(Photos courtesy of Better Days Utah 2020) Elizabeth Taylor, left, Alice Kasai, Zitkála-Šá and Hannah Kaaepa are Utahn women of color who fought for equal voting rights. Source: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/08/16/utah-women-color-were/ “Indigenous women have had a political voice in their nations on this land for over 1,000 years,” Sally Roesch Wagner, historian and editor of the 2019 anthology The Women’s Suffrage Movement, points out. “Women’s rights is not a new concept on this land; it’s a very, very old one. And the clan mothers of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, the H ..read more

  Diana E. H. Russell in 2009. Throughout her career as a scholar she studied and wrote about violence against women, including rape, incest, child abuse and battering. Credit...Susan Kennedy [Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html] Rest in power and peace, Diana E. H. Russell!?   I'm trying to imagine all the girls' and women's lives her work and its effects have helped, in part by assisting them in finding their way out of a state of current traumatic and post-traumatic despair, by popularizing the term femicide, by naming men's systematic ..read more

As you may know, Tamika Mallory co-organized the 2017 Women's March on Washington. Here she is addressing a Minneapolis rally on May 29, 2020. This is the most compressed, powerful dose of truth delivered to Amerikkka I've seen or heard since I don't know when. Four versions of this amazing speech follow.  The first is more complete than most on the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxAhGhHZMI     The second has English subtitles and shows the women who were around her, supporting her: Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkGC1jdEtKc With the rest I'll just provide t ..read more

image of Black feminist marchers is from here I've been struggling to figure out how to maintain integrity of practice, of action in friendship and within communities and in isolation. How to find my footing, meaning both my voice and in what perspectives my voice is grounded. I hope to write a series of posts about who influences my thinking and doing and where I am landing at this time. Radical Black feminism, or Black radical feminism, has been a core influence. Some of the key figures for me have been Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Alicia Garza, among others. Each wo ..read more

This photo of Andrea Dworkin and John Stoltenberg was found here. [I have revised this piece since published on 4/22.  — Julian, 4/26/2020] PART I: INTRODUCTION In recognition of the fifteenth anniversary of the passing of the great Andrea Dworkin, her life partner, John Stoltenberg, recently wrote a piece published online at the Boston Review. You may read it here (or see the URL in the notes): "Andrea Dworkin Was a Trans Ally."(1) I fully appreciate and understand where John is coming from; I share his concern about any ideology or actions that aim to generate bigotry, syst ..read more

  book cover Although this was published several years ago, this book is new to me. It was put on my radar by Swedish feminist Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a writer, journalist, and activist. I found her via this audio recorded lecture wherein she mentions it. She addresses interpersonally abusive men's tactics and behavior in the initial stages and how those tactics may mirror and mimic the country's oppressive male supremacist government and its leaders. The audio link was sent to me from a friend in Serbia. I believe the close translation of the title of the lecture is: Types of Abuse: How to R ..read more

Stormé DeLarverie is from here Stormé was always clear: “It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was civil disobedience. It was no damn riot.” Stories are missing from several accounts of what occurred that fateful night. For example, some say the grief over the death of Judy Garland, whose funeral service had ended not long before the midnight uprising, put many of her followers in a less obedient place: the deep grief may have fueled the rebellious anger and rage. I grew up hearing that. I also grew up with the impression that this was primarily a white gay male story, of ..read more

image is from Elle, here I won't put the faces of virulent misogynists in this blog post. We all know what they look like. What Brett Kavanaugh, Lindsay Graham, Trump and Comp are doing is showing us how blatant misogyny can be, acted out not timidly or shamefully. Unsurprisingly and predictably, this is not how the story is being told. Instead we are seeing it on cable and internet news with cynicism and sarcasm in public, or brought through testimony from private spaces, in bedrooms literally over women's bodies. The reign of white male supremacy has never gone away. From decade t ..read more

image is from here Two of the highest ranking outed perps, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and POTUS Donald Trump, may be welcoming another predatory man into their rank ranks, reinforcing and shaping the US's laws and policies. Structurally, privately, and professionally, they all support woman-hating predation. The potential disaster and disgrace of confirming Kavanaugh and the horror of the predicted re-election of Trump means half the US Senate and half of the US population are reinforcing patriarchal norms in the face of recent challenges to rape and porn culture ..read more

Link is from here: It is with sadness that I am remembering Aretha Franklin's great gifts without her in this world. A few brief thoughts: She maintained authority over her music and what she chose to share about her life. She did what few women and fewer Black women are allowed to do in the white and male-dominated music industry: require respect, and get it. As she was the first woman, the first Black woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I heard someone state that while she was honored by them they were far more honored to have her in their club. Her truth ..read more