happy ec-niversary!

Just about a year ago, the FDA finally approved EC for OTC purchase.  And in honor of that auspicious occasion, I want to take the opportunity to talk about anti-choicers, and their relationship to some of the discourse around pregnancy.  Not just pointing and laughing, either (though don’t get me wrong, I think pointing and laughing at anti-feminists should be an Olympic sport), but the ways in which our culture, and particularly the anti-choice movement, characterizes all consequences of sex as pregnancy.

these are a few of my favorite things

Sex toys and the federal judiciary ALL IN ONE STORY!  YES REALLY!!

Basically, Alabama has a state law prohibiting the sale of sex toys.  You can, as the author of this article points out, purchase fireworks and guns on the street, but keep that filthy Rabbit Habit out of this here state.  There’s not much I have to add to this article.  But I’m tickled.  (HAHA GEDDIT?)

Barack Obama on TDS

So I am quite impressed.  Still watching the show, and writing down initial reactions instead of processed thoughts is weird for me.  (Okay, now I’m fleshing everything out as I watch my love Stephen Colbert.*  I am just incapable of letting political thoughts lie.)

Wendy Shalit

and the case of “why is anyone reading this idiot anyway?”

on gender, coaching, and remember the titans

This particular topic has intrigued me for a while, especially as it lets me talk about Very Important Personal Experiences, but the particular impetus is on that movie of Feel Good ‘Cuz Racism is Over, Right Guys? Football Fun, Remember the Titans.  Now, I am at least as much an evil cynic as the next girl, but yes, I did choose to watch it because it’s fun, and does an interesting job portraying a lot of complex relationships.  While it doesn’t pass the Mo Movie Measure,* it features some actors I truly enjoy, uses tons of fun music, and has OMG a gay quarterback.  Mostly, though, I watch it because it triggers new thoughts on memories that are pretty important to me.

pro-life, indeed

Shove it up your ass, Justice Kennedy.  And Justices Alito, and Scalia, and Thomas, and Roberts, and everyone who voted for that fucking Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, even though we didn’t expect better from most of you.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/women/articles/2007/08/10/shots_assist_in_aborting_fetuses/

Blog Against Racism

I am a little late to the boat, I believe, for International Blog Against Racism Week.  But I think it’s deeply important to say, though it should need no saying, that I am against racism.

I am against racism because I am a feminist, which means I am in favor of equality for all women, whether they look like me or not.

I am against racism because every tiny racist assumption made anywhere lends credence to the ugly, violent terrorists that we euphamistically call “hate groups.”

I am against racism because my mother’s mother’s mother and my father’s grandfather’s father came across the Atlantic for a better life, and faced irrational and repulsive hatred and discrimination, just like the people who come east and west and north every day.  I am against the racist impulse of some Americans to restrict the numbers of new Americans – because these new Americans are the essence of what makes us Americans.

I am against racism because as much as I try to know, to read, as hard as I worked on my diploma that says “International Affairs and Women’s Studies” but which means “priviliged and intelligent and oh so very lucky” I am shocked and hurt anew all the time by the horrors faced in the name of “ethnicity” or “nationalism” or “racial purity.”

I am against racism because right now, men and women who wear the colors of my nation are killing brown people because my government has decided that it doesn’t like that particular shade of brown.  I am against racism because I protested and voted and volunteered and still failed, because we are still there.

I am against racism because I am tired of the dirty looks I have to give at family dinners, and all the times before I was brave enough to give those dirty looks.

I am against racism, but I need to be better and smarter and braver.  And I am, and I will be.

more on ED

Apparantly, there’s this tragic LJ community called proanorexia.  And it’s all about support for anorexics, so they can be even better anorexics.

And it breaks my heart for those girls (and they seem to uniformly be girls).

And it also makes me so, so angry about the way we frame discussions about eating disorders.