This is bad, but not unsurprising news (Free registration required):

This is standard care for rape victims, not a political battleground. As Rob Findlay says, anti-abortion rights groups “want the public to believe that emergency contraception — ‘the morning after pill’ — is on the same level as an early abortion.” In reality it is closer to the birth control pill, a much higher dosage of it.

Outlaw the morning-after pill and there isn’t much standing in the way to begin chipping away at our other reproductive options such as, to be alarmist, the Pill.

Though I have taken a break from the computer, I have managed to compile a list of noteworthy items.

1. Alternet brings us two retrospectives on 2004, Arianna Huffington’s list of Things to Forget and the Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2003-04. My favorite is the “conspiracy” that the war on Iraq is not about control of natural resources. In my circle, we call that propaganda.

2. The Stepford Way: a female fantasy? Amanda of Mousewords has plenty to say on the notion of the general attractiveness of female submission.
3. A guest blogger at Buzz, Balls, and Hype examines Mommy Lit, big sister to Chick Lit, and the notion that motherhood is not interesting to those who aren’t mothers. (And for that matter, that literary accounts of women’s experiences aren’t as interesting as men’s.)
4. Sixteen Tons of Fun: Dave Eggers of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” writes on Monty Python. I received Eggers’ most recent work, “How We Are Hungry,” for Christmas and it is wonderful, better than his sophomoric effort.
5. New to my blogroll is Whirled View, a blog by three highly credentialed women on liberal and progressive politics. Patricia Kushlis writes Selling Cars, Colas and Countries.
   People in the White House and Pentagon are baffled. According to The New York Times on December 13, American policy makers can?t understand why a country able to market cars and colas to people deeply hostile to the U.S. can’t also “sell its democratic ideals” to them. Madison Avenue is infamous for its ability to persuade people to buy things they don’t need and can’t afford, and yet, our leaders observe, the U.S. falls short in persuading most Arabs (or even most Europeans) that the Iraq invasion was a good idea.

   The Bush administration has been fixated from day one on the “marketing” and “sales” models for influencing foreign publics. Soon after the inaugural a successful ad woman was appointed to head up the Public Diplomacy section of the State Department. To the surprise only of those who recruited her, the lady failed to generate a love fest for America in the Middle East. So she’s gone; wanted to spend more time with the family or something like that, the usual pretext for the departure of a high level political appointee.

   Why am I not surprised or baffled? [more]

6. And finally a fun link, Bollywood for the Skeptical. I have been drawn into the glory of Bollywood this year after taking two movie-heavy classes on South Asian culture. If you don’t know where to start, begin downloading the songs from the 1950s and 60s and anything performed by Lata Mangeshkar. You won’t be disappointed. While you’re at it, rent the 2001 Academy Award nominee “Lagaan” over the new year.

Happy New Year to all! Be safe and smart, as all of you undoubtedly are, over the holiday weekend.

As I’m sure many of you have by now noticed, no one can add new comments. I’m not sure what’s wrong; I’ve emailed the admin, and hopefully the problem will be fixed soon.

Page 22 is done! Well, sort of. I’m running late, so I’ve posted the black and white art. Later on, I’ll replace it with the color image.

UPDATE: Color artwork is now online.

UPDATE 2: The cross-hatching on Fruma’s right hand looked pretty good on the black-and-white version, but looks awful and muddy in color, so I just went and removed 90% of it. Much better now.

It’s a strange day when I agree with a Tech Central Station article. But this article on exercise and weight loss (via Big Fat Blog) is interesting.

The article goes on to describe several more studies which found the same result: for many people, exercise won’t lead to significant weight loss.

What’s horrible about this is that, by presenting exercise for fat people as primarily about weight loss, mainstream media and medicine may actually be increasing deaths among fat people. Because exercise for fat people is presented as a weight loss issue, those fat people who try exercise and find that they remain fat may not see the point of continuing. After all, the exercise program “failed.”

If the major media and the medical establishment preached that exercise - not weight loss - was the key to good health, then many people (especially fat people) might exercise more, and therefore lead longer, healthier lives.

But mainstream opinion-makers won’t do that. Sure, it might save some lives, but there are more imporant issues at stake here. Talking about exercise and health for fat people, without making losing weight the measure of success, implies that we can be fat and in good health. And that view is heretical in our fat-phobic society.

Arguably, it’s not only heretical - it’s immoral. For many people, being fat isn’t just a physical trait; it’s a moral flaw. And suggesting that people should be fat and fit is suggesting that immorality should go unpunished. To the most fat-phobic people, that suggestion doesn’t just sound wrong; it sounds unjust.

Unfortunately, I underestimated just how awfully slow this dial-up connection here is in backwoods Small Town America (TM), so I’ve dug up an oldy but a goodie post of mine from Brutal Women, and I’m posting it here for your enjoyment.

Cheers…

On Merit. And Sex. Of Course.

So, it bugged Amanda and Echidne, too, which I find quite funny, because when I hopped over to Kos’s place and read his justification for the lack of PC diversity among his guestbloggers, something in me went, “Huh?” too. Amanda explored the issue further, I think, in this post about the democratic party’s seeming reluctance to forward a progressive agenda for women.

Kos’s comment actually read a lot like the backlash against affirmative action. I would love it if we lived in a world where merit alone really decided whose voices we hear, but as Amanda and Echidne pointed out, we don’t live there. Bringing in a voice that comes at issues from a new and different perspective (non-white, non-male, non-Christian) is a merit in itself.

Now, I’m not going to harp on Kos, because blogs are, of neccessity, very personal endeavors, and you have a right to run them the way you want to: but if you’re looking to put forward voices for progressive change and you take out women - those bold, powerful women and minorities whose campaigns for equal rights shook up this country so enourmously and so quickly in the 60s and 70s, then you’re missing a whole lot of shit. You’re missing the whole point. You’re not looking to change the world, you’re just looking to change your own place in it. And when you’re on top, you’ll switch sides and go conservative, because you’ve altered the system so that you and your white male buddies are in charge, instead of rich guys like Bush and his buddies.

Shuffling around old white men within the same power heirarchy isn’t getting any of us anywhere. It’s got the dollar dropping, healthcare sucking wind, social security going out the window, and a backlash against women’s rights that’s been steadily getting worse (in some circles) since the 80s.

Because what are we really talking about, when we talk about these “huge issues” “dividing” the country? Sure, the war in Iraq is huge. The war on terrorism is huge. But creating Big Bad Enemies is supposed to unite a country, not divide it.

The issues that were put up front to handwave people away from the war are the two big issues that people in the US are now most passionate about, and clawing at each other about: abortion/reproductive rights and homosexuality.

Let’s get that straight (ha), once and for all. The attacks on freedoms have to do with women. Yes, yes, terrorism is a big issue, and racism, and I don’t want to forget those - but reproductive rights and attacking homosexuality and preaching Back to Bible Basics is about controlling women.

Gay men are scary because the conception of “gay men” in red-staters heads likely brings to mind anal sex (whether or not said men engage in anal sex), and the gender binary says that means one of them’s gotta be passive, one of them’s gotta be the woman. Which means any man can be passive. Any man can be the woman. And in a society whose fear and disgust for women is shared by many women who spent their childhoods believing they could grow up to be “real” people, this is a terrible revelation.

And there’s nothing scarier to people who love to argue biological and/or Bible determinism than two women who not only can support themselves, raise children together, and provide one another emotional support, but don’t need men around for sex either, cause they’re quite fulfilled all on their own.

That’s some scary shit.

And, scarier than that: women who can decide to have children or not. Women who decide, therefore, whether or not a man has children.

That’s why people are angry about abortion. That’s why the father’s rights freak-outs are freaking out.

Women control fertility. Children don’t come out of thin air. They’re created OF a woman’s body: her blood, the food she eats, the air she breathes. That’s what makes a baby. A woman. Men submit a string of DNA, which triggers a chemical reaction inside of the egg, and the egg begins to divide itself. An egg is cells. Dividing cells attach to the wall of the uterus. Attaches back to the woman. And it’s women’s bodies that take over from there. Life depends on women. Life is women.

Get over it.

This pisses people off. It’s always pissed people off.

If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, then the people who control women control the world.

That’s why controlling women is a major part of pretty much all major religions. That’s why women should be quiet in church, and obey their husbands, and not fall in love with women.

And yea, this world doesn’t benefit all men. There are lots of geeky guys who don’t want to be violent, and hurt people, and be mean to women, and play sports, and rule the world. There are a lot of guys who really do want to just have friends, and love people. In fact, I think most people are like that, male or female. If we let sex be more social and less romantic-kill-me-I’m-dying-you-must-marry-me-cause-I’m-lonely/pregnant/can’t do my own laundry, then I think we’d be getting back to what the hell sex is really about in the first place. There’s a reason women’s clitorises are outside of the vagina, and a reason 70-80% of women don’t have orgasims with penetrative sex alone.

Sex isn’t all about procreation.

::gasp::

The biological “facts” about men and women like to ignore the clitoris, and the fact that men can get off just fine without a vagina.

Sex is about keeping people together, forming social connections, it’s about showing affection. And when women are allowed to control their sexuality, when they decide that no, maybe, they’ll live in a house of women and raise children, or a house with some guy friends and some girlfriends, or a house by themselves, they have the power to cut men out of the affection loop, and eventually, the children loop, if they so choose.

This is real power. And women are raised to believe their bodies are wacky, abberant, dirty, disgusting, bloody, awful, fat things.

The bodies that could rule the world.

We’re told we don’t have merit. We don’t have voices, because if we were really all that good, obviously, someone would have noticed us. If we were quieter, prettier, if we preached violent foreign policy, men would like us, and if we parrotted their own views back at them, we’d be allowed to talk.

We would talk about what they wanted to talk about: We’d stop talking so much about those silly bloody uteruses that are so obviously so bloody fucking unimportant that the women carrying said uteruses have been the targets of rage, hatred, and Biblical control for most of recorded history.

In fact, women’s issues are so completely frivolous that men don’t even talk about them, except to harp about how women being able to take care of themselves and kiss each other is biologically abberant because it leaves men out, and how women should be forced to carry around a man’s strand of DNA until her body creates a child with it because “killing” a man’s DNA is so much more awful than forcing women into slavery for said DNA.

Yes, we’ve been over this before. Women bloggers aren’t read because in addition to screaming at the world and talking about healthcare and politics, they talk about their uteruses, and talking about uteruses doesn’t interest men.

In fact, it doesn’t interest anyone at all.

That’s why entire religions, social mores, and scientific theories have been built up to control them.

Women have no merit at all.

I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner: being a woman, and all.

Horizon Air Collectable Fine China.

Just one day and 23 hours of bidding time left!

Here it is… Sorry it wasn’t up a week ago… I’ve started drawing on larger paper. The difference is apparent to me (the larger size is letting me use a more variable line), but I’m not sure that anyone else will be able to see it.

Oh, and now that Shabbos is over, we’re back to that plot thing. Remember the plot? :-P

I read this article by Katha Pollitt earlier this year and it has yet to leave me. In Whose Culture? Pollitt responds to an essay by Susan Okin and agrees that multiculturalism and feminism are, if not in tension, often opposed to one another. Pollitt doesn’t understand how this can be considered controversial, but I find it awfully provocative.

Pollitt says,

How can this be? I wondered. Academic feminism and academic multiculturalism seem to be two branches off the same tree. Further, Pollitt frames feminism as a superior philosophical mode in a way that makes me rather uncomfortable. I want gender equality, but I don’t want to erase the cultural traditions that only I deem deserving of respect.

But in some sense, Pollitt is right. Look at sati, the French banning of headscarves, the global wish for daughters to marry rich over acquiring education.

My mentor, Dr. B, recently wrote on the practice of female genital mutilation/female circumcision:

Teacherly moments are the times in which a facilitator attempts to resolve a tension by exposing and revealing the incongruities between two lines of thought, a method employed by Lindon Barrett in his book comparing African-American pedagogy with traditional “white” pedagogy. This moment of juxtaposition between those who willingly inflict FC on themselves (and those who inflict it on others) with the Western ideal of free female sexuality is one in which it becomes far too easy to demonize and name-call the Other. In other words, it’s a perfect teacherly moment.

FC and phenomenon like it are problems in themselves, but more widely, are symptomatic of the larger propensity for an androcentric, patriarchal worldview in which women are othered and mystified, and that imagined female otherness and mystery must be contained.

For me, the education against FC and other symptoms of patriarchy is not so simple. It comes to this: the line between “education” and Western indoctrination is very narrow once it crosses the border. In addition, the difference between rightly educating a community and operating from a xenophobic, racist space is also a strong concern. We must educate ourselves to avoid the mischaracterization of the communities we attempt to reach, and as Dr. B says, “learn the other folks’ rules.”

From over here, snug in my windowless office in Collegetown, USA, it is easy to forget that in any area where oppression occurs, there is usually a counter-movement already in place working from within to change the minds and experiences of the oppressors and the oppressed. Rather than swooping down and inflicting their movement with my urgency, I lend my economic and emotional support from afar.

This is old-ish news, but I don’t want it to fall off the collective map.

One hundred and fifty sexual abuse cases are under investigation by the United Nations, and the offenders are the peacekeepers themselves.

From the NYTimes:

Accusations include rape, prostitution and pedophilia, and there is photographic and videographic evidence for some.

The NYTimes article also exposes one of the more uncomfortable aspects of this kind of widespread allegation, that some of the teen girls interviewed were comfortable with and liked the sex-for-money exchange with their foreign “boyfriends.”

Nonetheless, the most salient point is that even those designated to promote and preserve peace in war zones are not above the economic and sexual exploitation of war refugees. Even if those refugees are children. Should I be surprised?

The UN, already under extreme criticism from right-wing groups that endorse abandonment of the UN by the United States, cannot afford this loss of credibility. Most importantly, the refugees cannot afford to lose international support.

Related Reading: The UN position on women and violence.

My name is Lauren and I am an Alas addict.

Though I generally post on my own domain, Barry has been kind enough to allow me a guest spot on Alas, A Blog until I resolve my differences with my host’s server.

For those of you unfamiliar with me, I am a single mother who discovered feminism during my turbulent teen pregnancy. Blogging came to my attention right about the same time, and Alas was one of my first discoveries. I’m honored to begin writing here and hope y’all will be nice to your guest posters.

I’m interested in having some new guest posters on “Alas.” Posters must be feminist, obviously, and be more-or-less compatable with the general spirit of “alas” (not that I know what that is!).

I’m interested in “promoting” folks who write in comments here at “Alas” (don’t you hate those promotions that don’t come with a pay increase?), and also in folks who might be interested in guest-posting for a week or so as a way of publicizing their own blog.

Let me know via email if you’re interested, please.

UPDATE: Two people have volunteered and I couldn’t be more thrilled with who they are! Keep on watching…

P.S. I want to avoid “Alas” having so many posters that it’s hard to keep track of ‘em, so I’m not seeking any more guest posters right now. Maybe in the future.

Quoted with permission from The Economic Emergence of Women, by Barbara R. Bergmann (second edition, Palgrave, forthcoming in 2005)

When I started “Alas,” there were hardly any blogs that focused on feminist issues. Now I can’t even try to read them all, there are so many good ones. Here’s another three to check out:

• Brutal Woman. My favorite new (new to me) blog lately - consistantly excellent writing, great analysis.

• Volsunga.
• When you’re not around threesomes aren’t normal…

La Luba is (I’m fairly sure) a feminist as well as a kick-ass progressive, but her blog isn’t focused on gender or feminist issues, so I’ve added it in the “blogs of a feather” catagory.

I’ve also added left2right, a mainstream-democrat blog with a lot of philosophy professors contributing.

From a column in today’s Washington Post:

Remember, this sort of thing never happens anymore, and hasn’t happened for decades, if you listen to the anti-feminists. That aside, three things are particularly striking about this:

First, Viacom isn’t worried about emailing a request for collusion in breaking anti-discrimination laws to three Republican sentator. Viacom sees no danger anyone in that corner will object, I presume.

Second, a Washington Post columnist reprints the Viacom email and says nothing about the illegal sex discrimination.

And third, this is one hell of a great job, and it’s open to applicants only through back channels. And only if they’re male, of course. It’s the old-boy network in action (in this case a little oddly, since the VP who wrote the request is a woman).

Jack of Jack Bog’s Blog likes having new visitors to his website. He likes it so much, in fact, that today (and today only) he’s giving $1 to local food banks for every unique visitor who clicks over to his site.

So what are you waiting for?

(P.S. And if you have a blog, please consider linking to Jack Bog yourself!)

Amanda at Mouse Words is on a hot streak. Here are some of my favorites of her recent posts:

• On one of the most repulsive anti-same-sex-marriage arguments I’ve seen;

• On why “what if there were only one sex?” speculation (sci-fi novels and the like) almost always imagine men being the sex that’s wiped out;
  Why is it that in most versions of this intellectual exercise-cum-fantasy that men are the sex that suddenly disappears? I doubt it has much to do with the genetics of the X and Y chromosomes. My guess is that since the great bulk of the day-to-day work of exaggerrating the differences between the sexes falls on the shoulders of women, then it’s just natural. Men are the standard that we strive to differ from. Men are hairy, so women attempt to be unhairy. The one place men have less hair is on their heads, so women diligently work to make our hair look thicker, i.e., not mannish. Since we do the work of being a Gender, we are the ones who have a vested interest in the idea of a world without gender, which means that the standard we strive not to be like would be what disappears.

  (And also check out this response to Amanda on Brutal Women.)

• And my favorite of the recent bunch, a comparison of It’s a Wonderful Life and The Dead.
  The way that “Wonderful Life” disposes of this plot point is probably the weakest part of the movie. When the question of who his wife would be if he had never been there arises, it’s summarily dismissed by showing that she would be a spinster, which the movie makes more than clear means that she wouldn’t have much of a life at all. It’s a logic-defying conclusion that points to the pat answer to George Bailey’s existential crisis, that answer being, “We find meaning in our life through other people.” This is exactly the answer that eludes Conroy at the end of “The Dead”, because it is in fact, too pat. After all, he has been rejected momentarily for the memory of a dead man, exactly the sort of thing that will frustrate your attempts to find meaning in other people.

[My housemate Elkins posted this comment in the "fat people and gay people" discussion. With Elkins' permission, I'm making it a post of its own. - Amp]

Mary put her finger on it here:

That’s it exactly. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging people to take better care of their health, but I don’t think that’s really what anti-fat discrimination is all about. It is an appearance-based prejudice, and it has far more to do with fat itself than it does with “health.”

I’ve never heard anybody defend quite so passionately the notion that employers ought have a “right” to screen job candidates for blood pressure and cholesterol levels before deciding whether or not to employ them. But suggest, even in the mildest of tones, that perhaps discriminating against a fat applicant might be inappropriate, and people get very passionate indeed! Why? Why is that?

So what’s actually going on here?

One of the parallels that Amp did not cite between obesity and homosexuality–possibly because it is not quantifiable enough by half for his preferred standards of debate–is that whiff of religious righteousness that always seems to permeate these exchanges, that stench of moralism, or even of moral panic.

It strikes me as intrinsically connected to both misogyny and homophobia, this. The terror that fat seems to inspire, the moral terror, seems rooted in the same fear and loathing that has traditionally been reserved for the promiscuous woman. She is not obeying. She is “out of bounds”–much like the fat that oozes over the sides of the airplane seat. Her problem is a surfeit of appetite–which is the reason that no matter what medical studies might actually show, people will continue to frame the problem of obesity wholly in terms of eating and of appetite.

It is also very much the way the religious right views those who dare to break gender boundaries. Queers are disobedient, they are in “moral rebellion.” They are encroaching on our public life. Those who support them must have a “recruitment agenda.” They lack the will-power to restrain their nasty urges. They are not only weak, but also insatiable.

As it becomes less and less socially acceptable to try to regulate sexual behavior, we turn to the subject of eating instead. Whether eating habits really have all that much to do with obesity is irrelevant. We must define obesity in terms of voluntary appetite for it to serve the same social function that sex once served.

Eating is the new sex. Anti-fat hysteria is the new Puritanism.

The Infamous Brad has taken The Center for Reproductive Rights’ educated guesses about which states will ban abortion if Roe v Wade is overturned and put them in a map form. (I’ve cleaned the map up a bit and added in Hawaii, Alaska and captions).

Some things to keep in mind.

• It’s not at all certain that Bush could overturn Roe, even if he wanted to. Roe currently enjoys a 6-3 majority. To reverse that, Bush would have to replace two of the currently pro-Roe justices, and it’s not certain he’ll get a chance to do that.

• Even if Bush could nominate enough justices to overturn Roe, it’s possible he wouldn’t. Many pundits think that if Roe is overturned, that would hurt the Republicans in the election booth. However, I’m not so confident - it seems to me that Bush has never lacked for audacity.
• The worst-case scenario is that either Congress or the Supreme Court will ban abortion nationwide. This isn’t likely, though, because it would almost certainly be an electoral disaster for Republicans if it happened.
• If this happens, pro-choice organizations will be formed to raise funds to help impoverished women who need abortions pay for transportation to the legal states. Abortion ban states will pass laws making it illegal to transport a minor across state lines for the purposes of getting an abortion. And probably some sort of “underground railroad” pro-choice activism will exist to help teenagers in abortion-ban states get abortions.
• As Infamous Brad points out, “What’s more, the anti-abortion movement’s campaign of terror back in the 1980s and early 1990s had a chilling effect. This is almost the status quo now. In many, many of those “red” anti-abortion states, doctors are no longer willing to perform abortions in nearly any rural clinic or hospital. Already, 86% of all counties, including 95% of all rural counties, have no local access to abortion. (Source: Alan Gutmacher Institute.) Women who want abortions in a lot of places are already having to drive or be driven hundreds of miles for them, and to plan for an overnight stay in the process because of mandatory waiting periods. So if you look at it that way, a repeal of Roe wouldn’t be that different fom the America we live in now.”

So Roe’s repeal wouldn’t be the end of the world. But it would be bad, and it would hurt a lot of women, mostly poor women and underage women in the red states.

Do read The Infamous Brad’s entire post for more analysis, and also this page on Religious Tolorance.org. And thanks to “Alas” reader Douglas for the tip.

UPDATE: In response to “Alas” readers pointing out errors, I’ve changed CT and CA to be marked as “safe.” Thanks, folks!

Gotta clear the build-up off my desktop….

• Not really new material, but a post on Left2Right nicely sums up some of the ways Republicans made the 2004 election about masculinity.

• And another post on Left2Right brings up the “shouldn’t we give up on defending late-term abortions?” idea that I think we’ll soon get tired of. (There’s a long post by me far down in the comments.)
• Hey, have you read Lynne Cheney’s lesbian frontier novel? Here are some outtakes. For real. Some of the stuff could have been written by Andrea Dworkin at her most radical:
  [Men, including husbands] indulge themselves selfishly, sensually, with no thought of the consequences for us. For their own pleasure, they condemn us to early graves, murdering us as surely as if they had knotted a cord around our necks.

  Via Gwen’s Petty, Judgemental, Evil Thoughts.

• Philobiblon argues that the historic working week was actually much less work-filled than we imagine nowadays.
• A good post on Wicked Thoughts comments on my recent “being fat and being gay” post.
• Penn State’s Michael Bérubé details how he works, day in and day out, to keep those darn conservatives out of the academy.
• Michael Kinsley writes:
  Today’s near-universal and minimally respectable attitude — the rock-bottom, non-negotiable price of admission to polite society and the political debate — is an acceptance of gay people and of open, unapologetic homosexuality as part of American life that would have shocked, if not offended, great liberals of a few decades ago such as Hubert Humphrey. [...]

  This is also scary, of course, because there is no reason to think that gay rights are the end of the line. And it’s even scarier because these are all revolutions of perception, as well as politics. That means that all of us who consider ourselves good-hearted, well-meaning, empathetic Americans — but don’t claim to be great visionaries — are probably staring right now at an injustice that will soon seem obvious — and we just don’t see it.

  My guess is that either animal rights or transsexual rights will be the next big movement.

• This really interesting article explains why the meidcal marijuana case before the Supreme Court is, first of all, the most interesting case they’re now looking at; and, second of all, is far, far more broad-ranging than the issue of medical pot.
• C.S. Lewis on religious vs. civil marriage. “A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine…”
• An interesting article in The Bend Bullitin about the legal limbo the thousands of lesbian and gay Oregonians who got married before the gay-bashers amended the Oregon constitution are in. Since Oregon’s anti-SSM amendment wasn’t retroactive, the Oregon Supreme Court still has to decide what happens to the already-existing marriages - and perhaps, about the civil unions issue as well.
• I really enjoyed this comixpedia article about how geek women are presented in comics: Geek Women - Your Little Standards-Compliant Fantasy.
• In order to teach kids about World War 2, the correct thing to do is to present both the Nazi side and the anti-Nazi side, and then let the kids make their own decision. Right?
• Right now, I’m listening to an interesting, powerful cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” by A Perfect Circle (click on “music” - it’s one of the iconic links near the top, you’ll find it - and then on “listen”). Via Brutal Women.
• CultureCat looks at some very sexist responses to a female student’s critique conteroversial article in the student paper.