RIP Dixie Carter, whose Designing Women character was "a confounding woman for those who think liberal politics and feminine wiles can't coexist."

Australian Chief Justice Jim Spigelman blames immigrants and "diversity" for sexism. Ah yes, because we all know that white people have never, ever exhibited any sexist tendencies, and an Australia without immigrants would be a feminist utopia.

Obama failed to pass reforms that would have helped millions of low- and moderate-income students attend and finish college.

Is hormone replacement as dangerous as people say it is?

A meditation on dude music.

Looking closer at openly un-retouched celebrity photos.

Pilgrim Soul on her disinterest in the debate over Tina Fey's feminist bona fides.

Modeling "conscious antidiet" as a way of teaching your daughter to both be healthy and love her body.

On the speculation about the sexuality of women on the short-list to replace Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court.

There seems to be a rising trend in Japan of boys wearing skirts. Which I think is pretty cool. The article links this trend to "Vegetarian Boys" - that is, boys who don't spend their time "hunting" girls. The second article frames this as a problem that will exacerbate Japan's decreasing birth rate, and of course places the blame on gender equality.

Is someone here who is Japanese or has an understanding of Japanese culture able to comment on these trends?

Debbie Stoller is the co-founder, co-owner and editor-in-chief of BUST magazine, the magazine "for women with something to get off their chests." Stoller and the BUST co-founders saw that mainstream women's magazines focused less on the pleasures of womanhood than on the risks and dangers. "Whereas Seventeen might have been like, 'now that you're becoming a woman, boys are going to want to touch your breasts, but don't let them, and cover yourself up, and just make sure that you're skinny enough,'" Stoller wanted to create a magazine that would encourage women to embrace their bodies and their lives. And so, inspired by the zine Sassy, they founded BUST in 1993, with the goal of creating a magazine that spoke to young women in the voice of a peer, and that focused on the pleasures and possibilities of being a woman. Fifteen years later, BUST has become synonymous with smart, funny feminist analysis of popular culture.

BUST covers everything from music to movies to what it's like to be a feminist in high school, and of course, crafting. In fact, Stoller is the New York Times bestselling author of the Stitch'n'Bitch series of books, calendars and journals about knitting and crocheting. So if you like feminism but feel like your life lacks knitting, BUST is for you. If you'd like to hear more from Debbie and happen to be in NYC next week, you can! Also, if you're on the hunt for an internship in the city, BUST is hiring.

And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Debbie Stoller.

Out magazine finds only nine gay women powerful.

Laura Eldridge reminds ladies of the "dark side of birth control."

Check out the Love Your Body poster winners for 2010.

The trigger warning conversation continues.

Jack Kimball, a Republican candidate for governor in New Hampshire, compared paying taxes to getting raped at a recent tea party event. Smart campaign move, a-hole.

According to a new study, women who change their surname are seen as more dependent, less intelligent and less ambitious. No word on how men who pressure women to change their surname are perceived. Of course.

Civil rights leader, Benjamin L. Hooks, Dies at 85

In breaking news on why the world hasn't totally gone to shit: padded bikinis for kids have been recalled.

Thomas Macaulay Millar blasts the usual sexist "because it's just natural" argument to smithereens...with an 80s music soundtrack no less.

Since I've been inducted as Community Moderator here at Feministing, one of the perks of the job is reading so many poignant and thought-provoking comments that add vital elements to the discussion on post threads. And as I begin to delve deeper into the commenting community, I thought it would be great to highlight these comments in a series -- not only to give some of readers props where it's due, but to showcase them as a reminder of how vital you all are to the Feministing community.

So this is the official kick-off post of our Comments of the Week series where I'll be highlighting some of my favorite comments. I want to bring these comments (and comments that are just hilarious or get a lot of praise from other readers) to the forefront and celebrate our commenting community!

This week: Icy Bear, nattles thing, Heina & liv79...

Family Affair was an incredible brave documentary about family life, incest, race, religion, truth-telling, and healing. Chico David Colvard takes the viewer on a riveting journey, starting with an accident that would change the course of his family life. After little Chico accidentally shot his sister in the leg, the silence surrounding the family was fractured. His three sisters admitted to being raped repeatedly by their father, a veteran and authoritarian figure. Chico, now an adult, goes back and interviews everyone involved, trying to understand all of the different dimensions. Like all good art, this film asks way more questions than it purports to answer. Not surprisingly, it's been picked up as the first doc film to be a part of Oprah's new documetnary series, called OWN. Here's the trailer:

You think you know about the Stonewall riots, but you don't know the whole story until you've seen this awesome new doc, Stonewall Uprising. The filmmakers did a miraculous job of taking an event with no footage and only 7 still photographs and turning it into an amazing movie. They zoom out to give the wider context of homophobia in the late 60s/early 70s in America, complete with horrifying and hilarious public education videos about the dangers of homosexuals. The riots themselves, which participants argue should be framed more as an "uprising," are elucidated in riveting detail, as is the very first pride march.

12th & Delaware is a film about abortion from the same documentarians who brought America Jesus Camp. These two incredible filmmakers--Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing--have an anti-Michael Moore style, committed to letting their subject speak for themselves. I believe it is way more persuasive in its restraint. In this film, they bring the viewer into one corner of the abortion debate taking place on 12th & Delaware in Fort Pierce, FL, where a crisis pregnancy center has opened up shop across the street from an abortion clinic. The characters that emerge, the philosophies that curdle, are impossible to look away from and offer all of us valuable insight into the hearts and minds of those that we vehemently disagree with. It's a must-see for all feminists, in my humble opinion.

The Most Dangerous Man in America provides us with an example of heroism at great cost: Daniel Ellsberg's notorious leaking of the Pentagon Papers to American newspapers, the tipping point in the Vietnam War. It's incredible to watch Ellsberg's journey from RAND corporation, war-strategist insider to fugitive and friend of Howard Zinn and other radical, anti-war thinkers and activists. It made me so hungry to figure out how, in our own time, we can tell the truth about government corruption and the cost of war, and motivated me to re-ask critical questions about the power and decline of the media in our own time and the dearth of racial, large-scale activism against violence.

I had to laugh when I saw this headline over at RedState (I especially appreciated the sub-head):

Apparently blogger Lori Ziganto was scandalized by a recent post I published about a pro-choice New Yorker who changed an anti-choice subway ad. Here's the ad after it was pro-choiceified:

Ziganto writes:

Want to go to college, but there is a pesky baby growing inside of you? Abort! A life is far less important than your co-ed fun and career plans, right?

...Jessica Valenti called the abortionchangesyou.com ad "heinous." Do you know what she said about the defaced ad promoting abortion for convenience? She called the vandal a "pro-choice hero" and then said: "Love. It."

Loves encouraging abortion for convenience. Loves encouraging abortion because a baby, a human life, doesn't fit in with your super fun college plans.

...But you want it to be safe, legal and rare? Baloney. Willy nilly matters of convenience are not part of that definition. You have devalued life to the point where *convenience* over-rides a life itself, in your minds. (Emphasis mine)

Going to college is a matter of "convenience"? Really? Women want higher education for "co-ed fun"?

I always wondered what anti-choicers meant when they said women get abortions "for convenience." Did they think that women were procuring lunchtime abortions so they could go out and booze it up that night? That women didn't feel like gaining weight and that ending the pregnancy would be so much easier? I figured that they had this bizarre fictitious woman in their minds and that they didn't recognize the complex, personal, and often selfless reasons women decide to get abortions. But I was wrong.

It isn't that anti-choicers don't understand why women get abortions - it's that they care so little about women's lives that any reason given to obtain an abortion is seen as "convenient."

Some things that are convenient: Providing for your existing children. Going to college. Having enough money to eat, pay rent, keep the electricity on. Not dying.

So yeah, I guess I would "rejoice" over women obtaining abortions when it's convenient. (The inaccessibility of abortion for too many women makes actual rejoicing impossible.) Whether it's for health, financial, and educational reasons - or simply not wanting to have a child yet - it would absolutely thrill me if women's life decisions were respected, accepted and supported.  But instead, we live in a world where a woman's desire for something as basic as education is mocked as selfish.  And we're the ones who are "anti-woman"?  I think not.

I love reading advice columns - a guilty pleasure of mine - but I often find myself approaching them fearfully, worrying that I'm going to come across some advice that's going to offend me. Much of the time, columnists dish out advice that is sexist, patriarchal, offensive and sometimes even dangerous. We've seen many critiques of this sort of thing on this very website.

But today I read this, and it's a refreshing case of the opposite! The Frisky's Wendy Atterberry, of the "Ask Wendy" column, offers great advice to a help-seeker that is not only non-sexist, it's downright feminist. Her advice to "Name Withheld" checks his entitlement:

You're not a hard-line traditionalist or a domineering macho type? Good! Then you shouldn't have a problem with taking your wife's name if you feel so strongly in your convictions that a family unit should share the same surname. Maybe your girlfriend would even be open to creating a new last name you both take when you marry. Still feel like it's the woman's job to take the man's name and you're not going to marry any woman who disagrees? Well, maybe that traditionalist macho label fits a little more snugly then you'd like to admit.

Here's the thing with name-changing upon marriage: It is a patriarchal act. Find the definition to the word patriarchy and you'll see what I mean. It's not necessarily a sexist act, but it is patriarchal.

Am I dissing women who choose to change their names? Absolutely not. My mother did, almost all the women in my family did, and the majority of my friends (including many of those who identify as feminists) either already have changed their names, or they plan on doing so if/when they ever get married. That's fine. That is THEIR CHOICE. It's not one I will personally make, ever, because I feel a pretty strong connection to my last name and I know that's not the case for everyone. For me, changing my name would be like changing my identity. It would be a pretty inconsiderate thing for any man to ask of me.

Obama asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services to create new protocol by which all hospitals that participate in the government-funded Medicare and Medicaid programs respect the rights of patients to designate who may visit them, i.s. gay and lesbian partners who have so long struggled to be close during the hardest of times, will no longer have to face this kind of inexcusable discrimination in medical settings. Read more here.

It's long overdue justice, but incredibly heartening nonetheless. Thank you Mr. President.

While we all cheer when Barack Obama talks about creating a nation where every single kid can pursue a college education, the deep chasm between here and there is sobering. Presently, only a third of Americans actually have a college diploma, and the majority of us are mired in school debt of one kind or another. The mortarboard, at least at the college level, is way more elusive and expensive than ever. So what is going to bridge the gap between?

Anya Kamenetz, staff writer for Fast Company, believes that the bridge between Obama's vision and the present reality is open content and online learning. In her new book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, she argues that huge demand and high cost of higher education, coupled with technological and information innovations, are leading to a total paradigm shift in who learns and how we do it. She writes:

Research shows that, at its best, hybrid learning beats both online-only and classroom-only approaches. Learners can take in and retain more content faster and more easily, form strong mentoring and teamwork relationships, grow into self-directed, creative problem solvers, and publish portfolios of meaningful work that help jobs find them. These innovations hold out the tantalizing possibility of beating the cost disease while meeting the world's demand for higher education.

Unsurprisingly, the prospect of online learning and open source curriculum makes lots of folks nervous. Anyone who's had a truly transformative relationship with a professor, in person, doubts that the same dynamic can really be replicated online. But no worries, Kamenetz isn't arguing that the days of sitting in uncomfortable lecture halls are going extinct; she's not a technology evangelist. Instead, she's arguing that a new hybrid form of learning is going to emerge from the dynamic intersection of forces pushing educators and aspiring students to innovate.

Bottom line: If more people can have access to life-changing information and life-building skills, than we owe it to ourselves to face this new future unafraid.