The Women’s Media Center has a new award this year, for an outstanding woman in social media. I’m not sure how the nomination list was created, but I’m on it!
It’s an honor to be showcased next to so many amazing women who are working online to change the world. Seriously, if nothing else, it’s an incredible list of women in feminist media.
If you’re so inclined, you can also vote for one of the nominees, who will be given the award at the end of November.
We take a quick break from our regularly scheduled blogging to make a polite request!
I’m trying to get to Netroots Nation this year, a yearly gathering of the online progressive community, associated with the blog Yearly Kos. I’ve never been and I’d like to make it there this year.
You can help me with just a few clicks of your mouse! Democracy for America is hosting a scholarship contest and the winners are partly chosen by online voting. Thanks to my awesome community I’m currently in 6th place. Can you help me make it to the top three?
You can vote for me here.
Our Bodies, Ourselves, the Women’s Health organization (and well known book!) has a yearly Women’s Health Heroes contest.
This year, two awesome radical doulas, who run the Prison Birth Project in Western Massachussets, are nominees.
Go vote for them! They definitely deserve it. Voting ends tomorrow.
More about Marianne and Lisa after the jump.
Judith over at A Lesbian and A Scholar has been blogging the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape this month.
Last week she blogged about my essay, When Sexual Autonomy isn’t Enough: Sexual Violence Against Immigrant Women.
Today I read Miriam Zoila Pérez’s essay, “When Sexual Autonomy Isn’t Enough: Sexual Violence Against Immigrant Women in the United States” for day eleven of the Blogging “Yes” project. You may know Miriam from Feministing, or from her own blog, Radical Doula. She’s one of my favorite bloggers out there, and in this essay she sheds light on an important issue, namely sexual violence faced by immigrant women. I also want to recommend a related blog post on Feministe written by brownfemipower, Confronting Citizenship in Sexual Assault.
The violence faced by immigrant women, both institutional and interpersonal, is a serious problem in the US. The essay I wrote only skimmed the surface of the issues at hand, but there is a large body of work and activism out there focused on this intersection.
Check out the rest of Judith’s post about my essay here.
This 50 Best Blogs for Midwives round-up includes Radical Doula in the “Doulas” section, but it’s seems to be a pretty good survey of all sorts of birth blogs around the web.
Check it out here.
Chally of Zero at the Bone included a post from Radical Doula (about the shackling of incarcerated pregnant women in PA) in the latest Carnival of Feminists.
Go check it out! It’s an awesome thematic round-up of some of the best feminist blogging out there.
Today is blog for choice day, a chance for the blog world to commemorate the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade–on it’s 37th year!
Each year, I find myself unable to write about choice without talking about why I want it to be justice instead.
As I’ve talked about before, choice isn’t enough.
Choice doesn’t recognize that we don’t all have a choice. That often times our choices are impacted by what others want, by what we can afford, by what we will allow ourselves to do.
Our choices are mediated by politicians, religious figures, our paycheck this month. Our choices are limited by our family members, our lovers, what we see on TV and who is close to us when we have to make a decision.
Our choices are determined by the color of our skin, the language that rolls off our tongues, the restrictions of our bodies, the gender we identify with and the people we love.
Our choices aren’t just about abortion, they’re also about how we live, how we create family, how we interact with our bodies, with society, and with the world.
So I’m going to spend today, instead of thinking about choice, thinking about justice.
Dooce, the big mommy blogger I mentioned last week, has her full birth story up now in three parts. You should read it, it’s damn funny.
The best part? She talks about her doula. Now that’s some good exposure for us. There are some nice pictures too.
Part one, part two and part three.
So for those of you on Twitter, I just set up the radicaldoula twitter account. It’s set up to automatically post new blogs from here, so if you want a feed of Radical Doula posts directly to your twitter you can follow radicaldoula here. If you want posts and commentary from me (about all sorts of things) you can follow me, miriamzperez, here.
I joined the Twitter-mania a few months ago. I find it to be a great way to learn about breaking news and share links with other like-minded people.
You can follow me at http://twitter.com/miriamzperez
If you’re on twitter, send me a message!
Radical Doula 