Obama Approves Rule for Universal Contraception
Today is a monumental day for women.
Shit Republicans Say About Black People
This is a must-see.
(Source: jezebel.com)
A chart to remember 2011 by. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 2011 proved a banner year for passing abortion restrictions into law in the United States. These restrictions included everything from attacking insurance coverage to requiring women to go through ultrasounds and waiting periods.
Read the Guttmacher Institute’s review of 2011’s state reproductive health policies.
Can You Tell The Difference Between A Men’s Magazine And A Rapist?
An incredibly disturbing research study shows most people can’t distinguish between quotes found in some men’s magazines and interviews with convicted rapists.
13 Fantastic Female Comics Creators of 2011
This made me happy, as I’ve always been discouraged by becoming involved in comics because I’ve perceived it as a male-dominated arena. I hope these women continue to make comics and gain more support.
A rape victim in Mogadishu. From the New York Times, a sickening story of the alarming rise in sexual assaults against women and girls in war- and famine-torn Somalia:
Somalia has been steadily worn down by decades of conflict and chaos, its cities in ruins and its people starving. Just this year, tens of thousands have died from famine, with countless others cut down in relentless combat. Now Somalis face yet another widespread terror: an alarming increase in rapes and sexual abuse of women and girls.
The Shabab militant group, which presents itself as a morally righteous rebel force and the defender of pure Islam, is seizing women and girls as spoils of war, gang-raping and abusing them as part of its reign of terror in southern Somalia, according to victims, aid workers and United Nations officials. Short of cash and losing ground, the militants are also forcing families to hand over girls for arranged marriages that often last no more than a few weeks and are essentially sexual slavery, a cheap way to bolster their ranks’ flagging morale.
But it is not just the Shabab. In the past few months, aid workers and victims say, there has been a free-for-all of armed men preying upon women and girls displaced by Somalia’s famine, who often trek hundreds of miles searching for food and end up in crowded, lawless refugee camps where Islamist militants, rogue militiamen and even government soldiers rape, rob and kill with impunity.
With the famine putting hundreds of thousands of women on the move — severing them from their traditional protection mechanism, the clan — aid workers say more Somali women are being raped right now than at any time in recent memory. In some areas, they say, women are being used as chits at roadblocks, surrendered to the gunmen staffing the barrier in the road so that a group of desperate refugees can pass.
“The situation is intensifying,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations’ special representative for children and armed conflict. All the recent flight has created a surge in opportunistic rapes, she said, and “for the Shabab, forced marriage is another aspect they are using to control the population.”
(Photo: Sven Torfinn / The New York Times)
Take your pick.
To quote the tag-line from the cinematic opus that was Aliens Vs. Predator
Whoever Wins, We Lose
(Source: youvegotitbad)
“The average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year … For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.”
—President Obama speaking in Osawatomie, Kansas, yesterday about what he calls a “make or break moment” for the middle class
BP Accuses Haliburton over Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Are we seriously still playing the blame game, BP?
