Pre-December Linkpost

• World AIDS Day is 1 December. Click that link and contact your MP to get better HIV education into classrooms. And do what you can to fight HIV stigma, because a) stigma is a load of oppressive shit; b) it’s a problem that encompasses a load of feminist issues (for more on this tune in next week – several of us work in related sectors and will be blogging some WAD-related musings), and c) if you think simply knowing some basic facts about how HIV is contracted is all you can do to “act aware”, you’re wrong. Especially when the media so often fail enormously at reporting either sensitively or accurately on it.
• Ryanair, Stop Selling Your Staff – female cabin crew staff speak out against the latest round of Page 3-style ads.
• A thorough and thoughtful post on transphobic humour tropes, cinema and pop culture in general.
• NASA’s added a new webpage to its site to encourage women and girls to get into science and tech! Hooray! We’re not quite sure about all the PINK FOR LAYDEEZ font, mind, but it’s great to see.
• Two contrasting views on Twilight, both thought-provoking: the Hairpin points out the parallels with romantic literature in the Western canon, while i09 is transfixed by ‘body panic’ and nightmarishness.
• “We have to trick the consumers of boobsplat into buying books they wouldn’t normally buy”: how did we miss this?! Comics Alliance takes the women-comics debate to some creators, with Kieron Gillen, Greg Rucka, Kurt Busiek, G. Willow Wilson, Jeff Parker, Jess Fink, Brandon Graham, Sana Amanat, Jamie McKelvie, Erika Moen and Rachel Edidin sharing ideas.
• Finally, here’s Mary Wollstonecraft’s face being projected on the side of the Houses of Parliament. NOTHING ABOUT THIS ISN’T BADASS.

Have a great weekend! The next linkpost will be in December, meaning we will waste no time in being horrendously cheesy, flinging mince pies around, and singing The Waitresses (IT IS OFFICIALLY ALLOWED FROM 1 DECEMBER ONWARDS. YES) but nonetheless continuing the feminist pop culture adventure amid the silliness. :)