In preparation for an upcoming neo-Nazi march in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, local residents decided to fight back in a hilariously perfect way: by sponsoring each of the 250 fascist participants. According to Heeb Magazine, "For every metre they walked, €10 went to a programme called EXIT Deutschland, which helps people escape extremist groups."

The anti-semitic walkers didn't figure out the town's scheme until they had already started their march, and by that time, it was too late to turn back. The end result? The neo-Nazis raised more than $12,000 to fund programs to put an end to neo-Nazis.

Fun fact: Between pages of naked women, there are actual articles in Playboy.

BuzzFeed asked 10 women who had never read Playboy to read the magazine and give some feedback. The reactions ranged from hilarious to confused as the women flipped through Playboy issues from the 1960s through 2015.

The women made some interesting discoveries. They found that a full bush was definitely big in the 80s, and that when it comes to models, Playboy has a serious lack of diversity. Apparently, the mag hasn't quite figured out its image yet, since the content ranges from "porno mag" to Vanity Fair-esque, as one woman put it.

While the magazine has attempted to rebrand its image of late by discussing real issues such as feminism and rape culture, these ladies probably won't be subscribing any time soon. One woman joked about Playboy's readership: “They have the young men who really just want to look at the pictures, then there’s the like ‘I’m a little bit more sophisticated’ man I’m going to read the articles now. Then there’s ‘I’m old, I have to read the articles so that I don’t come off as a pervert.’"

Joss Whedon has never been shy about speaking out against misogyny within the entertainment industry. His latest shot across the bow of the patriarchy comes in an interview with Digital Spy conducted on the set of "Avengers: Age of Ultron" last summer.

"It's a phenomenon in the industry that we call 'stupid people,'" Whedon said when asked about the dearth of female-led superhero movies. "There is genuine, recalcitrant, intractable sexism, and old-fashioned quiet misogyny that goes on. [...] You hear, 'Oh, [female superheroes] don't work because of these two bad ones that were made eight years ago,' there's always an excuse."

This isn't the first time Whedon, who directed "Marvel's The Avengers" and its forthcoming sequel, weighed in on the topic. Speaking to The Daily Beast in 2013, Whedon also called the idea that female superhero movies couldn't work "stupid."

"I'm hoping 'The Hunger Games' will lead to a paradigm shift," he said at the time. "It's frustrating to me that I don't see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched 'The Avengers' and was like, 'My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,' and I thought, Yeah, of course they were. I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: 'If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.'"

Since Whedon spoke to Digital Spy, both Marvel (with Captain Marvel) and DC Comics (with Wonder Woman) announced plans for standalone superhero films with females leads at the center. Speaking to BuzzFeed on Thursday, Whedon clarified his comments. "I just thought, 'I sounded very harsh,'" he said about the original comments. "And then [Marvel announced], 'We're going to make Captain Marvel. We're going to make Black Panther. We're going to shake it up.' I was just like, great! Now I just sound mean and bitter. But, you know, there's a lot to be mean and bitter about."

Rosa Parks' Other (Radical) Side
The flesh-and-blood Rosa Parks was a lot more interesting than the one we read about in history books. A new book details how she was a warrior for justice for black women who were brutally raped by white men in the segregated South.

Rosa Parks was a demure seamstress who defied a Montgomery, Ala., bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white man because -- on that particular day -- she was tired. Her spontaneous act sparked a 1955 bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement.

Sound familiar? It should. It's the tale told in history books. It's also just a tiny sliver of the truth. The flesh-and-blood Rosa Parks is a lot more interesting. "It's sad, I think," author Danielle L. McGuire told me. "We tend to like our heroes simple and meek."

"If we had a larger sense of who she was, a radical activist and warrior for human rights," instead of a powerless individual struck by chance, said McGuire, it would show the work and the time she put in over many years.

McGuire, an assistant professor in the history department of Wayne State University in Detroit, tells the history of Parks' activism in her just-published book, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance -- a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. She gives a name to a few of the many women who risked their lives by speaking about brutality and injustice. They claimed their dignity and womanhood in a society that refused to recognize either.

For the past three years or so, at least one stranger has sought me out pretty much every day to call me a fat bitch (or some pithy variation thereof). I’m a writer and a woman and a feminist, and I write about big, fat, bitchy things that make people uncomfortable. And because I choose to do that as a career, I’m told, a constant barrage of abuse is just part of my job. Shrug. Nothing we can do. I’m asking for it, apparently.

Being harassed on the internet is such a normal, common part of my life that I’m always surprised when other people find it surprising. You’re telling me you don’t have hundreds of men popping into your cubicle in the accounting department of your mid-sized, regional dry-goods distributor to inform you that – hmm – you’re too fat to rape, but perhaps they’ll saw you up with an electric knife? No? Just me? People who don’t spend much time on the internet are invariably shocked to discover the barbarism – the eager abandonment of the social contract – that so many of us face simply for doing our jobs.
Sometimes the hate trickles in slowly, just one or two messages a day. But other times, when I’ve written something particularly controversial (ie feminist) – like, say, my critique of men feeling entitled to women’s time and attention, or literally anything about rape – the harassment comes in a deluge. It floods my Twitter feed, my Facebook page, my email, so fast that I can’t even keep up (not that I want to).


It was in the middle of one of these deluges two summers ago when my dead father contacted me on Twitter.

At the time, I’d been writing a lot about the problem of misogyny (specifically jokes about rape) in the comedy world. My central point – which has been gleefully misconstrued as “pro-censorship” ever since – was that what we say affects the world we live in, that words are both a reflection of and a catalyst for the way our society operates. When you talk about rape, I said, you get to decide where you aim: are you making fun of rapists? Or their victims? Are you making the world better? Or worse? It’s not about censorship, it’s not about obligation, it’s not about forcibly limiting anyone’s speech – it’s about choice. Who are you? Choose.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/02/what-happened-confronted-cruellest-troll-lindy-west?CMP=fb_gu

Mindy Kaling is actually invisible, just like all minority women

I mean, America doesn't even care to address her by her real name. It's Vera Mindy Chokalingam. Go on, make a funny comment about how it's a mouthful and difficult to pronounce. I dare you.
If you haven't seen the ad yet, it starts off with Mindy Kaling trying and failing to catch a cab. The cab breezes right by her, then stops mere feet from her for a man. As Kaling stands in the street perplexed and watching the scene unfold, we hear, "After years of being treated like she was invisible, it occurred to Mindy: She might actually be invisible." You probably watched the ad and thought it was funny. It is funny. Because Mindy. But my first thought on seeing it for the first time was that it was a commentary on minority women being invisible in general.







More: http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/1071437/mindy-kaling-is-actually-invisible-just-like-all-minority-women

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 23!
The trailer for the FSoG movie is out, and here's my mini-review. (And one more thought on it.) I have a weird mix of glee and sorrow that they're making a movie out of this. I am looking forward to it being so-bad-it's-good, a Showgirls for our time--but I'm also terrified that it's going to give millions of people the idea that BDSM is "abuse but they're perverts so it's okay." I don't want that.

Based on the trailer, it seems like it will be very faithful to the book, which might work in my favor. The audience consensus might end up being "wow, when you see this stuff actually acted out it's miserable," and then the whole thing will sink beneath the murky waves from which it arose. I can hope.

Anyway, we still have four chapters left in this book. Let's get slogging. As a reminder, when we left off, THE EMAIL WAS COMING FROM INSIDE THE BAR!!!

Content warnings for this chapter: Emotional abuse, do I even have to say it? Stalking, bigtime. Weirdness around drinking. Child molestation, molestation apologism, and implied (?) physical child abuse. Period sex.

Also, this is another long-ass entry.
I glance nervously around the bar but cannot see him. “Ana, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” “It’s Christian, he’s here.” “What? Really?” She glances around the bar too. I have neglected to mention Christian’s stalker tendencies to my mom.
"There are certain things about our relationship that sound like abuse, so I can't ever tell other people because they might think it was abuse, which it's not, but it's important I watch my words because if he thought I was calling him an abuser he might really do something awful." That's one of your classic warning signs.