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Welcome to this month’s Feminist Friday, where I round up some of the best thought-provoking links, and we can discuss what’s going on in the zeitgeist. Our motto here: Feminism is for everyone.
Feminist Focus
As I’m typing this, my baby is 9 weeks old. She is fed and sleeping (although there’s no telling for how long). As any new mom can vouch for, these early days are all about survival. Keeping baby alive. Keeping yourself alive.
Which brings me to one of the many battles in the mommy wars: breastfeeding.
I had zero expectations this time around. I thought: If she latches, she latches. If she doesn’t, we’ll supplement. Whatever.
She latched. And she hasn’t let go. For all the breastfeeding positivity out there (which, yes, is great, even when a model looks perfect doing it on a runway which is in no way reality), no one really discusses how maddening the experience can be. Being someone’s sole source of food day in and day out, every few hours at a time, is literally no walk in the park (or on the runway).
When I find myself googling parenting solutions at 3 a.m., I always come across at least one thread full of women talking about how “easy” breastfeeding is. How your instincts are wrong about everything. How you can just go ahead and feel guilty for having your own needs like a normal human being.
As feminists and women, we can do better to prop one another up during this time of new motherhood.
Breastfeeding, sleep training, etc., there’s no need to be so divisive.
In case you need someone to say it right now: Fed is best. Do whatever you can to get your baby to sleep. Keep the baby alive. Keep yourself alive. You are doing a wonderful job.
Feminist Links
All the links that are worth clicking on this month. Some are serious, some not so much. All are food for thought.
- Don’t mess with the jiu-jitsu suffragettes.
- The Lazy Trope of the Unethical Female Journalist
- On ‘it was fine.’
- “It Was Us Against Those Guys”: The Women Who Transformed Rolling Stone in the Mid-70s
- If Hollywood Insists on Deeming Women Good or Bad, I’d Rather Be Bad
- All the men who never assaulted me.
- 6 Downloadable Freebies for Radical Feminists
- What If a Female CEO Acted Like Elon Musk?
- Why Women Volunteer for Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions
- Fury is a political weapon and women need to wield it.
- Women around the world send postcards to Christine Blasey Ford to show support
- The Problem With ‘Hey Guys’
- “XOXO”: What Does Your Email Sign-Off Say About You?
- Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women
- California has a new law: No more all-male boards
- Why do I feel the need to ‘look good’?
- Ford’s Politeness & Kavanaugh’s Anger Are Everything That’s Wrong With Gender In America
- The manipulative power of white men’s tears.
- Books by women that I’ve added to my To Be Read list: I’ll Be There for You: The One About Friends, Work Party, You’re on an Airplane, No One Tells You This, Rage Becomes Her, You Have the Right to Remain Fat, She Would Be King, Looking for Lorraine, Betraying Big Brother, How to be Alone, Becoming, Fed Up,
Feminist Art You Might Like
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