What's Your Little Girl Reading?

Do you have a little girl? If so, when was the last time you sat down and took a good look at the books she's reading?

[Source]

Little girls need stories with strong, relatable female characters. Stories that only portray girls and women as passive, silent objects to advance male narratives (and especially as princesses in distress, waiting anxiously for their prince to rescue them) teach girls that passivity and reliance on men are the ideal mode for women. Worse yet, the histories of real, powerful women are hidden, so that they cannot provide a vital counterpoint to the fantasy narrative - so that too many girls grow into women cheated of their expected happily ever afters.

Rebel Girls is out to change that, and one of the ways they're doing so is with their book Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls, featuring the stories of 100 awesome women, and beautifully illustrated by 60 fantastic women artists.

Highly recommended as an addition to any little girl's library!

Pretty picture time!

Weld

Links!

• Library Land
• Women's Liberation reading guide from Haymarket Books "March is Women's History Month, and March 8th is International Working Women's Day. This year, women all over the world will demonstrate, strike, and continue to organize to highlight the struggles of women around the world.... In solidarity with the Women's Strike and beyond, Haymarket Books offers a reading guide for those looking for the history, politics, and inspiration, to learn from past struggles for women's liberation, and to participate in the many struggles to come."
• Health, Science, & Technology
• The Immigration Ban And The Physician Workforce "The Executive Order restricting visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen has many legal, political, and moral implications. But here we will focus on the medical implications of the executive order, by considering its impact on the physician workforce in the United States and the patients that rely on these immigrant doctors. There are 14 million doctor’s appointments provided each year by physicians trained in those six countries. These doctors are working all across America, but they are especially concentrated in the Rust Belt and Appalachia, seeing many patients in communities in Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Indiana, and Kentucky."
• Hey, look, Big Brother is watching you! Wikileaks 'reveals CIA hacking tools' "The alleged cyber-weapons are said to include malware that targets Windows, Android, iOS, OSX and Linux computers as well as internet routers." Now, where'd I put my tinfoil hat...?
• Congress is Trying to Roll Back Internet Privacy Protections As You Read This
  

  Back in 2014 over 3 million Internet users told the U.S. government loudly and clearly: we value our online security, we value our online privacy, and we value net neutrality. Our voices helped convince the FCC to enact smart net neutrality regulations—including long-needed privacy rules.
  
  But it appears some members of Congress didn’t get the message, because they’re trying to roll back the FCC’s privacy rules right now without having anything concrete ready to replace them. We’re talking here about basic requirements, like getting your explicit consent before using your private information to do anything other than provide you with Internet access (such as targeted advertising).  Given how much private information your ISP has about you, strict limits on what they do with it are essential.

• International
• South Korea Receives First Components of Thaad Missile-Defense System "The arrival of the first components of a controversial missile-defense system in South Korea drew a rebuke from China, escalating tensions in a region that has been rocked by North Korea’s recent missile launches and its diplomatic standoff with Malaysia." OK, maybe North Korea is going to start WWIII before Russia can get around to it.  Related: China Warns of Arms Race After U.S. Deploys Missile Defense in South Korea 
• North Korea, Malaysia ban each other's citizens from leaving They're holding each other's citizens hostage - that can't be good. 
• U.S. News
• Not Trump
• Want educational equity? Make sure your teachers feel valued, say lawmakers  Hey, you know what makes teachers feel valued? Not having their funding taken away to support charter schools. Also, not being portrayed as just waiting around to be told what to do.
• To "Deter Movement" at Border, Homeland Security Wants to Leverage the Kids The argument for this is the claim that people are kidnapping children and claiming them as their own in order to get across the border. But kidnapping is already a crime, and separating children from their parents, which is what this would amount to more often than anything else, is cruel to both the parents and the children. "'Bottom line: separating mothers and children is wrong,' [Representative Henry Cuellar] said. 'That type of thing is where we depart from border security and get into violating human rights.'"
• Chaffetz: Americans May Have To Choose Between New Phone, Health Insurance  Let's be honest here - if you can afford a new iPhone, you're not the one most worried about losing health insurance. It's the people who are forced to chose between health insurance and rent, or health insurance and food, who are the most vulnerable. Chaffetz and his ilk (which seems to include most of the GOP, and certainly GOP leadership) are completely out of touch with real life for a huge chunk of their constituencies. 
• While we were distracted by Trump, Republicans advanced these 9 terrifying bills Included on the list: the termination of the EPA and the Department of Education, as well as the introduction of national Right to Work laws and stripping federal funding from all sanctuary cities. 
• Senate votes to kill worker safety rule aimed at federal contractors  In particular, they're killing "a rule that required federal contractors to disclose and correct serious safety violations." Because, at the end of the day, they don't really care about the well-being of America's workers.
• OK, look. I understand that Carson got into his position because of the crazy notion that someone who is an expert or genius in one area is automagically an expert or genius in all areas. But now I'm beginning to question his expertise as a neurosurgeon, too: Ben Carson told HUD staff he could zap their brains into reciting whole books read 60 years ago. What? Hint - that is not how brains work.
• Of Course Trump 
• UN says Trump's revised travel ban will worsen plight of refugees "Donald Trump’s revised travel ban will increase the woes of the world’s refugees, the United Nations has said, as some of the Muslim-majority countries affected by the ban expressed their disappointment, insisting they had fully cooperated with US anti-terrorist efforts."
• Related: Our Better Ban : Behold the re-launch of American ostracism "The ban’s target is neither the refugee nor the visa holder but those 'real' Americans who imagine their opportunities and safety abridged by them. Per this new moral math Trump and his advisers would like Americans to adopt, the immigrant and Muslim others are not simply foreign but morally inferior to those who can smugly claim belonging based on ancestry or birthright. Seeking a visa, permission to enter becomes a kind of beggary, devoid of dignity and justifying a demeaning scrutiny and differential treatment. This new travel ban, with its petty concessions, is one brick in this edifice of nativist moral superiority currently under construction. When complete, it will render the native synonymous with the good, the pure, the pristine, and the legitimate. "
• To fund border wall, Trump administration weighs cuts to Coast Guard, airport security "The Trump administration, searching for money to build the president’s planned multibillion-dollar border wall and crack down on illegal immigration, is weighing significant cuts to the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies focused on national security threats, according to a draft plan.  The proposal, drawn up by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), also would slash the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides disaster relief after hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters." This makes my brain hurt so much. Why does anyone think Mexicans crossing over the border are a bigger threat than natural disasters? 
• White House aides struggle to defend Trump wiretap claims "Trump has since provided no proof to back up his assertion, which has been rebuffed by Obama, FBI Director James B. Comey and former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr." Look, we've got North Korea lobbing missiles around like baseballs, South Korea getting antsy about it, and China getting antsy about them; and then, of course, there's Russia getting pushy, and Sweden's nervous enough to reinstate the draft. Why is Trump focusing on imaginary wiretaps and snarky media portrayals? Seriously, someone's priorities are way out of whack.
• Donald Trump Met Russian Ambassador During The Campaign, Despite Repeated Denials Oh, come on! That's it - I'm done. Good night, folks.