"Real women have curves” was a marketing slogan thought up to sell people overpriced, ill-fitting pants. It does NOT promote body positivity – it only perpetuates body policing by turning the tables on people who don’t fit into yet another arbitrary ideal.
The job is to BUST THE FUCKING PARADIGM APART, not shift it a little bit toward the fat side. The job is to remind people, bodies are not public property and your opinion about an individual’s body is only an opinion, not a valid judgment of their worth as a human being. The JOB is to destroy systemic oppression of nonconforming, rebellious bodies no matter what those bodies look like."
"Here is the thing, okay? Coming into a feminist conversation with, “Have you considered that sometimes women acquire free drinks at bars?” is like walking into graduate school during Philosophy finals and saying, “Have you considered that the color blue that I see may not be the color blue that you see?”
Imagine you are the guy who just walked into that Philosophy class and laid that shit down. Imagine the class full of students who have worked very hard and committed themselves and sacrificed to be here, students who have spent several years of their lives learning about this subject. Imagine now their feelings when you go to the head of the classroom with a smirk on your face and demand the professor give you an A for effort. Imagine now that they think you are a douchebag asshole, because they do, and because you are. You are a douchebag asshole because you are obviously so self-centered, arrogant, and completely ignorant of the world around you, that you thought you could walk into a high-level course with no background and no work and say something profoundly simplistic and totally unrelated and also everybody should congratulate you for having done this thing, so brave, so provocative.
[….]
You are not asking us a real question. You are simply illustrating, for all to see, your own ignorance. You are saying, “I have not considered the implications of the question I have just asked. I have not taken the time nor effort nor commitment to sit down and ask myself this question. Instead, I have come into your philosophy classroom/office/feminist blog and shat out my question with a smirk, because I believe that my two seconds of thought are worth more than your long-term analysis, because I believe I am worth more.”"
Exactly! This can also be applied to conversations other things as well(racism, trans* issues, etc.) Usually, the person asked has already lived (or living) the experience that you’re asking about.
Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate drops by 36.9 per cent
Better access to contraception, higher quality sex education and shifting social norms have contributed to a 36.9 per cent decline in Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate between 1996 and 2006, according to a report released today by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada.
America’s emphasis on abstinence-only sex ed “tends to result in a higher percentage of teens becoming pregnant,” as does the country’s lack of universal health care. Poverty is another factor.
Among the four countries compared for 2006, Canada boasted the lowest teen birth and abortion rate per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 (27.9), followed by Sweden (31.4), England/Wales (60.3), and the United States (61.2).
I love it when Canada beats Sweden in a positive social indicator.
