The WOC commenters on Jezebel have seriously revolutionized my feminism. I've been a feminist forever and certainly before "intersectionality" was a commonly-used word; I obviously never thought of myself as racist but I didn't realize how white-centric my viewpoint was. I read coverage on Jez of the women's Olympic…

I didn't mean to sound like I was encouraging womanists to identify as feminists, I'm really not. Or to suggest that womanists are opting out of being a powerful force for good by not identifying as feminists, I think they're a powerful force for good in their own right (what they lack in numbers they make up for in…

a lot of white lady feminists have a real hard time seeing the ways they benefit from and act consistently with white supremacy. That the problem isn't just racism practiced as personal character defect, but institutions that prioritize the concerns of white people and systematically exploit non-white people for the…

From where are you getting the torture and murder? The article states that she was co-sleeping with her baby, woke up to find it dead, and went to the hospital to get help. Maybe she did kill her child either intentionally or by accident- but to jump from that to torture and murder is a little much without some actual…

Of course it would. And if they did go so far as to to charge her, the narrative would all be about her presumptive illness and the tattered state that her health care situation was in at the time.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you can get a court order along those lines, but more importantly, why would you want to? If a teenager who had a baby at 16 is neglectful, is she doomed to be neglectful for the rest of her life? I'd be a shame if someone went through all the hardship of getting their life together, getting…

The prosecutors tried to coerce one woman into sterilization after she was arrested with marijuana. She also happened to be young and had 3 kids. I guess the prosecutors just wanted to throw in some forced sterilization for grins and giggles.

No, the shocking thing is how many people don't see a problem with it.

Oh god, I know. This happened to other women of color or those they decided didn't deserve to have children.

That was happening to Native women in the US as late as the 1980's as a matter of official policy, and it still happens in the way the article described to this day. The most shocking thing about it is that so many people who read this will be surprised by it.

To piggyback of what Vulcan Has No Moon said, I know a middle class white woman who was sleeping in the same bed with her baby when it died. (Maybe SIDS? Maybe she rolled over and smothered him?) There may have been a little investigation, but it was done in a way that would be sensitive to her loss.

If you read the story, she and the baby were sleeping in the same bed and it died. If this were a wealthy, white Park Slope yuppie mother "Co-Sleeping", there wouldn't be charges because it would be a "tragic accident" or "SIDS".

Men love to control women's genitals. They won't control their own but they do so love to control women's.

I would say so, ya. What do you want to bet that the women being coerced are predominantly of color? I'm Canadian, and we have a horrific history of forced sterilization up here, as do you in the U.S.

Every time the state has sanctioned coerced sterilization, it has been abused. Every. Time.

I understand how to some, this seems entirely logical. Decades of mental illness, mysterious death of a baby, and an easy way to make sure it never happens again. But we should learn from death penalty cases that government can't be trusted to make these decisions. Over time they will over reach and people will be…

I remember my mom making an offhand remark one day that my grandma refused to go to the tribal clinic while she was having a baby. She didn't want to be sterilized. She knew what happened to a number of women who went there and she didn't want to be one of them.

I don't know why anyone would be obligated to do anything in the bedroom. Penises of the world, no one owes you a blow job, no matter how swell you think you are.

I'd imagine human slavery would break some sort of Federal statute, too.

Tandoori Grill was my favorite restaurant. The food was always amazing but occasionally not quite as delicious as normal. We would joke that it must have been the regular chef's day off whenever it wasn't as good as usual. It makes me ill thinking that the chef never had a day off, and his "off" days were likely due…