With all the talk about Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama in the news during this presidential election, issues of racism and sexism have risen to the top of the American consciousness.  What better time than now to look back at an important moment in American feminist history? The documentary film "Sisters of '77" tells the story of the 1977 National Women's Conference held in Houston, Texas.  The weekend long meeting was attended by a wide range of prominent women including former First Ladies Rosalyn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, writer Maya Angelou, and feminist activists Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan.

The first time it happened, I didn’t think anything of it. I was on FaceBook, surfing around and answering mail, when a guy I knew pinged me. 50-something, smart, and techie (like many of the people I knew), he was a distant acquaintance.

Hate your body? Can't bear to look in the mirror? If your answers are yes, stop right where you are and listen to this podcast interview I did last week with Kelly Park.

Rachel Kramer Bussel has an excellent piece live in the Huffington Post about Carla Bruni, her reported number of sexual partners(15) and whether counting out loud makes you a big slut (she says in our culture, it does). Worth a read and thought provoking.

The ad men of AMC's "Mad Men" are sleek, stylish and mired in a 60's culture that's been meticulously recreated.  They smoke like bad oil, they drink like cheap dates and they sleep around like they've earned the right.  Three weeks into the show's second season and just a few weeks before going for sixteen primetime Emmy awards, "Mad Men" is maintaining its buzz.

This week, you might have noticed an interesting trend in our mostly text-based medium: popular women bloggers are now, in the case of Playboy, being offered money to pose nude.

I never imagined myself with children. I was never one of those girls to which the younger children flocked. Yet, I never escape being pegged as a mother. Yes, I have children, but we all know of women who've borne children and have not a mothering bone in their bodies. And we know women who've never had biological children but nurture neighborhoods and perhaps nations. When I say I'm pegged as a mother, I mean I seem to be that person to whom other people come for answers to their problems, the one to whom they'll tell their troubles, or the person in front of whom they decide to break down.

Have you noticed that now that now that Hillary is presumed out of the race, the gender meme is huge? Barack Obama thanked Clinton last night: No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age.

In honor of the 10th Anniversary of V-Day and BlogHer's exclusive interview with the writer of "The Vagina Monologues" Eve Ensler, I was asked to focus this week's post on "The Vagina Monologues" on YouTube.

"I think there are many different ways in which you define leadership. As a feminist, and as a feminine feminist, I truly believe that we don't do a very good job in the United States of believing that you can lead by serving, and I think the United States needs to think deeply about being in service of the rest of the world."

V-Day, the global non profit founded by Eve Ensler in 1998 at the first benefit of her award winning play The Vagina Monologues, will celebrate it's 10th anniversary of working for the end of violence against women. "V To The Tenth" will take place April 11-12 and will reclaim and transform the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans into "Superlove."