Sunday Snippets: Do the work

Those who have white privilege, do the work; be it donation, reading, advocating for others, etc. Find where you can help and do it.

The inescapable pressure of being a woman on Zoom

I Don't Feel Like Buying Stuff Anymore

Black People Need Stronger White Allies — Here’s How You Can Be One

Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide

'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Chris Evans ('Defending Jacob')

'Trying to stay alive': 70 protesters sheltered in stranger's home during D.C.'s curfew

A Partial Map of Black-led Black Liberation Organizing

FBI Asks for Evidence of Individuals Inciting Violence During Protests, People Respond With Videos of Police Violence

Why we can’t stop thinking about George Floyd’s neck

Betsy DeVos Tells Connecticut: Ban Transgender Athletes, Or Say Goodbye To Your Federal Funding

New USPS Stamps Feature Prominent Voices of the Harlem Renaissance

Sunday Snippets: Impeachment

About. Fucking. Time.

How Ava DuVernay Made When They See Us, the Year’s Best Miniseries

Trump administration says joint UNC, Duke program portrays Islam too positively

Teaching Kindness Isn’t Enough

Teaching 6-Year-Olds About Privilege and Power

How the United States created the largest immigrant detention system in the world.

Child Immigration Detention is Not Only Wrong, It Is Ineffective

Sunday Snippets: Baby Shower

Headed to a baby shower today!

I did not realize how much I needed to love John Cena.

This is disgusting

This White Woman's Shocking Account of Police Brutality Has a Lesson About Race in America

Petition to create a federal law enforcement agency that supervises the behavior of all law enforcement agencies

#JoeyEnglish #NativeLivesMatter

Read This If You're Feeling Helpless After Last Week's Tragedies

Accurate political signs We are so fucked.

#WhitePrivilegeMeans

"Your the best lunch man we could ever have I wish you were alive. You have rainbows in your heart!" it reads.

Why highways have become the center of civil rights protest I actually didn't know this, but am glad to have found out.

#DeravisCaineRogers

Slow death: Is the trauma of police violence killing black women?

On Being a Good Ally

#SayHerName

Finally. Someone explains the deep feelings I have about stickers

Conditional Freedom

Birth of a Nation Excited to see this.

AllLivesDidntMatter

When you are rooting for Jack McCain and not sure how to feel about it

#CharlesKinsey

Sunday Snippets: Happy Holidays

I hope you get to spend time with the people you love over the coming days.

Horrifying (TW)

Yup, pretty much White privilege is a hell of a drug.

I was sad to miss this, but the pictures are incredible & More from #MillionsMarch & More & More & Timelapse from NYC

Pretty fall picture

Amazing

Indeed, publicity surrounding Ali’s case is said to have inspired efforts to annul other child marriages, including that of an 8 year old Saudi girl who was allowed to divorce a middle-aged man in 2009.

Fucking heartbreaking

Because cats & Because cats are assholes

What the hell That poor woman

After police shot and killed 22-year-old John Crawford in August for picking up a legal BB gun in a Walmart store in Beavercreek, Ohio, police detective Rodney Curd interrogated Crawford’s girlfriend Tasha Thomas for 90 minutes, suggesting she may have helped him take a gun into the store, even though Crawford had no gun. Detective Curd didn’t tell Thomas that her boyfriend Crawford was dead until the end of the interrogation, the Guardian reported. A grand jury decided in September not to indict the officers who killed Crawford.

Absolutely cannot stop laughing

#BlackLivesMatter Means We Must Talk About Sexual Violence Too

Black women have always been at the forefront of social movements and shown loyalty to Black men throughout all our struggles—risking arrest, physical assault, and the emotional and psychological stress that often accompanies being engaged in social movements. However, we may be building movements to prevent further state-sanctioned murders of Black men, but we are not discussing the factors that led to Oklahoma police officer Daniel Holtzclaw allegedly assaulting several Blackwomen while on duty. We have not marched through the streets for Rekia Boyd, Aisha Stanley-Jones, Renisha McBride, and Islan Nettles the way we have for Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and other Black men and boys who have met the same fate.

Buffalo police officer Cariol Horne stopped another officer from choking a handcuffed man. She was then punched and fired.

Heartwarming news

THE HELL?

One of the leading witnesses identity, also infamously known as Witness #40, whos story was used in the Mike Brown case, has just been uncovered only to reveal a woman named Sandy McElroy. problem? SHE WAS NEVER THERE.

Truer words and all

Tamir Rice

God Bless Jon Stewart He has his faults, to be sure, but when he gets it, he gets it.

YUP

Mall of America got shut down Incredible

Beautiful pictures The last three are my favorite

YES. My heart goes out to the officers' families, but yet again.....

Well, damn Out of the mouths of babes

Fucking A Anxiety disorders SUCK

Oh, cats

Sunday Snippets: Need something to read?

My latest book review, about marriage, here.

How wonderful  Beautiful. Treating people with dignity and respect isn't hard.

Awww! Otters are adorable.

Sweet kitty

OMG. Important pictures that are made of such truth.

I would love a vacation there

Love this man

I love penguins

This is repugnant

Heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time

that was the moment i realized women were the most important beings on this planet and we have to protect each other bc nobody else is going to

#ViolenceWillNotBeTolerated Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Sunday Snippets: Almost July?

I've gotten so much done in the last few weeks but can't believe it's almost July.

This. All this. Fuck that racist twat waffle.

See gifs for explanation

or

lol, I love dogs.

"I take it back!"

*slow clap*

Essential reading for white anti-racist work

Extreme TW for an awful case of domestic violence Beyond heartbreaking and awful.

Indeed. A case of WTF? How dare you?

I may be a bit biased, but black kitties are awesome.

All the truth

*pets* & *moar pets* & *gah!*

Double ugh

Late last year, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Representative Rose DeLauro of Connecticut, both Democrats, introduced the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which proposed offering new parents and caretakers the ability to take 12 paid weeks off each year. Workers would contribute 0.2 percent of their wages to the Social Security Administration, which would handle paying bills. Employees could only get up to 66 percent of their monthly income, but that's a great deal more than the 0 percent workers in 47 states currently receive if they stay home with a loved one. 

Feels. All of them

Because puppies

Because goats

Because guinea pigs

Sunday Snippets: I'm waving the official white flag edition

So very very tired of snow. Yes, it's pretty. But this winter jacked up my heating bill and I'm very tired of being cold, stepping in mucky puddles of melted snow and wearing seventeen different layers of clothing to stay even remotely warm.

Shit I definitely didn't learn in college Really wish I had learned more than just the surface in my women studies classes.

Lol Really and truly have no problem if you choose to practice any religion, be it Christianity or Islam or Wiccan, etc. But be truthful and honest.

OMG PUPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! If I had a bigger house, I'd have a Saint Bernard. I have always loved them, the adorable big giant slobber monsters.

Monkey's face is priceless

Recess = classic kid's show

I'm such a sap for small fuzzy critters Especially ones that make cute noises like this. And these kitties.

Really interesting way of looking at purchases I could not imagine having to catalog every purchase I made and I think that would be a good way of cutting down on misc spending.

AAAAAAAAnd new favorite person Preach Jesse Williams.

Exactly! I love my job to pieces but we don't have paid family leave. We get FMLA, which is something, but dammit, if we got paid leave, I could probably be that much closer to tiny overlords. Three months of leave is nice, but my bills still need to paid during those three months.

Snippets: Pre-Thanksgiving Edition

Signed off from work at noon (ish) and don't have to think about work again until Monday. Mmmmmm.

This post was supposed to be up on Sunday but we got to fight our plumbing again. Thankfully, after spending an hour in the cold rain this week augering our sewage pipe in the front yard, it appears to have fixed the issue. Of course, now it looks like the problem was root intrusion. What is the benefit of home ownership again?

Be still my heart Because honestly, why else do we use the internet if not to look up adorable pictures like this? I love furry four legged critters so much, I will be that cat lady at 60.

THE FLUFF I would use this kitty as a pillow.

Stunning Mother Nature is awesome. The end.

About Zimmerman (TW for violence)

The issue here isn’t that this white woman called the police because she feared for her life - that is legitimate and the police acted appropriately. The issue is that the police did not act appropriately the last time this violent aggressor harmed someone. The issue isn’t that the police picked him up in less than 44 minutes, it’s that for Trayvon they didn’t bother to arrest this asshole for 44 days.

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words Brave brave lady.

I want to marry these photos. Cause damn. The one with the leaves falling in the sunlight? SWOON

Truth Why is it I find more knowledge on Tumblr than my supposed "liberal arts" college?

Distrusting Women (TW for rape)

It’s no exaggeration to say that distrust of women is the driving force of the “social issues” agenda of the Republican Party. From food stamps and “legitimate rape,” to violence against women and immigration policy. “We need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that’s the way nature made it,” explained the man who penned Arizona’s immigration law. “Men don’t drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do.” I could do this ad infinitum.

Immigration is a feminist issue

These women know that their position of power is threatened by woc and this is why white mainstream feminism is always been exclusionary to woc.

My life

LOL. Love this

I love concise explanations. And this one comes with pictures!

LOVE this woman. Really and truly. More on Michelle Obama from Racialicious.

The president has been ridiculed as an elitist for suggesting that more people go to college. So if you think there’s no political risk, maybe you haven’t been paying attention. Also, you misunderstand the place Michelle Obama occupies as the first African-American first lady. You seem to think she is steering clear of the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype.

But when she calls herself mom-in-chief, she is rejecting a different stereotype–the role of Mammy. She is saying that her daughters–her vulnerable, brilliant, beautiful black daughters–are the most important thing to her. The first lady is saying, “You, Miss Ann, will have to clean your own house, because I will be caring for my own.” Instead of agreeing that the public sphere is more imporant than Sasha and Malia, she buried Mammy and embraced being a mom on her own terms.

A guide to anxiety disorders YES. My anxiety disorder still pops up on occasion but I'm so thankful that I was in a position to get the help needed for it.

Damn. (TW for rape) I won't even try to summarize. Just go read this poem.

When the fuck are people going to learn? I mean, honestly. Blackface is not okay and never will be. Neither is this shit, Katy Perry.

THIS. I would also highly recommend Angela Davis' book, Are Prisons Obsolete?

The U.S. imprisons more people than any other society in the history of the world, with more than 2 million people currently behind bars, and private companies are gunning for more (PDF). The Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), just one of several private prison companies, netted $1.7 billion dollars in 2010. CCA’s president and CEO, Damon Hininger, made $3.2 million in 2010. The Geo Group, another top prison company, raked in $1.2 billion and paid its CEO, George Zoley, $3.4 million the same year. The federal government and state governments across the nation funnel money into these private prisons, making them a multibillion dollar industry.

And this is even putting aside how fucking racist the prison system is. Absolutely shameful and disgusting.

Right in the feels

Some days, it makes me want to hug my fiancé so terribly tightly and run away to somewhere where no one knows us, maybe live as gypsies on the road. Maybe I can outrun this legacy.

But I don’t do that. Instead, I clear away the pile of yesterday’s mail, invite my family over for Thanksgiving dinner around my small clean table, offer surface conversation, and am grateful I’m an adult and can define my own space. That I can build my own baby family, and that, together, he and I can fight the inertia and build something beautiful instead.

Book Review: F'em: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls

Jennifer Baumgardner's latest, F'em!: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls leaves a lot to be desired, least of all the title, which hardly applies to any essay in the collection at all. The book is a mix of interviews with some of the biggest names in the feminist community, including Ani Difranco, Loretta Ross and Julia Serano, along with personal essays about Baumgardner's own life and perspective.

But in out of the eight interviews in the book, there are only three women of color. In the interview with Debbie Stoller, she states that
     "trying to struggle for feminism, just feminism, is almost impossible, because of all these other causes that get placed in front. If you look at the democratic convention from the 1970's, when women agitated for equal rights, then the feminist cause became the lesbian cause...When we are talking about gay people's right to marry, we don't also start talking about women's position in marriages and independence and yada yada yada. When racism is in the news, people don't also start talking about women's rights."

Can I just a moment to publicly say what the fuck? The white and hetero privilege in that statement; truly throughout her entire interview (she also complains that working long hours, even if you love what you do is awful and that "stay-at-home parents need to contribute something to the picture") is disgusting. Stoller is the founder of Bust and I'm honestly content to never pick up another issue if these are in fact her true feelings. Obviously, she says more in the interview, but this two main statements were extremely upsetting and frustrating to me as a feminist who believes that intersectionality is key and vital to the feminist movement.

Jennifer Baumgardner has contributed a lot to the feminist movement, but which one? Her books are geared toward a white women's viewpoint, which is undoubtedly why I did enjoy some of the essays in the book: I was the target audience. The book mainly touches on pregnancy (both of hers), children and abortion. I don't begrudge her topics, she is writing what she knows and what she worked for as an activist, which includes her I Had an Abortion project. I just found it difficult to connect with her writing, knowing that she could go so much deeper and touch on topics that aren't broadcast in the way others are. She is similar to Jessica Valenti in that nature, because they are both white women, they have significant power in what their messages about feminism are and they fall short by skimming the surface.

(Photo credit: Book Depository)