If you call yourself a “feminist”—which basically means you believe women deserve the dignity, rights and respect afforded to men—then you can relate to how peeps come out of the woodwork to tell you you’re either being “too feminist” or “not feminist” enough. Some people think feminism should be a spartan existence where there’s no frivolity allowed, on principle: no makeup, no “Sex & The City, and definitely no getting married!

The dumbest criticism of feminists we’ve ever seen happened when some people freaked out over the engagement of Jessica Valenti, co-founder of Feministing (and one-time Frisky blog!) to her boyfriend, Andrew Golis, deputy publisher of the politics blog, Talking Points Memo. Gettin’ hitched, apparently, is “antithetical” to feminism.

One of the country’s largest feminist groups, National Organization for Women, has weighed in on the revelations that “Late Show” host David Letterman slept with several of his interns and assistants. In a statement released on Tuesday, NOW said:

“The latest Letterman controversy sheds new light on the widespread objectification of women in the workplace. Most women can attest to the fact that many workplaces are plagued with inappropriate behavior by men in power. As ‘the boss,’ he is responsible for setting the tone for his entire workplace — and he did that with sex. In any work environment, this places all employees — including employees who happen to be women—in an awkward, confusing and demoralizing situation. The National Organization for Women calls on CBS to recognize that Letterman’s behavior creates a toxic environment and to take action immediately to rectify this situation. With just two women on CBS’ board of directors, we’re not holding our breath.”

Usually, I agree with NOW’s pro-women’s rights stance on lots of subjects—for what it’s worth, I was president of the NOW chapter at my college. But I only have one thing to say about the stink they’re making about Letterman’s employee-diddling:

Bitch, please.

• Lady Gaga told an interviewer she is not a feminist because, “I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars and muscle cars.” [Daily Beast]—Dang, Gaga, didn’t you read about that study that found feminists don’t actually hate men?
• When I was a starry-eyed little girl, I wanted to be a doctor someday. The paint company Dutch Boy has other ideas: their homepage teases girly color selections under a banner reading, “Because she wants to be a princess when she grows up.” [Jezebel]—Oh, princess crapola, when will you die?
• Police beat protesters outside a Sudanese court today, who had gathered to support Lubna Hussein, a female journalist who is on trial for violating Islamic law for wearing pants in public. Hussein, a former U.N. worker, has already received 10 lashes from police and paid a fine, but is facing 40 additional lashes. [Wall Street Journal]—If you are looking for something to be grateful for today, you’ve found your answer.

• Here’s a shocker: Feminists don’t actually hate men. A study published by the Psychology of Women Quarterly found that people who cheerlead for traditional gender roles, not feminists, reportedly have the most negative attitudes about the menfolk. [Feministing] — However, further study is required on why feminists won’t shave their hairy armpits, burn their bras, and have no sense of humor.
• Billie Jean King, one of the first openly gay athletes, and Harvey Milk, the gay civil rights leader upon whom the film Milk was based, will be recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. [San Francisco Chronicle]—So will Sen. Ted Kennedy, presumably for his role in helping the Obamas pick their new puppy, Bo.
• Despite opposition from the Vatican, Italy’s drug agency ruled yesterday that hospitals can give women RU-486, the abortion pill. Italy will not allow RU-486 to be sold at drugstores, however. [Guardian]—So if a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy with the abortion pill in Italy, she has to check into a hospital? Doesn’t that totally negate the point of RU-486, which was to allow women to have an abortion in the privacy of her own home? Color us confused.

Diane Keaton will star in her own half-hour HBO series where she’ll play “a feminist icon who attempts to reignite the movement by starting a sexually explicit magazine for women,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. Annie Hall working for a porn mag? Yes! Yes! Yes! The show’s writer, Marti Noxon, says Keaton is the first actress she considered for the role because there are so many similarities between her and Gloria Steinem. We don’t see the Keaton-Steinem similarities, though, other than the fact that we want them both to adopt us and share joint-custody. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Aww, F-Bomb, a new blog about feminism for teenaged girls, is like a baby Feministing! Hooray for Julie Zeilinger, a teenager from Pepper Pike, Ohio, who has her s**t together, her fingers on the keyboard and her heart in the right place.

Julie’s interview with Gloria Steinem and her smartypants post on the feminism in Lily Allen‘s lyrics have us totally convinced we’ve found our next intern! [F-Bomb]

Men only care about sex. All men are violent and abusive. Women are victims. Women aren’t capable alone and need a man’s help.

Sometimes it seems like the erroneous beliefs attributed to feminism are so negative that only LiLo could have worse PR. So, why is it a surprise when the men we fall in love with are skittish about embracing the term?

I don’t recall how it came up over the weekend, but my boyfriend still managed to raise my eyebrows when he said that wouldn’t describe himself as a feminist.

Frisky commenters are seriously freaking awesome. But I’ve blogged at a bunch of different sites and have heard some not so nice things—that I’m stupid, immature—even sexist. At least no one has called me “ugly” yet, but there’s still plenty of time!

With that in mind, the blog The Curvature linked to a list of “troll” bingo cards. Each fake bingo card has a list of typical of unkind/inaccurate remarks that trolls make. She’s got one for “anti-choice” comments, one for homophobic comments, fat hate comments, and a bunch of others.

My favorite card for “troll bingo” is one of the ones for anti-feminist comments—because seriously, how many times have you been asked “Is it that time of the month?” or “Can’t you take a joke?” when you make a feminist statement? Click through to see the “troll bingo” board and play!

Lipstick and leopard print aren’t feminists’ usual weapons of choice, but the founding editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan always thought differently.

As the original “fun, fearless female,” Helen Gurley Brown lived a topsy-turvy life as a pioneer for women in media—and in the bedroom. A recent biography of Brown, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, by Jennifer Scanlon, argued that Brown is reason that the unmarried, financially stable single woman as we know her exists!

And now Lorraine Candy, former editor of British Cosmo has weighed in to dish about her career alongside don’t-tell-me-what-to-do firebrand.

There’s been some internet chatter recently about how Huffington Post, a blog with mostly liberal writers and a liberal slant on the news, publishes a lot of photos and slideshows of half-naked female celebs. Two years ago I was on staff at the Huffington Post and this was going on back then too. The ongoing hypocrisy of an ostensibly liberal politics site objectifying women’s bodies, sadly, is not new.

I was raised by a working, single mother. She went to Stanford, majored in economics, became a public school teacher, wrote a book, and now works as a journalist. She didn’t give up her job when she had my sister or me, and she certainly didn’t give it up after she and my father divorced. I consider her the ultimate feminist—she’s worked her butt off, made a living on her own, and raised two perfect daughters (just kidding). She’s my hero. But if she had quit her job when I was born, retiring at age 31, would she still be my #1 role model? It’s hard to say.

Sirens siren Heather Wood Rudulph has written a piece for Huffington Post about five reasons we still need feminism, including the recent murder of abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller, and the propensity of pop culture to make women look like marriage-crazy loons.

Her five reasons are just dandy, but why limit ourselves to only five? It was depressingly easy to think of five more reasons we need more of the F-word.

“No means no” is a phrase feminists have successfully integrated into the lexicon to use in halting unwanted sexual advances. And now some feminists are arguing the next terrain for “no means no” should be for cutting back on above-the-call-of-duty hours spent in the workplace.

So says the new book “Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules For Success,” by Claire Shipman, senior national correspondent for ABC News’ “Good Morning America” and mom of two, and Katty Kay, Washington correspondent and anchor for “BBC World News America” and mom of four. Their argument, as described by Salon:

[The authors] call for women to say no to 60-plus-hour work weeks and overly demanding jobs that yank them away from their families. Instead, they urge working women to use their clout in the workplace to demand fewer hours at the office, turn down non-family-friendly assignments, and take control of their time by working from home more, checking e-mail less and avoiding meetings whenever possible.

Sigh. We remember back when Feministing was just Jessica Valenti’s small third wave feminist blog with a couple of her friends. But now one of our favorite blogs rolls nine bloggers deep and is turning five years old!

The anniversary bash will be held on June 12 in New York City.  If you’re not in the NYC area but still love Feministing, you can buy a ticket that the bloggers will donate to a partier who can’t afford to go.

If a night of debauchery with folks who aren’t afraid to use the F-word (feminist, duh) isn’t enough to bring you out, the party will even host a special guest appearance from Kathleen Hanna of Le Tigre and Bikini Kill! So get your tickets now, alright? [Feministing]

Jessica Valenti,  Feministing editor and Full Frontal Feminism author, is getting married! Congratulations are in order! Wait, are they? Apparently not, if you believe feminism and marriage can never, ever go hand in hand. Certainly, marriage has its traditions that are problematic from a feminist perspective, which Valenti has addressed many times on the blog—and perhaps that’s why she seemed hesitant to announce her good news. But does the personal really always have to be political? Can’t she get married without every Gloria, Betty, and Camille judging if her wedding is “feminist” enough?

“I don’t want to feel that I must blog about getting married because it relates to the work that I do. I want to be able to have things that are just for me and not be judged poorly because of that…. I realized that I don’t feel like I had to blog about getting married—I wanted to…. I’m positive you’ll be hearing more from me on the marriage front: Like how to do it while shirking patriarchal tradition? Or why I decided to participate in an institution that still (for the most part) excludes same-sex couples.”

Women’s History Month should feel different this 2009. We’re living in an epicenter of change and progression. We have powerhouses Nancy Pelosi and Hilary Clinton sitting high in the White House. Tina Fey represents our new wave of venerated cultural icons. And before our new president married our first lady, he was reporting to her in the workplace. Yes, smart is sexy again. Or is it?

Growing up, my mom and dad shared the responsibility of bringing home the bacon…well, the proverbial bacon—we’re Jewish. Anyway, my mom was a realtor and good at her job, but I’ll never forget her main competitor. His wife didn’t work and he was a jerk, the kind of guy who used too much hair grease and put his cheesy head shot up at bus stops. While my mother kept me in enriching after school programs, this other slick Realtor dude would scam his clients for sympathy by dragging his son around to meetings. One particular prospective female client even told my mother she was going to go with this guy because he was really his family’s breadwinner. Puke—that’s some serious girl-on-girl crime! I was always proud of my mama for Mary Tyler Moore-ing it up in the face of sexist foolishness, but apparently this chauvinist realtor isn’t the only man who has cashed in on close-mindedness.

Oh yes, it’s ladies night, but the feeling is not quite right—the actual perk may be as outdated as the song. Being a woman has its advantages when it comes to getting into nightclubs, but are they fair? When we flip the tradition and examine the idea of just a “gentleman’s night,” the discrimination is glaringly obvious.  Las Vegas resident Todd Phillips is sick of being a second-class citizen in his city just because of his gender. Taunted by a gym club billboard that offered free enrollment to women, Phillips felt penalized for his penis. So he decided to take action by filing a complaint with the National Equal Rights Commission.  “When you have one price for men and one price for women, that’s clearly discrimination, clearly sex discrimination,” Phillips argues.  And the man has a point!  Sure, the gender equality feminists fought for protects us all, ensuring our rights to the same wages, respect, and opportunity.  However, Phillips is finding out that the statewide statutes about bias based on sex or sexual orientation are more like policy suggestions than prosecutable orders.  Even the ACLU isn’t sure he has a leg to stand on. But Phillips is a male trailblazer and promises to fight for his right to work out the same way women do—for free!  After he takes the gym to court, he’s planning on going after the clubs on the Vegas strip like the MGM/Mirage for favoring ladies. [Las Vegas Now]