Disabled Bodies in Able-Bodied Contexts
No one wants to be pitied, but many people are comfortable having others to pity. And it’s easy, if you haven’t thought it out, to pity someone in a wheelchair, or someone who walks tapping her way with a white cane. It’s much more complicated to think about that wheelchair, or that cane as something that opens up the person’s life … and would open it up much more if buildings and streets were more accommodating to a variety of needs. It’s not only complicated, but potentially deeply disturbing, to think about high-tech prostheses, maximized for the needs of a particular person with particular skills at a particular time in his or her life, to think that a “disabled” person perhaps has something that works better than what “normal people” are issued with.
[Nudity below the fold]
On Change and Accountability: A Response to Clarisse Thorn
This is a guest post by Maia.
Dear Clarisse
Towards the end of your post On Change and Accountability you asked a question.
Did you expect your readers to answer no?
...read moreFall Into the [Reverse Gender] Gap
This is a guest post by Jessica Mack.
One of the concepts that I hope fades out as we enter 2012 – along with flash mobs and marshmallow vodka – is the “reverse gender gap.” Somehow, in the American obsession with doom and gloom, small but important gains for women have become a reason to worry. They’ve become a reason to claim that the gender gap is not just closing, but – worse – it’s reversing.
...read moreGirl-on-Girl Victim-Blaming Action (or, The Most Terrible Time of the Year)
This is a guest-post from Jaclyn Friedman.
[trigger warning for the text and the embedded links]
What is it about December that inspires mass breakouts of victim-blaming? Is it the darkness encroaching on our days? Is it the way the holidays make us all want to drink? Whatever it is, it’s happening again.
Feminist-Friendly Marriages on Television… Or Not
This is a guest post by Ashley Lauren.
Believe it or not, fighting against patriarchal norms that come with the idea of marriage has been a piece of (wedding) cake compared to what it has taken for me to define myself as a wife in the face of what pop culture tells us wives in heterosexual relationships are supposed to be.
On wresting good from stupid: Herman Cain, sexual harassment and sexual assault
This is a guest post by Emily L. Hauser.
With the revelation of what is turning into quite a slew of accusations of sexual harassment and/or assault (“Hey, baby, you’re lookin’ gooood tonight!” [or some such] being the former; grabbing a woman’s inner thigh and pulling her head toward his crotch [the actual accusation that Sharon Bialek has leveled] being the latter) we have an opportunity to wrest some objective good out of this mountain of stupid.
Deus Vult: “God Wills It”
This is a guest post by Laurie and Debbie.
Believers in a Judeo-Christian god must, by definition, believe that the world was designed by that god as (s)he wished it to be. The Latin phrase is “Deus Vult,” translated literally as “God wills it.” In this context, let’s contrast a popular (although far from universal) Christian view of sexuality with what’s known about the animal kingdom:
Charlotte Allen Missed the Memo
This is a guest post by Thomas Macaulay Millar.
Allen’s idea is that rape is merely a sexual urge men cannot control. Leaving aside all the other evidence, this ignores the recent research into who the rapists are: they are not out of control. They are very much in control. Allen’s puritanical finger-wagging cannot hold up to the actual evidence.
If we’re the majority, where’s the (media) visibility?*
This is a guest post by Echo Zen.
I’m starting to feel like a skipping record.
Every so often there’s a local pro-choice event where my mates and I are invited to speak. I stand before an audience of likeminded students or professionals, talk about reproductive politics in the States, and end on a call to action: “We can’t win the fight for reproductive equality unless we counter anti-choice lies with facts and stories about our own experiences.”
...read moreVirginia Board of Health Approves Most Onerous Regulations for Women’s Health Centers in the Country
This is a guest post by Katherine A. Greenier.
Under pressure from the Attorney General’s office, the Virginia Board of Health voted on Friday to place burdensome and unnecessary regulations on women’s health centers in the state, placing women’s rights in jeopardy. The threat these regulations pose to women’s access to health care and patient confidentiality reinforces that we must always be vigilant in order to protect constitutional freedoms.
Where Dark Tourism Meets Global Feminism
This is a guest post by Jessica Mack.
If you haven’t heard it before, you probably already know the concept. Dark tourism is what happens when former places of tragedy and horror become memorialized, then patronized by droves of tourists. Like Ground Zero in New York City, or Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island. It’s where dark memories, human curiosity, and capitalism mix.
Farewell, Feministers!
This is my last post. Sob. I know you are all in mourning, what with my charm, sweetness, and sparkling personality. I thought I’d leave a list of books that I’ve enjoyed (or that I’m currently enjoying). As I have jury duty this week, I’m doing this as a shameless way to get people to [...]
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