* Via Vox Populi, Georgetown student Julia Shindel talks to the Chronicle of Higher Education about her reproductive health activism on campus, which included chaining herself to a statue of Georgetown founder John Carroll and wearing duct tape over her mouth. She rates that symbolic silencing method “disgusting.”

* The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health offers up a proposed curriculum on porn.

* Something to remember, via Hysteria!: “There are too many instances in the world when women’s voices are discounted.  Not just our figurative voices—-the words we speak and the meanings of those words—-but our literal voices too—-our sometimes soft, high-timbre ululations. We are told that we are too soft-spoken to hear, that our proclamations carry too much emotion, too much shame, too many tears.”

* Queen Emily on what can happen when you’re outed as trans:

One time, I inadvertently outed myself to a group of students. I’d been teaching a tremendously interesting media studies class to first years; that is, mostly 17 and 18 year olds. The first three weeks went pretty well. We talked video games and violence, Hollywood, what they actually did with media. The discussions were engaged, it was all going fine. Then, a month in, I came down with a cold. My voice suddenly dropped an octave, because I couldn’t vocalise at my usual pitch. And like that, you could see the lights go on in their eyes. They’d realised I was trans.

. . . The next week, we did adbuster style cut-ups to jam dominant media messages and several groups turned in transphobic assignments, giggling their arses off. They were laughing at me. Another student spent the lesson interrupting me, telling the class how everything I was saying was stupid. And of course, a number of students stopped attending my classes altogether, trying to get into classes in the same unit run by other teachers.

. . . The point is, the mere fact of their knowing that I am trans meant that they, 17 and 18 year olds with scant knowledge of the subject they were taking, suddenly felt entitled to talk over me, to mock me openly when previously they had been respectful. Of itself, being subjected to ungendering takes its toll, especially if it’s something you experience frequently.

* Elena Kagan on abortion. Apparently she believes that the constitution provides for women’s lives being protected in abortion regulation. Activist judge!

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Photo viaGeorge Eastman House