“If you want to blame her for all of Bill Clinton’s bad decisions, which many Sanders partisans do, then you can’t do that without admitting that she did in fact play a major role in policy; if you want to trivialise her as ‘just a First Lady,’ then you can’t use any part of Bill’s administration against her. Pick your poison, but they’re mutually exclusive options. ” [Sady Doyle]
“… [The Kardashians] also exhibit an attitude toward their bodies that can only be called revolutionary. Women have long asked for fair vagina representation in media, for their vaginas not only to be sexual objects but to smell and bleed and pop out babies, and on their show, Kardashian vaginas do all that and more, which is very different than other pop-culture vaginas.”
“When asked if racism existed outside of Compton by SPIN magazine in 1990, Eazy-E replied, ‘The black police in Compton are worse than the white police. Chuck D gets involved in all that black stuff, we don’t. Fuck that black power shit; we don’t give a fuck. Free South Africa; we don’t give a fuck…We’re not into politics at all.’” [Talking Points Memo]
I also recapped Outback Championship Wrestling’s latest show.
And I hosted their podcast, chatting to Ricardo Rodriguez.
While we’re shamelessly self-promoting, I’m also at Bitch Flicks writing about Shondaland’s bad mothers. More bad mother content to come in next week’s collection.
The Good Wife‘s Alicia Florrick’s wardrobe changes as her character does. I’ve just started watching this series so it’s interesting to see the looks I’m familiar with and how Alicia changes over the subsequent four seasons I’m yet to watch. [The Hairpin]
These lyric intelligence ratings from pop songs from the past ten years made my blood boil. More to come next week. [Seat Smart]
Anne Helen Peterson dissects the ultimate family Christmas movie, The Family Stone. What’s your ultimate Christmas movie? Mine have always been the Home Alones (I’m partial to the second one, Lost in New York) (whose haven’t?), the Miracle on 34th Street remake with Mara Wilson and the trashy ridiculousness that is Olivia Newton John in A Mom for Christmas. The plot, for those of you unlucky enough to have never heard of it, is this: Jessica is a motherless girl who wants a mum for Christmas. She makes a wish on a department store wishing well for, you guessed it, a mum for Christmas. Next thing Jessica knows, Amy (Newton John) shows up for the holiday season to act as a housekeeper and babysitter for Jessica and her dad. Plot twist: Amy is a department store mannequin come to life. Hijinks ensue. [LA Review of Books]
As tensions between police and unarmed people of colour continue in the U.S., here are the 76 unarmed people of colour who’ve been murdered by police in the past 15 years. [Gawker]
Feminist writers of the Aussie and NZ persuasion, including yours truly, are featured as part of the 79th Down Under Feminists Carnival. [Hoyden About Town]
I went as Beyoncé standing in front of the feminist sign at the MTV VMAs to my work Christmas party. Head on over to my Twitter page to check out photos from the night.
My friend, colleague and important disability advocacy worker Stella Young died on the weekend. Below are some of her pieces I have linked to in the past.
I didn’t know Stella Young too well. We worked together for a few years but it wasn’t until she started getting heavily involved in—or I just started noticing on social media—feminism, disability advocacy and social justice in general that we realised we had more in common than we thought. She even commented on this when I bumped into her at a party.
I enjoyed getting a chance to catch up with her at events such as SlutWalk and the Melbourne Writers Festival, otherwise I kept up to date with the goings on in her world on social media.
I was quite shocked to get the news of her passing yesterday morning, as it seemed like only a few days before she was live tweeting Four Corners and posting pictures of lunch with friends.
As others, most notably Stella’s good friend, Clementine Ford, have written, Stella wasn’t interested in being your inspiration. (Though when discussing her death at work yesterday, that word was thrown around a bit.)
In addition to me checking the language I use to speak to and about people with disabilities, though, Stella did teach me a few things, whether directly or through her important work. They are:
Make noise about inaccessibility. It’s shocking to come to the realisation that not only are the majority of places and services inaccessible but that most people don’t even think twice about it. For example, Stella spoke at a Melbourne Writers Festival event in 2013 about the book Destroying the Joint. Stella managed to get in the joint but the event started late because it didn’t occur to the organisers that she couldn’t get onto the stage. She told a story of some of the hired help offering to lift her and her chair onto the stage, but she’d long since stopped accepting such assistance. Why should she be made to feel infantilised when the embarrassment should fall to the event organisers?
A few months ago Stella traveled to the U.S. in pursuit of her work (what exactly I wasn’t privy to). I remember seeing something on her Facebook or Twitter about how proactive the U.S. is about accessibility and that returning home to Melbourne made her realise how far behind the eight ball we actually are. I was shocked at this revelation as, looking back on my trip to the U.S. last year, I don’t remember accessibility standing out to me. This proves my above point that so many people for whom accessibility is not an issue are oblivious to it, even those who claim to be allies.
One of the more popular rants Stella went on on social media was about an accessible toilet at a Melbourne bar being used as a storage area. The pressure she and her followers put on the bar (whose name escapes me) saw them making changes almost immediately.
I can’t help but wonder why we still use the term “carer” for people working in the disability support sector. What a disgrace. #4corners
And just a couple of weeks ago, when Stella was live tweeting Four Corners, she influenced the language I use to describe support workers. In my job, I have to interact with support workers quite regularly, whom I’d always referred to as carers. From the point of seeing her tweet onwards, I now call them support workers.
Stella left us with an impressive body of work including comedy stylings and written words in addition to her advocacy. Perhaps most touchingly, her final piece was published recently as part of the book Between Us: Women of Letters. It was a letter to her 80-year-old self.
