Category Archives: Feminism

Wisconsin attorney general candidate says fast food workers should get a “real job”

In fact, Walker recently said he doesn’t think the minimum wage “serves a purpose” at all, saying he wants to create jobs that pay “two or three times that.” The sentiment expressed by Schimel and Walker is a common conservative talking point–and a huge scam. The idea that instead of ensuring that low-wage jobs give people enough money to pay rent and fucking eat we should just get them better jobs is nothing more than a way for conservatives to pretend they care about poor people by ignoring reality. Let’s talk about some real facts…

It’s a real fact that there about 3 million fast food workers in this country, and there is no indication that Americans’ love of fries and processed burgers will wane anytime soon.

It’s a real fact that few of these workers are teenagers “flipping burgers” as a summer job–two thirds are women, disproportionately women of color, and their medium age is 28.

It’s a real fact that these workers are usually supporting kids, often by themselves, with their apparently not-real fast food jobs.

via Wisconsin attorney general candidate says fast food workers should get a “real job”.

When black women die from street harassment

You’ve read this piece before. You’ve read it a dozen times over. I’ve written it before. I could have written it a dozen times over. It’s the piece where someone complains about how little outrage there is surrounding something which deeply affects them, and then the reader is left to wonder, “Well, if it means that much to you, what are YOU doing about it?” You may have written that piece before. And we keep writing them because I don’t think any of us are quite sure what to do.

Where black women are concerned, we aren’t just talking about mounting the evils of misogyny, or even racism. We compete with the sacrifices black women make for their community.

I understand that there’s an impulse to not make black men the faces of street harassment, given all of the ideas that already exist around black male hypersexuality, as well as the disproportionate amount of police violence that black men face as the result of the constant criminalization of behaviors associated with black men. But black women have been allowed to suffer too much for the protection of black men. They have paid with their lives.

And here I am, writing another blog post wondering why no one seems to care.

Street harassment is vile. It makes women feel unsafe in public. But when black women die because we have failed to teach boys and men to keep their thoughts and hands to themselves, that they are not entitled to the sexual attention of any and every woman, or that their attempts at proving their masculinity through verbal and physical assaults on women are failures, the concern fades before it has a chance to actually surface. Black women are expected to keep sacrificing.

Who cries when black women die? Nobody. No damn body.

via When black women die from street harassment.

VIDEO: Danish mums’ breastfeeding protest – The Local

Danish mothers in seven cities carried out a coordinated public ‘feed-in’ to protest against what they feel is society’s skewed view of breastfeeding.

Up to 200 women brought their babies to train stations in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, Esbjerg, Aalborg and Herning on Thursday to breastfeed in public.

 

“I’m here because I think it is important for women to have the option of breastfeeding in public. The current debate is full of people who don’t seem to understand how often a baby needs to eat. Sometimes the tone in the debate is downright nasty,” Nanna Reffstrup, who was breastfeeding her son in Copenhagen Central Station, told DR.

via VIDEO: Danish mums’ breastfeeding protest – The Local.

Suffering from Perfection Paralysis? Well then, F##k It. | Rebelle Society

Where the real problem comes in is when we allow that need for perfection to actually control us, stop us from trying, keep us in our safe zone and away from doing anything that might lead to us to look foolish or less than, in eyes of someone else. Then we are in Perfection Paralysis.

That was me for a very long time. I missed out because I was afraid, because of course you are never perfect the first time out of the gate, so better just to watch from the sidelines. “No, I’m good. You guys go ahead. l’ll just watch.” I became a really good cheerleader.

I still am a really good cheerleader, in fact I absolutely love celebrating other people’s success and accomplishments, but a few years back I realized something: I wanted to celebrate my own too!

I wanted to be engaged in life, I wanted to feel the exhilaration of extending myself, testing my limits and seeing what I was capable of and I wanted to be me, not a version of me that works for everyone else, but the real honest to goodness me, the one that had been lost somewhere along the way.

It’s not like one day I just completely stopped worrying about what other people think, in fact I consider myself a recovering perfectionist and probably always will.

I just realized that how I feel is far more important than what other people think.

Because really, what other people think about me is completely out of my control. But how I feel in my own skin, how I see myself through my own eyes, is a choice I get to make each and every day.

via Suffering from Perfection Paralysis? Well then, Fuck It. | Rebelle Society.

Anita Sarkeesian, Video Game Critic, Cancels Speech After Threats of Massacre – NYTimes.com

Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist cultural critic who has become a target of harassment by gamers, canceled a public speech scheduled for Wednesday after the college holding the event received threats of violence.

Ms. Sarkeesian was set to speak at Utah State University in Logan. Even after school administrators received the threats against Ms. Sarkeesian and those who attended her speech, she planned to give her talk. Ms. Sarkeesian, who hosts an online video series that has challenged how women are portrayed in videogames, has been a frequent target of threats because of her work.

But Ms. Sarkeesian reconsidered and canceled the talk over security measures at the event, according to a tweet by Ms. Sarkeesian and a spokesman for the school.

via Anita Sarkeesian, Video Game Critic, Cancels Speech After Threats of Massacre – NYTimes.com.

What Happened to “Abortion On Demand Without Apology”? | Dame Magazine

In Katha Pollitt’s new book Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, The Nation columnist argues that the pro-choice movement has become increasingly defensive, and even apologetic, about abortion. “Anywhere you look or listen,” she writes, “you find pro-choicers falling over themselves to use words like ‘thorny,’ ‘vexed,’ ‘complex,’ and ‘difficult.’” Pollitt laments this “awfulization” of abortion and claims pro-choicers have been complicit in its rise. The movement’s language has shifted radically since the pre-Roe v. Wade 1970s, she writes, when activists fought for “abortion on demand and without apology.”

 

And she’s right. We hear what Pollitt calls a “permit but deplore” attitude from high-profile pro-choice politicians: Sarah Erdreich, in Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, cites Hillary Clinton’s characterization of abortion as a “sad, even tragic choice” and John Kerry’s hope that it be “the rarest thing in the world.” It’s not altogether surprising to hear politicians hedging, but even the most ardent pro-choice activists often express reservations about the very thing they work to defend. Cristina Page, an advocate who has dedicated her career to abortion rights and authored How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, called abortion “something we don’t want to have happen at the frequency that it is, or even at all.”

via What Happened to “Abortion On Demand Without Apology”? | Dame Magazine.

One more Jerk in the IT Jerk Wall! Microsoft CEO apologizes for comments on women | Business | DW.DE | 10.10.2014

adella continued to say that “good karma” would ensure women were compensated fairly for their work. His interviewer at the event, Maria Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College and a Microsoft director, drew applause when she said Nadella’s viewpoint was “one of the very few things that I disagree with you on.”

via Microsoft CEO apologizes for comments on women | Business | DW.DE | 10.10.2014.

Somali militants stone woman to death | Reuters

Cowards and shameful to claim their acts have anything to do with religion – it is about power and their terrorizing their own people for their benefit!

The group, which pledges loyalty to al Qaeda, has waged an armed campaign to impose its strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Forced out of many areas of the east African country by African Union forces and the Somali army, al Shabaab is keen to show it has authority over areas it still controls.

Hundreds gathered to watch the killing of Safia Ahmed Jimale in an open field. The 33-year old mother was buried up to her shoulders and pelted with stones by masked al Shabaab fighters and local men.

via Somali militants stone woman to death | Reuters.

Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Mom’s Hands

When I was born you held me in your hands.

When I couldn’t sleep you gave me your hands and sang Lalayi for me.

When I got dirty you washed me with your hands.

When I wanted to stand you put my hands in your hands and lifted.

When I fell down your hands picked me up.

You cleaned my clothes, brushed my hair, and gave me food, all with your hands.

When I grew bigger you walked me to school, hand-in-hand.

Do you remember how I cried because I didn’t want to go?

You dried my tears with your hands.

My daughter, you have to go to school.

I am illiterate. I have to work at home. But you must go.

You told me to become a doctor, an engineer, a teacher.

You prepared my books, polished my shoes.

You shook my teacher’s hand and told her to take care of me.

Every step of my life, always, your loving hands are in my thoughts.

When I was young I saw society’s view of women and was discouraged.

You touched my hands.

My daughter, I am always with you.

Don’t be afraid. Go ahead.

You taught me that conditions will never be as I wish, but I can turn them in my favor.

Now your hands are old and wrinkled because of me.

You worked hard with your hands so that I can be at peace.

Mom, you are the reason for my success, the reason for my happiness.

You are the source of my good fortune.

These kind and helping hands of yours

Mom, I am thanking you.

And kissing, your hands.

By Arifa H.

via Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Mom’s Hands.