Feminism and Gender Issues Resources

Rayyan was kind enough to put together a list of website links for further information on feminism, femininity, and various other gender issue/activism subjects. Feel free to browse through and comment with your own suggestions. I will be adding to this list in the future, so check back often.

University of Maryland Specific
Department of Women’s Studies
“Women's Studies at the University of Maryland is an interdisciplinary program of study of women and men in society within both historical and contemporary contexts and from multicultural and multiracial perspectives.”

Feminism Without Borders
“Feminism Without Borders' goal is to educate students and community members about the brutal realities of poor women's position, particularly poor women of color's position, transnationally, under global capitalism. Feminism Without Borders engages in critical dialogues, grassroots organizing, and direct action against corporate globalization, colonization, hunger and homelessness, welfare and environmental racism, the prison industrial complex, heterosexism, and sexual diseases and abuse, among other issues. Feminism Without Borders encourages all people from all backgrounds (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, sexuality, etc.) who care about social justice issues and actions to get involved.”

Pride Alliance
“[Pride Alliance] provide[s] a safe and supportive environment for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and allied students within the University of Maryland at College Park community and promote[s] an accepting and supportive campus environment for persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities, through outreach, education, and work with other student organizations.”

Student Advocates For Education About Rape (SAFER)
“SAFER brings men and women together to talk about rape. The SAFER program is a peer education program designed to educate, raise awareness, and in turn, prevent acquaintance/date rape on campus. The program accomplishes this mission by providing co-educational workshops throughout the campus community, led by small groups of male and female presenters. Topics covered include gender-role issues and communication differences between men and women, the role of alcohol and other drugs, prevention techniques, and resources.”

Activism
National Organization for Women (NOW)
“Since its founding in 1966, NOW's goal has been to take action to bring about equality for all women. NOW works to eliminate discrimination and harassment in the workplace, schools, the justice system, and all other sectors of society; secure abortion, birth control and reproductive rights for all women; end all forms of violence against women; eradicate racism, sexism and homophobia; and promote equality and justice in our society.”

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.
“Planned Parenthood is the nation's leading sexual and reproductive health care advocate and provider. With more than 860 health centers nationwide, nearly five million women, men, and teens turn to us each year for essential services — services we provide regardless of income, marital status, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or residence.”

Save ROE!
“SaveROE.com provides visitors with the latest information on policies impacting women’s health and reproductive rights and urges activists to speak out on these critical issues. The SaveROE.com online action center has all of the tools pro-choice activists need to make their voices heard. By providing the tools to send letters to the editor or take action on legislative issues, SaveROE.com mobilizes people who are committed to defending and increasing access to birth control, abortion, and sex education.”

Sexual Minorities
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
“GLAAD is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.”

Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
“PFLAG promotes the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, their families and friends through: support, to cope with an adverse society; education, to enlighten an ill-informed public; and advocacy, to end discrimination and to secure equal civil rights. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays provides opportunity for dialogue about sexual orientation and gender identity, and acts to create a society that is healthy and respectful of human diversity.”

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF)
“The mission of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is to build the political power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community from the ground up. We do this by training activists, organizing broad-based campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation, and by building the organizational capacity of our movement.”

Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL)
“SMYAL is the only Washington, DC metro area service organization solely dedicated to supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. Our mission is to promote and support self-confident, healthy, productive lives for LGBTQ youth ages 13-21 as they journey from adolescence into adulthood.”

Deaf Queer Resource Center (DQRC)
“The Deaf Queer Resource Center (DQRC) is a national nonprofit resource and information center for, by and about the Deaf Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Intersex and Questioning communities.”

Gender and Sexuality
Helping Independent Prostitutes Survive (HIPS)
“HIPS' mission is to assist female, male, and transgendered individuals engaging in sex work in Washington, DC in leading healthy lives. Utilizing a harm reduction model, HIPS' programs strive to address the impact that HIV/AIDS, STIs, discrimination, poverty, violence and drug use have on the lives of individuals engaging in sex work.”

Sex Workers Outreach Program (SWOP)
“SWOP, at its most basic, is an anti-violence campaign. As a multi-state network of sex workers and advocates, we address locally and nationally the violence that sex workers experience because of their criminal status.”

Sex Workers’ Art Show
“The wildly successful cabaret-style show is hitting the road again, bringing audiences a blend of spoken word, music, burlesque, and multimedia performance art. Intelligent and hot, disturbing and hilarious, the performances offer a wide range of perspectives on sex work, from celebration of perspectives on sex work, from celebration of prostitutes’ rights and sex-positivity to views from the darker sides of the industry.”

No Fauxxx: Porn That Doesn’t Fake It!
“Hot radical porn made by ladies, queers, and artists from all over the world. No Fauxxx is artistic, political, and all-inclusive, featuring models of all genders and sizes.”

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who came out to our first symposium last Monday! A huge thanks to our panelists, Ryan Shanahan (WMST), Bianca Laureano (WMST), Jill Paquin (Counseling PSYC) and Julie Arseneau (Counseling PSYC) for coming down here to speak with us about their projects and share their views on feminism and sexuality. If you would like to get speak further with them, please feel free to leave a comment here, and I will do my best to get you into contact with them.

Photos from the event will be uploaded soon.

If you would like to continue the discussion further with our panelists, please feel free to contact them via e-mail (replace [at] with @ and [dot] with .)

Ryan Shanahan - shanahan [at] umd [dot] edu
Bianca Laureano - bianca [at] nyc [dot] com
Jill Paquin - jpaquin [at] umd [dot] edu
Julie Arseneau - jra87 [at] umd [dot] edu

We also extend our heartfelt thanks to Laura Bellows for her contributions to our first event. She has asked us to share this article about Indonesia's Policy on Porn, published recently in the online journal American Sexuality, which is produced through the Sexuality Studies program at San Francisco State University.

First Symposium!

Our first symposium on Feminism and Sexuality: A Conversation on Porn, Reproduction, and Prostitution will be held on February 19, 2007 at 5 p.m. in Anne Arundel Hall (basement lounge - you can find a campus map here). Please invite your family and friends! Refreshments will be served afterward. To help facilitate publicity, we have made the following fliers for you to distribute.



A more detailed PDF flyer with photographs of discussion leaders can be found here.

As always, any comments, suggestions, or con-crit are always welcome! Just leave a comment here or feel free to e-mail us at the addresses in the sidebar.

New Co-sponsor

Please give a warm welcome to the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity (CRGE) at the University of Maryland, founded by Dr. Bonnie Thornton Dill and currently directed by Dr. Ruth Zambrana. Dr. Amy McLaughlin, the Associate Director, is working closely with us to organize the colloquium. They will be co-sponsoring all of our events and helping us publicize the series as the semester goes on.

Project Specifications

Project Components

“Feminism Now” is composed of three primary, organized components, outlined as follows.

I. “Feminism Now” Colloquia Series

A series of informal colloquium events will serve as the organizing spine of “Feminism Now.” At the present time, five colloquia have been proposed for the spring 2007 semester.

Feminism & Sexuality – featuring panelists discussing issues such as women and pornography, reproductive rights, prostitution, and bisexuality. Potential panelists include Ryan Shanahan, graduate student in the University of Maryland’s Department of Women’s Studies and active member of HIPS: Helping Independent Prostitute’s Survive; Jill Paquin, graduate student in UMD’s Department of Counseling and Personnel Services and former staff member of NARAL; Julie Arseneau, graduate student in UMD’s Department of Counseling and Personnel Services and published emerging expert on bisexual women and sexual identity development; Dr. Laura Mamo, Assistant Professor of Sociology (UMD).

Men Doing Feminism – featuring panelists discussing the role of men in feminist scholar-activism. Potential panelists include Dr. Angel David Nieves, Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation and Director of Graduate Training and Research at the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity (UMD); Robb Hernandez, graduate student in American Studies and founding director of the Latina/o Studies Working Group (UMD)

Politics & Feminism – spotlight presentation from Ambassador Frances Cook, first women U.S. Ambassador to the Middle East (Oman).

Globalizing Feminisms – panel of expert academic feminists discussing feminism in globalized contexts. Potential panelists include Dr. Michelle Rowley, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies (UMD); Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, Assistant Professor of American Studies (UMD); and Dr. Lois Vietri, Professor of English (UMD).

Women, Work and Culture – featuring panelists discussing women’s roles in male-dominated fields, especially science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Potential panelists include Dr. Ruth Fassinger, Professor of Counseling and Personnel Services/Counseling Psychology and principal investigator of the ENHANCE Project (UMD); Erin Deery, undergraduate engineering student and Honors Humanities Program member; Dr. Paige Smith, Director of Women in Engineering, A. James Clark School of Engineering (UMD).

The preceding list is clearly not exhaustive of all relevant issues and topics. Future panels might include a pro-life/pro-choice dialogue, as well as panels on disability, transgenderism, the history of feminism, women’s health, international development and women and warfare, among many others.

II. “Feminism Now” Reading Group

The “Feminism Now” Reading Group, led by Gender Caucus members Rayyan Ghuma and Anqi Fu, will meet periodically during the semester to discuss literature, television and film relevant to the “Feminism Now” colloquia. This reading group is designed to facilitate discussion among interested students and to create a designated space for students to come together and dialogue around a range of gender topics.

III. “Feminism Now” Online

The “Feminism Now” Online Web site will feature a blogspace that will serve to: a) inform interested parties about upcoming relevant events, not limited to those specific to “Feminism Now,” and b) facilitate conversations, networking and information exchange among people interested in “Feminism Now” and other scholarship and activism related to gender issues.

Introduction

Overview

The Honors Humanities Gender Caucus has planned a series of panel presentations, colloquia and informal conversations for the spring and fall of 2007 organized around the topic, “Feminism Now.” Conceptually, Feminism Now is designed to address the past, present and future of feminisms, particularly as they relate to issues directly affecting women’s lives, such as reproductive rights, pornography, international politics and gender and sex-based oppressions worldwide. As an ongoing series of special programs and events, “Feminism Now” should bring together students, faculty and staff throughout the University of Maryland community (and beyond) to discuss, learn, challenge, and dialogue around the complex ways in which gender inequality continues to shape the everyday lives of all people in the United States and around the world. Feminism Now aims to be innovative in its approach by examining gender oppression through an intersectional lens, exposing ways in which multiple dimensions of difference (e.g. race, sexuality, nationality, ability) shape all people’s experiences of gender inequality, discrimination and oppression.

Project Impetus

This project was motivated by an informal network of Honors Humanities community members who continue to perceive highly negative attitudes toward feminism and gender issues in mass culture, generally, and the University community, specifically. Prevailing attitudes toward gender- and sex-based oppression seem to imply that gender inequality is no longer an issue affecting men and women in the U.S. Such attitudes similarly work to distance Americans from explicit gender oppression occurring in other places throughout the world, such as Sudan and Afghanistan. Furthermore, by denying the existence of gender inequality, these attitudes have the effect of symbolically separating gender from other forms of oppression, such as racism, classism, heterosexism and ablism. In other words, such attitudes deny or obscure the intersectionality of gender and other forms of identity.

Even in contexts in which the persistence of contemporary gender oppression is acknowledged, there often exists a palpable reluctance to engage with feminisms as perspectives that a) might be useful to shed light on how gender continues to be an organizing component of social life and b) offer ways to combat gender inequality and generate positive social change. At least for undergraduate students in Honors Humanities, feminism seems to be a caricaturized movement left far behind in the 1960s. Accordingly, feminism is sometimes viewed as too radical (“The Vagina Monologues”) and too irrelevant (the suffrage movement) to the lives of young adult U.S. women.

Regardless of this perceived resistance to feminism, Honors Humanities is a vibrant community of engaged student-activists, many of who devote much of their time and energy to social justice. Honors Humanities is an accepting community of critical thinkers and motivated citizen-scholars. Over the course of fall 2006, it become clear to the members of the newly formed Gender Caucus through conversations in the classroom, residence hall and greater University community that Honors Humanities was ready and willing to have conversations about feminism. A lack of exposure to contemporary feminist ideas appears to be much more the source of resistance than ignorance or intolerance.

As such, “Feminism Now” is envisioned as a variety of events and programs to expose students to the diversity of ways in which feminism can empower rather than oppress; include rather than exclude; innovate rather than stagnate; trouble rather than stabilize. Contemporary feminism – at least in the abstract – has failed in many cases to appeal to young American women, particularly those whose race and class privilege has shielded them from experiencing (or perceiving) overt forms of discrimination and those for whom “feminism” remains something only relevant to White, middle-class, heterosexual women. Through inclusive conversations that focus on application rather than academic theory, “Feminism Now” hopes to expose, educate and empower all members of Honors Humanities and the University of Maryland community. By (re)considering feminism in all its diversity, we hope to offer fresh perspectives and new ways for knowing and doing social justice.