Wednesday, February 22, 2012
I thought I would write about the myth of choice. How when we talk about choice in a feminist context we mean “We want people to have a choice in terms of how and when they get pregnant and if they carry that pregnancy on”. How we want people to have a choice on their [...]
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
“You cannot come in with that ugly cow standing over there”. Said by the bouncer at a posh disco, to my brother, when I was sixteen? maybe seventeen? and trying to enter said disco with a group of friends. I was the “ugly cow” the bouncer referred to. Summer dresses and lipgloss, and a place [...]
Thursday, February 2, 2012
It started with a news item I came across a few days ago: Two deaths in three weeks in Spain’s notorious detention centers. On 19 December 2011, an unnamed woman, aged 41, believed to be from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, died of meningitis hours after her admission to hospital from the Aluche detention [...]
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
“This is a chance for me,” said Ms. Sinclair. “The Huffington Post gave me a chance.” (The New York Times) I love chances! I do! I do! Especially when they vindicate the downtrodden, the ones that have been beaten up, those who are finally rewarded with a possibility, with an opportunity. Anne Sinclair, newly appointed [...]
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Jizz on your face! A FACIAL! Let your guy cum on your rosy cheeks because it is the latest act of feminist empowerment! Moreover, IT’S CLEANSING! Didn’t you hear? Jizz on your face is better than a detox diet! It has “purifying” properties. Or so says Hugo Schwyzer, Professor Feminism extraordinaire in his latest installment [...]
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
I. “My feminism will be intersectional” redux I set myself up for failure. I know. I like big, unachievable goals that I will, all on my own, conquer. Because I am a sucker for failed end of the year balances. Because when this time of the year rolls by, I sit and ponder on what [...]
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Yesterday was a tragic day in Europe. Death and violence have swept the continent in two episodes that might, at first hand, seem unrelated. In the Belgian city of Liège, a man threw hand grenades and opened fire on the crowd at the city center’s Christmas market, killing four and injuring more than 100 (of [...]
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Every morning I wake up and I have a little ritual going. First I am met by the generally cheerful dog and cats. Then I pee. Then I get a cup of coffee and sit in front of my computer. I scan my inboxes (yes plural, as a long term mail user I have ten [...]
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 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 [...]