Happy Mothers Day.

Abstract image of stone-statue-like, faceless mother and child against a dark red background.

Mother (pink madonna) by Mikulus Galanda, 1933.
(public domain via rawpixel)

(via Women’s March email)

Mother’s Day grew from a movement rooted in antiwar organizing, mutual aid, and demands for policies that support women and families.

Before it became a commercial holiday, women used this day to organize for peace, public health, labor protections, and dignity.

That legacy belongs to mothers. And it also belongs to every woman helping shape the future of this country — whether they have children or not.

Today, women are still leading. We are the supermajority of people showing up and leading resistance movements across our country.

Women don’t carry society on our backs because we’re built for it. We carry it because we refuse to hand the future to fascists.

Happy Mother’s Day,
Women’s March

Co-signed in solidarity and love,
-Iris the Childless.

P.S. I understand all too well that this day can be a difficult one for those with challenging, damaging, distant, abusive, or no relationships with our mothers. It can also be difficult for those who are grieving the loss of beloved mothers, mother-figures, and children. Please know that you are not alone. I wish you peace and healing.

FWIW, here’s an image that made me smile today.

 

Siberian tigress with cub in snow.

Siberian tigress with cub in snow.
(public domain via rawpixel)

DOJ Fallout Over Comey Prosecution.

Screenshot from email alert: The Washington Post Trending Now: Must-read stories around major news events May 9, 9:22 a.m. EDT DOJ sees fallout after push to prosecute former FBI director James Comey. Several prosecutors have left the Justice Department, others are considering doing so, and at least one major case has been disrupted.

Screenshot from Washington Post email alert.

I am of two minds about this. When good people, like (some) federal career prosecutors, quit the DOJ on principle, it makes a powerful and important statement. (And headlines in the gawdawful Washington Post, apparently.) I could never ask any one of them to stay against their conscience, and to remain part of a captured, right-wing-politicized, weaponized DOJ, tasked with acting like the president’s personal law firm – one with the power to imprison his targets. That is some seriously fascist $#!+, right there.

At the same time, quitting on principle makes the DOJ even worse, with a stronger concentration of amoral, authoritarian @$$holes remaining. Those who leave know this of course, and I have to wonder how many of them have struggled to stay this long for that very reason, hoping to keep their jobs by keeping their heads down, and attempting to persevere until the chaos demons currently in charge are gone. But everyone with a conscience has their breaking point.

There is no good choice here for prosecutors who actually believe in, and often have devoted their entire careers to, the rule of law. Oh, they will be fine, at least financially: prosecutors are heavily recruited by law firms, and private practice pays way, WAAAAY more than a public prosecutor’s salary. They may even get to take some satisfaction in representing clients targeted by their former colleagues at DOJ.

The whole thing just makes me sad, angry, and wishing I had a passport from another country.

grayscale upside-down U.S. flag

Then again, if I had a different passport I wouldn’t be able to forfeit my vote to my Black neighbor. 😈

WHITE PEOPLE: LET’S ALL FORFEIT OUR VOTES TO BLACK WOMEN.

photo of the U.S. "Supreme" Court

U.S. “Supreme” Court (image: public domain via rawpixel)

In Callais v. Louisiana, the United States “Supreme” Court just eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an extraordinarily hard-won piece of federal legislation aimed at ending racial discrimination in voting.

The tl;dr version is this:

The ruling effectively invalidates Section 2 of the VRA as it has been understood for four decades without explicitly striking down the statute… By allowing for the dismantling of minority districts currently held by Democrats, the ruling could provide the GOP enough additional seats to lock in the party’s control of the House for a generation.

There is nothing surprising about a 6-3 SCOTUS opinion wherein the six-asshole majority rewrites, neuters and/or hollows-out laws duly enacted by Congress or states that do not uphold white cis-het christian male supremacy. Conservatives are constitutionally (<-hahaha) incapable of envisioning a culture, society, community, institution, family structure, or indeed any human relationship that does not embody a strict hierarchy, as arbitrary, amoral, or immoral as it may be. This is why conservatives by nature hate democracy: because democracy is, at least aspirationally, a real-world manifestation of equality. One person = one vote.

THE HORROR. 😱

After Callais, the gerrymandering frenzy in Republican-led states has gone into hyperdrive, in an effort to lock in a permanent gain of House seats for the GOP. Dem politicians are responding accordingly in a manic frenzy to rewrite electoral maps in blue states to counter these measures.

The Dem reaction is all fine and dandy, and probably necessary in the immediate aftermath of the court’s transparently racist and anti-democratic excrescence. But the real travesty here will not be remedied so easily: racial minorities will remain disenfranchised and significantly underrepresented for the foreseeable future.

Gee Iris, I can hear you asking, What can I possibly do about this malevolent shitfuckery? Fear not! For I have the answer:

WHITE PEOPLE:
LET’S ALL FORFEIT OUR VOTES TO BLACK WOMEN.

No, I am not joking.

[Read more…]

Banksy: Now in 3-D!

A statue of a man holding a flag which covers his face, and stepping off a plinth, signed "Banksy," surrounded by a crowd. It appeared in Waterloo Place in London, Thursday, April 30, 2026.

(AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

via AP:

May 1, 2026

LONDON (AP) — Elusive street artist Banksy said Thursday that a new sculpture that appeared in central London of a man striding off a plinth, with his face blinded by a billowing flag, is his work.

A statue of a man holding a flag which covers his face, and stepping off a plinth, signed "Banksy." It appeared in Waterloo Place in London, Thursday, April 30, 2026.

(via AP – video uncredited)

In a humorous video posted Thursday on his Instagram account, Banksy showed snippets of how the sculpture was put up in the dead of night. The sculpture appeared to have been erected in the early hours of Wednesday on a plinth on a traffic island in Waterloo Place, near Buckingham Palace.

…

The statue is situated close to those of King Edward VII, who reigned between 1901 and 1910, and legendary nurse Florence Nightingale, as well as the Crimean War Memorial.

Banksy is known for his 2-D spray-painted images, surreptitiously applied on public and private buildings. The sharp, witty, satirical and often scathing political commentary embedded in his work is not subtle. For me, Banksy’s artistic genius lies in crystallizing his point of view on dark and deep subject matter into simple, nearly universally accessible images (and statues!) that simultaneously exude an unmistakable playfulness, hilarity, child-like whimsy, and outright joy.

It is quite the trick Mr. Banksy pulls off, like no other.

More images of the statue below the cut.

[Read more…]

This is my rage face.

[CONTENT NOTE: mass shootings and shooters, violent misogyny, rape culture.]

Emoji: face with cringing eyes and mouth.

GENERAL NOTES:

First, when I use the word misogyny, by way of definition I incorporate by reference the concept of entitlement. It may be directed to women’s deference, obedience, attention, decisions, bodies, privacy, place in a hierarchy (such as a business), perceived or actual safety (relative to men), and/or umpteen kazillion other aspects that I cannot think of right now on account of the blinding rage. So whatever else its definition may encompass, it encompasses at least some form of gender-based entitlement.

Second, the definition of mass shooting lacks consensus, to put it mildly. Broadly speaking, it requires a single shooter, a minimum of three (or four) victims, which may (or may not) include the shooter, in a public place, in essentially the same geographic location with shots fired close together in time. Again, broadly speaking, it does not include foreign terrorist attacks, or incidental homicides such as multiple killings during a bank robbery.

Interestingly, the common caveat that a mass shooting must occur in a public place means that incidents where a shooter kills his wife, girlfriend, or ex, her children, other family member(s) and possibly himself (odds are 50-50 there) does not meet the definition of mass shooting.

I wonder why that is?

[Read more…]

And this is…news?

To anyone? Srsly?

Wahington Post banner logo

picture of the headquarters of the Southern Baptist convention.

News Alert
May 22, 4:01 p.m. EDT

Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, lied to members about secret database, explosive report shows

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention released a major third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top leaders in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Read more [@Washington Post]

Why? So we can “learn” that the hierarchy at an ultra- conservative, openly misogynist, church has a hideous history of sexually abusing women and girls (and probably boys and men too) and covering it up for decades?

You guys, it’s so weird! I feel like I could have written this exact story, word for word, without seeing anything more than the headline.

Yeah, I must be psychic or something. ‘CUZ THAT’S THE ONLY EXPLANATION THAT MAKES ANY SENSE AMIRITE.

Emoji: big eyeroll

 

To my Black friends and their families re: the Buffalo shootings.

[CONTENT NOTE: white nationalist terrorism and mass murder, no images.]

This moment is not about me. It is about you, and your families and communities, facing loss, hatred, and evil. Again. Still.

I try, but I cannot really fathom the depths of your pain and grief, and not just today but every day, because you already carry with you the legacies of slavery, death, violence, injustice, and hate, and all of it at the hands of people who look like me.

This moment is about you sharing your grief with others who do understand this pain. It is about your families and communities coming together to bury your dead, and to hold each other up even as you face endless, bottomless despair.

I have no place in this moment.

I cannot even offer you my prayers. I am not a praying person, and so I find proffers of “thoughts and prayers” to ring hollow, especially from politicians and people who are in positions of power to make this country a better place for you, and yet they do not.

So I can only offer my thoughts, for whatever they are worth, along with my sincerest, deepest, heartfelt condolences.

If it helps, please know I will be here, on the sidelines and in the backgrounds, in mourning with you, and for you.

I will be here, waiting for you with open arms and open heart, with great love and great sorrow.

I will be here waiting, honored and grateful to listen, if and when you will tell me what you need from me, and from the people and communities where I may have some influence.

The next moment will be about me. It will be about the work I need to do – white people need to do – for you and yours.

I am here, and I see you.

All my love,
-Iris.

Louisiana to become El Salvador, i.e., hell.

[CONTENT WARNING: child rape, teen suicide, fanatical hostility to bodily autonomy and consent, extreme misogyny, and probably some other shit I could be too triggered to recall.]

Photo of a Salvadoran woman crying in court, flanked by two law enforcement personnel.In In this December 2017 photo, Salvadoran Teodora Vasquez, found guilty of what the court said was an illegal abortion via a miscarriage, arrives in a courtroom to appeal her 30-year prison sentence.
(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

Perhaps you have heard about Louisiana’s latest bill classifying all abortions as homicides? Anyone found to help facilitate an abortion, from the person(s) performing it to the involuntary organ donor who wants or needs it will be charged with homicide, with the potential penalty of life in prison. There is no exception for rape, incest, or when fetuses are incompatible with life (e.g. anencephaly).

The bill, HB813, passed out of committee on a 7-2 vote; it now faces the full legislature, and if passed, will land on the desk of Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. But before you entertain visions of victorious vetoes dancing around in your head, you should know that Governor Edwards has been a hardcore advocate for involuntary organ donation (by other people) as a governor, and previously as a state lawmaker. He has already signed into law one of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the country, outlawing the procedure upon the detection of a heartbeat, which is about six weeks gestation and before many people know they are pregnant.

[Read more…]