gentlemen ladies

Ok, so I know I talked about fashion earlier this month, but I have to bring it up again, because if I was made of money, I would buy so many clothes from Marimacho. (And hey, I'm not criticizing them for charging for their craft, their goods are high-quality and tailored. It's just out of my thrift-store based price range.) See if this promo copy doesn't make you drool: "Marimacho is a masculine clothing line for cis women and transmasculine bodies. We design in-house, manufacture locally and distribute our entire line via our website. Our primary focus is fit. We make classic masculine garments with narrower armholes and necklines, shorter sleeve lengths, more bust room, etc. In this way, we offer cis women, trans men and gender queer folks the same standards of fit and style available in mainstream menswear. Marimacho is dedicated to creating classic masculine fashion that empowers people of all genders." Check out their hot, hot shop, their fun and boi-filled blog, and spread the word to your dapper-dressing female-bodied friends.  

Also, isn't the couple who runs it absolutely the cutest? Geez.

breeches part

Back in my good old theater days, something that used to drive me crazy was the lack of great roles for women in most plays, most of the time. Meanwhile, there are always, always more female actors than male actors. I got really sick of talented women working like hell to get cast in roles supporting (all too often) mediocre men in leading roles.

The San Francisco Shakespeare company Women's Will nicely circumvents this problem by casting women, exclusivley. Artistic diretor Victoria Evans Erville clearly shares my frustration, saying, "Every year, I work with a few women whose work I admire, but every year there are many more with whom I cannot work because there are so few good roles for women out there. This company arose from a desire to overcome this problem, to pull together talented women and create a supportive environment where we could grow and play." Shakespeare was always kinda genderqueer, afterall, since the orignal productions of his plays were all-male. In addition to putting on accessible theatrical performances during the summer, Women's Will hosts Playfest, an annual festival of new plays by women.  

Their website, unfortunately, seems quite out of date (all of the information, from auditions to performance schedules, is from 2011), but I lhope to hear more from them as the summer of 2012 approaches!   

what is the lack

Not just because it's her birthday, but also because she's awesome: I'm dedicating today to Sasha Laudy, founder of the meetup group Women Who Code (SF). What motivated Sasha to form this group? In this blog post on Women 2.0, she states, "While many men were friendly and helpful to me, I grew tired of being the only technical woman at event after event. I craved a space — just one night a month! — where I wasn’t the only one. Where I didn’t constantly have to prove myself with every introduction, and where I could see what other technical women were accomplishing. So I launched Women Who Code." The group's grown to over 300 women and, even though Sasha's moving on to work for Codecademy in New York, it's clear that the group will live on without her. And that's the measure that you've made something good, no?

So hats off to her. And this makes me wonder (and I bet it makes you wonder, too): What is the lack in my life, the lack that is not only mine, that I could make a space to fill?

the one speaking my heart

Women LEAD is a nonprofit based in Nepal that works to enable "women and girls to take key leadership positions alongside men." Their mission is to "provide young women with the personal and professional skills to pursue their vision for change." Ambitious, yes, and they're quite new in the world; they seem to have just started running full-time programming last year. But they have quite a few impressive-sounding programs: Their Leadership Institute annually trains 30 high school girls "...on issues such as human rights and conflict resolution, personal and professional skills (goal setting, teamwork, public speaking), [offers] leadership experiences, [and] support networks (peers, staff, mentors)." Many of the students they work with teach the skills they learn back at their own schools. They also have a women's entrepreneurship program, and an internship-placement program.

Their get-involved page lists not only the usual request for donations (cameras, or laptops, in this instance), they're also looking for folks to write for their blog. Two opportunities: "If you are a female leader in your school, community, or country, we would love to feature you on our blog!" and "Do you know an amazing young female leader? We want you to highlight her by interviewing her and writing a 300-400 word post for our blog." Think on that, y'all.  

Finally, check out the incredible and super-charming young women they're working with:

a brave new pedagogy

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” 
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

I talk and write about education so much not only because I work in it, but because it's become a kind of failed state within our country. Fewer low-income students are graduating college than in decades, and high school graduation rates are sadly stratified along racial lines (check out California's data). Land of the free and home of the brave, right? It is hard to change education. It is especially hard to make sweeping change. But looking local, looking at where you live, and at what can be done right now, for this generation, well, some change is possible.

Which brings us to Grace Lee Boggs, who's been doing rocking work for radical education since at least the early 90s – and she's 96 herself. Wow. She lives in Detroit, and her current project is the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, whose mission is "to nurture the transformational leadership capacities of individuals and organizations committed to creating productive, sustainable, ecologically responsible, and just communities. Through local, national and international networks of activists, artists and intellectuals we foster new ways of living, being and thinking to face the challenges of the 21st century."

I've said here before that the patriarchy hurts everybody, and let's face it, school is often (usually) a place where students, male and female alike, are taught to accept the established order, to fall in line, and to perform within existing systems in order to be rewarded. So when I hear about a non-authoritarian, student-focused, community-empowerment-based system, it really warms the cockles of my heart.

(Cheers to Angie for today's topic.)

p.s. Special bonus at no extra cost: Grace wrote a book called Women and the Movement to Build a New America. I can't seem to get any decent information on it, but I sure do love the title.

the feminists you were warned about

By now, I know, most of you are starting to worry. This is great, you think, but what, what will I do when March is over? Let me sooth your troubled feathers in two ways: 1) Since I started late, a few days into March, I'll continue a few days into April, and 2) Let me tell you about Opinionated. 

What is Opinionated? Well, it is "[a] podcast to discuss all things feminist, from gender politics to pop culture. Hosts Amanda Marcotte and Samhita Mukhopadhyay comb over the news and spend one hour a week dissecting items that aren’t getting the mainstream media coverage they deserve. When the mainstream media isn’t ignoring important stories about gender issues, they’re providing piss-poor coverage. We can’t fix that problem, but we can aim some sarcasm in its general direction while informing the self-selected smarty-pants Citizen Radio crew. The show will feature news, digressions about music nerding, and interviews with some of the coolest and sharpest feminist minds of our digital age." If you're so excited you can't even finish reading my blog right now, I honestly won't blame you.

In fact, they're such good talkers, I won't put words in their mouths. Here's how they define their feminism: "You won’t be hearing a mealy-mouthed debate about whether or not Sarah Palin is a 'feminist' on this show. (The answer is, 'Sarah Palin is a feminist like Richard Dawkins is a Catholic.') Hardly a day passes anymore that women don’t see basic rights being attacked or glossy magazines publishing pieces about how education makes women unmarriageable, making the only real question, 'How can we triage what needs mocking today?' We see everything from police brutality to DJ culture as feminist issues, and figure we’re pretty persuasive in showing how we’ve come around to that belief."

Check it out! And, if you feel moved, you can become a member at the "Dirty Hobo," "Miscreant," "Pirate," or "Zombie Pirate" level (among others).

ladies who ink

The hard data seems hard to come by, but all the anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that the tattoo world is pretty seriously male dominated. The women tattoo artists interviewed in this New York Times article have pretty mixed feelings as to how pervasive sexism in is in the industry, as well as the value of a tattoo artist convention solely for female artists. (Marked for Life is an annual conference that gets women tattoo artists together.) Which reminds me that I'd really like to do some extended thinking on female separatism soon. But probably not right now, because I'm sleepy.

Meanwhile, here in the Bay Area, we've got Diving Swallow, Black and Blue Tattoo, and Sacred Rose Tattoo, for starters. There may be more, but it's a weirdly hard search to do. P.S. Hey Yelp: What's up with that? Why can't I search for "women-owned business"? Thanks. Actually, that's a great point. I just searched for "women-owned businesses" on Google and came across this helpful site for women who'd like to open a business, brought to us by the Small Business Administration, who also maintain this (warning: glaringly ugly!) directory of women-owned businesses around the country. It's impressively long and the index isn't even alphabetized, so I can't believe I haven't used it before. Right. This information should be free and friendly, people. No reason why not.

Want to know more? The SBA also maintains this handy page of recent studies and research on women owned businesses. Neato!