It's Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month and, as a youth activist, I'm all about these kind of conversations throughout the month (including any day ending in "y"). But while I get to talk about these things as a public speaker and advocate, rarely do I get to talk about it as a fangirl of scifi TV and popular culture ( Read more... )

Almost done with edits, but I ran across this again and it hits me every time. Joss Whedon is one of my writing heroes and his stance on gender equality is equal to none. If you haven't seen this speech from EqualityNow, watch it now & then pass it onto everyone you've ever met.

Click to view

(And yet they still keep asking the question...even today!)

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I'd like to take a moment and point you to another post here where Sophia McDougall writes about hating strong female characters, nailing something I've been trying to express for years. You see, I *love* strong characters (both male and female) but what I love about them isn't, perhaps, the usual definition of "strength" but that they are complex ( Read more... )

Evidently, I've been living under a very large rock as I've only just read David Levithan's newest book, EVERY DAY and... and... I'm absolutely smitten.

And my mind boggles how to tell you why without *ruining* it.


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It's not a new topic: strong female protagonists. We want 'em, we love 'em. Give us your Buffys and Xenas, your Katnisses and Katsas, your Scarlets and your Trises! We want to see action, weaponry, fighting for her life and the lives of her loved ones or to stand up to the Old Order and take it all down in flames! And while I'm as much a fan of ( Read more... )

Last Wednesday's #yalitchat featured an interesting discussion about diversity and authenticity and it was no surprise that this included the call for more LGBTQ characters in YA books. This is not a new topic and we're all pretty much preaching to the choir. However, the most interesting part of the discussion (at least to me) was the fact that ( Read more... )

The other day I was in the dentist's chair for some emergency work (don't ask) and while a trip to the dentist isn't what I'd consider a relaxing affair, the thing I found most disturbing as I lay taut in the recliner with tools and tubes and fingers sticking out of my mouth wasn't the high-pitched whine of grinding bone or the sudden spritz of ( Read more... )

I read this post by Mur Lafferty, a letter to her daughter about the fact that being "a girl" is considered one of the worst insults in the English language and as a mother of a pretty remarkable little girl, yeah, I get it ( Read more... )

Yesterday was Purim, the Jewish "dress up" holiday and another one of those "thank goodness we weren't wiped off the face of the earth!" celebrations. Coincidentally, it was also World Read Aloud Day which was perfect for the reading of the Megillah, the story of Queen Esther. (For a quick-ref of the story, click here.) And while I get something ( Read more... )