Hello, and welcome to the weekly women+’s issues/health thread!

Each Wednesday, someone will post a discussion with a few relevant news items from the last week, as well as a topic for further conversation. The prompt will serve as a starting point for those who may want to participate but don’t have a topic of their own they’d like to discuss – as long as it’s relevant to the discussion as a whole, anything goes.

Some guidelines to help this space be a positive experience for everyone:

☮ As always with the AVCAD, don’t feel compelled to share beyond your comfort level.

☮ Anyone who identifies as female, or who was socialized female/AFAB/otherwise has firsthand experience with the issues being discussed, is welcome to post. If you identify as cis-male, we ask that you please set your participation to “lurk” mode, unless otherwise explicitly invited to participate further (i.e. if we did an AMA kind of thread). I’m sure there’s plenty to be gleaned just by reading!

☮ Please do your best to be mindful of others’ experiences when commenting or posing questions for the group. The female identity is Legion and contains multitudes, and not everyone who has experience with being treated as female by society identifies as female. Furthermore, racial and ethnic identities, sexual orientation, and many other factors can color how one experiences their gender identity on a day-to-day basis. Simply put,

Updates from the world of womanity:

We’ve got black women to thank for the election of Doug Jones over Roy Moore, and white women to shame. See more about this in the weekly topic, but here is the breakdown of the votes per WAPO:

Let’s also keep in mind who gets listened to when we talk about harassment and assault. Gabrielle Union pointed out last week that she broke the silence about her own assault years ago…and no one listened. White women are believed while women of color are dismissed or ignored.

 

 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

““When liberal whites fail to understand how they can and/or do embody white supremacist values and beliefs even though they may not embrace racism as prejudice or domination (especially domination that involves coercive control), they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of racist domination and oppression that they wish to see eradicated.” bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black

DISCUSSION TOPIC OF THE WEEK: White women uphold white supremacy

As you can see from the chart above, white women in Alabama voted for Roy Moore. As we also know, white women voted for Trump. Many white women continue to prioritize reinforcing and supporting white supremacy over their own self-interest and over the interests and safety of other women. What can we do about this?

If you want to sign up to do this post in a future week, go right ahead! This list serves as both a sign-up sheet and as an archive for old topics. Check it out! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nBFdVjBdMVCwjw_H7R-k9qwthgV6HrzNiOtkKjxq8sk/edit?usp=sharing