Vagina dentata

Teeth, which premiered at Sundance this year, is a film about a teenage girl who is “the local chastity group’s most active participant”… and then discovers she’s living the vagina dentata myth.

A stranger to her own body, innocent Dawn discovers she has a toothed vagina when she becomes the object of violence.

A friend who went to Sundance said this was the film everyone was talking about. Says director Michael Lichtenstein,

I’ve known about the vagina dentata myth for a long time. Though there are many versions of the myth, the story is nearly always the same: the hero must conquer the woman/creature with the teeth. I thought it would be fun and informative to turn ...

Teeth, which premiered at Sundance this year, is a film about a teenage girl who is “the local chastity group’s most active participant”… and then discovers she’s living the vagina dentata myth.

A stranger ...

Baby machines, we are.

It’s always nice to see the leaders of this world allowing their sexist side to slip out. Japan’s health minister described women as “birth-giving machines� during a public speech on the declining birthrate this Saturday.
Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa made the comment, which he’s obviously been getting a load of shit for:

“The number of women between the ages of 15 and 50 is fixed. The number of birth-giving machines (and) devices is fixed, so all we can ask is that they do their best per head,�

What I absolutely love is that immediately after making the statement, he says, “Although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines.”
Not so much, Minister, ...

It’s always nice to see the leaders of this world allowing their sexist side to slip out. Japan’s health minister described women as “birth-giving machines� during a public speech on the declining birthrate this Saturday.
Japanese ...

Weekly Feminist Reader

Here we go again… South Dakota legislators will soon introduce another abortion ban, this time with rape and incest exceptions. Plus, the North Dakota house just passed a trigger law banning abortion in the event Roe is overturned.
“Madame Speaker” is good not only for women, but also for men.
Scary news: Birth-control pills are now less effective at preventing pregnancy. Update: Reader Therese points out that the FDA says that’s actually not true. Phew.
Warrior sperm!
How Sassy magazine convinced its teen readers to stop worshipping New Kids on the Block and start loving bands that wrote their own songs and actually played instruments.
Wal-Mart’s ...

Here we go again… South Dakota legislators will soon introduce another abortion ban, this time with rape and incest exceptions. Plus, the North Dakota house just passed a trigger law banning abortion in ...

Laura Hershey: Disability Rights Activist Extraordinaire


Laura Hershey’s parents didn’t listen to her doctors’ assumptions that spinal muscular atrophy would end her life when she was a child. Forty-four years later, Laura is still here, and isn’t planning on going anywhere.
Laura Hershey is a consultant, published writer/researcher, and committed advocate who has 20+ years experience as an activist for disability rights. You can read Laura’s writing at Crip Commentary, a web site she runs that discusses various aspects of disability rights. She’s currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing.
I spoke with Laura from her home in California. Here’s Laura…


Laura Hershey’s parents didn’t listen to her doctors’ assumptions that spinal muscular atrophy would end her life when she was a child. Forty-four years later, Laura is still here, and isn’t planning on going anywhere.

D.I.Y. abortions

A Massachusetts teenager is in trouble after her attempt to self-induce abortion failed:

An abortion was out of the question. [Amber] Abreu, 18, had done that once already. She couldn’t ask her mother to pay for that again. Her mother, a Venezuelan immigrant who wanted so much for her children, would be devastated.

It’s interesting that Abreu didn’t consider taking the pills — which a friend brought her from the Dominican Republic — to be the same thing as having an abortion. In a study of Latina immigrants and their relationship with self-induced abortion using Cytotec, many said they considered taking the pills “better” than surgical abortion, or not an abortion at all.

[Abreu] did not contact social service workers ...

A Massachusetts teenager is in trouble after her attempt to self-induce abortion failed:

An abortion was out of the question. [Amber] Abreu, 18, had done that once already. She couldn’t ask her mother to pay for ...

Bad-Ass Woman of the Day

Nell Hamm, 65, who clubbed a mountain lion that attacked her husband while they were out hiking.

Nell Hamm said she grabbed a 4-inch-diameter log and beat the animal with it, but it would not release its hold on her husband’s head.
“Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, ‘I’ve got a pen in my pocket and get the pen and jab him in the eye,”‘ she said.
“So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn’t want to go in as easy as I thought it would.”
When the pen bent and became useless, Nell Hamm went back to using the log. The lion eventually let go ...

Nell Hamm, 65, who clubbed a mountain lion that attacked her husband while they were out hiking.

Nell Hamm said she grabbed a 4-inch-diameter log and beat the animal with it, but it would not release ...

The future of feminist activism

In addition to some of the stuff Jess linked to earlier this week, I’ve been slowly making my way through the many, many posts from Blog for Choice Day. The list is impressively huge.
I often find myself feeling like the antis are so much more together than we are as a movement. But one thing I realized at the Blogs4Life conference on Monday, especially after returning from it and seeing how many people Blogged for Choice, is that blogging is one thing pro-choicers do WAY better.
I mean, their event included a speaker who had to explain, “A blog, or ‘Web log‘ is an online journal or diary…” Thing is, this wasn’t billed as a ...

In addition to some of the stuff Jess linked to earlier this week, I’ve been slowly making my way through the many, many posts from Blog for Choice Day. The list is impressively ...

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