Wife of a Preacher-Man
This article in the Times about the historical view of priests’ wives is fascinating for a lot of reasons, but I particularly enjoy how it butts up against modern visions of human sexuality. In white middle-class Christian American culture, it’s taken as biological truth that men are the sexually aggressive ones, and while white women’s bodies are tempting and women can be slutty, white female sexuality isn’t about wanting sex so much as embodying sex (non-white women get different treatment, as either asexual or as insatiable hussies). Priests’ wives, apparently, were a little too close to power for comfort:
...read moreThe Parallels Between Breast Augmentation and FGM
...read moreBut even if FGM were carried out in the best of clinical conditions on a consenting adult woman, we call it a human rights violation. Why? Because it is an intervention which is carried out solely to satisfy stereotyped notions of what a women could or should be, and which has:
1. no discernible health benefits;
2. a negative impact on women’s sexual health; and
3. permanent effects on women’s health more generally.
Hateful Girl Scout Mad That Girl Scouts Lets In Girls
“Wait, what?” you ask. “I thought the Girl Scouts was for girls?” And it is! But one California teen haz a mad because the Girl Scouts created a policy to let in all girls — including trans girls. She wants everyone to boycott Girl Scout cookies, because the Girl Scouts should be punished for not ostracizing a little trans girl from their organization. If you want to be extra-horrified, read the Baptist Press’s take on the issue. And then make yourself feel better by ordering a few extra boxes of Samoas this year.
...read moreNew Favorite Things
Jaclyn Friedman’s Unsolicited Advice column in GOOD. This week she advises Blue Ivy Carter:
...read moreOne of the things that’s going to be especially weird, if the response to Shiloh Jolie-Pitt’s haircut is any indication, is that a non-trivial minority of the global population will soon consider what you do with your body and your sexuality their business. In fact, they’ve already started. Most people would welcome a new addition to their family as “the most beautiful baby in the world,” but in your case, perfect strangers are already being invited to assess that claim.
Hero of the Day
...read moreWhen Samira Ibrahim makes a rare foray into the streets of her hometown of Sohag in Upper Egypt or to a demonstration on the streets of Cairo, she has the distinct feeling of being watched.
“I never feel comfortable,” she said during in an interview in a Cairo cafe. “The only place I can feel like myself is in my home with my family. Everywhere I go, I feel there are eyes on me. They want me to forget everything and just go away.”
Ms Ibrahim, 25, is taking on, under her own name, a battle against the powerful ruling generals. She is the only named plaintiff in several legal cases against the officers who conducted “virginity tests” on 17 women protesters detained by the military last year.
The Sexual Counterrevolution
A very good article by Tracy Flory-Clark about the GOP’s war on sex – as we’re all getting more liberal in the bedroom, conservatives are trying to turn back the clock. It’s what Susan Faludi was talking about 20 years ago.
...read moreLadies, let’s all calm down.
Rick Santorum doesn’t actually want to take away your birth control! Hahaha. Silly ladies, thinking that when he said “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country. . . . Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” it meant he opposed birth control access. Even sillier ladies, thinking that when he said Griswold v. Connecticut (the Supreme Court case striking down state laws prohibiting birth control) was decided wrongly, he meant that states should have the right to outlaw birth control.
...read moreObjectification, Your Honor
This is a guest post by Jessica Mack
Last week, there was a new and interesting twist to the Leveson Inquiry – the ongoing public trial of the British Press following last year’s phone hacking scandal. A handful of women’s rights and rape prevention groups in the UK are insisting that the media’s portrayal of women – namely its accomplice in sexism, objectification, rape culture, and misogyny – be investigated as part of its general scumminess.
The best thing you will read today about Breaking Dawn
And vampire-fetus-babies and misogyny and female desire and abuse and rough sex and mother-martyrs:
...read moreWelcome to the twisted glory that is Mormon housewife turned teen-lit sensation Stephenie Meyer’s imagination.
On the pages of Breaking Dawn Meyer let that imagination, which has been hovering under the repressed surface of the series’ previous three books, run rampant: Bedboard-breaking, feather-spilling, bruising honeymoon sex. A demonic pregnancy that grows so fast the fetus is nudging and jumping around the heroine’s womb days after conception. A grown-up werewolf falling in love with a half-vampire infant. And our heavily-pregnant heroine sipping blood from a soda cup–and loving it–just before her ribs and spine are shattered by the immortal spawn she’s carrying. It gets better: a c-section performed by vampire teeth. A shot of venom straight to the heart. A crazed childless vampire woman who will protect the fetus at all costs.
Ideological zealots: Usually bad news.
The latest battleground in Israel’s struggle over religious extremism [...] has the unexpected public face of a blond, bespectacled second-grade girl. She is Naama Margolese, 8, the daughter of American immigrants who are observant modern Orthodox Jews. [She has] become terrified of walking to her elementary school here after ultra-Orthodox men spit on her, insulted her and called her a prostitute because her modest dress did not adhere exactly to their more rigorous dress code.
Feminism: Getting ‘em young
That kid rocks my world. I love that she identifies feeling that the toy companies are “tricking” people with the pink toys/princesses are for girls nonsense, and I love that she identifies the binary as being pink for girls and other colours for boys. [S]he clearly understands the concepts, feels strongly about them, and is articulating them clearly. That’s awesome.
...read more
Recent Comments