This post is part of the Love Your Body Day blog carnival.

Image by Kyla Hollis, grand prize winner of NOW’s 2011 Love Your Body Day poster contest

Today is Love Your Body Day, a yearly event sponsored by the National Organization for Women Foundation.  Billed as “a day when women of all sizes, colors, ages and abilities come together to celebrate self-acceptance and to promote positive body image,” it’s also a day in which I force myself to admit publicly that beneath my Battle-Hardened, Bad-Ass, Nearly-Forty Feminist facade beats the heart of a quaking 15-year-old girl who hates what she sees in the mirror.

It’s also a good day to mull over what I’m learning from the latest entry in my ever-growing Feminist Book Pile: Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl: a Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (look for it in the nifty Amazon widget on the left of your screen). Published in 2007, it is a fascinating unpacking of cultural misogyny everywhere, including within the feminist community.  And we’re not just talking about the exclusion of transwomen from supposedly feminist places like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, though Serano gives Mich a whole chapter.  As she writes:

While past feminists have gone to great lengths to empower femaleness and to tear away all of the negative connotations that have plagued women’s bodies and biology, they have allowed the negative connotations associated with femininity to persist relatively unabated.  Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that, while most reasonable people see women and men as equals, few (if any) dare to claim that femininity is masculinity’s equal.

Bam!  I’m a ninth-grader in front of that mirror again, bewailing my failure to conform to what Cover Girl, Seventeen magazine and my mother all expect of me.  How could I possibly escape their collective pressure?  For me, the way out was to opt-out.  In 1987, I decided I would dress like the Replacements for the rest of my life.

Beauty-go-round rejected!  Fuck you, L’Oreal!  Kiss my ass, Vogue!  I’m a perfect feminist…right?

Writes Serano:

The greatest barrier preventing us from fully challenging sexism is the pervasive antifeminine sentiment that runs wild in both the straight and queer communities, targeting people of all genders and sexualities.  The only realistic way to adddress this issue is to work toward empowering femininity itself….indeed, a feminist movement that encompasses both those who are female and those who are feminine has the potential to become a majority, one with the strength in numbers to finally challenge and overturn both traditional and oppositional sexism.

Goddammit.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go polish my nails.

Friends, fans, flamers: I give you Barbra Peterson.

“We’re challenging you here today. We demand that you start covering the crime itself.  Start now doing stories about the backlog in processing rape kits.  Start now doing exposes on why only six percent of rapists serve any time.  That’s a crime in itself, don’t you think?  And how about how colleges try to discourage the victim from reporting the crime? Do you think the newspapers should be doing stories about that? Instead of a word we choose to call the event? What do you think?”

What DO you think?  Tell me in the comments.

One thing that we won’t debate, however, is the brilliance of Barbra, a woman I cannot BELIEVE I am lucky enough to know.

Pinch me!

…and it ain’t pretty.  Or is it?  I’m so burned out I don’t know anymore.

Regular readers of this blog should recall a recent post here called “If we didn’t confront you, you wouldn’t pay attention.” It described my thoughts shortly after I completed an interview with a local reporter about SlutWalk Minneapolis.  Richard Chin and I talked for a good 30 minutes about all things feminist, including the fact that my work today is informed by my desire for my daughter to grow up in a world where her IDEAS mean more than her BODY.

Her miniskirted body.  Her high-heeled body.   Her blah blah blah…..baby, did you see those LEGS!  Check out the GAMS on HER!

The article hit the streets (pun sadly intended) on Monday, September 26. You can check out the article yourself here.  I am quoted near the end of the piece, NOT within the legs, thankfully:

Shannon Drury, president of MN NOW, said she thinks the SlutWalk can present a different face of feminism that attracts younger women. ”There’s a lot of baggage when it comes to feminist imagery. There’s a lot of stereotypes of what feminists look like,” said Drury, 39. “Some people don’t like the idea that a feminist would dress in provocative clothing.”

The Mama Grizzly was right: you really can’t trust the Lamestream Media!  For those who haven’t met me in person, I wear a bra.  I shave my legs.  Am I still a feminist?  I do not wear makeup, nor do I wear heels.  Am I still a woman?  And most importantly, what on earth did Richard Chin and I talk about for the other 29 minutes of our conversation??  Did rape as a public health emergency come up at all?!!

Happily, I was able to share my opinion on the subject with the good people at Minnesota Public Radio News, who printed my commentary, “A rape protest whose talk draws attention to the walk,” on Wednesday, September 28.  Allow me to quote myself, please:

…during the course of those 30 minutes, the reporter mentioned that a previous interviewee said she would fear for her daughter’s safety if she were to wear a SlutWalk t-shirt in public. I replied that everything I do for women’s civil rights is done to ensure that my daughter’s world is a little better than the one my feminist mentors left me. Why should I accept limitations for her? Shouldn’t I demand that my culture accept her dignity, her humanity and her bodily autonomy? In the end, the one quote [the reporter] used was about feminists in provocative clothing….

Sex sells, with or without consent. In a puritanical society as baffled by sexual behavior and expression as ours, it follows that any frank discussion of sexual violence would lead to confusion….I challenge the opinion that SlutWalks draw negative attention. The negative attention is already here. It’s called silence.

My thanks to the editors at MPR for allowing my hastily- and furiously-cobbled together piece space this week.  One interesting bit of feedback I received from the essay was via a friend who sent it to a vocal opponent of the entire SlutWalk movement.  Said this critic after reading my commentary: “well, at least Minneapolis has its act together.”

Gosh!  I might be pretty after all!  But I’ll take another picture, just to be sure…

Additional links to local coverage of SlutWalk Minneapolis (trigger warning for victim-blaming in comments sections):

Heavens! A SlutWalk in Minneapolis.  Brian Lambert, MinnPost.com

SlutWalk comes to Minneapolis.  Sheila Regan, Twin Cities Daily Planet

SlutWalk March divides feminists.  Kristin Tillotson, Minneapolis StarTribune

As predicted, following the advice of The Feminist Breeder resulted in a large bump in my blog traffic–not because the subjects of Abortion & Menstruation are really that hot, after all, but because TFB has some of the most loyal readers anywhere on the web.  To my great delight, they left comments in abundance, and not simply ones that parroted back my point of view.  In some cases, the comments challenged me directly, but they did so without calling me a “pro-choice whore,” a “matriarchal gynecentrist,” or a homicidal maniac who looms over my children’s beds at night with an icepick.  How refreshing!  Thanks, all!

To welcome my new readers, I present my favorite feminist menstruation story of all time.  Believe me, it kicks the ass of The Red Tent.  ENJOY!

Via Spinner.com:

Date: August 28, 1992

What Went Down: When L7 got pushed, the all-girl grunge band pushed back. The crowd at England’s 1992 Reading Festival learned this the hard way. During the band’s set, guitarist Donita Sparks got fed up with all the crap fans were hurling onto the stage and retaliated by removing her bloody tampon and throwing it into the crowd. Some (un)lucky fan walked away with one of the most unsanitary souvenirs in alt-rock history.

That about sums up what I just told a reporter seeking my comments on an invented controversy swirling around the upcoming SlutWalk Minneapolis.  In a twist on what Jessica Valenti famously requested of the Morning Joe crew on MSNBC, I inquired of this reporter: “Minnesota NOW has supported Take Back the Night marches in the past, but you didn’t call me for comment about those, did you?”  Um, no.

I also told him that reappropriating the word “slut” isn’t new–Kathleen Hanna was doing it nearly twenty years ago.

In 2000, Gloria Steinem was asked by BUST’s Debbie Stoller (aka Celina Hex) what she thought of the ’90s riot grrrl movement.  Steinem said, ”I was really fascinated by it and applauded it…[but] it’s true that older feminists don’t always recognize feminism when it comes in a different form.”

The reporter I spoke with today asked if I wouldn’t mind sharing my age and generation identification.  ”I’m 39,” I answered, a Free to Be…You & Me baby and riot grrrl Third Waver sandwiched between the Second Wave and the new breed of feminist online networkers.  There’s plenty I can learn from both of these groups of people, but I would never in a million years be so arrogant as to assume that THEY have something to learn from ME.  ”The more we listen to one another,” I told the reporter, “the more we can get beyond words and move towards action.”

After all, a word (A WORD!) on Kathleen’s stomach didn’t end rape or rape culture, did it?

The sharp-eyed among my blog readers have noticed that a wee-little Amazon.com widget has been added to my page of late.  This is only the beginning of my devious plan to sell out to corporate America so that I can give my dirty millions to feminist causes.  For now, the list is a few of my favorite feminist titles as well as a great memoir by a friend (Sonya Huber’s Cover Me) and the book that has inspired my late-in-life freelancing career (Ariel Gore’s How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead).  I will add more once I learn how to do such a thing.

In the meantime, one of my feminist idols who hasn’t written a book yet but should (I may get her the guidebook for Christmas) recommended that I get schooled on one of HER feminist idols, the late Florynce Kennedy.  You may know her from such phrases as “if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”  Since I gain all of my knowledge from books, I requested Color Me Flo: My Good Life and Hard Times from the dusty stacks of the Hennepin County Library.  I picked it up at my local branch yesterday and about dropped dead from joy, for THIS was the cover:

Have you ever seen anything so wonderful in your life?  If not, take a closer look at her shirt: it reads BULLSHIT, ad infinitum.  Yet as brilliant as the cover is, it’s merely a warm-up to the jewels that are inside.  The gospel of Flo:

• “When I get all these mailings about sending money to the little starving children in Africa, I can’t understand how anybody smart enough to write that stuff can be so dumb as to not realize that’s not the way to make the change.  How can they think that the way to deal with starving children in Africa is to have people who have already paid their taxes write checks, when all that tax money goes into the imperialist wars that bring about the misery in the first place?
• “A lot of people get upset when you say ‘shit’ or something like that.  But do you realize that almost our entire country sat still while they barbecued people in Los Angeles, firebombed a house, burned the people to death?…and you see, this is part of the pathology of people who are so sensitive to some kinds of stylistic offensiveness, and so callous to real cruelty and brutality.”
• “It’s absolutely necessary in order to control people and get them to want to take the shit that you dump on them.  You must make them think they are not entitled to the freedom from corruption or freedom from oppression….You must select something that is common to all people to establish the pall of guilt….if you can use sexuality as the modus operandi for oppression, you’ve got a rather simple way to get at the people.”

This month’s theme in the Minnesota Women’s Press was “Picking Up Your Power,” so my thoughts naturally turned to a fellow activist mom of two, Kimberia Sherva, who is the brains (and enormous heart) behind SlutWalk Minneapolis.  Below is the text of my column, complete with information about how you can sign up to walk with us on October 1st.

If you object to the title of the walk, please don’t tell me about it.  Get a blog of your own and parse out the meanings of “slut,” “bitch,” and “cunt” until your Google PhD in Women’s Studies is complete, for I lack the energy to debate you.

A walk towards power

by Shannon Drury

Kimberia Sherva is a smart, funny and energetic mom of two, a woman who not only picked up her own power, she grabbed it, wrestled with it when it became unruly, and absolutely refused to let it go. She is the force behind the upcoming SlutWalk Minneapolis.

A brief primer on the SlutWalk movement: In January of 2011, a Toronto police officer, Michael Sanguinetti, told a group of college students that “women should avoid looking like sluts in order not to be victimized.” What began as a grassroots plan to protest the police attracted widespread attention (due in no small part to the action’s purposely confrontational name), and an estimated 1,500 people gathered on April 3, 2011 to raise awareness of sexual stereotypes and the persistence of victim-blaming in Canadian society. Since then, SlutWalks have been replicated in London, Stockholm, and Sao Paulo, with walks in the works in Mexico City, Johannesburg, and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Sherva thought our Twin Cities community needed a SlutWalk of its own, and she took on the challenge of planning it. In addition to raising her two sons, Sherva is a full-time student with a work-study job, and she’s neither an event planner nor a political activist by training. She’s learning the ropes one social media account at a time.

When I told her about the “pick up your power” theme of this month’s Minnesota Women’s Press, she admitted, “It’s hard to pick up personal power. It’s hard, and it’s scary, and [women have] been conditioned to play nice.” So why do it? For one thing, Sherva said, “I have always believed that the women of today stand on the shoulders of the women of yesterday,” and organizing a local SlutWalk could repay that feminist debt. But she had another, even more important reason: “This SlutWalk isn’t just about tearing down the word slut, it isn’t just about fighting against victim blaming and society’s messages about rape,” Sherva wrote on the event’s Tumblr blog. “It’s about being able to say, ‘I was raped,’ ‘I was sexually assaulted.’ And being believed.”

Sherva continued: “I know exactly why women walk in the SlutWalks. I know how they feel. And I know that when our event happens, it’s going to be cathartic … it’s going to give a voice to the rage and the hurt and the bewilderment of being blamed for my rape, of not being believed, of jumping through the hoops of the legal system, and being told that I wasn’t raped. … I’ve been questioned, I’ve been asked ‘What did you do?’ and I’ve been flat out and out called a liar.”

The process has been just as hard and scary as Sherva predicted. As of this writing there have been hangups with the Minneapolis permit process, resulting in the date for the SlutWalk being shuffled around the calendar; glitches in the official Facebook invitation, which went haywire once the event received over 4,000 RSVPs; objections from feminist allies who hate the use of the word “slut” in any context, even an anti-rape one; and worse still, an outpouring of hurtful comments from trolls who reaffirmed Constable Sanguinetti’s opinion in no uncertain terms (Sanguinetti has since apologized). The stress has been enormous, but not overwhelming-Sherva has faced each obstacle with grace and determination, gathering her power as she goes. During SlutWalk Minneapolis I’ll be by her side, making my own voice for equality and freedom heard.

For as Sherva told me, “We ALL have the power to change the status quo.”

Shannon Drury lives in Minneapolis with her family and is a self-described radical housewife.

IFYOUGO
What: SlutWalk Minneapolis
When: Oct. 1, 2 p.m.
Where: Hennepin Island Park, Minneapolis
Register online: www.slutwalkminneapolis.org/register-to-walk.html
FFI: www.slutwalkminneapolis.org

One of my favorite feminist bloggers in the world (literally–she’s based in Australia) is Blue Milk.  She contacted me a few months ago about a new anthology that features her writing called The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How To Do It.  She asked if I’d review it here, for the delight of my many radical readers.  After I choked down my jealousy and assured myself that someday, SOMEDAY I will receive a letter from a publisher than is not a kindly worded rejection, I agreed.  Heh.  Seriously though, it is great pleasure to spread a little more feminist mom love in the world.  When the package arrived I even posed Miriam with it, in what will be a Radical Housewife tradition (see my post on Gloria Feldt books from January).

Looks great, huh?  I couldn’t wait to open it up.  My beach reading had arrived!  Until…

Holy crap, Miriam said!  Did you catch how THICK this mother (no pun intended) flippin’ book is?  School may be in session Down Under, but around these parts I’m on call 24/7.  Kids can’t be expected to entertain themselves in the 21st century, you know.  Elliott needs to be reminded several times a day that he has books and toys in his room that were purchased to alleviate what he claims is his soul-killing boredom.  Then there’s the constant bicycling from park to wading pool to garage sale, the hours in the car driving to waterparks and nature centers and museums and….

I’m sorry.  I can’t read real books in the summertime.  This is as intellectual as I get:

School’s in session on Monday, August 29.  I should get my brain back online somewhere around Labor Day (that’s September 5, for all non-Yanks).  Thanks for your patience, fellow readers!

Why happening, Prince? Have we offended you? Consider:

Neal Krasnoff has closed up most of his blog, leaving behind only four posts: an “apology” for offending anyone with his SlutWalk rantings, his resignation from local Democratic Party leadership, and two posts from 2008 about…..ME! Read and chuckle along.

Two years ago, I participated in a MPRIG-sponsored panel on sexual violence during the University of Minnesota’s Welcome Week. To their great credit, a large number of earnest 18-year-olds showed up to discuss an issue far less appealing than learning the forehand frisbee throw. During both the morning and the afternoon sessions, I heard a question that I remember from my own college days, asked the bravest straight male in the room: “This is really upsetting. Are women actually assuming I’m a perpetrator just because I have a penis?”