The founder of La Leche League has died at 93, we learn from Our Bodies Our Blog. The group, which has not been uncontroversial, promotes breastfeeding.

Target Women is brilliant.

Via Punk Planning, The Girl Effect:

Trevor Hoppe considers the cruelty of the US ban on non-citizens from entering the country if they are HIV positive.

Even talking plants reinscribe gender norms, shows Gender Pop.

Feministing points out the sexist attacks on Barack Obama, and attempts to cast him as “effeminate”.

Lesbian Dad considers some of the issues with mother’s day.

Hoyden points out some really weird disembodied “toy” hips. Has to be seen to be believed.

Out on the Stoop profiles the student-led protests at a Los Angeles school, to get their teacher Karen Salazar re-instated. She found out her contract was not being renewed, because she was “too Afro-centric”.

Muslimah Media Watch has an update on the case of Dr. Samar Habib at the University of Western Sydney in Australia, who has been strongly criticised for a course she runs in the Islamic Studies programme because it is “too sexually explicit, promotes lesbianism and derides the Koran as misogynistic”.

From one student:

I absolutely loved the course. [Dr.] Samar Habib did not ever push anti-Islamic sentiment down anyone’s throat. She was educated and well-knowledgeable and held a feminist’s view that I admire. The fact that she said that women are oppressed in Islam is not incorrect. It is true, but not because of Islam, rather it is because of a patriarchal society that likes the idea that men have the power when it comes to translation and transliteration of Islamic text.

The US version of the DS game Harvest Moon Cute has removed the option for lesbian relationships, according to Lesbian Gamers.

The Guardian’s readers editor tackles the offensive advice for bosses on dealing with a transgender employee in a Work supplement column.

Are women being sidelined in the media reform agenda? WIMIN’s Voices considers the impact this has.

And, finally some good news, as photos of the first same-sex couples to get married in California since the state supreme court lifted the ban on gay marriage have been surfacing. There’s been so much commentary on this, but I like Alison Bechdel’s best.

Posted by Jess McCabe on 17 June 2008, at 11:52 PM | Comments (2)