Dearest readers,

As you probably know, True/Slant will be undergoing some changes, and many of the bloggers– myself and my brother included– will no longer be writing here.  I’ll miss T/S a lot.  I hope to freelance with a couple of different places, but my temporary home will be here.  And please follow me on Twitter and friend me on Facebook if you want updates for other things, like performances I’m doing in New York City.

Thanks to Lewis Dvorkin for making a place like True/Slant and for being so welcoming to writers with different perspectives.  Thanks to Coates Bateman and Michael Roston for always being helpful and sending me shit to write about.  Thanks especially to Chloe Angyal for always sending me amazing feminist stories.

And thank you, most of all, to you readers.  I’ve made a surprising amount of enemies in my short tenure here at T/S– or, more accurately, feminism already has it’s enemies, and they found me.  And through it, the support of my readers has been incredible.  To the people who disagreed with me– thanks for reading and sharing your ideas.  I hope we both learned from each other.  To the people who called me names– thanks for the traffic!  And all the amazing friends and people I don’t know who read what I wrote, shared their thoughts, and reposted me– I cannot thank you enough.  I learned so much from this experience, and all of the comments I ever got helped make me a better writer.  Even the ones that called me a cunt.  Maybe.

I was 18 when I first started learning about feminism, gender equality, and queer theory.  It completely changed my life.  With this blog, my goal was to show that this stuff can be fun.  Thinking critically about gender and sexuality is something we should be doing every minute of every day– but that’s okay, because it’s fun.  Pop culture, comedy, music, current events– all these things can be made richer by looking at them through a feminist lens.  I also hope I’ve done justice to illustrating that what feminism means to me– and what it means to a lot of people– is not Women Good Men Bad, but a belief in equality for everyone, regardless of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability… the list goes on.

Please follow me on Facebook and Twitter so you’ll know when and where I’ll be writing next.  In the meantime, watch this hilarious video from my friend, comedian Jared Logan, on advertisements and feminism.  I can’t embedd it, but it’s only a minute, and it’s perfect.  Watch it.  And best wishes.

Dan Savage, sex advice guru and solver of all problems, has long been an advocate for the pitfalls of monogamy.  From his point of view, showing love and commitment to someone is choosing not to fuck other people– but the desire to fuck other people doesn’t go away.  John Edwards, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Bill Clinton, and literally millions of other people provide ample evidence that monogamy is not an easy thing for many people, even people with a lot at stake.  So Savage was pretty excited about a book that just came out called Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. He had one of the authors, Christopher Ryan, on his podcast last week to talk about the origins of the sacredness of monogamy. continue »

In a surprising twist of fate, the 10th amendment– the one that protects states’ rights, and is a big fav of right wingers and teabaggers– is being implemented to protect the rights of same sex citizens in Massachusetts.  Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, was all like: how can DOMA (the Defense of Marriage act, which prevents same-sex marriages from being recognized by the federal government) be used to deny civil rights to the people of Massachusetts?  And this judge was all like: good question.

Really, really good question.  Turns out, it’s unconstitutional. continue »

Two of them aren't even wearing shirts!

Geena Davis, an actress who I must admit I know very little about, has recently conducted a study on representations of women and girls in popular media– specifically children’s movies and shows.  The results are depressing, if not surprising.

In G Rated films (the top 101 grossing films from 1990-2005– not sure why CNN just put out this info now)

• Fewer than 1 out of 3 (28%) of the speaking characters are female– both animated and live action
• More than 4 out of 5 (83%) of narrators are male
• 85.5% of the characters are white, 4.8% are black, 9.7% are “other continue »

There’s been a lot of interesting buzz about women in comedy lately.  After Olivia Munn made her debut as the new female correspondent on the Daily Show, the feminist response was a mixed bag.  Jezebel had a fantastically informative piece about the “women problem” over at the Daily Show.  The piece doesn’t lay down a harsh judgment on Munn herself, just on the historical lack of of female writers and correspondents (and the dismissive treatment thereof) on the show.  Double X responded with a critique of Munn, who has a bit where she stuffs phallic objects in her mouth, among other things.  Broadsheet ruminated on the larger problem of women in comedy– the whole “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect of being either too hot, or talented and not hot, or talented and hot, and basically no matter what, someone is going to judge you for it.  continue »