Menstuff® has compiled information and books on the issue
of Feminism.
The New Look of Feminism
A Directory of
Feminism
Defining
misogyny 
Pain
and the misprescribed cure
Homosociality,
pro-feminism, and the support of other men
Andrea
Dworkin Dies
“The Feminine
Mistake”
"Much of women's art worldwide is often interpreted as a criticism of patriarchal practices in "developing countries" - a term now considered politically incorrect - when, in fact, 'many of these countries experienced women's movements long before the United States, along with their independence movements.'
"For many women artists, it has been a struggle to find the right balance between the traditions and cultures of their birthplaces and the esthetics and politics of the mainstream contemporary art world. Many are addressing personal experiences or making work directly reflecting the conditions of women in their homelands. Yet, wary of falling into didactic categories, few want to be labeled "feminist," although they often show the influence of such wide-ranging feminist artists as Carolee Schneemann, Miriam Schapiro, Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman.
"I am working with these contradictions," says Egyptian-born artists Ghada Amer. She emerged in the mid-1990s with subtle and lyrical works portraying homemakers or porn stars (appropriated from popular magazines) stitched across the surfaces of raw canvases. Her Private Rooms (1998), displayed excerpts from the Qur'an, detailing prohibitions for women. In the canvas Red Diagonals (2000), images of women in various sexual positions are loosely embroidered across bright splashes of color. Despite the obvious parallels to works by other American women artists, such as Sue Williams and Elaine Reicheck, Amer distances herself from didactic examples of feminist art.
"I started with the proposition that feminism had failed, but it was a positive failure, meaning there were still things to work on," says Amer. She moved to New York in 1994. Ironically, she found the French theoretical approach to feminism to be as stifling as the growing Islamic fanaticism back home in Egypt, and she struggled for a way of expressing this contradiction in her art. She discovered the solution when in 1988 she stumbled upon a sewing magazine. "It was a special issue for Muslim women, sort of Vogue for the veiled woman," she recalls. "I didn't want to address the issue of the veil like, 'Oh, those poor women, they need help,' as if in the West, we had all this freedom. I had to find a way to address extremism - both feminism and religious fanaticism and their parallel problems with the body and its relationship with seduction."
Another artist who juxtaposes fabric and sewing with issues of the body is Kim Sooja, 44, now based in New York after living most of her life in Seoul. Her early work resembles 1970s feminist performance art. A Needle Woman consists of eight video monitors, each showing Kim standing on a street corner in a different locale - Cairo, Mexico City, Lagos, London, Bali, Shanghai, Tokyo and New York - her back to the camera, remaining absolutely still and unfazed as people variously shove, rob or simply ignore her. Her work, once regarded as explicitly feminist, now appears to bear on a broad range of issues, not least, the distinctions between foreign and familiar - how to retain a distinct ethnic identity in the midst of international travel and modernization.
"Feminism is part of my nature as a woman artist, but I never wanted this to be my only intention," says Kim. "My work is more about globalism, which is really all about locality, because keeping a specific identity, a local identity, is becoming a big issues as the world increasingly becomes bland, having no character at all, no mystery."
"There are some very important women artists addressing the issues of being female within their culture," observes Dana Friis-Hansen, chief curator at the Austin Museum of Art. "I challenge the idea of 'global feminism' and would say that there are 'feminisms' which artists are tapping into depending on personal and local situations." To underscore his point, he draws attention to the feminist art movements in Japan and to the artists who eventually became major international stars, such as Yoko Ono and Yayoi Kusama. More recently, Miwa Yanagi and Almine Rech, who has been making an impact with her digital "elevator girls" surrealistic views of the young, omnipresent hostesses in Tokyo's shopping malls. But, notes Friis-Hansen, the artists he met while working in Japan in the early 1990s would have been shocked to be called feminist - that is, except for Yoko Shimada, who, he says, "has made work addressing the role of women in Japan during World War II, akin to Rosie the Riveter in the U.S., and more recent work about the prostitutes who served U.S. servicemen after the war."
By contrast, Berni Searle from South Africa finds her identity as a black woman inescapable. "I see my own body, so it is inextricably tied to issues of gender, but it is also connected to race and class," says Searle, who acknowledges the influence of her work of American artists such as Lorna Simpson and Pat Ward Williams. For her "Colour Me" series, Searle created large-scale photographs and video installations of her body stained with spices and ink. In the video Snow White, the artist sits under a drizzle of flour until she is entirely covered, then scoops up the white powder and kneads it into a loaf of bread, a performance that can be read either as a meditation on the subjugation of women or as an ironic comment on the current politics of reconciliation in South Africa, which asks its citizens to blithely build a future out of the ashes of apartheid. Searle, who continues to live and work in Cape Town, is acutely aware that audiences in Europe and the United States may find her image exotic. "Using my body is a tricky thing to do because it can reinforce stereotypes," she says, explaining that to ward off simple voyeurism she intentionally inserts an element of confrontation into her self-portrait.
"Searle is dealing with issues relating to women, race, color, language, and specific questions about South Africa's recent history," says Oguibe, a Nigerian-born curator and artist living in New York. He points out that while Searle's work is esthetically beautiful, it is also an entry into the complex history of Africa and other regions. For example, he explains, being "whited-out," as enacted in Snow White, refers to the official policy of "erasing" indigenous populations in countries such as Australia and Tasmania. The use of nudity, which Western viewers tend to associate with pornography, actually goes back to the anti colonialist demonstrations in Eastern Nigeria in 1929, in which crowds of naked women took to the streets in protest, thereby bringing down the British poll tax.
Nudity is a formidable issue for Indonesian performance artist Arahmaiani, 40, whose works have generated hostility on the part of both Islamic community leaders and political authorities. Her performances and installations examine the violence against women in her own culture as well as in much of the rest of the world, but she has encountered the most resistance in her home country. In 1983, she was sent to jail for a month for drawing pictures of tanks on the street, a creative gesture not appreciated by the Suharto dictatorship. "After I had this trouble, I was kicked out of school and I went to live on the street," she recalls. "It gave me a really clear picture about the society in which I live, especially for women and the weak." But she never backed off from making controversial art projects. In her 1994 color exhibition, "Sex, Religion and Coca-Cola," Muslim viewers in Jakarta objected to her work Etalase, a vitrine in which the Qur'an was displayed beside other international icons ranging from a Coca-Cola bottle to a plastic Buddha. In her performance Dayang Sumbi Refuses Status Quo (1999), the artist slowly undressed and then asked the audience to write words and draw on her body. Instead, some viewers charged the stage and tried to get her to put her clothes back on.
Despite their diversity, these artists have all succeeded in overcoming some formidable obstacles - religious constraints, patriarchal educational systems, isolation from contemporary-art centers, and the disapproval of family members. Nevertheless, "the issues that feminism is concerned with - the representation of women and recognition of women's contribution to culture - are very important to keep on the agenda," says Oguibe, who is concerned that the sudden chicness of "globalism" will sweep other important issues from view. "It is the proverbial Sisyphean task," he says, "but you have to keep at it, because if you let go, it rolls back to the bottom of the hill."
Source: ARTnews, 9/01 www.artnewsonlinne.com
Feminist is self-defined. You do not have to have been with a group or organization. Write as much as needed. Some informal, personal story of a feminist event important in your life is welcomed. If you can’t remember specific dates, don’t let that stop you from filling this out. The Most Important Section is Your Contributions - Questoin 19! Please respond promptly to ensure your inclusion. Just fill out this form and e-mail it to the address below. It's easy!
First Name
Middle Name
Last Name
Maiden Name (If pertinant)
Your name from 1963 - 1975:
Date of Birth: Month/Day/Year
Place of Birth City, State:
Spouse or Partner (optional): Name
Children’s Name(s):
Education:
Occupation:
Race (optional):
Religion (optional):
The following 5 information questions are for contact purposes only: not for publication in the directory.
Current address: (Street, City, State: ZIP) List all current
addresses
Home phone number: (1-XXX-) XXX-XXXX
Office phone number: (1-XXX-) XXX-XXXX
Fax number: (1-XXX-) XXX-XXXX
E-mail address:
What year did you enter the Women’s Movement? (Entry date must be 1975 or earlier to qualify for inclusion in this Directory. If you meet this requirement, please include your contributions up to the present.)
The primary geographical location(s) where most of your participation took place:
City, State:
Please check only the boxes below that reflect your primary contributions for which you are providing supporting details in question the next question
Please share your mosst significant contributions to the women's movement below. Type or print your summary in chronological order. Include feminist groups/organizations you founded or worked with, offices held, committees served on, key actions and other important events. Give locations, dates, purpose and results of specific actions whenever possible. State your role in these actions.
Please list your feminist writings, if any. Include book titles, anthologies, magazines, journals and newspapers with names, dates and your role in these publications (writer, editor, author, coauthor, contributor, publisher, production, etc.
If you were ever active in another political movement, which one(s)? (civil rights, peace, environmental, labor, etc.) Please share specifics.
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Please help us make this directory as complete as possible. List names, addresses and phone numbers of others who should be included in this Directory. (Name, Address, City, State, Telephone)
Please provide information on any dead feminist leaders who should be in the directory to ensure their place in history. Include dates of birth and death, major contributions and other information called for in this questionnaire that you can provide. I hereby give non-exclusive rights for use of the above information in the The Women’s Movement: Pioneers of the Second Wave 1963-1975 directory and other Veteran Feminists of America projects.
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Mail to: Barbara Love, Editor, 82 Deer Hill Ave., Danbury, CT
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The Juggle: What prompted you to write this book?
Ms. Bennetts: The media was covering this [opt-out] phenomenon like it was a lifestyle choice. No one was talking about the economic consequences, how hard it was if they try to get back in. There’s gender bias, age bias, bias against mothers, bias against returning workers. I felt as if women were being sold a bill of goods.
The Juggle: In our prior posts, some readers said that financial planning and life insurance could protect wives in the case of a spouse’s death, illness or a divorce. Do you agree?
Ms. Bennetts: Women can plan for that, so why don’t they? Often, it will turn out that they have like four years of life insurance to live on. They are shocked when I say in my speeches that the average age of widowhood in the U.S. is 55. [With divorce], people say, oh just hire a good divorce lawyer . . . if you have been out of the workforce and your husband cuts off your credit cards and you can’t pay for groceries, you can’t hire a good divorce lawyer.
The Juggle: Do you think your book is actually reaching stay-at-home moms, or is the title a turn-off?
Ms. Bennetts: I have had people call me at home every day for the last five months, including stay-at-home moms, saying they’ve read the book . . . If people are not willing to look at information assembled to help them, that kind of denial, to me, indicates a high level of fear.
The Juggle: Why are people angry about this book?
Ms. Bennetts: There is a small, but highly vocal group of affluent stay-at-home moms who are very angry if you question their choice. I’m not criticizing or saying their choices are unworthy, I’m just saying it has worked out badly for many women who do this.
The Juggle: You just got back from a women’s conference in Malaysia. What are women concerned about there?
Ms. Bennetts: The thing that really struck me, contrary to my expectations, was that the parallels between women in Malaysia and women in America were overwhelming . . .Their stories were often almost in the same words I heard from women in Connecticut or Chicago or Indiana, because [that area] has become quite prosperous and the elites are affluent, a lot of women have the same options, so women who have promising careers are quitting to stay home with their kids. And they say, ‘I have four kids under age of 10, my husband left me, I have no way to support myself.’
The Juggle: Managing both kids and a career can be tough. Any advice for the long haul?
Ms. Bennetts: Working mothers, by the time they are in
their 40s or 50s, they are happy campers. They realize their kids are
growing up fine, their careers are thriving. They have economic
independence, whether or not they are married and whether or not
their husbands are employed or healthy.
Source: blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2007/08/17/leslie-bennetts-on-the-reaction-to-the-feminine-mistake/?mod=sphere_ts
One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man. - Marlo Thomas
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