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»

Who, she notes, are mostly and sadly, women

(NEWSER) - Ashley Judd made a TV appearance last month looking larger than normal and with a puffier face, and the ensuing criticism of her appearance led her to write a scathing but eloquent response in the Daily Beast . Judd was on steroids due to an illness (leading some to assume her puffy face was the result of having had work done) and had gained a little weight over the winter (leading some to joke that her husband must be looking for a new woman). "The conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle," Judd writes. More»

Conservative 'godmother' slams liberals over contraception flap

(NEWSER) - Phyllis Schlafly's advice to young men: Don't date feminists, even though "some of them are pretty." Speaking to an all-male student crowd at The Citadel college in South Carolina this week, the so-called "godmother of conservatism" also blamed feminists for drumming up the recent contraception flap in US politics, The Post and Courier reports. "Contraception is not controversial," said the 87-year-old. "The issue is not access. It’s who’s going to pay for it.” 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»