feminist blogs

Image via Wikipedia A study released this week has shown that racial minorities in the U.S. are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia than whites are, suggesting once again how powerful the link between social status and health can be. When people write about intersectionality, it can seem impersonal: this force and that [...]

I can take no credit for asking this question or raising this issue. Many people I respect have written about this subject before. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find most of these posts through Google, though I remember that one appeared here. You see, when I first started seeing these posts, my response was [...]

 A Virginia legislator, while protesting funding for Planned Parenthood, said disabled children are punishment for aborting  firstborns.

Virginia Delegate Robert G. Marshall (R) said, “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

You can hear the remarks  here.  

Marshall has since apologized, saying his comments were “misconstrued.” From his website:

“A story by Capital News Service regarding my remarks at a recent press conference opposing taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood conveyed the impression that I believe disabled children are a punishment for prior abortions. No one who knows me or my record would imagine that I believe or intended to communicate such an offensive notion. I have devoted a generation of work to defending disabled and unwanted children, and have always maintained that they are special blessings to their parents. Nevertheless, I regret any misimpression my poorly chosen words may have created as to my deep commitment to fighting for these vulnerable children and their families.”

I don’t think I misinterpreted what he said about people with disabilities being “vengeance” and “punishment’. And his reasoning about first borns was absurd. How ignorant.  

But then again, this is the same man who supposedly  opposed abortion in the case of rape and incest because “sometimes incest is voluntary”.  And he is the same man that compared a budget bill to slavery.

I have witnessed many an online conversation about the politics of food devolve into a debate over whether or not being vegan or vegetarian (veg*n) is a privilege (though this did not happen with Colleen’s excellent post last month about Feminism & Food). These arguments result from an error in categorization: being veg*n is not [...]

As part of their preview of their upcoming This Is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Forum, the experimental poetics blog, Delirious hem has posted a provocative piece about feminism and disability from poet Jennifer Bartlett. In it, she notes several areas in which feminism has failed to advocate for women with disabilities: Sometimes, I feel [...]

Avatar is a pop culture force to be reckoned with. After only two weeks in theaters, it has raked in over $1 billion in international ticket sales. While it’s been much-hyped for its special effects, it has also sparked a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about its treatment of gender and themes of racial [...]

Image via Wikipedia According to a new CDC study that looked at medical and educational records, in 2006, .91% of eight-year-olds in the US (or 1.45% of boys and .32% of girls) were on the autistic spectrum (which includes Asperger Syndrome and PDD-NOS), though if you’re going for the scare story the way most of the [...]

Attention GAB readers living in the Bay Area! If you’re looking for plans for the upcoming weekend, consider checking out Tranny Fest, San Francisco’s own transgender film festival, now celebrating its twelfth year. Of particular interest is the world premiere of excerpts from Lexie Cannes, a film by Tom Bertling. The film tells the story of [...]

What does it take to draw attention to the harassment and other mistreatment suffered by people with disabilities? What does it take for the police and society at large to care? The answer, for the UK at least, appears to be a death. Indeed, for the issue of hate crimes against the disabled to become [...]

In June, GAB covered the story of a young employee in London who was told that neither her artificial limb nor the long-sleeved cardigan she wore in an attempt to hide it fit “the Abercrombie look”. It turns out that this was not an isolated incident of ableism at Abercrombie and Fitch. Minnesota Public Radio [...]