Friday Feminist Flickr Fun!

Okay, well this isn't so much Flickr as a picture from my cell phone I took of a wonderful red wine bottle enjoyed last weekend with a dear friend in a jug of sangria. Keeping with last week's bicycle liberation, I thought I'd share this one and remind you, dear readers, that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
But naked flying goddess lady holding onto a bicycle is very hot. And I love my bicycle, too. In that way. Happy Friday!

The Girls are Rumblin'

The International Herald Tribune reports today about young women in Thailand, mostly from poor farming regions, entering the ring for some rumblin' and power punchin'. It makes me happy to read that these young women are finding empowerment in their bravery of engaging in this sport in a country where 'feminine' ideals are highly valued and women are expected to be discreet, polite, and delicate. And the best part is that despite these values and cultural expectations, the sport is gaining in popularity. Boxing is one of the things I want to try this winter, as I love watching it at the pub but have yet to have the guts to take a punch! These girls have inspired me!

Maggots in the Rice and Needles in the Skull

“Maggots in the Rice,” a phrase used in China to often refer to baby girls, is a gross comparison, unarguably. But sticking needles in a baby? A woman in China, Luo Cuifen, now 29 years old, has been found to have had multiple sewing needles pushed into her as a child, including through the fontanel. This has lead not only to a painful process of her body expelling these needles through her skin, but these needles have actually migrated throughout her body, and are now in her lungs, kidneys, bladder, and liver.

Crush Fetish

I just love bizarre fetishes! Crushing creatures is gross and cruel, but inanimate objects - like toy trains - definitely laughable!
Compliments of boinboing.

Not so shocked.

On this anniversary of 9/11 watch this short film and consider checking out Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine. We must always empower ourselves with knowledge and educate ourselves with historical truths. By doing this we will not be afraid and we will not be swayed. Stay strong, all.

Breaking News

The founder of The Body Shop, Anita Roddick, has died.

A lovely tribute to Dame Anita Roddick by James Macintyre

University Sex Assaults

This makes me sick. I visited the Women Against Violence Against Women's website to read some statistics again. This story at York Univeristy just makes me rage inside, makes me gnash my teeth and ask the desperate question, how long? One in Four. One in Four women in Canada will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. A woman is raped in Canada every 17 minutes (Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1985.). This doesn't include the unreported sexual assault crimes. The Take Back the Night March is a place to voice our anger, to raise our voices in a safe place. But attitudes towards women and violence against women need to change. Jane Doe, in her book, argues that if every 17 minutes lawyers or doctors were being beaten up, the army would be called in. She's absolutely right!

Alberta has a higher proportion of domestic violence cases against women than any other province (Canadian Institute for Health Information Report 2003). It takes more than a march, a protest. It takes more than donating to the shelters. It takes more than dialogue. What are we going to do about it? Come the revolution.

Friday Feminist Flickr Fun!

Visit Taisau's posted photo on flickr and read about how the bicycle became a symbol of women's liberation in the late 1800's!

On the Frontlines - NDP Offers Women's Equality Challenge

From the NDP Website Yesterday:
"OTTAWA – The NDP issued an “equality challenge” to political leaders today in Ottawa. Recently, women have been losing ground in their fight for equality as the Harper Conservatives and Liberals in Ottawa have dramatically cut programs and moved backwards on women’s issues."

The Action Plan outlines the following:

Fairness for women - Action plan of the NDP federal caucus
1. Fairness for women at work
2. A better work-family balance
3. An end to violence against women
4. Making sure women are heard – in public, in politics
5. Fairness for marginalized women
6. Equality for women around the globe

I encourage you to read the rest of the plan on the website!

Superstar

Finally finally finally I've found it! I've been looking for this film for a LONG time and thanks to Google you, too, can watch Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story as acted by Barbie Dolls.
Check it out!

Diva Diaries

What a brave woman. Al Jazeera's executive producer, Rebecca Lipkin, has been diagnosed with "inflammatory breast cancer, and it is extremely aggressive, with a lower survival rate than other kinds of breast cancer". Everywoman is chronicling her experience with treatment of the disease and you can watch the first part of The Diva Diaries here.

Diary Crime

Wow. I just read an article in The Independent about a Dutch woman who's diary was found in the jungles of Colombia by the Colombian Army. Fighting with the FarcMarxist rebels, alias "Eillen" was captured and is now "being held . . . and may face punishment, possibly death."

Eillen poured her thoughts into the pages of her diary - her frustrations, her passions, her hopes, her struggles, her fears... in Anais Nin's words, "we write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." We write for our own inner audience, for our children... for those who may one day find our journals. This is heartbreaking, though, as I am all too familiar with the solstice found in a diary, a paper friend, a trustworthy confidant; and to have those very pages exposed at such a time in one's life, or end thereof, possibly - breaks my heart.

Emily Dickinson did not want her dark poems to be published. After her death we read her "letter(s) to the world that never wrote to (her)." I'm struggling with this today, because I have always maintained we write for an audience and if we don't want our words read then we should destroy our writing. I never considered the consequences of having journals seized, and published while still living. It's this scenario I failed to consider. Eillen's entries can be found online. I feel it to be a courtesy to give her her privacy. I will not be reading her letter to the world.

Abortion in the Philippines

Reuters' Carmel Crimmins reports on abortion in the Philippines and increasing number of women seeking illegal abortions due to the United States government's agency USAID gradually halting distribution of birth control by 2008 in order to be "in line with Manila's goal of self-reliance in family planning." (What about self-reliance from the American troops in the Philippines?) Problem is is that the Philippines is run by militarist President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (evil evil evil), a devout Catholic with the political power of biships on her side. The other problem is, "Women who abort their fetuses in the Philippines risk a prison sentence of up to six years, while anyone providing help or assisting faces a similar sentence as well as the loss of any medical license."
Here is another example of how limiting access to abortion hurts women.

Fruit of the Loom is in Season

Thanks to Jezebel for this link about Melon's scented panties (on sale for just $6.00!) with a lovely fresh scent "built" in to the panties like a "second skin." Boasting that the scent is thanks to the same material as a dryer sheet, I've got an issue with that. Dryer sheets are toxic! Not only are they an irritant to sensitive skin, they contain toxic chemicals approved by the FDA for use! Read a list of dangerous ingredients in dryer sheets here!
Pussy smells like pussy so fuck off scented panties!

Following Up: Miss Dumb Blonde USA

With the debate sparked over the Miss Teen South Carolina video, there has been a lot of back and forth over whether the ridicule of Lauren Caitlin Upton was mean or desserved. Rebecca Traister weighs in on the debate:

Maybe we're not laughing because she's a pretty girl; maybe we're laughing because she chose to go on national television, where she wanted to win a contest that included a question-and-answer session, and then made a total ass of herself in that question-and-answer session. And while we're on the subject of the pageant, why are we snorting at a stupid answer when we don't bat an eye at the fact that Upton and her pageant sisters are smearing Vaseline on their teeth and parading around in bathing suits and evening gowns, hoping to be judged superior to one another and deemed emblematic of young American womanhood? Where, exactly, does Upton's (and our own) humiliation begin? Perhaps not with a geography question.

Exactly. I stand by posting the video on this feminist website.