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Please Don’t Ask Me if I’ve Lost Weight

Cross-posted at Pink Scare .

For one thing, I don’t know if I have. On my best days, I could say I really don’t care if I did lose weight. Other days, I can at least be honest and tell you I don’t keep a scale around so that I can’t obsess about weight, and honestly, I don’t know. On my worst days I could at least say I’m not sure because knowing things like that becomes too consuming and I don’t want to be consumed by it.

For another thing, while I know you think you’re making me feel good, you’re really just letting my sick mind know that you thought I looked fat before, enough so that now you think I look different enough that it bears pointing out. It feels like a back handed compliment, whether you wanted it to or not.

For another thing, you say it with this proud grin on your face, which immediately reminds me how much you value thinness, and how hard it is for me to make myself not care about it, when I’ve grown up around people like you and in a culture that makes you seem so normal. And, no matter how strong I was feeling that day, it immediately makes me question whether I should be valuing thinness just a little bit more.

Why the Privacy Justification for Abortion Rights is Bad for Women

Cross posted at Pink Scare

Every few years (lately, at least), a new nominee comes up for a position on the Supreme Court. For a week or so, the entire country is abuzz with constitutional chatter. Old news becomes news again, simply because we are reminded of it during Senate Judiciary committee hearings like those Justice Sonia Sotomayor is undergoing (or enduring?) now. Of course the perennial Supreme Court case for massive controversy is that of Roe v. Wade. Once again, abortion talks have been the most contentious and interesting in an otherwise boring hearing, thus far, and Roe has been the focus of some of the surrounding drama even outside the committee ("Jane Roe," who has become something ...

Cross posted at Pink Scare

Every few years (lately, at least), a new nominee comes up for a position on the Supreme Court. For a week or so, the entire country is abuzz with constitutional chatter. Old ...

Some Marxist-Feminist Theorizing: Consumerism, Patriarchy, and The “Target Market”

Cross posted at Pink Scare.

Scholars have taken many approaches to this question, usually ending up talking about the division of labor. Sex difference and inequality had to be enforced so women would raise a work force for us and not ask for any pay. And her children would be good workers, because she did "woman" right and taught them right. In other words, so that they would provide the domestic labor necessary to continue the cycle of labor in the public sphere (see Angela Davis ). The capitalist needed domestic servants so they created good man and good woman by promoting the bourgeois morality.

This is an answer which has always made sense to me, but I’ve never ...

Cross posted at Pink Scare.

Scholars have taken many approaches to this question, usually ending up talking about the division of labor. Sex difference and inequality had to be enforced so women would raise a work force ...

You don’t think she’s a terrorist sympathizer? Then YOU must be a terrorist sympathizer

Samhita wrote a fairly emotional (which is to say, not entirely fact-based or scientific) post about her unease with the NY Times even referencing the idea that M.I.A. might be a terrorist sympathizer…of course, it didn’t take long before a commenter suggested Samhita herself is a terrorist sympathizer (not just for the Tamil Tigers, but the PKK as well).
The accusation is absurd and such a threat to reasonable dialogue, and well, kind of a threat to Samhita as well, as she rightly points out in the thread.
But look, here’s the thing: This conversation has repercussions far beyond the details of the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan Civil war and M.I.A. The fact that we in the West ...

Samhita wrote a fairly emotional (which is to say, not entirely fact-based or scientific) post about her unease with the NY Times even referencing the idea that M.I.A. might be a terrorist sympathizer…of course, it didn’t ...

Mormonism and Feminism, Not Incompatible–At Least Not Necessarily

A Mormon feminist posted about her precarious position of being a feminist Mormon, amid the Prop 8 battle and the post-8 backlash against the Church. A lot of posters there are sympathetic to her plight and apologetic for hateful statements or stereotypes they or their allies may have made about Mormons, even while they admit they’re very frustrated with her church (technically, my church as well, though I’ve got a pretty nice resignation letter I’m perfecting and mustering the courage to send in).

While I could talk about Mormonism, feminism, bigotry, and GLBT issues until I was blue in the face (and I may on this very blog, when I have more time to sit down and I’m in ...

A Mormon feminist posted about her precarious position of being a feminist Mormon, amid the Prop 8 battle and the post-8 backlash against the Church. A lot of posters there are sympathetic to her plight and ...