Have you ever come across the terms “pro-life” or “pro-choice”? If you have, chances are that you know about the huge controversy surrounding abortion. Abortion is the act of removing a fetus before it has the chance to become a baby. The controversy evolved around whether this should be considered murder and around the resulting question of whether it should be illegal or not.
People who are vehemently against abortion call themselves “pro-life”, seeing as they claim to save lives by stopping fetuses from being aborted. However, if you look at the situation of women who want to abort, I don’t see how it would help anybody to illegalize abortion. There are a few different situations a woman can be in that would possibly lead her to wish to abort her fetus. The pregnancy could have been a result of carelessness, an accident or an assault. In most cases she will not be in a situation where she could offer her child a good life. She might still be in school, in which case a baby would hinder her chance to have a good education, or she might not have the financial security a baby would need. Not to mention the possibility of a rape victim having to deal with the additional emotional trauma. Continue reading Why being “pro-life” is not actually saving lives →
Think of your favorite movie.
Now try to name as many characters from that film as you can.
Write their names in a column, male on one side, female on the other.
What do you see?
Chances are the list of male names is about twice as long as the list of females. Why is that? In the world there are roughly the same amount of men and women, shouldn’t a movie represent that? Shouldn’t it at least be somewhat similar to reality? While that seems logical, a study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film has confirmed that in 2014[1] just about 30% of all characters in movies, and only 12% of protagonists, were female. You could of course ask why it is that way. It’s a valid question. It doesn’t represent real life. And while that may make sense for some movies taking place in universes that have nothing to do with our reality, it certainly doesn’t for most. Continue reading Female Representation in Movies →
Many people would argue that queer representation on TV has improved a lot over the last few years. And it has. There is no denying that there are more non-straight characters on TV now than there were thirty years ago. But it isn’t as great as it is painted to be.
Since 1976, 11% of series on TV have had a lesbian or bisexual character, and of those, 65% have had a deceased queer character. 31% of lesbian characters no longer on TV have died and only 11% of those have had a happy ending. This phenomenon has a name: Dead Lesbian Syndrome. Continue reading “Dead Lesbian Syndrome” aka. “Bury Your Gays” →
What we think and what we do…
