This movie is in many ways a fairy tale. The character Precious gets to be saved by a caring caseworker and a loving teacher. In real life, poor, undereducated and sexually victimized girls are most likely to end up in the juvenile justice system.
I see it all the time. There is the 13-year-old who became [...]

by Guest Contributor Fiqah, originally published at Possum Stew
[NOTE: This post was originally penned back in September. The police officer in question is obviously no longer a threat to my safety. However, because a lot of what I discuss in this post is triggering, it took me a while to get to a place where [...]

The literature on sex equality is shot through with accounts of this predicament, variously described as a “double bind,” a “Catch-22,” or a “tightrope.” In many workplaces, women are pressured to be “masculine” enough to be respected as workers, but also to be “feminine” enough to be respected as women. (I put the [...]

I would think, I wish I were dead.
I did not think of it as a suicidal thought.  My poet’s parsing mind read the first “I” and the second “I” as different “I’s.” The first “I” was the whole watching the self, while the second “I” – the one I wanted to kill – was the [...]

by Guest Contributor Seattle Slim, originally published at Happy Nappy Head

While checking out Bossip, I saw a link to an article at HipHopWired about Mattel’s new line of black Barbies, S.I.S or So InStyle.
You already know I was hesitant to get my hopes up, and that hesitation was warranted.
I am not one to complain about [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
Last night while I was browsing the Sociological Images website, I saw this:

Sociological Images explains that the ad is for Swiss company Max Shoes, to advertises its sturdy laces.  The ad made me immediately think of these cell phone charms that my bf’s friend brought back from Japan:

Called Oshibari Girls (does [...]

By Guest Contributor Ndidi Oriji

Dear MTA Employee,
I am the woman who requested your help Wednesday morning at approximately 9:40am. I came to the station agent’s window and told you that I swiped my metro card and the display read “See Agent”. You told me to swipe it at the window. When I did, the display [...]

Compiled by Special Correspondent Thea Lim, with Guest Contributors Robin Akimbo, Alaska B, Michelle Cho and Elisha Lim
…continued from Part 1!

Vogue Evolution is all about getting folks to recognise that queer culture is responsible for sooo much of contemporary dance.  So it’s a radical history lesson – what’s VE’s relationship to Paris is Burning?

Michelle: I [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Bringing up Tyler Perry tends to complicate conversations.  He is a polarizing figure, represented by his work, an entrepreneur who provides work for black actors often passed over by the Hollywood machine, yet who trades in what some would call limiting representations of blackness and/or stereotypes.  He is often touted as proof that [...]

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid
When my wife and I started LoveVoodoo 6 years ago, we wanted the site to bring people together.  Many of the other adult dating or ‘Swingers’ sites are very segregated. There are “Black” swinger sites, “Hispanic” swinger sites and very little diversity on the larger sites. This never made any [...]

by Guest Contributor Catherine Traywick, originally published at Hyphen

One of the first things a (good) transnational activist learns is the practical meaning of solidarity — which, as the latest issue of New York Times Magazine illustrates, is a concept not easily grasped by even the worldliest and most committed of advocates. This week’s installment of [...]

by Guest Contributor Jha, originally published at Rebellious Jezebel Blogging
So my dad said the other day, “you could do better than the stereotypical China Doll makeup, but I know that’s not your usual style.”
This was in reference to a shoot I did a while back. (Yes, I model, but that’s neither here nor there.) The [...]

by Guest Contributor Jen, originally published at Disgrasian
Asians love being the best. But here’s one superlative we don’t love–Asian-American women are most likely to think about and attempt suicide, more than all other Americans, according to a new University of Washington study.
The study, published in the current issue of the Archives of Suicide Research, [...]

by Special Correspondent Nadra Kareem, originally posted at Nadra’s Race Relations Blog
Caster Semenya is making headlines after winning an 800-meter race in the World Championships in Berlin on Wednesday by 2.45 seconds more than the second-place athlete. The fact that the 18-year-old South African literally left her rivals in the dust during the competition [...]

by Latoya Peterson
I’m starting to love air travel. It is really the only time where I actually have to disengage from the internet, which becomes time to read actual books.
On this trip, I packed Kenji Yoshino’s Covering, a book I had been intending to read for quite some time. In Yoshino’s gut-wrenching [...]