October 2007 Archives

Anti-choice comic strip gone wild. Didn't anyone tell this guy that someone is already on the creepy cartoon fetus thing?

Today people around the country are wearing red to protest violence against women of color.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons on why she's wearing red, and on an upcoming action:

I am wearing red because I am a survivor of incest and rape.
I am wearing red because I live in a City (Philadelphia) where a White Woman Judge Terri Carr Deni dropped all rape and assault charges in the case of a woman gang-raped at gunpoint. Because the woman was working as a prostitute, Judge Deni decided that she could not have been raped and changed the charge to “theft of services.� Deni later said that this case “minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped.�
On Thursday, November 1, 2007, in Philadelphia, there will be a Press Conference at 1pm Outside Municipal Court (Criminal Justice Center)1301 Filbert St. On November 6, 2007, I will voice my opinion to Judge Deni by voting “NO!� on her retention as Judge in the Municipal Court of Philadelphia.

I am wearing red because I am very clear that it doesn’t matter if you’re a stripper, a prostitute, a lesbian, a bisexual woman, a heterosexual woman, a single mother (especially with several children from different fathers), on welfare, a high school drop out, college educated, working in corporate America, working at a minimum wage job with no health insurance, or working in the film/music/television entertainment industry. Yes, I placed what some people would view as very different/distinct categories of women of Color in the same category because history has consistently shown me and all of us that if any of the aforementioned Black women are at the wrong place at the wrong time (which could be at any time), we, women of Color, will be left to heal our very public wounds alone.

Check out the images of women who are wearing red today, and find out how you can get involved.

The New York Times Style section had a cover story (!) this weekend on the term "vajayjay." For reals.

I'm glad that the lack of non-sexist euphemisms for women's genitals is being discussed, and I actually find 'vajayjay' kinda endearing. Though I've also been a fan of 'vag' for a while. (For example, when at a male-dominated party a couple of years back, me and all my girlfriends dubbed ourselves "Team Vag" for the ensuing beer pong games.)

So...what's your favorite vagina-related pet name?

A report by the Gender Violence Recovery Centre (GVRC) in Kenya says that more than 600 women in the country are raped daily.

The report...indicates that the youngest rape survivor is five-months-old while the oldest is 86.

The statistics, which have been compiled in hospitals and community-based organisations where the victims go for treatment and counselling, approximate that there are at least 16,482 rape cases every year.

Reported cases of assault and battery in the country have also increased from 6,255 to 9,169 while a third of adolescent girls' first sexual experience is coerced, Health Policy Initiative Kenya adds.

I feel ill. For more information on sexual assault in Kenya, click here.

Louise Sloan and her publisher have very generously donated five books to Feministing to give away to our readers. Fun!

To make things interesting, the first five people to email me with the correct answers to all three Feministing trivia questions will win a copy of Knock Yourself Up: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom:

What was the first feminist organization that we wrote about on the site?

Name the two one of the co-founders of Feministing who no longer write for us...

Happy answering!

Despite the creepy "Slut-o-ween" nastiness and costume racism, Halloween can be a good time. I mean hey, free candy right?

So, let's celebrate: What's the best costume you ever had? Mine was this great ballerina get-up my mom put together for me when I was in pre-school that I would later puke all over. Sicked-up-on tutus are some funny shit.

I find the question of who keeps the house clean a fascinating one. Maybe because I am a total slob and I pretty much don't know anyone my age that is married and stays at home or has the time to do most of the cleaning in the house. But there are couples that do, right? They have kids, they both work and the bulk of housework still falls on the shoulders of women. Obviously, this plays out really different based on your class background or the type of relationship you are in, but consistently, both in my experience, the experience of my peers and others, the majority of house work falls on the shoulders of women. It is the assumed default position, that if it isn't done, than guess who is going to end up doing it.

Well, according to this article from Parenting.com the main reason for this is that we as women really have to stop keeping tabs on who is doing what and just, you know, take one for the team. Oh and don't nag while you are in the process. Kthnx.

Stop nagging, start talking

"When we're tired and stressed out, we don't usually talk to our partners as respectfully as we might otherwise," says Kristen Harrington, a marriage and family therapist in Kingston, New York, and a mom of two. "We women, particularly, get bitter about our husbands' not noticing what needs to be done around the house and start treating them like their IQs are 20 points lower." Men, for their part, seem to tune out their wives when they nag.

Um, maybe we get bitter because we consistently end up doing more work and usually the work that is considered women's labor? I understand this article is assuming, hetero, middle class, married couples that have money for the mortgage. So I want to pull us out of that frame of reference. This sexual division of labor that is instilled in us through the household and then through the media and other forms of socialization trickle into every way that we interact with each other. Who does what jobs at the work place and how is that reflected in their gender? Why are the majority of nurses and teachers women and the majority of doctors and principals men?

Who is expected to do what in the household is extremely political and it isn't just a matter of convenience or someone whining more than the other. It is based on a historical division of labor that is the crux of the nation. Furthermore, when middle class women do not have the time to clean their houses, who do they hire to clean them? So still, today, the majority of house cleaning is done by women and mostly women of color.

Let alone dismembered and made into fashion accessories.

Ok, now repeat after me. Dismembered women's body parts are not funny, or ironic, classy or a message for recycling (as in this case). They are gross and a reminder that women are continually objectified in compartmentalized ways, where they are judged for a piece or section of their body, not for the total being they are. Dismembered women's body parts are so part of everyday life, you almost have to remind yourself that it is totally fucked up.

I guess, I would like this more if it was done in a way that highlights how scary dismembered women are, a different type of art. Not trying to make something pretty, that really isn't.

Thanks to Trina for the link.

Missouri Governor Matt Blunt has put an anti-choice group in charge of convening a task force in his name to investigate the "impact of abortion on women." Of course, every member of the task force is anti-choice. I'm sure this will be an "objective overview of the impact of abortion."

The forced-pregnancy movement uses tactics like this -- bullshit committees stacked with anti-choicers and testimony from biased "experts" -- to introduce inaccurate or slanted information about abortion into the public record, which can be used to prop up anti-choice legislation and legal decisions. So trust me, these task forces are a big deal.

A good example: South Dakota's task force on abortion was a major factor in the state's abortion ban (which voters overturned last year). State lawmakers used the commission's biased "findings" (over which the only two pro-choice members of the task force quit in protest) to form the basis of the legislation that not only criminalized abortion, but used the "daddy knows best" language that's the hallmark of the anti-choice movement.

So don't you just love how the Associated Press says "Gov. Matt Blunt, an abortion opponent, has launched the state on a scientific quest to determine how abortions affect women," then goes on to use this quote:

“I certainly would begin with the presumption that abortion has a negative impact on Missouri children, Missouri women, Missouri men, because it’s harmful to society,� Blunt said.

Sure sounds like a "scientific quest" to me. Stay tuned for the task force's completely biased findings, and the terrible legislation that is likely to result.

Left, Judy Nails in a previous version of the game. Right, in the latest version.

When I picture guitar heroines, they're usually sporting jeans and a tank top. Or menswear. Not the case in the Guitar Hero video game, apparently, where all of the ladies wear midriffs or bikini tops. Cara laments the sexing-up of her favorite Guitar Hero character, Judy Nails, in the latest version of the game:

Basically, I’m not sure why they bothered to put a shirt on her. There are copious amounts of cleavage, her entire stomach, and at least half of her bra hanging out. The shirt is really more of an accessory than an actual article of clothing. Even on stage with all of those bright lights, she still might get a little cold. And every outfit change I could give her doesn’t make it any better.

Even worse, I don’t have any other female options. There’s Cassie, who has always worn a bikini top in lieu of a shirt (which I was originally fine with, because there were other options and there is a male character with no shirt). And there’s a new Asian female character who, though she is covered, is dressed like she works for Gwen Stefani. And since I see it as pretty racist, I can’t go with her, either.

So. Apparently Guitar Hero now thinks that it either A. does not have any female fans or B. their female fans will, for some reason, not mind being objectified and forced to play with a character who is half naked, if they want to play with a woman.

Add to that Axe sponsorship (including the eau de asshole promotional jingle actually placed within the game), a guitar shaped like a woman's disembodied leg in a fishnet stocking, and a guitar called "Lady Shapes" with an airbrushed blonde in a bikini on it. More from Cara:

but, I have always thought nuns were really cool, to be honest. I mean something appeals to me about a simple life away from the consumer marketing of mainstream culture and the woes of relationships with men. But the whole, anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-gay, dogmatism kinda makes it a bad choice for anything other than sociological study on how religions make some people act crazy.

But this story does stick out to me, because it transcends some of the awful, bad, terrible communications strategy/PR of the Catholic church and gives us a sense of something real.

The real geekery of a nun.

Her cell phone has a custom ring tone. She frequents the Internet's most popular social networking sites. She gets jittery when she can't check her e-mail or post on her blog. She communicates with her family mostly by AOL instant messenger. And she's a 50-year-old nun.

Sister Anne Flanagan has been a Daughter of St. Paul for almost 30 years, and lives with five other nuns in a convent upstairs from a Catholic bookstore near Chicago's Magnificent Mile. She teaches Bible study classes, edits Catholic books and magazines and roams the Internet looking for cool technology, although, she wryly notes, "a vow of poverty tends to limit one's access."

A nun excited about Wired. C'mon, that is pretty cute. The interview is worth a read, she talks about online prayer and mobilizing environmentalism through religion.

Via.

For your daily dose of complete and total woman hate.

How the hell did this make a craigslist best of?

Thanks to Elizaveta for the link.

O'Reilly appeared on Good Morning America yesterday to talk about his new book on the youth of today. I am scared that O'Reilly actually was near young people. But I remember teachers like him, the ones that did it to really set these kids straight. They sucked.

But now he has a book out about young people and how to control them and how they act in school. I wouldn't normally pay attention this, but this got me. O'Reilly claims that wearing a burqa/hijab/veil, is an imposition of religion onto OTHER people. Huh?

O'Reilly and host Diane Sawyer are in agreement that today's youth are unacceptably dressed. Indicators of this include the flaunting of low-hanging pants and burqas. Burqas, O'Reilly says, are an imposition of one's religion on others. He alludes to such an expression of religion as a path to "chaos in the classroom" and an acceptable loss at the discretion of school administration.

Oh, I see, low hanging pants AND burqas. So too much exposure, bad-too little exposure, bad. No wonder kids are so confused and angry these days. All they get are mixed messages. And what do these two fashion choices have in common? It is probably young brown kids wearing them, so of course they shouldn't be wearing them to school. My god, how did they even let them IN the school?

And you have to love the hypocrisy. First he chides the school district for firing a teacher to have the students pray and then demands that wearing a burqa in school creates chaos. Obviously for him, it is only an imposition of religion if it is not one that he adheres to.

(Oh and he hates on Colbert, so boo to him. AND, what is up with Diane Sawyer all, "thanks for saying I am pretty?" Barf.)

via Raw Story.

Shocking, really. Pam was on this last week, asking why the hell Obama would be touring with Donnie McClurkin, as an ex-gay homophobe. Potentially an appeal to connect with people of faith, but why make a move that so clearly loses you more votes than you could potentially gain?

And then shockingly, in the final parts of his performance, Donnie goes all gay hate, god can cure you gays, I was cured, on us. Not exactly surprising.

Americablog writes,

Obama's anti-gay religious right activist used the opportunity Obama gave him last night to preach his hate to thousands of African-Americans. That's just great. And the white preacher who Obama picked to help explain to the audience that gays aren't minions of Satan? CNN reports that he said nothing at all - just a short little prayer, then he left. As for Obama, he did a taped introduction in which he praised McClurkin, the religious right activist, as one of his favorites. That's nice, because the way to help combat homophobia in the black community is to make sure the gay-basher is first endorsed by someone as high-ranking as Obama, who then chooses to say nothing about the gay-bashing.

So, in the end, Obama let his "best" and "favorite" artist slam gays to thousands of African-Americans, in his name, and neither he nor his hand-chosen white gay preacher said anything in response. Class act, that Obama campaign. For them, creating a "dialogue" means the gay-basher gets to spread his bigotry to thousands while the candidate and the token gay STFU.

Yep, I am going to have to agree with that. Also, it is not like he is gaining any votes from this. As someone mentions in comments at Pam's, the folks that dig McClurkin, are probably not going to vote for him anyway. He had a way better shot with the LGBQT voters. This is political suicide.

Can't get enough of hearing how scary and mean Hillary Clinton is? Just in time for Halloween, a poll shows she'd make the scariest costume of the major presidential candidates.

Once again, Hillary Rodham Clinton leads in a poll. This time, she was top choice when people were asked which major 2008 presidential candidate would make the scariest Halloween costume.

Asked about costume choices, 37 percent in an Associated Press-Ipsos survey this month chose New York Sen. Clinton, the front-runner among Democratic presidential contenders.

Hard-hitting poll, Associated Press. Thanks.

Of course she's scary. She's a woman, and the current Democratic front-runner. Spooky, right? Ugh.

On the campaigns that have cultivated and promoted their lower-level female staffers. Like Matt, I think Garance makes an incredibly important point about the reasons for Hillary Clinton's largely female senior staff:

After all, it’s not like there was some huge population of female strategists out there the various campaigns were competing for and Clinton just happened to snap them all up. Clinton created, on her own, a cadre of female strategists to serve her political needs, by spotting talent in the women around her and promoting them up the political food chain. No other candidate can say, for example, that their campaign is being managed by their female former scheduler.

This is one of the reasons I get so frustrated when I hear male editors say they're "really committed" to having more women writing and editing for their publication, while at the same time only cultivating lower-level male employees. I've heard older female editors say it took them years to realize that their male counterparts were being groomed by the older men in the office. It can be a very subtle, everyday kind of thing. So it's important to keep pointing out to people in positions of power (in business, in politics, in media, etc.) that the best way to achieve gender parity higher up the ladder is to develop the skills of women at the bottom and promote them -- not only to look for women to hire in at the top.

A new draft law submitted by the Canadian government would require Muslim women to lift off any face veils if they want to vote.

Apparently it's fucking noose-mania in my hometown. Shameful. Gothamist reports:

The person who hung a noose on the doorknob of a professor at Columbia's Teachers College the other week seems to have been a catalyst for NY metro idiots, who have been been copy-cating or otherwise emulating public displays of hateful symbols. Most recently, Parks Dept. employees were appalled to find 10" nooses wrapped around the necks of their clothes when they opened their work lockers in Queens Saturday morning.

Kenny Clark and Michelle Rouse-Williams are both supervisors at the Queens facility; Clark is party to a class-action lawsuit against the Parks and Recreation Dept. that claims minorities are passed over for promotion. When Rouse-Williams opened her locker and found the noose, her reaction was natural. "This has got to be a f------ joke."

Indeed. You know, I think white New Yorkers like to think of the city as immune to racism. (After all, we're all cosmopolitan and shit. Right?) For example, I never heard anyone use a racial slur when I was growing up--not until I moved down south for college. I was completely clueless that folks my age were racist; I think I thought of it as something from an older generation. But I went to diverse schools where that shit wouldn't fly. And benefiting from white privilege, of course, it's not like I had to experience racism or even think about it until it was explicitly in my face. Even knowing all that, it's still difficult for me to recognize that my city is just as capable of spewing hate as any other.

And now, in Connecticut, some folks are trying to defend the use of nooses in Halloween decorations. Sigh.

(By the way, Cara has a good post, "On nooses and white reactions," that you should check out.)

Ten more minutes, mom!

This kinda makes me wish I had a sleeping pillow with my name on it. (Not so much with the torn apart bone.)

The Fawcett Society, a UK-based organization fighting against the wage gap, has named tomorrow Women's No Pay Day, "because the pay gap is the equivalent of men being paid all year and women working for free from October 30th."

In addition to the gender pay gap, women of color in the UK are disproportionately affected:

Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society, said: “Every year women are being ripped off by the pay gap and at the current painfully slow rate of progress the pay gap will not be closed in our lifetimes]. It’s worrying that all women face these gaps , [but] that some groups of ethnic minority women face even bigger gaps is outrageous."

To take action, click here.

What better way to start the week than a reminder that women are nothing more than headless piss depositories!

By the way, Shakes has a great round-up of some other dismembered woman parts as fun novelty products. Good times.

Thanks to Mary for the link.

On names and gender connotation.

Biologist James Watson retires in the wake of his racist remarks.

Jenna Bush understands a few things her father doesn't.

Supporting Aung San Suu Kyi's non-violent struggle

Massachusetts expands buffer zones around women's health clinics.

Vietnam's "Paris Hilton moment."

Because no woman would ever need to know how to fix her own plumbing or install virus-scanning software on her computer.

Female lawmakers in Illinois start a listening tour, asking women about their concerns.

Queen Latifah: "Beauty is not just a white girl."

The CIA's glass ceiling.

An international court rules that it's a human right to be protected from domestic violence.

The Kansas Supreme Court halts the proceedings against Dr. Tiller.

Wisconsin courts consider whether transgender inmates have a right to continue taking hormones while in state custody.

On masculinity and public displays of male dominance.
...and how rape is a "crisis of manliness."

Justice Ginsburg on how criminalizing abortion only serves to punish poor women.

"I'm exhausted from constantly trying to explain why this conversation, one that involves playing a guessing game based on incredibly sexist and archaic gender norms, in order to figure out which men are gay in one's group of friends, office environment, or even a set of total strangers, is kinda wrong."

Married... without children.

The toxic reality of cosmetics.

Boys don't cry, apparently.

The media always seem to remember that October is breast cancer awareness month, and forget that it's also domestic violence awareness month.

Syracuse, NY approves same-sex partner benefits for school district employees.

I talked to Katha Pollitt about her new book.

Courtesy of Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library

In lieu of an interview this Saturday, I thought we could use this weekend's post to give shout outs to bad-ass women you would like me to interview. Let's pay tribute!

Please include their full name, their website if they have one, why they kick ass, and why you find them so inspiring, and I'll get working on interviewing them.

Holla!

Of course the manliest of manly men (ahem), Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, employ only a few female senior staffers. Edwards and Obama don't fare much better.

Power is difficult to discern, but the relative influence of women within presidential campaigns can be partially gauged by gender ratios among salaried operatives playing strategic leadership and advisory roles, the top twenty best-paid individuals, and staff who were paid more than $9000 in the last quarter.

The campaign of Republican Mike Huckabee achieves the closest gender balance at a near 50% division between men and women on all measures (it is also the smallest of all the major campaigns). The campaigns of Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson, and Republican Mitt Romney are also fairly balanced, with Clinton's somewhat favoring women and Richardson's and Romney's somewhat favoring men. The most gender-skewed campaign, in contrast, is that of Rudy Giuliani.

I think Garance correctly assesses this as foreshadowing what the gender breakdown would be in the candidates' administrations.

And on another election-related note, Dana pleads for people to stop referring to Giuliani as pro-choice. She notes that "'pro-choice' politicians don't 'reassure' Sam Brownback that they'll appoint "strict constructionist" justices to the Supreme Court following the model of John Roberts, as Giuliani did yesterday."

Do you think Joel Stein stands outside throwing Halloween candy at women screaming, "Whores, all of you, whores!!!" while secretly cursing them for not sleeping with him?

On a more productive note, who has a great costume idea? (C'mon, I know someone's going as sexy mustard.) I'm considering going as Joan Collins, but am on the lookout for a better idea...

Check out this series of Seal Press podcasts, featuring interviews with authors such as Julia Serano (swoon), Michelle Goodman and other great women writers. Full disclosure: Seal Press is my publisher.

From a New York Times article today:

For much of her career, Mrs. Clinton served in largely advisory or collaborative management roles -- as a law firm partner, as chairwoman of the board at the nonprofit Children’s Defense Fund and as a director of three public corporations.

Since when are law firm partner, chairman of the board, and director of a corporation "largely advisory or collaborative roles"? Oh, that's right, when they're held by women.

In this article, the Times expends nearly 2,000 words on Hillary Clinton's management style -- mostly comparing it to the less-strict attitude of her husband. And it occurs to me that one way women get ahead in business (and in the business of politics) is to be way more organized and generally more on top of their shit than male managers. As a female editor recently put it, one of the best ways around sexism in journalism is to just do an absolutely phenomenal job in all your work. Be twice as good, and maybe you'll be treated as an equal.

Also, when you're trying to establish yourself as a leader or an authority, men have the luxury of being chummy. Women, all too often, do not. (Insert "ball-busting bitch" stereotype here...) They might have a great sense of humor, but many have learned through experience that it won't get them anywhere. To be sure, the no-nonsense female boss is slowly becoming less prevalent (to a point where I'm not sure women are more "serious" in the workplace than men anymore), but I think some women -- mostly those who came up through the ranks in the '80s and early '90s -- still assert their authority this way.

When I read about Hillary's management style, and when I see in the debates that she knows her stuff backwards and forwards, I see echoes of female bosses and editors -- especially those who came up through the ranks a few decades ago -- who know every single talking point, who leave no detail unaccounted for, who had to be twice as good to be treated as equals. In my mind, that type of president would be a welcome departure from the bumbling, sloppy, nicknaming, joke-cracking demeanor of George W. Bush. But I also know that there are a lot of men (and a few women) in this world whose greatest fear is to have to work for a woman who's strict, competent, and all business. And I'll be interested to see if that affects how they cast their votes.

Dedicated to Jennifer Pozner, who I think will enjoy this immensely.

A little harsh? Maybe. But, talking about the importance of being a woman in a political campaign is one thing. Printing materials with hearts for bullets is another. Yuck.

This comes from Louisiana State Senate candidate Yvonne Dorsey. It’s accompanied by a letter, and parts of it read like an episode of the Tyra Banks show. The worst part is, she’s got a strong record that gets lost in hokey language like this:

“I’m wonderful friends with all of the Senators (many of whom are endorsing me) and I love them like brothers (and sisters), but the Senate is still basically a smoky men’s club and needs a woman’s touch.�

Not quite the same as this:

"This is a historic moment — for the Congress, and for the women of this country. It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years. Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren't just waiting; women were working. Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and granddaughters, today, we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and our granddaughters, the sky is the limit, anything is possible for them."

I’m just saying. But really it’s the hearts that get me. Did I mention yuck? I wonder if she thought to send it on perfumed stationery?

Many thanks to Sunshine for being from Louisiana and scanning this stuff for me.

Via Amanda, perhaps the best abstinence logo yet. By the way, if my hymen was made of diamonds, I would have turned it into a hot pair of earrings. And if it was just one huge diamond like the one above, I doubt I'd be able to walk, let alone fuck.

A new study says that women are more comfortable with idea of childlessness than men. The research, published in the November issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, shows that the results may be due to the fact that men experience "strong economic and social rewards" for being a father, while women experience more pressure and demands on their day-to-day life.

"On a basic level, for men and women, parenting and parenthood mean different things," said study author Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox. "For me, it reflects that there's something important happening in the experiences of men and women where those different experiences are leading to different perceptions of family, relationships, gender and children."

Despite stereotypes that assume women care more about having children than men, this study says that it's actually women who understand the costs more of having kids.

[Irene] Goldenberg [a professor emerita of psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles] added that she thinks "women are not really going for childlessness, but that they are more attuned to the demands -- both economic and social demands -- of parenthood, and they carry more of these responsibilities."

Nadine Kaslow, chief psychologist at Emory Medical School in Atlanta, viewed the findings similarly, adding that "women who are successful professionals make a choice that they don't want to have children in their lives, because they have other things in their lives." Men, however, "tend to think that is what you do in life. You grow up and have a baby."

What do you guys think?

"German playboy" Rolf Eden is suing a 19-year-old woman for ageism because, after he wined and dined her, she refused to sleep with him.

Despite a night on the town with Eden, which ended back at his place, she refused to have sex with him, saying the he was too old for her.

"That was shattering. No woman has ever said that to me before," Eden told the tabloid. "I was crushed." He has filed charges with the prosecutors' office, he said. "After all, there are laws against discrimination."

Yeah, let me tell you what's up, Rolf. Purchasing a meal and a few drinks for your ladyfriend has NEVER meant you've bought the right to sleep with her. I'm sorry she's not into septuagenarians, but that's not exactly grounds for a lawsuit.

This guy sounds just awful. He once wrote, "I would like to die as I have lived -- on a woman."

I bet that poor woman under him wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

The Manassas, Va. City Council passed a resolution to create a "committee" that would study the regulations and guidelines abortion clinics in the city operate under as well as decide if stricter guidelines are necessary.

This is all despite the fact that:

There are also architectural regulations, and more is being proposed, like allowing state inspectors to access patient records. Jennifer Blasdell, director of public policy for NAF, stated "Regulations such as these are calculated to chip away at abortion access under the guise of legitimate regulation."

This regulation doesn't even sound legitimate to me. Sigh.

Former Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.) has an editorial in an Atlanta publication yesterday saying that focusing on sex education is making kids illiterate.

He's specifically referring to the decision made last week to allow a Maine middle school's health center to dispense birth control, and continues on a diatribe claiming that "Portland's middle school students may not be able to read or do math real well, but they'll be able to tell you all about condoms and birth control pills."

He even titled the op-ed, "SAT doesn't stand for Sex Aptitude Test." Awww, Barr tried to make a play on words!

A quick update on King Middle School: A committee member of the school board has proposed a revised plan to give parents the option of blocking access to prescription contraceptives if they enroll their children in the clinic, as well as limit contraceptives to students who are at least 14. (Which probably covers a very small portion of the students as well.)

According to Gothamist, this billboard in downtown Manhattan was receiving a number of complaints before the recent "addition" above.

Some Gothamist readers are arguing that the graffiti is implying blame on women for dressing provocatively, others on AA for objectifying them. Thoughts?

Thanks to reader Laura for the heads up!

Pic from GammaBlog.

Abortion's at it again.

Not even a week after his priceless claim that promoting safe sex and contraception use is the same as saying that domestic violence is only half bad, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is following Tom DeLay's lead by now saying that immigration is taking jobs away from aborted fetuses:

Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.

Lovely. I'm sure he was thrilled to find the bill that failed to pass the Senate yesterday which would have given legal status to undocumented immigrants who have graduated high school. Sigh.

It's time to bring out the heinous in Halloween.

Between sexy mustard and Anna Rexia, I don't know which is worse. But when these ridiculous, "sexy" costumes start getting marketed to kids is when the nausea really starts to kick in. Girls costumes categorized as "occupational" on this site include "Major Flirt Child," "Nurse Child," and "French Maid Child."

The women's "occupational sexy costumes" are disturbing as well; their careers consist of being "Ella Mental," (shown after the jump -- because tied up and mentally ill just screams sexy), "Shop-A-Holic," "Trophy Wife," "Working Girl," and a "Deviant Housewife."

So a crazed shopaholic, deviant trophy/whore of a wife fits the bill of what it means to be an "occupational" woman for Halloween. Hot.

Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania had prevention messages being aired for just two days on WDUQ 90.5 FM, the flagship NPR affiliate in Pittsburgh, before they pulled the plug on the underwriting messages because it was "not aligned with" the "Catholic identity" of the station's license holder, Duquesne University.

If you live in Pennsylvania and thing this is a load of crap like we do, then take action.

Females, are you fembots?

A segment on the Today Show (above) calls women who don't get married and have children, "fembots." Seriously. The segment, featuring an editor from Marie Claire, basically calls any woman who cares about her career "emotionally unavailable" and soulless. It's pretty vile stuff.

Amanda has a podcast on the segment and Andi at WIMN's Voices has some analysis.

You can email the show here and let them know what you think.

In an interview with The Guardian, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell says that "feminism is bra-burning lesbianism...It's very unglamorous." Unglamorous, my ass. Hmph.

Halliwell went onto say that she thinks feminism should be "rebranded" and that it should celebrate "our femininity and softness." Now, debunking feminist myths is definitely something I can get behind--but when the desire to "rebrand" is because you think there's something inherently wrong with being considered an activist, strong, or "unfeminine," well then we have a problem.

I don't know much about this comic, Crankshaft, in general--but I do know this above one is pretty fucking heinous.

Not only does it attempt to make a joke out of rape, it also plays on the gross myth that only young, "attractive" women get sexually assaulted. Which, of course, is a version of "rape is a compliment."

Anyone know how to get in touch with the cartoonists?

Thanks to SecretMargo for the link.

As Feministing grows, our busy lives make it more difficult for blogroll upkeep. And as we know that updating it is extremely important, we wanted to check with you all about creating a new, shiny blogroll.

As there are many amazing blogs out there, we fear that the blogroll will get so long that visitors will cease to even look at it. So we're thinking about switching up the format a bit. What would you prefer?

A) A smaller but rotating blogroll every month
B) A list of each Feministing editor's favorite blogs
C) A combo of the two -- "Samhita's fave blogs of the month" etc.
D) Other ideas you might have

Also, if anyone wants to bring attention to a blog you fancy (or your own blog for that matter) for the blogroll, email me.

Thanks all!

I never get tired of purity ball stuff. Note the pink boxes (ahem) on the table--I believe they're what the girls give to their dads with the pledge. *Shudder*

Who has that coveted "lesbian look?"

I've never been a fan of Cary Tennis, he kinda creeps me out. But this latest advice column just beats all. A young woman, who identifies as straight, wrote to Tennis looking for help with an inappropriate boss who thinks (and says) that she is a lesbian:

However, it has gotten back to me that she talked to several other employees of the store about how "closeted" I am. This shouldn't bother me, as it's an assumption that people have made about me my entire life because I never wear makeup or shave my legs, I wear clothing that is pretty androgynous, and I rarely ever date. However, I find this particular set of occurrences particularly offensive and hurtful not only because it is happening in the workplace, but mainly because of how confidently and often she assures my co-workers that she knows exactly who I am.

Shitty boss, yeah? Well Tennis only focuses on that for a mere sentence or two before delving into what he sees as the real problem: the way the advice-seeker dresses and "tricks" people.

But what interests me is you, and why you dress and act the way you do. Surely you have tired of people saying, with exasperating and simple-minded gall, that you are obviously a closeted lesbian. That is not what you mean to convey by your dress and your manner, is it? So what do you mean?

...you play the trickster; you express both allegiance and contempt. ...So you are sort of in drag at this store, are you not? You're not a lesbian. You just dress like one. So maybe this is trickster energy...

But what people see, apparently, when they look at you, is a lesbian -- or at least, let's be fair, they see the social construct we have agreed to call a lesbian. So is your style serving the purpose you want it to serve? If that purpose is to trick people, then perhaps it is.

Um, what? Since when do all lesbians look alike? This totally reminds me of a scene in But I'm a Cheerleader where Jan, a butch looking young woman at the crazy gay "rehab" camp (pic above), comes out as straight: "Everyone thinks I'm this big dyke because I wear baggy pants and play sports and I'm not pretty like other girls. But all I really want is a big, fat weiner up my..." You get the point.

The assumption that a woman who doesn't dress in a feminine way must be gay is just dripping in gross gender binary norms. And to call her a trickster?! Would Tennis say the same of a femme lesbian--that she is trying to trick people into thinking she's straight? I'm appalled.

How about some real workplace advice for this young woman?

Related: For anyone interested in the rhetoric of trickery when it comes to the GLBTQ community, check out Julia Serano's Whipping Girl.

via AP.

J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall. After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

The part of my brain that determines sexuality was mildly shut off while I read Harry Potter. But thinking back, the characters in Harry Potter were frighteningly asexual or heteronormative.

I wrote a response to Thomas Friedman's New York Times op-ed "Generation Q"--aka Quiet--for a lady some of you might know over at The American Prospect Online (the amazing Ann). In short, I argue that it isn't that we are quiet, but that we are overwhelmed. Friedman has, in my opinion, mistaken our paralysis for apathy. Check it out.

I'm actually doing a little speaking at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois today and had the good fortune to hash out some of these ideas with a whole new, non-urban, non-Ivy League, largely religious and ethnically white demographic--unlike most of my friends back in Brooklyn--and found that they see two different "types" among their peers: the aware and overwhelmed, and the unaware and conspicuously consuming. I learn so much being on the road and hanging out with people...

Your thoughts?

Being a SUNY Albany alumni and all, I had to give the Women's Studies department a shout-out since they're seeking submissions for their 2007 Women's Studies Conference to be held November 29-30th. Not to mention the theme for this year is "Media Justice and Feminist Futures." Hot.

I actually helped organize the conference a few years back (and made kick-ass white chocolate chip and coconut cookies); it was an awesome experience with some great feminist discussion. Check out the site for more information and how to submit your proposals.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in Atlanta recently, where she talked about the backlash against women and reproductive justice. She noted if Roe was overturned, middle class women would still be able to obtain abortions but the decision "would have a devastating impact on poor women."

I'm dying to get my hands on this book. Knock Yourself Up: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom, is a single-mom by choice guide that I keep hearing great things about it.

Author Louise Sloan tells her own story of getting pregnant via artificial insemination when she was 41 years old, as well as the stories of other single gals. As someone who was never really sure about getting married, but absolutely sure about having kids, this book definitely appeals to me. (Though I figure I have another few years before I start worrying about it, despite all the Sylvia Ann Hewlett-style scare tactics.)

Salon has an interesting interview with Sloan, but even more intriguing is the vitriol she's getting in the letters section.

the boy will be screwed up or resent women, not having had a father around. he will have a higher chance of being a criminal. he will likely understand that all the feminist piffle shoved in his head is the opposite of what men need to know to be EFFECTIVE and happy free agents in the bigger world.

Your child will grow up fatherless and disadvantaged. But you got what you want, and that is what is most important. How sad.

And those are just from the first page; there's a ton of letters calling Sloan selfish and saying that her son will grow up to be dysfunctional. There's just something about a single mom by choice that really pisses people off. So...predictable.

Read more about the book and Louise's story here.

Women fighting on the front line in defense of Kurdistan play an important and vital role in the movement. They are fighting for the rights of Kurd women and Kurdish autonomy.

The women are mostly former Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters who say that they now pursue more of an educational and co-ordinating role in support of Kurdish women’s rights. Airstrikes have become a regular hazard as tensions rise between their outlawed organisation and the Turkish Government.

Treated as equals by their male counterparts on the battlefield as well as in the political arena, women fighters are trained to use Kalashnikovs, grenades and other weapons before being dispatched in mixed and single-sex units.

The best women fighters are also able to climb up the ranks to positions of command, with the “self-defence� armed wing of the PKK operating an obligatory 40 per cent female quota.

A look at many of the revolutionary struggles through out history, women are often asked to join the frontlines to fight for their countries. Most wars have allowed women to leave traditional gender roles. But when the war is over, it is all "get back in the kitchen!" So I am apprehensive when women die for the cause, as often the cause doesn't end up serving them.

At first the Turkish Army did not take the women rebels, who have been part of the PKK’s armed struggle since it was begun in 1984, seriously.

“Then they realised that the women are as tough if not tougher than the men,� said Ms Surbuz, an attractive woman with short, bobbed, brown hair.

“After this the soldiers stopped distinguishing between the male and the female fighters. I think they are now more afraid of the women because the women are more disciplined and they will never surrender.�

“We will either kill or be killed,� she added. “For me it is freedom, success or death. It is simple.�

I don't know. Amazing on one level yes. But sacrificing so many bodies for the nation and female bodies at that, I have issues with that. This battle has been fought for a long time. Will Kurdistan be a feminist state?

via TimesOnline.

Your wtf for the day.

(Yes, I know it is a parody.)

Women's Sports Foundation founder Billie Jean King and figure skater Michelle Kwan, recipient of the 2007 Billie Jean King Contribution Award.

So I forgot to mention this, but last week I got to go to the 2007 Annual Salute to Women in Sports--an event given by the Women's Sports Foundation. It was frigging awesome.

I didn't realize how much work the Women's Sports Foundation--which was founded by Billie Jean King--does for women athletes. They even fund the fabulous Girls for Gender Equity, where Vanessa used to work.

The event, which I had to get all shmancy for, featured this incredible Grand March of Athletes--where women from over 50 sports took to the stage, including Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Gretchen Bleiler, Michelle Kwan and Laila Ali. It was super inspiring, and even got me a little teary-eyed at times.

I think I'm so used to thinking of women's sports in relation to Title IX and assholes who are trying to dismantle it, that I forget how incredible and positive the stories of so many women athlete are.

So, dear readers, who is your fave female athlete? Mine right now is Anne Marie Saccurato cause she sat at my table during the dinner and was just generally bad-ass.

WE tv is launching a campaign that seeks to register over 1 million women to vote in the 2008 election. Nice. Now if they would just stop running all of those terrible bride shows...

The anti-choice crowd, which is usually so eager to stop talking about women's bodies and start talking about fetuses, has been known to say that women who want to force pregnancy on other women are, like, sooo much prettier than pro-choicers.

So I wasn't really surprised when Garance sent me this image, which is apparently making the rounds on Facebook:

Even if it were remotely true, "our women are better-looking!" is not an argument. The idea that discussing the attractiveness of women's bodies as a point in favor of or against a specific set of political beliefs is just disgusting. And the implied possession -- as in, our things are pretty and yours are ugly -- is also revoltingly sexist.

Which I why I also can't stand it when people (especially those on the political left) choose to focus more on right-wing women's looks than their heinous political statements. It's. Not. Okay.

Monty was super excited to get a new squeaky shoe toy from my mom this weekend. He's been hiding it inexplicably, as if he thinks I'm going to steal it. Hilarious.

A man in Maryland was acquitted of assaulting his girlfriend (despite the beating being witnessed by a police officer) after a judge ruled: "You have very rare cases; sadomasochists sometimes like to get beat up." Seriously.

According to charging documents, a police officer was on routine patrol when she saw Michael Antonio Webb approach a car at an Exxon station in Laurel. Webb reached in the driver's side door and swung his hand three times at the driver, police said.

Webb, 24, of Columbia is 6 feet, 3 inches tall and weighs 315 pounds, according to charging documents. Now serving a four-year prison term after pleading guilty to a drug distribution charge in June, Webb was unavailable for comment yesterday but had pleaded not guilty in the assault case.

Webb's girlfriend refused to testify against him--which isn't exactly uncommon in abusive relationships. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Paul Harris, when called out on the inappropriateness of his comment, had this to say: "I'm probably as against domestic violence as anybody, when the case is proven." Well that's comforting.

Via Shakesville.

Okay, is anyone else totally icked out by the new 50 Cent/Justin Timberlake song? "She Wants It" (don't they all?) seems like an ode to stalking in the video above, and the lyrics aren't much better. A couple of snippets:

She she, she want it, I want to give it to her / She know that, it's right here for her / I want to, see her break it down

...Look at the way she shakin' shakin' / Make you want to touch it, make you want to taste it / Have you l / lustin' for her, go crazy face it / Now don't stop, get it, get it / The way she shakin' make you want to hit it
Think she double jointed from the way she splitted / Got you're head f**ked up from the way she did it

...She always ready, when you want it she want it / Like a nympho, the info, I show you where to meet her

Along with the video, these lyrics seem doubly as creepy. It's like someone took a bunch of traditional excuses to rape women (look at how she's dressing/dancing/acting, she totally wants it) and put them to a beat. What do other folks think?

Via Show Me Your Wits

Right-wing pundits fail to grasp why women may be more motivated to vote if they see a woman's name on the ballot. Garance has more on the pend-up demand for a female candidate.

Can't wait for the Itty Bitty Titty Committee movie!

The Senate rejected an amendment that would have cut reproductive health care funding.

Feminist health activism is still alive and well.

Kai Wright on the recent spate of noose incidents.

Mike Huckabee claims that if you promote safe sex and contraception use, it's the same thing as saying domestic violence is only kinda bad. WTF?

Don Imus is getting his platform back, and will likely be back on the air soon. The Rutgers basketball players say they don't really care. (via.)

New York State has stopped distributing a sexist handbook for female prison guards.

On race and hipsterdom.

Phill Kline continues his crusade against women's health clinics in Kansas -- this time he's filed 107 counts against a Kansas City Planned Parenthood.

Attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey has a history of excusing gender discrimination.

The Democrats' "bipartisan compromise" on the S-CHIP bill included a $28 million increase for abstinence-only education. Because clearly children's health is best protected with medically inaccurate information and gender stereotypes. (More on Democrats propping up abstinence-only here.)

A new book of essays takes on all aspects of choice: birth, contraception, infertility, adoption, single parenthood and abortion.

Benazir Bhutto continues to push for democracy in Pakistan, despite the recent violence there.

Women are considered "impure" in the sumo tradition, and a woman recently tried to climb into the ring in protest.

Katha Pollitt has a big-picture take on reproductive rights.

Scientists are at work developing a birth control pill that messes with your genes, not your hormones. (Is that better or worse??)

A leading website for British teachers has a gender-segregated list of reading recommendations that limits girls' horizons.

Verlyn Klinkenborg gets it right that women writers sometimes have a hard time learning to assume and write with authority. He gets it wrong that Midwestern gals are somehow more meek or quiet.

Phoebe reviews Pollitt's new book.

Rape is rape, not "theft of services."

What will the '08 election mean for single-sex schools?

The U.S. average life expectancy is greater than ever -- for everyone but pregnant women of color.

On Dolly Parton's feminist streak.

Add links to your own recommended reading in comments...

Maya Nussbaum (right) with author Tayari Jones at the Girls Write Now 10th Anniversary Friendraiser on October 18. Photo taken by Nana Brew-Hammond.

Founded by Maya Nussbaum, Girls Write Now is the only East Coast nonprofit that provides all-girl mentoring and creative writing training for high school girls. Based in New York City, Girls Write Now matches young aspiring female writers with a professional female writer to serve as her mentor and writing coach.

Founder and Executive Director Maya Nussbaum reflects on the past 10 years and why girls need to write. Here's Maya...

Check out this piece on how Hillary Clinton has apparently been focusing on her "feminine" side to appeal to women voters this past week as she finishes up her week of "Women Changing America" events. (Although I have to chime in that I saw her speak this week at the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee luncheon this week where the awesome Emily's List's president and founder Ellen Malcolm was honored, and she seemed to focus more on Bush's shitty administration than anything.)

Anyway, I also had to give a shout out to our girl Jaclyn Friedman for getting a quote in there. Big ups!

I love this.  Two young women are driving across the country interviewing and photographing other young women, asking them what they thing about feminism.

We are talking to both self-proclaimed feminists and the “I’m not a feminist but� contingent. We're also publishing a book upon our return, which will include photos, essays, interviews, and diary entries. The road trip, a staple of American culture that has always represented discovery and change, is our way of getting to know our peers. We also plan to chat with some influential feminists of our mothers’ generation and beyond. Both of our mothers were deeply involved in Second Wave feminism, so we are closely connected to the movement’s history. But our roadtrip seeks to discover how other women our age grapple with this history of freedom, equality, joy, ambition, sex, and love.

Cool shit. Their blog, GIRLdrive, documents their adventures in feminist America. Check it out.

The opening session for this conference was fantastic. It was called "Telling Our Stories" and featured Lilly Ledbetter and Rev. Lois Dejean. Both talked about the ways rolling back civil rights changed their lives. Ledbetter started out reading the testimony she gave during a Title VII hearing in Congress. If you're not familiar with the history of her case, definitely go read it. Basically, wen she was a manager at Goodyear, even though her performance was excellent, she consistently got smaller raises than her male peers. But, she only found out about it years later, because the company kept all increases confidential. Once and anonymous person left her a note telling her of the discrepancy, she did the right thing and filed a claim with the EEOC. Only then did she get official confirmation of her unfair pay.

In court the company claimed that she was paid less because she wasn't as good an employee. Except they also had given her a top performance award. Hmm. And other female managers testified that they received the same treatment. Pretty easy case, right?

Well, no. Blah blah, legal wrangling, and she ends up at the Supreme Court. They say she should have filed a complaint every time she got a discriminatory increase. You know, the ones she couldn't know about. Right. Swell. She concludes her statement with this:

My case is over and it is too bad that the Supreme Court decided the way that it did. I hope, though, that Congress won’t let this happen to anyone else. I would feel that this long fight was worthwhile if, at least at the end of it, I knew that I played a part in getting the law fixed so that it can provide real protection to real people in the real world.

Ledbetter also talked about the aftermath of the case. She told a funny (by which I mean irritating) story about all of the interviews she did. The NBC folks wanted her to bake a cake during the interview, to show... something. She wouldn't, so they asked her to make coffee. Though her husband is apparently the coffee-brewer in the family, she agreed. Then CNN came to town. They said she'd already made coffee for NBC, so "how about a cake this time." Charming. Let's gender stereotype the woman you're interviewing because she was discriminated against because of her gender. Nice work.

Reverend Lois Dejean, a New Orleans native, shared her stories from the aftermath of Katrina. She addressed the UN in Geneva about what happened. She told us that before that speech it didn't occur to her that the human rights of people on the Gulf Coast had been violated, only civil rights. She also touched upon the environmental impact of Katrina, and efforts to get the EPA to actually do something about it.

It's not really a huge surprise that Dejean didn't think about human rights. It's not something we talk about a lot in this country. partially because our country doesn't recognize that we have them. It's something I've heard Loretta Ross talk about. I mean, unless you're versed in international issues, it's rare you'll even know what's included in the Universal Declaration of human rights. It's a good list.

Hey Feministing readers, if any of you are at the Bioneers Conference today in Marin, I will be presenting on a panel called, "Girls Gone Mild? Reclaiming Feminism's Radical Edge."

Join diverse women leaders in conversation about valuable lessons from the past and today's new approaches to winning women's human rights. Hosted by Linda Burnham, co-founder of the Women of Color Resource Center; with Yvonne Bynoe, commentator and author of Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip-Hop Culture; Charlotte Brody, executive director of Commonweal; Patti Chang, former executive director of the Women's Foundation of California; Samhita Mukhopadhyay, editor of feministing.com; and Andrea Cristina Mercado, lead organizer for Mujeres Unidas y Activas.

Come say what's up if you are around!

The Bioneers conference is supposed to be really cool, but I have never been. Any advice?

New York Magazine writer Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote a cover piece in which she said that New York Post's Page Six had been "emasculated" by a recent scandal.

And how did the gossip guys respond to her criticism? Well, they threatened to gang rape her, of course. In print.

As for us being "emasculated," Grigoriadis ignores that fact that half the Page Six staff is female. The male half might take her someplace private and disprove her theory, but we don't like a woman with a mustache.

Wow. Shakes breaks it down:

Take her someplace private and disprove her theory. Jezebel wonders: "Is that a sexual threat?" Leaving aside that there's no such thing as a "sexual threat"—if you're threatening someone with sex, it's a rape threat—I am hard-pressed to see how, precisely, the suggestion of a group of men taking a woman "someplace private" for a display of their virility could be construed as anything but threatening.

It isn't an invitation; they're not offering to meet her someplace private, but to take her.

Most tellingly, however, is the reliance on the familiar "rape as compliment" structure. They might take her someplace private to "disprove her theory," but she's too ugly. It's the written equivalent of the man who goes out of his way to physically intimidate a woman in public on her own, only to scoff, "Don't flatter yourself!" before wandering away.

All of the NYP's contact information is here. Go make a stink.

Contributed by Chelsey Clammer

I read the first half of Felicia Luna Lemus' sophomore work Like Son in a day, and it's taken me two weeks to finish it--not because it is bad but because I didn't want the story to end. Lemus’ characters, storytelling, and obsession with a portrait of one radical woman created a world in which I never wanted to leave. Frank, Lemus’ main character, lives in post 9/11 NYC. He's really a girl, but that doesn't matter because why conform people to gender norms? The novel has been called a “post-trans� or “post-queer� novel, (see Bookslut’s interview with Lemus to get a full explanation and reaction to these terms.) because Like Son is not about what life is like as a transgender man, but instead it gets over the fact that Frank is trans and moves on with the story line. And what a story line at that. When Frank’s Vietnam War vet and blind father dies, he's left with only a few reminders of his Latino father: a briefcase, a suit, an Edward Weston photo of real-life Mexican rebellion Nahui Olin, and a book of Olin’s poems personally inscribed to Frank’s grandmother: “My Love: ‘She went through me like a pavement saw.’ Yours as ever for the revolution, Nahui.� The photo of Olin haunts Frank, as he can't shake her image out of his mind or why this mysterious woman was calling his grandmother “My Love�.

The Portland School Committee recently voted to make birth control and the patch available in King Middle School, reports the Guardian.

Parents have expectedly been complaining that the full range of contraception options are now in the school health center for the 6th to 8th graders; you know, about the Almighty's will and the pill causing cancer and whatnot. However, students do need parental permission to get treated at the health centers, they just aren't required to tell their parents if they do decide to go on birth control.

Bean has more.

The name alone is enough to make me want to see this movie. Add in my love for feminist graffiti, and I'm sold.

I'm in (currently) cloudy Durham, North Carolina today for a conference called "Why We Can’t Wait: Reversing the Retreat on Civil Rights" from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund and the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights. Great, and packed agenda for the next two days. I'll keep you updated. One of this morning's sessions will feature Lilly Ledbetter, from Supreme Court case Ledbetter v. Goodyear.

1. Make the radical choice to commit to healing your relationship with your body.

2. Never diet. Never ever. It is a $31 billion industry that fails 95% of the time. That's just stupid.

3. Reconnect with your authentic hungers. When are you hungry? When are you full? What are you hungry for?

4. Move in ways (African dance, yoga, running, sex...) that make you feel happy instead of adhering to strict fitness regimens.

5. Add a compassionate voice to the chorus in your head.

6. Don't spend money on products made by companies that make you feel inadequate. Duh.

7. Stop hanging out with toxic people that make you feel bad about yourself.

8. Change conversations about weight to conversations about wellbeing.

9. Nominate someone for the REAL Hot 100.

10. Redefine your notion of success to include your own wellness--including joy, fulfillment, resilience, and self-love.

Shameless plug alert. For more ideas of how to heal, check out my book: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.

Feministing is one of the top 3 blogs in the Best Political Blog category! If you haven't already, go vote for us. (Voting ends tomorrow.)

Via WashPo:

A furious campaign to persuade Republicans to change their votes on the $35 billion expansion of the government children's health insurance program fell 13 votes short today when the House failed to overturn President Bush's veto of the legislation.

Sigh.

This is one of those things that I almost didn't blog about, because it's clearly a publicity stunt and me writing this only adds to the "buzz." The awful Radar cover is photoshopped spoof of a Vanity Fair cover from March 2006 -- which Rebecca Traister ably took to task at the time. (Using naked women as accessories to powerful dudes is a real VF cover theme.)

I know this stupid Radar cover is designed to make me go, "ugh." And it succeeded. Of course the white man is the only one who's fully clothed. As Rachel Sklar points out, "Rudy's head just looks so natural on Tom Ford's skin-crawlingly skeevy body."

Thoughts?

A Reuters article titled, "Sexy rap videos suspected to be damaging to young girls" says:

Watching rap music videos that are overly sexy and violent can lead to alcohol abuse and promiscuity among young black girls, according to a study into sexual stereotypes in rap music footage.

Firstly, putting "sexy" and "violent" within the same category is a bit disconcerting. (Not to mention "promiscuity" and "alcohol abuse.") The actual study was even more so:

The research was based on a survey of 522 African-American girls aged 14 to 18 who were asked how often they watched rap videos, questioned about their sex lives and asked to provide a urine sample for a marijuana screening.

While obviously the media and pop culture (which does include the misogyny that exists in many rap videos) has a huge impact on girls' lives, why not focus more on their self esteem and confidence rather than their sexual activity and pot smoking? (The research method itself is pretty problematic to me as well, but that's a whole other discussion.)

Thoughts?

Just a day after Bush managed to appoint a birth control opponent to head the country's family planning office, we find that women's health is doing pretty crappy nationwide, according to a new report by the National Women's Law Center and Oregon Health & Science University.

"Overall the nation's grade was 'unsatisfactory.' Only three of the 27 benchmarks were met," Dr. Michelle Berlin of the Oregon Health & Science University told a briefing...

No state received a passing or "satisfactory" grade for women's health status. Only three states -- Vermont, Minnesota and Massachusetts -- were "satisfactory minus," a drop from a report in 2004 when eight states earned that mark.

Lovely. Go here for the report, where you can search by state.

Despite what anti-choicers seem to think the pro-choice reaction to this would be, I agree with them that it's awful, and anyone who forces a woman to have an abortion deserves to be punished.

When I was in Mary Gordon’s story writing class, I wrote an essay about the three generations of women in my family—my grandmother, my mother, myself. I called it Duty. It was about the ways in which women of different generations (mis)understand, criticize, and ultimately, adore one another. I remember that one of the moments I felt most validated as a young writer was the day that Professor Gordon cried in her office while giving me feedback about this essay. She was moved.

Now I know why. Her mother was dying at the time that I wrote that essay and she too was thinking about women within families, the way we misconstrue one another across space and time.

Her book, Circling My Mother, is a memoir about Gordon’s journey to write her mother into significance. She approaches it by literally circling her mother—exploring her relationships to church, friends, love—without writing a direct biography. This exploration gives the reader a wide ranging sense of the time and place within which her mother became her mother, a sense of the sprawling history and dogma and generational change that took place during her long lifetime.

A new study is showing that the HPV test is actually more accurate in detecting early signs of cervical cancer than taking a pap test:

The test for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, found 95 percent of cases in which women had potentially pre-cancerous changes in the cervix. This compared to 55 percent of Pap smears, the team at McGill University in Montreal found.

"We're proposing to go straight to the HPV test," said team leader Eduardo Franco.

While this finding is obviously a huge deal, it doesn't come without a price - literally; a pap test costs between $10 and $20, while the HPV test costs up to $90.

Between the vaccine and the test, HPV is creating quite a market. I guess the uninsured and low-income can, you know, just deal with the cancer.

The California Supreme Court, which last week blocked the arrests of four paroled sex offenders who live within 2,000 feet of a school or park, refused today to extend its order to about 850 more parolees who face arrests for the same reason.

Why 2,000 feet? Such an arbitrary number, seems almost like it is just for show. Is physical distance really going to stop sex offenders from being repeat offenders?

Officials said about 850 parolees were living too close to a park or school and were subject to being arrested and held for parole violations, which could return them to prison. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the arrests would continue despite Wednesday's state Supreme Court order barring any action against the four men who filed suit.

The four - one from San Francisco, one from Santa Clara County and two from San Diego County - said in their suit that it was irrational to apply the residency restrictions to parolees, like themselves, whose sex crimes did not involve children. They said virtually all residential areas of their counties were within 2,000 feet of a park or school and that the law would force them to choose between homelessness and prison.

I know Ahnold loves to put folks in jail, but is this a realistic plan? How about rehabilitation services and re-entry programs where people can be supported and treated for being mentally ill? I feel like pushing people off to the periphery only makes the problem worse. Instead of people attempting to live healthy lives, what we really need is a bunch of homeless convicted sex offenders. For some reason that doesn't make me feel any safer.

via SFChronicle.

A true Vaginal-American!

From Media Matters:

On the October 15 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign with Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, host Tucker Carlson said: "Gene, this is an amazing statistic: 94 percent of women say they'd be more likely to vote if a woman were on the ballot. I think of all the times I voted for people just because they're male. You know? The ballot comes up, and I'm like, 'Wow. He's a dude. I think I'll vote for him. We've got similar genitalia. I'm -- he's getting my vote.' " After asserting that "the Clinton campaign says: 'Hillary isn't running as a woman,' " Carlson stated: "Well, that's actually completely false, considering the Hillary campaign -- and I get their emails -- relentlessly pushes the glass ceiling argument. 'You should vote for her because she's a woman.' They say that all the time." May responded: "At least call her a Vaginal-American."

Get it? Cause she's a girl, she's not just a regular person--she's a person with a vagina! So does this mean I can call Mr. May a Dickwadish-American?

If you're outside the womb, forget the support of the National Right to Life Committee. The group won't lend its support to the S-CHIP bill.

Initially, they wouldn't sign on to the legislation because it included coverage for pregnant women, not for fetuses specifically. (As if fetuses exist separately from pregnant women...) But with that provision stripped, NRLC still won't support S-CHIP. Anti-abortion Democrats aren't pleased, and sent a letter to the group telling them so. But the NRLC legislative director explained,

“There’s nothing there [in the SCHIP bill] for us to really grab onto.�

And,

"They had their chance to put something in there for the pro-life community, and they batted it down."

Because there's nothing for the "pro-life" community in a bill that protects children's health. They clearly have zero interest in that.

Bush has appointed a birth control opponent Susan Orr to head our nation's family planning office. And she requires no Senate confirmation, so get used to this woman as the leading government voice on "a wide range of reproductive health topics, including adolescent pregnancy, family planning, and sterilization, as well as other population issues."

This is a woman who "cheered" the Global Gag Rule and considers birth control "not a medical necessity." As RH Reality Check notes:

In 2001, when President Bush proposed eliminating the requirement that federal employees' health insurance offer a range of options for birth control coverage, Dr. Orr, then the senior director for marriage and families at the Family Research Council, told the Washington Post, "We're quite pleased because fertility is not a disease. It's not a medical necessity that you have [contraception]."

I'm sorry, I (and most women I know) certainly consider contraception a medical necessity. And it's frightening to me that this is the person who will "oversee $283 million in annual grants that are intended to provide contraceptive services to low-income families, the office's abstinence program aimed at teens, and the all of the funding for birth control, pregnancy tests, counseling, and screenings for sexually transmitted disease and HIV administered by the Office of Population Affairs."

Orr also has typically outdated views on what women's roles and goals should be:

Orr authored a paper in 2000 titled, “Real Women Stay Married.� In it she wrote that women should “think about focusing our eyes, not upon ourselves, but upon the families we form through marriage.�

With anti-contraception officials rising through federal ranks, I suppose it should come as no surprise that Bush appointed a Family Research Council hack to this position. When HHS spokesman Kevin Schweers says that Orr has a "breadth of programmatic and managerial experience," he clearly means a breadth of experience in pushing extremely far-right views on reproductive health.

A 19 year-old woman is suing George Washington University after being denied treatment on the night of her rape because she "appeared intoxicated."

The plaintiff, a 19-year-old sophomore, also filed suit against the District, Howard University Hospital and several local doctors. The complaint states she was given a date-rape drug at an off-campus party near Howard and was then denied a rape kit at several hospitals - including GW.

..."There is no legitimate reason why it was handled this way," said Bruce Spiva, her attorney. "She has really been hurt by this and is reluctant to speak out publicly."

Even when the woman went to the police, she was denied help.

"A sexual assault kit is for police to recover evidence," said Sergeant Ronald Reid of the MPD Sex Assault Unit. "So if we don't have reason to believe a crime happened we wouldn't administer a rape kit."

So they didn't believe a crime had been committed because she appeared intoxicated? (Which isn't a shock considering she was drugged.) Make sure to read the whole story of her assault and subsequent horror story at multiple hospitals. It's just too depressing for words.

A new survey out of the UK shows that over half of general practitioners believe that the okay of just one doctor should be enough for a woman to get an abortion. Right now, a woman has to convince two doctors that carrying her pregnancy to term would be a health risk.

There's nothing quite like a sexist toy. It's usually pink, frequently about domesticity, and always reminds us how the bullshit starts early. Take, for example, Playskool's new Rose Petal Cottage. The tagline for this girls' playhouse is "Where dreams have room to grow." That is, of course, assuming your daughter's dreams consist of baking muffins, rocking a cradle and doing laundry. Jezebel has the commercials for the toy (a must-watch, seriously) but just to give you an idea of what they're selling, here's one of lyrics from the Rose Petal Cottage song: "I love when my laundry gets so clean/ Taking care of my home is a dream, dream, dream!"

If that's not bad enough, wait till you see the part where the little girl is putting clothes in her Dreamtown laundry machine while the narrator notes the cottage is a place "she can entertain her imagination!" Imagination. Laundry. What the fuck.

Via Broadsheet.

I always like interviews with bloggers, because it helps to debunk some of the myths (like we get paid, LOLZZZ) or that we believe that the revolution will be internetized. I especially like interviews with the bloggers I read on the regs. So go check out this interview with Pam from Pandagon and Pam's House Blend. She breaks down some of the myths of political blogostopia. (Wow, I just made up a lot of words.)

Researchers in Chicago are embarking upon a federally-funded study in search of the "gay gene." You know the one that if we prove it exists, we can tell fundies to STFU and leave our people alone.

While initial results aren't expected until next year — and won't provide a final answer — skeptics are already attacking the methods and disputing the presumed results.

Previous studies have shown that sexual orientation tends to cluster in families, though that doesn't prove genetics is involved. Extended families may share similar child-rearing practices, religion and other beliefs that could also influence sexual orientation.

But is there really a gay gene?

Dr. Alan Sanders of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, the lead researcher of the new study, said he suspects there isn't one so-called "gay gene."

It is more likely there are several genes that interact with nongenetic factors, including psychological and social influences, to determine sexual orientation, said Sanders, a psychiatrist.

Still, he said, "If there's one gene that makes a sizable contribution, we have a pretty good chance" of finding it.

So what is the result here? If we can prove there is a "gay gene" can we also prove there is a lesbian gene, a trans gene, a bi gene? And suppose we can prove that there is a gay gene, does that mean that people that choose to be gay are inherently immoral.

Also, are we going to start checking to see if our babies have gay genes?

I understand that the mainstream LGBTQ movement relies on this type of research to support hard earned civil rights victories. I can get behind that. The problem I have with it is that it assumes that if being gay were a choice, then it would be an immoral one. It is not supporting the rights of people that want to live the sexual lives of their choice or people that are influenced by other conditions, outside of a genetic predisposition.

What we need to study is people that insist on proving anything outside of heterosexual romance and marriage between a "man and his wife" is in someway abnormal. I never signed up for that campaign.

via AP.

Though she may be better known in the feminist blogosphere for introducing us to the bullshit term "gray rape," let's not forget that Laura Sessions Stepp also suggested that young ladies should stop dancing, flirting, and downing vodka tonics and start trying to land a man with their baking skills.

why.i.ihate.dc took the fight to LSS in person, at one of her readings:

She wasn't writing about how women should not be choosing to get laid. (And let's be honest, a lot of people like getting laid.) She was writing about women being the sexual gatekeepers instead of choosing to pursue. She was writing about women baking cookies to impress men. She was writing nonsense like "women should avoid bars, that's a man's place." LSS had left an opening and we were there to expose it. [...]

So Terri asked her how someone could mentor a young girl into conforming into typical gender roles and still call herself a feminist. LSS responded with something that directly contradicts the New York Times article by saying that she could have used any other example of an activity as long as the point was made that women don't belong in bars.

It was at this point that she lost the room.

I quickly raised my hand and asked how she could say "feminism is about choice" out of one side of her mouth while saying "ladies don't belong in stereotypically male environments" out the other. Her response that people, gentlemen and ladies, are only at bars to get blitzed and hook-up with some dude or lady was not well-received.

The next question was from someone asking what the problem with bars is. Isn't the dude you meet at a bar the same dude you meet at Gold's Gym or the library? Why does going to a bar make someone undateable?

And then the master of ceremonies cut the Q+A short. Victory!

Oh man. Wish I had been there.

It's that time of the year again... and this is hilarious:

However, actual non-parody sexy racial stereotype and sexy anorexic costumes? Not so hilarious.

Via.

UPDATE: Roy has a more thoughtful take.

Hotness.

Pic from caffeina.

Ok, so that title is a bit misleading. There's actually no debate among doctors (those without an anti-choice bias, anyway), medical associations, and FDA officials about when pregnancy begins. They all agree that moment is when a fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall. Most folks in the anti-contraception, pro-forced-pregnancy movement believe, however, that "life" begins at the magical moment when sperm meets egg, regardless of whether that egg implants.

I bring this up because it's relevant to a case recently dismissed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in which parents filed a lawsuit after their teenage daughter received emergency contraception at a city health center and was told (correctly) that it would prevent -- not terminate -- pregnancy. Sherry Colb at FindLaw explains:

The plaintiffs in Anspach v. City of Philadelphia alleged that at the girl's request, the health center gave her a "morning after" pill, but without notifying her parents and without informing her that the medication could prevent a fertilized egg from implanting inside her uterus. Her parents contend that this information would have been of great significance to all three of them, because the prevention of implantation constitutes an abortion according to their religious beliefs.

Of course, parents have no right to be notified when contraception is dispensed to their daughter. And emergency contraception does indeed prevent pregnancy, not end it. So the court had no problem throwing out the suit.

Colb connects this to the whole embryo debate. Some legal experts think that the 400,000 embryos currently sitting in fertility clinic freezers could form the basis of a serious legal challenge to Roe. (I'm not convinced.) And when it comes to how these embryos will affect the right to contraception, agree with Colb -- that conception in a petri dish actually further supports the medical standard that pregnancy begins at implantation.

Is there any reason to view implantation, rather than conception, as the morally relevant moment for purposes of saying whether an abortion has taken place? Consider the case of in-vitro fertilization. A woman has her egg harvested for fertilization by a man's sperm cells in a test-tube. Conception takes place. Notwithstanding conception, however, no one, at this point, can be said to have become pregnant.

Well, except that many anti-choicers claim that not implanting these test-tube embryos is tantamount to murder. I'm just waiting for the day when they start pushing false "research" showing that all women who have thawed their embryos are plagued by severe, life-long depression.

Please go check out the amazing Jill from Feministe's piece at HuffPo, on denial and ignorance on behalf of religiously motivated anti-choice stance, looking at the case of Nicaragua and some biting analysis of the position that has deadly global repercussions.

Some tidbits. . .

Yes, you read that right: Mainstream "pro-life" organizations are opposed to contraception as well as abortion. They're just keeping quiet about it because they know it's an unpopular position, and they know it outs them as hypocrites who put ideology over human life. But the fact remains that none of the well-known and influential national anti-choice groups have come out in support of contraception access. None of them promote the very thing that has been proven, time and again, to lower the abortion rate.

READ IT.

Check out this great vid (and more!) from I Am Emily X, a new blog by an anonymous Planned Parenthood worker.

A fabulous (and accurate) shirt.

A new study out of Rutgers (represent) finds that feminism improves relationships. I knew it all along, but I'm glad that I have some smarties to back me up.

They found that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women. Men with feminist partners also reported both more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction. According to these results, feminism does not predict poor romantic relationships, in fact quite the opposite.

The study, done by Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan, also sought to debunk feminist stereotypes. Sounds like my kinda research.

Thanks to Kombiz for the link.

A new study by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization shows that abortion rates are similar in different countries whether the procedure is legal or not. Shocking, I know. Of course, what wasn't similar was the risk to women's health.

The study indicated that about 20 million abortions that would be considered unsafe are performed each year and that 67,000 women die as a result of complications from those abortions, most in countries where abortion is illegal.

Moral of the story? Safe, legal abortion is the best bet. Always.

For those of you in New York, there's an awesome event tomorrow at the New School featuring the preeminent thinkers on women, work, motherhood, and the so-called "opt-out revolution":

WORKING MOTHERS: WHO'S OPTING OUT?
Tuesday, October 16, 7 p.m., $8 admission
The New School, New York City
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)

You've read the articles--and gotten angry at the debate. Are vast numbers of working mothers bolting the career track--or dreaming of doing so? Are elite women betraying feminism by staying home with their children? Or do the Opt-Out stories rely too heavily on anecdotal evidence--while shoving aside actual labor statistics and working families' needs?

JOIN US as some of the KEY THINKERS and CRITICS of the "opt-out" storyline DISCUSS & DEBATE the real state of working motherhood in America today.

Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University, collaborator on Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It.

The panel includes Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It; Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University and author of Get to Work; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, and co-author of Hardships in America and The Real Story of Working Families; and Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families and Business and the Nation.

Seriously, it's like the all-star team of work/life issues...

Click here for more info. And if, like me, you can't make it to New York, fear not! They're going to be posting a video of the discussion online.

I know Ann mentioned the new Home Depot store for women, Her Depot (blech). But I had to point out some of the language they're using in their rollout:

"She can buy a light bulb as well as all of the lighting," [a spokesperson] said. "Or a major appliance plus the laundry detergent to go with it."

You know, so she can get to the cleaning right away. I wonder if the signature orange outfits will be traded for pink...

Ah, they grow up so fast. The boyfriend and I took Monty to Astoria Park this weekend where we learned several things about him: Monty is an excellent jumper, he is super shy around people who want to run up and pet him, he prefers pooping on the grass (as evidenced by his going like a million times while we were there). Good times.

One more time with feeling: There is no such thing as "gray rape."

Cosmo magazine, which ran (and defended) an article on "gray rape" by slut-shamer Laura Sessions Stepp , is sponsoring a panel on the subject. Once more, the underlying assumption is that there's a gray area when it comes to rape.

The NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault says that rape crisis organizations were deliberately excluded from the conversation. The protest is at 11am, so hop to it and get all the pertinent info here.

Jennie Yabroff at Newsweek has a piece on the current state of feminism and the ERA. It's worth checking out. A small note, however: I'm mentioned in the article as saying that "feminist blogs drove the million-plus turnout at the 2004 March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC." What I actually said was that online organizing (mostly done by folks like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and NOW) was a huge part of the march turnout. Feminist blogs were a part of that, but a small part.

Everything you ever wanted to know about men's rights activists, but were afraid to ask.

Hot local Purity Ball action! Organizers say there have been more than a thousand of these things in the past year. And apparently, not all of the sorta similar events for boys are called "Integrity Balls." Some are "a Knight to Remember." Ahahahahaha.

Reviewing Susan Faludi's new book on gender in post-9/11 America. (Terrible headline, huh?)

I have mixed feelings about Newsweek's cover story on women leaders. Check it out for yourself.

"If you are kidnapped or missing, it helps to be the right race, age, social class and gender. Otherwise, don't expect the media to cover your story."

On honor killings in Iraq's Kurdish region.

A Catholic college rents space to a conference on teen pregnancy, and the Catholic hierarchy is not pleased.

On the heels of the WaPo piece, the New York Times notices how white the runways are.

In his new book, Tom Perrotta tackles the "only oral/anal sex until hetero marriage" movement.

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families is knocking on doors, asking people to sign a petition asking the legislature not to consider any more abortion bans. (One local media outlet called this "silencing the debate." As if that were possible.)

Margaret Cho talks about her new show, The Sensuous Woman.

Check out Feministe's hilarious Twelve Days of Christmas Pussy.

Home Depot decides to open stores that cater to the ladies. That is, ladies who aren't into hardware, only home decorating. Or something. And how, um, toolish is the store's name, Her Depot?

A woman is thrown out of the women's bathroom in a New York restaurant because the bouncer wouldn't believe her when she said she was a woman.

On making work/life balance a campaign issue.

Contraception access on college campuses is declining dangerously.

I talked with New Voices magazine about my experience in talking to Al Jazeera English about Israeli's Maxim PR campaign.

On the NY Times Book Review poor history with feminist authors.

"Can evangelicals and liberals come together over abortion, gay rights, and the role of religion in public life?" No.

A judge tells a criminal defense attorney she has a "nice butt" in open court. Classy.

Rebecca Traister sits down for a chat about the movie business with ten powerful Hollywood women.

A pretty general piece on the gender of the Democratic frontrunner...

Vancouver sexworkers are creating a cooperative brothel in anticipation of the 2010 Olympics.

A display honoring those killed by domestic violence was vandalized in Wisconsin. Cara has more.

An appalling story about a guy who raped at least 30 women he met on Match.com.

On the state of abortion rights in the South.

Finally, a group calls out Unilever's hypocrisy.

The declaration from the first-ever Black European Women's Congress

How messed up is the concept of MyFreeImplants.com? Ugh.

More on Nicaragua's first year as a "pro-life" nation. Death toll so far: at least 80 women. (Check out the HRW report for more details.)

"Video vixen" Karrine Steffens talks to NPR.

Marion Jones's admission to using steroids leads Robin Givhan to ruminate on the strength and glamour of female athletes.

What life is like for women in Kashmir.

And more and more and more nooses. Dumi writes, "While these incidents may be isolated in the forensic sense they are bound in the sociological sense by their support of a White supremacist ideology. A noose is not a joke, a noose is not a prank, a noose is a symbol of violence and threat."

Filmmaker Tiona. M. has worked in the educational documentary genre and pulled up her sleeves in the non-profit arena. This time, she has two documentary films that she wants to share with the world. One is on a Black women and her two daughters, and their university experience. The other, which I interviewed her on, is black./womyn.: conversations..., which should be out soon.

Here's Tiona...

Okay, this video totally makes me want to go to this school. It also makes me want to be seven.

Check out this great post from a med student who is doing a rotation at his local Planned Parenthood. He breaks down the myth that PP is all about abortions--it's good stuff.

Thanks to RebelDad for the link!

While Clay wants to whup Ann's anti-cat ass, Cracker thought he'd reach out to all the anti-felines in a more sympathy-inducing way; the poor baby had to endure 10 days with "the cone" after getting three stitches from a cat fight.

Now if that's not worth some respect, I don't know what is.

There are many, many reasons I don't like Real Dolls. There are also many reasons I don't like Charlie Sheen (Men at Work, however, is not one of them). Now, that Sheen-Real Doll dislike comes together in a truly disturbing way.

Sheen, who owned a Real Doll, supposedly destroyed and "disposed" of the doll after he was laughed at for suggesting a group romp with said doll and some real women.

“They couldn't stop laughing at him,� the source told the Daily News. “Charlie got so mad that he ran the girls out of his house. Then he took a meat cleaver and chopped one of the doll's hands off. He and his bodyguard tried to dispose of it, like it was a real body. They wrapped it in a blanket and drove around in the middle of the night till they found a dumpster.�

I'm ready for this week to be over. Seriously.

God, how I loathe David Brooks. Unlike most misogynists (who are all too happy to let you know how little they think of you) Brooks' sexism is sugar-coated, making it particularly insulting. Whether it's writing about how rape exists simply because chivalry doesn't , or telling women that the "power is in the kitchen," Brooks has a knack for denigrating women while swearing up and down he has our best interests at heart.

Brooks' latest, however, is a bit more transparent than usual. In The Odyssey Years, Brooks gripes about young people today and what he sees as prolonged adolescence:

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.

Okay, sure. This sounds a lot like what feminists have been talking about for a while, except more specifically, concerning the new masculinity being boyhood.

Brooks rattles off a list of what he clearly sees as failures of this generation: Young people are much less likely to be financially secure, married and having kids by 30 today than they were in 1960; dating and courting are now "hooking up"; "Marriage gives way to cohabitation"; and the kicker....

She's only the 11th female Nobel Laureate in Literature ever. My colleague Phoebe, who's a serious Lessing fangirl, has more:

She's best know for The Golden Notebook which is usually hailed as a feminist text, but is just as bold an experiment in literary form. (Side note, check out this audio snippet of her reading from the book.) I highly recommend her Children of Violence series, which has some of my favorite writing about women struggling to maintain identity within political movements.

Listen to Rhodessa Jones of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women on NPR. I read Rena Fraden's chronicle of the collective, "Imagining Medea" in grad school, which was awesome; it's good to see such an amazing project get this exposure.

I've got some good news for the women at Jezebel! Medical abortion (aka taking pills-- mifepristone and misoprostol -- to induce abortion rather than having a surgical procedure) is definitely legal in the U.S., and has been for about seven years.

Let's break this piece up a bit. Reinhard Krafft, head of private banking at Sal Oppenheim jr. & Cie, contends:

'If we service a family, you not only have a patriarch, you have the mother, daughter, son at the table. Whom are you talking to? Whole families.'

Translation: Because all families are hetero, nuclear and patriarchal, of course. The article continues:

Rich women, often widows or heirs, are seen as taking a larger role, but their involvement varies across countries.

And women bankers can sometimes be more perceptive when dealing with couples. 'In some cases what we find ... (that) if you have a couple a male adviser will oftentimes look to the male and have the whole discussion with the male and it could be that the female is the decision maker around this area or it could be even their (her) wealth that we are talking about," Junkans [Dean Junkans, chief investment officer at Wells Fargo's private client services division] said. Typically a female adviser will not make that mistake.'

Translation: Women bankers may make less sexist assumptions than male bankers, but let's just rephrase them as "relationship managers."

Any women in the banking world want to weigh in on this?

Crazy Christian author Mark Dice made a comment about Fox News' female news anchors, "I see shorter skirts on the women of Fox News than I do on the prostitutes being arrested on cop shows." Pretty classy, I know.

What's almost worse was Fox's response: "We're always flattered to have everyone talking about us in one form or another."

Yes, this shit actually gets coverage.

If you're in the New York area, come check out friend to feministing, Deborah Siegel, who is facilitating a panel at the kick-ass Tenement Museum tonight. It will center around the book Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and "the private and public acts of New York women during the time of the occupancy of 97 Orchard Street."

I didn’t choose to attend Barnard with an awareness of what a great legacy of female writers had passed through its cramped classrooms and underground tunnels, but it has been one of my greatest gifts. I studied story writing with Mary Gordon for a full year. I was an Erica Jong writing fellow. Zora Neal Hurston, Anna Quindlen, Natalie Angier, Sigrid Nunez, Jeanette Walls, and Jhumpa Lahiri, all went to Barnard once upon a time. It is humbling to have a shared biography with any of these names.

Also humbling is the exquisite example of Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, whose senior thesis—Breath, Eyes, Memory—became a bestselling novel after landing on Oprah's actual bookclub. Danticat has earned herself a well-deserved reputation as a genius at simple, chilling storytelling. She reclaims folktales, capitalizes on sensory experience, and paints a vivid picture of a culture she loves, though its shortcomings make for some of her best writing.

Her new book, Brother, I’m Dying, is her first memoir. It is the story of both her uncle and her father dying just as her own daughter is being born. As you might imagine, the cycle of life and death is at the center of this tale, as are the themes of home, national and cultural identity, family loyalty, and dignity.

The prizes are pretty dope too. Go to RH Reality Check for more info.

So Feministing has been nominated for several Blogger's Choice Awards, including Best Political Blog (we're in the top 3!) and Best Blog of All Time.

Apparently this has pissed off a ton of anti-feminists (who lovingly call themselves "men's rights activists"), so they've flooded the awards with votes for Feministing under Most Obnoxious Blogger and Worst Blog of All Time. In fact, they're so peeved that they've even entered their own Feministing parody site (feministing.org) under several categories in an effort to thwart votes away from us.

On one of their forums that I sometimes peek into, they're calling this their latest form of "activism" to spread the word about the evils of feminism and, of course, to "give the bitches something to whine about." They're taking it so seriously, in fact, that they've warned to "be careful about feminist spies" and talked about taking the action "underground." Awww. Seriously, some people have way too much time on their hands. Boys, I've said it before and I'll say it again: You could have just sent flowers. Kisses!

Thanks to the ever-fab Matt Ortega for the heads up.

Deciding the fate of people with disabilities is a complicated and loaded issue. I taught severely disabled youth for 4 years and the truth is between the school rights, teachers know-how, parental decisions, law and funding, the fate of young people with disabilities is one that is complex and brings up a lot of issues about what is the correct course of action. The truth is unless you have a child who is disabled it is difficult to judge the motivations of a parent. But I found this story to be extremely sad and poignant.

A mother is seeking to have the womb of her severely disabled daughter removed to prevent the 15-year-old from feeling the pain and discomfort of menstruation.

Doctors in Britain are now taking legal advice to see if they are permitted to carry out the hysterectomy on Katie Thorpe, who suffers from cerebral palsy.

But a charity campaigning for the disabled said on Monday the move could infringe human rights and would set a "disturbing precedent."

Andy Rickell, executive director of disability charity Scope, told the Press Association: "It is very difficult to see how this kind of invasive surgery, which is not medically necessary and which will be very painful and traumatic, can be in Katie's best interests.

"This case raises fundamental ethical issues about the way our society treats disabled people and the respect we have for disabled people's human and reproductive rights.

"If this enforced sterilization is approved, it will have disturbing implications for young disabled girls across Britain."

It is hard not to connect this to the belief within the care of people with disability as sex-less and neutered. I truly believe that this young woman's mother has her best interests at heart, but it is difficult to empathize with a desire that is so loaded with the control of a woman's sexual organs and along with the often held belief that disabled people don't have the right to experience sexuality.

It doesn't appear that this procedure is medically necessary or would create a great increase in comfort for the lifestyle of this young woman (but I could be wrong). Than why do something that is so invasive at such a young age? People with disabilities have feelings, they go throw changes, they have desires and wants that we may not always understand and I don't think it is in our rights to dictate whether they should menstruate or not. If it is not life threatening or will not greatly increase their quality of life, I say let her be.

Read more at Feministe and Mojoblog.

You may remember this atrocious decision last year: a Maryland appellate court ruled that once a woman consents to sex, she can’t change her mind. Not if it hurts, not if her partner has become violent, not if she simply wants to stop. Now, the state's highest court is hearing the argument again.

There are so many different levels of fucked up surrounding this case, it’s hard to know where to begin. Not only because of the ruling that essentially legalizes rape, but also because of what the ruling is based on.

The court’s ruling cites a case from 1980, which defines rape based on common law that considers women property. This definition says that rape is just the initial “deflowering� of a woman; in fact, the injured party in a rape isn’t even the woman who has been assaulted—it’s her father or husband. The decision notes that after penetration—the “initial infringement upon the responsible male’s interest in a woman’s sexual and reproductive functions�—anything following can’t be rape because “the damage is done� and the woman can never be “re-flowered.� Charming, huh?

It’s hard to believe that this could even be discussed, really. After all, who would continue to have sex with an unwilling partner besides a rapist?

Via Racialicious.

Kira Cochrane at The Guardian has a great article on feminist folk singer and all around kick-ass gal Ani DiFranco. I love me some Ani.

Just a taste: "I think what we need to do is to understand feminism as a prerequisite to saving the environment, to ending war, to ending racism. We need to understand that feminism is not for women, it's for humanity. Patriarchy does not work for men - they go and get killed in wars. Patriarchy hurts all of us. You know...the older I grow, the more I understand peace and stability as a product of balance, and human society is fundamentally imbalanced. Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about, but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society?"

Swoon.

In the Atlanta Journal Constitution's "Woman to Woman" column, Andrea Cornell Sarvady and Shaunti Feldhahn argue whether or not feminism is to blame for the 'happiness gap'. You know, the one that doesn't exist. Sigh.

Apparently selling stripper poles in toy stores wasn't enough. Now girls as young as seven are taking pole dancing classes in Australia.

Eleven-year-old Angela, who does up to three classes a week to gain strength after an illness, said she was much fitter.

"It's really fun and you get to learn a lot of different moves. People think it's pole dancing but it's not. It's great exercise," she said.

Mother Julie yesterday defended allowing Angela to take the classes, insisting it had increased her fitness and confidence after she was diagnosed with coeliac disease earlier this year. She added she stays and watches her daughter each class.

"It's not slutty or anything. I've seen pole dancing on TV and they don't do anything like that here," the 42-year-old said. "It's building up her strength after she got ill and it doesn't put too much pressure on her muscles. She's much stronger, healthier and more confident."

Sure. But I'm fairly certain she could get the same results from joining a soccer team. Just saying.

Thanks to Taelor for the link.

Apparently, in light of Bush claiming that we don't use torture methods in our war tactics (cough-bullshit-cough), it is OK to use torture imagery to sell products. Add a little sexy, sultry, brunette action and you are good to go.

It is all about sex and violence to sell products and women's hair products are so important that of course we need the strictest of *interrogation* tactics.

via Democracy Cell Project.

Thanks to Dianne for the link.

I never said I was a well woman.

Oh dear. It seems Barbie has come up with yet another way to mess up little girls.

Fashion Fever Shopping Boutique, the correctly named Barbie toy, features a built-in credit card swiper and a life-size credit card for young children to use when buying outfits for their dolls. According to the Amazon website, "Once the balance hits zero, it will reset so you can continue to shop."

You know, just like in real life! The commercial, which you can watch a low-quality version of here, features a little girl saying "And you never run out of money!" Sigh.

Via Jezebel.

So last week's Feministing Party was a BLAST. Thank you to all that made it out and came up and said what's up! We raised some money and if you couldn't make it, remember you can always donate on the site. ;)

And check out the video from the party! Olivia founder of Wiretap Music is amazing and if it were not for her this event would not have happened. Thanks Olivia! And please check out the cool video she made to get a sense of the madness. Rock on people!

Thea at Shameless Mag really gets it right:

This is what really breaks my heart: Wes’ track record with women of colour. Anderson just loves pairing women of colour up with dorky white dudes, shortly after dorky white dudes have been dumped or rejected by white ladies. Even though Rushmore’s Margaret Yang is the fullest of all of Wes’ colour characters, she is still paired up with the loveable/hateable Max after Ms Cross turns him down. It’s the same story with Inez, the lovely Latin American hotel cleaner in Bottle Rocket.

[...] The interracial relationships in Anderson’s films are not radical. They simply reinforce racism’s most current and insidious form - they take cultural appropriation to the ultimate level by appropriating actual women of colour, a la Gwen Stefani.

Read the whole thing.

I am so sick of reading newspaper style section "trend" articles about how the gender and social norms of the 1950s are "making a comeback." So I hereby inaugurate Retro Trend Watch. In today's installment... Asking Permission. (And sadly, I'm talking about for marriage, not sex . In the bedroom, I'm all about asking permission.)

Supposedly more men are asking daddy if it's ok to marry his daughter.

The kick-ass historian Beth Bailey puts this in some context:

‘‘It was a fairly common practice based on the notion of making alliances between families and passing the daughter who was legally the property of the father onto the husband,’’ says Temple University historian Beth Bailey. ‘‘What we’re seeing right now is an odd combination of young people with progressive sentiments and a real desire for conventional gender roles and arrangements’’

At a wedding this summer, I had to stop myself from making retching noises when the bride's father devoted a significant portion of his reception speech to how he knew his son-in-law was "worthy" of his daughter because he asked for permission before proposing. And this was a couple who lived together before getting married -- not exactly a picture of conservatism.

I know I don't need to explain to you, dear Feministing readers, why asking dad for permission to assume ownership of his property marry his daughter is a pretty f'ed up practice. But if you feel like being extra grossed-out, check out this step-by-step "How to Ask Your Girlfriend's Father for Her Hand in Marriage." Yiiikes.

Thanks to Kay for that barftastic link.

Because dressing like an eating disorder is sexy!

You think this get up is just another "sexy" take on a standard skeleton costume? Guess again. Meet...Anna Rexia.

The dress "includes a headband, choker looking like a tape measurer, a removable Anna Rexia heart badge, and ribbon tie belt resembling a tape measurer! Add fishnets or thigh high socks and the look is complete!"

I want to cry.

Via Pandagon.

According to a new study, done by researchers at Wayne State and University of Michigan, black women are three times less likely to receive chemotherapy and five times less likely to receive Tamoxifen (a drug used to help treat breast cancer) than their white counterparts.

The study examined medical records from 651 women diagnosed with breast cancer at a major university hospital and cancer center in Detroit from 1990 to 1996. Of the women, 242 were white and 388 were black.

Previous studies had also shown differences in treatment rates between blacks and whites, but discerning the reasons for the differences was often difficult.

Despite previous studies having found difference in the types of cancer that black women get verse white women, it is clear that it is cultural and racial factors that motivate the difference between why white women get the treatment they need more than black women do.

Most experts were not surprised by the results of the study, but stated that figuring out why the differences existed would be difficult.

"It is sometimes very difficult to determine whether disparities are due to race or other factors," said Moy. "But in my opinion, race is a very important factor to consider."

"It is probably multifactorial," said Dr. Herbert Smitherman Jr., assistant dean of community and urban health at the Wayne State School of Medicine in Detroit. "The choices that people make are clearly a composite expression of their social and cultural circumstances, their conditions of living and the conditions of their community."

Finally, some findings that makes sense! The way you relate to you doctor is in fact different based on your cultural background. If you are distrusting of medical institutions, you may not feel comfortable demanding what you need, or engaging in a way that can fully serve you.

via ABCNews.

Yuck.

Note to freeper madness that has taken capitol hill by storm: abstinence-only education doesn't work! Are we really going to tell kids to save it for marriage?

Now, please turn off this ad and go cry in the bathroom for the fact that your tax money goes towards this, but expansion of SCHIP was vetoed. The Bush administration HATES youth.

*grunts and slams laptop shut*

via Truthdig and Think Progress.

Starting at the headline, I knew this was gonna be rich:

Women's Liberation Through Housework

The daring thesis?

Keeping a tidy house needn't be an exercise in pointless, mind-numbing tedium, regardless of what girls of my generation were taught. Many of us for a few decades there refused to admit it, but deep down, we have a perfectly respectable desire to create an attractive, peaceful haven for our families and ourselves.

Those feminists were totally wrong when they said that a life of unpaid housework isn't fulfilling! Rena Corey is soooo fulfilled by cleaning up her toddler's drool and straightening her bathroom towels, she can't understand why any woman would abandon her genetic housecleaning tendencies to work outside the home for a paycheck.

Let it be said that there's some middle ground here. I'm someone who has been known to hang curtains and keep my apartment pretty clean but, uh, I don't exactly feel a special tingle whenever my hand touches the Swiffer pole. I think Rena is missing the point here in treating housework as a sort of higher calling. This part just seems sad to me:

Oh, I don't enjoy the minute-to-minute minutiae of the job, any more than someone in the corporate world enjoys time-wasting meetings or bureaucratic directives. But I like the results -- a refuge for everyone to come home to, with a nice meal on the table and clean linens (well, most of the time) on the beds. My home is my little kingdom where, on a good day, with a lot of organization and a little bit of elbow grease, things run as smoothly and peacefully as I wish the big outside world did.

I admit, that sounds to me like a sad justification. Keeping a "little kingdom" clean might be enough for Rena, but most people don't find that ultimately fulfilling. Which is why Betty Friedan struck a chord in 1963. I don't doubt that there are a few women in this world who feel spasms of ecstasy every time they pick up a Windex bottle. I think my own mother, who quit her job when she got pregnant with me and remains (even though her kids are all grown and moved out) a full-time homemaker, would say that she's very happy with her choice.

But to say that the "second shift" is because of women's genetic predisposition to housework is just absurd. And it lets men off the hook. Rena might be satisfied to spend her adult life as the happy homemaker, but the vast majority of us are not. See, those of us who manage to part with our Swiffers long enough to venture outside for a paycheck know that, as Rena notes, there are indeed minute-to-minute unpleasant tasks in the work world. But they add up to a lot more than a sparkling toilet. They allow women to have influence in the public sphere -- the world beyond the "little kingdom," where important decisions are made about the direction of society, and where money and power change hands.

No matter how many times women like Rena tell themselves they are "renegades" for liking housework, the fact remains that they're taking the path of least resistance with domestic gender roles. That's all well and good if it makes them happy, but Friedan called this a "mystique" for a reason. Most women aren't as happy in this role as they tell themselves they are. As Moe puts it, "There's nothing zen about chapped hands and Brillo pads."

I fell for Ms. July even harder when I read her interview in the latest issue of Bust, especially this part:

Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Yes.
That's so nice to hear. There are a lot of women who don't want to associate with the word anymore. Why do you think that is?
Whenever I see people have a long answer to that question, I'm just like, "What's confusing about that?" It's just being pro your ability to do what you need to do [laughs]. I doesn't mean you don't love your boyfriend or whatever." And I wouldn't go out with any guy who wasn't a feminist. But I guess for people, especially once you kind of get more well-known, labels get really scary because it's a reduction of who you are. When I say "feminist," I mean that in the most complex, interesting, exciting way!

Word.

Monty is to his ball as I am to water and Advil.

Last night I watched my high school friend (and prom date!) Jesse get hitched. This made me think about how I probably can't avoid the sad truth that I am, in fact, a grown up. Which in turn made me take advantage of the open bar. Liberally. So, dear readers, as I have the worst hangover headache of all time (combined with the fact that it's a three day weekend and all) there will be limited posting today.

In other news, Monty had his first play date this weekend. Phoebe the pug who lives in my apartment building is now officially his bestest friend.

The head of Warner Bros. has declared that "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead." Wow. Gloria Allred is calling for a boycott.

Jenna Bush is apparently opposed to a lot of her father's policies.

On South Carolina's gender-stereotype-heavy single-sex public education.

Australia recruits stay at home moms to be volunteer firefighters.

Get ready for a 2 1/2-hour mega documentary about abortion. (This review, which notes some of the key people and interview subjects in the film, mentions only one woman in it -- the one who's seeking an abortion. Let's hope the film is not another entry in the "men talk about abortion" genre...)

Apparently a Chicago woman killed her boyfriend because she was so angry after finding his porn collection. Though something tells me there was more to the story than this...

A new film exposes human trafficking.

BlackProf connects the Isiah Thomas lawsuit with the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

And Anita Hill takes to the NYT op-ed page to discuss Thomas's new memoir.

Does gaming make women smarter?

The NFL issues a warning that teams need to "control their cheerleaders." (via Jovan)

Why we shouldn't be looking at banning super-skinny models as a response to anorexia.

A British professor talks about her upcoming book on the history of rape.

Women discuss the books that opened their eyes to feminism.

Sol Mills does corporate social responsibility for a living, she works for CSCC. Originally named Cal Safety Compliance Corporation, it pioneered the concept of safety compliance inspections in the California apparel community. The company grew and changed its name to CSCC. Today CSCC provides corporate social responsibility consulting services to a variety of industries around the world, including garments and textiles, home furnishings, hard-lines, technology, cosmetics, toys, food processing, and agriculture.

Just to make sure, the following responses represent only the personal opinions of Ms. Mills and not of CSCC, the company.

Here's Sol...

If there's anyone in the New Paltz, New York area, come check out a conference there tomorrow: Girlhood: The Challenge and Promise of Growing Up Female. I'll be speaking on a panel tomorrow morning with Senior Adviser to UNICEF, Mary Roodkowsky, and three students (Yeah, dope planning on Professor Heather Hewitt's part to include students as key voices!): Queen Bond, Julliany Lahoz, and Cristal Pimentel.

And if you're not in a studious mood this weekend, alright. But you better have yourself some fun. Feminist dance parties always work wonders for our NYC crew.

The ever-fabulous Susie Bright interviews author Erica Jong. And apparently things get a bit saucy. Fun.

Listen to it here.

What is about bathrooms and women's dismembered body parts?

Pic from krazykoreanbling.

Thanks to Lucy for the heads up!

At the University of Maryland, a traditional rape-awareness event is coming under fire.

For the past 17 years, students have participated in a rape awareness program where victims and advocates against sexual violence hang T-shirts along a huge clothesline on campus.

The program allows victims to turn their backs on the crime and have a voice. Some victims also write the names of their assailants on their shirts.

But this year, university lawyers are instructing participants not to write names on shirts to avoid potential lawsuits.

The students say they still plan on hanging the shirts with names on them. One student and a member of the Student Advocates for Education about Rape, Khalifah, says "This is just another way [of] silencing sexual assault victims."

This reminds me of my all-time favorite movie of bad-ass girls, Girls Town. There's a scene where one of the characters scrawls on their high school bathroom wall the name of the guy who raped her, identifying him as a rapist. When she comes back to the wall later, other girls have written down the names of their assailants. There's power in naming. The University of Maryland should support that.

The Women, Action & the Media conference in MA has become the hot ticket for feminists, activists and journalists. It's fun, there are amazing participants and the panels are diverse and interesting. It's not to be missed.

So get involved now and send in a proposal for a panel--you'll get free registration and travel/lodging assistance. All the info on how to submit an idea for a session is here, so hop to it!

I love how "breaking news" on this study "The Breast Cancer Epidemic" about the supposed link between abortion and breast cancer is so slyly researched by the innocuous London-based research institute PAPRI that happened to previously be commissioned by an anti-choice group to do a similar study. Additionally, the oh-so-prestigious-sounding Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons where the research was published is apparently a bunch of religious anti-choicers as well.

Who woulda thought.

Pam has a interesting post up tying together the ongoing racist reaction to Jena and the inclusion of trans people in Employment Non-Discrimination Act. She poses some thought-provoking questions about how fear of being labeled a racist or bigot keeps people from addressing their actual racist or bigoted actions.

Check it out.

Drum Major Institute's blog has a good post up by their civil justice fellow Kia Franklin on the Anucha Brown Sanders' victory of her sexual harassment lawsuit against Knicks coach Isiah Thomas.

Yes, women can be misogynist. And who better than Ann Coulter? Here's a recent interview quote of hers, via the Garance:

If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.

It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and “We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care — and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?’’

Today, the New York Times takes on a trend for new (and rich) mothers: postpartum plastic surgery. (With a really horrendous title, I might add: "Is the 'Mom Job' Really Necessary?")

"Mommy makeovers" are being marketed by plastic surgeons across the country in an attempt to reach out to women post-childbirth, so that they can get their, you know, "normal" bodies back:

In 1970, “Our Bodies, Ourselves,� the seminal guide to women’s health, described the cosmetic changes that can happen during and after pregnancy simply as phenomena. But now narrowing beauty norms are recasting the transformations of motherhood as stigma.

These unforgiving standards are the offspring of pop culture and technology, a union that treats biological changes as if they were as optional as hair color. Gossip magazines excoriate celebrity moms who don’t immediately lose their “baby weight.� Even Cookie, a luxury parenting magazine, recently ran an article that described postpregnancy breasts as “the ultimate indignity� and promoted implant surgery; a photo of droopy water-filled balloons accompanied the article.

Many women struggle with the impact of aging and pregnancy on their bodies. But the marketing of the “mommy makeover� seeks to pathologize the postpartum body, characterizing pregnancy and childbirth as maladies with disfiguring aftereffects that can be repaired with the help of scalpels and cannulae.

The Mommy Makeover website is nothing less than atrocious, with a slideshow introduction of "beautiful" mothers and their children with the text: "Embrace the feeling of being a woman." Which apparently means going under the knife.

So these surgeons are not only pitching this idea that women's bodies are "used up" after they give birth, but even physically deformed. In other words, while it's more than natural for a woman to bear a child, her post-baby body isn't natural and needs to be "fixed." (For a minimum of $10,000, I might add.)

There are way too many double standards and oxymorons to list here; all I know is that it never ceases to amaze me how obvious the war over our bodies is.

P.S. I second Feministe's request that the NY Times start to "focus more often on issues affecting more than the top 1% of the income distribution." Amen.

Having lost their appeal to the Aurora city council to shut down the new Planned Parenthood clinic, the antis have set up shop on private property -- specifically the parking lot of a Dominick's/Safeway grocery store -- adjacent to the clinic. Of course, photographing women and license plates outside of abortion providers is not exactly a novel anti-choice tactic. But this time they're not standing on public sidewalks.

As a private business, Dominick's/Safeway could throw them off the premises and make them stop this intimidation. So call Safeway corporate and ask that the Aurora location do just that:

1-877-SAFEWAY(1-877-723-3929)

Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m, Local Time
Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Local Time

The Dominick's/Safeway store in question is at 3025 E. New York St, Aurora, Ill. 60504.

UPDATE: Folks in comments are saying they're having better luck with this number for Safeway corporate offices in Pleasanton: 925-467-3000 .

Nice. After discovering The View co-host Elzabeth Hasselbeck's belief that emergency contraception is abortion, it was great to see her idiocy get shut down by Whoopi. (Note: It happens about two minutes in, but is totally worth the wait)

Hat tip (and happy birthday!) to Michael.

A newly release study shows that panic attacks may be linked to an increase in heart disease risk. While this may not seem that shocking to some, there are bigger questions here we should be asking about the panic attack phenomena among women in particular. Via the bane of my existence, WebMD:

Older women who experience panic attacks appear to have an increased risk for having heart attacks or heart-related death, new research suggests.

Postmenopausal women in the study who reported at least one full-blown panic attack within six months of being interviewed were four times as likely as other older women to have a heart attack or related death over the next five years.

They were three times as likely to have either a heart attack, heart-related death, or stroke, and nearly twice as likely to die from any cause.

I will admit that the wonderful combination of 1. a personal history with panic attacks, 2. a family history of heart disease and 3. hypochondriacal neurosis makes me much more eager to find out further information on this, but doesn't exclude the recently discovered fact that panic attacks are twice as common in women than they are in men.

I can bet there are a number of readers here that are afflicted with the same three attributes listed above (after all, everyone seems to be having panic attacks these days), but why so many more women? And should we really be surprised? I've been trying to find further studies on women and panic attacks but I'm coming up short. Can anyone else weigh in?

I’m always a little distrustful of conference dances. You know, the Saturday night affairs in the ballroom of the hotel where all the scholars you’ve seen pore over papers with academic language or activists you’ve watched try to fit their work into words, shed their pens and lexicon and shimmy to a bad DJ?

Well, I approached the National Women’s Studies Association’s annual conference dance, back in June, with the same apprehension and was pleasantly surprised to find that feminist scholars—especially those of the third wave variety—were out on the dance floor, doing their thing, and doing their thing remarkably well. One such dancer was Astrid Henry, who I later found out wrote an important book about intergenerational feminism called Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism. She teaches at St. Mary's College where I'll be heading later this month to talk about my own book, thanks to her colleague Amanda Littauer.

The book is academic in its approach and no doubt dense, but it is written with a vocabulary that the average college gal wouldn’t have a hard time getting through. The content is largely focused on the spuriously (see, I can sound academic too) framework of feminist mothers and daughters as a substitute for second and third waves.

Feministing party TONIGHT in the BAY!!!!

9pm $8-20 sliding scale ALL AGES!!!
@ the Rickshaw Stop www.rickshawstop.com

Feministing, along with Wiretap Music are throwing the bash of the month. Come check out some live music with awesome Bay Area bands and support the feminist website that keeps giving!

More info and invite after the jump. . .

Awww, I wish I had three uteri. I'd even settle for my one if it came with a goofy grin like that.

Pic from harveyandeileen.

There's a great Book Club going on over at TPMCafe on Pollitt's latest book, Learning to Drive. (You know the vagina dentata intellectualis one.) I just put up my post, Humanizing Feminism: The radical notion that feminists are people. Join the conversation!

Rebecca Traister is so good sometimes that I get highly annoyed. Her latest, for example, an article on Susan Faludi's new book, "The Terror Dream," is so frigging thorough that I'm left with nothing to add. So I'll just quote shamelessly:

You'd almost forgotten the feeling of impotence provoked by 9/11? Faludi hasn't. Here's her recounting of the people lined up at the blood banks with no one to give blood to, the police faking "live saves" to cheer up rescue dogs on the pile, because even the canines were depressed. There's the adoration of the firefighters and of the "Let's Roll!" male heroes of Flight 93 -- remembered always for their college sports achievements and their regular-guy toughness -- while the stewardesses who boiled water to throw on the terrorists were written out of the myth.

Just when you think there can't be more, Faludi concludes Chapter 3 by asking, "If women were ineligible for hero status, for what would they be celebrated?" Well, see Chapter 4: "Perfect Virgins of Grief." From here on out you'll find the victimization of Jessica Lynch, and the tale of how widows -- especially stay-at-home-mom widows, and especially widows who were pregnant -- became the golden geese of the morning shows. She recalls articles about how lonely all those haughty, self-satisfied single career women were now that we'd been attacked by terrorists and they had no one to snuggle up with at night; the Bush administration's phony interest in women's rights in the Middle East; makeup tips on how to look like a pale, pure angel; the decrease in female bylines; the nesting obsession.

Seriously, I can't wait to read this book.

Amanda has more.

Human Rights Watch has just released a report, Over Their Dead Bodies, documenting how the stringent abortion ban in Nicaragua is killing women. In fact, the ban has caused the deaths of at least 80 women since it was put into action 11 months ago.

The U.S.-based rights group said women with risky pregnancies whose lives might be saved by aborting the fetus were dying because of the ban on terminations in any circumstance.

"They died because of the intimidation effect of penalizing abortion," said Human Rights Watch investigator Angela Heimburger, presenting the data in Managua.

The ban includes rape victims and women who risk dying in childbirth. But women in Nicaragua are fighting back; hundreds marched in Managua last week calling for an end to the ban.

He gave Chris Matthews (who thinks vaginas are debate-stoppers) the interview he deserved. I was dying laughing last night.

There have been various times here where I have taken on articles that fall in the category of "science journalism" and usually have headlines such as "women prefer good looking men." Headlines designed to remind the public that essentialism never died and despite common sense and clear evidence to the contrary, so and so study proves otherwise. So last week, I made the choice to ignore the headline, "He's Happier, She's Less So." I didn't know where to start and comments around the sphere were just too annoying.

Lucky for me a reader was on it and sent me a blog run by linguists that broke it down!

A great local event (in Columbia, Missouri) that could use some support from like-minded feminists across the country:

On November 10th, 2007, the Women's and Gender Studies Undergraduate Group of the University of Missouri-Columbia will be hosting the "You Could Stop Traffic In These Clothes: Stop Traffic Now Fashion Show." The goal of the fashion show is to awareness about the devastating problem of human trafficking, and we will feature local designers' work at the show. Human trafficking is the violent act of transporting and selling people for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Proceeds from the fashion show event will go to anti-human trafficking work.

The fashion show is part of larger anti-trafficking efforts, which include a three-day conference that will be held at the University of Missouri-Columbia in March 2008. (They've put out a call for papers.) They're also seeking donations of merchandise to sell to at the fashion show, and monetary donations for the show and the conference. More info at www.stoptrafficnow.com.

The feminists at my alma mater have an awesome history of combining creativity with activism, and these events sound great.

Contact info and how to donate, after the jump.

Over at HuffPo today, Rachel Sklar rants about the sexist coverage of Hillary Clinton. (I also have a piece up there -- an expanded version of my post over the weekend about that awful NYT article on her laugh.)

On a related note, I get really annoyed when people suggest to me that pointing out this sexist coverage is somehow an endorsement of Hillary Clinton as a candidate. It's not.

One year ago the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal against the Texas sex toy ban. To commemorate it, they've just done the same thing for a similar law in Alabama.

The law does not ban the possession of sex toys, and it doesn't regulate other items, including condoms or virility drugs. Residents may legally purchase sex toys out of state for use in Alabama, or they may buy sexual devices in Alabama that have a "bona fide medical" purpose.

Stupid. But it gets even less consistent.

Similar laws have been upheld in Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, but struck down in Louisiana, Kansas and Colorado, said Mark Lopez, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney in New York who worked on the Alabama case until recently.

So, make a note, folks. Deem your horniness a medical condition in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. Or, import your sex toys from somewhere else. Now if you'll excuse me, I feel the need for some alone time.

Thanks, Sunshine for the link.

Contributed by Jennifer Baumgardner

Back when there was no Morning After Pill or legal abortion but a radical women's liberation movement, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer were the Thelma and Louise of the "California Feminists." They made illegal abortion referrals, learned DIY gynecology, created the very first feminist women's health center, and were famous for whipping our specula and mirrors to show women how to look at their own vaginas and cervixes. In 1971, Lorraine Rothman invented the Del-Em, short for "dirty little machine," a device that could perform very early abortions using a Mason jar, aquarium tubing, and a syringe.

Sadly, Rothman died Tuesday, September 25, at her home in California, just a week after her diagnosis with bladder cancer. She was 75. Margaret Mead once congratulated Lorraine as having succeeded in producing the most original and important new product of the 20th century. While menstrual extraction and the Del-Em never became widely popular--in part because abortion became legal in 1973 and women didn't have to resort to home procedures anymore--the invention cemented Rothman's historical significance. Think of Lorraine and all she did while on earth whenever you see a Mason jar, a clinic, or your own cervix.

This cracks me up:

Says Kate, who snapped this picture in a CVS in DC, "Because a Real Man who uses Axe body wash must have a black loofah."

Sexual harassment cases are certainly not new in the arena of sports. There have been several high profile cases related to big and famous athletes sexually harassing women, whether in the hotel after party or at the job. The media has always played a big role in how we perceive the accused verse accuser. Whether the athlete be portrayed as a big evil aggressive monster-beast the general public is repulsed by or the woman as a money hungry *fan* that just got too crazy and was lucky that she got any attention at all, and now she just wants his money! Gender-based and racial stereotypes usually come to the forefront of the popular imagination.

Either way, sexual harassment cases are bad press for all people involved. As we have found here before, trying a case on blogs is not always productive, when you don't know all the facts of a case. So, while I was reading about this case in yesterday's New York Times, thinking oh noes, here we go again. Although this story hasn't gotten a ton of press and mostly I think people are sad the Knicks are continually not in good favor in the media.

Former basketball player Isiah Thomas (I used to love him when I was a kid, I mean LOVE!) is being sued by the former Vice President of marketing and business operations for the Knicks, Anucha Browne Sanders. Shortly after she filed the complaint, she was fired and is suing and one of her complaints is that she was fired because she brought up potentially being sexually harassed by Thomas.

Just wanted to say one more congratulations to the Aurora Planned Parenthood, which opened its doors today!

So as we expected, the woman in Nebraska who was suing a Federal Judge for banning the word "rape" at her rape trial, was throw out. The same case that inspired Ernie Chambers to sue god.

A Nebraska federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against a state judge who barred anyone from saying "rape" or "victim" during a criminal trial, ruling Tuesday that the accuser failed to prove that he should intervene.

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf also determined Tory Bowen didn't provide enough evidence to show her lawsuit against Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront wasn't frivolous.

As Norbizness mentioned in both prior comments threads about this case, it is very difficult to have a free speech suit about language used in the court room since language is already extremely restricted there. So what possible recourse could she have taken? What do we do, when crimes against women aren't taken as serious as they are and aren't allowed to be called what they are?

If you can't call something what it is, it is very hard to convince a jury it happened. The accused is, however, being charged with first degree sexual assault.

via AP.

The latest Dove ad dealing with women's body image issues is called "Onslaught":

The commercial is indebted to Jean Kilbourne's pioneering "Killing Us Softly" series, which was one of the first video explorations of how all these images of women's bodies we see in advertising really add up and influence how we view women's bodies in real life.

What I find fascinating about this Dove ad is how the fashion/beauty industry is finally portrayed like the drug it is. I mean, the whole, "Talk to your kids" message is usually used for things like weed or cigarettes or drunk driving. It's not often associated with the portrayal of women in mainstream advertising, which also has an extremely destructive influence on girls (and boys) who consume these ads. It's a powerful message.

Of course, as with all of these "body-positive" Dove ads, this message is coming from a company selling beauty products. A company that wants you to believe your thighs need firming and your underarms need "fixing" so that you'll buy their shit. A company whose parent corporation, Unilever, has pledged not to use size 0 models, but also makes products like Axe eau de asshole and skin-whitening cream. These things are hard to reconcile.

via Jezebel.

So if you are in the Bay this Wednesday night, come out, come out, to support your favorite website!

Feministing, along with Wiretap Music are throwing the bash of the month. Come check out some live music with awesome Bay Area bands and support the feminist website that keeps giving!

More info after the jump. . .

The city of Aurora has decided to allow the new Planned Parenthood clinic to open its doors!

This is awesome news. Thanks to everyone who spoke at city council hearings, attended the rally, sent donations, or helped raise awareness.

I think we all needed some good news today. The Supreme Court is letting a NY ruling stand that forces religious-based social service agencies to cover contraception for employees.

New York is one of 23 states that require employers that offer prescription benefits to employees to cover birth control pills as well, the groups say. The state enacted the Women's Health and Wellness Act in 2002 to require health plans to cover contraception and other services aimed at women, including mammography, cervical cancer screenings and bone density exams.

Catholic Charities and other religious groups argued New York's law violates their First Amendment right to practice their religion because it forces them to violate religious teachings that regard contraception as sinful.

Okay, then don't use it. But you still have to respect your employees' rights.

NARAL Pro-Choice New York Kelli Conlin said of the ruling, “Again, the Court has shown that women have a right to access reproductive health care services under their employer health plans. This law ensures that women will be able to afford the vital care the need to make healthy decisions."

Several readers have emailed me to say that today's content is particularly depressing. (Even with Monday Monty Blogging?!) So I'm happy to bring you a little happy-making video to counteract all the crappy sexism we posted about today. Cheer up, folks. Think furry, happy monsters laughing.

In addition to being heinously ugly, this shirt represents some serious misogyny. And it's being sold at Wal-Mart. A woman in North Carolina who noticed the shirt is also a stalking victim, and she's justifiably horrified.

"People don't realize how serious stalking is," she said. "You constantly live in fear, look over your shoulder and suffer from psychological and physical symptoms due to the stress of the stalker."

She wondered aloud: What's next?

"Some say it's rape, I call it hot sex"? Or: "Some call it domestic violence, I say I'm just teaching her a lesson"?

Exactly. "Joke" shirts like these only further promote the idea that stalking is just romance taken a little too far. It's not. It's about power and control, and it's fucking scary as hell.

The NC Coalition Against Domestic Violence says that they're taking action and have been in contact with Wal-Mart. So far, no response.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised however, when you consider the company's history with sexist shirts...

Here's some contact info for Wal-Mart's corporate offices, but they seem pretty nondescript. If anyone has better contact information, leave it comments.

Thanks to Alaine for the link.

This is going to ruin your day. A young woman of color in Los Angeles had her wrist broken by a school security officer after not cleaning up a piece of dropped birthday cake to his satisfaction. During the attack he said, "hold still nappy head."

The girl, 16 year-old Pleajhai Mervin, was subsequently expelled and arrested for littering and battery. Because as you can clearly see from the video still above, this teenage girl was battering the shit out a full grown, beefy security guard. Uh huh.

But it gets worse. When the girl's mother went to the school to complain and rightfully demand that this guard be arrested--she was arrested and suspended from her job with the school district.

Students at the scene captured the assault on their cell phones; one such student was also beaten.

Students have planned a walk-out in protest. Do your part--spread the word. Oh No a WoC PhD has the contact info for the school and school district office.

Via Women of Color Blog.

I admit, I'm not much of a fashionista. I don't follow Fashion Week here in New York, and much of my fashion sense comes from the good luck of once having a fabulously-dressed roommate who worked in the industry that I copied off of shamelessly. (Now that I'm living without my dear friend, my style has atrophied severely. Come back, Tris!)

But despite being an outsider to the fashion world, I still found this pretty interesting:

The spring 2008 fashion shows, which ended Friday in Milan and continue this week in Paris, went off as usual, with a mob of breathless editors and retailers surging through the streets of the Italian fashion capital in search of the next new thing. The models were the typical young thoroughbreds, some of them still in their gawky teenage years and not yet at ease with the striking features that have propelled them into the spotlight.

And, as usual, models of color were an uncommon sight.

Writer Robin Givhan (perhaps making up for her atrocious Hillary/cleavage article) notes that these "whiteouts" were common on many of this season's runways, and says that this lack of diversity is a pretty powerful thing:

[S]itting along the runway in Europe, surrounded by an international audience, one realizes the power the fashion industry has in shaping our vision of beauty. A single room contains the imagemakers: the designer, magazine editors, photographers and stylists whose job it is to tell you how you'll want to look in six months. They sell fantasy, romance, sex appeal and power through their glossy images. They bombard the public with information about what is mainstream and what is subversive, about what is rarefied and what is dross.

...So what happens if women of color are not included in the conversation about beauty and femininity? What happens when those lighthearted stories about how to apply the latest shades in makeup never include examples of ebony skin? Or when the most influential designers say through their aesthetic choices that dark skin is not part of their vision? Audiences applaud and cheer the landmark diversity introduced on television by "Ugly Betty" and its fictional Mode magazine, but no one is objecting to the lack of diversity at real fashion magazines.

Good stuff. (Though, of course, this lack of representation of women of color is hardly a new thing in fashion industry.) Jezebel was all over this story last month, making the point that that black women spend more than $20 billion on apparel each year. So in addition to racism, it's not even in the best interest of the industry financially to continue with this nonsense.

Any thoughts?

On Mondays I'm generally a ball of stress. Today, for example, I'm freaking because I didn't answer nearly enough emails over the weekend or get any writing done because I thought it was more important to lay on the couch and watch the entire season of Dexter. And then I saw Monty sleeping like this.

So, on this most stressy of days, I suggest that we all take a cue from Monty and use our office chairs for deep relaxation and napping, not working. (A gal can wish, no?)

Good for chasing (and stabbing) criminals!

Female police officers in Italy have high-heeled shoes as part of their uniforms. Seriously.

In Italy, the land of fashion and elegance, it's only natural that public officials want to look good too. And so the Italian police ordered high heeled-shoes for its 14,750 female police officers, who wanted to give their uniform a younger and sexier look.

Cause crime-fighting is hot! This isn't to say I'm not a fan of heels. Hell, I'm wearing a pair right now. But mandated heels for those who are supposed to be able to protect the public is just...stupid. And apparently they don't even fit well.

One female inspector told the Italian daily La Stampa that she found the shoes very attractive at first. But when she wore them for the first time to a police party, she "cried with pain," she said.

I'm sure she'll get plenty of work done in those.

Via Jezebel.

It sounds hot because it is: Our gal Samhita is being honored by the National Sexuality Resource Center as a "Champion of Sexual Literacy"! We couldn't be more proud.

The NRSC has an audio slideshow with Samhita, in which she explains "her years growing up in New York state, her riot grrrl phase, and her 'coming out' (despite the fact she dates men)" and gives a "feminist history for dummies" lesson.

Check it out.