Feminism A La Carte

I happen to be reading a lot of feminist sites lately (as you may have noticed), and I’ve been getting pretty riled up, and I have this suddenly ballooning list of articles on feminist topics. Rather than sprinkling them into my links of the day, I thought I’d just highlight them all in an explosion of feminist awesomeness (and some head-explosion inducers as well).

But first, my quote of the day:

“… what’s vile and offensive about a cunt, anyway. I have one. I’m a fan.” (Feministe commenter)

I ask you, what’s not to love about that.

First up, we’ve got douchenozzle of the month Peter Hitchens, who is here to tell us that drunk girls deserve to get raped. The whole article is so infuriating that it’s hard to pick just one quote, but here you go: “…a rape victim who was drunk deserves less sympathy.”

A high school student wrote an editorial about how abstinence-only education is not very sensible, practical, or helpful. The paper yanked it. She’s fighting back.

A Shapely Prose commenter happened to come across a copy of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from 1965, and wondered how much had changed. Sweet Machine did a great comparison of Sports Illustrated then and now, with some brilliant commentary, and the comments only get better.

Amendment 48 is a proposed law in Colorado which would give fetuses personhood. RH RealityCheck is doing some great coverage on it here.

Disembodied dead women are sexy! Or something. Says Wrangler jeans. Guess who’s not buying Wranglers?

I don’t even have to search that hard for articles exemplifying the objectification of female Olympic athletes. Hey kids, did you know that they only let teh ladiez into the Olympics so that you can ogle them?

If this whets your appetite, go check out the 62nd Carnival of Feminists!

18 August, 2008 – 6:27 pm | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |

Marriage With Benefits

I have been remiss in talking about the article in the Times about people marrying for health insurance benefits, and for that I apologize. If you haven’t read the article, you really should, and the comments are well-worth browsing as well. It highlights a grim truth about health insurance in this country; people really are forced to go to extremes to get coverage. Some of the stories in the comments are just mind-blowingly awful.

Every now and then, I wake up, and I remember that most of the world doesn’t have a health care system like America’s. It seems sort of strange and novel to me, the idea that there could be an alternative to this totally fucked-up system in which people scrabble for benefits and struggle to make ends meet. I’ve been having some health problems of my own, of late, which has really brought the insanity of the American system to the forefront of my mind. It’s a system where people are forced to make bad choices between crappy alternatives, and it’s not a system that anyone should have to endure.

It’s already infuriating enough that money is such a driving force in decision making here, but to see people opting for the health care they can afford, instead of the health care they need…that’s depressing. The cost of health care has risen so exponentially that making sound choices is really difficult, and people die in this country from conditions which could be treated because they can’t afford the treatment. That, my friends, is wrong. I don’t care what people think about welfare and personal responsibility, to stand by while others suffer is perverse.

For all those who think that prisoners and illegal immigrants live off the fat of the land, here’s a story about a Chinese man who died in custody. We can’t even care for the people we lock up for no good reason, let alone our own citizens.

Our whole attitude towards marriage in this country is already so twisted and strange, I have difficulty wrapping my head around it. And I found something profoundly unnerving in the idea that people are forced to marry (or divorce) each other for health insurance coverage. The marriage of convenience is hardly a new thing, granted, and there’s a venerable tradition backing it up, but that doesn’t make it any less sad. One could argue that marriage has never really been a sacrament, but do we really need to sully it even further by forcing people into it as a ploy for health benefits?

When will we realize, as a collective, that our health care system is profoundly sick and twisted?

18 August, 2008 – 10:22 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, health |

Rotting Roots

Photographers at the Olympics seem to be showing an inordinate interest in butts. Perhaps, one would argue, an unhealthy and imbalanced interest, considering the fact that most of said butts appear to be female. Apparently even Olympic athletes are still ultimately objects for consumption.

Orson Scott Card, as you may be aware, is a bit of an asshole. So, how should we feel about his books. (Thanks for the link, Vicki!)

Penguins being knighted? Oh, yes, and how happy it makes me.

Forget abortion: does your candidate support the right to access contraception?

LOL Bush: Olympics edition. My new favourite meme. I defy you to look at these and not be at least momentarily cheerful.

No one is protesting the Olympics in the designated protest spots. Could it be because people who apply for permits randomly disappear?

Living Library is possibly my new favourite social justice project.

18 August, 2008 – 10:12 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |