February 2010

Top 5 George Harrison Vocals

by Cara February 27, 2010

This past Thursday, February 25th, was George Harrison’s birthday. He would have turned 67. And with it, we mark the (admittedly probably intermittent) return of Gratuitous Beatles Blogging. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the Quiet Beatle, but as I’ve begun an obsession with collecting vinyl records over these past several [...]

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Turkish Activists Demand Action on Transphobic Hate Crimes

by Cara February 26, 2010

There are exceedingly few places in the world where trans people are truly safe. Turkey, then, is only one of many, many countries where trans people, usually trans women, are violently attacked and murdered at epidemic levels simply for being who they are. The abuses there, however, could be considered particularly bad — and regardless, [...]

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Anti-Choicers Target Women of Color: How Should Pro-Choicers Respond?

by Cara February 23, 2010

Earlier this month, Renee wrote a post about an Atlanta billboard targeting black women’s reproductive rights by pointing to the higher rates of abortion among black women, and claiming that abortion clinics are attempting to abort black children out of existence. It’s a great post, touching on many things that will come up here, and [...]

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Yes, Abuse Is Your Business

by Cara February 20, 2010

This video (sorry, embedding is disabled) is of Ewan McGregor on Good Morning America. The part of the video that I’m going to talk about (beginning at :38), discussing McGregor’s recent film made with Roman Polanski, is transcribed below: George Stephanopoulos: [Roman Polanski]‘s also of course going through his troubles right now, being held in [...]

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Montana State Hospital Pays $375,000 Settlement to Rape Victim

by Cara February 19, 2010

Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of sexual violence. Moodybpgirl recently wrote about a really horrifying case in which Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs paid a six-figure settlement to a woman who was raped during her stay there, by a fellow patient who also just so happened to be a convicted sex offender. A female [...]

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Happy Birthday, Ms. Ono

by Cara February 18, 2010

February 18 is a day on which badass women are born, from Audre Lorde to Toni Morrison. But you had to know that I couldn’t let the day pass without acknowledging the birthday of my favorite badass feminist in the entire world: Yoko Ono. 1 Today, the fabulous Ms. Ono turns 77. And she’s still [...]

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Rape: the sinister blame game

by Cara February 16, 2010

A new UK study shows that most people still blame rape victims at least some of the time — and women are even more likely to victim-blame than men. I offer my analysis on these findings in my first ever piece for the Guardian. A new survey by the Havens service for rape victims shows [...]

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Book Review: Promises I Can Keep

by Cara February 15, 2010

I’m the kind of person who hoards books, and finds difficulty getting the the time to read them all within what most people would consider to be an even remotely reasonable timeframe. While that’s something I’m working on getting under control, the consequence is that I’m also the kind of person, who, if she ever [...]

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Deaf Woman Was Not Told Her Cancer Was Terminal

by Cara February 9, 2010

I’ve heard a lot of heartbreaking and enraging stories in my lifetime, but this still manages to rank pretty highly up there. Health care providers never gave a woman with cancer and her husband, both of whom were deaf, a repeatedly requested interpreter. And thus, they weren’t told for three months that she was dying. [...]

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Court Ignores Man’s Domestic Violence Prior to Murder-Suicide

by Cara February 4, 2010

Via SAFER comes a really awful story about a man named Stephen Garcia who murdered his 9-month-old son Wyatt before taking his own life. Obviously any kind of violence like this is always horrible, but what makes it even more appalling is that the man’s actions were easily predicted by his previous threats and behavior, [...]

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