Feminist Valentine Awards

My work life over the past year has been all-involving, and I've left this site sadly neglected. One task that has regrettably been left undone has been the announcement of the 2006 Feminist Valentine Award Winners.

Since here it is already Valentine's Day 2007, obviously it's too late to even try to call for enties this year. But last year's winners were exceptional and deserve recognition.

And so, better late then never (or so I hope), I present to you the 2006 Winners of the MediaGirl Feminist Valentine Blog Awards!

Lorraine at culturekitchen wins the Pleasure IS Political Award for Orgasm and Politics:

February 13. The day before Valentine’s Day, the day we celebrate and honour erotic love in the USA. Which, of course, makes people like me laugh out loud. Americans celebrating erotic love? The same group of people who keep voting en masse to ban pleasure in all of its forms? I could spend the rest of this post linking to every news item and blog entry I can find that documents how much we hate our bodies in this culture. Our fat selves. Our messy selves. Our sexual selves. Our reproducing selves. Our natural selves. Our self-pleasuring selves. Ourselves.

But I don’t want to do that. Not today. Today, I’m willing to risk opprobrium to celebrate erotic love. (And if you want to see opprobrium, try posting something called “Erotica” on Big Orange as I did a while back and watch what happens.)

OrangeMagritte at Vicious Lidocaine wins the Valentine Angst of Grade School Award for happy valentines day no, really:

remember when you were in grade school and you had to make those damned difficult valentines boxes for all yer classmates to "post" their teeny valentines in? i remember one year i made one that actually looked like a post-box, i built a flap, and a post for it, so it was like 2ft tall. i didn't decorate it in hearts and red construction paper, instead i pasted love notes and quotes and poems all over the outside. i was in 4th grade, i'd typed all the notes myself. my parents (well, the moth) didn't help with the thing, we didn't see each other very much because she worked a bizillion miles away from home, and my brother and i were left to our own devices for much of our after-school hours. (we both were way too involved in music, i was a cellist with a Purpose, and practiced til i couldn't read the notes, even when i was tiny.)

ok, so the valentines day box.

i didn't make mine with the trappings anyone expected. although it was the most imposing in Ms Kenner's class, and the way things were supposed to go, you didn't put your name on the boxes, it was an equal-opportunity card-getting for everyone. in theory, this should've worked out well for my desperate 4th grade self: i wasn't the most adorable of children, however adorable i've become (ha), and i was a big loner based on, what i now believe, the fact i had a cello with me nearly always. celli, when you're in 4th grade, are as big as another person. it must've seemed like my best friend was always around. (i had named her (because that's what yo yo did! and he was amazing!) as much as i loved playing, playing took up most of my life.

i didn't get any valentines in my un-pink-hearted-box. despite the supposed anonymity involved, my oddity stood out like me wearing yellow shoes with black pants.

Blooming Town wins the I-Don't-Really-Know-What-You-Said-(but-I'm-sure-it's-great)-Award for 2회 페미니스트 발렌타인 블로그 어워드:

발렌타인 데이에 관한 페미니스트들의 생각을 담아 블로그가 있는 사람은 태그를 붙여 테크노라티에 핑을 보내거나, 아니면 답글에 글을 남겨서 심사기준에 따라 상을 줍니다. 작년에 이어 두번째 행사라네요.

muse and fury wins the Why Wait? Award for So you wanna be valentines...:

Of course, all the Valentiney ’stuff’ is for heteros - I didn’t see any cards this year for same sex couples. There were plenty of husband/wife and girlfriend/boyfriend cards, but none for girlfriends or boyfriends to exchange. Harumph.

This version of the holiday is also the one where women and men have preset roles and obligations (think dominant/submissive, flowers, chocolate, lace, sex), and even some self-declared feminists get goose-pimply and deck out in pink and red for this day of celebrating Loooove. This holiday is the one where a year full of shoddy treatment and neglect is forgiven by a bouquet of flowers and some chocolate - and sex. If we pretend the love game on V-day, the relationship can carry on for another year. When I was married, we ignored V-Day as much as every other day of the year. We weren’t fooling anyone.

The other version of the holiday is the twisted game the kids play. The one where they each have to bring in little pieces of paper - one for every kid in the class, no ‘friends only’ trading - and pass these out at lunchtime. The cards are usually store bought and branded with whichever television or pop character is trendy this year. They all say “Be my Valentine” or “You’re cool, Valentine” or some such hideous phrase that no child would ever say outloud to their classmate, but yet on Valentine’s Day, on a slip of paper, it’s okay.

Why do we do this???????

Everyday Goddess wins the Oh, Please Spare Me Award for I know it's hard for you, my baby:

The fact that prices jack up and everyone goes out on the same night definitely causes hassle and expense, especially in a big city. But, still, something was bothering me...

And I finally realized that what it was was that I take on that sort of hassle like TEN MOTHERFUCKING TIMES A DAY. OOOHHH, do you have to deal with expense and hassles LIKE A FEW DAYS A YEAR???

GO TO AN EFFING BABY SHOWER. DEAL WITH A BRIDAL SHOWER. HELL, SCHEDULE THREE KIDS AND DRIVE THEM AROUND. MANAGE MY LIFE AND MY SCHEDULE.

Please. Make some reservations and buck up, already. Or order dinner in. Hell, have pizza and a romantic movie and a back rub. Buy a card. What's the problem???

Honestly, if I get the whole negative-on-holidays line from a guy, I just know that I would rather go the next ten years without sex OR romance rather than deal with that whiny, negative, un-spirited and un-fun-loving lump of bullshit for even ten minutes.

liza at culturekitchen wins the Valentine Orientation Award for Be my valentine! Heterosexually yours?:

"But valentines are only supposed to be between boys and girls!"

These were the words that rolled off my oldest son's lips after I suggested the make valentines for all his team mates and soccer coach. "For my coach? Ewww. He's a man", said heterosexually my eight year-old. It's funny, but Thing #1 seems to be deciding these days he likes the girls and their smoochies after all.

His father is quite alarmed that I made this observation impassively, diagnostically. Well, I do look at pregnancy, mothering and the whole parenting thing as one big human Wild Kingdom experience. It's like I am looking at animals in the zoo but I am one of them.

And let me tell you, there's a couple of boys that by their choices are really hell bent on liking Peter and Paul waaaay more than Mary. It really is amazing to see, how some of us are just, well, gay from the day we were born. I think it's beautiful.

EL at My Amusement Park wins the True Love is It Award for Happy Valentines Day!

Valentine's Day isn't just for preppy, thoroughly non-alterna monogamous heterosexuals. If you want to give roses, chocolate, and a red teddy bear, be my guest. If you want to skip the celebrating and make it any day of the year, do it. If you want to protest the capitalist and heterosexist and sexist elements of the way many Americans celebrate, grab your sign and hit the streets outside Hallmark. But My Amusement Park believes in true love (and the power of "reclaiming".) And true love is nothing if not deeply personalized. So we're going to get you in the mood.

Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Professors wins the The Small Gestures Really Count Award for this untitled post:

The long slog through the rest of the semester loomed interminably, and I knew that the only respite from the tedium would be the reoccurring fear of finals. I was too heinously depressed to even buy myself some chocolate. Then I went to my student mailbox, which was really just a hanging folder, and found an unexpected valentine, from a casual law school friend, and by casual I mean completely and unambiguously platonic. It was just a small, extremely inexpensive valentine of the sort children buy in bulk to exchange with classmates, and it featured a smilling cartoon bumble bee with the legend “Bee Mine” or some equally silly pun, but it completely and profoundly brightened my day.

OrangeMagritte at Vicious Lidocaine wins (again) with the Deconstructionist Valentine Award for news fails:

Derrida wrote that world view comes from textural interpretation. We make words out of everything we see in order to make sense of it. There's no other way to do it. When a therapist suggested my online life was obviously depressing me, i slammed derrida at him in retort, to which he had no reply (being he was a therapist, i wasn't surprised). Beckett's moving novel Watt speaks (oh my. a pun) of the importance of language and the devastation which occurs when it isn't accessible any longer.

What started as "chat" with the otherh rapidly became "camaraderie." What spun from there was the awe we share that we ever found each other. Having spent three years never having met wasn't relevant, our Dasein didn't need a handshake, or a hug or a long, hard kiss. That we are mitdasein has everything to do with togetherness, and i'd wager, roughly nothing to do with the fact we share 24hrs a day in the same space.

I would not need to deck our bed in roses for the otherh to know my feelings. I would not need to mail trinkets, baubles, naughty things and the like in order to highlight the depth, breadth and endlessness of my love. the otherh just *knows*.

LotionBarBunny at I need to vent wins the Love's Tinfoil Hat Award for The Valentine's Day Conspiracy.

I'm just taking a stab in the dark here and saying that I think Valentine's Day is a conspiracy. Propoganda made up by retailers to get you to spend lots of money with them by hiding behind love and mushy stuff. I suspect it was started by Hallmark, Russell Stover, FTD Florists, and Victoria's Secret. Then Kay's Jeweler's and the people who make those candy hearts caught on. They figured out that they could convince women that their should be a Holiday all about them, because hey, we WANT to be showered with affection and expensive gifts. And really, if you think about it, are their really Valentine's advertising geared towards women to buy gifts for their man? Nope. It is all about the men taking us out to dinner and wooing us with overpriced chocolates, soon-to-be-dead-I-just-spent-my-entire-paycheck roses, sappy cards that they think will get us into bed with them before dessert, and please-be-slutty lingerie.

LotionBarBunny at I need to vent (again) wins the It's Not Tinfoil If It's True Award for happy valentines day no, really:

And it is the stupid Valentine's Day conspiracy that makes me this way. Thinking I should be special today...not to mention the freaking fact that today is our 8th wedding anniversary. He wanted to get married on Valentine's Day so that he would not forget our anniversary because he loves me so damn much. Ugh. Did he even say "Happy anniversary," or "Happy valentine's day my awesome wife and kick a$$ mother of my children, for whom I will forever cherish"? Nope. Nothing.

He'll be likely to come home tonight with a last minute card and some roadside flowers. Things that tell me I am not important enough, however...just important enough so that he isn't sleeping on the couch.

Note: Click here to see what happened.

Chaos Theory wins the As If! Award for happy valentines day no, really:

I was reading this message board thread and I found myself getting more and more irritated with the comments of some of the posters. The posts were along the lines of (summarized):

"Just spend time with me."

"We're not into gifting."

"I don't need gifts."

"All I want is a card."

"We never do dinner on the day. So many crowds!"

"We're not into holidays. We just spend it like every other night of the year, at home with dinner and the TV."

And the more I read Smug comments like that, the more my inner Bridget kept coming out and getting annoyed. Like, "Wow, you're so shallow for WANTING stuff or special attention on that day." And "Who cares about holidays? Why make it special?"

Diane at The Dees Diversion wins the Love Only with a Gun Award for A valentine with no heart:

On my bookshelf is a photograph of my father showing my mother how to shoot a rifle. They are standing in front of an old shack in the middle of nowhere, both looking smart in their 40's trousers. My father towers over her as he stands behind her, helping her steady her hands on the gun. She looks like Hedy Lamar in a still from a pre-war Western.

I found this gem several years ago, after my mother died and I had to go through her things. The picture haunts me. The entire time I lived with my parents, I never saw my father help my mother do anything, and the only time I saw them stand close to each other was when he was punching or slappping her. They didn't dance together, though my mother was a great dancer. They didn't sit near each other. They barely spoke. There are no other photographs of them together.

It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the one photo I have of them in a position of physical closeness is one in which the focal image is an instrument of violence.

s at jelly-fish consciousness wins the Big Shrug Award for Pain and Intimacy: a few Valentine's Day thoughts:

I really have no strong feelings about Valentine’s Day. I’ve very rarely been in a relationship on Valentine’s Day, so I don’t really have any special memories associated with this holiday. On the other hand, Valentine’s Day never really made me bitter that I always seemed to be in a perpetually single state. And I get mildly annoyed over the whole commercial manipulation of the holiday, but I would say I have stronger feelings about the commercialization of Christmas (which is actually a holiday that I love). So, as I ponder what to write in a feminist Valentine’s Day post, I find myself thinking more about love and relationships in a general sense rather than phenomena associated with the day itself.

Thank you all for entering last year. I'll try to do better next year. (Heck, maybe next year Valentine's Day will be more for me than something that happens to other people.)

Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O' heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers,
Over the meadow and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it
Flash for a million miles.

We have winners!

However, the announcement must wait while I pull together the nifty linky buttons for the winners.

(we're so sorry uncle albert
but we haven't done a bloody thing all day
we're so sorry uncle albert
but the kettle's on the boil
and we're so easily called away)

Because of some craziness here on the home front, the round-up on the Feminist Valentine Blog Awards submissions is coming soon, but is not here yet.

Meanwhile, check out the entries. Post your comments there, and here, too.

And if you want to sneak in your own late entry, go on ahead. Since I'm tardy, no reason everyone else can't be, too! Details are here.

Award announcements are coming soon. I promise!

Today is the day. Time for you to celebrate the love of your life. Time to indulge in romance. Time to be with your honey and do all sorts of silly and wonderful and embarrassing and lusty and heartfelt things with each other.

Or not.

Time to buy that chocolate. Time to get that perfect card. Time to pick up that three-dozen roses. (Diamonds are forever, boys!) Time to lavish your sweetheart with stuff.

Or not.

Today is the day to blog about it. Valentine's Day and you.

(The Blog Awards particulars are here.)

Since Valentine's Day is tomorrow, and the awards were announced only yesterday -- and don't fret: the person responsible for the tardy call for entries is being punished -- I thought I'd post another plug....

Plug: Post your submissions! The particulars are here, including a linky thing that enables me to track it on Technorati.

And to the emailer's question: It's Shakespeare's Sonnet 47....

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other:
When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
With my love's picture then my eye doth feast
And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
Another time mine eye is my heart's guest
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
So, either by thy picture or my love,
Thyself away art resent still with me;
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them and they with thee;
Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.

For the love-addled and romance-anxious souls out there, it's no surprise that Valentine's Day, the High Holy Day for romantic love, is almost upon us. For the rest of us -- or at least me -- it snuck up with the stealth of 10 zillion red-colored gift cards in stores across America ever since December 26th. What that means to a semi-love-cynic workaholic like me is that it was too subtle -- Ha! -- the net result being that this Call for Entries comes just a tad later than I had intended.

So here are the rules:

Who'da thunk that so much crap could be wrapped around a holiday symbolized by a heart? Is it about romance or crass commercialism? Is it about anti-war protests or tacky gift-giving? Is it about love or about expectations? The award-winners here explore these questions, and more.

This being the inaugural year for the Mediagirl.org Feminist Valentine Awards, we were able to be the most idealistic and democratic and give awards to everyone who bothered to ping in here with something at least somewhat relevant. In future years we'll probably give in to bribes and threats of torture, but this year we're blessed with relative obscurity. Which means we have 13 awards (and one troll trinket) to mete out here. Award winners are hereby pressured encouraged to publish their nifty award graphic with a link back to this post. (The troll can just shove it where it might tickle something.)

So here are the 2005 Awards:

The Snarkiest Rant Award goes to Amanda of Mouse Words, for The Valentine's Day post....

Balloon bouquets might be my absolute favorite of gifts I would never want. Well, maybe second to huge teddy bears. Or statues that look like they want a hug. Flowers seem like a waste of money to me, but at least they are attractive. But balloon bouquets cost the same and are appalling and corny. I suppose the idea behind them is that the sender wants to be romantic but also wants to convey the message that he/she may be in love, but that doesn't mean they aren't a goofy, humorous sort. Which would be okay if ever there was a balloon bouquet that was funny, but there's just not. It's like the Hawaiian shirt of romantic gifts--the wearer of the Hawaiian shirt thinks he's a devil-may-care sort, but the rest of us are thinking, "Dork."

The Good Riddance Blog award goes to Lauren of Feministe, for Don't Send Me No Flowers, I Ain't Dead Yet....

I'd rather think of Valentine's Day itself as a massacre of another sort: hearts, relationships, and unrequited love slayed as easily as gangsters with guns hanging in a garage on February afternoon. Disappointment, really, and not because I feel left out of the holiday or anything, but that people so invest their relationships and self-worth into this holiday that most are disappointed. And thus, I am disappointed in them for being so ridiculous.

The Cut the Bull Award goes to North of are we there yet?, for sex for roses....

Valentine's Day is all about keeping all those roles in place. Women provide sex and want romance and money; men provide romance and money and want sex. Eew. I hate thinking of my relationships, romantic or not, in that transactional mode. The relational part of being human is really strong, and really wonderful, and I think it cheapens and sours it to talk about it like it's a widget exchange. Not to mention the way these enforced gender roles damage women, damage men, contribute to sexual violence, and completely fuck over anyone who's not straight.

The Best Marxist Romance Analysis award goes to Trish Wilson, for A Feminist Analysis of Valentine's Day and A Feminist Perspective on Valentine's Day, Part II....

Maybe this is a class thing, and class is definitely a feminist issue. White, middle-class feminists have been criticized for being classist. It's a fair criticism. I wouldn't want to get a rose from a gas station because, I admit, I'm a snob. I'm solidly middle-class now (at least until Bush's "reforms" take effect. I could sink any moment now.), and I admit I have sometimes had a case of class snobbery. I like flowers from a flower shop, even if it's the flower shop at the local grocery store. The flowers at the grocery store in my neighborhood are more fresh than the roses at the gas station, and there is more variety. They are often on sale. It's convenient. You can buy your milk, bag of Reese's Cups, condoms, and porterhouse steaks, and stop for a bouquet of field flowers that are likely to be a dollar off without having to go near a gas station. One-stop-shopping is your friend.

(Also worth peeking at: For Cheapskates on Valentine's Day, about a gas station's alternative offerings to the traditional florist bouquet, and More Valentine News, about a bachelor's desperate (pathetic) attempt to attract true love by climbing into a plastic bubble.)

The Books Just Don't Compare award goes to Ravenmn of Fly By Night, for this February 15 post....

When I was a teenager, I spent my summers working shitty jobs. One summer, I worked in the cornfields de-tassling corn. A couple of summers, I worked in a corn canning factory pulling 12-hour shifts. During those long days I spent hours on end constructing elaborate fantasies about my dream life with whatever man was the focus of my current crush. I'm not talking about three or four minute visions about what might be possible. Nope. I constructed entire lifetimes for hours on end. I included career changes, I furnished apartments and houses, I provided children and storylines for years or more.

These elaborate fictions owed as much to my vivid imagination as they did to the phenomenal boredom that comes from stuffing corncobs into slots on an assembly line at a rate of 60 ears per minute or more.

The Warm and Fuzzy, Yet Rational award goes to Elayne Riggs of Pen-Elayne on the Web, for Valentine's Day - A Feminist An Elayne-ist Analysis....

And now Robin gets me choccie boxes (or Godiva during more prosperous years). Chocolate is lovely for the old endorphins, and the fat content of this most comfortable of comfort foods (yes, I am planning to watch many of these shows, why do you ask?) is particularly welcome during the cold weather.

The Best Expression of "What-ever!" award goes to D.E.D. of DED Space, for Roses are red, men are retail targets....

The only time I have ever let myself be hurt by one of these observances was when I took a woman who has been like a mother to me to lunch one Mother's Day, and the woman waiting our table handed us both roses, saying to me, "I know you must be a wonderful mother." I wanted to slap her until she bled, because, at the time, my childlessness was the source of extreme emotional pain for me. Later, when I thought about it, I wanted to slap her all over again because, for all she knew, I had beaten my kids with belts or driven them into the lake.

The Best High School Epiphany that Changed Everything award goes to Carrie of Spiral Staircase, for her Valentine's Post....

Even though my feelings were hurt that day and I felt useless having not received a valentine, I learned a lot too. Like when I left the library and went to basketball practice, none of the girls had time to talk about valentines. When I went home that night, my parents asked me about my classes, not if I had gotten a valentine that day. I stopped talking to that boy, and the next week no one mentioned valentine's day at all. It didn't matter anymore. Because what happens on Valentine's day is ultimately useless if it doesn't happen on every other day of the year. If the love - or in high school terms, the fun or the excitement - that fuels the relationship dries up, the roses are good only to celebrate the ending of the relationship.

The Funniest Heartfelt Bitch Rant award goes to Chaos Theory, for The Five Commandments of Valentine's Day....

I admit it: I don't even necessarily want a guy to prove his love on that date so much as I just want to "keep up with the Joneses" for ONCE in my life. I want to flaunt flowers in the faces of people with flowers. I want the candy, even though to be honest I hate those candies with the goop inside and don't even eat them. I want to be shown off on Valentine's Day in a fancy restaurant NOT with my parents, wearing a skimpy dress, and finally feel like I'm having the holiday Hallmark always promised me, so I can be good enough, hot enough, and goshdarnit, SOMEBODY LOVES ME AND LOOK, HE SPENT BUTTLOADS TO PROVE IT TO THE WORLD!

The award for Best Short Ode to Everyday Love goes to Pesky'Apostrophe, for Call me....

As I am no longer single, I'm not quite as bitter. I mean, no one wants to be told what day they have to officially celebrate their love, right? Why don't people celebrate every day? We do. I think most normal couples do. It's not like you wake up on Valentine's Day and think, "Wow, I really love Mr. Fish! I think I'll be extra special nice and lovey to him today instead of spitting in his coffee!"

The Best Admonishing Advice award goes to Jane Hamsher of firedoglake, for Some Valentine's Day Observations....

1. He will not present me with a box of chocolates as a gift after I have announced I am on Atkins
2. He will not download tons of porn onto my computer then think I won't find out if he empties the cache
3. He won't show up for a date with a box of Viagra and leave it out in the bathroom....

The award for the Most Romantic Anti-Valentine's Day Blog goes to mistress of epigraph, for february's b-grade holiday....

I'll start with the lover. Mine lives 700 miles away from me. I am not ashamed to tell you that I am painfully incomplete without him here. When I venture into the world, I do so in my vulnerable alone-ness. In this silent solitude, my protection is gone. My shield from insult and violation, a shield upon which I had come to depend in its comforting familiarity, is impossible without him.

How is this so? What am I missing? Is he a line-backer looking boyfriend, quick to defend my honor at the drop of a hat, the slightest sign of disresepct to his beloved? Is he feverishly at the ready to come to blows should a stranger cross a forbidden boundary? Well, not quite. In fact, upon taking notice of a threatening stranger, he often inquires about my martial arts background: "You can kick his ass, right?"

The Stuff Isn't Enough Blog award goes to to sundre, for valentine's eve....

But now? I don't like the popular holiday nearly as much. Because it isn't about glee, it's about the stuff. And the having of a significant other. And I'm not really into either. While I enjoy small doses of theobroma, I'm not a kid anymore, and I can buy my own (decent) chocolate instead of waiting for the next holiday to swing by. I prefer live plants in pots to those in vases. Lace is itchy. The only jewelry I really wear is a necklace I got from my aunt when I was twelve. And I don't believe I've ever been unsingle on V-day.

Unsingle! Yes! That's the thing. While a guy would be, well, handy, it's not a necessary. (Really, really handy. There's a better word for this, I'm sure, as I'm not talking about skills with a toolbox. I can change my own lightbulbs and kill spiders and everything. But still. Handy.) I like being a complete person on my own. Being "with" isn't on my to-do list.

Of course, what would Feminist Valentine Awards be without the femiphobes? This inaugural year kicks kicks off rather strongly, I believe, with the awarding of the Black-Hearted Misogynist Prize Ass Award to recognize the feminist-hating stridency of a poor little boy who, because his site scarcely registers on Technorati and I would not want to change that, shall remain nameless, but who actually attempts to paint violence against women as just so-many myths perpetrated by "the gender feminism victim cult," and even makes the claim that more men aren't getting married because of marriage license taxes that go to women's shelters. So much for "love conquers all," hmmm? Other thorns in his side include sympathy for battered women (and none for the batterers), lack of kudos for men who protect women from violence (perpetrated by other women, no doubt), rape statistics and myriad other ways real men like him are oppressed by women. So sad. All that Levitra and nobody to share it with.

Anyway, any feminist worth her salt draws the ire of misogynists every now and then. Thus we are validated.

So there are the winners. Read, learn, laugh, sigh, perhaps shed a tear.