• Aisha Tyler gives advice for women gamers dealing with online harassment (PolicyMic).
• Sarah Mirk at Bitch reviews Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and concludes you’re better spending your money on something other than a ticket.
• Sociological Images analyzes Merida’s Disney princess makeover.
• Estimated sexual assaults in the U.S. Military are way up in the past couple of years, as reported by Ms Magazine.
• Kendra and Arturo at Racialicious discuss the representation of the character “The Mandarin” in Iron Man 3.
• More than 20 Conservative MPs and Senators joined the “March for Life” in Ottawa last week (Globe and Mail).
• A group of students who started a “White Girls Club” at their New Jersey highschool are being sent for counselling after posting “racially insensitive comments and photos” on social media (The Root).
• A guest blogger at Feministe takes us through how to be an ally to bisexuals.
• Jennifer Finney Boylan has a poignant Mother’s Day reflection in the New York Times about experiencing mothering throughout her gender transition.
• The Guardian has an article up about the fight to keep North Dakota’s last abortion clinic open.

• Farrah Khan at Shameless looks at the myths being challenged in the case of N.S., a woman who has spent years fighting for her right to testify while wearing a niqab against relatives she says molested her.
• Angus Johnston of Student Activism responds to Niall Ferguson, who this past week caught flak for saying Keynes’ economic theories were short-sighted because he was gay.
• A straight, 18-year-old girl from Texas is standing up against her principal’s attempt to stop her from supporting LGBT rights at school (Queerty).
• Jezebel reports on a creepy new app for guys who want to play at being “pickup artists”.
• Tennis legend Billie Jean King talks at NY Mag about Jason Collins and the lesbian athletes who came out or were outed before him.
• A Saskatoon bridal shop owner asked a trans woman to leave because “we don’t allow men to wear dresses here” (Transgriot).
• And Towleroad reports on the firing of a Toronto RE/MAX real estate agent for putting out a flyer advocating for “traditional families”.
• Lauren Chief Elk does a great job eloquently expressing the concerns of many Indigenous women related to Eve Ensler’s V-Day One Billion Rising campaign. OBR Canadian Coordinator Tanisha Taitt responded and you can read that here (though it raises its own concerns) and later Eve Ensler also issued an apology. The discussion is far from over but I think these are important concerns to be familiar with for anyone involved in these events next year.

• As a former die-hard Law and Order: SVU fan, I think this is an important take from Sociological Images, saying the show may have crossed a line in appropriating the real-life stories of rape survivors.
• The Feminist Wire is running a week-long forum on race, racism, and anti-racism within feminism and it is well worth checking out and using as a jumping-off point for introspection and action.
• Emily Lindin is sharing her experiences as “the 6th-grade ‘slut’” on her Tumblr, The UnSlut Project, with the aim of working to undo slut-shaming in our schools and communities (and check out her “My Reality” post here at Gender Focus from yesterday!).
• The ACLU is challenging a Norristown, PA law that lets landlords evict tenants who report domestic violence incidents to the police (Huffington Post).
• Grimes is standing up against the sexist and otherwise offensive comments she gets from some members of the public. Read her moving statement on her Tumblr.
• Andy Hines and Brené Brown talk in the Atlantic about how messages of shame are organized around gender.
• The Province of Alberta is cutting a successful program that made low-cost birth control available to women in need (Calgary Herald).
• SPARK Summit shows that teaching men not to rape does actually work at preventing rape.
• Elsa at Feminist Sonar muses on her experiences on how having a disability affects how people push beauty standards on her.

• Steph Guthrie is leading a conversation on “revenge porn” (sharing nude or explicit pictures of someone without their consent) and how to “wipe it off the face of this green earth”. Check out the ideas that have been generated to influence legislation, curriculum development, and public opinion on this issue.
  
• The Mary Sue shares the American Library Association’s most recent list of the top banned and challenged books from the past year.
• Does Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” register with women of colour? Tami Winfrey Harris explores this question in her article at In These Times.
• Super congrats to Laura Bates on one year since founding the Everyday Sexism Project. Here, at The Guardian, she reflects on the feedback she’s had and the stories she’s helped share in the first year.
• Time has released their 2013 list of the most influential people in the world. Women and Hollywood has made it easy for you to find the profiles of all the amazing women on the list.
• Lady T at Bitch Flicks asks whether there’s too much gratuitous nudity in Game of Thrones and whether that’s at all balanced by the complex female characters.
• Jen Kirkman reminds people why it’s actually kind of condescending to tell a childless woman that she’d be a great mom (The Atlantic).
• The rape of a 5-year-old girl in India has led to more protesting on the streets (Jezebel).

On another note I wanted to remind readers I’m always interested in helping to use this blog to promote and publicize feminist and related community campaigns or events, especially those happening in Canada. Some examples of community stuff we’ve covered in the past are: the campaign for Equal Pay Day in Ontario, a project to empower Filipina girls in B.C., IWD in Ottawa, and the campaign to keep the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

But I’m located in Vancouver and we don’t have contributors in quite every province, so sometimes I miss out on inspiring feminist happenings unless someone brings them to my attention. Comment on a post or email me if you have something coming up and you’d like help spreading the word.

• The new #femfuture report on the state of online feminist activism and its needs going forward has been the subject of intense debate and discussion on Twitter and blogs. Bitch asked feminist writers not involved in the project to share their two cents.
• Caperton at Feministe has also collected some valid critiques of the #femfuture report.
• More reflections on the passing of Margaret Thatcher: Towleroad shares a clip that’s surfaced of an anti-gay speech Thatcher delivered in 1987, and Holly Combe at The F Word takes issue with some implying Thatcher’s success furthered women’s equality.
• Sociological Images has some new data that show the number of dads providing primary care for kids is virtually unchanged from 25 years ago.
• Can corporations patent genes? Believe it or not, the US Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments on that issue as a challenge is brought against a company that has patented two “breast cancer genes” (Ms. Magazine).
• Joe.My.God is reporting that the Canadian Human Rights Commission isn’t allowing former sportscaster Damian Goddard’s case against Rogers to proceed. Goddard claims he was fired for sending a tweet against same-sex marriage.
• I haven’t quite found time to read Susan Faludi’s tribute to Shulamith Firestone in the New Yorker, but I understand it is an inspiring and moving must-read, so I’ll give you all a head start.

• It’s Equal Pay Day, which signifies how far U.S. average women must work into 2013 just to make what average men made in 2012 (Ms. Magazine).
• For Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, Suzy X. shares a comic about what it’s like being a sexual assault survivor (Bitch).
• On the death of Margaret Thatcher, Melissa McEwan remembers the misogyny and sexist commentary she was subject to during her career (Shakesville).
• At Shameless, Meg Pirie has some great suggestions for how to respond to mansplaining.
• Nerdy Feminist shares an interesting infographic on the extra money women spend throughout their lives (an average of $849,000 in the U.S.), just for being born female.
• UK Immigration Tribunal Judges are being accused of asking lesbian asylum seekers some really inappropriate and insensitive questions (The Independent).
• Amy Richards is doing her dissertation on the feminist blogosphere at the University of Leeds and needs feminist blog readers like you to take a couple of minutes to fill out her survey.
• Lolla Mohammed Nur talks about starting the #MYcultureNOToutfit hashtag and campaign against Urban Outfitters’ cultural appopriation (Opine Season).
• Obama recently had to apologize to California Attorney General Kamala Harris for calling her “the best looking Attorney General by far”. Colorlines shares a list of three things she should be known for.
• Cosplayers have a message for convention-goers: cosplay does not equal consent to be harassed (Buzzfeed).
• At YU Free Press, Shaunga Tagore draws connections between colonialism, class, race, and violence against women’s bodies and the environment.

• When some people found out the person who runs the Facebook page I Fucking Love Science is a woman, they were shocked, shocked! (The Guardian)
• Two women featured in a New York Times “trend piece” on “feminist housewives” are saying they were misrepresented and made to fit into the author’s fairytale (Jezebel).
• Feministing interviews Zerlina Maxwell, who gained attention recently after speaking up on the Sean Hannity Show to argue that men should be told not to rape rather than putting the onus on women to own a gun to protect themselves.
• In the department of creepy old white guys, Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield has been called out by MP Megan Leslie after he told a high-school girl that her baking skill means she’ll “make a wonderful wife for somebody” (Huffington Post).
• On a more positive note, the NDP’s Bill C-279 – their latest attempt at a trans rights bill – passed the House! Let’s hope it finally makes it through the Senate and into law this time (Transgriot).
• Someone at the University of Western Ontario went around campus defacing posters protesting violence against women (Sociological Images).
• Abby at Accidental Devotional talks about the day she had a conversation with her Grade 9 class about how not to rape.
• Sarah Noble at The F Word tells the story of Lucy Meadows, a trans teacher in England who recently committed suicide after being hounded by a transphobic media.
• The recent reaction to Adria Richards’ calling out sexist jokes at a text conference is part of a larger culture of online threats against women, according to Soraya Chemaly at The Huffington Post.
• Tabatha Southey reflects on the Steubenville coverage in the context of her experience being sexually assaulted as a teen (Globe and Mail).
• And is media coverage of Premier Christy Clark sexist? Katie Hyslop asks reporters, politicians and experts for their opinion (The Tyee).