Things a Feminist Can Still Do

Remember, she's a comedian—not a professional feminist

(NEWSER) - As the laws of gravity have taught us, the Tina Fey backlash was inevitable—Rebecca Traister actually expected it when the comedian started “appearing on every magazine cover shy of Horse & Hound”—and it’s now, quite suddenly, here in full force. But her pack of haters isn't composed of cynics: It's made of women. Feminists are angry, particularly in light of her recent “Brownie Husband” sketch on SNL, that Fey isn’t a good enough feminist icon…but they’re forgetting that she never purported to be anything of the sort. More»

(NEWSER) - For Katie Roiphe, the connection with her newborn child is like an “addiction," she writes on DoubleX. "There is an opium-den quality to maternity leave. The high of a love that obliterates everything.” Why, then, can’t feminists accept that motherhood is more than a “vocation?” Sure, “the act of caring for a baby is demanding, and arduous, of course, but it is wilder and more narcotic than any kind of work I have ever done.” More»

Some find the term 'gross,' but Wilson Diehl needed to hear it

(NEWSER) - Since becoming a mom, Wilson Diehl had “internalized the wildly sexist notion that moms are unsexy,” she writes on Salon . “Maybe I could be a hot 35-year-old married lady, but a hot 35-year-old married mom?” But on a ladies’ weekend in Chicago with friends, Diehl found herself “dressed in not-too-badly-baby-stained clothing, drinking hot toddies and engaging in an ever-so-slight flirtation” with two college guys. When her friends whipped out the baby photos, Diehl thought it might be time to leave the guys alone so they could hit on younger women—but when she suggested doing so, one was quick to protest, “No way, man! You all are MILFs!” More»

And they're 'annoying,' writes Kathleen Parker

(NEWSER) - There’s a new type of feminist taking Washington by storm, though these women would never stoop to the level of actually calling themselves feminists. These are the “gun-toting, breast-feeding” supermoms who “condemn government for being a ‘nanny’ and tell men to man up,” all while being considered “hotties” by “the men who stand by admiringly, watching their women show those libs a thing or two about being a ‘hard-core woman,’” writes Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post . “We needn't name the queen of this emerging bevy of can-dos.” More»

Says Victoria Jackson, former SNL cast member

(NEWSER) - Victoria Jackson—you might remember her from her time on Saturday Night Live —declares Sarah Palin "the perfect feminist" in a column on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood . Palin "is beautiful, thin, even athletic, successful, happily married, a good mother and a grandmother. She’s got it all—everything those Suffragettes were fighting for back in 1920. Not only can she vote, she got voted for! And, she was a great Governor," Jackson writes. More»