May 2007 Archives
After successfully triggering a backlash against the movement for universal HPV vaccination, right wingers are working hard on the health-scare angle. The conservative group Judicial Watch has made public the FDA's records on adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine:
Three deaths were related to the vaccine. One physician's assistant reported that a female patient "died of a blood clot three hours after getting the Gardasil vaccine." Two other reports, on girls 12 and 19, reported deaths relating to heart problems and/or blood clotting.As of May 11, 2007, the 1,637 adverse vaccination reactions reported to the FDA via the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) included 371 serious reactions. Of the 42 women who received the vaccine while pregnant, 18 experienced side effects ranging from spontaneous abortion to fetal abnormities.
Yikes, right? Well, maybe some stuff to be concerned about, and some not. After all, 77% of the "adverse reactions" were typical vaccination side effects -- itching, dizziness, etc. Kaiser reports:
CDC, FDA and Merck have said that the adverse events likely were unrelated to the vaccine and were caused by underlying health problems or other factors, the Journal reports. According to CDC, two of the three women who died were taking oral contraceptives and died of blood clots, which are associated with oral contraceptives. The third, a 12-year-old girl, had heart disease and died of a heart inflammation triggered by the flu.
I read the same reports the Judicial Watch people did. One of the women died of a blood clot two weeks after receiving the vaccine. And the 12-year-old also had chicken pox and Hepatitis A vaccines on the same day. Granted, I'm not a medical professional. But nothing I read made me feel uneasy about getting the vaccine. This isn't exactly like three women and girls have received the shot and then dropped dead on the spot -- it seems like they had other health issues. I have yet to read an evaluation from an apolitical medical professional who believes these reports are an indication that the vaccine is dangerous.
All vaccines carry a certain level of risk. All come with warnings that if you have certain conditions you should probably choose not to be vaccinated. During 2003 and the first half of 2004, there were eight reported deaths related to the chicken pox vaccine. Three deaths in the past year -- which may or may not be attributable to the HPV vaccine -- doesn't exactly seem like a "catalog of horrors" to me.
That said, the deaths potentially caused by oral-contraceptive-related blood clots are troubling. I'm guessing that a lot of women in the "catch-up" age range for HPV vaccination -- ages 18 to 26 -- are on the Pill or other hormonal contraception. And it sounds like you should just hold off on the vaccine if you're pregnant.
This is a good time to issue a reminder about conservative hypocrisy on this issue. It's a right-wing group that's ringing alarm bells over reactions to the vaccine. But for years, uber-conservative groups sounded some of the loudest warnings about the dangers of HPV. (From the American Family Association, in 2003: "HPV, a Bigger Killer, Takes Back Seat to Agenda-Driven Issue of AIDS.") But of course they wouldn't celebrate a vaccine gaining wide acceptance, because HPV is of great use to the abstinence movement. It's one of the few STI's that condoms don't effectively protect against, meaning HPV-related cervical cancer was proof of the "grim cost of sexual promiscuity" and "100 percent preventable with proper sexual behavior." So now that there's a vaccine for HPV, they have to catalog the "horrors!" of the adverse reactions in order to keep up their "SEX KILLS" talking point.
Contributed by Kate Harding
I just attended an amazing panel called Prisons as Agents of Reproductive Oppression. I had a hell of a time deciding which of the 13 awesome-sounding workshops to go to (a problem that's only going to get worse as the conference goes on), so I went with the subject I felt I knew least about.
And McCain just smiles and nods. Lovely.
Check out this NY Times piece on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and how she's using her current Supreme Court term to speak up. Literally.
In both the recent federal abortion ban case and this week's discrimination ruling, Justice Ginsburg read dissents from the bench:
But the words were clearly her own, and they were both passionate and pointed. In the abortion case, in which the court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act seven years after having struck down a similar state law, she noted that the court was now “differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation.� In the latest case, she summoned Congress to overturn what she called the majority’s “parsimonious reading� of the federal law against discrimination in the workplace....The oral dissent has not been, until now, Justice Ginsburg’s style. She has gone years without delivering one, and never before in her 15 years on the court has she delivered two in one term. In her past dissents, both oral and written, she has been reluctant to breach the court’s collegial norms. “What she is saying is that this is not law, it’s politics,� Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor, said of Justice Ginsburg’s comment linking the outcome in the abortion case to the fact of the court’s changed membership. “She is accusing the other side of making political claims, not legal claims.�
Gee, I wonder why.
A friend of Ginsburg's, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, says "shehas always been regarded as sort of a white-glove person, and she’s achieved a lot that way...Now she is seeing that basic issues she’s fought so hard for are in jeopardy, and she is less bound by what have been the conventions of the court.� Thank goodness. Now let's just hope people will listen.
Some potentially bad news. Mexico's Supreme Court is going to hear a challenge to the the landmark law that legalized abortion in Mexico City.
Get the whole story at BushvChoice.
NOTE: I was supposed to post this for Kate last night, so pretend you're reading it in the wee hours.
All right, I'm truly exhausted now, and writing up some odds and ends a couple hours after beer-thirty is not so much "liveblogging," but here are a few final notes on the Causes in Common Meeting.
Regarding Assisted Reproductive Genetic Technologies, Miriam Yeung says at this point, we're still figuring out the questions more than the answers. Three key ones for both LGBT and reproductive freedom activists are:
1) Just because we can, should we?
2) Is it fair?
3) Who makes the decisions?
The crucial thing right now, she suggested, is for "smart people to get thinking about it." Aaand.... go!
The later afternoon panel on Coalition Building was moderated by Alisa Wellek of the LGBT Community Center
I bought my first Birkenstocks last weekend. Now I'm a real feminist.
Samhita's post about gentrification and "ghetto fabulousness" has, not shockingly, turned into quite a conversation about race and privilege. I think it's an important conversation to have, so let's do it. The whole thing is really getting to me for four reasons.
First, my back hurts.
Second, just last week a bunch of us were sitting at a ceremony celebrating the future of reproductive rights and justice - a diverse group of young women I am proud to be counted among. And now this. Good thing all of those women were young and tough. There's a lot that needs doing.
Third, instead of sitting here I'm supposed to be in Chicago rocking out at Sistersong.
And fourth, because as the headline says, you don't have to mean to be racist to say racist things. And I understand that most of the readers here don't want to be called racist. Fine. Then don't say racist things. I'm not sugar coating this one, folks. The following comments on Samhita's thread are either racist, or positively drowning in privilege. Regardless of how you meant it. Read them, and please take a moment to think about why I say this. Just like I assume we'd like well-meaning sexist people to think about why we respond the way we do to things they say.
I stopped writing this post and came back to it later. Now I'm not angry, I'm curious. I'd really like to hear from some of the folks whose comments I include. Thoughtfully, not just angry because you think I'm an asshole and calling you racist. I'm so rarely earnest, but I really mean it.
Apparently female cheetahs "sleep around."
For female cheetahs in the Serengeti, the call of the wild is just too hard to resist as new research shows nearly half of their litters are made up of cubs with different fathers.And while the serial infidelities of the females does ensure a broader genetic mix to help the survival of the endangered species, it comes at a cost, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said on Wednesday.
"Mating with more than one male poses a serious threat to females, increasing the risk of exposure to parasites and diseases," said Dada Gottelli, ZSL's lead scientist for the research.
"Females also have to travel over large distances to find new males, making them more vulnerable to predation, so infidelity is a heavy burden."
Is it just me, or do those arguments sound like abstinence-ed for cheetahs? (I'm sick. Give me a break.)
We're a little tardy in writing about yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. The court ruled that employees must make their discrimination complaints within 180 days “after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.� In other words, the discrimination occurs at the time a woman is given a salary that is significantly lower than her male counterparts. If she doesn't catch on to the pay disparity within 180 days, she's screwed. Which is why Ledbetter's attorneys had argued that she was discriminated against every time she was handed a paycheck for less money than her male equivalent on the job -- not simply when her salary was determined. According to the Times:
Ms. Ledbetter’s salary was initially the same as that of her male colleagues. But over time, as she received smaller raises, a substantial disparity grew. By the time she brought suit in 1998, her salary fell short by as much as 40 percent; she was making $3,727 a month, while the lowest-paid man was making $4,286.
So 180 days isn't much time to figure out a pay disparity exists. How many people -- especially, for example, women in nontraditional professions -- talk openly with their coworkers about how much they're earning?
This is likely to have a chilling effect on employment discrimination suits. As Scott says,
Republicans don't have to modify or repeal civil rights legislation, and the Court's needn't strike it down; the courts and/or the executive branch can just gut the legislation by making it difficult to enforce in ways that don't attract public attention.
This decision is an even greater incentive to get behind the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would require employers to make employee salaries public so women will know sooner if they're getting paid less for equal (or more) work.
UPDATE: In comments, Jill Zimon points out that Congressional Dems have responded to the ruling by pledging to pass a law that eliminates the time restriction.
(P.S. For your reading pleasure, Ginsburg's dissent.)
Contributed by Kate Harding
Yesterday I got an e-mail informing me that Feministing's Jen had thrown out her back and couldn't attend the first ever Causes in Common Meeting today and the SisterSong Conference over the next few days as planned. Having the extensive qualifications of being a Chicago blogger who was available to do it, I was asked to fill in for her. I'm so sorry Jen's in pain, but so grateful to have this opportunity -- both to write for Feministing and to attend these gatherings, the first of which is already shaping up to be fantastic.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Causes in Common, it's an organization devoted to making connections between activists for reproductive justice and the LGBT community. Their FAQs explains more about this too-often overlooked intersection of equality and self-determination issues.
There is SO MUCH to say about the morning's panel on the National Legislative Landscape and Statewide Ballot Initiatives -- not to mention a few enlightening conversations with other attendees-- but I have to get back soon for the afternoon panel on Assisted Reproductive Genetic Technologies. Right now, I'll just pass along the Quote of the Morning, from Jackie Payne, Director of Government Relations for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, with regard to politicians who campaign on homophobic and anti-choice platforms:
"I want to spank these people, and I want them to know that if they go against us, we will go against them."
More later.
Kate Harding is a Chicago-based writer who blogs about feminism and fat acceptance at Shapely Prose and about books at The Bibliophilistines.
Just so you know: Seems the Colors of Domestic Violence campaign may not be an official Benetton thing. Broadsheet reports that a senior fashion public relations manager for the company says that Benetton has never heard of the campaign. So where in the world did this thing come from?
In perhaps the best titled article ever, "Crying Over Spilled Semen," Psychology Today reports on a study that basically says women are addicted to semen. Hilarious.
The finding that women who do not use condoms during sex are less depressed and less likely to attempt suicide than are women who have sex with condoms and women who are not sexually active, leads one researcher to conclude that semen contains powerful—and potentially addictive—mood-altering chemicals.Study author Gordon G. Gallup, Ph.D., a psychologist at the State University of New York in Albany, also found that women who routinely had intercourse without condoms became increasingly depressed as more time elapsed since their last sexual encounter. There was no such correlation for women whose partners regularly used condoms.
Gallup also found that women who did not use condoms were most likely to initiate sex and to seek out new partners as soon as a relationship ended: "These women are more vulnerable to the rebound effect, which suggests that there is a chemical dependency."
Gallup also says he's planning on examining whether "semen withdrawal" places women at an increased risk for depression. Yeah. Well I guess the best way to avoid semen addiction is to never get started. I'm sure that will go over well.
This post by Wendy Muse on Racialicious just about sums up (really well) what I have been feeling about the hipsters all up in "our hoodz stealin all our fashionz." I also feel old as I wore door knockers the first time around (NY in the 80's) eeek.
Muse is discussing all her personal negotiations and some of the political stakes involved with "ghetto chic." She says,
For one, it’s a matter of nomenclature. The term “ghetto� is evocative of “negative� images (poverty, housing projects, crime, drug use, lack of education), and remains racialized by the media. Ghettoes and poverty are typically associated with blacks and Latinos, even though as a result of the racial demographics of the United States, there are technically more poor whites. According to a U.S. Census Bureau Press Release from 2003, though “non-Hispanic whites had a lower poverty rate than other racial groups, [they] accounted for 44 percent of the people in poverty,� which makes me wonder why whites are virtually ignored in discussions of class and blacks and Latinos are always assumed to make up the majority of the poor population in this country. . . but that’s another article.
A few months ago I was sitting in a coffee shop in my neighborhood, a coffee shop I can no longer go to as I may fight somebody, and this white "hipster" boy sat down across from me wearing a red bandana tied on the front of his head, Tupac style. That's right, he was "GANGSTA." I am not laughing. I shot him the nastiest look and freaked him out so he didn't want to share the table with me, but I was raging inside.
I worked in the schools in and around San Francisco's Mission District for about 5 years and am very familiar with the problems that are tearing our schools apart and our communities. Our kids didn't wear red. And I thought about how this kid, moved into the Mission and was just walking around wearing a flag, like he is on some shit. I thought that god forbid if he got shot (which is highly unlikely, I don't want to further sensationalize gang violence the way the media does) how the media would cover it. They wouldn't say anything about his ignorance of any of the local politics or any of the racist ways that these people just move on in and visually violate these communities. To move into a community, uninformed, taking from it, not giving back and flaunting your expensive Ipod and "ghetto chic" accessories, is a form of violence.
I may be sounding like a hater, and maybe I am just too old to get it, but I AM FED UP WITH THESE KIDS. I hate Vice Magazine and I hate this attitude that pretty much says, "I am so passed racist, I can act like this." Wake up asshole, look around you, you are part of the problem.
This is much less articulate than Wendy's post, lol. I wrote about this a few years ago, when I had heard about the "Kill Whitey," parties in Brooklyn. I had hoped that the trend was dying out, but I was oh so wrong. I am so moving back to Oakland (although I hear they are invading there as well).
Dove's Real Beauty Campaign has had its fair share of successes and critiques, yet while they have been pushing this idea of "real beauty," it seems that they also think that should exclude your armpits. Like we don't have enough body parts to obsess over.
The slogan, "Are you sleeveless ready?" says enough about what they're trying to pitch, but I've heard the commercial is pretty irritating, more or less saying that their newest deodorant will make your underarms look soft and gorgeous (as opposed to their gross existence before). The website says:
"Every woman can have softer, smoother underams and show them off in sleeveless styles that make her feel beautiful."
Because seriously, who likes a girl with dry and not soft-as-a-baby's-ass underarms?
Thanks MAC for the story.
Naomi Wolf had the cover story in New York Magazine on Saturday titled, “The Porn Myth,� which largely discussed how porn today basically kills people’s sex lives; or in other words, men’s.
With mainstream porn’s fake breasts, tiny vaginas and perpetually tan bodies, the unrealistic expectations it puts on straight men and what sex is “supposed� to look like is evident, which Wolf points out. But her extreme oversimplification of the issue is evident as well.
She claims that all porn this day and age does is demolish straight women’s sex lives because they can’t live up to porn’s image of the “perfect body� and satisfy their more-or-less bored partners. In fact, the entire piece discusses the issue from the perspective of men, seeming to say that a satisfying sex life is defined based on what a man wants.
Her solution seems to be to regress back to a more modest sexuality, and possibly mimic the sexual habits of more “traditional cultures�:
I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding female sexuality, but I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time.
Her example of this is her Orthodox Jewish friend who covers her body and hair in public, and the apparent erotic nature in the the fact that only her husband can see her hair. What exactly is she trying to posit by using this example? That we'd be better off covered up? She seems to be cloaking the idea of putting sex back into the private sphere with the concept of “sexual mystery.� Wouldn’t it be more practical (and fun) to simply promote the realistic images of women (and men) in sex culture than simply repress it altogether?
Wow. People are assholes.
Benetton, the clothing company well known for its ads, has created a Colors of Domestic Violence campaign.
Thoughts?
Health activists in sub-Saharan Africa are seeing that attempts at stopping FGM based on women's rights isn't working, so they are turning to the Quran, to find evidence that it is not a religious necessity.
Abdi, who speaks about female genital mutilation on behalf of the US-based Population Council, said invoking Islam penetrates years of cultural indoctrination."Women don't have to torture themselves.
Islam does not require them to do it," said Abdi, who underwent the procedure when she was 6 and was a college student by the time she realised it was not necessary from a religious viewpoint.
With age-old cultural roots, female genital mutilation is practised today in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt and other parts of the Arab world such as Yemen and Oman.
In the rest of the Islamic world - the Middle East, North Africa, southeast Asia - it's nearly non-existent.
I am sure part of the problem is that Muslim ideas and Western feminist ideas tend to run in opposition to one another. The feminist movement, as it is understood world-wide, is considered to be Western and white. It seems almost logical that local leaders would reject the terms of women's rights if they are based on a Western model of "women's liberation."
However, the health risks of FGM are real and cannot be ignored internationally. But it is important to listen to these activists on their own terms.
Late last year, the top cleric in Egypt - where the practice is pervasive and many believe it is required by Islam - spoke out against it, saying circumcision was not mentioned in the Quran, the Muslim holy book, or in the Sunna, the sayings and deeds of Muhammad - the two main sources of Islamic practice."In Islam, circumcision is for men only," Mohammed Sayed Tantawi said.
"From a religious point of view, I don't find anything that says that circumcision is a must" for women.
Laws against female genital mutilation exist in many of the regions where it is practised, but poor enforcement and lack of publicity can hinder the laws, human rights groups and women activists say.
Feel free to list other info on this topic in comments.
I, like Christopher Hitchens, do not give a rat's ass about Rev. Jerry Falwell. I was reminded of another reason why he did indeed lead people based on paranoid, hate-based superstition. Falwell outed Tinky Winky and for that I will never forgive him. Nothing (well not nothing) gave me more pleasure when I was stoned in college, than to watch Teletubbies.
Apparently, the Polish government is also suspect.
The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head."I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy."
EU officials have criticised Polish government policy towards homosexuals.
Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children's show should be broadcast on public television.
Poland's authorities have recently initiated a series of moves to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality among the nation's children.
That's right kids. Tinky Winky is going to make you GAY GAY GAY.
It looks like questions are being answered concerning the genetics of breast cancer, and in fact, may be the most important genetic discoveries since 1994.
The findings could lead not only to better understandings of breast cancer, but better ways to identify and treat the disease. Good shit.
At the Choice USA Awards: Jen, Jessica, Marvelyn, Courtney and Ann.
Hey all...so a lot of the Feministing ladies have been traveling like crazy over the past week. The Choice USA Awards in DC were super fun--it was amazing to meet all of these incredible women doing such important work for reproductive justice.
Then we were off to Colonial Williamsburg for the wedding of Feministing friend and real hot 100 director Gwynn Cassidy.
And in two days, we're off to Chicago for the Causes in Common meeting and the SisterSong conference.
So given all of the past and future craziness, we're going to be taking today off to sleep, chill out, and maybe have a BBQ if the nasty NYC weather allows. See you tomorrow!
Photograph by Mathew Schwartz
Pagan Kennedy has published seven books and is a pioneer of the '90s zine movement; her autobiographical zine Pagan's Head is noted for describing her life in extraordinary detail. Some of her books include Black Livingstone which was named a New York Times Notable Book and her novel Spinsters which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine, Village Voice, Utne Reader, The Nation and Ms. magazine.
Pagan's new book, The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth Century Medical Revolution, is a biography that documents the life of Michael Dillon who, in the 1940s, survived the world's first known female-to-male sex change treatment.
I interviewed Pagan over email. Here's Pagan...
For many of you, you may be saying it’s about time. But I just want you to know, my intentions and actions, although contrary to what you may have hoped for, were never from an ill or self-gratuitous place. I decided to interview and post Nubian’s interview because I wanted to help share her voice and her experiences with racism on the blogosphere. Unfortunately, what went down was exactly what she documented in her interview with me.
Nice to know that if you get gang raped and there are fucking eyewitnesses, your case won't get prosecuted.
What's the penalty for the alleged gangrape of a drunk, 17-year-old girl at a party with 10 of your buddies? Bupkus, said the Santa Clara, California District Attorney's office yesterday.The alleged rape occurred March 3 at a wild, off-campus party hosted by a member of the DeAnza College men's baseball team in San Jose, California. Three partygoers, members of the school's women's soccer team, said they saw a young girl on a mattress on the floor, clothes around her ankles and vomit on her face, with one man on top of her and approximately 10 more looking on in a dark bedroom. Feeling "something wasn't right," the girls pushed their way into the room and rushed the victim the the hospital.
20-year old April Grolle, one of the women who intervened, said "One of the guys who was in the room said 'This is her fault. She got drunk and she did this to herself.'"
Assistant District Attorney David Tomkins said, "We looked at every shred of evidence in this case, and we used every procedural avenue available to us to examine the facts. We discussed it and decided there was insufficient evidence of any crimes being investigated."
Lovely. So no charges will be brought against the men, who were members of the De Anza College baseball team. The only punishment? Eight baseball players were suspended, and three games were cancelled. Yeah. I'm just so sick over this.
Check out Dane Cook's new movie poster after the jump. I think you'll agree that it's...special.
On January 22, UN Dispatch reported that 105 Indian police officers where being deployed to Liberia as the UN's first all-female peacekeeping force. Today, Dispatch sat down with a unit commander, Seema Dhundia, to check in on their progress.
Now that your unit has been in the field for a few months, how would you say the presence of a female UN peacekeeping contingent is enabling Liberia to get on the path to rebuilding?
I think that for the first time the Liberian people are seeing a fully trained contingent of female officers out on streets. Their own women are getting inspired and motivated and now they are coming forward. Seeing my girls performing their duties is inspiring young Liberian women to join the regular forces -- in this way we are sort of role models for the young Liberian ladies. They are seeing our girls and are now coming forward and joining the regular forces. Their numbers have considerably increased after our arrival here
The people are watching us here in Liberia. They are seeing the all-female contingent -- which has come all the way from India for the peacekeeping mission -- and they are getting inspired. They might start their own female force.
Have you faced any specific challenges being an all-women's unit?
There is no specific challenge as such. The situation is still volatile - the undercurrents of the conflict are still there, though the politics seem to be calm and quiet. Sometimes, though, it does get out of hand. But since the troops are prepared and they are professionally competent, we are able to cope with the pressures of any kind of situation.
Apparently the latest Shrek movie has a tad o' feminism in there:
Cameron Diaz has admitted she loves the fact her character Princess Fiona gets all feminist in the latest instalment of hit animation films Shrek.Shrek The Third sees Fiona team up with other princesses to fight the bad guys, the Daily Express reports. "We get kind of 'bad a**' and burn our bras. Sleeping Beauty and the others decide that instead of being damsels in distress wondering when our prince will come, we band together with the help of Julie Andrews (Fiona's mother) to save ourselves," the star is quoted as saying.
Neat. Did they have to go with the stereotypical bra-burning though?
Watch Mary Alice Carr of NARAL Pro-Choice New York take on the ever-nutty Leslee Unruh on the recently approved contraceptive Lybrel.
Scariest part: "I want more babies! More babies! We love babies!"
*Slowly backs away from computer*
ThinkProgress has the same segment, different clips. Equally hysterical.
I hate bad news.
This week the FDA approved Lybrel, contraception designed so you don't get a monthly period. Some of the reactions to the pill have been really revealing as to just how little many women know about how hormonal contraception works. As Ema writes, "Imagine the women's surprise when they find out (hopefully) that, since the 1960s, every single Pill brand allows them to avoid their monthly menstrual period indefinitely." She also links to this gem from ABC News:
It's unclear whether women will embrace this new pill, which contains the same formulations of estrogen and progestin used for birth control pills for decades, but its arrival marks yet another step toward the blurring of the genders.
Panic in the streets! How will women know they're women if they don't have to ride the cotton pony once a month? You've got to be kidding me.
And speaking of condescension, (via Ann Bartow) in a post that should be titled, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Eugene," Eugene Volokh seeks to understand the mysteries of biological womanhood by requesting "input from people who have actually menstruated":
When you menstruate, do you feel that you're part of the "in crowd"? If you chose to stop -- not because of menopause, which is a marker of age and of lost fertility, but voluntarily and reversibly -- would you feel "out"? Do you smile and talk to your friends about the cramps, the mood swings, and the like? Do you feel you derive meaning from the fact that you share menstruation as an experience with other women? Would you feel meaning subtracted if you stopped menstruating, because menstruation is so "central" a "female experience"? Do you find menstruation to be similar to pregnancy in any emotionally positive way?
Well this is just lovely.
A teenage girl who claims she was gang raped by three 13-year-old schoolboys was overweight and would have been “glad of the attention�, a barrister told a jury.The 16-year-old and her friend told a court the boys mugged them for their phones then raped them repeatedly in a park while filming the ordeal on a mobile.
But lawyer Sheilagh Davies, acting for one of the defendants, said the girls consented to sex “maybe to gain attention, maybe to gain affection�.
Davies also told the jury that the girl had “slimmed down a lot� since the rape and that she "may well have been glad of the attention.� Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall.
If more art was feminist, I'd probably go to the museum every once in a while. (Instead of hanging out on the internet.)
Along with Ann's post of the Salon article about Michelle Obama, a post by Malena at Racewire also has some really good analysis.
She says:
Everybody's been talking about Michelle Obama these days.Since she announced her decision to leave her high-ranked job at the University of Chicago hospitals to join Barack Obama on the campaign, she's had more time to make speeches and do interviews.
In the process, top journalists continue asking her to explain what it means for her husband Barack Obama to be a Black man running for presidency.
And every time, Mrs. Obama slam dunks the answer and offers stronger race analysis than Mr. Barack. Overall, she uses less political correctness to interrogate the issues. And I love her for it. She ought to be campaigning for her own presidency.
Take this February video for example. When asked if she's concerned about Obama being assassinated because of his race and position, Mrs. Obama said: "as a Black man, he could get shot at a gas station.
Along with this little sound byte:
Read more at Racewire. Thanks to Andre for the heads up.
Thoughts?
From WIMN's Voices: A Group Blog on Women Media and News written by, Sonali Kolhatkar:
Twenty eight year old intrepid Afghan MP, Malalai Joya, has just been suspended from Parliament for comparing warlords in power to donkeys. Joya is the youngest and most outspoken member of Parliament and has survived 4 assassination attempts for denouncing warlords, many of whom were funded at various times by the US government in the fight against the Soviets (1980s) and the Taliban (post-9-11).
This story is amazing. Read more here.
Remember our huge controversy over heels? Well now we have gotten a solution. And I am sure that the super hip style of these shoes will take care of all your fashion needs, not make you feel like a cyborg.
So my three year stint at San Francisco State is slowly (time is moving like a slug) coming to a close. I will soon have an MA in Women's Studies (assuming I finish my thesis) and can then work at the local grocery store. Just kidding, I will be working with Youth Media Council starting this summer and I am very very excited. If you are not familiar with their work, please, get familiar.
So the point of this post isn't just so you can congratulate me on massive quantities of debt and my phone being shut off for a degree that will never get me a job (just kidding if anyone from the WS program at State is reading, lol), but to rejoice in the fact that I will now have some free time to read something other than really dense transnational feminist theory.
In my excitement I ran down to Modern Times and didn't even know where to begin. I wanted to read everything.
I ended up getting Failed States, by Noam Chomsky and if I had more money I would have gotten Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, by Greg Grandin and Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, written by INCITE!
And of course I will be in line when Harry Potter comes out.
What is on your summer reading list?
Every once in a while you come across a story and for whatever reason it makes you just start crying at your computer.
A Pakistani court has arrested a couple after "figuring out" that the husband, was actually transgender, thusly making him not a "real" man and them a same-sex couple, which is against the law.
The judge said the pair had lied over the husband's gender, and a sex change operation the husband had had to become a man had not been done properly.The couple told the court that they had got married so that the wife could avoid an arranged marriage.
The article says he married his cousin to protect her from an arranged marriage. I hate when they put something like that in, without elaborating.
If they are convicted of an "unnatural offense" aka, homosexuality, it is life sentence in prison.
For the lack of posting today; we've been running around like madwomen trying to prepare for our trip to D.C. and our big fancy Choice USA award tomorrow. Yay.
I know this is a wee late, but I just had to talk about the Opie and Anthony drama that's been going on since last week. Shakes has been following the story on how the two radio talk show hosts have been suspended for featuring a guest, "Homeless Charlie," in their XM radio show who talks about raping Laura Bush and Condoleeza Rice to death.
Because raping and killing someone is SO funny. What's more infuriating is that XM allowed them to continue their show after Opie and Anthony "apologized," which followed them pretty much retracting their apology on the next show. For that, they got a mere 30-day suspension.
The worst part about this that Shakes has also pointed out and why I felt it necessary to bring it up now is the blasé attitude that's resulted in the media coverage on this. Almost every article I come across on the story uses the language in regards to comments as "sexual," "inappropriate" and from WashPo, "racy." I'm sorry, but there is nothing "racy" about rape. Violent and heinous, yes. Racy and sexual? Hell fucking no.
In the meantime, a slew of Opie and Anthony supporters have been creating sites urging readers to cancel subscriptions to XM in response to the suspension, with the hopes of an apology to Opie and Anthony in addition to letting them back on the air immediately. Because, you know, making humor out of serious violent acts against women is just too necessary to take off the airwaves.
A big congratulations to Feministing friend Nancy Goldstein who, along with her wife, was featured in a NY Times article today about same-sex couples in New York and their marriage rights...
The two women have a pleasant Park Slope apartment, an excitable dog named Juno and a marriage certificate signed by the town clerk of Provincetown, Mass. Ms. [Nancy] Goldstein, 45, and Ms. [Joan] Hilty, 40, were two of the gay and lesbian New Yorkers who rushed to cities and towns in Massachusetts to get married in May 2004, after it became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriages.In the three years since then, the validity of their marriage certificate has been something of a question mark. But Ms. Goldstein and Ms. Hilty learned last week that a judge had ruled that same-sex couples from New York who married in Massachusetts from May 2004 to July 2006 have a legally recognized marriage.
“I got married,� said Ms. Goldstein, a director of an advocacy group for pregnant women. “I did not get civil-unioned. I got married.�
Damn straight (heh) you did. Now the only question is whether or not Nancy will forget all the little people now she's all famous.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reports that they are seeing more complaints, and more suits filed, on behalf of pregnant women who have been discriminated against.
“The increase in pregnancy discrimination charge filings and lawsuits is cause for concern,� says David Grinberg, a spokesman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Such charges filed with the EEOC, state and local agencies jumped nearly 19 percent to a record 4,901 last year, from 3,977 in 1997. And, he adds, “pregnancy discrimination lawsuits by EEOC have increased about threefold from six or fewer per year in the early to late 1990s, to 16 or more per year since 2001.�
Not only are women being discriminated against by not being hired or being fired because of pregnancy, but apparently one of the biggest issues is how much time an employee can take after the baby is born.
Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, workers who are employed by firms with 50 employees or more and have worked for a company for at least 12 months have to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave to employees for medical reasons including pregnancy and the birth of a child.Often disputes arise when employers either don’t honor that or employees take more than 12 weeks, only to find their job has been given away.
Lovely. For information about pregnant womens' rights, check out the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which is an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. MSNBC also has a handy little sidebar explaining your rights here.
From the Girls Rock Movie. Sweet.
Tried posting this on Nubian's blog, but it didn't go through for some reason. I tried twice. It's in response to Nubian's post Monday evening regarding our "Blogging While Black" interview almost a year ago:
"nubian speaks..."
http://blackademic.com/?p=174
While I was trying to find a quote on Wikipedia (don't ask, I'm obsessive), I stumbled upon this page for Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris. She was the first woman ever ordained as a bishop in the United States Episcopal Church. And, she's been a close friend of my family for as long as I can remember. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good bio of her. They talk about her road to election as a bishop in 1989. I haven't seen her for a long time, but when I think about the women that inspire me, she's on the list. One of the things I love is that while I can't relate to her deeply held religious beliefs, she has (like I try to) always fought for the rights of women in her world. Sadly, of course, the Episcopal Church hasn't gotten past the fighting that occurred when she was ordained. In fact, things have gotten much worse.
I also found this great copy of a sermon she gave on the 25th anniversary of the first ordination of women in the priesthood in the Episcopal church. (Incidentally, the sermon was delivered at the church where I was baptized, which didn't turn out so well, but it's still a great place) Check it out, the whole thing is awesome.
Now I want to try to speak a little truth here tonight. And I am going to be brief and, as often accused, I am going to be blunt. I do, however, have to choose my words very carefully in that I not only tend to be quoted, I frequently tend to get misquoted. I don't mind the former, in context - it's the latter that ticks me off.To begin with, last year's decennial gathering of apostolic eagles - which included its share of turkeys - the Lambeth Conference, brought a defining melding of these two questions.
Despite the development of a critical mass of ordained women, including eleven bishops, at Lambeth we were left wondering what had happened to the dream of a kinder, gentler church. The conference resolution concerning ordination of women and its odious amendment - authored by two women bishops in concert with some conservative male bishops - totally ignored any positive impact the church has experienced through ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate over the past 25 years. It was a stunning denigration of the more than 6000 women in Orders from Utah to Uganda, to say nothing of those who have yet to respond to God's call. Rather, having tasted blood with the much amended resolution on human sexuality, the princes of the church moved in for the kill on the people they really hold in low esteem - WOMEN.
What a gift it was to have someone like her in my life. She's just one of the many people from my childhood that lead me to the feminism. And now that I'm thinking about it I feel like I need to look her up for a talk.
P.S. Writing this without cursing was tough, but I figured I owe it to Barbara. Not that she would really mind. I remember the smoking, drinking and trips to Atlantic City.
Apparently Clarkson has spoken out about her experiences with sexist music executives and their blatant disapproval of her writing her own music because she's a young woman:
"Everybody doesn't like me writing all the time, no matter how many No. 1's you write. It's clearly like yelling at a brick wall....It's because I'm a woman — because I'm a young woman. I literally heard someone say it [during a conference call]. They didn't know I was on the phone. Like, really? We're living in what century? I hung up. I was like, I can't even address that. 'Cause that was the most ignorant thing I've ever heard."
In the meantime, she just won a Song of the Year award for, yes, a song she wrote herself. Take that.
Today in Salon, Debra Dickerson has a great piece about Michelle Obama, the politics of being First Lady, and what it means that she's the first woman of color to potentially fill that role. Some highlights below the jump...
...conform to gender stereotypes, that is. I linked to this truly terrible article about a very interesting study in the WFR this week, and it deserves some further exploration. Article headline:
Don't want to be harassed? Stop acting like a man
Shudder. Because it's your responsibility to keep men from harassing you! Offensive headline aside, the study itself is pretty fascinating. With a much better title ("The Sexual Harassment of Uppity Women").
In my own experience, the level of harassment is way higher if I'm wearing a skirt or dress. But that's street harassment, and the study, by Jennifer L. Berdahl at the University of Toronto (who has done a lot of great research on harassment), is about workplace harassment. And in that situation, Berdahl found, if you're defying traditional gender stereotypes, you're more likely to be sexually harassed. She writes,
The original prototype of sexual harassment was a male boss sexually coercing a female subordinate. Sexual harassers were assumed to be motivated by sexual desire for their targets. If sexual harassment is motivated by sexual desire, then the most frequent targets of sexual harassment should be individuals who meet gender ideals. Gender ideals involve both physical and personality characteristics. Personality characteristics desired in men include assertiveness, independence, and dominance; those desired in women include modesty, deference, and warmth. If women are sexually harassed more than men, and if individuals who meet gender ideals are harassed more than those who do not, then women with feminine personalities should be sexually harassed the most.I suggest that just the opposite is true. The most common form of sexual harassment is gender harassment, a form of hostile environment harassment that appears to be motivated by hostility toward individuals who violate gender ideals rather than by desire for those who meet them.
Makes sense. Think about the shit that tradeswomen and female firefighters have to endure in their male-dominated workplaces. And I'd venture a guess that a good amount of the harassment heaped upon LGBTQ individuals is not a result of who they're sexually attracted to, but is because their gender expression is nonconforming.
Berdahl notes that this all comes down to men who get very upset when their masculine identity is challenged.
Recent experiments provide compelling evidence that this is the case. Using a computer paradigm, Maass and colleagues had men receive an electronic communication from a purported interaction partner. Half of the men received a message from a woman who said she was studying economics, intended to become a bank manager, thought women were as capable as men, and participated in a union that defended women’s rights. The other half of the men received a message from a woman who said she was studying education, intended to become an elementary school teacher to allow time for family and children, and chose not to become a lawyer because the job is more appropriate for men and she is afraid to compete with men. Men had the option of sending a variety of images to their interaction partner in reply and were more likely to send offensive pornography to the woman who expressed nontraditional beliefs and career ambitions than to the woman who expressed traditional ones.The rationale provided by Maass et al. (2003) for why men gender harass nontraditional women is that men are motivated to derogate women when they experience a threat to their male identity. Women threaten male identity when they blur distinctions between men and women and thereby challenge the legitimacy of these distinctions and the status they confer men.
Just goes to show that you can't win. If you like wearing skirts and heels and makeup, you're asking for it. But if you're an assertive woman who literally and figuratively wears the pants, you're asking for it, too. As Berdahl said, "These results highlight the double bind faced by women who are dismissed and disrespected if feminine but scorned and disliked if masculine, limiting their ascent up the organisational ladder."
Surprise, surprise. A study released yesterday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that more veteran inmates are sex offenders than non-vets:
Veterans are half as likely to be incarcerated as those without service experience in the first place, researchers found, but 23 percent of the veterans in prison were sex offenders, compared with 9 percent of nonveteran inmates.The numbers mirror a trend seen in military prisons, where populations have declined but sexual assault remains the most common crime.
The researchers said they couldn't come to any conclusion as to why this is the case. Me thinks they should be talking to Cynthia Enloe.
Poetry found a.m. wai on April 22, 2006. “Worthy� was her first inspired poem. A year later, her voice continues speaking truth on race, identity, love, and relationships.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the last post in this month's Voices of... series. We ran out of space last week (which is a great thing!) so we held this post over till today. Next month you can look forward to Voices of the U.S. Social Forum. Thanks again to Priscilla and the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum for organizing this!
Friday Night Dinner
For so long
I kept trying to get
invited to your
Friday night dinner
I would
peep through
the window
gaze at the
fine china
salivate over the
3 course meal
Asking myself
what do I need to do to get in?
Every Friday night
I would stop by
wondering what
haute cuisine
would be served
who the guest
of the week
would be
For a long time
it was never
anyone I knew
I remained
still mesmerized
week after week
like watching an opera
for the very first time
from the standing room
only and miss my
Friday night dinner
I write this entry with a broken heart. The cumulative effect of hatred spewed via the internet inevitably bogs you down. In light of the conversations surrounding Jessica's book, I just wanted to touch on some of the issues that have come up. I am going to admit first and foremost, I haven't read all of them and I am not going to cite any people, just some themes that are coming up and the feelings they are bringing up for me.
Specifically, why is Jessica the face of Feministing? I have been writing for Feministing for 2 years. I am a woman of color and have consistently written about intersectionality in rigorous and radical ways. It seems to me, the only people that have noticed are my enemies, who have grilled me alive when they can. Some blogs calling out Feministing for a lack of intersectional analysis makes me feel like my voice has been erased and silenced. As have the voices of the women of color that write for Feministing and are written about at Feministing. This critique on the "whiteness" of Feministing is doing that which it seeks to ameliorate--erase the voices and contributions of women of color.
That said, I am not a token. I am not here to talk about all WOC voices. My being here doesn't inherently fix or solve the white-centered nature of the political blogosphere (please believe). And my brown-ness doesn't make me the spokesperson for all things brown, and similarly Jessica or the other white ladies, spokespeople for whites only. To discount the contributions of all the women that write for Feministing, while upholding Jessica as the embodiment of all that is wrong with Feministing and feminism, erases our contributions and ignores the fact that we are all working TOGETHER. What does it mean when Jessica is singled out for blame for posts or threads that we ALL take responsibility for?
All of the women that write for Feministing, from DAY ONE, have incorporated an intersectional analysis (please go back to archives and read). All of the writers at Feministing believe that a race, class and sexuality lens is necessary to inform our feminist action and writing. It's an integral part of our work, evidenced not only by what we write and how we write it, but also by who we bring in to work with us and the connections and collaborations we seek on the ground. To argue otherwise not only feels dismissive to us, it feels intensely hurtful and wrong.
The thing with blogs is that you pick who is most heard. We just do our thing and other people link to our work. What does it mean if Jessica is not the only reason Feministing is popular? That perhaps, Vanessa, Ann, Celina, Jen and myself, have had a hand in the popularization and circulation of some of our most controversial posts. It means that Feministing isn't just one perspective. It means that we have all said things that matter in a variety of arenas and in a variety of ways.
We are one blog, one group blog, we are NOT the holy grail of feminism. All the writers here draw from a variety of authors, feminists, writers and experiences. There is no central conversation, everything is a tangent to something else that someone else wrote and our reflections to it. My voice as a women of color is integrated to the greatest extent that ANY voice can be integrated into a blog. Everything is a tangent, an intervention, an analysis, a (dare I say) BLOG POST.
It seems that some of the frustration is with the way our comments threads go, sometimes unmoderated and frequently offensive. It is important to note that we do not reflect the opinions of people in comments. That is the point of comments, that they are a diverse array of opinions. This is something we have been talking about and dealing with for a long time at Feministing and have yet to come to a solid understanding of what to do. We do not want to silence diverse opinions, but it is hard to find a balance between a dialectical dialog versus things we happen to disagree with (that make us and many of our supportive readers, upset). If one thing can be said about the ladies here at Feminsting, we very passionately believe in the things we write about. So it makes moderating comments very, very challenging.
We have hit a space where it feels like, we are damned if we do, damned if we don't. For some people, Jessica has come to embody (similar to Amanda, Jill and myself in the neocon blogosphere) all that is wrong with feminism and Feministing, when she is just ONE PERSON, who also worked her ass off and was in the right place at the right time, and yes, wrote a book. She is one voice and one perspective. As my friend just mentioned to me, "she's become iconic. She's no longer a real person. Despite the intimacy of blogging, who she really is is no longer relevant to the discussion." She has become a convenient target.
Critique of white feminism is necessary to keep movement alive. It is true that certain voices get to the top, but there are a variety of factors for that--and white-ness is one of them. But what if we stop to think about what some of the other ones might be? Why is it that I might get a book deal? What are all the rest of us are doing over here? THEN WHAT? DO WE WIN THEN?
No, we don't. Clearly this is difficult terrain to navigate as it is fueled with not just our politics but our intimate and dearly held feelings. There is no winner, just the vain hope of getting somewhere with what we are doing. If we fail to look at greater systemic issues (like why white women are positioned where they are verses women of color, or WHO decides the marketing of images, products and books) as opposed to hating on someone, who you don't know, then we all lose.
All of that said, I also want to say, "JESSICA I LOVE YOU and I APPRECIATE ALL OF THE WORK YOU HAVE DONE."
Internationally, girls are more likely than boys to be malnourished, suffer poverty, face violence and be refused an education.
There are 25 shelters nationwide that serve homeless queer youth.
A new novel is about two sisters who separately deal with domestic violence.
Leonard Nimoy: Size-positivity crusader.
Are Katie Couric's ratings low because she's a woman? (Answer: No.)
Japanese women are getting curvier, and clothing makers are changing their sizes to accommodate them.
There's a new musical about Grace O'Malley the "Pirate Queen."
Is a male version of the IUD -- reversible, nonhormonal, long-term contraception -- in the works?
Chlamydia: Not good. Let's hope that vaccine comes through.
A new study shows confident, assertive women are more likely to be harassed.
A group of conservative Chilean parliamentarians are seeking to roll back the country's progressive emergency contraceptive policy.
A high-school girl who was sent to the principal's office for saying "That's so gay" sued the school district, saying it was a violation of her First Amendment rights. The judge recently sided with the district.
Introducing the Butch Cookbook.
Our very own Jessica Valenti, founder and editor of Feministing.com, has published her first book Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters; released late April 2007. The book has since sparked discussions across the political spectrum.
Jessica has a Master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University. In addition to founding Feministing.com, Jessica is a co-founder of the REAL hot 100, a counter campaign to Maxim magazine's Hot 100, that instead highlights the important work young women are doing across the country. She has worked with such organizations as NARAL Pro-Choice America, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), Planned Parenthood and the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). Her writing has appeared in Ms. magazine, Salon, The Guardian (UK), Bitch, Alternet, The Scholar & Feminist and Guernica.
Here's Jessica...
Lisa Fu is the Western Organizing Director at NAPAWF. She is based in Los Angeles, CA.
Even though I read and hear about different racist, sexist and ignorant attacks that women of color face every day, every once in a while I’m caught off guard in a way that I can’t anticipate. Like this email our office got not too long ago:
Dear NAPAWF,My name is _(omitted)_, I am a designer. I am looking for an experienced seamstress and have tried to find one for a long time. Someone suggested that I contacted your organisation [sic] since a lot of asian women sew there [sic] own clothing and there are some really good seamstresses.
Maybe you can tell me where I can put an add [sic] up?
Thank you so much for your help.
After reading this, my reactive-pissed off-high-speed-stream of consciousness went a little something like this…
“What? Are you kidding? Is she serious?? Is this a joke? I’m so sick and tired of your ignorance, stereotypes and sense of entitlement towards us… the fact that you're trying to wipe away the history of struggle and movement-building in our communities in a single email, a brief thought. And you’re perpetuating stereotypes of small, nimble, obedient Asian women that we fight against every day of our lives - (rumbling pit of anger broils in my gut)…
Hey, why should I be surprised?...Isn’t this how most of this country thinks? I can only dream that the answer is no…Yeah, I’m one of those people swimming in the big bubble of social justice work, surrounded by fierce sisters, allies and comrades that live, breathe, and play like me... getting emails like this remind me that there’s a lot more work that needs to be done, blah blah blah... Yeah. I get it…but sometimes I like being in the idealistic bubble… is it really a bubble anyways? Maybe east and west coast bubbles and a few in between…
Yes, there are a lot of Asian women who are seamstresses – but the stereotype goes way deeper than that. It’s about recognizing the struggle of immigrant women workers working in sweatshops and their right to a workplace with fair wages, better working conditions, and free from sexual harassment, exploitation and discrimination. And recognizing the intersections between the garment industry with that of globalization, capitalism, racism, sexism and all those other –isms… Damn, so thanks for reminding me that really this is why I do the work that I do...thanks for reminding me that another world is possible…
So that was my stream of thought. I’m curious… what’s yours? How would you have responded? Share!
If you’re interested in learning more about the struggles and fight to support Asian women in the garment worker industry, here are a few of the many resources you can check out: Sweatshop Warriers, Garment Workers Center and read about one of the most famous cases in the country, the El Monte Thai Sweatshop Workers. (And for those of you wondering how we responded to this email – NAPAWF’s fabulous Courtney Chappell schooled her.)
Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu is a member of the NAPAWF San Francisco branch. She is the producer and co-host of a Tongan radio program titled “Education is Powerful� broadcasted on Radio Tonga, San Francisco. She is also a PhD student and part of a grassroots movement working to implement Pacific Islander Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
I’m the oldest daughter in a Tongan American family. Tonga, an archipelago located in the Pacific Ocean, neighbors the islands of Samoa, Fiji and Hawai’i. My new home here in the Bay Area currently hosts the largest Tongan community in the U.S. Although the 2000 census reports that we Tongans and other Pacific Islanders are some of the hardest working Americans here in California, our myriad contributions are often unrecognized and images of Tonganness are seldom painted with affirmative brush strokes.
Tongans are many times defined by our big bones and ample brown bodies. Our physical differences are “othered� and hyper visible in the media. These are crucial components in the systems of racializing Tonganness here in the U.S. According to a community based research report on Pacific Islanders released in 2006, the fingers and hands of young Tongan youths are frequently classified by the police as “weapons� similar to loaded machine guns and other dangerous ammunition. In the U.S. imagination, Tonganness is defined as an imminent threat, a “weapon� to be contained. Correspondingly, the hyper visibility of Tongans as athletes in the sports arenas and the simultaneous invisibility of Tongans in academia and other prominent institutions are a direct manifestation of these stereotypes.
Yolanda King, the eldest child of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who melded her father’s message of racial equality and nonviolence with her own calling as an actor and a motivational speaker, died on Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 51.
Yolanda King was an activist, actor, writer and tremendous activist for racial diversity.
Read more at the NYT.
The following is from a very good friend of mine, Jennifer Conrow, who works at a clinic that provides abortions. I'm hoping this post will just be a preview of this important, and usually missing perspective. I can't speak to whether or not this Jen is currently hungover.
In the wake of the most recent anti-choice ambush of Planned Parenthood, I wanted to take a moment to introduce everyone to the world of independent abortion provision and the philosophy of care that most independent abortion providers strive for. This philosophy often gets lost in all of the hullabaloo surrounding the Big Scary Abortion Debate because most independent providers don’t have the money or time to launch a high profile campaign about the level of care provided within our walls. Our priority is helping the women (and their families) who seek our care while simultaneously trying to navigate the murky waters of public policy and ensuring the safety of our patients as they wade through protesters and have surgery. We are so often put on the defensive, waging never ending legal battles that we rarely have the opportunity to talk about how we care for patients.
My facility is one of only two dedicated abortion providers in my state that provides terminations to 24 weeks and 6 days in a pregnancy (yes, that’s 6 months; a fact that can sometimes challenge even the most pro-choice among us and is not lost on the small percentage of women who have terminations at that stage in pregnancy). What differentiates us from the other provider is our dedication to a holistic approach to abortion care. In our world abortion is not just about the physical removal of a pregnancy from the body, but it’s about the heart and emotional well being of our patients as well.
So I'm here at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in dowtown New York, doing my best to keep my laptop on as the battery slowly dies a terrible death. There are some really interesting sessions today, so I'll do my best to liveblog them.
In the meantime, random frivolous Friday question: What song best describes your current mood? Mine is below.
Cuz sometimes it is just good.
Yeah you heard it right. Senator Sam Brownback actually argued on Wednesday that, "We talk about abortion, but abortion is a procedure. This is a life that we’re talking about. And it’s a terrible situation where there’s a rape that’s involved or incest. But it nonetheless remains that this is a child that we’re talking about doing this to, of ending the life of this child."
Crappy video quality, but you get the point.
I don't understand how this passes for a political position, as opposed to fundamentalist fringe psycho-babble, and should be totally overlooked. And apparently he thinks he has a uterus as well.
More feminist video goodness from the roundup at Fetch me my axe.
Kiran Ahuja is the Executive Director of NAPAWF and has been involved with the organization since 1999 as a national board member and co-founder of the Washington, D.C. chapter. She has practiced as a civil rights lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division where she worked on desegregation, bilingual, race and national origin discrimination issues in education-related civil rights cases.
As a young leader and woman of color in the women’s and reproductive rights movements, I find myself in meetings with seasoned and more experienced leaders. They often emphasize how many years they have been “in the movement.� As a rite of passage or precursor to an important statement or opinion, time served has become a badge of honor in the movement. Indeed, as a young leader I understand that length of time stands for depth of conviction, expertise, commitment, and hopefully, even wisdom.
At 35, I cannot claim to be a young leader. I am positive my more youthful sisters would balk at the idea of a 35-year-old being called “young,� but that is a statement alone about the progressive women’s movement: the movement and our ideas are maturing.
That I am one of the youngest leaders in the national women’s movement is telling and highlights a serious challenge for the movement – where and when do we make room for new, young and diverse leaders, and when do we see that the inclusion of them determines the success of our movement?
Developing young and diverse leadership remains one of the foremost challenges for the progressive women’s movement. A 2003 report by the Center for the Advancement of Women, Progress and Perils: A New Agenda for Women, noted that few women belong to women’s organizations and that women of color – specifically African American (63%) and Latinas (68%)—had a strong desire for a women’s movement than Caucasian women (41%). These statistics highlight the awkward juxtaposition of a sputtering women’s movement and a growing, potent constituency who crave a movement that puts them at the center.
With the rise of national women of color organizations, an interesting phenomenon is taking place. Several of the newer organizations are being led by young women, including NAPAWF, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and Refugee Women’s Network, to name a few. In NAPAWF’s case, though our founding sisters are now in their 40s and 50s, they consciously stepped back and created space that allowed for young leadership. Because APA women were simply fighting for space and voice within the women’s movement, there was little fighting among ourselves for position, power and recognition. Now NAPAWF is run by young APA women, the majority of whom are 30 and under.
But starting new organizations should not be the only way to build young and diverse leadership. We have to look within our organizations to see how and whether we are genuinely cultivating leadership. What type of training do young people receive in organizations? Are they allowed to present and speak for the organization? Are they given substantive work and meaningful mentorship? And now the more difficult question: Does an executive director or top leadership have a succession plan to allow for new and young leadership? There are mantras in the movement that ask, where are all the young people, and how do we sustain a movement without “fresh blood?� My question is, where are all the young, diverse and new leaders?
From more on this topic, click here.
A hotel in Indiana is in the process of constructing a women-only floor.
Hotel spokeswoman Andrea Groom says half of the business travelers today are women.She says some women don't feel safe in a strange city or don't like being approached by men in lounges.
The women-only rooms will have amenities not found in other rooms, such as chenille throw blankets and special bath products.
So I don't know if this women-only thing is for safety concerns or for girlie soaps, but either way I'm not a big fan. As I've written before about things like women-only train cars (created to try to curb sexual harassment) the idea of separating women out instead of trying to improve the world we're already in doesn't seem like much of a solution.
Check out Katha Politt's latest, 'Democracy' Is Hell, that takes on the laughable idea that women are now "free" in Iraq.
This is great. After Erin Davies' Volkswagen Beetle was defaced with "fag" and "u r gay," she decided to take action.
A lesbian in Albany, New York, Erin believes that the rainbow sticker on her car prompted the attack.
Being that she was on her way to her part-time job, Erin didn’t have time to call the police. So she got in her car and began to creep up the street. After getting only about a half block, people were already pointing and gawking at the homophobic graffiti on display....Erin made it to her part-time job, but left early so that she could call the police and report the incident. While waiting for the cops to arrive, she noticed over 50 people walk by her car. “It brought strangers out on the streets together to form a dialogue,� she said. “People were shocked, disturbed and outraged by what they saw.�
After thinking on it, Erin decided to drive her car around as it was to raise awareness.
“That night I was on Capital News 9 and initially decided I was going to drive the car for one week, which seemed like an eternity at the time,� said Erin. “Soon my timeline of a week turned into a month and so on and so forth.�The very next day, Erin received a call from a close friend of hers who set up a website and a myspace page for the aptly named, “fag bug.�
This summer, Erin is takig the "fag bug" on the road--she'll travel across the country and in Canada to encourage discourse about homophobia. Amazing.
Jennifer Jin Brower has been a board member of NAPAWF Seattle Chapter since 2001. She moved out to Seattle six years ago to get her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Washington. She currently runs a community garden through InterIm that mainly serves elderly, low-income, Asian gardeners and does tenant outreach in InterIm’s affordable housing units.
I am an adoptee. My parents adopted me from Seoul, Korea in 1981. I grew up in the mostly white suburbs of Michigan and had little exposure to the Asian community or opportunity to connect with my Korean identity. Being Asian in a conservative Midwestern town meant teasing, stares, comments, and racism. I learned to assimilate as my parent's were told to teach the adoptive child from the adoption agency. "Don't make them feel different, treat them like your other children, and be color blind."
Things changed after my first trip to Korea in 2000 and then when I moved to Seattle and joined the API Women and Family Safety Center (APIWFSC) and NAPAWF. I learned about the history of the community, the struggle for economic and social justice, and became an active member of local grassroots groups.
These experiences fueled my desire to learn more about my personal history and about global systems and politics that resulted in the phenomena of Korean adoptions. Additionally, I learned that some adoptees who returned to Korea had found their birth families. I had thought this was impossible but hearing their stories made me realize it could be a reality. Therefore, in Fall of 2006, I packed my bags for a four month trip to Korea. I stayed in Kimhae, Korea where I studied Korean language and culture.
I never expected to experience so many different things while I was there. Not only did I learn more about myself and what it meant to be Korean. I also learned that I will always be an outsider in a land where everyone looks like me. There are adoptees that have been living there for many years and speak the language fluently and blend in well and yet are still not seen as citizens but as perpetual foreigners.
A truly disappointing email from Planned Parenthood hit my inbox this morning, lauding Rudy Giuliani's position on abortion:
WASHINGTON, DC - In response to comments by Republican primary candidates during tonight's debate, Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Cecile Richards issued the following statement:"Giuliani's pro-choice position proves that you don't have to check your convictions at the presidential primary door. It's increasingly clear that the days of the anti-choice stranglehold on the Republican Party are numbered.
"While other Republican candidates pander to and fight over the extreme right wing within their party, Rudy Giuliani is leading the pack and he recognizes that standing up for women's health is a winning position. Freedom of choice and personal responsibility are bedrock values of the Republican Party. Now is the time for mainstream Republicans to raise their voices in support of this important issue.
Right. Clearly Giuliani is staking his campaign on his deep, unwavering commitment to women's health... He repeats that he's personally opposed to abortion, that he would support further restrictions, that he would appoint an anti-choice Supreme Court justice, and that overturning Roe would "be OK."
Apparently $900 in donations buys a lifetime endorsement from Planned Parenthood, no matter how weak your position on choice.
Fetch me my axe has a great roundup of feminism on YouTube, including this clip from the film I Was A Teenage Feminist.
Democrats plan to let a federal abstinence-education program die quietly next month, demonstrating that pursuit of their legislative agenda can sometimes be passive.The authorization for Title V abstinence-education grants expires at the end of June, and those on both sides of the sex-education debate agree that the $50 million-a-year mandatory-spending program — which draws an additional $37.5 million match from the states — stands little chance of winning an extension from a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Nothing is a done deal, so don't go breaking into song and dance just yet. But jeez, this put in me in one hell of a good mood this morning! (On the downside, there will probably be less "glass hymen" jokes in my future. Damn.)
I've been meaning to do this for a while (taking a cue from others). I've been way remiss lately in finding and reading new blogs, so I'll be lazy and let you do it for me...if anyone with a blog wants to whore some of their posts, do it in comments. Fun.
For those without a blog, a random question inspired by the Spiderman weirdness: If you could have a feminist superpower, what would it be?
You gotta love BoingBoing for taking it to the next level.
I have seen this in so many places at this point, but Zuzu has some proper analysis.
Gadzooks! I saw Spiderman on opening night, I love comic book movies. But I have to say, you may as well put all your analysis on gender, nationalism and race to the side. I guess that is what you have to do to enjoy the movies most of the time anyway.
OK, back to work. *sigh*
UPDATE: This picture was not from BoingBoing but originally published on Livejournal and was drawn by Nancy Lorenz. This has made people VERY VERY mad, I am very sorry I was bogged down with finals.
Again sorry for the mix-up.
Sorry for my lack of posts today, I am all types of in the middle of finals, but I will be back shortly. I shouldn't even look at you, blogosphere, but you are so addictive.
Just in case you are wondering, I am writing (or rather, should be writing) about the multiple ways that queer voices are marginalized in the mainstream political blogosphere. And how despite our attempts to decenter that fact and insert voices where we can, the norm is still "straight."
Am I imagining this?
Thoughts?
(and I will not be using it for my research, hehe, I am too far along for that, WOE IS ME!!! okay sorry)
Apparently some women are shelling out $1,850 every four months for a shot of collagen to the G-spot. This is what you get when you cross labiaplasty with the myth of the vaginal-only orgasm. Scary.
From the G-Shot official website:
The G-Shot® is a painless office procedure performed in your doctor’s office under local anesthesia. The actual injection usually takes less than 8 seconds and the total office visit time is usually less than 30 minutes. A specially designed speculum is used to assist in the deliver a specified amount of human engineered collagen directly into the G-Spot after local anesthesia. The G-Shot® augments (enlarges) the G-Spot. This results in a G-Spot about the size of a quarter in width, and one fourth of an inch in height (meaning the projection into the vagina). Note that results do vary.
There's a very long list of potential side effects. Doesn't it seem safer (and more economical) to invest in a few high-quality sex toys? Or maybe go out and find a new partner? Because after reading the testimonials, it becomes very apparent that this "enhancement" is just as much about making sex better -- and easier -- for your (male) partner: “My man is so excited about my G-Shot he can’t wait until I get home from work� and "After the G-Shot® it is simple to direct your partner to your amplified pleasure center.� The quotes seem to imply that women were stressed out and feeling like they were failing their partners by not coming fast enough. (“My G-Spot is always present and ready for action at a moments notice.�)
And this quote from the article is sadly revealing: "The main thing is it gives me a boost of self esteem," Sherrill said. Self esteem? As in, she's finally able to orgasm vaginally, just like she always thought she should? Somebody needs to get this lady some Betty Dodson literature, stat.
"I think getting addicted to the $1,800 every four months just to be able to function sexually is problematic. There are a lot of ways to get pleasure. Women really don't need a shot to be able to do it," [Dr. Bryna] Barsky-Ex said.
Exactly. I wonder how many of the women who sign up for this have a positive outlook on their bodies and their sexuality, a box full of sex toys at home, and partner who's really interested in making sure they have pleasurable sex. My guess is not very many.
Via Nerve. Also check out Dodson's ruminations on the G-spot.
I love me a good tshirt, and our gal Jaclyn Freidman has made several. After publishing an article on drinking and rape, Jaclyn received some less-than-polite comments. Including a couple that called her a "lying, man-hating whore." (Because she decided to write about being sexually assaulted in college--the nerve!)
Here's Jaclyn's response: "Well, I gotta say, that hurt. A lot. Until I realized it only had power because I let it. And what takes the piss out of a phrase faster than putting it on a cute tshirt?"
Indeed. So now you can buy shirts that say: lying man-hating whore; working hard to undermine your marriage; I hate your freedom; and hairy-legged lesbian. Fun.
Liezl Tomas Rebugio is the Anti-Trafficking Project Director for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
Human trafficking is one of the worst forms of exploitation and human rights violations. It’s become a multi-billion dollar industry with profits that rival the illegal drugs and arms trade. Trafficked persons are forced into various types of labor that include domestic servitude, servile marriage, sex work, sweatshop labor, and agricultural work. This is an important issue to NAPAWF, because 80% of trafficked persons globally are women and girls and two-thirds of persons trafficked into the U.S. are from East Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Nowadays, we hear a lot about human trafficking. But we don’t hear a lot about the intersection between human trafficking and other social justice struggles, particularly reproductive justice. NAPAWF believes that reproductive justice is achieved when all women and girls have the means and ability to make well-informed decisions about their bodies, their health, their families and their communities. With this in mind, reproductive justice plays a role in ending violence against women, economic justice, immigrant rights, and more. Allied organizations like Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice and SisterSong also talk how reproductive justice is connected with other human rights issues.
Some advocates refer to these human right violations as “Reproductive Oppression,� which is a means to control women’s reproductive lives and exploit their bodies and labor as a tool to oppress them based on their race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and immigration status.
Here's a little something interesting.
A group of House Democrats yesterday publicly repudiated the Pope’s recent suggestion that politicians who support abortion rights should be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.Eighteen House Democrats, led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), are responding to Pope Benedict XVI’s statement that indicated he would support Mexican bishops if they were to excommunicate Mexican legislators who voted last month to legalize abortion in Mexico City.
The statement reads: "We are concerned with the Pope’s recent statement warning Catholic elected officials that they risk excommunication and would not receive communion for their pro-choice views...Advancing respect for life and for the dignity of every human being is, as our church has taught us, our own life’s mission.�
“U.S. Presence in Iraq Promotes Muslim Feminism.�
That was the title of this FOX news piece by former Lt. Oliver North (conservative crook turned conservative rock star) for Mother’s Day yesterday, whose interpretation of “Muslim Feminism� is (shocker) the protection of Iraqi women by U.S. occupancy:
“Mother's Day. It’s a wonderful occasion for Ms. Pelosi and her comrades in Congress to reflect on what will happen to millions of Muslim women if Congress pulls the plug on their protectors.�
Because if anyone knows what’s best for Iraqi women, it’s someone who puts the term women’s rights in quotes.
Now, let’s look at a real feminist presence in Iraq.
Rebecca Sawyer is a queer hapa feminist/activist living in the Washington, DC area. She is one of two co-chairs for the DC chapter of NAPAWF.
When I received the email to guestblog for NAPAWF on feministing, I immediately volunteered to write on issues impacting queer Asian Pacific Americans (APAs). As a queer hapa feminist and one of several frequent commentators on all things queer for NAPAWF-DC, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to educate others on queer APA issues. Then, as I mulled over it a bit more, I realized, damn, that's a lot to cover.
And if you think about it, it really is. If you, like the fierce women of NAPAWF, understand that reproductive justice is a queer issue, just as ending employment discrimination is an APA issue, and that passing hate crimes legislation is a feminist issue, just as immigration is a queer issue, etc., etc., etc., you realize that I could present an encyclopedic volume on precisely all those issues facing queer APAs. Instead, I'd like to talk a little bit about the importance of defining our work and our communities.
I received an email just the other day announcing the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is releasing a new study on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer APAs. The press releases says the study, Living in the Margins (released on May 10), found "75 percent of respondents reported experiencing discrimination and/or harassment based on their sexual orientation and 85 percent reported experiencing discrimination and/or harassment based on their race or ethnicity." [Check out the full report online at the Task Force's website.]
This does not and should not come as a surprise to anyone. Especially when one considers the recent racist and homophobic remarks of the likes of Rosie O'Donnell and Isaiah Washington.
From that email, this stood out: the study's author, Alain Dang, states "these findings and others add to the growing body of evidence that support the need not only for community introspection but also for legislative intervention."
I agree. As a community working towards social change, we need to think about what's working and what's not.
For one thing, we're still not making that concrete individual impact. On top of all that activisty jargon of ensuring intersectionality in our work to create social change, we need to learn how to speak plainly about what this means for your ordinary, run-of-the-mill person. We need to share our stories with other people. We need to share our experiences as domestic workers (as the women from Casa de Maryland did with members of NAPAWF-DC recently), as queer APAs (as the women of Asian Pacific Islander Queer Sisters did with advocates at Asian Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project), and as immigrants (like Larry Chang, a gay Chinese-Jamaican man and a political refugee, did with members of the DC community).
For me, it means sharing my story as a proud, out, hapa feminist. It means telling my story of where I come from, where I am, and where I'm going.
What's your story and who are you telling it to?
I give Newsweek credit for recently coming out with a lengthy piece on transgenderism, and how the movement is not only making us question gender, but also recognizing its fluidity. However, I couldn't help singling out this statement:
"Still, even the most diehard feminist would likely agree that, even apart from genitalia, we are not exactly alike. In many cases, our habits, our posture, and even cultural identifiers like the way we dress set us apart."
But just because a transgender boy wants to wear a dress and nail polish doesn't mean that proves the inherent nature of what it means to be female; he is just falling into the same social gender role as a non-trans girl would. Another person interviewed continuously talked about his "femininity"; but is it really a natural femininity or a conditioned femininity because he biologically identifies as a woman? In other words, being as marginalized as they are doesn't mean that they still can't fall into gender stereotypes.
I just find it interesting that when the mainstream media discusses queer issues, it often keeps them under the feminine (flamboyant gay/ bi man, transwoman) and masculine (butch bi woman/lesbian, transman) binary umbrella. There are also straight "masculine" women and straight "feminine" men, "feminine" lesbians and "masculine" gay men, as well as many people who don't fall into either category.
Then again, how "fluid" can we expect the media to get when it's the biggest perpetrator of gender stereotypes?
Thoughts?
New Jersey Senate President Richard Codey introduced legislation on Thursday for New Jersey to be the first state to require both pregnant women and newborns to be tested for HIV.
The bill would make all pregnant women get tested twice; once early in their pregnancy and a second time in the third trimester. Newborns would be tested as well.
While I’m all for offering pregnant women an HIV test (which is the current law in NJ), I’m also for women making their own medical decisions about their pregnancy; an actual mandate interferes with that right, as well as opens the doors to even more policies that could invade those rights further. I don’t like it.
Jessica is in town today talking about her book. Make sure to stop by and say hi!
Monday, May 14 @ 7:00PM
Simmons College Main Building
Linda Paresky Conference Center (3rd Floor)
300 The Fenway, Boston
Priscilla Huang is the Policy and Programs Director at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
It’s Asian-Pacific American History Month, so I’m going to this as an opportunity to celebrate the history of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women. API women started making history a long time ago. In fact, the United States’ first immigration law targeted Asian women—particularly Chinese women—with the enactment of the Page Law of 1875. (Note: The Page Law pre-dated the notorious Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the law that most immigration scholars consider the “first� U.S. immigration law.) Facially, the law prohibited the entry of Chinese prostitutes. In practice, the law acted to prevent most “Oriental� women from immigrating to the U.S. The law presumed that all Asian women seeking entry to the U.S. were prostitutes unless the woman could “prove� to immigration officials that she was not. You can imagine how many Asian women were actually certified and allowed into the U.S. (Answer: About 60 women per year.)
Unfortunately, the struggles of API women are still being minimized 133 years later. At NAPAWF, I constantly run into the problem of trying to advocate for a group of women that is often left out of the larger feminist picture. API women (and men) are plagued by the “model minority� myth. From an advocate’s perspective, this is problematic because it creates the impression that all Asian Americans are wealthy, educated, and healthy. The myth dismisses the reproductive health disparities that Asian and Pacific Islander women suffer, and masks the many barriers that we encounter when accessing reproductive and sexual health care. It also allows mainstream health providers and researchers to ignore the needs of API women and devote less resources and services to our community.
For a while now, all of us at Feministing have been talking about how to better link our work with all of the amazing feminist activism happening on the ground. There are so many incredible organizations--and incredible women!--doing national and grassroots work that it's difficult to write about all of it. Also, when it's other folks who are really the experts, it feels almost disingenuous to write about their work on their behalf. So we figured what better way to highlight activism in different communities than to let women speak for themselves.
This is where our new "Voices of..." campaign comes in. Every month (we're hoping), Feministing will feature a week-long series of posts gathered by a sponsoring organization or activist.
Today, we're kicking off our Voices of API Women week with help from Priscilla Huang at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. All of us here are really excited about this project; we hope that it will not only shine a spotlight on different kinds of activism and help others promote their work, but that it will also make Feministing a better tool and forum for feminist thought and action.
Ministers in the UK may give all women the legal right to breastfeed in public as well as give breastfeeding breaks at work. Sweet.
The discussion has been brought up due to a memo signed by nearly 200 politicians, “The Breastfeeding Manifesto,� (awesome title) which brings up the health issues -- for mother and child -- that arise from women not being allowed to breastfeed during work as well as uses examples of breastfeeding women being forced to leave public spaces.
I wonder what our legislators would say if we brought them our own Breastfeeding Manifesto. I think “ha� might be the right word?
The ACLU has a Mother's Day action to push for ratification of CEDAW -- the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.
Caryl Rivers explains how the media perpetuate women's fear of being a bad mother.
It's still taboo to say you have no interest in ever becoming a mother.
Can GPS devices be used to stop abusers?
Yes, the marriage-industrial complex really has gotten this out of control.
Most women who seek abortions in China aren't being forced to comply with the "one child" policy, they're young and single.
Giuliani, who said overturning Roe would "be OK" in the May 3 debate, is now supposedly a pro-choice candidate.
Papa Ratzi, on his papal visit to Brazil, endorses the excommunication of Catholics who endorse pro-choice policies -- with language so strong that the Vatican toned down the transcript of his speech
Why the former head of Catholics for a Free Choice, Frances Kissling, hearts Roe. And why she stayed silent on the issue of "partial-birth" abortion -- until now.
Dahlia Lithwick on why women shouldn't apologize -- or feel stupid -- for taking internet harassment seriously.
Feminist Souad Sbai calls for more rights for muslim women who immigrate to Europe.
Why aren't pro-choice Democrats pushing to repeal the Hyde Amendment?
Reviewing the latest model kidnapping-torture flick.
The American Psychological Association evaluates "post-abortion syndrome."
Some states move to increase regulation of crisis-pregnancy centers.
Randall Tobias, who pushed abstinence programs abroad and was revealed to enjoy "massages" from DC sexworkers, is not the first public abstinence advocate to violate the strict moral code he touted.
The situation for women in Iraq grows ever worse.
The divorce rate is at its lowest since 1970. Probably because people are getting married later, or choosing just to live together instead.
The Texas legislature officially overrules the governor's HPV vaccination mandate. And New Hampshire has avoided controversy by not making the vaccine required for school entry, but instead making it free. And the strategy seems to be working.
Plus, there have been conflicting messages in recent reporting about the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine.
Iranian women's rights activists are seen as "Trojan horses" of Western influence, which makes it hard for them to accept help from Western advocacy groups. It's also hard for the NGOs, which don't want to be seen as pushing for military intervention for regime change in Iran.
Kansas nixes abstinence-only sex ed. And Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick calls for an end to abstinence-only education in his state.
A poll commissioned by a national abstinence organization shows that parents would rather see sex ed that emphasizes abstinence but also teaches about contraception. Which is... comprehensive sex ed. The no-sex-until-hetero-marriage crowd is erroneously touting this as public support for abstinence-only programs.
Meanwhile, a Florida school -- which contracts with a crisis-pregnancy center to provide its sex ed -- brings in an abstinence-only speaker, then releases a flier calling it an "abstinence rally." Parents are pissed.
The high cost of America's hyper-masculine culture.
Plan B has been over-the-counter (kinda) for nearly a year, but has access really expanded? ACOG reports access varies greatly from state to state.
Rebecca Traister writes a mash note to Jane Fonda.
A new Iranian film is about women who dress up as boys in order to be allowed in to watch a soccer match.
Parents of Down syndrome children are reaching out to other parents who find out (via a prenatal test) that they are pregnant with a Down syndrome child. Dana responds here, and Salon's Peter Birkenhead weighs in with a moving post about he and his wife's decision to abort.
From left to right: Make/shift founders Jessica Hoffmann, Stephanie Abraham and Daria Yudacufski. Photo by Christopher Bazin.
The first issue of Make/shift magazine is now out and about. Founded and created by Jessica Hoffman, Stephanie Abraham and Daria Yudacufski, make/shift creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art.
Based in Venice, California, make/shift is produced by an editorial collective that is committed to anti-racist, transnational, and queer perspectives. According to the magazine's mission statement, "We know there’s exciting work being done in various spaces and forms by people seriously and playfully resisting and creating alternatives to systematic oppression. Make/shift exists to represent, participate in, critique, provoke, and inspire more of that good work."
The second issue of make/shift is in the works and will be released this fall. Here's Jessica, Stephanie and Daria...
You gotta love how the media just loves to throw the word feminist around just because someone said something that is slightly pro-woman. In the post-Imus fall-out Snoop Dogg did manage to emerge as a spokeperson for women in hip-hop videos (which is both frightening and endearing). I mean Doggystyle is one of my favorite positions albums, but I don't exactly look to Snoop for political commentary, what with his own connection to GGW and a clearly misogynistic attitude throughout his music and public personality.
So I was surprised to read that he has been defending "video ho's," a term that has gained fluency, but is nonetheless degrading and inappropriate.
The rapper is insisting the semi-naked girls in his videos are simply 'following their dreams'.Snoop waxed philosophical as he told MTV.com: "Who's to say that these women in videos are hos? They are classy women. Not every girl in the videos has sex with the rappers. A lot of these women do this as a means of modelling or being appreciated for their looks."
"The women allow themselves to be in these videos. We don't force them to be in these videos. They want to be seen, and they have calendars, portfolios, headshots, cards."
I do agree with him on one level. I don't like the way "video vixens" are talked about, as opposed to talked too. And I think it is good to counter the belief that these women will do anything to get to the top, sleep with the rappers, appear naked for free, etc. It feeds into inaccurate stereotypes about women of color's sexuality and self-esteem. I do bet that a lot of these women are savvy and recognize what they are doing and why.
But I don't think this gets to the heart of the issue. The misogyny for me in "video ho" culture is not that the women are choosing to do this, but the question of a) what other choices do they have for careers and b) ultimately where does dancing take them? It is not some utopia where you will dance in one video and then you will make it in a career in modeling, acting or dancing. It is really competitive and when you are already seen as a "video ho" I am thinking it is much harder to break out.
Everyone wants to make dancing in videos a morality issue. Should these women be "allowed" to dance this way, should our children be "allowed" to consume these images? Ultimately, for me it is a labor issue. Are they getting paid what they should, especially in comparison to the rappers that make the videos and are they getting any kind of longterm benefits?
I feel like I could write a much longer post on this, but some initial thoughts?
And Snoop is NOT a feminist.
Author Pam Stone talks about the "opt out" myth.
(Thanks to Andrew for the link.)
Due to some technical difficulties (namely my lack of internet access at home), there's no video this week. However, I do have a little story, and a follow-up question for everyone.
Last night I went out with some friends to celebrate an engagement. Good times. At bar number two, randomly, some guy (I'll call him White Linen Pants, or WLP for short) came over and hugged and kissed by friend on the head. Awkward! Later, we were dancing, and he came back again. And again. And again. Awkward the first time. Vaguely funny the second time. Irritating the third time. Seriously pissing me off by the fourth time. And this shit happens all the time. Nothing rare about it. This is not behavior I see women engaging in.
Sure, drunk people tend to be more friendly with strangers, which is fine. Maybe we'll talk to a group of people, but I've never seen a woman repeatedly return, touching, and physically pushing her way into a group like that. Here's what bugs me about it. At least two of the times WLP came to visit, none of us even talked to him. I certainly didn't say, "Hey, come over here, WLP. Put your arm around me, too." Don't even get me started on the woman he held on his shoulder and asked us to give "birthday spankings" to.
Before starting to write this, I took a little survey of some of the women I was with, and asked them, after the numerous visits, why didn't anyone tell him to go away. I got a few different answers. Some said because WLP wasn't really near them, or dancing with or hugging them individually, he wasn't bothering them. Another said she thought he was funny. And another said it never even occurred to her to ask him to go away. That got me thinking. Because I did think about asking him to go away. But I didn't. Not because I wasn't adamant about him leaving, but because I was worried about how it would seem. I didn't want to be the angry, mean girl. I didn't want to "spoil the fun." Except this guy's presence was spoiling some of the fun for me.
Instead of just having a great time with my friends, every time he came over, he was the center of attention, and I was annoyed. Along with the hangover, this left me thinking, especially about my very cool, feminist friend who didn't consider the option of asking this guy to go somewhere else.
I swear this isn't a plug, but one thing that has been sticking with me from Jessica's book is how important it is to analyze the things we do from a feminist perspective. Not to follow any sort of rules, but to really think about the reasons behind behavior. So that's what I'm doing.
Now, you help. What do you all think? Why didn't anyone say something (at least among those of us who wanted WLP to fuck off)? Was it the booze that made me want to put being "nice" to someone else above my own good time? And if, as someone just suggested to me, you think I'm "overreacting," why do you think so?
She went to bed one night, in the bedroom she shared with her boyfriend, and a man she thought was her boyfriend got into bed and had sex with her. It turned out the man was her boyfriend's brother who pretended to be her boyfriend...Is that rape? The Massachusetts Supreme Court says no.
Lovely, huh? Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday that consent for sex obtained through fraud or deceit isn't rape. The court said that MA's law defines rape as intercourse "by force and against [the] will" of the victim and that "fraudulently obtaining consent to sexual intercourse does not constitute rape as defined in our statute."
Almost disturbing as the decision: the picture that ABC decided to accompany the article.
Our girl Celina has a great piece up at HuffPo about her Abuelita, make sure to check it out. Here's a snippet:
I remember worrying about losing my Abuelita shortly after the concept of death really sunk in. I would wake up crying after a nightmare, with fear and rage storming inside my little body. I must have been 5 or 6 years old. I think Bambi did the trick. I figured I still had a ways till my parents died, given our age differences; knock on wood. But me and my Abuelita, there was a 67-year age difference between us! What chance did we have of sharing a long life together?! But how could I live in a world without my Abuelita?
Because women can never feel bad enough about their bodies. The New York Times had an article yesterday about the latest in "hot" bodies: a "well-chiseled clavicle."
That's right ladies, not only do we need skinny waists to be pretty, we need skinny collarbones.
I think Emily at Gawker put it best: "Stay tuned, Styles readers, for the inevitable follow-up story—'Is Clavicle-Whittling The New Labioplasty'?"
Now all you anti-woman folks please write that down and repeat. It doesn't matter to whom they are addressed, regardless of a woman's politics or her position in society, rape threats are never OK. Several readers sent in this horrible radio clip today (warning: it is REALLY offensive) and I am truly disgusted.
I may not agree with Condoleeza Rice's or Laura Bush's politics, at all, but under no circumstances would I think it is OK to threaten them with sexual violence. What is up with all the verbal rape threats to women lately? Is this some kind of paranoid misogynist trend because so many (not that many) women are gaining access to power?
Good stuff. (If you go to the YouTube page, try to ignore all the misogynist douchebaggery.)
Notice anything about the bylines?
The New Republic is having bloggers respond to Jonathan Chait's recent article about the netroots. Apparently, "bloggers" don't have vaginas.
Something that has really been on my mind lately is the way that younger women--younger feminists, in particular--are being "blamed" for (what I think is) a largely media-created craze about girls "gone wild." This came up recently on a feminist listserv that I'm on--actually it comes up there a lot--so I've somewhat edited (and added to) an email I sent around for posting here...
I think what I find most frustrating about this conversation--whenever it seems to happen--is how young feminist discourse about sex somehow always gets compared to, and talked about in relation to, the very trendy Girls Gone Wild theme.
I feel like there's a tendency in these conversations to conflate the probably not-very-thought-out (or drunken) actions of girls "gone wild"? and young feminist actions surrounding sex--like certain burlesque shows or events. Sure, there are conversations to be had about both kinds of performance, but talking about them as if they're the same thing seems very dismissive to me.
I keep seeing these threads where folks say that young feminists somehow think that Girls Gone Wild is "empowering"? or "feminist."? What young feminists--or even young women--say this?! I don't think that anyone is trying frame drunken performances for male pleasure as feminist. And I think that if you talked to the young women participating in GGW or similar things, most would say that they do it because it's "fun."? (And it would pay to have conversations with, rather than about, these young women about why they think it's fun and what that says about what girls are learning about pleasure.) But even if the occasional young woman did use feminist rhetoric to explain "going wild," it's not because of third wave feminism--it's because of the mainstream appropriation of feminist language.
It just irks me to see that just because young feminists want to have a conversation about things like GGW without finger-wagging at the girls involved and while recognizing that all sex and sexual performances aren't exploitative, we'e somehow seen as simply okaying it using feminism. The truth is much different, and much more complex.
An aside: What also upsets me about this conversation (and all the GGW hype) is that it frames most young women as being participants in this kind of culture--as if we're all just dying to be Paris Hilton. The young women I know are doing amazing, political, active things, and are a far cry from the creepy-shirt-wearing, wild gals I keep hearing about from the media.
I'm taking my new wheels out for a spin this afternoon...just wishing I would see some cool ladies like these on the sidewalks of Queens.
Yesterday brought some bad health news: According to a new study, certain strains of HPV could cause throat cancer.
A reader sent in the above screenshot of a Google News headline and accompanying picture related to the story. Cause nothing says oropharyngeal cancer like a sexy, lipstick-ed, slightly-opened women's mouth.
Oh, and I'd like to point out that--despite the misleading pic--the study linked both fellatio and cunnilingus to an increase in throat cancer occurrences.
Finally some good news on this case. The teen girl in Ireland whose fetus is terminally ill has (finally) been granted permission to go to England to get an abortion. But not, of course, without going through hell first.
Pope Benedict issued a warning to Catholic politicians, saying that they risked excommunication from the Church and should not receive communion if they are pro-choice.
It was the first time that the Pope, speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him on a trip to Brazil, dealt in depth with a controversial topic that has come up in many countries, including the United States, Mexico, and Italy.
The Pope's comment comes after Mexican Church leaders' threats to excommunicate legislators who voted to legalize abortion in Mexico City.
Wow. Reuters reports that Somali security forces are taking and burning Muslim women's veils in an attempt to stop Islamist insurgents from disguising themselves as women.
...One girl, 17-year-old Iftin Hussein, said she had left her veil at home to avoid encounters with the police. "Yesterday, I was forced to run away to escape from being unveiled. This is wrong, but we cannot do anything, we are powerless," she said.
Ever since Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem gave Stephen Colbert a little "ice cream threeway", feminists have had a special place in their heart for Colbert. And now a new blog, Feminists for Colbert, makes it official.
And since it seems a bit serendipitous that the shirts featured on so much of the blog share a name with my book, I figured this would be a good time to mention that I'll actually be on The Colbert Report on June 5. (Giving me just enough to build up a puke-inducing amount of nervousness.)
Because reproductive justice for women is indistinguishable from the battle over which cola is more refreshing.
In this Associated Press article about anti-choice "crisis pregnancy" centers, there is one doozy of a quote that should tell you exactly where these folks are coming from:
"The state should not be in a position to put pressure on one industry's competitor,'' said Diane Fell, the executive director of Astoria's Door of Hope. "We are competitors for Planned Parenthood. It's like Coke saying to Pepsi, 'You can't be on my block, go away.'''
Yes, that's exactly what it's like.
A reader sent me this article about Sir Patrick Moore, an astronomer and presenter of The Sky at Night, who recently said that the BBC has been ruined by women and should be gender segregated.
My only question: how seriously can we take the opinion of someone whose monocle (yes, monocle) is held in place by rogue eyebrow hair?
Maura Kelly at Slate has an interesting article about the electronic surveillance of batterers.
Just as GPS can find a lost driver, it can also alert cops and targets whenever a domestic-violence offender enters a restricted zone, like the area surrounding a woman's home or office. Police put an electronic bracelet on the batterer that sends a signal to computer servers at headquarters if he goes anywhere he shouldn't. Then, if he violates a restraining order, they can call the woman to let her know that he is on his uninvited way. The idea is to buy women crucial time, even if it's only minutes, so they can get away. The notification loop also kicks in if the offender tries to remove or deactivate the bracelet.
Eight states have laws in place that allow for the electronic surveillance of abusers--a preventative (and punitive, obviously) tool that former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey calls "a no-brainer." This is something that could save women's lives.
Kelly notes that tracking abusers isn't a cure-all: it doesn't protect victims from emotional or long distance abuse (like harassing phone calls, etc), it could (like restraining orders tend to do) simply piss abusers off more, and while few people Kelly spoke to seemed concerned about this--there are clear civil liberties issues.
It's hard for me to be concerned about these other issues when so many people are killed by abusers--shouldn't their safety be a priority? What do you think?
This short film from the VC Film Festival is really good. It made me think about a lot of different things about the way we assume, talk about and just blatantly overlook the experience of transgender folks.
He is so brave. Thoughts?
We've had the racist Halloween costumes. We've had the Disney movie. We've had multiple Hollywood flicks (including the most recent Brave New World, which I heard is horrendous).
Tonight at 8 p.m., PBS is airing a special titled "Pocahontas Revealed," a look at the woman's life from archeologists' perspective. Should be interesting.
Check out this great report from Media Matters, "Locked Out: The Lack of Gender and Ethnic Diversity on Cable News Continues."
The report's not-so-shocking conclusion? "[C]able news remains an overwhelmingly white and male preserve. "
I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for high heels; I love them. But after seeing this article and illustration (cropped version above) from The Washington Post, I'm rethinking my fashion sense. Ouch.
Doaa Khalil Aswad was a member of northern Iraq's Yazidi religious sect but, according to local officials, was murdered on April 7 by her brothers and uncles after she allegedly converted to Islam.In the video - on the Kurdish website Jebar.Info and rapidly spreading on the internet - Aswad is shown lying in the road as men kick her and throw a large lump of rock or concrete at her head.
Her face is drenched in blood but uniformed and armed members of the Iraqi police stand by and do nothing to prevent the attack.
I don't want to write about this, because writing about it feels like an act of violence, but I don't really feel like I have a choice. As I discussed with my good friend Neela earlier, how do I engage in talk of 'honor killings' (which are really just displays of woman hate and have nothing to do with culture) without it turning into a "how can we bring democracy to such a backwards place" conversation. That said, I am going to have to agree with Twisty that this is just vile and Amanda about victim-blaming and the rhetoric used to support that. I couldn't watch the video and I am not going to post it here for a variety of reasons. Violence of this kind is a production of male ego and woman-hate and this truth is pitifully disguised when justified through religious or cultural circumstances. There is no cultural defense when it comes to mob mentality, woman-hate and violent murder. Unless, you want to talk about the global culture of patriarchy.
As I browsed articles, questions of whether or not the woman had converted to Islam, or whether or not it was just an honor killing, or if she fell in love with the wrong man, were used as possible explanations. As though any of those reasons can justify such a hideous display of violence.
Activists in Kurdistan agree.
Hundreds of women from various parts of Kurdistan Region took to the streets of Erbil on Sunday to protest the brutal killing of Du'a Khalil Aswad, a 17-year-old Yazidi girl, and Kurdistan government called for the murderers to be brought to justice."We do strongly condemn the killing of women under the pretext of honor and the killing and mutilating of the body of Du'a on April 7, 2007," a statement released by the protesters read.
The rally came as police in Bashiqa, a district northeast of Mosul where the incident took place, said that two arrests have been made in the murder, and four others who have been implicated, including two of the victim's uncles, have escaped.
Around 40 women and feminist organizations from various parts of Kurdistan Region organized the rally.
"Taking revenge on women under the pretext of honor is a terrorist act," read a banner carried by the demonstrators.
The protesters called upon the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to take decisive action regarding the incident, and work to stop honor killings and set a limitation for the power of tribal chiefs.
This one act of violence has prompted several acts of violence to follow. Don't tell me this is just about *them* and doesn't happen *here* (read-lynching, gang rape, etc. events quite indigenous to the "free world"). This type of culturally sanctioned patriarchal mob mentality woman-hate happens everywhere. And furthermore, don't tell me that the use of torture by US troops in Iraq as part of the campaign for democracy hypocrisy is not connected to the perpetuation of these not so isolated instances of disgusting glorified displays of violence.
According to a post left on Digg, when you search Google for 'she invented,' it asks you, did you mean 'he invented.' Not shocking I suppose, but no doubt one of the many ways that cultural and social norms get embedded in language. Adding 'she' confused the search engine, because it is assumed that an inventor is always he. According to the post and many of Digg's thoughtful comments from mini-misogynist D&D playing teenagers it must be because women don't invent things and never have.
So our task here is double, first what did she invent? And if SHE didn't then what are the historical, social, racial, economic and gendered reasons for that?
And second, how do we resist sexist language? How about, don't call me a woman blogger, I would never call you a man blogger. Asking where women are in any number of settings (including but not limited to blogger, inventor, scientist, engineer or doctor) reestablishes that the normal archetype of these folks is gendered male. It is similar to saying male nurse. Certain work is assumed to be done by a certain genders so it surprises us when the wrong gender is doing the wrong work and it must be named, with he, she, male or female.
Now what this says about Google, well I leave that to you. . .
Check this out.
Total Chaos and Hip Hop Theatre Festival Bay Area May 8-20 present:
IS THERE FREEDOM AFTER HIP HOP?
A DISCUSSION ON HIP HOP POLITICS
Can Hip Hop create a national agenda for political change? Do we really have the power to change our cities and the country?
FREE Forum Discussion
Jeff Chang, Total Chaos editor
Jerry Quickley, performance poet
Malkia Cyril, director of Youth Media Council
Troy Nkrumah, chair of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention
Rosa Clemente, hip-hop activist
Moderated by: Davey D of Hard Knock Radio (94.1 FM KPFA)
Tuesday, May 8, 7 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street at 3rd Street
San Francisco
Just a reminder to folks that the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls' online auction ends tonight at 8pm. So get bidding!
Disney has created their own line of wedding dresses to represent the many princesses of Disney movies. Ew.
It's called Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings Collection, where the dresses are meant to represent characters of Disney classics, like Cinderella (in the pic to the right), Jasmine and Snow White. Mara Urshel, owner of the popular Chelsea bridal salon, said she expects the dresses to be top sellers, particularly for younger brides. And exactly how young are we talking?
Even the quotes in the article on thoughts of the dresses were from 12 and 13 year old girls. What the fuck is going on here? I don't know if this some sort of sick scheme to make Disney child brides or convince young girls that they actually can grow up to be a princess -- but only if they get married! Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Thanks to MAC for the link.
Recent reports are showing that there are more girls than boys aged 12-14 years old that are engaging in binge drinking. The Center for Disease Control calls this “an alarming trend.�
While I’m curious as to why more girls are drinking than boys at that age and it’s obviously not a good thing, I don’t understand why it’s so alarming that girls are drinking more than boys. The CDC states:
“There are a multitude of dangers. . . Drinking and driving; being more likely to be sexually active; more likely to be engaged in sex without protection; more likely to be in physical fighting; more likely to have sexual abuse; more likely to use drugs."
A lot of "sex" dangers in there. I would think most of these are the same “risks� for boys, don’t you think? By saying this finding is "alarming," are they implying that a 13-year old boy is more capable of handling serious drinking than a 13-year old girl? Just a thought. But regardless, it is a little crazy that girls this young are engaging in binge drinking. I don't think I ever really got drunk until I was 17.
Checking out the Onion this morning, I nearly mistook it for iVillage. That's right -- a special women's issue. Chock full of cleaning tips, weight-loss advice, women's history timeline, and faux feminism! The whole thing is packaged like a douche ad, which makes it extra realistic.
The best part, though?
"As recently as 15 years ago, a woman could only feel empowered by advancing in a male-dominated work world, asserting her own sexual wants and needs, or pushing for a stronger voice in politics. Today, a woman can empower herself through actions as seemingly inconsequential as driving her children to soccer practice or watching the Oxygen network."
This is the premise that Female Chauvinist Pigs was built on -- if a self-identified feminist is doing something, that must mean she feels "empowered" by it. And it's also a lovely satire of the odd perspective that the Pussycat Dolls are somehow icons of modern feminism:
Whereas early feminists campaigned tirelessly for improved health care and safe, legal access to abortion, often against a backdrop of public indifference or hostility, today's feminist asserts control over her biological destiny by wearing a baby-doll T-shirt with the word "Hoochie" spelled in glitter.
And, finally, an infographic of euphemisms for menstruation. Hilarious. As a huge fan of the applicator-less tampon, I hope #8 really takes off. (#1 and #6 aren't so bad, either.)
A southern state in India is planning on implementing legislation that will ban women from working night shifts to “ensure their safety.�
The Karnataka government is in the process of passing the bill as a part of the Karnakata Shops and Establishments Act, where women will be prohibited from working later than 8 p.m. in all professions except those within the IT industry and hospitals.
Once again, women are being punished to avoid the possibility of rape or assault while men’s responsibilities are bypassed. After all, it’s much easier to just restrict their rights to work rather than actually deal with the problem. (At the same time, something tells me that the actual well-being and safety of women is not necessarily the government’s concern.)
And apparently not the media's either.The coverage of the story doesn’t discuss the potential financial burden the curfew can have on women (after all, they are being taken from their jobs), but focuses on the problems it will cause for the hotel industry. (Since much of their workforce are women.)
It’s nice to see where everyone’s priorities are.
Check out this review of Tori Amos’ new album, “American Doll Posse,� which is said to be a critique of the Pussycat Dolls’ ridiculousness.
Has anyone heard the album? Thoughts?
Fuck.
After appealing to the high court, it looks like the young woman in Ireland who was being withheld from leaving the country to seek an abortion in the UK is not being granted permission to leave.
While the Health Service Executives (who were originally prohibiting her from leaving) agreed on Friday to allow her to travel to the UK for the abortion as long as the judge ruled it was appropriate and under other conditions, the judge stated that granting the order would amount to a failure to protect the rights of the fetus and hence would be unlawful and "improper."
Now the HSE is trying to fix their fuck-up by bringing a judicial action review, saying that the judge misconstrued the law and that the woman should be allowed to travel.
Bush brings forced-pregnancy advocates to new levels of ecstacy by vowing to veto any legislation expanding abortion rights. No comment on whether he'd also veto a pro-contraception bill like the Prevention First Act.
Rebecca Traister on Ricki Lake's new childbirth documentary.
Another entry in the long-running feminist debate over sexwork.
Morgan Stanley must shell out $46 million to settle a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit brought by the National Council of Women's Organizations.
New York Times TV critic calls the women of "Grey's Anatomy" feeble and pitiable.
Scott Lemieux reviews Melody Rose's new book about chipping away at Roe.
Garance argues for raising the age of consent to participate in porn from 18 to 21.
How de-unionization hits women -- especially Latinas -- particularly hard.
The politics of the female orgasm.
One-third of the historically male Pentagon Press Corps is now female.
How pro-choice advocacy and birth activism go hand-in-hand.
Mainstream media picks up the story of harassment of female bloggers.
Jenn Pozner explains why the right-wing cable news pundits really hate Rosie O'Donnell.
The U.S. military reportedly thwarted a planned attack on Iraqi schoolgirls.
Shockingly, the Imus debacle has not reformed shock-talk radio.
Barbara Carrellas is an author, sex educator, and theater artist. Her most recent books are Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century and Luxurious Loving: Tantric Inspirations for Passion and Pleasure. She conducts Urban Tantra workshops throughout New York City and is the co-founder of Erotic Awakening, a groundbreaking series of workshops which toured the United States and Australia. Believe me, her list of amazing accomplishments goes on and on.
Barbara is currently directing her partner Kate Bornstein in Kate’s new solo show, “Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger.� They also frequently perform and tour their sex positive, gender-bending lecture/performance piece, “Too Tall Blondes Do Sex, Death & Gender.� Barbara is also the Dean of Femmenergy at Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want To Be Girls, a crossdressing academy.
I corresponded with Barbara over email on her new book Urban Tantra. Here’s Barbara…
My friend and classmate Trevor is putting together a collection of pieces on masculinity, called Beyond Masculinity.
Gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer men's gender identities often exist somewhere outside the traditional categories of "masculine" and "feminine." Sissies, drag queens, and leather daddies alike play with gender in a way that cannot be accounted for in traditional understandings of maleness. This collection -- part blog, part anthology, part audiobook -- aims to shatter traditional understandings of maleness and point towards a new understanding of how queerness and gender intersect.
This project looks awesome. I am very excited about the new growth of masculinity studies, the potentials it holds for feminism, and to help us in thinking about all the diverse sides of sexuality and gender studies, as we think about gender equity. So contribute or email to someone you think would be perfect.
So I'm running on about three hours of sleep and am stressed like mad. (Hence the lack of posts today, apologies.) So thank goodness that my orchid plant--which I've been nursing back to health for about six frigging months--finally decided to bloom again. It made me feel a million times better.
Total non-feminist question for comments...what's your favorite flower/plant?
Thanks to Jess Wakeman for sending me Dictionary.com's Word of the Day for May 2, 2007. It's a doozy.
termagant \TUR-muh-guhnt\, noun:1. A scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; a shrew.
2. Overbearing; shrewish; scolding.
If only it rolled off the tongue easier, I'd reclaim that shit.
Check out this Newsweek interview with Courtney Martin, Feministing contributor and author of the newly-released Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. It's a great piece with an unfortunate title: "How Feminism Got Corrupted." (Sigh.)
This week's report is about the always entertaining topic of abstinence-only programs.
(Thanks Amber for introducing me to the term Vessel of Honor)
So we have a good news/bad news situation.
The good news: Today the House passed a bill that would add gender and sexual orientation to the categories covered by federal hate crimes law. (Under current federal law, hate crimes are acts of violence against people based on race, religion, color, or national original.)
The bad news: The White House has already had issued a veto threat against the legislation.
Moral of the abstinence-only bookmark: Cinderella didn't leave her virginity behind on the palace steps for the prince to find, now did she? So don't have sex. Or something.
Does anyone else find it telling that abstinence-only folks rely on fairy tales and the like?
Astoria, Queens (where I grew up and now live) is home to perhaps the only homeless shelter in New York spefically for for transgendered youth.
Yes, I know we've posted this before. But I meant to post it again for Equal Pay Day and I forgot. Plus, I really like Batgirl.
It's that time of year again...when Salary.com lets us know how much money moms would bring in if their work were waged. This year, the company figured out that the 10 jobs moms work would bring in $138,095 a year.
The typical mother puts in a 92-hour work week, the company concluded, and works at least 10 jobs. In order of hours spent on them per week, these are: housekeeper, day-care center teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive officer and psychologist. By figuring out the median salaries for each position, and calculating the average number of hours worked at each, the firm came up with $138,095 -- three percent higher than last year's results.Even mothers who work full-time jobs outside the home put in $85,939 worth of work as mothers, according to Salary.com.
Of course, women's unwaged labor isn't just a U.S. thing; women and girls do 2/3 of the world's work, most of it unwaged. For more information (and some cool stories) check out the work being done with the Global Women's Strike, where women across the world organize strikes to protest the lack of wages for "caring work."
To check out The Scholar and Feminist Online and its blog. And join in on the conversation!
The fabulous Guernica magazine has an interview up with Iraqi feminist Yanar Mohammed, founder of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI): "First Victims of Freedom." Read it. Trust me.
Huge goofballs. Now you know how much effort it actually took for Gwen and I to get a decent video intro for this.
A totally ridiculous story graced the front page of the Washington Post on Monday: Apparently more energy-efficient light bulbs would be flying off the shelves if only women weren't such hypocrites. You've got to read to the second page to get anything resembling actual data:
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week showed that while women are more likely than men to say they are "very willing" to change behavior to help the environment, they are less likely to have CFL bulbs at home. Wal-Mart company research shows a similar "disconnect" between the pro-environmental attitudes of women shoppers and their in-store purchases of CFL bulbs. [...]Utility company surveys show the same gender-based bulb-buying pattern in the Pacific Northwest, which has the highest CFL market share in the nation, about 11 percent. Men have been aware of CFLs longer than women, have bought them earlier and have installed more of them in the house than women, according to surveys that the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance has been conducting since 2004.
That's interesting. But most of the article reads like a '50s sitcom script rather than truly exploring reasons for this beyond the aesthetic. (Are women buying fewer fluorescent bulbs because of the up-front expense? Are they less aware of exactly how much less energy these bulbs consume?) I'd also be interested in reading some legitimate research on the "eco-gender gap": how men and women differ in their implementation of environmentally friendly lifestyle changes. I'm not looking for an eco-battle of the sexes or anything, but a serious investigation. Without the stupid "wife test" anecdotes.
Related: The Ms. cover story this month is about women leaders in the environmental movement.
Contributed by Rachel Kramer Bussel
38-year-old writer Peggy Munson lives in “the wilds of western Massachusetts,� where she’s been penning lusty stories that are frequently featured in annual anthologies like Best Lesbian Erotica and Best American Erotica as well as other types of fiction and poetry. She’s also the editor of the 2000 anthology Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Haworth Press), and her disability plays a large role in her work, affecting everything her writing schedule to her writing style. Her first novel, Origami Striptease, a “lyrical love story between a writer and an enigmatic wanderer named Jack,� was published in 2006 by San Francisco queer indie publisher Suspect Thoughts Press, after winning the 2004 Project Queerlit prize. Here, Munson explains via email just what “iambic meter� is, the connection between identity and language, why she’s been “buoyed� by the queer writing community in the wake of having a video of her reading from her novel (which you can see, and salivate over, at blip.tv) censored from a Lambda Literary Award finalist reading (Origami is up for Best Lesbian Debut Fiction), and pushing the edges of the queer literary canon “to its breaking point.�
Hey y'all. Gwen and I have been working on an issue of Barnard's The Scholar and Feminist Online for what seems like forever, but it's finally here!
We're really excited to have brought together bloggers and academics to talk about the relationship between feminism and blogging--not only do we have fancy scholarly articles on the subject, we've also put together a blog for the issue. So please check it out and participate. We'll be posting some really great stuff over the next few days.
(And keep an eye out for our video bloopers from the above intro. Too funny.)
Gawd, I love the Guerrilla Girls.
Oh this is fucking classic.
An Australian senator has caused a storm of protest for describing a female politician as "deliberately barren" and therefore unfit to govern.Bill Heffernan said Labor Party deputy leader Julia Gillard did not understand the public because she had no children.
Empty womb? No governing for you!
OK this is funny, but also really sad. A would-be husband shows up to a wedding, but he is too drunk to get married. So what do they do? Marry the girl to her brother.
"The groom was drunk and had reportedly misbehaved with guests when the bride's family and local villagers chased him away," Madho Singh, a senior police officer told Reuters after Sunday's marriage in a village in Bihar state's Arwal district.The younger brother readily agreed to take the groom's place beside the teenage bride at her family's invitation, witnesses said.
"The groom apologised for his behaviour, but has been crying that word will spread and he will never get a bride again," Singh said by phone.
I couldn't help but notice that the article says she was a teen bride. That just upset me.
If you use birth control, what's your favorite/most loathed method? (And I'm not just asking because I'm looking for alternatives to the Pill.) My friend Gwen tells me diaphragms are making a comeback, but since she's currently sleeping with a girl I don't know if I buy her BC trend expertise.
UPDATE: We published a piece over on TAP Online about the diaphragm renaissance. Basically, it's got a higher failure rate than condoms, but it has the benefit of being a woman-controlled method. They also think it may be useful in fighting the spread of H.I.V. in Africa. --Ann
Reuters reports that Muslim women in France are beginning to have vaginal reconstructive surgery to reattach their hymen so that when they get married, their past sexual experiences will remain private.
While this is obviously upsetting, I fear the trend will be used as a means to push the xenophobic agenda that has been, to a large extent, controlling Muslim women's lives in Europe for quite some time now. Called now by some "the two 'V's' -- veils and virginity," I wouldn't be surprised if there is a proposed ban for the procedure. (They already banned headscarves from schools in 2004.) But what would that actually do? A serious backlash could occur for women who would be seeking the surgery; it could very well just oppress them more.
Am I saying hymenoplasty is a good thing for Muslim women? Not at all, but to prohibit women from doing something personal with their bodies to avoid potential shame due to their religion while women in our own Western culture willingly have been seeking hymenoplasties because "it's so hot" and want "designer vaginas" would just further exemplify how Muslim women are consistently victimized by Western cultures for entirely different purposes than "liberating them."
But who knows, maybe France won't be willing to give up their own designer vaginas.
Remember the amazing Alexyss Tylor? Well Shakes points out some new vids from her. And as expected, they are pure genius.
Wow. For once a newspaper has selected a truly awesome women's advice columnist: Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the Gossip, a fashion icon, and a thoroughly fab, fat, feminist lesbian. She will be answering questions in a new column, "What Would Beth Ditto Do?", in the Guardian's G2 on Fridays.
Of her new gig, she writes:
There have been a lot of times in my life when I wished that someone was around to be really honest with me, to say, "What the fuck are you doing?" Realistically it's often easier if that doesn't come from your friends, but from someone at a distance. That's why I'm so excited about starting this column in G2, addressing your questions and dilemmas. I'd love to be able to help convince people to accept themselves and to let go of what other people think of them - I think that's one of the most important things you can do. [...]I didn't read a lot of teenage advice columns when I was growing up, partly because I couldn't relate to them. I would read them and think: "I don't have trouble with boyfriends - I'm scared that my mom can't pay the rent." I was brought up by a single mom in a poor town in Arkansas and while some aspects of smalltown life were really positive - like the fact that everyone there is really sweet and hospitable - there is also this close-minded mentality, and that naturally made me want to rebel.
So. Awesome. In her column last week, Ditto tackled how to come out to your co-workers.
Thanks to Becky for the link.
That's right. A group of scientists are developing a pill that will increase your libido and decrease your appetite. Wooohooo, horny skinny chicks! Just what the world needs more of.
The Edinburgh team, led by Professor Robert Millar, have been looking at the properties Type 2 Gonadotrophin-releasing hormone.When it was given to monkeys, they displayed mating behaviour such as tongue-flicking and eyebrow-raising to the males, while female shrews displayed their feelings via "rump presentation and tail wagging".
But the animals also ate around a third less food than they normally would.
Yes, I am laughing at this. But in reality it would be a hit. As the article asserts, low libido often has more to do with unhappiness in relationships than with actual lower libido. But why deal with that when you can have a quick fix drug to help you ignore the cause and allay symptoms.
They are ten years away from making ones from humans. Hopefully they won't release the one on monkeys and women will start wagging their booties (oh wait, we already do that).
Check out this IM interview I did with Bill Scher of LiberalOasis (the very guy who urged me to start Feministing in the first place).
A snippet:
LiberalOasis: So, isn't feminism dead?Jessica Valenti: hahahaha
JV: nope, still hereLO: Time Magazine said you were dead, like, 10 years ago. After Ally McBeal.
JV: Time magazine can suck it
I stay classy, even on AIM.
According to sharia laws in some place men can take up to four wives. So what happens when a woman decided that she is going to take on four wives herself? They have to go into hiding because if caught they are either stoned to death or canned.
Kano's Hisbah board, which uses volunteers to enforce Islamic law, told the BBC that the women's marriage was "unacceptable".The BBC's Bala Ibrahim in Kano says Aunty Maiduguri and her four "wives" are thought to have gone into hiding the day after they married.
All five women, who are believed to be film actresses in the local home-video industry, were born Muslims, otherwise they would not be covered by Sharia law.
Home-video industry? That sounds totally shady.
When men take more than one wife, that is some type of hyper-masculinized heterosexuality (even though in some way those women are married to each other, they are not given as many legitimate rights as men, but it is not your typical heteronormative relationship). But when women do it, they are constructed as run-away lesbians and have to go into hiding. I am scared for them.
