Browse

This pains me to write, because I adore David Byrne. The man is incredibly inspiring, always active, never resting on his laurels, a great social critic and just plain rockin' (his music made up a big chunk of my 'growing-up' soundtrack). So I was pretty bummed by one of the bike racks he recently created for the New York City (see the full article on The New York Times site). Each rack is in a different shape that relates to the location (for example, a dollar sign on Wall Street). It's a great way to add a little glamor to cycling, which is, of course a great way to use less gasoline, which is a great way to save the planet etc.

Our beloved punctuation mark is under attack for being 'girly'...

H/T to Broadsheet for linking to the Boston Globe article:  

Revisioning and strategic planning are hard work for an organization. We at B-Word/Bitch have been thinking about this process for months, even years for some folks, but last Friday we formally began this journey and I have got to say, it is going to be a pretty great adventure these next few months.

Debbie is devoting an entire post to our process so I won't divulge more, but being in the planning process and looking at our strengths really solidified one of the reasons I feel B-Word/Bitch is so incredibly inspiring as a non-profit: Our supporters.

So New York lawyer Roy Den Hollander once married a young woman he met while working as a private investigator in Russia. Once Den Hollander moved himself and his foreign bride back to New York City, though, she took a job as a stripper and proceeded to dump him within months.

It's a sad little story, and probably not nearly the first of its kind. But to say Den Hollander seems to have had a wee bit of trouble letting it go would be a massive understatement. Since his marriage ended, the spurned groom has turned into a men's-rights crusader so convinced that feminism is the reason for all his personal woes that he's literally made a career out of litigating against it.

“Basically, I just want people to see what it would be like if plus-size models were represented similarly to slim models." -- Kristin Lou Herout. 

Passing on the news of a recently-launched website dedicated to honoring and mobilizing girls' media production called Girls Make Media. Creator Mary Celeste Kearney is hoping the site will become a resource for girls, as well as media educators, researchers, and others dedicated to amplifying the voices of girls.

Looks like it's off to a good start -- please check it out, spread the word, contribute... 

Back to the most recent Bitch fundraising trip...

I'd never been to Salt Lake City before, so I was excited to check it out.  After a long drive in from Denver, I was even more excited to be greeted by a plate of vegan cookies, freshly-baked by our host, Courtney Maguire (thanks, Courtney!). Courtney is one of the folks involved with the Female Empwerment Movement (FEM), a new(ish) feminist group created in response to the high rates of sexual violence in Salt Lake. FEM also helped organize and get the word out of the evening's events, and I'm grateful. 

I'm also grateful to Angela Brown, Meghann Griggs, and the rest of the folks at SLUG magazine, who responded almost immediately to our call for assistance in helping put together the discussion and fundraiser in Salt Lake. SLUG was founded in 1989 and remains Utah's oldest alternative paper. 

 

In my shock at seeing a Wal-Mart ad on the Mother Jones website, I neglected to include a link to the article I was searching for in the first place, which is the story of the California Secretary of State's office rejecting the name Bitch Publications on the grounds that it was obscene. 

I've been debating whether I should post this for a few days, but I've decided I must.  

Earlier this week, I went to the Mother Jones website to find an old article I wanted to post here. But my search was interrupted when I saw an ad for Wal-Mart pop up.

An ad for Wal-Mart on the website of a magazine that calls itself:   

An independent nonprofit whose roots lie in a commitment to social justice implemented through first rate investigative reporting.