July 2007 Archives
There's only one word I can use to describe this button: WANT.
Because a 3-second soundbite wasn't enough... Here's what else I was going to say about the so-called controversy over Hillary Clinton sporting a v-neck top. Then I promise to stop yammering about it.
First off, Robin Givhan is a fashion writer for a paper in the political capital of the country. Of course she's going to write about what the '08 frontrunners are wearing. The difference between Hillary and the boys, though, is that she gets WAY more attention paid to what she wears. And even though Givhan's article appeared in the style section (where, if anywhere, such an article belongs), the unfortunate thing is that other news outlets took it for news, and interspersed it with their political coverage. That's when it gets really offensive.
Another difference between this incident and, say, the totally unwarranted flap over John Edwards' hair, is that when it's about a female candidate, it's all about sex. Givhan even compared Hillary sporting a v-neck to one of the male candidates appearing in public with his zipper down. Umm... really? And in her article, she even noted that Hillary's sedate, conservative black pantsuits during her senate campaign were "desexualized." But the minute Hillary goes to work (because that's where she was -- at work, on the Senate floor, not on the campaign trail) in something other than a collared shirt or turtleneck (in 90-degree weather, no less), she's supposedly making a break for "sexy."
We're going to run into this problem again and again. Because you know what? Hillary can never just grab a sedate gray suit out of the closet, pick a "fun" tie, and hit the road. She cannot make a fashion choice that doesn't "say something" about her, because there is no default, nondescript outfit. The default for politicians is the traditional male suit, because for so long, all major national politicians were male. She doesn't fit that mold. And try as she might, there is no clothing selection Hillary can make that won't elicit some sort of commentary.
The Clinton campaign was very smart to turn this into a fundraising issue. Every female public or political figure faces the same no-win situation that Hillary does when it comes to her clothes. Too conservative? You're a stuffy matron. A little lower-cut? You're practically baring your boobs, you slut. Women can relate to the experience of having every aspect of their personal appearance analyzed and critiqued. So even if the fundraising appeal didn't come right out and say, "Hillary has to put up with bullshit criticism of her appearance, just like you!" that was the sentiment they were capitalizing on. And rightfully so.
The ACLU reports that the House of Representatives has passed H.R. 2831, the "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007."
...aimed at fixing the May 29, 2007 Supreme Court decision undermining protections against wage discrimination in compensation that have been bedrock principles of civil rights law for decades.
Oh what a sad day when I found this piece of trash in my inbox today courtesy of reader Traci, found via CNN but originally in Oprah's mag. Oh Oprah, how could you do me like that?
More bad frenzy inducing advice on how to get through to your man. Gross.
"You're 100 percent correct"
It doesn't matter what you're arguing about -- he just wants to be right. This is his weakness; you can use it like judo, turning his own momentum against him.Saying two little words, "You're right," is the verbal equivalent of darting a raging elephant with animal tranquilizers. It gives him what he wants, reducing tensions and leaving the way open for you to get what you want. Try it: "You're right, but I still want to go to the party."
Meet every protest and argument he makes, no matter how ridiculously false, with the observation that he is absolutely correct ... but you still want what you want. In boxing this is called rope-a-dope, and even if you don't know what the rope part means, the dope part sounds pretty applicable. This is called win-win -- except you did and he didn't.
No, wrong. That's right ladies, put to the side that you have a brain and just yes 'em to death. I think this is more insulting to men. Who wants to be some childish buffoon that needs to be right all the time? Grow the hell up. And who wants to date someone that is so insecure they need to feel reassured all the damn time?
The rest is equally amusing. I mean I know we Feministers know better. I am so disappointed with mainstream dating and courtship writing though. It seems to exist in a bubble. As though feminism happened everywhere, except behind closed doors.
Thoughts?
A recent study found that women are less likely to ask for higher salaries because when they do the social costs are far greater than when men ask for raises. You know the usual--I don't want to work with an aggressive, ball-busting bitch.
The study first done by a professor, who noticed that women Ph.d candidates were less likely to be teaching classes than men, decided to inquire.
When Babcock took the complaint to her boss, she learned there was a very simple explanation: "The dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, 'I want to teach a course,' and none of the women had done that," she said. "The female students had expected someone to send around an e-mail saying, 'Who wants to teach?' " The incident prompted Babcock to start systematically studying gender differences when it comes to asking for pay raises, resources or promotions. And what she found was that men and women are indeed often different when it comes to opening negotiations.These differences, Babcock and other researchers have concluded, may partially explain the persistent gender gap in salaries, as well as other disparities in how people rise to the top of organizations. Women working full time earn about 77 percent of the salaries of men working full time, Babcock said. That figure does not take differing professions and educational levels into account, but when those and other factors are controlled for, women who work full time and have never taken time off to have children earn about 11 percent less than men with equivalent education and experience.
The studies done were all really interesting as were the conclusions.
"What we found across all the studies is men were always less willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who did not," Bowles said. "They always preferred to work with a woman who stayed mum. But it made no difference to the men whether a guy had chosen to negotiate or not."
They luckily moved past the tired and archaic, 'women are genetically inferior' bull, and looked at reasons outside of just blaming women for not being aggressive enough in demanding salaries. They found that there are clear social ramifications for women to ask for raises. It is dangerous for them to do so as they will hurt their reputation and potentially hurt their work environment.
Furthermore, I think that women are so used to working twice as hard as men, they may not always think they can get a raise. They have probably internalized the message that they are lucky they got the job in the first place. Naturally you can't totally generalize, but in a lot of cases, it is not that women don't believe they deserve it, or they are afraid of being perceived as a bitch, they just don't believe they will actually get it.
The reality is, women do the majority of work, in non-profits, in education, in government jobs, in corporations, in health care and in universities and men make the majority of the money. Still. Today.
Maybe that is why women don't ask for raises. When was the last time you asked for a raise? And I know damn well you deserve it.
Ann and I were sure that we had posted this video before, since it made the rounds a couple of years ago, but we can't find it anywhere. And it's too good not to post.
It's resurfaced because Anna Quindlen has written an article about the National Institute of Reproductive Health's new campaign, "How much time should she do?", and points out how anti-choicers are hesitant to tell folks how much jail time they think women should get if abortion were to be illegal, and they got one anyway.
"They never connect the dots," says Jill June, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa. But her organization urged voters to do just that in the last gubernatorial election, in which the Republican contender believed abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest. "We wanted him to tell the women of Iowa exactly how much time he expected them to serve in jail if they had an abortion," June recalled. Chet Culver, the Democrat who unabashedly favors legal abortion, won that race, proving that choice can be a winning issue if you force people to stop evading the hard facts. "How have we come this far in the debate and been oblivious to the logical ramifications of making abortion illegal?" June says.
Indeed.
UPDATE: 21st Century mom scanned the picture for me! THANKS!
I can't seem to find this picture online, but my coworker pointed this out to me in today's Chronicle. It is in response to a picture of a pregnant woman's stomach from the side with an image of the world imposed on it. This was the response that one reader had and I applaud it.
Don't blame womenEditor - Your picture of a naked, pregnant woman's belly (Letters, July 22) to symbolize the overpopulation crisis is both vulgar and misleading. A picture of an erect penis would be more accurate. Men's lust and arrogance, not women's fertility, is the cause of overpopulation.
Patriarchal religions, such as Roman Catholicism, fundamentalist Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as patriarchal societies, such as just about every one in the world, are responsible for the overpopulation crisis.
Access to birth control is denied to hundreds of millions of women. These same women are often forced to have intercourse at the risk of their health and lives. It is they who are victims, not the perpetrators, of this crime against the Earth and humanity.
Bravo. If I can get the picture I will post it.
Native and indigenous women are victims of domestic violence at higher rates than the average American woman. Why is that? A history of displacement, colonization and violence I am sure have something to do with it, along with lack of resources, legislation or education to help women out of bad situations. You know, just a few minor bumps in the road.
I guess Congress noticed after an Amnesty report found that Native and Alaskan women are 2.5 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault in their lifetimes.
The House of Representatives Wednesday approved a bipartisan measure that would provide one million dollars for the creation of a tribal sex offender and protection order registry to identify serial perpetrators of such assaults, most of whom are non-Indian.The same measure, which was approved by a 412-18 vote, provides an additional million dollars to conduct a baseline study on sexual violence committed against indigenous women in the U.S. to better identify the extent of abuse and how best to address it. Both appropriations have already been approved by the Senate.
The study also found that 86% of assault against indigenous women is by non-indigenous men, who are rarely caught or charged with the crime.
"American Indian and Alaska Native women are living in a virtual war zone, where rape, abuse and murder are commonplace and sexual predators prey with impunity," Sarah Deer, an attorney at the California-based Tribal Law and Policy Institute, told IPS in April."In many tribal communities, rape and molestation are so common that young women fully expect that they will be victims of sexual violence at some point," she noted, adding that the weakening of tribal justice systems by the federal government has made it far more difficult for victims of sexual violence to gain redress.
Indeed, federal and tribal statistics may understate the degree of violence suffered by Native American women, according to the report, which noted that fear of retaliation and the lack of confidence that the authorities will take allegations of assault seriously tend to reduce reporting of sexual assault throughout the United States, as well as in Native American communities.
One support worker in Oklahoma, for example, told AI that only three of her 77 active cases of sexual and domestic violence had been reported to the police.
Half the problem is trying to figure out where to try the case. This combined with lack of resources in tribal courts, makes for a pretty dismal situation.
Thanks to Jenny for the heads up.
The 15th Erase Racism Carnival is up over at Racewire and it is GOOD! Please go check it out and show some love for all the excellent, insightful and necessary writing that makes this carnival what it is.
Radical Doula has an important post on the flipside of this debate. As she noted in comments to my previous post on young women being denied tubal ligations,
I think that you will find that for women of color, low income women, or immigrant women, this issue is completely different. Rather than having trouble getting sterilization surgeries, they are being FORCIBLY sterilized.
I completely missed this angle, and really appreciate her bringing it up. Read her whole post here.
Previous Feministing posts on forced sterilization are here, here, and here.
The Today sponge, now put out by Synova Healthcare Group, is back on the market. And it has a new "look."
The new package is meant to have a more modern look: instead of a pink flower and a conservative-looking typeface, the box has drawings of hip-looking women, playful typography, and colors that Synova officials call "fuchsia and wine."Barry Schmader, executive vice president and creative director of Synova's advertising agency, Dudnyk, of Horsham, Pa., said the new colors and graphics were chosen to create "high impact"? and to help the Today Sponge compete on store shelves, especially with condoms. "We need to stand out on the contraceptive shelf space and compete for presence," he said.
The new advertisements feature four drawings of women who personify the different customers whom Synova seeks to attract: Maria, 22, who is health conscious and job hunting; Monique, a "30-something" career woman; Lilly, a 32-year-old doctor and new mother who is breast-feeding her child; and Jill, 40, a newly single store manager.
You can find these cartoon gals on Today's website. They're a little too cutesy for my taste, but cutesy seems to be par for the course when it comes to birth control ads. But I'm all down for more BC options--especially those that are hormone-free.
The sponge is a bit before my time, boot-knocking-wise...anyone who has used Today want to weigh in?
Insanity is the new black!
To further touch upon Vanessa's question about why the media (and everyone these days) seems so obsessed with celebrity downfall, I enter into evidence the above spread from Vogue Italia. It's crazy chic! Complete with a model buzzing her hair off a la Britney. Charming.
But that's not all, folks! In related women-in-distress-are-fashionable news, W magazine ups the ante: dead models posing with furries!
I think Amanda said it best in a recent IM conversation: "I can't wait until fashion is about trotting out women in fancy clothes and shooting them dead on the runway--so daring!"
Okay, I think this poster is just great. It's a poster used when Clinton was speaking at the National Beauty Culturists' League Convention recently. Being judged on your hair (or supposed cleavage) is completely crappy. Being cheeky about it is awesome. Kudos.
Speaking of cleave, Ann will be on CNN tonight talking about the ridiculousness that is this article. We'll give you the details as soon we have them so you can tune in!
UPDATE: The segment will air as part of the Situation Room on CNN between 5-6pm EDT (and will repeat from 7-8pm).
The Observer had a piece yesterday on the media's obsession with the "Bad Girls of Hollywood," and questions why everyone seems to get off on watching these irritating rich, white women get in trouble.
While an obvious answer to this is that it's entertaining to see these overly privileged bad gals like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who think they can get away with anything not only be treated as criminals just as any one of us would, but also have overwhelming flaws and personal problems. (In other words, rich life ain't all that grand.)
But is there more to it? And what is so appealing about famous women's demise rather than the lads? 'We have had years of young male stars running amok. It is now so much more fun for the public to see beautiful young women being hauled off to jail,' said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, New York state.
Is this saying something bigger about our culture? Why is it so much fun to watch "beautiful women" be imprisoned--or drug-addicted or clearly sick with eating disorders? And the comparison of these women's behavior with "Girls Gone Wild" is irksome as well; it's almost being posed as some kind of fetish. And who are we blaming?
To put it simply: is this a feminist issue?
This post from Amanda about Natalie Angier reminded me of how much I frigging love Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography. She's just such an amazing writer. (The non-fiction skill of Angier with the fiction stylings of Flannery O'Connor would be my dream author hybrid.)
So dear readers, who's your favorite writer?
I can't believe that I missed this. Congrats to Katrina and Justin and the rest of the DL crowd! (You can even see Jill from Feministe and my buddy Fred in the background.) Hot damn, I wish I was there.
A new survey shows working women are deeply divided about the value of maternal employment. Judith Stadtman Tucker explains what's going on behind the research.
Didn't get sex ed in school? At least you can get it in SecondLife.
The Nation takes down Wendy Shalit's Girls Gone Mild.
A Kurdish woman's father and brother are found guilty of "honor killing."
Latest Carnival of Feminists!
Dr. Drew hearts the IWF.
The case for a "women's page" in the newspaper.
A virtual tour of feminist art in DC.
Why can't people shut up about Hillary Clinton's clothes?
NPR on problems facing female military vets.
How the new movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry exploits feelings of homophobia while superficially emphasizing a message of tolerance.
A documentary solves a previously cold rape/murder case.
How to break down the barriers that stand in the way of women's political leadership.
What the U.S. could learn about China's disastrous attempts to regulate relationships.
Debunking the myth of the "boy crisis."
The nation's abstinence-only capital also features the #1 teen birth rate. Coincidence? I think not.
On African Americans' "shrinking" view of sexiness.
The Politico argues (seriously!) that Hillary is going to have problems succeeding because Geena Davis's TV show was cancelled. Give me a fucking break.
The hypocrisy of Republican Congresswomen who are mothers but refuse to vote for family-friendly legislation.
Heather Burcham, who fought for universal HPV vaccination, died of cervical cancer.
Despite its strong characters like Hermione, does Harry Potter advocate for a hierarchical society of traditional roles?
On sexism in Disney cartoons of the '90s.
Singer and songwriter Nicole Nelson recently returned to New York City after a long run in Boston, MA where I first saw her perform. Her voice and music are often compared to the artistry of Eva Cassidy, Donny Hathaway, Gladys Knight and Erykah Badu; and her style and poise are often compared to those of female greats well beyond her years.
I thankfully caught up with Nicole over email amidst her hectic schedule. Here's Nicole...
For once, I'm not talking about the anti-choice movement. American Sexuality magazine has a piece describing one young woman's travails in finding a doctor willing to perform a tubal ligation on her. She's in her early 20s, and absolutely, positively, 100% certain she never wants children. Never.
Seems perfectly logical to me that she'd want her tubes tied. After all, birth control is expensive. And can be a nuisance. If you know you won't want kids, why wait another 10 years to have this surgery? Maybe because doctors are refusing to perform it on her:
“[Planned Parenthood of Boston**] said it was much too permanent and weren’t going to give it to me, plus my insurance wasn’t going to cover it,� recalls Green. What’s more, according to Green, “It was all and only about my age.� She was twenty-two at the time.Green’s experience is not that unusual. Though no actual laws have ever been put into place, most OBGYNs refuse to provide women under thirty with permanent forms of contraception. Dr. Daniel Wiener, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at McGill University in Montreal, is one such doctor.
With thirty plus years of medical practice, Dr. Wiener finds no good reason for putting otherwise healthy patients in surgery: for one, there are anesthetic risks involved. Plus, tubal ligations are considered elective surgeries (assuming the patient can use other, less invasive forms of birth control). More pressing, still, is the fear that a patient may one day change her mind. Sound familiar?
Yes, actually it does. The last time I heard the "we must protect women from their future selves" argument, it was being proffered by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Over at Broadsheet, Tracy Clark-Flory says, "It's an issue of reproductive choice and freedom, to be sure. But making medical and ethical judgments like whether to tie a woman's tubes (or whether someone is prepared for a sex change) is a doctor's right and, arguably, an essential part of the job description." Um, what? Is it a medical professional's job to "protect" women from their own decisions? Is it a pharmacist's right to make medical and ethical judgments like whether to dispense contraception? If you're a doctor who's happy to provide tubal ligations to older women, it seems totally out of sync to deny them to younger women who are equally certain they'll never want to reproduce.
It's not hard to believe the stigma that the woman in the article says she faced in pursuing the surgery. After all, I've seen this story about the increasing demands of 20-somethings for tubal ligations (or vasectomies) crop up a few times in the past year. The simple fact is our society still has a hard time accepting that some people just aren't interested in spawning.
So what should doctors do when faced with a patient in her 20s who requests a tubal ligation? I think Justice Ginsburg's advice in the wake of Gonzales v. Carhart applies to this situation quite nicely: inform women of their options, the attendant risks, and the likely outcomes. Then let them make the decision for themselves.
You're going to love this. In a Nancy Grace segment last night about Atlanta Falcons' Michael Vick and his recent arrest for running a dogfighting ring, CNN sports anchor Larry Smith said that Vick's crimes were worse than rape. Yeah.
The below transcript followed a short clip of Kobe Bryant proclaiming his innocence, which Grace used to make a point about how Vick should speak up in the media:
SMITH: Yes, well, that's -- he's been in a lot of trouble lately, when you think about all the other incidents, and this is just the worst one of all. Keep in mind, too, that while Kobe Bryant is a situation we can sort of compare this to, this really is much worse. Not only can you argue that the crimes are much worse in terms of, you know, killing dogs and that kind of thing, but as an NFL starting quarterback, you are the most visible face in that city. I`ve said all along, in fact, you know, if you go through and, you know, very quickly name 10 mayors of major cities in the country...GRACE: Larry Smith, did I just hear you say...
SMITH: ... you could have a harder time doing that...
GRACE: ... mistreatment of...
SMITH: ... than naming 10 NFL starting quarterbacks.
GRACE: Did I just hear Larry Smith, CNN sports correspondent and anchor, state that crimes on a dog are much worse than crimes on a woman? Did I hear that?
I don't know, Nancy. But I certainly fucking heard it. Tell CNN what you think here.
Thanks to RebelMom for letting me know about this one!
Check out this video showing Vermont's all-girl welding camp, Rosie's Girls. Amazing. (And please, forgive the puntastic headline, I couldn't help myself.)
Thanks to Amy for sending!
Hopefully you've already heard of She Should Run. It's a project of the Woman's Campaign Forum, trying to gather nominations for 1,000 pro-choice women to ask to run for political office. There was a dust-up a few weeks ago about why more women didn't get elected in 2006. She Should Run says that's the wrong question. More women need to run for office. Because the more of us there are on ballots, the more likely we are to be able to overcome the sexism that female candidates face, and get into office. Gender-based attack ads and questions about being "taken seriously" are hard to deal with. That's why we need tough women to try.
So, I took the She Should Run challenge, and nominated a smart, strong, politically savvy woman I know. You should do the same. Hell, nominate yourself if you want to. According to the Women's Campaign Forum, less than 1/4 of elected officials in this country are women. That, my friends, is bullshit.
Apparently one of the big barriers is women are more likely to run for office when asked. So ask. And check out this video from a few women in public office talking about how important this is:
Anti-choice pharmacists are suing Washington state over a regulation that requires them to sell emergency contraception.
Thanks to Alisha for the link!
I got your "find a man" right here!
A judge in Spain has ordered a lesbian mother to give custody of her two daughters to their father because, apparently, homosexuality is harmful and would increase the chance that the girls would become lesbians. Uh huh.
Judge Fernando Ferrin Calamita, who heard the case at a court in the eastern region of Murcia, also said the woman could keep custody of the children if she found another male partner.According to Ferrin, being raised by homosexual would not allow the children the right to the proper environment to which they were entitled.
“It is understood that (a parent’s) drug addiction, child abuse, prostitution, belonging to a satanic sect or heterosexual affair would negatively affect the children and serve as a reason for a change of custody,� he said. “Well, it’s the same with homosexuality.�
Lesbians and satanic sects. Peas in a pod, clearly.
So, for his unapologetic assholery, Judge Ferrin gets Feministing's very official Fuck You of the Day. Congrats, jerkoff.
Image stolen from the lovely Bitch PhD.
I just put some pics up of my California trip. Includes such fascinating pics as me eating my first In and Out burger and the biggest piece of seaweed ever.
Women's magazines haven't exactly been a bastion of feminism lately, but that doesn't mean we can't do something about it.
Glamour magazine is taking nominations for their Women of the Year issue. Past winners include Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Madonna, Christiane Amanpour, Venus Williams, and Pakistani women’s rights activist Mukhtar Mai. This year, the magazine is looking for amazing women who make change in their communities.
Need ideas for nominees? Check out the REAL hot 100, past Feministing interviewees, or you can even nominate your fave group of feminist bloggers (cough, cough).
Do it here.
Here's a disturbing story. The first-ever Global Peace Index has been published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, measuring nations by their peacefulness and ranking them by their "absence of violence."
Unfortunately, that "absence of violence" doesn't seem to count for women and children. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the index fails to include this sadly prevalent form of violence and gives high ranks to countries with poor records on women's and children's rights.
Why am I not surprised?
Reader Mikki sent me this story from The New York Times about a children's book series featuring a sassy heroine, Junie B. Jones.
Apparently, some parents are not feeling Junie B. books:
Their disagreement is a pint-size version of the lingering education battle between advocates of phonics,who believe children should be taught proper spelling and grammar from the outset, and those who favor whole language, a literacy method that accepts misspellings and other errors as long as children are engaged in reading and writing.The spunky kindergartener (first grader in more recent volumes) is prone to troublemaking, often calls people names and isn’t averse to talking back to her teachers. And though she is the narrator of the stories, she struggles with grammar. Her adverbs lack the suffix “ly�; subject and object pronouns give her problems, as do possessives; she usually isn’t able to conjugate irregular past tense verbs; and words like funnest and beautifuller are the mainstays of her vocabulary.
The horror! Parents are also miffed that Junie B. isn't all sugar and spice and defies authority. And when I say miffed, I mean crazy.
With every new kindergarten class comes attempts to ban the books. In 2004 Barbara Park was selected as one of the American Library Association’s 10 Most Frequently Challenged Authors, alongside Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and John Steinbeck.
Luckily, Park has a good attitude about it. “I’ve never been in such good company!� the 60-year old author said.
I was a huge fan of Ramona Quimby when I was a kid, I thought she was such a bad-ass--same with Pippi Longstocking and Eloise. In fact, any book about a feisty little girl captured my heart. My all time most read book when I was a kid was Caddie Woodlawn.
I say any book that encourages girls to be individuals, as opposed to vapid consumers, is fine by me--good grammar or no.
Random question: Why do so many spunky girl protagonists have red hair? (Caddie, Anne of Green Gables, Pippi)
This is a horrible story. A woman in Umlazi township in South Africa was stripped naked and her home was burnt down. Why? Because she had the audacity to wear pants.
This is just frigging awesome. Seems that Spiderman teamed up with Planned Parenthood back in the day to create a comic about the importance of sex education--complete with an anti-choice villain who wants teens to get knocked up!
Kind of sad though that this comic is probably more progressive (and factual) than what kids are actually being taught in school.
Thanks to Norbizness for the link.
“The detritus left in the wake of 30 years of feminism is considerable, an international disaster. And, as with most other disasters, such as 9/11, it falls mainly to men to clear up the mess.� --David Hughes, chairman of the ManKind Initiative
By the way, this illustrious "organization" also takes issue with women wearing pants, working outside of the home, and has recommended that men not marry women graduates because "they prefer to choose a wife who is less-educated and who will be happy to qualify in the most important degree of all – as wife and mother.� Charming.
Thanks to Ann’s always great Weekly Feminist Reader, I found myself reading Rebecca Traister’s smarty pants (she's so good) piece on Katie Roiphe last week on Salon. Katie Roiphe, author of the very controversial The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism, has a new book out called Uncommon Arrangements and a new teaching position at the culture reporting and criticism department at NYU’s School of Journalism, a program I took a course in while a grad student (from Ellen Willis, amazing radical feminist pioneer).
Anyway, in Roiphe’s interview with Traister, she talked about an essay by Joan Didion that she always teaches called “The Women’s Movement� and I just had to take a look. So this week, us sexy librarians set down our back-breaking tomes for a nice, light essay.
Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that birth control prices on campus were doubling and tripling. (But not condoms, of course--just the kind that the ladies use.)
Well, they're still going up. Drug companies had long sold colleges contraceptives at a discount, students would pay $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more, for example.
But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.
Great. Female students are (rightly) feeling like this is unfairly affecting their health and rights on campus. 22 year-old Susan Maly at the University of Iowa says, "This is the one thing that many females on campus are getting from student health...It felt like we were a target."
I am so amazingly glad to be back in New York! I had a great trip though, and thanks again to the Feministing readers who came out to my readings on the West Coast, you guys rock.
I'm a little jet-lagged, so be patient with me if my posting is erratic today!
For those of you who didn't catch it, here was Clinton's response to the YouTube debate question about whether she'd be taken seriously by the leaders of Arab or Muslim countries:
"Certainly in my last year in the Senate, I have had high-level meetings with leaders in Kuwait, Pakistan, Afghanistan. I don't think there's much doubt I can be taken seriously," she said. "Other countries have had women presidents and prime ministers. I have noticed that their compatriots certainly take them seriously."
Of course Bush would appoint a man to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who, in his previous job at the justice department, "undermined the unit's mission of securing the employment rights of women and minorities in the public sector, while defending employers' rights to discriminate based on religion."
The nominee, David Palmer, also fired a colleague he had previously "had a romantic relationship" with:
Marian Thompson, who worked in the section for 18 years as a statistician, said that after becoming section chief in 2002, Palmer fired a veteran attorney with whom he had had a romantic relationship and that the woman filed a complaint against him. In a phone interview, Thompson expressed surprise that Palmer did not let someone else handle that personnel decision.Richard Ugelow, a former section chief who teaches employment law at American University, said that it was "unheard of for the head of an agency charged with enforcing equal employment opportunity laws to be charged with violating those laws. ... He's supposed to be above reproach, to set an example for other employers."
Palmer's former coworkers are asking Senators to block his nomination to the commission. (Bush first nominated Palmer in September 2006, and renominated him in January. Now Republicans are pushing for his confirmation.)
Under Bush, funding for the EEOC has continually been slashed. He's discontinued use of the word "underrepresented" to describe certain populations. And how has the administration responded to a backlog of EEO cases? By encouraging people to file fewer of them, of course.
Sounds like what this commission needs is another Republican member (there's only one Democrat left on the commission), one who's been charged with flouting employment laws and is only interested in defending the rights of conservative Christians. A perfect fit.
Like Matt, I don't get the joke.
Ok, so you know how Jessica always loves to post photos of infants that make her ovaries jump? I finally found a baby video that I find satisfying:
Nicole at Scanner says it perfectly, so I'll repeat what she says verbatim: " Finally, a way to watch babies suffer and not feel that bad. I mean, it's a lemon. It's not going to do any permanent damage. Their brains are mush. If anything, it will teach them to not be so greedy." Ahahahahahaha.
I liked this story about Harley Davidson making bikes for women, because the changes they've made aren't stupid things like makeup mirrors or pink paint. They're mostly practical modifications that women riders actually need:
“Fifty percent of the population is female and there is pent-up demand,� said James L. Ziemer, Harley-Davidson’s chief executive. “We need to remove barriers.�So they are producing more motorcycles that are low to the ground — so women can plant their feet firmly at rest — with narrower seats and softer clutches, and adjusting handlebars and windshields to make bikes more comfortable for smaller riders.
Ok, so they're also selling rhinestone-studded merchandise and decorating with more plants. Gag. But thank god their marketing site for women isn't pink. And the changes to the actual product seem truly beneficial to real women -- unlike some prototype cars "for and by women," which feature crap such as changeable seat covers to match your outfit and computer-aided parking (because y'all know men don't need the help). In contrast, Harley-Davidson's more practical changes to their motorcycles, along with the stated mission to treat women as serious buyers when they enter the showroom, is a great tactic. Way to market to women without condescension.
In an interesting essay over at The Nation, Annabelle Gurwitch fears she's become a Tipper Gore type because she didn't want her kids exposed to the sexist and disturbing movie posters for Captivity. Gurwitch describes her strong beliefs about free speech, and then this:
But that was all before one fateful morning last March. It was on that day that I was driving a carpool of third graders to school when my son pointed at a large looming advertisement and asked, "What's that, mom?" I craned my neck--it was pretty high up, but still visible from the car--and glimpsed some extremely violent and disturbing images. What was being depicted exactly was hard to make out.... A woman crying, maybe; someone encased in a mask with tubes inserted in the nasal passages; and finally what looked like a female body lying inert, her body draped over a bed. The poster read: "Abduction, confinement, torture, termination." Naturally, as a left-wing liberal, I assumed it was detailing abuses at Abu Ghraib and the anguish this has inflicted on the spouses of the prisoners. But no, it was advertising a movie.To the children, however, I replied, "That person has just found out she's very ill. She goes to the hospital and is placed in a full-body cast, and when she gets home she sees her medical bills, which are so exorbitantly high that she passes out." Were they convinced, confused, politically indoctrinated? I'm not certain, but the rest of the ride to school was very, very quiet.
So apparently the Captivity poster Vanessa wrote about was the second iteration. The first was even more disturbing. And Gurwitch was not the only feminist mom who was troubled by her kids seeing these ads. Wrote Jill Soloway in the HuffPo:
A couple of weeks ago I was driving my son to school when I took a left onto LaBrea, and, as usual, sat in traffic for a couple of minutes. As we waited for the construction bottleneck to ease up, we sang along with the new Shins CD. And then, at the same moment, we fell silent.We were both noticing the same thing.
It was a billboard for a movie. There was actress Elisha Cuthbert, super-heavily made up-dare I say whorishly-- being used as the centerpiece of the most repulsive, horrifying, woman-hating, human- hating thing I have ever seen in public. [...]
The next morning I decided to take a different route. Except this time I saw two more of the same billboards. It felt like they were EVERYWHERE, peppered all over my city. That afternoon, after the ride home with two more ten year olds in my car-one, a little girl, whose face I watched in my rearview mirror as she tried to make sense of the billboard. Now I was ready to take action.
Even as the letter-writing campaign to Lions Gate Films succeeded in removing the "Abduction, confinement, torture, termination" ads, Gurwitch writes that the questions kept coming from the kids, even about the new, less graphic ads.
This week, the new posters for Captivity went up in my neighborhood. Right on the bus stop at eye level for the kids to see in our carpool today. The new image is simple. A gorgeous woman's face imprisoned behind a chain-link fence. This time, one can clearly see she's crying and mascara is running down her face.My son asked me what the girl had done wrong and why she was being punished. I was going to say, "She's crying because she heard about the recent Supreme Court decision limiting a woman's right to choose," but I felt defeated, so I just said, "I don't know."
Even though her first explanation made me laugh, her feelings of ambiguity over opposing these ads struck a much more serious chord with me. I have no children or plans to have them, but I can see the desire to keep these images away from kids. They're different than other types of sexist ads I dislike (say, boob-filled beer commercials, or gender-role-heavy ads for household cleaning products). Sexualized violence against women is a whole new level, and I can see how having to explain it to your kids would bring out the Tipper Gore in almost every free-speech-loving feminist.
So I'm curious, dear readers, how do you talk to your kids (and others') about sexist images in the media, particularly disturbing or violent ones like the Captivity ads?
"Incarcerated Girls May Be More Aggressive."
The study also found that while teen girls typically are expected to internalize their problems while boys act out, girls in juvenile detention centers are twice as likely as the boys to externalize their anger through aggression.
Any theories?
Real Women, Real Voices has the gender breakdown on submissions in Monday's YouTube debate: Women were featured in only 11 out of 29 video questions selected.
As Rachel points out, Question #15 (not posed by a woman) was a real doozy:
Hello, my name is John McAlperin. I'm a proud member of the United States military and I'm serving overseas. This question is to Senator Hillary Clinton: The Arab states and Muslim nations believe [in] women as being second-class citizens. If you're president of the United States, how do you feel that you would even be taken seriously by these states in any kind of talks negotiations or any other diplomatic relations?I feel that's a legitimate question.
Has this guy been living under a rock? Condi Rice and other female Bush administration officials make frequent visits to the Mideast and appear to be taken quite seriously. India just elected a woman president. And check out this insanely long list of other countries that have had a woman president or prime minister-- several of them are Muslim nations.
I think what's really going on here is John McAlperin might have a problem taking a woman president of the United States seriously.
UPDATE: Rachel emailed me the following correction to her numbers:
You could say they featured 42 "videos" and 12 women's videos or 39 *questions* that had 11 with women in them. I did however miscount the men initially by one, so it still would have been 30 *questions* with men or 31 videos with men.
Taking the foot fetish to the next level of nasty.
Shoes have never been so sexy sexist.
Thanks to Jessica for the link.
Check out the August issue of ELLE that takes on partial birth abortion and the words that informed the debate.
Some tidbits. . .
Here is Justice Kennedy, in his wisdom: "Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision….While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexcep-tionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort…. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow."So, he rules, we'll spare you all that grief and sorrow by deciding you can't have a partial-birth abortion (if your state so decides), even though there was substantial testimony from medical experts and groups, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, that this now potentially criminal form of second-trimester abortion is sometimes safer for women than other forms. This is for your own good, of course.
Where have we heard this before? You are too mentally challenged to master the rigors of a higher education, so we'll keep you out of universities for your own good. You are too gentle for the rough-and-tumble world of business, so we'll keep you out of the high-paying professions for your own good. You don't understand complicated political issues, so we'll spare you the confusion of voting, for your own good. You are too frail for competitive sports, so we'll keep you from running or swimming or discovering your body's capabilities, for your own good. And now paternalism's last stand is over motherhood. You don't know when you are ready to become a mother; whether you are suited to become a mother; what to do when something has gone dreadfully wrong with your pregnancy. So you can't decide.
Read the whole thing, it is worth the read. How do you feel about such a mainstream magazine taking on such an important issue? (Hint: I think it is great!)
I read last week about Mattel marketing a new Barbie website and other types of "virtual play" for girls. Even though it's still in beta, in its first 60 days, the Barbie Girls site signed up three million members, and is adding another 50,000 every day. (I tried to log in and poke around the site, but it's been so jammed with visitors that I couldn't get it to load.)
One of the reasons Barbie has historically had such a hold on young girls (and what I loved about Barbie as a kid) is that she's a grown-up. I know this is one of the critiques of Barbie -- that she presents a very screwed up image of what an adult woman is supposed to physically look like. As a kid, I loved Barbie because she wasn't a baby doll -- I had no interest in playing mommy. I used Barbie to act out how I wanted to be as an adult. My Barbie was a journalist. She wore men's sweaters sometimes. She always drove the red convertible. In her spare time, she was the frontwoman of a rock band.
What didn't she do? Go shopping. Sure, she had lots of fun outfits, but having her "purchase" more was never part of my play routine. When I searched for descriptions of what Barbie is actually set up to do in her popular new virtual world, every article I found only mentioned her ability to shop for stuff like "miniskirts, tiaras or home accessories." In other words, training girls to grow up to be women who are first and foremost consumers.
A Barbie virtual world seems so much more pernicious than Barbie the 10-inch doll. It's still got all the body- and beauty-standard issues that the old-school version has. But at least girls can more easily impose their own personalities and interests onto a doll. It requires imaginative play. I'm sure that Barbie Girls has been focus-grouped like crazy, and that TONS of young girls want their Barbies to do nothing but go shopping and get makeovers. But it's really terrible (not to mention a wasted opportunity) to not include other activities. Why couldn't they join a virtual rock band, or run for virtual office, or play virtual sports? (I can think of several great organizations that would have made perfect partners for a website like this.)
As the site stands now, though, where would a kid like I was fit into the Barbie Girls world? From what I've read, the site features no fast cars, no rock band, no newsdesk. Just credit cards and cosmetics.
Hey all, I'll be back in New York (and back to posting) on Thursday. Though I can see that the gals have been doing amazing double duty in my absence.
I've had the most amazing week in California. Jill Soloway throws a bad-ass party, I can tell you that. I did a reading at her event Lady Party, where the most incredible all-female Journey cover band played--Infinity. Hotness. Also, Kathy Najimy was there and totally told me she dug my book. And then I died. (Photos to come. Of party, not me dying.)
Later I was off to San Fran, where the folks at Book Passage were just great--and a huge thanks to the Feministing readers who showed up! I even got a chance to get out of the city this weekend and go to Sonoma county to do the winery-hopping thing with the boyfriend. (My fellow wine-loving blogger Scott Lemieux will be proud of the awesome Zin I brought back.)
I'm loving my West Coast trip, but I'm missing my kitty and my apt and am looking forward to getting home for some down time--and not living out of a suitcase.
In any case, for those in San Fran--come see me tonight at Books Inc. C-SPAN will be taping it!
This was one of my favorite questions from last night's Youtube/CNN Democratic debate. What was yours?
Finally, the chairmen of two House committees are initiating a probe into Bush's abstinence-only policies for attempting to spread HIV and AIDS. You know because abstinence-only really works with women who are married with men that are cheating on them and getting infected that way. Or I don't know for anyone else, who has sex, which is everyone. Bush's global abstinence-only policy is so uninformed and void of sense, I can only think that it is intentionally racist and sexist.
Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Tom Lantos (D-CA, chairs of the Committees on Oversight and Government Reform and Foreign Affairs, respectively, wrote with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) to Mark Dybul, the US Global AIDS Coordinator, in a Monday letter. It warned that the administration's current approach to HIV/AIDS prevention was coming up short."[A] recently completed impact evaluation that the Administration commissioned suggests that U.S.-funded 'abstinence and be faithful' programs are failing to meet the needs of sexually active youth," the three Congressmembers wrote. "According to the study, many of the evaluated programs lack age-appropriate, skill-based lessons on partner reduction, mutual fidelity, and cross-generational and transactional sex....most of the programs do not seem to have procedures in place to refer sexually active or 'at-risk' youth to more comprehensive programs, despite your office's direction that they do so."
Yeah, no shit.
Given the recent rape-related bullshit in Nebraska, and elsewhere, it's not hard to believe there's a movement called USE not Rape.
What's that? It's from a site called Baptists for Brownback. USE (unplanned sexual event), inspired by right wing wacko Sam Brownback, seeks to stop using the word rape in order to:
remove the stigma associated with this sometimes unpleasant situation. It is our mission to protect the innocent lives of the babies that are part of His plan and eliminate the excuses given by many women when a precious baby just isn't convienient.
Wait, they're kidding. I promise. Here's a suggestion they offered for a fun 4th of July activity:
Ruin an Enemy Picnic:
If you have neighbors, or God forbid relatives, who are Democrats and/or atheists (it can be hard to tell the difference) that are having a BBQ or picnic today this is your chance to show them your Patriotism. Wait until they are good and drunk, don't worry, they will be, and then march right into the middle of their "celebration" and start reading from the Bible as loud as you can. While you are spreading God's word to the heathens, have a fellow Patriot simultaneously read from the Declaration of Independence. The Liberals hate the Bible and anything constitutional so this will upset them to no end.
I actually would love a simultaneous reading of the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. Any DJs out there want to do a remix?
But, it is hard to tell that this site is a parody. I mean, how different, really, is this statement:
It's no wonder gang membership is increasing. Worship is down. Morality is down. Patriotism is down. Where else are these children supposed to turn to? They can't pray in school anymore. When they tour the courthouses and government buildings, they don't see the Ten Commandments or a picture of Christ anymore. If the TV is turned on there is always some Liberal news reporter promoting abortions, homosexuals getting married or making disparaging remarks about our Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush.
from this one on Brownback's website?
Religion, once an integral part of our society, is today being eradicated from nearly every aspect of public life. The First Amendment protects the freedom to practice the religion of one's choice. That freedom is under attack by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who profit financially from lawsuits brought against cities and towns that display religious symbols.
If you read through the comments on the site, it's a little disturbing. Some of the commenters are clearly in on the joke. Some are not. I found a lot of it funny, but also scary. A lot of people seemed genuinely ready to hop on the bandwagon.
Well, this is sort of hilarious.
In addition to the UK study last year which said that working mothers are big drunks in front of their kids, new UK research is showing that being a working mom will also make your kids fat.
The researchers said: 'Long hours of maternal employment, rather than lack of money, may impede young children's access to healthy foods and physical activity.'For example, parental time constraints could increase a child's consumption of snack foods and / or increase television use.'
They said working mothers were also less likely to breastfeed for the recommended amount of time.
They're malnourishing their babies! Oh wait, I mean making them fat! Well, they're malnourishing them, and then making them fat! Working mothers are just bad for your health, trust us!
Fat babies, here I come.
Check out this HuffPo piece on the increase of older women falling ill to easting disorders. According to recent findings, the number of women in their 40s and 50s seeking treatment have tripled and quadrupled from a decade ago.
You have got to be kidding me.
The world's largest wakeboarding event not only holds bikini competitions every year, but one that supposedly challenges beauty standards by showing off women's asses rather than breasts.
"Girls who surf a lot definitely do not have a big chest and cleavage but tight, fit bodies and a nice bum," Shereef Shiaty of Reef Promotional Staffing, who finds the contestent's for Miss Reef Wakestock bikini contest, says, "It's not your fake breast Barbie doll look or beer company stuff." (This is despite the fact that last year's winner was a Bud Light promotional model.)
Promoting an ass contest as a subversive statement. Classic.
I found this really interesting. A Florida shelter for women and children who are victims of abuse has a program that specifically targets women of wealth.
The Women of Means program specifically reaches out to women who are "upscale, educated or professional" women who are victims of abuse. It's a program derived from the Naples Shelter for Abused Women and Children, and has been up and running for the past year.
Women of Means was created by a group of volunteers who felt that it was necessary to recognize that wealthy women can suffer from intimate partner violence, as well as recognize the different forms of abuse that wealthy women may experience. The program consists of trained advocates (who are also wealthy woman) who serve as peer supporters to the women seeking help.
When I first read this article, I was initially a little put off mainly because of the name of the program; the term "of means" just rubs me the wrong way. I was also bothered by the fact that "educated" and "professional" women seemed to get lumped into that category (when not all educated women are rich, ahem), and that only wealthy women can be peer supporters. Could having this type of DV club, in a way, just perpetuate their privilege?
At the same time, having this program could really do nothing but good for these women's lives; with economic status being such a huge factor in some victims' situations, this can obviously play a role for women who marry wealthy abusers. Despite my own knee-jerk reaction to see it just as a program that helps the wealthy, I had to remind myself that it's also a program that is helping victims of abuse. And that holds precedence.
Thoughts?
Hillary Duff recently had an interview with the Guardian titled, "What I know about men..." in which she talks about not being a "tramp" or "whore," her desire to have a family and bake pies, and comes out with this gem:
I'm not, like, a crazy feminist. I think women definitely need men. Like, I couldn't imagine having a girlfriend!
Icky lesbian feminists! Check out the rest of the interview, it's pretty, um, interesting.
Take Back the News is a project which aims to resist the under/ misrepresentation of sexual assault in the media. Here's their mission statement:
Take Back The News confronts the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of sexual assault in mainstream media with the goal of improving both the quantity and quality of media coverage of sexual assault. We intend to provide outlets for rape survivors to publish their stories in their own words. Take Back The News also seeks to raise public awareness about the epidemic nature of rape, in order to foster greater public dialogue and ultimately greater public responsibility.
And not to mention they're sisters, which obviously adds points with us. Keep up the good work, ladies!
After being so impressed with Pratibha Patil's speech at a women's rights rally early this month, it were pleased to find out that she was elected on Saturday to serve as India's first woman president.
As such an advocate for women's rights, many predict that this is a huge leap forward for women and girls in the country. And I doubt she'll disappoint.
A truckload of links for you this week...
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) signed three anti-choice measures into law banning dilation and extraction abortions and requiring providers to offer fetal anesthesia.
How Bush's war on women is also a war on science.
The pay gap is still wide in Europe.
Christian white male supremacists the Promise Keepers are regrouping.
On women and their marvelous "multitasking" abilities.
Two former sexworkers are running for seats in Parliament in Turkey.
Rumors are circulating that Don Imus might be back on the air soon, but groups are lining up to try to prevent that.
Gay veterans go on the road to oppose "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
The EPA is changing its reporting requirements, which is bad news for women's health.
Local small businesses are adopting the "babe chain" approach to selling their services.
Making movies based on books with a strong woman of color as the protagonist? Awesome. Casting white women to play the lead role when the movie is actually made? Decidedly not awesome.
How to the '08 presidential candidates measure up on the issue of sex ed?
Real Women, Real Voices has ongoing coverage of the Alabama clinic protests. (Anti-choice leader Flip Benham was recently arrested.) See also Gloria Feldt on who's responsible for reining in clinic protests.
The IRS rejects a transwoman's write-off of her sex-change surgery, calling it cosmetic, not medically necessary.
On gender roles in action films, specifically Live Free or Die Hard.
Cara rounds up some inane Hillary coverage.
Bad girls, bad girls, whatcha gonna do? Increase ratings, of course.
Anti-choicers want permission to wear "Right to Life" logos while working the polls.
Nigerian human rights activist Dorothy Aken’Ova faces osctracization and intimidation.
The Washington Post botches its Plan B coverage.
Saudi Arabia is creating "women only" work centers.
The IWF talks about sex, baby. (Without, of course, taking a stance on the availability of contraception.)
House committees investigate abstinence funding in anti-AIDS programs.
Where curly-haired women gather to get the kinks ironed out.
Violence against women in Afghanistan is skyrocketing.
Amnesty International defines reproductive rights as human rights (YES. Finally!), and responds to critics.
On the absence of abortion in this summer's hit movies.
British police are offering a 20,000 pound reward for information about people involved with female genital mutilation.
My girl Lauren reports that some transgender kids are receiving hormones to delay the onset of puberty.
On Pakistan's "Burqa Brigade" of moral militants.
The charges against former Israeli President Minister Moshe Katsav are spurring more women to come forward about their own sexual assault experiences.
The evolution of Katie Roiphe.
Female inmates in New Hampshire speak out about overcrowding.
Ghanaian women push for more property rights.
Mattilda, a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, is the author of a novel, Pulling Taffy, and the editor of three nonfiction anthologies: That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation; Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving; and Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients. She is at it again with her latest anthology, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity.
I caught up with Mattilda over email. Here's Mattilda...
At the end of last month I taped an episode of "Everywoman" on Al Jazeera English, talking about the Israeli consulate's partnership with Maxim to try to "improve the country's image" among young men in the U.S. Check it out:
(My first TV appearance! I was so nervous.)
This morning, Vanessa asked sarcastically, "Why, oh why can't we have a hot, long-haired candidate with a "plunging neckline"?"
Ask and ye shall receive.
Disgraced former CongressmanTom DeLay tells college Republicans that it's not NAFTA, not economic inequality, not years of failing policies that have brought us to our current immigration crisis. Nope, it's abortion rights. (Forward to the 3:45 minute-mark on this video to watch DeLay say this with a straight face.)
If you believe abortion, if you believe that doesn't affect you... I contend it affects you in immigration. If we had those 40 million children that were killed over the last 40 years, we wouldn't need the illegal immigrants to fill the jobs that they are doing today. Think about it.
Right! If all those white women hadn't had abortions, we'd have plenty of good, upstanding white folks to fill the jobs the scary brown people do now!
Seems like a crazy, fringe perspective, no? All sorts of places are linking to DeLay's comments as if this is news. But this has been a relatively popular talking point of the radical conservative, forced-pregnancy movement for quite awhile. The "abortion-causes-illegal-immigration" view has even been endorsed by Republicans in the Missouri state legislature:
"Suggestions for how to stop illegal hiring varied without any simple solution," the report states. "The lack of traditional work ethic, combined with the effects of 30 years of abortion and expanding liberal social welfare policies have produced a shortage of workers and a lack of incentive for those who can work."
That's right. They use the specter of illegal immigration to justify suggesting the state roll back its reproductive rights and social welfare programs. I only wish Tom DeLay were the only one spouting this crap.
Good stuff. This has apparently been an ongoing story in Trudeau's most recent strips.
Big ups to Sarah D.
Not to make this Hillary Day on Feministing or anything, but here's something we've been remiss in not covering: Conservative bloggers have had a field day with this comment Elizabeth Edwards made about Hillary Clinton in an interview with Salon's Joan Walsh:
Look, I'm sympathetic, because when I worked as a lawyer, I was the only woman in these rooms, too, and you want to reassure them you're as good as a man. And sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women's issues. I'm sympathetic -- she wants to be commander in chief. But she's just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is. And then she says, or maybe her supporters say, "Support me because I'm a woman," and I want to say to her, "Well, then support me because I'm a woman."
As Walsh pointed out, Edwards was definitely NOT calling Clinton a man, as people like Matt Drudge suggested. But I think Edwards was implying that Hillary is saying "Vote for me because I'm a woman" while simultaneously downplaying issues like reproductive rights or pay equity. That just doesn't seem true to me.
This is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation for Hillary. If she builds a campaign primarily on reproductive rights, work/family balance, and other "women's issues," she's criticized as not knowing or caring enough about other important issue areas. Someone is bound to say she's playing identity politics. But if she builds a campaign on say, national security or health care, then she's pegged as trying to be "mannish" or ignoring women. Elizabeth Edwards, who's working hard to secure progressive women's votes for her husband, is of course going to say the latter. But she's wrong.
I am by no means endorsing Hillary Clinton, but I think she IS talking about women's issues a fair bit. She had good things to say when addressing Planned Parenthood earlier this week. (John Edwards didn't even attend the event.) She has been a strong advocate of feminist legislation such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, the Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act, and the Prevention First Act. She seems to be held to a higher standard, though, than the male candidates. I swear, even if she only sponsored "women's issues" legislation and held every press conference in front of a NOW banner with "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar" piped in the background, there would still be people saying she's not paying enough attention to women's issues. The threshold is just so much lower for John Edwards and Barack Obama. (Who, to be fair, also have strong records of support for issues like reproductive rights and pay equity.)
Courtney, Rebecca Traister, Dana, and Kay have more thoughts on feminists supporting Hillary. But I believe our own Jen Moseley said it best: "There's no vagina litmus test, people."
Americans for UNFPA have created the "One Woman Can" campaign, which is a petition demanding George Bush release the $161 million he has withheld from the UNFPA since 2002. We need to get this money out of his hands and in the hands of the people who can improve (and save) women's lives.
Sign the petition today.
Sorry this is a wee late.
First Lady of Argentina Cristina Kirchner has decided to run for President, and she makes Hillary Clinton look dowdy.
When When Argentina's foxy first lady and fashionista Cristina Kirchner announced July 2 that she would run for president, she allowed her long, black hair to cascade over a plunging neckline.But America's first lady of politics, Hillary Rodham Clinton — who has often been compared to Kirchner — opted for a solid black pants suit during her recent presidential debate.
Other international women with brains and power, such as France's Ségolène Royal, flaunt their sexuality. But Americans prefer to play the dowdy card.
Why, oh why can't we have a hot, long-haired candidate with a "plunging neckline"? Oh right, because she would probably be deemed an immoral slut. Better dowdy than dirty, right? This just makes me fume.
Thanks to Rebecca for the link.
If you were like me, you discovered hip hop before you discovered feminism. Growing up in the suburbs of Colorado Springs, it was—believe it or not—the soundtrack to my adolescence. Summer camp: Beastie Boys. Junior high make out parties: Dr. Dre and Snoop (we were, for all intents and purposes, west coast). High school cruising: Lost Boyz and Pharcyde. First love: Outkast. Etc. etc.
By the time I discovered a feminism I could call my own, I was nearly 18. So then came the hard work of applying my new feminist analysis to hip hop. Damn. I was, as so many hip hop fans are, stumped. I have continued to struggle to rationalize my ass shaking to R. Kelly at night, while reading feminist analysis of sexual exploitation during the day.
I was hoping that T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s new book Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women might help me in interpreting my own hypocrisy. (Note: I’m not black, but I assumed that her analysis would be applicable, at least in part, to all female hip hop fans.) I was wrong.
Brooklyn filmmaker Sarah Schenck’s first feature film, Slippery Slope, bills itself as “a comedy about pornography and feminism.� Those aren’t words you see together every day. All too often, the debates around the topic are polarizing and volatile.
Here, Schenck takes an antiporn feminist who’s trying to get funding so her film Porn for Dummies can go to the Cannes Film Festival, but the only way she can make ends meet is to take a job on the set of a porn flick helmed by a woman. She has to keep her job a secret from her boyfriend while also figuring out the logistics of the genre and what her own politics will let her do. “With hot button issues, humor is often the best way to start a conversation about it,� says Schenck.
The 41-year-old mother of two, who was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for producing 2004’s Virgin, starring Robin Wright Penn and Elisabeth Moss, was inspired by her own potential dip into the world of porn directing, which she ultimately chose not to pursue. While making Slippery Slope, though, Schenck herself got an education in the mock-porn business, shooting mishaps, and learning when to compromise. Her, she delves into the complexity of feminist debates about housework, babies, and smut.
The Guardian has a great feature this week, "50 Years of the Guardian Women's Page" where loads of Guardian articles written by women from as early as the 1950s to the present day have been republished.
The intrigue of this is seeing how journalism by women evolved from the 50s until now; like seeing old articles about the power of traditional gender roles, wives' allowances, and (my favorite) "The ghastly effects of short skirts and bare legs," and then the transition to the 70s and the beginnings of more feminist pieces. Very cool stuff.
Thanks to Louise for the heads up.
If anyone tries to tell you that gender roles aren't conditioned, take them to Target.com.
While Pottery Barn's featured gender-specific rooms from a couple of years ago were pretty puke-worthy, Target's categorization of toys by gender is severely disappointing. Let's take a gander:
It couldn't get more obvious when I noticed there was a "Girls' Tech Toys" section, which was a tiny relief for about 2.5 seconds until I went to the page; these "tech toys" weren't much more than a Barbie electronic purse set, a Barbie and MP3 player in one, and a nearly three-hundred dollar electronic pony. (Where, oh where did the girl-pony phenomena originate?)
And not to mention nearly everything is pink.
The saddest part is that you will find these gendered toy categories at almost every large retail store like Target. Anyone know one that doesn't?
A big thanks to Kelley for pointing this out.
Former Feministe blogger and dear friend Zuzu now has her very own blog, Kindly Póg Mo Thóin.
Congratulations, Zuzu!
Calling him by his first name makes me feel closer to him.
Everyone, meet the "Susan B. Anthony of pole-dancing."
I read with much interest last month's huge interblog discussion of male circumcision. And I have to say, I find this article from Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle a bit offensive. I'm all about debating the merits of circumcision based on public health -- whether the procedure makes it less likely for men to transmit HIV and other STIs to their partners. But it seems flat-out wrong to make female pleasure a major factor in this debate. (Here's one for the MRAs: Feminists oppose female orgasms! OMG! Ok, sorry, couldn't resist.)
This is just strange:
For years, O'Hara says, she suffered pain and discomfort during sex with her husband. She wondered if the problem was hers. The problem, she finally concluded, wasn't her own dysfunction -- what psychologists used to call "frigidity" -- but "the abnormal structure of the circumcised penis."Like 85 to 90 percent of American men born in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, O'Hara's husband, Jeffrey, was circumcised at birth. Twenty-one years ago, he went through a foreskin restoration process and ever since, O'Hara said in an e-mail from her home in Massachusetts, "sex became a beautiful thing again and was no longer painful. That's when I realized that millions of women are having abnormal sex because of circumcision, and millions of women fake orgasm because of it."
When I hear "abnormal sex," all sorts of morality-police alarm bells start going off in my head. And is it just me, or does "foreskin restoration" sound a little disturbing? This one woman's radically different experiences with circumcised and uncircumcised penises do not a trend make. As Susie Bright points out,
"Some people make a cause out of their sexual preferences, and find an eager audience," Bright said by e-mail from her home in Santa Cruz. "You can buy books about how black men supposedly have larger or more 'magic' penises than white men, too. The myths are apparently catnip to many."
During the aforementioned interblog discussion, Ezra linked to a study showing circumcised men experience a significant decrease in sexual pleasure. Which, to my mind, is more relevant to this debate than anything that appeared in the SF Chronicle article. When we're talking about a procedure that's done to men's bodies, it makes sense to keep the discussion focused on male pleasure and health and, more broadly, on public health. Not women's preferences.
This is actually familiar territory for us. All too often, discussions about women's bodies and sexuality are put in terms of how it affects men. Tint your nipples for men. Have "re-virginization" surgery or labiaplasty for men. Orgasm faster for men. And on and on. Just like male pleasure and preferences should not have a place of prominence in discussions about women's bodies, women's pleasure and preferences should not be at the forefront of the foreskin debate.
Thanks to Jezebel, we have yet another example of how fucked up magazine airbrushing is. Perhaps at her next concert Faith Hill will dedicate this song to the crack photoshopping team at Redbook:
Every part of who I am
Is so in love cause what I have is beautiful
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
You make me feel so beautiful feel like I could fly
Beautiful - cross the clear blue sky
Beautiful - baby I could cry
You make me feel so beautiful
Beautiful
Jezebel's also got a complete satirical breakdown of the cover.
Thanks to Erin for the link.
This is still news? That some women can lead fulfilling lives without breeding?
The president of Eastern Michigan University has been fired, in all likelihood for telling students no foul play was suspected when he had good reason to believe Laura Dickinson, 22, had been raped and murdered in her dorm room.
Maybe from now on the school will be sure to inform its students when officials suspect a rapist/murder is running around their campus.
It's not surprising that there's yet another in the series of "babe chain restaurants," which typically sell meaty entrees delivered to your table by nearly-naked women. This one, Hawaiian Tropic Zone, brings you both broiled meats and waitresses resembling the broiled beauties from suntan ads. It's owned and operated by Dennis Riese, a total feminist -- in the Pussycat Dolls sense, that is.
Nor is Hawaiian Tropic Zone a strip club. “No nipples,� Riese said. “You’re never, ever going to see a girl nude.� He continued, “I’m such a feminist. I love women and believe in them. And I’m not being P.C. by saying that men and women like to look at the woman’s form—it’s been going on since Michelangelo, you know, since they were doing statues of Venus de Milo. So I really believed that I was creating a restaurant that was going to appeal to men and women. I used colors that are very feminine in this place.� He gestured toward a tropical mosaic and toward a pair of soft-orange overhead lights shaped—as are the salt and pepper shakers—like breasts.
I mean, what's not feminist about boob-shaped salt and pepper shakers? They're the must-have gift for every graduating women's studies major.
Riese called for a menu. “We have a section that says ‘simply grilled,’ because women don’t like to eat sauces the way men do,� he said. “They’re watching their weight more often.� He pointed at the menu. “Also, see, it says ‘sharing encouraged,’ no extra charge. Well, women have smaller stomachs. And maybe two young single girls have a smaller pocketbook, and the idea of encouraging two girls to come in—nobody’s going to put a spotlight on you, make you feel uncomfortable because you’re sharing a dish, or that you want something just simply grilled.� (Riese says that women make up about a third of the restaurant’s customers.) “Women like sexy. Talk about empowerment and feminism! There’s nowhere offering women sexy in the way they would like it to be—classy sexy!�
The mind reels.
Intrepid Women's eNews reporter Allison Stevens has a great essay up about what it's been like for her to cover reproductive-rights issues -- particularly the Supreme Court's recent decision to ban a specific abortion procedure -- as a pregnant woman. Talk about an issue hitting home.
As a pregnant woman, I understand why abortion opponents are pushing state laws to give women the opportunity to view their fetuses in ultrasound images; at least for me, seeing the embryo on the screen helped the reality of the pregnancy sink in.I just wish those same activists had access to the kind of journalistic ultrasound I viewed as a Supreme Court reporter. And I certainly wish the justices--especially the eight male ones--could take a look inside the minds of pregnant women and experience not just the hopes but the fears and anxieties associated with pregnancy.
And check out Allison's most recent piece, about the politics of stillbirth. She's also got not one but two features in the latest issue of Ms..
Yesterday Hillary Clinton reintroduced legislation to ensure EC access on military bases for U.S. servicewomen at home and abroad. A companion bill has been introduced in the house by Reps. Mike Michaud and Chris Shays. (Democrats made a run at passing this legislation back in May, to no avail.)
This is pretty damn important, especially considering that sexual assault of servicewomen has gone up considerably in the past two years:
Current Department of Defense policy does not require EC to be available at all health care facilities. In fact, current availability of EC is up to the discretion of each individual facility. According to the Pentagon, the number of reported sexual assaults in the military increased approximately 24 percent in 2006 – nearly 3000 incidents were reported in 2006 compared to almost 2400 in 2005. Given this unfortunate spike in reports of sexual assault cases in the military, access to EC is needed now more than ever. The Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act simply ensures that EC is available at all facilities for our servicewomen.
Clinton mentioned the legislation in her speech to Planned Parenthood last night, where she also spoke out against China's one-child policy, the Global Gag Rule, and forced pregnancy in Romania.
Today the New York Times ponders whether the end is near for abstinence-only.
Even in the face of imminent defeat, the weird metaphors just keep coming:
“You have to look at why sex was created,� Eric Love, the director of the East Texas Abstinence Program, which runs Virginity Rules, said one day, the sounds of Christian contemporary music humming faintly in his Longview office. “Sex was designed to bond two people together.�To make the point, Mr. Love grabbed a tape dispenser and snapped off two fresh pieces. He slapped them to his filing cabinet and the floor; they trapped dirt, lint, a small metal bolt. “Now when it comes time for them to get married, the marriage pulls apart so easily,� he said, trying to unite the grimy strips. “Why? Because they gave the stickiness away.�
Keep your sticky to yourself, kids.
And over at RHRealityCheck, they've got a three-part series reporting from the recently health National Abstinence Clearinghouse conference. There's some great stuff, including a Heritage Foundation concedes that 75% of parents favor comprehensive sex ed, and Leslee Unruh admits defeat on the federal-funding front: "This message is not going away. The message is good -- with or without federal dollars." And Lakita Garth Wright, a speaker on the abstinence-only circuit, offered this pearl of wisdom:
"I run a business. If you come in for a job washing my bathroom floors, I ask you your name -- and your real name, not 'Pookie' or 'Ray-Ray' or whatever you're calling yourself today. I ask you your address, so I can see if you're still living with momma. I ask you where you've worked...and that's to clean my floor. That's more than some girls ask guys they sleep with."
You hear that? Confirm your janitor is not named Pookie or Ray-Ray before you go and sleep with him.
Originally posted at Racewire.
These pictures are too much for me.
Talk about the wedding industrial complex has been all over the place and I like it. But the conversation of race and culture has been left out of the larger discussion. How does capitalism intersect with wedding rituals in cultures other than mainstream white culture? Looking through the wedding section of Nirali has me perplexed (and cracking up) thinking about South Asian weddings in the US and how they typify this notion of the "wedding industrial complex". I have been to many and at this point I have just stopped going. I am 29 and don't plan on getting married. In fact I vehemently oppose getting married, and really can't afford to fly all over the country for a ritual I have deep problems with.
The weddings that I have seen and many of the weddings characterized in Nirali, don't really seem like weddings that are about love and romance. They seem more like business mergers and marketing ploys. Some weddings even get straight to the point and ask that you don't bring boxed gifts, just a check. Nothing says love like having all your friends give you a few thousand dollars. And clearly love can only *really* happen if you spend 70K and have 500 of your closest friends present.
Weddings in India are huge as well, but in the US they are huge, elaborate, cheesy and cost a small fortune. It has become the norm in the middle class South Asian community to have a huge wedding and spend a ton of money whether you have it or not. It is a new way to become American in an Indian way. For example, "something old, something new, " is not a South Asian tradition! That is the placement of US romantic fetish marketing within South Asian chic. Romantic heterosexuality, having money and raising a normal family have become encoded in the "becoming" process for second generation South Asian Indians. And since being American seems to be all about capitalist consumption they may almost succeed, except for that post 9/11 'you look like a terrorist snag.' (Which may be the fear that exaggerates it in the first place, but let me not get ahead of myself.).
It is so lame. Neela at Hyphen delves deeper.
Thoughts?
Er, two of the Democratic frontrunners address Planned Parenthood. One sent his wife instead.
Dana Goldstein reports on Elizabeth Edwards and Barack Obama's speeches. Clinton is scheduled to speak later tonight.
ThinkProgress quotes conservative pundit Robert Novak:
Novak: I hate to say it, but I think the hatred toward George W. Bush is just mad. I listen to, sometimes in the car radio, on talk shows, and the venom that comes out of the mouths of some of these women, particularly, I’m not trying to be sexist, but they’re so vicious toward him. And I don’t think that really contributes. And also, the bloggers, I don’t read the bloggers very much, but it is really, it’s really vicious.
'Cause there's nothing vicious about what Bush has done to women in this country and around the world for the past six and a half years. Nope. Nothing at all that would warrant that kind of anger. And lord knows no men are never venomous toward Bush.
Bonus: I just love how he even prefaces it with the classic, "I'm not trying to be sexist, but [INSERT SEXIST COMMENT HERE]."
I am few days late on this, but please check out the Carnival of Radical Action with a special focus on the Allied Media Conference. I have been liveblogging conferences for a while and it is always fun and exhausting, all at once. Conferences tend to be full of emotion, excitement, enlightenment and sometimes frustration. It is nice to have a forum to share your thoughts and give people an opportunity to read about an event they weren't able to attend. It is always fun for me to go back and read what myself and other people wrote during the conference and the sheer energy and raw emotion that being around folks, talking our talk, releases.
When we find out about Senators that have historically been pro-"family", pro-DOMA, pro-war, anti-choice, anti-immigration and ignorant about what happened post-Katrina in their OWN state, we have to forgive them for little things like, a prostitute habit? David Vitter, Jr Senator from Louisiana spoke out again this morning saying he is sorry for his connection to the DC Madam, among others. Well I would just like to say, sorry to you too, but it just doesn't work like that. We over here will in fact revel in every piece of evidence we find of your hypocrisy and have it add the general belief that wing-nuts are totally and completely full of shit.
Speaking for the first time since he acknowledged a connection to the so-called D.C. Madam a week ago, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana appeared briefly before reporters here Monday to apologize again and attack “political enemies� he said had spread falsehoods about him.Mr. Vitter dropped out of public view a week ago after admitting that his phone number had appeared in a list of clients’ numbers kept by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who is accused of running a prostitution ring in Washington. He missed major votes on Iraq in the Senate and made no public appearances, even as accounts of other relationships with prostitutes multiplied in the New Orleans news media.
After his initial apology, a woman convicted of running a brothel on Canal Street said Mr. Vitter had been a client, and another woman, identified by The New Orleans Times-Picayune as a prostitute named Wendy Cortez, came forward to say that she, too, had had a relationship with him when the senator was in the State Legislature in the 1990s.
And his wife stood in solidarity with him saying although their relationship isn't perfect, but they choose to work together as a family. Because what family values actually means is to defend the actions of your husband--no matter what--for the service of this great nation and probably much to your discontent.
Earlier, Mr. Vitter said he thought he had “received forgiveness from God� for his ties to Ms. Palfrey’s service, and he took a swipe at those who have accused him of hypocrisy. Mr. Vitter’s political career has been in large part based on a strong conservative “family values� stand.He insisted he was “committed to trying to live up to the important values we believe in.�
“If continuing to believe in and acknowledge those values causes some to attack me because of my past failings, well, so be it,� he said.
Yeah dude, whatever.
A group of kids banded together to prevent their 13 year old classmate from getting married.
Around 50 pupils in the town of Satkhira took to the streets to demand that Habiba Sultana's wedding be called off, they say. Pupils even submitted a petition to police urging them to take action. Police summoned Habiba's father and ordered him to stop the girl's marriage, which they said was illegal. Police say that Habiba, a student of Abdul Karim Girls' High School, did not agree when her poverty-stricken father arranged for her to marry a 23-year-old neighbour. Police say that she was too frightened to protest. When she told her friends about the impending wedding, they rallied round and urged her not to go ahead.
Word.
I am shamefully late on writing about this and I meant to write about this two weeks ago when the Wimbledom actually ended, but, ey, better late than never. I will be honest I don't know much about sports, but I always watch Serena and Venus Williams play tennis. First of all, because of how they have made history by overcoming serious odds and making it in a sport that has been historically dominated by white people. Also because of the nasty way that the media has covered them in the past and how they may disappear, but always come back, defy the media and whooop some butt. This clip of Serena at Wimbledon still has me tearing. I just had to share.
Serena unfortunately lost in the quarter final. Venus, on the other hand, ended up winning the tournament as the lowest ranked player to ever win Wimbledon.
Seriously, inspiring.
Seriously, read it and then you totally have the right to go throw up.
My favorite excuse for why suicide bombers do what they do is to have an orgy. I mean, I am sure commitment to their cause (problematic as it may be) or defying Western imperialism, has nothing to do with it. It is all the sex they will have in heaven.
Thanks to Angela for the link.
This is what bad-ass woman of the day, Renuka Chowdhury, Minister of Women and Child Development, told millions of Indians on Monday. One of the ways that women in India are getting infected with HIV is from having unprotected sex with their husbands. Husbands who are contracting the disease elsewhere.
"You cannot trust men or your husbands, with apologies to the men present here," Chowdhury told the inaugural meeting of the National Women Forum of Indian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (INP+), attended by a few men."If you believe that men will be careful, then you can forget about protecting yourself."
India has around 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS -- the world's third highest caseload after South Africa and Nigeria -- with about 40 percent of those infected being women.
India just launched a 28.5 million dollar campaign to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS with a heavy focus on condom usage. For states that are resisting, Chowdhury says it is a hypocrisy for the people to not talk about sex when the population is so high and AIDS/HIV are spreading at such a fast rate.
She said public figures and leaders should speak the language of the people so that they could clearly understand health issues, particularly HIV/AIDS. "We have a population of one billion and we don't want to talk about sex. We have to be vocal on such issues. If we don't then it will affect the generations to come," she said. Chowdhury said her ministry would be setting up hospices for HIV positive women abandoned by their families through the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh fund.
To be real though, if my man is having sex with other women and I don't know if they are having protected sex or not, that relationship would probably be over. I am thinking a lot of these women are either unaware that their husbands are cheating or they are not consenting to the sex in the first place.
via Reuters and Times of India.
Meant to post this last week, my bad:
Before a jury was even seated, a Nebraska judge declared a mistrial Thursday in the sex-assault case where he had barred the words "rape" and "victim" among others.Judge Jeffre Cheuvront said publicity surrounding the rape case against Pamir Safi, 33, would have made it too difficult for jurors to ignore everything they heard before the trial, which had been expected to begin next week.
Right, and god forbid their precious little ears heard the word 'rape'. Fucker.
For background on this case, make sure to check out Dahlia Lithwick's piece at Slate.
Ladies, when in Germany make sure not to take the girls onto any public transportation.
A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday."Suddenly he stopped the bus," the woman named Debora C. told Bild newspaper. "He opened the door and shouted at me 'Your cleavage is distracting me every time I look into my mirror and I can't concentrate on the traffic. If you don't sit somewhere else, I'm going to have to throw you off the bus.'"
The woman ended up moving to another seat but, obviously, felt humiliated by the bus driver.
A spokesperson for the bus company defended the driver: "The bus driver is allowed to do that and he did the right thing...A bus driver cannot be distracted because it's a danger to the safety of all the passengers."
Hear that gals? Your titties are dangerous distractions! So please, in addition to keeping them off buses, make sure to shield them from sight while on planes, near streets (where poor male drivers may crash into each other), and any other public space where men are prone to be assholes. I mean, distracted.
In a bikini. On YouTube. The breathless coverage of presidential campaign "hot chick" videos continues. I really really tried to ignore the whole Obama Girl craziness, hoping it would just go away. But no, now videos of scantily clad women have somehow become emblematic of new media in this presidential election cycle. Letting anyone submit debate questions via YouTube? Oh, interesting. But damn, hot girls dancing and singing? This is groundbreaking political discourse. Oh, wait. They're just supposed to be "funny." Oh, I get it. Just had to take my humorless feminist hat off.
The latest in this string of videos really takes it to the next level. That's right, folks. What you've all been waiting for, a cat fight. Obama Girl and Giuliani girl get it on. And what a surprise, there's a pillow fight.
The woman from the Obama video says this isn't all frivolous, though:
But the song, says Kauffman, "is less a love song than a debate song. We go into some serious issues, like the war in Iraq and Giuliani comparing himself to Ronald Reagan."
Yup. Thought-provoking. I assume next month we'll get a 5-woman mud wrestling match. CNN will provide live coverage of the video shoot. Showtime will play the unrated version. You'll probably be able to buy it bundled with a Girls gone Wild DVD.
So let's get a (clothed) debate going. What do people think about these ads?
I'm off to California tomorrow for book stuff/some much-needed time off. I'll be back next week, and in the meantime the other Feministing gals will take good care of you. Don't miss me too much.
But if you're a west side gal, come see me! I'll be in LA and San Fran (partying it up with my girl Samhita). Here's where you can find me:
Tuesday, July 17
8pm
The Echoplex (downstairs from The Echo)
1150 Glendale Ave
Los Angeles
Saturday, July 21
2PM
Book Passage (In San Francisco's Ferry Building)
1 Ferry Building, #42
San Francisco
Tuesday, July 24
7PM
Books Inc.
In Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness
San Fransisco
Remember how the government health website, 4Parents.gov, has biased and inaccurate information on abortion? Well, it's time to take action.
NARAL Pro-Choice America has a letter you can send to demand factual and objective information.
FOX and CBS have both recently refused to air ads for condoms that emphasize their use as a birth control method. When interviewed by the New York Times, a FOX rep said, that the decision was based on their policy that condom ads "must stress health-related issues rather than the prevention of pregnancy." In other words, it is okay to educate consumers about STDs, but empowering them to make reproductive choices is beyond the purview of two of our nation's most sex-saturated networks.
Oh my. Check out my full take on this disappointment at Alternet.
Maribel Ortega is a fashion designer whose about to open up her first shop featuring her clothing line, LANENA, in Madrid, Spain. Right now you can get her T-shirts online.
LANENA comes from a nickname her family and friends call her—"La Nena"—meaning "Little Girl" in Spanish. Here's Maribel...
The first royal mummy since Tutankhamen has been discovered in Egypt. Her name was Hatshepsut, and she just can't catch a break for her appearance, even though she's been dead thousands of years.
Turns out, Hatshepsut was no Cleopatra. Instead, she was a 50-year-old fat lady; apparently she used her power over the Upper and Lower Nile to eat well and abundantly. Archaeologists also claim that she probably had diabetes, just like many obese women today.
*Gasp!* Can you believe they let a fat woman over age 50 be a ruler? Can you believe she liked to feast the same way male royalty did? OMG.
Hatshepsut also suffered from what all women over 40 need -- a stylist. She was balding in front but let the hair on the back of her head to grow really long, like an aging female Dead Head with alopecia.
In other words... Today's women over age 40? So gross they have the same beauty issues as a 3,500-year-old mummy.
But like today, one should never be fooled by a woman’s Look. Hatshepsut was a powerful, successful woman.
Riiight... Because in modern society, we'd never assume a less-than-perfect-looking woman was powerful or successful. I mean, how successful could she really be if she can't afford plastic surgery, a personal trainer, and her own stylist?
Ok, ok, I know this article is written in trying-to-be-playful style, but I just found it incredibly annoying.
India is requiring all women to register their pregnancies with the government in an effort to curb selective abortion of female fetuses.
The government wanted to ensure that abortions -- often carried out illegally with the aim of doing away with unwanted female foetuses -- were done for an "acceptable and valid reason", she said.
It's certainly true that the disproportionate abortion rate for female fetuses is upsetting. India passed a law in 1994 regulating prenatal testing for sex, in an attempt to curb abortion rates of female fetuses -- which clearly isn't having much effect.
But the way to curb abortion of female fetuses because of their gender is to work on improving gender equality throughout society. It's not to create an agency to ensure women are choosing abortions for "acceptable and valid" reasons. (That language makes me squeamish...)
To me working to improve the lives of and opportunities for women is a goal that's no less practical than creating an accurate government registry of all pregnant women in the country. I mean, is it even possible? In countries where abortion is illegal, women will always find a way around the law if they want an abortion badly enough. It doesn't seem like it will be hard to dodge the pregnancy registry. As the article points out, we're talking about a country of 1.1 billion people, where more than 50 percent of women deliver children at home, without ever coming into contact with medical personnel.
If you can get past the language about "valid reasons" for abortion, one upside of the registry could be an increase in maternal health. That's why UNICEF is on board, saying it "would enormously help promote institutional deliveries and strengthen and expand the safe maternity scheme." Which is, of course, a good thing.
Thanks to Lindsay for the link.
Despite our government's incompetency regarding sex education, it's nice to see that the rest of us are doing something right; a couple of great updates on the birth control front:
Now if we could only get OTC access for teens...
Oh you just know this is going to be bad. One of FOX's shows slated for the Fall is called When Women Rule the World and I have to say, the description doesn't give me much hope:
What if it was “a woman’s world�? What if women made ALL the decisions? If men were their obedient subjects?These questions and more will be explored when a group of strong, educated, independent women, tired of living in a man’s world and each with a personal axe to grind, rule over a group of unsuspecting men used to calling the shots on WHEN WOMEN RULE THE WORLD.
The unscripted series will reveal how women and men react in a world where women are in charge and men are subservient, and each gender’s ability to adapt to a new social order will be put to the test.
The participants will be brought to a remote, primitive location where the women will have the opportunity to “rule� as they build a newly formed society – one where there is no glass ceiling and no dressing to impress. For the men, their worlds of power and prestige are turned inside-out and upside-down. And for these women, turnabout is fair play!
In order to win, the men must accede to the women’s every demand, 24/7. Here, women command and men obey. Over the series’ duration, the men will be eliminated by the women until one last man is standing.
How will the men react? How will the women treat the men? Can women effectively rule society? Will the men learn what life is like for some women in today’s world? Will this new society be a Utopia or a hell on earth? And in the end, who will be man enough to succeed in the new social order? (Emphasis added)
Oh dear.
Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer, authors of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, have penned a piece for The New York Times about Jane's demise. Check it out. And not just because Feministing gets a mention (yay!).
I'm not sure why, but this story gave me a giggle. It's actually something good to remember, the skewing of contraceptive failure rates by abstinence-only purity pushers. The stats they tend to use include the highest ever found failure rates for condoms, but the lowest for abstinence. But, the part that made me laugh was the serious tone of this:
When it comes to "typical," measurable behavior among professed users, abstinence actually suffers a higher "failure rate" than the pill and some other contraceptives, says a study based on the National Survey of Family Growth. That's because teens who profess to remain abstinent practice that method, on average, as imperfectly and irregularly as kids who use condoms or the pill, the study found.
So, kids, if you forget to use your abstinence, put a condom on.
Yesterday there was a huge condom fashion show at a Beijing expo sponsored by China's largest condom maker. (Apparently there's a whole crafting subculture devoted to making dresses out of prophylactics. Who knew?)
Condoms could really use the publicity in China. People may be sporting them as outrageous eveningwear, but not many are using them during sex:
Gao [Ersheng of Shanghai Family Planning Institute] believes no more than half of Chinese youngsters use condoms -- or any precautions at all -- during first-time sex, according to China Daily.Based on an earlier national survey in China, only a quarter of those having premarital sex for the first time used a condom. "Many youngsters believe their sex partners won't have a sexually transmitted disease," Gao told China Daily, "and abortion seems easy -- you hear commercials for 'painless abortions' quite often."
This is the sort of thing the forced-pregnancy movement is always saying U.S. pro-choicers are after. You know, a world in which youngsters are having all sorts of sex and then learning on TV about how quick 'n' painless abortions are. But in reality, despite the availability of abortion, not a single person I know considers China pro-choice country. Without widespread information about and access to contraception, it's just a country with a high abortion rate. Which is different from one that truly values reproductive health and freedom.
Remember how overjoyed we were that one of the federal abstinence-only funding streams was about to dry up?
Well, surprise surprise, yesterday Congress passed legislation extending Title V funding for abstinence-only sex ed. While mainstream media outlets were still reporting that Democrats had let the funding expire (or not mentioning it at all), the conservative groups were already busy crowing about the extension -- and rallying the Purity Ballers to ask their legislators to continue the funding past the end of this fiscal year.
Ummm... so if Rep. John Dingell, the Democrat who heads the committee with jurisdiction over Title V funding, realizes that abstinence-only has been "a colossal failure," where were the Democrats on this?
Also, where are the comprehensive sex ed and repro health groups? I haven't heard a peep from them. Whether they decide to issue an action alert or not, in the coming three months we need to be asking our Democratic Senators and Representatives to live up to their word and let this abstinence-only money expire for good.
Shocking, I know.
The folks at NARAL Pro-Choice America let us know that the Department of Health and Human Services has recently revised its website, 4Parents.gov, to replace facts "designed to help parents talk about preventing teen pregnancy with biased and misleading claims."
This is disappointing, considering the website had made some (though not many) improvements after over 145 organizations, including the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and SIECUS, sent a letter in 2005 complaining about the biased and inaccurate information.
So what's some of the lovely info that the site is touting now? Check it out:
"Abortions can have complications. There may be emotional consequences, as well: some women say that they feel sad and some use more alcohol or drugs than before."
Charming.
I am sort of late to the Persepolis bandwagon (there are now four volumes of graphic novels and a film coming out), but wanted to make sure Feministing readers are aware of Marjane Satrapi’s work in case you were sleeping on it too. (Shout out to my momma for passing it along).
Satrapi writes about her life growing up in Iran post-revolution with a surprising sort of anti-romantic romance. Each chapter is a story, in the classic sense, but she also braids in these wonderfully surprising elements, the most exciting of which is her own sometimes crass, always deadpan comedic timing.
Remember the Nebraska judge who banned the word 'rape' during a rape case?
Well the alleged rape victim is having none of it.
"I refuse to call it sex, or any other word that I'm supposed to say, encouraged to say on the stand, because to me that's committing perjury. What happened to me was rape, it was not sex."
She says she's willing to go to jail for ignoring his order. Fuck yeah.
I'm with Scanner, which declares, "It will be a cold day in hell before we put a headband over our vaginas."
Remember the iDollator community? You know, the dudes who have "relationships" with their Real Dolls? Well, here's a short documentary about them. It's very creepy, very scary, and very sad.
And just to get this out of the way, since the last time we posted on these guys we got a whole bunch of comments about how women use vibrators and a sex doll is the same thing: Fucking a sex toy is fine by me. Calling it your girlfriend and wishing that real women were like dolls (in that they can't move, talk, etc) is not.
As the Senate gears up for confirmation hearings on Bush's surgeon general nominee, the homo-hatin' Dr. James W. Holsinger, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona told Congress that (surprise!) the Bush administration values ideology and theology over science and health.
Carmona, a Bush nominee who served from 2002 to 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that political appointees in the administration routinely scrubbed his speeches for politically sensitive content and blocked him from speaking out on public health matters such as stem cell research, abstinence-only sex education and the emergency contraceptive Plan B."Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried," he said.
That pretty much sums up the Bush administration's approach to, well, everything.
via Dana at TAPPED.
On the heels of the news that Republican presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson has vowed to end breast cancer by 2015, Brad takes the opportunity for some always-welcome discussion about the shortcomings of breast-cancer behemoth the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
He links to this amazing piece by Mary Ann Swissler about how corporate-backed cancer foundations like Komen are essentially taking money from (and improving the images of) companies that have profited by dumping chemicals into the environment, chemicals that very likely cause breast cancer. For example, one of Komen's big business buddies is Occidental, a huge petro-chemical company.
Swissler's piece, which I really can't recommend highly enough, also goes into detail about Komen's close relationship with Republicans. So it comes as no surprise that Nancy Brinker, Komen's founder, was selected as this year's Independent Women's Forum "Woman of Valor."
Apparently "Women of Valor" are those who cozy up to corporations that are causing the very disease their foundations claim to fight. Sounds pretty brave to me.
Brad also links to this post at the Plank about Thompson's announcement, in which Mike Crowley writes,
And it's not as though breast cancer, of all diseases, persists from a lack of publicity and political focus. My guess is we're already doing about as much as can be done. But please correct me if I'm wrong.
Consider this a correction. His misunderstanding points to another thing that's so pernicious about the Komen Foundation. The pervasiveness of their corporate pink-washing campaign leads most people to believe that breast cancer is a disease we're pouring lots and lots of resources into fighting. ("Hey, if every "lite" product I consume has a pink ribbon on it, we MUST be doing all we can!") While that may be true on the treatment end, it's certainly not true when it comes to exposing environmental causes of the disease, as Swissler explains in detail.
And these misconceptions persist exactly because people like IWF continue to honor the Komen Foundation for happily partnering with the companies whose pollution causes this disease.
The United Nations Population Fund has chosen "Men as Partners in Maternal Health" as the theme of World Population Day. It's really interesting stuff--find out more at UN Dispatch.
Awwww. Facebook has validated them as a couple.
I thought I'd bring back Feministing's trend of publicly shaming each other. Because, really, what good is having a blog if you can't use it to embarrass your little sister?
Brenda Berkman, the first female firefighter in New York City.
A black lesbian firefighter in Los Angeles who said she was harassed by colleagues has won a hefty settlement: $6.2 million.
In addition to having her mouthwash mixed with urine (!), firefighter Brenda Lee was also subject to derogatory comments from superiors and was forced "to perform strenuous exercises without proper safety precautions because of her race and sexual orientation." Charming.
Tuesday's jury payout was the largest in a string of recent settlements of cases alleging discrimination and retaliation against women and minorities within the Fire Department.In April, a jury awarded $1.7 million to Lewis Bressler, who claimed he was forced to retire for backing Lee in her claims of discrimination. Firefighter Gary Mellinger, who alleged the department retaliated against him after he helped Lee, settled with the city for $350,000 after a jury found in his favor.
(This is an issue close to my heart; I used to work on nontraditional employment for women back in my nonprofit days.) If you want to see a fantastic movie on female firefighters, check out Taking the Heat: The First Women Firefighters of New York City, a film by Bann Roy. (The pic above is a still from the film.)
If you want more information on nontraditional employment for women, go here and here.
Was it inevitable? And it was directed by "the master of horror" John Carpenter, I might add.
This gem involves the rape of a 15-year old girl, anti-choice crazies slaughtering doctors at an abortion clinic, and the birth of a demon baby. Well, at least we finally got a movie that addresses the A-word, right?!? Right?? Ugh.
Thanks to Deb for the link.
So I am helping organize the 15th Erase Racism Blog Carnival which will be hosted at Racewire.org (part of the great and mighty Colorlines Magazine). I am really excited to get the opportunity to read some of the best anti-racism writing out there. So if you are interested click here for more details and to submit go here.
The topics are diverse, but super interesting including:
Black/Brown politics
Environmental justice/green economies
And Humor/Satire blogs and vlogs
So check it out or add suggestions in comments. And please go check out some of the older carnivals if you are interested.
Today Michelle Goldberg has a great piece about the Bush administration's lethal decision to push abstinence as a solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa. She quotes Beatrice Were, the founder of Uganda's National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS:
Like many in attendance, Were contracted HIV from her husband, a common occurrence in a region where women make up the majority of new infections and marriage is a primary risk factor. For those like her, the White House's AIDS prevention mantra -- which prescribes abstinence and marital fidelity, with condoms only for "high risk" groups like prostitutes and truck drivers -- is a sick joke."We are now seeing a shift in recent years to abstinence only," she said. "We are expected to abstain when we are young girls and to be faithful when we are married to men who rape us, who are not necessarily faithful to us, who batter us." The women in the audience, several waiting to share their own stories of marital rape, applauded.
Goldberg goes on to debunk the notion, heralded by the likes of Bono, that the Bush administration has drastically increased AIDS funding. Nope-- they've just managed to not cut HIV/AIDS programs. In other words, they've ponied up the bare minimum. She also points out that, while defenders of the abstinence programs say that only 1/3 of prevention funding goes to "just say no" efforts, the reality is quite different:
But this figure is also deceptive, because the prevention budget includes things like fighting mother-to-child transmission. In fact, a full two-thirds of the money for the prevention of the sexual spread of HIV goes to abstinence. What's left is targeted to groups considered high-risk. HIV-activists have spent the last two decades trying to show that condoms aren't just for prostitutes and the promiscuous; Bush has undone much of their work.
This argument just might be starting to get through to Laura Bush. Her husband, not so much.
I don't know what's worse--the headline or the picture. Though all this talk of assholes does seem strangely appropriate.
NOTE: To the dear reader who sent me this, I lost your email so I can't give you the proper hat tip--but thanks!
As we have discussed before, the erased history of the hardships faced by comfort women during WWII, has recently come into the focus of the international media. Some of these women recently spoke out about the atrocities done to them at Shanghai Normal University. Recent attacks on these women include a full page ad in the Washington Post demanding that comfort women were licensed prostitutes that were better paid than the Japanese military. For some reason, I am thinking this is not true.
For the survivors of the system of sexual slavery at Japanese military bases, the latest denials have added a deep insult to a horrific injury."I was very angry when I heard such news," Ms. Lin said. "The Japanese government is still denying it. But it really happened. It happened to me in Hainan. And I'm still suffering from the violence they did to me."
An estimated 200,000 women - mostly Chinese and Korean - were forced into sexual servitude under Japanese wartime occupation. Of the Chinese victims, only 47 are still alive and willing to speak out. Every year, more of the survivors are dying.
There is a lot of debate over whether Shinzo Abe has apologized enough, including a US House Resolution. But the reality of what these women lived through doesn't change. And as they get older, they lose more of the people that are telling these stories. Will they be remembered?
(Warning: Content gets a little graphic after the jump)
Check out this piece on women directors and their experiences trying to make films within a male-dominated field.
Have any favorite female directors?
Our comments section is being naughty. Please be patient while we fix it. Thanks!
Your favorite virgin-pimping women's magazine is no more.
Devil spawn of it's much-cooler (and much-missed) foremother Sassy, Jane has been preaching the gospel of empowerment through elimination of your "Buddha belly" since 1997. It was a mainstream women's mag that tried to adopt the Sassy tone, but really had the same old takes on the same old topics, as Bitch magazine's "Jane Petty Criticism Corner" faithfully documented. (For a taste, check out this classic: "Ten Things to Hate About Jane.")
via Scanner, which is actually kind of sad about this news.
I just saw an article, and it reminded me of something that really bugs me. We all know how little most anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-women doing anything advocates trust women. As in, not at all. That's to be expected. What I don't expect, but see all the time, is how little some women trust each other's decision-making.
That's why when I see stories like this, it makes me sad. It's a story from Reuters about a study of women who ordered Plan B online before it was available over the counter.
All of the women had used an Internet service to get emergency contraception pills, and when surveyed, nearly all said they would have used non-prescription pills had they been available.Yet fewer than half said they fully supported making emergency contraception available over-the-counter to everyone.
Many other women supported the idea of non-prescription pills, but expressed reservations. Often, they worried that easier access to emergency birth control would encourage other women -- though not themselves -- to be promiscuous or have more unprotected sex.
I forwarded this article to a friend, who considers herself a feminist, and she agreed. She said (thanks for letting me quote you), "Come on, you know there are those women who ruin it for all of us. Who'll just go crazy with it." Uh, wha?
I'm a very judgmental person by nature. It's something I struggle with every single day. Because one of the most important parts of being a feminist (for me), is trusting other women to make choices about their lives, and respecting those choices they make. Regardless of what I may think would be smarter or better. One thing that helps me check myself is when I say something that sounds eerily like something that a far-right misogynist might say. That's a good time to reflect on where this opinion comes from, and what the result of it could be. Only women who behave "responsibly" should get the morning after pill? No Plan B for sluts? Who decides what is responsible behavior, or who is a slut, or even if being a slut is bad? Dangerous road, right? (Get it? Road right! I'm so funny, and sleep-deprived.)
Anyway, like I said, this is something I struggle with myself. Especially when it comes to romantic relationship decisions. Oh, gets me going big time. So share. What are you judgmental about?
Update: Amanda posted over at Pandagonthat "trusting women" is a poor basis for conveying rights and freedoms. I agree. That wasn't my point in this post. Part of my feminism is struggling against being judgemental because of what I may think I know about other women's lives. It's just something that I do in my head, not something any policy can be based on. It's hard enough to figure out why I do things, forget why anyone else does. Originally I was thinking the word "respect" was better. But, to me, respect suggest some kind of understanding and acceptance. Trust is more of a personal acknowledgment that I am not the best person to decide what's right for you life, and should trust you to do so. Easier said than done, but worth trying for, I think.
Linda Hirshman, Courtney Martin, and Deborah Siegel weigh in on the annual National Women's Studies Association conference. Hotness.
This weekend marked the closing of the first International Women's Summit on Women's Leadership and HIV and AIDS, which was held in Nairobi, Kenya.
The summit released a 10-point action plan that aims to foster leadership roles of women and girls in the battle against HIV/AIDS. Via Kaisernetwork.org :
The plan of action includes securing significant involvement of women in decision making processes; promoting equality and the human rights of girls and women; ensuring their sexual, physical and psychological safety and security; promoting their reproductive and sexual rights and health; and increasing their access to education, economic security and other resources, such as the right to own and inherit property. (Nation/AllAfrica.com, 7/9).
Other issues discussed at the summit were men's role in combatting HIV/AIDS and new technologies that could play a large role in prevention strategies, such as microbicides.
Sounds like it was a great gathering (of over 1,500, I might add); let's hope their results makes a real impact.
In an interview with Parade magazine Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, says that she's a feminist. Nice.
“There are too many stupid girls in the media,� Watson observes, her dark eyes lighting up. “Hermione’s not scared to be clever. I think sometimes really smart girls dumb themselves down a bit, and that’s bad.� Watson admits that there is quite a lot of herself in the confident and bookish Hermione. “I’m a bit of a feminist,� she proclaims. “I’m very competitive and challenging.� Though she resented it at first, Watson has come to appreciate the emphasis on Hermione’s brains rather than her appearance. “When I was 9 or 10, I would get really upset when they tried to make me look geeky, but now I absolutely love it. I find it’s so much pressure to be beautiful. Hermione doesn’t care what she looks like."
Though you have to love how Watson's comment about the way young women are portrayed in the media gets turned into this headline at People: Emma Watson: 'There Are Too Many Stupid Girls'
Another World is Possible Where Young Leaders Call the Shots
When you think of the US Social Forum, what things come to mind? Anti-globalization marches? Protestors against big business? Groups looking to infuse workers’ and human rights into international trade agreements? Calls for an end to imperialism? Anti-war activists? Maybe all of the above. However, we doubt, for many of you, reproductive justice issues ever come into play.
For far too long, the vision of an inclusive social justice movement has failed to conjure many connections with the basic reproductive health and rights movements in this country. Civil rights organizations have worked with labor rights movements. People’s organizations have worked with grassroots campaign organizers. Many of these collaborations have been around specific health and well-being issues, but frequently when the word “reproductive� is uttered, people draw lines in the sand and jump to one side or another.
Fortunately, as a social justice movement and a country, that is beginning to change. We’re pleased to say that a lot of that change has been initiated by new, younger leaders who not only care about the environment, but also sexual and gender identity issues. The newest generation of activists are working for labor rights, immigration reform, sustainable development, poverty, race and class divides, human rights, AND reproductive health.
Linda Tarr-Whelan, Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow, is working on a book “Want a Better Future? Bet on Women!� and wants to hear from young women:
We are overdue for a national conversation about achieving more women in leadership in the United States. Wouldn’t you like to open the newspaper and see the headline, “Glass Ceiling Cracks Open: Women 40% of Top CEO’s� or “Child Care Woes on the Way Out: All Parents Able to Choose Quality Options that Fit Their Family� or “No More Sticky Floor: The Pay Gap Closes.�
There are some questions below the jump, email your answers to Rachel. Make sure your voice is heard!
Nearly three years after bringing attention to the Oxygen show "Snapped" which focuses on real women who kill their husbands for the, ya know, usual reasons a woman would off her hubby -- adultery, money, or who are just plain pissed off -- The New York Times had a piece yesterday about its (and others like it) success.
According the Times, new women's shows like "The Bad Girls Club" and the "Secret Lives of Women," along with "Snapped," are the beginnings of a "recasting women’s television away from its celebrations of victimhood to its new fetish for female aberrance."
Celebrations of victimhood? Woohoo, time to victimize someone! I can't wait to finds me an abused lady to save!
And these show apparently have much more to offer than, you know, caring about women's issues; while "Snapped" obviously fails to address the much larger numbers of abused women who murder their husbands in self defense, seeing women as gold-digging psychopaths is just so much more fun! Or in the "Secret Lives of Women," for example, they follow the habits of an anorexic woman who doesn't find anything unhealthy with her "lifestyle," while "the producers level no judgment against her."
This "judgement" that the author is talking about is generally brought upon by feminists:
"The series attaches a certain sense of empowerment to unconventional behavior — like infidelity — and it defies the standards of pop-cultural feminism by refusing to solicit our sympathies for women obviously in trouble."
This is more than just "unconventional." Not only will we not judge you, but we'll videotape your sickness and air it on TV for kicks! Aside from this weird contention that feminists (pop culture feminist, don't forget) seek out and celebrate women who are abused, to also imply that these new shows are doing something liberating for these women they're blatantly exploiting, as well as developing a newer and more positive trend of the way we see women on television is just, well, horseshit. They're trying to create some sort of modern freak show of Women Gone Wrong, and trying to claim it as female empowerment.
Has anyone seen any of these shows?
Time to start speaking up about the toll HIV/AIDS is taking on black women.
New Missouri TRAP laws go into effect, which Planned Parenthood says could force it to spend more than $1 million on remodeling. Also, new abstinence-only requirements apply to educators in the state.
Men and women are equally chatty.
An anti-choice protester wins his appeal after being arrested outside a clinic. His lawyer said, "It struck a very positive tone for a pro-life protestor. In most courts around the country, they are treated like they are maniacs.� Gee, wonder why that is?
Can't say I'm surprised at these kind of images of a powerful woman in politics.
Nancy Goldstein explains why she's keeping her gay money to herself this election cycle.
An Australian campaign tries to combat speeding by questioning manhood.
And speaking of manhood, why are TV talk show types completely obessed with how awesomely manly the Republican presidential candidates are?
One of the federal funding streams for abstinence-only education has officially dried up.
And speaking of abstinence, Laura Bush says she's now down with promoting condom use in Africa.
On chick lit books for women in Saudi Arabia.
A New Jersey school blocks out a photo of two male students kissing.
What the Supreme Court's "resegregation" decision has to do with gender.
Rebecca Traister on Jane Austen mania and the myth of the "perfect man."
Egypt bans female circumcision.
Katina Paron is the editorial and program director of the nonprofit Children's PressLine (CPL) housed in the Martin Luther King, Jr. high school in New York City. CPL teaches youth between the ages of 8 and 18 the craft of oral journalism to empower youth and educate adults on youth issues. Youth at CPL interview other youth throughout the five boroughs and across the country on various social and economic issues that affect their everyday lives, their interviews are then in turn published in adult media outlets such as The New York Daily News and Alternet.org for adults to read and learn.
When she's not getting CPL interviews published, Katina's working hard to get funding. Here's Katina...
Can someone tell what the fuck this graphic of a woman in a tight shirt tied up and hooded has to do with impeaching Dick Cheney?
UPDATE: Due to some complaints, the image has been taken down. Good on them.
Cause I'm going to be there thanks to the fabulous Jill Soloway and OBJECT. Come say hi and have a drink with me.
Modesty maven Wendy Shalit is back with a new book, Girls Gone Mild, and (like any book that says girls are too slutty) it's getting some interesting press.
I've written about this modesty nonsense before, so if want to know how I really feel about it read this article I penned for The Guardian.
But I do have to say that I'm massively annoyed at how Shalit is appropriating feminist language and action to promote a very anti-feminist agenda.
Luckily, Ms. Shalit argues, a rebellion is under way. In "Girls Gone Mild," she claims that more and more young women today, put off by our hypersexualized culture, are reverting to an earlier idea of femininity. They wear modest clothing and even act with unbrazen kindness. They don't mind abstinence programs at school, and they prefer a version of feminism based on self-respect rather than sex-performance parity.
Interesting how "modest clothing" and adhering to inaccurate and dangerous abstinence-only ed programs are conflated with "self-respect."
The article even mentions the Abercrombie girlcott as an example of this "return to modesty." With an unsourced quote from one of the girls talking about how icky the National Organization for Women is, of course--to appropriately distance them from "mainstream" feminists. (Note: I actually find this quote very sketchy and am looking into where it came from.*)
Ms. Shalit has little patience for the thinking of the older generation of mainstream feminists. They are, she says, "so committed to the idea of casual sex as liberation that they can't appreciate or even quite understand these younger feminists." To them, modesty is a step back, even a betrayal of the liberationist spirit. "They don't understand," Ms. Shalit says, "that pursuing crudeness is the problem, not the solution."
I love when people talk on behalf of "younger feminists" to promote their own agenda. So classy. Well as someone who actually, you know, IS a younger feminist (and works and speaks with younger feminists), I can tell you this: We don't think that women's moral compass is located in between our legs and that what we do sexually (or how we dress, as Shalit seems to be so concerned with) has anything to do with how good of a person we are.
So modesty gals, if you want to push for a new generation of chaste, obedient girls who bake apple pies (seriously that's in there), go for it. But don't try to use feminism to do it.
*UPDATE: I called the folks at Girls as Grantmakers, who organized the girlcott, and Executive Director Heather Arnet (who was present when Shalit interviewed all the girls) is contesting the validity of the quote. How nice that Shalit sees fit to co-opt the activism of young women.
Well this sucks.
Twenty-four year old Iranian women's rights activist, Delaram Ali, has been sentenced to lashings and almost three years in prison for attending a rally addressing Iran's discriminatory laws against women last year.
"The women's movement is expanding and it worries the government," says Nasrin Sotoudeh, Ali's lawyer.
Ali was given 34 months on charges of taking part in an illegal gathering, propaganda activities against the system, and disrupting public order and peace.
Sotoudeh says that peaceful protest is lawful in Iran, and that the sentence was totally unjustified. Ya think?
South Dakota state Rep. Joel Dykstra--who The Hill reports has entered the race for the Republican nomination to face Sen. Tim Johnson (D) in 2008--has some interesting ideas about sexual assault:
"I think 'rape and incest' is a buzzword. It's a bit of a throwaway line and not everybody who says that really understands what that means. How are you going to define that?� --South Dakota state Rep. Joel Dykstra (R-Lincoln County) on why the state legislature didn't include those exceptions in its abortion ban, April 20, 2006.
I'm pretty sure that the women (and men, for that matter) in South Dakota know exactly what rape and incest mean. Maybe Dykstra needs someone to explain it to him.
Contributed by Eshanda Fennell, Pro-Choice Public Education Project
Why I Fight For Another World
I’m not a writer, like my ancestors I have a nostalgic belief in the oral tradition. While oral histories have always had a way of moving my spirit and providing a deeper level of understanding for my work, passion and commitment to social change, I know I cannot afford to romanticize or ignore the power of the written word. One lesson I have learned from those who have come before me is how the written word provides voice for many and opportunity for others to peek into a window of another’s view. This process of putting my thoughts into written words, has always been a journey—accordingly, my involvement in the movement has been just the same, a journey!
I like to describe my journey as starting in my mother’s womb… at birth and in the early years of my existence. You see, my mother is natural organizer! From a very early age I can recall how eager and full of grace my mother was with introducing herself to newcomers. She never missed the opportunity to learn a new face and was always busy figuring out ways to get people involved in growing community. Naturally, I learned a lot through watching my mother in action, even to this day, I find myself taking notes and attempting to model her selfless giving and belief in the betterment of humanity.
Like my mother and all the women of my family that have come before me, I enter this movement not as a feminist, and with very little thrill or frill of creating a name for myself. I enter this movement because of a little voice deep inside reminds me that “we can do better!� You see, feminism for my mother, grandmother and their mothers was a way of life and it was required for survival. Growing up in a single-parent household, you listened, watched and learned to do what needed to be done while the world before you - your home - was presented as a place of peace, love, and kindness. It is because of that world, the loving world my mother raised me in I know another world is possible!
For all the girls who hid under their covers with a flashlight and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings long after mom said it was time to go to sleep, for the cliff note reading dilettantes, for the closet feminists, for the professors hungry to read something without “hermeneutics� in the title, for the smarty pants, literary controversy whores, and proud feminist dudes…welcome to your weekly column.
I will be weighing in every Thursday on a new book that has sparked my interest, or an old book that suddenly seems poignant again (you know the drill, “those who do not learn from history…�). I’m hoping the material will range—from graphic novels to academic texts, from popular nonfiction to, hell why not, poetry. But let’s also be honest, I write nonfiction. I read A LOT of nonfiction. So that’s probably what you’ll find here most of the time. For an intro on me, check out my site.
If you have a book you’d like to send me, please shoot me an email and I’ll reply with the address of my super secret sexy librarian hideout.
Next week, the nerdy fun really begins…
I think I just got pregnant.
There's an opening at Our Bodies, Ourselves for a Communications and Marketing Associate. Hotness.
The same country that lets Libby go arrests Mississippi book store owners for selling "illegal" sex toys:
"They just started taking boxes," Charles Hobby said. "Some of those boxes, I understand, had lotions, massage oils."
The horror! So maybe the answer to getting Libby in prison is to catch him using a butt plug in a southern state.
Well this is just lovely. What's the best advice that Marlys Harris, Senior Editor of Money Magazine, has for women? "Snag" yourself a "Richie Rich."
True, it's not politically correct to go hunting for a marital meal ticket (or for that matter, to write about it). But just for a moment imagine the life that could be yours if you did.Forget the fabulous baubles, designer clothing, cutting-edge electronics and palatial mansions that your golden goose - uh, spouse - might heap upon you.
Consider the more pragmatic bonuses of the good life. No more scrimping and scraping to make your annual Roth IRA contribution. No more working until you drop to ensure a comfortable retirement. And no more worries about where your children will get into college (or how to pay for it).
That's of course until you're served with divorce papers and find yourself with no job, no work history and...well, generally just fucked.
But why encourage women to seek out higher education or give them advice on finding high-paying jobs when you can just recommend marrying a billionaire? But Harris does say you should get a degree and work on your smarts--just not for silly things like success or personal fulfillment.
To worm your way into a billionaire's business, and eventually his heart, you need the right career. An M.B.A. will give you the most flexibility....Ultrarich men once gravitated toward women with the showiest plumage - or plastic surgery. That has changed, says Richard Conniff, author of The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide.
"Arm candy is now seen as déclassé," he notes. These days, the more prestigious your credentials and the brainier you are, the better.
Amazing how an article about money can be so devoid of any class.
Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco presented a letter to President Bush signed by 50 presidential scholars who were visiting the White House urging him to "stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants."
Amazing.
Via Alternet. (Thanks to Melissa for the link!)
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is so generous:
"If there is a circumstance where the life of the mother is at risk by virtue of proceeding with the pregnancy, then abortion in that case is acceptable," he said. "I do not believe it is immoral in that case. I know other people feel differently."
Seriously, fuck you Romney. Not to mention, this is quite a different tune than Romney sung some years ago when he asked a woman whose life was in danger and considering an abortion why she "should get off easy."
Contributed by Maria Nakae, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice
Reproductive Justice: A Vision of Another World
A new movement is gaining momentum and changing the way that we view our world, think about our lives and take action for change. It is a movement that is working toward a vision where all people have the economic, social, and political power and resources to make healthy decisions about our bodies, sexuality, and reproduction for ourselves, our families, and our communities in all areas of our lives.
What is so unique about the Reproductive Justice Movement that makes it so powerful and vibrant? It addresses our selves comprehensively, rather than singling out parts of our bodies and our lives. It pushes for an understanding of how reproductive oppression exists in all aspects of our lives – at work, at school, at home, and on the streets. It strives for the self-determination of those who are most impacted to be part of the solution and create change in their communities. And it recognizes that by working together to fight for the needs of all of our communities, we are much stronger and more effective than working on our issues separately.
By placing our reproductive health and rights within a social justice framework, the Reproductive Justice Movement offers an authentic way for us to understand how reproductive oppression – the control and exploitation of our bodies, sexuality, and reproduction – is a result of intersections of multiple oppressions based on race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age and immigration status, and is inherently connected to the struggle for social justice and human rights.
At Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ), we believe in the centrality of organizing as a way for those who are most impacted by reproductive oppression to become the active agents of change in their lives and leaders in the movement, by directly challenging the power structures that try to control us. We also recognize that the issues we fight for intersect with a range of social justice issues such as environmental justice, immigrant rights, LBGTQ liberation, worker’s rights, and educational justice, and that it is essential to build alliances across social justice movements.
Feministing is taking the day off to hit up some BBQs, watch some fireworks and take part in general July 4th revelry.
See you tomorrow!
Growing up in upstate NY, I remember going anywhere with my father meant dealing with people that did not understand him. My father moved to the United States when he was 30 and he has a thick Indian accent. Public encounters were always traumatic. People would treat him with such frustration and disdain as though he were a child, even though in actuality he has an MBA in Finance and runs a business.
I remember all throughout my life people making faces and having trouble understanding my father because of his accent. When I was really young it embarrassed me a lot, but as I got older I began to realize that his accent wasn't actually that bad. It was his name, the way we looked and our foreignness that was the problem. People didn't just hear our accent, they saw it and there was no way phonetic breakdowns were going to get us passed that.
Those memories haunt me now in light of the failed immigration bill and some of the sentiments that inform its failure. I grew up in an America that was hostile towards immigrants and especially brown ones. That America has not changed. Just ask this pizza shop owner in Philly.
Then, as now, immigration was the hot political topic of the day, and Joey had turned up the heat. He had been reported to the authorities for having a sticker on the sliding door of his stall, which featured a picture of an eagle and the phrase: "This is America. Please speak English when ordering."For some, he had struck a chord, struck a blow for ordinary Americans. For others, this was brazen discrimination.
English is a language that Joey's Sicilian grandfather never mastered when he came to the United States in the 1920s. "But he tried," Joey told me, "and he knew that was what it meant to come here."
Well this article certainly struck a cord for me as well. Also, one of the ugliest forms of xenophobia for me is when it comes from people that are descendants of folks that came here and didn't speak the "proper" English. As though the only survival mechanism they could come up with was to hate on others that remind of the pain and hardship felt by their own families.
I have many friends who's parents didn't teach them their native language upon immigrating to the United States with fear they would be discriminated against. I have traveled all over the world and nowhere have I come up against this attitude of, "I am sorry, what did you just say, I don't, can. . . can you just speak English?" as I have in the US.
The "English-only" sentiment isn't so we can all get along and communicate. It is to let people know who is in charge. Other languages, other communications styles, alternative forms of English--well those are just too threatening for our racist Americans--so we have to suppress, silence, destroy and detain them.
What languages were denied to you from fear? Or have you ever experienced discrimination because of the language that you speak?
...at least in the minds of most people who are actually getting married. Amanda has a great post up about how fewer and fewer couples see marriage and babies as inextricable.
Of course, this has got to be deeply upsetting to fundamentalist Catholics. I spent the past weekend at a very traditional Catholic wedding in my hometown Iowa. Now, I've definitely been to Catholic weddings before, but not since I was a kid. And what really stood out to me about hearing the Catholic vows this time around is how procreation-focused they are. The Church makes the couple swear that they want to have lotsa babies. It's a promise right up there with "''til death do us part." The priest asks,
Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?
This is, it turns out, part of the underpinning of the Catholic Church's opposition to contraception. Want to get married but don't want to become a babymaking machine? Well, tough, you're in violation of your wedding vows.
I find the whole thing pretty appalling. And speaking of, check out the (two-piece! I shit you not) bridesmaid's dress I was sporting this weekend... (Below the fold.)
The sexy bullet wound to the head.
Clearly this is an act of violence against a woman, but cloaked in erotic imagery to give it an edgy quality. Similar to Vanessa's sentiments on the movie poster she had the misfortune of seeing on the subway, a reader sent me this ad for a new video game, Hitman. I too have been noticing the disgusting comfort with which violence and sex intermingle in movies and in video games. Movies and to a much greater extent some video games seem to make fetish of violence as an erotic moment, one where we don't know if we should be turned on, or scared, or both. Sometimes, sex scenes and violent scenes go back and forth so much it is hard to keep track of which is which.
I noticed this watching Spiderman 3. At one point Toby McGuire is standing out in front of Kirsten Dunst's apartment window looking in. He casually walks away and she comes to the window seeming to wish he was there. They just miss each other and it is supposed to be romantic, harmless and maybe even serendipitous. Now I don't know about you, but if I am interested in someone and I look out my window and they are standing there looking in unannounced, romance would be the last thing on my mind.
Only in the movies does stalking become romantic. But I digress, this picture is really nasty and I think another vivid example of violence against women being marketed as something sexy, desirable, artistic and erotic.
Dear NuvaRing,
First and foremost, thank you for making sure that I don't get knocked up. I like babies, but prefer to make silly faces at them from the safety of across the room rather than have them come out of my vagina just to hang out for another 18 years.
But I have also have to give you props, Nuva, for your amazing ability to prevent pregnancy without making me feel like crap. Gone are the headaches, swollen boobies and general fuzzy-headness that was par for the course with the pill. My ex, Ortho Tri-Cyclen, cannot compare to you. And even though I was hesitant to stay on a hormonal form of birth control because of all the potential side effects, you changed my mind with your localized nature--keeping the hormones in one place rather than pumping throughout my entire body after ingesting them just seems like a better idea.
But most of all, thanks for just being there.* I don't have to seek you out every day like the pill, or take you out and carry you around like a diaphragm. Your omnipresence is a comfort, even if you do live in my vagina.
Hugs and kisses, Jessica
PS. A big thanks to all who got in the (very long!) conversation about favorite birth control methods. You led me to my beloved NuvaRing and for that I'm forever grateful.
*In my vag, I mean.
Pratibha Patil started her campaign today to become president of India. Women gathered to welcome and support her.
UPA Presidential candidate Pratibha Patil today launched her campaign saying women were the backbone of every home and they contributed greatly to the progress and development of the nation.Addressing a massive women's rally organised by DMK here to support her candidature, she said even during independence struggle, women had contributed greatly and faced lathis and bullets even while feeding their families.
"Throughout my life, I have worked for the empowerment of women and this is a proud moment. It has been my privilege to serve society in many ways and capacities in the past 55 years", she said.
The nation is built on the body of the woman, on her labor, on her sacrifice. Amazing to hear a mainstream presidential candidate speak on it so candidly.
The New York Times has a piece today about how a number of typically male-played video games are now featuring options which allow them to "dress" their characters. And the boys are absolutely loving it.
Of course, this has to be cloaked in what some would call hypermasculine games like World Wrestling Entertainment and even the oh-so-controversial Grand Theft Auto. But nonetheless, it's nice to see men being portrayed in the media as fashion-conscious for a change.
Apparently a senior church of England bishop has made an official announcement that a onslaught of floods which has been causing damage across the UK isn't a an overabundance of precipitation resulting in shitty weather, but actually the wrath of the almighty smiting the nation for being too gay-friendly. I should have known!
As the Nerve headline says, "What If Gay Sex Could Actually Cause it to 'Rain Men'?"
I saw this ad for a new thriller movie, “Captivity,� on the train the other day and felt the need to bring attention to it.
But why? After all, it’s just a picture of a crying woman’s face behind bars, right? But notice her mouth slightly open and lips pressed lustifully against the bars. Needless to say, it left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. (Because that metal looks so damn yummy...)
If this ad isn’t marketing sex, I don’t know what is. That along with the fact that she’s crying and in "captivity" is really disturbing. Yes, the sex in thriller flicks is generally expected and normally cheesy, but seeing an ad that’s marketing both sex and violence against women on my way to work every day pisses me the fuck off.
The ad has caught a lot of shit from bloggers as well, one of which you can check out here (which includes a letter from my boyfriend Joss Whedon).
Contributed by Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, Pro-Choice Public Education Project
When people ask me what I do, I usually tell them I am a reproductive justice activist. When they inevitably ask me, “What’s that?� I tell them I am fighting to change the world. I work to lift the voices of those who have been silenced and to break down the walls that keep communities apart and isolated. For too long, social movements have focused on their own narrow interests, whether it be the environment, the War in Iraq, safer work conditions, or access to abortion. And while we have made great strides as separate movements, our true strength lies in working together.
The United States Social Forum (USSF) was an opportunity to do just that. Coming together under the banner of “Another World Is Possible� the USSF engaged activists from around the country to share information, strategies, and tactics in the struggle against injustice. Let me be clear: the USSF is not a conference. It is a social movement that creates a space for activists, organizers, non-governmental organizations, workers and other allies to explore opportunities to challenge the devastating effects of globalization, imperialism, militarism, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc. through workshops, trainings, conversations, rallies, cultural work and other events.
As thousands of participants demonstrated, the USSF presented a critical opportunity for activists to build bridges between our movements. Those of us who fight for reproductive justice are working actively to center those issues within a broader, global, social justice movement, and the USSF is an important link in that fight. The USSF was an opportunity to share strategies and resources with colleagues from around the country and build solidarity. To that end, we created a new activist tool, the Reproductive Justice Briefing Book, as a way to educate allies about the connections between social and reproductive justice issues.
Another world is possible, but we can’t do it alone. By linking reproductive justice to other social justice movements, we can lift all of our voices to change the world.
Aimée Thorne-Thomsen serves as Executive Director of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, where she focuses on creating spaces for and elevating the voices of young women in the reproductive justice movement.
A big thanks to the fabulous Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, for coordinating Feministing's second Voices of... campaign. Aimee is bringing together voices from the US Social Forum this week--so be on the look out for some great posts!
Um, yeah. 46 year-old David McMenemy was sentenced to five years in prison Friday for trying to burn down a women's health clinic in Detroit that he thought performed abortions. (They didn't.)
Alrighty then.
Governor John Lynch signed legislation on Friday that repeals their law requiring parental notice when a minor is seeking an abortion. This makes New Hampshire the first state to retract a parental notification law.
Forty-four states already have laws enforcing parental notification, but New Hampshire is no longer one of them. Good shit.
Well this seems fucked.
Israeli president Moshe Katsav stepped down from his presidency yesterday due to the rape charges that have been brought against him, but only to be rewarded with the dropping of the actual rape charges.
The prosecutors, who had originally said they had intended on charging him with raping two women that could land him 20 years in jail, are now in talks with Katsav about a plea bargain which would allow him to just confess to sexual harassment. Because, you know, it's all the same shit anyway.
A protest of over 20,000 in Tel Aviv resulted in outrage over the bargain yesterday, which has been frozen for at least 24 hours before any final decisions are made.
