stfuconservatives:

frombaghdadwithlove:

feministhope:

These are all so great.

My heart just exploded. So.

All of these are awesome.

(Source: whoneedsfeminism, via karnythia)

lord-kitschener:

Gimme Dem Dicks and Cake: You can’t claim to be radical when….

greenbrowngirl:

You’re conflating old, oppressive definition of sex and gender in the name of female power.

You can’t claim being radical when you’re excluding some of the most vulnerable population of women in our community. Trans women (especially trans women of color) suffer high rates of sexual assault and murder. You can’t say you’re against violence against women. You’re perpetuating it.

You can’t claim to be radical when you say all men should die as if it’s a joke when our Black and Brown men are being killed off in genocidal numbers.

Naw, you don’t give a shit. These aren’t your problems as white cis lady. You quote bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde as if you know the issues facing WOC. As if you can understand. You could never care hiding behind your first and second wave views. You ignore the cases of murdered black trans women. You don’t give a shit about CeCe McDonald is in jail for defending herself. Here you are whining about someone yelling at you on the internet. Saying it’s violence against women.

You wanna change the system? You wanna destroy the patriarchy? Naw, y’all just a bunch of whites hoes trying to take the white man’s place and uphold systems of oppression.

You’re no more radical than Jessica Valenti and the other mainstream popular white cis feminists.

You ain’t shit.

stfuconservatives:

Gay newspaper runs editorial screed against Trayvon Martin

bbanzaiz:

crankyskirt:

transradical:

The Washington Blade, America’s oldest LGBT (but mostly G) newspaper, recently printed an opinion piece from editor Kevin Naff titled “All aboard the Trayvon bandwagon”. As you can gather from the title, it was a tad problematic:

At the heart of Naff’s editorial are questions about whether racial bias actually played a role in Trayvon’s killing. He states “there’s not much about this case that’s so crystal clear” in response to the section of the LGBT organizations’ statement that racial bias played a role in Trayvon’s killing.

Further, Naff also somehow choose to ignore press reports that describe the racial profiling that Zimmerman regularly engaged in, including warning his neighbors about the presence of young black men in the area. To us, it seems pretty obvious that Zimmerman followed Trayvon because Trayvon was black and not because he was somehow acting suspicious.

What’s more, Naff trivializes the parallels between racially motivated hate crimes and those perpetrated against LGBT people by suggesting that the spotlight on Trayvon somehow casts a shadow on LGBT victims of hate crimes.  For example, Naff concludes his column with “…in the weeks since the Martin shooting, LGBT people have been attacked, shot and killed in the U.S. without a press release or peep of protest.”

This “us versus them” rhetoric implies that the LGBT victims are white, which couldn’t be farther from the truth considering that LGBT people of color are the victims of the most severe and deadly hate violence.  What Naff fails to acknowledge is that our “hate crime martyrs” are overwhelming people of color, be they straight or LGBT.  Among them are Brandon White, Deoni Jones, and Robert Champion, young queer people of color who were recently attacked and murdered simply because of who they were.  It’s worth noting that Naff himself has yet to write about any of them despite his chiding about the lack of coverage of LGBT hate crimes in recent weeks.

(Emphasis mine.)

Gay racefail? Must be a day ending in Y.

White gay men continue to race fail. In other news, the ocean is wet.

god i am so fucking sick of the lgbt community being run by cis able-bodied gay white men who continue to oppress everyone else and turn lgbt into gggg and use their gayness as an excuse as to why they couldn’t possibly be racist/sexist/transphobic/ableist/biphobic etc

i swear to god

(Source: mysocialhalitosis, via kerishma)

tehblackbird:

thatonegirlsierra:

curiousgeorgiana:

babstheartist:

themindislimitless:

tw: abuse, rape, domestic violence

feministblackboard:

A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.

The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.

Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types:
1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse.
2. Sabotaging birth control
3. Marital rape
Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.

The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.

The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her.  She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.

One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”  Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.

WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?

Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.

holy fuck im crying.

I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control.  I was on the pill until he found them in my purse. 

I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.

Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo. 

When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.

And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.

I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy. 

I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.

SUCH an important consideration. Many people don’t understand how you can be FORCED to carry a child. It’s very real and it’s very possible. And thankfully it is nothing that ever happened in my relationship, but who knows what the future could have held (especially because the main drive behind me finally getting out was fear for any potential future children). 

I don’t have anything to add because I think it’s all been said, but this is some REAL shit that needs to be reblogged as much as possible.

(via tehblackbirdflies)

allimmaturityandallcaps:

jaybellavitta:

“I am TIRED OF burying little black boys” 

Congresswoman Wilson’s House floor speech on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin

God bless Florida Representative Frederica Wilson.

Transcript:

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the time.

Mr. Speaker? I am tired of burying young black boys.

I am tired of watching them suffer at the hands of those who fear them and despise them. I’m tired of comforting mothers, fathers, grandparents, sisters, and brothers after such unnecessary, heinous crimes of violence.

In Florida, almost 3 years ago, as I served in the Florida senate, a young black boy, Martin Lee Anderson, was beaten to death at a Florida bootcamp. It was all captured on a State of Florida Corrections video and shown all over the world. Martin Lee Anderson was beaten and tortured until his lifeless body couldn’t take anymore, and then Martin Lee Anderson was dead, at the hands of several bootcamp guards. A young boy, who wanted to be somebody! A young boy who was trying to turn his life around.

After they beat him to death on international TV as the world watched, over and over again—not one guard was sent to prison. Not one was even reprimanded. In fact, after we closed down every bootcamp in Florida, many of the accused received promotions.

Well, guess what? In Florida, we have another Martin—Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a renegade wannabe policeman neighborhood watchman.

Trayvon Martin lived in Miami, Florida, in District 17—my congressional district. Trayvon, a 140-pound young black boy, 17 years old, was just trying to live and reach 18. In spite of that, the accused killer, George Zimmerman, has not been charged, and is using the term of “self-defense.”

The 911 audio tapes tell it all. They tell the story of the last moments of Trayvon Martin’s life, just as the videotapes told so visibly the story of Martin Lee Anderson’s last moments.

Trayvon was running for his life. He was screaming for help, fighting for his life, and then he was murdered—shot dead.

Today, I applaud the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the FBI, and the Federal Department of Justice for their intervention. I encourage the citizens of Florida and the citizens from around the world to continue to fight for justice for Trayvon Martin. Justice must be served. No more racial profiling.

I’m tired of fighting when the evidence is so clear, so transparent.

Twenty years ago, while serving as a school board member, I founded the Five Thousand Role Models of Excellence project: A million-dollar nationally recognized and honored foundation that specifically addresses the trials and tribulations of young black boys, and sends them to college. It impacts almost 20,000 young men throughout Florida.

In spite of that, we still have to march, and demonstrate, and write letters, and protest, and fight, and have prayer vigils, and sue, and sit in, just to be heard.

No more! No more, Florida. No more, America! No more hiding your criminal racial profiling by using self-defense to get away with murder. Stand up for Trayvon Martin! Stand up for justice! Stand up for our children!

I’m tired, tired, tired of burying young black boys.

Thank you, and I turn back the balance of my time.

(via titsplosions)

absquesetentia:

[“What you aren’t supposed to know about Israel: Every year, 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted in Israeli military courts. The US government pays Israel $7 million a day. Stop30Billion-Seattle.org”]

(Source: anti-propaganda)

so beautiful

(Source: arabculture)

vacilandoelmundo:

Doha, Qatar

(via arabculture)

malheureuxmarxist:

settler-colonialist bros 4 life

so true. some points, though:

before 1948, Palestine was a British Mandate. Aka it was under colonial rule by the British. So the situation in 1946 wasn’t really great either, it was still colonialism, just a different kind.

the UN partition plan was never implemented so it’s not exactly accurate to include that, since most of the land was lost in the 1948 war.

also 1948-1967, Gaza was technically occupied by Egypt and it was directly administered by an Egyptian military governor from 1959-67, so it wasn’t really “Palestinian land” then either :/

and from 1948-67, the West Bank was annexed by Jordan, and Palestinians there were given Jordanian citizenship (which was annulled in 1988, after the Peace settlements with Israel). So not exactly Palestinian land either.

Obviously I’m not saying that Egyptian or Jordanian rule was anything like Israeli settlement. But I’m just saying that Palestinians have had to deal with a whole damn load of occupation and colonization.

(Source: cheimaphilia, via absquesetentia)