Feminist Weekly: Commencement 2013 Edition

Culture

Editor's Note: Every Thursday, I'll be rounding up my favorite pieces from the past week so that PolicyMic Pundits can more easily read and comment on the great content being written about sex, sexuality, gender, and race in politics and culture, in addition to updates from our community and GIFs galore! You can subscribe to get updates delivered straight to your inbox. 

Highlights This Week:

Do you wish you could go back to college? Good news. School may be out for summer, but learning is in for life.

ICYMI: 13 Lessons PolicyMic Writers Can Teach You About Graduating From College in 2013,” featuring Pundits Shanzeh Khurram, Mayura Iyer, Lauren MostardiGiuliana Cortese, Kirin GuptaCaitlyn Mattil, Lisa Wade, Barbara Kurshan with Cat McManus, Camille SquiresJohnathen Duran, Gabi Chepurny, Heather Price-Wright, and Talia Lavin. Have something to add to the curriculum? Let me know on Twitter: @sameier12

I’m beyond thrilled to announce that Liz Plank has officially joined the PolicyMic team as our viral content and social justice editor! We can’t wait to take the interwebs by storm. Be sure to congratulate her yourself: @feministabulous

Updates From Our Pundits:

Congratulations to Pundit Christine Salek, who got into every graduate school program she applied to! 

Remember Zach Wahls’ moving testimony on Iowa’s same-sex marriage ban which went viral in 2011? He’s back, with a new message: The Boy Scouts of America must end their ban on gay Scouts to send a message to the rest of America. And so far, America seems to agree … at least if Iowa Congressman Bruce Baley is any indication.

Pundit Kate Moening’s piece “4 Reasons Olympia Snowe Was Right to Leave Congress” was Tweeted by none other than Olympia Snowe herself.

TruthOut picks up Pundit Lauren Rankin’s piece on transphobia and feminism.

PolicyMic’s Soraya Chemaly is one of several folks working with Women, Action and the Media to get Facebook to take down pages which constitute gender-based hate speech.  

As Liz Plank explains, “The open-letter campaign doesn't only target Facebook users and executives; it's also aimed at companies who advertise on the social networking site. Sample Tweets have been created by the campaigner for corporate entities such as Dove, VistaPrint and Zipcar. Companies whose advertisement appears on anti-woman pages have already received thousands of Tweets. One of Facebook's sponsors, West Host, announced that it would no longer advertise on the site after it received a slew of Tweets yesterday.”

So far, activists have sent over 16,000 Tweets and 1,300 emails. Join the efforts here!

What did you do last week? I’ll share any outstanding writing achievements in our community, and highlight the great work that all of our Pundits do offline as well. If you have anything you’d like for me to include about yourself or a fellow PM writer, please send it along!

Must Reads From Last Week: *Shortened this week due to 13 articles featured above!*

Antiwar.com and ACLU File Lawsuit Over FBI Docs Detailing Possible Spying On Website’s Editors (Joseph Frankel) — The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of antiwar.com, which has potentially been the target of FBI monitoring.

Thanks for reading! Please encourage friends to subscribe here. Send me your feedback, give me a tip for what I should be reading, and tell me how I can do better: sam@policymic.com.

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