Self Care is a 2020 American satire by author Leigh Stein. Set in the wake of the 2016 United States presidential election, the novel follows Maren and Devin, co-founders of social media platform Richual as they try to balance their personal politics and dedication to well-being against their need to succeed on a platform that depends on advertiser content.
Maren Gelb, originally from Wisconsin, is the overworked co-founder of the lifestyle platform Richual which aggressively caters to women's wellness goals. While Maren struggles to enact the self-care she espouses on the website, her co-founder Devin Avery, who struggles with an eating disorder and is already well-off thanks to a large inheritance from her deceased father, is the face of the site.
In 2017 Maren releases an angry tweet criticizing Ivanka Trump. The tweet goes viral, much to the distress of Devin who thinks that Maren's behaviour goes against the Richual credo to believe and support women. She suggests that Maren take some time off and asks board member Evan Wiley, a former Bachelorette contestant and minor feminist celebrity, to loan his family's country estate to Maren. While Maren is there she accidentally stumbles across Evan's personal sex room which contains sexualized photos of women who appear to be sleeping.
Later on a story drops in which several women accuse Evan of sexual misconduct and reveal his personal fetish for having sex with women who either appear to be or are asleep. Devin, who is in a consensual relationship with Evan and knows of his fetish, passionately defends him and wants to attack the women as liars while Maren wants to publicly support them. Instead the Richual team decides on a statement in which they celebrate Women's History Month while barely mentioning Evan at all.
At a conference for female entrepreneurs Devin is attacked for her support of Evan. After she flees Maren comes to believe that Devin is another one of Evan's victims which Devin denies. Maren later steals Devin's phone and posts to Richual telling the world Devin was a victim. The post garners widespread support for both Devin and Richual.
Maren tries to use the next board meeting to oust Evan but is surprised to be ousted herself by Devin who buys her out by undervaluing her shares knowing Maren does not have the ability to fight her.
The novel received praise for its timeliness. The L.A. Times called the novel "a frightfully true portrayal of days gone by". [1] The A.V. Club called it "a timely beach read". [2]
A dominatrix, or domme, is a woman who takes the dominant role in BDSM activities. A dominatrix can be of any sexual orientation, but this does not necessarily limit the genders of her submissive partners. Dominatrices are popularly known for inflicting physical pain on their submissive subjects, but this is not done in every case. In some instances erotic humiliation is used, such as verbal humiliation or the assignment of humiliating tasks. Dominatrices also make use of other forms of servitude. Practices of domination common to many BDSM and other various sexual relationships are also prevalent. A dominatrix is typically a paid professional (pro-domme) as the term dominatrix is little-used within the non-professional BDSM scene.
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
Carol J. Adams is an American writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books, including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2004), focusing in particular on what she argues are the links between the oppression of women and that of non-human animals. She was inducted into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2011.
Erotic humiliation is consensual psychological humiliation performed in order to produce erotic excitement or sexual arousal. This can be for either the person(s) being humiliated and demeaned or the person(s) humiliating, or both. It is sometimes performed before spectators, including through pornography and webcam modeling. It may be part of BDSM and other sexual roleplay, or accompanied by the sexual stimulation of the genitals of one or both parties in the activity.
Lipstick feminism is a variety of feminism that seeks to embrace traditional concepts of femininity, including the sexual power of women, alongside traditional feminist ideas. The concept emerged within the third-wave as a response to ideals created by previous movements, where women felt that they could not both be feminine and a feminist.
Omorashi, sometimes abbreviated as simply "omo", is a form of fetish subculture first categorized and predominately recognized in Japan, in which arousal from the idea or feeling of having a full bladder and potentially wetting themselves, or from witnessing another person in that situation.
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The Wrongs of Woman was published posthumously in 1798 by her husband, William Godwin, and is often considered her most radical feminist work.
"Africana womanism" is a term coined in the late 1980s by Clenora Hudson-Weems, intended as an ideology applicable to all women of African descent. It is grounded in African culture and Afrocentrism and focuses on the experiences, struggles, needs, and desires of Africana women of the African diaspora. It distinguishes itself from feminism, or Alice Walker's womanism. Africana womanism pays more attention to and focuses more on the realities and the injustices in society in regard to race.
Feminist views on pornography range from total condemnation of the medium as an inherent form of violence against women to an embracing of some forms as a medium of feminist expression. This debate reflects larger concerns surrounding feminist views on sexuality, and is closely related to those on prostitution, BDSM, and other issues. Pornography has been one of the most divisive issues in feminism, particularly in Anglophone (English-speaking) countries. This division was exemplified in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s, which pitted anti-pornography activists against pro-pornography ones.
An Asian fetish is a strong sexual preference for people of Asian descent or heritage. The term generally refers to people specifically of East or Southeast Asian descent, though this may also include those of South Asian descent.
Feminist views on sexuality widely vary. Many feminists, particularly radical feminists, are highly critical of what they see as sexual objectification and sexual exploitation in the media and society. Radical feminists are often opposed to the sex industry, including opposition to prostitution and pornography. Other feminists define themselves as sex-positive feminists and believe that a wide variety of expressions of female sexuality can be empowering to women when they are freely chosen. Some feminists support efforts to reform the sex industry to become less sexist, such as the feminist pornography movement.
Networked feminism is a phenomenon that can be described as the online mobilization and coordination of feminists in response to sexist, misogynistic, racist, and other discriminatory acts against minority groups. This phenomenon covers all possible definitions of what feminist movements may entail, as there have been multiple waves of feminist movements and there is no central authority to control what the term "feminism" claims to be. While one may hold a different opinion from another on the definition of "feminism", all those who believe in these movements and ideologies share the same goal of dismantling the current patriarchal social structure, where men hold primary power and higher social privileges above all others. Networked feminism is not spearheaded by one singular women's group. Rather, it is the manifestation of feminists' ability to leverage the internet to make traditionally unrepresented voices and viewpoints heard. Networked feminism occurs when social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are used as a catalyst in the promotion of feminist equality and in response to sexism. Users of these social media websites promote the advancement of feminism using tools such as viral Facebook groups and hashtags. These tools are used to push gender equality and call attention to those promoting anything otherwise. Online feminist work is a new engine of contemporary feminism. With the possibility of connecting and communicating all around the world through the Internet, no other form of activism in history has brought together and empowered so many people to take action on a singular issue.
Feminist Digital Humanities is a more recent development in the field of Digital Humanities, a project incorporating digital and computational methods as part of its research methodology. Feminist Digital Humanities has risen partly because of recent criticism of the propensity of Digital Humanities to further patriarchal or hegemonic discourses in the Academy. Women are rapidly dominating social media in order to educate people about feminist growth and contributions. Research proves the rapid growth of Feminist Digital Humanities started during the post-feminism era around from the 1980s to 1990s. Such feminists’ works provides examples through the text technology, social conditions of literature and rhetorical analysis. Feminist Digital Humanities is aimed to identify and explore women's sense of writing as well as to prove widespread of women's work in most of the digital archive.
The socio-political movements and ideologies of feminism have found expression in various media. These media include newspaper, literature, radio, television, social media, film, and video games. They have been essential to the success of many feminist movements.
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: that of the man behind the camera, that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and that of the spectator gazing at the image.
Hijas de Cuauhtémoc was a student Chicana feminist newspaper founded in 1971 by Anna Nieto-Gómez and Adelaida Castillo while both were students at California State University, Long Beach.
Eggshell Skull is a 2018 non-fiction memoir by Australian author Bri Lee. It details Lee's experiences as a judge's associate in Brisbane's District Court of Queensland, where she oversees many cases, including those involving sexual harassment and assault. Two years into her job, she returns as the complainant in her own case.
Jessica Taylor is a British feminist author and campaigner. Taylor is the author of the 2020 book Why Women Are Blamed For Everything. She has made appearances on British television, including BBC Two documentary Womanhood, and in the true crime documentary My Lover, My Killer, which aired on Channel Five.
Mindy Finn is an American digital media expert, political and technology consultant, and entrepreneur. She worked as a digital strategist for the Republican Party, most notably for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008, respectively, and became the vice presidential candidate for Evan McMullin's 2016 presidential campaign. She co-founded the organizations Stand Up Republic and Empowered Women, and works to make elections more inclusive.
Jessica Butcher is the co-founder of Blippar and social media video platform Tick. In 2012, she was listed as Fortune's "10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs", and one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2014. She was one of four new Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) board commissioners appointed in November 2020. She is the daughter of late Conservative MP for Coventry South West, John Butcher.
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