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Feminist Friday: S’mores of Defiance

This Week in Ladybits

A wee reminder that just having “a hospital” nearby won’t necessarily serve your needs if you happen to have ladybits: This Catholic hospital in Oklahoma no longer allows its doctors to prescribe hormonal birth control as a contraceptive. So if you live in Oklahoma City and want hormonal contraception, all you have to do is wait in line behind about 18,500 women for the single remaining OB-GYN to offer it.

In Arizona, harsh restrictions on drug-induced abortions took effect this week, meaning safe abortions are even harder to get. And Louisiana’s House approved a new TRAP law that could shutter three of the state’s five clinics.

Hey, remember those deep convictions Hobby Lobby the “corporate person” had about birth control? They didn’t seem to be in play when Hobby Lobby invested in several companies that produce contraception and abortion products. Yes, many of the same products Hobby Lobby is arguing that it shouldn’t have to cover because of its deep moral convictions.

There are some bright spots for Ladybits this week, though. West Virginia’s Governor Earl Ray Tomblin (D) vetoed his state’s 20-week abortion ban because it is unconstitutional, and because it would harm the health and safety of pregnant women. I found that last part particularly refreshing because of how rarely the health and safety of pregnant women seems to come up in the abortion debate.

State representative Doug Cox of Oklahoma is another bright spot. He describes himself as a pro-life Republican, but he’s outspoken with his disgust over what the Republican party is trying to do to women. He calls the attempts to block emergency contraception “prejudiced against women,” and he is crazy enough to think that a conservative should believe that “women should have the right to control their own destiny.” If Cox sounds remarkably in touch with women’s needs, it’s because he has been: He’s an emergency room doctor. And to him, “pro-life” means that he hasn’t personally performed any abortions, but he doesn’t think he should interfere in a woman’s private decisions. What a sane definition of that term.

And Lady Parts Justice had an ovaries-to-the-wall writing and sketch-shooting marathon in L.A last weekend, thanks to the astonishing energy of comedian/activist Lizz Winstead. Get ready for some fun and pointed video rollouts soon. In the meantime, take the Which Hobby Lobby Birth Control Method Are You? Quiz.

Or enjoy the LPJ Meme of the Week:

Image courtesy of Lady Parts Justice, via Twitter

This Week in Thinky

Oh, this is terrific. The McGill Law School Feminists have decided to take the word back — and show the true diversity of feminism.

Images courtesy of the McGill Law Feminists tumblr

And Emily’s List is blowing past President Obama’s endorsement of the male Democratic candidate in Hawaii’s Senate race to back Representative Colleen Hanabusa. Emily’s List president Stephanie Schriock doesn’t seem worried.

This Week in Side-Eye

The U.S. Army released new grooming rules this week. And a lot of the newly-banned hairstyles are natural hairstyles that are popular with black women, most notably twists, multiple braids, and hairstyles with headbands. This is a problem. Women who are deployed can’t reliably find or use chemical relaxers or straighteners. And even if the could, why should they have to?

Image from the U.S. Army’s policy leaders training Powerpoint

The editor of The Washington Timesthinks that trans* equality will “endanger every single female.” (P.S. She is incorrect. This is what happens when ignorance and fear take over and you let your lizard brain do the thinking.)

I’m posting this oldie-but-goodie for the sheer wave of bizarre nostalgia it produced when I saw it this week. Good thing nobody’s listening to that guy anymore. Wait, he what?

Image from the smell before the rain, via Tumbr

And Republicans are opposing the nascent Paycheck Fairness Act because blerg.

This Week in Commendable Corporate Behavior

Honey Maid released a commercial that says — prepare to flip your wigs and drop your monocles — that all kinds of families deserve to enjoy s’mores, even when those families have people of different races or even gay people in them.

So the usual “Million” (bigoted) Moms fired off some angry emails and something called the American Decency Association went batshit and said that Honey Maid is trying to normalize the Gay because of Satan. Which, now that I think about it, finally explains that passage in Matthew when Satan says “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made graham crackers.”

But you know what happened when they got all those angry letters? Honey Maid doubled down on the awesome.

And Firefox installed a new, explicitly anti-gay CEO, Brendan Eich. So OKCupid just straight-up blocked Firefox.

Image via Twitter

And you know what? Firefox finally got the message that public bigotry hurts your bottom line. Eich stepped down as CEO on Thursday.

So go have some s’mores while browsing OKCupid. No, your significant other won’t mind. Really? That mad? OK, maybe just the s’mores.

This Week in What Do You Mean This Horsedander Wasn’t an April Fool?

You have maybe heard about how the GOP is trying to attract more ladies into voting for them, mostly by trying to stop gay ladies from getting married to each other and stop straight ladies from getting birth control and stop non-white ladies from voting entirely and stop low-income ladies from being able to access women’s health services and also by constantly calling all of us sluts.

For some reason, that plan hasn’t been working out as well as they’d hoped.

Well, welcome to the Heritage Foundation think tank’s exciting new plan! Instead of asking women what policies they would like and maybe supporting one or two of those, the Heritage Foundation wagged that dog hard and decided how they would like ladies to think and behave, then worked from there. I know: You’re on tenterhhooks.

So the way The Heritage Foundation is going to get more ladies to vote Republican is by telling them to stop having jobs and stop worrying about equality, especially equal pay, and get married (to men) and be the only caregivers for their kids instead.

Don’t get me wrong, here: I’m all for marriage — so much so that I think ladies should be able to marry other ladies! — and I agree that rearing children well is one of the most important jobs we have. Except, whoops, I can’t possibly think those things because I am a feminist and therefore I hate families, which the Heritage Foundation has conclusively proved.

Anyway, I’m sure we’ll all be delighted with this exciting new direction for conservatives. Please, please double down on this strategy, politicians!

This next item is so abhorrent that you may want to skip it. For real.

Robert H. Richards IV, heir to the DuPont fortune, was convicted of raping his three-year-old daughter. And then he was sentenced to probation, because the judge did not think Richards would do well in prison. I was unaware that we as a nation have been sending people to prison because we thought they would do well there all this time. I really should have paid more attention in civics class.

I don’t know if this is symptomatic of the way rich people are treated vastly differently by the court system, the way white people are treated vastly differently by the court system, or the degree to which we as a society focus on the rights and well-being of rapists instead of the victims; probably all of the above. But all of them are issues that feminists should be concerned about. Everybody go work out on a punching bag for a while and do some primal screams and meet back here for some awesome.

This Week in Awesome

Happy birthday to my mother Nancy, my first bad-ass feminist role model, who continues to inspire and surprise me year after year.

DC Comics has added Equinox, a new Cree teen superhero. Equinox will appear as a part of Justice League Canada, (h/t The Mary Sue) the only league of superheroes to say “Sorry” after every punch.

Image courtesy of DC Comics, via CBC News

IndieWire interviewed Gina Carano about In the Blood, a new action flick that reverses the traditional gender roles. (Spoiler: Carano kicks major ass in it.)

Speaking of movies, remember how I was fretting a week or two ago about Hollywood not ever bothering to change movies because, hey, women are already buying half the tickets just the way things are? Well, 538 made the case that movies with more developed female characters are a better investment. Did you hear all those cash registers? Me too. Get ready for a certain industry to start pandering to your mind.

Tacocat released a video for “Hey, Girl,” their song about street harassment. (Thanks to Brangien for the tip!)

You probably want more Tacocat after that. Me too. And we’ve been so very good, I think we should have it.

And it’s not from this week, but I can’t get enough of these defiant women from 1930. Or their hats. (Spotted by the ever-alert Elaine Atwell.)

Image from Historical Pics, via Twitter

Have a great weekend. Get out there and make a little history of your own.

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