Debbie says: A couple of months ago, Jessa Crispin at Bookslut was very actively recommending Depression: A Public Feeling by Ann Cvetkovich. I’m not prone to depression and I had never heard the phrase “public feeling,” but Crispin’s comments made me curious, and I picked up the book. [the] idea that depression can come from [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Melissa McEwen at Shakesville recently delivered a very satisfactory smackdown to Richard Dawkins when he decided to discuss his opinions of abortion on Twitter. In this series of tweets, Dawkins said, “My criterion for “relevant to morality of abortion” is standard consequentialist morality. Opponents follow absolutist morality. Simple.” First, to quote [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Tomorrow is the Daytona 500, and Danica Patrick stands a pretty good chance of winning it. For those who don’t follow race car driving, the Daytona 500 is a major NASCAR (stock-car driving) race, and Patrick is the first woman NASCAR driver to make the very top rank in the sport. [...]

Laurie says: The Freedom’s Sisters Exhibition is at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  The website is an exhibition in it’s own right. Much of our national memory of the civil rights movement is embodied by male figureheads whose visibility in boycotts, legal proceedings, and mass demonstrations dominated newspaper and television coverage in the [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME. ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION One billion women are rising tomorrow, all over the world. On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 14 February 2013, we are inviting ONE BILLION [...]

Debbie says: Welcome to 2013! We hope you had sane holidays. In our Thanksgiving post, Laurie and I mentioned Rolling Jubilee. We both wanted to give it a little more space of its own. Jubilee comes from many faith traditions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A jubilee is an event in which all debts are [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: If you live in the U.S., and you’re not watching the news extremely carefully, you probably don’t know that a powerful Hungarian politician, Marton Gyongyosi, made a speech in the Hungarian parliament at the end of November, calling for “the authorities to compile a national list of Hungarian Jews, especially those [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Last week, a defense attorney in Cleveland, Texas, described an 11-year-old girl who was gang-raped by as many as 18 men as a “spider” luring men into her web: Like the spider and the fly. Wasn’t she saying, ‘Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?’ ” Taylor asked. At [...]

Since 2005, we’ve been writing posts about news to be thankful for. This year, we have a lot to celebrate. The bulk of our good news this year (but not all of it!) comes from the U.S. elections, but before we get to that, here’s breaking good news. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a [...]

Debbie says: Lynne Murray pointed me at this article by John Jeremiah Sullivan on his trip to Cuba with his Cuban-American wife and their daughter in the spring of 2012. The whole article is interesting, and Sullivan’s complete unawareness of his American privilege is simultaneously business-as-usual and jaw-dropping. He’s been to Cuba two or three [...]