Friday, November 25, 2011
Today marks the anniversary of the political assassination of three women known as the Mirabal Sisters. The Mirabals were four sisters who grew up in Salcedo, a city in the Dominican Republic, during the era of the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Three of them — Minerva, Patria, and Maria Teresa — were killed by Trujillo’s henchmen […]
Monday, November 21, 2011
NPR has an ongoing series wittily called ‘Living Large‘ which is supposed to be about obesity in the US. Now, I am an NPR listener from way back. I have fond memories of childhood with All Things Considered on in the background while my father and I cooked dinner, or waking up to listen to […]
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Last Saturday Katie Roiphe’s “In Favor of Dirty Jokes and Risqué Remarks” appeared on the New York Times’ Op-Ed page. Roiphe took as her ostensible subject the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations, but quickly abandoned that topic to meander aimlessly through a collection of every ignorant thing she had ever thought about sexual harassment in […]
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Free the Slaves estimates that 27 million people worldwide are enslaved. Many are bonded labourers, enslaved to work off debts which can grow over time and may be passed between generations. Others are forced labourers, compelled to work under threat, unable to receive access to basic workplace protections, and unpaid. They are all around us, […]
Monday, November 14, 2011
[Content warning for very racist images, links to videos of police brutality and depictions of State endorsed racism] Ah, my home, The Netherlands. Tourists from all over the world wax lyrical about the tulips, the windmills and the widely available weed. What these tourists hardly ever get to see is how institutionalized racism works in […]
Thursday, November 10, 2011
[NOTE: This article is about — and hence contains copious examples of — violent, highly triggering, and bigoted language. When the slur isn’t something connected to my own identity, I have tried to bleep it with asterisks.] [EDITED TO ADD: Since its publication, this article has been cited by many reporters and bloggers. Thanks, everybody! […]
Thursday, November 10, 2011
European countries are always praised for the strides they make towards gender equality. European nations consistently rank on top of quality of life rankings and measurements. Moreover, the EU is held as a sort of modern gold standard for the promotion of human rights and the values of “reason and enlightenment”. Gender equality and anti […]
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Bad sex has a bad reputation. It’s not hard to sort out why when it gets conflated with rape all the damn time. The idea that someone violating your body can be written off as “bad sex” has a lot of awful ramifications, many of which, as clever readers of this exceedingly fine blog, you’re […]
In 2009, I was a far more cheerful person. It’s true! You can see it, in the posts and such! I was exclamation-point-y, and elaborate-DFW-sentence-ripoff-y, and oh, oh so very droll about all this wacky sexism. I got mad, a few times. Who doesn’t? But for the most part, I was just darn chirpy. “Hey, […]
The Internet was abuzz last week with the Hillary Adams case; a young woman bravely videotaped her father beating her as a teen, and uploaded the video to YouTube several years later, sparking an international discussion about child abuse. It’s a horrible video to watch, made more chilling when you realise the level of planning and […]