reading from the project at the Poetry Society in London on 12 February, as part of LGBT history month. Via womensgrid which has full details:

Jerusalem-born British artist Ashery has collaborated with lesbian asylum seekers, developing characters, stories, drawings, and poems from their experiences of suffering traumatising discrimination, because of their sexual orientation, in their home countries. These have been brought together in a publication available for download at http://www.artangel.org.uk Please join us for readings from the publication and a discussion of the project. Venue: Poetry Place, The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9BX http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk

Nerves Strengthened By Tea revisits Jane Austen’s early gothic satire Northanger Abbey:

The female gothic, which Jane Austen is poking fun at in this novel (but obviously loved too), provided a space for women to express and explore very real anxieties about patriarchy.

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Why are there so few female werewolves? Student Elizabeth M. Clark has written what sounds like a very interesting thesis about this, and although I can’t download it for some reason, Latoya Peterson summarises at Jezebel.

Clark argues:

This interview segment illustrates how the idea of a female werewolf challenges cultural conceptions about the appropriate female body and acceptable female behavior. For a horror film to show images of large, muscular, hairy, aggressive women would just be too “horrifying,” according to Wiseman and Beckinsale.

And Latoya summarises:

In order to neutralize the jarring effect that seeing “masculinized” women would have on the viewers’ delicate psyches, many directors employ a common device to keep audiences connected - physical beauty conveyed through excessive nude scenes. In exploring the scenes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Clark notes how both of the episodes emphasized the were-woman’s human form, and often featured long lingering shots of the women’s hairless, slender, nude bodies or images of the women behaving in sexually aggressive ways while still in human form.

Via Samhita at Feministing, The Frisky has a series of photos and stories about black women artists, including writer Zora Neale Hurston - it’s black history month in the US right now.

In The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter famously retold and repurposed fairy tales, and many feminist reclamations of the genre (if fairy tales can be called a genre!) have followed. Jezebel found another project in this vein, which is calling for submissions of

Stories that radically revise stereotypes of “bad women” in the Bible, in myth and in fairy-tales. Stories that aren’t afraid to be literary, transgressive, dark, and sexy. Think: Lilith, Medea, the Wicked Stepmother, the Evil Witch, Pandora, Eve, crones, sibyls, fates, muses. Contemporary adaptations are fine… The spine: We begin to see these women through another lens.

Over at Racialicious, guest blogger A. Rahman Ford writes a powerful piece about masculinity, race and disability, explaining his photographic self-portrait:

The photo, titled “undesirable,” is essentially about me ultimately beginning the journey of accepting my disability as I have my blackness. More broadly, it is to protest what I refer to as the negative fetishism of poor bodies, bodies that are deemed broke and broken, crooked and criminal, dilapidated and degenerate, ugly and useless. It was influenced in part by depictions of Holocaust victims - persons with disabilities among them - determined by the Nazi regime to be “undesirable” and anathema to the Aryan archetype because they did not and could not conform. “Undesirable” is also meant to invoke sexuality and how poor male bodies navigate the difficulty of being sexually desirable because of the physical valuation males and females deploy to determine sexual attraction. These are issues and feelings that I have dealt with and I used the photo to embody both my struggle and progress.

Heather Corinna from Scarlateen unpacks a very common phrase used in sex ed for teenagers: “You should wait for sex, but if you can’t….” She says instead:

What we want is for everyone to only have any kind of sex — be it intercourse or any other physically enacted expression of sexuality with oneself or a partner — when it is what everyone involved in a sexual scenario: strongly wants, can and does actively consent to, feels prepared for, and has the knowledge and capacity to have sex in a way that is physically and emotionally safe for everyone.

This is our goal for people of every age, and we don’t think it’s fair or reasonable to hold young people to different standards on this than we hold, or anyone else holds, older people (especially if you’re going to say young people are less capable of meeting the standard than older people, but older people don’t need to meet it once they are capable).

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Parental Leave and “Choice”

By Guest Blogger | 8 February 2010, 21:36

Troon argues that recent announcements from Labour and the Conservatives of plans to offer families ‘radically more choice’ in how they balance work and childcare may actually reinforce traditional assumptions about gender roles in childcare

On 28th January the government announced changes to the parental leave system, which currently allocates the birth mother up to twelve months, of which nine months can be partly paid. Her partner (male or female) gets up to two weeks at minimal pay. The government’s new plans allow the mother to allocate all or part of the final three months’ unpaid and three months’ paid leave to her partner should they wish. The Conservatives wish to allow couples to take 38 weeks of a total twelve months’ leave in any combination they want. As someone who looks after children when his partner is working, earns roughly what she does, whose partner is currently feeling much like this about maternity leave, and who only managed by luck to have an extended period of time with my first son, I should be jumping for joy at these moves to allow us choice. Both, however, are deeply flawed.

There can be no real reason for allocating the early part of leave only to women and the later part, potentially, to their partners. Women often need less than six months to recover after birth, and that time should be for their own physical or emotional wellbeing and treated as ‘sick’ leave, not incorporated into leave for childcare. The Conservatives’ proposal comes close to what has been argued for by Jennifer Gray on this site, but ignores one key piece of reasoning behind an EHRC leave proposal. By allowing leave to be taken simultaneously, male partners may indeed get to ‘help out’. Regardless of the time spent actually caring for children, ‘helping out’ and ‘assuming responsibility’ are not the same, and it is notable that more men think they take ‘responsibility’ than women think their partners do. The sphere in which responsibility is taken also needs examining. I know many men who undertake a fair share of the childcare at home, but rarely take the baby out of the home, something which would be impossible if they actually looked after children on their own. Allowing men to act as societally invisible subsidised domestic sidekicks in a supposedly woman’s world does not promote the idea that childcare should be their responsibility too.

My key objection is that ‘choice’ is not sufficient to change the idea that this leave, and childcare, are primarily intended for women, and may make the situation worse by suggesting the current status quo is desired rather than enforced. Gendered inequalities in existing pay and welfare structures mean that choice is so constrained by external circumstance that what ‘makes sense’ can hardly be seen as choice at all, so that two in five men do not take even what leave they are currently allowed . The problem goes much deeper than economics. From the children’s centre staff who refer to me as ‘’babysitting’; to the women at baby group whose discussions about childcare never consider their men staying at home; to a barrage of media coverage, the world outside of the feminist blogsphere is one in which the assumption of female caring is so strong it makes choice and criticism of that choice about when and if a woman returns to work, not whether her male partner should be involved. The law needs to change this, not work within it.

Meaningful reform of parental leave is critical to parents and non-parents. The initial period of leave influences which partner does what for the rest of their children’s childhood, and the way their children and other adults perceive gender roles. The image of women alone as child carers constrains all adults, and women especially. We don’t need a law which states that men can do childcare if they want, but one which states that they should. Its basic components must be a separation of the recovery period of the mother from leave given for childcare, and leave periods for both partners which allow some flexibility but which cannot be taken largely simultaneously. The government claims these ideas offer ‘radically more choice’; it would be better for us all if they simply offered a more radical choice.

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Report from the Yarl’s Wood hunger strike

By Jess McCabe | 8 February 2010, 16:54

The shocking situation for women at the Yarl’s Wood detention centre continues. More than 50 women are on hunger strike, and today the Black Women’s Rape Action Project sent out this report that some women have been beaten, and some subject to racist abuse and more:

Over fifty women are currently trapped in an airless hallway in Yarl’s Immigration Removal Centre. On Friday 5 February they began a hunger strike. Today they were herded into the hallway were they have been left there for over two hours without access to water or toilets. Four women, including an asthma sufferer, have fainted. Around 1.30 the guards came into the hallway and started to beat women. As we spoke to one woman she told us that someone was bleeding. One of the managers told the women they would regret what they have done; she called the Chinese women monkeys, and the Black women black monkeys. Four other women have been locked in other rooms for three hours, and have been told by room mates that their belongings have been packed. They are worried they face immediate removal even though their cases are still being considered. Fifteen women have been locked up in “Kingfisher”, the punishment wing.

According to women on the other wings all movement has been restricted - even those not on the hunger strike are not getting any food including diabetics who urgently need it.

Hunger strikers want to speak to the press and get the truth out about the protest.

They are protesting at the length of time they have been detained - one woman who cannot speak English, has been held for over two years. Their statement is attached. Their demands include: an end to the “degradation and humiliation of detained/foreign nationals during deportation by detention staff and escorts during flights”; an end to the Fast Track for asylum seekers which denies fair decisions, the restoration of full legal aid and access to independent legal advice for everyone who is being detained.

Cristel Amiss, Black Women’s Rape Action Project which is supporting women on hunger strike said “Over 70% of women in Yarl’s Wood are rape survivors, many are sick and vulnerable. Why are they being punished for raising serious injustices? This “kettling” tactic has been thoroughly discredited, women should be allowed back into their rooms immediately, there should be an immediate investigation into what has happened and any guard found to be responsible for injuring women must be sacked immediately”.

More information about the conditions in Yarl’s Wood reported by women recently released who spoke at the House of Commons 14 January 2010.

Click on the images below to see a full-size version and read the full list of demands:

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Important questions from Gita Sahgal

By Jolene Tan | 7 February 2010, 23:47

The detention of Moazzam Begg and others in Guantanamo Bay was and is a violation of their human rights, which Amnesty International is right to criticise.

Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cage Prisoners, are not defenders of human rights, and are therefore inappropriate allies for Amnesty.

It is not hard for both of these observations to be simultaneously true. The victims of human rights violations are not thereby automatically immune from having problematic political positions. So why has Gita Sahgal, head of Amnesty’s gender unit, been suspended after raising these concerns?

Here is her full statement:

Amnesty International and Cageprisoners

Statement by Gita Sahgal

7 February 2010

This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.

Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.

The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.

I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.

The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should. The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.

I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners. I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg. Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights. Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.

As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.

I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.

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Same garbage, different continents

By Jolene Tan | 7 February 2010, 17:22

Over at Racialicious, Thea Lim discusses an American website, “Classy Asian Ladies”, which fetishises Asian women (“Asian” is used in the American rather than the British sense, referring to the Asian continent more generally rather than specifically South Asia). Drawing a supposed opposition between Asian-American women and other American women:

It seems that in today’s society the average woman is becoming very competitive and even a bit more masculine than their counterparts in earlier generations. All the while it seems to be just the opposite is taking place for Asian women who tend to retain their sense of femininity and well-known cultural attitude of gentle and caring support. …

Asian ladies … are known for their loving and gentle nature, they are extremely loyal, supportive, and dedicated to their men. One of the great qualities you will find in the Asian women at ClassyAsianLadies.com is how important their man is in all aspects of their lives. It’s not about what a man does for a living or how much he earns; the Asian woman at ClassyAsianLadies.com will stand behind her men in times of trouble and stress, while rejoicing in his periods of success. She always thinks of her man first! …

They rarely complain, are gentle and constructive with their criticism … Did we mention that Asian ladies are among the most beautiful females in the world? And they are well known for retaining their youthful beauty and shapely figures well into middle age and beyond.

On this side of the pond, a “Thai bride” agency offers more on the same theme:

If you are one of the growing band of disillusioned genuine single Western gentlemen, who is “sick to the back teeth” with the new breed of twenty-first century woman. If you are disillusioned with the kind of de-feminised, over sized, self-centred, mercenary minded lady, available on the Western singles scene, who is only out for what she can get. … we introduce gentlemen to the kind of decent, marriage minded Thai ladies …

For me, there is something especially ironic, and empty, about the characterisation of “Asian women” in opposition to Western women, because funnily enough, this is exactly the sort of reasoning used by some men in Singapore - in that place, you know, Asia - to justify participation in the regional “bride trade”, through which they purchase women from Vietnam and other countries.

A Singaporean man was seen distributing leaflets to passersby, promoting luxury cruise packages at a cost of S$13,800 (US$8,365). For an extra S$9,800 (US$5,940), a single man buying a luxury cruise could choose a bride on the spot to accompany him on his trip.

“It was like a TV advertisement, and it was so humiliating,” the Thanh Nien daily reported, quoting a Vietnamese employee at a computer firm in Singapore.

In recent years, an increasing number of Singapore men, unable to find love at home, have sought their brides in Vietnam, China and Indonesia. Many are convinced that foreigners make better wives because they are perceived as more domesticated, less arrogant or materialistic compared to their Singapore counterparts.

The website of one of the bride businesses enthusiastically reproduces the following bullet points from a Singaporean news story (page two here) on the subject:

“Mr. Yeo said that he is getting old, he need someone to take care of his 73-year-old mother and himself.”

Foreign brides are more demure and accommodating.

“I want woman who will put the family and husband first, rather than demand cars, condominiums and credits.”

Willing to bear kid. …

His wife takes care of the kids and all housework.

Her requests are simple, “care for her, don’t bully her and don’t go out look for other women.”

Although racial fetishes in dating are not directly comparable to the purchase of mail order brides, the similarities in legitimising rhetoric are striking. As a woman from Asia, myself, I find essentialising language about “Asian women” far from complimentary, but rather dehumanising and Othering. The Western characterisation of a homogenous bloc of “Asian women” as ciphers of femininity - as delicate lotus flowers of mind-reading, uncomplaining wish fulfillment fantasy - has a particular resonance in light of the exploitation by the bride trade of the economic hardship faced by many women in Asia.

Quite aside from cases of outright fraud or coercion in the “bride trade”, for many women, marriage is their only or primary opportunity to secure a level of material provision for themselves and their families. It is unsurprising that some would look to richer countries to make the most of it. Once in an unfamiliar society, dependent on their husbands for economic provision and often immigration status, possibly unable to speak the local language, these women are in a position of great vulnerability. When marketers in the “bride trade” speak of women who are “demure and accommodating”, they are promoting this very powerlessness as a key selling point.

So the glowing tributes to “femininity”, here, are not descriptions of women - any women - “as we really are”, whatever that means, but celebrations of powerlessness. (We might well ask, of course, if tributes to “femininity” are ever anything but sops to inferior classes under patriarchy.)

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Pope Benedict XVI

By Philippa Willitts | 7 February 2010, 10:47

The Catholic Church has contributed more than most to the oppression of women. Whether it’s the deaths of women in childbirth and of HIV / AIDS due to their commitment to preventing safer sex, or covering up the abuse of girl and boy children and protecting the abusers, they have consistently chosen paths which keep women controlled and ‘in their place’.

This is the church that ordered the excommunication of everyone involved in helping a 9 year old girl, who was pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather, to have an abortion. The church actively tried to prevent the termination, and when it failed it ordered that the child’s mother and the doctors involved be excommunicated. (Not the step-father, tellingly).

“If the B52 bombers flying over Vietnam were dropping contraceptives, the American Catholic hierarchy would have condemned that in a minute, but they were dropping napalm”
— James Carroll

The Pope has also been in the news this week for speaking out against the UK government’s equality policies, which would have required churches to stop discriminating against LGBT people. This is a man who, when he speaks, people listen. Just think what he could use his voice for. He could protest poverty, he could condemn domestic violence. But no, he speaks out against equality.

Later this year, the Pope is planning a visit to Britain. Not only do I not want him here, I was really disgusted to hear that the £20 million cost of his visit will be paid for by public money. Just think how many Rape Crisis centres could be funded by that money!

The National Secular Society have started a petition to ask the Catholic Church itself to pay for the visit. As I write, it has 17,457 signatures, one of which is mine.

The Catholic Church, contrary to the guidance of many passages of the Bible, is a very rich institution. If this man, who played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, wants to come here, let him pay for it himself.

(cross-posted at incurable hippie blog)

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Say NO to nuclear weapons

By Laura Woodhouse | 6 February 2010, 18:10

If you’re disgusted by the government’s decision to spend billions and billions of pounds producing more weapons and instruments of mass murder you might like to join the women’s contingent at The Big Blockade, Aldermaston on Monday 15th February:

The plan is to impede work on the UK’s planned new warhead for the Trident nuclear missile system by closing down all seven gates of the Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston simultaneously. As women, our plan is to close, for as long as we can, one of the gates of AWE. Known as the ‘Home Office Gate’, it is one of two entrances used by 50% of Aldermaston’s workers. Other gates will be blockaded by groups of men and women from Scotland, Wales, England and other countries; by students, cyclists and ‘faith’ groups.

[…]

We decided that Women’s Gate messages will express our feminist critique of nuclear weapons and the militaries that deploy them, of the UK government’s irrational notion of ‘security’, and of NATO with its ever-growing, nuclear-tipped ambitions. We want to contrast this with the lack of government support for women suffering violence - whether it’s cuts in funding for rape crisis centres, or the lack of funds for women’s refuges, or the ever declining conviction rate for rape. We want to let the government know what we mean by security. As women we’ll refuse violence in every aspect of our lives, from home to street, from nation to the international arena. Let’s say no to violence - whether from fists, boots and knives, or from guns and fighter jets - and a resounding NO to nuclear weapons.

All the details are available on the Facebook page (you don’t need a Facebook account to view it).

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Asylum seeker mothers fight to be reunited with their children

By Laura Woodhouse | 6 February 2010, 16:53

Mothers in the London-based All African Women’s Group are campaigning for the right to be reunited with their children following the successful settlement of their asylum claims. Many of the women, most of whom have experienced rape and torture, felt they had no choice but to leave their children in order to keep them safe, but when they enter the UK they are not recognised as mothers with dependants:

We sometimes lose contact with children back home. Or we hear of them suffering without our protection —- living on the streets after caring relatives have died; taken by the military; or even turning to pick-pocketing and prostitution to survive and feed the younger ones.

We have hardly enough to feed ourselves but we do all we can to send money home for them. And if we don’t know where they are, we raise money to search for them. We do low-paid, illegal work or even sleep with men for money for them.

Currently, there is no guarantee that children left behind in their home countries will be granted asylum in the UK should their mothers win the right to stay here, and children who turn 18 while their parents’ claim is being processed (often a matter of years) have no right to family reunion in the UK.

The mothers have put together a list of demands:

· To be recognised as mothers, with dependent children

· That when the government grants amnesty to families with children here - their right to stay without having to establish a fear of persecution - that we, together with our children back home, must also have a right to family amnesty. Though we are divided, we are a family.

· Unconditional right to family reunion to everyone who wins the right to stay in the UK (whether under the refugee convention, humanitarian protection, human rights act, legacy process or other grounds).

· The right of children to join their mother even if they turned 18 before her asylum claim was settled.

You can show your support for these demands by signing the campaign petition. I’ll keep you updated with ways we can support the mothers, but in the meantime please contact the All African Women’s Group if you’d like to get involved:

Crossroads Women’s Centre
230a Kentish Town Road
London NW5 2AB

Tel: 020 7482 2496
E-mail: aawg02[at]googlemail[dot]com

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Rape Victims Blamed Again

By Philippa Willitts | 6 February 2010, 10:45

Virginia Wood has a really interesting post on her blog about yet another form of blaming women for being raped.

This time it isn’t what she was wearing, what she had drunk, or her fantasies, but is actually her own history of trauma and her lack of awareness of her surroundings.

Many women have a history of trauma, and I can’t imagine there are any who are constantly aware of everything that’s going on around her. Neither of these make it her own fault if she is raped.

Similarly, even if you are aware of your surroundings and don’t ‘freeze’ when attacked, that is not necessarily enough to prevent rape. Virginia gives certain examples,

Maybe it was a “blitz attack”, which of course by definition would mean she wouldn’t have known she was even being attacked until she was already down. Or maybe her rapist had a weapon: I have to ask—do men really believe that a martial artist can kick a gun out of an attacker’s hand like good ol’ Chuck Norris on the teevee? And then there’s the rapist who comes in through the bathroom window in the middle of the night and has you under his control before you even wake up. Now how you gonna karate-kick his ass outta bed with your legs all tangled up in the kivvers? And then there was the woman I knew whose attacker told her if she cooperated, he wouldn’t harm the children sleeping in the next room: All the martial arts training in the world won’t trump that one.
[…]

Let us note that one in every six women in the U.S. will be assaulted in her lifetime. Maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s frequent enough to suggest that we are not, in fact, in control of our own destinies—at least not when it comes to rape. Indeed, that kind of thinking sounds to me like a form of privilege: The not-raped can believe they did/do something to earn/deserve that status (“I kicked the shit out of him!” or “I’m always aware of my surroundings.” Always? Really?). That kind of thinking allows the not-raped to feel safe and secure in the fantasy that “it will never happen to me” and to look down on victim/survivors as people who screwed up somehow.

Victim-blaming, even in this guise of scientific research, is rife. Somebody, somewhere is missing the fact that the person to blame for a woman being raped is the rapist. Always.

When I was at sixth-form college, two police officers came in to give us a talk about safety. The boys were sent to one room with a male police officer, to receive a talk about driving safely. The girls were sent to another room with a woman officer, to receive a talk about rape prevention.

Quite why the girls didn’t need to be given the same advice about safe driving was bewildering, but the weirdest thing was it was the girls being told how to prevent rape rather than the boys.

In that talk, we were told that 2 out of 3 rapes could have been prevented (by the victim). How’s that for victim-blaming? Imagine how that felt for rape survivors in that room! Being told by a cop that really they should have been able to do something about it was humiliating and vicious.

And what’s more, 3 out of 3 rapes could have been prevented - BY THE RAPIST NOT RAPING THEM. That is where the blame needs to be laid. Every rape that ever occurs could have not happened, if the perpetrator chose not to do it.

That is the point. Men can stop rape. They have to.

(cross-posted at incurable hippie blog)

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New review - Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism

By Jess McCabe | 5 February 2010, 15:41

Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein’s book reclaims the road trip and tells a story about what young women across the US think about feminism and the issues facing them as women, says LonerGrrrl

When young feminist writer Nona Willis Aronowitz and her feminist photographer friend Emma Bee Bernstein met for brunch one day, they excitedly came upon the idea of taking a road trip across the United States in order to talk to other young women about what feminism means to them.

Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism is the result - a beautifully designed and exuberantly written journal of the two friends’ trip, and an insight into where young contemporary US feminism is at.

But don’t let the emphasis on the US put you off - the diversity of women’s opinions presented here are just as relevant to UK readers and the two authors’ account of the fun and freedom they experienced whilst out on the road, just as inspiring.

We set off in Chapter 1 from Chicago, and each chapter thereafter stops off in a different state, containing profiles and photos of the women they meet along the way, Nona and Emma’s personal reflections and striking photography of the landscape they drive through.

Click here to read on and comment

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