Objectify This

[trigger warning] What is this? Who defends women in the Department of Defense? Not Republican senators, apparently. When Al Franken brought forward legislation to combat the horrifically hostile and sexually abusive environment found in the Department of Defense and amongst  its contractors on October 6th, a block of thirty white men rose up in opposition. [...]

On Fighting Corporate Mind Control: Yes,  the Yes Men are awesome. Yes, they are fixing the world, or at least promoting a movie about it. They’re committed to demonstrating that corporations’ dignity is not as important as human dignity. So is Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping, who are concerned with helping [...]

The formidable mind of my mentor Kristin Bumiller always deserves mention. Luckily, the American Political Science Association agrees with me. Bumiller’s excellent book, In An Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriate the Feminist Movement against Sexual Violence, won the APSA’s 2009 Victoria Shuck Award for the best book published in the previous calendar year on women [...]

Hat tip to Bust for their coverage of this well-heeled event in their August/September issue: there’s a a new annual parage of feminist men who strut their stuff and walk the walk, literally. The “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes,” which bills itself as an “International Men’s March Against Rape, Sexual Assault and Gender Violence” [...]

As The Austrailian reports, “In his remarks, UN chief Ban Ki-moon stressed the world body was “profoundly committed to its zero-tolerance policy against sexual exploitation or abuse by our own personnel”.” “”Violence against women has reached unspeakable and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict,” he said.” The BBC notes that China, [...]

Hat tip to Sabotabby of Punkassblog for the scoop on this one: the Russian Government has released a statement officially limiting children’s toys that are “psychologically incongruous” (thus, threatening irony in the next generation of Russian childhoods) and stating that, as Sabotabby has it, “Apparently, the Russian government feels it necessary to fight the growing [...]

In the past, women who experienced rape or sexual assault were faced with the immediate decision of whether or not to prosecute, even as they still reeled from the trauma of violation, which is often manifested as post-traumatic stress disorder. This was necessary because any action such a woman took following her rape, such as [...]