Signal Boost: petition Disney to keep Brave’s Merida marketing true to movie
‘Brave’ creator blasts Disney for ‘blatant sexism’ in princess makeover:
Quick link: Adults Who Give Children Guns
From my friend Mel, an Aussie living in Philadelphia:
Adults who give children guns are as bad as adults who give children porn.
Some women want to stay home with children and feminism needs to make peace with that
Alexandra Carlton has an article in The Age this weekend, “The retro housewife” that proves it is just as possible to build a faux phenomenon in Australia around smart women dropping off the career ladder to become domestic over-achievers as it is to build that case in the United States, though this piece is more [...]
Thread: #forcedadoption #babysnatching
So the formal Government apology from PM Gillard is about to happen. I just wanted to note an important social justice moment.
P.S. the Welcome to Country and opening speech reminding everybody of the particular example of the Stolen Generations is an important note on which to start.
Biddulph discovers something that I think we’ve been calling feminism
Parenting expert, Steve Biddulph, who I am not a fan of for various reasons, is best known for his book, Raising Boys. Now Biddulph has begun calling attention to the plight of girls with the launch of his new book, Raising Girls. That’s nice, except man oh man, does this guy do some fabulous mansplaining. [...]
A thought experiment
Slacker Mums: Lets come up with a scenario and then add bits to see where we end up.
A couple of things to bear in mind with the ‘slacker mum’ movement
Jane Caro has just written a rather charming article, “Over-mothered? No, over mothering” for the Sydney Morning Herald. For birthdays, I bought two packs of 12 lamington fingers and stuck a candle in each one. They served a whole class. I was very bad at any sort of preparation. I only once helped a daughter [...]
Quick Hit: Different desires
Dealing with different levels of desire: women they’re looking at you. Only you.
The controversy in writing about your children
This article in The Atlantic by Phoebe Maltz Bovy, “The ethical implications of parents writing about their children” is incredibly unforgiving of mother writers and bloggers. She sets the benchmark very low for the test of appropriateness with writing and it’s anything that may embarrass your children when they’re older. My god, I think the [...]
Quicklink: Beauty and the Beast, Love Actually and the skill of consuming media critically
From gyzym on Tumblr: just shut up …consuming media critically is a skill, and in an age where media is more prevalent than ever before, it’s a skill worth having. It’s a skill worth having because you are going to continue to be exposed to media, and it is going to continue to attempt to [...]
Friday Hoyden: Nieceblogging – what’s she making?
Here she is bonding with her Dad over the Christmas break by doing a little gadget construction. Bonding with your daughters doing electronics, woodwork, mechanics or baking: A very feminist thing to do over the holidays and there should be a lot more of it.
Education is a political issue. This is why.
This, “For many poor students, leap to college ends in a hard fall” is a very well-executed piece in The New York Times. It follows three talented, but terribly disadvantaged, girl students who make it into university but then manage to go no further, and it shows why education doesn’t always lead to social mobility; [...]
The ‘damaged women’ vote
Recently we were being trolled by an Australian economist, Dr Steven Kates about the Obama win in the United States of America. Among his conclusions, that the Obama vote was made up of the medicants (ie. people who need significant medical treatment and can’t afford it, as in, I guess any of us at some [...]
Anthropomorphic Personifications
There’s been a bit of the annual Twitter discussion recently about Santa Claus. Specifically about how to handle the “Is he real?” questions, and the personal and social ramifications of same.

Recent Comments
Beppie, Mindy, Holly
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, Chally, Mindy, Aphie, tigtog [...]
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, angharad, tigtog, YetAnotherMatt, The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, Mindy [...]
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, AMM, Chris, The Kittehs' Unpaid Help, QoT, David [...]
tigtog, Xanthë, tigtog, Ali, tigtog, Lauredhel [...]
David, Lad Litter, Megpie71, David
Chris, Mindy, Chris, Mindy, Chris, tigtog [...]
Aphie
Mindy, Mindy, David, tigtog, fmark
angharad, David, Mindy, David, tigtog, Mindy [...]
Megpie71, Megpie71, Sharon M, Chris, Helen, Chris [...]
tigtog, Aqua, of the Questioners, tigtog, David, Mindy, tigtog [...]