It’s a basic legal principle in Canada and the U.S.: Women who are severely intoxicated are not capable of giving consent, and taking advantage of their mostly-or-completely-unconscious state is rape. And yet, both grim statistics and all-too-frequent rape-apologist statements show that many still do not understand that an unconscious woman was not “asking for it.” […]
Author: Kathleen Richter
Kathleen Richter is a recent graduate of the University of California, San Diego in the field of International Studies. She has been a feminist ever since kindergarten when she proved that she too could belch with the best of them. When she is not engaged in life-sustaining activities, she is most likely either drawing feminist comics or writing feminist sentences.
Feminists Joking About Feminism: A Chat with Vag Magazine’s Creators
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview the creators of Vag Magazine, a comedy web TV show about a group of feminists starting an anti-patriarchal magazine. Leila Cohan-Miccio and Caitlin Tegart, the co-writers, co-creators and co-executive producers of the show, both hail from New York City’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre; after chatting with them, I […]
Meet the Blogger: Ebony Utley
Welcome to the Ms. Blog’s new weekly segment, “Meet the Blogger”. This week the subject is Ebony Utley, our expert on hip hop, relationships and race. She is an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach and has published her work in several journals, including Black Women Gender & Families, Critical Studies in Media Communication, […]
Which Pumps Won’t Health Insurance Cover?
Ran out of the adhesives to keep your dentures in place? No worries, the Internal Revenue Service will give you a tax break on new ones. Suffering from an attack of the killer zits? The I.R.S. agrees this is a health concern worth giving a tax break for. How about allergic to grass? If you […]
You Can Help Make Pregnancy Safer
Imagine earning less than $2 a day, then learning that you are not only HIV positive but pregnant. Imagine having lost seven children to starvation and learning that you are pregnant again. Imagine learning you are pregnant when you’ve seen many women in your village die from uncontrollable bleeding after giving birth. Sadly, for many […]
Concluding Thoughts on Love Your Body Week
Today marks the last day of “Love Your Body Week,” and the blogosphere has been actively posting useful tips on how to love one’s own body even if it does not live up to the marketed ideal. Of course many women find it hard to love their bodies when they’re “overweight,” even though the fashion-model […]
Vag Magazine: The Laugh’s on Feminist Journalists
The first episode of Vag Magazine, a six-part web series, has debuted online–and even though we’re in the line of comedic fire, we’re grinning, if not yet guffawing. The show was created by some funny women from the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, an improv and sketch-comedy group where famous peeps like Amy Poehler got their start. […]
Newsflash: Transgender Discrimination Rampant in Health Care
According to a new report released by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, transgender and gender non-comforming people face severe discrimination when they try to access health care. The study is the largest study of transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the U.S. to date, surveying more than […]
Dear Salon.com: Veganism Isn’t an Eating Disorder
While reading an article on Salon.com, I became distracted by a sidebar entitled, “Glee‘s mysteriously shrinking Rachel.” I enjoy reading criticisms of how awful Glee is as much as the next blogger, so I clicked. First, in the subhed, the article tries to connect Glee actor Lea Michele’s shrinking body to the quality of the […]
Job Searching in an Unfriendly Market: Try Nonprofits
Everybody knows it: This job market royally stinks. Supposedly there are jobs out there, but if you have any recent graduate friends (who have already been looking for a year) who can’t find jobs, this assertion seems suspicious. Maybe Monster.com and Jobfox aren’t working for you. Maybe you’re afraid of Craigslist. Perhaps you’ve heard the […]