A a certain point, Britney Spears lost her worth, in the public eye. When she had children, gained weight, lost the fascination of the new. When she became a grown-up; when she became publicly known as a flawed, suffering person instead of a cartoon; when she stopped pretending to be a fantasy. And, of course, now she's in the "comeback" stage of the cycle. Which was inevitable. Every sacrificial victim gets a comeback, if she doesn't die first. And that might simply be because, after you've torn someone down far enough, there's nothing else to do but build her back up. We love women when they're too young and too inexperienced to be anything other than vessels for our desire. We love them when they're spiraling out of control and giving us a chance to opine about what Good Girls Don't do, to scare other women into line. And we love them even more when they let us welcome them back into the fold - when they demonstrate, for us, the benefits of repentance."

Worth reading! When I think of the magic of Buffy and what that show meant to me I genuinely think of Marti Noxon and Jane Espenson, women who gave us some of the most amazing episodes. I think of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amber Benson, Emma Caulfield, Charisma Carpenter, etc etc, women who brought the most amazing characters to life.

How do we fight for Black women, girls, and femmes when they’re alive? Trans communities are showing us the way, with Nina Pop’s life, and death, urging us to stand together in that work. [read more]

totally agree...

My illustrations for Bitch Magazine, thank you Kristin for including me!!!

The Supreme Court shocked many of us today when, in a six-three vote, the conservative-leaning bench declared that federal law prohibits job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status. The Supreme Court essentially held up a long-established precedent: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 included Title VII, a provision that declared it illegal for employers to discriminate against an employee based on their sex, but since 2016, the question of whether Title VII covers gender identity has been debates in lower courts. Aimee Stephens, who was fired from a Michigan funeral home for being transgender; Gerald Bostock, who was fired from a county job in Georgia; and Donald Zarda, who was fired from his job in New York as a skydiver, were the plaintiffs in the cases. In a surprising twist, the Supreme Court decided that Title VII has always covered gender identity, meaning that it’s illegal to terminate a trans person’s employment because they’re trans. [read more]

Understanding the “Karen” meme requires first understanding two things: One, the process by which memes born on social media find their way into the larger internet, becoming warped and critiqued by people who encounter them out of context; and two, the custom (also largely based in social media) of giving white women nicknames that reference their specific brand of racism. While “Karen” and “Becky,” another term for a white woman (further locked in by Beyoncé’s reference to “Becky with the good hair” in Lemonade) are standards, some women’s nicknames align with the racist incidents that brought them to the internet’s attention in the first place. In 2018 alone, we met Permit Patty, BBQ Becky, Cornerstore Caroline, and, of course, Kidz Bop Karen, with many of these names (and the general Karen) originating with Black women. The silly names don’t get at the weight of these women’s offenses or the danger in which they put their targets: writer Antonia Noori Farzan wondered, in a 2018 Washington Post article, whether these names are too cutesy for white women who put Black people at risk, writing, “Their memorable nicknames easily lend themselves to hashtags, memes, headlines, and ridicule. But whether the viral monikers are a productive way of calling attention to the experiences of [B]lack Americans is a matter of debate.”   [read more]