It would be sadly easy to make a habit of this. Posting the everyday things like weight-loss lipstick and security protocol videos that make me go “ew” for reasons that are so self-evident it’d almost be painful to write them out.

This commercial, from Quiznos, has been running over and over and over (and over) on my limited selection of non-cable channels. If I could pay to make it stop, I would. If buying a Quiznos “Sammie” would make it stop I… no, I still have limits.

Shameless Magazine is putting together an anthology for publication in Spring 2009 and we’re currently looking for submissions! Check out the call below!

Call for Submissions: A Shameless Anthology

Co-editors Megan Griffith-Greene and Stacey May Fowles are seeking submissions for an anthology for teen girls to be published by Tightrope Books in Spring 2009.

The anthology will include creative non-fiction essays by women and trans-identified adults about their formative experiences as teens, and is primarily intended for a youth audience. Specifically, we’re looking for submissions about how teen experiences (positive and negative) shaped our writers’ lives and made them the people they are today.

This project is affiliated with Shameless magazine and is based on the magazine’s signature mix of smart, sassy, honest and inclusive writing. In keeping with the mandate of Shameless, we want to reach out to young female readers who are often ignored by mainstream media: freethinkers, queer youth, young women of colour, punk rockers, feminists, intellectuals, artists, and activists. We hope this book will open up a real dialogue about growing up female, creating a book that is pro-choice, queer-positive, sex-positive, girl-positive.

(Unsure of what we want? We suggest you pick up a back issue of the magazine.)

Your contribution can be personal, educational or political; it can be fuelled by humour, rage or sadness; but make sure what you write is honest, accessible and meaningful to teen girls, does not patronize or preach, and is in keeping with Shameless magazine’s mandate.(more inside…)

Okay, so maybe I’ve got babies on the brain lately, but this movie looks fantastic. Touted as the “Inconvenient Truth of Childbirth,” it has some relevence, given out recent conversation about “expectant mother shaming.”

Also, who doesn’t love a little Ricki Lake?

I missed this yesterday but it’s still worth posting.

Via Torontoist

Looming just east of Dundas Square (in Toronto,) at the corner of Dundas and Victoria streets, is an out-of-home ad sponsored by the Niagara Region Right to Life. The billboard features a larger-than-life toy soldier, his right cheek adorned with one giant tear. The copy reads, “Some toys will have fewer children to play with this year. Some 100,000 aborted children.”

Sarah Nicole Prickett’s post on the billboard is certainly worth a read. She says some really thoughtful things about the current climate threatening a woman’s right to choose and goes on to detail her experience after Torontoist called the number on the billboard - “a number belonging not to Niagara Region Right to Life, but to a local organization that calls itself Aid to Women.” Prickett found Torontoist was “put indefinitely on hold:”

By the time we got bored and hung up, we’d decided that we’d be a lot more outraged by this public display of sanctimony if it wasn’t so laughably stupid. Toys without children? Boo-freaking-hoo. What about children without toys, without proper food and care, without loving parents and homes? That’s a real tragedy. This abortions-make-toys-cry argument is just a bad joke.

(By the way, looks like “Aid to Women” is yet another pro-life organization masquerading as unbiased information.)

You can view the billboard here.

I found this announcement from the American organisation, the Family Violence Prevention Fund on the Women’s Health News blog:

Holes poked in a condom. Flushed pill packets. A boyfriend’s sneer that
“Depo-Provera is for sluts.” Widespread but often silenced, women’s experiences of birth control sabotage offer a prime example of how violence and abuse in intimate relationships are linked with reproductive health and rights.

This September, a groundbreaking study by Dr. Elizabeth Miller of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities revealed just how common the problem really is.

Miller found that a quarter of teenage girls with histories of abusive relationships living in poor neighborhoods in Boston reported that their abusive partners actively tried to get them pregnant by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control, and making explicit statements about wanting them to become pregnant.

Troubling stuff. And something that needs to be more openly dicussed — both in the women’s health community and in the wider national arena.

That’s where women like YOU enter the picture. The Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) is searching in a wide variety of venues for women who are willing to share their personal experiences of birth control sabotage and other negative attempts – no matter how seemingly “small” – to control their reproductive rights.

Have you ever had to hide your pills from your boyfriend or husband? Has your intimate partner been verbally or emotionally manipulative about your birth control choices? Have you ever been pressured into an abortion or an unintended pregnancy? We want to hear your story, because we think it matters, and we believe it can make a difference to women in similar situations.

Your stories can be emailed to safewomenstories@gmail.com. If you’d like to share anonymously, let us know; if you’d prefer to take a more active role as a spokeswoman, tell us that, too. We’re eager to hear your thoughts, experiences, and ideas, and we think they’ll be a crucial part of this new effort to put a widespread and serious problem on the public’s radar screen.

(This campaign reminds me a lot of this.)

From Canadians.org:

Canada is a cold country and we need energy to stay warm and to heat our homes. But Canada’s lack of an energy policy is like sending someone out into the cold with only one mitten – one hand stays warm while the other freezes.

Without west-to-east pipelines, we do not have a way to get energy to all parts of the country. All Canadians deal with the impacts of an energy market focused on sending the majority of our oil and gas south to the energy-hungry United States, no matter what the environmental or societal cost to Canadians.

Take action!
Send one mitten to Prime Minister Stephen Harper or your local Member of Parliament and tell them that you support a Canadian Energy Strategy that will give Canadians secure energy supplies, guaranteed access to energy reserves in times of need, and strong policies that protect our environment and focus on finding alternative, less harmful energy solutions.

Thousands of mittens from Canadians across the country will send a strong message that politicians cannot let corporations and the market set the agenda, focusing on big business needs, and privatizing public services, while ignoring the energy security needs of Canadians.

Send a mitten with your own message in support of a Canadian Energy Strategy. Take a picture with your mitten and e-mail it to us at mitten@canadians.org so we can show how people across the country are taking a stand and demanding government action.

Send your mitten in support of a Canadian Energy Strategy now!

Mail it to: Office of the Prime Minister, 80 Wellington Street, Ottawa K1A 0A2.

Download the PDF for more information here.

(Mostly unrelated, check out this sleeping bag made out of mittens, or “Mitten Bag,” made by Canadian artist Karina Bergmans.)

Rabble.ca has launched a great new “advice column” for activists called Now What?

When the stresses and strains of daily life combine with the realities of an unjust world, sometimes you just need some good advice. Ms. Communicate is here to take your questions, and each week we’ll feature her response.

The first installment? Ms. Communicate outlines your options for dealing with that obnoxious right-winger in your extended family (we all have ‘em.)

…you have my permission to use as much swearing as you deem appropriate. Racism and sexism are much more offensive than profane language, in my view.

Normally I wouldn’t report on paparazzi goings-on, but this Margaret Cho piece is too funny not to post.

In case you’re unaware, some photos (that I refuse to link to) began circulating of Britney’s “discoloured” underpants and as a result there was a whole lot of “I guess she’s not pregnant” and “ewww” as a response. But the best response? How about “Let She Who Is Without Period Stains Throw The First Tampon:”

I am the worst when it comes to period stains. That is why I never move because my mattress is so so so so stained that whenever I change the sheets it just looks like a murder scene. I’m serious. Somebody should put crime scene ‘do not cross’ tape up. It’s awful! I can’t understand any woman who hasn’t had some kind of hot menses mess. Those women are weird and probably perfect, and always get a pap smear every six months, and have never had a weight problem or worried about sitting on a white couch - and they are no friends of mine!

Did I mention I love Margaret Cho? Check out this piece on Cho in a back issue of Shameless Magazine.

Another topic on the horizon of teen pregnancy: soon-to-be moms at Colorado high school ask for four weeks of maternity leave.

Pregnant students in a Denver high school are asking for at least four weeks of maternity leave so they can heal, bond with their newborns and not be penalized with unexcused absences…

Teen mothers face a challenging future, with many dropping out. A third of teen moms receive their high-school diplomas and 1.5 percent get college degrees before they turn 30, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

I’m all for this. If we accept that pregnant women have a right to maternity leave, then shouldn’t we accept that pregnant girls do as well?

One of the arguments against allowing teen moms four weeks off school following birth is that such a policy will encourage teen pregnancy. But why is it that any type of harm reduction program is always painted as encouraging “deviant behaviour”?

While those four weeks will make the beginning of motherhood easier, to say that it encourages teen pregnancy is to say that it neutralises all the other difficult things about young motherhood - so much so that motherhood becomes attractive for girls who weren’t otherwise considering it. Now that’s just plain silly. And insulting! It’s not as if teenage girls are a bunch of bubble heads who make lifelong decisions on the basis of a paltry four weeks.

What harm reduction does is accept what our reality is (in Denver the reality is that of every 1,000 girls ages 15 to 17, 54.5 will become pregnant in the city), and tries to roll with it. That’s way better than attempting to prohibition-style force people into making socially acceptable choices, instead of the choice they know is best for themselves. And forcing people to do what’s “proper” never works anyhow.