Bits and Pieces
First, a bunch of must-reads on the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal. Tim Fernholz writes a personal piece about why he will not be attending Mass this Easter. Amanda points to the victim-blaming and molestor-coddling coming from some high-profile conservative writers, and reminds us that the cultural and legal shifts in the 1960s and 70s that [...]
...read moreTransgender Day of Visibility
Today’s International Transgender Day of Visibility. Started last year as a movement on Facebook, the goal of today is to increase visibility and celebrate transgender identity: “I went on Facebook and I was thinking… whenever I hear about our community, it seems to be from Remembrance Day which is always so negative because it’s about [...]
...read moreHappy César Chávez Day
For those who don’t know, today is César Chávez Day. Chávez was a migrant worker from a young age and co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with the ever-awesome Dolores Huerta. (The NFWA would later merge with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the United Farm Workers of America.) In addition to being a [...]
...read moreYour definition of “anti-sex” is not like mine.
See, I define “anti-sex” as you think sex is bad. Or that sex should be kind of like a punishment (or that you should be punished for having it). Or that you don’t think sex should be enjoyable. And I define “pro-sex” as thinking that sex is a normal and healthy part of the human [...]
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Bits and Pieces
On average, each African woman will experience seven unsafe abortions in her lifetime. In Nigeria alone, where abortion is illegal except to save the pregnant woman’s life, there are 760,000 abortions annually. Unsafe abortion is one reason why Nigeria has such a high maternal mortality rate, with 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births. For every [...]
...read moreDavid Brooks has a question.
He would like to know if you would rather win an Oscar and be stuck with a cheating husband, or have zero personal or professional accomplishments but have a really happy marriage. If you take more than three seconds to decide, he says, you are an idiot. Marital happiness is far more important than anything [...]
...read moreContribute to Connie Saltonstall
She’s running against anti-choice Democrat Bart Stupak in the primary, and she needs all the financial help she can get. During the health care reform debates, and now that reform has passed, pro-choice women have been livid at conservative Democrats for waging a war against our most basic right to bodily autonomy. We’ve been angry [...]
...read moreCutting the Cost of Being a Woman
At least health care reform does that. Until now, it has been perfectly legal in most states for companies selling individual health policies — for people who do not have group coverage through employers — to engage in “gender rating,” that is, charging women more than men for the same coverage, even for policies that [...]
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Bits and Pieces
Lucky Girl: A must-read piece about being one of the “lucky ones” who could actually get an abortion when the procedure was illegal. The new Erykah Badu video, Window Seat, is pretty awesome. Matt Taibbi asks, in a predictably provocative piece, Is it time to dissolve the Catholic Church? Should boys and young men be [...]
...read moreThe Rage Is Not About Health Care
But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964. … If Obama’s first legislative priority had [...]
...read moreThe Angry Tranny: Tone Arguments and Trans Women
This is a guest post by gudbuytjane. (Note: This essay is not about Lady Gaga, and I will not discuss the telephone video or any of the commentary surrounding it. If you want to discuss the video, there’s an entire internet to do that in. This essay is about derailing, so as such I’ll probably [...]
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Right-wing cartoon depicts Obama raping the Statue of Liberty
I’m wondering the same thing as Amanda: Why are anti-healthcare conservatives so obsessed with rape metaphors? And this is not new. Conservatives routinely accuse progressives of “raping” America, or they use language that hints at rape to describe political processes that they dislike — healthcare is being “rammed down our throats,” we’re being told to [...]
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