http://youtu.be/tmrf0ljbD6w Your reading and thinking about Obama’s marriage equality affirmation isn’t complete until you’ve heard Jay Smooth’s take. In North Carolina, where marriage equality was just voted down this week, a lesbian has been arrested for seeking a marriage license . A Mothers’ Day message from Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother. I’m proud to be The Line Campaign ’s “Badass [...]

Yesterday, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Nancy Keenan, announced that she will be stepping down at the end of the year. Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post reported: The 60-year-old Keenan said she is leaving out of concern for the future of the pro-choice movement — and thinks she could be holding it back. In recent years, [...]

When I was fifteen, I got my belly button pierced. At the time, I really wanted to be a dancer. I was dancing four or five days a week, at an open studio where there were often professional dancers in my classes. When I looked around the room at the best dancers, the ones who I [...]

Kate Beaton has a few things to say about “strong female characters” and the depiction of women in comic books. In this ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, parents are being shunned for reporting to police that their children have been sexually abused by members of that community. Women of the Canadian armed forces have been brought in to [...]

Here we go with this week’s take on the latest Mad Men from the Feministing crew. Let’s jump in and get discussing. As always, tons of spoilers follow . The title of the episode Named after the famed Sylvia Plath poem, I guess this episode is about almost dying but then being revived. -Samhita Megan’s career change I’ve had pretty mixed reactions [...]

As Zerlina said earlier this morning, President Obama’s announcement yesterday that he believes that same sex couples should be allowed to get married was significant. It represents an historic turning point in this particular struggle for American civil rights. This video, by Shane Bitney Crone, is about what it can look like, and feel like, when [...]

The Kansas state Senate has passed a new conscience clause law that will protect doctors and other medical professionals who refuse to provide a drug or procedure to a pregnant woman if they believe it could terminate her pregnancy. Governor Sam Brownback, who is anti-choice, is expected to sign it. New York Magazine has a fascinating profile of [...]

Here we go with this week’s take on the latest Mad Men from the Feministing crew. Let’s jump in and get discussing. As always, tons of spoilers follow . Megan’s good idea Is Megan legit boning her way to the top? It’s like Peggy is our boring, unsexy kind of feminist and Megan is the kind that Republicans love–hot, savvy, [...]

Last night,  Maddow covered the story of Dr. Carl Reddix, the doctor who’s been fired from the state board of health in Mississippi because he’s pro-choice. Reddix is an African American Harvard and Johns Hopkins-trained doctor from Mississippi. As Maddow points out, Mississippi should be thrilled to have him on their state board of health. [...]

On June 5 th of last year, there was a fight outside a bar in Minneapolis. Several people were involved, a few were injured, one was killed. Only one was arrested. The person who was killed was a straight white cisgender man, and the person who was arrested was a young transgender woman of colour . Around 12:30 am, [...]

Remember that puzzling dream you had about a guy who ran for the GOP nomination having resigned under a cloud of scandal in the 1990s? Remember how that candidate from your dream was the opposite of a dream candidate – anti-gay, pro-racist dog whistles, anti-welfare, and pro-moon colony? And remember how the dream seemed to [...]

If the Governor of Tennessee signs this bill into law, miscarriage will count as murder.

At The New Yorker, Anna Holmes on “Girls.”

In California, there’s been progress on a new bill that would protect patients from predatory and harmful “ex-gay therapists.”

Over the weekend, Sydney police shot two Indigenous men in an attempt to stop them from stealing a car. One of the men is not a man – he is fourteen years old. The two men are in hospital in a “critical but stable condition.” There’s also video of one of the officers dragging and [...]

Yesterday, Australian Speaker of the House Peter Slipper stepped aside amid sexual harassment and other allegations. Slipper, who defected from the Liberal party last year, thereby giving Julia Gillard’s government a razor-thin majority, has denied the allegations made by his former aide in federal court last week. ABC News reports:

James Ashby says he was continually harassed [...]

If you’ve been listening to the radio, or watching TV, or indeed breathing the air in Sydney lately, you won’t have been able to avoid One Direction, the British boy band that was in town last week (they hit the States in May). One Direction arrived in Sydney around the same time I did, but [...]

150 Afghan schoolgirls have been poisoned in their classroom. “For the life of me, I cannot begin to understand why this is something that is a debate within Congress. It is inconceivable to me now that we are in the process of a debate about something that has proven so effective and is clearly so needed [...]

Tony Abbott, the conservative leader of the Australia’s opposition party, was having dinner on Sunday night in Melbourne when he was interrupted by a group of gay rights activists. Abbott, who said just yesterday that he wants a “non-discriminatory society” in which gays and lesbians are not allowed to get married, was not pleased to be [...]

The wives of the British and German ambassadors to the UN have called on Asma Al-Assad, wife of the Syrian President Bashar Assad, to end the Syrian regime’s violence against its own people. Huberta von Voss-Wittig and Sheila Lyall Grant have addressed this video message directly (pointedly, relentlessly) to Asma Al-Assad. They call on her [...]

A fifty-one-year-old mother of three just became the first woman to run across the 410 mile-wide Simpson Desert in Australia. What would immigration policies be like in a Romney-Rubio administration? In Gambia, 15 men have been arrested on the charge of “suspected homosexuality.” Alyssa Rosenberg on “Think Like  a Man,” the forthcoming romantic comedy based on Steve Harvey’s self-help [...]

Yesterday, the Arizona House passed a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks. It now heads to the desk of Governor Jan Brewer. Brewer has five days to veto it, or else it will become law. According to the Arizona Republic: The bill would make numerous changes to abortion laws, including banning abortions after 20 weeks except [...]