In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Politics

Lost (“lost”?) children and families torn apart at the border

One of the biggest stories currently under discussion is the Department of Health and Human Services allegedly losing track of nearly 1,500 immigrant children placed with host families. In many cases, the story is that the Trump administration has separated those 1,500 children from their families at the U.S. border and lost track of them. As in most complicated situations like this, there’s some stuff there that’s right, and stuff there that’s wrong, and stuff there that’s conflated with other stuff. On Twitter, attorney Josie Duffy Rice sorts out the details and provides insight on what the hell is actually happening with all of those kids.

Ten people didn’t die in Santa Fe because a girl “spurned” a boy

Last week’s school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, didn’t happen because a girl “spurned” Dimitrios Pagourtzis. It didn’t happen because she “humiliated” him or “embarrassed” him in front of the class. It was neither “sparked” nor “provoked.” The headline is not that a girl rejected him. The headline is that Pagourtzis harassed her for four months before going on his killing spree.

How not to make a feminist music video

Childish Gambino (known to his parents as Donald Glover) broke the Internet May 5 with the release of his music video, “This Is America.” It’s a nuanced and incredibly layered commentary about the experiences black people face in the U.S., from gun violence to police brutalization to commercialization of culture. YouTube… person Nicole Arbour jumped on that video and created the “Women’s Edit” that no one has been asking for.

Dear white women, please stop calling the cops on black people

Dear white women,

Please stop calling the cops on people of color.

Not when they’re in your coffee shop, or your golf course, or your gym, or your store, and you don’t want them there, and not because they don’t wave back when you wave at them. Don’t expose them to police interactions because you get a racist wiggins and need an armed officer of the law to back you up.

The “redistribution of sex” is rape

The redistribution of sex is rape.

That’s because sex isn’t a commodity. Even commercial sex isn’t a commodity. Sex, of both the amateur and the professional variety, is an activity performed by people, and the only way to “redistribute” it is to compel someone to perform it when they otherwise wouldn’t. And compelling a person to perform sex when they don’t want to is…

Thanks for fixating on eyeshadow, and other observations about the WHCD

At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night, comedian Michelle Wolf delivered what was, all told, a pretty tame monologue for her, taking jabs at the current presidential administration as is customary for comedians at the WHCD, and… and? A lot of it was crass and kind of tacky and pretty much entirely true, which is I think is what bothered them so much. The criticism, however, came out in the form of “I don’t mind a joke, but going after Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ appearance crossed the line!” which is fun because she didn’t actually do that. (She said three words even remotely related to Sanders’ appearance, and one of them was “perfect.”) But I guess it’s easier than responding directly to Wolf’s legitimate criticisms of the current media environment.

Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s reproductive rights

Women aren’t stupid. (I mean, on average.) Over time, we’ve begun to vote, work, sign for our own credit cards, and helm blockbuster movies and society hasn’t collapsed under the weight of our unfettered ignorance. Certainly, given accurate information to work with, we’re capable of making decisions about our own bodies. We’re capable of deciding if we want to have kids, when we want to have kids, and how many kids we want to have. And that is precisely why so many groups lie their little asses off when the subject of reproductive health arises: because they want to be the ones making the decisions.