In my usual way, found this for a dollar at a yard sale last summer. Read the intro. Forgot about it until yesterday, whereupon I plowed through 70 pages in one go. lol Anyway, I think it’s good.
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we remember Flo Kennedy, who was born on this date February 11, 1916, in Kansas City, Missouri. Kennedy was a lawyer, feminist and civil-rights activist. As a lawyer, she represented Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Assata Shakur, H. Rap Brown, and Valerie Solanas (for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol). In 1972 she formed the Feminist Party and filed an Internal Revenue Service complaint alleging that the Catholic Church violates tax-exempt requirements by spending money to influence political decisions. "I'm just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady . . . & a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me."
She grew up at a time when the KKK was quite active in Kansas City. She remembered her father had to have a shotgun to keep them safe. "My parents gave us a fantastic sense of security and worth. By the time the bigots got around to telling us that we were nobody, we already knew we were somebody." As a young woman, she moved to Harlem and enrolled at Columbia. She was refused admission to their law school because she “was a woman.” She knew it was because she was black. So, she threatened to sue them and they admitted her. She was the only black person among the eight women in her class.
As an activist, she once said, "we have a pathologically, institutionally racist, sexist, classist society. And that niggerizing techniques that are used don't only damage black people, but they also damage women, gay people, ex-prison inmates, prostitutes, children, old people, handicapped people, native Americans. And that if we can begin to analyze the pathology of oppression… we would learn a lot about how to deal with it." As early as 1966, she was picketing and lobbying the media over their portrayal of Black people. She played a prominent role in the protest against the 1968 Miss America Pageant. After the Attica prison uprising, she said, “We do not support Attica. We ARE Attica.” She also participated in the 1973 protests at Harvard over the lack of women’s bathrooms. When asked why she participated in the pouring of urine on the steps of Lower Hall, she said, “I'm just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me.
In addition to her activism and legal work, Kennedy also acted in the films “The Landlord” (1970), adapted from Kristin Hunter's 1966 novel, and the independent political drama “Born In Flames” (1983), directed by Lizzie Borden. She also acted in “Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow” alongside Morgan Freeman.
Flo Kennedy, c1972, wearing a leather cowboy hat and vest, and a t-shirt that says “bullshit” while flipping the middle finger and smiling at the camera. By http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/files/images/kennedy.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36268845
This is a long shot but does anybody know anybody who worked on the Calgary feminist radio show "Yeah, what she said?" that used to air on CJSW?
I was interviewed on it for Escher Girls in 2014 (though the episode wasn't posted online as a podcast until 2015) but the site no longer exists except on the internet Archive and the mp3s weren't backed up afaict.
Does anybody know anybody who used to run the show that might have the episode backed up? Or if any of my fans actually backed it up when it was live. (I might have, I have to check but I don't think I did ): )
"WANTED, Girl to wear stretch pants in pits during coming motorcycle road-racing season. Must be able to turn stop watches off and on, and must also be able to turn rider mostly on."
from the classified ads in Helix, a #Seattle underground newspaper, February 1968. The others are rather spicy too....
Portion of a typewritten page with "unclassified" ads in boxes. They include a magazine that explores "the world of transvestism," a married couple seeking partners for swinging, and a plea for Judi to call her mother
Judith Butler: “We are witnessing the restoration of patriarchy, nationalism, racism and capitalist individualism. It is the nostalgic fury of right-wing movements that want to return to an idealised past, one that perhaps never truly existed, and to re-establish hierarchical orders."
Everyone is absorbing This Moment in their own way.
[Note: I think, since Jan 22, 2025, we've had at least 300 unprecedented moments]
A colleague, someone I would absolutely call a 2nd Wave feminist, had almost an a ha moment. She said, The women's movement is just failing to come together to meet this Moment!
You know that thing that Black women do when we curl in our lips and bite them as if to seal our mouths shut to keep our words from flying out and hitting someone in the face?
A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed. ...
Kingfisher's homey feminism gives us another great one. The awkward princess wins the day, banishes the ogre, and rides off into the sunset for more adventures! A woman's work is never done, after all.
As Eva Wiseman (Observer) warns the beauty industry/sector needs better regulation, to stop it using ingredients (and procedures) that cause physical harm to the user(s).
From skin care to hair straitening ('relaxing') from cosmetic 'procedures' to nail varnishes, beauty products are causing damage to the consumers whose anxiety about their looks the industry has stoked.
While some people are taking Ozempic (and other weight loss drugs) for purely medical reasons... the promotion of the hyper-thin as a norm for women looks more like a return to the disciplining of females via body-shaming rather than any empowerment through weight loss.
Its almost like the patriarchy saw body positivity as a threat to its power & (pretty swiftly) came up with a new weapon to promote anxiety in the war against women's independence & happens.
Hello! I'm having to start over with my account due to it being deleted.
I'm Amora. I'm bisexual, ND, and have anxiety so I'm sometimes non verbal. I love cats, tea, poetry, reading and being a creative girly. I'm a leftist, and an international feminist. I'm also a witch. Trans rights are human rights, always🏳️⚧️ If you're over 18, give me a follow!
Having read the long read on the background to the Sex Discrimination Act, I was astounded that there was no mention of the wartime Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) led by Pauline Gower, who pioneered sex equality in the workplace in the ATA, equal pay for male and female pilots, and equality of opportunity based on merit.
To the female pilots who joined the ATA this was astounding, given the sex discrimination and misogyny that they were subjected to in their prewar flying careers. These women are the subject of an excellent book by Becky Aikman that I have just finished reading: Spitfires – The American Women Who Flew In The Face Of Danger During World War II, which tellingly recounts how their experiences in the ATA opened their eyes to the need for sex discrimination to be eliminated in the US.
They aspired to serve on the frontline, but this was prohibited by the ATA and United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) as they were not part of the armed forces. They looked to the postwar world in the US for their flying futures in civil airlines, but this aspiration was stifled by the unchanging sex discrimination, coupled with a large cadre of demobbed male USAAF pilots seeking civilian careers.
Unfortunately, much the same was true here in the UK. Sadly, Gower died in 1947, aged only 36. One wonders what might have been had she lived longer and been able to continue promoting workplace equality for women and the banning of sex discrimination.
Paul F Faupel
Somersham, Cambs
If your identity depends on someone else’s behavior, then it’s not an identity; it’s a desire to control others. Men who need women to behave in certain ways so they can feel masculine enough define masculinity as power and dominance over women. And that’s really all you need to know about them.
The 50th anniversary of the passing of the Sex Discrimination & Equal Pay Acts is days away and Susanna Rustin offers a reminder of the feminist groups & individuals around that time who did so much work to advance gender equality, even if fifty years later much work remains to be done. A worthwhile exercise in (popular) historical recovery!
Drawing of a police officer and a child. The child says "Are you one of the 40% who beat up their spouses or the 60% who enable them? How many white surpemacist tattoos does your uniform cover? Did you always want to be a guard capital or did you used to be a human?"
Betty Friedan (1921 - 2006) Betty Friedan, born on this day in 1921, was an American feminist activist and writer, authoring the widely influential book "The Feminine Mystique" in 1963
Betty Friedan (1921 - 2006) ...
Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 26th to February 1st, 2026 - A Powerless Ukraine
A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed. ...
Angela Davis (1944 - ) Angela Davis, born on this day in 1944, is a Marxist and feminist activist, prison abolitionist, philosopher, and educator
Angela Davis (1944 - ) ...
Lucretia Mott (1793 - 1880) Lucretia Mott, born on this day in 1793, was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, pacifist, and social reformer
Lucretia Mott (1793 - 1880) ...
Changer de regard sur la solitude des femmes ( video.blast-info.fr )
Soutenez Blast, nouveau média indépendant : https://www.blast-info.fr/soutenir ...