Book Review

AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET

Black Women, Rape, and Resistance: A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

By Danielle L. McGuire

Knopf. 324 pp. $27.95

RT @margotfriedman: Call your Senators and ask them to pass Paycheck Fairness Act #women #fem2 #woc Pls RT

RT @phrTweets: #Arizona’s New #Immigration Law Imperils #HumanRights /by @Katilist and Erin Hustings #women #asylum

Sometimes, you post something that you know is going to cause a shit storm. But most of the time, when you write something that ends up causing a shit storm, it just hits you like a ton of bricks and makes you think “Dude. I really must have been on to something there, because why else is everyone freaking the fuck out.”

I was not just surprised, but kind of floored at the response to my first guest post here on Tiger Beatdown. One hundred and fifty-nine comments, people. As of right now. I’m not just bragging. I want to know–what is it that my post is tapping into that has heretofore been un-tapped-into, why haven’t we been talking about it before, and what the hell are we going to do to dislodge this righteous anger and put it in a pot where it comes out SOMETHING AWESOME? Because I am ready to rock, I think.

I used to be in a band with a bunch of dudes.

People are always shocked when they hear this, if they know me, because they have a very specific sense of “women who play in bands” and it is most emphatically not me. In order to be a woman who plays in a band you have to be, first and foremost, hot. Preferably hot in that slightly NOT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE way, so that dudes can believe that they are the only guy in the world who really, truly understands how hot you are, and can correspondingly believe that by bestowing upon you their belief in your paramount hotness, they are giving you a sweet gift which will make you so ecstatically happy, and can therefore believe that, because all you want in the world is for dudes to think you are hot, you will sleep with them.

You can be slightly not one hundred percent hot by doing something out of the ordinary, like wearing glasses, having a tattoo, or wearing clothes that don’t match. Just like how overalls made Rachel Leigh Cook not-hot in She’s All That, wearing striped socks with checkered shoes will get you into the dudes-love-you-because-you-just-don’t-UNDERSTAND-how-hot-you-are club.

I am not one of those women. I am, plainly, fat. I am mildly cute. And I do not look like In A Band Woman. Guys seem to have a really hard time projecting their fantasies onto me! Go figure.

On February 23, 2009, veteran Black Freedom movement leader Ruby Sales had a conversation with Vera Leone, SOA Watch organizer, about state violence and white violence against people of color in the United States, and the implications of that historical and present context for our continuing organizing to close the School of the Americas and dismantle the racist system of violence and domination which it represents.You can listen to the audio file here .

teacher refuses to stop using "squ*w"

Women around the country are finding that more and more hospitals that once allowed vaginal birth after Caesarean, or VBAC (commonly pronounced VEE-back), are now banning it and insisting on repeat Caesareans. About 300,000 women a year have repeat Caesar