March 2007 Archives

The panel is actually titled New Media Distribution 202: Empowering Communities Through Online Tools led by the fabulous Deanna Zandt, and girlfriend knows her shit. (Which is exactly why she's working with us.)

Here is a del.icio.us (indeed) resource list of some of the tools she went over.

We have some great women on this panel, which is discussing ways to reach out to and communicate with young women of color. Mary Mahoney from the Pro-Choice Public Education Project is moderating, with Nicole Clark from Helping Our Teen Girls in Real Life Situations (HOTGIRLS) and Candace Webb from the AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families as presenters.

One resource they gave that I really want to check out is this study, “Representin’ in Cyberspace: Sexual Scripts, Self-Definition, and Hip Hop Culture in Black American Adolescent Girls’ Home Pages� that was released this month in the international journal Culture, Health and Sexuality and led by Dr. Carla Stokes, the founding Executive Director of HOTGIRLS. While the study challenges the generalization that black teen girls aren’t tech-savvy and shows ways that they use the internet and hip hop to express themselves in creative ways, it also showed that much of the time, they actually choose to emulate the hypersexual, negative stereotypes of black women that are depicted in the media. All the more reason to have more online activism and outreach to these young women.

Oh gawd, they just put on “A Girl Like Me.� Great film, but I so do not need to be crying today.

Dana Goldstein of CampusProgress, who is also at WAM, has an interesting post up about what exactly folks mean when they say "feminist media."

What do you think?

Whew. So my panel is over and I can relax a little bit. (At least until tomorrow when I'm moderating a panel chock full of funny ladies, including Mikheala Reid.)

I'm at a panel run by the very cool Caryl Rivers on media myths like the "boy crisis."

Another media narrative they're discussing is the myth that professionally accomplished women make for bad wives, or have bad relationships. Well, shit...I've had my fair share of bad breakups but I'm pretty sure it didn't have much to do with how well I was doing at work.

I love these ladies...they're talking about how the Forbes debacle actually turned out okay for women. Women were so outraged by the article that they really had to eat their words and admit, well, that they were full of shit.

I really need to get this powerpoint, they also have a lot of fantastic info and stats debunking the male brain/female brain differences myths. (And boy are there a lot of them.)

My question is--yeah, so what do we do? I mean, we see these kind of bullshit stories all the time...but how do we call them out in a way that does more than piss off a couple of feminist bloggers.

This panel is addressing the question of how to build actual collaborations between different types of feminist media and organizations. How do we partner with feminist organizations and media as opposed to fighting or competing for readers?

Jessica is talking about how feminist blogs can be a model for collaboration since we all work together, link to each other, guest blog for each other etc. Despite a healthy competition there is still a sense of community.

Other panelists include Andi Zeisler co-founder and editorial/creative director at Bitch, Denisse Andrade from Manhatten Neighborhood Network and co-founder of the Grassroots Media Conference and Nancy Goldstein, director of Communication and Development for National Advocates for Pregnant Woman.

"We should fight this fight on all fronts."

Even feminist media is caught up on the same stories. Why do we only hear certain stories, certain links etc? If all your research is done online there is the potential for missing local organizations that may not have strong web presences. Who has the entitlement to speak? How do we reach out to people that don't have authority to speak?

The exciting project of building online communities through blogging and social networking technologies is slowly but surely being realized. The hope is that these connections will translate to real world connections between media and non-profit and community organizations.

Do you think that is happening?

Oh and granted we are all doing really amazing work but how the hell are we supposed to make any money???

And Vanessa and I are intently paying attention playing with my macbook cam

And is debuting at WAM! And she is so excited she actually tried to hump it.

So we made it to Cambridge for the annual WAM conference and it has already been tons of fun. Best moment so far? As I was registering a woman casually asks me where the registration is. I turn around and it is Cynthia Enloe. I embarrassingly and very uncooly blurt out "OMG you are Cynthia Enloe!" and she said, "Yes and you are?" Celebrity feminist sighting #1.

Yeah, we are dorks. Expect more updates.

Kerrita McClaughlyn (left) and colleagues at the International Diabetes Federation’s 19th World Diabetes Congress in Cape Town, South Africa in December 2006.

Kerrita McClaughlyn is the media relations coordinator of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) based in Brussels, Belgium. For over 50 years, IDF has been at the forefront of global diabetes advocacy. The Federation is committed to raising global awareness of diabetes, promoting adequate diabetes care and prevention, and encouraging activities towards finding a cure for the different types of diabetes that many people are not aware of.

Kerrita answered my questions over email. Here’s Kerrita…

GlaxoSmithKline has filed for FDA approval of its HPV vaccine, Cervarix. It would compete with Merck's Gardasil, which has been on the market since June.

GlaxoSmithKline counters that Cervarix is more powerful and may prevent up to 80 percent of cancers, thanks to the company's proprietary adjuvant, AS04, a key booster ingredient. It also is funding an unusual head-to-head comparison to try to prove Cervarix is more potent than Gardasil.

GSK has not announced how expensive Cervarix will be, but Gardasil costs $360 for the three-shot regimen. I had high hopes that the competition would bring the price down, but sadly it doesn't look like that's going to happen:

Jean Stéphenne, president of GSK Biologicals, the company's Belgium-based vaccine division, said in an interview last month that GlaxoSmithKline aims to win over physicians and others by proving Cervarix is better, not by selling it for less.

"If you start a price war, you give the impression that your product is of lower quality," Stéphenne said during a trip to Philadelphia.

...and Big Pharma doesn't get as rich.

FDA approval is expected sometime between October and January.

Looks like "Dr." Eric Keroack resigned because the Massachusetts Office of Medicaid is investigating his private medical practice.

MassHealth officials aren't releasing the details on the investigation. The AP reports that his practice is based in Marblehead, MA. And indeed, that's the address on his state registration: 14 Willow Rd., Marblehead, MA. But when I called the phone number listed with that address, I got what was clearly a home answering machine, not a doctor's office. And a simple reverse-phone lookup shows it is indeed a residential address -- not a medical practice.

So where is Keroack's private practice that is under investigation, if not in Marblehead? The address listed for his practice by the hospital he's affiliated with, North Shore Medical Center, is 103 Broadway, Revere, MA. This is the address of one of the outposts of his crisis-pregnancy center chain, A Woman's Concern.

The AP report implied that, because Keroack's practice is supposedly located in Marblehead, where there is no branch of A Woman's Concern, that the Medicaid investigation into Keroack's "private practice" is not an investigation into his crisis-pregnancy center. Seems to me that could be wrong, and it's possible the investigation -- and Keroack's subsequent resignation -- are related to his affiliation with the crisis-pregnancy center.

Related: Legal Momentum sent a pregnant woman into A Woman's Concern and documented her experience.

Update: Planned Parenthood reports that Evelyn Kappeler, the current Acting Deputy Director for Population Affairs will be replacing Keroack.

(Cross-posted at TAPPED)

This is just lovely:

Lawrence Roach agreed to pay alimony to the woman he divorced, not the man she became after a sex change, his lawyers argued Tuesday in an effort to end the payments. But the ex-wife's attorneys said the operation doesn't alter the agreement.

Roach says, "I have a right to move forward with my life. I wish no harm and hardship to that person...They can be the person they want to be, to find happiness and peace within themselves. I have the right to do the same. But I can't rest because I'm paying a lot of money every month." Talk about a class act.

If we're a little slow on posting today, it's because Vanessa, Samhita, Celina and I are on our way to the WAM conference in Cambridge. It will be super fun for multiple reasons: we're on cool panels with awesome women, networks galore, and this will be the first time ever I get to see my book printed up (apparently Center for New Words got it early).

So be on the lookout this weekend for some WAM live-blogging and please be patient with us today as we get our shit together and travel to MA.

Thanks!

I have it on good authority that "Dr." Eric Keroack, the abstinence-only nut and cartoon enthusiast who was appointed by the Bush administration to oversee reproductive rights funding is resigning.

More info as I get it...

Contributed by Miriam Zoila Pérez, Radical Doula

This article in last week's NY Times brings up some hotly debated issues in the progressive LGBTQ movement. In reaction to the way that mainstream gay political movements have been overtaken by the fight for gay marriage, some radical activists have asked the question: Why marriage?

Activists like Mattilda Bernstein have pointed out that gay marriage is really an issue for mostly upper-class, white and privileged members of the gay community. It’s they who suffer from the tax penalties of not being legally married, and worry about how their inheritances will be passed on to their partners. She asks, shouldn't we invest our resources in fighting poverty, homelessness and discrimination? She also points out that we shouldn't be fighting for inclusion in a system that is corrupt and has inherently racist and sexist histories. She makes a similar argument about the fight for LGBTQ inclusion in the military.

The other side of this issue is the increasing commercialization of gay partnerships and ceremonies. Even though LGBTQ people can still only get legally married in MA (and the new civil unions in NJ) businesses all over the country are already catering to the gay wedding market. I went to the Gay Wedding Extravaganza in Philadelphia last year--where traditional wedding vendors came to sell their wares to LGBTQ couples planning ceremonies--even though there is no legal recognition in the state of PA. M any of these businesses had never even worked with gay couples before, but as one chocolate fountain vendor put it, "Money is money."

The RainbowWeddingNetwork calls these events "Same love, Same rights." It sounds deceptively political, and although they usually include a speech from an LGBTQ legal rights activist, really it's about the same rights to waste tons of money on stupid wedding crap, like tuxedos, cakes, chocolate fountains and the like. I've never been a fan of wedding ceremonies (gay or straight) because I think they can get overtaken by commercialism and people forget the real purpose: to celebrate the love and commitment of two people. What does that have to do with cakes, bridesmaid dresses, housewares, flowers or food? Especially when the average wedding the US costs close to $30,000. Yikes.

While I understand the desire to commemorate your commitment publicly, with friends and family, I think that LGBTQ people should seize this opportunity to do things differently, rather than replicating a model that hasn't really worked for straight people either.

Believe it.

Last night at Bates College, Phyllis Schlafly gave a lecture titled, "Conservatism vs. Feminism: The Great Debate" where at one point she contended that a woman can't get raped by her husband: "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape."

The fact that this woman has any merit within the political sphere is beyond me.

Lawmakers started hearings recently on a proposal to legalize abortion in Mexico City.

The city's Legislative Assembly is not scheduled to vote until mid-April, but passage seems likely. Mexican feminists say the legalization of abortion in this city of 8 million would be a landmark for the Latin American women's movement.

"We've been working for this day for 36 years, and it's almost here," said Marta Lamas, one of the nation's leading feminists and founder of the nonprofit Reproductive Choice Information Group.

Illegal abortion is a widespread problem in Mexico--and much of Latin America--and if this proposal passes, it would allow women to travel to the city to obtain safe, legal abortions. Fingers crossed.

Because there's nothing like appropriating feminist language to promote bad girl bands.

Via Pandagon.

There's a new effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Nice.

The amendment, which came three states short of enactment in 1982, has been introduced in five state legislatures since January. Yesterday, House and Senate Democrats reintroduced the measure under a new name -- the Women's Equality Amendment -- and vowed to bring it to a vote in both chambers by the end of the session.

The renewed push to pass the ERA, which passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly in 1972 and was ratified by 35 states before skidding to a halt, highlights liberals' renewed sense of power since November's midterm elections. From Capitol Hill to Arkansas, legislators said they are seizing a political opportunity to enshrine women's rights in the Constitution.

But naturally, some women think equality is just plain silly.

Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly has been making the rounds testifying against the ERA.

In the 1970s, Schlafly and others argued that the ERA would lead to women being drafted by the military and to public unisex bathrooms. Today, she warns lawmakers that its passage would compel courts to approve same-sex marriages and deny Social Security benefits for housewives and widows.

"It's very retro. It had 10 years of debate, very passionate debate for 10 years, and it was defeated," Schlafly said in an interview yesterday."

Hows about we make a rule that the amendment would guarantee equality for all women except Phyllis Schlafly? Then everyone wins.

By the way, here's the oh-so-controversial text of the amendment.

UPDATE: Read Shakes for more.

And I was just talking to someone about them yesterday. These bitches rock.

Perhaps because cigarettes are 8 dollars a pack and you can't smoke inside and it is COLD outside (from what I hear) the percentage of female smokers has made a sharp decrease in NY.

The data, which is a random telephone survey of 10,000 residents, shows more women are becoming health conscious now. Calling it "bad news" for tobacco companies, city health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said that many companies are also using various marketing gimmicks to attract women smokers.

According to AP reports, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is using pink packaging and fashion magazine ads to market a new cigarette brand aimed at women called Camel No. 9. However, the vice president for marketing of the Camel brand sees their move as giving women smokers "a choice with products we believe are more appealing than existing products."

The latest figures from the health department find that the number of women smokers fell from 20 percent in 2002 to 16 percent in 2005 - a period when only one new smoker in four was a woman.

These ladies are fabulous. Also check out their other videos, United States Extreme Right Wing Cheerleading Squad Vol. I and I'm Saving My Hymen For Jesus. Sweet.

The National Organization for Women has announced their endorsement of Senator Clinton's presidential bid.

Here is Kim Gandy's official statement. Any thoughts on the news?

Yet another story about what life is like for women in "pro-life" countries:

Two months pregnant and bleeding, Yanira Then says she went to a clinic in her low-income Santo Domingo neighborhood, where her doctor said she had suffered a miscarriage.

Then was still in her hospital gown that February morning when her doctor's office was stormed by police, prosecutors and television news cameras. Accused of having had an abortion, Then, a 27-year-old law student, was arrested along with two other patients, the nurses and her physician.

She faces 3 to 10 years in prison. The doctor faces 50.

Can you think of any clearer way to send the message, "Your body is public property"?

Yanira Then is accused of attempting to induce abortion using misoprostol. This is a common reaction among women in countries where abortion is illegal. They induce abortion at home -- using pills like misoprostol or sometimes more violent means -- and then seek a doctor's treatment for miscarriage. Doctors are often put in the position of letting these women die of infection or blood loss, or facing prosecution for assisting in abortion.

This story is also a reminder that criminalizing abortion doesn't make it stop. The abortion rate in the Dominican Republic is 44 per 1,000 women -- more than double the rate in the U.S., where abortion is legal (though not always available). The DR is currently considering revisions to its penal code to permit abortion in cases of rape or incest.

Santo Domingo District Attorney Jose Manuel Hernandez denied any connection between the arrests and the penal code proposals, but added that he did hope to instigate a debate on issues such as allowing condom distribution or the morning-after pill. [...]

"This is a matter of public health, and we have to determine what our public health policy is," he said in an interview. "The discussion has begun. That's what we wanted."

In other words, they staged a police and media raid on a clinic where they further traumatized a woman who had just had a miscarriage, all to "instigate a debate" about contraception. Clearly, this man couldn't care less about the actual women, like Yanira Then, who are affected by his nation's public policy. She's just a rhetorical device.

Via Repro Rights Law Prof blog.

Why is it a good idea to hold networking events for women only?

Because historically male institutions -- like law firms, opinion journalism outlets, Wall Street -- have had male-centric bonding and networking events in place for decades. Because most of my potential female mentors immediately head home to their children at the end of the workday, and opportunities to grab a drink with them or interact outside the office don't materialize very often. Because women are more likely to make connections and pull each other up the ladder if they have a chance to interact in an all-female environment. Because it's fun.

Some male executives think ambitious women would be wiser to learn to play golf -- still a primary way men in business socialize and lay the groundwork for deal making. And some women are ambivalent about women-only events that may cause them to be viewed as "frivolous."

Yeah, there's nothing frivolous about golf.

Jill has even more reasons why women-only networking is a good idea.

There's been a lot of talk over the past few days about Katie Couric's interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards last Sunday. I'm not going to rehash what an asshole Couric was, it's been covered, and I think the whole controvery is ridiculous. I'm sure if John Edwards had removed himself from the campaign, someone out there would be calling him a pussy for it. And because he didn't, he's a jerk. Whatever. There's one thing getting a little lost in the conversation, and it's underscored by this one quote from the interview. Elizabeth Edwards said:

If I had given up everything that my life was about – first of all, I'd let cancer win before it needed to. You know, maybe eventually it will win. But I'd let it win before I needed to.

And I'd just basically start dying. I don't want to do that. I want to live. And I want to do the work that I want next year to look like last year and... and the year after that and the year after that. And the only way to do that is to say I'm going to keep on with my life.

This really struck a chord with me for two reasons. First, as someone with a chronic disease, it's the thing I find the hardest. How do you live with something you can never forget and not let it run your life? I love her comment about not letting the cancer win before you need to.

And second, beyond disease, this is an eloquent way to explain how I think of feminism. None of us can change our biology, control the world as a whole, or even anyone else's behavior. And we never know what's going to work, or how long it might take to make change happen. All we can do is refuse to let everything we struggle against get us down, and keep fighting as hard and for as long as possible.

Sorry to get all serious on you. Next week I'll be back to saying fuck a lot and making fun of Jessica, I promise.

This patch was designed for women that have low sex drives. It is only going to be prescribed to women that have low sex drives due to early menopause.

Doctors said there was no quick fix for low sex drive, and medical treatment was just one part of the therapy.

About a million women in the UK have had an early menopause because of surgery to remove their ovaries during hysterectomy for conditions such as heavy bleeding and pelvic pain, Procter and Gamble said.

And as a result have lower amounts of testosterone and thusly lower sex drives. Again low sex drive in women is complicated. I think medical reasons while viable in some instances, often overlook the cultural factors associated with a low sex drive.

Books like this that market off of the unfounded belief that some women have inherently lower sex drives are problematic. I haven't read this yet, but please expect a report.

The use of comfort women during World War II is a painful history and reminder of the evil nature of war itself. It is a history that has been denied, lied about and covered up by the government of Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a few weeks ago denied that there was any coercive acts done to comfort women used and abused during World War II. Women's activist were outraged.

Now Shinzo admits that it happened, but says there is no proof that the government or military were involved.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized for Japan's sexual enslavement of women during World War Two in remarks to a parliamentary committee on Monday. Abe's denials earlier this month that the Japanese government and military had forced women from neighboring Asian countries into sex slavery provoked sharp criticism at home and abroad.

Prompted by Communist parliamentarian Haruko Yoshikawa, Abe told a parliamentary budget appropriation committee that he would adhere to a 1993 statement of apology to sex slavery victims issued by then chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono.

Abe said, “I express my sympathy for the hardships they suffered and offer my apology for the situation they found themselves in.�

However, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hakubun Shimomura, one of Abe’s close aides, told reporters Monday, “There were military nurses and embedded journalists but no ‘embedded’ comfort women. It is true that there were comfort women. I believe some parents may have sold their daughters. But it does not mean the Japanese Army was involved.�

Sorry I don't know much about Shinzo Abe and I am not formally schooled in Japanese government, this to me seems cowardly and a bad move with respect to PR. What are you going to tell me next, the Holocaust and slavery were unfortunate, but we have no one to blame? Give me a break.

Please check out LABAN! Fight for Comfort Women. They have tons of info and press releases following this debacle. And let us not forget that the use of 'comfort women' is indeed one of the most heinous crimes of this century. The forced rape and mutilation of 200, 000 women during WWII can not be denied and the women that have survived, must see some justice.

Holy shite. I'm watching Law & Order SVU right now and they totally have a quiverfull family on, except they're calling it the "replenish" movement. Priceless.

This is so fucked up on so many levels. A judge in Germany refused to give a woman who was being beaten by her husband a speedy divorce because Muslim women should be accustomed to abuse.

In January, the judge turned down the wife’s request for a speedy divorce, saying that the husband’s behavior was not an unreasonable hardship because they were both Moroccan. “In this cultural background,� she wrote, “it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife.�

Uh huh.

Thankfully, after the woman's lawyer publicized the ruling, the judge was removed from the case. But damn that's messed up.

The North Dakota House recently passed an abortion ban that would take effect in the event Roe is overturned. The Senate has taken up the legislation, and is expected to vote on it later this week. The bill has an exception for saving the woman's life -- but not for rape or incest. (Full text of the bill is here.)

The ND legislature also recently failed to pass legislation that would have guaranteed pregnant teens the right to seek prenatal care without notifying their parents. (Full text here.) Currently, North Dakota law requires parental consent to treat pregnant women under 18.

Just to be clear, we're talking about prenatal care here, not abortion.

Conservatives are wailing that explicitly stating there is no parental notification requirement would "drive a wedge between the daughter and the parents." But isn't it obvious that, if a young woman has chosen to carry her pregnancy to term without telling her parents, she most likely has a compelling reason for keeping them in the dark? And if a teenage girl faces very little support at home for keeping her pregnancy -- which, presumably, is the reason she would keep this info from her parents -- then you would think anti-abortion activists would be in favor of this legislation. After all, they love to publicize cases where parents have coerced their daughters into abortions. You would think that this legislation would prevent that from happening.

Seeing as how the pro-choice movement is actually pro-choice, not pro-abortion (as the antis love to characterize us), we can agree it's bad for parents to force their daughters into abortions AND bad to force them to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

The disconnect in requiring parental notification for abortion but not for prenatal care has long been pointed out as part of the legal rhetoric opposing laws that meddle with teens' reproductive rights. A Guttmacher Policy Review article from 2000 found no states that require parental consent or notification for teens to receive prenatal care, whereas more than 20 required it for abortion.

But other sources say 27 states and DC "specifically allow pregnant minors to the obtain prenatal care and delivery services without parental consent or notification." And last year Colorado decided to grant teens confidentiality rights when it comes to prenatal care. Too bad North Dakota won't be joining their ranks.

Here's some cool women-in-sports news:

A rookie fresh from the minors is about to change the face of baseball: A female umpire is set to work a major league exhibition game for the first time in almost 20 years.

Ria Cortesio, ready to start the season in Double-A, will be on the bases Thursday for a game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago Cubs in Mesa, Ariz.

"I'm looking forward to it," she said Monday night. "There will be a lot more people in the stands than I'm used to."

No female umpire has ever worked in the majors during the regular season. Pam Postema was the last woman ump to call big league exhibitions, back in 1989 - she was in spring training for two years before getting released.

Cortesio, 30, is the only female umpire in professional baseball.

I am loving this title. I have written about the ever-amazing MPX before, however this is her newest project. Get familiar and if you are interested or in the LA area, shoot them a message. Three South Asian women sing about nation, women, peace and liberation. Gotta support that transnational art.

Yeah, her character was assassinated. Excuse me while I cry a fucking river.

Watch the whole exchange at Crooks and Liars. Also check out Lawyers, Guns and Money, Firedoglake, Shakespeare's Sister and Ezra Klein.

Originally at Bloggingheads.tv.

UPDATE: My reaction to this whole thing can best be summed up here.

I know, I know, it's Shakespeare turns teen movie, but I caught it while on my much-needed Beer and Couch Day (self-explanatory) and fell in love. The film, a spin-off of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, addresses a number of feminist issues, from Title IX to gender stereotyping. Oh how I love thee feminist teen movie, let me count the ways...

Anyone seen it?

In light of Kathy Sierra having to cancel her speech at ETech because of death threats, I just want to say that I completely agree with her and Lindsay and Zuzu, that death threats towards bloggers is NOT protected speech. They say it all so go read it. But I want to add Feministing has gotten its share of threatening emails and it is very upsetting.

When I was presenting at SXSW, one of the questions discussed was how safe can we make online communities for diverse voices and is it possible? Some people believe that everyone should be able to say what they want, but somethings are just not O.K. Threatening women or people of color for voicing their thoughts, concerns and opinions is NOT O.K. It is an old, tired and paranoid brand of racist misogyny and we are not going to put up with it.

It is so unfortunate that someone would have to cancel a speaking engagement because stupid trolls were so threatened by a women talking tech.

Disgusting.

Feminists are supposedly responsible for promiscuity, more women in prison, killing romance, and just about anything else you can think of.

But this is my favorite anti-feminist crap story ever: Warning: feminism is bad for your health.

Their argument is that there's a correlation between gender equality and lower life expectancy. Seriously.

Despite the horrendously cheesy title and the not-so-fantastic review ("feminist art" is a faux genre?), I’m stoked to see that the Brooklyn Museum has opened the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, in which their new show, “Global Feminisms,� is running through July 1st.

The show consists of contemporary feminist art by close to 90 women from nearly 50 countries, and is featuring special events, talks by artists and curators, concerts and film screenings. One of the works, “The Dinner Party� by Judy Chicago (pic above), is thought by many to be one of the most famous feminist artworks out there.

Yet another reason to be thrilled that I moved to BK.

Check out Feministe's Jill's HuffPo piece on the proposed bill in Texas that would offer young women $500 (essentially $.07 per hour) to give their babies up for adoption instead of having abortions.

Less than a month after a young girl was kicked out of a soccer game in Quebec because of her refusal to remove her hijab, the province has recently announced that Muslim women who are wearing niqabs, a form of veil that covers their face, will not be allowed to vote in today’s elections.

Quebec’s elections chief Marcel Blanchet originally allowed voters to wear their face covering if they signed a sworn statement and showed identification when at the polls, but reversed his decision on Friday, stating that it was "necessary to avoid disruptions� on election day.

These “disruptions� were among threatening calls and emails Blanchet had received leading him to get bodyguards, including some residents’ claims that they would show up at the polls with masks on in protest.

It’s just infuriating that at the first sign of opposition (and by a bunch of xenophobes, no less), Blanchet not only backs down but changes the language in the electoral laws to make the ruling permanent. Could it get much worse?

Zuzu at Feministe has more.

Whatevs, Bill. We were so on this before you were.

Sigh.

On Thursday, South Carolina legislators ratified a constitutional amendment officially banning gay marriage.

While there was already an existing law against same-sex marriage in the state, the amendment prohibits any future possibilities of judges attempting to legalize civil unions.

P.S. Nerve points out that while gay marriage is forbidden in Texas, you can still marry your 14-year old cousin. Gay marriage between two consenting adults that love each other? Blasphemy! Hetero child brides? Go for it!

The Catholic Chuch is pushing the limits of Mexican law in fighting the liberalization of abortion rights in Mexico City.

How motherhood has evolved from a given to a lifestyle decision.

Do female fiction writers "lack imagination"?

The REAL Act, which would require federally-funded sex ed to be comprehensive and medically accurate, was introduced in the House and Senate.

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh observed "a day without feminism": "Students were encouraged to behave as if the feminist movement had not occurred; women were asked to wear skirts, sit in the back of the classroom and stay out of bars, while men were supposed to open doors for women and not spend any money contributed by their wives or girlfriends."

Nerve has a conversation about Charlie LeDuff's new book on American masculinity.

HPV vaccine legislation failed in Florida, is California, Colorado and Georgia. Plus, the Texas legislature moved one step closer to overturning Gov. Rick Perry's mandatory vaccination order. In light of all this, I have a piece at the Guardian's Comment Is Free about the HPV backlash.

An interview with feminist artist Sandra Bermudez.

Police in the UK are using cameras to catch domestic abusers in the act.

Conservatives panic over teaching teenage girls about their bodies.

Are pro-choice cartoons being shut out of editorial pages?

The Supreme Court decides not to review a sexual harassment case.

Slate charts the evolution of The L Word.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland yanks funding for abstinence-only education, and Amanda critiques the news coverage.

I profiled Frances Kissling, who recently stepped down as head of Catholics for a Free Choice, for the April issue of In These Times.

Photo by Patrick Bishop

When I think of Etta James, I think of her sultry and indescribably amazing voice singing the words to “At Last.� Then I think of Melissa Acosta. I saw Melissa sing “At Last� at a bar in Boston. I think Etta would have been proud.

Melissa has been climbing the music scene since as far back as she can remember. She’s now singing with the progressive hip hop/R&B/reggae/funk New York City-based band, Emergency Service. Melissa is currently on tour with them, so catch her if you can.

She took time to email me her answers to my questions. Here’s Melissa…

Vanessa and I decided that it's high time for a Friday feminist dance-off. So we're going out with some of our fave friends and cohorts from the REAL hot 100 to do some damage in the bars of NYC.

Here's my inspiration for tonight's dance party:

I'm fully expecting to do the running man.

So what are your weekend plans?

The Associated Press reports that prices for the birth control pills are doubling and tripling at student health centers on college campuses. Great.

Ah Texas. Via culturekitchen we find out that Sen. Dan Patrick, a Republican talk-radio host from Houston and opponent of women's repro rights, is proposing a bill that would pay women $500 for giving their babies up for adoption rather than having abortions.

Under Patrick's SB 1567, AKA the Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007, women would qualify for a $500 payment from the state within 60 days of signing away all parental rights to their newborn children.

Wow, what a fucking deal! As Amanda notes, that's a baby-making wage of $.07 an hour. And they say republicans don't value women!

Someone mentioned this on an email list I'm on, and I had the same thought: this reminds me of the oh-so-lovely group that targets poor women and women of color to get sterilized for cash.

It's just so fucking insulting, I don't have the words.

Luckily, Bitch PhD does:

Honey, $500 isn't even going to pay for the extra groceries you'll eat during a pregnancy. Let alone the prenatal care, if you're not insured or on Medicaid, or the cost of the birth.

Senator Patrick, would you agree to take care of a neighbor's dog for nine months for a measly $500? Where the fuck do you get the balls to offer women $500 to rent out their uteruses and sell their children?

Indeed.

Here's Sen. Patrick's contact info, if you're so inclined.

Pretty little hymens, all in a row.

Oh my god, check out this latest video of a purity ball in Colorado.

Puke.

There’s nothing like a little woman-punishing to get legislators all hot and bothered.

A bill approved in the South Carolina House this week would force women to see a fetal ultrasound before they have abortions.

After three hours of passionate debate, the House voted 91-23 to require women to sign a statement swearing they had seen an ultrasound image of their fetus before getting an abortion.

A half-dozen other states offer ultrasound images to abortion patients, legislative staffers said. But those states do not require abortion patients view them.

You know, because it’s fucking ridiculous.

And if you had any doubt that this law was about punishing women, and somehow making them “face� their transgression, check this out:

Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, railed against Republicans for opposing his amendment to exempt victims of rape and incest from the required ultrasound viewing.

This logic goes to show that this isn’t about making sure women are informed—it’s about punishing them. So women who were raped shouldn’t have to have their noses rubbed in their pregnancies and be punished any further--that’s just for the “bad� women who wanted to have sex. Ugh.

You know, this is just fucked. Apparently America's Next Top Model had a recent episode where the models took part in a "beautiful corpses" photoshoot. You can see all the pics here; they are massively disturbing.

But perhaps even worse than the pictures of women who are beaten, shot, strangled, drowned, stabbed, decapitated and more, were the reactions of the judges to the pictures:

What's great about this is that you can also look beautiful in death.

I think you look absolutely wonderful.

Death becomes you, young lady.

There's more, I just can't bear to write it all.

From Jennifer Pozner at WIMN's Voices:

For decades, media critics such as pioneering advertising theorist Jean Kilbourne have argued that ad imagery equating gruesome violence against women with beauty and glamour works to dehumanize women, making such acts in real life not only more palatable and less shocking, but even aspirational. ANTM’s pretty-as-a-picture crime-scene challenge epitomized the worst of an insidious industry trend that, ahem, just won’t die.

If you want to give the folks at the show a piece of your mind, click here.

The new cover of Vanity Fair, shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, is (understandably) pissing some folks off. I mean, damn.

I think Art Threat magazine says it best:

The image isn't just striking because a woman appears at first take to be completely naked, with her back to the male gaze allowing no revealing features like a face or god forbid a personality to emerge, but because she is embracing the lead from the Sopranos, who stares back at the male gaze with the look of someone who is about to do violence to another. As he sits and asserts white male power articulated by stance and especially by relation to the disempowered woman, he also has one hand around her, disturbingly clutching her flesh so vigorously it could only be described as violent.

What do you think?

Elizabeth and John Edwards announced a couple of hours ago that Elizabeth's cancer has returned.

Despite the recurrence, they have decided that the show must go on and John Edwards will continue his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

I met Elizabeth while on her book tour not too long ago, and she is a truly lovely and impressive woman. Our thoughts are with her and the fam.

Via Mary B. in comments, this is a truly awful story from Florida about street harassment turning into full-on assault.

A woman was walking down the street, and chose to ignore the catcalls some asshole was yelling at her as he drove past. Apparently he thought he was so entitled to her attention that he turned the truck around and ran her over. In other words, "that's what you get for ignoring me, bitch." Hard to hollaback from underneath your harasser/assaulter's vehicle.

The woman was taken to the hospital and is in serious condition. The driver of the truck is still at large. If he's ever found, police say they may charge him with attempted murder.

Word.

Pic from shesinfashion.

A court in South Australia has ruled that a man can't rape and have consensual sex with a woman in same sexual encounter.

In a 2-1 decision, the Court of Criminal Appeal erased the criminal record of a man who twice had sex with a woman in his car.

A jury had found him guilty of having forced intercourse but ruled an earlier act of fellatio was consensual.

The appeals court, however, ruled last week that the verdict was "illogical" and "unacceptable" and quashed his conviction.

Because if you say yes to one sex act, you're not allowed to say no to another. (By the way, the woman defendant says that both the oral sex and the intercourse was forced.)

Thankfully, folks seem to get that this kind of "logic" is unacceptable.

Yesterday, the State Government vowed to table new laws, wherein sex would become rape as soon as consent was withdrawn – even if the act had already begun.

But not everyone, apparently, thinks silly things like sexual assault should be legislated.

Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Isobel Redmond warned the new laws may interfere in people's private lives.

"When reading the legislation, one gets the feeling even married couples will need to sign a contract before they have sex," she said.

"You reach a point where you're trying to legislate for every human behaviour.

I'm just speechless on that one.

But I guess now Australia and Maryland have something in common. And not in a good way.

Sigh.

Via Sinister Girl comes a great story about women looking out for each other to prevent rape.

After two female bartenders in San Francisco noticed a man dump white powder into his date's beer, they hatched a plan.

[Bartender Karri] Cormican returned to the table and told [would-be date rapist Joseph] Szlamnik and his date, whom the court identified only as Tatiana K., then 34, that the woman's beer had come from a fermented keg and that they were going to replace it. Cormican brought her a Stella Artois.

Cormican carried the adulterated Hefeweizen to Bridgeman-Oxley [the other bartender] and out of sight into a back room. They held it up to the light and saw, unmistakably, a white powder. At a preliminary hearing last summer, Nikolas Lemos, chief forensic toxicologist at the San Francisco medical examiner's office, identified the powder as zalepron, a prescription sleeping drug sold as Sonata.

After seeing the white powder, Bridgeman-Oxley said she "panicked a little bit. We had to figure out a way to keep her away from this man."

Think Progress reported late yesterday that the Justice Department replaced one of the fired U.S. attorneys, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, with former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin -- passing over Cummins's deputy, Jane Duke, because Duke was on maternity leave at the time.

A typical tale of a qualified woman being passed over for a job so it could be awarded to a member of the boys' club. Add pregnancy discrimination to the list of Bush administration transgressions in Purgegate.

As the commenters pointed out over at TAPPED, they would have found a reason to pass over Cummins' deputy whether that position was held by a man or a woman. But the fact that Duke's recent pregnancy was cited as the reason she was skipped over -- not her job performance or anything like that -- is telling.

ALSO the National Partnership for Women and Families is calling on the Justice Department to review its policies and practices to ensure it's not penalizing employees for being pregnant or taking parental leave.

Conservative Baptist leader Albert Mohler wants to test for homosexuality in utero. "Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?" he asked on his blog.

And he's not just saying this knowledge could be used to keep your gay-positive young 'uns away from Tinky Winky and Sponge Bob in an attempt to stave off the inevitable. Nope, he's after a medical "cure" for homosexuality -- a shot or a patch to ensure your baby is hetero-fabulous. Mohler writes hopefully, "In other words, finding a biological causation for homosexuality may also lead to the discovery of a "cure" for the same phenomenon." (This is exactly why everyone was up in arms about the gay-sheep research.)

As Jenny writes, "But isn’t one of the big beefs these wingnuts have with homosexuality the fact that it’s supposedly so unnatural? If the fetuses are already gay in the womb, wouldn’t that tend to support the idea that homosexuality is an inborn trait?"

Right. Which is part of the reason Mohler's comments have riled some in the straight-to-Jesus movement. But other conservative religious types are simply lovin' it. Take it from Catholic priest Joseph Fessio (who is provost at Ave Maria University, the whacked-out Catholic college built by Domino's pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan):

"Same-sex activity is considered disordered," Fessio said. "If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb, and a way of treating them that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science."

Ugh. There are so many contradictions in pro-life/anti-gay conservative rhetoric already that I fully expect the movement to endorse in utero treatments of fetuses found with the "gay gene," and at the same time decry other medical procedures that supposedly meddle with God's will. They're all about the "wonderful advancement of science" when it helps them persecute gay people.

Jill Vejnoska on why the 1970s televsion show “Maude� would never make it onto broadcast TV today:

Its bold storylines about race, abortion, feminism and drugs would have the typical 2007 network executive balled up in a corner, cradling old “Touched by an Angel� tapes.

Via Nerve's Scanner.

The L.A. Times follows up their recent story on state funding of crisis-pregnancy centers with a piece today on how anti-choicers are making more effort to reach out to black women. Honestly, I don't think this is a new phenomenon. Maybe they're building more centers in urban areas, but they've always produced their own special brand of misleading advertising and literature designed to appeal to black women: Calling Margaret Sanger a racist or likening abortion rights to genocide and slavery. (See the "Classroom" commercial, for example.)

Antiabortion activists are fighting back with their own appeals to black pride. In particular, they target Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a racist intent on eliminating people of color. One popular flier — recently mailed to 10,000 homes in minority neighborhoods in Waco, Texas — declares, "Lynching is for amateurs" and compares "Klan Parenthood" clinics to Nazi death camps.

But honestly, the effects of this type of "outreach" pale in comparison to the years of relationship-building and education done by the pro-choice movement. The piece mentions the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice's work to get to know black pastors, and how Planned Parenthood representatives speak to church congregations about things like contraception and HIV testing -- which are core services that the anti-choice movement will never offer women.

Yarbrough, 28, had seen the ads promising help for crisis pregnancies, but those clinics were a long bus ride away, out in the suburbs. Plus, that was a white woman's world, she thought; how could they understand?

"I had this view … that I'd be saying, 'I can't afford this, I can't afford that' and I'd be looking at [the counselor] and thinking, 'You can, because you probably have a husband at home who's a doctor or a lawyer,' " she said.

So Yarbrough started dialing abortion clinics. At one, a secretary sensed her despair and referred her to the Family Care Pregnancy Center, run by a black megachurch in south Dallas.

This directly contradicts what the anti-choice movement is always saying about abortion providers -- that they want to coerce women into abortions, no matter how ambivalent they're feeling. Clearly, the receptionist at the clinic could tell Yarbrough was hesitant, and so referred her to a church counselor.

Says a vice-president of the crisis-pregnancy chain Care Net, "[Black women] look at us as a group who cares very little about what's going on in the inner city, the poverty and all the other issues." That about sums it up. Unlike the antis, pro-choicers don't just use race as a basis for cheap sloganeering. We have long demonstrated that we truly care about a woman's lifelong reproductive health care -- not just about what happens to the fetus if she has an unplanned pregnancy.

I'm a bit late on this one, but it's worth reporting.

From Matt at My Left Nutmeg:

Connecticut State Rep. Deborah Heinrich (D-Madison) has been a strong advocate for emergency contraception for rape victims in Connecticut. Yesterday, in a press conference that preceded hearings on the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act, shared with the press and her colleagues that she had been a victim of rape and wanted to ensure that other rape victims would not have to live with the fear of pregnancy following rape because some hospitals refused to carry emergency contraception.

This was the first time that Heinrich had shared her story--with the publicly or her family. I'm pretty in awe of her bravery, I have to say.

Video news coverage of the story after the jump.

Damn, I love me some Betty Dodson.

The Blank Noise Project in India is one of the most provocative movements in India battling sexual harassment on the streets. My very good friend and writer Neelanjana Banerjee was just there hanging out with and interviewing some of the folks involved with Blank Noise.

She reports. . .

A number of women stand placidly by the railings. For more than two hours, these women – members of the Blank Noise Project, a public art project concerning sexual street harassment – will do one of the most subversive things they can do as women in India: occupy public space. n a rapidly changing India, traditions such as purdah (keeping women secluded inside the house) are no longer in effect. Women are an important part of the growing middle class, with jobs in call centers, technology firms and at the coffee shops and malls that are entertaining this new generation. But as women hit the streets in greater numbers, often in Western clothing, their vulnerability to street harassment — including physical assaults — has increased.

“’Eve-teasing,’ or street sexual harassment, is something that we experience every day,� says 27-year-old Jasmeen Patheja, the founder of the Blank Noise Project. We’ve learned to deal with it mostly by not dealing with it — by ignoring it.�

Check out the rest of the article here.

Contributed by Courtney Martin

"The Women’s War," Sara Corbett’s heartbreaking and exhaustively researched account of the psychological fallout for female soldiers in the Iraq War is filled with the kind of revelations that make you first go, “holy shit� and then, immediately “well, of course.�

Holy shit, one-third of a nationwide sample of female veterans said they experienced rape or attempted rape during their service. Well, of course rape is rampant in a war zone based on humiliation, sexism, and blind submission to authority. (Hell, rape is rampant everywhere.)

Holy shit, female soldiers are more likely to be diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, sometimes at twice the rate of male soldiers. Well, of course women exposed to the “double whammy,� as Patricia Resick calls it, of sexual trauma and exposure to combat are coming home with some serious mental health issues. Though the 160,000 female soldiers that have been deployed in Iraq often are in roles technically classified as “combat-support,� the violence of this war is ubiquitous. (There were just 7,500 females who served in Vietnam and 41,000 who served in the gulf war.)

Holy shit, the Department of Defense isn’t doing anything to support these women: of the 3,038 investigations of military sexual assault charges in 2004 and 2005, only 329 have resulted in a court-martial of the perpetrator.� Well, of course the government isn’t taking responsibility. Just like they’re not taking responsibility for the rampant brain injuries resulting from this new kind of warfare or the civilian casualties or the lies that got us into this war in the first place or the…you get the point. Kudos to Corbett on this incredibly important story.

Bush has nominated Richard Honaker, a Wyoming lawyer who's written some truly awful anti-choice legislation, to a U.S. District Court judgeship.

Honaker has yet to be approved by the U.S. Senate, and has vowed not to let his personal anti-choice views interfere with his decisions as judge. Somehow I'm not completely convinced.

The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute. Sounds innocuous enough, I know. But these assholes are just using breast cancer and health rhetoric to push their anti-choice agenda.

So fuck you, you fake-ass organization.

Check out their video after the jump. Hint: whorey gym teachers get their comeuppance.

Today marks the National Back Up Your Birth Control Day of Action, which aims to spread the word about the importance of emergency contraception.

I just started working at the Institute for Reproductive Health Access and NARAL Pro-Choice New York and have been doing the online outreach of the campaign (it's a project of the Institute) to remind peeps about the significance of EC and that just because we -- as in adults, not minors (except in certain states) -- now have OTC (over-the-counter) status doesn’t mean our work around EC is finished. Not by a long shot.

Being in this new “dual label� environment (meaning adults have OTC access, but minors don't) makes it all-the-more necessary to raise awareness about EC within the teen population, particularly to dispel myths (ex. EC isn’t safe for teens) and give them resources of where they can get it. There’s also other issues of access with the new OTC status, as in the cost of Plan B sold at pharmacies can be a barrier for low-income women as well as the difficulty immigrant women may face due to the ID requirement. And then there’s, of course, the “conscience clause� asshole pharmacists and the legislators that are working against its availability to rape victims in hospitals.

But don’t fret; we’ve also had quite a few victories just over the past couple of months concerning EC:

- Kroger Company has required that their pharmacies must make EC available to their customers.

- Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed a bill requiring hospitals, rape crisis centers and pharmacies to provide information on EC to rape victims.

- After the possible threat of withholding funding from the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health potentially over the Plan B hoohah, the FDA announced that all $4 million will be allocated to the department this year. Yay!

Wins and losses aside, BUYBC is one amazing resource for teens, pharmacists, and activists who want to mobilize for emergency contraception. (Or simply learn more about it!) So spread the word and don’t forget to Back Up Your Birth Control!

And on my shit-list.

The Georgia house approved a measure yesterday that would require doctors to offer to show patients requesting an abortion an ultrasound image of the fetus if an image was made.

Ew. Though, it seems as if the language of the bill has changed for the better since it was introduced--the original bill would have required doctors to perform an ultrasound and required women to have "15 minutes of reflection time prior to an abortion." Nice, huh?

Three words for the author of this article: Boo-fucking-hoo. Oh, and fuck the man.

So it has been a week since I have been back from the great Texas city of Austin, and I can truly say that my first experience at SXSW interactive was not only eye-opening, but extremely enriching. First and foremost, I made several very good friends, including Jason Toney, Laina Dawes, Lynne D Johnson, Erica Mauter, Tiffany Brown, Amanda Marcotte, George Kelly and Lainie Duro (yeah I know a whole lot of blogging amazing-ness), and through the help of twitter have been very effectively keeping in touch.

And finally, things I learned that I will remember if I am asked to go back:

*Although it was awkward being a non-tech person in a sea of technophiles, it was that much more important for me and other people that are utilizing technology in unique ways to represent.

*Race, class, gender and sexuality are indeed legitimate critiques of the ways that technology is distributed, consumed and reproduced.

*Being around people that are making a lot money can be frustrating when you are a poor and struggling writer.

*Don't think veganism is a legitimate diet in Texas.

*Social justice oriented geeks exist, they really do!

*Don't rent a car. You can't party with the bloggerati. (boo!) Stay downtown, not far away where you might get lost and end up in Waco.

Finally, if you want to see video of the panel I was on you can get that here thanks to George! It is shaky, but you get the point.

Missouri Republican Governor Matt Blunt recently announced he's slashing funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide free cervical cancer and other health screenings to poor women in the state.

"Patients should not have to go to an abortion clinic to access lifesaving tests," Blunt said in a written statement.

Except for the fact that the affected clinics don't even provide abortions. They do, however, provide cervical and breast cancer screenings -- about 1,500 a year -- paid for under the Show Me Healthy Women program. This just drives home the point that, even though anti-choicers love to characterize Planned Parenthood as an abortion provider only, their clinics primarily provide other types of reproductive and women's health care.

"Gov. Blunt's sudden decision to cut a 15-year partnership to prevent cancer in southwest Missouri is a shocking, misguided act driven by political ideology rather than sound health care delivery," [Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Kellie] Rohrbaugh said in a written statement.

Blunt's timing is awful. Missouri is one of several states considering a bill to make the HPV vaccine (which prevents some types of cervical cancer) a school-entry requirement. If the bill manages to make it through the legislature and lands on Blunt's desk, he's going to face a lot of pressure from his conservative base to veto it.

Here's an idea for Blunt and other conservative governors: If they want to defuse some of the tension over the HPV vaccine, they should seriously step up the public funding for cervical cancer screenings and regular reproductive health care for low-income women. Not that screenings are a substitute for vaccination, but it would go a long way toward showing they aren't totally deaf to women's health concerns.

UPDATE: Sara sets the record straight.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Christian comedian Keith Deltano has been performing at a number of high schools in Loudon County, Virginia this year with the intent of pushing abstinence-only education through comedy. How does he do this, do you ask? By dangling a cinderblock over a male students' crotch to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of condoms against HIV.

Because what's funnier than a brick possibly dropping on your dick?? Hahaha!! Heh.

Via Nerve.

UPDATE: Check out Deltano in action after the jump.

There was an “On Language� piece yesterday in the New York Times Magazine, “Woman vs. Female.� It discusses the fact that “woman� is increasingly being used in the media as an adjective rather than a noun (ex. “woman voter� as opposed to “female voter�), and questions whether the term “female� is dying out.

My favorite part was at the end when the author think he’s slick by calling us feminists out:

But here’s a development above politics that is breathtaking in its cultural contradiction: feminists everywhere have begun to turn on the word female. What’s next?

Womanism.

I guess he didn’t think to look it up to find that this term actually already exists.

Catherine Conover, Associate Editor & Communications Coordinator of the young women's magazine, New Moon, will be in Washington D.C. this week with two girls representing New Moon's readers. They'll be in D.C. for two days, March 20 and 21, to hand-deliver girls' letters to Congress and to meet with members of Congress.

The letters are from girls ages 8-14 from around the U.S., who ask Congress members to take seriously the issues these girls take seriously. Twenty-six of the letters have been published and are featured in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue.

The New Moon delegates will be joined on Capitol Hill by girls from the D.C. area. The group will celebrate their successes at a New Moon open house at Busboys and Poets in D.C. on March 21st from 4-6 pm. Erin Vilardi of the White House Project will speak at the event about women and power, and New Moon is waiting for final confirmation from several other speakers.

If you're in the D.C. area, say hello and give a big cheer to the girls of New Moon. In the meantime, check out some of their kick-ass letters.

In honor of this survey showing that corporate types of both genders would rather work for a man than a woman (just check out those quotes -- ugh), I give you a clip from one of my favorite movies of all time, Big Business. Bette Midler's bitchy boss caricature simply blows Meryl Streep's out of the water. Bette did it first and she did it better, Oscar nomination or no.

Back when The Devil Wears Prada came out, Rebecca Traister had the definitive take on how tough-minded career women always get their comeuppance in the movies. It's worth re-reading.

There was an op-ed piece in a local Alabaman paper about how women from the South have their own definition of what it means to be a feminist:

They work through their churches, their children's play groups, their studies, their charity, their positions at work and more. I have never met so many women who are willing to share phone numbers, mentor you, offer to help or propel you forward.

In life, we often talk about needing to be savvy of an "Ol' boys' network" but here, I've come to recognize that Huntsville has a thriving "Ol' girls' network" and to be a part of this generous and active network is a great honor.

I’m not going to get into the question of whether the women of Huntsville would actually identify themselves feminist, but I do find the issue the author raises concerning the politics of location interesting. While Western feminists are often critiqued for victimizing women in developing and third world countries and imposing U.S. ideals of what it means to be “liberated� without recognizing others' agency, could we apply the same question to women of say, the East and West coasts? Women in middle America and the South experience different lives and experience -- to an extent -- different types of sexism than us coasters, but how different are we really? I’d love to hear some Southern women’s thoughts on this.

Picture via Reuters.

As we’re approaching the fourth anniversary since we invaded Iraq, thousands marched in D.C. on Saturday to protest the war.

Other protests were held in San Francisco, San Diego and Hartford, Connecticut, where more than a thousand people gathered, while tens of thousands gathered in Madrid to protest as well as call for the closing of the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Let’s hope this coming anniversary will be the last.

So McCain doesn't know his stance on distributing condoms as part of HIV prevention efforts -- he's content to do whatever Tom Coburn says? Dear god.

Linda Hirshman responds to MSN's "Women Who Make Us Cringe." ...and also starts a debate at The American Prospect about the role of fathers in the work/family balance issue.

Looks like the FDA's Office of Women's Health will get full funding after all. Phew!

Women's Health News reports that pelvic exams were often performed on anesthesized surgical patients without their knowledge or consent.

Yemeni family-planning advocates talk in terms of Islam to get out the message about contraception.

Proposed D.C. legislation would protect the rights of breastfeeding mothers.

Yet another fluffy review of Laura Sessions Stepp's book, Unhooked.

A bill with "abortion hurts women" language failed in Wyoming.

Someone was anonymously harassing bisexual students at Grinnell College in Iowa -- and those students set out to expose the harasser's identity.

A high-school safe-sex advocate talks to NPR about black teens' sexual health.

How the tenure process discriminates against female professors.

Relying heavily on Joan Williams' research, E.J. Graff skewers media coverage/creation of the "opt-out revolution."

Ema points out that just because you're morally opposed to Plan B doesn't mean you can invent side-effects to the drug.

The NY Times highlights efforts to increase women's presence on op-ed pages.

I found myself really sympathizing with these Amish girls who, caught between their traditional upbringing and their desire to test the boundaries of the real world, are labeled as "going wild" by the Cleveland Scene.

More girls than boys are huffing inhalants.

"Mommy wars" bullshit spreads to Germany.

A Michigan high school is on edge after threats of violence against female students.

Parents facilitate their daughter's porn career.

Who would play Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live?

Disney is set to introduce its first black animated princess. Whatever your thoughts on princess culture, more diversity is a good thing.

Whoops! I forgot to observe Abstinence Week in D.C. last week.

The state of South Dakota is still asking anti-choicers to disclose the name of their biggest funders in last year's abortion ban battle.

Anti-abortion groups are sending mobile crisis-pregnancy centers to surround abortion clinics.

South Carolina considers legislation requiring women seeking abortions to view an ultrasound first. The state is also debating a truly terrible abortion ban.

Women soldiers tell their stories about PTSD. (video)

Weightlifting is becoming more popular among women.

Helena D. Lewis is an actor, playwright, poet, and social worker. She performs her autobiographical one-woman plays across the country chronicling with humor her life as a certified alcohol and drug counselor and HIV/AIDS educator. Helena has appeared in multiple movies such as “Golddigger Killer,� TV shows, and slam poetry festivals. She is currently a member of the troupe, HerStory, a multi-cultural group of female performers who are touring the U.S.

Helena will be performing her play, “Call Me Crazy� at the Nuyorican Poets Café from March 22 to March 25th. Make sure to catch it. You definitely won’t forget it.

I interviewed Helena over email. Here’s Helena…

When the sale of used panties is outlawed, only the outlaws will have used panties.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a company's failure to offer insurance coverage for contraception doesn't violate its female employees' civil rights.

The suit against Union Pacific railroad for failing to cover contraceptives has been going on for years. In 2005, after the district court ruled in favor of UP's female employees who sued for coverage, the company "independently" agreed to cover birth control. (Initially, the UP insurance plan covered drugs like Viagra and Rogaine but not birth control pills or IUDs.) So this disastrous ruling isn't necessarily bad for female employees of UP. But it means that UP and other companies are still not required to cover your pills. Which is a problem.

The female employees and Planned Parenthood (which joined the suit) alleged that failure to cover contraception is discrimination under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The language in the law says it applies to "women affected by pregnancy," not "pregnant women." They argued that every sexually active woman who is capable of becoming pregnant is a woman "affected by pregnancy." (I completely agree.) But the appellate judges rejected the argument on the basis that the PDA does not specifically mention contraception.

How hard is it for judges to understand that 1) contraception is a basic, fundamental part of women's preventive and routine health care, 2) pregnancy -- which is the result of lack of contraception use -- disproportionately affects female employees, so 3) failure to cover contraception is discrimination against women? Seems clear as day to me.

The kicker? UP was named one of Working Mother magazine's best companies for women! Despite the fact that many of its readers are, I'm sure, mothers who don't want any more children, the magazine doesn't include insurance coverage of contraception as one of its judging criteria.

One judge on the panel dissented, which may pave the way for an appeal. In the mean time, we can encourage Congress to take action on the Prevention First Act, which "guarantees equity in contraceptive coverage by ensuring that private health plans offer the same level of coverage for contraceptives as they do for other prescription drugs and services."

Check out the Cover My Pills campaign, which has a list of states that require businesses to provide contraceptive coverage.

Oh, gross. This makes me never want to have anyone touch the girls again. Ew.

Via Nerve.

I'm getting pretty ugh over the direction the comments have taken over at my "gray rape" post at TPMCafe. Enlightened, lovely, readers...will you go weigh in over there?

Check out this great article from Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women: Towards A Real Culture Of Life at TomPaine.

Exhale, an after-abortion (though non-judgmental) counseling organization has put out "after-abortion ecards." I would generally be a bit wary of a place that touts itself as an abortion counseling center, but Exhale truly is a great place. Just check out their mission:

Exhale creates a social climate where each person’s unique experience with abortion is supported, respected and free from stigma.

And, even better, Exhale is now home of the amazing zine Our Truths, Nuestras Verdades.

So back to the cards...they're available in English and Spanish, and different cards take different women's possible situations into account (one is religious, one is just a note of encouragement, etc). I have to admit, I don't know that after-abortion cards is something I would have thought of as a fantastic idea initially. But there is something appealing about the idea of a card that normalizes abortion as an event in someone's life that can be recognized and spoken about, rather than stigmatized and kept quiet. Thoughts?

Via Feministe.

A study by the Online Journalism Review measured where men and women's eyes linger when they see a picture. Women look first and longest at the face, while men look at both the face and the "private anatomy."

[Researcher] Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

Ahahahahaha.

Via the perpetually awesome Nerve Scanner.

CNN breaks down 10 myths about the pill and other forms of birth control. Word.

Good news! Today Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed the state's first piece of pro-choice legislation since 1999. This should broaden EC access:

The law would require hospital emergency rooms to provide information about emergency contraception to sexual-assault victims as a basic standard of care. It also would require pharmacies that don't stock Plan B, the brand name of an emergency contraception regimen, to post a sign saying the medication is unavailable.

Take that, Don Schultheis.

Like many northern midwesterners I know, I've always been annoyed by the fact that Garrison Keillor has built a career out of idealizing the down-home homogeneity of 1950s Minnesota, even as he lives in an Upper West Side apartment. So I wasn't surprised to read him blathering about his Leave It to Beaver upbringing -- which he laments has become a lifestyle of the past.

Back in the day, that was the standard arrangement. Everyone had a yard, a garage, a female mom, a male dad, and a refrigerator with leftover boiled potatoes in plastic dishes with snap-on lids. This was before caller ID, before credit cards, before pizza, for crying out loud. You could put me in a glass case at the history center and schoolchildren could press a button and ask me questions.

Oh, if only he were locked away in a museum somewhere. I can sum up his piece (and his career) thusly: Wasn't life grand before no-fault divorce, before there was easy access to contraception, and before women went to work outside the kitchen? Ah, the good old days. Back when gay people knew to stay in the closet:

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.

Nothing like those bigoted midwest values. As Scanner retorted, "Advice on not hogging the spotlight from a man who made his living writing memoirs?" Indeed. (Twisty, Cameron and Dan Savage are pissed, too.)

Can I just say that this e-card is just insanely un-funny? You want (accidental) PMS humor? See if you can find those old commercials for Sarafem--you know, Prozac for ladies on the rag.

I remember one TV ad where a woman with PMDD was brushing her hair in front of her vanity. Friendly hubby comes in the room, saying "Honey...?" She throws the brush on the vanity and snarls, "What do YOU want?!" Of course post-Prozac, she's a doting wife. Just saying.

Legislators in Mexico City are debating a bill that would legalize abortion during the first three months of pregnancy:

The bill is supported by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, which holds the mayorship and a majority in the city's legislature, and it could be approved in the coming months, lawmakers said.

…Under current Mexico City law, abortion is only permitted if the pregnancy endangers a woman's life or if the woman has been raped.

Proponents of the bill say these restrictions force women to seek abortions outside the law. While wealthier women travel to the United States for the procedure, poorer women must remain in Mexico and have back-street operations, supporters said.

The Roman Catholic contingent is strong over there, so I’m wary of getting too excited…but still, cool shit.

I laughed out loud when I saw this. Send it along to your friends...hysterical AND educational.

Laura Sessions Stepp’s book Unhooked—a warning to young women about “hook up� culture—has come under fire for promoting gender stereotypes (young women don’t really like sex) and being regressive. But predictably, as is the case for most books or studies that “warn� young women against being sexual, many of the reviews have been glowing.

Now, I can handle the tired complaining about young women being ruined by promiscuity—arguing that women’s moral compass is located in between their legs isn’t exactly a new or compelling theory. But another concept that comes up in Stepp’s book left me more than slightly disturbed: “gray rape.�

Read the rest of my post at TPMCafe...

Forbes just released its list of international billionaires, which includes more women than ever before. And the ladies of IWF are crowing that this proves women don't need anti-discrimination or pay equity laws:

This is irrefutable proof that women don’t need government programs to help them make it in the business world—a fact our friends at NOW and similar organizations are unwilling to admit.

Except for the fact that every woman in the top 100 has inherited her wealth, not shattered the glass ceiling to earn her millions. The presence of these women on the Forbes list has next to nothing to do with the obstacles faced by average working women. And, in fact, it's still a great idea for government to pay attention to how these average women are faring in the workplace. Paris Hilton's riches are no excuse to ignore the issue. (Although she did film a season of "The Simple Life" attempting to be an office intern...see above artwork.)

So of course I had to go to this panel because I LOVE writing about dating and the romantic industrial complex. Although, I was excited at the prospect, I ended up pretty disappointed with the outcome.

The panel consisted of a variety of women writers/bloggers, two of which wrote for Redbook and Glamour. As they began discussion of the realities of being a sex blogger (or as I said to my folks, a "courtship" blogger), I began to twitch. It started out so innocent as they were talking about hate mail and comments and how it makes them feel. You know I can relate because I have certainly battled my share of online hateration. Overall though, I had trouble feeling bad for the paid bloggers, as they get PAID to write and well, I get tons of hate email and comments and I don't. Oh I guess that is because there is a major difference between being a feminist blogger as opposed to a female blogger (like Michele Malkin, hello!).

Either way, this panel could have been really good as our feminist gal pal Rachel Kramer Bussel from the Gothamist and Lusty Lady was on it, but she didn't get to talk as much as I would have liked. And I think she was really an outlier as she is both a very "outside the box" sex columnist and a feminist.

The comments (and I say comments to recognize that I will not obey patriarchy and fight with other women, but I will interrogate concepts and recognize that they are a result of much bigger systemic problems) that pissed me off were the ones that portrayed a culture of online media and dating discourse that completely ignored the contributions of queer and feminist bloggers, as though date/romance/sex blogging was just a place to discuss the downside of your task on how to meet a man in a white, middle class, normal, straight way. Not only are their bloggers battling the misogynist and heterosexist nature of mainstream dating, we have these same people and others blogging about their personal dating lives in very crucial and insightful ways.

Granted this is a panel so it is limited in how many people we can have and we are not going to see a sample from every part of the population of people blogging about sex and relationships, but still, comments like, "let's not ghettoize the sex bloggers" and "women are bitches, that's why comments are so bad" should not be considered acceptable, when compared to the greater sexist and racist context of the internet.

Also, I think a conversation of public and private information and acceptable ways to think, talk and engage with our audiences while talking about our personal lives would have been really helpful. How do we talk about dating without letting all our secrets out or embarrassing somebody?

Women's magazines such as Redbook and Glamour are not ghettoized or marginalized. They get tons of money to endorse their product and image. And perhaps they are pushed into the realm of women-only consumption, but quite frankly, I am not working to push that type of feminine aesthetic. One of the main reasons they get the money they do, and explicitly feminist publications don't is because, the former feed into patriarchal ideas of how women should look, act, think and feel.

I was indeed befuddled that a conference that seems to be showing a very progressive lineage in terms of political-social-cultural commentary could have such a simplistic panel on a very important topic. Now how can we as feminist bloggers and feminist blog readers utilize the resources we have to create transgressive environments where we can talk about both the political climate of dating, sex and romance AND the personal, juicy and naughty tidbits of the actual interactions?

If we only relegate dating conversations to the "girly" part of the internet, then we are not going to reach the people we need to or include the voices that are truly ghettoized.

For another perspective check my new best friend Jason Toney's post.

Remember the sorority that ousted its "undesirable" members? Well here's an interesting turn of events:

DePauw University severed ties yesterday with a national sorority that evicted two-thirds of the university’s chapter members last year in what the sorority called an effort to improve its image for recruitment, but which the evicted women described as a purge of the unattractive or the uncool.

“We at DePauw do not like the way our students were treated,� DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, said in a letter to the Delta Zeta sorority. “We at DePauw believe that the values of our university and those of the national Delta Zeta sorority are incompatible.�

Good for them.

Yes, yes, I know International Women's Day has come and gone. But just look at how cute those kids are.

Pic from Grant Neufeld.

This was another really interesting panel at SXSW. It discussed the global nature of technology and the ways that tech can be used to give accessibility to marginalized voices, in this case, young women of color. The panel covered a lot of different topics, from global consumption of social networking technologies to the digital divide.

But what really stuck out about this panel was three students from Crosby High School that created an online textbook for their heavy course load. In an effort to work, take honors classes and be a teenager they utilized online technologies to facilitate their learning. Along with this, they were creating online tutoring services and other educational processes to facilitate different learning styles.

It was very impressive. Young people and especially young people of color seem to be the fastest growing segment of folks utilizing mobile technologies. What does this mean for the next 10 years or so? What is the potential in these groups having access to mobile technologies?

I think it is scary and exciting, all at the same time. You can read more about this panel here.

There’s been quite a bit of controversy being raised over schools who have began reprimanding students who use the phrase, “That’s so gay.�

For example, an elementary school in Fresno, CA sent a letter home to parents suggesting to talk to their children about inappropriate language, specifically referring to the phrase. The letter came about due to a student being suspended for saying it during a soccer game. While the student’s mother didn’t object to the suspension, another student was later only given detention when they said the same statement. In response, the school, as well as the ACLU, says that the context of the statement has to be handled on a case-by-case basis, but must be addressed:

Whether the phrase is meant hatefully or not, it can upset students, said Robin McGehee, Central Valley program coordinator for the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, a youth-led organization that connects school-based Gay-Straight Alliances to each other and community resources.

‘It's an insulting and demeaning comment, and it's become a catchphrase that everyone uses,’ she said. But ‘it's still something that we socially accept.’

However, after the student of a school in Santa Rosa was reprimanded for saying the phrase, her parents sued on the grounds that her right to free speech was violated.

It seems that school-age kids use homophobic language more so than any other age group (does anyone know stats on that?), and I think it’s necessary to identify these phrases and terms as offensive as early as possible. Maybe if we began taking some advice from the UK, it wouldn't have to get to this point.

I'm happy to report that RightRides will be expanding its rides home:

We couldn't be more excited to announce that our vehicle sponsor, Zipcar, will be donating another 3-4 cars to RightRides! This will enable expansion to an additional 16 neighborhoods, bringing the total areas served to 35, across four boroughs. RightRides will soon be serving:

Bronx: Melrose, Mott Haven, Port Morris, The HUB

Brooklyn: Sunset Park

Manhattan: East Harlem, Harlem, West Harlem, plus all neighborhoods 23rd Street and south

Queens: Astoria, Maspeth, Ridgewood, Woodside

We'd like to expand RightRides as soon as mid-April and are seeking Driving and Navigating volunteers to make this possible. We ask that volunteers sign up for one 4 hour shift every 4-6 weeks, making this an easy and fun way of building safer communities by reducing the risk of assault.

Can you help us expand RightRides?

If you can, please do! Money also will definitely help!

Of all the panels I went to at SXSW, I felt three in particular that I wanted to share with Feministing, so here is the first of them. More to come including a round-up post. I had a very cerebral weekend, to say the least.

Sex and Computational Technology

This panel was by far the most interesting I went to. It discussed the role of sex in the creation of machines, networks and online spaces, and how sex exists in everything. And also how people LOVE their machines and probably want to, on some level, have sex with them. It was a discussion by different people educating and/or researching sex and technology.

Violet Blue, who's work is interesting, made the point that ignoring the role of sex and desire is an oversight on behalf of product developers and marketers of technological products. People do indeed use their computers for sex right? Whether it be finding people, looking at pornography or talking to your sweetie on aim. As a potential solution Kyle Machulis was designing products for folks that were trying to have sex with their computers and how to make this process more comfortable. Along with creating interfaces he has also helped design a sex toy charmingly titled the virtual hole and the virtual stick. These products are plugged into your computer and mimic the vibration of whatever it is you may be watching.

I really enjoyed the panel because it centralized the role of sex in technology and the reality that a lot of people really do use their technologies (computer, ipod, cell phone, pda) for sex. What I would have appreciated is an analysis of the ways that these technologies tend to cater to male/heterosexual models of sex. And how most internet porn is not only offensive but extremely racist and sexist. The assumed subject of most of this research is a young, straight, white man. The reality is that people of very diverse sexualities are using technology for sex.

Either way though, the internet is a sex filled place and some folks are developing hardware to further facilitate this new moment in sexuality. Despite its potential problems, how does this affect the ways in which we understand sexuality?

You can catch a live podcast here.

New Mexico is all set to pass legislation making the HPV vaccine mandatory for girls going into the sixth grade.

And check out this comprehensive piece from The Nation, Who's Afraid of Gardasil?. Good shit.

Imagine my delight to open the new issue of Bitch and discover pieces by our very own Jess, Samhita, Celina, and contributor Courtney Martin. No wonder they've called it the Super Issue. The full content isn't online, so pick one up at your local bookstore.

And as long as we're talking about awesome feminist publications, the new magazine make/shift publishes "journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art," is "committed to antiracist, transnational, and queer perspectives," and "embraces the multiple and shifting identities of feminist communities." (Celina is also a staff writer.) Click here to submit and here to subscribe.

I thought this was a cheesy but cute, brief piece that reminds us what the Girl Scouts actually does besides sell cookies, and why they’re necessary. One of my many grandiose dreams is to create a similar girls’ organization, but with the specific goal of raising our future feminist revolutionaries (I can see it now, “Feminist Friends for the Future�...), but I suppose Girl Scouts will do for now.

Now that I think about it, I could say that being in the Brownies was my first feminist experience. (Not to mention my dad was the Brownie leader; one of the only two or three male Brownie leaders in the state at the time.)

Anyone have Girl Scouts experiences (good or bad) to share? Or title suggestions for my feminist boot camp?

Schoolgirl fresh? What is it about cars that inspire this kind of weirdness?

Via Blue Gal.

This is pretty cool. (And an excuse to embarrass Jessica by promoting her soon-to-be-released book.)

While only 15 percent of the books on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list over the past 52 weeks were authored by women, almost 70 percent of non-fiction books are purchased by women. This, along with International Women’s Day, sparked a women authors networking group to launch a national survey on women and books.

Essentially the study will aim to look into the reading and buying (books) trends of women, as well as research the ways in which aspiring women authors can, well, get successfully published.

While I’m always wary of random types of research methods such as this, I’m interested to see the results nonetheless. Go here to take the survey.

I know it's not Friday...but what better way to end a Monday than with some gratuitous pussy shots.

Hot kitty action after the jump.

I just finished reading Lust in Translation, an anecdotal survey by Pamela Druckerman of how different cultures deal with adultery. The chapter on Japan describes various types of sex clubs that cater to workaholic businessmen:

Imagine getting off a crowded subway train and walking into a sex club only to discover... a mock-up of a crowded subway car. In this subway, however, you're allowed to feel up the pretty women. Ten male customers and ten women enter the chican-densha, or "pervert train" at the same time. (Women are supposed to shout "chican!" to embarrass the culprit if they're felt up a real subway.)

Another book, Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs features a more in-depth description of groper-fetish clubs (and includes the above photo):

For instance, one of the clubs, which caters to train gropers, simulates a 20-minute train ride in a carriage, complete with conductors’ announcements and ‘stops’ where women in short skirts (who are on the club’s payrolls) get on and off. For about 6,000 yen [about $50], ‘commuters’ can ride the train —and fondle as many of the pliant women as they please.

If feeling up strange women as if they are your property is an act popular enough to merit its own fetish clubs, is it any wonder that over 60 percent of Japanese women in their 20s and 30s have been groped on the subway? Or that there's a demand for women-only subway cars?

Apparently it's already difficult for some Japanese dudes to understand that women's bodies don't exist for their groping pleasure, and I can't imagine that frequenting the fetish club makes them get the message. Men have long complained about the women-only subway cars, with several claiming to have been wrongly accused. We can all agree that false accusations are bad. But in my experience, women -- even those who have been harassed before on crowded public transportation -- will usually assume they're not being groped until there's, uh, hard evidence to the contrary. (Case in point.)

With Japan being a cellphone tech mecca, aren't we about due for a Hollaback Tokyo? I'm taking a trip to Japan this spring, and you better believe I'll be keeping my cellphone camera at the ready when I'm on the subway.

Ironically, I have not been getting good internet connex at SXSW but I am at the Bloggies Award and there is not a single feminist blog nominated in any category.

I find this to be problematic. Wonkette just won best political blog.

Thoughts?

Here we go again. The North Dakota Senate is going to hear a bill, HB 1466, which would ban all abortions in the state. And get this: the ban is even more extreme than the beaten-down South Dakota ban! There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the woman AND the ban would impose criminal penalties on women and their doctors.

The bill would allow the Attorney General to implement a ban on abortion regardless of the status of Roe v. Wade. Performing an abortion would become a Class C felony in the state.

Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, is monitoring the progress of the legislation. “North Dakotans deserve to make these personal, private decisions free from government intrusion,� Stoesz said. “This bill attempts to substitute political opinion for medical judgment and endangers women’s health and safety in the process,� said Stoesz.

The great people at the Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota (can you believe they have to cover all those places with one org?!) tell me that the bill will be heard in the judiciary committee tomorrow.

I'm waiting to hear back from them on any action folks can take.

Sometimes you come across ads that so baffling that there are no words.

(And before all the non-New Yorkers jump on me, it was just a joke. I'm sure there are great bagels/vaginas in every state.)

Via AdFreak.

Kroger Company, a Cincinnati-based grocery chain, has said that their pharmacies must make emergency contraception available to women who request it.

"We believe that medication is a private patient matter," said Meghan Glynn, a Kroger spokeswoman. "Our role as a pharmacy operator is to furnish medication in accordance with the doctor's prescription or as requested by a patient."

The statement came on the heels of a campaign launched by pro-choice activists in Georgia, when a woman there was denied EC by a Kroger pharmacist.

"Society Will Benefit from empowered women."

P.S. You should check out the article too.

(That could very well win for Feministing's Cheesiest Title Award.)

Since I’ve recently developed an extreme interest in wine (interest meaning, drinking one or two glasses a night) since moving into my new apartment in Brooklyn, I was pleased to find that the National Women’s Wine Competition is kicking off this month. I was not to pleased to find that it is not being held in Brooklyn.

This year’s event, titled “Wine Women Want,� is going to be held all of this month in Santa Rosa, California where there will be all woman judges for the first time in the U.S. (Yes, the title is a play-off of a Mel Gibson film.) It’s typical in wine competitions for most judges to be men, so this is an exciting break of trend. However, a comment by Lea Pierce, one of the wine experts involved in the event, left a bad taste in my mouth (no pun intended):

‘people want to know what wine women want. Especially men.’

Ah I see why they’re having this silly competition now; it’s just a subliminal way of telling guys what’s good to order on the first date! Genius!

Female soldiers face threats of sexual violence from within the U.S. military. And MADRE has a new report on gender-baseed violence in Iraq.

I reviewed Laura Sessions Stepp's Unhooked for Campus Progress.

A West Virginia man is sentenced to probation for making threatening phone calls to an abortion clinic.

Kroger grocery stores pledge to ensure that emergency contraception is available to any woman who requests it.

Dove's latest pseudo-feminist ad.

An off-duty airline employee was arrested for ejaculating on a female passenger.

Bulgarian brothel owners say they're having an easier time with staffing these days, because global warming has shortened the ski season and there are fewer resort jobs for young women. This is dubious, to say the least.

After $10,000-worth of fertility treatments, a woman decides shoulder the risks and not to reduce her pregnancy with triplets.

Feminist artists show their work at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Washington legislation will require medically accurate sex ed.

Members of Congress push for increased funding for breast-cancer research.

Dubious Hillary Clinton analysis: Women who don't support her are just afraid the country isn't ready for a woman president. And supposedly she has a lot to learn from Katie Couric's tanking ratings.

It's hard out there for a prominent female physicist.

ABC picks up the Purity Balls story.

Feminism is not responsible for Girls Gone Wild.

1969 counter-protest signage: "Repent, Women!"

That's right. Women that run their own web-based companies. And all the invisible labor that goes into making it happen. (like blogs!) Where does work stop and life begin? Check the description and the interesting people that are on the panel.

They are talking about women not fighting with other women but actually working together (like Feministing!) and how the DIY movement wouldn't exist without online communities. Word.

One of the ways that we can utilize technologies to spread our work or whatnot. Only thing, there are no women of color on the panel. Clearly, we need to change this!

Now off to party with some serious geeks. W00t!

So I am having a tough time getting on the internet, but a quick update. Our panel was fantastic. We discussed the "politics" of being a person of color on the internet and what can be done both in terms of content and software development to better facilitate conversations about race, ethnicity, identity and gender.

So the question is, what can be done? We are operating in a blogosphere and a world of technology that tends to be dominated by certain voices, in fact those voices are normalized. So when you write outside of them you are marked, "oh the woman of color writer. . . " Is that necessarily a bad thing?

The internet is not a neutral place. But we can utilize these same technologies to have our often silenced voices heard. And we can also see those technologies be used against us (trolls, hateful commenting, inequitable labor, etc.)

So how do we use internet/blog/social networking technology to further our conversations about the issues we care about and have it be effective? Or will we be perpetually caught in *the system*?

After a long day of flying and getting lost in the greater Austin area, I made it. I am in Austin for South by South West and it is looking good. I am on a panel tomorrow about Bridging the Online Cultural Divide with Laina Dawes, Lynne D Johnson and Jason Toney (I am truly humbled, like whoa).

And more to come!

Who else is here and what are you doing?

Rachel Aimee is one of the founders and Editors-in-Chief of $pread, a quarterly magazine by and for sex workers and those who support their rights. $pread was founded in the summer of 2004 by Rachel, Rebecca Lynn, and Raven Strega.

Rachel first became involved in the movement for sex workers’ rights while living in London, where she was a member of the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW). She also blogs at Dive Bar Dancer.

Rachel answered my questions over email. Here’s Rachel…

Come on, be our friend. You know you want to.

Mark at Punkass Blog outs my terrible, terrible secret.

I know I've posted this vid before, but I don't care--it makes me happy.

Because what else are Fridays for? The April issue of Elle magazine has an article called The 2007 IntELLEgentsia, featuring a list of cool women doing cool things. And apparently feminism is cool. Yes, I'm psyched.

Matt Browner Hamlin at The Right's Field brings us this skeezy exchange:

It started off innocently enough as [Senator Sam Brownback] made small-talk with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, mentioning, in passing, that senators often take off their ties when negotiating bills behind closed doors. Klobuchar needled him about it.

Klobuchar: “Ties off?… But I don’t wear a tie.�
Brownback: “I could say ‘dresses off’ but I won’t.�
Klobuchar (laughing, blushing): “Not while you’re running for president.�

I second Matt's emotion: Ewwww.

Clearly in need of nipping and tucking.

Because why stop at nipples? Best that women feel like shit about every inch oh their body--"especially the fun bits.

I know we've written a lot about "designer" vaginas and the increasing popularity of labiaplasty, but whenever I see a new article about it I just get fired up all over again.

Christopher A. Warner says he considers himself something of a maverick, a caring physician willing to challenge medical orthodoxy in order to help women.

That's why the 39-year-old board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist recently opened the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of Washington in a red brick townhouse off Washington Circle. There, he is building a business as the first area physician to perform controversial procedures that use a laser to enhance sexual gratification by repairing tissue damaged by childbirth, to give women a "youthful aesthetic look" or to make those who are not appear to be virgins.

Yeah, what a trailblazer. Because no one has ever thought of cutting up women's genitals to make them more "attractive."? I especially like the bullshit surgery name: vaginal rejuvenation. As if there's a scourge of exhausted pussies across America.

But perhaps the most vile aspect of this surgery is how doctors are appropriating feminist language to make the case for cutting up women. A press release from The Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of New York shouts, "Women Now Have Equal Sexuality Rights." One of the doctors mentioned in the article, David Matlock (who we've also posted about before), calls one of his surgery packages the "Wonder Woman Makeover."? It includes "several vaginal procedures, breast implants and a breast lift, abdominal liposuction and a Brazilian butt augmentation." Lovely.

I wonder how empowering these docs find the possible risks of surgery:

[Sex therapist Laura] Berman said she has treated about 15 women who have undergone vaginal procedures to improve their sex lives and developed complications such as painful intercourse.

Operating on or near sensitive vaginal tissue, [plastic surgeon V. Leroy] Young added, is inherently risky and can cause scarring, nerve damage and decreased sensation.

But so long as you have a nice, tidy, tight vagina for your man, what's a little pain and bad sex? Seriously, this makes me want to cry.

Fantastic. Just...perfect.

A Mississippi bill that would criminalize abortion is on it’s way to Governor Haley Barbour.

The measure would ban nearly all abortions in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. If Roe v. Wade is overturned and the state bill becomes law, anyone performing an illegal abortion in Mississippi would face one to 10 years in prison.

They just can’t wait to start punishing women, huh? Unbelievable.

Women commemorate International Women's Day at an anti-Bush protest in Brazil.

Pic from ndrC!.

Finally, a study that takes dads into account:

Children are more likely to suffer development problems if their fathers do not take paternity leave or spend enough time with them when they are very young, according to an analysis of thousands of babies born around the turn of the millennium.

A report published today by the Equal Opportunities Commission and based on research tracking 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001 found emotional and behavioural problems were more common by the time youngsters reached the age of three if their fathers had not taken time off work when they were born, or had not used flexible working to have a more positive role in their upbringing.

Though something tells me you won't be seeing any articles calling men "selfish" for going to work or not spending enought time with their children. Just saying.

Thanks to Evan for putting this together...go to the Alternet post for links to the projects mentioned in the video.

International women's rights oganization MADRE has just released a new report on gender-based violence in Iraq: Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy.

MADRE has released a groundbreaking report on the incidence, causes, and legalization of gender-based violence in Iraq since the US-led invasion. Amidst the chaos and violence of US-occupied Iraq, women—in particular those who are perceived to pose a challenge to the political project of their attackers—have increasingly been targeted because they are women. Today, they are subjected to unprecedented levels of assault in the public sphere, "honor killings," torture in detention, and other forms of gender-based violence. Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy documents the use of gender-based violence by Iraqi Islamists, brought to power by the US overthrow of Iraq's secular Ba'ath regime, and highlights the role of the United States in fomenting the human rights crisis confronting Iraqi women today.

A re-telling of the Iraq war from the perspective of Iraqi women illuminates the strong links between women's human rights and democratic rights in general and the Bush Administration's clear contempt for both.

Check it out and let me know what you think...

Not that this wasn't to be expected. But this whole thing is making me have flashbacks of Jesus Camp. Shudder.

The lawsuit challenges Perry's authority to issue the order and seeks to block any state money from being spent on the [HPV] vaccine until that question is resolved, said Kenneth Chaiken, the attorney representing the families.

“The school-age girls of Texas are not guinea pigs who may be subjected to medial procedures at the apparent whim of Texas' governor,� according to the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Travis County.

The vaccine has already been tested. So foolish. Someone explain to me how protecting women from cervical cancer and genital warts is working against abstinence-only education? These freepers just won't rest, will they.

For more information on International Women's Day and events happening worldwide to mark the occasion, click here.

A new study by the American Sleep Foundation (yes, it exists) found that 60 percent of American women don't get enough sleep.

At the top of the poll was stay-at-home moms, who get the least amount of sleep. The only comment regarding this fact was that 'Some of these women are putting their families at risk by driving while they're drowsy with kids in the car,' said Dr. Kathryn Lee, of University of California, San Francisco.

Let's not be concerned with your health consequences, think about your children some more! That will be the perfect remedy!

With permission from Jill, I'm reprinting her entire post over here. Because that's how important I think it is. I saw this story earlier, and knew that these fuckers had messed with Jill. So I figured she'd write about it and I'd link to it. Then I saw this lovely commentary. As someone who has been on the skeezy end of douchebags posting about your body, this totally infuriated me. I still get folks asking me if I'm the "Clinton boob girl" at random bars, and I know that everyone I work with knows about the whole mess--and it ain't done me any good. So fuck anyone who says that women being exposed and harassed like this can't take a joke. Seriously--you have no idea. And you're an asshole.

More refined commentary from Jill is after the jump.

Who knew?

Apparently Benefit--which is probably my favorite makeup company--is touting their Benetint blush (above) as something to enhance your nipple color.

In just one more sign of the stripperization of the Everywoman, Benefit’s Benetint, conceived in the seventies for an exotic dancer to color lips and cheeks, is now also being sold at Sephora and elsewhere as a “kiss-proof and water-resistant� nipple tint. “Women want nipples to be pert and fresh-looking, and this shade makes them appear that way,� Benefit spokeswoman Alison Haljun says. “For a long time, the idea of a ripe, rosy nipple has been considered appealing and alluring.’’

Not only is this just, well, ick...it also sets the nipple beauty ideal as light skinned. I mean, you have to be pretty fair to have "rosy" nipples, no? Anyway, ick.

Not only is tomorrow International Women's Day (which we'll def be posting about), it's also Blog Against Sexism Day! So get blogging, gals (and guys!). Find out more here.

First they refuse funding or abstinence-only programs because it would limit what they could say about sex (you know, the truth), and now this.

Senate Democrats said Tuesday they would use their new majority to push a bill that had stalled: a mandate forcing hospitals to supply emergency contraception to rape victims.

Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, said she would revive legislation that would require hospitals to tell rape victims that the morning-after pill is highly effective at preventing pregnancy.

Hospitals would have to dispense the medication if victims requested it.

It’s fucked that hospitals have to be forced to do their jobs and help women—but I'll take what I can get at this point.

After protests in Spain, and Italy outright banning the ad, Dolce & Gabbana are pulling a controversial print advertisement that some say glamourizes rape.

NOW President Kim Gandy called the ad a "stylized gang rape." Dolce says the ad was meant to "recall an erotic dream, a sexual game."

What do you think?

After over 30 women's rights activists were arrested in Tehran, High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour expressed concern about their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression. Arbour further urged authorities in Iran to adhere to the international agreements they are party to, specially the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Read more at UN Dispatch.

I had to write about this, mainly because I remember playing soccer against this high school, when I was in school (way back when). And this is just rad.

Saying the word "vagina" during a reading at a John Jay High School open mic session has resulted in suspension for three female students and has sparked a debate about censorship throughout the community.

School administrators had warned the girls it would be inappropriate to say the word while reading a selection from Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," but the students were willing to suffer the consequences.

What is exciting is that this has the school, students, parents and even a former councilman saying this is blatant censorship. The administrator is claiming that the girls had agreed to not say it and they did anyway, so there must be consequences. As a former school teacher, the best administrators are the ones that let harmless shit slide. Furthermore, isn't this about awareness and self-expression, as opposed to disrespecting authority? Shouldn't the staff be supportive of that?

The controversy in Cross River centers around the verse: "My short skirt is a liberation flag in the women's army. I declare these streets, any streets, my vagina's country."

The words were part of a longer selection, which the three girls had divided among themselves.

Leading up to the performance, the girls had debated whether to say the word that they knew would get them into trouble. One idea they discussed was to not actually say the word, but rather hold up a sign with the word written on it.

Ultimately, however, they decided to say "vagina" because they did not feel they had the liberty to change a work of art.

All three girls read the final line together, as a sign of unity.

Either way I am impressed with these young women. Other thoughts?

via Journal News.

All of a sudden, I really want a drink.

Pic from curoninja.

Some pretty dismal statistics here.

A survey of women over the age of 65 in Washington and Idaho found about one-quarter have been the victim of physical, sexual or psychological violence.

The survey of 370 women, published in The Gerontologist, showed that 26.5 percent of the women surveyed reported violence by an intimate partner over their lifetimes, while about 3.5 percent of the women surveyed had suffered violence in the past five years and 2.2 percent in the past year.

Interesting that they chose Washington and Idaho. I wonder how this would look different if we looked at other states.

Thoughts?

via UPI.

If you haven't already, sign up for the Feministing newsletter (via the box in the upper right hand corner of the site). Not only will it include our Weekly Feminist Reader and the best posts of the week, but the newsletter will also have orignal content not available on the site. So you'll feel all special and shit. First newsletter goes out this week, so hop to it!

Cooking: Terms and What They Mean

Stir, bitch, stir!

Via Punkass Blog.

Feminism's kiss of death?

Ok please--PLEASE--can folks just stop talking about the goddamn Pussycat Dolls phenomenon as feminism? It's just embarrassing.

Thirty women were arrested for protesting the government's treatment of women's activists in Iran.

The arrests are the culmination of a year of increasing pressure on women's rights activists, who have been arrested, summoned to court, threatened, and harassed. Their protests have also been disrupted -- in some cases violently -- and their websites have been blocked.

Some observers believe the arrests are aimed at intimidating activists who were planning to hold a gathering on March 8 to mark International Women's Day and to protest injustice against women.

They are also cracking down on activists for two campaigns for human/women's rights. . .

One campaign aims to end the practice of stoning to death convicted adulterers. Authorities, however, deny that stoning sentences are being carried out.

Another campaign aims to gather the signatures of one million Iranians who are in favor of changing discriminatory laws and to present these signatures to the parliament. Islamic laws as applied in Iran deny women equal rights in divorce, child custody, inheritance, and other areas.

Pretty heavy.

via Huliq.com

The Canadian International Football Association has supported a decision made at a Quebec match in which an 11-year old Muslim girl was removed for wearing her hijab.

The reason behind the ban was that according to national rules, a player is restricted to just a shirt or jersey, shorts, socks and kicks. How a hijab (specifically a headscarf) actually interferes in a match is unbeknownst to me.

The team forfeit in protest after the girl was dismissed from the game, and understandably. Prohibit an 11-year old from playing a sport for her hijab? Just fucked up.

Writing for The New Republic Online, Alexandra Robbins says the DePauw sorority's ouster of its less-than-Barbielike members was purely a business decision:

But, in truth, the ouster wasn't just about Aryan uniformity--it was about business. As Delta Zeta's national office admitted, it needed to recruit new members because its house was half-empty--and it wanted to make the sorority popular again (it used the pretense of lax recruiting to boot the victims). The way to do that, presumably, was to make it seem pretty and perfect (even if that meant a caricature).

Isn't it any wonder sororities call this process "re-colonization"? Sure, there may have been business goals motivating this decision, but it was a racist and fat-phobic decision nevertheless. It's still racism when fashion magazines consistently feature white models on the cover because they "sell better." It's still sexism when female casino employees are required to wear makeup to improve their looks. It's still fat phobia when an airline fires its curvier flight attendants because they aren't the airline's "best ambassadors." Just because it's good for business doesn't mean it's not racism/sexism/fat-phobia. In fact, the opposite is often true. As far as I know, Hooters has never been in the red.

That said, Robbins makes a lot of interesting points about the business of sororities:

Originally, sororities were founded on the pillars of service, scholarship, leadership, and friendship for life, all noble endeavors. In the twenty-first century, however, these pillars appear to have morphed into the corporate lynchpins [SIC] of quota, property, image, and profit. At age 17 or 18, girls join sororities expecting to join a social or service club, but they often find that, financially and emotionally, membership is more than they had bargained for.

Greek culture doesn't have to operate this way. Robbins points to many of the historically black sororities as an example -- they often don't require members to live in a communal residence, they don't charge the same exorbitant dues, and they still maintain a very tight-knit sisterhood.

Here's a list of some of my faves (in no particular order), if you're interested. Leave your favorites in comments...

On March 10th, HBO will premiere a film, Life Support, starring Queen Latifah, about a HIV-positive black woman from a low-income community in Brooklyn who becomes an AIDS activist.

As someone who works for an organization in Bedford Stuyvesant that educates girls about HIV prevention, which is the neighborhood that partly inspired the director for this film (the film is based on his sister’s life), it’s great to see the HIV/AIDS crisis in these communities brought to light. (Not to mention with a female protagonist.)

One hope I have is that the film touches not only on the struggle the main character goes through but the larger reasons behind why HIV/AIDS is so prevalent in these communities. It’s seeming to be pitched as a story of redemption, of choices this woman made and how she ended up giving back to her community; I just hope that the lack of choices she had, particularly as a woman, are exposed as well.

Then again, I doubt the movie (nor Latifah) will disappoint me.

As in, don't need to know that they were assaulted.

If a doctor sedates a patient then touches her inappropriately without her knowing, does the patient have a right to learn about it later? A Multnomah County judge has apparently decided that she does not.

Legal experts say Circuit Judge Ronald Cinniger, in a ruling involving a grand jury witness, carved out a broad new way to keep information secret in a criminal case.

This lovely ruling comes from an investigation of a doctor in Portland, 49 year-old David Oliver Burleson, who was groping women he had sedated before surgery. (He's an anesthesiologist.)

A grand jury witness in the case didn't want to name Burleson's possible victims, claiming that if patients were told about the assault, they might be afraid to seek out further medical treatment. The judge agreed. So anyone who was sedated and abused by this asshole apparently has no right to know. Nice, huh?

Douglas Beloof, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute, said the judge's decision will do anything but "protect" victims: "He is foreclosing the possibility of victims obtaining information that may be important to their physical health, and he is foreclosing any possibility that these victims could be compensated for the harm that was done them."

And by the way, the good doctor's punishment? Suspension of his license for just two years.

When I was over in Atlanta for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women's conference, no organization quite made me swoon like SisterSong. So when Loretta Ross, founding member of SisterSong and all-around bad-ass, mentioned the organization's upcoming conference about sex, I was all revved up.

And now it's here! "Let's Talk About Sex," a four-day conference in Chicago will be a "celebration of family choices, sexuality, and wellness in communities of color."

Toni Bond Leonard, President of SisterSong, says "our communities can no longer afford for to be passive and silent at the expense of women of color."

Make sure to check out the conference and go if you can! If you can't make the trip to Chicago, consider making a donation to SisterSong--they really are an amazing organization that deserves your support.

The New York Times Magazine had a piece yesterday on the “fertility paradox� and how the drop in birth rates in industrialized countries could be reversed if the status for women in work is improved:

While scholars blame several phenomena, including greater access to birth control, later marriage and a drop in what one researcher calls “hopefulness about the future,� many researchers agree that at least part of the problem is due to the particular burdens women face in the work force. If becoming a mother requires a woman to take a huge financial and professional hit, the thinking goes, she will be far less likely do it.

In other words, women are no longer necessarily prioritizing their lives around motherhood.

Could it be, then, that easing a woman’s ability to hold a job and raise children simultaneously will nudge her toward having a bigger family? At least 45 countries in Europe and Asia are betting on it, having instituted government programs to maintain or raise their fertility rates. Contrary to the rhetoric of many family-values champions, their example suggests that the promotion of larger families and the promotion of women’s careers may go hand in hand.

I truly hope others catch on, rather than calling us baby machines or saying that work and daycare is degrading us.

I know, I know; who woulda thought supporting women's life decisions might actually be productive to society.

She is just all class, all the time.

Slate reviews Black Snake Moan: "But can we just start with something very basic here? Chaining someone to your radiator is wrong."

Virginia governor signs a law mandating HPV vaccination for all sixth-grade girls.

Wisconsin turned down a $600,000 federal grant that would have required the state to teach abstinence-only sex ed. This may now be my #2 reason for loving the state of Wisconsin. (#1 being squeaky-fresh cheese curds. Mmmmm....)

Are ERA proponents agitating for women's rights at the expense of gays and lesbians?

Producer of the new Pussycat Dolls reality TV show describes it as "a snapshot of the contemporary woman being everything she can be."

Persistent sexism in Japan has even professional women serving the tea in the office.

Dolce & Gabbana yanks an ad that featured a woman being pinned to the ground by her wrists while a group of men looked on.

Debunking the myth that granting teens abortion rights is actually protecting pedophiles.

One of the highest-ranking Sunni authorities declares that if men demand proof of their fiancees' virginity, those men must also provide proof that they are virgins. Related: "Virginity Soap."

The new Demoratic leadership offers more hope that programs affecting women will escape Bush's budget unscathed.

Most young girls in the UK believe they can do anything they choose, but say they think having children will set back their careers.

A survey of Hawaiian pharmacists showed half are providing incorrect info about EC.

A high-end Seattle pet boutique is called High Maintenance Bitch.

Do restaurant waitstaffs treat men better than women?

The liberal love-fest over Keith Olbermann needs to end. The man is seriously sexist.

A crash course in all things queer for progressive heteros.

The complicated history of research into the female orgasm.

A new study examines attitudes toward and knowledge about HPV. (Full-text PDF.)

Could international human rights law protect domestic violence victims and their kids?

There's hope for passage of two federal gay-rights bills -- one preventing employment discrimination and one that would cover hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation.

What do female suicide bombers expect to be rewarded with in heaven? Hint: It's not 72 hot male virgins.

A set of pro-gay-marriage advertisements show voters that gay couples bicker at each other just like hetero couples do.

Lucy Georgeff lives and works on Lovejoy Brook Farm in Andover, Vermont with her boyfriend Oliver. She works for Lydia Ratcliff, who owns the farm, and who has within the last 30 years started two meat co-ops in the state and still runs them.

Lucy worked at the feminist young women's magazine, Teen Voices, in its teen programs department, before she made the switch to country life.

Here’s Lucy…

According to a new study, eating ice cream (and other dairy products that are high in fat) may help prevent infertility in women. So for you gals looking to have babes eventually, get thee to a Ben and Jerry's! (Actually, Baskin-Robbins is my personal fave.)

This is just fucking ridiculous.

There has been many tiresome efforts to get the Japanese government to give reparations to up to 200,000 victims of sex slavery, forced into prostitution by the Japanese Military before and during World War II. Although the goverment admitted to the crimes in the early 90s, they assert that all claims were settled by post-war treaties. Now some members are taking it a step further (or backwards, I should say) and denying the crimes' existence altogether. (I sense a bit of contradiction here...)

Nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a statement yesterday implying that the women were actually not forced into sex slavery, saying, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion."

Now right-wing members of government are talking of pushing for an "official revision of the apology." And what kind of apology is that supposed to look like? The refusal to give reparations is bad enough, but after years of struggle these women have went through to get the justice they deserve, the government's lack of accountability and straight-up disrespect for their sufferings would be just as heinous a crime as what actually happened. Sigh.

I've been charged with helping Feministing evolve into the wonderful world of Web 2.0, and you might notice a few changes that we are just pleased as punch to share with you all.

First, there's a set of links at the end of each post now where you -- yes, you! -- can save your favorite Feministing items and help spread the word to the rest of the world. Second, there's a link to a service called "Spotlight" where you can send posts right to local and national media outlets.

What? Why? How? OK, here's a little primer...

I guess this isn't a huge shocker.

A new study has found that employed women living with their employed partner actually spend more time doing housework than single women.

The men, on the other hand see the hours they commit to housework decline once they begin living as a couple.

Gee, wonder why that is.

The above pic, by the way, is the same image on a great dishtowel given to me by Matt, who apparently is under the mistaken impression that I clean things.

So I have three super cool bloggers coming to visit me this weekend: Amanda, Marc, and Norbizness (Austin, represent). So today is going to be a little slow, blogging-wise, as I run my ass back and forth to the airport and clean my apt in an attempt to look like a good hostess.

So as a thank you for your understanding and patience if we're a bit lacking today, I will express my love for you dear readers through the genius of Nelson. I know, don't all thank me at once.

This is insane. Boltgirl finds this interesting tidbit in a recent NPR segment about the evangelical vote.

Buried in the middle of this, almost as a non-sequitur, was a snippet from a woman named Tammy Bennett, described as decked from head to toe in silver. I'm not going to bother dissecting Ms. Bennett's call for protecting the sanctity of marriage; that was predictable given the context of the story. My attention was piqued much more by the tiny biographical blurb provided:

Bennett is the founder of Makeover Ministries, which she describes as "inspiring women to look good from the inside out and to be supermodels for Christ. And it's based on Proverbs: 'just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.'"

Supermodels for Christ. Supermodels. For Christ.

Gotsta look hot for the lord.

Apparently Bennett has written a book, Looking Good from the Inside Out, where she tells girls that "beauty is a choice and it all begins with a relationship with Jesus Christ." And eyeshadow. Sigh.

Pic from Random Good Stuff.

Go check out this great post by Kevyn Abernathy at QueerSighted, Lies My Lover Told Me: The miseducation of a novice. Really great stuff.

After a lifetime as an enthusiastic and fairly skilled heterosexual, I fell in love with a woman and signed up for a new way of being. My guide was always quick to point out all the ways in which I was violating lesbian custom. When I told her, for instance, that I was feeling extremely horny, she sharply remarked: "Lesbians don't use the word 'horny.'"

"They don't?" I responded, feeling my face redden with shame.

"Never, ever, EVER," she intoned. "We say, 'I'm in the mood for a little hanky panky.'" (I'm not making this up.)

Hysterical. I guess I shouldn't judge though, I've still been known to say, "knocking boots." But that's just the Queens in me.

The ACSBlog tells us that the REAL ID Act of 2005, which establishes a national database of personal data based on state drivers license and ID records, could put domestic violence victims in harm's way. According to Melissa Ngo of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's (EPIC), REAL ID "would create a national database with the personal data of 245 million license and state ID cardholders, yet there is still no plan for adequate privacy and security safeguards."

Read more here.

(UPDATE: I blogged about this two years ago... and the legislation is just as bad as it ever was. --Ann)

Turns out--gasp!--that men have biological clocks too. Shocking, I know.

When it comes to fertility and the prospect of having normal babies, it has always been assumed that men have no biological clock — that unlike women, they can have it all, at any age.

But mounting evidence is raising questions about that assumption, suggesting that as men get older, they face an increased risk of fathering children with abnormalities. Several recent studies are starting to persuade many doctors that men should not be too cavalier about postponing marriage and children.

Yeah, but let's see how many articles come out about women putting caps on their internet dates' age or pieces warning men that if they don't hop to it and find a nice woman, they're going to spend their life alone and childless. (A girl can hope, can't she?)

Related: The Male Biological Clock: The Startling News About Aging, Sexuality, and Fertility in Men, by Harry Fisch.

The City Commission in Largo, Florida is begining the process to fire a top official--almost immediately after he announced plans to get a sex-change operation.

The 5-to-2 vote Tuesday started a three-step process to remove City Manager Steve Stanton from the job he's held for 14 years.

Stanton, 48, confirmed last week that he is a transsexual. With a solid reputation as a forceful and energetic leader, he had hoped to keep his $140,000-a-year job as he underwent the gender reassignment process.

"It's just painful to know seven days ago I was a good guy and now ... I have no integrity," Stanton told the commission. "My challenge here has always been that someday I was going to leave this organization. So I am going to do it with a smile on my face."

Stanton can appeal the decision, and will be placed on paid leave while the city begins the legal process to end his contract. So upsetting.

A new study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shows that violence against women can be significantly affected by community-based interventions.

"Programming to Address Violence Against Women," reports on 10 case studies showing how targeted and planned interventions actually reduce gender-based violence.

Read the rest at UN Dispatch.

Related: We're in the middle of the 51st session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I'm hoping our girl Gwen (cough, cough) will give us a report from thr ground.