Practice democratic principles - part a

For the past several months I have been an avid reader of feministing.com, a feminist blogging site. I first discovered this website as part of taking the course Introduction to Women's Studies last fall. I had kind of forgotten about it until a friend was telling me about something that she had read on it. Over the summer, I added it to my quick links bar and I have been ultimately using it as a procrastination tool ever since, one that I find to be much more beneficial than facebook, for example. Feministing includes eight female bloggers who each post several times a week (or even several times a day) and a community page, where readers can post. In the past few months, the community blogs have become more and more interesting as more readers contribute. Many times the posts are simply pointing out the sexism present in typical news articles and advertising. Other times, they are praising gains that women have made in different areas or publicizing different feminist events. There is also discussion of a variety of issues. Oftentimes posts will be followed by dozens of comments.

Overall, I think that it has helped me to become much more critical of advertising and the slant that the media imparts. If this were to be my only source for news, yes, I would be receiving a quite biased view of reality; however, I think that this blog heightens my awareness in of possible biases in news stories and helps me to consider more careful my participation of certain cultural practices. Being critical of society is beneficial. People who blindly accept whatever they are told will not do well in life. Feministing is presenting a particular lens through which to be critical, but it happens to be a lens that I agree with (usually) and is important to me.

I will conclude with a final comment about feministing's logo, which may be seen by some as utterly ridiculous, counterproductive, or downright offensive. The creators of feministing sought to take a traditionally sexist, objectifying image and to alter it to represent their mission. I see this as being analogous to other feminists working to reclaim the terms "bitch" or "cunt." Though it may initially turn some people off, I think that the logo promotes conversation and ultimately does achieve the creators' goal of undermining "the sexist beauty standard she is supposed to represent" (http://www.feministing.com/faqs.html).