Jennifer Williams is a writer, musician and community organizer living in Oakland, California and has self-published two workbooks titled The Process of Letting Yourself Have a Creative Process and The Better Feminism Workbook. We chatted with Jennifer about The Better Feminism Workbook, finding strength in the era of Trump, and more.
Oath of Softest–Poems by Jessica Lawson
Oath of Softest
He makes his money his woman (in the office to steel (but the resolution (will not be televised,
(take this, then (our oath of softest.
A fly by Might operation might operate (on your granny, her (hip hip (hopping below the belt
(and he’s ready to give her (whatever care he can grab (in between conference calls, (while the
full ass of social media (butt dials their representatives (leaving an oath of softest (in the empty
art of the dialtone (when the voicemail box is full.Continue Reading
Why Can’t Women Just Get Along?
by Melissa Brooks
When I first moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I rented a bedroom in a house co-owned by a middle-aged woman and her twenty-six year old son. The son didn’t live there, but the mother did, making her simultaneously my landlord and roommate. Three weeks went by and despite the awkward set up, I thought things had mostly been going okay. No arguments had ensued and we regularly asked after one another’s wellbeing. I made sure to clean up after myself, stay out of the way, respect her privacy and be quiet. So it came as a shock when one day she spontaneously started yelling at me, boldly proclaiming that “this situation” wasn’t working for her and she didn’t like me. Confused by what I had done to offend her, she boiled down her hostility to a single trite creed:
“Women can’t get along.”
Tomboys Can Wear Dresses, Too: Why We Must Stop Dismissing Femininity
by Melissa Brooks
The perks and pitfalls of being a tomboy
When I was a kid, being a tomboy was cool. It seemed every girl in my grade claimed to be one whether they really were or not. My friends and I argued about who was the most authentic tomboy. I remember challenging my friend Jennifer’s authenticity because she wore dresses. “Tomboys can wear dresses, too!” she spat back.
We tried to act tough, which amounted to pushing the boys or stealing their baseball caps. We underwent “boot camp” training on the playground, during which a kid named Mike put us to a series of tests assessing our toughness, such as flipping off of the playground’s 6-foot-high metallic bridge.1 I remember feeling triumphant as I overcame my fear and did it, and feeling more triumphant as the-too-girly Jennifer couldn’t work up the nerve.
Why the Feminist Question Matters
by Melissa Brooks
Like so many celebrities before her, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting has been making headlines for disavowing feminism. To recap, this is what she said when asked if she considered herself a feminist during a recent interview with Redbook Magazine:Continue Reading
The Sex Wars, Revisited: Sex Positive vs. Sex Negative Feminist Voices on Pornography
From the “sex wars” of the 1980s to today, feminism (as a multi-faceted and -faced movement with nearly as many iterations as there are practitioners, which is yet expected to comprise itself into one monolithic ideology) has, as a whole, grappled and often floundered with issues of sexuality and its representations in mass media.Continue Reading
