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The Virgin Suicides (by LittleThunder)
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“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all...”
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The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.—BB King
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My boyfriend sometimes tells me what I wear is “slutty.” I’ve tried to explain to him that I find this possessive, sexist and objectifying but he can’t understand why. When I give up on that argument and try to just tell him that the only thing that should matter to him is that I feel good wearing it, he responds that he doesn’t understand why I need to dress “slutty” to feel good. How can I articulate my feelings to him in a clearer way? Should I just compromise and not wear the offending articles (it really is only one or two things in my closet).
Read the answer here.
When reproductive health, rights and justice folks responded to the craziness with the bishops, and the ensuing madness of Sandra Fluke, we were all like, HEY. Many women use these pills for reasons having NOTHING to do with sex.
This is true. Folks have collected thousands of stories that talk about how important the pill is for managing various hormonal and uterine situations. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 58 percent of women who take the pill use it at least in part for medical reasons.
However, it is also true that lots of people take birth control pills because they are having sex and they don’t want to get pregnant. Guttmacher’s data says that 14 percent of women take the pill ONLY for medical reasons. That leaves 86 percent of us who take it at least in part because we want to be able to have sex and not get pregnant.
And, we as reproductive health, rights and justice advocates think this is a really good thing. That women have autonomy over their bodies, their sexuality, and access to a full range of good choices about how to manage their fertility.
By taking the argument only on the, “but what about folks with polycystic ovarian syndrome?” front, we ceded the critical point that coverage for birth control (including pills, vasectomies, and more) are essential for people who want to have sex but not to get pregnant.
Read the rest of this excellent piece here.
‘Students’ awareness on gender issues is still at the lowest level. They do not receive any information on women’s rights and gender equality. Young girls remain in a passive role, deprived of reliable sources of information on their rights. And this lack of awareness leads to insecurity, discrimination, unhealthy relationships, and future violence,’ Nikoghosyan told the Armenian Weekly.
Currently, 9th graders are briefly taught about the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Nikoghosyan said. “There is no word about gender or gender equality. The term ‘gender’ is not even mentioned…
Whereas social attitudes towards racial equality and homosexuality have tended to become more progressive as the younger generation has come through, attitudes towards the sexual assault of women appear to lag significantly behind. A 2008 poll of Northern Ireland university students commissioned by Amnesty International found that almost half of those polled believed a woman to be partially or totally responsible for being raped if she had behaved in a flirtatious manner. And the recent controversy over the website Unilad was perhaps most striking for the fact that the creators of the site did not consider their “banter” to be anything out of the ordinary until they were pulled up on it.
In 21st century Britain, the idea that a woman can dress how she pleases, flirt as much as she wants, and lie in the same bed as a man without being obliged to have sex with him, remains a revolutionary one.
Understanding why social attitudes towards the victims of rape remain so regressive, however, cannot happen without first confronting one of society’s last great taboos: the demonisation of promiscuous women.
Read the whole article here.
