Your Friendly Neighbourhood Feminist

So apparently everybody on this whole planet is clamouring about '420', and of course being the culturally inept, deprived soul that I am, I had no idea what the big fuss was about. So, in an attempt to pre-empt any embarassing faux-pas I might make in conversation tomorrow (or today, rather - I'm up late as usual), I quickly Googled "April 20" to ascertain what they could be referring to.

Now usually I think of Hitler's birth or Columbine when April 20th rolls around, but on reviewing a list of events that happened on that day, I was pleasantly surprised to see that on the April 20th of 2001, China removed homosexuality from their list of mental illnesses (and the best part is, I can somewhat indirectly justify to myself that my discovery could potentially relate back to the material I was supposed to be studying and not feel bad about being so easily distracted!).

Anyway, I digress. I figure that most of the people I know are referring to 420, the holiday in cannabis culture, but why celebrate pot when you can celebrate legitimate recognition and equality? Happy Homosexuality-is-not-a-mental-illness Day, people! Let's get high off of acceptance :)

Labels: acceptance, April 20, China, mythbusting

...but exams are ramping up and I am completely not prepared. YFNF will pick up during the summer - and that's a promise!

However, I just -had- to post this ridiculousness up. Look at this. It's absolute dreck.

Good job, Amazon.

They later claimed it was a "technical glitch" and they're now "working on fixing it". Yea, I didn't know discrimination could be solved by computer troubleshooting.

[Edit on April 13] - A further update: Apparently not only have they de-ranked and removed ratings for feminist books such as the "Yes Means Yes" anthology on sexual violence, my well-informed source tells me that pro-sexuality books and books on disabilities are now also affected. Real smooth, Amazon. Real smooth.

Labels: Amazonfail, homophobia, LGBT community, literature