Hello, Birkenstocks! This weekend I thought I was gonna go to work early, but then I couldn’t catch a train and I went shopping for gifts instead. I ran a mean DIY wrapping station, let me tell you. Let’s catch up on the stories we missed while I was rockin’ around the Christmas tree.
Cleveland’s Trans* Tragedy
Two of three murdered trans* women in Ohio were killed last week.
Brittany Nicole Kidd Stergis was killed in Ohio last week. She was 22.
The Right-Wing is Wrong
+ A Michigan Republican Committeeman said gay people wanna get married so they can get free health care… for AIDS. Then, my head exploded.
+ Republican Senator Mike Lee has proposed legislation legalizing discrimination against gay people (and non-virgins, among others) by employers who identify with a religion. Presumably, Christianity.
+ Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is open to talking about LGBT folks and where they fit into the state’s nondiscrimination laws, but he refuses to start the conversation.
The Marrying Kind: Lesbian Bridal Wear is a Growing Industry
When you’re gettin’ married/
To another chick/
Who you gonna call?/
La Mode Abyssale!
In 2011, two of Helen Bender’s lesbian friends approached her with a problem. They wanted to enter a civil partnership and throw a big party, but could not figure out what to wear.
Neither of them were into dresses, but they did not want to wear trouser suits either: they were women in love with another woman, after all, they said.
They also insisted on not seeing each other’s clothes before the ceremony.
After much counselling, Bender came up with a solution – a gold overall with a jacket and a matching cream-coloured dress of variable length – and soon realised that she had chanced upon an unexpected gap in the market.
Requests for on-demand wedding dresses for lesbian couples have been flooding into the 27-year-old’s small studio in Mainz, Germany, ever since. And after her label La Mode Abyssale (“fashion without limits”) was invited to New York fashion week in September, the international market now beckons too.
This Drug Could Save Lives and It Isn’t Marijuana
Anastrozole, an existing drug, was recently discovered to cut Breast Cancer risk in post-menopausal women.
The Best Binder Full of Women
Butch is a new book that reads like your life story.
WATCH: Toni Morrison and Junot Diaz Talk Race
It’s not MHP and bell hooks, but it’s still damn great.
Sh*t’s Not Great in Ethiopia
“In many countries, it’s getting better for the LGBT community. In Ethiopia, it’s getting worse.”
Judge Feminist, Presiding
Will Nina Pallard outlaw men? Probs not, but a girl can dream.
The Senate voted late Wednesday to confirm Nina Pillard to the second-highest court in the United States, and now the American people must watch helplessly as their country spirals into a feminist dystopia where it is illegal to be a man, or something.
Pillard is a former attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and a noted advocate for women’s rights…Pillard’s credentials have made her very, very scary to congressional Republicans, who previously blocked her confirmation after calling her a “militant” and “radical feminist.”
Wait I am a bit unclear, if Nina Pallard is radical fem, is she the kind that supports discrimination against gentle beings who are trans*, or is she accepting of all?
I don’t think Nina Pallard herself identifies as a radfem, but rather that fearful conservatives have labeled her one. Come to think of it, they probably don’t even know that radfem is a thing, and are instead trying to point out how scary she is because she wants women to have access to contraception. Here’s a Slate piece about the use of the term against her! http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/12/nina_pillard_not_a_radical_feminist_obama_s_nominee_for_d_c_circuit_court.html
Ah, that makes more sense, because radfem and the similar scare me as someone who identifies as trans*(woman).
I hate that anti-trans people have co-opted the term radical feminist. Being radical has nothing to do with hating trans people. Let’s just use TERF or bigot or something.
I’m down for a feminist judge :).
Oh gods of sky, earth and Outside *eyeroll* you do realise some of the listed things are profoundly causally interconnected?
I really like your articles, i’m behind 99% of it – but this…i’m sorry as it stands it only lacks a little festive cheer for the present Pope or whichever not-entirely-anti-gay-according-to-his-words evangelical leader to go nicely with the Ethiopian bit, for a good measure. Let’s put it this way – even if @SubSpecieFrancis himself does not support physical violence, the people doing the beatings and killings are acting in his name, or at least that of his own acknowledged, much revered predecessors.
You wouldn’t put those on one page. But please understand it is precisely the same with the other murder situation here and the other religion.
hey serena, what’s the interconnection? i understand that you’re analogizing but have now scrolled through this AAA a few times and can’t find what you’re referring to.
Thank you thank you for posting the article about Ethiopia. Just returned from six months in Addis and, man, shit is bleak. I’m so happy someone was able to write about it and I hope the conversation continues!
The situation in Ethiopia is very depressing
Radical feminism (and no i won’t quantify that with additional letters unless i get my exgf back and NOT in a zombie form at that) and systematic deaths of trans women are interconnected – as that was the one message actually successfully imprinted upon society back in the days of the peak of RF power (reference points: Final Fight/Street Fighter char Poison backstory or Greer’s revelling in violence personally inflicted).
Needless to say i do not consider another power peak as something even remotely desirable. It is the one single scenario i see myself working with outright Acheron with no reasonable limit of how far, to misquote Juno from Aeneid.
oops this was in reply to Cara
oh yeah, radfems are no good. but I think that Nina Pallard (as Kaitlyn pointed out in her reply to Al) is not one and that conservatives have pinned a label on her that means different bad things to different people.
Well I hope for all our sake that is true, because TERF/radfems/womyn partially have strange bedfellows when it comes to trans* topics, the religious right being one of them.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the article about Anastrozole!! This is super relevant to my life and we need to get the word out about this.
That Butch book though. I need it.