Blog makes feminist and minority issues more accessible to wider audience
story by Jenny Knernschield, posted April 16, 2008
As a special event in honor of Women’s History Month in March, the MU Women’s Center invited Jessica Valenti and Ann Friedman, executive editor and editor of the Web site Feministing.com, to speak to the students of Mizzou about their popular blog, and to broaden perspectives on the often misunderstood subject of feminism.
Having graduated with a master’s degree in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University, Jessica Valenti went into her first job expecting to make a big difference in the world for women, but was left disappointed and disillusioned. Valenti and Ann Friedman both worked for the same national women’s organization
“There were companies [run by women] hiring girls right out of grad school, giving lip service to younger woman,” said Valenti. “They didn’t care about women’s concerns, but instead paraded their young female employees in front, but didn’t actually care for them.”
Feeling unsatisfied, Valenti started up Feministing.com with a small group of fellow feminists. The blog has been available for four years, and since its inception, Feministing.com has grown to reach an audience of 150,000 readers a month. The blog has an open atmosphere that encourages people from all around the world to assess and analyze recent issues that involve women and minorities. It originated out of what Valenti saw as a need for more information on a subject that was often pushed to the side and left unexplored or abused by most media outlets.
Feministing.com allows people of all ages, gender, political affiliation and feminist standpoints to contribute their two-cents to any given topic. The purpose in founding the blog was to make issues more accessible. For instance, often the blog’s responses to news stories are written in an informal manner to make the ideas more interesting and approachable for the general public. Their comments criticize and sometimes even lead to corrections in the media to stories that are offensive to women and men.
Feministing.com chisels away at the stereotype that feminists are a collection of stubborn, angry women, and instead shows that contemporary feminism is more a way of looking at the world. Today’s feminists don’t settle for picketing in the streets, they have a new form of activism: through the collective voice of its members, and their movements and efforts as a group, Feministing.com has become a recognized and respected media watchdog.
For more information about Feminism and Women’s Rights, the MU Women’s center is located in 229 Brady Commons.
