Welcome to the Womyn's Resource Center at TESC!!!

The WRC is an all inclusive student group that welcomes female assigned, female identified people and their allies. We hold weekly meetings, empowerment circles, put on events and publish womyn's newsletters and zines to be distributed to the campus and community. The WRC works to meet the needs of all female identified, female assigned people, and their allies on campus by providing resources like free menstrual products, pregnancy tests and condoms, as well as a vast lending library of books, zines, DVDs, and music, referrals to campus resources and community support and a private safe space. The WRC works to fight all forms of patriarchy and oppression. Contact: [email protected] with questions or suggestions. OR SUBMIT your musings, art, or whatever else to our Editor-in-Chief at [email protected] for publication in our newsletter, the C(I)A or zine, the Ovarian!

[flyandfamousblackgirls]

Toni Morrison Takes White Supremacy To Task

Few intellectuals have waged a public battle against white supremacy and patriarchy like Toni Morrison. Morrison has both examined and challenged systems of domination throughout her intellectual life. With her novels, essays, and interviews she has taken critical looks at the interlocking systems of race and gender oppression. In this interview she is asked by PBS’s Charlie Rose what it is like for her to encounter racism. In true Morrison fashion she turns the question on its head, and places the onus for explaining racism back into the hands of White people. She asks Rose what he thinks of racism, why do Whites hold onto, and what are they going to do about it ending it. She rejects the notion that racism is simply something that Black people must grapple with, insisting, demanding, that White people also grapple with it. Fearless. Brilliant. Powerful.

[jenonthenet]

This is an excellent video with a great message: “Whether or not women can determine when and whether to have children is the single biggest element in whether we’re healthy or not, whether we’re educated or not, how long our life expectancy is, whether we we can be active in the world or not. This presidential election is a turning point. We will lose what we have gained if any Republican candidate were to win.”

Happy 78th to Gloria Steinem!

[barackobama]

She really is kind of the best.

[foreverliberal23-deactivated201]

I love Gloria Steinem. (: 

[jenonthenet]

This is an excellent video with a great message: “Whether or not women can determine when and whether to have children is the single biggest element in whether we’re healthy or not, whether we’re educated or not, how long our life expectancy is, whether we we can be active in the world or not. This presidential election is a turning point. We will lose what we have gained if any Republican candidate were to win.”

Happy 78th to Gloria Steinem!

[barackobama]

She really is kind of the best.

[foreverliberal23-deactivated201]

I love Gloria Steinem. (: 

[thatfeministqueer2-deactivated2]

Feminism

Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog - Frequently Answered Questions

Feminist Literature (Tumblr)

Feminist texts written by women of color (Tumblr)

fuckyeahfeminists (Tumblr)

grrrlpower (Tumblr)

Racism, Race, & Culture

...

[achrayes]

[tesc-wrc-blog]

laborreguita:

YES!

[newyorker]

In this week’s issue, Charlayne Hunter-Gault examines the disturbingly pervasive occurrence of hate crimes against gays and lesbians in South Africa. Click through for a photo slideshow of Zanele Muholi’s Portraits from South Africa’s Lesbian Community: http://nyr.kr/KIOSxw

[npr]

Moving photos. — Tanya

[androphilia]

[heytoyourmamanem]

[loveandthevillage]

Elizabeth “Tex” Williams

Williams was the first black Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps (WAC) photographer. She made the army her career from 1944 on, documented air and ground maneuvers, recorded medical procedures, and provided images for intelligence. In 1949 she became the first black woman admitted to the Signal Corps photography school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, graduating at the top of her class.

via auntada

[fuckyeahfeminists]

Charlotte Ray Became 1st Black Female Lawyer 140 Years Ago

Pioneering Black female lawyer Charlotte E. Ray achieved her historic feat 140 years ago today in 1872, becoming just the third woman ever admitted to practice law in the country at the time. Ray was also the first woman admitted to practice law in the nation’s capital and the first woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court.

[fuckyeahfeminists]

So basically the government funds crisis pregnancy centers, which is just RIDICULOUS. They’re also obviously NOT equal opportunity employers, since they only want Christians to apply for positions there. This is just ridiculous; we’re paying money to allow organizations to LIE to people who can get pregnant? oh hell no.

If you want to help carry out the anti-abortion mission of the taxpayer-funded Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center, you have to be a Christian.

It’s right there on the Rapid City, S.D., center’s volunteer application.

“Do you consider yourself a Christian?” “If yes, how long have you been a Christian?” “As a Christian, what is the basis of your salvation?” “Please provide the following information concerning your local church. Church name … Denomination … Pastor’s name.” “This organization is a Christian pro-life ministry. We believe that our faith in Jesus Christ empowers us, enables us, and motivates us to provide pregnancy services in this community. Please write a brief statement about how your faith would affect your volunteer work at this center.”

But that hasn’t stopped the center from receiving federal funding and other forms of government support.

In 2010, it was awarded a $34,000 “capacity building” grant as part of President Obama’s stimulus bill.

Last year, the nonprofit National Fatherhood Initiative, with “support from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Family Assistance,” awarded the center $25,000 for capacity building.

And when South Dakota passed a law requiring that women get counseling from a “pregnancy help center” before receiving an abortion, the Rapid City center was quick to sign up — becoming one of three such facilities listed on the state’s official website.

Like other crisis pregnancy centers, the Rapid City Care Net seeks to prevent abortions by offering women a combination of free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, a “24 hour hotline,” and medically dubious “abortion education” (its website claims that “a number of reliable studies have demonstrated connection between abortion and later development of breast cancer”).

The Rapid City center is not alone. On its website, the facility says it “submits to the affiliation guidelines” of the national Care Net organization, which supports more than 1,100 explicitly Christian crisis pregnancy centers. Care Net requires that at each center, “those who labor as pregnancy center board members, directors, and volunteers are expected to know Christ as their Savior and Lord” and that “all board members, staff, and volunteers of the center agree with the Care Net Statement of Faith.”

And it’s not just Care Net. Across the country, crisis pregnancy centers that refuse to hire non-Christians are receiving taxpayer funding and other forms of government support. 

[freececemcdonald-blog]

CeCe’s Pretrial Hearing is tomorrow morning at 9am, Hennepin County Government Building! We’re asking folks to change their FB, Tumblr & Twitter profile pic to one of CeCe or Art inspired by CeCe. If you are coming to court please wear all your Free CeCe shirts & buttons. Thanks for the solidarity community!

[transfeminism]

Free CeCe McDonald: http://supportcece.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/people/FreeCece-Mcdonald/100002567181562

https://twitter.com/#!/Free_CeCe

http://freececemcdonald.tumblr.com/

[anarcho-queer]

Due To New Law, Planned Parenthood Of Wisconsin Suspends All Medication Abortions

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin (PPWI) announced Friday that they will be forced to end distribution of all medication abortions — known as the abortion pill — because of a new law just enacted that has too many gray areas and makes it too legally risky for the organization to continue providing the pill.

The law, Act 217, is part of Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) anti-abortion agenda, aimed at making it harder for a woman to choose an abortion.

“This is just one piece of a very anti-woman agenda put in place by this government.” said Nicole Safar, policy director for PPWI.

Specifically, Act 217 changes “informed consent” laws — the process a doctor has to follow before he or she can administer the pill. Act 217 creates criminal penalties for providers of medication abortions if they don’t follow the ambiguous legislative restrictions. And the penalties are strict. According to the bill’s language:

Under this bill, a person who gives a woman an abortion-inducing drug in a manner that violates the prohibition is guilty of a Class I felony and may be subject to a civil action. This bill specifies that a penalty may not be assessed against a woman who receives an abortion-inducing drug.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin gives care to about 80,000 a year. Since they will no longer be distributing the pill, it will become significantly harder to access. Women who lose the option of the abortion pill will be forced to have a surgical abortion — a more invasive procedure that can carry greater medical risks for some.

The battle over abortion in Wisconsin has been particularly fierce. Just a few weeks ago, a Planned Parenthood in the state was firebombed.

Source

[stfuconservatives]

A win in Oklahoma, a loss in Wisconsin. Sigh.

[stfuconservatives]

“The “Personhood Act,” introduced by Sen. Brian Crain (R), would give legal personhood rights to embryos from the moment of fertilization. A similar measure was rejected in Mississippi, one of the most conservative states in the country, because legal and medical experts raised concerns that the bill could ban some forms of birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research.”

This was the law that was so restrictive that it prompted a Democrat to suggest the “spilled semen” addendum.

(cissexist language all over the article, jfyi)

-Jess

[humboldtoctober-blog]

Passive Aggressive Cecilia Payne

So.. this is a thing now.

Make one yourself!

[stfuconservatives]

Passive aggressive Cecilia Payne demands your memes! And demands that you send them to me!

-Jess

[fuckyeahfeminists]

shit that never happens

[flapjackstate]

[image: comic titled “shit that never ever happens”, with a man in a pickup saying “damn… hey girl. Whassup baby” to a woman on the street, and her running after him saying “wait!! what’s your phone number?!”].

[cartoonpolitics]

[stfuconservatives]

From Wikipedia: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979) was an English-American astronomer who in 1925 was first to show that the Sunis mainly composed of hydrogen, contradicting accepted wisdom at the time.

… Shapley persuaded Cecilia Payne to write a doctoral dissertation, and so in 1925 she became the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe (now part of Harvard) for her thesis: “Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars”. Astronomer Otto Struve characterized it as “undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy”. By applying the ionization theory developed by Indian physicist Megh Nad Saha she was able to accurately relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures. She showed that the great variation in stellar absorption lines was due to differing amounts of ionization that occurred at different temperatures, and not due to the different abundances of elements. She correctly suggested that silicon, carbon, and other common metals seen in the Sun were found in about the same relative amounts as on Earth, but that helium and particularly hydrogen were vastly more abundant (by about a factor of one million in the case of hydrogen). Her thesis thus established that hydrogen was the overwhelming constituent of the stars. When her dissertation was reviewed, she was dissuaded by Henry Norris Russell from concluding that the composition of the Sun is different from the Earth, which was the accepted wisdom at the time. However, Russell changed his mind four years later when other evidence emerged. After Payne-Gaposchkin was proven correct Russell was often given the credit.”

Cecilia Payne wrote several books, including:

“Stars of High Luminosity” (1930)

“Variable Stars and Galactic Structure” (1954)

“The Galactic Novae” (1957)

“Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: an autobiography and other recollections” (1984) ed. Katherine Haramundanis

All of these books have been added to the STFU Conservatives bookstore. I made a new category called “Great Ladies of Science,” so if you have any suggestions for it let me know!

-Jess