Healthy Is The New Skinny

Love this message from Healthy is the New Skinny. Check them out if you haven’t already!

 

 

Check out their new promo piece HERE! It’s awesome! Or watch it below!

FYI Congressman West: us feminists have no interest in neutering your gender.

Sometimes I hear politicians say things, and I wonder how anyone can actually believe the shit that comes out of their mouths. I realize this video is from April, but I just saw it for the first time last weekend at the NOW National Conference and I had to respond.

In this video, Congressmen Allen West (R-FL) urges his female supporters to come together to tell the “Planned Parenthood Women” and “Code Pink Women who have been neutering American men”, that the Women for West are “not going to have their men become subservient”. He tells them that if they don’t come together to stop the Liberal Women that the “debt will continue to grow”. I swear I’m not making this up, have a look for yourself:

 

 

First, he makes these wild accusations, bashing “liberal women” for neutering men then turns right back around and calls on “his” women to “lock shields and come together to strengthen the men that will go in to the fight” for them. Wow – great game strategy Mr. West – what a way to enabling that “mean girl” mentality and pit women against other women.

And what is this 1910? Why are us women supposed to just sit around in our “Women for West” t-shirts, strengthening up the men so they can “go in to the fight” for us? Frankly, I don’t want you anywhere near my fight with that kind of attitude.

When I posted this link on facebook, a friend of mine, Hugo Schwyzer – an amazing feminst, women’s studies professor, and blogger (definitely check out his site) – commented this:

“How the hell do I still have my balls after all these years as a male feminist? **checks scrotum** **checks politics**”

We need more men like him in this world. He reassuringly said, “men like him are a dying breed, just taking a long time to go extinct.”

Obviously, Congressmen Allen West knows nothing about feminists and the feminist movement. The very last thing we want to do is to neuter men. I don’t want my men to be subservient, but I don’t want them to be dominant either. I want my men to stand with me – next to me – by my side as my equal.

I’ve got news for you Mr. West – real men don’t have to denigrate women in order to make themselves look better or to win elections.

Since When Are Pedophile Rape Jokes Funny?

I ref men’s league hockey games at a few of the nearby rinks. I’ve heard some pretty shitty stuff on the ice. Everything from insulting me because I’m a female official – to sexist jokes about players skills on the ice. Last night what I heard was, by far, the worst, most disturbing and disgusting thing I’ve ever heard – not just while officiating either. It pretty much takes the cake for one of the sickest comments ever.

This guy (who’s lucky that I don’t know his name and that he can only be identified by his jersey that read HPPB in bright pink letters. He told me it stood for Hot Pink Panda Bears) skates over to the bench in between plays. Behind their bench were two little girls, one maybe 6 the other about 10. The younger one was sleeping in the bleachers, wrapped up from head to toe in a blanket. I said to the guys on the bench, “Well, someone’s kids are out past their bedtime!” It was an 11:15pm game.

The guy in the HPPB jersey says, “Oh those are my kids.”

He was really young – like maybe 25 so I replied, “No they’re not – are they really?”

He says, “Yea, I have 6 kids.” I don’t believe him, and he offers to show me pictures.

Now I can tell he’s full of shit and making all this up cause him and his teammates are all starting to giggle like little boys. I jokingly said to him, “Haven’t you heard of birth control?” At this point, play was going the other direction so I had to skate away.

He waits till the next face-off and skates over to tell me this story. This is where it goes from funny to sick REAL fast.

He goes, “Let me tell you what happened. So, I took my 7 year old daughter to the doctor. Everything was great – the doctor said she was fine. And I asked him, ‘Hey doc, do you think I can get her some birth control?’ and the doctor said ‘What?! For you daughter? She’s only 7 years old, you mean to tell me she’s already sexually active?’ and I looked at the doctor and said, ‘No way, are you kidding? She just lays there . . . just like her mother does.'”

I had absolutely NO idea what to say to him. I think what came out of my mouth was something like, “Your fucking sick. I should give you a penalty just for telling that joke.” (Which was a totally lame response, but come on I was shocked.)

He actively sought me out, half way across the ice, to come tell me a sick joke about him having sex with his 7 year old daughter. He honestly thought I would think it was funny!

I do have to give the guys on his team credit though, the ones that heard him tell it all made remarks about how they thought it was sick. A few minutes later in the game my partner called a penalty on him and as I skated by him in the box I told him it was karma for telling sick pedophile rape jokes. Then I told him he needed to change the HPPB on his jersey to HPDB for douche-bag.

I guess maybe I’m less offended by sexist or racist jokes, because we hear them so much more often. And I guess I should be just as offended by those too. But what could possibly make ANYONE think a joke about having sex with your 7 year old daughter is even the slightest bit funny. I don’t understand that.

He told that joke to the wrong feminist . . .

Her Dress is Not a Yes

I’ve been spearheading the SlutWalk Tampa coordinating the last few weeks and haven’t had too much time for blogging and writing over here, but there’s been a lot of cool stuff going on over at SlutWalkTampa.com. 

When I offered to organize the SlutWalk here, I knew it was a HUGE undertaking, but I also knew that there’d be many other women who’d want to get involved and I just had to trust that people would come out and offer to help. Over the past month or so I have received so many emails from people who want to get involved. The support has been incredible and I can only imagine it will continue to grow.

One girl in particular, Teagan, emailed me and said she was a rape survivor and that she wanted to get involved. I can’t tell you why, but for some reason I felt like I needed to ask her to get more involved. She told me she was a writer and that she’d love to help with the website. Her first post, Rape: Not a Casual Word was beautiful, powerful and inspiring. Then, I asked her if she’d be interested in doing a response to an article from Daily Mail Online, where celebrity lawyer, Nick Freeman, said, “girls who wear ‘racy’ underwear and skimpy tops made it clear they had one thing on their minds: sex.” He goes on to say about the SlutWalk movement,

“Those taking part claimed women should be able to wear whatever they like in public – including racy red underwear – without being judged and their motives questioned. But, as a red-blooded alpha male, let me state unequivocally that I believe how a woman dresses (and behaves in that dress) tells a man what’s on her mind.”

I wasn’t expecting Teagan’s response to be so incredible! She posted the video below and I love it! You can read the original post here. I love that she’s a young confident woman, with the courage to speak out and be so honest about her experience. I hope that she inspires many other women because I know she has inspired me. Keep it up Teagan!

For more about SlutWalk Tampa visit www.SlutWalkTampa.com or ‘like’ us on facebook at www.Facebook.com/SlutWalkTampa

Thank You Mom . . .

Me and my Momma!

For loving and teaching me to love every part of myself, my body, my heart, and my mind.

For acting like it was no big deal when I wanted the black baby doll when I was little. You taught me to never judge anyone because of their appearance or their beliefs, even when they were different from mine.

For believing in my dreams and giving me the courage to go after them.

For always making the BEST halloween costumes! Princesses, Minny Mouse, and even a Troll!

For having the strength to leave a marriage that was hurting you. It showed me that we always deserve to be treated right and to be happy.

For being a room mom, a Girl Scout leader, a marching band volunteer, and the manager of our sports teams.

For being open and honest with me about sex and discovering my own sexuality and teaching me to love myself as a sexual being and to never be ashamed of that.

For embracing and trying to understand all the things that made me different and special.

For going to Planned Parenthood with me when I was 19.

For encouraging me to play with Barbies and baby dolls and kitchen sets and makeup when I was little.

For encouraging me to play sports like volleyball, baseball, snowboarding, hockey and lacrosse.

For letting me play baseball on the boys team, when I didn’t want to play with the girls.

For the MANY MANY times you helped me get organized.

And most of all, thank you for being a strong, confident, beautiful, driven, passionate, intelligent woman for me to look up to. I wouldn’t be half the woman I am today without you.

I love you more than anything in the world! You are my rock, my mom and my best friend!

Love, Fess ♥

My Mom with me and my brother after he was born! Almost 21 years ago!

I couldn’t resist . . .

Saw this on a tumblr feed and I couldn’t resist posting it for everyone. I’m a huge someecards fan anyways.

If you haven’t already spent hours checking out their cards I highly recommend it! Love this!

. . . only if she swallows

Even a real life Cinderella didn’t meet their body image standard . . .

I think she's beautiful . . . even before photoshop!

I have my own opinions about marriage and I don’t think it’s for everyone. But surprisingly, I found myself really into the Royal Wedding. Usually, I’d be repulsed by the abusrdity of some of the traditions (like when the priest asked “who givith this woman” and Kate Middleton’s dad physically gave her hand to the priest, who gave it to Prince William. *gag* Please, she’s almost 30 years old, I’m pretty sure her daddy doesn’t make her decisions for her any more). On the other hand, I have a lot of respect for her for taking the word “obey” out of their vows. I can only imagine that she didn’t have too much say over how it went, so the fact that she had “obey” removed deserves so much credit. I think it shows she really is a modern woman.

As I was watching the whole thing go down I realized that Kate looked SO incredibly happy. I guess I was expecting her to be nervous or some royal version of bridezilla, but instead I found her to be incredibly enchanting. I thought her dress (as well as her sisters) was the perfect mix of class and sex, modern and tradition. I was completely captivated by her.

I read in a couple different places that she went from a size 6 to a size 2 for her wedding. This is a common thing for most brides so I wasn’t too surprised to hear that. However, yesterday at the Huffington Post I read an article about how the magazine Grazia had photoshopped Kate Middleton’s wedding photo for the cover image to make her waist look much slimmer than it already was. Grazia told the Huffington Post:

 “Grazia did not make any changes to the image of the Duchess of Cambridge to make her look or appear slimmer than she is.”

Do they think we’re stupid? All you have to do is look at the two pictures to see they did a good squeeze job on her waist. This is so discouraging! Kate Middleton looked so stunning and sexy and classy and happy on her wedding day. She’s a real life modern Cinderella story! She’s a size TWO! How much skinnier did she have to be for the media to consider her skinny enough? I guess in today’s world, even Cinderella isn’t skinny enough to escape the devastation of photoshop. Maybe she should have tried for Barbie instead of Cinderella . . .

Here’s the photo:

Turning Women into Meat . . . Literally

I realize that this HUSTLER cover is really outdated (June 1978), but I think it’s important to talk about. This was the cover of a HUSTLER magazine form 32 years ago. Yet, I still feel like it’s relevant to how women are viewed in the gentleman’s magazines of today.

Yesterday started reading the book Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality. So far I’m loving the book! I’ll be sure to post some updates about it!

Any thoughts on this image? 

Take Back The Night: End Sexual Violence

Here is a short video I made from a collection of street interviews about rape and victim blaming. Feel free to share it and spread the word! Thanks to everyone who participated!

Video For Those With Vaginas!

In light of the pending government shutdown over the proposed Planned Parenthood budget cuts, I thought I’d post this video. It is definitely worth the watch!

“They help women . . . period!”

Thanks to TheSecondCity Network for creating it!