Blogger Appreciation

**This is the first post of a new series I am starting in order to share some positivity for the bloggers I truly admire. Blogging can be hard work, and these people deserve to have that work acknowledged. I will link to the sites of all these bloggers, and I highly recommend you check them out.**

This week's letter goes out to Melissa, founder and manager of the blog Shakesville.

Dear Melissa,

Thank you for running one of my favorite feminist/progressive blogs ever. I have consistently read Shakesville since I first began identifying as a feminist back in 2007 and have never ceased to be impressed with the quality of posts that are published by you and others at your place. You have also fostered an impressive community that any progressive blogger would be lucky to have.

It is obvious that you work hard to cover many of the bases that should be touched upon in a progressive blog, and you handle yourself in a professional and caring manner that I admire deeply.

Not to mention, your blog, while covering some serious and important issues, is fun. My life would not be the same without "OMG Shoez," "Pathetic Anger Bread," or the "Boob Pistol of Disdain." These things help remind me that I am not alone in dealing with personal insults and general ignorance and hatred for speaking up about my politics, and if you can handle yourself in a constructive manner, so can I.

You are brave, authentic, and you do good work so well. Thank you for starting a blog to which I make sure to send all new feminists that I meet, as well as your continuing efforts to make the world a better place.

Fondly,
Amelia

Operation Beautiful

I just found something really awesome thanks to Cara's Twitter.

Operation Beautiful, which was launched in June of 2009, already has a lot of people talking and taking action.

Check out the website, leave a random note for strangers to find, and help end Fat Talk.

This made me smile so much. I can't wait to be part of it. I am so thrilled to see that people are getting behind this idea because we have to start fighting back against all the harmful images and messages that women are receiving every day about their weight/worth. This is a great place to start.

What an idea.

Walking as Rebellion? A Follow-Up

Wow. I had no idea that my experience would be shared by so many vocal, awesome commenters. Thank you to everyone who has shared anger over similar moments, support, solutions, thoughts, or opinions.

A few things that have been coming up in the comments that I want to address:

1. Harassment as compliments
I think a few readers have misunderstood the kind of harassment I'm concerned about. There is no way to mistake a "suck my dick" comment for a compliment. And yelling something from a car, even something meant kindly is not the appropriate way to compliment someone. Ever.
If a guy feels need to tell a girl, who he doesn't know, that she looks nice or that he likes something she is wearing, that is a totally different situation. And one that deserves a separate blog post.

2. Solutions: Silence or The Middle Finger
In the original post, I mentioned that I have a hard time ignoring the situation, so I usually flick the bastards off. I lot of commenters responded that they choose to simply ignore the situation because a reaction is what the guys are looking for. But, I just can't do it that way. I feel a need to respond, and the quickest way in my situation, which is mostly cars driving by and commenting is flicking people off. That's just me though. I do realize that ignoring the situation is probably the best, productive way to handle it, but at this point in my life it just makes me feel powerless, something I don't want to feel.

I've been thinking more about this. I was texting one of my guy friends, while I was walking home the other day. I was complaining about the harassment, and his response:

"Girl, what are you wearing?"

Now, this is a really smart, kind friend and his question didn't bother me too much at the time. But, days later, its irking me. Obviously, this parallels a rape victim being asked what she was wearing. It is a form of victim blaming and nothing new. But, I think it does brooch the importance of talking to people you know about the issue and educating them about what its like to be on the receiving end of such "compliments." A lot of commenters have stressed this, and I think it is so important.

We need to take action. So, let's start an impromptu re-education movement. Seriously, it is a slow start, sporadic, and spontaneous, but it can't hurt. I'm going to start talking to my friends, especially the men in my life, about this issue, and I'm gonna post about when I do. Any reactions or questions or miscommunication will be written about here, so people can refer to them to answer their own questions. And because I'm clearly not an expert, I want you to do the same. You can post here in the comments or email me the story and I'll make a separate blog post for it. I even set up a new gmail account katehatesharrassment@gmail.com Or start your own blog and just link here. There have been lots of awesome hollerback sites started, but this are a documentation of harrassment. I want to start a documentation of avoided harrassment and positive teaching and learning experiences.

We also need a title for this action, I think. In my internship, I'm learning how important clever titles are. Any ideas?

Alright, let's begin! Go talk.

Summer

Hello Strangers!
Well, I haven't blogged in a long time, and if you are a new reader, you may not even remember me. But, quickly, I'm Kate. I'm one of the original bloggers and biggest slacker of the Female Impersonators. I go to school with Amelia, but this summer I have a nice little, unpaid internship at Democracy for America.
I'm living in Vermont with an awesome host family, biking places on my bright yellow 1982 bike, drinking coffee, photocopying, doing work projects, and enjoying the summer sunshine. Its been a nice few weeks.
I don't have wifi at my house, so I have to blog from the public library. So I can't promise that I will be blogging regurarly, but I'm gonna give it a good effort.
Democracy for America is Howard Dean's organization. It emphasizes grassroots action in all fifty states, and encourages citizen participation in local, state, and national politics. I love my job so far, and I must say it was pretty cool being in a conference room with Howard Dean the same day that he went on the Colbert Report. The organization is working to get support for the public option, so I'm learning tons about healthcare. Hopefully, I'll blog about that this summer.
I don't know anyone in Vermont, so I've been spending a lot of time reading. I just finished The Woman's Room, which I was inspired to read after hearing the author died. It was an extradinary book, and I would recommend it. Now, your turn; I would love any book recommendations from readers.
I don't have anything very specific to blog about, but expect to hear from me more soon.

To be or not to be a feminist...

It amazes me how willingly some people shirk the label "feminist." It's even more amazing the answers some people give for doing so. I have talked to people recently who clearly hold feminist ideas, yet they refuse the label and don't even recognize their own ideas as feminist in nature. Lindsay has covered a similar topic before.

One of the most striking patterns is that people feel that they can't be a feminist if they don't engage in some sort of activism. But what constitutes activism? Even if it's making choices to reject sexism in your own life, that's a form of activism in my book. But a lot of people I have spoken to seem to disagree.

What about you, readers? Have you ever had a similar experience, with someone who clearly holds feminist views rejecting the label for a reason you couldn't understand? What do you feel constitutes feminist activism?

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's out there!

Unfortunately, I can't even take my mom out for brunch! But I want to make sure she knows that I'm thinking of her.

I especially want to thank my mom because she has recently started selling Silpada Jewelry because of the work the company does with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I was diagnosed with type I (juvenile) diabetes when I was twelve, and my mom has always been a huge supporter of mine when it comes to me living a normal life despite my disease. Choosing to work with a company that is supporting research for diabetes is a small way to show that my mom really cares, and it means a lot to me.

Thanks, Mom, for one of the many ways you support me and show that you care. I hope you have a great Mother's Day.

Website launch - anditwaswrong.com

I am extremely pleased to announce the launch of a new project, called And It Was Wrong, that seeks to give voice to women's experiences of sexual assault.

And It Was Wrong is a grassroots compilation of women's experiences of sexual assault. It is a project made up of women giving voice to a problem society silences: that of sexual assault as it occurs in our everyday lives.

The project is a collection of stories, in the words of the women who lived them, that deal with sexual assault. Stories can be submitted anonymously on the website and all must end with the line "...and it was wrong."

Rachael, the woman behind And It Was Wrong, is a dedicated feminist activist who attends Knox College with Kate and I. She has been a role model for me since I began to identify as a feminist, and I hope all of our readers can support her project.

Congratulations, Rachael, on this new development in this project that you have dedicated so many hours to.

An Open Letter to Activists of All Sorts

Bill Ayers, Obama's pal, spoke at Knox this afternoon. While his talk acknowledged the election "controversy," it focused more on the purposes of activism and how an individual can balance activism with individualism.
Ayers is a dynamic speaker, and one of the most important moments for me came when Mr. Ayers spoke about connecting activist movements. He is most famous (or infamous) for his work within the anti-war movement, but he also talked about his experiences protesting after Prop 8. Mr. Ayers noted how the feminist movement and the environmental movement can connect to the anti-war movement to broaden support for all causes.
I think this is absolutely important, and something both feminists and other groups don't do often enough.
I think of myself as a Marxist, pacifist, feminist, with an emphasis on feminist. I also feel passionately about ending global warming, expanding gay rights, and emphasising immigrant concerns. However, I blog, almost solely about feminism.
The post I wrote about the Texas sheriff was linked in many places in the blogsphere, but one aspect I failed to address was the victim's supposed crime, drug possession. While I feel that drugs should be legalized I didn't go there; I don't think I even remarked upon it. I should have. Drug legalization and the prison industrial complex and feminism are intimately linked, as are feminism and environmentalism, feminism and food, feminism and pacifism, feminism and LGBTQ rights, and feminism and [insert your cause here].
However, another issue within the feminist community is the ostracism we may feel after identifying as feminists. Some groups do not want their causes associated with us. There is still a huge stigma on feminism. Many of my progressive friends still shy away from the label or refuse the association. I urge these causes, whether it be the movement for universal health care in the United States or organizations against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to accept feminism as an important cornerstone of your organizations. The agenda of your group will not be diminished or over taken by feminist concerns, instead your participants and concerns will be broadened to make them more comprehensive and important.
And my sisters and brothers in feminism, we must also expand our agendas beyond the typical women's rights checklist. Fair pay has to do with more than sexist discrimination; it deals with economics, socialism, and the further discrimination suffered by sisters of color. Abortion is tied to racism and environmentalism and radical religion. What a beautiful web we could weave.
Historian activist Howard Zinn addressed specialization within social movements:

"To work on a real problem (such as how to eliminate poverty in a nation
producing $800 billion worth of wealth each year), one would have to follow that
problem across many disciplinary lines without qualm, dealing with historical
materials, economic theories, political problems. Specialization insures that one
cannot follow a problem through from start to finish."

I didn't address the charges levied against survivor of the Texas sheriff's assault because I didn't want to complicate the issue within a short blog post, so I categorized it as rape, a man's power over a woman. While it was rape, it was also about drug legalization, and the threatening power of the prison industrial complex. The woman's problem was not accurately addressed, and a prescription for her mistreatment will not come out of a misdiagnoses.
Please, my feminists and fellow activists we need to begin a dialogue between each other. I promise to do better as a blogger. I will ask the more complex questions and explore the deeper power dynamics. I will not be afraid to ask other causes for support or help and be quick to answer their calls for assistance. I urge you to do the same. Feminist blogs need to address other environmental issues. Environmental blogs need to address immigrant issues. Immigrant rights blogs need to address feminism. Ect. Ect. Ect. It will make us each stronger. We have the power.
Si se puede.
Yes we can.

One Code Pink Protestor at the RNC

My sister, a student at the University of Minnesota, participated in some of the Code Pink protests this weekend at the RNC. She's kindly written up her impressions and thoughts from the day, so I'll just let her speak for herself:

Ever since the Republicans picked St. Paul as their convention site I knew that I wanted to join the protests. I chose to march with CodePink, an anti-war movement organized by women advocating for a peaceful world.

The day arrived and as I sat on the city bus riding toward the capitol I realized just how out of place I looked. Bright pink spandex leggings, jean shorts, and a bright pink shirt--not normal attire for the Twin Cities. Nonetheless, I felt great. I was on my way to stand up for what I believe in.

CodePink organizers were already picking out banners and readying the massive figurines when I arrived. As more and more women and men trickled in we divided ourselves into various groups. There were about 100 of us in all, including a giant Heart of the Beast statue, doves that flew around the statue, a dragon, pink police, crazy pink cheerleaders, banner holders, Heart of the Beast backpack figurines, pink bicyclists, and many more. We were decked out from head to toe in pink. For those in need, CodePink had boxes full of pink paraphernalia that brought back memories of rummaging through the kindergarten costume box.

Before we left for the rally we joined together to stretch and get ourselves pumped up with a few cheers. I spent most of the pre-march rally at our meeting site working on a large banner that said, “$$ For Gulf Coast Not Gulf War.” We finished the banner just in time to join up with our comrades at the start of the parade. Code Pink was second to last in line (I like to think we were the finale) so we were able to see thousands upon thousands of marchers ahead of us streaming down the hill toward the Excel Center.

The march itself was surprisingly fun. We sang songs to familiar tunes and chanted catchy phrases. Throughout the route we saw many other groups representing everyone from students to anarchists to soldiers to pro-war protestors. The police were out in force during the parade. Their presence was immediately noticed (it’s hard to miss black clad officers in riot gear carrying thick wooden sticks). Although the show of police force was incredibly excessive and intimidating, our group had no problems with the police. We marched peacefully and respected of the pro-war activists and the police.

CodePink was a great group to march with. They were positive, welcoming, and respectful of everyone’s abilities during the march. Although more than 280 marchers were arrested during the parade, we remained peaceful and conveyed our message without breaking windows or harassing delegates.


K.B.

Ed. note: This is just one person's account of the march. It is in no way representative of other people's experiences.

RNC Protesting

Minneapolis/St. Paul has been preparing to welcome the RNC to town next week, however, not surprisingly some people are a little unhappy about it. There's going to be massive demonstrations and protests from all different organizations, some peaceful, some aimed at civil disobedience.

My sister sent me this email today (I just flew back from Mpls yesterday so I'm unpacking at school now):

Since I'm sure you're not doing much today (moving all your belongings is a cinch), can
you make me a list of groups I should march with during the RNC?

I've thought of Code Pink, but I'm kinda stuck otherwise. Everyone else seems to be an
anarchist. I want some feminist action.
What do you think of Code Pink?

Anybody have any suggestions? Has anyone demonstrated with Code Pink before and can offer some advice?

HollaBack CT!!!

If you live in the Connecticut area, take a look at HollaBack CT, from feministgal at Oh, You're a FEMINIST?!.

I seriously love HollaBacks - they empower people by giving them a means to react in a safe manner to their street harassment. In a harassment situation that's completely about power, someone may not be comfortable enough to say something, or it may not be safe to.

In May, Mildred Beaubrun ignored catcalls from a car of men at a gas station, and they shot her and her friends. She died. All because they wouldn't give out their phone numbers.

It's not safe anymore for women in public. HollaBack is a great, safe place for venting and alerting other people to the creepy people out there who think that women's bodies are public property.

So check HollaBack CT out, even if you don't live in Connecticut.

Life and Blogging: Incompatible, accompanied by relevant comic and video

Planning my grandparent's 50th anniversary luncheon with my mother was such a time-suck that I've been completely absent from the internets for the past week or so. I didn't even read any of my blog subscriptions which was a blasphemy of the highest degree. My very small audience will be happy to note that I'm currently sitting on a rant on the pornification of bisexuality.

In other news, I totally caught that interview with Jessica Valenti, writer and founder of the popular Feministing.com, on Moblogic:

Nothing particularly hard-hitting there, but we feminists tend to be a bit stand-offish in wider forums with our views. Probably because of trolls on comments like this:

Jessica Valenti is a bigot, she just happens to back what is currently a politically correct and popular form of bigotry.

The way they talk on her website you'd think women were living in some kind of planet of the apes scenario and yet she seems to manage to live a rather privileged life of celebrity, book deals and socialising.

She's not even an intelligent bigot, or she's highly intellectually dishonest, but then again her career is based on this notion that women are horribly oppressed - it's in her interests to keep perpetuating this idea.

No, I will not link to the comment. Trolls don't get free audiences here.

First of all, since when is feminism popular? I think our dear troll is confusing feminism with Suicide Girls or the various teenie-bopper fads that confuse titillation with empowerment and equality.

It's really obvious that Jessica is "privileged". I mean, she has to put up with asinine trolls and their sophomoric logic day in and day out! I do that too, although on a much smaller scale, and I can tell you how much fun it is, and how much money I make. Jessica's "socializing" is called activism. Instead of getting drunk and shooting the breeze with buddies, which is fun in moderation, try something more productive like writing books.

Finally, our dear troll punctuates his sentiment with the tired-and-true, "shuttup opportunistic man-hating whore!" sentiment. Any feminist knows she's doing something right when she gets this gem thrown at her. From trolls in my very personal rape thread whining about teh poor menz to anonymous emails about how I alienate people from feminism with my awful, terrible book reviews and pop-culture sociology, there seems to be no shortage of men, and the occasional woman, who seem to think that the people pointing out discrimination are somehow more to blame for society's ills than the people that perpetuate those attitudes with the defense of their willful ignorance.

In more colloquial terms, via Penny Arcade:

(Cross-posted)

Happy 45th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act!

Forty-five years ago, on June 10 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, making it illegal to pay different people different amounts for the same work. Huzzah!

Fat lot of good it did, though, as white women are still payed 77 cents to every white man's dollar, African-American women are payed 66 cents to a white man's dollar and Latina women earn 53 cents to a white man's dollar. Across the board through all different kinds of fields and education levels, unequal pay according to gender persists in the American economy and workforce as institutionalized sexism.

Well, what about "women's choices"? You know, the stuff like makin' babies and dinner - those "women's choices" to put family first, because you know women with careers don't think about their families at all. The National Women's Law Center says, "Recent authoritative studies show that even when all relevant career and family attributes are taken into account, there is still a significant, unexplained gap in men's and women's earnings. Thus, even when women make the same career choices as men and work the same hours, they earn less."

Ok, so unequal pay isn't a result of career choices and persists regardless of socio-economic or racial categories, which means that it hurts everyone - men, women, children, families, single people, divorced, disabled, widowed, people with brown hair, people with black hair, people with five fingers, people who shave their legs and even those hippies and feminist-crazies who don't.

Here's what you can do:

Support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which says that people can sue for pay discrimination within 180 days of their last paycheck, not 180 since their first paycheck. That means that if you've been working at the same company for five years and you've recently discovered that you're the victim of pay discrimination since hiring, you can sue your company for the past five years of pay discrimination. This new law would replace the recent Supreme Court ruling stating that people can only sue for pay discrimination within 180 days of the first incident. So if you've been paid unfairly for the past five years, you would have needed to discover the discrimination and sue within the first three months. In a society that's cultured not to discuss wages, especially among women, it's pretty damn hard to discover pay discrimination within three months of starting a new job/new salary. Not to mention this means that any women currently experiencing pay discrimination in their jobs (perhaps of many years or decades) would be screwed.

Here's info on the Fair Pay campaign, a fact sheet produced by the National Women's Law Center, and most important, a letter to your senator supporting the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. If you live in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, or Virginia, one or both of your senators voted against the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act the first time around. You need to write them and tell him/her to get their ass in gear and support the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I'm looking at you, Alabamians, Alaskans, Indianians, Iowans, Floridians, Nebraskans, New Mexicans, North Carolinians, Ohioans, Texans, and Virginians (who we all know are for lovers). Get on the ball and make sure your senator(s) know you're not happy with the way they're representing you.

Not For Sale

From the European Women's Lobby, a documentary on prostitution, and why full legalization cannot grant women the agency they deserve in three parts:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Like I have said before in the comments section of an earlier post, I do not support the legalization of prostitution because I feel that legal systems would not be interested in women's rights over the market demand or the privacy of the pimp or john. From stories like the D.C. Madam to the normalization of violence against sex workers, it is very clear that the American justice system is not as interested in protecting the extremely vulnerable women in the sex industry as they are demonizing them. With statistics coming out of European countries like Britain's deplorably low rape conviction rate, it looks as if my skepticism for any legal institution is well founded. Like this documentary, I think that the only solution is to criminalize buying sex and decriminalize selling sex like Sweden did. There are hundreds of trafficked women and children in Sweden, compared to the thousands elsewhere. While Sweden's solution is hardly ideal, it seems to be doing a lot of good.

So while I believe that the best policy is always legalization, and I shy away from anything that looks like morality legislation, there are simply too many human rights violations in the market of prostitution that legal systems are not equipped, or willing, to handle. The interest of protecting women from the most grievous harms trumps any right to buy sex. I have never yet seen any argument that is capable of convincing me that the sex trade is so demonstrably important that it must be allowed to flourish even if the majority of women meeting the demand for sex are raped, trafficked, abused, or coerced. As long as we live in a patriarchy unwilling to hold our agency over our own bodies above any wrongly perceived right to abuse, neglect, harm, and fuck, it is shamefully irresponsible to legitimize the deplorable conditions in which the sex trade operates.

Animal cruelty is not sexy

Cross-posted at XXBlaze

"Sex sells". When it is not selling me pants, sunglasses, bikini waxes, and a fat-complex it is now selling me morality. Take away the message and what is the difference between an ad like this and one like this? The answer is absolutely nothing. Naked women have nothing to do with Levi's pants or vegetarianism. The message, "this lifestyle promoted in this ad is sexy", does not vary between the two ads. The only difference is that one lifestyle is that of buying jeans, and the other is the lifestyle of not eating meat.

We humans must be incredibly stupid to fall for such shoddy marketing. I really have no words for a society that buys cheap body-spray en masse when the half-wit marketing experts at the firm have nothing more to say for their product other than it makes women take off their bras. How does it do that? Nobody knows, simply because there is a cognitive dissonance when I try to compute a reality in which people are convinced to buy a product on the promise of sex that it cannot possibly deliver.

Axe Body Spray is hardly the worst offender. Axe promotes no political agenda other than the dudely enjoyment of foul smelling cologne masking the fact that you have not showered in a week, or the simple-minded pursuit of titties. This ad campaign works, I might say, because the people who would use cheap cologne to excuse not taking a shower would be the kind of dupes to connect buying something with getting laid.

Liberals, however, claim to function on a higher level. Empathetic beings concerned with the plight of life everywhere do not need bared breasts and toned asses to buy, or not buy, a lifestyle.

Wrong.

Guess what bikini models have to do with the suffering of chickens? Absolutely nothing. If PETA really wished to highlight the suffering of animals, they would make their protests horrible, frightening, and sickening. With so shortage of horrifying images of animal suffering (five minutes of googling produced this, this, this, and this) why does PETA, among other organizations, feel the need to sell the idea that animals are suffering for our lifestyle with sex?

Melanie B, from the Spice Girls, would also like you to know that Sex Trafficking is hot. "Get your tits out for trafficking!" an activist asks us. We all know that strippers and prostitutes always get the best side of the law, because society as a whole values their opinions and personhood so much. Making our causes into our pimps and baring it all for a liberal cause, of course, wins the respect of many. It is also very relevant to the discussion at hand. Animal abuse and the unwilling trafficking of sexual slaves in our own country is titillating and sexy.

PETA reminds me of a circa-1970s Al Sharpton, who shot himself and his cause in the foot by involking the ire of New York Jews with some insensitive antisemitic remarks. To this day, Sharpton and his pose of goons continue to give activists a really bad name by various other classy shenanigans such as sexism and rape apology. Of course, the average American can tell you that he or she thinks Sharpton is full of shit. He or she will place Sharpton in the "bat-shit crazy" category alongside PETA. The most damaging person to their causes, obviously, is PETA activists and Sharpton themselves. The average American is not convinced. Thus Sharpton and PETA are unsuccessful.

In contrast, anti-abortion activists continue to get considerably more positive press than PETA. The reason why is not rocket science. Perhaps it is because their ad campaign is so blessedly simple and horrifying. I am firmly and absolutely pro-choice. However, I will say that if I had no opinion on eating meat or abortion, the anti-abortion ad would be significantly more morally compelling than a strip-tease for animal rights.

There are only two rules to good advertising: keep it simple and relevant. The anti-abortion ad is a picture of an abortion, thus it is relevant. It just states, "abortion is bad". The PETA ads, however, are convoluted and self-defeating. Alicia Silverstone with no clothes on does not really have anything to do with my greasy hamburger. The PETA ad asks the viewer to make a connection between nakedness, fur, and animal cruelty. The connection is tenuous, and thus, falls apart. The abortion ad achieves its purpose while the PETA ad does not.

Not only does PETA need to fire its marketing executives, the organization itself is probably the only thing on the planet more self-defeating than Al Sharpton. Commenters will poo-poo my critique all they want, but the fact remains that feminists can be agents of their own oppression especially when they sell their bodies for a cause that has nothing to do with sex. Yes, the woman who climbed into a cage while naked and pregnant in the cold to protest animal cruelty did so consensually. Would she, however, have posed nude if female nudity was not the biggest successful seller of unnecessary over-processed shit on the planet?

In conclusion, I hate PETA, and will continue to do so because:
(a) They utterly fail at marketing
(b) They protest the cruelty of animals with the objectification of the female body
(c) They diminish the horror of their cause with meaningless strip teases
(d) They diminish and poo-poo the objections of activists for other causes
(e) They are the most unintentionally self-parodying group on the face of this Earth

I will not continue to suffer any fools, especially sexist fools that sit on their high-horse naked and defeat feminism's basic tenements in order to diminish the real issue of the objectification of women, and to sexualize the suffering of animals.

Note: As the author of this post, I will delete comments that are trolling, offensive, and off-topic, and ask that all contributors to this tread ignore all those who will attempt to hijack the thread.

Note 2: After only having this thread open for three hours, I am closing the comments due to the thoughtless, rude, and asinine trolling of one Coyote Skinhead, self-proclaimed "critical thinker" and anti-feminist.

Note 3: Thank God for the ban-hammer. Comments on this post and some of my others will go back on, now with moderation. Thank you internet, for imposing moderation upon us by providing the world with anti-feminist trolls.

Lithuanian pro-choice protesters

I've been to Lithuania numerous times for mission trips and I consider the place a second home with people who live there who are my friends and family. Needless to say, it was distressing for me to see they are considering banning abortion.

Pro-choice to the rescue!


Awesome protesting and I think each and every one of those protesters is badass. Nice work, feminists!

I hope the right to choose is protected for all of the young girls I know in Lithuania, in case they may need to make that choice one day.

Feminist and Trans Activist: Tammy Baldwin

Trans and gay citizens do not have many friends in the US government; however, Tammy Baldwin is in the friendly minority.

Baldwin has been a Democratic Wisconsin Congresswoman for ten years, and she was the first openly gay person who ran as so, instead of coming out while in office. And since she has been elected, Baldwin has followed two passions: universal healthcare and protection for gay and transpeople. She is pushing to extend partner benefits to federal workers, and she previously pushed to include trans workers in a legislation to protect them from discrimination in the workplace.

They were not included, but Baldwin swore, ""You are not forgotten. And our job will not be finished until you, too, share fully in the American dream."

Beautiful.

My Feminist Flashback: Action Project

In the first women's studies class I ever took (Fall of 2007), students were required to do a group "action project" as part of their final grade. The project could cover any issue that had been discussed in the class, and Kate (who was also in the class) and I teamed up with another lady for this assignment.

Our topic: the media's effect on body image.
Our goal: to raise awareness of the fact that the media is constantly bombarding people with messages about what is beautiful, and get people to discuss the effects that can have on people's body image.

We focused mainly on one medium, magazines, and our tactic was to pull out advertisements (which make up a large part of most magazines) that portray messages of beauty or attraction and post them on the walls of the Human Rights Center, a building on campus where human-interest clubs meet and hold events.

Here are some pictures of our work (Kate took all the pictures with my camera).


The pictures above show just some of the images we found. We had a decent sized group that attended our event, and we had a pretty engaging conversation about why magazines use the imagery that they do and how it can make people feel. It was interesting to note that most of the appearance motivated ads feature white women.

Feminist Activist: Arlene Samen, founder, One H.E.A.R.T.

After a trip to Tibet opened her eyes to the high infant and maternal mortality in developing countries, Arlene Samen helped create One H.E.A.R.T. (Health Education And Research in Tibet).

"'When I came to Tibet I heard of so many tragic stories of women dying -- no access to care in remote areas, no history of trained birth attendants, and no knowledge about pregnancy and childbirth,' Samen recalls.

It is a problem that stretches well beyond Tibet's borders. According to the World Health Organization, more than 500,000 women worldwide die each year as a result of complications during pregnancy and childbirth, and nearly 7 million babies are either born dead or die within 28 days of their life. Almost all these deaths occur in the developing world.

Since 1998, One H.E.A.R.T has worked to set up centers that teach and educate local nurse practitioners, villagers and expectant mothers on how to deliver and care for newborn babies. A huge part of the organization's instruction includes hands-on birthing demonstration and distribution of community-tailored birth kits."

Thanks, Arlene Samen, for helping provide women with information that keeps them, and their children, alive and safe.