From the monthly archives:

September 2007

Offensive Remark of the Week

by Cara September 30, 2007

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas seems to have gone out of his way to be offensive this week. He is releasing a new book about his life. In both the book and his interviews about the book, he makes the claim that the Anita Hill controversy was about abortion. Says CBS on an interview with [...]

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Beer Ad Misogyny-Off

by Cara September 29, 2007

vs. I found this tidbit from an AlterNet article about the new Bionic Woman show and the history of fembots to be interesting. It’s about those Heineken ads that featured a female robot dancing for its male audience while serving out beer. I’m not about to argue that fembots are a positive trend in advertising. [...]

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Aurora Antis Get Crazier and Crazier

by Cara September 28, 2007

You know, the thing about this Aurora Planned Parenthood clinic debacle is that it just keeps getting more and more absurd. First off this week was the “silver bullet” incident. The anti-choice foes who are desperate to bring the clinic down dug through zoning rules and announced at the tops of their voices that Planned [...]

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Congrats to the Matthew Shepard Act!

by Cara September 28, 2007

I almost forgot! The news came out last night: nine years after Matthew Shepard’s murder, the Senate has passed the Matthew Shepard Act 60-39. The legislation extends protection against hate crimes to the LGBTQ community– and gender and disability! Three cheers for a Democratic Senate! Bush, of course, has threatened a veto. Which would be [...]

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On Katha Pollitt and the meaning of feminism

by Cara September 28, 2007

Some of you may have already read some of the misogynist hoopla regarding Katha Pollitt’s new book of personal essays, Learning to Drive, but I think that this Salon piece by Rebecca Traister really takes the cake. You see, it’s technically supposed to be a defense of Pollitt and a rumination on the double-standards for [...]

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Who knew that you could make sexual asasult worse?

by Cara September 27, 2007

Courtesy of reader Cheryl comes this very sad story. In Ottawa, a Muslim woman was sexually assaulted while attending university. An Ottawa paper covered the story, printing that the woman was raped. The victim has now come out clarifying that she was not raped, due to concern that she will be rejected as “not clean” [...]

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Aurora Rally for Planned Parenthood

by Cara September 27, 2007

By all accounts, the rally in Aurora went very well on Tuesday. Officials say that at the height of the protest, 250-300 pro-choice supporters attended and outnumbered the opposition 2 to 1. Great work! After the jump, there are a whole bunch of pictures courtesy of JenLovesPonies, who attended the rally, with commentary! The Planned [...]

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Gee, freedom of speech and victims’ rights sure are frivolous

by Cara September 26, 2007

I’m sure that many of you remember or have been following the case of the woman who was banned from using the word “rape” at her own rape trial. Earlier this month, she filed a lawsuit against the judge who had this insanely insulting idea, and received some interesting responses as a result. Personally, I [...]

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She Should Run

by Cara September 26, 2007

Throughout history, women have made up two percent of the total individuals serving in the U.S. Congress. Though women make up 50% of the population, only 25% of all public offices are held by women today. Even though we’re doing the best we ever have with 16 female Senators, 70 women serving in House of [...]

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Why Generalizing About Porn Doesn’t Help

by Cara September 25, 2007

Perhaps in response to the Don Hazen review of Robert Jensen’s book Getting Off, AlterNet today has another article on the topic. This time it’s by Riane Eisler, and she argues that pornography and war are intricately linked. I want to start off by saying that Eisler’s writing is not particularly academic. She also repeatedly [...]

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