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Monthly Archives: October 2010

SEXIST BEATDOWN: Revenge of the Smiler Edition

Readers! Have any of you been adolescents? (Probably yes.) Specifically, have you been adolescent  girls? (Probably sometimes. It’s complicated!) Well, super. Because now, we’re going to conduct a brief pop quiz on the adolescent female experience, and trust, and who exactly will fuck you over and how. Specifically, when you think of the wilds of […]

OMG GLEE: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Disastrophe

In Glee’s ongoing mission to swallow large swaths of popular culture and extrude out the pink coils of chicken sludge they call “entertainment,” this week they did Rocky Horror Picture Show. “Don’t dream it, be it” Rocky Horror urges its viewers, and Glee got it half right. Here is a partial! incomplete! list of complaints: The […]

Stars and the “Real” Girl; or, Yeah, I Listened To That One Taylor Swift Album A Few Times

Which isn’t to condemn Swift totally, or to say that her much-publicized dating life or much-published feelings are entirely artificial. It’s just hard to believe that the most important emotional moments in Taylor Swift’s life line up, so very closely, with the most important moments in her tabloid narrative. You know what I love? Intimate […]

UNDERMINER’S JOURNAL: Links to Sexy and Exciting Essays Edition

Well, howdy! Do I ever have a link for you! It is entitled “The Fantasy of Girl World: Lady Nerds and Utopias,” and it will lead you to an essay by me, about just such a topic! There is one line in the end of it which reads, “and it’s easy to point out the […]

The Garjectionist: Female Characters in Literature

October is drawing to a close, and National Novel Writing Month is upon us. Which means that some members of the Beatdown Brain Trust might be trying their hands at noveling, with the jaunty scarves artfully thrown over the shoulder and the good seat in the coffee shop and the endless Internet browsing loops and […]

SEXIST BEATDOWN: Advocating For Depressing Mid-Century Housewife Appreciation Edition

So, I have some relatives in town. Including a relative I have not met before! His name is Mr. Are You Kidding I Am Not Disclosing The Names Of My Relatives On This Blog I Don’t Even KNOW You, he is from Arizona and is my mom’s cousin, and his interests include world travel, the […]

Grey Areas: Surrogates and Cybertools

From now on I’m crowdsourcing everything. Grey Areas is a masterstroke. So! I have been thinking about this lately, but am yet to come across any feminist blogging on it: what’s the feminist stance on surrogate mothers and the mothers deciding to keep their children? On one hand, that is most definitely breaking some type […]

No-One’s Ever On Your Side: Betty Draper Francis Still Needs Your Love

So, Mad Men’s over now for another season. And we have a brand-new wife to hate! Hurrah! You guys, I am sure she is going to be so much worse than we can even plan for. And then we will get to write about the not-so-coded misogyny involved in how she is awful. But before […]

Speaking of Doin’ It Whilst Feminist:

You know who is frequently called upon to make their sexual practices more in line with someone else’s personal idea of What Feminism Means For Us All? Why, the porn ladies and gentlemen, that is who! And whilst you were all preparing to yell at Don this weekend (oh, like you thought he WOULDN’T end […]

Fucking While Feminist: The Unfuckables

I Fuck While Feminist by making decisions about who I won’t fuck. If I’m going to support the right of women to control their own bodies, their own lives, and be equal partners in their relationships, I need to respect myself enough to label some men as unfuckable. For me, this starts with a recognition […]