Mordant Belle

Contents:

• About the Site
• How did you compile this list of books?
• Have you read all the books?
• A Note on Race and Class, Radical Feminism and Men
• About the Author
• Author Interests and Academic Pursuits
• About the name: Mordant Belle

About the Site, also: What’s the Point?:
Goals, Purposes, Updates, and Regular Features

The goal of Mordant Belle is to create a resource of texts and literature on the subjects of:

• Feminism and gender studies
• Understanding race and racism (and working to combat racism) as a white person
• Corporate criticism, Anti-corporatism, and Anti-consumerism

The following is regularly scheduled content:

• Posts one book of feminist literature every other day
  • Even days only, as in April 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc…)
    • Full Disclosure: Every book posted links to Amazon.com (or another web site if the book is rare) through their referral service. So every time you click through and buy the book, I get a small commission. Any clickthroughs are much appreciated!
• Regularly adds to interactive virtual bookshelf, the Feminist Library
• Regular (as in, when I have time) posts of culture critiques, focusing on specific mass media images and ideas presented in:
  • Advertising
  • Magazine articles
  • Journalism pieces
  • Television
  • Web sites.
• Regular (see above) updates on academic studies published in scholarly journals
• Resources! (Again, these will come as time permits.)
  • Links
  • Notes from classes
  • Feminism101 posts
  • Important feminism-related statistics and history pieces
  • Activities and exercises for your own cultural critiques and personal exploration

Overall, I try to add one helpful slash interesting post per day, but I only officially commit to one post about a book every other day. That way, when I’m overtired/lazy/distracted/working/sleeping and people are mad at my lack of non-book-related updates, I can wave my non-committal flag and say “I PROMISED NOTHING OF THE SORT!!!”

How did you compile this list of books?

I got most of my initial list of titles from this post at Feministe, this post at I Blame the Patriarchy, and this post from Ginmar. I also got some books from my “Further Reading” sections in my collection of Women’s Studies textbooks, some from RSS subscriptions and recommendations from Amazon (they’re quite good, since I peruse the site all the time I constantly get popups of new and fascinating books). If there’s any specific place that I got a book from, such as from a (non-book list) post on someone else’s blog, I will note it in the post itself.

Have you read all these books?!?!?

NO. Hell no. There’s no way.
Though I do note at the time of posting whether or not I have read/am reading/haven’t read the book at that point in time.

A Note On Race and Class, Radical Feminism and Men

I am really, really bad at addressing issues of race and class. I am a white, middle class student who grew up in a white, middle class area with white, middle class people. Until I left private school and went to public school, where 60-70% of the class was white, 30-40% was Mexican, and one black kid if we were lucky. My class in high school had almost 500 people, and only 6 of them were black. As a result, I have little to no personal experience dealing with issues of race and class…the Chicana student association wasn’t exactly looking to me for insight (and who could blame them?). As a first step, I am trying to learn and understand as much about race and class as I can by thinking about it more and expanding my awareness of it. Specifically, I’m trying to post books that address issues of race and class, and posts where I ruminate on it as much as I conceivably can. I welcome any criticisms and suggestions on how I can better address issues of race and class, especially from people of color and women of color.

Regarding radical feminism and men: I refuse to limit the scope of my blogs titles to a certain sub-division of feminism. All my posts (and books) will deal with many varying forms of feminism, ones which I may subscribe to, or I may not, but all of the books will make the readers think and will likely challenge some of your core beliefs and require you to consider another perspective — all of which are something everyone could use much more of. So I will have books on radical feminism which may make men uncomfortable, and I will have books on masculinity and men which may make radical feminists irritated (Almost every book ever published before [insert date here] is about men and masculinity, do we really need to pimp more on a feminist blog? My answer: Yes.) If you’re bothered by a book I post: deal. Give some feedback in the comments and get the discussion going, if you feel passionate about it. Both radical feminism and masculinity studies have been crucial to my development as a feminist, so I’ll post them both.

About the Author: Mel Morrigan

• Not my real name
• Young, white, female
• Happily atheist, humanist, strictly opposed to formal religion
• Feminist, journalist, bookworm, news junkie
• Confident, conversational, confrontational
• Complex, run-on sentences; long paragraphs
  • Trying to overcome this horrible tendency through user-friendly design and visually-appealing text formatting, such as bulleted lists
• Recovering from growing up in a combination fundamentalist/evangelical Christian household
• Attended private Christian school until age 12
• Oldest of three daughters, mom was the Sunday school teacher
• Refused to continue to attend church at age 17
• My mom, dad, sisters, and guy-lover-man-thing (also: GLMT, also: Sam) all varying levels of Christians; all still pray for my soul

Author’s Interests and Academic Pursuits:

• Journalism, Rhetoric, Media Studies, and Mass Communication
• Feminism, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies (Masculinity Studies)
• Publishing (book, magazine, webzine)
• Religion, Politics, and Government
• Psychology and Sociology
• Anti-corporate, anti-consumerism
• Economic systems: capitalism, socialism, communism, environmentalism, globalization
• History as it applies to modern life
• Science and technology, as they impact the previous items
• Blaming the Patriarchy and plotting its overthrow
• Deconstructing, undermining, and redefining masculinity and femininity
• Social justice
• Anything that affects the lives of women
• Sex(!)

…not necessarily in that order.

About the Name(s):

mor·dant /ˈmɔrdnt/, (môr’dnt), [mawr-dnt]
–adjective
1. sharply caustic or sarcastic, as wit or a speaker; biting
a) Bitingly sarcastic: mordant satire.
b) Incisive and trenchant: an inquisitor’s mordant questioning.
2. burning; corrosive.
3. having the property of fixing colors, as in dyeing.

[Origin: French, from Old French, present participle of mordre, to bite, from Vulgar Latin *mordere, from Latin mordēre; see mer- in Indo-European roots.]
—Related forms: mor·dant·ly, adverb
—Synonyms 1. cutting, stinging, acerbic, scathing.

Morrigan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrigan