Shout Out to Zahra Rahnavard

A big Fringe shout out to bad-a** mother-feminist Zahra Rahnavard, wife to Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main competition in Friday's Iranian election.

After Ahmadinejad questioned Dr. Rahnavard's credentials during a televised debate with her husband, the spunky academe called a 90-minute press conference where she proceeded to excoriate Ahmadinejad for lying, humiliating women, and debasing the revolution.

"Those who made up this case against me wanted to say it is a crime for women to study, to get two graduate degrees, to become an intellectual or an artist," she said.

In addition, she threatened to sue Ahmadinejad for slandering her academic qualifications if he did not publicly apologize to her within 24 hours.

Dr. Rahnavard put on her feminist hat to woo young and female voters promising that, if elected, her husband will do away with the morality police, end discrimination, ensure that women are treated like humans, not second class citizens, and appoint women to cabinet posts.

For a woman in Iran (or anyone in Iran), this is ballsy busty styff, but because she's a woman, Rahnavard's been able to indict Ahmadinejad more strongly than any of his male competitors.

You can read more about her at the London Times, the AP, The New York Times, The New Internationalist Blog, and Wikipedia.

Target Women

While surfing the internet in the name of procrastination, I stumbled upon my favorite new comedian: Sarah Haskins

She takes a look at the way advertising targets women, and the result is hilarious. I recommend you spend the next 45 minutes-4.5 hours watching you tube clips.

Is 30 Rock Feminist? Or, my eternal love for Liz Lemon.

Recently, in the recesses of the interwebs, people have been discussing the feminist merits of every nerdy girl's favorite show, 30 Rock.

A few weeks back Jonah Weiner, of Slate, called out 30 Rock for being anti-feminist and secretly conservative here. The Pursuit of Harpyness (one of my favorite blogs!)weighed in, and Bitch Magazine's blog joined in on the discussion, too. (There was also a Maxim article bemoaning Liz Lemon's low libido and the affects this will have on their female audience. Gasp! Horror! Bring back Sex & the City.)

The question at the heart of this discussion seems to be: Is Liz Lemon a feminist? Unfortunately, everyone is banging their heads against the wrong door. The real question we need to ask is this: Is 30 Rock a feminist show? This is a very significant difference. Liz Lemon doesn't need to be motivated by feminism, nor Tracy Jordon by civil rights for the show to be a smart critique and satire of gender and race relations.

Jonah Weiner (note: his last name is Weiner) writes:
Flawed people are funny, sure, but why does Liz Lemon have the traditionally gendered flaws she does? Elaine Benes and Murphy Brown, for example, were strong, feminist-friendly characters and funny, to boot.

She's a real woman. Woman have flaws. Some of those flaws are, gasp, "traditionally gendered". Weiner is giving preference to Jack Donaghey as the more-perfect character because his flaws are gendered male (endless ambition, stunted emotions). Liz Lemon's flaws are worse because they are "feminine" problems. (baby hungry, hungry hungry, in love with night cheese). The underlying argument here is that the only way to be a feminist is to be like a man. Masculinity is still better than femininity. Isn't this precisely what we're trying to undo?

I love Murphy Brown and Elaine; they are some of the great t.v. female characters of our time. But to privileged them for their "masculine" characteristics and "masculine" flaws is, to say the least, problematic.

Furthermore, to answer your question Weiner, it's SATIRE. Liz Lemon's gendered flaws are serving a purpose within the narrative of 30 Rock. Indeed, if you look at all the characters of 30 Rock (which some of these articles--I'm looking at you Weiner and Bitch--are hesitant to do), everyone is a caricature of their character/a stereotype. Tracy Jordon? Jenna Maroney? Frank? Toofer? Jack? Kenneth?

They are all absurd. They are all mocking the stereotypes of sitcoms before them, and of our cultural stereotypes. The satire of 30 Rock is about mocking the system from within. The danger with satire, of course, is that people, like Weiner, will miss the joke. You run the risk of people missing the tongue firmly planted in your cheek.

Is Liz Lemon a feminist? She'd say yes, but it doesn't matter. Is 30 Rock a feminist show? I say, while cuddled in my slanket, yes.

Fringe Contributors Rock: Art Edition

Here's the first of a series of semi-regular posts that will showcase the fine work of Fringe contributors past. We'll start out with the supa-fly visual art by some of Fringe's former artists:

• TM GRATKOWSKI has work up over at Art Slant, YouTube, and the Saatchi Gallery
• Feminism issue artist DAVID BARNES has a new website that highlights his work.
• PETER SCHWARTZ has some keen new photography over at Cella's Round Trip and Foliate Oak.
• ZEHRA KHAN, whose "Back Words" is pictured here, has been hard at work too -- we'll be posting some of her photos this week as we roll out more of the Fringe army's accomplishments.
• The funky and un-categorizable artist/audio collage maven MICHAEL K. MEYERS has a sweet homepage with a bunch of new publication credits.

And please remember: Fringe is still in the midst of a fundraising campaign for our web redesign. We're so close -- only $299 away from success. We need to raise the funds in the next 30, so please consider a $5 or $10 donation. It'd make a big difference to a small literary journal.

Poehler's latest venture

SNLer and Baby Mama, Amy Poehler, hosts an internet series called Smart Girls at the Party. Despite being sponsored by Barbie, the show focuses on talented pre-teen girls and celebrates how they "can succeed and make a difference simply by being themselves.” The segments showcase the girls’ hobbies and opinions in honest and entertaining interviews, giving their age group a voice not typically heard in today's media. Check out Ruby the feminist:

Women's Studies First on the Chopping Block in Hard Times

Women's Studies, African Studies, and other multicultural university departments and programs are first on the chopping block amidst steep budget cuts. Last year the USF WST department pulled a massive effort together to oppose merging all the "marginal" cultural departments into one department, and they were successful not because of the letters from famous feminists on their behalf, but because of student-lead protests. As an alumnus of USF and beneficiary of the strong WS department there (the largest in the south and the oldest in FL) I was proud and relieved to see its survival, and with the Obama presidency, I saw the pendulum swinging back toward the important work of small departments like these.

But I was breathing that sigh of relief too quickly. Jenn Moore posted this information on the Women's Studies list serve: "This year something similar [to USF], but arguably more dire, is happening at Florida Atlantic
University where the school is may be using the recession as an excuse to dissolve the Women's, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies department and its MA program."

The global gag rule has just been reversed, and the Lily Ledbetter Act has passed congress, but feminists are so, so not out of the hot water. I am not surprised that people against WS would use this time of financial crisis to get rid of progressive departments, but we can't let them win. It's true that budget cuts are very real and very big, but it's a repression of information and educational opportunity to systematically ax multicultural and gender/sexuality focused departments and programs of study, as Jessica on Feministing reports is the case in Georgia.

Post-feminists are using this opportunity to use economicspeak to argue that WS has outlived its usefulness, akin to arguments that American car companies deserve to fail if they aren't profitable. But to this charge, I answer that I've been involved with WS programs at three universities, and they had strong enrollment and an excellent record of service and community involvement, the professors strong records of publication and leaders in their fields. I know it's not just about WS, because for instance philosophy departments are also having to defend themselves, but what the fields most often in trouble have in common is that they are are seen as more "feminine" and generate less revenue, lead generally to lesser paying jobs, are in essence less "masculine," so while there are targeted attacks on race and gender studies, there are also attacks that consider themselves to be quantitative but succumb to patriarchal assumptions of value.

Hmpf.

Women Do What?

Most of us are aware that women are awesome and capable of just about anything. However, sometimes people seem to forget that while we are able to give birth, run countries, and cure diseases, we also do crazy things every once in a while, like drink beer and tell jokes. Weird.

Former Weekly Dig staffer Lissa Harris has noticed the slightly disturbing trend of the "look at women[insert completely inane and irrelevant activity here]!" headline and decided to create a blog dedicated to calling attention to these stories. Women Do! is just getting off the ground, so if you know a good story that meets this criterion: "The true Women Do story is not about medical issues, or gender discrimination, or anything properly related to women qua women. Oh no. It is about the shocking spectacle of women doing stuff that people generally do. At its heart is typically an earth-shattering revelation that some women, for instance, like to drive motor-cars or eat ice-cream.", be sure to send your tip to womendoblank[at]gmail.com.

Power and Pole Dancing in Malaysia

I lost my footing on the treadmill when I found the Asian Pole Summit ad in the Expat KL Magazine, which targets expats in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a Muslim country in Southeast Asia. My first thoughts as an American feminist were that the summit represents an unusual tolerance for female sexual expression, or maybe it’s not so different in this culture from belly dancing. Egyptian women once danced me under the table at a women-only party, but then I consider our proximity to the "lady sex" industry in Bangkok where erotic dance is more empowering to pimps than the dancers. Then I noticed the ad's Simone de Beauvoir quote, “one is not born a woman, one becomes one.”

The appropriation of this second wave feminist cornerstone made me ask “What is a woman--in Malaysia?" Beauvoir’s idea that “women” are a social construct threatens to crumble the Islamic gender norms, which circumscribe dress (even though the hijab is optional here), rights, and behavior. I let local women answer for themselves whether and how they feel might feel oppressed, but in any case the Asian Pole Summit’s audience lives in a society whose majority subscribes to strict gender norms and where men can take a two-hour flight and get all the pole dancing they want. In such a context, to tell women that they can empower themselves via a weekend of “killer workouts” and “exotic titillation” reduces the options for women to the virgin-whore dichotomy while doing nothing to challenge the patriarchal social structure wherein most married women have banking options that rival pre-1950s America.

This country is confused about women. Mini skirts and hijabs rival each other for majority so it feels to me that the only public woman seems to be a sexualized one, and therefore any choice a woman makes about her presentation is a response to the country’s secular-religious struggle. I wonder if female empowerment through the art of pole dancing is possible in a patriarchal society; as Andi Zeisler asks regarding do-me feminism, “If the standards and stereotypes by which girls and women are judged haven't changed, could it really be called empowerment at all?”

No doubt the Asian Pole Summit deserves kudos for its woman-centered approach and the apparent business savvy of its female leaders. The issue isn’t to pole dance or not to pole dance, but it’s a question of power and meaning. I'm not convinced that empowerment from sexy fitness will translate outside the studio's doors where a solitary woman, irregardless of race or class, is a target for robbery or abuse even in broad daylight (don’t be mislead by KL’s low statistics). Maybe the dance's power doesn't have to translate to be effective for an individual woman, but I think she might be best served learning a dance move that includes a few karate chops when she’s seduced a would-be attacker to his knees.

I like jazz AND I wear heels

By now, you've probably seen this commercial. In case you haven't, it's part of a new campaign to McDonald's new foray into serving espresso. It's called "Intellectuals." (Their quotation marks, not mine.)


(I'm sorry this is huge, and topped with a boston.com logo. It's the only place I could find the video)

Sure, this commercial is all about the commodification of a lifestyle. If you buy your coffee from Starbucks, you're one type of person, and if you buy your coffee from McDonald's then you're another, presumably more real, kind of person. While that's always frustrating, it's nothing new; it's the basis of almost every commercial out there.

But before we go further, let me confess: I am a devoted coffee shop girl. I don't even like coffee, but drinking tea & reading a book in a coffee shop is pretty high on my list of favorite-ways-to-pass-the-afternoon. So my initial reaction to this commercial is defensive; that's me they are making fun of.

But ego aside, this is a messed up commercial! From the other side of the fence, Starbucks is pretentious. So in criticizing Starbuck's, McDonald's is suggesting that everyone at Starbuck's would rather be some place more real, more down to earth. Some place like McDonald's.

And so, in this commercial, we see a series of confessions unfolding after the initial excitement of McDonald's coffee, starting with the exclamation, "We won't have to listen to jazz anymore!" The two women, additionally, have only been pretending to speak French and don't know where or what Paraguay is. Thank God for McDonald's; they can finally be themselves! All along they've just been faking it for Starbuck's, but now liberation in the form of a $1.99 latte.

And this idea that book-reading, coffee-shop going "Intellectuals" are some how just full of it is insulting. It's the same ideology behind Sarah Palin's condemnation of "those East coast states." (Read: those liberal, urban, intellectual hot beds of sin like NYC and Boston. But that's a post for another day.) As the title proclaims, it's anti-intellectual through and through.

But here's where we get to my favorite part. The concept that Starbucks-going intellectuals are phonies is reinforced, I think in a forced way, through gender stereotypes. The excitement over McDonald's coffee shops elicits the response: "I can wear heels again!" It doesn't matter that no one would ever dress up in their stilettos for McDonald's. Being an intellectual is completely opposite to being a traditionally feminine, high-heels wearing, sexy individual. Not only is this reinforcing normative gender roles (Woah, just took you back to that Women's Studies class from sophomore year, right?), it's suggesting that a) intellectual women are defying their true desire to be vapid, gossip reading airheads and b) being intellectual, if you're a woman, can't be sexy.

The exclamation at the end, "I just want to show my knees, you know?" is confusing and awkward. The source of her frustration, however is not that she was apparently was raised by Puritans, but that she spends her time at Starbucks wearing flats.

Recently McDonald's released round two of this campaign. You can watch it here. It actually has humorous moments, but is still severely messed up, and while there's lots to say about this commercial too, this post is probably long enough.

Drag Show: A feminist interpretation

A few weeks ago I had occasion to go to a drag show for a bachelorette party of a dear friend. In addition to being raunchy and a lot of fun, watching men clothed as lounge singers get dollar bills shoved in their bras by a ravening horde of various bachelorette partiers made me wonder why the joint was filled with women and exactly what enjoyment we were getting out of the event.

The stereotypical bachelor party includes strippers. Bachelorette parties are a newer tradition (thank you women's lib), and it seems that a drag show is for women what a strip bar is for men. Except instead of seeing men strip, we watched transvestites strip, straddle bachelorettes, and get dollar bills put into their skirts, bras and mouths as they shimmied to Cher, the Supremes and Beyonce.

The dancers' dazzling appearances, with elaborate costumes and oodles of makeup made me feel like I was watching the constructed ideal of femininity gyrate on stage, femininity divorced from inborn biology, so constructed that it seemed like the ideal to which airbrushed magazine vixens aspire. Several of the transwomen were hotter than I could ever be, even if I went on an all ice water diet and hit the gym 8 hours a day.

As a feminist, I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of stripping, but I'm also uncomfortable passing judgment on women who choose to strip or are forced into stripping to get by.

Yet here we were, stalwart bachelorette partiers, rehashing the power dynamics of a strip club. Were we fetishizing a power dynamic that on its face, seemed sexist? Were our faces frozen in masks of delight because these women were doing the things we would not dare do ourselves, for fear of being labelled "slut"? Or were we enjoying being on the other side of a sex for money power dynamic that has traditionally penalized women?

In short, was this bawdy fun or a meta-feminist experience? I'm still not sure.

Free Speech vs. the Jihadists

“It’s not my role to set off bombs — that’s ridiculous. I have a weapon. It’s to write. It’s to speak out. That’s my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb.”

So said Malika El Aroud, as quoted in a recent article in the New York Times. El Aroud is a Belgian woman using the internet to develop her "jihad" against the Western world, encouraging Muslim men to join the fight and women to support them in doing so.

If you could ignore the fact that she incites Muslim people to war against Western society, you might respect her for using her writing savvy to speak out. You might respect the fact that she is a woman unafraid to voice her opinion to a male-dominated society, and in fact tell those men what to do. IF you could ignore her message.

At Fringe Magazine, we are dedicated to publishing the words of writers outside of the mainstream, and we support all women in their efforts to voice their opinions and change the world. But as Suzanne Reisman noted in her blog, "how do we encourage women to share their views and experiences when we sometimes disagree with them? Who decides what is appropriate and what should be condemned?"

I believe there are times when words should be used as weapons - the words of abolitionists helped bring about the end of slavery; the words of feminists helped women get the vote in the U.S. But these "weapons" were used to include others in the conversation, not exterminate them.

Then again, maybe I would feel differently if I were on the other side of the argument. That's what freedom of speech does for us - we don't get to silence someone because we disagree with them so both sides maintain their rights to exist. But that's another thing that bothers me about Ms. El Aroud - she is on both sides of the argument. She purports conservative Muslim values (she said, "Women didn't have problems under the Taliban"), yet she is Belgian, and uses this Western side of her identity to her advantage - the very system she wishes to destroy protects her rights to speak her mind.

Is there ever a time when it's okay to preach the destruction of others? And is there ever a time when it's okay to stifle another person's right to speak?

Ah Spring, buds on trees and feminists getting hitched

A lot of kids here at Fringe are doing the nupital dance this season, and I thought of them when I read this wonderful article by Christie Church (it's been making the rounds: originally at girlistic magazine, here on alternet, but I first saw it on my truthout feed).

How familiar a script, and how refreshing a story! (but when they visit the jeweler, ooh: I read that, became physically angry, and spent a pent-up commute really, really hoping they took their business elsewhere).

So friends, headed to the altar in church or backyard or city hall, do it your own way and be proud.

Make Me A Match

Everything is Jane Austen these days. Or that’s what the BBC would like us to believe. Yes, I have been eagerly sucked into this romantic pleasure, turning on my TV every Sunday to watch Masterpiece Theater televise Austen’s novels. I am swept away by costumes, love triangles, and the saga of 19th century female survival. I can’t help it. I love this stuff regardless of my feminist sensibilities. The prospect of historical romance is alluring, and Austen’s a master at presenting a formula for True Love.

Some say, little has changed since Jane Austen’s day. In a behind the scenes interview, Masterpiece Theater compared Austen’s novels to Sex in the City. At first I was offended by the connection. I saw it as a degradation of Austen’s intelligence. But now, I can’t stop thinking of the Bravo reality show, Millionaire Matchmaker, where Patti Stanger, founder of the Millionaire's Club, matches wealthy men with their dream girls.

The sentiments expressed on Millionaire Matchmaker resonate freakishly with the courtship scene in Edwardian England. I urge you to go to the Bravo TV website and check out Patty’s commandments for dating. In them, women are told that on a first date they should be engaging, act like a lady, let the man lead conversation, and not get intimate. Have we progressed since Austen’s time?

We all know that in 19th century England, women’s hopes for marriage revolved around financial security. Love was often left to the lower classes—people who had little money to lose—or was an added bonus to an advantageous marriage. Luckily, many things have changed for women since Austen’s time, but clearly others have not, including a sentiment that wealth and marriage are keys to happiness.

Last week as I watched Pride and Prejudice, I moaned to my boyfriend, I want to be Elizabeth Bennet! He looked at me askance and said, really? Her life is so boring. And it’s true. The appeal, and danger, of Austen’s novels is that they paint a world where a woman’s goals are to end up happily secure in love and finances. And this formula is compelling, and should be looked at critically.

I certainly don’t want to be shut up in the house waiting for the next ball, or stuck submitting my profile to the likes of Patty Stanger. But I do want happiness. A balance must be achieved. I’m not quite willing to give up Jane Austen, but I do want to point out our continued social pressure (going strong over 200 years after Austen’s death) to “marry well.”

So here’s to Valentines Day, romance novels, and genuine relationships. We don’t need a millionaire matchmaker, or wealthy uncle to introduce us to Mr. or Ms. right. Let's be our intelligent selves. I think Austen would approve.

Girls, girls girls!

As Webmistress, I have been working hard to pull together Fringe's much-anticipated Ethnos issue (which will go live March 1). Though I had read each piece separately, it wasn't until I set the contributor page for the issue that I noticed we've got an all-female contributor list this time around.

When I made the realization, I was initially elated. Here I am, an editor at a magazine run by women, and I brag often about how many female authors we have featured over the past few years. I am proud that we have created a comfortable environment for work from all types of authors, be they female, male, transgender, non-white, non-traditional, or any other adjective you can muster.

But in spite of myself, I felt somehow self-conscious about having a male-free issue.

As I laid in bed last night with my now-usual pregnancy insomnia, I tried to reason with myself. The honest truth is that I felt that publishing all women would make men feel excluded. Why did this bother me? Afterall, women have often been excluded! But still, isn't our magazine trying to fight against the exclusion of anyone? So musn't we include the white male as well?

But then I intellectualized a bit. We did not set out to choose an all-female cast for this issue. Each genre editor chose the piece she thought worked best with the goal of the magazine and the goal of the theme issue. These contributors just happened to be women. Nothing to be self-conscious of there. And so I made myself feel better. And I realized that even I, a super feminist to the nth degree, cannot fully escape some ingrained patriarchal dictates. All I can do is reason with them, struggle with them, be conscious of them, and continue to fight against them.

And now you've heard my confession, so the circle is complete.

Yours,
Julia (Who hopes you'll still think she's a good feminist. Do you?)

Guyliner

Here it is ladies, evidence of a drastic advance in gender equality...guyliner.

Before you know it, we'll be making 100 cents on the dollar.

Breaking News: Man Finally Put In Charge Of Struggling Feminist Movement

WASHINGTON—After decades spent battling gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace, the feminist movement underwent a high-level shake-up last month, when 53-year-old management consultant Peter "Buck" McGowan took over as new chief of the worldwide initiative for women's rights. . . .

"All the feminist movement needed to do was bring on someone who had the balls to do something about this glass ceiling business," said McGowan, who quickly closed the 23.5 percent gender wage gap by "making a few calls to the big boys upstairs."

...more at, you guessed it, The Onion. Via WomPo, the women's poetry listserv, which is well worth checking out itself.

Taking a Bite Out of Rape

South African Sonette Ehlers is taking women's defense in a new direction - vaginally. The former medical technician has developed Rapex, a version of the female condom that is beefed up with teeth to stop would be rapists, or at least to slow them down enough for intended victims to get away. My first thought: won't the rapists be angrier, and find some other way to hurt these women? After all, it causes no lasting damage - seems like it'll be more likely to piss them off. And as Kira Cochran of the Guardian points out, "it places the onus for stopping rape not on the perpetrators, but on women - entirely the wrong way around. It implies that rape is an inevitable part of human culture and that women need to adapt accordingly." Some have even claimed that using the device is just an act of vengeance toward the rapists.

I'm sorry, say that again? Maybe it's just an old eye-for-an-eye judgment on my part, but I think rapists deserve much worse than a few pricks that aren't permanent (excuse the pun). The fact is rape is all too common in South Africa (and many other places, too) - perhaps it will anger the would-be rapists, but it seems better to have some chance of getting away than none at all. Is it just a bandaid slapped on a larger problem? Of course it is, but someone please explain to me how we ought to go about changing the way a rapist's brain works so we can stop him from hurting women. And then make sure to change all rapists' brains. I think it's more empowering for women to have some option of defense.

And I think the teeth should be bigger.

What is Feminism?

What is Feminism? Can Christians be Feminists? Can Conservatives? Can “Pro-Lifers?” Non-white women have often been marginalized within feminist discourse; poor women are nearly non-existent as valiant voices. Also, many issues have divided feminists like sex work or lesbian rights. About five years ago, I listened attentively with my Intro to Women’s Studies class as Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, authors of Manifesta and leaders within Third Wave Feminism, preached to the choir at a neighboring university. Our class was trying to define feminism (so cliché right). We got as far as “feminism is the idea that women are equal to men and thus should be allocated equal rights and opportunities.” But, how do we define “woman?” Feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty importantly questions the overgeneralization of women’s experiences and the emphasis of placing gender at the center of oppression without complicating it with race and class. While working at a feminist magazine where all of the content was written by and for girls, I came across the same question when an intersex person sent in a piece for publication. What is a woman?

The existence of “pro-life” people who claim to be feminists, also begs the question of what is a feminist and what is a woman. I just had to ask Baumgardner and Richards: can you be “pro-life” and a feminist? Surprisingly, their answer that day was explicitly yes! They cited a list of ways “pro-life” and “pro-choice” people could work together to make a change in our world, like making education and contraceptives available. But, because the idea of personhood is the root conflict for “pro-life” and “pro-choice” people, a definition of feminism remains in limbo. In an age where technology proliferates and ideas over what is “natural” are debated, who decides what defines a person? Or more precisely, who has the power to decide?

Panties for peace

If you've already told the Postal Regulatory Commission you won't stand for a sellout to big media (and if you haven't yet, there's still time to weigh in before their hearings on Tuesday, October 30), perhaps you're feeling a little bored, a little blue.

Happily, there's a cure for such listlessness, and it even involves the mail. You can support the people of Burma by sending your panties to the SPDC! Dunno about you, but the image of hundreds of pairs of panties, lacy, frilly, variegated, winging their way through the postal system carefully packaged in envelopes and boxes, destined to freak out officials worldwide, just puts a smile on my face.

Andrew Buncombe writes in the Independent:

Activists seeking to pressure the Burmese regime are targeting the superstitions of its senior generals by asking for people around the world to send women's underwear to the junta.

In what may be a first, campaigners based in Thailand have called for supporters to "post, deliver or fling" the underwear to their nearest Burmese embassy. They believe the senior members of the junta – some known to be deeply superstitious – could be made to believe they will lose their authority should they come into contact with the lingerie.

"The Burma military regime is not only brutal but very superstitious. They believe that contact with a woman's panties or sarong can rob them of their power," says the website of the Lanna Action for Burma group, based in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. The group says that Burmese embassies have already received underwear from people in Thailand, Australia, Singapore and the UK.

Lanna Action for Burma kicked off this campaign on October 16. You can find the nearest SPDC embassy here. Read more about ongoing protest efforts here. Happy panty-flinging!

Ms. Magazine Turns 35

I have a love/hate relationship with anniversary issues, particularly when they are celebrated in quarterly ones like Ms. Magazine. The issue quickly diverts from present day feminist politics to a historic trajectory of where we’ve come and where the heck we’re going. A who’s who list is cultivated to show the breadth of feminist leaders—which inevitably falls short.

But, I dutifully read through my Fall 2007 issue of Ms., feeling a twinge of guilt when I remember how I literally squealed when the last issue of Bitch hit my door, because surely I have much to learn from women who raised female wages, exposed the ad industry, deconstructed the definition of marriage, put more women in politics, title IX—the list is endless. (My favorite fun fact from the issue compares Pat Summitt’s salary in 1974, which was $8,900, to 2004, when she became the first collegiate women’s coach to be paid over $1 million).

One group of thankful voices in the issue comes from the Girls Editorial Board, editors ages 8-14 of New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams. My faith in feminism is further restored. New Moon is an ad free publication, where 80% of the content is written by girl readers. Now, I know Fringe readers are more likely to pick up a copy of The New Yorker rather than New Moon but how inspiring it is to see our youngest cohorts have a place where one is “Free to Be…You and Me.” I’m still a proud reader of New Moon even though I’m much older than 14 and not because I’m nostalgic for my youth (trust me, those weren’t my best years). I continue to read feminist publications because I want you and me to be free.