Feminist Friday Summer Wrap-Up

This week we wrap up our longest run of Feminist Friday discussions so far. We’ve had discussions for eleven consecutive weeks on nine blogs, and this project is still going strong. We’re planning another, shorter run for later in the year.

L.M.’s post from the Lobster Dance, “Ask a Bisexual: Can Women and Men Ever Just Be Friends,” was recently published at Feministe. Luther Siler of Infinite Free time joined us for this round and hosted an awesome discussion on teaching girls as a guy. We have a page at Part Time Monster to archive our discussion posts from here on out, and Diana’s announced that she plans to make feminist content a regular staple at the Monster on Fridays.

I’ve missed a lot of the chats this run, and I’ve not had time promote them the way I did during 2014 and in the spring. Yet both attendance and the discussions have been good. All this is bodes well for the health of this project.

It’s amazing all this started as a conversation between three bloggers in 2013. You can read the backstory in my very first discussion post. These discussions have meant a lot to me, personally. They’ve not only made me a lot of friends, they’ve made me more sensitive to my own privilege, and they’ve improved my advocacy skills.

I’m happy with what we’ve accomplished — and we’ve accomplished a lot. We’ve produced 42 posts so far. We’ve collected last year’s into an essay collection which is available for free on Smashwords. Sabina wrote a follow-up to one of her discussion posts that ended up being Freshly Pressed.

I’m hoping we can keep it going. I’d like to continue finding new bloggers to host these posts and to join in the chats. I’m looking forward to this year’s collection. Seems like these discussions are shaping up to be an ongoing thing, and they’ve proven they can survive without the sort of micromanagement I did during the first year. So, uber-planner that I am, I almost tossed out a couple of project-related issues today.

Decided to do something fun instead, and save the project-y stuff for another day. I have three questions for you. Respond to any, all, or whatever combination suits you.

1. What’s your favorite post this project has produced so far?
2. What’s the most memorable discussion thread?
3. What topics do you think we should discuss in the next series of these?

If you’re just joining us, scan a few of the posts and threads from Part Time Monster’s Feminist Friday page and chime in if you like. I’m interested to know what grabs people. And feel free to answer item #3 even if this is the first you’ve heard of us.

#FEMINISTFRIDAY: On Teaching Girls, As a Guy

A very thoughtful post about teaching math and science to an all-girls class from Luther here. Comments on this thread are disabled to encourage discussion on the original post.

Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

Christa McAuliffe.

“You’re teaching an all-girls’ class?  I’m not sure I feel like that’s right.”

I heard that for the first time… wow, was it four years ago?  Probably.  My homeroom was all girls, and my afternoon class was a mixed group.  I did not reply the number of girls in my classroom doesn’t actually make me more likely to be a sex criminal, ma’am, which was probably the right answer– I am either too much of a degenerate to teach middle school students or I am not, and the composition of my classes doesn’t actually have much of an effect on that– but I don’t remember what I actually said to that mom.  Probably something along the lines of We’ll be fine, and then an abrupt ending of the conversation, because I don’t really like wasting my time with people who blithely suggest that I might be a sex…

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Some Things . . . Mostly Feminist Things

We’re doing our Feminist Friday thing at Infinite Free Time this week, and I’ll wrap up the summer run here a week from Friday. And speaking of feminism . . .

Comparative Geeks turned me on to this video yesterday. It’s part one of six, and as a person who engages regularly in some feminist chatter on the internet, I find it fascinating. It’s so good I watched the whole series, and too good not to share. I may have things to say about it at some point. I’m pondering.

Also. If you happen to remember the Manic Pixie Dream Girl discussion we had in February at Victim to Charm — the one that inspired a four-part series on trolling behavior from me. Well. That post has been getting some attention lately. You should bop over there and take a look at the sharing counts on the Facebook and Twitter buttons in the post footer. And give it a read while you’re there 😉

Other news:

I’m moving forward with doubling down on Sourcerer and bringing this blog in for a somewhat graceful landing. My #WeekendCoffeeShare post will run over there this weekend, probably on Sunday, and I’m getting a real domain for that blog just as soon as I can afford it.

In the next week or two, I’ll tweak the About Page here to ensure full disclosure and change the tagline. From that point forward, this blog will be about building a resume for social commentary until I can start figuring out how to place posts on larger sites with audiences for that stuff or build a better site to host my personal commentary. Once we get through the Feminist Friday wrap-up, posting here will be extremely sporadic for a few weeks, because I’ve got higher-priority things that need doing.

I’ve unpublished the Just Gene’O Facebook page because it wasn’t getting me anything even when I was updating it, and I don’t want an inactive public page attached to my name.

I doubt I’ll ever bring it back. I regard the Facebook page experiment as a failure and not worth putting more time into. From where I’m sitting, the value of Facebook is all in my personal timeline and a handful of groups at this point. But of course, the Sourcerer page will continue to host publicized links, and I’m still up for helping friends build their page followings when the opportunities present themselves.

Happy hump day!