Feminist Weekly: PolicyMic Gets Personal
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:
As PolicyMic readies for our October re-launch, Thomas and I have been putting in work to put people in touch with their own experiences and expertise. We've been asking writers to focus on personal, identity-driven angles on contemporary culture and politics. It's not easy work. In my opinion, it's just as hard to write a compelling personal essay as it is to write a hard-hitting news story. So this week, I decided to challenge myself to write as personally as I could.
Here's the result: "Portrait Of the Editor As Young Feminist in the Internet Age."
And then this happened.
And I was all:
There's one feminist writer, though, whose profound influence I didn't get to mention in my piece: Vivian Gornick, the author of The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative.
In a 2010 interview with Sari Botton, Gornick says, "I was of that generation that was very influenced by the New Journalism, and I knew early that – and this dovetailed with feminism, with my becoming a radical feminist — to insert myself, to use myself to tell a story that was actually cultural and political and intense, was my style. I learned the importance of using myself — not writing about myself — in those years. People who knew what they were doing would use themselves to illuminate a subject beyond themselves. The bad ones were falling into it and ending up writing about themselves and they were the worst writers of personal journalism. I never lost sight of the story that was outside myself."
Right on.
Thoughts to share? I'd love to hear via email (sam@policymic.com) or Twitter (@sameier12).
Updates From Our Pundits:
I'm not the only one who had something to say to Hanna Rosin. Feministing picked up Senti Sojwal's excellent piece, "Shocking Women Everywhere, Hanna Rosin Declares Patriarchy Dead."
Watch PolicyMic contributor and all-around badass Anna Day on HuffPo Live, but not before you read her piece at the Daily Beast.
Bitch Media is reading Liz Plank on the Miss America pageant.
Do you recognize PolicyMic's Pundit of the Week?
Must Reads From Last Week:
This University is Robbing Students and Surrounding Communities Blind (Walker Bristol, @WalkerBristol) — And your college probably is too.
Don't Be Scared Of Obamacare, I Promise It Won't Hurt a Bit (Polina Kroik) — I should know. As a low-income Russian immigrant in Israel, I never had to worry about health care until I came to the United States.
Is Nina Divuluri Too Dark-Skinned to Be "Pretty" in India? (Sarmed Rashid, @sarmedrashid) — Our "wheatish" writer explores racism's many hues.
Millennial Women Are More At Risk For Dementia, Depression and ADHD (Danielle Paradis, @DaniParadis) — Luckily, Arianna Huffington is working to save our lady brains.
This Black Fashion Scholar Thinks You Should Care More About What Happens On the Runway (Evette Dionne, @EvetteDionne) — New York Fashion Week reminds us that fashion is about so much more than you think.
The Republican Argument For Legalizing Pot (Ryan Schuette, @RyanMarcS) — I'm a former GOP aide and I changed my mind. You should, too.
This Viral Blog Post Says Millennials Think We're All Special Snowflakes (Jewelyn Cosgrove, @JewelynCosgrove) — Another day, another story about how we're self-obsessed. I've had it. The real story is that millennials face challenges and opportunities Boomers didn't have — and we make them very nervous.
The Labor Movement Has to Get Less White Or We're All Screwed (Sophia Kerby, @SophiaKerby) — The economy is tough on all of us, but especially millennials of color. Labor is missing out on the best allies they've got.
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