Women make 10% of the world’s income, but own only 1% of the world’s property while contributing 66% of the labor.
Condoms With Teeth
No, really. It’s almost something out of a feminist sci-fi:
Women fearful of being raped can insert the Rape-Axe condom inside themselves like a diaphragm or tampon. If her worst fears come true, and a man attempts to rape her, the Rape-Axe’s inside hooks attach themselves to the penis and don’t come off, instead getting even tighter and stopping the man from being able to urinate. The only way to remove it is by seeing a doctor—which will obviously help with prosecution.
Oddly enough, via Gizmodo.
Crimes & Misdemeanors
Topeka, Kansas isn’t currently enforcing domestic violence laws put on the books to protect women. They say they can’t afford to.
& Honestly, I’d like to know when exactly we’re going to realize that our courts are clogged with minor drug offenses instead.
The Bechdel Test
This article on women characters in movies – skip to the end – is very funny. I think her Ethereal Weirdo is my favorite, although I will admit to having women like her. They’re usually stoners. I’ve always thought of her as the Cortazar Hopscotch fantasy woman, because I dated a guy who actually admitted, out loud, that he fell in love with the woman in that novel when he read it.
This girl can’t be pinned down and may or may not show up when you make concrete plans with her. She wears gauzy blouses and braids. She likes to dance in the rain and she weeps uncontrollably if she sees a sign for a missing dog or cat. She might spin a globe, place her finger on a random spot, and decide to move there. The Ethereal Weirdo appears a lot in movies, but nowhere else. If she were from real life, people would think she was a homeless woman and would cross the street to avoid her. But she is essential to the male fantasy that even if a guy is boring he deserves a woman who will find him fascinating and perk up his dreary life by forcing him to go skinny-dipping in a stranger’s pool.
But no post about women in film is complete without Bechdel’s Test for Women in Movies:
Some days it’s hard to come up with any that do pass the test. Help me out, readers?
Park Slope Cops
There is a rapist in my old hood of Park Slope, and the NYPD are completely fucking up the investigation. They’re following women home without identifying themselves and asking them about their clothes. It’s unbelievably obnoxious, staggering in its stupidity.
So sign the petition from change.org to get the Chief of Ds to pay attention. Continue reading “Park Slope Cops”
Grrrl Power Mash-Up
i love it i love it i love it.
Slutwalk Critique
An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk, it’s titled, but it should be called how to dismantle white privilege in feminist movements, or something similar.
Black women in the U.S. have worked tirelessly since the 19th century colored women’s clubs to rid society of the sexist/racist vernacular of slut, jezebel, hottentot, mammy, mule, sapphire; to build our sense of selves and redefine what women who look like us represent. Although we vehemently support a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants anytime, anywhere, within the context of a “SlutWalk” we don’t have the privilege to walk through the streets of New York City, Detroit, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, L.A. etc., either half-naked or fully clothed self-identifying as “sluts” and think that this will make women safer in our communities an hour later, a month later, or a year later. Moreover, we are careful not to set a precedent for our young girls by giving them the message that we can self-identify as “sluts” when we’re still working to annihilate the word “ho”, which deriving from the word “hooker” or “whore”, as in “Jezebel whore” was meant to dehumanize. Lastly, we do not want to encourage our young men, our Black fathers, sons and brothers to reinforce Black women’s identities as “sluts” by normalizing the term on t-shirts, buttons, flyers and pamphlets.
The personal is political. For us, the problem of trivialized rape and the absence of justice are intertwined with race, gender, sexuality, poverty, immigration and community. As Black women in America, we are careful not to forget this or we may compromise more than we are able to recover. Even if only in name, we cannot afford to label ourselves, to claim identity, to chant dehumanizing rhetoric against ourselves in any movement. We can learn from successful movements like the Civil Rights movement, from Women’s Suffrage, the Black Nationalist and Black Feminist movements that we can make change without resorting to the taking-back of words that were never ours to begin with, but in fact heaved upon us in a process of dehumanization and devaluation.
Great stuff. Go ahead & read the whole thing, especially if you’re a white feminist who is excited about SlutWalk. It won’t ruin it for you – it’ll just give you some context and maybe a little humility.
Vertical Smile? Really?
Jane Scott, RIP
She was a rock journalist before anyone was paying attention:
In 1952, she joined The Plain Dealer and was assigned, typically for the time, to the society pages.
She found her lifework on Sept. 15, 1964, the day four lads from Liverpool came to Cleveland. No one at the paper was interested in covering the Beatles, and Ms. Scott volunteered.
How women’s careers are born: good luck & excellent timing. It would be nice if women got the kinds of careers they deserve instead of needing both, but too often – especially for the “first woman to ____________”, we seem to need a lot more than talent and hard work.
Shave and Get Drunk.
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