18-year-old Mildred Beaubrun was shot after rebuffing “banter” - Essential Presence has more.

Manjula Sood has become lord mayor of Leicester; the first time a south Asian woman has held the post in any UK city, according to Khaleej Times (via womensgrid).

Social media tool Twitter is under fire - it is being accused of failing to respond adequately to reports of harassment of a user. It seems that an existing campaign of harassment against Ariel Waldman migrated onto the service. Violet blue has more (site NSFW).

Twitter has posted about the incident on its blog, basically arguing it’s done nothing wrong. I have some serious concerns about their response, however - I’m no lawyer, but they seem to be adopting an extremely narrow definition of what constitutes harassment. They argue that the tweets were not harassing, because they didn’t mention Ariel by name - but anyone with a modicum of common sense will realise that’s not needed to create a hostile environment, and that jibes and bullying can be directed at an individual without identifying them directly.

Fox News offends just as much as usual - check out this YouTube footage of one of their pundits “confusing” Osama with Obama, and saying they should both be murdered.

Lithuania wants to define a family as one man, one woman plus children - not only sidelining same-sex two-parent families, but all single parents, according to Feministe. I have a feeling that this might clash with EU law.

On masculinity, homosexuality and hip hop:

“What would the world be like without men?” asks Daily Mail columnist ‘AN Wilson’ - apparently the logical conclusion of last week’s vote to allow lesbian couples and single women to undergo IVF treatment without rolling out a father figure is the extermination of men. Really, the article doesn’t even merit consideration, it’s that bad. However, I would point out the illustration they chose - an endless sea of blond, white women.

OK, OK, I couldn’t resist excerpting this particularly horrendous couple of lines:

As all New Brits learn in their Herstory lessons (the term History is banned, of course, because of its male connotations), it was a very old President Cherie, after the tragic demise of her husband in the Middle East, who decided on the most humane method of reducing crime: lower the amount of testosterone.

It began with compulsory oestrogen injections for rapists and muggers, but such were the benefits of turning the criminal population into round-breasted, round-bottomed hermaphrodite sloths that it was soon decided that the male element in society was altogether redundant. A few die-hards insisted on such foolish old mantras as ‘everyone needs a dad’, but the appendage ‘like a hole in the head’ was soon tacked on by the rest of society.

Ohh, Ohh, and this bit:

They no longer talk about the death penalty because there is no longer any such concept of death - as such

Um, yeah, evil future dystopia with… no death penalty. Ah, AN Wilson, you make me chuckle, you really do.

Cate at DollyMix points out an excellent campaign on emotional abuse from Singapore.

And, finally, Menstrual Poetry brings us the uterus vase.

Posted by Jess McCabe on 26 May 2008, at 12:15 AM | Comments (6)