Bunchland

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

We made the leap and nabbed a cargo bike off of Craigslist last month, a doozie of a vehicle that fits up to four kids, or as the man we bought her from claimed, two adults and one big dog, or as Sarah Elton wrote in a Grid article last summer, a barbecue.

Whatever you put in them, cargo bikes are some kind of awesome. A freedom ride that lets to cart your kids or your junk (or both) around town, and as the above-mentioned Elton article points out, gives a big, revolutionary stick-it finger to our city’s war on bikes.  Read more...

Meri Perra’s sure to have something good for us!

Meri Perra’s moving into some new digs this weekend, so we’re sure to hear a good story about it next week. You may recall that Meri and her family live in pretty close quarters, so we’re glad they’re getting a bit more space. Anyone else moving this spring?

We’re wondering if Meri took a gander at Stephanie Potter’s moving with kids tips.

On the lesbian mom news front, some good news and some bad. First the good: Zach Wahls has a book! My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength and What Makes a Family came out yesterday. And why we need to keep talking about queer parenting issues: the Boy Scouts booted out a lesbian den mother, but she’s fighting back and she’s got GLAAD on her side.

Photo by The Muuj via Flickr

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

I found a new queer parenting column on Chicago’s LGBT news site, the Windy City Media Group by Roi Ann Phillips, a self-identified suburban, lesbian soccer mom, who debuted her column with the following question:

“What about our life is quintessentially gay?” she writes, hitting home with:
“I haven’t been an active part of the public LGBT movement in nearly eight years.”

Relate much? I do. Much of my first pregnancy was spent being a union local president, and freaking out about becoming a mom, both of which caused me to drop out of the queer scene a good nine months before our first daughter was born. I’ve been out of it nearly six years.  Read more...

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

Call it a throwback to the anti-porn debates of lore, when some feminists and conservative Christians actually agreed with each other on an issue. (If feminists ever had a warning that maybe they should re-think their stance on something…)

Now, an international beauty pageant and North America’s 35-year running feminist music festival happen to agree with each other also. The agreement: that trans women are not “real women”, or “natural women” or however else you want to mask-up some fairly blatant transphobic nonsense.

Let’s start with the story of Jenna Talackova, Canada’s Miss Universe finalist who was kicked out of the competition after certain groups pressured the corporation to let her go, or because she does indeed break the Miss Universe rules. Either way, the 23-year old Talackova got booted out of Miss Universe because she is trans, and over 40,000 people, including yours truly, have signed a Change.org petition telling Miss Universe to get their heads out of you-know-where and bring Talackova back, because, come on.  Read more...

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

I went to journalism school with a sports writer who landed a part-time job at a parenting magazine right after graduation. She got the job after she completed an internship we both applied for. (She got the internship, I went elsewhere.)

She’s a smart, career-focused, young woman, who is not a parent. The type who’d probably never picked up a parenting magazine, except to prepare for the interview that ultimately landed her the job (I mean, why would she read a parenting magazine?) Meanwhile, I’d spent a year of mat leave reading them.

Jobs are so weird.

Now I’m writing NHL score re-caps, taking on some extra work for a client. Those who know me, understand this is much more ironic than the above-mentioned non-mom landing the parenting magazine gig over me. As in, this is way, way ironic. As in, Alanis had nothing on this. As in, it’s i-ron-ic.  Read more...

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

I got into an argument this morning with my four-year old, Rosa, about whether or not she had brushed her teeth. Other mom Catharine, said she was pretty sure Rosa hadn’t. At least, that’s what she yelled from the shower.

I looked at Rosa. “You need to brush your teeth,” I said.

“I did, I did!” she yelled back.

This exchange happened about three or a million times. And soon, the inevitable, and heart breaking, preschool tears started to flow.

“I did brush my teeth, I did!” Rosa said, her face getting red, her eyes blinking back wetness. “Rosa, your toothbrush is dry, honey. You didn’t brush your teeth at all. Look.” I held up the toothbrush. She looked at the brush, looked up at me, and then screamed, “That’s my sister’s toothbrush!”  Read more...

It could be my twisted sense of humour, but sometimes the news is just, funny. Here is my round-up of queerly-themed parenting stories that I found both newsworthy and laugh-worthy this week.

1. Turns out, same sex marriages aren’t a threat to the whole institution after all

According to a website run by journalism graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill school, gay marriages don’t ruin straight ones. Hear this out. It’s almost as though we help straight marriages. States that allow same sex marriages have the lowest divorce rates in the U.S, and same-sex couples divorce at slightly lower rates than straight folks.  Read more...