About

FemAcadem is a Feminist blog originally written by Suzi, and  is  now a group blog co- written by Suzi, Andie, Melazska and other guest writers.

Suzi is a 25 year old terribly British, terribly middle class Social Sciences graduate, tutor and mother. She is kept on her toes  by two charming curious children and one charming, curious baby, one charming, curious kitten and one charming curious partner, who incidentally does all the technical stuff for this site, because while Suzi is a total nerd she lacks in technological skills and is very good at breaking things that are gadgety.

Suzi also reads a lot of blogs and has a wide range of opinions that tend to focus on why the government are idiots, why education is the solution to all of societies problems, why gender inequality sucks, why the gender binary is the most rubbish thing ever and why being a nerd is the best way in life to be.

Andie is also a Social Sciences graduate and mother of two. She is much more radical than Suzi and is passionate about civil liberties, human rights, freedom of information and the open source movement. She also has a lot of opinions and reads a lot of blogs, some of which are ones that Suzi doesn’t read. She’s a top notch organiser, and  won the colleges Margaret Marsh award which is awarded to the female student who has contributed the most to student life. She spent last year as President of the Student Union, fighting a lot of sexist behavior and stereotypes about single, working class mothers along the way, and was subsequently re-elected for a second term. Andie now does work for OSARCC and is contemplating re-writing her dissertation for publication.

When not parenting, working or living in new graduate job hunting  hell, Suzi and Andie like to spend time gaming- Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Fable 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Devil May Cry 4 are amongst their collective favourites. They also like to go out for lunch and scare waiters by discussing the relative merits of opposing political ideologies and whether or not P!nk is a feminist icon. At the moment between the recession and growing children they are both too poor to go out for lunch so instead they have coffee and spend a lot of time trying to work out whether Jadzia Dax was better than Ezi Dax and planning campaigns against Sexual Violence at college, organising local feminist events and trying to persuade people to fund them for further study.

Recently they’ve been joined by Melazska and Dorrie, who has held down the fort while Andie and Suzi have been gadding about writing dissertations and having babies and other frivolous things like that.  Melaszka is 41, based in the West Country and has identified as a feminist since the age of fourteen. She currently cares full-time for elderly parents, but has previously worked in education and the arts.

Dorri has been many things in her life so far; English, foreign, able-bodied, feminist, worker, disabled, student, activist, partner, and born-again singleton. She attended her first peace protest on 1st April 1983 at the age of 10, a few years later she succeeded, although very briefly, in trespassing on RAF Greenham; that was the beginning of her life as a feminist. When she was 18, just before she was planning to go to university she became ill. It was a very unremarkable event but it changed her life entirely. The illness quickly worsened and within weeks a single step defeated her. It took years but eventually she got to university but it was a very different experience as a disabled woman, despite this she has gone on post-graduate studies. Today her passions included Taijiquan, disability rights, feminism, psychotherapy, writing, LARP, and the rather handsome cat with whom she shares her home.