Winter has officially arrived in South Dakota. Stay warm and check out what we’ve been talking about in DW-land:

*In case you’ve forgotten, South Dakota has some really icky STIs going around and now gonorrhea is at its highest rate in 25 years. (Note: Leslee Unruh has been involved with abstinence education in South Dakota for 27 years. Coincidence? I think we should start calling gonorrhea Unruh Pox.)

*Mary Mazzio is a kick ass lady, but can’t you kick ass even if you aren’t sporty?

*I’m pretty sensitive to this kind of thing, but the argument that a clothing line based on Lisabeth Salander’s style is somehow ‘glamorizing sex attacks‘ is stupid and demeaning. It’s essentializing a person as a victim nothing else. Sexual assault survivors have a lot more to them (including their personal sense of style) than what happened to them. Can you imagine looking at a person you know has been raped and thinking, “She’s wearing a hat. A rape victim hat!”

*I love the idea of lady-centric media, but there’s something about the name Hello Giggles that rubs me the wrong way. Like Zooey Deschanel herself, it may cross the line into too cute.

*Why rape jokes aren’t funny: “Let’s boil this down to its common denominator: laughing at torture that has historically been directed at one class of people who were not allowed access to societal protection or defense is a very clear indicator of where your loyalties lie.”

*Keep this article bookmarked for the next time someone starts man-splaining to you about the man-cession.

*This book about Rosa Parks and how black women’s protests against sexual assault and interracial rape fueled the civil rights movement looks super interesting. Perhaps Anna will provide us with a review?

Enjoy your weekend and get ready for exciting legislative fun to come. In the meantime, here’s an awesome tune from the Woolly Bandits: