Witch. Bitch. Fat. Hag. Cunt.

Here's an entry from my proto-blog, "Kate Almanac", dated 9 July 2000.In June this year, I visited relatives in Washington DC. I packed my passport, my swimsuit - and a list of references to look up at the Library of Congress. Despite plundering university and local libraries around the world, there were still a handful of citations I hadn't been ( Read more... )

"In this post-everything real decade (post-politics, post-feminism, post-consciousness) there's a corresponding decadent compunction to Look Good: spiritually, physically, culturally: pose pretty. Appear-to-have-it-all-together. As a substitute for real substance, genuine power. Even our goddesses. New Age spiritual guides, even we spiritual ( Read more... )

Challenging The 'Sex Sells' Cliche. This is a 2006 article about the porn that saturates the scum British press. The point it makes that stuck with me was that it's not sex that sells, but one narrow stereotype of "sex" out of the endless variety of human sexuality, numbingly repeated over and over and over.

And also: Championing Ourselves, a ( Read more... )

The Goddess movement has been criticised within and without feminism as a distraction from more important issues for women, but the truth is, it intersects very much with political thought and action. Rummaging through old bookmarks, I rediscovered the essay The Goddess Ungirdled: How I learned to love my belly and found the Sacred Feminine within, ( Read more... )

David Bennun. British as a Second Language.
Judy Horacek. Woman With Altitude.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The Mote in God's Eye.

( Books bought and borrowed )

A couple more statistics:

• In the Australian state of Victoria, from 2000-2003, police classified only 2.1% of reported rapes as false reports. (Statewide Steering Committee to Reduce Sexual Assault. Study of reported rapes in Victoria. Office of Women's Policy, Department for Victorian Communities, Melbourne, July 2006.)
  
  
• In 1991, the San ( Read more... )

Found a printout of 1994 soc.feminism posting by Janis Cortese: "I KNOW we're in danger six ways from zero. I KNOW we're abused and raped and hated. But NO "Look how bad we have it" article in Ms. Magazine has EVER made me feel empowered like seeing Counselor Troi kick the hell out of the fellow who was trying to mentally rape her in Star Trek."

Although it's a common belief that women frequently falsely report rape, there is no evidence that this is the case, and some evidence that women do not often make false reports. In 2007 I made a series of postings in which I outlined some of the research. I'd like to follow those up now with some more facts and figures specifically about false ( Read more... )

Via silverblue and hnpcc: Some US health insurances companies count domestic violence as a pre-existing condition.

Via mrteufel: Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

And in another kind of violence... Queensland women cannot currently obtain abortions while a question mark hangs over the legality in the state.