August 2007 Archives

Trish has written for Time Out Chicago, The Village Voice, Punk Planet and AfterEllen.com. She is one of the Hook-up bloggers on Ourchart.com, one of the curators for Queer Fest Midwest, and was the co-founder and publisher of the now defunct, chillmag.com.

Trish took time out this week to report back on Queer Fest Midwest in Chicago last weekend and her views on mainstream queer media. Here's Trish...

Who would want to cut up such a happy and serene vagina?

Finally. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have released a public warning against vaginal rejuvenation surgery, saying that not only is there no proof of the surgery being effective, but that it can be severely damaging to, well, your vag:

According to ACOG, the procedures are unproven and the potential risks -- including infection, scarring, nerve damage and loss of sensation -- outweigh the potential benefits (Zimmerman, Wall Street Journal, 8/31). ACOG in a statement said it is 'deceptive' for physicians to 'give the impression' that such procedures are 'accepted and routine surgical practices.' ACOG's Committee on Gynecologic Practice in a statement published in the September issue of the group's magazine said the '[a]bsence of data supporting the safety and efficacy of these procedures makes their recommendation untenable.'

And remember that not only are they giving the impression that these procedures are routine, but that they're also empowering. And while there's been a "doubling" in the number of labiaplasties in the UK over the last five years (compared to a reported 30 percent rise by the American Society of Plastic Surgery), they're making attempts to warn women of the negative mental effects:

The British Medical Journal weighed in on the topic with a May article calling cosmetic genital surgeries an 'extreme and unproved intervention' that 'could undermine the development of other ways to help women and girls to deal with concerns about their appearance.'

Most women don't understand that the size and shape of genitalia vary greatly, leading to 'misguided assumptions' about what is normal, said the authors, a clinical psychologist and a gynecologist.

Amen. Hopefully more women will begin to get the hint, especially since they're doctors and all.

By Veronica Bayeti Flores, Research Assistant, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

We often think of immigration in the context of people leaving a “poor� country and going to a “rich� one. In some regards this is true – many immigrants do arrive at their new homes with the promise of a land filled with opportunity. But to think of immigration in terms of the movements of individuals is to obscure a large piece of the picture: the social and political forces that precipitate these movements and make countries “poor� or “rich� in the first place. As an immigrant who comes from a family of immigrants, it is clear to me that these forces have brought me, and countless other Latina immigrants, here today.

You know what's fun? When you're linked to by a great blog just to have assholes in the comments section ruin it all.

And people ask me why I'm a feminist...sigh.

Gawd, I love the Guerrilla Girls.

You know, i think Carey Roberts is maybe my favorite anti-feminist. He's at least in the top five. Because he's nothing if not original. First it was that feminists have a mental disorder (which he called "FIPH – feminist-induced phobic hysteria."). Then it was that feminists ruined Amnesty International.

Roberts' latest gripe? American Idol winner Carrie Underwood:

Dial up your local Country and Western station and you may soon find your fingers tapping out the beat of Carrie Underwood’s latest hit, Before He Cheats. Underwood suspects her boyfriend is probably cheating on her (in matters of infidelity, I guess “probably� is proof enough).

This how she extracts her revenge:

“I dug my key into the side
of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats…
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
slashed a hole in all four tires…�

Trashing your boyfriend’s car has little to do with sugar and spice and everything nice. But it’s the title — Before He Cheats – that turns this song into a bitter gender tirade. Just imagine a male star reaching platinum for crooning, Before She Aborts.

I'm unsure how Roberts makes the leap to abortion here, but I'm impressed. (Equally as impressive is how he goes from Carrie Underwood to The Color Purple to women feminizing the church all in the same article--kudos, Carey!)

But you have to love that anti-feminists hold on to things like this (and Lifetime and Oprah to prove that women have power!) for dear life in order to prove how the world is out to get men. I mean, Carrie Underwood is the best they can do. Yeah.

We're having some problems with comments, they should be back up shortly. Thanks for your patience!

I know I'm in the extreme minority of feminist bloggers because I a) don't own a cat, b) don't find LOLcats all that funny, and c) don't really think cats are cute. Which is why Realisticats is for me! A sample of one of these blissfully accurate and grammatically correct images:

Because I want this trend to spread like wildfire, I tried my hand at creating my own -- inspired by a real-life event in which my roommate's cat shredded a dress I had just made to wear to a friend's wedding:

Make your own, people! Spread the cat-hate! We're the, um, silent majority in the blogosphere, I swear.

Pic from laurlopr09.

The Los Angeles Times had a piece yesterday about the television and movie trend of the BBF--the Black Best Friend:

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has one. Sandra Bullock had one. So did Jennifer Garner and Katie Holmes. Jennifer Love Hewitt has had two. Calista Flockhart took hers dancing. Kate Walsh had one, lost her, and got another one with a different face but the same name. And Scarlett Johansson got her first one last weekend.

They're stars who have all played lead characters who experience adventure with the help of their BFF (Best Friend Forever). But in many cases, these BFFs might more accurately be characterized as BBFs -- Black Best Friend -- played by an African American actress whose character's principal function is to support the heroine, often with sass, attitude and a keen insight into relationships and life.

Rose Catherine Pinkney, executive vice president of programming and production for TV One and a former Paramount Studios executive, says "...[I]t's a shame that studios also don't have the courage to put these actresses in leads...Historically, people of color have had to play nurturing, rational caretakers of the white lead characters. And studios are just not willing to reverse that role."

Sounds like the "magical black man" syndrome. Charming.

But the article is quick to point out that unlike movies or shows where black and white men are shown to be buddies, the relationship between women on screen follows a rather predictable formula:

BBFs vary in personality and looks, but many share the same qualities: They are gorgeous, independent, loyal and successful. They live or work with their friend but are not really around all that much except for well-timed moments when the heroine needs an eating companion or is in crisis. BBFs basically have very little going on, so they are largely available for such moments. And even though they are single or lack consistent solid relationships, BBFs are experts in the ways of the world, using that knowledge to comfort, warn or scold their BFF.

Oh yeah, and they're usually the only person of color around. Way to go, Hollywood.

Here's something a little lighter for the end of your Thursday...

Strangely, the brassiere has been getting a lot of media attention as of late. AlterNet has everything you'll ever need to know about the bra, including the myth that it was almost named a Titzling. (Come on, you can't tell me that's not a little funny.)

Playtex has also been getting crazy press for the new launch of their new bra campaign called "Girl Talk" in which they tell you to basically treat your boobs like people. You know, "The Girls." I suppose it could be seen as a step up from the '94 ad (mentioned in the AlterNet piece) after the jump.

It's a shocker, I know. And if I was pregnant, this would just stress me out even more. Via the Guardian:

Most expectant mothers suffer stress during pregnancy, potentially putting at risk their baby's development in the womb, according to a survey. A poll of more than 1,100 pregnant women by the baby charity Tommy's revealed that almost 90% endured stress prompted by an array of causes. Worries range from money to food, work pressures and relationships.

Women are also struggling to deal with concerns over a range of 'taboo' topics they feel they cannot confess to publicly, according to the survey, conducted to mark the start of Tommy's pregnancy health month. The taboo topics include fears of developing post-natal depression, and that they may not want or love their baby.

Two-thirds lamented their partner's failure to appreciate how tired they were, and being told it was 'just their hormones' whenever they became upset.

Maternal health specialists say women should try to reduce stress or risk complications such as limited growth of the unborn baby, premature delivery or, in cases of prolonged high stress, miscarriage.

To say there's a threat to the development of a pregnancy because the woman stresses about things that everyone stresses about seems a bit silly to me. People stress out. And baby receptacles aren't too easy to come by these days. We have, you know, lives and stuff.

However, it was good to address the fears (or "taboos") that women may have but feel guilty about saying because of expectations to be the oh-so-thrilled mother-to-be, and the "hormonal drama queen" stigma that's attached to pregnant women. Has anyone had similar experiences?

It was the night before I had the awesome opportunity to see Barack Obama in-studio on The Daily Show. I got my The Audacity of Hope and my Obama biography and curled into bed, thinking I would read some passages and get excited about seeing the man with the otherworldly charisma the next day. But I also had a stack of books that authors and publicist have sent me to review for feministing, so I thought, “Mmm…maybe I’ll just flip through a few.� Two hours later I was still engrossed in I Love Female Orgasm and the Obama books remained unopened. Even super charismatic Obama didn't stand a chance against female orgasm.

Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller (imagine how explosive their sex must be!) are sex educators and Brown graduates who have pretty much dedicated the last few years of their lives to educating people about the complex and wonderful female orgasm.

What I really like about the book is that it is incredibly inclusive—no heterosexism here, no assumptions that their readers are sexually-active or experienced, no intimidation factor. Instead reading I Love Female Orgasm is like having a little sex therapy session with the least judgmental guru on the planet.

As Samhita noted earlier this week, there's some legal wrangling going on in Missouri over a TRAP law that would require abortion clinics to perform major modifications to their facilities -- modifications so expensive it would effectively shut down two of the three abortion providers in the state. (Which is, of course, the law's intended effect.)

Planned Parenthood is fighting the law, and today Sarah Posner reports in TAP Online that instead of allowing Attorney General Jay Nixon to represent the state in court, anti-choice Gov. Matt Blunt has decided instead to contract with the Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing Christian legal group, which will defend the state free of charge. (Just check out the ADF's anti-choice record.) You see, Nixon is a Democrat who is challenging Blunt for governor in '08, and Blunt has defended his choice by saying Nixon is too "pro-abortion" to defend the TRAP law.

A little eau du Rove, a little essence of Jesus, and voila! The state is now represented by a powerful organization with its own radical agenda. According to its website, "in 1994, God raised up" ADF to counter the American Civil Liberties Union's and Planned Parenthood's "distortion" of the Constitution. As a result of ADF's litigation efforts "the so-called 'wall of separation' ... is slowly starting to crumble." ADF has achieved "significant God-given victories ... as we strive for the day when all life is once again legally defended, protected, and affirmed."

Scott Holtse, a spokesperson for Nixon, who, like Drummond, remains a defendant in his official capacity, seemed half exasperated and half bemused by the shenanigans. Normally the attorney general represents state agencies in litigation against them, and Holtse could think of no other example of when a state agency pushed aside the voters' elected law enforcement official in favor of an outside lawyer -- except when the Department of Natural Resources hired a law firm at which Blunt's sister was an attorney last year. "We're focused on doing our job, which is defending the laws of the state of Missouri," Holtse told the Prospect. "We are not going to be distracted by sideshows."

I think comparing the ADF to a circus sideshow isn't quite going far enough. Everyone in Missouri should be really concerned that their government is in bed with this group.

Contributed by Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage

If there were no Disney, would girls still spend their lives looking for Prince Charming?

I read fashion magazines. I figure I better confess that up front. As I flip through the pages of the September issue of W, I am reminded of just how airbrushed that universe is, and how brainwashed a readership it leaves in its wake. If I’d never looked at those pictures, I wonder how I’d think I “should� look. By extension, I wonder if other people would care so much that my relationships---and most especially my marriage---don’t look like they “should.� What would my world look like today, I wonder, if I hadn’t grown up with the messaging that it was essential to find my Prince Charming and live Happily Ever After?

But since the medium is the media and I am a product of the culture in which I was raised, I don’t have the luxury of wondering about the what ifs. I have what some would consider an “unconventional marriage� because it’s open. But when I look around, the only thing unconventional about it is that we tell the truth about sleeping with other people. People who read my article in Tango magazine, “Portrait of an Open Marriage,� had strong opinions about my choices---and my husband’s---but most people aren’t so willing to look at their own. For the past few months I’ve been working on my new book project, Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage, and I keep wondering why I don’t know more people in open marriages who aren’t part of the out poly community. I have wondered about the woman in the grocery store in front of me in line, about the man holding his son’s hand as they cross the street on the way to school in the morning. Could these people be in open marriages? They look just as normal as me and my husband. Would anyone ever suspect us if they saw me shopping for back-to-school clothes with our daughter at Limited Too or if they ran into my husband at Three Forks? The answer is probably no.

I was curious about why people posted such vehement comments to my article after it ran, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all about fear. Fear and lack of models of open marriages that are working. My husband and I are happy. We’re both getting what we want and need and we’re together. We love each other. We’re good parents. We understand that we’re simply not built for monogamy.

We’ve been socially programmed to demand fidelity and are told at every turn that jealousy and ownership prove love. I don’t buy it. I’m guest blogging today to open up the conversation, because I want to know what readers think---specifically what feminists think---about marriage, cheating, and open relationships. What’s the deal with Happily Ever After anyways?

Jersey Garcia, Member of Miami International Latinas Organizing for Leadership and Advocacy (MI-LOLA)

Being an Afro-Latina and first generation Dominican American, I grew up knowing that many of the same reproductive justice issues affecting Latinas outside of the USA continue to plague their peers in the states. Poverty, lack of resources, violence, and no access to services or information are some of the issues that women continue to face here and abroad.

As the granddaughter of a poor, illiterate black woman living in a rural village in Dominican Republic, I know first hand what it is to not have choices or the resources to exercise our intrinsic right to sexual and reproductive health. My grandmother had 22 pregnancies, three miscarriages and two of her children did not reach the age of five. She never received prenatal care or contraceptives--and she never received information about her body or reproductive health.

My grandmother was a wise healer; she used plants and herbs to cure ailments from those who requested her help. But she did not know how to prevent pregnancy and was helpless under my grandfather’s sexual and emotional abuse. My mom and aunts eventually learned how to prevent pregnancies when they arrived in the US, but they still lacked access to reproductive health services, as well as resources and sex education to make informed choices. Some had unplanned pregnancies, and several, including my mom, had to undergo a hysterectomy at an early age.

At the end of the continuum are the granddaughters, who, because of to the lack of accurate sexual health education, at home or in school, were left with limited choices about their sexual and reproductive rights. Several of my cousins became pregnant as teenagers, and one almost died after attempting to self-induce an abortion by overdosing on misoprostol.

I joined the Peace Corps at the age of 23, and served as a Health Volunteer in rural Honduras. I provided sexual and reproductive health information to adolescents and adults. One day as I opened a sex education book to gather information for my first training, I finally learned why I got my period every month. I began to see the patterns of my life choices around reproductive health, as well as those made by my grandmother, mother, aunt, cousins, and the many women I met in Honduras. I realized in that moment that I needed to break the cycle and make sure that herstory did not repeat itself.

I am an educator and advocate for sexual and reproductive health rights because I want all our grandmothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, and cousins in the USA and abroad to live empowered lives, that are not limited by lack of access to resources, services or information, but that are full of unlimited potential

This piece couldn't be more ridiculous. While its seeming purpose of being a "calling out" of the large number of New York politicians who have been accused and convicted of rape and sexual harassment, it does anything but:

Dennis Gallagher, the Queens councilman recently indicted on charges of raping a 52-year-old grandmother he met at a Middle Village bar, is just the latest in a long line of New York City pols to have been accused of behaving badly.

At the turn of the last century, a cigar-smoking, hard-drinking, womanizing Tammany insider named Murray Hall was discovered upon death to actually be a woman. When Hall died in 1901, a friend who knew him, er, her, through her work in the State Senate remarked, "A woman? Why, he'd line up to the bar and take his whisky like any veteran, and didn't make faces over it, either."

Ninety-one years later, Sol Wachlter, chief judge of the state's highest court and a presumed front-runner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, was busted by the FBI for harassing his ex-mistress after he mailed her threatening letters and sent a condom to her teenage daughter.

So what exactly does the second paragraph have to do with this story? Oh right, those rapists and trans folks are all the same! A deviant is a deviant, right?? Blech. And it only get better with its "expert's" quote:

'In Albany everybody is sleeping with everybody,' said Dr. Bernie Katz, a noted relationship expert. 'Plus, men have this stupid idea that they picked up in middle school that no really means yes. Let's face it we men never grow up.'

Wow. I mean, wow. Not only does rape mean "sleeping around" and boys learn about rape in middle school, but all men never really get rid of that ole rapist/school boy mentality!

What a waste of a decent story. Thanks to MAC for the link.

Courtesy of Cara, check out this appalling Will Saletan column in Slate:

Um, what? In the column he conflates female genital mutilation with sex reassignment surgery. (Several countries are subsidizing surgeries for victims of FGM, while Brazil now offers health care coverage for the sex-change procedures.) His little brain explodes: Aren't these the same thing? He poses the breathtakingly stupid question,

Is genital mutilation a crime if you don’t want it but a right if you do?

Just... wow. Setting aside Saletan's totally inapt comparison, astute commenter Tracey over at Cara's place notes that, "COUNTLESS things are crimes if you don’t want them but rights if you do. Like sex, for example. Or sterilization. Or abortions." But "It’s completely ludicrous to make a comparison between FGM and reassignment surgery." Exactly.

Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, Director of Policy and Advocacy, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

I’ve heard it all: the misogynistic comments, the anti-immigrant rants, the accusations of being a ‘bleeding heart’ socialist with no pride in ‘America’. “If you hate this country so much, why don’t you go back?!� the detractors scream. “Baby-killer!�, “Spic!� “Liberal!� But still I march and still I fight.

This is a common experience for many activists. As a person committed to reproductive justice, an activist, a woman, a Latina, a daughter of an immigrant, a queer ally and a progressive individual, I find myself being constantly confronted by hate and fear. What’s most difficult is when the fear and distrust come from within our individual movements, further perpetuating divisions within the larger movement for social justice.

I once read a blogger who harshly asserted that immigrant rights is not an issue of concern to LGBT people of color. She claimed that queer activists should stick to fighting for their own rights before joining coalitions in support of immigrant rights. This ignores the entire population of queer immigrants who are denied the right to petition for the status of their partner because the government does not recognize their relationship as valid or legal. It also ignores the reality that many movements have a common enemy. As an ally, I marched on behalf of an immigrant rights organization in the St. Pat’s for All Parade in Queens, a parade centered on inclusion of LGBT people in reaction to their forced exclusion in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan. I am neither Irish, nor queer, but felt that it was important to participate in this parade. On the sidelines, conservatives and religious zealots displayed large signs, saying “Sodomy!� and “Stop Blaspheming our Lord!� Some could easily brush that off with “they are not talking about me,� but I know that those same people often stand on the sidelines at women’s marches with images of dead babies and anti-choice rhetoric “Stop Abortion Now!� and are also at the immigrant rights rallies with “Go back to your country!� and “Deport Illegal Aliens!� Unfortunately, many good-intentioned activists don’t get the connection and disjointed communities end up fighting their own often-parallel struggles.

It's time for that semi-regular feature where I complain about Axe advertising campaigns. Reader Juniper alerts us to the fact that, in the latest series of ads for this disgusting cologne for the desperate, Unilever is clearly making light of hilarious issues like rape, sexual harassment, and stalking. The premise: Women are becoming sexual predators when they get a whiff of Axe. This video (sorry, it's in Spanish -- only one I could find) should give you the gist:

Ah, but as with all Axe campaigns, the actual ads aren't the worst of it -- it's the companion websites that are truly wretched. In this case, the site contains lots of cheeky faux headlines urging men to not walk alone at night (ha! get it? the threat of street harassment and sexual assault is hilarious when the genders are reversed! ugh), or making light of police abuse (hysterical!). The whole campaign is hinged on the idea that intimate-partner violence against men is not only a-OK, but completely desirable. Revolting. (Yes, I know they're just stupid ads and that this Unilever's way of appealing to a certain subset of male consumers. It's still not funny.) Plus the site's whole "naughty to nice" feature, which has yet to be launched, promises more clueless exaggerations of the virgin/whore dichotomy than you can possibly handle.

I feel like this would make a far more appropriate Axe ad:

It's official: Women do more housework than men. Shocking, I know.

Married men worldwide report doing less housework than unmarried cohabiting men, according to an international study of 17,636 men and women in 28 countries. Findings are published in the September issue of the Journal of Family Issues.

In the study by researchers at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and North Carolina State University in Raleigh, cohabiting men report doing more housework than married men, and cohabiting women report doing less housework than married women, although cohabiting men still do less than cohabiting women.

Looks like shacking up is in my future! I have to say, it was no surprise to find out that women worldwide do the bulk of domestic labor. But I was somewhat taken aback by the fact that married couples have a more inequitable division of chores than those who live together.

Shannon Davis, an assistant professor of sociology at George Mason and the study's lead author, says the institution of marriage seems to have an effect on couples that traditionalizes their behavior, even if they view men and women as equals.

"We haven't had such a widespread and systematic international study, but all the separate studies I have read have shown this," [Stephanie Coontz, author of the 2005 book Marriage: A History,] says. "The very word 'marriage' is so deeply associated with the idea that it involves men having to do less housework. Even the most untraditional couple will fall into it after marriage, unless they are very conscious of it. They judge themselves against this centuries-old standard of what a wife does, which they didn't have to do when they were just living together."

Does anyone else find that terrifying? I'm really curious about this. Any married gals who have had this experience want to weigh in?

Page Rockwell at Salon reminds us that there's more than one reason to celebrate Alberto Gonzales' resignation.

By Ligia Rivera, Director of Community Mobilization Programs, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

“You are getting la operación? You’re going to be sterilized for the rest of your life?� I said to my friend Rosalía recently. “Yes, I will,� she replied. With those three simple words, my friend threw into question all the hours I’ve spent learning and training others on reproductive justice. What else could I have said to a single undocumented mother of two, working a low wage job? Rosalía, like many other immigrant women, came to this country to escape from extreme post-civil war violence, risking her life and the lives of her children by crossing the Rio Grande on an inner tube. After realizing how lucky she was to be living in one of the four US states that offer prenatal care to undocumented, uninsured women, she felt comforted when the medical staff at her local clinic sympathized with her daily struggles and encouraged her to get sterilized as a long term birth control option.

Is this just a new type of coercion meant to strip immigrant women of their reproductive freedom? While some white women still find it hard to convince their doctors to sterilize them, there is a long history of sterilization abuse against women of color. The sterilization of more than a third of women of child-bearing age in Puerto Rico in the 1940s along with the lawsuit against USC-Los Angeles County Medical Center in the 1970s for the coercive sterilization of low-income and primarily Spanish-speaking patients are both a testament to how women of color have experienced sterilization differently. Although significant progress has been made, including federal guidelines to regulate sterilization procedures, I wonder how much oversight still exists and to what extent our movement is aware of the continuing abuses and undercover coercive medical practices.

As I prepare to speak to my friend about the history of sterilization, abuses against women of color and the long-lasting effects of her decision, I examine my own motivations. Am I infringing upon my friend’s right to self-determination with my privileged Latina discourse? I think I am not. I am not only a Latina; I am a proud reproductive justice advocate for whom silence is not an option.

This interview in Pitchfork with the fabulous, Sri Lankan via GB, M.I.A. bangs out just what she thinks is wrong with the way that she is portrayed in the US media. That perhaps the US media focuses on the "who" is behind the production and lyrical genius of M. I. A., as opposed to recognizing that she is responsible for her own creativity.

M.I.A.: Yesterday I read like five magazines in the airplane-- it was a nine hour flight-- and three out of five magazines said "Diplo: the mastermind behind M.I.A.'s politics!" And I was wondering, does that stem from [Pitchfork]? Because I find it really bonkers.

Pitchfork: Well, it's hard to say where it originated. We certainly have made reference to Diplo playing a part on your records, but it seems like everyone plays that up.

M.I.A.: If you read the credits, he sent me a loop for "Bucky Done Gun", and I made a song in London, and it became "Bucky Done Gun". But that was the only song he was actually involved in on Arular. So the whole time I've had immigration problems and not been able to get in the country, what I am or what I do has got a life of its own, and is becoming less and less to do with me. And I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can't have any ideas on my own because I'm a female or that people from undeveloped countries can't have ideas of their own unless it's backed up by someone who's blond-haired and blue-eyed. After the first time it's cool, the second time it's cool, but after like the third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it's an issue that we need to talk about, maybe that's something important, you know.

She is awesome. However, in response to Diplo not helping her mix the album, well I heard maybe that is not true, but who knows.

I'm HOW old?

My lovely and brilliant sister Vanessa turns 27 years-old today, so show her some love!

Over at Jezebel, Moe responds to my post:

Gray rape, if you think about it, is an ideal term to describe a topic about which I am so conflicted. it evokes the notion of "shades of gray," which is to say, the nuance without which empathy would not be possible. I forgave my gray rapist or date rapist or whatever a long time ago, much longer ago than I would have if I had felt myself that night to be in the presence of the OMG PURE EVIL that would be required to commit the sorts of things I'd been used to calling rape in the past. It is a loaded and powerful term, after all, and I derive no empowerment from using it to characterize his offense.

Ok, I'll repeat myself and say that the definition of rape does not change depending on its empowering/disempowering effect on the people involved, or whether they choose to use the word "rape." And rape isn't something that's committed only by guys who are OMG PURE EVIL. Even if 99% of the time he's an upstanding citizen and all-around awesome dude, but he still wouldn't listen that one time when you said "no," he's still a rapist -- and it's still rape.

A Jezebel commenter writes,

Just like we have manslaughter, vs. 2nd or 1st degree murder, there are many different forms and levels of sexual assault.

I concede that there are different kinds of rapes (in that the circumstances vary), but I don't believe that "worse" or "better" rapes. Sure, we have degrees of murder. But there has never been any question in modern society that it is a crime to kill another person. However, feminists had to work damn hard to get courts and society to recognize that rape is a crime. (Clearly, that battle is still being fought.) So introducing "degrees" of rape has the effect of diminishing the idea that it's a crime. Period.

I do feel slightly more conflicted about the appropriate legal response to situations in which women (drunk or not) may not want to have sexual contact with someone, but also do not say "no," push back, or make any other outward indication that they are opposed. (This doesn't apply to the situation Moe described, in which she said "NO" several times and he continued anyway.) But in the end, I keep coming back to the idea that we need to strongly advocate for the idea of enthusiastic consent, and make that the standard.

Putting our differences on "gray rape" aside, Moe and I can totally agree that "emosogynist" is an incredibly useful term. And I echo her call for more conversation about your personal experiences with rape -- no matter what you choose to call it.

Thanks to Scott for reminding me that gray-rape enthusiast Laura Sessions Stepp is the same person who argued in The Washington Post last year that girls who like sex make dudes limp. Seriously.

So a little retro Feministing for you:

Apparently women who like sex too much are responsible for a scourge of impotence among college men.

The Washington Post reports on the problem of younger men experiencing erectile dysfunction, which is supposedly caused in part by young women initiating sex.

According to surveys, young women are now as likely as young men to have sex and by countless reports are also as likely to initiate sex, taking away from males the age-old, erotic power of the chase.

"I know lots of girls for whom nothing is off limits," says Helen Czapary, a junior at the University of Maryland. "The pressure on the guys is a huge deal."

But it’s not just women’s horniness that’s a huge turnoff, it’s our damned opinions too:

One can argue that a young woman speaking her mind is a sign of equality. "That's a good thing," says [teacher Robin] Sawyer, father of four daughters. "But for some guys, it has come at a price. It's turned into ED in men you normally wouldn't think would have ED."

Equality is the enemy of boners. Now I get it. Traister also did a great piece tearing Stepp down, "Do loose chicks sink dicks?" Heh.

So according to Stepp, women who like sex not only are responsible for their "gray rapes," but are also causing a scourge of limp dicks. Jeez, she gets better every day!

Our very own Jessica has been nominated for Glamour's Women of the Year Award! Go vote for her. (Or vote for whoever inspires you most out of the great list of women they have lined up. But seriously, go vote for Jess.)

Because looking good in a swimsuit is more important than knowing about basic geography, or knowing how to answer a question. I am sure people in *the* Iraq and South Africa need to get taught by us good all-knowing, well-meaning, geographically gifted, Mericans. Interesting how when asked why Americans don't know, her response is Americans need to help other people know (what we don't know).

Feel bad for her. How embarrassing. Even Mario Lopez was cracking up.

Racialicious highlights this hilarious MadTV sketch. Amazing.

Rural women in South Africa, unaware of laws that increased their rights, are not able to exercise those rights.

Ahead of the 4th annual Women's Parliament, North West delegate, Catherine Motlhabane, told BuaNews Monday, that women in rural areas must be aware of provisions in legislation governing their rights.

An example of such a right, which many rural women were not aware of, she explained, was the right of married women to buy homes without their husband's consent. In the past, women were compelled by law to have such consent before buying real-estate.

"Women didn't have access to property but now they do. However they still do not buy houses because they are not aware of their rights," she said.

One of the objectives of the women's Parliament is to make sure that women all over the country receive the education they need with regard to new laws. They did keep referring to these women as "lowest" level, as in those that live on/off of the land, growing food, surviving and not getting access to what they should be allowed. You know the first to be displaced in any great and modern nation.

via AllAfrica.com

Karla Ayala, Office Administrator, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

As a young Latina who has had to face the realities and consequences of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), I have been fortunate enough to be able to educate myself on the facts and to educate others through my work as a peer educator. While I have been lucky enough to possibly have changed someone’s life by providing them with this information, I always ask myself about the countless others left in the dark, especially those left behind due to a lack of communication as a result of a language barrier.

When my mom was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1999, she had no idea what it was or how she developed it. Even scarier, 8 years later, she is just learning about HPV. You’d think some medical professional would have discussed this with her at some point, whether it was at the first sign of an abnormal Pap smear or sometime before her hysterectomy. But sadly, this wasn’t the case. My mother speaks primarily Spanish, and not only was an interpreter rarely provided for her, but when one was, they clearly did not take the time to discuss everything in depth.

My mother is not alone. At a recent workshop I hosted on HPV among young deaf women of color in NYC, more than half the women in the room had no idea what HPV was. Although they’d seen ads for the vaccine, they knew relatively little about it. Some thought HPV was actually herpes and most had no idea how prevalent it was among sexually active people. Clearly the message was not getting across to this group of women.

The media can infuse us with a million ads about HPV vaccines. But until health care providers and educators begin discussing HPV with women consistently, and start taking the time to break through to communities already at a disadvantage due to language barriers, HPV and cervical cancer will not simply disappear. Not speaking English, or not having access to comprehensive sexuality education should not automatically qualify you for a death sentence because no one took the time to reach out.

This fall, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health will launch its Cuídate, �rmate, Edúcate: Latinas for Cervical Cancer Prevention campaign to continue the dialogue in the Latino community. For more information, visit www.latinainstitute.org.

But this is one of the reasons for sure. There is nothing weirder than the cyborg woman fetish. Well, except the cyborg woman who multiplies and exists to be gutted and filled with a beer keg. I am sure this ad campaign is supposed to be edgy and (post!) modern, but really it relies on some pretty standard notions of what the *purpose* of a woman is and that it is all good to watch her being cut up, spliced and reproduced like starfish or something. Clearly, anything but edgy.

Cara has more, including info on where you can lodge a complaint.

The law, which was scheduled to take effect on Tuesday, would put more abortion clinics under state supervision by categorizing them as outpatient surgery centers, requiring them to meet specific state building, staffing and health standards. The law would apply to any facility that performs more than five first-trimester abortions a month, or any second- or third-trimester abortions.

Planned Parenthood argued the organization would have to halt abortions at its Columbia and Kansas City offices - either permanently or while expensive and "medically unnecessary" renovations were made.

It is temporary ruling and will be decided at a later date. The ED of the local Planned Parenthood was pleased with the ruling. It didn't appear to me that the judge was explicitly pro-choice or wanted to protect the right of women, but more confused about how the ruling would play out between surgical and non-surgical reproductive health clinics. But maybe I am reading to much into it. The Health Dept of Missouri is not giving up. It amazes me despite evidence that medicine-induced abortions are safe and effective, people are still fighting it.

via AP.

Moe at Jezebel writes:

[T]his one time about nine years ago I got locked out of my house and went home with some vaguely smarmy hair-product using type from my ex-boyfriend's frat. I had slept with maybe two or three guys prior to that -- it was the summer between sophomore and junior year of college -- so when he, after about a half hour of fooling around, put on a condom I was like, "Whooooah, what are you doing?" But I'd had two forties and I kept drifting in and out of consciousness -- my tolerance, obviously, wasn't what it is today -- and I woke up to find him sticking it in. I'd said 'no' a bunch of times and when I came to I just froze, stopped, turned over and slept. In the morning I chewed him out (by informing him I wasn't putting him on "my list" -- oh no she didn't!) and after that he kissed my ass so liberally I thought he might have learned from it.

In other words, she was raped he raped her.

Jezebel readers kindly pointed this out in comments. Moe responds,

Well, yes, technically it was, but I can empathize with the desire to find a word to differentiate it from the type of rape that, you know, actually SCARS you. I always used "date rape" before.

"Date rape" is still rape, only the rapist is someone you know. It's still a crime.

Moe also says, "Sigh. It's a personal story, and that's how I dealt."

Calling it what it is -- RAPE -- doesn't mean you have to have a specific reaction to it. No one is requiring you to be traumatized. In fact, I'm really happy to hear that this experience didn't seem to cause her much pain. But the definition of rape doesn't change depending on how you feel afterward. Rape is a nonconsensual sexual act. "That time you fucked that guy you didn't really want to fuck" is a better description of consensual sex that you later regret. (Which, of course, isn't rape.)

This is why the Cosmo article and the whole Laura Sessions Stepp "gray rape" concept are such bad news. It creates a new category that suggests it's not-quite-rape if you say "no" while drunk, or you say "no" to intercourse after you've said "yes" to making out. To not straight-up call it rape diminishes it and excuses it. It goes from a crime to simply impolite or bad behavior.

I think it's possible to call a crime a crime without assuming a "victim" role. As Shakes writes, "to be a survivor of rape does not have to mean shame and brokenness and guilt, that it is brave, not weak, to say, plainly: "I was raped.""

From NPR:

Sixty-one women in the U.S. military have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq — more than twice as many female casualties suffered since women were allowed to join the military after World War II. The number indicates that women are playing new roles in combat zones.

Listen to the segment here.

Okay, not really. But this ad for Clorox does end up unintentionally showing how women have been doing household grunt work for generations.

The worst line in the commercial says that "even a man or two" has done the laundry. As if all the women watching are supposed to have some little laugh to ourselves about the inequitable division of labor. "I do shit work for free, tee hee!"

(Also, as was pointed out by tipster Jessica Hicks, depending on how you listen to the line--it could be read as a little dirtier than intended.)

As an update to Cosmopolitan's article on the crock-o-shit "gray rape" theory, The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault has initiated a letter-writing campaign which says it simply, "No Such Thing as Gray Rape."

If you're not in the NYC area, why not start your own letter-writing campaign? Or at the least, write your own letter to Cosmo at cosmo@hearst.com.

What better way to gain support for your cause than make shit up?

The Times Online has literally one of the worst reported, anti-choice pieces of nonsense I've seen in a while.

Amnesty International risks alienating some of its high-profile rock star backers in the row over its decision to support women’s access to abortion.

The group has been accused of “duping� the singers Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne [by the organization Rock for Life], who have both made statements against abortion and are among contributors to an Amnesty CD released to raise money for survivors of the atrocities in Darfur.

And what are these "statements" against abortion that Aguilera and Lavigne made?

But Aguilera, 26, is a devout American Catholic. She is reportedly expecting her first child and has taken part in a television show in which she interviewed a teenager who had kept her baby rather than have an abortion.

Lavigne, 22, is a French-Canadian from a tight-knit Christian family. Her song Keep Holding On is the backing track to a pro-life video on YouTube that declares “abortion is murder�.

So because Lavigne's song is used in some random YouTube video, an anti-choice organization can say she's "pro-life?" Same with Aguilera interviewing a teenage mom? Kudos on the reporting. Seriously.

Note: I have no idea what the musicians' personal views on choice are, but it's ridiculously clear that these reporters, and Rock for Life, are reaching in order to push their anti-choice crap.

UPDATE: Keen commenter Megan points out that Aguilera was actually involved in the March for Womens' Lives. So...yeah.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Rock for Life folks say they never claimed the rocksters were pro-life; the journalists did. I said it before, and I'll say it again: Shitty journalism.

This weekend was his first big adventure--we went to my grandparents' house in upstate New York. Afterwards, he was just a tad tired. (Seriously, he didn't move from that position for over an hour.)

By Silvia Henriquez, Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

What is the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word abortion? For me it is relief. Deciding what was best for me at that time was a relief.

I know that not everyone shares my perspective or opinion. What I do know is that abortion and pregnancy stir up a variety of emotions, regardless of whether you consider yourself pro-choice or not. According to the Guttmacher Institute, ½ of pregnancies are unplanned—that means that many of us, at some point, have purchased a home pregnancy kit. For some women the little blue line is a blessing and for others it is a source of anxiety or fear. Regardless—we know that it is a life changing moment.

As a Latina who works in pursuit of reproductive justice, I am constantly searching for the perfect way to talk about abortion. I understand that our communities are somewhat conflicted on this issue. At the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH), we include abortion within a broader social justice framework. Abortion is just one of the many reproductive health and rights issues facing the Latina community. However, as the only national Latina organization advocating for abortion rights, we have a responsibility to not just protect and expand this right, but also foster dialogue and create a safe space to talk about abortion.

This week, the fantastic National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health is hosting our Voices of series and the gals at Feministing couldn't be more excited.

The Latina Institute's mission is "to ensure the fundamental human right to reproductive health for Latinas, their families and their communities through public education, policy advocacy, and community mobilization." You can find out more about their work here through their posts this week, or you can check out their website.

A big thanks to Miriam for putting this all together!

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Playboy is starting their own social networking site:

If magazines and Internet porn leave you lonely, now there’s Playboy U. Playboy Enterprises Inc., is trying to woo collegians with the “exclusive, college-only, non-nude� social-networking site. Hef is imploring undergrads: “Join our student body.�

What better transition from your Playboy pencil case?!

The head of the civil rights division of the Justice Department has resigned.

NFL punishes dog-abusers, but not domestic abusers.

Not your typical "topless car wash."

Why we need to restore funding to the UNFPA.

Can TV really empower women?

Women aren't getting good information on how -- and what it means -- to stop getting a monthly period.

Feminism once again declared dead! (This time by a "high priestess.")

Has the internet really been "feminized"? I mean, we're still talking about serious misogyny here.

A new study illuminates (again) gender bias in science and academia.

Time on soaring birth control prices on campus.

Remembering writer, feminist, activist Grace Paley.

Via in comments, a fascinating breakdown of the different types of "gazes" women are posed to give in magazine spreads and advertisements.

Time for the female urinal?

Women only seem to make the cover of fashion magazines. The political/newsweeklies, not so much.

Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation—and Positive Strategies for Change, by Sara Laschever and Linda Babcock was first published in 2003 and recently released in paperback February 2007. I know some women who think this book has truly changed their lives and their literal outlooks.

Sara Laschever, pictured above, is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Village Voice, Vogue and other publications.

Here's Sara...

Have a crazy-on-you kinda weekend.

Ellen Goodman outlines just how far we haven't come this year. (Random: All of us at Feministing were happy to see that we had blogged about most of the issues Goodman brings up.)

Police: Man Rapes Woman As Bystanders Look On

(AP) St. Paul -- A 25-year-old man was charged Thursday for allegedly raping and beating a woman in an apartment hallway -- an incident apparently witnessed by as many as 10 people who did nothing.

Rage Ibrahim was charged with several counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct for the attack early Tuesday. According to the criminal complaint, police responded to a call of drunken behavior in an apartment hallway, where they found both Ibrahim and a woman lying unconscious. The woman's clothing had been pulled up, she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh.

And despite the witnesses -- and the fact that the rape was captured on a surveillance camera -- the guy denies it.

"I'm so upset because of the situation I'm in," Ibrahim told the St. Paul Pioneer Press, as he headed to the county jail on Thursday to turn himself in. "I've got a mom, I've got a sister. I wouldn't rape anyone."

Because no rapists have female relatives? Maybe he's thinking that, because everyone seemed to ignore what was going on, it wasn't really happening:

Police spokesman Tom Walsh said the video footage clearly showed five to 10 people, both men and women, looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before retreating as the assault occurred.

"It shows one person looking out of her door probably three times," Walsh said. "It shows another person walking up, observing what's going on, then turning and putting up the hood of his sweatshirt."

The 26-year-old victim knocked on a door at one point, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside that apartment told police he didn't open the door or look out, but said he did call police -- although they have no record of his call, according to court documents.

Ibrahim denied raping the woman, "saying if he wanted to do so he would have done it in the apartment, according to the complaint." Ugh. Yeah, not the best way to convince the court you aren't actually a rapist.

Reading this article is like a punch in the gut. I hope this guy is brought to justice.

Thanks to Amber for the link.

The evolutionary trail from monkey to subway groper has been identified. Money quote:

"The monkeys grab their breasts, and gesture at us while pointing at their private parts. We are afraid that they will sexually harass us," said Mrs Njeri.

(Credit to my friend Darin for the link and the joke.)

Cristina Page had a great op-ed in the Baltimore Sun this week, making a plea that when journalists question presidential hopefuls (of both parties) about their reproductive rights beliefs, that they specifically bring up contraception access.

Why? Because when the Republican presidential hopefuls speak to a roomful of forced-pregnancy advocates, they are doing everything but declaring their desire for a birth-control ban. These are things they're not saying in interviews with national media, or during the debates.

Before this year's National Right to Life conference, which several Republican frontrunners attended, NARAL issued a list of questions for the candidates, and made sure to ask about their position on access to emergency contraception.

While the questions were predictably ignored, at the conference Romney declared, "I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation." He's essentially saying he opposes hormonal contraception methods, because they could prevent implantation. Which -- newsflash! -- isn't just emergency contraception. It's the Pill, the NuvaRing, the IUD -- a slew of birth-control methods. Page explains,

Mr. Romney's code, deciphered, meant, "I, like you, hope to reclassify the most commonly used forms of contraceptives as abortions." In fact, he told the crowd, he already had some practice redefining contraception: "I vetoed a so-called emergency contraception bill that gave young girls abortive drugs without prescription or parental consent."

And it's not just Romney. The other Republican candidates are also working to deny women birth control:

Presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, beefed up his anti-contraception resume by co-sponsoring a bill to de-fund the nation's largest contraception provider, Planned Parenthood, by excluding it from Title X family planning for the poor. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's campaign officials boast he has "consistently voted against taxpayer-funded contraception programs." And Mr. McCain reports that his adviser on sexual-health matters is Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who leads campaigns claiming condoms are unsafe and opposing emergency contraception.

But Page and the repro-rights groups seem to be the only one talking about this issue. (Even the National Right to Life's crib sheet on the candidates doesn't feature their stance on contraception.) Yesterday the Washington Post had an article all about Romney and abortion, with nary a mention of birth control. It's time for the national media to start paying attention and quit narrowing reproductive rights issues down to abortion only. Because while the nation may be divided on how we feel about abortion rights, there is widespread and unequivocal support for contraception access. Moderate Republican voters should know that Mitt Romney wants to take away their birth control pills.

I'd also like to see the Democratic frontrunners highlighting this divide on contraception between them and the Republicans. If some political analysts are to be believed, single women are a highly coveted group of voters. And even 80 percent of self-described "pro-lifers" support contraception. The Democrats are with the vast majority of the country on this issue, and it's time for them to start shouting about it.

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, and biologist.

This Tuesday, The New York Times ran an article about the continuing controversy surrounding psychologist J. Michael Bailey’s 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. The premise of the book is that *all* transsexual women transition for purely sexual reasons - either to attract straight men or because they are sexually aroused by the idea of being or becoming female. This sexualizing of trans women’s motives is of course nothing new. In the media, trans women are regularly depicted as either sex workers, sexual deceivers who prey on unsuspecting straight men, or as fetishists who get off on the idea of wearing women’s clothing. The media’s (as well as Bailey’s) assumption that MTF (but not FTM) transsexuals transition in order to fulfill some kind of sexual fantasy not only dismisses trans women’s deeply experienced female gender identities, but also insinuates that women as a whole have no worth beyond their ability to be sexualized. (For those interested, I discuss this more in depth in my own book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity).

Much of the transgender community’s initial outrage over Bailey’s book centered on the fact that it was presented to the public as a work of science. It was published by Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of National Academies Press, whose goal is “publishing well-crafted, authoritative books on science, technology, and health for the science-interested general public.� But if one looks beyond the back cover copy, one finds little science at all. Bailey simply rehashes a scientifically flawed theory that was put forward by fellow sexologist Ray Blanchard nearly a decade ago. Rather than providing data to support Blanchard’s theory, Bailey instead attempts to make his points through the use of lurid (and often demeaning) anecdotes, sexist and racist commentary, gross generalizations and unsubstantiated speculations (for specific details, see Joan Roughgarden’s review of the book). In addition, Bailey conveniently claims that trans women and gay men whose personal accounts differ from his thesis are merely lying (he’s used this tactic before: see a 2005 NY Times article called "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited," in which Bailey insinuates that men who say they are attracted to both sexes are lying).

Of course, this week’s NY Times article doesn’t discuss the hypersexualization of trans women in our culture, and it barely mentions the fact that Bailey falsely presented stereotypes and sexual innuendo as “science� without any hard data to back his claims up. Rather, the article focuses almost entirely on accusations made by Alice Dreger in her forthcoming article in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, in which she claims that several prominent trans activists stooped to conducting personal attacks on Bailey during their campaign against the book. As Dreger comments in the NY Times article:

“If we’re going to have research at all, then we’re going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we’ve got problems not only for science but free expression itself.�

Ah yes, another ridiculous "study" showing how women are inherently homemakers. This week's research reveals that women are naturally better at grocery shopping than men. When that became a skill, I am unaware.

Ah, it's always nice when the mainstream media quotes totally inaccurate information about women's health.

Media Matters in Colorado recently released some very interesting information about how the Denver Post and Associated Press covered a story on Planned Parenthood building a new clinic in Denver where they allowed an anti-choice crazy to quote that the organization "get[s] young girls hooked on their birth control pills, which don't work."

This reminds me of the bizarre FDA memo which said the distribution of Plan B could result in EC sex cults. Because those hormones just feel too damn good! Sigh. And let's not forget the most important part of this quote wasn't criticized or questioned by either newsource: that birth control pills don't work. (Which is obviously not the case.)

And the bullshit just keeps coming. The beginning of the claim by Colorado Right to Life VP Leslie Hanks tells us to "face it, they're in the business to kill babies for profit," which the entire Post article seems to be framed around. Um wait, but isn't Planned Parenthood a NON-for-profit organization? Hmmmmm...

In other words, this person managed to use the whole "drugs, money and murder" bit to whet the mainstream media's appetite and make Planned Parenthood look like some sort of organized crime cartel. Apparently Planning IS Power! Mwahahaha! Heh.

Check out Feministe and Pandagon for more.

This week marks a full year that since the FDA decreed that Plan B emergency contraception could be sold over-the-counter without a doctor's prescription to women age 18 and older. (The new status actually went into effect a few months later, in November 2006.)

But on the anniversary of the day we "won" the EC over-the-counter battle, it's a good time to ask, where should our EC activism go from here?

-- Ensuring access for servicewomen.
-- Expanding access to teenagers.
-- Making it a major issue in the '08 presidential race.
-- Continuing to fight pharmacist refusals.
-- Holding the media accountable when they spread misinformation about EC.
-- Encouraging all the women you know to back up their birth control.

UPDATE: Planned Parenthood made a video to promote EC awareness:

(via Spare Room, thanks to Lindsay for the link.)

What if your wife, even after graduating the prestigious homemaking course at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with a degree in ladylike submission, still won't behave? Uber-conservative Christian patriarchs everywhere now have a solution!

Give her a good spanking. For how to incorporate this into your marriage, see the "Christian Domestic Discipline" site. Unlike the Baptists for Brownback campaign Jen wrote about awhile ago, this site appears to be legit. Not a parody.

A Christian Domestic Discipline marriage is one that is set up according to Biblical standards; that is, the husband is the authority in the household. The wife is submissive to her husband as is fit in the Lord and her husband loves her as himself. He has the ultimate authority in his household, but it is tempered with the knowledge that he must answer to God for his actions and decisions. He has the authority to spank his wife for punishment, but in real CDD marriages this is taken very seriously and usually happens only rarely. CDD is so much more than just spanking. It is the husband loving the wife enough to guide and teach her, and the wife loving the husband enough to follow his leadership. A Christian marriage embodies true romance and a Christian man a true hero.

This is billed as completely consensual, with it made clear that "the husband has authority to spank the wife. The wife does not have authority to spank her husband." The site was created by wife-spankers who were sick of stumbling upon porn when they searched for other like-minded folks online. Lest you become confused that the CDD site is a BDSM site with a Christian spin, they're sure to reiterate that this is about adhering to Biblical gender roles -- not about sexual pleasure. Unless you get off on asserting your patriarchy by slapping your property wife. Not an unheard-of phenomenon, as the site acknowledges:

Though we recognize by its very nature this subject can be erotic, we will keep this website as clean and wholesome as possible. However, we will not seek to deny the erotic nature of some CDD marriages as we believe it is a natural consequence of following God's plan. After all, He created eroticism to be enjoyed inside a Christian marriage.

But what if sometimes your wife doesn't want to be spanked? Well, let's not use an inconvenient phrase like "domestic violence" or "spousal abuse." Nah, "non-consensual CDD" would be more appropriate, really. And the site basically says that it's a man's god-given right to hit his wife, even if those pesky laws against domestic violence get in the way.

Non-consensual CDD:

Though we believe the Bible gives a husband the authority to use spanking as one tool in enforcing his authority in the home with or without his wife's permission, in today's world we recognize the legality that mandates that all CDD must be consensual. Therefore we will do not condone nonconsensual CDD as a rule.

How progressive of them!

Lynn at Broadsheet delved into the blogs linked on the site, which are just so sad. One blogger, a woman named Debbie, has decided having her husband hit her is a cheap and effective weight-loss strategy. She recounts being beaten for accidentally leaving the stove burner on, and writes, "I felt my stomach drop when I saw my husband bring out a heavy belt." She continues,

I am not abused nor capable of being abused. I imagine that if one of you raging feminist find yourself beaten by a man you had better hope Leah or I (or someone of like mind) comes along to beat the stuffing out of him for you. I know I'm capable and from reading I sort of believe Leah is as well. My submission is quite voluntary.

I'm not saying all wife-spanking is analogous to domestic abuse. The blogs and the site make clear that this is a lifestyle chosen (how freely chosen is another question...) by women themselves. One writes on the site, "We practice CDD-lite in our home as it is a concept that I have brought to my husband and one that he is still getting comfortable with."

Of course, that's less disturbing than "non-consensual CDD," but still thoroughly depressing. As Lynn writes, "violence at home -- 'consensual' or otherwise -- is by no means unique to these particular fundamentalists; abusers and victims can find plenty of justification for their actions without distorting Scripture." And I agree with her that seeing it put in such plain terms on this site and in these blogs is really, really troubling.

On a much, much lighter note, the site also features a store... which sells crotchless pantaloons. (Picture below the fold.)

Due to the public's protest, a district in Indonesia has decided not to force female high school students to take virginity tests.

The proposal was made by Indramayu district head Irianto Syafiuddin, who recently announced, "Because many people oppose it, we cancelled (the plan)." Not to mention it's, you know, heinous and invasive.

He thought of the lovely idea after a video of two high school students having sex was being circulated via cell phones. Syafiuddin is now seeking other "ways" to prevent students from having premarital sex.

Can't wait to see what he whips up next.

Video hoes. Perhaps the most notorious of monikers, the most objectified of women, the most coveted of positions for some teenage celebrity worshipers.

Karrine Steffans’ New York Times bestseller on her life as a “video vixen� is—unsurprisingly—a very quick read and a titillating tale of her brief relationships with various hip hop big hitters (JaRule, DMX, Ice T, Kool G Rap, Usher, Bobby Brown etc.) and famous athletes (Shaq). It falls short, however, of the cautionary tale that Steffans’ purports to want to have created.

Sigh. Seriously, I'm sick of this shit. Michelle Obama talks about keeping their family going during the campaign, and it gets turned into a slam at Hillary Clinton. Meow. Which is a fair conclusion if you only take this part:

"Our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House."

Oooh, burn. If you're 10 like Drudge. Or the tons of other stories that picked it out.

Except, oops. The rest of the quote goes like this:

"So, so we've adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he's traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I'm home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don't care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that’s why we’re doing this. We’re in this race for not just our children, but all of our children."

Not nearly as bitchy, huh? I mean, come on. Both campaigns are taking enough real shots at each other, there's no need to create a cat fight.

Too Sense and Media Matters have more.

This is a case that I just haven't been able to stop thinking about.

LaVena Johnson died in Iraq on July 19, 2005. The seemingly happy and healthy 19-year old Private First Class soldier was found dead by a gunshot wound with bruising, a dislocated shoulder, an indication that someone tried to set her body on fire, and a number of other signs including a blood trail outside of the tent she was found in. But despite all of these factors, the U.S. Army declared that her death was caused by suicide and shut the case quietly.

Although the Johnson family have been desperately trying to get her case reopened, the Army has refused. Shocking, I know.

LaVena's father, Dr. John Johnson, believes that his daughter was murdered, and that the murder was connected to sexual assault. Check out his speech talking about LaVena's case:

Sign the petition and/or contact your representative to get LaVena's case reopened. Now.

You can also find out more at Shakes and Reclusive Leftist.

A big thanks goes to sports columnists Rick Morrissey and Barry Rozner for pointing out what feminists have been: That the Michael Vick case has made it seem that the American public is more outraged over violence against dogs than they are over violence against women.

Related: CNN's Larry Smith: Dog fighting a worse crime than rape

Because there's nothing worse than being "girly," a South Carolina prison has taken to punishing sexually active inmates by dressing them in pink.

Of course, the prison punishment isn't the first to use feminization as a deterrent against "bad" behavior: Thai police officers who act up are forced to wear a pink Hello Kitty armband and let's not forget about our Man Can friends. But this punishment being tied up with sexual behavior strikes me as particularly fucked.

State Corrections Department John Ozmint said the two-year-old punishment deters inmates and protects female officers.

..."We don't believe the United States Constitution protects an inmate's right to publicly gratify himself,'' Ozmint said.

Uh yeah. How exactly is a pink prison jumpsuit going to protect women? But more to the point, feminization as a form of punishment is sexist and foul. Rant over, back to playing with the puppy.

Cristina Page, author of the great book How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex, has a terrific article in the The Baltimore Sun decoding Romney's anti-choice rhetoric. Check it out.

Remember how the new Batwoman was going to be a lesbian? Well, she's not.

When it comes to portraying characters as gay in comics, Devin Grayson admits the amount of editorial latitude she's given depends upon the legacy of the character in question. “The Powers That Be are pretty good these days about letting you choose to make a character of your own design homosexual or bisexual, but the closer you get to an established character, the harder it becomes,� Grayson said.

...In fact, Grayson was eight months into the development of the proposed “Batwoman� title when she found out from a newspaper article that the project was dead, and to this day, the writer has not received so much as a phone call from upper editorial on the matter. “That reversal really surprised and disappointed me,� Grayson admitted.

I'll second that disappointment. Boo.

Remember the guys who have "relationships" with their Real Dolls? Well there's a movie (kinda) about that, Lars and the Real Girl. And it looks really good. (Though my mad crush on Ryan Gosling probably doesn't make me very objective.)

In response to the uncomfortable and controversial clip of Bill Richardson claiming that being gay is choice, O' Reilly demands, "I think everybody should relax on the gay stuff." When Papa Bear (as Colbert lovingly calls him) has consistently failed to relax on any of this "gay stuff."

Media Matters has more.

We are still fixated on the girls like pink and boys like blue thing. Seriously?

I suppose this headline is not shocking, however, I thought it was going to be about murder. Instead this study looked at the health risks associated with repressing a response to arguments in a relationship.

Women who force themselves to stay quiet during marital arguments appear to have a higher risk of death, a new study shows. Depression and irritable bowel syndrome are also more common in these women.

Such "self-silencing" during conflict may have provided an evolutionary survival advantage long ago, and unfortunately may be a necessity for women in abusive relationships, Dr. Elaine D. Eaker of Eaker Epidemiology Enterprises in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

Eaker and her colleagues found that, over a 10-year period, the most striking finding was that women who self-silenced were four times more likely to die than women who expressed themselves freely during marital arguments.

I think saying self silencing is a bit of a stretch. If women feel like they have no choice, you can't really claim that it is something they are doing to themselves. This study is interesting though, as the researcher is looking at the health related risks of marriage as opposed to a study about abusive relationships, recognizing that abuse, violence and repression may all be connected in varying degrees and have different effects on women's health.

via Reuters.

There weren't any explicitly feminist issues in this segment (where Ann takes on conservative blogger La Shawn Barber), but that doesn't mean it's not blog-worthy. Go Ann!

So I don't really know how this would be that different from USC section 2257, but to take an already faulty law to the next level, the US Dept of Justice wants to generate a list of all actors in the porn industry. The desire to do this is of course to prohibit the production of underage porn. However, the reality of 2257 has been that many women have had their identities and personal information revealed to people that shouldn't have access to it. Or rather people we don't want to have access to it, thusly making a potentially preventative measure backfire or often force performers to leave the country.

The new rules, proposed under the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act, would require blue-movie makers to keep photos, stage names, professional names, maiden names, aliases, nicknames and ages on file for the inspection of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

"The identity of every performer is critical to determining and ensuring that no performer is a minor," according to the new proposal.

The adult film industry plans to challenge the new rule as a violation of the First Amendment, said Paul Cambria, a lawyer for Hustler and other adult film companies.

According to one article the key difference will be that this new law covers all sexually simulative acts, not just explicitly sexual acts. There has been some discussion to keep personal information completely private. The pornography industry is already so complicated with respect to the rights of women and attempted protection of underage performers, so I have trouble believing that this would actually help.

Thoughts?

via New York Post.

When BookTV aired a reading I did in San Fran, I got a bunch of great emails from folks. Other emails...not so much. Here are a couple of excerpts from my faves.

Jessica, I do not mean to offend, I usually would not even care enough to comment. I feel you really did your self an injustice at your speaking engagement viewed by many Americans by TV. Your words were profane! It is hard to believe that an educated lady as beautiful on the outside could be so dirty on the inside. I'm surprised that no one had the courage to speak up and rebuke you as a child! A wise person loves a rebuke. You were very unprofessional.

I wasn't sure which was funnier--the idea that I'm dirty "on the inside" or that I'm not wise enough to love a good rebuking.

I saw your talk on C-Span, and wanted to comment. First you used profanity gratuitously, which immediately puts you in a lower class, in which a lot of feminism already loiters. Second, you giggled throughout the talk, which is the type of behavior that has led many men to disdain females in the first place.

Hold the phone, gals! We've found the source of misogyny: giggling. Finally, we can get on with our egalitarian, giggle-free lives.

Do you know GOD? Do you know HIS (NOT HER) Plan?

No, I'm betting you'd like to tell me.

But this one, by far, is the bees knees:

Can ot [sic] figure you out. Are you Lesbo? Or just love being a slut? Most of the stuff on this site is the basic left wing crazy. I don't care if you want 100 abortions. It is NOT a Federal issue and RvW took it away from the states. That was wrong. You want to fuck? go ahead. But do not ask the taxpayers to foot the bill for the diseases you get (i.e. 4 billion for Aids). Why were most of the women who come to see you so ugly? Most of them should look at getting laid as a blessing. I doubt if any would have to worry abouot [sic] rape. Other than that ... have fun. see your doctor regularly and keep away from children.

And people still actually ask me why I'm a feminist? Anyway, hate to run but I'm on my way to get abortion number 101. But not before I go have slutty lesbian sex while giggling.

Do you think men smoke more weed than women? Is that a proven fact? Have you ever been to the Bay Area? LOL. OK seriously, this article in the Stranger (and as a tribute to Hempfest) is about gender and weed smoke and how women don't smoke weed.

Smoking pot is a guy thing. Guys are the ones who deal, buy, and smoke. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that adult males were 50 percent more likely to have smoked marijuana in the last month than females. (Alcohol use showed only a 12 percent difference.) All illegal drugs show this approximate divide between the sexes (except illegally obtained prescriptions—women use those in substantially higher numbers).

Is this actually true? Or do women hide that they smoke weed more? A very quick look at my friends, I would say half the women I know smoke weed all the time. Even in my women's studies undergrad, I knew a lot of female stoners. In fact I have never attributed smoking weed to being a male activity. Perhaps this says something about the kind of women I hang out with, but this is seriously news to me.

Reading more into the article, I did have to agree that media depictions of drug use are in general inaccurate and definitely sexist. The war on drugs is extremely racist and gendered with little conversation about how drugs affect the lives of young women, while being absurdly focused on the incarceration of young men. Furthermore, the usual drug user is depicted as male.

But on a much less serious note, maybe women don't like to look lazy. . .

Perhaps the obstacle to female toking is a fear of looking lazy. Getting stoned is, in effect, a great way to relax. Men are allowed to be lazy—being stoned is part of their farting, pajama-wearing, video-game-playing pantheon of acceptable male relaxation techniques. Since Jeff Spicoli made his debut in 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and continuing into the entire oeuvre of director Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), stonerdom is an accepted part of modern maleness. Their sloth is even kind of adorable.

But modern women are not allowed to be lazy, adorable stoners. Women have to go to college (which they're now doing at higher rates than men), and then get their careers going quickly, before their biological clocks run out. Then they have to have kids and take them to all of their activities. There is no time for women to be slovenly and relax—and if women do relax, it has to be at a gym.

I have never really thought about mainstream pot culture being sexist, I always thought about it as pretty corny, considering people of all different types smoke weed, not just middle class white dudes in California. But now that I do think about it, it does reproduce certain stereotypes.

I also don't appreciate women in general being depicted as people more obsessed with what they look like then with pleasure or having fun. I see that the author is trying to put a feminist spin on the female deviance of weed smoking, but he seems to rely on sexist tropes to prove his point.

For me, it is hard to talk about drug culture in the US without looking at the racial politics of the drug war and how for some "toking" is a fun activity that some people don't go to jail for, while others do. Understanding that, is pot culture sexist? And is smoking weed a feminist act?

Humor me people!

I have no more to add.

Pic from emilie margaret.

The New York Times had a bizarre article recently on (hetero) relationships and the work/life balance: Wedded to Work, and in Dire Need of a Wife.

Now that women have solidly earned their place in the work force, many find themselves still yearning for something men often have: wives.

"The thing I most want in life is a wife. I'm not kidding," said Joyce Lustbader, a research scientist at Columbia University, who has been married for 29 years. "I work all day, sometimes seven days a week, and still have to go home and make dinner and have all those things to do around the house."

It is not just the extra shift at home that is a common complaint. Working women, whether married or single, also see their lack of devoted spousal support as an impediment to getting ahead in their careers, especially when they are competing against men who have wives behind them, whether those wives are working or staying at home. And research supports their argument: it appears that marriage, at least marriage with children, bolsters a man's career but hinders a woman's.

And rather than negotiating with your partner for an equitable division of domestic labor, it's much more effective to daydream about having a "wife." (And I love how the definition of wife in this article is synonymous with maid.)

Working women have noticed, correctly, that their male colleagues with wife support — whether or not those wives are themselves working outside the home — get further at work than the women who are fettered by marriage and children.

Wife support. Hmm. Now, I know the article is trying to make a point, but framing support for a spouse's job and chores at home as "wifely" duties is not exactly the best way to hold men (remember them?) accountable for their role in the domestic sphere.

After all, according to the article, one in five men does some kind of housework on an average day, while more than half of women do. Why is it that women (still!) are putting up with this? It's always seemed amazing to me how willing we are to fight for equality when it comes to legislation or policy, but not so much in our own personal lives. Just saying.

And even "progressive" men aren't exactly quick to pick up the slack. Just one example: My boyfriend recently told me about a meeting of this lefty NY book club he's a part of (which is, in most meetings, primarily male) where they read Ruth Rosen's "The Care Crisis." The men in the group where all for equality when it came to other women, but still imagined they would have "wives" to take care of the kids and handle housework so that they could pursue their own careers. Uh, what?

So, dear readers--what to do?

Aren't fashion folks supposed to be somewhat original?

Via Jezebel.

We had a little tech issue so the site was down--but we're back! Thanks for your patience.

I would like to add: Thank goddess for Deanna.

From BBC News: "Amnesty International has confirmed its controversial decision to back abortion in some circumstances, replacing its previous policy of neutrality."

Things I now know about Monty:

He gets a second wind around midnight and wants to play with (destroy) any magazines, Sudoku booklets or mail within reach.

He is a hoarder. If it's on the floor, it will soon be dragged into Monty's crate for safekeeping. This includes toys, shoes, umbrellas and sweatshirts.

He is not a fan of walks. Why go anywhere when you can just poop inside?

Also, faces are for eating (as evidenced after the jump).

"Because of my degree in homemaking, I can read this recipe book!"

The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is offering a new and exciting academic program: homemaking!

Southwestern Baptist, one of the nation's largest Southern Baptist seminaries, is introducing a new academic program in homemaking as part of an effort to establish what its president calls biblical family and gender roles.

It will offer a bachelor of arts in humanities degree with a 23-hour concentration in homemaking. The program is only open to women.

Of course it is. Coursework for the program includes nutrition and meal preparation, textile design and classes on "the value of a child" and the "biblical model for the home and family."

Seminary President Paige Patterson says "We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God's word for the home and the family...If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed."

I always thought nations were destroyed by war, famine or disease. Little did I know it was actually women taking classes in anything other than ironing that determines the demise of a country.

By the way, Patterson is known in Southern Baptist circles for issuing a statement saying that women shouldn't be pastors and that they should "graciously submit" to their husbands. (How one "graciously submits" is another question. Would I smile and thank him for the great honor of doing his laundry?)

Earlier this year, a former professor filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the school and Patterson--she says she was fired from her tenure-track position because she was a woman. Perhaps she didn't graciously submit. Silly girl. In fact, Patterson's wife is the only woman faculty member in Southwestern's theology school. Shocking.

Though, of course, this isn't just about Patterson. Plenty of folks at the school are behind the move to instill traditional gender roles in their students. Terri Stovall, dean of women's programs at Southwestern, said "Whether a woman works outside or strictly in the home, her first priority is her family and home...We just really want to step up and provide some of these skills." Yeah, way to step up. I'm sure women graduates will look back on their years at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and be ever-so-grateful that they spent half of their college education learning how to knit booties.

Thanks to Marquel for the link!

How the so-called "Mommy Wars" ignore low-income mothers.

Abstinence-only programs don't decrease HIV infection rates.

Inside the Code Pink house, where activists stay when they're in DC agitating for an end to the war. It's described as "half Legally Blonde-style sorority and half radical boot camp."

Deborah Siegel reviews modesty enthusiast Wendy Shalit's book, Girls Gone Mild.

The 17th century version of Cosmo.

The USAID phase-out of contraceptives for developing countries is nearly complete, and places like the Philippines are preparing for an increase in births and abortions.

They actually made a movie about a man (played by Ryan Gosling) who has a "real" relationship with his Real Doll.

A nice little ode to Judy Blume, and her respectful literary treatment of teen sexuality.

Apparently you can now recycle your vibrator.

ABC News has a surpsingly (pleasantly!) inoffensive piece about women who "look both ways."

A woman sues her doctor after she becomes pregnant after having a tubal ligation.

The Journal of the American Medical Association finds the HPV vaccine prevents infection, it doesn't treat HPV infection. (Which is not at all surprising, seeing as how it was never intended to be a treatment.)

Great idea: Stop asking the Republican candidates where they stand on abortion, and start asking specifically about birth control access. Now if only they'd agree to participate in a YouTube debate, we could flood them with submissions of this question...

How courts fail pregnant minors.

Alex over at the Bilerico Project does a weekly queer reader! Check out today's installment. (And while you're there, check out Jessica's post on why she identifies as queer, not lesbian, bi, or anything else.)

Plastic surgery is, apparently, "democratizing."

The fascinating history of a racist typeface.

On BookTV if you feel like watching. I'm sure I'll YouTube it or something, but I def can't watch now because Monty is doing cute puppy things that require constant attention.

He already pooped on my floor, but I really don't mind...

Tatiana

Tatiana Suarez Pico, Tara Lopez and Aurin Squire together make a bilingual comic strip titled, "Bodega Ave." Tatiana translates and writes, Aurin writes and Tara draws.

Their website describes "Bodega Ave." as a pop fantasy and ridiculous satire based on a bunch of pre-teens in Brooklyn."

Here's Tatiana, Tara and Aurin...

A Northern California man was recently sentenced to 13 years in prison after pleading guilty to exposing himself to a woman on a train.

Prosecutors sought the lengthy prison sentence because Burton already had two prior convictions for indecent exposure and a previous conviction on six counts related to sexual assault, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. [...]

"Our concern was, 'Are we being too lenient? Are we adequately protecting the public?'" Wagstaffe said. "We have a person here who has done this for many, many years. And with all likelihood, he will be doing it again."

This raises some questions for me. For all of our (warranted!) complaining and consciousness-raising about street harassment and public-transit perverts, we devote very little discussion to what (if any) penalties there should be for such behavior.

I'm still figuring out exactly where I stand on this. But I do know that sending the occasional flasher to prison isn't going to solve this problem. Mainly because many harassers/flashers are not in fact "perverts," they're just regular dudes who like to, you know, occasionally assert their patriarchal authority -- not generally thought of as a danger to society (outside of the feminist blogosphere, of course. Har har). We can't (and shouldn't) send all of these guys to prison for a decade.

How should our criminal justice system treat chronic harassers, then? Make these guys go to some sort of therapy, perhaps? Ban them from public transportation? Make them read some feminist literature in an attempt to teach them all women aren't their sexual property? The list of potential "punishments" goes on and on. But adding to an already bloated prison population doesn't seem like the right answer to me. I think there should be penalties for public harassing and flashing. I also think we (as a society) use incarceration too often. What do y'all think?

Hotel mistakes Nobel laureate for bag lady

She was wearing a Mayan dress, the traditional attire of indigenous people in central America, and the hotel's response was also traditional: throw her out.

The woman was Rigoberta Menchu Tum, who was asked in an interview before receiving her Nobel Peace Prize in 1992,

Q: Do you personally feel the effects of racism?

A: Definitely. During the last summit in San Jose in Portugal, with all the Central American Presidents present, the Guatemalan delegation threatened to leave the summit if I entered the main session to present a document on the development of Guatemala.

It was inconceivable to them that an indigenous woman, self taught, born to a humble family in the mountains, who ate roots and leaves, didn't go to school and who has no professional title would appear there. It was the greatest shame. The racists won't stand for the presence of a person who is not of their race and convictions.

She also said, in the same interview, "We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism."

I've heard that the latest issue of Cosmopolitan magazine has an article about "gray rape." Which, let's remember, is a total fucking myth.

And not-so-shockingly, the piece is written by Laura Sessions Stepp--not exactly a bastion of feminism.

I've gotten several emails from sexual assault and intimate partner violence activists who are incredibly upset about the article--not only because it gives credence to the idea that rape is somehow a "gray" area, but because of the media play the article (and idea) seems to be getting.

One activist even told me that she was asked to go on a morning show to discuss the article, and when she explained that there was no such thing as "gray rape" recognized in the field--they cut her from the segment.

More to come when I pick up the magazine, but in the meantime read these great pieces on sexual assault by Courtney Martin and Jaclyn Friedman to clear your mind of Stepp's bullshit.

It's as if Axe had a sadder, but just as offensive, little brother.

Two incredibly awful stories recently about young Latina transwomen and their run-ins with the U.S. criminal "justice" system:

Via Jessica Hoffmann:

Victoria Arellano/Arrelano (the spelling of her name varies from story to story), a trans woman with AIDS who died in a California immigration facility for men in July after being denied medication and otherwise improperly treated, was one of three immigrants to die in federal custody in a month, according to the Washington Post.

And from Amnesty International (via AngryBrownButch):

My name is Mariah Lopez. I am a young, transgender person of color. I also am an activist who does street-based outreach in the West Village, where I also socialize.

Let me tell you how the police often respond to this.

With verbal abuse.

Sexual harassment.

Unwarranted arrests.

Withholding food, water and medication in detention.

Humiliating and inappropriate strip searches.

Physical assaults.

This is what I have endured at the hands of police and corrections officers - and not just once. What occurs is a systemic abuse of power, one that is seemingly inflicted on whim. For my friends and me, it seems that something as inconsequential as an officer's mood can dictate whether we spend time in jail.

Read her whole statement. It's gut-wrenching.

I don't mean to diminish the injustices suffered by these two women by lumping their stories together. Rather, I think it's important to recognize that what's going on here is systemic. For each story like Mariah Lopez's or Victoria Arellano's that bubbles up through the alternative media or queer/feminist blogosphere, there are countless more that don't even make the radar. Jessica Hoffmann (who has been tirelessly pushing for more coverage of Arellano's story) summed it up nicely: "Immigrants' rights struggles and trans struggles and health-care struggles and feminist struggles and HIV/AIDS struggles--and all other struggles for justice--are interconnected. If we believe in justice, these struggles are ours." (Which is also why I apologize for not posting on either of these stories sooner.)

AI has an online action alert calling for an NYPD investigation into the abuses suffered by Mariah Lopez while in custody. I'll post updates on Victoria Arellano's case as I get them.

It seems there has been some controversy sparked up by that New York billboard that Vanessa spoke about on NY1.

"It's trashy and its vulgar and it's in your face with its crudity," Kiera McCaffrey, of the Catholic League said on Thursday about the Manhattan Mini Storage billboard.

The Roman Catholic group, a vocal opponent of abortion rights, has been urging people to complain to the company.

You know what's really vulgar? Women dying from illegal abortions. So seriously, fuck you.

Mary Alice Carr, of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, points out that most New Yorkers are pro-choice, and that billboards like this one remind people to stay active.

If you're feeling up to it, it would be nice to show Manhattan Mini Storage some support--so send them an email thanking them for not backing down to folks like the Catholic League.

This joke site from Australia, the Worldwide Organisation For Men Exhibiting Nanciness, is the epitome of anxious masculinity.

Welcome… Maybe you had trouble understanding the difference between a V8 and flat 6. Perhaps you bought just a few too many hair products. Whatever the case, you acted in a distinctly unmanly way. And you grew yourself a nice little pair of Man Cans.

Don’t say we didn't warn you.

If you’re visiting this site, you’ve made the right move. The first step is always the most difficult and acknowledging the problem is crucial. Man Cans or, more importantly, the unacceptably soft behaviour that causes them, is something we all have to prevent.

There's even a little video that follows, showing a guy who dares to cry at a movie suddenly growing a pair of breasts. Because what better way to punish a man than to feminize him? After all, there's nothing worse than being a woman. (I would argue it's better than being crushed by a giant beer can, but that's just me.)

What's equally as baffling is the amount of work put into this site, and it's parody sister sites Man Can Do, Man Tape, and Bra Bro. Seriously. Happy Friday, folks.

So you know how we've been doing all this work on feminism and highlighting women who do feminist activism? Turns out it's totally passé.

You don't hear the F-word so much these days...How often, after all, do you hear the word feminism these days outside the Guardian women's page? We have, it seems, moved on.

We have? Shit.

Name someone more bad-ass than Tina. Seriously. Can't be done.

Even the cancer is pink!

Remember Camel's new brand of cigarettes, Camel No. 9, which are marketed towards women? Well a group of women's and public health organizations have come together to protest the brand.

Camel No. 9 hit stores early this year. It immediately drew fire for its stylish packaging — shiny, sleek black boxes bordered with fuschia and teal — and ads that included florals, hints of lace and the slogan "Light and Luscious."

The latest ad campaign says "Now available in stiletto" — a longer, thinner cigarette.

A letter sent to R.J. Reynolds chairman Susan Ivey says "This product is nothing more than a veiled attempt to sell more cigarettes to girls and young women, putting them at grave risk for disease and a premature death." So far, efforts to get women's magazines to pull the ad have been unsuccessful.

Without wading into the "should feminists wear makeup" debate, I wanted to point to this great post over at Racialicious, "Sorry! We don’t have that in your color. . .", prompted by Wendi's discovery that her favorite makeup line doesn't have tinted moisturizer darker than "beige."

In actuality, as per usual, women of darker skin tones were simply being ignored, and when the industry remembered us for a moment, our needs were considered to belong to a niche market, calling for a separation of default skincare and makeup products from the ones for “women of color.� I understand the need to highlight a new set of products for a certain population, but at the same time, why aren’t colors that are made for the beyond-beige ladies just a part of the regular lines? Why must we so frequently be singled out, somewhat as a reminder of our phenotypic foreignness in a market that still considers light skin not only the default, but the beauty norm.

I don't wear much makeup at all, have only worn foundation twice, and didn't know tinted moisturizer existed until recently, so I haven't encountered this problem. Has anyone else? I wonder what they think women of color should do about our nipples?

While I was in San Francisco, I had the chance to go speak to the teens who work with YO! Youth Outlook. A project of New America Media, YO! is a journal created by mostly young people of color who live in the Bay Area. They are frigging awesome, so make sure to check them out.

So after we had a lunch roundtable to discuss my book and feminism in general, two young women from YO! interviewed me for their YO! TV show, which airs on the local CW station. Check it out below.

Also check out this review written by 15 year-old Jasmine Redmond.

A big thanks to Neela Banerjee for inviting me; I had a great time!

There’s no doubt about it—young women tend to take themselves very, very seriously (takes one to know one). That’s why I was very excited about the opportunity to read Lynn Harris’ new book Death by Chick Lit, a totally entertaining, truly absorbing novel with an authentic, relatable narrator (who is neither obsessed with Coach, nor desperate to find a man and make babies) and some unpredictable twists and turns.

Harris has a damn good sense of humor. Her heroine is fuming with jealousy as she sucks down theme drinks at a “friend’s� fabulous book party, until she realized the friend has been murdered. She spends the rest of the book trying to figure out who the killer is, Nancy Drew with a borough writer’s edge. Her adventures take her to a ridiculous baby shower, a couple of swanky apartments, downtown bars, a canal, and everything in between. Think campy, but smart, biting, but poignant, totally New York with a Brooklyn edge.

It was refreshing to read a smart feminist novel that made fun of all the hullabaloo over “chick lit.� Lynn Harris doesn’t know why anyone would be so up in arms about what feminists are reading. After all, do lefty pundits get riled up when one of their own is caught reading John Grisham, or gasp, Michael Crichton?

In the words of Cyndi, sometimes girls just want to have fun. (You get special points if you find all the covert and not so covert feminist references throughout this juicy little read!)

Next week: Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans. Seriously.

A new study done in Denmark showed that abortion pills (aka medical abortion) pose no risk to a woman who decides to have a child later in life.

The study in the New England Journal of Medicine found no difference in the rates of subsequent tubal pregnancies, miscarriages, premature births or low birthweight births for women who had previously had surgical abortion, usually through vacuum aspiration, or those taking any of the three drug regimens that eliminate a fetus.

About 2.4 percent of later conceptions led to tubal pregnancy and just over 12 percent miscarried, regardless of the type of earlier abortion, the researchers found.

The likelihood of having a premature birth (5.4 percent) or a low birthweight baby (4 percent) was slightly lower among the women who had received the abortion pill but the difference was not statistically significant.

Dr. Jun Zhang of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, who worked on the study, said "The short-term safety of medical abortion has been well established."

Previous studies have established the safety of surgical abortion in the first trimester.

A New Zealand health company is offering its low-income patients vasectomies and IUDs -- free of charge. A recent study found that many women became pregnant (and later had abortions) while on a waiting list for tubal ligations, so this was the health care provider's response.

They're offering the IUD instead of tubal ligation because the IUD is much cheaper (about $500, as compared to a $1,500 procedure). Some women's groups in New Zealand criticized that decision, saying women should have an option equivalent to the vasectomy available to them.

It made me think of our conversation a few weeks ago about sterilization -- how it's denied to many young women who want it but still forced upon many low-income women and women of color who don't. The article certainly doesn't make it sound like this company is pushing sterilization on people who don't want it. (Good news, of course.) It's great to see these long-term contraceptive methods made accessible to people of all income levels -- expanding options for people who wouldn't be able to afford a $500 lump sum (a huge dent if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck).

So as long as it's not coercive, this sounds like such a rational plan to me -- how do we reduce unplanned pregnancies and abortions among low-income women? Offer free, reliable, long-term contraceptive methods to them and their partners. So simple!

via the Kaiser Report.

Remember the above ad? Well NY1, the local station here in New York City, just did a short piece on it and our own Vanessa made her television debut in the segment. Fun.

Our gal Courtney talks about, and reads from, her fantastic book. Buy it.

If you thought Cheaters was bad, this just takes it to the next level of sick. The use of technology to aid in the harassment and abuse of women is not a new phenomena. Given the nature of our overly public lives, half the information people need to stalk and harass you, is part of public information, usually self generated. But so what right? I mean you should be able to write about yourself and not have to worry about someone taking that information and using it against you in some capacity. That is just one issue.

What about people that are installing spyware on your personal technologies to track what you do and who you call? This includes GPS monitors in your car and spyware on your computer to even tracking your cell phone calls. Our frighteningly voyeuristic culture does not cease to disgust.

Spyware has been around for years, and so have software packages marketed specifically to suspicious spouses.

But so have wiretapping laws which make electronic interception of other people's conversations illegal -- making use of such spouse spying tools a likely violation of federal law. That should make you scratch your head when you search for "cheating spouse" on your favorite search engine and find thousands of links to software products specifically intended to spy on husbands or wives.

In at least one high-profile case, a software maker was indicted by federal authorities for marketing spouse-spying products. In August 2005, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara was indicated in the Southern District of California for creating and selling a product called "Loverspy." Four Loverspy users also were indicted.

But the legal action hasn’t slowed the use of spy technology in abusive relationships, Southworth said. If anything, the tools are more common now and much easier to use.

You can read more here. Only read the comments if you want to get really angry.

An explanation of this piece, (White) Fem uh nist, can be found here. Interesting stuff.

Pic from carmen_seaby.

In sub-Saharan Africa, one in every 16 women will die in pregnancy or childbirth. In Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, pregnancy and birth complications kill one in every six women. To take on the millions of maternal deaths worldwide, the UN is backing a landmark global conference set to take place in London this October.

At Women Deliver, more than 2,000 people will come together to strategize new ways to save women's lives and tackle other issues that impede women's access to care, such as poverty.

Read more at UN Dispatch.

It is always nice to be reminded that when women suggest they need more rights they are protested, slapped, exiled and/or censored. Bangladeshi poet, author, feminist and activist Taslima Nasrin was barraged by protesters, at a book reading in South India, accusing her of suggesting changes to the Quran.

Dozens of Muslim protesters led by three lawmakers attacked an exiled Bangladeshi writer at the release of her book in southern India on Thursday, calling her “anti-Islam,� and telling her to go back to her country.

About 100 people burst into the Press Club in Hyderabad, shouting insults at Taslima Nasrin and ransacking the place, throwing chairs in the air and overturning tables.

Organizers pushed them back, and Nasrin escaped unhurt. In the melee, one of the protesters slapped her, witnesses said.

via AP.

Wearing white after labor day is a fashion don't. So, apparently, is being black.

PS. I would really like to know how to get "political" hair.

Thanks to Lydia for the Deep Thoughts logo!

Don't tell Vanessa, but fishing is for boys.

This is charming. A camp in Canada wouldn't allow a nine year-old girl to attempt a one-day camp where kids get to fish and hike...because it's only for boys.

The camp, run by the Municipality of the District of West Hants, north of Halifax, has a separate program for girls called the Glamorous Girls camp, which includes a trip to a spa for manicures and pedicures.

Cause nothing says the great outdoors like a great set of toenails.

Thanks to Stu for the link.

A new poll says that one in five women are deciding against having children--or delaying having one--because of the high cost of child care and preschool. The poll, which was commissioned by an anti-crime organization, recommends increased funding and support for quality child care and preschool programs like Head Start.

It's kind of amazing how a country that just lurves to tell women that we need to be having children (so long as we're white, of course) is so damn crappy at providing the resources necessary to have kids and not go broke. Sigh.

If you want more information on the care crisis, this article is a must-read. Also check out Legal Momentum's Family Initiative.

Can this be for real? Along the lines of Cara's post last week about nausea inducing acts of injustice in rape trials, this is another one of those, "is this shit for real?"

Senior Aircraftsman Kenneth Ecott, 26, wept after a jury took two hours to find he was not responsible for his actions.

Mr Ecott did not deny having sex with the girl, but said he had no memory of it happening.

Instead he insisted he had a condition known as sexsomnia in which sufferers carry out indecent acts in their sleep.

It was this affliction that made him climb naked on top of the girl at a friend's birthday party sleepover in Poole, Dorset, the Bournemouth Crown Court heard.

He admitted to "having sex" with the girl? Than in court he doesn't deny that he raped her. His girlfriend says he fondles her in his sleep. All he can say is he doesn't remember doing it and he walks?

Are you fucking kidding me?

via Daily Mail.

During a discussion of financial news on MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews told CNBC's Erin Burnett: "You're beautiful," "you're a knockout," and "It's all right getting bad news from you." Uber-professional, I know.

Via Media Matters.

UPDATE: The Carpetbagger Report and Shakes have more.

So now that I'm back from vacation (boo), I'm all set to get back to work. Not just on Feministing, but on my new book as well! I'm super psyched to be working again with Seal Press on a fun book that takes on different sexist double standards.

Here's where you come in, dear readers. Tell me what you think the most infuriating, funny, weird (or whatever) sexist double standards are--and I'll try to incorporate some of them in the book. (With appropriate thanks, of course.) My pet-double-standard-peeve is the sexual double standard--you know, men are studs and women are whores. It's something that has baffled me since I was a kid. So, what's yours?

(picture via WAPO)

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman in 1944, refused to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus headed to Baltimore. She was arrested and jailed for her bold move, but her contributions resonated. Kirkaldy died last week.

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman whose refusal in 1944 to give up her seat to a white passenger is seen as a precursor to the US civil rights movement, has died at the age of 90, reports said Monday.

Kirkaldy's determination, more than a decade before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus to allow a white person to sit down, led to her arrest and incarceration and eventually to the Supreme Court, which said the law used against her was unconstitutional.

Kirkaldy, nee Morgan, was taking a Greyhound bus from her mother's home in the state of Virginia to Baltimore in neighboring Maryland.

A few miles after she boarded, several white passengers got on, and Morgan and another black passenger were ordered by the driver to move to the back of the bus.

When they refused, the driver stopped the bus and called law enforcement officials, who showed up with an arrest warrant.

What amazes me about this story is that 1944 was not that long ago. My father was born in 1942, and my best friend's father who fought in the Korean war, had to sit on the back of the bus. And while the SCOTUS relies on the belief that racism is over and all that was done to people of color in this country has in some way been rectified, those of us that can see get to sit with the bitter reality that it wasn't that long ago, and not much has really changed.

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy was truly a hero.

via Rawstory and NYTimes.

For the most part, evolutionary psychology scares me. And studies that try and test what people find more attractive are usually full of variables that can't always be accounted for (cultural preferences, personal preferences, oh I don't know racism). Putting all that to the side, this study found that women are more attracted to "feminine" men.

Many women regard men with masculine facial features -- such as a square jaw, larger nose and smaller eyes -- as unsuitable long-term partners, because they're more likely to be domineering, unfaithful, unaffectionate and poor parents, U.K. researchers have found.

On the other hand, women believe that men with finer facial features -- fuller lips, wide eyes and thinner, more curved eyebrows -- to be more committed, less likely to cheat, and to make better parents, said the study by psychologists at Durham and St. Andrews Universities.

I don't appreciate physical characteristics identified as masculine and feminine as though there is a static way to look manly verses looking feminine. Why is a square jaw masculine? I have a square jaw and I don't think I am masculine. So I suppose this study relies on fixed categories of masculine and feminine to prove its logic, but we already know that is problematic.

Furthermore, I have met tons of men that are super nurturing and don't have what would be considered feminine features.

And what about gay men? Are they just not part of the equation?

But perhaps, I am missing the point. Is there some logic to this I am not getting? Superficial qualities have some role in how we behave?

via US News and World Report.

Well this is amusing. Bill Richardson thinks being gay is a choice. So you know, if it is a choice, then you know, you can just change, and so you don't really need equal rights. I am not feeling the logic.

Etheridge is looking pretty sharp. I had no idea.

via Truthdig.

I know Ann already pointed out a piece I wrote for The Guardian on the growing trend of women-only spaces as a way to combat harassment, but I just wanted to add a little something.

There was a paragraph that was cut due to space constraints where the amazing Julia Serano weighed in, so I've pasted it below the jump. By the way, more to come on Serano later because her book Whipping Girl is just ridiculously amazing so I'm going to be haunting her for an interview.

Since I'm here ferry-blogging anyway, I just wanted to give a huge thanks to excellent guest bloggers Cara and Miriam. And I'll tell you what, ladies. You both rock so hard, I wouldn't even mind if you did blog drunk. Kisses.

And don't forget, dear readers, to add The Curvature and Radical Doula to your daily blog reading.

(So I'm kind of freaking out that there is WiFi on the ferry from Martha's Vineyard, but pleased that I can bring you at least one post today!)

It seems that the judge in the witch-hunt, uh--I mean case, against Dr. Tiller was once a "staunch anti-abortion state lawmaker."

The judge who will decide the case — Sedgwick County District Judge Anthony Powell — was a leading voice for anti-abortion lawmakers during his eight years as a legislator. Powell was appointed to the case this week.

Well that sounds fair.

Vanessa and I are en route back to New York today (I'm posting from my Blackberry, weird) so posting will be slow to possibly, well, none. Apologies.

Have a great Monday and we'll be back kicking sexist ass tomorrow.

A new study shows women are more interested in making long-term partners of men with more effeminate features.

A judge rejects a Missouri law that would have allowed midwives to deliver babies at home.

Violet has an update on why electro-shock therapy is a feminist issue.

Prostitution is on the rise in China.

The BBC on "pro-anorexia" websites.

Ohio legislation would expand the rights of pregnant workers.

Bangladeshi feminist author Taslima Nasrin is attacked in India -- politicians were among those leading the mob. Ammu Joseph examines coverage of the incident in Indian media.

E.J. Graff's take on the first-ever gay issues presidential debate last week.

How involvement in high-school sports leads girls toward college diplomas. (Wooo!! Title IX!)

Newsday takes a long look at the state of affairs for women filmmakers. Turns out they don't all like directing rom-coms (shocker), and there are still far too few of them.

Doctors adopt a defensive tactic in the wake of the so-called "Partial-Birth" Abortion Ban: administering lethal injection to fetuses.

Sara at F-Words says this ad is simply offensive, not "absurd." (For a good follow-up read, check out Ornamenting Away on the right to be offended by misogyny.)

Our gal Courtney on fat activism and Mo'Nique.

And the Washington Times basically laments growing acceptance of "queen-sized ladies." (Featuring a truly awful headline: "U.S. women losing girth control." Ugh.)

RHRealityCheck has a breakdown of the Iowa straw poll results from a pro-choice perspective.

The 42nd Carnival of Feminists is up at Uncool!

Deidra has been running her blog, Black and Missing but Not Forgotten since July 2007. She states:

"This blog is dedicated to all the missing black women in America. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr once said "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." If the media doesn't step up—who will? Let these ladies know that we did not forget about them."

Deidra made time between her two jobs and blog to answer my questions. Here's Deidra...

Since this will be my last post at Feministing, I would like to give a quick thanks to everyone who made it such a great experience. A big thanks to all of the Feministing women for asking me to guest-blog, to all of them and Miriam for being such great co-bloggers, and a special thanks to Ann for being so helpful. Also, thanks to everyone who commented and was receptive to what I had to say. I hope that those of you who enjoyed my posts will follow me back to The Curvature, and of course, I'll be around here commenting, as always.

I'm going to leave you with a stunningly excellent pro-choice poetry slam called "What We Deserve." It's from the 2006 International World Poetry Slam Finals and by Sonya "The Drama" Boom Renee. I had to watch it twice, and was almost in tears towards the end, the second time around. For those of you who have been commenting today that all the recent bad news is getting you down, know that you're not the only one who's angry!

This week a massive fire destroyed the only domestic violence shelter in the state of Massachusetts that allows mothers to stay with their children.

"It's a big loss," said Toni Troop, spokeswoman for Jane Doe Inc., an umbrella group of 60 social service providers including the Stone House. "The loss of any single bed, never mind an entire program, in Massachusetts just diminished the availability of emergency shelters. There are already as many people turned away as are served on any given day."

Troop said the Stone House is one of 32 emergency shelters for domestic violence victims in the state, and that there is no fast way to replace the beds lost by the fire. Officials estimated the damage at $175,000.

But for Erika, who had just set up the playpen for her infant and was hauling the last of her goods into the apartment Tuesday afternoon when the building started to burn, the loss was impossible to quantify.

"I'm just devastated," said Erika, 34. "I just know my life was starting over . . . [now] I have nothing -- nothing, nothing, nothing."

This must be a terrible time for the women who had been living at the shelter. They're still waiting to hear if their insurance is going to cover their losses. If you want to help out, the center is seeking donations. Here's where you can send a check:

The Elizabeth Stone House
P.O. Box 300039
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
info@elizabethstone.org

TWO UPDATES: Reader Sarah informs that there are indeed more DV shelters in Massachusetts that serve women and their children. (Apologies for repeating the error in the Boston Globe article.)

You can click here to donate with a credit card. I have no idea if they're also accepting non-monetary donations. Will keep you posted if I hear anything more.

How sexism keeps women from participating in the YouTube vlogger culture.

Who remembers the case of the man who was arrested and tried for a 1984 rape, after using his AA program to write a letter of confession and apology to his victim? I remember it well. I loved the bravery of the victim, Liz Seccuro, who shamelessly went public with her story. She refused to accept an apology as a form of justice, and had to watch others both excuse the crime that happened "so long ago" and excuse the "apologetic" rapist.

That man, William Beebe, is now being released on parole after serving only six months in jail.

William Beebe, 42, pleaded guilty in November to one count of aggravated sexual battery for his attack on Liz Seccuro while at the University of Virginia. In March, a judge ordered a 10-year prison sentence with all but 18 months suspended.

Seccuro was shocked when informed Tuesday by Beebe's parole officer of his impending release. She said she was never given the opportunity to speak to the parole board.

"Everywhere in America I've seen, the victim has a say," Seccuro said. "And that's the problem rape victims are voiceless."

Virginia abolished parole for all crimes committed after 1994, but because the crime occurred a decade earlier, Beebe is a candidate for early release. He has a projected release date of Sept. 17.

How seriously fucked up can you get? The man admitted to rape. His letter contained the words: "I want to make clear that I'm not intentionally minimizing the fact of having raped you. I did." What the hell more do you possibly need? I don't care how long ago it was. And while addiction sure sucks, being raped by an addict has to suck an awful lot more. I don't care that he's sorry. An apology should not be a get out of jail free card for a violent crime.

But, apparently, it is.

I'm happy that Seccuro is still speaking out, and hasn't allowed herself to be shamed into silence. But it's very little consolation, and in no way makes up for the injustice of a 10 year sentence being turned into six months in jail. Maybe this will silence the rape apologists who think that feminists are hysterical women when they speak up about society's indifference towards rape. But somehow, I doubt it.

Do you remember in High School, when your friends would compare the length of their index fingers and their ring fingers to see who was gay? Well now scientists are researching these traits as well.

A New York Magazine article, written by a self-identified gay male author, delves into the research behind supposedly "gay" traits--hair whorls, fingertip lengths, handed-ness, thumbprint density and even penis size. All this research, which purports to prove how gay men and lesbian women compare to their heterosexual counterparts (gay men's penises are thicker and longer than heterosexual men's, lesbian's ears function more like heterosexual men's ears do) come to the big conclusion we've all been waiting for:

'We're reaching a consensus on a broad question,' says J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University. 'Is sexual orientation 'something we're born with or something we largely acquire through social experience? The answer is clear. It's something we're born with.'

Apparently the scientific community is reaching a consensus that the LGBTQ community definitively has not. There are still two very distinct camps--the social constructionists and the biological essentialists, who have been debating not only the construction of sex and gender, but sexual orientation. Once this decision has been made by the scientific community, the obvious next step is well how or when is it biologically determined?

The theme that keeps returning in this research is the pregnant woman and her interaction with the fetus. (Sound familiar?) Some surveys have shown that for every son that a woman has, the next one is 33% more likely than the one who came before him to be gay. A quote from one researcher of the biological origins of "gayness," (to use the author's terminology) Sven Bocklandt, is particularly telling:

Every man and every woman has all the genes to make a vagina and womb and penis and testicles. In the same way, arguably, every man and woman has the genetic code for the brain networks that make you attracted to men and to women. You activate one or the other--and if you activate the wrong one, you're gay.

Last week, a Federal court ruled that, despite Illinois law, pharmacists in Illinois can refuse to dispense emergency contraception. The state passed a law in 2005 that requires all pharmacies to dispense EC. As a result, Wal-Mart (and other companies) have disciplined pharmacists that refused to follow the rule. Then came the lawsuits and the bad news.

U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott denied a request Tuesday by Wal-Mart to throw out a lawsuit filed by pharmacist Ethan Vandersand. Scott sided with Vandersand, who had claimed he was legally protected from discipline by the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act when he declined to dispense Plan B.

Vandersand, who lives in Bluffs, formerly worked at the pharmacy in Beardstown's Wal-Mart. He was put on unpaid leave after he refused to fill a Plan B prescription requested by a nurse practitioner at Springfield's Planned Parenthood on behalf of a female patient in February 2006.

Wal-Mart had contended the state's right-of-conscience law doesn't cover pharmacists. Walgreen Co. has made the same argument in other Illinois lawsuits filed by fired pharmacists.

But Scott wrote in her ruling, "The statute prohibits discrimination against any person for refusing to provide health care because of his conscience."

I think that this is the one and only time that I will ever take Wal-Mart's side in a lawsuit. So of course they ended up losing. You know, it really sucks when a company tries to do the right thing-- especially when they have such a strong reputation of doing the wrong thing-- only to see it blow up in their face. It's precisely these kinds of ruling that can deter companies from acting in a socially conscious way in the future. And this ruling is certainly going to add fuel to the anti-EC fire. It also has the potential to influence pending cases across the country.

And what's it all for? To accommodate those who choose professions incompatible with their religious beliefs? I have to say that I'm really not sure what valuing a potentially fertilized egg over a woman has to do with "conscience," anyway.

Correction/Clarification: it has been brought to my attention that all Wal-Mart has lost is a motion to dismiss in federal court, not the case itself. The misunderstanding arose from the article's statement that "A federal judge's ruling this week upholds the right of Illinois pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception." This is accurate, but the final outcome of the actual case could change that. My understanding, and the impression given in this post, is that an appeal was dismissed, therefore upholding a previous ruling. This is false, and the case can still potentially be won in court. My apologies for the confusion.

Commenters had already set us straight on Andy Samberg's NOW t-shirt, but it's nice to hear it from Samberg himself in this Nerve interview:

You wore a National Organization of Women shirt to the Spike TV Awards —
I did! Thank you for noticing! I thought it would be funny, because obviously Spike TV is very in the opposite direction. You know, we were promoting the movie, and it was a good time with a lot of fun people we liked. We went and had fun, but you know, I'm from Berkeley, California, I can't go into that thing wholeheartedly. I had to put a little wink in somewhere to let everyone know back home that I hadn't gone all the way.

I was reading a feminism blog that was trying to decide whether you were sincere or ironic.
[laughs] Totally sincere.

Niiiice.

Today is Women's Day in South Africa. On August 9, 1956, more than 20,000 women marched to government buildings in Pretoria and presented this petition protesting laws that made African women carry special passes. Since then, the holiday has become a day to reflect on whether the country's laws are truly serving women and advancing equality.

So it's only appropriate that on this Women's Day, LGBTQ and women's groups are organizing a rally in Soweto to protest the torture, rape, and murder of a two lesbian couple, Sizakele Sigasa and Salome Massoa, this week.

"A key message of this particular action is to highlight and confront the contradictions between our constitutional provisions on equality, dignity and autonomy for all, including LGBTI people, and the ways religious and traditional institutions and others shape and/or contribute to hate and hate crime," say the organisers.

via BlackLooks.

No, seriously! Last week's New Yorker featured an awesomely snarky profile of men's rights activist Roy Den Hollander, who is going about the noble work of trying to get Ladies Nights banned. Den Hollander, who is into "black and Latin chicks, and Asian chicks," drinks Absolut vodka gimlets, keeps his age a secret, and likes the music quiet (otherwise he has trouble hearing the woman he's hitting on). In other words, he sounds like a total tool. This cracked me up:

The club was filling up as Den Hollander held forth on Title IX (“Sports isn’t a big thing to girls, but it’s a big thing to guys�), pickup tactics (“You sort of cut the person you’re after from the herd�), his personal finances (“Have you heard of the dot-com bubble?�), and his belief that “the Feminazis have infiltrated institutions, and there’s been a transfer of rights from guys to girls.� Too bad, it was suggested, that his lawsuit is set to be heard by Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, herself a known female.

But, as the New Yorker piece points out at the end, many feminists (myself included), for various reasons, think bars should charge men and women the same price for cover and drinks. A NOW lawyer remarked about Den Hollander's case,

“It probably wouldn’t be very fun to go out to dinner with him,� she said, “but, insofar as you’ve told me about his theory, I agree with it.�

Yeah, I wouldn't want to sip a vodka gimlet with Den Hollander, either.

Our previous posts on Ladies Nights are here and here.

The REAL hot 100 is now accepting nominations for the 2007 list!

Do you know a smart, savvy young woman who represents the intelligence, drive and diversity of young women today? Is she breaking barriers, speaking her mind and making the world a better place? Look around – she may be your best friend, your wife, your partner, your colleague, your sister – she may even be you.

For some inspiration, check out the list of last year's honorees. (FYI, last year's hot 100 are not eligible for this year's list.)

Then click here to nominate a young woman you know!

Disclaimer: I know Kimmi Auerbach. I have eaten her truly divine mushroom lasagna. I have reveled in her otherworldy laugh. I have taught her the electric slide in all its myriad variations.

And so I don’t claim objectivity on this week’s selection, just a genuine conviction that the book Kimmi has just published—The Devil, The Lovers, and Me: My Life in Tarot—might just change your life. At the very least, it will be a fabulous break from whatever depressing reading you are forcing yourself to do at this very moment. That’s right, put down the WSJ. Pick up Kimmi.

You see Kimmi is not your academic feminist or your better-than-thou literary writer. She is, instead, a girl who was stuck working at Fox News, hating herself for being the girl at the party who said, like a broken record every year, “I’m working on my one woman show,� a girl who wanted a boy who wanted to want her. There is a lot, as you might imagine, to relate to in her story.

I missed the AFL-CIO's Democratic presidential forum the other night, but while reading a short write-up of the debate, I came across a quote from Senator Clinton that made me do a double-take:

"For 15 years, I have stood up against the right-wing machine. And I've come out stronger. If you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I'm your girl."

Wait, what? Forget the part about how Clinton says that she stands up to right-wing machine when she actually has a history of caving in (*cough* Iraq War). "I'm your girl?" She's 59-years-old!

I bring up her age not to make her sound "old"-- I'm 23, and I bristle at being called a "girl" as much as any 23-year-old man bristles at being called a "boy." I resent the cultural phenomenon of infantalizing women, as well as the social practice for men to be called men the moment they turn 18, while women have to wait at least until they're 30 to be regularly called a woman, and even then are encouraged to put off the change as long as possible.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but as someone with an English degree, I think that language is important. Particularly in politics, words are chosen very carefully. And I'm not the only one who noticed. So what the hell is going on, here? How did we go from a Hillary Clinton eager to push her credentials of toughness to a Hillary Clinton referring to herself as a "girl?" Is it an attempt to reverse the perception that she is too masculine? An attempt to appeal to women as "one of them," like with her self-deprecating remarks about her weight? Or, since it was a labor union forum, maybe she was trying to appear populist, as opposed to the liberal that she is so often (incorrectly) portrayed as?

And what on earth are we to think of it? Of course, she gets to call herself whatever she wants, but we're also entitled to our opinions. As feminists, we have worked long and hard to see a woman with a real shot at the presidency. I know that a lot of us already have personal reservations about her and her policies. So how are we to feel about having a legitimate female presidential candidate-- the Democratic candidate who would probably win if the primaries were held today-- referring to herself as a girl? And, particularly for those who find the phrase inconsequential, why don't we have the same reaction to Clinton saying "I'm your girl" as we would if Giuliani said "I'm the boy for the job?"

Are you a vegetarian? Maybe you just don't like the taste of red meat? Well careful ladies, cause you might not be able to snag a man!

The NYTimes today reports that eating red meat (particularly steak) and ordering it on a first date is a surefire way to hook the man of your dreams. The article starts with the story of Martha and her Match.com profile, where she mentioned red meat twice in her advertisement. Fast forward to a year later, and she's engaged to Mr. Right, after numerous red meat centered dates. Martha used to be a meat-hating vegetarian, but changed her ways when she realized

That ordering steak on a first date had the potential to sate appetites not only of the stomach but of the heart. Red meat sent a message that she was “unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic,� she said, “that I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin, and I don’t have any food issues.� She added, “In terms of the burgers, it said I’m a cheap date, low maintenance.�

We've heard this line before haven't we? What you decide to order on the first date is of the utmost importance. If you order too much, he might think you're a pig...if you order only a salad, he might think you're a waif with body image issues. So what's the solution? Meat of course!

Ordering meat, on the other hand, is a declarative statement, something along the lines of “I am woman, hear me chew.�

Someone please tell me that the National Cattlemen's Beef Association is behind this. Are we seriously still in a time when this statement can pass muster?

Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.

New legislation that will lower contraception costs went into effect this week in Minnesota.

Since 2003, the cost of contraceptives has skyrocketed for family-planning clinics, forcing them to pass those costs on to their clients. In turn, higher prices have decreased the number of family-planning clinic patients -- and, presumably, the number of women using effective birth-control methods.

[. . .]

Lawmakers voted to allow family-planning clinics to buy contraceptives through cooperative purchasing agreements that will lower their costs. Previously, clinics negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on their own, often placing orders that were too small to receive the best prices.

Now, the commissioner of human services must work with clinics to adjust medical assistance reimbursement rates to adequately cover the costs.

Clinics will be able to get the same per-unit price for contraceptives and other clinic supplies that are available to the state. In other words, clinics can now join the state drug plan.

This is great news! This is going to tremendously assist non-profit reproductive health clinics like Planned Parenthood in providing more and better services. And there's no question that it's a great thing for low-income women who have trouble staying on birth control regimes due to cost.

Even better, the law also allows nurses to dispense contraception under the supervision of a medical director. This too has the ability to greatly improve and expand services at clinics with tight budgets (almost all of them), and there's really no reason to not have it as an option. The woman I see for my OB/GYN appointments is a registered nurse, and my experiences with her are some of the best I've ever had in receiving medical care.

Let's all tip our hats to Minnesota legislators for looking out for women. Let's also hope that, in states where it hasn't already, the idea will start to catch on.

This is amusing. Women are now being blamed for the failure of their own love lives. What is to blame? Well, that you are too smart. If you are intelligent and advanced at work or your career (or your interests that are also smart outside of just reading Cosmo and He's just not that into you) than you have a low emotional intelligence. Because this is a common misnomer around women, you see. That women are emotionally UN-intelligent. Really now.

Anne, a very sad, disappointed and single 40 year old tells us clearly what we need to hear:

I never envisaged that at my 40th, not only would I not have a partner, but I wouldn't even have a date. When I waltzed out of Oxford University nearly 20 years ago, throbbing with a sense of my potential, this wasn't what I had in mind at all.

But now, taking stock, I can see that while my career as a writer has flourished, I have floundered massively in the relationship stakes. My romantic CV makes shockingly depressing reading - I was married at 32, divorced by 34, became pregnant by a new partner at 36 and was left by him as a single mother at 38.

Let's start with the obvious. It is not your fault that you focus your energy on your work instead of your relationship and that a man cannot appreciate that in your life. If a man leaves you with a child, that is not your fault. Yeah there are two sides to every story, but it is hardly just your own fault.

So what does all this mean? Well, I believe that at the root of all this is the fact that many women with a high IQ have a perilously low EQ (that's their emotional intelligence quotient). Put more prosaically, this would explain why bright girls are often fools in love.

Last year, American writer Michael Noer created outrage when he wrote a piece in Forbes Magazine warning men off marrying career girls. He claimed that recent studies had found that clever, professional women were more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children.

I know it is hard to take an article seriously that attempts to use last year's atrocious Forbes article as legitimate information. But, all things considered, I can truly relate to this as someone with a thousand things to do-all-the-time, it definitely puts a strain on all my relationships. But why are women to blame for that? Is it our fault that men are taught that they should have a woman's undivided attention and care? That perhaps when you are successful or more invested in your career than a relationship, that perhaps this is threatening?

As it is, women have to be needy and provide love, while men get to be invested in their careers (and not all men and women are like this at all, this is just what stories like this make me realize that dominant relationship myths tell us). If you don't fit that framework, than I suppose you end up alone! And what, OMG, what could be worse than that?

OK, let me stop before I start talking about my own life. The reality is men are changing with women and there are men out there that are supportive of women that are in their careers and that could be anything, like for me my social justice work or writing, or whatever it is you love to do and feels you and motivates you.

What we don't need is doom and gloom fear talk about how we are emotionally unintelligent and how we will end up alone if we are successful in our careers or our personal interests. Furthermore, WHO has the money to not work? And if I have to work, than I better be invested and interested since I have to spend a lot of time doing this work.

Perhaps there is a relationship between women having robust and flourishing careers and lack of male companionship, but is that such a bad thing? If the person you are with doesn't take interest or support you in the things that you want to do, then they are not loving you for who you are, and that is not the situation you want to be in. That is not your fault. The blame game needs to stop. You didn't do anything wrong. Divorce is not always such a bad thing, it shows that people know how to do what is right for themselves.

Showing interest in things other than a relationship shows a high level of emotional intelligence. You know what you want and aren't afraid to get it. Does this change that some people just don't want to be alone, outside of just the media motivated fear of it? Probably not, but it makes it easier to think about.

In this week's Addicted to Race podcast, Carmen Van Kerckhove of Racialicious and Latoya Peterson of Alter Ego Maniacs discuss why women of color sometimes feel ambivalent about feminism.

Click here to download the mp3. If you like what you hear, click here to subscribe to the Addicted to Race weekly podcast.

New research shows women who have had breast implants are three times as likely to commit suicide. While the article doesn't include what percentage of women who get implants have pre-existing mental health issues, it does mention that,

Previous studies have shown that as many as 15% of plastic surgery patients have body dysmorphic disorder, a condition marked by severe distress over minor physical flaws. People with the disorder have a higher rate of suicidal thoughts and rarely improve after surgery.

Lest I sound like a forced-pregnancy advocate screeching about so-called "post-abortion syndrome," I have to say that the implants themselves are pretty meaningless here. It's a question of the mental health status of women who choose to get breast implants. Realizing this, some plastic surgeons are calling for more pre-augmentation mental-health screenings. (My question: Would they really tell a woman with severe depression that she couldn't have D-cups? Maybe. Maybe not.) Other surgeons don't seem concerned, saying that, because the research was conducted between 1965 and 1993, the situation today is much brighter for the silicone-boobed:

Researchers said the results may have limited applicability to women today because breast augmentation is more acceptable than it was 40 years ago.

Do they actually mean to suggest that the women in the study were suicidal because, in previous decades, society was not accepting of their silicone-enhanced breasts? I'd argue that today there is even more social pressure to look perfect than there was 40 years ago. And as plastic surgery becomes more socially acceptable, women with mental-health issues (and problems like body-dysmorphic disorder) may be under even more pressure to get breast augmentations. Therefore this problem is not going away.

Does this mean it's time for the Love Your Body movement to take a cue from the anti-choice movement and start drumming up lots of biased research about so-called "post-boob-job syndrome"? Er, probably not...

Thanks to Erin for the link.

An article in both Women's eNews and AlterNet discusses the reasons why many women don't vote. In actuality, more women vote than men. And that's great news! The problem is that significantly lower numbers of unmarried women vote, compared to married women.

Unmarried women are the fastest growing major demographic group and represent the largest potential group of new voters, according to "The State of Unmarried America," an annual report released on June 29 by Washington-based Women's Voices Women Vote.

But many of their votes aren't there to be counted. Of the 49.5 million single, separated, divorced or widowed women in the United States, 18 million are unregistered and 5 million are registered but don't vote.

"What would make them most likely to participate is if they have more information from sources that they trust: nonbiased, nonpartisan information," said Joe Goode, executive director of Women's Voices Women Vote. "They don't have the same social network or are not as politically engaged as married couples. The second major thing holding them back is cynicism towards politicians and politics."

Goode says the women sitting out elections are hindered in general by a high degree of instability; 40 percent of young women move every three to four years and need to re-register.

Other women may be hindered more by everyday difficulties.

"Women are voting and women are voting in high numbers every year," said Kassidy Johnson, a campus organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation in Arlington, Va., which has a variety of programs to increase female voting. "I really believe the things that hold us back are normal, everyday things. You forget, you can't find a babysitter or you don't want to stand in line all day."

Women's Voices, Women's Vote has a fact sheet (PDF) that more clearly shows the disparity. And while I don't consider unmarried women a demographic that we can expect to vote a certain way, I do think that it's important to make sure that they have a say in our political process.

The disparity in numbers raises several questions. Why do more married women vote? Is it because married women are more likely to have children, and therefore feel stronger ties to their community? Is it because more men are interested in politics and encourage their wives to vote? If this is the case, are husbands unfairly influencing the votes of their wives? Are there completely different factors? And what is the effect on our voting process going to be, now that numbers of unmarried women are increasing? I don't have the answers to these questions, but they're food for thought.

Aside from the economic and practical issues discussed in the article, I also wonder if there are more social reasons behind this trend. I'd like to supply a personal anecdote.

Did anyone else ever see that terrible movie from the 90's? Well, Elizabeth Edwards is doing a remake on the campaign trail. Why? Because she thinks John Edwards is getting screwed in press coverage. So they're turning to the internet to help get the message out about their campaign, reaching out directly to voters. Sounds like a smart strategy to me. But she also says:

"In some ways, it's the way we have to go. We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman. Those things get you a lot of press, worth a certain amount of fundraising dollars."

Uh, I've been a fan of hers for a while, but that's fucked up. Perhaps some of the reasons Obama and Clinton are getting more attention in the mainstream media are their back and forth sniping, or the fact that they're incredibly far ahead in polls and fundraising.

The point is folks, it's hard out there for a white man. Maybe Edwards shold run as a Republican. They're all white, that should make it easier on him.

As Kevin puts it,

"This is me calling bullshit on the wife of a potential Presidential candidate blatantly using existing prejudices against Blacks and women for her husband’s political gain."

Her comment, and the Esquire cover are poor John, life is unfair complaining. Which is a classic political tactic for a 3rd-place candidate. But in this case they're playing off of people's fears, and boiling the popularity of these other candidates down to their gender and race. None of those are acceptable tactics for a "progressive" campaign to be using.

Nope, this isn't about a revival of the early 90s Whoopie Goldberg hit movie, this is about what Bust Magazine is reporting this month is a new trend of young, feminist minded women choosing to become nuns.

Bust reports that young women are being drawn into the nun's life, something that even in Whoopie's movie is characterized by sheltered little old ladies with grey hair. At a time when criticisms against the Catholic church are at a high, with recent priest sexual abuse scandals and harsh reactions to the archaic stance the Vatican is taking against modern day issues like homosexuality and birth control, it's surprising to think that young women may be choosing to become part of this hierarchy.

The article points to the internet as evidence of the rising visibility of nuns, and gives it at least partial credit for recruitment into the life as well. They mention a number of nun-authored blogs which deal directly with many of the difficult issues of convent life--celibacy, for example. And, just in case you're curious, priests are blogging too.

The women interviewed for the Bust piece use the language of feminism--and frame their decisions to enter the convent within the language of choice:

Society tells women that you have to get married. But I'm open to the possibility of falling in love with a religious community or a man.

Further explaining the feminist context of these convents:

...Women's gifts are encouraged--whether it be to play music, teach, learn languages, or write. Convents demonstrate the positive side of a gender-segregated education. Women's religious life is a very strong feminist social construct.

This news item made my stomach turn: Cassandra Hernandez, a female Air Force airman was raped, reported her attack and then subsequently became a court-martial defendant, herself.

The story goes down like this: Hernandez was at a party, where she was drinking. She says that three male airman raped her. She went to the hospital and filed a report accusing her attackers. Due to stress and harsh interrogation tactics by the Air Force, she eventually refused to testify against the airmen.

The Air Force then charged her with underage drinking (of which she admits to being guilty, but that's hardly the point, now is it?) and, along with her three attackers, "indecent acts." I had a hell of a lot of trouble finding an official definition for "indecent acts," and the best one I came up with is a "form of immorality relating to sexual impurity which is not only grossly vulgar, obscene, and repugnant to common propriety, but tends to excite lust and deprave the morals with respect to sexual relations." Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the basic translation seems to be "a sexual act, particularly one that is not generally accepted in society, such as sex with multiple partners."

So. The woman was raped. By three men. She reported her rape. She was harassed by her superiors, to the point where she became too afraid to testify. The Air Force took this as meaning that the sex was therefore consensual (which isn't what it means at all), and charged her in the case of her own rape. If she loses her case, she could be publicly registered as a sex offender.

Sounds like it couldn't get any worse, right? But it does. How? The three alleged attackers were offered sexual assault immunity to testify against Hernandez on the indecent acts charge. Having at least half a brain cell among them, they accepted.

Hernandez is writing to her congresspeople and her Governor, Rick Perry, in a desperate plea to end this madness. Once you finish throwing up, crying, breaking things, etc., I strongly suggest that you write, too.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: Apparently, the correct action to take is to write directly to YOUR congresspersons. You can find the information to write to your Representative here, and the information to write to your Senators here. It is a good idea to include one of the links to articles about the case, so that they know specifically what you are referring to.

The Chinese government is trying to put a better PR gloss on it's notoriously harsh one-child policy by changing the way it talks about the restrictions, issuing 190 "acceptable messages."

Now-forbidden slogans:
One more baby means one more tomb.

This is just weird and doesn't have much to do with anything outside of just being weird. But why are 'bad' cops in Thailand being forced to wear a Hello Kitty armband? What did Hello Kitty EVER do wrong?

Apparently, it is to make them look less macho and therefore feel humiliated. Now that is some seriously unnecessary sissyphobia.

Via Slashdot, I read an article today in Computer World summarizing the experience of four women and how the thrived in IT. It was definitely interesting, but I have some issues with the framing of the issues.

The first profile about Monique McKeon who eventually worked for the Chubb Corp ( a woman friendly place apparently where she is happy) experienced in her early career in IT a struggle between her home life and having a flourishing career.

At the consultancy, her travel schedule kept her out of town more than she was comfortable with. Then, when her first child was born, the bottom fell out. “I heard through the grapevine that one of the partners said I wasn’t as committed as before I had children,� she says. “That was the day I started looking for a job.

Please don't tell me the work place doesn't discriminate against working mothers. If a male employee showed affection or interest towards one of their children, would they be called out for a lack of commitment to the job?

At the end of every profile there is a little bit of advice:

You can balance an IT career with your home life, but it means making choices that are true to your priorities and understanding the trade-offs. “Having it all� is a fantasy.

That's right ladies, get used to it. You will not have the same choices, so be happy with the ones you have. I am sure the author of this piece did not intend for this article to denigrate the success of these women in anyway, but actually wanted to highlight some of the experiences of women in IT. However, it is clear that thriving doesn't mean actually beating boys at their own game. It means learning how to balance home and career, which is not something that men have to do.

It appears, at least to me, thriving means making strategic choices that may not always be the most career savvy, but allows you relative peace and minimized discrimination. I guess in order to thrive you have to forget that you want to get to the top and "refocus" your energy to where a woman's energy ought to be, on her family! I mean imagine you were a woman that didn't care about having kids and just wanted to make it to the top? What are you then?

There is a lot more to the article I am not getting into here, but really grim aspect for me is the significant decrease in the number of women that are going to college for computer science. I guess in light of Cara's excellent analysis of sexism in tech culture, why am I NOT surprised?

Coping strategies to make it in any workplace are great, but let's not cover up the deeper issues here.

An article in the Washington Post covers the increasing "sexuality" of the 2008 presidential candidates. The problem is that in almost all cases, the sexuality of the candidate is not the one actually in question-- it's that of his wife.

In this long, hot campaign season, intimations of sexuality are sprouting like wildflowers along the road to the White House. Not that the commingling of sex and politics is anything new, but for what seems to be the first time in memory, voters are being confronted with questions that don't usually break the surface: Just how sexy is a first lady allowed to be? And what constitutes an appropriate display of affection between candidates and their spouses?

With a nominating field full of older men and younger wives, experts say that a youthful, even sexy wife offers a none-too-subtle message about the vitality of the candidate.
[. . .]

"What's going on reflects what's happening in the larger culture, a culture increasingly focused on young, attractive women and blatant sexuality, on display for all to appreciate," said Elizabeth Sherman, a political sociologist and Democrat who is married to former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma. "The candidate's wife is a strategic asset. How are you going to deploy that asset?"

Gag.

You know, it's bad enough that the media is constantly judging the wives of candidates at all (and let's face it: Michelle Obama, Jeri Kehn Thompson and Judith Nathan Giuliani are getting far more attention these days than Bill Clinton is, and whatever attention he gets is undoubtedly due to the fact that he used to be president). These women are scrutinized for how they dress, if they're too supportive or not supportive enough, if they follow the candidate around like a puppy or are "disengaged," how their views match with the candidate, whether they're nice enough, pretty enough, maternal enough, smart enough, etc. But now we're officially referring to them as "assets" that need to be deployed? On the bright side, I guess that it's at least more honest.

Panda Demands Abortion

via ONN.

Currently, most California State Prisons do not have any policy regarding transgender inmates. I know you are shocked. In a climate where sexual violence is a norm, one would think that highly vulnerable populations would receive special treatment, but clearly this is not the case.

So I suppose this story is not shocking, but upsetting nonetheless. Alexis Giraldo, a formerly incarcerated trans woman at Folsom State Prision, lost her case against several prison employees (nurses, guards and social workers) when her charges of rape were dropped. Her lawyer said it was a "clear indication of rape" and that she had asked many different people for help, but no one came to her aid.

However, the San Francisco court ruled in favor of the prison staff.

Deputy Attorney General Jose Zelidon-Zepeda said there was no evidence of violence in Giraldo's communications with guards, counselors and nurses.

He pointed out that Giraldo had also engaged in consensual sex with her cellmate, argued that many of her assertions were contradicted by evidence, and attacked her credibility, saying her lawsuit was driven by greed.

The power differential between inmates fighting against injustices done to them within the system is already so great it tragically distorts the outcomes. Who are the courts going to support? It will cost them so much money to audit a prison or fire people and it will make the state look very very bad. It is so much easier to just let them go.

Now if they are not guilty of the crime at hand, I suppose I could have more empathy. But if one of the rationales for ruling in favor of the prisons was that she had already HAD consensual sex, well pardon me if I am not that impressed. You can have consensual sex and be raped by the SAME person. Just because you had sex with someone before, it does not mean you owe it to them again. If you are forcibly raped against your will, you deserve the protection of the law, irrelevant of past encounters. Men rape their wives. That actually happens and it is rape, and it doesn't matter whether they had consensual sex in the past. Furthermore, if you are locked in a cell, it is not like you can runaway.

Seven jurors voted to hold the seventh employee, Sgt. Darrel Ayers, responsible for inflicting emotional distress on Giraldo. But in civil trials, nine votes are needed for the plaintiff to win damages. Walston - who said he is considering whether to retry the case - had argued that Ayers failed to act after being told of Giraldo's complaints.

Giraldo asked Judge Chaiton to demand the establishment of laws that protect the rights of transgender inmates, but her pleas dropped as Giraldo is no longer within the prison system. Again, currently California State Prisons have NO POLICY to protect the rights of transgender inmates.

Disgusting.

The New York Times reports today that the New York City Council is considering a proposal to ban the word bitch. This proposal follows a similar ruling which banned the use of the n-word last February.

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity� for all women.

While the article mentions no details about how a ban like this would be enforced (NYPD giving tickets for profanity?) they do talk to quite a few random people on the street to gauge their reactions to such a proposal. Most people interviewed are against the idea, arguing that is a too crucial part of their daily speech--they use it to refer to their friends, spouses, in their stand-up comedy or in their every day.

While I agree with the Councilwoman's sentiment above, that in many of its uses, the word bitch is derogatory toward women--eradicating its usage isn't going to solve the larger problem of the word's sentiment, or the fact that women who are assertive or opinionated are considered bitches. The idea of fighting sexism by regulating our language seems to me like putting a politically correct band-aid over the larger problem we face--mistreatment and disrespect of women.

What do you all think?

Dr. George Tiller, one of the few late-term abortion providers in the U.S., has pleaded not guilty to 19 misdemeanor charges brought upon him by the state of Kansas.

Dr. Tiller has a long history of being harassed by anti-abortion activists. He has faced protests at his clinic incredibly frequently, other trumped-up criminal charges, physical threats and constant intimidation. His clinic is currently closed, thanks to severe vandalism. He has also been shot. Attacks have escalated to the point where his is a frequent pet cause of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

The current charges against Dr. Tiller revolve around a Kansas law which requires that two legally and financially uninvolved physicians sign off on any late-term abortion procedure. The charges against Dr. Tiller allege that he has an improper financial relationship with one of the doctors from whom he regularly receives authorization. As a result, he faces up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for each charge.

Any pro-choice individual should be outraged at the harassment of Dr. Tiller-- and that includes the criminal charges he's currently facing. Kansas Attorney Generals have a history of baselessly attacking Dr. Tiller. Not only that, but the law itself seem to have been created specifically for the purpose of making the lives of abortion providers more difficult.

Requiring written approval of any late-term abortion procedure from two independent physicians is not only requiring the abortion provider to seek permission to practice medicine, it's also essentially requiring that the woman get permission to successfully request medical care. Her choice, along with the medical advice of her doctor, is not enough. Late-term abortions, contrary to what anti-abortion activists constantly profess, are not undertaken lightly. The women who receive medical care at Dr. Tiller's facility come from all over the country; Dr. Tiller is hardly going to be their first medical consultation. They seek their abortions either due to health risks to themselves or severe fetal deformity. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who likes late-term abortion, and that includes the women who need them.

This law implies that doctors who provide abortions are somehow less scrupulous than doctors who practice any other type of medicine. It implies that the women seeking late-term abortions are too stupid to make the effort to seek a second-opinion on their own, or that their physicians would not recommend this to them. Even worse, it requires that a woman's medical records be shared with other doctors whom she doesn't even know, so that she can obtain what is likely to be an emotionally-painful treatment.

Lastly, Dr. Tiller is in no way being charged with improperly or unethically practicing medicine. He's being charged with a minor infraction under a bullshit law. I somehow find it hard to believe that this law and these charges hold absolutely no relation to the other constant tactics of intimidation used against him. The effect, after all, is the same: money, time and resources are being diverted from providing women with medical care that many desperately want to wipe out of existence.

Update: There are requests for how to contact and help financially support Dr. Tiller. His address is:

WOMEN'S HEALTH CARE SERVICES
5107 East Kellogg
Wichita, Kansas USA 67218

For obvious reasons, there are not any publicized means to electronically contact him or the clinic, but I'm sure that any checks and words of encouragement by mail would be greatly appreciated.

Uterundies! Made by Harvey and Eileen.

Pic from amberbrook.

This week’s New York Times magazine included a piece from the idea lab about research that is being done ways to prevent obesity in newborns. The piece explains that the study of obesity (a disease that affects almost a third of the US population) focuses on lifestyle and genetic causes, but researchers are beginning to look into a third area as well, what they call “developmental programming.� This idea proposes that “like many aspects of our physiology, [obesity] can be traced to the months just before and after birth, when the brain and other organs are still fine-tuning themselves.�

Statements like these frighten me, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, I get scared because the implications seem to further burden the pregnant woman—not only is she already freaked out by all the things that could go “wrong� during her pregnancy (there are a million and one books telling her exactly what to eat, how to live, what to avoid), but now we can scare her with another proposition, that if her child later develops obesity, it’s her fault. The article references a few conditions in utero that might have negative effects: the “thermal environment� or stress hormones in the mother. Of course appetite and metabolism are two things they also think are developed during this phase of development.

The main scientists researching these possibilities are trying to develop an infant formula that would “program babies’ metabolisms to provide permanent resistance to excess pounds.� The author takes this one step further—that this formula could turn these children into one of those people (you know, that we all hate) who can eat whatever they want and not gain an ounce. Forget breast milk ladies—now we’ve got trimspa for the three month olds.

Beyond the scary implications of this kind of manipulation at such an early age—is this really what we want for our children? This kind of intervention assumes that excess weight is the only marker for an unhealthy body, which we know is not true. What about skinny fat? Even someone with what is considered a “normal� weight can have other health problems related to diet and exercise--high blood pressure, blocked arteries and high cholesterol. If weight gain is no longer a motivator for healthy eating, will we give in altogether? Also, we need fat, in certain amounts, it lines our organs and plays an important role in our body function.

The real scary sentiment is at the end of this piece where the author implies that the unhealthy eating habits “oceans of soda, mountains of baked goods and sparkling glaciers of ice cream� are an inevitable part of our society—so maybe it’s easier to change our babies than to change our habits.

Via reader Wyndi comes this truly gross NPR piece about how the wealthy are apparently breeding like crazy, in a trend dubbed (seriously) "competitive birthing." One mother actually says, "Baby number 4 has become the new must-have accessory."

Given the incredibly high cost of raising children these days -- with housing, child care, camps, clothing, and college tuition -- big families are apparently now a status symbol. A lot of the NPR story is anecdotal, but the reporter does talk to a demographics analyst, who says that census data shows the number of high-income families having three or four kids has shot up 30 percent in the last 10 years. "It's an unprecedented jump, and completely counter to 100 years of history," he says.

I feel like the kids-as-status-symbol story bubbles up occasionally. But what's new here, if you take the NPR reporter's word for it, is that having lotsa babies has become a way for super-educated moms who have left the workforce to "justify" their choice to opt out.

In other words, the more kids, the more comfortable these women seem with their stay-at-home status. One mom explains, "I know in some sense I feel more validated to say I'm a mother of four. Of course I'm not working now! What are you thinking? How could i possibly do anything else? This is a full-time job." Another says that having more kids "gets you a lot more recognition for a notoriously thankless job."

I have no idea how widespread this "trend" really is. But it doesn't seem completely far-fetched to me that women who used to be career-driven would want to direct their competitive energies somewhere -- and for some women, that's become a quest to be the best mom. ("Best" in this case, of course, equals "most kids.") Says one woman, "All that drive gets channeled into the children when they quit their job."

It's also easy to see that a formerly successful businesswoman would feel pressured to ensure that anyone could tell, just by looking at the size of her brood, that there's no way she could have continued to work outside the home. It's as if more babies are a defense mechanism -- not only against the raised eyebrows and judgments of women who stayed in the workforce, but also against any doubts these wealthy breeders may themselves harbor about their decision to opt out.

My colleague Garance Franke-Ruta put together a panel at YearlyKos to discuss Blogging While Female, or, as The Nation put it, "the toxic online environment for female political pundits." (The panel, which featured our own Jessica, Amanda of Pandagon, and YearlyKos organizer Gina Cooper, was also mentioned in this Washington Post piece about the lack of diversity at the conference.)

So... use this thread as a space to share your own "blogging while female" stories.

This advertisement (larger image with full text) for QSOL.com appeared in the August issue of the Linux Journal.

Let's tick off the most offensive points. The misogyny is obvious, since the ad treats women explicitly and entirely like sexual objects. The themes of objectification and comparing women to machines continue throughout the smaller print with lines like "We've all known disappointment. And few things are more disappointing than undependable, expensive servers that don't satisfy your needs." Ah yes, it's hard not to agree-- it's really frustrating when either uppity bitches or online servers won't do whatever you say.

That's the second problem. Not only are women nothing but sexual objects, but the print also implies that, like technology, women also sometimes fail to act "properly." I think that we can all agree that there are certain standards we hold for how we want and expect our computers to behave. Apparently, QSOL has similarly rigid standards for women. The word "won't" in the sentence "won't go down on you" implies that, for some reason, the woman should go down on you.

Of course, the ad isn't simply offensive to the broad (pun not intended) demographic of women; it's also directly insulting its audience. It plays off of a stereotype that everyone knows-- haha, guys who like computers are nerds, and nerds don't get any sex-- and yet whoever wrote it somehow forgot that it's a negative stereotype about the company's own customers. Making an even bigger mess, the ad is excruciatingly heterosexist with its "wink wink, you know what we mean, guys" attitude. Who, after all, decided that "nerds" are always straight? That's not even mentioning how the ad completely ignores the fact that-- horror!-- some women like computers, too. Yes, I do think that the technology-savvy crowd is probably a mostly straight male demographic, but does that give a company the right to completely erase the existence of its other customers? Since they obviously didn't care much about how their male customers felt, did QSOL ever consider what its female customers might think about the company's apparent view of them? I'm betting not.

Lastly, as all clever sexist advertising does, QSOL assumes that its customers are "in" on the joke. It doesn't entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, all men aren't assholes who spend every available moment running around trying to find random women to give them blow jobs. As a result, the ad acts not only as an example of sexism, it also encourages, normalizes and perpetuates the sexist hierarchy. Hey, it's all fun and games, just a joke, lighten up-- and it's just us guys talking here, anyway.

Sure puts a bad taste in my mouth.

If you haven't read this report, Hidden in Plain Sight: Sexual Harassment and Assault on the New York City Subway, you should. It documents what most of you probably already know, that a large majority of people (particularly women) face significant sexual harassment while riding the New York city subway. The report, written from a online survey of subway riders (the MTA partnered with a number of organizations to write and distribute the survey) finds that 63% of people who responded report having been sexually harassed on the NYC subway. 10% of people who responded have been sexually assaulted.

The results got some blog attention last week, go here for Cara's blog about the survey results, Gothamist posted about it as well as the NYTimes Cityroom Blog.

As someone who has been harassed and has numerous friends and acquaintances who experience harassment on a regular basis, these results came as no surprise. What did come as a surprise however, were some of the comments that this news received--the Gothamist comment thread was particularly upsetting. I won't give these jerks the privilege of having their thoughts reposted here, but the general sentiment of these thoughts followed a few patterns. a) Complete denial and disbelief: But I've been riding the subway for and that's NEVER happened to me! b) Blame the victim talk: Women who get harassed on the subway deserve it because they dress like sluts (etc, etc, droning on with misogynistic and disgusting commentary) and to top it all off, c) I hate it when women try to get me to help them when they are being followed or harassed on the subway, it's not my problem and they brought it on themselves.

This might be more sad than the survey results themselves, and probably indicative of why this is a problem in the first place. For some awesome and innovative responses to street harassment, check out Holla Back NYC, one of the groups that partnered with the MTA on this survey. They've got links to holla back's in other cities as well, because we know this isn't just a New York City problem.

Jessica tackles the question of whether women-only spaces are an appropriate answer to harassment.

Even after they're forced to register on an online database pledging to not get pregnant, more than 120 women who take Accutane became pregnant in the past year.

How Muslim feminist artists are confronting perceptions of women's place in their religion -- and in the art world.

Eugenia Chien on why unmarried women aren't a voting bloc.

A woman loses a lot of weight after a health problem, and is disturbed when strangers keep telling her how good she looks, and asking who her nutritionist is.

The number of family-leave discrimination suits continues to rise.

A really disturbing article ponders whether some men choose to kill their wives rather than divorce them.

A woman sues her ex, claiming he gave her HPV

The quiceanera industry seems on pace to match the wedding industry: a heady combination of girl culture and consumerism gone wild.

On gender bias in comics.

More about a Los Angeles sportswriter's decision to publicly document her transition.

GOP presidential candidates validate anti-contraception activism.

Latest stupid political/fashion trend piece asks, "Just how sexy is a first lady allowed to be?"

How autistic girls may be different from autistic boys.

More on the "legal loophole" that lets white men who abuse American Indian women get away with it.

How the Bush administration politicized global reproductive health.

An Army private is sentenced to 110 years in prison for raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl.

Remembering feminist theologian Letty Russell.

Can Elizabeth Edwards secure the votes of women who aren't inspired by her husband?

Wendy is the current president of BiNet USA and a software engineer. BiNet USA is the oldest national bisexual entity in the United States. "It is a network of groups, projects and individuals, encouraging dialogue and participation as a way of creating and maintaining a cohesive bisexual community and empowering individuals to feel proud of their bisexuality."

I caught up with Wendy over email. Here's Wendy...

Happy Friday!

Don't you love it?

I noticed an item on Glossed Over last week about an article in Marie Claire called "Fembots: The New Breed of Women." The whole thing is posted on MSN now, and it's a doozy. Writes Theresa O'Rourke,

I came of age in the gut-spilling '90s, a time of Ally McBeal, "female bonding," Lilith Fair, and the explosion of the self-help section at Barnes & Noble. A decade has passed, but women still seem bent on suffocating themselves with an endless supply of self-indulgent hot air. We're due for a backlash, and I think it has arrived in the form of what I like to call the fembot: the cool, together, emotionally unavailable girl one cube over.

Um, didn't that stereotype "arrive" nearly a decade ago, in the form of Samantha, when Sex and the City first aired on HBO in 1998? She continues,

In 2007, fembotism is the next frontier in the great big gender divide. We can narrow the pay gap, outpace men earning degrees, helm a company, run the House of Representatives, choose to raise a child on our own, and match a man’s sexual appetite thrust for thrust. But there’s an unspoken disclaimer: We’d better not forsake our nurturing instinct while doing all of the above. Yeah, well, some of us are saying screw you to the fine print.

Hmmm... what sort woman might want to narrow the pay gap, advance women's educational opportunities, break through the glass ceiling, succeed in politics, raise her own children, and have lots of satisfying sex? I don't think "fembot" is the word we're looking for, here. Theresa, honey, it's "feminist." Say it with me now: "FEMINIST."

Problem is, she has to lump all the stupid "manhating bitch" stereotypes along with it, extending that "cold, disconnected" caricature of the young, modern woman well into strawman territory. I'm surprised she doesn't already have a book deal, because this sort of material makes people like Bill O'Reilly feel vindicated, and allows people like Laura Sessions Stepp to do more hand-wringing.

I know it doesn't make for clear-cut, black-and-white article, but most young women I know who possess a lot of these so-called "fembot" characteristics are in fact not afraid of intimacy, not disgusted by men, not self-absorbed. They fall in love and like to cuddle and sometimes cry at the movies. They just don't like flowers, Norah Jones, or traditional gender roles. And they don't feel a pressing need to get married.

Well, kinda. Women in their 20s are out-earning men their age in several major U.S. cities, including New York, Dallas, Chicago, Boston, and Minneapolis.

To summarize the various reasons for this offered in the Times article, it's likely because these are women who flock to cities after they graduate college, and because they have yet to get married or have kids. In other words, they're very much career-focused at this point in life. One social scientist also notes that there's likely to be less gender discrimination and more professional opportunities for women in big cities.

In 2005, 53 percent of women in their 20s working in New York were college graduates, compared with only 38 percent of men of that age. And many of those women are not marrying right after college, leaving them freer to focus on building careers, experts said.

“Citified college-women are more likely to be nonmarried and childless, compared with their suburban sisters, so they can and do devote themselves to their careers,� said Andrew Hacker, a Queens College sociologist and the author of “Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Men and Women.�

As the article also notes, this new data stands in contrast to national figures that show the wage gap is closing at a much slower rate than in the past two decades, and in some cases, even widening.

So I don't really expect this women-outearning-men trend to continue as these women age. Those who decide to have kids will be mommy-tracked after the birth of their first child. Many will get passed over for promotions, or decide to take a lower-track or part-time job. And the second child is often what causes women to leave the workforce altogether. The article summarizes,

It is not clear whether this is the front edge of a trend in which women will gradually move ahead of men in all age groups. Typically, women have fallen further behind men in earnings as they get older. That is because some women stop working altogether, work only part time or encounter a glass ceiling in promotions and raises.

Of course I hope that these trends don't play out for my generation of city-dwelling, go-getting women. But I can't say I'm very optimistic.

Jessica and Vanessa are headed out of town next week for a family vacay. In their stead, you can expect some awesome guest-blogging from Miriam (aka Radical Doula) and Cara (whose home base is The Curvature).

We're really excited to have them on board. Give them a hearty hello, and look for their posts starting Monday.

A case is hitting the California Supreme Court about whether doctors can refuse to provide IVF or other fertility treatments for single women or lesbians for religious reasons.

Guadalupe Benitez filed a lawsuit against San Diego two doctors who refused to artificially inseminate her because, she alleges, she is a lesbian. Those doctors worked at the only facility covered by her insurance plan. So it wasn't like she could easily find another clinic after their refusal.

The doctors are now claiming they did not deny services based on Benitez's sexual orientation (which is illegal in California and several other states), but because she's not married. (Never mind that she lives with her partner of 11 years.) As if it's somehow better to discriminate on the basis of marital status than on the basis of sexual orientation? Yes, sadly, in most states, marital status is an acceptable reason for denying people medical services. Seriously. Ugh.

The court is being asked to decide how to accommodate a physician's religious views without violating California's anti-discrimination laws. [...]

What distinguishes the case of Guadalupe Benitez is that the physicians involved refused to provide a medical procedure to one patient that they readily provide to others, says Jill Morrison, legal counsel to the National Women's Law Center, an advocacy group that works to protect women's rights in the workplace, schools, sports, and health care. "Usually, providers who object to certain services object to them for everyone: 'I won't provide contraception.' In this case, they don't object to the service, just the patient. You can't pick and choose. You can't say, 'I will perform it for white people, but not for black people.' "

I disagree somewhat. I know Morrison wasn't saying that refusing to provide contraception is ok, but that's sort of the implication. (Which is unfortunate, because the NWLC does a lot of good work around pharmacy access issues.) Of course, we can all agree it's bad to provide a service to one group of people that you refuse to provide to another group of people. But pharmacists who refuse to dispense contraception to women, then happily ring up condoms for men, are doing the same thing. Providing services to one group but not another. If that fairy-tale day ever arrives when they start selling hormonal contraception for men, I'd be shocked if there was the same level of pharmacist resistance to dispensing it.

Mother Jones has a more in-depth look at the Benitez case, and the larger issues it brings up. It asks, "Should there be a right to reproductive assistance?" And, following from that, "Should infertility be viewed as a medical problem?"

Says University of Wisconsin Law School bioethicist Alta Charo, “For many years infertility was not regarded as something sufficiently serious that it necessitated care. Treatment was discretionary, not necessary.� RESOLVE and other infertility rights groups have worked hard to change this, as have [Assisted Reproductive Technology] clinics. Yet defining ART as a medical treatment is a bit forced, because “if you use the classic situation of a fertile woman with an infertile male spouse, she never had a fertility problem to begin with,� notes Charo. A more logical line of reasoning might be to view her as having a social, not a medical, dilemma. She does not want to have sex outside her marriage -- that’s why she can’t get pregnant. Should society step in to help her? Should this be covered by insurance?

To get around this dilemma, those in favor of greater access to ART like to position infertility as a disease of a couple -- a rather unconventional diagnosis. But even if “an infertile couple� gets under the umbrella of medicine, there’s no guarantee of particular services. “You have to start with the fact that in the United States of America, in terms of health care, with certain limited exceptions, you have a right to nothing,� says [Northeastern University legal scholar Wendy] Parmet. “If I want a hip replacement and I don’t have the money� -- be it through insurance or otherwise -- “I don’t get a hip replacement.� And, except for “certain no-no reasons,� Parmet notes, all doctors, including fer