Probably things everyone has heard of, but I’ve really enjoyed

this article on the lessons we can learn from jinn in the Qur’an. I love stuff like this.

Feminist Frequency has completed her series on tropes, with #6, The Straw Feminist
Previously:
The Mystical Pregnancy
The Evil Demon Seductress
The Smurfette Principle
Women in Refrigerators
and The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Cisgender News! In which cis people are written about in a similar fashion as trans people.

A couple of gems from the site:

The singer, whose real name is Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, was pictured without make-up, showing her face unusually pale and smooth despite not undergoing electrolysis recently. She finds it unnecessary as she is a cissexual – she was born a woman and thinks she is a woman.

Rebekah Brooks – as she started to call herself following a second marriage – courted power but avoided publicity. She started receiving female hormones via her ovaries during her first puberty, and intends to continue with them.

Have you read Autumn’s series on Thoughts on a Word? (ENGLISH MAJORS REJOICE!) Here’s “lovely” and The Politics of Hello (must read)

Chally has a beautifully written post titled An Education in Racism

On that note regarding race, Womanist Musings has a (so far) two-part guest post on Jasmine

Part I: Disney’s Jasmine is the Archetype of White Colonial Fantasies

She is the archetype of white colonial fantasies: the alluring dark-skinned woman, exotically desirable like cinnamon and indigo and other spices that were the corporate backbone of colonialism, a hedonistic indulgence counterpointing the tastes of ‘civilized’ Europeans. Profitable, but not an equal by any means. Exploitable, and therefore undeserving of respect. In the words of Ursula Rucker: “good enough to fuck but/ not good enough to vote”. In white patriarchy, a woman’s body is an object to be traded and bargained with; a woman whose body is deemed easily accessible, loses her value and her right to respect, to human dignity. This is how the First World regards the lands and people of the Third World whose resources they have gleefully plundered and monopolized, and this is how WOC are symbolically, culturally and sociopolitically situated in white colonial hegemony. Thus the politics of land theft and resource usurpation, of cultural imperialism, systematic rape and dehumanization, intersect on our bodies and shape our sexual self-awareness.

[…]It’s no coincidence that out of the Disney princess menagerie, the three WOC (Pocahontas, Esmeralda and Jasmine) are the scantiest clad. It’s no coincidence that, while Belle and Ariel and Aurora are undoubtedly sexualized, that they’re sexual allure is composed of a wide-eyed innocence, a girlish shyness and naivete, while Jasmine and Esmeralda move in deliberately sinuous lines, their bodies openly sexual and beckoning.

Part II: ‘Exotic’ is not a Compliment

The white Princess is an image built off the devaluation and dehumanization of women of color, constituted in opposition to our supposed unfeminine and undesirable qualities. As WOC, we are the savages, the whores, only good for fucking, the sleeping dictionaries that exist as perks for colonizing white men, only to be tossed aside of course in favor of the elevated white women. Throughout the history of European colonization, white men have raped, abused, enslaved, used, fucked, had children with and lived off the labor and bodies of WOC, but they have never even come close to acknowledging our power, dignity and humanity.

And last, but certainly not least, the Dangers of claiming that Muslim women are not oppressed:

The danger is when we refuse to accept that Muslim women are oppressed because we fear that we will belittle Islam, although such oppression has nothing to do with Islamic doctrines. Thus, we only help to perpetuate oppression. We empower abusive men and women by claiming that all is perfectly fine in the lives of Muslim women. There would have been no need for Muslim Feminism if Muslim women were enjoying full rights given by Islam and were not subjugated by their society. This is where the job of the Muslim feminist starts. A Muslim feminist does not belittle Islam, s/he only tries to show what Islam promised and society denied.

I’ve been having an overwhelming month, and I think it’s been showing through the rather abrupt (except for that last one) posts. Insha’Allah I’m getting the hang of my crammed schedule and will be able to regroup myself soon. Hope you’re all having a great Tuesday!

P.S. I made a wordle in very early September from the fatal feminist and this is how it looked like: (click to enlarge)