The Patriarchy is everywhere, but that doesn't stop feminists from fighting The Penis People

1. Feministing: Women at the Machine -- by Gary Moskowitz

An interview with Feministing editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay (29) is like a fast-paced workshop on how to be a tireless wireless feminist. Mukhopadhyay is one of six female staff members that run the blog Feministing . The site editors and founders are motivated by their belief that young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures. Feministing aims to provide a platform for women to comment on and analyze these issues. Roughly 25,000 unique users per day visit the site, which gets more than 50,000 actual hits a day, according to the site's most recent data. A men's group, in response to Feministing's success, has created a mock-feminism blog site at Feministing.org. Mukhopadhyay says: "That shit just makes us more famous."

The site is no sorority house side project. It doesn't "hate" men. It doesn't have male contributors, although men frequently respond to its blogs. It prefers quick, off-the-cuff blogs and rants to fully reported news articles. Mukhopadhyay is the only woman of color among the site staff. They make money off of page ads-- maybe $100 a month-- which is typically spent on new writers or travel.

The San Francisco Chronicle in an article about feminism and First Lady Laura Bush in May 2006 called for a new, all-inclusive "Big Tent" feminism, and chided Feministing as "righteous" in stating that feminism isn't for everybody. The online magazine AlterNet.org praised Feministing for its ability to segue flawlessly from rants on Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to reports on a skin-tightening product called "Virgin Cream."

As a feminist blogger, Mukhopadhyay's focus is on productivity and connectivity. During our interview, she huddles up with her laptop and multi-tasks. While firing off responses to my questions, she's also reading an update about an alleged gang rape at Fresno State, recommending other blog sites to me, discussing the pros and cons of polyamory versus hetero-normativity and debating the relevance of mainstream media.

Is the blogosphere the location for a new feminism?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: If you are an activist and not reading blogs, you're not doing your job. [The blogosphere] is a listening audience and an active audience. It could be anyone out there; an anti-feminist from Ohio, a housewife in Illinois.

Are most of your readers from the Midwest?

We get a lot of response from the Midwest and Austin, Texas, but the Bay Area and New York City are our two mainstays. We hear from a lot of college students.

What do you think draws people to a blog site like Feministing?

Anonymity-- that's the best part about it, for most viewers who want to participate in in-depth discussions. [Anonymous] people say shit they wouldn't normally say. People chime in with very personal stories. "As a woman of color in this townÖ," you know, like that-- I'm sorry, I just saw an update on this 11-year-old girl who was [allegedly] raped at Fresno State. Excuse me for a second. I've got to write about this immediatelyÖ

It's almost like it's you and your computer against the world. But aren't there drawbacks to leading a feminist movement through blogs? What about face-to-face dialog?

Well, this is our activism; engaging with other bloggers. But yeah, we talk all the time about whether or not we are organizing the people we talk about or if we're just computer nerds. We want to alliance-build. But is it always safe to sit behind your keyboard? No. I still don't always feel confident or safe.

How so?

People come to the site, read my blog and say things like "Don't get out of hand." This is still the dominant view, and there is still such a gendered power imbalance, and it's easy to get caught up in all that and think, "Well, you're right." People have told me I'll never have a journalism career. Some say my writing is unbalanced and anti-white. But it's not, not in this context. I write what I feel and what I see, through the lens of post-colonial theory.

And how, through that lens, are you working to build alliances?

By continuing to read and write. By going to events. I attended "Action in Media" at [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] this spring. It made me realize how much influence Feministing has. People there knew who we were. In feminism, it's so important to be among colleagues to challenge each other and be surrounded by each other. Plus, a lot of men read my blog. That's how I get laid (laughs).

I think men come to feminism in a lot of different ways. I have a friend whose idea of feminism is to let woman pay the tab at restaurants and bars.

That "what can women do for me" mentality is patriarchy at work. They try to put the joke on us. Statistically, men still make more money than women. But that's not what it's all about. It's about access and power.

Can you elaborate? What are some issues you are focused on right now?

In politics, there is an assault on women and reproductive issues. Look at South Dakota right now and this whole "Plan B-conscience clause-pharmacy ban" thing. I get hundreds of comments daily. I've got 140 comments on drinking and self-esteem alone. I can't read through all that. But also issues like immigration, and how it's a feminist issue. It's not just about the lives of women. It's about how gender and sexism affects our lives. There's Roe vs. Wade, child molestation, rape laws, affirmative action, health care, prostitution, and retirement, like how women have no access to pensions in the UK. I'll even talk about Britney [Spears] once in a while, if it's relevant.

You talk about building alliances, challenging notions of access and power and how gender and sexism play out in society. You don't need to be a feminist to actively struggle against these things. Plus, plenty of folks are quick to dismiss women who stand on a strong feminist platform. Do you consider yourself to be an unmitigated feminist?

Yes. I am a feminist, because I believe that this society is inequitable because of gender, race, class and sexuality. I recognize it and actively seek to change it.

Do you expect people to be on the same page with you?

Feminism can be recognized in many ways. For me, it's more about what our moments of resistance are as women: a mother kicking out her deadbeat husband for not taking care of their child; women with multiple sex partners; women earning power in board rooms. Taking back. Acting back. It's complicated.

Is it possible to have a united feminist movement?

Those chicks who flashed their tits in the 60s largely cater to the white middle class. They often don't do enough to include women of color. I think what you see now is little clusters [of feminists] getting together on issues, like the Duke rape case. It's fragmented, but once something happens, people rally.

(Gary Moskowitz ia a former staff member at Pop and politics. He is now a contributing writer. Mukhopadhyay photo and site logo courtesy of feministing.com)

2. Women from Bitch Magazine: Andi Zeisler and Lisa Jervis -- by Kate Bolick

THIS SUMMER, for feminists of a certain age at least, a chapter closed when the all-female indie rock band Sleater-Kinney announced an indefinite hiatus. The band was among the last live-and-kicking vestiges of the punk rock Riot Grrrl movement that reached its apex in the 1990s with an explosion of willfully political bands and zines. As such, it was also a touchstone of a sort for the Title IX generation: those girls born after 1972 who grew up enjoying their mothers' gains. (Myself among them: My own grade-school wardrobe featured T-shirts with slogans like "A Woman's Place Is in the House-and the Senate.") Back then, it seemed inconceivable to young feminists-the so-called "third wavers"-that a movement so headstrong and loud would ever be quieted.

As it turned out, by the mid-1990s the movement was already splintering. Feminist bands broke up; the Spice Girls were born. But if the Riot Grrrl moment has passed, its influence hasn't, and not all of its voices have yet been quieted.

This summer also marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of Bitch magazine, celebrated in a new anthology featuring 54 sharp, often funny feminist critiques of everything from Martha Stewart to horror movies. As the magazine's founders, Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, explain in their introduction, it's their mission to get "more girls and women to stop and think critically about the pop culture they're encouraged to consume unquestioningly."

Jervis and Zeisler, now in their 30s, met as sophomores in high school. After college, bored with their day jobs and outraged by what they considered to be a world increasingly mediated by an antiwoman culture, they entered San Francisco's thriving small press movement and emerged with their zine, which in the 10 years since has matured into a stylishly designed quarterly. Today Zeisler and Jervis both live in Oakland, where I called them last month.

IDEAS: Ten years of critiquing pop culture is a lot of bad television. Do you ever get tired of it?

JERVIS: I am very tired of it. In fact, a couple years ago I cut off my cable.

ZEISLER: I'm not. I love pop culture as much as ever and I hate it as much as ever.

IDEAS: I realize this is a big question to answer, but where would you say feminism is today?

JERVIS: The movement is a lot more vibrant and lively and active than commentators who are outside of feminism think. There's this sense in the mainstream that feminism is moribund and that women-especially young women-don't care about it anymore. That is incredibly untrue.

ZEISLER: She's right. Not many people are actually making the effort to look for feminist thought or activism outside what they know of it.

IDEAS: Where aren't they looking?

JERVIS: Many progressive issues are informed by feminism: workers' rights, antipoverty work, antiracist work, the transgender and gender-queer movements, a lot of consumer-culture critiques. But when people outside of feminism wonder where feminist activism is right now, they're pretty much only looking at reproductive rights stuff.

IDEAS: Does this have anything to do with so-called Third Wavers reaching child-bearing age?

ZEISLER: That and also because reproductive rights are much more in jeopardy than they were 10 years ago.

JERVIS: That's the main thing. It's just our current political moment.

IDEAS: But I've personally been heartened to see a new, more complex critique around motherhood itself that's coming from women in their late 20s and early 30s.

JERVIS: I agree that there's a new visibility to ``work-family balance" issues, what people are now calling the Mommy Wars, and that the way people are talking about them is starting to shift. Not enough in my opinion, but people are starting to say more and more that this is not a women's issue, it's a workers' issue, and that we need to shift responsibility onto employers to assume some of these problems rather than leave them for the individual.

IDEAS: Neither of you write for mainstream publications. Does it concern you that your ideas and agendas aren't reaching a wider audience?

JERVIS: The reason we started the magazine in the first place was because we wanted to say what we wanted to say, with nobody else saying, ``Oh that's too harsh" or ``You're going too far" or ``We can't say that because advertiser X,Y, or Z wouldn't like it." Both of us value that ability to say whatever we think needs to be said.

ZEISLER: But a lot of the stuff we write gets picked up by bloggers. So it gets out there.

JERVIS: Our influence is bigger than our numerical reach. That's true of a lot of small independent publications: The ideas filter out into the larger culture and get picked up and used by other people. Stuff does get diluted when that happens, but you do influence other people.

IDEAS: Are there mainstream outlets you think are doing a good job of addressing feminist issues?

ZEISLER: Elle Magazine actually grapples with a lot of the same issues that feminists are grappling with. But in the context of a fashion magazine it's often not really seen as feminism.

IDEAS: How come? Isn't it just the thinking that counts?

JERVIS: When feminist content is stuck between the pages of how to put on eye shadow and what skirt you need to buy for next season, it can feel really schizophrenic. Feminist values, in my opinion, are in opposition to that kind of consumer-driven ethos.

ZEISLER: The mainstream media feels the need to define stuff against the word feminism: Is it feminist, is it not feminist, is it antifeminist? A lot of people are still scared of the word. But if we can convey that calling yourself a feminist doesn't mean that you have to stop wearing lipstick or shopping or whatever, that's good. I would rather have fashion magazines acknowledge that there is no perfect idealism and there's always going to be a compromise, but you should still go out and call yourself a feminist anyhow.

(Kate Bolick is senior editor of Domino magazine and teaches writing at New York University. Her interviews appear regularly in Ideas. E-mail kbolick@globe.com)