Virtual Oases
For those of us not attending the Sunstone Symposium this weekend, here’s some supplemental reading to keep you occupied:
- Are you a little mystified at the “Women against Feminism” movement, and its subsequent parody movements? The Deseret News writes, “Is Feminism Misunderstood?” and the Washington Post chimes in with “Is this what an anti-feminist movement looks like?” to explain the gist of the movement, while the Daily Beast takes a more philosophical stance with: “You don’t hate Feminism. You just don’t understand it.” My personal favorite? Jane Austen Characters.
- “Watch your tone!” Melissa Y at Segullah gives us a grammatical run down about How, What and Why. There’s also this exceptional post by our Evangelical Feminist sister, Rachel Held Evans “On Being Divisive”. If you only have time to read one thing from this list, click over to Rachel’s essay!
- Keeping up with Kate Kelly: you can listen to this podcast to hear a recent interview, as well as read her appeal materials published on the OW website.
- Paul Barker examines stigma and status quo with “No Soup for you! Why Women Can’t have the Priesthood”
- A heartfelt statement of faith and testimony by Margaret Blair Young.
- And an interesting interview with the author of “The Polygamous Wives Writing Club” Has anyone read this book yet?
Any ideas sparking for a broader conversation? Any other articles you’d recommend? Add your insights in the comments!
Thanks. You’re awesome!
I loved the Segullah post, as well as some of the others. Thank you for sharing.
This is an amazing rundown of highlights from the last week or two. Thank you for doing this, Violadiva!
Thanks for all the pointers, Violadiva! I particularly loved the post by Rachel Held Evans. It’s striking how similar the responses she gets (“don’t air dirty laundry before the world,” “you’re hurting our witnessing efforts,” “this is a minor issue”) are to the responses Mormon feminists get when bringing up feminist issues.
Great collection of interesting stuff.
I am getting very tired of the polarization around feminism resulting in the oft-repeated assumption that if someone doesn’t support feminism, they are ignorant about it. While that is true in some cases, a lot of us who choose not to identify as feminist have actually been involved with feminist organizations, work with them on issues of common interests, and have studied the theory etc.
We just don’t agree with it.
Toward the end of her life, I heard interviews with Betty Friedan in which she lamented the directions that feminism was taking. Last year I had the chance to meet Stephanie Coontz, author of the brilliant The Way We Never Were. She said that she was no longer identifying as a feminist because of the baggage involved and was focusing more on the issues themselves.
So no, non-feminists are all ignorant or less enlightened.