the argument that the periods women currently experience on the pill are just an imitation of menstruation doesn't make me any less uncomfortable with the idea of doing away with menstruation all together. despite the reassurances from pharmaceutical companies that the "new" pill will be safe, i can't help but think of the history of oral contraceptives. from its early testing on puerto rican women, the serious, and even deadly side effects experienced by patients were dismissed and ignored by researchers. for decades doctors and drug companies have disregarded women's complaints about birth control's side effects, and each new advance has just been the same old hormones in a shiny new package. for years i would explain to doctors that i'd had crippling depression on two different dosages of birth control pills, and they would recommend me the patch or the ring or depo provera, essentially the exact same drugs i had just been complaining about delivered in a new fashion. i can't help but think that these new pills are just more doses of the same drugs so many of the women i know hate in the first place.

Anonymous wrote

"But do they have to make is so easy? free to low income residents? Isn't abortion supposed to be a huge life choice?"

Forcing low income women to pay for abortions doesn't help them think more about the alternatives. It means deciding between food and an abortion, or between electric bills and abortion. It means that they put off the procedure for weeks or months, trying to pull together enough money to pay, as the abortion itself gets more and more expensive, or eventually illegal, in the case of Mexico City (where abortions are only legal in the first trimester.)

Having an abortion is a difficult decision for some women, and a simple one for others. For every woman, it should be made based on her desires, principles, ability to raise a child, and mental and physical health, not on wheter or not she can afford it. Kudos to the politicians of Mexico City, (and the amazing Mexican feminist movement, without whom this decision would never have hapened). If only our country could be as just.

Although I would certainly have to disagree with the poster who alleged that all feminists hate transwomen, I would like to point out that the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has gone a long way to perpetuate that stereotype, through their "womyn born womyn" admittence policy. Kudos to the good folks at Camp Trans (most of whom would also consider themselves feminists) for fighting for an inclusive and healing definition of womyn kind.

While I'm the first to admit that the graphic novels that everyone always mentions to justify the literary importance of comic books are amazing (dark knight returns, watchmen, safe area gorazde, etc), there are a lot of plain old comic books published each week that are thought provoking, compelling, and beautifully drawn. I'm thinking of comic books like BPRD and Hellboy, Y the Last Man, the first couple of years of the Authority or the first season of the Ultimates. Authors like Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis and Brian K. Vaughan are writing political, thoughtful and moving works within the "mainstream" comics genre. As much as I love the brainy alternative comics out there (and I have to include a shout out to Jessica Abel's La Perdida as an awesome recent work that has been overlooked in the discussion thus far) I'd love for some of the hipster comic snobs to take a chance on some of the more interesting works being published by the mainstream publishers. In the same way that there's room in my life for both Junebug and Pirates of the Caribbean, there are a lot of Chris Ware or Seth fans out there who might enjoy an issue or two of Planetary or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen if they gave them a try.

The Female Victims of Sexual Violence project seems far and away the organization I would want to support working on sexual violence in the Congo, but no one is going to send a bank transfer to the Congo... We've got to be able to set up a better way to collect donations and support this organization. I know that in Chicago, Crossroads Fund, a progressive community foundation, set up a pooled fund to collect donations for the WE-ACTx Rwanda project (an amazing organization working with survivors of the genocide living with HIV-AIDS). The pooled fund allows Crossroads Fund and WE-ACTx to collect tax deductible donations, and make wire transfers every couple of months, cutting down on the bank fees involved and making it easier for people to donate from the states. You can read more about it here: http://www.crossroadsfund.org/GiveADaytoWorldAIDS.htm

Although Crossroads isn't able to take on another international project like this (full disclosure, I used to work there), I'm sure there's another foundation that would be willing to provide a service like this for such an urgent need.

Any thoughts?

I have to add The Dark Crystal! As a child many of the movies I loved, including Baron Munchausen, Time Bandits, and the Secret of Nimh, were a little bit dark and scary. Those are the movies that have held up best when I go back to them as an adult. Although some of the puppets in the Dark Crystal scared me as a child, I loved that movie with a passion and watched it again and again.