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“Welcome to Congress” by Barry Blitts for The New Yorker

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“On Friday, Victoria’s secret was out: the international retailer doesn’t support trans or plus-size people. VS’s chief marketing officer and executive vice president of public relations Ed Razek admitted to Vogue that they intentionally don’t have trans or plus-size models on the runway at their event.

“Shouldn’t you have transsexuals in the show? No. No, I don’t think we should,” Razek remarked during the interview. “Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy.” It may be the fantasy of far-right conservatives that trans people don’t exist, especially after the Trump memo. However, in a country where nearly 3% of teens are trans or gender nonconforming and the average woman is size 16/18, the fantasy is just that — unreal, unnecessary, and exclusionary.

Following a long silence on the clearly anti-trans and anti–plus-size statements, Razek clumsily walked back on the comments: “To be clear, we absolutely would cast a transgender model for the show. We’ve had transgender models come to castings… and like many others, they didn’t make it…But it was never about gender. I admire and respect their journey to embrace who they really are.”

In response to their continued refusal to cast trans or plus-size models, here are eight lingerie and undergarment brands you can support that actually embrace our communities.

Read the full piece here

Also: Victoria’s Secret Doesn’t Want Plus-Size or Trans Women Walking the Runway

“The 70-year-old Razek, who is part of the casting team that chooses the models for each show, gave some bizarrely out-of-touch answers in the interview, lambasting critics as being “haters” who want too much diversity in the show and describing trans models as “transexuals.” He comes off as a complete joke and absolute asshole and is clearly the reason the company is stuck in 2005.”

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“I was thinking about running but I didn’t know if I could do it,” said Titone, 40. “When Danica Roem won her election, it kind of gave me the courage to say, ‘Someone else has done this, and now I have a chance to do this, too.’”

Titone declared victory Saturday morning and changed her Twitter handle to representative-elect as her lead increased to 368 votes among nearly 49,300 cast. All ballots have been counted except for an estimated 2,100 overseas and military ballots and those where signatures were challenged, according to Jefferson County elections officials. Nov. 14 is the deadline for those.

In addition, two trans women won statehouse seats in New Hampshire this week.

“When you elect trans folk, we are really good at constituent services,” said Roem, a former newspaper reporter.

“Because we know what it’s like to be singled out & stigmatized by the very people who are elected to serve us. That means when we get into office we are going to be inclusive leaders who are focused on serving our constituents instead of attacking them.”

Read the full piece here

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“The average prison sentence for men who kill their intimate partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are sentenced, on average, 15 to 17 years. A pair of Maryland cases vividly illustrates this inequality in sentencing. In one case, a judge in Baltimore County, Maryland sentenced Kenneth Peacock to 18 months for killing his unfaithful wife. The very next day, another judge in the same county sentenced Patricia Ann Hawkins to three years in prison for killing her abusive husband. Significantly, the prosecutor in the Peacock case requested a sentence twice as long as the one imposed, while the prosecutor in the Hawkins case requested one-third of the sentence imposed.” “As many as 90% of the women in prison today [2008] for killing men had been battered by those men.” ~ The Michigan Women’s Justice & Clemency Project

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“Welcome to the 116th Congress!!” 

- Mahyar Sorour‏ @mahyarsorour

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Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has won the Arizona Senate race, making her the first openly bisexual US Senator.

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lynseyaddario: At a cemetery in Georgia in 2016, Lucy McBath weeps over the grave of her son, Jordan Davis, who was killed by a white man at 17 years old at a gas station in Florida after being accused of playing loud music. After her son’s murder, Lucy became a gun control activist, and was just elected to Congress in Georgia. Her win, which unseats Republican Rep. Karen Handel, seems only more poignant the morning after 12 people were gunned down in California. 

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Ruby Bridges was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis in 1960.

This movie made me cry, I was so heart broken by how Ruby Bridges was treated! She was only 6, but was so strong. She is a very brave girl and she did not care what the white folks called her.

People are simply disgusting to minimize people by skin color!

Ruby you might not think you’re a hero… But to other people you are! You are A HERO and you are A PERSON WHO MADE AMERICA CHANGE!

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the body diversity for rihanna’s new lingerie line is incredible??? it’s not even just “oh all our models are skinny but we stock everything in plus sizes too don’t worry” or throwing kate upton and ashley graham into the line-up and pretending they’re plus-size lol like they actually have plus-size models as the default pics for a bunch of items? look this is just a random sample

thanks rihanna

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Forgotten Women Friday #48

Qiu Jin- 1875-1907- China

“China’s Feminist Martyr”

Qiu Jin would become many things-- a poet, feminist, revolutionary, and martyr. But she began as a young girl, born into China’s gentry in 1875 during the Qing dynasty. Because of her family’s status, she received an extensive education and fell in love with writing early on. She particularly loved to write about female warriors from Chinese history, and one of her poems began, “Don’t tell me women / are not the stuff of heroes.” Although she dreamed of being a hero, Qiu’s family made her bind her feet, practice needlework, and enter into an arranged marriage with the son of a wealthy merchant. Her marriage was an extremely unhappy one, and she wrote of her husband, “That person’s behavior is worse than an animal’s… He treats me as less than nothing.” Forced to look outside her marriage for inspiration, Jin observed the events of the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising against the Qing dynasty and wealthy Westerners living in China, and became intrigued. Jin finally left her husband in 1903 to study in Japan, and it was here that she became actively outspoken about women’s rights. She also grew impressed with the Japanese’s disciplined militancy, and she began practicing martial arts and dressing in masculine clothing. She was forever frustrated with China’s gender roles, writing, “My body will not allow me / To mingle with the men / But my heart is far braver / Than that of a man.”

When she returned to China in 1906, she joined the Triads, an underground society of rebels that sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty and restore the Han government, and learned skills like bomb-making. Qiu also founded her own journal, the “Chinese Women’s Journal,” in which she published many musings on feminism, such as her belief that the nuclear family was oppressive to women. In 1907, she was appointed head of the Datong school in Shaoxing, which was secretly used to militarily train revolutionaries. During this time, Qiu wrote, “With all my heart I beseech and beg my two hundred million female compatriots to assume their responsibility as citizens. Arise! Arise! Chinese women, arise!” She had been working closely with her cousin, Xu Xilin, during this time, but in July he was caught and tortured for information over a planned uprising. Xu was executed and Qiu was warned that she would be next. However, being unafraid to die for her cause, Qiu stayed at the school and continued to teach. Sensing her impending doom, she famously wrote one final poem that played on her name, which meant “autumn.” She wrote, “Autumn wind, autumn rain, they make one die of sorrow.”

One week later, Qiu was arrested. She refused to reveal plans of the revolution even after undergoing relentless torture. On July 15, 1907, Qiu was publicly executed. However, her death had the opposite effect the regime intended. The public was horrified that the Qing dynasty would brutally behead a woman, and Qiu became a national hero and a symbol of women’s independence in China. The Qing Dynasty would fall just five years after her death. As The New York Times wrote, “With her passion for wine, swords and bomb making, Qiu Jin was unlike most women born in late 19th-century China.” Zhang Lifan, a Beijing- based historian, said, “Qiu Jin lived at a time when women in China were not permitted to venture out of their homes, let alone participate in public affairs. So Qiu Jin not only participated in politics, her actions alone were a rebellion.” More than a century after her death, her legacy as a pioneering feminist in China lives on, and people continue to visit her tomb in Hangzhou to pay their respects.

The above image comes from a 2011 film about Qiu’s life entitled, “Jian hu nu xia Qiu Jin,” or “The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake.”

#Forgotten Women Friday #fwf #feminism #feminist #women #women's history #true #text #Qiu Jin #China #Chinese #poetry #martyr #Qing dynasty

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Yup

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“Ilhan Omar escaped war-torn Somalia and grew up in a Kenyan refugee camp. Her family immigrated to America with nothing. And tonight she became the first Somali American congresswoman in US history!”

-  Simran Jeet Singh‏

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I’ve never been more proud to be a WOMAN especially a WOMAN of COLOR! 

👑 WE. DID. THAT. 👑

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Megan Hunt, who is bisexual, is the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the Nebraska legislature. 💖💜💙

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MEET THE NEW FACES OF CONGRESS IN AMERICA!!!

This is SO refreshing 😌💕