"Rude girls aren’t the antithesis of feminism. They aren’t even a different form of feminism. I am hesitant to label women of color’s efforts to survive and carve a place in the world anything as flawed as feminism because things really just tend to be larger than the labels we give them. A rude girl is just the girl you need her to be, point blank. Get into her narcissism, her cockiness, her sex-positive approaches. Honey, really get into the way she tears down obstacles–with a little flair and whole bunch of attitude. Even if you can’t hang with her, you can hang with the way she handles her shit–because it’s the way we sometimes want to: open and blunt, with the tell-tale knowledge that she is, and will always be, the shit."
—

Michelle, “An Ode to Rude Girl Anthems”

More from that last quote I reblogged because these first three sentences need to be included.

(via mylifeasafeminista)

Something for me to chew on. (via fumblingtowardshappiness)

accidentaltheme: THE VERY LONG LIST OF AWESOME LADIES ON TV: Cersei Lannister [Game of Thrones] I should wear the armor, and you the gown.

accidentaltheme:

THE VERY LONG LIST OF AWESOME LADIES ON TV: Cersei Lannister [Game of Thrones]

I should wear the armor, and you the gown.
favorite fictional ladies l Annie Sawyer (Being Human) “You know the worst thing about being a ghost? It’s lonely. You’ll give anything for that crumb of comfort. That feel of skin against skin that says, “It’s okay. I’m here.” It’s a hunger. The most basic instinct. You might even drag others into this world of the dead. Even if it means turning them into monsters too.”

favorite fictional ladies l Annie Sawyer (Being Human)

“You know the worst thing about being a ghost? It’s lonely. You’ll give anything for that crumb of comfort. That feel of skin against skin that says, “It’s okay. I’m here.” It’s a hunger. The most basic instinct. You might even drag others into this world of the dead. Even if it means turning them into monsters too.”

favorite fictional ladies l Atsuko Jackson (Michiko to Hatchin) We’re strangers the next time we meet.

favorite fictional ladies l Atsuko Jackson (Michiko to Hatchin)

We’re strangers the next time we meet.

favorite fictional ladies l Marya Morevna (Deathless by Catherine M. Valente) “Perhaps all a Tsaritsa is is a beautiful cold girl in the snow, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding.” 

favorite fictional ladies l Marya Morevna (Deathless by Catherine M. Valente)

“Perhaps all a Tsaritsa is is a beautiful cold girl in the snow, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding.” 

eastafrodite: (TW:Rape) Somali woman helping rape victims wins U.N. award Hawa Aden Mohamed won the United Nations refugee agency’s Nansen Refugee Award on Tuesday for her work in helping thousands of Somali women and girls, many of them rape victims, start new lives in their battered homeland. Mohamed, 63, is a former Somali refugee who returned from safety in Canada to her war-torn country in 1995, launching an education program in Puntland to shelter and train Somalis who have fled war, famine and violence, it said. “When Hawa Aden Mohamed rescues a displaced girl, a life is turned around,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement. Known as “Mama Hawa”, she founded the Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development which has assisted more than 215,000 displaced and victims of violence since 1999, it said. “In a society like Somalia, it’s very often that a woman or a girl is raped and they are severely marginalized thereafter. So what she has done is given them is a home, a new start, hope for a new life and their dignity back,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a news briefing. Young Somali boys also receive vocational training in carpentry and welding to keep them off the streets and avoid them falling prey to criminal or armed groups, the agency said.

eastafrodite:

(TW:Rape) Somali woman helping rape victims wins U.N. award

Hawa Aden Mohamed won the United Nations refugee agency’s Nansen Refugee Award on Tuesday for her work in helping thousands of Somali women and girls, many of them rape victims, start new lives in their battered homeland.

Mohamed, 63, is a former Somali refugee who returned from safety in Canada to her war-torn country in 1995, launching an education program in Puntland to shelter and train Somalis who have fled war, famine and violence, it said.

“When Hawa Aden Mohamed rescues a displaced girl, a life is turned around,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

Known as “Mama Hawa”, she founded the Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development which has assisted more than 215,000 displaced and victims of violence since 1999, it said.

“In a society like Somalia, it’s very often that a woman or a girl is raped and they are severely marginalized thereafter. So what she has done is given them is a home, a new start, hope for a new life and their dignity back,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a news briefing.

Young Somali boys also receive vocational training in carpentry and welding to keep them off the streets and avoid them falling prey to criminal or armed groups, the agency said.

mohandasgandhi: womenwhokickass: Maryam Molkara: Why she kicks ass She runs the major transsexual campaign group in Iran, and frequently bails out trans persons who have been arrested. In 1978, before the Iranian Revolution, she wrote to Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile, requesting religious guidance. He replied that she should follow the Islamic obligations of being a woman.  After the Revolution,  like all other transgender persons in Iran, she was harrassed, and made to wear men’s clothing, forced to take male hormones, and confined in a psychiatric hospital. She tried approaching Khomeini directly and was badly beaten up by his bodyguards before succeeding. However he did give Fereydoon a religious authorization for SRS surgery, and has been taken to be a fatwa that covers other transgender persons as well. Subsequently Maryam struggled to organize transgender persons in Iran, and introduce medical standards. However she was not happy with procedures in Iran, and had surgery in Thailand in 2001.  Because of Molkara, Iran has become a “global leader for sex changes”: In contrast to almost everywhere else in the Muslim world, sex change operations are legal in Iran for anyone who can afford the minimum £2,000 cost and satisfy interviewers that they meet necessary psychological criteria. As a result, women who endured agonising childhood and adolescent experiences as boys, and - albeit in fewer numbers - young men who reached sexual maturity as girls, are easy to find in Tehran. Iran has even become a magnet for patients from eastern European and Arab countries seeking to change their genders. […] This situation would have been unthinkable were it not for the bravery and persistence of Molkara, who embarked on a personal odyssey that brought persecution and abuse in her quest for Khomeini’s official blessing. Khomeini had pronounced on gender problems in a book written in 1963, when he indicated there was no religious proscription against corrective surgery. However, says Molkara, the statement applied only to hermaphrodites, defined as those bearing both male and female genital characteristics. It provided no remedy for those - such as Molkara - who physically belonged to one gender but were convinced that they were members of the opposite sex.

mohandasgandhi:

womenwhokickass:

Maryam Molkara: Why she kicks ass

  • She runs the major transsexual campaign group in Iran, and frequently bails out trans persons who have been arrested.
  • In 1978, before the Iranian Revolution, she wrote to Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile, requesting religious guidance. He replied that she should follow the Islamic obligations of being a woman.  After the Revolution,  like all other transgender persons in Iran, she was harrassed, and made to wear men’s clothing, forced to take male hormones, and confined in a psychiatric hospital. She tried approaching Khomeini directly and was badly beaten up by his bodyguards before succeeding.
  • However he did give Fereydoon a religious authorization for SRS surgery, and has been taken to be a fatwa that covers other transgender persons as well. Subsequently Maryam struggled to organize transgender persons in Iran, and introduce medical standards. However she was not happy with procedures in Iran, and had surgery in Thailand in 2001. 

Because of Molkara, Iran has become a “global leader for sex changes”:

In contrast to almost everywhere else in the Muslim world, sex change operations are legal in Iran for anyone who can afford the minimum £2,000 cost and satisfy interviewers that they meet necessary psychological criteria. As a result, women who endured agonising childhood and adolescent experiences as boys, and - albeit in fewer numbers - young men who reached sexual maturity as girls, are easy to find in Tehran. Iran has even become a magnet for patients from eastern European and Arab countries seeking to change their genders.

[…]

This situation would have been unthinkable were it not for the bravery and persistence of Molkara, who embarked on a personal odyssey that brought persecution and abuse in her quest for Khomeini’s official blessing. Khomeini had pronounced on gender problems in a book written in 1963, when he indicated there was no religious proscription against corrective surgery. However, says Molkara, the statement applied only to hermaphrodites, defined as those bearing both male and female genital characteristics. It provided no remedy for those - such as Molkara - who physically belonged to one gender but were convinced that they were members of the opposite sex.

“You’ve made some mistakes, Miss Kyle.”

“A girl’s gotta eat.”