November 2005 Archives

Samsung is selling a new cell phone for women. It's not only sparkly and pink-- bonus features include offensive gender stereotypes!

The phone has a built-in shopping list, fat calculator and favorite fragrance list. Plus, says Samsung marketer Jenny Goodridge, "You can put in your birth date and it will tell you if you are intelligent, attractive or emotionally stable. You can't be all three on any day... It's pretty funny." Hilarious!

The phone also has an ovulation calendar. There aren't details on how it works, but this is the one feature that might actually be useful.

Samsung is looking to sell the phone to women ages 24 and younger. And though I'm in the target market, I can't seem understand the "girly appeal." Sigh. I'm probably not having an "intelligent" day.

The Supreme Court started hearing arguments on Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood today, and already the fur is flying.

The court, starting with Justice David Souter, a New Hampshire native, wasted little time before firing questions at Ayotte about how the state's law deals with situations where a minor's health — but not life — is in danger and she needs an immediate abortion.

Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer zeroed in on how doctors would avoid being prosecuted or sued if they performed an abortion if the minor did not want to notify a parent and a judge was unavailable to provide the necessary approval.

The justices did not seem satisfied when Ayotte said another, existing New Hampshire law would protect the doctor from legal action and that the state's attorney general would set a policy that would shield physicians in such instances.

"How do we know that's the law?" asked Breyer. "There are people of good faith on both sides of this argument" who may disagree about the other law's meaning.

"In an emergency, a woman needs to go to the hospital not a courthouse," justices were told in a filing by Jennifer Dalven, attorney for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England which challenged the law.

Ahh, courthouse, hospital--what's the difference? We just should have kept our legs closed, right?

Sweet.

Two Saudi businesswomen have been elected in the kingdom's first ballot in which women were allowed to stand.

Lama al-Suleiman and Nashwa Taher were among 12 successful candidates voted onto the board of Jeddah's chamber of commerce and industry.

The turnout was low and the election was only a local affair, but analysts say it is a significant step.

I’d say so! Now about that driving thing…

Charlotte’s Fox Channel 18 accomplished quite a feat recently when they created a news teaser that combined the shame of abstinence-only education with the visuals of porn.

The 20-second promo for the 10 p.m. newscast showed a teenage couple and said:

"These local kids found God. They pledged abstinence. But now they're getting on their knees. And it definitely isn't to pray. ... They found a loophole in chastity. Don't worry about your kids' virginity. Worry about their oral fixation."

And with that, the screen showed a woman, her eyes obscured, licking a red, white and blue ice pop.

I’ll suppress my urge to make a Mr. Softee joke. Outside of the promo’s obvious ick factor, why is it that oral sex means girls sucking dick? It’s already been shown that teens who have oral sex are doing it in a fairly reciprocal fashion. I guess when it comes to teen sex scare tactics, it’s all about the ladies.

My internet is rebelling against me today, so I’ll happily point folks in the direction of these recent must-reads:

Rebecca “Smartypants” Traister points out the strange misogynist response to Dowd’s book on Amazon. I think Mr. John F. Ross really needs to meet Vox Day for some bosom buddy woman-bashing.

After a bit of a mailing list scuffle where Ampersand called Cathy Young an “anti-feminist” (and I think rightly so), he explores the meaning of the term.

Jill at Feministe wades into the scummy waters of guys who think rape is some sort of figment of women’s imagination.

Amanda breaks down the elusive nature of the Strawfeminist.

Media Girl tells it like it is (and it ain’t pretty) on the Global Gag Rule and the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

The Supreme Court will meet tomorrow to start hearing arguments on Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, the court’s first abortion case in five years.

On a conference call last night for bloggers, speakers from NARAL Pro-Choice America, the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project and NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire explained that Ayotte is about a hell of a lot more than parental notification.

This case isn’t arguing whether or not parents should be notified or give consent when their daughters want to obtain an abortion--it’s about the health of young women:

New Hampshire imposes a 48-hour waiting period after the required notice to at least one parent. Like all states, it provides an exception for conditions that present an immediate threat to a pregnant teenager's life.

But of the 43 states with parental-involvement statutes, New Hampshire is one of only five that do not also provide an exception for non-life-threatening medical emergencies, and it was on this basis that two lower federal courts declared the law unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court's decision in the case, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, may therefore shed light on the contours of the "health exception" that the court's abortion precedents have required since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

No matter what someone thinks about abortion, I think any parent would want their child to get the best medical care possible. And if your daughter is in medical distress, you would want her doctor taking care of her, not running off to find a lawyer and a judge.

I found the jackpot of offensive t-shirts after seeing an ad for the company in The Onion.

What kills me is that a lot of the shirts are anti-Bush, liberal-ish types. And then there are shirts like the one above. Sigh.

More shirts after the jump.

Cause the only way to respect your body is to wait for someone to pay for it. By this logic, I wonder if it's cool to have oral in exchange for some earrings.

Via Shakespeare's Sister.

The good news: There are more women in chess than ever before.

The bad news: They’re being noticed because of the way they look, not the way they play.

The New York Times reports on women in competitive chess who are showing off more than their brain power to get noticed in the traditionally male-dominated field.

Vanessa Reid, a 16-year-old student from Sydney, Australia, runs cross-country, plays touch football, enjoys in-line skating, swims and goes bodyboarding. She also has a cerebral side: she plays competitive chess. She represented Australia at a tournament in Malaysia in 2002 and played in a tournament in New Zealand this year.

While Ms. Reid is clearly no novice at the game, she isn't exactly taking it by storm. She is not on the World Chess Federation's list of the world's 50 top female players. In fact she is ranked 47,694th among both men and women. But Ms. Reid, who has auburn hair, light-blue eyes and a winning smile, is arguably the top player in the world based on a more subjective criterion: her looks. A Web site called World Chess Beauty Contest (www.1wcbc.com) ranks her as the world's most beautiful woman in the game.

...Alexandra Kosteniuk, 21, a dark-haired, porcelain-skinned Russian grandmaster who is ranked fifth in the world among women and 525th over all, models and uses her Web site to sell photos of herself posing in bikinis next to giant chess pieces.

Maria Manakova, 31, who is the fourth-ranked woman in Russia and who is ranked eighth on the Beauty Contest site, attracted attention last year when she posed nude for Speed, a Russian magazine.

Of course it’s sad that these women are only being noticed because of their physical assets, but it’s their right to promote themselves however they want. It was something else in the article that really disturbed me.

Goodness. Apparently Teen People was planning on running an article on Prussian Blue, the scary twins that sing about “white pride” and crushing on Hitler.

Teen People nixed a story about Hitler-loving teenybopper twins Prussian Blue - amid outrage that the glossy had promised to avoid the words "hate," "supremacist" and "Nazi" in its piece on the racist singing sisters.

A Web-based teaser for the February story originally called the hatemongering duo "aspiring musicians" and compared them to wide-eyed sensations Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

Cause I’m sure the Olsens sit around playing a video game called “Ethnic Cleansing" and calling people who aren't white "muds."

Via Broadsheet.

Recently appointed Chief Justice John Roberts will face his first major abortion case on the Supreme Court when Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood comes up before the court next week.

The case stems from a 2003 New Hampshire law requiring teenagers to tell a parent before getting an abortion. While the law has an exception for girls who would die without the procedure, New Hampshire lawmakers omitted an exception for other non-life-threatening health problems because they felt it would render the law meaningless.

The new law has never been enforced, because two federal courts have said the lack of a health exception made it unconstitutional.

...New Hampshire's version would make it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion on a minor unless the doctor has written proof that at least one parent has been notified or unless the doctor certifies the girl would die without the procedure.

But unlike the parental involvement laws in most states, the New Hampshire statute does not explicitly let a doctor proceed when, in the doctor's judgment, the girl might be about to suffer serious health consequences short of death.

Nice to know where some folks’ priorities are. Much better that a young girl suffers and risks her health than a parent not be immediately notified. This is disgusting.

Saudi women voted this weekend on a new board of directors for the Jiddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Women were also included on the list of candidates.

There are an estimated 2,800 businesses registered in women's names at the chamber, but it was unclear how many of them would be eligible to vote. By Sunday evening, only about 50 women had turned up to vote, said Fatin Boundagji, director of Khadija Bint Khuwielid Women's Empowerment unit at the Jiddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Turnout among men is expected to be stronger, but is still uncertain.

The election has been billed as a major step forward for women in Saudi Arabia, especially after women were barred from municipal polls earlier in the year. Despite a budding women's movement in the kingdom, women are still subject to a host of restrictions, most notably against voting in political elections and driving. But many women saw the vote, which included 17 women as candidates, as a victory for women in business, as well.

"This vote is extremely important not just because women are being allowed to vote and to run, but also because it's a recognition of the role of women in the economy," said Lubna al-Ghalayini, a human resources consultant in Jiddah who voted Sunday.

Too bad Saudi women have to wait another four years to vote in a nationwide election. Sigh.

We're off to stuff ourselves silly and give thanks that no one can see us unbutton our pants underneath the table.

Feministing will resume posting on Monday. Have a fantastic holiday!

Great news. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been elected president in Liberia, making her the first female president in Africa.

The election commission confirmed the tally on Wednesday -- officially naming her Liberia's president-in-waiting and first woman to ever win an election to be an African president. Her inauguration is scheduled for January.

Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf has served as her country's finance minister and taken on top jobs at Citibank and the United Nations. She is a widowed mother-of-four who also has eight grandchildren.

Thanks to Chris for the link.

Yikes.

An anti-abortion group has renewed its effort to fly pictures of aborted fetuses over crowded Oahu beaches.

An attorney for the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform has told federal appeals court judges that Honolulu's ban on aerial advertising illegally censors the group's most effective way to advocate its message.

Robert Muise says the explicit images can't be replaced by other forms of advertisement.

The group already drives trucks around town with giant photos of first-term aborted fetuses.

All of a sudden, Hawaii doesn’t seem like such a great vacation spot. Ugh.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that breastfeeding could lower women’s risk of diabetes by 15 percent each year she nurses.

The findings add to a growing list of benefits from nursing for both mother and child, including less risk of cancer and osteoporosis for women and fewer ear infections for the newborn. Researchers said the benefit may result from the 500 calories a day burned in nursing. That helps lower blood sugar levels and makes nursing mothers more sensitive to insulin, the opposite of what is seen in diabetics, past studies have shown.

“Supporting breast feeding is not just an important issue for babies. It's a woman's health issue," said lead author Alison Stuebe of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in a telephone interview yesterday.

Just another reason to love those lactivists.

Is this what happens when creepy guys don’t have enough cash for a Real Doll “girlfriend”?

From The Telegraph:

A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood "marriages".

The women, who are cousins, were married in absentia by a mullah in their Punjabi village to illiterate sons of their family's enemies in 1996, when they were aged from six to 13.

The marriages were part of a compensation agreement ordered by the village council and reached at gunpoint after the father of one of the girls shot dead a family rival.

The rival families have now called in their "debt", demanding the marriages to the village men are fulfilled.

Thankfully, the young women’s fathers are supporting them and are refusing to marry their daughters off. But the case is becoming increasingly controversial and violent--two people have been shot and 20 arrested in related incidents.

Not only have the young women been sentenced, but Jehan Khan Niazi--the father of three of the women--has been sentenced to death for refusing to produce his daughters for marriage.

Niazi said, “I have refused to give into the council's request as it is un-Islamic. I cannot hand over my girls like goats...”

Niazi’s daughters--who are are all in school, the oldest in college--say they will kill themselves if forced to marry.

After a long wait and an some odd elections, Parliament voted today to make Angela Merkel Germany's first female chancellor. Merkel will take power immediately.

We New Yorkers have a tendency to get all high and mighty over our state's supposed uber-progressiveness. And then reality slaps us with some nonsense like this:

The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed an official complaint to the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a Queens teacher who says she was fired because she got pregnant out of wedlock.

St. Rose of Lima School terminated Michelle McCusker's contract last month, after she told school officials she was pregnant.

Despite the fact that McCusker was praised by the principal for her “high degree of professionalism,” the Brooklyn Diocese says that the teacher didn’t “follow the principles contained in the teachers' personnel handbook.” The book requires that teachers adhere to the Catholic faith by their words and actions. Translation: Unauthorized fucking will get you fired.

McCusker said at a press conference yesterday, “I also don't understand how a religion that prides itself on being forgiving and on valuing life could terminate me because I'm pregnant and choosing to have this baby.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America has launched a national petition drive to save Roe and stop Alito. Go sign it now.

NARAL is aiming for 500,000 signatures by December 9th, so after you sign the petition send it to friends. (You can also print it up.)

A little something cool--if you collect 6 petition signatures by Dec. 9, NARAL will send you a pro-choice magnet. Come on, admit it. You love magnets. Lord knows I do.

Advocates for Youth and Sex Etc. have just launched a great campaign contest in response to the increasing anti-sex ed nonsense going on.

Some people are trying to hide the truth about condoms and their effectiveness from young people. Advocates for Youth believes you deserve the straight facts. While abstinence is the only 100% effective way to avoid sexually transmitted infections (STIs), condoms are the most effective prevention tool we have for sexually active people. But, a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about condoms. Enter Advocates' contest to design a message that will get people talking about condoms. You just might win $500, too!

To get the word out that condoms do protect against HIV and many other sexually transmitted infections--and to have fun, too--we have developed an online creative tool that young people can use in the contest. Contest entrants must be between the ages of 15 and 24. But anyone--of any age--can unleash their creativity and make an innovative, imaginative, provocative, or just plain silly design.

The contest lets you design your very own safe-sex ad like the one above.

And while I’m a couple years past the contest’s age limit, I’m all about anything that lets me procrastinate and play with condoms.

From BBC News:

After quite the controversy, the FDA seems to have finally gotten their act together regarding the new head of the agency’s Office of Women’s Health. After Susan Wood resigned in protest over the FDA’s trumping of politics over science in its decision process concerning Plan B, the agency first announced the position would go to Norris Alderson--a man trained as a veterinarian.

Understandably, women weren’t too pleased. The FDA then said that they had never announced anything about Alderson, despite the fact that an email announcing his appointment was sent to several women’s groups and that he was listed on a Health and Human Services directory as the acting director of the office. Mysterious stuff. Theresa A. Toigo, a 20-year veteran of the FDA, was then made acting director.

It seems that the FDA has finally made a decision as to who will take over the position permanently--Kathleen Uhl, who was most recently the supervisory medical officer in FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

I don’t know much about Uhl, but was glad to see that she had the support of Susan Wood:

...Wood said that Uhl "would be a good choice for the job." Wood said that she has frequently worked with Uhl and that "she is a long-standing advocate for women's health in the agency."

Let’s hope she can bring some much-needed common sense and logic to an agency that seems to have anything but these days.

Amnesty International reports that one in three people in the UK believe that women who “behave flirtatiously” are responsible for being raped. This is just fucking terrifying.

A new ICM opinion poll commissioned by Amnesty International indicates that a third (34%) of people in the UK believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner.

The poll, ‘Sexual Assault Research’, published today (21 November) as part of Amnesty International’s ‘Stop Violence Against Women’ campaign, shows that similar “blame culture” attitudes exist over clothing, drinking, perceived promiscuity, personal safety and whether a woman has clearly said “no” to the man.

For instance, more than a quarter (26%) of those asked said that they thought a women was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was wearing sexy or revealing clothing, and more than one in five (22%) held the same view if a woman had had many sexual partners.

Around one in 12 people (8%) believed that a woman was totally responsible for being raped if she’d had many sexual partners.

Similarly, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, and more than a third (37%) held the same view if the woman had failed to clearly say “no” to the man.

And people have the nerve to ask me why I’m a feminist.

Amnesty spokesman Neil Durkin says in The Guardian, "There's pretty much a rape crisis in this country...It's up to the government to change these attitudes, and look at to what extent they permeate the criminal justice system."

The Guardian also reports that a 2002 study found that one in 20 reports of rape led to conviction, compared to one in three in 1977.

This is very interesting and very important.

While the identity of Saint Mary's as an all-women's institution is widely celebrated and well publicized, one definition remains less clear - whether or not the College can describe itself as a feminist environment.

Forty years after the sexual revolution, feminism remains a polarizing issue on campus. Students' perceptions of feminists vary drastically - from activists lobbying for equal pay in the workplace to women burning bras on the steps of the Capitol Building.

Btw, bra-burning never happened, it is a myth. But really this is something I think we as active feminists can do. Begin to discuss our differing perceptions of feminism and actually learn the history of the movement, where are we now and where we are going. It should not be merely limited to the academic classroom or certain circles of people.

But how do we feminism palatable for young university women? Do we care to do it? Do we need to do it?

Junior Erin Kotelnicki is one Saint Mary's woman who refuses to identify herself as a feminist. For Kotelnicki, 'feminist' is synonymous with extremist.

I think we do, but I know one of my shortcomings is not being able to express myself without straight calling folks out or being intimidating and getting into fights. How do we get these folks on board? And is it possible?

ps-a man taking care of his baby is *not* anti-feminist!

Apparently there has been a little upswing in the number of women that have decided to go back to taking their husband's name upon marriage.

Interesting?

“Adopting a husband’s last name remains an entrenched tradition that is on the upswing, despite a temporary blip in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s where many young women tended to want to hold on to their birth names,” said UF linguistics professor Diana Boxer, who led a series of studies. “I think it reflects how men’s power continues to influence American society despite the fact that women have made great advances economically and socially.”

“Taking on my husband’s last name was an outward sign of our union,” explained one woman. “It served to make me feel that I was ‘really married’ and that we were forming a brand new family.”

This is interesting, because many women have said that to me, "What is in a name?" I think naming is important, it is strategic and it does serve as a symbolic representation as to who is in "charge" of the particular union. Language and names are a very socially mediated system of symbols and what you choose to name yourself does reflect certain values of society. In this case, women are choosing to be defined in name by there husband and that is very much connected to patriarchal control. That doesn't mean that these women don't have agency, voice etc, but it does serve as a symbolic representation.

The researchers found that many women felt they should take their husband's name because it would be good for their children and would represent the union of their family. Quite frankly, it does take more than a name to create a feeling of family union. Sometimes these lies force women to be complicit in their own oppression in ways that are conscious and unconscious. This is how patriarchy thrives.

via Reuters...

Japan plans to toughen its gender equality law in an effort to encourage women to stay in the workforce as the population begins to shrink, a government official said on Friday.

Employers would also be prevented from firing a woman who was pregnant, or who had a child under a year old, unless they could prove that the employee's family situation was not the reason, the paper said.

The current equal opportunity laws are not so effective, women are still paid 1/3 of what men are paid on average.

Check out this article in the New York Times yesterday on sex education and how the typical age to learn about sex is getting younger by the year.

One of the people interviewed is Robie H. Harris, a renowned author of sex education books for children. Her most recent books, “Perfectly Normal” (shown above) and “It’s So Amazing” are directed towards 7-year olds and up, and is soon to publish her latest, “It’s Not The Stork”, which will be intended for children as young as 4. In 2008, she plans to write one for toddlers.

This new early childhood approach to sex education teaches words like “vulva” at the same time they’re learning words like “ears” and “toes.” As bizarre as this may sound, it actually makes sense. Instead of learning it in other random ways and experiences that children do, they know about their bodies and the “birds and the bees” before they can get confused or misinformed by peers and pop culture. They also urge parents to abandon offensive words such as “weenie” for boys and the obscure “down there” for girls. Awesome.

Dr. Justin Richardson, assistant professor of psychiatry and sex ed author says:

"People have been told by experts that there's a right age. . . If you're talking about how babies are made, there's no age at which it is harmful to learn that the penis goes into the vagina . . . Yes, it's true that exposing a child to sexual stimulation is harmful. But telling a kid how babies are made is very different."

I still don’t doubt that Harris will catch a lot of shit for this. Her and illustrator Michael Emberley caught enough for “Perfectly Normal”, which had information on homosexuality, contraception and masturbation. (The horror!)

Click here to check out Harris’ work.

Just as the media finished trashing Harriet Miers’ looks, reporters-cum-fashion-police have started obsessing over special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s sexiness. Feministing has already pointed out how male and female public figures are held to different standards in the media, but the Miers and Fitzgerald examples shine a bit more light on the subject.

When a male politician is ugly it’s considered normal and no fuss is made over it in the news. But boy do we swoon when one comes along who’s even remotely good lookin’. We require our women to be beautiful, though. So when a female public figure shows up at a press conference and her fashion is sub-par, we're all over it.

I understand that making Pat Fitzgerald one of the sexiest men alive sells magazines. I just want to know why we're so busy insulting Condie’s coiffure that we can’t bother mentioning that Cheney started sporting his comb-over 30 years ago?

Contributed by Madeline Halperin-Robinson

In a radio interview on Wednesday, Bernard Accoyer, the parliamentary leader of President Jacques Chirac’s party, said that polygamy is a reason behind the riots in France. Wow.

Pierre Cardo, a deputy from Chirac’s party, explained that the most rebellious of “delinquents” are “often products of polygamous families.”

In response, MRAP, an anti-racism group, accused political leaders on the right of "playing an extremely dangerous role in feeding our country with the racism that causes the damage we know. . .These accusations shame the nation and are not acceptable from the responsible representatives of the Republic."

Fuck racism, nontraditional households are the problem! Sound familiar?

Last Tuesday, Maria Esther Valerio was found dead in a lot in the southwest area of the city. She is the 29th woman to be killed in Juarez this year. On the same day, the police chief of the city was replaced by Guillermo Prieto, who served in the same position some time ago. Yeah, that should help.

Although I use sarcasm to hide how dispirited I am over the 400 plus Juarez women who have been murdered over the past decade, a wee bit of hope is coming to El Paso during the first week of December. The National Organization for Women’s (NOW) board is scheduled to meet December 2nd, 3rd and 4th for a discussion of what action they are going to take in response to the murders.

El Paso’s NOW chapter is also in the works of restarting as well; hopefully this will help lead the people of Juarez out of this shit storm of injustice. If you’re in the area (or not) and interested in getting involved, email nowborderlands@gmail.com.

Heidi Fleiss, ex-madam and convict for running a prostitution ring about a decade ago, has plans to get back into sex work, except the brothel she’s looking to open will be full of men. A rooster ranch, or so they call it.

The town of choice is Pahrump, Nevada, a tiny city about 80 miles northwest from Las Vegas. Fleiss intends to get what she calls a “stud farm” and charge a whopping $250 an hour for the gentlemen’s services. She seems anticipate to a majority of female clients:

"Women are more independent these days...They make more money and it's hard to meet people. You wouldn't believe the number of women who've told me, 'Heidi, if you do this, I'll be the first one in line'. I mean, relationships are harder than dieting - you know what I mean?"

No, not really. (I try to stay away from both.) But I can’t deny that I’m curious to see how much business she does.

Any thoughts?

In response to Virginia’s laws banning same-sex marriages, a local pastor and his church’s governing council have decided to protest in a big way -- the church is no longer offering wedding services.

The Clarendon Presbyterian Church has long been a supporter of the ordination of women, people with AIDS and the rights of the disabled. Now Pastor David Ensign is in the process of renouncing his state authority to marry (straight) couples. In the meantime, he’s offering blessings to couples by having “celebration ceremonies” and counseling couples who support his protest. “We’re not seeking trouble,” says Ensign. “This is a statement of who we are.”

While many surrounding churches are obviously up in arms and more debate is anticipated, Wilson Gunn, the general executive of the Nation Capital Presbytery, says that it’s unlikely that the church will be punished by the national office.

“It’s within their rights to decide what they’re going to do and not going to do,” he said. “We’re in the Jesus business, not the marriage business.”

I love it.

Go check out Holla Back NYC, a blog dedicated to calling out street harassers in the Big Apple. Love it.

Whether you're commuting, lunching, partying, dancing, walking, chilling, drinking, or sunning, you have the right to feel safe, confident, and sexy, without being the object of some duckweed's fantasy. So stop walkin' on and Holla Back!

The site encourages women to send in their street harassment stories and--if possible--catch the assholes in the act with a camera phone.

The creepiest harassing comment on the site so far? "Girl I can Smell You." Lovely.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Men in Serbia are lining up to have electric shocks delivered to their testicles as part of a new contraceptive treatment.

Serbian fertility expert Dr Sava Bojovic, who runs one of the clinics offering the service, said the small electric shock makes men temporarily infertile by stunning their sperm into a state of immobility.

He said: “We attach electrodes to either side of the testicles and send low electricity currents flowing through them.

“This stuns the sperm, effectively putting them to sleep for up to 10 days, which means couples can have sex without fear of getting pregnant.

“The method does not kill the sperm permanently and it does not affect the patient's health.”

Unless you count the whole electrocuting-your-balls-thing. Jesus. I’m all for new forms of contraception, but stun-gunning your swimmers seems a bit extreme.

Dr. Bojovic also noted that they “are hoping to have a small battery powered version on sale in the shops in time for Xmas.” Cause nothing says stocking stuffer like a mini testicle-shocker.

I like this. Tiffany asked last week on blackfeminism.org if we too should be rioting (like they are in France) when we begin to think about how black and brown people are treated all over the world. I have been thinking the same thing as I read and write more about incarceration rates and their racial implications and as I teach in communities that continue to deteriorate because of racist/classist/sexist policies and as I talk to my best friend, another community worker who just went to a funeral for a 2 year old that was shot in the chest.

So you tell me, shouldn't we be rioting?

Interesting that Rwanda is the highest in political representation because gender inequity is alive and thriving (well like everywhere else really) and is connected still to violence against women and increased HIV/AIDS infection among girls and women.

via AllAfrica.com...

Globally, women and young girls now make up nearly two thirds of those living with HIV/Aids, and the majority of whom are people below 24. Women's vulnerability to infection can be attributed to society's inequalities which puts them at riskâ-oepoverty, abuse, and violence, lack of information, coercion by older men and men having several partners. That's why many mainstream prevention strategies are untenable; for example those based on the 'ABC' approach. Abstain, Be faithful, and use Condom.

"Where sexual violence is widespread, abstinence or insisting on condom use is not a realistic option for women and girls. There is no full access to prevention options-including microbicides and female condoms. Nor, does marriage always provide the answer, in many parts of the developing world, the majority of women will be married by the age of 20 and have higher rates of infection than their unmarried sexually active peers, often because their husbands have many sexual partners," observed Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general.

Thanks Kofi, you might want to tell Ellen Sauerbrey about that! You mean empowering women might help in the "growing AIDS epidemic?"

Annan suggests mobilizing global gender movements, which I think is happening. What we/they need is some SERIOUS financial and resource backing, not this ABC spouting nonsense.

Another thing, I was just talking to my friend about how when people talk about other countries they use the name of those countries, but when folks talk about Africa they don't refer to countries, the say Africa. That is annoying.

for women's political representation.

Ha!

Britain has tumbled out of the international top 50 for women's political representation, with its proportion of female MPs ranking well below those of Mozambique, Iraq, Mexico, and Tunisia.

The UK languishes at 51 in the Inter-Parliamentary Union's latest table, which emerges as the Hansard Society's fourth Women at the Top report, to be published on Thursday, warns that only all-women shortlists (AWS) will close the gender gap in parliament. Women make up 19.8% of the Commons, while Rwanda leads the world with 48.8%. Sweden has 45.3%, Mozambique 34.8% and Iraq 31.5%.

Contributed by Gwendolyn Beetham

So, there’s been crazy debate from all sides lately on Ariel Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs. I can’t help but wonder what she’d think of a recent Guardian article by Kira Cochrane on the British paper The Sun’s “Page 3” models. In case you’re not as much of an anglophile as me (and how could you be?), you should know that- every day - Page 3 of The Sun shows topless pictures of women. Yes, every day. Just like the photo of “Nikkala, aged 23, from Middlesex” above. I kid you not.

Cochrane, taking a somewhat Levyesque perspective, writes that:

…Now young women tend to label the topless photos "empowering" and "liberating". A recent survey of 2,000 15-19-year-old girls found that 67% considered "glamour model" their ideal profession. Faced daily with the evidence that women have to be sexually attractive to be considered successful why wouldn't young women choose to make a profession of it…With the proliferation of these images, is it any surprise that young women have further embraced it?

However, Cochrane also gives props to:

…a growing number of women…starting to speak out about objectification, beginning a debate on how the mainstreaming of porn imagery affects women and indeed men, socially and personally. Groups that campaign specifically against sexism and objectification are growing at a huge rate…

I say right-on, but I must also make a full (frontal, hee hee) disclosure: in college a few friends and I posed topless in front of a bunch of the page 3 girls that were pasted up in our co-ed common room (don’t ask) and sent a copy of the photo – nipples strategically covered—out to almost the entire campus as a birthday party invite. Were we embracing our sexuality? Falling prey to the patriarchal culture of pornography? Or did we just want to throw a really kick-ass party?

Just wonderng how people felt about Jennifer Aniston being featured as one of three "Men of the Year" in GQ magazine.

I'm also trying to figure out if posing topless is a prerequisite to being one of the guys.

A new drug for sexual dysfunction--for both men and women--isn’t a little blue pill or terrifying suction cup.

PT-141, about to enter clinical trials, is taken via nasal spray. I’m hot already.

PT-141 has been tested on 900 volunteers who have since reported enhanced arousal and desire in as few as 15 minutes after taking the drug.

...PT-141 acts on the brain to jump-start desire, which in turn can cause increased genital blood flow in men and women.

Is it just me or does the vague “acts on the brain” explanation of the drug seem a little freaky?

And don’t worry, there are no Birkenstock-wearing clowns in this feminist carnival. At least I hope not. Clowns freak me out.

The third installment of this excellent round-up is available for your viewing pleasure at Sour Duck.

(Big thanks for including Feministing in the mix!)

The National Center for Health Statistics reports that the rate of Caesarean sections is at an all-time high in the U.S.

Almost 1.2 million C-sections were performed in 2004, up 27.5 percent from 2003.

The increase in C-sections has been attributed to a number of factors, including the “too posh to push” contingent of women who supposedly prefer the convenience of a scheduled operation over vaginal birth. (Is this really a trend? Who in the world would want surgery?)

Another reason behind the increase is apparently the fear of malpractice suits if something goes wrong in a vaginal delivery. Ugh. There are some hospitals that have even banned vaginal deliveries after a woman has had a C-section.

Tonya Jamois, president of the advocacy organization International Cesarean Awareness Network, says “Women are struggling to avoid unnecessary surgery, but the medical system has abandoned them. For many, they have to submit to major surgery in order to get medical care.”

Having never had a kid, I’m unfamiliar with a lot of this stuff--any parents want to share?

Jennifer Baumgardner has a great piece up on Alternet today critiquing Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs. It’s a must read.

Feminism Is a Failure, and Other Myths argues that Levy is right to discuss the difficulties negotiating feminism and sex, but that her blame tactics are counterproductive:

Levy swings hardest at this conflict in her book, arguing that the daughters of feminism's second wave are eager to prove how beyond sexism they are, "making sex objects of other women -- and of themselves." These women, according to Levy, "think they are being brave... and funny" but Levy thinks "the joke is on them."

...Unlike Susan Faludi or Naomi Wolf, who critique the way society has dealt with feminism, Levy places most of her blame on women, especially young women.

...Intentional or not, Levy contributes to that mean finger, pointed only at girls, that says "You think you are being sexy, you think you're cool and powerful, but you're not. You're a slut and people are making fun of you."

Ouch.

Deanna Zandt at Alternet thinks we need to get rid of the term ‘women bloggers’:

...Not surprisingly, it's still a man's world, but that's not the point I want to address. It's the frame of "women bloggers." By addressing the issue in this way, we've already set the frame up so that the default "blogger" by itself is male, and adding a parameter -- "women" or "female" -- is necessary to feminize this default setting for the word.

...I'm thus putting out a call to bloggers (and readers of blogs) everywhere to help make sure that this word gets firmly established as a gender-neutral, happily androgynous occupation. Stop using those pesky gender-qualifiers today.

I agree with Zandt’s analysis, but I have one concern. If we erase gender from the equation, will it be easier for male bloggers to marginalize us? (I know I only have guys on my blogroll, but it’s just cause I’m super into equality and don’t pay attention to sex--there are no ‘women’ or ‘men’ bloggers.)

Any thoughts?

In a recent conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito backed away from his past anti-choice comments.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., an abortion rights supporter and the only woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she asked the conservative judge about a document released Monday showing Alito in 1985 telling the Reagan administration he was particularly proud to help argue that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.”

“He said first of all it was different then,” she said. “He said, ‘I was an advocate seeking a job, it was a political job and that was 1985. I’m now a judge, I’ve been on the circuit court for 15 years and it’s very different. I’m not an advocate, I don’t give heed to my personal views, what I do is interpret the law.”’

I call bullshit. Arguing that Roe isn’t constitutional isn’t a personal view, it’s a legal opinion.

Gawker gives a mini-transcript of Dowd’s Today show appearance this morning, and it’s not pretty.

Matt: Writing for the Times, is it harrowing to read a review of your own book inside of it?

MoDo: Actually, I, uh —

Matt: Because I didn’t think it was all that wonderful of a review!

MoDo!: No! Oh, well, I never read anything about myself. But my mom had a great saying in cases where people were being catty about you, which is just put out the saucer of milk.

Matt: Get ready for — heh, yeah. I’ll let her complete the sentence.

Oh Maureen, why?!

Nerve came out yesterday with a Reproductive Rights Issue that includes (among others) an article on Feminists for Life, a piece by Jennifer Baumgardner on the stigma of the second abortion, and an interview with former FDA Women’s Office director Susan Wood.

There are also some articles that have yet to be posted on the Supreme Court and the future of contraceptives.

Now if they could only get the computer to spit out condoms, I think they would have it all covered.

Thankfully, there was some action yesterday after the oh-so-shocking news that the FDA didn’t for usual procedure in considering emergency contraception for over the counter status.

Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) and 17 other lawmakers signed a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt saying that they were “deeply opposed to this subversion of science.”

The New York Times reports that in addition, Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA) issued a statement saying the Plan B mess “was a politically motivated decision that came down from the highest levels at the F.D.A.”

I’m glad they’re speaking out, but I don’t know how much help it will do. Sigh.

Love it.

NARAL Pro-Choice America just launched a “timer” clock to keep track of how frigging long the FDA has refused to act on Plan B’s over-the-counter status.

Even comes with a nifty--though depressing--timeline and a letter to send to your representatives.

And shockingly--the FDA doesn't exactly come off great.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has just issued a report, Decision Process to Deny Initial Application for Over-the-Counter Marketing of the Emergency Contraceptive Plan B Was Unusual. Ya think?

The report focuses on several different aspects of the FDA’s review process and notes that they were all out of the ordinary. Politics trumping science--you gotta love it.

Just a snippet from the overview:

The Plan B decision was not typical of the other 67 proposed prescription-to OTC switch decisions made by FDA from 1994 through 2004. The Plan B OTC switch application was the only one during this period that was not approved after the advisory committees recommended approval. The Plan B action letter was the only one signed by someone other than the officials who would normally sign the letter. Further, there are no age-related marketing restrictions for any prescription or OTC contraceptives that FDA has approved, and FDA has not required pediatric studies for them. FDA identified no issues that would require age-related restrictions in the review of the original prescription Plan B new drug application.

Think Progress on the same.

Do only white people have sex in New York?

Via Gawker.

Not surprising, but still worth knowing:

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" in a 1985 document obtained by The Washington Times.

"I personally believe very strongly" in this legal position, Mr. Alito wrote on his application to become deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin I. Meese III.

"It has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan's administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly," he wrote.

"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

So much for respecting Roe. Precedent, my ass.

Check out this press release from The Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of New York. Apparently it’s empowering to cut up your genitals.

Women Now Have Equal Sexuality Rights

For years we have been made aware of the benefits of male impotency drugs and enhancement surgery but, until recently, very little medical attention was directed to the physical and emotional aspects of female sexuality. Today women are now exercising their rights to sexual equality due to innovative vaginal surgeries performed by Robert A. Jason, MD, FACOG, the Founder and Medical Director of the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of New York.

The Institute’s specialties are Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation and Designer Laser Vaginoplasty. Cause when I think equal rights, I think designer vagina.

Another little tidbit from the release:

An acknowledged expert in women’s medicine, Dr. Jason was personally selected and trained by David Matlock, the pioneering developer of Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation.

You may remember that Matlock is the doc who "hones new techniques on animal parts — chicken thighs, turkey legs and pig's ears — until he is ready to work on women." That's reassuring.

A new study by Corporate Women Directors International says that only 10.3 percent of board seats at the world's 50 largest banks are held by women. The report also notes that several of the largest global banks have no female directors.

...At the top 100 U.S. banks, women hold about 12.2 percent of board seats, according to the study. In comparison, the average percentage of women directors in the Fortune 500 companies is 13.7 percent, the study said.

Bah...who needs institutional power and representation anyway? (Ugh.)

Check out Katha Pollitt's article on our favorite hater Maureen Dowd's new book, Are Men Necessary?. Here's a little snippet:

Are Men Necessary? is a Feminism Is Dead polemic, put through a Dowdian styleblender. Like her New York Times column, it's funny and free-associative and not afraid of self-contradiction, full of one-liners and puns: Women who let men grab the check are 'fem-freeloading' a 'quid profiterole' (ouch). Like her column, too, it's heavy on media fluff: silly trend stories, women's magazine features and interviews with editors of same, dubious gender-difference studies. It's annoying to read pronouncements about feminism based mostly on chats with her friends in the media about men, clothes, TV shows and Botox. Why not call up some people who actually do feminist work?

Amen to that.

Domestic violence victims in London have begun to use an alternative method to protecting themselves against their former partners: panic rooms.

So far, nineteen women have had safe rooms installed into their homes, which include fireproof letterboxes, strengthened doors and second phone lines to call the police.

The Home Shelter Scheme is being considered a cheaper alternative to women fleeing their own homes for asylum. Deborah McIlveen from the charity Women’s Aid seems a bit skeptical, saying that victims need more support than a steel door.

“Unfortunately there are some who will keep coming back, and measures need to be put in place to deal with that.”

Thoughts?

New York University plans to build a dorm on an East Village site formerly owned by the Catholic church. And although NYU is allowed to demolish the church itself, the new dorm's residents will still be subject to Catholic "morals."

The Archdiocese of New York placed deed restrictions on the property prohibiting future residents from offering family planning advice or services on the site. Sneaky bastards.

The deed, signed in December 2004 between the Roman Catholic Church of St. Ann and the dorm's developer, Hudson Companies, contains several restrictions on the property's use, including a ban on "performing any abortions or providing any professional counseling or advice advocating abortions or family planning." It also prohibits signs or other advertising relating to abortions or family planning.

Apparently moral deed restrictions are often used by religious groups to prevent churches from being converted into dens of iniquity. But it’s not clear exactly which activities will be barred in the new dorm. Can RA’s hand out condoms? Can they display posters with a "practice safe sex" message? Can student reproductive-rights groups hold meetings at the dorm, or post announcements about those meetings? What about brochures containing information about abortion or emergency contraception?

A spokeswoman for NYU, Lynne Brown, said the university was planning to use the building as a dorm, not a health or medical facility, where family-planning counseling would ordinarily take place. She said the NYU team that negotiated the transaction ... "felt comfortable that the activities that typically occur in a dormitory would not be inconsistent with either the spirit or the language of the covenant."

Yikes. I’m sorry, Lynne, but college students have sex. This dorm will probably see a lot of activities that are inconsistent with the "spirit" of the covenant. And in accepting the restrictions on "signs and advertising related to family planning" in one of its dorms, NYU is doing its students a major disservice.

Thanks to Patrick for the link.

It’s official. Almost four months after a lawsuit was filed by ten women against the Ortho Evra birth control patch concerning the serious health risks involved, the FDA issued a serious warning yesterday to the patch’s label.

The makers of the patch, Ortho McNeil, had previously denied the accusations of serious risks such as blood clots and strokes, claiming that the potential risks in the patch and the pill were more or less the same. Yet new information has found (and added to the label) that women who use the patch will be exposed to 60 percent more estrogen than women on the pill. DAMN.

While the patch and the pill both have the same amount of estrogen in them, hormones from the patch go directly into the blood stream while the pill is digested and loses a significant amount in the process. In result, women die and suffer from blood clots at a rate three times higher than women on the pill.

I never found a sticker on my ass very appealing to begin with, but hopefully now women will think twice before putting this serious amount of hormones into their bodies. Scary stuff.

On this Veteran’s Day, Code Pink Women for Peace gives us the resolution made in 1926 by Congress that recognized the end of World War I:

“Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed...

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”

Additional to some ideas they offer on how to celebrate the true meaning of the holiday, there’s a good article with talking points on how to take action, “How to Support Our Troops on Veteran’s Day.”

t looks like China has recently taken up a serious interest in bras, an interest so serious that you can now get your bachelors in bra studies at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University. Now that’s a degree!

China’s biggest lingerie manufacturer, Top Form, even has its own bra lab. As of late, the lab has been trying to find new ways to pad, testing "fillers" such as air and oil. (That would be a tad messy, no?) Their latest (and more realistic) experimentation has been with fiberfill, the stuffing used in ski parkas.

I would think a much better choice than oil. But don’t ask me -- I didn’t go to school for it.

Crazy headlines everywhere: “Sex scenes on TV nearly double!”, “Television awash in sex!”, or my favorite “TV Sex: Teens Love It!” Yeah, and?

The study, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, has expectedly sparked a debate on teens’ favorite shows, the prevalence of sex on the shows, and the potential sexual behavior that may ensue. I don’t know about you, but that OC definitely brings out my inner slut.

Things cleared up a bunch once the Washington Post pointed out that the study included kissing as sexual behavior. And we think the shows will confuse teens’ perception of sex?

Additionally, teen pregnancies have dropped, less teens are having sex, and teens that do decide to have sex are more frequently using protection. Yup, sounds like TV is doing quite a number on the poor children.

Thoughts?

While we’ve been tracking the intelligent design trial pretty closely since the bullshit began, I was happy to see that Pennsylvania voters have ousted all eight Republican members of the school board who set the intelligent design policy and replaced them with Democrats.

While the judge is still expected to make a decision on the case by January, it looks like the newly elected board members may change the policy by then. One winning candidate, Judy McIlvaine, stated, “We are all for it [intelligent design] being discussed, but we do not want to see it in biology class. It is not a science.”

Ex-school board member/sore loser David Napierskie told AP that the vote was not just about ideology. “Some people felt intelligent design shouldn’t taught and others were concerned about having tax money spent on the lawsuit.”

Either way, they’re all greedy, god-hating sinners. At least that’s what our buddy Pat Robertson seems to think.

via Guardian Unlimited...

The figures, published 30 years after the introduction of the sex discrimination act, show that in the year to April 2005, women working full-time earned on average 17.2% less than their male colleagues.

"Every thinking person would agree that it's not right for women to be paid less than men - but that's what still happens even after 30 years of equal pay legislation," said Kate Bellamy, the society's senior policy officer.

Well not every thinking person, because there still is a wage gap. Either that or not every person thinks, which I buy.

try and check this out.

Keynote Speaker: Andrea Smith
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee
"Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide"
11/10@7pm at Mills College Student Union (Free)
KPFA 94.1 will be recording the lecture...

Andrea Smith (Cherokee) is co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, and she is the coordinator of the Boarding School Healing Project. She is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (South End Press), and is the co-editor of the upcoming anthology: The Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color (South End-forthcoming). Andrea also coordinated the Native Women and Sexual Assault research project for Amnesty International. She is currently teaching in Native American Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan.

See you there! I had done a little blip on a similar issue a while back if you are interested in the issue.

This is just bad news.

Women and children are the most vulnerable to HIV/Aids and failure to protect their legal rights is exposing them to the disease, said experts on Wednesday at an international convention for women lawyers.

The convention heard that the prevalence of HIV/Aids was increasing among women, with the burden of the pandemic greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, where many women were unaware of their rights.

Nigerian lawyer Victoria Awomolo said at the conference,

"Women can't negotiate for safe sex or say no to unfaithful partners. Monogamous married women are powerless against infection by husbands with outside partners.

"To worsen their situation, economic dependency prevents women from leaving unsafe sexual relationships."

They also talk about another practice/myth I am sure some of you have heard about before, where having sex (usually forcibly) with a woman or child that is a virgin will cure the infected of HIV/Aids.

Continue to plague the whole world. Several folk in the US, such as Hillary Clinton are speaking out against working (specifically in terms of trade agreements) with countries that are ignoring the growing instances of sex/human traffic.

via Voice of America...

UNICEF reports that, each year, about 1 million children are sold or otherwise recruited into this criminal business. Sex trafficking is believed to be growing the fastest in Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. In Asia, girls from villages in Nepal and Bangladesh -- the majority of whom are under 18 -- are sold to brothels in India for $1,000. The European Policy Agency estimates that the industry is now worth several billion dollars a year.

I hear that, but what about trafficking in the States. It is a big problem as well.

Federal officials say 14,500 to 17,500 of them are trafficked to the United States, where the myriad forms of modern-day slavery present an elusive target for those trying to eradicate it.

Victims have come from at least 50 countries in almost every part of the world and are trafficked to virtually every state - to clandestine factories, restaurants, farms, massage parlors, even private homes where women and girls are kept in servitude.

Any country is more like every country. The worst is many of the women that are caught in the States are treated like undocumented illegals and we all know how that goes down.

Classy, right?

In case you're interested in the gory details of the bias suit filed against Fox News, check out Gawker. They have excerpts from the suit, specifically the outrageously gross comments made by Joe Chillemi, a Fox vice president.

Cause really ladies, don't you wish your boss would comment on your "cannons�"

Ugh.

Texas voters Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, making their state the 19th to take that step.

..The contest in Texas was decided quickly--the ban was receiving 75 percent of the votes in early returns. Like every other state except Massachusetts, Texas didn't permit same-sex marriages previously, but the constitutional amendment was touted as an extra guard against future court rulings.

Kind of an extra little "na-na-na-boo-boo" to the queer community.

I know boobs are great and all, but who knew they were potentially world-saving?

A leading lingerie company has joined Japan's fight against high fuel use, unveiling a heated bra for winter.

The fluffy creation contains special pads filled with an eco-friendly gel that can be easily heated in a microwave or with a hot water bottle.

The design also includes a furry boa designed to double as a winter scarf.

Lingerie giant Triumph unveiled the bra months after PM Junichiro Koizumi urged Japan's office workers to ditch ties to save on air conditioning.

Being padded, the new bra packs a little more bulk than most regular designs, but the Japanese arm of Triumph insisted the look was more chic than sheep.

"We hope this will not only help prevent global warming but also provide a little fashion chic to the office," the company said in a statement.

The bra, which comes only in white, also features a pendant shaped like a chilli pepper dangling on its front.

Um, ok. I’m all down for eco-friendly clothing, but this freaks me out a bit. Partly because I don’t like idea of my breasts bursting into flames due to some kind of malfunction. (And because it kind of reminds me Bjork’s swan dress.)

Zachary Karabell at The Huffington Post writes a predictable piece on why the Dems should just give up on Roe. (Don’t worry little ladies, abortion will only be illegal in some places.)

Karabell’s argument in What if the Supremes Overturned Roe? is that nothing would really change in the Blue states and that there would be a chance for debate in the Red. But his main point is that the “Democrats would be far better off.”

And women? Well, apparently it’s not necessary to discuss women (or even mention us once) in a conversation about Roe.

So long as Daddy Dems are doing what’s best for the party, I guess us gals should just pipe down and start stocking up on wire hangers.

A new study says that drinking coffee doesn’t seem to cause long-term high blood pressure.

But you make want to chuck the Dr. Pepper (my current obsession), because women in the same study who drank sodas seemed to have a greater risk of high blood pressure.

Caffeine is a well-known ingredient in both beverages, and has been shown to cause short-term increases in blood pressure. But coffee drinkers in the study were no more likely than abstainers to develop high blood pressure during 12 years of follow-up.

...There was even some evidence that women who drank lots of coffee — four or more daily cups of regular or decaf — faced a slightly lower risk for developing high blood pressure than those who drank little or none.

Winkelmayer said that may be because coffee has lots of antioxidants, substances which are thought to help protect the heart and reduce risks of cancer.

The study isn’t conclusive, so you don’t have to swear off soda quite yet. Unless you’re freaked out by that urban legend about a nail dissolving in a glass of Coke.

Sotheby’s announced that it will be auctioning off a rare copy of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s speech from the Seneca Falls convention.

The speech, titled "Declaration of Sentiments," was modeled on the Declaration of Independence and asserted, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal."

The Declaration of Sentiments was signed by 68 women and 32 men at the convention and is considered the founding document of the suffrage movement that resulted in American women being granted the right to vote in 1920.

The auction house says that there are only four copies of the speech in existence; this copy is the only one available for private ownership. Sotheby’s estimates that the speech will sell for $300,000 to $500,000.

Girls Inc. and American Girl are still being attacked by conservative groups over their recent collaboration. So check out the message below from Girls Inc. and go buy a bracelet (it’s only a dollar!) for a girl in your life.

You’ll be supporting an amazing organization and giving a big “fuck you” to the guys over at American Family Association. And what could be more philanthropic than that?

You may have seen recent news reports about groups waging a protest and threatening to boycott American Girl if it doesn’t cut its financial ties with Girls Inc. We are shocked and saddened by this misguided attack.

By purchasing an “I CAN” band, you are sending a clear message that together WE CAN continue to fulfill the important mission of Girls Inc., a mission that has guided our work for over 141 years.

Wherever you are!

If in California, remember Prop 73 sucks!

Doctors who perform abortions would have to give written notification to at least one parent of an unmarried minor, 17 years old or younger, at least 48 hours before the procedure, except in a medical emergency. A minor could avoid the parental notification by getting a waiver from a juvenile court judge. Requires each court to issue a public report once a year on how many abortion requests each judge has granted and denied. Defines abortion as causing death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born.

Some more details on other Props here for California. See you at the polls.

via Khaleej Times...

Women rights activists are about to launch an aggressive campaign in support of the proposed Family Law that has faced rejection from religious scholars because it lacks the Shariah laws.

It is unfortunate that a forward-looking country like Bahrain has nothing in terms of legislation that guarantees the protection of women and their rights, said Ghada who had late last month hosted a get-together for victims of domestic violence as part of efforts to drum up support for the passage of the law.

I know huh? We are thinking it is unfortunate a country as "forward-looking" as the US is going through such a fundamentalist backlash as well. Looks can be deceiving.

Um, I had no idea that this was still possible. The AFL is trying out some new policies that would decrease sexual assault, especially hush money which is paid to women who have been victimized to "hush" them up, and for the players to avoid litigation costs.

Ugh.

AFL players caught paying "hush money" to victims of alleged sexual assault could be sacked under new rules designed to change attitudes towards women among some of the stars of the sport.

In releasing the AFL's policy on the treatment of the women - Respect and Responsibility - AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said the league's penalties for sexual assault offenders ranged from fines to suspension and delisting.

I can be SO clueless sometimes, here I am thinking that something like this already WOULD be illegal.

Wowie, people can't get enough of MoDo these days.

Salon: Yes, Maureen Dowd is necessary

Wonkette: Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?

Slate: Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?

Boston Globe: Feminism ain't dead yet

The Washington Post: Sex & the Single Stiletto

PopPolitics: What's a Modern [white, straight, upper-class, socially-mobile, college-educated] Girl to Do?

Women's eNews: Why Dowd Doesn't Know What Men Really Want

The Seattle Times: Feminism: on board or overboard?

I'm sure that I'll add more in the coming days...

PBS' Frontline is scheduled to air an episode tonight, The Last Abortion Clinic. The episode will take a look at the increasing amount of state level anti-choice legislation and will focus on Mississippi. I wonder why.

In the last decade, all but one clinic providing pregnancy terminations in the state have closed. The last abortion clinic, in Jackson, is difficult to access for women outside the capital who do not own a car, who have limited funds for gas or who cannot easily take time off from work or child care responsibilities.

"It's like even before Roe v. Wade for these poor women," says Pat White, a nurse-midwife who has been working in the Mississippi Delta for decades. "We are making decisions for them. These women have no option except to continue with the pregnancy, whether they can afford it, or whether or not it's wanted, or whether or not they can emotionally provide for the child."

Ugh. I'm sure I'll end up screaming at the television the entire time, but I'm planning on watching anyway.

A video preview of the episode is available online.

Turns out women like jokes more...or something like that.

Women seem more likely than men to enjoy a good joke, mainly because they don't always expect it to be funny.

Oh lord. The researcher also manages to throw a Mars/Venus quip in there, so brace yourselves.

These studies crack me up.

The female hormone oestrogen could give women the edge when it comes to tasks such as safe driving, say researchers.

Tests showed attention span and ability to learn rules were far better among women than men.

The Bradford University scientists told a hormone conference in London how tasks requiring mental flexibility favour women over men.

A woman's oestrogen levels may prime the part of the brain involved in such skills - the frontal lobe - they said.

...The women were far better at being able to shift their attention from one stimulus to another, making it easier for them to perform everyday actions like driving and reading.

The article points out that in the past, different researchers said that women were not as good at spatial skills like map reading and parking because of a lack of testosterone.

Why the constant battle of the hormones? It’s getting kinda old.

From Salon’s advice column Since you asked:

My girlfriend told me she's a racist. Do I have to dump her?

My advice? Yes. Hells yes--you have dump her. Sorry.

Cary Tennis offers much more in-depth advice to the young lad about questioning where these views came from and how to address the issue with the girlfriend.

The answers to these and similar questions might be complicated and difficult or they might be simple. But if we are ever to be rid of racism, it seems to me we must ask them. We must try to understand what good it does people to hang on to these ideas, why it is so difficult to give them up.

This is true. But it doesn’t mean we have to fuck them.

It’s similar to the idea of dating someone who is sexist. Sure, if I stuck around with a misogynist for a while perhaps I could change his mind. But who in the world has time for that?

Besides, perhaps a good dumping is just what the doctor ordered for folks like this. People need to know that racism, sexism, homophobia, you name it, isn’t acceptable. Do they really need coddling or a just a good kick in the ass?

Abercrombie and Fitch announced on Friday that they would stop selling some of the shirts that prompted a “girlcott” by Pennsylvania teens.

"We recognize that the shirts in question, while meant to be humorous, might be troubling to some."

A&F didn't specify which shirts would be pulled.

Via Broadsheet.

Carnival of Feminists is looking for submissions.

The Carnival hopes to build the profile of feminist blogging, to direct extra traffic to all participating bloggers, but particularly newer bloggers, and to build networks among feminist bloggers.

All the info is here. Questions and comments can be sent there.

Hook it up feministers, this is a great opportunity to get involved, especially if you are new to blogging.

Eric Jaffa at SpeakSpeak News says the term catfight needs to be retired, arguing that the word is “more obnoxious than useful.”

When the term “catfight” is used against women, it reeks of sexism. When the term “catfight” is used against men, it reeks of feminization.

All it took for me to be way over the term was a quick Google image search (see above). Cause female agression is only ok if you're making fun of it or if nakedness is involved. Ugh.

Check out Amanda on the same.

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

A federal judge denied on Friday a request from a group of Mendocino women who wanted to protest topless on the grounds of the state Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell said the group made no compelling argument that showing their breasts constitutes free speech.

"Being topless is not inherently expressive" speech, Burrell said. The group, Breasts Not Bombs, had scheduled a protest for noon Monday. The California Highway Patrol threatened to arrest anyone who went topless.

Flashing boobs probably wouldn’t be my protest action of choice, but hey, I’m a modest girl like that.

But the judge in this case seemed a little pissy for my taste. He asked the group’s lawyer: “Do you think the founding fathers had this in mind when they drafted the First Amendment?” Witty replies, anyone?

As Ann noted last week, the end of the FDA's "comment period" on Plan B’s over-the-counter status came and passed without much action. Shocker.

But on Thursday, four members of Congress introduced a bill to force the FDA to decide whether EC can be sold without a prescription.

Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) sponsored the bill, which would automatically make emergency contraception available for over-the-counter sale 30 days after the bill's passage, until the FDA make a decision. I love it. Someone needs to force these fuckers to stop stalling.

But of course, not all women would have access--women under 17 wouldn’t be able to buy EC without a prescription. You know, cause much better that teens get an abortion than prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Sigh.

Via Women’s Health News.

UPDATE: Make sure to check out a related Salon piece by Lynn Harris. Harris writes about a New Mexico doctor who has been providing prescriptions for emergency contraception for the last five years on his site, Getthepill.com.

A key Democrat said on Sunday that he expects the full Republican-led Senate to vote on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito without the threat of a Democratic filibuster.

"My instinct is we should commit" to an up-or-down vote by the full Senate, said Biden, a member of the Judiciary Committee. "I think the probability is that will happen.

via Reuters...

My instinct is to move far far away.

Okay remember Vanessa's post on the situation in Dover, PA where the school board was trying to adopt science curriculum that included this notion of "intelligent design." To update, the trial ended on Friday and it is pretty well understood that this decision will have far reaching implications for schools around the country that are having similar "moral" dilemmas.

via SF Chronicle...

Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District was the first legal test for intelligent design. At issue, is whether the policy of the board to incorporate intelligent design into its curriculum was motivated by religious or educational principles. If either the purpose, or the effect, of a public school policy is religious, it would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which the Supreme Court has interpreted to mandate a separation of church and state.

At issue was a four-paragraph statement adopted by the Dover school board, which was read to ninth-grade biology students as they begin to study the theory of evolution and which says:

"Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested ... The Theory is not a fact. Gaps exist in the Theory for which there is no evidence ... Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view ... Students are encouraged to keep an open mind."

Like religion isn't a theory? All theories are privy to exploration, that is the reality of it. I don't necessarily believe that science is all facts that can't be questioned, it can be questioned, especially with respect to race, class and gender. Understanding this, implementing religious dogma doesn't open space to explain the shortcomings of science, it is just another way to marginalize alternative explanations and create one meaning. Science, like life, is complex, we need space to explore the complexities. These people need to read some Donna Haraway.

Anyway, let's see what the courts rule.

Regardless of how he rules, this trial was the beginning of what will be a protracted battle in the courts sought by Christian conservatives such as defense lawyer Thompson. "We're preparing our case for an ultimate review by the Supreme Court of the United States," Thompson said. He added that President Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to fill a vacant seat on the high court is "absolutely" encouraging. Senators of both parties who have been meeting with Alito reported he told them he believed the court might have gone too far in separating church and state.

Fuckin ey, let us pray!

A while back I had done a piece on awarding women in the tech industry.

To add to that a conference last week discussed the role of women in the tech industry and found that women have a long way to go in the tech world, specifically in venture capital.

Despite strides made by women in many areas of the economy, they've got a lot of work to do in the world of Silicon Valley venture capital.

Cause who needs an education or experience when you have gemstones and confetti flowers?

Via Gawker.

Hundreds of abstinence educators came together in Baltimore this week for the first national conference on abstinence education evaluation. The meeting is sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Can you imagine being the poor person who has to report on these programs’ progress? “Uh...yeah, sorry about that whole anal-sex thing. Our bad.”

Pandagon has taken the sexist shirt controversy to a new level: More offensive than thou T-shirt contest!

So go vote, though it’s hard to decide which shirt is most hurl-worthy. My vote is for the one above, mostly because of the (evil) genius way it plays on both body image and sexuality issues. This one comes in a close second.

Innovative retail designer or run-of-the-mill tit freak?

A Dutch designer has created a wall of fake breasts to help male shoppers buy bras that fit their wives or girlfriends.

Wendy Rameckers works at the Piet Zwart Institute for Retail and Design in Rotterdam, reports Het Nieuwsblad.

"Most men have a selective memory," she explained. "They know all about their car, but never seem to know their wife's bra size.

"When trying to buy a sexy bra for their wife or girlfriend, usually they point to other women in the shop or, when asked about size, they say a 'handful'."

The wall consists of rows of silicon breasts in all sizes. By look and touch, male shoppers can work out the right size, she says.

Or they could just check out the size tag on her bra strap. But why make things complicated?

When it comes to disturbing toddler trends, timing is everything.

The New York Times, November 3, 2005, Love the Riches, Lose the Rags:

...More than a millennium after her creation and 55 years after her Disneyization, Cinderella has gone from a stalwart to a phenomenon with the kind of hypnotic effect exerted by only a few characters per generation. "It's everywhere I turn, and she's obsessed with it," said Suzanne Brady of Wantagh, N.Y., of her 2-year old daughter, Reilly.

...In fact, Cinderella lust causes some young devotees to behave more like her wicked stepsisters. "Literally, the dresses get fought over by the little girls," said Elaine Harrop of Farmingdale, N.Y., as her 3-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn, repeatedly flung herself at a Cinderella statue in the World of Disney Store in Manhattan on Saturday, clutching at the stiff skirt.

...It started with some dress-up costumes sold at the Disney Store, and after those initial test products vanished from the shelves faster than Cinderella's coach at midnight, Disney knew it had a major hit on its satin-gloved hands. Sales of the Princess line were an astounding $2.5 billion last year, up from $300 million in 2001.

...The ease and rapidity with which a princess obsession can take hold of a young girl's psyche is mind-blowing. Josh Levine, a Brooklyn, N.Y., writer/photographer, says he and his wife made a decisive effort to keep their daughter, Sasha, away from anything Disney. But when she was a little over 2 she watched a video of "Sleeping Beauty" at a friend's house and was immediately hooked. Soon the accoutrements of princess-hood started to fill the Levine home and Sasha began to insist upon wearing ball gowns as her everyday wardrobe. While decked out in her full Snow White regalia in early October, a woman on the street asked the 3-year-old if she was going to dress as a princess for Halloween, to which Sasha responded, "No, I am a princess."

But whenever it's reported--this shit just freaks me out. If there really has to be a toddler-driven consumer frenzy, couldn't it be for something better than this?

Check out the rest of Mikhaela Reid's latest, Adventures in Republican Logic. Terrific, as always.

By Sara Catania

Urgent message to readers from Maureen Dowd in "What’s a Modern Girl to Do?" via The New York Times Magazine, Oct 30:

Some men are intimidated by accomplished and successful women; Maureen Dowd is an accomplished and successful woman who intimidates men; Some women like to dress up in frilly, retro outfits and play hard to get; Maureen Dowd likes to dress up in fishnet stockings and snakeskin pumps and say sarcastic things; Some men don’t marry women who say sarcastic things; Maureen Dowd is not married; Some men like it when a very rich and successful actress/singer/superstar dresses up in a maid costume; Some of Maureen Dowd’s relatives have worked as maids; Some men marry significantly younger women who aren’t very bright; Maureen Dowd is very bright and not young and has been noticing a trend in which famous and powerful men seek out partners whose job it is to take care of them; It is not Maureen Dowd’s job to take care of men; Some actresses exercise by practicing pole dancing; Feminists are earnest and tedious and wear Birkenstocks; Some reporters at the New York Times agree with Maureen Dowd; Fish may not need bicycles, but fishnets complement a zebra-print bar stool nicely.

My roommate Alli has a serious catalog problem--she gets at least three a day. We have no idea what kind of bizarre mailing list she’s on, but damn do they love sending us stuff. (This is my explanation of why I was looking through a teen clothing catalog. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.)

Imagine my horror when I came across the above shirt in Alloy--a catalog marketed to teen girls. You have got to be fucking kidding me.

In other icky-shirt news, a group of high school students in Pennsylvania are speaking out against Abercrombie & Fitch over a shirt that reads: “Who needs a brain when you have these?" How sweet.

I couldn’t find that particular shirt on the A&F site, but they have plenty others to get squeamish over.

Senator Richard J. Durbin (D, IL) says that in a private meeting with Samuel Alito, he asked the Supreme Court nominee about his dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

"He said he had spent more time worrying and working over that decision than over any other decision he made when he was a judge," Mr. Durbin said.

Like I give a shit. As much as he “worried,” Alito still came to the conclusion that restrictions on abortion--including spousal notification--were just peachy. I think women are the ones that need to be worried.

I have to write about this, since I go to school here AND because this is appalling.

One of the professors in the Africana Studies Department at SF State University was wrongfully arrested this week for going to his own office at night. Professor Akom was trying to go pick up something from his office at around 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, and the campus police stopped him, thinking that he was breaking in. He told them that he is a professor trying to enter his own office but they did not believe him without even checking his identification. They called the real police and he resisted arrest because he did not do anything, so they put him in jail for that. His bail was $50,000. They finally released him on Wednesday afternoon around 4 pm. About a year ago, the campus police also targeted Prof. Akom in a similar situation of picking something up from his office in the evening, although it did not escalate to imprisonment. This recent incident combined with other cases of racial profiling in our campus have triggered many of us into organizing against this racist and unjust practice. And we are spreading the word about it, because the university is all hushed up about it.

Antwi is also a professor in Ethnic Studies. The irony is that ethnic studies actually started at San Francisco State University.

Take action here.

Also here is an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the situation. Guess who is his lawyer, Matt Gonzales, W00t!

This is the only appropriate pic I could find from Halloween. As my friends post more, I will link to them.

What is up with the cup of wonder juice?

and I don't?

A study carried out at the university of St. Andrews, Scotland, found that women who were judged to be attractive tended to have higher levels of oestrogen in their urine than women who were not judged to be attractive. Such features as large eyes and full lips do seem to be linked to higher levels of the female hormone and higher fertility.

1. Do we really need more reasons for people to uphold unfair standards of beauty?

2. Who decided what was "judged to be" attractive? (attractiveness is culturally mediated and not to mention totally distorted by hegemonic notions of beauty)

3. Why did someone decide to do this study? To justify men being superficial in picking partners?

This is bullshit.

Marian Smith and her team took photos of 56 female students. They were all aged 18-24. The team took urine samples from the 56 students at exactly the same point of their menstrual cycles.

29 people (14 males and 15 females) were then asked to rate the pictures for attractiveness and health. They found a direct link between high levels of oestrogen and higher judged levels of attractiveness.

This sample size is WAY to small to generalize the findings, let alone publish this in Medical News Today. I just had to submit my MA thesis to Human Subjects for approval. One of the criteria is that I have to show how my study will somehow benefit my field or society at large. How does this study benefit anyone?

And I wonder if oestrogen (and its release) is connected to self-esteem at all? That would no doubt skew these findings. I mean for me sexuality/wanting to have sex, thus my production of oestrogen is DIRECTLY connected to my self-esteem, which is NO DOUBT mediated by our detrimental cultural standards of beauty. Just a thought.

Yesterday marked the end of the FDA's "comment period" on Plan B over-the-counter. Now that the 60 days are up, I'm sure the FDA is hard at work figuring out another way to delay making a decision.

Right now officials say they've reviewed 2,300 of the more than 10,000 comments they received. Who submitted comments?

I messed up on this one and missed the opportunity to comment directly. Like many people, I'm guessing, I sent a form letter via Planned Parenthood to Congress, asking for an investigation of the FDA's tactics. I also signed NARAL's petition. Neither group directed me to the FDA's comments page. But rest assured the Concerned Women for America website had specific instructions on how to log an official comment.

As one commenter noted, the FDA's website is difficult to navigate, and the docket that pertains to this issue doesn't come up in a search for "Plan B" or "contraception." Maybe other pro-choice groups provided instructions on how to submit a public comment, but I didn't see them. Which is a shame because I think we could have sent the FDA way more pro-choice comments. Not that I'm positive they would have made a difference...

Related: The Philadelphia Inquirer had a piece yesterday examining how conservative opposition to EC-- including the never-ending series of FDA delays-- has increased public awareness of the issue.

And if you need a reminder as to why EC access is so important, here are stories of sexual assault survivors who were denied EC.

Mukhtaran Bibi, the Pakistani woman who was sentenced to a gang rape by a tribal council for a crime her brother had committed, spoke out in Washington yesterday:

"I am the voice of those Pakistani women who need you to stand behind them in their fight for justice…I have raised a voice against oppression…"

Her comments come in the wake of the outrageous statement made by Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf that women in Pakistan get themselves raped.

Bibi is receiving Glamour magazine’s "Woman of the Year" award today. Could we give Musharraf the asshole of the year award?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Proposition 73—the California amendment that would require parental notification before a teen could obtain an abortion—is a lot more dangerous than it seems:

One little-discussed provision of the Nov. 8 ballot measure would create a public scorecard for judges who rule on minors' abortions. Another would define abortion in the state Constitution as the killing of "a child conceived but not yet born."

Whoa! You gotta love how they sneak that shit in there.

This sucks:

Millions of women in Britain are being failed by the state pension system and are left dependant on means-tested benefits to lift them out of poverty, according to a new report.

Less than a third of retired women are currently entitled to the full basic state pension, while 2.2 million are failing to accrue any entitlement at all, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

…Much of the problem stems from the fact that the current state pension system was designed in the 1940s when women were financially dependant on their husbands, and it has failed to adapt to take account of changing social and working patterns.

One of the reasons so many women are failing to accrue full entitlement to the basic state pension is because they have taken career breaks to look after children and elderly relatives.

Silly women—don’t they know caretaking isn’t profitable?

And I saw one last night in this costume, "Mammogram Man." In case you can't see, the lettering on the headpiece says "Place breasts here." Let's also not forget it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Ugh.

Did anyone else see offensive costumes to share?

Do you see something wrong with this picture? Via The Boston Globe:

“The highest court in the Methodist Church yesterday defrocked a lesbian minister in Philadelphia, and reinstated a Virginia pastor who had been suspended for denying congregation membership to a gay man.

The nine-member Judicial Council also voided a declaration by Methodists in the Pacific Northwest that there was a ‘difference of opinion among faithful Christians regarding sexual orientation and practice.’ The court said the declaration was a ‘historical statement without prescriptive force’ and had no bearing on church laws.

The decisions amounted to a clean sweep for conservatives in the church who believe homosexual activity is a sin and want to enforce a Methodist rule against ‘self-avowed, practicing’ homosexuals in ordained ministry. They were the latest in a series of recent defeats for liberals in the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination who have sought to be more welcoming toward gays and lesbians.”

Sigh. I don’t know how people can keep faith amidst all this bullshit. The minister, Rev. Irene ''Beth" Stroud, is even intending to continue her work at Philadelphia’s First United Methodist Church of Germantown as a lay minister, which means she’s not allowed to be present at communion and baptisms.

In the meantime, Rev. Edward Johnson of South Hill United Methodist Church in South Hill, Virginia was reinstated to his post just four months after he refused a man to join his congregation because the man didn’t believe his same-sex relationship was a sin.

Well, that killed my good mood.

I won’t deny that I’m absolutely ecstatic that Margaret Cho linked to us on her blog yesterday. In all honesty, I had a dream last night that we met and became best friends instantly. Sigh.

Aside from my new imaginary relationship, check out her thoughts on Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls that Samhita posted on a while back.

Islamic feminists from around the globe came together this weekend in an effort to mobilize and liberate Muslim women in a new “gender jihad,” reports the Guardian.

"The meeting, which drew women from as far apart as Malaysia, Mali, Egypt and Iran, set itself the task of squaring Islam with feminism. That meant not just combating 14 centuries of sexism in the Muslim world, participants said, but also dealing with the animosity to Islam of many western or secular feminists. They insisted that many of the fundamental concepts of equality embraced by feminism could also be found in the Qur'an."

The "gender jihad" has been labeled as the recognition of and action against sexist and homophobic readings of Islamic texts, which has been greatly abused by predominantly male Muslim scholars over the past centuries.

Amina Wadud, an African-American theology professor, is playing a leading role in the movement. She created an uproar within the Muslim community not too long ago when she formed a mixed-sex congregation in New York. She has been dedicated to studying the Qur’an for the past two decades and decided to mobilize when she realized that “horrific things were being done in the name of religion.”

Progressives admit that the movement will be trying. Rachel Raza, a Pakistani Canadian who has also led mixed-sex prayers, says it plain and simple, “I already have a fatwa against me. I don’t want to be murdered on the street.”

Although I’m currently struggling with the Halloween hangover of hell, I had to take the opportunity to give a shout out to Jessica on her birthday. As her tortured little sister, I've never been surprised she was born so close to the holiday o' horror. (Seriously--just check out her demon eyes.)

She’ll probably be pissed at me for this, but I had to return the favor after my own special day not long ago.

Happy birthday, Jess!