So much feminist news to catch up on! Enjoy.

• My favorite story of the week: Fox News is apparently worse than no news at all. via GOOD magazine.

• The wonderful Samhita over at Feministing wrote an unconventional and feminist dating advice book. Racialicious applauds her deconstruction of exoticism, anti-interracial dating narratives, and the pressures on cis-gendered men. (There’s a long excerpt in the review, too.)

• American-Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy courageously shares her story of being sexually and physically assaulted by Egyptian police in Tahrir Square. via The Guardian [trigger warning]:

“I was taking pictures and covering events on the frontline of confrontations between protesters and the police and the military and a group of five or six riot police beat me, and surrounded me and rained their big sticks down on my arms. I was trying to protect myself.

“They also sexually assaulted me. They dragged me to the ministry of the interior. They dragged me by the hair and called me all sorts of insults. And this all happened in about seven to eight minutes.”

• Another, quite different, brave use of 1st amendment rights: Emma Sullivan, an 18-year-old high school student from Kansas, overtly and shamelessly criticized her state’s Republican governor, Sam Brownback, for his homophobic and anti-choice politics. She was sent to the principal’s office for her comment made on Twitter that he “sucks”– but as she says, “I wasn’t sorry for what I said because I meant it.”

• NPR has a series called “Living Large: Obesity in America.” Let me just list you a few of their headlines, all cringe-worthy for the fat-positive and body-positive community:

-Losing Weight: A Battle Against Fat and Biology
-One Woman’s Struggle to Shed Weight, and Shame
-Why Doctors and Patients Talk Around Growing Waistlines
-For Obese, Intimate Lives Often Suffer
-Corporations Offer Help in Trimming the Waist

• Notice any patterns? Shame, lose weight, trim your waist, waistline, suffer, shame, shame, bad, bad. Might as well read Cosmo. Read Tiger Beatdown’s excellent analysis of the lack of critical treatment of body size in this series.

• Can’t believe I haven’t posted this here yet. Feminist Ryan Gosling, created by a PhD candidate in Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin. It’s FLASH CARDS of dense feminist theory, in a cute package! Here’s an interview with the creator, who responds to the question, Why do you think this is so popular?

Feminists are apparently not supposed to have a sense of humor.  I think people are really liking the fact that this site is intelligent while simultaneously silly, and obviously self-referential. A lot of my followers are women’s studies majors, or people who have taken women’s studies classes, and love seeing inside jokes presented in this way. For example, if you’re a women’s studies major, you’ve probably read “The Yellow Wallpaper” at least 18 times. Now matter how much you like that story, it gets a little ridiculous.

• A little politics-of-the-c-word action for ya! Comedian Sarah Mathews writes about her mixed (but ultimately positive) feelings in Guernica magazine.