The intro of the No honorary doctorate for anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly Facebook group:
Wash. U. will honor anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly at commencement. WHAT?
This is the woman who lives the hypocrisy of having a career that takes her around the country lecturing “family values” groups on how women should stay home.
This is the woman who said of husband-wife rape, “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape [sic].”
This is the woman who described sex education classes as “in-home sales parties for abortions.” Do her views fit with the future the men and women of Wash U’s graduating class see for themselves and their peers? Probably not. Then why honor her with them? Wouldn’t having someone like her in the midst of Wash U’s female graduates be incongruous at best, offensive at worst?
Indeed.
When Jessica posted about this on Feministing this morning, she said there were 1100 people in the group; when I joined at 11 a.m., it was up to 1350, and as of 11:15 it’s over 1400. It’s already being discussed broadly (a Google Blog search on phyllis schlafly degree currently has 311 hits); a friend forwarded it to me from the Feminist Daily News Wire, saying “this’ll set the blogosphere on fire,” and I suspect she’s right.
The organizers have clearly thought ahead, labeling this group as a discussion group and setting up another, smaller, action-oriented group. They’ve also got contact information for University officials and the press, and some excellent tips such as (“Wash U Alums: Make it very clear to the administration that not only do you disapprove of their choice of honoree, this choice will lose them your contributions. Money talks.”) They’ve got a very clean website with links to key information, and an email list.
Looks like Wash U’s in for some excitement!
jon
jon | 06-May-08 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
I mentioned this in the Facebook group, but can’t hurt to repeat here, with a little more context.
For people who are doing Facebook activism as part of the protest, there’s a work-in-progress resource page on the CFP wiki.
One important topic is avoiding getting tagged as a spammer. be very careful about posting duplicate messages and links — and don’t post too many links. If you do start getting spam warnings, slow down. If your account gets disabled, see the Wired HowTo WIki page.
The resource page is for the upcoming May 22 Workshop on Education and Activism Using Social Networks. If you’ve got any suggestions, please add them — and pass the links along!
jon | 06-May-08 at 10:55 pm | Permalink
Just over 1800 people in the group; that means about 50/hour joined today.
339 blog posts matching the Google search.
Of course, a lot of people were distracted by the primary today. It’ll be interesting to see if this starts to get play in the political blogosphere …
jon | 09-May-08 at 7:06 pm | Permalink
About 2550 people. The blog search returns 394 hits, which isn’t as many as I would have thought … very high quality, though. There’s a small list in the Facebook group here
Google News currently returns 23 articles for phyllis schlafly degree. I wonder what it’ll be at a week from now, on commencement day?
www.tagsto.com/trackback/ | 10-May-08 at 4:23 am | Permalink
Shops of Facebook groups protesting Phyllis Schafly’s honorary doctorate ……
shops about u.s : Do her views fit with the future the men and women of Wash U’s graduating class see for themselves and their peers? Probably not. Then why honor her with them? Wouldn’t having someone like her in the midst of Wash U’s female gra…
queerunity | 12-May-08 at 10:14 am | Permalink
please let me know if u find out any protest details?
http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2008/05/ding-dong-witch-is-getting-honorary.html
jon | 12-May-08 at 1:53 pm | Permalink
will do — although i’m getting my news on this from the Facebook groups, so you might be better off checking there directly
queerunity | 12-May-08 at 5:48 pm | Permalink
thanks, i haven’t seen anything on there about specifics for the protest but will keep checking
http://www.queersunited.blogspot.com