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Hey welcome to your weekend! You look great, really well-rested and hydrated. Have you been taking Rachel’s advice? It shows.
You Should Go or Do or Give
+ Call for Submissions: Moonsick Magazine!
Queer as in F*ck You
+ A beloved LGBT activist, Catherine Han Montoya, was killed in her East Atlanta home on Tuesday. She leaves behind her wife, Meredith, and an incredible legacy of love, strength and activism. A fundraiser has been set up to help honor her life, support her wife, and cover funeral expenses.
Let’s think about how Cathy, the self-described “Queer Chicana Korean Feminist (and Broncos fan),” dedicated herself to working for justice, while remaining so full of life and joy. Let’s think about how selflessly she threw herself into the task at hand – whether in co-founding the Southeast Immigrant Rights Network, helping the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice organize against HB56, empowering the grassroots while working at the ACLU, Leadership Conference for Civil & Human Rights, National Council of La Raza, or co-founding the first National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum chapter in the South— never losing sight of her vision of elevating the voices of the oppressed, and building power of immigrant families and communities across the South.
Let’s honor Cathy by stepping up and answering the call. Please donate to help support Meredith and their family. Funds will go towards helping with funeral costs and to supporting Cathy’s deepest loves: her family and the movement.
+ Nicole Pasulka interviewed Edgar Díaz and Ariel Speed Wagon for Patrolling the Queer Craigslist.
+ Vicky Beeching: “I Tried to Pray the Gay Away, But Ended Up in a Hospital Bed”.
+ Malasysian Transgender Activist, Nisha Ayub, Crowned “Hero of the Year” at Regional LGBT Awards.
+ Dvora Meyers interviewed Vanessa Newman and Michelle Janayea from Butchbaby! Maternity Clothes for Genderqueer Parents.
Doll Parts
+ Meet the Lawyer Taking On Uber and the On-Demand Economy by Kashmir Hill.
Several years ago, Boston lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan was visiting family and friends in San Francisco. While she was out at a restaurant in the West Portal, one of her friends pulled out his smartphone. “You have to see this, Shannon. It’s a new thing and it’s changed my life,” she recalls him saying. The friend fired up Uber, the car-hailing app. “You push a button and a car comes to pick you up.”
Then, Liss-Riordan says, her friend looked at her. “He saw what was going through my mind. Then he said, ‘Don’t you dare. You’re going to put them out of business.’”
+ What happened when Professor Alice Dreger live-tweeted her son’s abstinence-only sex-ed class?
Paper babies are being handed out to EVERYONE. They have ALL HAD CONDOM FAILURE AND THE WHOLE CLASS IS PREGNANT.
— Alice Dreger (@AliceDreger) April 15, 2015
"You have to have a baby!" There are apparently no scissors in the room for paper abortions.
— Alice Dreger (@AliceDreger) April 15, 2015
+ Coalan Madden shares Songs My Toddler Likes, Ranked According to Feminism.
+ Karen Iris Tucker brings you Life Inside the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for Women.
Most of the camp’s inhabitants weren’t Jewish; rather, they were considered inferior because they were prostitutes, lesbians, political resisters, “work-shy,” or “asocial.” Roma (Gypsies) and Jehovah’s Witnesses—the latter had only to renounce their faith to be freed—were also imprisoned there. All were considered “useless mouths” by the Nazis, worthy of brutal treatment. More than 30,000—some estimate as many as 90,000—women perished there from starvation, disease, gassings, hanging, torture, or execution by shooting.
+ This Store Lets Women Pay 76 Cents To Every Man’s Dollar.
Elana Schlenker is starting a pop-up shop called 76<100 in Pittsburgh, where she charges women 76% of the retail price of any item, while men are charged the full ticket price. (In Pennsylvania, women earn 76 cents on the dollar.) Says Schlenker, “It’s incredible how deeply unconscious biases still permeate the ways in which we perceive (and value) women versus men. I hope the shop’s pricing helps to underscore this inherent unfairness and to create space for people to consider why the wage gap still exists.”
As for its offerings, 76<100 sells products made by independent women artists who are all on board with Schlenker’s mission. “Most of them feel the way that I do — something needs to be done about this. I just keep reading article after article about the wage gap, about how undervalued women are in the workplace, about the underrepresentation of women in company board of directors, executive positions, and government, and it just blows my mind. This is a small way that I can do something about it, and I think many of the artists involved are coming from a similar place.”
+ China Releases 5 Detained Women’s Rights Activists.
+ Danielle Henderson has The Confident Evolution of Laverne Cox.
+ Amandla Stenberg (you know her as Rue from that little Hunger Games movie) made this video on cultural appropriation for her history class, but it’s making big waves all over the internet.
+ The Folk Feminist Struggle Behind the Chola Fashion Trend by Barbara Calderón-Douglass.
The chola aesthetic was first forged by the marginalized Mexican American youths of Southern California. It embodies the remarkable strength and creative independence it takes to survive in a society where your social mobility has been thwarted by racism. The chola identity was conceived by a culture that dealt with gang warfare, violence, and poverty on top of conservative gender roles. The clothes these women wore were more than a fashion statement—they were signifiers of their struggle and hard-won identity.
Saw This, Thought of You
+ Your fave Carly Usdin directed this hilarious and super important PSA on CCDD (Climate Change Denial Disorder). Does your representative suffer from CCDD? It’s so sad.
+ This is weird. If I have a face twin, I never want to meet them. Do you have a face twin? What even is anything ever forever??
+ How the Rhetoric of Personal Responsibility Warps Personal Relationships.
+ Trees! For your house! 15 Awesome Indoor Trees for Arbor Day. I had an indoor tree once and it was beautiful — it was the only plant I could keep alive. But it turned out to be poisonous to cats (!!), so I had to put it on the curb and watch a skinny man in a baseball cap take it away in a large blue truck and reader, that was a bittersweet day.
+ Scientists Figure Out Why Your Knuckles Crack. IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME, SCIENTISTS.
+ It’s another Fleetwood Mac Friday at The Tusk, this time about “Silver Springs”, but also other stuff.
+ So, you owe your daily routine to The World’s Fair. I really do love Cream of Wheat, that’s true.
+ Jamie Lauren Keiles‘s How to Optimize Your Flesh Prison is something you will enjoy immensely.
+ Is the Gaze From Those Big Puppy Eyes the Look of Your Doggie’s Love?
+ Here are 12 Ideas for Earth Day, for your hippie bullshittery.
+ Craft Beer is Annihilating the Hop Supply. ANNIHILATING it, ok? Do you feel terrible yet?? YOU ARE SUCH A SELFISH CRAFT BEER DRINKER hand me another overpriced local IPA please.
+ While we’re here: Ben & Jerry’s is Teaming Up with New Belgium Brewing Co. to Bring You Salted Caramel Brownie Brown Ale so don’t say they never gave you anything.
And Finally
Smaug the Komodo Dragon Gets a Prosthetic Leg! Here, watch him eat this ostrich egg for Easter. (Or don’t.)
Have y’all watched My Bionic Pet on Netflix, about animals getting prosthetic limbs? YOU WILL CRY SO HARD. One dog gets a new leg or legs or something, and takes off running around in the grass and nearly runs out onto a busy highway. Megan and I were so nervous for it! Anyway, good stuff.
I’m really interested in one of the ideas brought forth by the über article that maybe a lot of their workers, as well as workers for postmates taskrabbit et al fall into a category of employee that doesn’t exist yet, somewhere between independent contractor and employee. I feel like a lot of companies would have employees who fall into that space.
They could be labeled as independent contractors, as UPS tried; but, like UPS they may loose the case and be force to be a large sum of money.
But what I don’t get is why cracking my knuckles feels good?? It doesn’t seem like it should.
According to that Uber article, I’m currently misclassified. It benefits me in some ways, but generally means that I get fucked over by my boss on the regular and have no weight to effect any change or decision-making.
But but but … I need my overpriced local IPAs! It’s like my one indulgence! I’ve been wearing this t-shirt for three days!
face twins: a friend linked me to a porn gif one time of a girl who looked a loooot like me. it was weird.
craft beer: I don’t like super hoppy beers, so I am innocent! on with the stouts.
feel like i should just tell everyone i know that if they ever see my doppelganger in a porn gif, to keep it to themselves.
on the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, it was really fairly entertaining. and softcore. prolly less so if it had been x-rated.
I saw my doppleganger on an NSFW picture here on AS! To the point that even my friends (who also read AS) thought that was a picture of me. Still have no idea who she is though.
the children’s songs ranked for feminist messaging made me laugh inappropriately in a doctor’s office waiting room. i have zero regrets.
Huh.
I have joked on occasion that I’m an encyclopedia of awful, but it’s not like I have an eidetic memory so some details get lost here and there. Can’t really say I feel any positive feelings about being able to name one of the women’s concentration camp that as a topic were only mentioned in passing, a footnote of Nazi human experimentation, or as an aside to the big picture.
History has so many facets and important things to not forget lest we repeat or forget ourselves, the big picture seems so small and false a concept.
Ravensbrück, I will not forget.
There was a girl in my sorority who looked so much like me that sometimes I would see her across the room and think there was a mirror reflecting me. Then I’d realize it was her and it was a real mindfuck. Same with when I would see pictures, I’d be like, “when did I take this pic?” I thought maybe I was imagining the resemblance, but then I mentioned it to another girl and she was like, “Oh, yes, I keep going up to her thinking she’s you and then I’m like, ‘Youuuu are not Lyssa, whoops.'”
The Komodo dragon gracked the egg on the ground! Now I feel so bad for it! Did it ever manage to eat that delicious-looking egg?!