The Personal is Political

Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were the pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs, and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.

Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, “Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers” (via ynannarising)

(via aliveforalittlewhile)

Virginia GOP Nominee For Attorney General Would Force Women To Report Their Miscarriages To Police →

robot-heart-politics:

abaldwin360:

If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) had become law. And yet, the […]

*sigh*

Somewhere between 10% and 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. 1 in 4 people who can get pregnant will experience a miscarriage. A miscarriage is a completely normal, natural process that happens surprisingly frequently. Why on earth should it be reported to law enforcement, and how on earth does this not constitute gross government overreach into people’s private lives?

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

[F]or the first several years the SAT was offered, males scored higher than females on the Math section but females achieved higher scores on the Verbal section. ETS policy-makers determined that the Verbal test needed to be “balanced” more in favor of males, and added questions pertaining to politics, business and sports to the Verbal portion. Since that time, males have outscored females on both the Math and Verbal sections. Dwyer notes that no similar effort has been made to “balance” the Math section, and concludes that, “It could be done, but it has not been, and I believe that probably an unconscious form of sexism underlies this pattern. When females show the superior performance, ‘balancing’ is required; when males show the superior performance, no adjustments are necessary.”

“Gender Bias in College Admissions Tests”, FairTest.org

And then people urge me everything is fine, of course it is, when you’re ignoring statistics that is.

(via cwnl)

(via becauseiamawoman)

When faced with someone behaving outside of their gender role, we as a society are more likely to dismiss the individual as an outlier— “you’re acting like a girl” —rather than accept that our definition of ‘what a girl acts like’ is completely off in the first place.

(via hollywoodsquare)

(via lesbians-and-bathsalts)

But ask yourself: Why is there that knee-jerk rejection of any effort to “overthink” pop culture? Why would you ever be afraid that looking too hard at something will ruin it? If the government built a huge, mysterious device in the middle of your town and immediately surrounded it with a fence that said, “NOTHING TO SEE HERE!” I’m pretty damned sure you wouldn’t rest until you knew what the hell that was — the fact that they don’t want you to know means it can’t be good.

Well, when any idea in your brain defends itself with “Just relax! Don’t look too close!” you should immediately be just as suspicious. It usually means something ugly is hiding there.

- David Wong

This quote is in an article about superhero movies, but it applies to so many things.

(via thecharles)

(via whatifshestayedinwonderland)

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

Bill Watterson (via mikekarnell)

(via werelemur)

Be of service. You are taking your degree into a society dominated by concentrated poverty and a vulnerable middle class, a society where it is harder to pay for education, harder to find a job, harder to buy a house and harder to hold onto those things even if you manage to get them. You are entering adulthood during a period of mass incarceration and near constant war. There is a lot for you to do. Service is the rent you pay for the space you take up on the earth, and as a relatively privileged American you take up a lot of space. We are the most consuming, polluting, wasteful nation on earth. So your rent is steep. Pay it with service.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry’s advice to Class of 2013 (via bitchwhoisyou)

(via robot-heart-politics)

ianthe:

justcallmeemilyv:

my-so-called-vagina:

ianthe:

here is a thing

Reblogging again for reasons.

get it girl.

:’)

(via theprophetlilith)

Call of Duty got a playable dog character before it got any playable women characters

brotherentropy:

tsunderisse:

geoomega:

because it’s marketed more to men than to women

you’re a misogynist.

i like the implication that men find it easier to emotionally connect to a dog than a woman and that that’s for some reason not an extremely fucked up thing about our culture

(via the-uncensored-she)

nerdfighter13812:

ohanameansfandom:

Whenever anyone argues against marriage equality because of their religious views as a Christian I just want to hit them over the head repeatedly with a Bible whilst yelling

ADULTERY ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

LYING ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

DIVORCE ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

DISRESPECTING YOUR PARENTS ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

WORKING ON THE SABBATH ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

WORSHIPPING OTHER GODS ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

THE LAW DOES NOT FOLLOW THE BIBLE!!!!!

I’m a Christian and I approve this message.

(via fatgirlopinions)

Why aren’t more people freaking out about the new Venezuelan labor law?

sapphrikah:

cupcakesnotbombs:

bluandorange:

monetizeyourcat:

dancepunksnotdead:

You know, the one that gives housewives/full-time mothers a pension— wages for housework?

It’s ONLY A HUGE VICTORY FOR FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND WOMEN OF COLOR. Not a big deal or anything. Tumblr is mysteriously silent about this.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/05/venezuelas-new-labour-law-best-mothers-day-gift

holy shit!

fucking COOL

this is dope as shit

THAT is awesome.

“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley â A Dribble of Ink →

eschergirls:

I often tell people that I’m the biggest self-aware misogynist I know.

I was writing a scene last night between a woman general and the man she helped put on the throne. I started writing in some romantic tension, and realized how lazy that was. There are other kinds of tension.

I made a passing reference to sexual slavery, which I had to cut. I nearly had him use a gendered slur against her. I growled at the screen. He wanted to help save her child… no. Her brother? Ok. She was going to betray him. OK. He had some wives who died… ug. No. Close advisors? Friends? Maybe somebody just… left him?

Even writing about societies where there is very little sexual violence, or no sexual violence against women, I find myself writing in the same tired tropes and motivations. “Well, this is a bad guy, and I need something traumatic to happen to this heroine, so I’ll have him rape her.” That was an actual thing I did in the first draft of my first book, which features a violent society where women outnumber men 25-1. Because, of course, it’s What You Do.

I actually watched a TV show recently that was supposedly about this traumatic experience a young girl went through, but was, in fact, simply tossed in so that the two male characters in the show could fight over it, and argue about which of them was at fault because of what happened to her. It was the most flagrant erasure of a female character and her experiences that I’d seen in some time. She’s literally in the room with them while they fight about it, revealing all these character things about them while she sort of fades into the background.

We forget what the story’s about. We erase women in our stories who, in our own lives, are powerful, forthright, intelligent, terrifying people. Women stab and maim and kill and lead and manage and own and run. We know that. We experience it every day. We see it.

But this is our narrative: two men fighting loudly in a room, and a woman snuffling in a corner.

This is a really interesting article about the way media, fiction and narratives repeated in society shape the way we see and assume reality to be, specifically (in this case) about how narratives about women being victims, or supporting men, but not being fighters or soldiers create the idea that women never did that, and it’s only a modern new thing that we think they could, when in fact that’s not true at all.

Also, specifically relevant to this blog are the parts about how that affects us when we create stories ourselves, and can end up adding to this narrative consciously and subconsciously. It’s the same with how women are depicted in illustrated fiction. I honestly don’t think a lot of the boobs and butt poses, or women in bikini armor, are drawn by people consciously thinking sexist thoughts, I think they’re just doing What You Do. This is a female character, this is just the pose we’re used to seeing women in. We don’t think twice about drawing her like that, because it’s just how we’ve become conditioned to seeing women pose in the medium. Same with stuff like this. It’s how we’re used to seeing female armor, and when we think “female warrior”, our imagination just instinctively runs in the direction of what we’re used to seeing. It’s just What You Do with female armor, and female characters, and female poses.

Since starting Escher Girls, I’ve gotten quite a lot of mail from people telling me that they never realized just how often they put their female characters in boobs and butt poses, or gave them bikini armor, just because that’s how they saw women drawn in video games and comics and never thought twice about it. It’s just what seemed “right” to them, and that they’re now a lot more conscious of it and try to have more variety in the way they depict women, and often in ways that make more sense to the story. :)

I think it’s just important to catch ourselves sometimes and think are we creating something because this fits what we’re doing, and this makes sense, or are we just doing What You Do? (This applies to all sorts of tropes and stereotypes too.)

(via trulysophisticat)

Imagine if you had to explain to your three children and grandchild that they had to go to bed hungry because the deficit in the national budget is more important than the deficit of food on the table.

Melissa Harris-Perry, in her “Open Letter” to Rep. Frank Lucas, Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, on re-authorization of the Farm Bill. (via msnbc)

(via thebitterhour)

falalamele:

truth

(via choosechoice)

In one 1962 survey roughly 90 percent of White people believed Black children had an equally fair opportunity to get a quality education as White children. Wise recognizes that White Americans’ lack of awareness—and denial about the extent of racial inequality in America—is dated, calling it “borderline delusional”.

(Unpacking the Snowflake - Kevin M. Hemer)

In 1962— before Civil Rights legislation, when Black people were literally having their houses bombed for moving into white neighborhoods, and Black neighborhoods were being bombed in entirety for having nice houses, white people were literally releasing dogs on Black children (my parents) for walking to school, Black children and teenagers were literally leaving school to protest and then being arrested for demanding to be treated equally, police commissioners were driving through Black neighborhoods in tanks to instill fear in them for wanting to be treated equally, everything was separate with Black people getting the shittier end, they literally had lower education standards for Black schools and Black people were still getting lynched and the KKK was strong—

White people when surveyed said “there is equal opportunity“… So don’t think it’s weird that 93% or so of white people still think “there is equal opportunity” today. They’ve literally always been wrong and still are.

(via fuckyeahcracker)

This post isn’t about welfare, but it beautifully illustrates a point I’ve been making (or trying to make) since I started this blog:

Privileged people do not understand the realities of people who lack their privilege.

White people assume PoC have the same education and job opportunities.

People with permanent addresses assume homeless people can just fill out an application for McDonalds or Burger King, be hired, and immediately use their paychecks to secure housing.

People who don’t receive welfare assume people on welfare are lazy and intentionally having multiple children and not looking for jobs.

This is why I am always, always asking people if they’ve ever considered that maybe, JUST MAYBE, they don’t have the whole story about their cousin/neighbor/friend’s sister. Because people in privilege tend to ascribe their own circumstances to everyone, even when that’s the exact opposite of reality.

(via getoutofthewelfaretag)

(via native-detroiter)