Black, Successful, and (not so) Unhappy

It’s taken me a long time to talk about the now-infamous Helena Andrews profile on Black Girl Blogging, because it made me so upset. Not because I think there is truth to how lonely, sad, and unlovable black women are, but because I know that there isn’t much truth to it to begin with. What [...]

Say it to my face!: Anonymity, Sexism and Social Networks

I recently signed up to try the current social network craze, formpsring.me. Formspring takes Facebook’s Honesty Box a step further, allowing people to submit questions to ask you either anonymously or not. I’ve never been into the Honesty Box because I wasn’t that pressed to find out what people think about me; I come from [...]

Vogue Italia’s Black Barbie: A Step Forward or a Step Back?

This month, Vogue Italia is doing another take on last year’s successful Black Issue: a fashion spread featuring all Black Barbies. from Jezebel: Last year, Italian Vogue shook the fashion world with its “All Black issue, which sold out on many newsstands. This year, the July issue features Kristen McMenamy on the cover, but comes [...]

The Sotomayor Hearings and White Male Condescension

By the way: For those of you who missed the hearings or just want to see a good rundown of who’s who in all of this: Check out Adam Serwer’s post over at the American Prospect. Okay, I’ll admit it. I really did watch all 4 days of the Sotomayor hearings.  I didn’t watch so [...]

We Can Do Better

Today I am taking part in a blog-a-thon against hate. It’s been a week since the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Dr. Tiller was a target of many extreme pro-life groups and had feared for his life because, alongside health care and contraceptives, he also provided women and girls with a choice to have an [...]

Today is the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy invites teens to take a short, scenario-based quiz on their teen website. The quiz challenges teens to think about what they would do when sexual situations arise. This day also is  a great opportunity to think about solutions to not only teen pregnancy, but also to [...]

Wildin’ at WAM!

This weekend I had the privilege of attending the Women Action and the Media Conference sponsored by the Center for New Words in Boston. It was a great opportunity to hear about feminism from a global perspective, but more importantly, I just loved hearing the voices of some of my fellow women of color activists, [...]

Yes Means Yes @ Busboys and Poets

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a booksigning for Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & a World Without Rape, an anthology edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti of Feministing. What an incredibly powerful and liberating idea: creating a world where rape is rare and where women can truly own their [...]

Confessions of a Black Male Womanist

Please welcome my friend and fraternity brother James Hines to the blog. Today he addresses an issue I wrote about recently at change.org, which is the ways in which men–particularly Black men—embrace womanism and feminism. He also discusses the challenge of balancing womanism with not-so-womanist tendencies. (btw, you can find him on twitter @jimmysunshine). I’m [...]

Womanism 101

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending Feminism 2.0, a conference devoted to creating a bridge between feminism and social media. During one of my comments, I mentioned that I was a womanist political blogger. The one thing that kind of surprised me was the number of women–young and old, black and white–who had never [...]