Office by Alex Penny

freckles make me strong.

I live in Seattle. These are things that catch my attention, pique my interest and/or make me want to pass notes in class like a 7th grader

May 4, 2012 11:01 am
"I want to say a little something that’s long overdue –
The disrespect to women has got to be through.
To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends –
I want to offer my love and respect to the end."

—

Adam Yauch aka MCA  (via emory)
March 15, 2012 9:06 am

Half the Sky, a multi-part documentary series based on the bestselling book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, will air on PBS October 1st & 2nd, 2012, and internationally in 2013.

More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.

The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day… life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

This book is incredibly important. The stories recounted will break your heart and knock you down. They will demand your attention and just when you think you can’t listen to the horrors any longer these stories will offer you hope. I can’t wait to see the documentary. Mark your calendars everyone.

March 9, 2012 9:45 am
"For women, obviously birth control is not a religious topic: it’s a health topic, and 99 percent of women in America use it. And at Planned Parenthood, we provide birth control to millions of women every single year, so yeah — I think they’re kind of mystified by what the ‘controversy’ is all about.

…I think we’re seeing in this presidential primary this sort of, like, race to the bottom, where every presidential candidate on the Republican side is trying to say ‘I would be absolutely the worst for women.’"

—

CECILE RICHARDS, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, on The Daily Show (via inothernews)

(via think4yourself)

March 7, 2012 11:36 am
pantslessprogressive: This extraordinarily offensive political cartoon by Mike Lester is making the rounds today. In the cartoon, President Obama, dressed as a pimp, says of Sandra Fluke, “She just wants to have recreational sex and you to pay for it. It’s not exactly a new  concept.” Best commentary of the day comes from Angry Black Lady: You’ve got the African-American President is a 70′s pimp angle, the Sandra Fluke is a whore angle, the “evil light-skinned brother” angle, the white girl subservient to the black man angle, a complete misrepresentation of Ms. Fluke’s statements to boot and it’s all rolled up into one big insulting awful package of pure hatred for black people, women, and human beings with working souls. It’s actually impressive, in the same way ebola-tipped bullets fired into crowds of baby sloths is impressive: just overwhelmingly, unremittingly awful on multiple levels.

pantslessprogressive:

This extraordinarily offensive political cartoon by Mike Lester is making the rounds today. In the cartoon, President Obama, dressed as a pimp, says of Sandra Fluke, “She just wants to have recreational sex and you to pay for it. It’s not exactly a new  concept.”

Best commentary of the day comes from Angry Black Lady:

You’ve got the African-American President is a 70′s pimp angle, the Sandra Fluke is a whore angle, the “evil light-skinned brother” angle, the white girl subservient to the black man angle, a complete misrepresentation of Ms. Fluke’s statements to boot and it’s all rolled up into one big insulting awful package of pure hatred for black people, women, and human beings with working souls. It’s actually impressive, in the same way ebola-tipped bullets fired into crowds of baby sloths is impressive: just overwhelmingly, unremittingly awful on multiple levels.

(via think4yourself)

February 20, 2012 11:14 am
"No one could blame American women here if they all suddenly decided to leave the country saying, ‘That’s it, we’re fucking out of here, this is complete bullshit.’ There has been a debate on contraception in the last week so ludicrous that part of me was wondering if it was in fact a performance art piece, to make us all question how terrible it would be to live in a country where something like this could actually happen."

—

John Oliver on American contraception debates, The Bugle 183 (via sixpencesoulcake)

(via scout)

January 17, 2012 10:25 am
"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy (sic)."

—

Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Joshua Speed, 1855

(Source: politicalprof, via think4yourself)

August 24, 2011 11:09 am
"When girls and women fleeing the devastating Somali and Kenyan drought were asked, “What is your greatest concern?,” food, water, and shelter were not their first answers. A recent survey funded by the U.K.’s Department for International Development of 100 girls and women in the Dadaab refugee camp of northern Kenya shows that their greatest concern is avoiding rape and kidnapping. Somali and Kenyan girls have become the victims of sexual violence on a frightening scale. The most vulnerable are girls under the age of 15. As one woman said, “While we were walking, if the men with the guns saw a pretty girl, they would take her and they would keep her.” In the first six months of this year, there were 358 reported incidents of sexual violence in and around Dadaab—but this is probably just a fraction of the true number. Girls who are raped are afraid to tell anyone for fear of shame, being blamed, or being branded as “unmarriageable” by their families and communities. As one—anonymous—woman in Dadaab put it: “If you tell, no one will help. It is better to be safe and tell no one."

—

Anne Hathaway, Maria Eitel: What African Girls Fear More Than Drought - The Daily Beast (via apsies)

This doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves.

(via apsies)

June 9, 2011 1:51 pm
thedailywhat: Sign Of The Times of the Day: If you falsely believe any of the first three increase a woman’s chances of getting raped, please peruse this. [reddit.] Thank you.

thedailywhat:

Sign Of The Times of the Day: If you falsely believe any of the first three increase a woman’s chances of getting raped, please peruse this.

[reddit.]

Thank you.

April 10, 2011 12:00 pm
Wal-Mart v. Women

It began in 1999 after Stephanie Odle was fired when she complained of sex discrimination. As Ms. Odle recounted in sworn testimony, as an assistant manager she discovered that a male employee with the same title and less experience was making $10,000 a year more than her.

She complained to her boss, who defended the disparity by saying the male had a family to support. When she replied that she was having a baby that she needed to support, the supervisor made her provide a personal budget and then gave her a raise closing just one-fifth the gap.

The plaintiffs who have brought a class action on behalf of 1.5 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees allege that they, too, faced discrimination in pay and promotion. If Wal-Mart loses, it could owe more than $1 billion in back pay.

Yet another reason to boycott Wal-Mart.

February 3, 2010 11:06 am

jennabee:

Sean James and Al Joyner respond to the Tebow Super Bowl ad

“We’re working toward the day where every woman will be valued. Where every woman’s decision about her health and her family will be respected. We celebrate family by supporting our mothers, by supporting our daughters. By trusting women.”