Happy Readings While Wishing for More Time

Even when this post was just a wee little comment, it rung with me and I’ve been hoping since I read it to blog about it, but time just doesn’t seem to be getting any more plentiful these days (what’s up with that?). Kay Olson on bastard.logic:
In being effective allies, I don’t believe empathy can [...]

Apologizing

This has been a really difficult week in my personal life, and as such, I haven’t had the time to really be following the ever-multiplying posts on the subject of the incredibly racist imagery contained in Amanda Marcotte’s book. Holly and many others have addressed the core issue far better than I ever could, and [...]

How Not to Have Honest Negotiations

Again, in the Caledonia land claim dispute, the rhetoric being used by the government ensures that honest negotiations will not be possible. So now, the use of land that is under dispute is being subjected to fee requests. One may even be justified in saying “demands”. Local MPP Toby Barrett, however, said recently:
From the beginning [...]

(Not) Talking About Genocide

It’s not “breaking news” anymore, but there was an announcement last week of the discovery of mass graves of First Nations children who died at residential schools. It was coupled with an announcement of an independent inquiry called The International Human Rights Tribunal Into Genocide in Canada.
When we talk about the history of white-native relations [...]

Ignorant Comment of the Day (So Far)

The CBC has a story posted today addressing the question of why only half of the girls who are eligible for free HPV vaccination in Ontario have actually gotten the vaccine. The answer, of course, is that under the influence of Catholic school boards and the like, parents are choosing not to have their daughters [...]

Axis, Allies and Switzerland

Like most white people, I’ve got serious issues with my privilege. I can be completely oblivious to the normalization of whiteness, to the meaning of racism, to the impact of “intersections of oppression” in lives, even as I know about “intersectionality” in theory. There is a distance accessible to me in conversations about race and [...]

Sorry to Let You Know, But…

I was raped.
abyss2hope had a series of posts a couple of weeks ago detailing the problems with the criticism people raised against some t-shirts that say “I was raped”. This one is takes apart a particularly egregious comment, the salient point of which is: “Be rational, silly women. This is only going to turn people [...]

Feminism, Hierarchy and Self-Aggrandizement

A few days ago, I posted on the recent attention drawn to the issue of the appropriation of WOC writing and thought by white feminist authors. I’ve been trying desperately to read most of what’s being posted on the subject, and I’ve commented a few times, but I ended up deleting that post because I [...]

Please Stop Trying to Explain My Brain

I’m inevitably hesitant to write critically about how frustrating I find it when atheists write about faith, religion or spirituality, because I feel like I risk sounding overly self-pitying and coming off as though I don’t recognize the privilege that nominal Christianity brings in North American society. I am, however, just going to hope that [...]

The Basic Questions

Helen G posted on The F-Word asking the fundamental question: What is feminism anyway, and why are you one? It was asked in context of whether or not it’s actually possible for there to be such a thing as trans*feminism, throwing out the idea that maybe, just maybe, there’s not enough common ground to work [...]