Dr. Jean Pakter , who did important work to make sure abortion was a safe procedure, died Tuesday at 101. Today’s “No duh” study : about half of Latino voters find the term “illegal immigrant” offensive. And in a poll sure to make some people’s heads explode (you know, the same folks panicking about the lack of white babies), [...]

A woman who tried to travel wearing a pro-choice t-shirt was barred from an American Airlines flight yesterday because of her fashion choice. According to RH Reality Check , she was coming home from a meeting of pro-choice activists, and was about to change planes for the second leg of her travel when this happened (this comes from [...]

Can you imagine if the US government gave out free condoms at the Super Bowl? That’s basically the equivalent of what will happen in Poland next month, when the country is one of the hosts of Euro 2012, Europe’s annual football tournament held every four years (that’s soccer to all us ignorant Americans). The tournament runs from June 8 [...]

The best thing on the internet today.

The worst–a man is deported and while trying to get back to his family dies in the Arizona desert, leaving behind 5 children.

Are men who have stay-at-home wives more sexist in the workplace?

Jennifer Pozner has an interesting piece up at the Daily Beast on the class-action racial discrimination suit against The Bachelor and The Bachelorette .

That calculus has governed casting on The Bachelor since its 2002 debut on ABC. Ten years, one spinoff (The Bachelorette), and 24 seasons later, every star of TV’s oldest reality romance franchise has been white. So were 22 [...]

Can’t lose, Mr. President. Can’t lose. Men are increasingly entering traditionally women-dominated professions. As one male dental assistant says, “The way I look at it is that anything, basically, that a woman can do, a guy can do.” Good point from Jamelle Bouie: For women, social issues are economic issues . Missouri passed a bill allowing employers or health [...]

Joyce Banda, who became Malawi’s first female president last month, is hitting the ground running. In her first state of the nation address, she announced that as “a matter of urgency” she’ll seek to repeal the country’s laws criminalizing homosexuality. Banda seems to have enough support in parliament to get the laws overturned, but Malawi is still a conservative [...]

In a rather lenient sentencing, a New Jersey judge sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail also suggesting that he not be deported. This is a probationary sentence for Ravi, who earlier this year was convicted of bias intimidation and a handful of other hate crimes for bullying his Rutgers roommate Tyler Clementi. Why did [...]

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, 22 films directed by 22 men will compete for the prestigious top award. But to feminist criticism of that dismal lineup, Cannes says, essentially, “Well, you can’t make us pick a girl just because she’s a girl.” Of course, those numbers are pretty standard for Cannes. Last year there [...]

OK, maybe not exactly what Reince Priebus, RNC chairman, said over the weekend on CNN–but he did essentially blame the Obama administration for calling out a Super PAC plan proposing race-baiting. According to Priebus, the Obama team wants to focus on this instead of the real questions about his leadership at hand. Well, if that is the focus [...]

The NAACP voted to make the wise decision to join the bandwagon and get on the right side of history by  publicly endorsing same-sex marriage. Not only is the right decision for them (because it’s just the right thing to do!), in terms of being an organization committed to advancing the rights of disenfranchised people–but it is [...]

Lashinda Demus of the US Olympic track and field team. More awesome Olympic portraits here . h/t Shakesville. “My mother died of femininity.” Interesting profile of the founder of Jimmyjane vibrators who’s aiming to make vibrators as well-designed as iPods . Conservatives have it backward: “Teen motherhood is much more a consequence of intense poverty than its cause.” Laurie Penney talks to Mona [...]

Maya interviews Lizz Winstead on her new book over at Mother Jones.

Shakesville with more on white fear of brown babies.

Are women underrepresented in HIV research?

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Spoiler alert: The answer is almost always PROBLEMATIC. Doing science? Sorry. You’re “reinforcing a masculine-supremacist view of intelligence.” Reading? Nope. After all, “the Western canon is white and male-dominated.” Watching sports? Please, that’s a “sort of miniaturized warfare.” Yep, it’s hard being a marginally acceptable feminist full-time. But it’s still feminist to watch Friday Night Lights . So that’s a relief . Riding two dolphins [...]

We’re all pretty pissed about the incredibly watered-down Violence Against Women Act reauthorization bill the House passed on Wednesday. But perhaps no one is more outraged than Rep. Gwen Moore–and with good reason. The legislator from Wisconsin shared her personal history with sexual violence during House debate on the bill earlier this year. And yesterday she spoke out [...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zufp5zVN86I The beautiful and influential queen of disco, Donna Summer passed away today at 63 . Is it really  straight marriage that has evolved? Cautionary words from Chloe about how Australia must not follow the US in it’s assault on repro rights. On this week’s Opinionated, Amanda and I talk about that horrible article in the NYTimes about black women and [...]

(Spotted by my friend Karlos Gauna Schmeider from the Center for Media Justice –two headlines, backwards ideology and the new moment on race in the US) That inevitable moment that conservative Americans have been dreading is finally here. According to census data births of white babies has been surpassed by brown babies. The AP reports that for the first [...]

The Feministing crew is currently planning our annual retreat for June. It’s incredible how much we can get done when given the opportunity to meet face to face. Work that might take a year to hash out over the interwebs happens almost instantly when we’re in the same space. Since Feministing doesn’t have offices (some [...]