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Geekery Today: posts from February 4th, 2006

Betty Friedan, feminist pioneer, has died at 85 (posted 4 February 2006)

Betty Friedan (4 February 1921 - 4 February 2006)

I just read from Dr. B. (2006-02-04) that Betty Friedan — author of The Feminine Mystique, founding member and first president of the National Organization for Women in 1966, founding member of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws in 1969, and one of the founding mothers of the second-wave feminist movement in the United States — died at her home today, on her 85th birthday. Friedan was a prescient, maddening, monumental, and complicated figure in the women’s movement, and she deserves much better than I could offer her by way of a memorial in the space and time that I have tonight.

More to come.

Further reading

Whiteness studies 102: Intended audience (posted 4 February 2006)

Quick quiz. Here’s a selection from an interview with novelist Danyel Smith:

cg: The writing style of [More Like Wrestling] is absolutely unique, definitely daring and I remember being a little surprised that it made it into print.

DS: For that I have to thank my editor, Chris Jackson. He is extraordinary. My agents really stuck by me as well. They sent MLW out September 10, 2001, if you can believe that. Three or four houses were interested, good houses, but I mean, no one was jumping though hoops to acquire this book. This is my first time saying this on the record, so I want to phrase this carefully I had lunch with this one editor, she took me to this fancy restaurant, and she told me I had to make a decision whether or not I was writing for black people or white people. And that I needed to have clearer heroes and heroines in the book.

Your assignment: before you follow the link to read the whole interview, see whether you can accurately predict the race of the novelist based on the fact that an editor subjected her to this kind of question.

I’ll bet you can.

(Link thanks to Kameron Hurley @ Brutal Women (2006-02-03): You Need to Make A Decision.)

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