Happy Friday, Unicorns! Time once again to catch up on some of the news stories catching my eye this week. (more…)

It’s not too often that I have much to say on the subject of sports, but we’ve got a few stories of note this week, as well as some new hurdles to LGBT equality. Throw in some medical/science-y bits, and we’ve got ourselves a newsy roundup. Let’s get to it:

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One of the Steubenville rapists got to walk free this week, the pay gap may be even screwier than…

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Nice Guys™ and MRAs! “Fake” geek girls and cosplayers! Lesbian cookies! There’s something for…

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I think my favorite article this week was about how institutionalized feminism prevents assholes…

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I took last week off from recapping the misogynistic crap in the news because, for once, I couldn’t…

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What’s been happening in your world? I’m settling into fall, and the world is falling into…well,…

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Welcome to another edition of News in Asia; same great column, different time slot. This week we…

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Even before Little Juniper arrived, I was faced with questions about my contraceptive choices. Come…

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Compared to last week, the news today is downright cheerful. And that’s not saying much, because it…

While I am a huge proponent of the good ole Nuva Ring — mostly because it did not screw with my emotional health, dermatology, or weight like some other hormonal methods of birth control did — I've been off the Ring since July of last year due to long-lapsed insurance and a couple of other mitigating factors. So, to keep untimely fetuses at bay, we've been going the ole rubber route.

We have people trying to make windows into women's uteruses, many times motivated by religious institutions and what these institutions teach. Yet when the Obama administration announced that all businesses in the United States would be required to have health insurance that covered and paid for contraception for women patients, religious institutions got upset about this and claimed that the government was trampling on religious freedoms. So the Obama administration came up with a Plan B: religious institutions wouldn't have to pay for the contraception themselves, but the insurance companies would have to pay for it. Still a lot of people are against this policy, and there has been much political posturing over it. Speaker of the House John Boehner—who just likes to run his mouth anyway regardless of whether or not he sounds intelligent—has bellowed that such a policy is trampling over the religious rights of those who believe and practice otherwise. The House of Representatives has gone so far as hold hearings and hear testimony from religious leaders as to why it does and from others who say why it doesn't. Yet when a young law student from Georgetown wanted to make her voice heard as to why it didn't trample on religious rights and why it was important, she was banned from testifying. Because her voice wasn't important enough.

And the decades-long, sad history of the war on fat is that it has been waged on women's bodies especially. The message we get, again and again, is that we should take up as little space as possible. That our voices shouldn't be heard too much, and that voice is only valid if reverberating from a slim, youthful-looking, fair-skinned body. The war on fat is part and parcel of the war on women and the war on people of color. The message we get is that we should let men (and only men) figure out what's best for us.