Facebook allows sexually exploitative pages to stay up.

Oaky, so Facebook deletes and bans pictures of women breastfeeding, or of mastectomy scars/cover-ups, yet leaves up pages promoting rape, violence against women, pictures of nearly-naked breasts that aren't breastfeeding and show more skin than the breastfeeding pictures, and this page, that's dedicated to one of India's largest red-light districts, which is well-known for being made up mostly of underage girls and sex-trafficking victims. It has EXPLICIT photos of blowjobs and sex. Some photos have been up since before 2012.

And Facebook refuses to take it down.

Here's the Tumblr post and screencaps. Reblog the hell out of this, my friends, and report it to Facebook like crazy. My friends and I are reporting it as "I don't think should be on Facebook" and then "Sexually explicit content."

http://thehistoryoftheladder.tumblr.com/post/52181800196/this-is-the-response-i-received-from-facebook


Update #1: Here's an article on the website Jezebel and the author's Tweet about it.

http://powderroom.jezebel.com/nsfw-facebook-says-that-page-trafficking-women-doesnt-511363941

https://twitter.com/SlayBelle/status/342119323546050561


Update #2: Jezebel ran the above story on their front page, and it got into the Daily Dot.

Minutes later, the page was deleted.

However, at least two other pages advertising Sonagachi are still up, albeit with less explicit photos. That doesn't change the fact that many of the women and underage girls in Sonagachi are sex-trafficking victims, and I'm pretty sure "advertizing prostitutes - willing or not" is a major violation of Facebook's TOS.

If only they had pictures of some of them breast-feeding. >.<

An open letter to Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee, rumoured to be the Republican Party's main Presidential candidate in 2012, has made inane and idiotic (is that redundant? Close, but no) remarks about Natalie Portman's pregnancy.

For those who don't know, Ms. Portman, who is 29 years old, an Academy Award-winning actress, and a Harvard graduate with a B.A. in psychology (obtained during the filming of the three Star Wars prequels), and who's had a 4.0 GPA since grade school, is pregnant by her partner and fiance, Benjamin Millipied.

Mr. Huckabee slammed single mothers in general, calling them "very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care." He neglected to comment on single fathers, or men who abandon the women they've knocked up, as if it's only women who have a hand in getting pregnant.

To the one I love: Back off my hijab.

I love you.  You are amazing.  You are intelligent, you are funny, you are inquisitive, you are strong, you are sassy, you are beautiful.  You are one of my favourite people, and I love telling others how much I love you.  I love, have always loved, and will always love, that you are a part of my life.

But I need you to back off my hijab.  I need you to stop asking why I wear it, because I've explained it to you several times.  I need you to not insinuate anymore that women who cover their heads because they believe that God wants them to haven't yet come into the 21st century (Catholics, Muslims, Jews, anyone).  The idea that I'm somehow stuck in the 7th century simply because I, and I alone, choose to not show anything but my face and hands to men who aren't related to me is insulting, rude, and, depending on how you're phrasing it, hurtful.

Love (because I do love you), my intelligence, strength, sense of humour, and strength don't diminish every time I put my hijab on.  My IQ doesn't diminish point by point with every layer that goes around my head.  The tightness of my hijab doesn't squeeze out my individuality, nor my sense of self, nor my self-esteem --- though sometimes it can make hearing and/or breathing a bit difficult, depending on the thickness of the material and how badly I've wrapped and pinned it.  Also, I'm just deaf sometimes.

In defence of purity rings.

This was brought on by my mother's friend talking about her tall, talented, georgeous daughter who wants to stay a virgin and wears a purity ring, and gets a lot of flack for it.

Purity rings get a lot of flack.  I'm guilty of that, I think.  I can't remember, but if I am, it was probably the same flack that I hear from other people: Kids can't control their sexual urges, the rings don't mean anything, they don't stop teens from having sex, and on and on and on.

I've never worn a purity ring.  I'm uninterested in partner sex, so I don't see a reason to remind myself to not do something that I don't want to do, and have no urge to do.  However, the one ring that I wear in a gold band with inset diamonds in it that my mother gave me.  I'm concerned about blood diamonds, so those are the only diamonds that I'll wear.

My moral issues with diamonds aside, I've worn that ring for the last few years, ever since Mom gave it to me.  Recently, I noticed that one diamond was chipped, so I took it in and was told that in addition, two more were loose.  I didn't want to loose any of the diamonds, so I took the ring off.  It's been two months, maybe three, and my finger still feels naked without the ring.  I'd fiddle with it when I wore it, and it reminds me of Mom every time.  Not wearing it makes me feel itchy, and sometimes I'll be looking around, wondering what's out of place, before I'll realise that my ring's not on my finger.