Many thanks for the conGRADulations all! Eh? Ahaha. Anyway, after a weekend of hibernation, I’m glad to be back. Still on student time though, which is why this is being posted at one in the morning.
A queer rights and immigrants rights activist tosses glitter over Newt and Callista Gingrich at one of their book signings in Minneapolis. Maybe Scott “the worst thing to happen to Wisconsin worker’s rights and now queer rights” Walker is next?
Via Racialicious:
But we must not grow weary. We must continue to uplift one another. Use our voices to tell our multifaceted stories. Our mere existence is a testament against an oppressive system that would rather we continue on as the mules of the world Zora noted decades ago. But like Zora, we must not “weep at the world.” We should be “too busy sharpening our oyster knife.”
From The Rising Attacks on Black Women Since the Presence of Michelle Obama
And in that vein, another black woman at the top of her field, Serena Williams, gets victim blamed.
A Saudi Woman takes on her country’s ban on female drivers by getting behind the wheel. This should remind us that activism and bravery are in actions simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary.
Three cis-women detail their experiences after making the choice to undergo tubal ligation. For those who might think “hey, that’s major surgery, which will have a major and lasting effect on a woman’s life and body, isn’t it a little drastic?”- pregnancy and childcare have major and lasting effects on cis-women’s lives and bodies. Aortions have major and lasting effects on cis-women’s lives and bodies. Hormonal birth control has a major and lasting effect on cis-women’s lives and bodies. This is just one choice among a series of choices in a culture whose lack of support and respect for cis-women’s lives and bodies has limited us in the first place.
Finally, a constructive critique of Slutwalk as a strategy in the fight against rape culture. I found this an insightful and intersectional analysis of race, sexuality and gender, one that I’m sure many of us deal with in our own organizing. There is resistance to the reclamation of the word slut from many who fight against sexualized violence, and it is something we must consider, and without immediately jumping to the conclusion that people who dislike the term slut are internalizing heteropatriarchy. We ALL internalize heteropatriarchy. We all have different strategies for working through that. What I like about this piece is its honesty, and what I like about Slutwalk is that it is one strategy, which, like all others, should be considered open to critique and improvement. No movement is perfect. No movement ever will be. But isn’t the whole point of the work we do in effort of that?