Rebekah Kuschmider

Sexual orientation is not a lifestyle and gay people are not a monolith. Much as women are all individuals with different wants, needs, and preferences, so are gay people, bi people, asexual people, polyamorous people, and pansexual people (also people who present gender differently that the usual male/female binary but gender identity is a different thing than sexual orientation and will likely be the subject of a whole different essay).

There is a working group of 14 Republican men and one Republican woman (the woman was added after the outcry about the original all-male revue-style workgroup got loud enough) who are creating the Senate version of the bill in secret. Behind closed doors. No hearings to discuss major points of the law. No input from stakeholder groups like hospitals, patient advocacy groups, doctors, or insurance companies. No input from Senate Democrats.

Let this be known as the Great Mammogram Gotcha Moment of 2015. Not for the antis, mind you. For us feminists. All we need to explain this little hiccup in the Planned Parenthood defense is a little basic knowledge of medicine.

For the moment, the plan is to see how transplants in several pilot programs across the country work, then possibly make the procedure more routine for women who were born without a uterus, or who suffered later damage and needed to have it removed.

Understanding that systems of oppression tend to cast a wide net is the easy part. Next is the hard part: How do we as feminists work to position ourselves within the intersection of marginalized peoples and make sure we’re working with them, instead of stepping on them to get ahead?

The FDA has announced that Mibelas 24 Fe pills, made by Lupin Pharmaceuticals, is under recall due to packaging errors that mixed up the active pills and the placebos. In the case of the recalled lot, the packets have 24 active pills, four placebo pills, then four more placebo pills. That’s too many days without the active pills and your body — your pregnancy risk just got a WHOLE LOT HIGHER.

Yesterday, Americans got to take yet another trip to the magical realms of WTF as FBI Director

Yesterday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan motioned for a moment of silence for the Orlando shooting victims. But some of his colleagues weren’t having it.

If you owe the feds a tax payment and don’t want to pay by check or e-transfer, you can make a cash payment in person at 7-11 stores. This is incredibly helpful for people who don’t have bank accounts or credit cards — or people who need to get taxes paid locally, at a spot near public transportation.

As a political philosophy, feminism proposes that women are entitled to all the same rights as men under the law. There was a time when this was a radical notion and it required a whole lot of hard work to make certain crucial elements of that possible. Such as a the right of women to vote. Or to own property. Or to obtain divorce. Or sign contracts. Or use birth control.