August 2009 Archives

Costco takes a racist toy off the shelves. The question of how the hell it got there to begin with remains.

A study shows that despite the stereotype, women aren't more "tentative" than men.

Newsweek on "America's War on the Overweight."

Circulation of women's magazines are sharply declining.

Amanda at the Sexist takes on gender misidentification in reporters' coverage of the DC women who were murdered recently.

Check out the launch of Harlot's Parlour, a new blog about sex, sexuality and sex work.

During the third season of Mad Men Feministing writers will offer some of our thoughts on feminist moments, scenes, and themes in the new episodes in order to start a discussion about these topics in our community. *WARNING: Lots of spoilers follow.

Derby Day and "going back in time."

Change was once again central to this episode, but this time the focus was on class in a way it hasn't been on Mad Men before. We got to see old money performing class in a way that is quickly becoming antiquated and the complexities of living as an upwardly mobile person uncomfortable in a world one wasn't born into. All of this while perched precariously at the end of the American dream that defined the 1950s. I think this will quickly become one of my favorite Mad Men episodes, an hour of television so layered I'll be able to return to it again for new ideas and insights. -Jos

I spent this whole episode jotting stuff down like "Peggy is tough" and "Pete and his wife scare me", so I'm definitely going to have to watch it again! - Jessica

Joan and Jane's subtext confrontation.

Did anyone else find Jane's attempt to one up Joan a little too on the nose? There was just no subtlety to anything she said, like she was trying too hard. And then ending the conversation with an attempt at a classic Joan walk away? No one can do that better than Joan. To me this conversation hinted at Jane's inability to play the class role she's been thrown into, something that became incredibly clear later in the episode. -Jos

You know, I think you're right - that it was meant to display how uncomfortable she is in her new rich wife role.  And of course that awkwardness was only exacerbated by her drunkenness towards the end of the show.  It made me even more aware of how young she is, as well - she seemed like a little kid to me.  Also, Joan rocks. - Jessica

Peggy and her secretary Olive.

This episode was full of character pairings I found absolutely fascinating. Olive represents what Peggy should have become - she dresses in a way reminiscent of season 1 Peggy, has been a secretary all her life, and feels strongly about the divide between secretaries and their bosses... or more accurately the divide between women and men, and she needs to be reminded that she works for Peggy. Olive thinks she needs to protect this young woman, but Peggy really does seem to be on top of things. -Jos

When Peggy says to Olive, "you are scared aren't you???" she is touching on the fear of Peggy becoming like the men and the level of discomfort and confusion Olive is feeling with a woman in a position of power. -Samhita

I really loved the exchange between Olive and Peggy - highness aside, it really was a sweet moment.  And I just can't get over how much more I love Peggy with each passing episode.  From her disdain for the sexism of dudes in her office to her calling them out on only asking her about "brassieres, body odor and make up," she is just kicking ass lately. And hey, she says it: "I'm in a very good place right now."  Couldn't agree more. - Jessica

This is too good. Robert McDonnell, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, wrote a Master's thesis calling working women and feminists "detrimental" to the family. Wait, it gets better.

He said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

Via TPM.

This weekend was Vanessa's 29th birthday - so please give her some b-day love in comments. For those of you who don't know V personally - and that's most of you! - here are some essential things you should be aware of:

She will always win in a dance-off. (See picture above.)

She throws a mean party.

She can find orange salamanders in the woods in record time.

She is an amazing friend and sister (sniff).

If you get her on a good day, she'll tell you about the time she threatened to beat up Claire Danes. Seriously.

Possibly triggering

Has anyone seen this movie? A friend of mine passed it on as something to maybe show in the Gender & Pop Culture class I'm teaching at Rutgers this semester, but I thought I'd see if any lovely Feministing readers could tell me more about it first. It seems like a combination of Killing Us Softly and Tough Guise - and those two filmmakers are featured in this clip. The short bit on hip hop gave me pause - I think Byron Hurt's Beyond Beats and Rhymes is probably better for that subject. Any thoughts?

Thee Wall Street Journal reports on a new study that shows only 13% of Wikipedia contributors are female.

So true....ladies.

You know an article is going to be blogging gold when it starts off like this:

As our society abandons the conservative values that make women into ladies, women with grace and dignity have become an endangered species--especially on today's college campuses. The kind of woman who inspired Tom Jones' song "She's a Lady" has become an antiquated figure from America's past.

Oh yes, Eva Lorraine Molina at Townhall wants us to know that she's no liberal whorebag - and she wishes conservative women would stop acting like us sex-crazed feminists, too!

The feminist movement's war on conservatism in America has killed chivalry and trained too many women to think and act like men. As a result, many young conservative women do not know what it means to be a lady.

But don't worry, Molina is here to tell us exactly what being a "lady" entails.

A lady does not tell dirty jokes along with men and she does not tolerate men telling dirty jokes in her presence. She does not swear, and she is not considered "one of the guys." In spite of new fashion trends, a lady always dresses appropriately, leaving a lot to the imagination. When at a social gathering, a lady does not do things she will regret the next day. Above all, a lady is well-mannered, dignified, gracious, and kind.

Sounds fun. But what's particularly telling about Molina's idealized notion of being a "lady" is that it's directly related to whether or not men will find you marriageable - since getting hitched is the ultimate goal of all ladies, of course.

I have heard many of my male peers place women into three categories: "the ones to mess around with, the ones to date, and the ones to marry." Though this is a rather crude way of categorizing women, it shows that men do recognize and value the qualities that make a woman a lady.

No, it shows that your guy friends are assholes. Big ones.

Ladies are the kind of women that men can take home to Mom and Dad and that most men want to marry. Being considered "marriage material" is an indicator that a woman is to be respected; most men who deem a woman as such treat her with the utmost respect. For men, ladies are at the top of the female totem pole, and conservative women need to take pride in the fact that they are worthy of time, love, and commitment.

Article-skewering aside, this just made me sad. Too many women think that their worth is completely based on what guys feel about them - whether or not they're considered fuckable, dateable, marriageable, etc, makes a lot of women feel valuable. It's all bullshit. And while I feel compassion for Molina - because it can't be fun to think of yourself that way - it irritates me to no end when women perpetuate this crap. Though I suppose I shouldn't be shocked, considering Molina is an intern with the anti-feminist, pro-hope chest, anti-rectum-misuse (seriously) Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute.

So I think I'll continue to curse, tell dirty jokes, try things that I may regret and keep company with women who do the same. Because at the end of the day, me and my ladies know that all people are deserving of respect - not just the ones who fall in line with antiquated sexist stereotypes.

What's the point of having a dog if you can't occasionally embarrass him by dressing him up in clothes, right? (Actually, he kind of loved wearing this shirt. He walked around in it for a good hour.)

From the early 80s...

And now.

Pioneering photojournalist Mary Morris Lawrence (pictured above) died last week at age 95. At her request, the last line of her obituary reads: "In lieu of flowers, Mary would ask you to join the League of Women Voters, shop at Farmer Joes, write a letter to the editor, or break a glass ceiling!" (Which reminds me of this post by Amanda Marcotte, asking folks to "politicize" her death.)

As we mark the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a few relevant reads:
Katrina's Hidden Race War, The Nation
Waiting for Charity in New Orleans, The Root
Lunchtime Lessons from New Orleans, The American Prospect
Levees and lives: New Orleans four years after Hurricane Katrina, Global Comment
Remembering Hurricane Katrina, Feministe

On the struggle to reconcile Ted Kennedy's stellar public record with his far-less-than-stellar personal record. (See Kay Steiger and SarahMC.)

Rebecca Walker responds to Katie Roiphe's piece on feminism and motherhood.

Monica Roberts on Caster Semenya and the parameters of femininity.

How food stamps influence women's nutrition.

Women write about their experiences with infertility and pregnancy loss.

Glamour received an outpouring of letters after running a photo of a woman who wasn't super-skinny. Obviously women want to see more "real" bodies in magazines. Think Glamour will actually do something about that? Me, neither.

Asian American women are more likely than other Americans to think about and attempt suicide.

Support the campaign to remove the Gender Identity Disorder category from the international diagnosis manuals.

Listening to Latinas, a new report by the National Women's Law Center, "explores the causes of the dropout crisis for Latinas and identifies the actions needed to improve their graduation rates and get them ready for college."

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Dear Professor Foxy,

Thanks,
Conflicted

Dear Conflicted -

I in no way think you are going against yourself. In the words of a trans woman friend of mine who I spoke to about this question "everyone has the right to sexual pleasure with the body they have." Your body does not match your gender and that is hard. Let's think of ways to make it less of a disconnect. I love the support of your partner. First, how do you and she refer to your genitalia? Instead of penis, why not use words like clit, pussy, or whatever word you like the best. You are female and, in sexual situations, should feel free to use female words to refer to your genitals. This may feel awkward at first, but I think you'll grow into it.

What do you picture in your mind? If you are thinking about penis, penis it will be. Think of your genitalia as female and it may start to be much more comfortable. Inner voices will likely tell you that you are lying to yourself, try ignoring them or answering them with "it is MY clit." A lot of people, trans and cis, do not use the biologically accurate terms to refer to their genitalia and gain power and pleasure from this.

As you move through transitioning, you deserve sexual pleasure. Frankly, I think it will be a good release.

As to your question for the future, sex reassignment surgery (SRS) has different outcomes for different people, but the majority of trans women do have sexual sensation. I also think that many of the things that you describe (uncomfortableness with your genitalia and body) will be alleviated. In all people, being comfortable with one's body is key to enjoying sex.

Choose your surgeon carefully, see pictures of her work ahead of time to make sure you like the physical outcome. Make sure she will talk to you about your fears and concerns. See if you can find other trans women (the internet is a great resource for this) who have used the same surgeon. How do they feel about their results?

Keep in mind that this is surgery and your body is going to take time to heal, do not panic if it takes up a few months for sensation to develop in your genitalia or any place where you have had surgery.

Sexual sensations may also be different and try to embrace this. It is a mark of a new body and a new relationship with your body.

Last, celebrate. Why not have a vulvatastic party with your partner? You are coming into a new phase and that should be honored. Transitioning can be difficult, but there are rewards and happiness along the way. Enjoy them!

Best,
Professor Foxy

PS Due to the topic of this post, comments will be moderator approved. If you have questions, please see Feministing's comments policy.

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

Josh Phillips and Rachel Griffin make one heck of a team. The pair met at Central Michigan University, where they were both members of Sexual Aggression Peer Advocates, CMU's sexual assault education and prevention group. Today, they're taking the mission of that group off campus and all over the country.

Dr. Griffin is an Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University. Griffin's written works, including her doctoral dissertation, address the intersection of gender and race.

Phillips is the founder of East Coast Walkers, a group of CMU students who, in the summer of 2008, walked from Miami to Boston to raise awareness about sexual violence. His book about the experience, 1800 Miles, comes out this fall. The Walkers blogged about their trek along the way, and one entry, written from South Carolina, filled me with hope:

"Something remarkable keeps happen on this trip: our restaurant bills disappear. We will stop in a small mom and pop diner, the waitress will undoubtedly inquire what we are doing, and an eavesdropping patron will sneakily pay our tab as we devour whatever food is on the table. It must be magic..."

It's not magic, but something better: it's a sign that Phillips, Griffin and the East Coast Walkers are not alone in wishing and working for an end to sexual violence.

Phillips and Griffin regularly team up to speak about sexual violence, and to teach workshops on awareness and prevention. Their team approach works well, Griffin says, because when they're addressing a crowd on the topic of sexual violence, "there are people who can hear Josh who can't hear me and vice versa."

And now, without further ado, the inaugural Feministing Five, with Rachel Griffin and Josh Phillips.

A review of Still Here, a book of photography of Katrina 4 years later.

Obama's abstinence FAIL from Amplify.

Women activists in Iran are not buying Ahmadinejad's nomination of the first female Cabinet ministers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Tami's must-read take on the NYT article about black women and hair.

What if black women were white women?

Mali's President Declines to Sign Legislation Expanding Women's Rights

Have a great weekend folks!

Who said there is no feminism in hiphop?

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.

It has been a frightening week to be trans in Washington, D.C.

Miriam linked previously to RMJ's excellent critique of Metro Weekly's coverage of an attack on a transgender woman by a gay man. I was particularly struck by Ray Young's approach to solidarity between gay and trans folks. His statement that, "I let her know that I was one of the family, that I was homosexual" assumes that gay and trans individuals are automatically allies. Of course, this is following his violent attack on Janey Kay, a trans woman. Young seems to think he should be perceived as a friend to trans folks just because he's gay and regardless of his actual actions.

I see this largely as the product of the often tokenizing tacking on of "T" after "LGB." As RMJ points out, Metro Weekly claims to be "Washington DC's GLBT Newsmagazine," but their coverage of this story shows a woeful lack of understanding of and respect for transgender individuals. The fact is, solidarity between gay and trans folks is not an automatic reality. Cisgender gay folks can still be transphobic, as Young demonstrates. The attack on two trans men at Fab Lounge, a D.C. gay bar, in March is more proof that gay spaces can be sites of violence against trans folks. I certainly hope for solidarity and community under the queer and trans umbrella. But there is a great deal of difference among LGBT folks and support for each other's causes and needs is something that takes real work.

The anti-trans violence continued in D.C. on Wednesday when two transgender women were stabbed on a public street in the middle of the day. Both of them were taken to the hospital where Tyli'a "NaNa Boo" Mack died. The location of the attack is particularly frightening:

The stabbings occurred about two blocks from the North Capitol Street offices of Transgender Health Empowerment, a private social services group that provides drop-in services to transgender people, including transgender youth.

If gay media is screwing up on trans issues it is sadly no surprise mainstream news sources are getting it so wrong. The prevalence of violent attacks against trans folks is horrible enough. The situation is compounded when the press does not respect the transgender community enough to write about us in ways that are accurate and recognize our humanity.

The othering of trans individuals and confusion about our identities in the press makes us seem strange and unknowable and bolsters fear. Poor reporting can further the dehumanization and lack of understanding that support a culture of transphobic violence.

For those of you in the D.C. area: there will be a candlelight vigil tonight at 6:30pm at 209 Q St. NW.

Concerning this news story.

Transcript after the jump.

Last week, I was lucky enough to be in the Bay Area and was invited to do my annual blog training at the YO! summer program (a project of New America Media). I have gone for the past 3 years and the students and staff never cease to amaze me. The YO summer program is in part funded by the San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and is focused on youth that have been in some way touched by the juvenile justice system. They seek to give youth skills with the hope to not only tell their stories, but to stay out of the criminal injustice system. Harris has recently come under scrutiny after having been accused of allowing "illegals" back on the street due to her support of re-entry programs. This criticism has been part of conservative attacks on spending money on rehabilitation for criminal offenders.

This year we tried something different at the summer program. In trainings in the past we have usually discussed what blogging is and how young journalists and media makers can use new media in their work. This year, Neela Banerjee, director of the program (and my BFF), asked me to focus explicitly on what it means to be blogging about gender and sexism. So that is what I did.

We started by asking the group what they perceived sexism to be. Around the board the youth answered (2 women and 3 young men) that it was pay discrimination, hiring practices and the "get back in the kitchen" attitude. They hit the nail on the head, but interestingly their perception of gender issues were ones they had not experienced themselves. When I asked them to think about the ways sexism plays out in domestic violence, sexual violence or even in popular culture, they were more reserved in their responses.

Finally, I asked them what they felt about the depiction of women in Lil' Wayne's track (see above), "Every Girl," and had them compose their own blog entries around the topic. They had to write three paragraphs where they listen to the lyrics and defend their point of view. Initially, most of the youth were stuck, debating how to write about a track critically that they enjoyed so much. I admitted myself how much I can enjoy hiphop that may not portray women that well, but can evaluate it critically while still enjoying it (at least most of the time).

I'm pleased as punch to announce the revival of our interview series and to introduce Feministing's new interviews contributor, Chloe! Chloe will be profiling amazing feminist women using a new format that we think everyone will enjoy: The Feminist Five. (No, you'll just have to wait and see.)

More about Chloe:

Chloe Angyal grew up in Sydney, Australia, and credits her radical parents and her all-girls high school for raising her to think that feminism was just common sense. She is a newly-minted graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in Sociology and founded Equal Writes, Princeton's first feminist publication. At Princeton, she worked in eating disorders awareness and prevention, and ran an all-girls dance company. Chloe has just moved to Manhattan, where she works for The Op Ed Project and Choices in Childbirth. She aims to be a writer, a professional feminist and an all-around good person.

Apparently because scientists think men won't take it. According to an article in Science Progress, outdated ideas of who's responsibility birth control and contraception is, has put the burden on women's shoulders.

Via Broadsheet.

Let's pretend you are a straight couple, in a monogamous long-term relationship, and you don't want a kid. Consider your options: A woman can choose from 11 forms of contraception -- including barrier methods like the diaphragm, permanent sterilization, and that holy grail of the sexual revolution, the pill, and its more recent and even more foolproof sisters in hormonal birth control, the ring and injectibles. A man can choose two: condoms or a vasectomy.

Right, so according to science, if you are woman it is your problem if you get pregnant or end up with an STD, so it just makes sense if you take care of the birth control. Doesn't sound very scientific does it. Furthermore, the financial burden, time constraints and side effects of hormonal birth control on women has another implication on not only time, but unfair burden.

Via Lisa Campo-Engelstein at Science Progress

Not being responsible for some or all of these economic, health-related, and other burdens is a significant boon for men. Men typically do not have to dedicate time and energy to contraceptive care, pay out of pocket for the usually expensive and sometimes frequent (often monthly, or at least four times a year) supply of contraceptives, acquire the knowledge about contraception and reproduction needed to effectively contracept, deal with the medicalization of one's reproductive health, endure the bodily invasion of contraception, suffer the health-related side effects and the mental stress of being responsible for contraception, and face the social repercussions of their contraceptive decisions (such as whether to use a particular contraceptive or to switch contraceptives), and the moral reproach for contraceptive failures.

What both Lisa Campo-Engelstein from Science Progress and Amy Benfer at Broadsheet acknowledge is that this outdated ideology not only leads to the false belief that men wouldn't take contraception, but also leads to a disempowerment of men taking responsibility for contraception. As in, they benefit from the structural belief that it is a woman's responsibility and it is a lose-lose all around. To counter that narrative would take a leap of faith on behalf of women and an insistence by the science community around the effectiveness of male birth control and the corresponding research, development and distribution of such measures. So, it is possible, but sex education, the science community and health care providers would have to overcome the sexism endemic in the way we teach and distribute contraception.

Elle Magazine breaks down swimsuit controversies through out history.

ESPN writer Scoop Jackson tries to slut shame Brett Favre. Seriously?

Chiara Volpato, a professor of social psychology at the University of Milan, explains why conservative ideas die hard in Italy--especially while Berlusconi is around.

Feministe reports: Since 2005, nine women who lived at the edges of the poor community in this small North Carolina city have disappeared. And the mainstream media doesn't seem to give a shit.

Bloggers react to Chris Brown's pop apology.

Firing woman for taking unauthorized breaks to pump breast milk is just fine, Ohio top court rules.

I'm really excited about Vogue Evolution, a group competing in the current season of America's Best Dance Crew. The crew members are black and Latino. Four are out gay men and one is an out trans woman. From the beginning they've been very upfront about their identities (a relief after seeing so many euphemistic referrals to queer people on TV including the insulting "Choice Fab-u-lous" category at this year's Teen Choice Awards). Check out this video from the first episode of the season where they introduce themselves and talk a little bit about being gay and trans:

Voguing has been around since the Harlem Renaissance and has been dominated by queer people of color. Pony Webster, one of the crew's directors, described the style in an interview with After Elton:

Voguing came from poses in Vogue Magazine, that turned into movement that then became self-expression. Voguing is like flamboyant movement with abstract art with self-expression. There are some elements to keep you in the box. There's hands, which is moving your hands. There's catwalk, which is a stance with your knees, then there's duckwalk, so there's a skeleton, but it's really self-expression.

Voguing has received public recognition as a result of the film Paris is Burning and Madonna's appropriation of the style. However, Vogue Evolution's participation in ABDC is the first time members of the house and ballroom community are representing their own style to such a wide pop culture audience.

I was visiting a couple of friends that I've known since childhood this week and my feminist identity came up. My friend's husband, a small business owner, generally pretty conservative guy, asked me how I defined feminism. When I explained ("genuine equality, educated choice, and authenticity") he was a bit stunned. "By that definition, I'm a feminist," he said, incredulously.

"Yup," I said, smiling.

"But if feminism has such bad connotations in the mainstream media and in so many parts of the country, why do you use it? Doesn't that just alienate you from people that you're trying to influence?" he asked next.

It's, of course, not something that every feminist who cares about being effective hasn't thought about. I explained that I use it strategically. For example, in my book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, I obviously use a feminist lens, but don't spend much time explicitly talking about feminism. When I go on The O'Reilly Factor to defend Helen Thomas, they slap FEMINIST under my image, and while I wouldn't mind them using an actual professional title as is customary in the industry, I'm loud and proud about my identity. I've always been of the mind that if using the word means the difference between me reaching someone with a feminist analysis or turning them off to the point that they won't even hear me out, then I'll bypass using it. I'm strategic, and maybe, a bit of a sell-out in this regard.

Another friend brought up that she's more comfortable with the term "humanist," which Webster defines as "a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values." Okay. Sounds good. But it feels like the fact that it doesn't hold any controversy, that there's so much ambiguity in the terms, makes it less powerful. Plus, it seems to invisibilize the fact that various humans (i.e. women, people of color etc.) have gotten a disproportionate shake at dignity. Somehow "humanism" sounds neutral to me, like we are all on a level playing field and just need to protect that.

Plus, a huge part of feminism, for me, is about community. Where would I find my humanist roll dawgs? With feminism, I know just where to look.

There's an article in today's New York Times about Chris Rock's much anticipated new documentary, Good Hair, which explores black women's complex relationship with hair and all the historic, racial, economic, gendered, and of course comedic, connotations. It won the jury prize at Sundance. The trailer:

In the Times article, Ingrid Banks, an associate professor of black studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, breaks it down: "For black women, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you've got straight hair, you're pegged as selling out. If you don't straighten your hair," she said, "you're seen as not practicing appropriate grooming practices."

There is so much at stake here. Not only are black women subjected to and sometimes perpetuate a system that infuses their hair choices with all sorts of social and political implications, but there are major economic implications as well. The Times article reports that "Last year, sales of home relaxers totaled $45.6 million (excluding Wal-Mart), according to Mintel, a market research firm, a figure that has held steady in recent years."

Things aren't getting cheaper, but they may be getting more complicated:

Noliwe M. Rooks, the associate director of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, had many conversations about what it meant when the hair of Sasha and Malia Obama was pressed straight. "Unlike earlier times," the conclusion wasn't "clearly she had sold out, or she's saying straight hair is better," Professor Rooks said. "There's a complexity to who we are now. There wasn't an easy answer to why."

Thanks to reader Rachel for the reminder.

Roxanne Shante gets her Ph.D. on Warner Music's dime because of a clause in her contract that said they would pay for her education for the rest of her life. Frickin' love that. Shante said: "This is a story that needs to be told. I'm an example that you can be a teenage mom, come from the projects, and be raised by a single parent, and you can still come out of it a doctor."

Like me, Arianne Cohen is a woman over 6 feet tall who makes her living as a journalist. And dammit, she beat me to writing a book about life in the 99th percentile for height: The Tall Book. (I've blogged about some of my tall-lady experiences before, in response to an article Cohen wrote for Nerve.)

Much of the book focuses on the undeniable advantages that come with being tall -- I'd venture to call it height supremacist, even. Because height is a product of not just genetics but good childhood nutrition, there's a strong correlation between height and intelligence, and therefore height and wealth. (Ah, but a gender gap persists: tall women still earn 17% less than tall men.) Tall people are also more likely to attract attention (duh) and be perceived as leaders.

But the picture isn't quite as rosy for tall women -- especially those of us who are extremely tall -- as it is for tall men. Cohen describes how, as early as age 8, she was offered the option of taking estrogen to stunt her growth so she would not reach her projected height of 6'5". This practice developed in response to parents' fears their daughters would not be able to find a husband if they grew too tall. Cohen said no to the estrogen, and today she's 6'3". It was a good choice -- growth-stunting estrogen has been linked to fertility problems later in life. Yet some doctors continue to prescribe this "treatment" for tallness. A 2002 survey of 411 endocrinologists found 137 still offered height-reduction treatments. How fucking archaic is that? Cohen writes, "In the United States boys are rarely treated, because height is considered beneficial."

As I read Cohen's book and thought about my own height, the more I came to think my physical self has had a lot to do with me turning out a feminist despite a very conservative upbringing. It's the social aspects of tallness -- especially when it comes to gender dynamics -- where things really get interesting...

I wanted to introduce the feministing community to one of the amazing artists that I had the honor of being in residency with while in Italy last month. Her name is Sharlene Khan--a young South African artist who wrestles with themes of identity, work, race, class, gender, community, and so much more in the many genres that she works in.

Her work, in her own words:

My work (which comprises of oil paintings, installations and mixed media drawings) hopes to bring to the fore this sector of society that is so sadly ignored, to depict the 'humanness' of these people we pass by daily - their dreams, hopes, struggles, wit and dignity. My work also combines oil painting and ink drawing to portray this 'lower class' society in what once was an upper class indulgence and to continue to question these attitudes towards the 'fine arts', by turning oil paintings into functional everyday objects e.g. clothes, bedspread, curtains, haircut salons. My work is a visual representation of my identity and all the influences upon it. Needlework in my paintings, as well as the depiction of Indian mehndi designs, biblical scriptures and poetry are meant to reflect my African, Indian, Chrisitan, female identity as well as my early apartheid education, and later tertiary education.

Khan describes her distaste with the word diaspora: "It chiefly recognises similarities at the expense of equally important localised differences. I don't really consider myself as part of such a diaspora, I am a South African Indian who is very located in this specific country at this specific juncture in time. And while I realise that the sense of 'Indianness' is probably a valid one among many migrant communities, in South Africa it was promoted by the apartheid government to ensure that Indians in this country were made to feel like outsiders. Indians have been in SAfrica since the 1820's."

Her work is bold, controversial, deeply emotional, and truly original. A couple more examples are featured after the jump.

Yesterday, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yarovslavksy announced that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department will completely fund the testing of every single rape kit in the backlog within the next two years, and the expansion of a staff to ensure that a backlog will never return to their shelves.

We've been following this story for awhile and it's just so gratifying to see that the coalition of organizations advocating on this issue have won the fight on all fronts.

Thank you to the following groups and all the individuals who got the word out about this outrageous backlog: Human Rights Watch (led by superstar Sarah Tofte), Peace Over Violence, the Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center, the Downtown Women's Center, National Council
of Jewish Women, Hollywood Now, and many more.

ABC News reports on a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University which supposedly determined that women with higher testosterone levels "take more risks and are more likely to choose a finance career." Testosterone levels made no difference in men's career choices in the study. The sample size was 500 graduate students.

I know that hormones play a real role in our behavior--no matter our sex--but these kinds of studies worry me. It feels as if isolating only one factor like this, especially one so biologically-determined, underplays all of the other huge influences on how we choose careers, get educated, seek mentors, develop an identity, determine our own gifts etc. The socialization, for example, that we experience as a result of our socioeconomic class, seems like a far greater influence on whether we see ourselves as "fit" for a career in finance, than whether we have a slightly higher testosterone level.

Which is all to say--okay, do the hormonal studies, but don't forget to couch them in the context of what I see as far more powerful social, economic, and psychological factors. Your thoughts?

A leaked iPhone commercial spoof that shows you how to stalk your ex.

It looks like Senator Kennedy's death might just be a rallying cry to pass health care reform.

A jury in West Virginia found a man guilty of raping a number of sex workers. The things said about sex workers by the defense were horrific, and I'm thankful they agreed that non-consensual sex is rape, regardless of your profession.

Microsoft is caught in a huge race FAIL, when they were found to have photoshopped an image on their website--to change the race of the man in question.

Angered about what is happening to Caster Semenya? Sign National Sexuality Resource Center's petition asking officials to stay out her pants. Courtesy of community blogger h.buck.

This Saturday marks the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Melissa Harris-Lacewell and James Perry have some thoughts on what they call our "Katrina Nation."

Check out this great cartoon, All Things Being Equal from Indexed.

Metro Weekly, the local DC LGBTQ newspaper, screws up royally in their headline's reference to a trans woman.

Rush Limbaugh is worried about keeping his penis.

On my two week vacation around New England (and Montreal!) I discovered a new feminist sex shop to review, Nomia in Portland Maine. From their website:

Portland's first women owned and operated sensuality boutique.

We opened in February 2004 in order to provide women and men with a comfortable and fun environment in which to explore sex and sexuality. We offer a broad range of literature, from the academic to the erotic, lingerie, hosiery, and the finest adult toys and accessories available.

Nomia made it to my list of favorite feminist sex shops--it was a great place! It's location is discreet, without a storefront. It's up the stairs, but there is good signage outfront. They seem to emphasize discretion, and they had a sign up about "discreet shopper." If you wanted you could give the employee a list of items you wanted and they would collect them and bag them up for you. A nice option for those who might be more shy and not something I've seen in other stores.

The shop was small but well-stocked. They had a big sale section, which is great for those on a budget. They have a lending library of DVDs (always a plus) and a great vintage sex toy display. A large book selection covers the first floor, including books on topics like menopause and cuddling. Plus all the standards perks of a feminist sex shop--you can touch and test display products, no toys that are bad for our bodies, and a really queer friendly selection.

All in all a great store. No online shopping yet, but check back as they are working on that feature.

Previous reviews:
Sugar in Baltimore, MD
Smitten Kitten in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
Hysteria in Denver, CO
Early to Bed in Chicago, IL
VaVaVoom in Asheville, NC
Aphrodite's Toy Box in Atlanta, GA

Know another feminist sex shop I should review? Email me at miriamATfeministingDOTcom or leave it in comments.

A new video from one of my favorite performers, Athens Boys Choir. I have to say this song doesn't top my love for Fagette, the song and video that got me hooked on ABC.

The last two weeks I spent driving through Vermont, Montreal and Maine. The first week of it, I worked on an organic farm in Vermont through a program called WWOOF. Some of you may know I have a burgeoning interest in food politics and spending some time on a farm seemed like a logical next step. Also a great way to take a break from my typical work life in front of a computer.

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) is an international program that has been around since the 1970s. It helps connect volunteers with organic farms around the world, where folks exchange volunteer help on the farm for a place to stay (or camp), food and a lot of learning about organic farming. It's a great program, and also a great way to travel and learn about farming. I'd recommend it to anyone! You have to get a membership to WWOOF to get their directory of farms, but I'd say it's worth the $25.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. The farm was on a beautiful stretch of land in rural Vermont, and we stayed in this awesome solar-powered yurt (see slide show above) with beautiful views. The owner of the farm is Jill Kopel, an incredible woman who bought the farm (former dairy farm, as most of VT) nine years ago and is basically a one-woman show. She now has a two year old daughter who she often straps onto her back in a carrier and keeps going with her work. She blew me away.

New Leaf Organic Farm is a organic vegetable and flower farm, so we got to try our hand at harvesting a number of different things--tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, onions, green beans, swiss chard, beets, blueberries, cucumbers, the list goes on. Practically any vegetable that grows in VT. What was great about my week there, besides the beautiful scenery, was learning about how all these vegetables grow and seeing a bit of what it takes to grow our food.

I had no idea what a green bean plant looked like, or most of the vegetables I mentioned. I learned about what preparation goes into getting vegetables to the farmer's market, or a CSA. I learned about the potato and tomato blight, and how weather can seriously affect a farmer's livelihood. Added bonus that I got to work with an awesome woman entrepreneur and farmer.

After this experience, I'm on board with the food activists who say gardening and farming should be a part of our public education. Even if most of us aren't going to grow our own food, it would do a lot for us to at least know how it's done. There has been increasing popularity in school garden projects, and farm to school programs, and I think that's a great thing.

I've been a huge fan of Bitch Magazine ever since I discovered it in my college library. I've been an avid subscriber, supporter, and even had a Love it Shove it piece published there a few years ago. Trust me, getting that edition in the mail was one of my most exciting writer moments.

I've been eagerly awaiting the Fall edition of the magazine, which was delayed by a redesign and organizational changes.

Yesterday, it came in the mail. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an online replica of the new design, so I old-school scanned on of the pages from the new edition, it's after the jump.

I love you Bitch, but why so much pink??

The new design of the magazine is in color (great!) but the color makes it kind of blinding to read. It's a bubble gum/hot pink and it's just too much. I don't mind the headlines, the title boxes, the pink accents. But a good percentage of the graphics and photos are also pink hued (see scanned page after the jump). It makes it hard to read and unpleasant.

Any color, used this way, would produce a similar effect. But I still have to ask the question--why pink? As a magazine that has always been an amazing feminist critique of pop culture, I think we've seen enough pink to last us quite a while--in every product and commercial targeted to women. I'm not a pink hating feminist, but I can't help but seriously question this design decision.

I've worked on enough publications to know that a muti-colored layout would be way more expensive, but to be honest I prefer the old black and white version to this pink mania.

Update: I got this email from Andi Zeisler, Editor of Bitch (I had emailed her to let her know about my post):

Since this was our first issue with spot color, we expected some technical difficulties with the transition from black-and-white to spot color. Because of this, we decided to use magenta, which as one of the four process color makes it a known quantity -- you know what to expect and there are generally few unpleasant surprises in the printing process. Aesthetically, we felt like it announced Bitch's new look in a way that was fun and splashy, and since the Bitch website uses bright, poppy colors, the magenta fits well with the color palette we've been developing.

As for the girly implications of the color pink, obviously we're aware that pink still signifies a lot with regard to women and representation, and this issue was meant to neither comment on that nor reclaim it. Bitch has always engaged with the varied meanings of the color (you might recall that we did a whole Pink Issue back in 2001), and we're really not interested in either writing it off entirely or embracing it in an ironic, pink-can-be-feminist-too! way. For this particular issue, the color choice was an aesthetic and practical decision, and we're very happy with it. We did expect that some people wouldn't be, but we're also well aware that we won't please everyone every time.

Also Bitch previewed the new design on their facebook group--if you search through it you can find images of this edition. I'm happy to hear that the pink is not permanent, and interested to see how the spot color turns out in future issues.

Check out Kai Wright's fantastic article over at The Root about Caster Semenya and the absurdity of what she (and other female athletes) have put through by gender identity testing.

The International Association of Athletics Federations has demanded Semenya, who won the 800-meter gold last week, submit to a sex test; bookies are taking bets on the results. But whatever the IAAF's shameless doctors conclude, the verdict about Semenya is already in--she's a monster. What remains is to determine what type of monster we're gawking at. A hermaphrodite? An intersexual? A genetic boy whose parents raised him as a girl? Or just a mannish woman, after all?

If "science" concludes the latter, Semenya can keep her medal. Her humanity, however, has already been sacrificed to Western culture's desperate, frightened effort to maintain the fiction of binary, fixed gender.

Read the rest.

Courtney also weighed in on the case.

This morning, the sad news that Senator Edward has died from brain cancer.

As many have already said, he was a great politician who was a great supporter of many social justice issues, and did what he could to fight those battles in Congress.

Let's hope that his biggest legacy will be that of health care reform, and in his memory pass legislation that might actually begin to fix our broken system. From the Young Invincibles campaign, a quote from Senator Kennedy:

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on. The cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.

More about Senator Kennedy's work on healthcare, visit the Our Bodies, Ourselves blog.

For more reading on Senator Kennedy's life:
Michael Tomasky at The Guardian
Harold Meyerson and Adam Serwer at The American Prospect
Thoughts from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Robert Scheer at The Nation
John Broder in the NYTimes

You know, it's been a really long time since I thought about pageants.* Yes, every once in a while we see a beauty queen get shamed for some pseudo-controversial picture and everyone shakes their head in mock disapproval - but pageants themselves? I don't tend to give them much mind; they seem too silly to expend feminist energy on.

Boy was I stupid.

When I was clicking around my television Sunday night I landed on the Miss Universe pageant and I was transfixed. I guess I forgot how utterly ridiculous and gross these things are. But it occurred to me that a pageant where women are parading around - and literally being judged on how they look in a bikini - could be feminism's best friend. I mean, what proves the existence of nationwide sexism better than the Miss Universe pageant (or Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, etc)? Just a thought.

Oh, and for fun - here's the winning contestants final question and answer. (Hint: It's not feminist.)

Sigh.

*I wrote about them a bit in The Purity Myth, but only in terms of how the beauty queen fall-from-grace fits into the virgin/whore dynamic.

On August 26th, 1920 the 19th Amendment went into effect. It gave women the right to vote in the United States. Via InfoPlease

This is why today is also marked the annual Women's Equality Day, started in 1971 by Bella Abzug.

The first case where a woman was to be caned in Malaysia, for drinking a beer, was put on hold.

Chris Brown will be sentenced today, anticipating a sentence of five years of probation and six months of community service.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) released a policy issue a statement saying women will be "allowed" to drink modest amounts of clear liquids during labor. Some home birth activists and midwives groups are not happy about it.

AP on how the Afghan elections are being seen as a setback for women.

This is pretty distressing:

Tens of thousands of people in Mali's capital, Bamako, have been protesting against a new law which gives women equal rights in marriage.

The law, passed earlier this month, also strengthens inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.

Sigh. Perhaps even more depression-inducing is this quote from Hadja Sapiato Dembele of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations: "A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband...It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it."

Today, the Obama administration is meeting with HIV/AIDS advocates and leaders in Atlanta to discuss the prevalence of AIDS in the U.S. and how the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) can work on new strategies towards HIV prevention. I don't doubt many advocates are coming into these debates with much fervor considering Obama's recent reversal on AIDS policy.

And in coordinance with the administration's community discussions this week, RH Reality Check is doing a series in partnership with HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the Center for HIV Law and Policy, and others. Some pieces to check out:

• The AIDS Crisis in the United States: Will the Obama Administration Meet the Challenge? Julie Davids and David Ernesto Munar
• Community Engagement in HIV Policy: Are Townhalls Meaningful Enough? By Catherine Hanssens
• AIDS 50 Times Higher in Gay/Bi Men Than Other Groups, an analysis and critique by Walt Senterfitt of new CDC data presented this week in Atlanta
• Coming out HIV Positive, 14-year old LaShaun Brown reveals her HIV status for the first time and discusses her hopes and fears for the future.

Don't miss it.

How's that for a headline.

Reader Philip alerted us to this new study by Swedish researchers who found that a number of men felt that getting an sexually transmitted infection (STI) like chlamydia or HPV was perceived more as a medal of honor or right of passage than a health issue.

The University of Skövde researcher Kina Hammarlund, who is also a midwife, says she was (unsurprisingly) disappointed with the findings:

"Despite all the talk about gender equality, it seems like today's young people are wrestling with the same prejudices and stereotypical gender roles that existed when I was young in the 1970s."

While it's irritating that none of the factual evidence was disclosed (in terms of how many folks were studied, etc.), I still wanted to highlight it because it brings up interesting questions about men, sexual activity and contraception use compared to the stigma on women living with STIs as "damaged goods," etc.

Thoughts?

Randall Terry is at it again. The founder of anti-choice extremist group Operation Rescue who said the late Dr. George Tiller "reaped what he sowed" as well as launched a terrifying and violence-inducing campaign against Sonia Sotomayor, has been going on a completely bizarre and batshit crazy road show tour. Joe from Amplify has more:

Yesterday, the freakshow went to Louisville, KY, where Terry performed a "skit" with two "actors". Dressed as a doctor (after stabbing a baby doll), he stabbed someone playing an old women in the neck, with a sign behind him reading "Obama death-care. One dead patient at a time." He then shook the hand of a white guy in an Obama mask over the woman on the ground.

While many folks are seeing this just as a silly act by a crazy man, Joe reminds us that this is no laughing matter; Terry and his organization will try to incite violence if they get the chance. And with the removal of federal Marshall protection from Dr. Leroy Carhart and his Nebraska clinic, Operation Rescue's intentions to "keep it closed" (referring to Carhart's intentions to re-open Tiller's clinic in Kansas) could ensue some serious shit this weekend when they'll be protesting.

The good news is that local NOW chapters and other activists in the Nebraska and Kansas area will be holding huge counter-protests. So if you're in or around these areas this weekend, be sure to get involved. If not, contact Attorney General Eric Holder and demand that they reinstate Marshall protection over Dr. Carhart at 202-353-1555.

Via Feministe.

Since we didn't have Monday Monty Blogging yesterday (and due to a couple of readers' requests via Facebook), I thought I'd give a little update on Monty's cousin, Tweet, who I've blogged about before.

She not only has huge feet, but lays on her back all day like a dog so I can scratch her tummy. She also plays fetch; I'm completely convinced she's a dog in a cat's body.

Tweet is also the sweetest cat in the world, so sweet that she wants to lick her brother's face. All day. There's a short video after the jump of her trying to get his face in her grip so she can clean him up, then gives up after much resistance.

Oh, it's ON.

On one side of the ring, we have Senator Joe Lieberman, who said that rape survivors shouldn't have a problem going out of state to get emergency contraception. On the other? Actor Alec Baldwin, a men's rights activist who calls his daughter a "pig" while hiding behind the faux movement of "fathers' rights" and claiming feminism has destroyed American women (but mail order brides are A-OK!) So everyone online is asking: Who is going to get the crown for the Senate seat in Connecticut??

That's right, Alec Baldwin has revealed his intentions to possibly run for the Connecticut Senate seat and defeat Joe Lieberman in 2012. (Which was disclosed in a Playboy interview, I might add. How poetic.) Baldwin says, "I'd love to run against Joe Lieberman. I have no use for him."

Burn!! Lieberman's response? "Make my day." Nothing is more hilarious than two anti-women assholes using cliché sayings to exert their masculinity over one another - and a Clint Eastwood quote, no less.

What's not really funny about is that it's over a seat in the U.S. Senate. But still, thanks for the good laugh, gentlemen.

UPDATE: Baldwin now says he won't run. I guess he knew to back off when Joe busted out the big guns with that Eastwood quote.

Sharon Lerner at The Nation tells us Why Women Need Healthcare Reform

BeckySharper takes on alcohol and antifeminism.

More feminist analysis on facials. (I know, shocking that it's such a hot topic.)

How rapper Roxanne Shante got Warner music to pay for her PhD.

The Guttmacher Institute released new research that shows the abortion pill (mifepristone, still known by some folks as RU-486) hasn't broadened abortion access in the United States. One of the reasons that feminists worked so hard to get the FDA to approve mifepristone is that they hoped it would be a way for your average OB/GYN to discreetly provide abortions. That it would, in essence, make it impossible for anti-choicers to protest women who were seeking abortions, because they would have to protest outside every clinic and doctor's office. However, Guttmacher found,

Most mifepristone abortions were performed at or near facilities that also provided surgical abortion. Only five mifepristone-only providers of 10 or more abortions were located farther than 50 miles from any surgical provider of 400 or more abortions.

In other words, existing abortion providers added the medical option to their list of provided services. But it was picked up by very few doctors or clinics that were not currently providers. There are a lot of reasons for this. As I wrote last year,

The requirements for being a provider of medical abortion and a provider of surgical abortion are actually very, very similar. Insurance premiums still go up when doctors decide to start providing medical abortion. Also, those doctors still have to get proper training in how to perform a surgical abortion, in case the drugs don't work. When I researched this issue awhile ago, for a story about how mifepristone has affected abortion politics, most people I talked to said the number of ob/gyns and other doctors who became providers of medical abortion (but not other methods) were very small. (Mostly for the insurance and training reasons named above, but also because of the stigma attached. Word gets around in small towns, even if you are only dispensing pills.)

The Guttmacher study won't come as a surprise to those working in the field. In 2006, I interviewed Beth Jordan, the medical director of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, who described the incredibly high barriers to providing the abortion pill -- basically, doctors need to perform an ultrasound to determine a woman is, in fact, pregnant and need to have the ability to perform a surgical abortion in case the pills do not work. So there is a training barrier. "If we're seeing trends that the drug is not being picked up," Jordan told me, "there are some real on the ground tactical obstacles."

And despite feminists' wishes, the pill did not reduce the stigma and threats that come with being an abortion provider -- especially in more conservative parts of the country. Karen Kubby, with the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City, Iowa, told me, "It was scary for many people to think of being an abortion provider, even quietly and for your own cadre of clients. Especially because of the harassment."

During the third season of Mad Men Feministing writers will offer some of our thoughts on feminist moments, scenes, and themes in the new episodes in order to start a discussion about these topics in our community. *WARNING: Lots of spoilers follow.

Marketing Diet Cola to women.

I thought this was a great selection of a product for exploring what I think will be some of the major themes of season 3. Change was a big focus of the episode, which included foreshadowing of a major change in the U.S. occurring on the date of Roger's daughter's wedding, November 23, 1963. Patio (wow, what a terrible name) marks a major change in how soda will be marketed, but the men of Sterling Cooper are resistant to selling a product by appealing to anything but the male gaze even when the soda's meant for women. Now diet products marketed at women are ubiquitous and in this episode we got to see some of the first moments of this shift in the marketing world. Most of Peggy's coworkers think she gained and then lost a lot of weight in season 1 without knowing the true story. So as a character she is perfectly situated to express the need for a new approach to marketing Patio while also having a very complicated personal relationship to conversations about the product. - Jos

Different reactions to Ann-Margret in the opening of Bye Bye Birdie. Ken calls Peggy a "prude."

Random fun fact: Both Vanessa and I were in a theater production of Bye Bye Birdie back in the day.  She was Ursula; I was Rosie.  Yes, we sang.  So I had no in-depth feminist thought surrounding this sequence besides me getting all excited and singing along. - Jessica

I couldn't have been older than twelve the last time I saw Bye Bye Birdie. I remember finding it fabulous and oddly disturbing. I like to imagine I had a look on my face similar to Sal's reaction to Ann-Margret. If the show makes it to 1969 and Stonewall can Sal please be a drag queen? - Jos

Don: She's throwing herself at the camera. It's pure, makes your heart hurt.
Peggy: No one seems to care that  it speaks to men, not the people that drink diet drinks.
Don: It's not about making women feel fat. This is, "Look how happy i am that i drink Patio. I'm young and excited and desperate for a man."
Peggy: I don't mind fantasies but shouldn't it be a female one?
Don: Peggy I know you understand how this works. Men want her. Women want to be her.
Peggy: if that's true...
Don: It is. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. ...
Don: Leave some tools in your toolbox.

Don has expressed this sentiment before but I think Peggy is starting to make the point that female desire can go beyond wanting to conform to male desire. Don also responded with condescension when Peggy said "sex sells" last season but he seems to have come around to that one. This episode was about change, and Don has always been resistant to the new and strangely nostalgic given the fact he's run away from his past. - Jos

Check out this great video from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women on the language that anti-choicers (and even the media) use to talk about abortion.

To accompany the video, NAPW's executive director Lynn Paltrow wrote a piece for HuffPo on why it's so important that we pay attention to anti-choice rhetoric and what it says about women:

Who are the millions of "murderous" women who have abortions? Sixty-one percent of women having abortions are already mothers. By the age of 45, 84% of all women in U.S. will have become pregnant and given birth and 43% will have had an abortion.

In other words, the women who have abortions are overwhelmingly mothers.

So we need to ask -- do the people who use this language really think the mothers who have had abortions are the same as, or worse than, those who carry out torture, kill children, and commit mass-murder?

...NAPW believes that the pregnant women who have abortions, who suffer miscarriages, who give birth, who raise children, and who love their families deserve better.

To dismantle the anti-choice myth that there are two kinds of women - those who have abortions and those who have babies - NAPW has launched a campaign that shows how the majority of women who have abortions already are, or will be, mothers.

"You can make it hard to label mothers murderers, by showing that the women who are accused of creating a 'culture of death' are giving birth and doing the caretaking that is at the core of a true culture of life," Paltrow writes.

If you have had an abortion and given birth, experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth, adopted or raised a child -- tell your story with a picture, a sign, a 1 minute or less video and NAPW will post it here.

For some reason the last couple of days have brought us a lot of fun emails. Here are some snippets from my favorite - in which the emailer keeps insisting that they're a woman. (From experience, I'd say this insistence generally means it's a man writing - but either way, it's irrelevant. Being a woman doesn't make your wack-ass ideas any more credible.)

Honestly, what are you trying to accomplish with this website? I'm a woman, and have been trying to understand what this new wave of feminists are trying to achieve (for instance suffrage in the past). And I just don't see it. All it is women complaining about anything and everything. All you do is bitch and bitch and bitch. Reading this website makes me hate women.

I mean, hate myself! (I also kind of love the irony of someone writing us an email complaining about us complaining.)

Feminists of the past were trying to make change, and they did. You're just making the majority of the population hate you and not take you seriously. Also you should learn that, honey, stereotypes are based on fact. There are some things that guys do better than chicks and vice versa. Deal with it.

Yeah, honey! For example, us chicks are awesome at things like using belittling names for women to put them in their place. Also, sweeping generalizations.

I can only imagine how much you'd bitch about having to do construction work on a highway day after day. We are lucky enough to live in a society that if that's what you want to do, then you CAN do it. So from one woman to another, you really need to keep your mouth shut.

From one feminist to an asshole: No thanks.

Regardless of sex or gender or anything, NO ONE wants to be around a whiny bitch. Then again if that's what you want to be than go for it. You're doing a great job.

Thanks! Now can I have that promotion to raging cuntmonster you've been promising me?

Like most of you, I'm sure, I was excited to see the package of articles in The New York Times Magazine yesterday on the state of women's rights globally. Times columnist Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, authors of the lead article, have a forthcoming book on the subject. This is their attempt to show that women's rights are not a niche concern or a "soft issue," but are core to fixing the major problems that plague the world today. The simple fact is that in places around the globe where women are doing well, everyone is doing well. If only our foreign policy reflected that fact. (Hillary is working on it, I know. But it's a long road.)

I am thrilled to see this point made so prominently. But there's also something about the article that rubbed me the wrong way. I think the banner on the Times' website sums it up:

Saving the World's Women? When I tweeted last week that the "we Westerners must save women!" phrasing rubbed me the wrong way, a few folks piped up to offer alternatives. Emily Douglas suggested, "How about getting out of the way so women can save the world?" I like that perspective a helluva lot better.

The international women's rights groups that have worked on these issues for years (WEDO, MADRE, AWID, etc.) are absent from the articles. And, consequently, so is their framing that in order to build a better world, women need to be empowered to be an active part in making that change. The U.S. swooping in to "save" them will not actually fix things in a sustainable way. International women's rights groups, most of whom are working in collaboration with women on the ground, emphasize the importance of supporting grassroots movements and change that is driven by women rather than imposed on them. (Yes, microlending is a way of directly supporting women, but Kristof and WuDunn fail to make this broader point about how Western nations should approach international women's rights.)

Anna N. at Jezebel has another critique of their approach:

It may be true that a society is more peaceful when women are empowered, but the idea of promoting women's equality in order to reduce terrorism is still problematic. First, as WuDunn and Kristof are no doubt aware, there are plenty of examples of female terrorists. But the very idea of helping women because they behave the way we want -- not drinking, whoring, or planting bombs -- implies that we have a certain ideal of how developing countries should operate, and we want to shape them according to that ideal. It's also not necessarily good for women, who must continue to behave well in order to retain their status as model recipients of aid.

Just to be clear, I am really happy to see global women's issues brought to the forefront. However, the way we look at these issues is just as important as the fact that we're looking at all.

We've covered the weirdness that is gendered vitamin marketing before, but I couldn't stop myself from posting this commercial.

Related: Shae's Community Post

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation,(not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente) just released a state-by-state review of women's health services health providers are allowed to deny, including contraception, sterilization, and abortion. Albeit with incomplete data, Kaiser alleges that only 7 states have no restrictions on these women's services.

Working with this data, and data from OpenSecrets.org on campaign contributions to Congress, I compiled a data table.

Findings:

Women are less likely to be uninsured than men.

There is no U.S. state where a higher percentage of women are uninsured. The general assumption attributes this to higher Medicare and government program eligibility among women; women are more likely to be below the poverty line, and thus qualify for these services. As of 2007, 56.6% of Medicare recipients nationwide were women. But in reality, there is a very weak correlation (.23) between women's Medicare enrollment and uninsured rates.

The higher percentage of 2008 votes for Obama, the lower the state's death rate from cervical cancer.

Rena Kanokogi with her gold medal - one she should have won in 1959

The New York Daily News has an interesting profile of a Brooklyn woman who was stripped of her first place medal in judo after judges realized she was a woman competing against men. (And beating them - which I suspect was the real issue.)

[Kanokogi] vividly recalls the moment she took on her opponent in the New York State YMCA judo championships.

She was an alternate, and had to step in when a male team member was injured.

Although women were not explicity barred from the YMCA contests, no female had ever tried to take part. Because her hair was as short as a boy's and she had an athletic build and tape around her breasts, Kanokogi's gender wasn't questioned until she won her fight - and her team won the contest.

She was pulled aside and forced to admit she was a woman or else her teammates would have been stripped of the title.

"It was very demeaning, painful," she said.

Now, fifty years later, the medal that was taken from her in 1959 has been restored. The New York State YMCA gave her the medal last week to make amends, and to honor a lifetime of work on behalf of women and sports: After losing the medal Kanokogi went on to fund the first female judo world championships and worked to get women's judo into the 1988 Olympics.

Is anyone else having a really hard time waking up this morning? (Yes, I may still be recovering from my sis throwing me a bachelorette party Friday night.) I figure there's nothing like a never-ending slide show of feminist graffiti to put in a little spring in one's step...

Feminism is for lovers!

Hamid Karzai was far ahead in the vote count after last week's Afghan election -- Alive in Afghanistan (via Spencer) has reports on low turnout, violence, ballot box-stuffing and other issues.

"Culture, Cognition, and Consent: Who Perceives What, and Why, in 'Acquaintance Rape' Cases."

Skepticism about marriage is a new, hot trend? I was WAY ahead of this one...

Cecile Richards asks, "Does anyone else see the irony in the U.S. bishops wanting to define universal health care as covering everything except for what they don't support?"

On the struggles of international LGBT couples.

The number of men who have been raped in Congo has taken a sharp upturn in recent months.

Maria Gunnoe fought the coal industry -- and won.

Post Bourgie questions interpretations of Mad Men as feminist-friendly. Plus, Melissa at Women & Hollywood looks at whether the women writers on the show are actually in positions of influence.

The rise of the Muslim woman's travel memoir.

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Hi Professor Foxy,

I came out of a 5 year relationship at the beginning of the year, he is the only man I've ever had sexual intercourse with. I'm currently enjoying myself being a free agent - being able to explore my sexuality, pursuing women and men and all types of relationships (not just monogamy).

Despite having quite a lot of opportunities I've not had sexual intercourse with anyone else yet. I caught genital warts/HPV from my first partner, so the big barrier for me in having sex with anyone else is in telling prospective partners and also the big fear of catching something else because of my bad luck with my first sexual partner.

At the clinic they advised me to tell every partner before I sleep with them and to go to the clinic with them if they were worried about catching it, but how does this work in real life? My friends tell me I shouldn't worry about telling someone at the beginning of a relationship if we're using protection (which of course I will), but I know HPV can be passed on through skin to skin contact. I want to be responsible and tell every partner but I really need help in how to broach that subject - especially at the beginning of a casual relationship or in a one night stand.

In my head this has become such a big thing, I feel almost like a leper. I know HPV isn't really a big thing, it's the common cold of STIs but what's the best way of discussing this in the 'heat of the moment'? I know so much about HPV, how do I give someone the information they need - that a large percentage of sexually active people have it, it's linked to cervical and penile cancer, without completely frightening someone to death? I feel like my sex life is on hold while I try to deal with this - despite wanting to go further than kissing and cuddling with partners I can't because I'm scared of being rejected.

On top of this I have a history of OCD and anxiety, so it feels like I take this issue much more seriously than others!

Some practical advice in what to say to partners and how to handle asking questions about others' sexual health would be great!

Thank you,

Worry Wart

Hello Worry Wart -
You clearly know a lot about HPV, but I am going to take a moment to do some background for those who are not familiar with it. First, HPV is the common cold of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). If you are sexually active (anything involving genital contact), you've likely had it. However, just like the common cold, there are many strains of HPV with the majority passing through and out of a person's body before they even know they've had it.

There are some strains that cause genital warts and then others that cause cervical/penile cancers (and increasing evidence shows they also can lead to head and neck cancers). Just to be perfectly clear, these are different strains that cause cancer or cause genital warts. The kind you have causes warts, not cancer. People can have both, but your healthcare provider should have checked.

I appreciate your desire to tell your sexual partners. I agree that you do not have to tell people you are just kissing or possibly thinking about hooking up with about your status. It is not their business and they are not at risk of catching anything.

When you are at the place of considering oral, anal, vaginal penetration, you should tell them. You don't have to give them every single bad outcome, but something to the extent of "before we go any further, you should know I have HPV. The kind that causes genital warts. I checked before we started hooking up and I don't have any visible warts, but I want you to know." Then wait; the next step is up to them. If they are comfortable asking questions, answer them honestly. Respect their decision on what to do next. But, and this is a huge but, they do not have the right to make you feel dirty. People with STIs are not dirty. They are simply people who have an STI. If your potential partner reacts negatively, you learned early this is not someone you want to be active with.

Now people with vaginas can have warts in non-visible places, but a visual scan is important to see any that you can.

I also hear your concern about catching something else. You take a risk when you do any kind of fluid exchange with another person. Oral, anal, vaginal - whatever your pleasure - you take a risk. Using latex barriers helps to lower that risk. I also always recommend doing a scan of your partner's genitals. This sounds very cold and awkward, but before putting your mouth or anything else on another's genitals something kiss the stomach while you look. In life, most things have risks, it is deciding when the gain (be it pleasure, desire, intimacy) outweighs the risks.

Best,
Professor Foxy

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

MoJo on why you shouldn't be drinking Fiji Water.

For serious?

Germaine Greer's gender FAIL on Caster Semenya: "We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man's delusion that he is female."

A blast from the past. I'm six weeks away from getting hitched, and Courtney's 2007 piece on love as activism has been on mind.

I promise I'm not just posting this episode of WBAI's Healthstyles because I'm interviewed on it. The awesome Tristin Aaron of the Women's Media Center guest-hosted this show and interviewed me, Jaclyn Friedman, and Jennifer Block - author of the great book Pushed: The painful truth about birth and modern maternity care. Tristin, Jaclyn and Jennifer are some seriously smart and compelling women - so please give a listen.

Check out this really in-depth article following up on the some of the big picture questions I raised in my post last month about the new Google AdWords policy disallowing abortion ads in over a dozen countries.

The article was written by Masum Momaya of Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) and gives a dope analysis of this truly multi-dimensional topic. Also the article explicitly mentions Feministing commentors and a lot of the points you all brought up in my first post on the subject, which is awesome and a testament to all of your thoughtfulness!

*pause to reflect on the greatness of this community*

Anyway, one major reveal from the article is that, legally and practically, "those submitting the ads, and not Google Inc., should be doing the screening for legal compliance." So there goes the theory about Google AdWords initiating the abortion policy just to abide by local laws.

Also, the article gets to what I think is the heart of the issue by exploring the various competing interests that are informing Google AdWords decision-making behind closed doors: legal, social, and financial, and more, and then asking:

"So do we want Google Inc. sorting, accrediting and ordering our information for us, ads or otherwise? And is doing so in a truly unbiased way possible for a for-profit company whose major source of revenue is dependent on advertising?"

Yeah, and I would add that reproductive health care information in particular requires special defense, because it is so often under attack as being "controversial" or "politically risky" when it is just health care for women, who, need I remind you, constitute half of this earth's population!

Anyway, before I begin to rant more about that, let me get back to the article. Overall, I agree with the article's conclusion:

"It is important for women's rights activists and social justice advocates more generally to understand the issues and limitations behind what does - and does not - show up when Googling for "abortion" or any other topic, for that matter, and continue to be on the lookout for this 'invisible' violation of women's rights."

Word.

In another win for reproductive justice this week, a federal judge called a South Dakota anti-choice law - which mandates that doctors tell women seeking abortions that the procedure increases the risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts - "untruthful and misleading."

On the suicide issue, Schreier was convinced by multiple studies showing women who get abortions have no increased risk of suicide. The state provided arguments, but no evidence, to the contrary, she said.

"Because such a risk is not 'known,' the suicide disclosure language of the statute is untruthful and misleading," Schreier wrote.

You know, because there is no link between abortion and depression.

The bad news?

But the judge upheld a portion of the informed consent law, which says abortions "terminate the life of a whole separate unique living human being."

Well, I'll take a small victory. For now.

The latest from our new crush Bryan Safi. This couldn't be more true.

Bachmann on "big abortion"

This is too good. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), an anti-choicer who wants to give eggs rights, was on Sean Hannity's radio show this week talking about health care reform. Check it out:

"That's why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress," said Bachmann, "and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions."

Ahem.

Video via Feministe.

Adrian from Amplify Your Voice has a thoughtful and informative piece on taking safety into account for LGBTQQI tweens and teens when coming out of the closet. Check it.

According to a report by Catalyst entitled Women of Color in U.S. Law Firms, more than 75 percent of women of color will leave their employer within five years because of job dissatisfaction stemming from "complex barriers," including:

* A greater sense of "outsider status" and limited growth opportunities.
* Racial and gender stereotyping and more feelings of sexism in the workplace compared to
white women.
* Lack of access to high-profile client assignments and important client engagements.
* Missed opportunities for candid feedback.

The study is the fourth and final in Catalyst's Women of Color in Professional Services Series "examining how the intersectionality, or combined identities of gender and race/ethnicity, puts women of color at a unique disadvantage in the workplace."

I wonder if some of our readers want to speak to their experiences within law firms? I have a hunch we have more than a few legal minds within the feministing community and I'd love to hear your reactions.

ABC News took on reality television's recent focus on exploiting larger women like the show Samhita recently reviewed, "More to Love" and decided to talk to her about it some more! Here are some thoughts Samhita gave the author:

To Feministing editor Mukhopadhyay, that perpetuates the impression that these women are to be pitied and fetishized for their size.

"On one level, it's good to have more images of larger women on TV because that act alone changes the way we look at people," she said. "But so many of them have low self-esteem, they're self-loathing, they talk about how no one loves them. It becomes this sort of spectacle. You really do wonder if all the stereotypes you've heard of fat people are true. On that level I do think it's exploitive."

Damn straight. Check out the whole piece.

Excellent article on under-reporting about Pakistani hijras in the U.S. media.

Couples seek Indian egg donors to have multiracial babies: "The perception is that multiracial children are healthier and brighter."

Salt Lake City resident faces major discrimination. Her experience highlights the challenges faced by LGBT workers, who, in Utah, are not protected against discrimination in the workplace by local, state or federal laws.

New research published in the September 2009 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology suggests that, although use of the abortion pill has become widespread and has contributed to the shift toward earlier abortions, its use has not improved women's geographic access to abortion services.

A mother has filed what experts believe is a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the Pittsburgh Public Schools, claiming her daughter developed anorexia because students bullied her.

Don't miss the latest issue of the Scholar & the Feminist Online, guest edited by Janet R. Jakobsen (an amazing professor I had while at Barnard) and Kate Bedford.

An excerpt from Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's forthcoming book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, is up at the New York Times. It begins:

In the 19th Century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

You likely recognize Kristof's name from his dogged reporting on women and trafficking around the world, rape in the Congo, and so many other issues facing poor women throughout the globe. I have to admit that I sometimes find his style repetitive, and therefore not as effective as I believe it could be, but I'm thrilled that he's calling attention to these issues (and has been with such precious column inches). It's cool that he and his partner collaborated to put this book together, as well.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but wanted everyone to be aware that's it has launched, along with a couple of interesting contests that feministing readers may want to enter.

I really like Fast Company's coverage--they manage to produce a lot of fresh, interesting material that isn't just about fuddy duddy notions of business, but the intersections of sustainability, design, creativity, leadership, innovation etc. (Full disclosure: I'm one of those nerds who likes futurist talk about where the world is headed culturally, technologically, sociologically etc.).

That's why I was purdy disappointed to find that only 24 of the top 100 of their "Most Creative People in Business" list were women. Really Fast Company? Women are launching businesses at twice the rate of men. Super innovative microlending businesses are taking the world by storm, largely led by the efforts of women. Between 1997 and 2006, the number of majority women-owned businesses increased 42%.

I'm not going to trot out gender stereotypes about women being more creative than men, but God knows we're as creative as men. We may be historically less likely to get involved in business, but all that's changing in a huge way, and I would guess, the women who are blazing trails in business are largely doing it in creative ways (out of both necessity and ingenuity). I don't claim to be a business expert, but this just seems short-sighted on the part of the Fast Company editorial team, who touts themselves as quintessentially big-picture and future-thinking.

The seven women in the top 25, FYI, are: Melinda Gates, Michelle Ganeless, Stella McCartney, Susan Athey, Trish Adams, Dawn Danby, Jil Sander.

Feel free to put your nominations in comments.

Stick it out till 4:35 for a great defense of Hillary. I heart you Colbert.

Thanks to Claire for the heads up.

According to the New York Times, Gold medalist Caster Semenya, a track and field phenom from South Africa, is undergoing sex-determination testing to confirm her eligibility to race as a woman. The testing is being conducted by the International Association of Athletics Federations, the sport's governing body.

There is plenty of useless speculation and a few fucked up quotations in the article from other athletes:

"These kind of people should not run with us," Elisa Cusma of Italy, who finished sixth, said in a postrace interview with Italian journalists. "For me, she's not a woman. She's a man."

Mariya Savinova, a Russian who finished fifth, told Russian journalists that she did not believe Semenya would be able to pass a test. "Just look at her," Savinova said.

Of course sex can not be determined by looks alone, and gender is not something that we get to decide for others, as Cusma suggests. "These kinds of people" is language taken straight from the bigot's handbook. I think both of these athletes should be asked to do an empathy-determination test, not to mention be schooled in sex, gender, and biology.

Their first reading could be a new book by Gerald N. Callahan, Ph.D.: Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of the Two Sexes. He reports that every year more than 65,000 children are born who aren't obviously either boys or girls. He writes, "In truth, humans come in an amazing number of forms, because human development, including human sexual development, is not an either/or proposition. Instead, between 'either' and 'or' there is an entire spectrum of possibilities.'" The book is really beautifully written, highly accessible, and visionary in its own right. For more on this topic, I also suggest Anne Fausto-Sterling.

The ambiguity of sex may not even be at play with Caster Semenya, but the public's reaction to her performance and body are flash points for our continued discomfort with admitting that the world does not come in such simple dichotomies as we safely like to think it does. My heart goes out to Semenya, who meanwhile has to deal with this shit instead of celebrating her victory and reveling in the moment.

Alice Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, appropriately, has the last word in the NYT article, and I'll give it to her here as well: "At the end of the day, they are going to have to make a social decision on what counts as male and female, and they will wrap it up as if it is simply a scientific decision. And the science actually tells us sex is messy. Or as I like to say, 'Humans like categories neat, but nature is a slob.' "

Thanks to so many readers for the heads up.

While in residency at the Bellagio Center, I spent almost the entire time reading Astra Taylor's Examined Life. I've written about the film version of this project previously. In short, Astra has complex, accessible conversations with eight of the world's most interesting philosophers (Judith Butler! Martha Nussbaum!) about ethics--all while in various kinds of motion. The second the credits ran, I leaned over to my movie buddy and said, "I really wish I could read all of that."

Oila! The New Press has put out this great book--a compilation of the transcripts of all of these conversations. Everything from ecology to disability to poverty to gender expression to phenomenology show up here. As Astra herself describes it in the introduction: "The salient message maybe be that the multiplicity of perspectives presented here does not lead to a quagmire of moral relativism, as some fear, but instead to an expansive ethic of intellectual inquiry, compassion, and political commitment."

I'll leave you with just a few of my favorite insights:
"Love is fundamentally a death of an old self that was isolated and the emergence of a new self now entangled with another self, the self that you fall in love with."
-Cornel West

"Your destiny is to remain ignorant of your destination."
-Avital Ronell

"Much of what is interesting about what humans do comes not from purity but from contamination."
-Kwame Anthony Appiah

"Unless we are willing to be vulnerable to one another, we will not be capable of love, and the denial of vulnerability is one of the sources of aggression and violence."
-Martha Nussbaum

"You are active all the time just to prevent some traumatic thing, the real thing, from happening."
-Slavoj Zizek

"I sometimes think that the social violence that affects people who look more permeable, who look more dependent, who look less defended, is a way in which impermeability on the side of the people who are violent is managed: you be the permeability of the body, you stand for the vulnerability of the body, and I will be the impermeable."
-Judith Butler

An excerpt from the movie:

I don't like writing about facials. So I'll let Tracy at Broadsheet do it.

People magazine (and CNN) carry cringe-worthy quotes from Kourtney Kardashian and why she decided to have a baby: "I looked online, and I was sitting on bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty from having an abortion...I was reading these things of how many people are traumatized by it afterwards." Good to research your options, bad to fall for anti-choice claims of "post-abortion syndrome."

What is "natural beauty" anyway?

Danish conservatives are calling for an abortion ban.

Proposed legislation in the Bahamas would outlaw marital rape (it's still legal?!) and apparently - sigh - the bill is facing opposition.

Spoiler Alert.

The censored episode of the upcoming season of Family Guy enjoyed a public reading in L.A. The Washington Post reports:

The episode, in which Griffin matriarch Lois becomes a surrogate mom for a college friend and her husband, really focuses on the "will she/won't she" abortion question only in the third act, after the couple dies in a car accident. What follows is a trip to a family-planning center, where Peter, initially encouraging his wife to end the pregnancy (and thus avoid her crazy-while-pregnant phase), is stopped by a group of antiabortion activists who try to change his mind with a video featuring Ziggy the Zygote, who just wants a hug.

Family Guy is a college student staple, and I watch every episode. As a feminist, I cringe at the domestic violence against Lois and then cringe at the inevitable accompanying scene where she exacts her revenge. As Samhita pointed out, the hilarious part about Fox's decision not to air the episode is that its audience will likely find it wholly uncontroversial-- to hazard a guess in the absence of polling, Family Guy's audience still doesn't include elderly voters or anti-choicers. The only thought-provoking topic I foresee in the episode could be the struggle between Lois' individual choice vs. a family decision. Lois ends up getting the abortion, after delivering a speech on the value of bringing new life into the world. There is no discussion or apology afterward; it rolls immediately to credits.

It looks like the episode is non-unique to the Family Guy lexicon, offering a little bit of offense to everyone. As equal-opportunity offenders, the writers clearly lean liberal. According to the WaPo article, this episode apparently tackles abortion apologists, abortion protesters, the characterization of pregnant women as insane, surrogate parenthood, experiences in family-planning centers, and a hearty family decision on whether to carry out the abortion. As per usual, the episode will include references to Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. I, for one, can't wait to watch.

Related:
What's with Family Guy's Rape Jokes?
Family Guy Abortion Episode Will Likely Not Air on Fox

A group of women gather at the National Stadium, where Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke at a rally in Kabul. Photo by Nikki Kahn - The Washington Post

Tomorrow, Afghanistan goes to the polls -- and many people are questioning whether it's even possible to hold a "legitimate" election given the potential for low turnout due to recent threats of violence by the Taliban.

But, as Jeanne Brooks reminds us at Women's eNews, it's not just violence that threatens democracy in Afghanistan -- it's the disenfranchisement of women. President Hamid Karzai recently signed a law that severely restricts women's rights. Among many other appalling provisions, it prevents Shia women from casting a vote without their husband's permission.

As Rachel Reid writes in the Washington Post,

Things got much worse recently when President Hamid Karzai officially promulgated legislation that would make the Taliban proud. Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern: As Karzai's government has grown weaker he has increasingly turned to some of society's most conservative elements for support.

In other words, Karzai has shored up his own power at the expense of women. Among Afghans who are risking their lives to vote, he is seen by many to be the only "real choice" in tomorrow's election.

We've got a feminist Secretary of State who has professed her commitment to keeping women's rights central to her agenda. And yet, Brooks points out, the U.S. and British governments decided not to raise a political uproar about the latest restrictions on women's rights "out of fear of disrupting the election." But if women's voting rights are restricted, the election is already disrupted and illegitimate -- violating several articles of the Afghan constitution and international treaties that Afghanistan has signed.

MADRE (an international women's rights group) has created a survival fund that "supports an underground rescue network of women committed to providing shelter and secret transport to women who have been targeted because they dare to speak out for human rights." Click here to donate to the fund.

Related:
Alternatives to Military Escalation in Afghanistan
An On the Ground Perspective on Afghanistan
What do the Women of Afghanistan Want?
The military's disingenuous talking points on women's rights

A new post on Akimbo displays this graph of women's attitudes towards domestic violence. As you can see, in many cases a disturbingly high percentage of women say it is sometimes OK for their husbands to hit them.

The graph depicts figures as high as 90% (Jordan) of women aged 15-49 responding in the affirmative when asked if a husband or partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances.

The information in the graph comes from the UNICEF site Child Info: Monitoring the Situation of Women and Children and was collected between 2001 and 2007. There's no info on attitudes of women in the U.S. in the study, but I'd be really interested to know if the U.S. figures were very different (based on the amount of "she deserved it" that went on during the whole Chris Brown/Rihanna escapade, I somehow doubt it).

You can view a chart with more country info and sources here.

So long, farewell?

Yes, my headline is wishful thinking. But this is definitely a step in the right direction. (Ignore the article's headline if you can, ugh.)

A Manhattan judge ruled yesterday that a blogger can't hide behind a web of anonymity while flinging the ugly words "skank" and "ho" at somebody online.

The sternly worded ruling orders Google to give up the identity of an anonymous blogger-assailant who inexplicably devoted an entire blog -- titled "Skanks in NYC" -- to maligning beautiful blond model Liskula Cohen.

Once Cohen knows the name of her harasser, she can serve them with a defamation suit.

Now, how I feel about anonymous trolls - anonymous misogynists, specifically, is no secret. But Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet has a point: "I am a true child of the Internet and a libertarian at heart, so I'm not all that enthused by the prospect, repugnant as these characters may be." What could a case like this mean for anonymous bloggers who aren't harassing creepsters? It's a tough one - I value the anonymity the Internet gives to people who are using blogging and online activism for progressive ends.

When it comes to the harassment and threats that so many people face online, the answer is clear - there should be some accountability. (And no, before anyone says it: Maligning people, calling women "whores," and issuing online rape and death threats aren't "free speech.") Sometimes that accountability comes in the form of a blogger outing a harasser. Sometimes it means that said harassers will face consequences they never expected.

Most of the time, however, there isn't any accountability - and the victims of online harassment and threats are left with no recourse except to live with it. I certainly know how that feels - having been the target of harassment ranging from bloggers calling me a slut from the way I looked in an innocuous picture, to rape and death threats in emails, to a website Photoshopping pictures of me to look pornographic. And let me tell you: that shit changes you. It changes your sense of safety, sense of self and any idealism you may have had about people being generally good.

And as I wrote in this 2007 Guardian article, battling online harassment should be part of feminist activism - because often the harassment is based on the same power structures and privileges that allow for real life racism, sexism, homophobia, you name it:

Is this what people are really like? Sexist and violent? Misogynist and racist? Alice Marwick, a postgraduate student in New York studying culture and communication, says: "There's the disturbing possibility that people are creating online environments purely to express the type of racist, homophobic, or sexist speech that is no longer acceptable in public society, at work, or even at home."

That doesn't mean I know what the answer is. The truth is, I really don't. But I do know that this is something feminists need to keep on their radar, keep talking about, and keeping fighting against. Because online or off - we all deserve to live free from harassment and fear.

Via OutSports, we find out that Australia's national rugby union team, The Wallabies, have joined forces with gay rugby union club the Sydney Convicts to fight against homophobia. (At left is David Pocock of The Wallabies.)

The campaign - This Is Oz - touts itself as "celebrating diversity and challenging homophobia," and uses its online photo gallery to feature athletes (and everyone else!) holding up messages supporting GLBT rights.

h/t Morgan.

Via Advocate.com and Philadelphia Gay News comes some really disgusting employment discrimination news. Kate Lynn Blatt, a trans woman, was let go from her temp position at Sapa Industrial Extrusions under dubious circumstances: allegedly because she was not healthy enough to complete the job, but it sounds like the real reason was her use of the womens locker room. Manpower Inc., the staffing services agency that placed her at Sapa, told Blatt she would have to supply a picture of her genitalia as a condition of continued employment.

Irene Kudziela, branch manager of Manpower's Pottsville office, allegedly told Blatt that a letter from her surgeon documenting her gender-reassignment surgery -- along with a photograph of her genital area -- would be necessary before she could return to Sapa. ...

Blatt filed bias complaints against Sapa and Manpower with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, alleging wrongful discharge based on sex and disability. She said her disability is gender dysphoria.

Blatt deserves mad props for filing suit. It's exhausting work having to defend your very humanity and right to basic dignity. Yet more evidence that we need to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA.

The recession is driving up recruitment rates for the U.S. Armed Forces. When men and women are laid off, they frequently turn to the one agency that is always hiring: the Army. But women, increasingly seeking out the Army for employment, are being turned away because of the struggles of the Army to accommodate their mentally and physically wounded. One woman I know who enlisted in January had her basic training canceled, while 2009 ROTC graduates in America's colleges have to wait until well into 2010 to take Officer Basic Courses, their first step towards deployment after graduation. This is not unique to women who attempt to enlist, but disproportionately affects women because of the recession.

Back in July, a U.S. fighter plane called the F-22 was essentially discontinued by the Senate, because Secretary of Defense Gates deduced that the U.S. owns enough. He proposed using the saved money to expand the Army by 22,000 troops. This was approved.

My knee-jerk reaction was "No more troops." The Army is requesting additional troops because, on paper only, it has bumped up against its Congressionally-mandated end strength (maximum size) of 547,000 soldiers. The Army is "full."

Active duty soldiers sustaining mental or physical injuries are classified as Wounded Warriors. There are 55-60,000 Wounded Warriors in the lengthy process of medical evaluation under the Department of Defense, but not yet discharged into the Department of Veterans Affairs. In limbo, these 55-60,000 are unable to deploy, while their numbers count against the Army's limit. The Army is 10% smaller than we think it is.

I love good news. Yesterday, a judge in Oklahoma overturned a state law requiring women seeking abortions to get an ultrasound and have the doctor "describe" the fetus.

Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki Robertson said the law violated constitutional requirements that legislative measures deal only with one subject. He did not rule on the validity of the ultrasound provisions.

Last October, a Tulsa abortion provider sued the state, arguing that the law unconstitutionally vague and that it violates a patients privacy and prevents doctors' from using their medical judgment.

Stephanie Toti, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, who represented the clinic, also said the ultrsound mandate is "an affront to women's autonomy and decision-making power, and it's also an intrusion to the physician-patient relationship."

Because what these ultrasound provisions and "informed consent" laws actually are saying is that women who have made the decision to end a pregnancy are too stupid to understand what they're doing unless it's put up on an easy-viewing screen. As Sarah Blustain wrote in a 2007 TAP piece, the laws rely "on the notion that a woman seeking an abortion doesn't actually understand what being pregnant means." So kudos to Judge Robertson for overturning a law based on the idea that women are idiots. That makes my Wednesday.

Related Posts: North Dakota Restricting the Right To Abortion One Ultrasound at a Time.
Twelve States Consider Abortion Restrictions Via Ultrasound Technology
South Carolina may expand ultrasound law
Misinformed consent
The politics of "informed consent"
Mandatory ultrasounds and "informed consent"

Conservatives in Denmark are calling for a ban of the burqa.

A good piece in WashPo about the status of women in Afghanistan.

Lactivists held a "nurse-in" at a Chick-fil-A in Orlando after a breastfeeding customer was asked to cover herself.

On Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, who some call "The Father of Proposition 8."

On August 15 the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) rolled out the latest phase of their Secure Flight program which requires passengers to provide their full name, birth date, and gender when booking tickets. Members of the transgender community are justifiably concerned about the problems this will create.

Many trans individuals do not have identification that matches their presentation or the name they regularly use. Others have IDs with conflicting information. The Advocate asked the TSA how trans folks should handle these situations and got some very un-helpful advice:

TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird told Advocate.com on Thursday that transgender travelers who are purchasing tickets should declare "the gender that they were at the time that they booked their flight."

Kristina Wertz of the Transgender Law Center offered a much more realistic view of what trans folks will have to deal with:

"A lot of transgender people don't have documents" that match up with how they currently identify, she said. "There are always troubles that arise when dealing with documents. People are sometimes forced to disclose their transgender status in a situation where they may not want to."

It is always interesting reading what different people get out of conferences and how they apply it to the work they do. Netroots is one of those spaces that are unique in that people from all walks of life converge for something they are passionate about, something that they often don't get paid to do and something that is trying to bring some semblance of justice and accountability to our legislative process. It is this process that Feministing has given me some access to, by having such a loud megaphone to discuss issues that I think are important and I want you, the voting public, to read about.

Netroots was an interesting experience for me, but not for the same reason it may be for other bigger bloggers, or bloggers that are professional, maybe more moderate and often, don't write about their personal experiences or opinions in the way that I do. Netroots was exciting because it connected me with a subculture of people that drift around the Netroots and connect everywhere we go, constantly engaging in what we have learned thus far, how far we have come and what we can do to better incorporate the voices of our most marginalized in our coverage.

I won't lie, I was critical of how I would feel at Netroots, similar to how I am critical of many mainstream conferences that are consistently by and for a very specific subset of able-bodied, heteronormative, white, male, middle class, college educated constituency. And I was right, the conference at a cursory glance was not as diverse as say, The Allied Media Conference or the US Social Forum, or Sister Song and other spaces that foster and centralize diverse voices.

But what was notable, and made me happy to be there was to be able to connect with all the people that make my world go round and to further make our impact known in a world that has been historically dominated by certain voices. Perhaps it was the hallway conversations with Baratunde Thurston and Jill Filipovic. Or the late night drinks with Amanda Marcotte and Khari Mosley. Or bumping into Melissa Harris-Lacewell and James Perry (or rather, them catching us staring at them and admitting what big fans we are, FYI MHL loves Feministing!). Or late night eats with Davey D and Goddess Jaz. Or bumping into Biko Baker and Billy Wimsatt in front of the convention center. Or partying with Jaclyn Friedman and our very own Ann. Or hanging out with the bad-ass ladies of the Media Consortium. Or finding out that Atrios knows who I am? Or seeing a fantastic panel on Immigration coverage with Rinku Sen and Cheryl Contee and some other awesome folks and watch them call out progressive bloggers for their inability to effectively cover immigration. Or the sit down I was graciously invited to with Jerry Nadler, aka "one of the good ones." Or perhaps it was sitting on a panel with some really talented lady-bloggers and watching as people inhaled our every word, that made me realize, again and again, we need to be here.

It is easy to have our voices drowned out, even in a crowd that may have the same values as we do. But despite that reality, we cannot deny the constant murmur of justice as held by the figureheads I named above and the impact of the work they do, to not only bring diversity in the Netroots but in bringing the power of the netroots to their diverse constituents.

That is what made Netroots rock for me, and yeah, that story is not about specifics on how to change policy, how to use these tools in accountability or how to reframe the healthcare debate. But all of that is affected by the diversity of the people doing the work, and the more diverse it is, the more effective and comprehensive any change we make using new technology will be.

If you have consumed any amount of pop culture directed at straight women over the past decade, you know of the "gay boyfriend" phenomenon: the superfabulous, showtunes and shopping-loving queer friend who shows up whenever a female lead character needs entertainment, romantic advice, or a plus-one.

Think Stanford in Sex and the City. The eavesdropping assistant in Obsessed. The gaggle of gays who advise Drew Barrymore in He's Just Not That Into You. I could go on and on... Much like the black best friend, the gay boyfriend is the perfect match for a neurotic and insecure (but still skinny, white, beautiful) leading lady because he is depicted as sexually nonthreatening and non-spotlight-hogging. I think Sady summed it up well:

Sadly, not everybody can be a White Heterosexual. However, if you are not, I have good news: you, lucky person, get to aid the White Heterosexuals in their quest for love! Gay folks and/or people of color make fabulous accessories to the single White Heterosexual girl's lifestyle.

Which brings us to Thomas Rogers, who describes his plight in Salon today: He's a gay man who has repeatedly been targeted by straight women looking for a gay boyfriend, despite the fact that he has little in common with these women:

As I moved away from home, to bigger and bigger cities, I discovered that there were lots of scruffy and poorly dressed drone-rock-loving gay men in the world -- especially of my age group -- who had nothing in common with the Sanfords and Wills I'd seen on TV. Just because I was into dudes didn't mean I had to suddenly love dance music or fine furnishings. And yet, despite my continued shortcomings as a stereotypical gay man, I remained a strangely alluring target for a large number of straight women.

Rogers grants that self-identified "fag hags" were once extremely important: "I'm here, I'm with that queer, get used to it." (He doesn't make this distinction, but in many parts of the country where gay rights are less entrenched, I think this can still hold true.) And he largely credits Will and Grace with mainstreaming the phenomenon. Granted, I have not seen too many episodes of the show, but to me it's very different than the Carrie/Stanford example. Will and Grace's friendship always seemed like a two-way street. After all, the show isn't called Grace, and Will is much more than a background character who pops up for comic relief. Rogers continues,

It was no coincidence that the first wave of gay male TV characters shared most of their screen time with straight women -- it made us palatable to mainstream America. "It was celebrating the feminine side of gay men, not about going into the bar scene," says Pimlott. "It disarmed their potential threat." And this, in turn, made us into every straight girl's best friend. "It made it seem like every straight girl should have these accessories: Manohlo Blahnik shoes, and a fag."

The military announces that mental health training will be part of a new initiative for all of those who serve. Why, for God's sake, is military sexual assault not mentioned anywhere in this frickin' article?

Ya gotta love Politifact. Despite Bill O'Reilly's contention that "Even though I reported on the doctor honestly, the loons asserted that my analysis of him was 'hateful,'" we find O'Reilly stands corrected.

Those "loons" were pro-choice folks who assert that O'Reilly's continuous coining of the late Dr. George Tiller as a "baby killer" was publicity that contributed to his assassination. "Chief of among the complaints was the doctor's nickname, 'Tiller the baby killer.' Some prolifers branded him with that, and I reported it. So did hundreds of other news sources." stated O'Reilly. So this isn't hateful for you?:

We searched transcripts of The O'Reilly Factor, his show that appears on the Fox News Channel.

We found at least 42 instances of O'Reilly mentioning Tiller by name, going back to 2005. In 24 instances, we found that O'Reilly referred to Tiller specifically as a "baby killer."

Most of the time, O'Reilly would simply refer to the Tiller as "Tiller the baby killer" or as "Dr. George Tiller, known as Tiller the baby killer" without attributing it to anyone. We found four times when O'Reilly said that "some" called him Tiller the baby killer. We did not find any instance where O'Reilly named an individual or a particular antiabortion group that referred to Tiller that way. (Emphasis mine)

Who's the loon now? Read Jill's Guardian piece for more.

h/t to MAC for the link.

Sarah Haskins did a special Target Women for her recent 30th birthday, and it's awesome as usual.

Not only are women apparently the only ones with poo problems, but our lady bladders are worse too!

After the madness that was Marriott's victim-blaming bullshit towards a rape survivor who was sexually assaulted in their hotel garage in Connecticut, we find (sort of) good news about the case:

The Marriott hotel chain on Monday abandoned its legal claim that a Connecticut woman raped at gunpoint in a hotel parking garage, in front of her young children, had been careless and was partly at fault.

The withdrawal followed days of backlash against Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott International Inc., which had claimed in its defense of a lawsuit by the woman that she had "failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities." (Emphasis mine)

The statement given by the Marriott says they are "profoundly sorry that such a terrible thing happened to the victim of this violent crime" and that the lawsuit has "created a mistaken impression that Marriott lacks respect" for victims of violence. Blaming a rape survivor for her assault? That's no mistaken impression of disrespect, but a certainty.

Many are also saying (and I concur) that the damage has already been done. Although it's obviously good that they're not using this horrific defense anymore, what kind of message has already been put out there? Nancy Kushins, executive director of Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services, contended,

"The fear of being blamed for being raped is one of the most common reasons that victims of sexual assault don't come forward."

The New York Times takes on women in combat.

New book, same old advice: If you want a man (the assumption being that of course you do), let him chase you because - sigh - "men are natural-born hunters."

A link for no other reason than liking this headline: "Feminists on a Spree, With Alcohol and Firearms"

Grossest beer cans ever?

Welcome to our newest series! During the third season of Mad Men Feministing writers will offer some of our thoughts on feminist moments, scenes, and themes in the new episodes in order to start a discussion about these topics in our community. *WARNING: Lots of spoilers follow.

The opening dream-like sequence

I was struck in the opening moments of the episode by the intense sexism that defines Dick Whitman's back-story and the degree to which Don Draper seems to be aware of this. Here is a man who is a proud misogynist, yet the past he rejects is shaped by the treatment of women as objects for sexual pleasure and reproduction, patterns Don has repeated. --Jos

Previous flashbacks for Don have often revolved around his father and a sort of hyper-masculine cruelty and neglect. These flashbacks were really centered around the women of his past, childbirth, bodies, and, as Jos said, sexism. I wonder if this is setting the tone for a shift in some of this season's "births." --Courtney

Betty says of Sally, "She's taken to your tools like a little lesbian."

From the beginning the show signals this season will deal with shifting gender roles as well as homosexuality. Betty's joking did not downplay the fact that she sees Sally's use of a hammer as aberrant behavior. --Jos

I actually wondered about Betty's comment, was it anachronistic? I got the impression from previous seasons that homosexuality is perceived as a perversion, not really as lifestyle/sexuality. (Remember when the Russian guy at Sterling Cooper guy who comes out is called a pervert by folks around the office?) And therefore it would be weird for Betty to reference it so casually. But maybe I'm wrong. I need some schooling from a gay-rights historian! --Ann

I was sort of thrown off by Betty's joke as well. There was certainly an edge to it, but even the fact that she would joke about it made it seem less pathological than I had thought it might sit in her mind at this time, in this place. --Courtney

I totally felt like it seemed anachronistic too. But maybe, like Jos said, it's more of an indicator of what this season will be bringing to the table in addressing gender roles and homosexuality. Perhaps they're looking to show changes in attitudes and some progression as the show moves forward through time - between Betty's comment, Sal finally getting a little booty and Don not outing Sal. (Though not that much time has actually gone by in the show...) --Vanessa

A new report from Human Rights Watch, "They Want Us Exterminated": Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq, says that Iraqi militias are torturing and killing men suspected of being gay.

Scott Long, director of HRW's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Programe, says the report "documents a campaign of violence against men in Iraq who are suspected of being gay or who simply don't act masculine enough in the eyes of their killers."

Download the report here.

Tagline: "The only reason to choose black. Time for Green."

This German campaign poster (tagline above) for the Green party was recently removed after folks quite aptly pointed out that it was a racist, sexist piece of crap.

The poster put up by the environmental Greens party in the western town of Kaarst contains a play on words: "Black" in German party politics refers to the color colloquially used to describe Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. Other major parties are described as red, yellow and, of course, green.

Sexualizing and dehumanizing black women and their bodies is hardly new, but I still was shocked at the blatant racism/sexism combo at play. Even worse, though, was the Green party's response even after the posters were removed:

The Greens more than anyone else have always stood for policies characterized by tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and equality. Issues such as integration and women's politics stand at the center of the Greens' political work. Accusations that this poster is racist or sexist are thus untenable. (Emphasis mine)

You see the posters can't be racist or sexist because they're the "good guys." Yeah, okay.

Thanks to Susanna for the link.

Check out Courtney's latest at The American Prospect!

I know I shouldn't be surprised by PETA's latest billboard campaign in Florida - after all, their brand of activism has proven to be sexist and racist time and time again - why not fat-shaming to boot? (Part of me hates posting this at all because it does just give PETA the attention that they want. But I just had to.)

From PETA's press release on the billboard:

A new PETA billboard campaign that was just launched in Jacksonville reminds people who are struggling to lose weight -- and who want to have enough energy to chase a beach ball -- that going vegetarian can be an effective way to shed those extra pounds that keep them from looking good in a bikini. The ad shows a woman whose "blubber" is spilling over the sides of her swimsuit bottom...

Anyone wishing to achieve a hot "beach bod" is reminded that studies show that vegetarians are, on average, about 10 to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters...

"Trying to hide your thunder thighs and balloon belly is no day at the beach," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. (Emphasis mine)

Seriously? This shit is just shameful. Consider this woman's reaction after seeing the billboard:

I was planning on taking [my family] to the beach to enjoy the beautiful day when I saw a billboard that made me want to cry.

...We all sat there and stared at it for a minute and everyone in the car was silent. No one wanted to mention my weight. I laughed it off as usual, but it really had made me so embarrassed, so self conscious and so ashamed about my weight that I dropped off my family at the oceanfront and left to go home, making the excuse that I wasn't feeling well.

I'm with Holly at Deceiver: PETA owes the residents of Jacksonville a serious apology.

Related posts: Sometimes there are no words
Quick Hit: PETA's Ad Banned from the Super Bowl
PETA: Cause objectifying women never gets old
When you thought PETA couldn't get worse.
PETA does it again
Same old shit from PETA

Ann already mentioned this video - made by a group of young people in Chicago discussing rape culture - but I wanted to make sure we posted it as well...

It's that time again! This particular emailer was a bit late to the hating - he's pissed about a video I made some time ago - one that prompted an Anonymous attack on the site and myself - that calls out online misogynists for hiding behind their anonymity. (Shockingly, this hate-emailer did not provide me with his real name or information.)

Mr. Late-to-the-Party goes off on the usual rant, calling me a hypocrite who is afraid of the "truth being exposed about feminism" because I disabled comments on the video. (He's right, if you all were able to see users talking about hate fucking me and telling me to "make a sammich," the tenets of feminism would come crumbling down around us.)

He also, of course, kindly elaborates on why feminism is losing influence because of brave dudes like himself. It was this little snippet, however, that I really liked:

A woman's youth and beauty is her greatest asset, because it can determine access to wealth, education, employment, etc. So enjoy what you can while you are young because time is the greatest enemy of the female, and the greatest ally of the man. 10 years from now when you are 20 pounds heavier and less attractive in the face, you will wither away like all the rest.

Justice, fairness, and real truth will prevail over feminism in the end!

Frankly, my biggest fear - other than my nemesis "time," of course - is being less attractive in the elbow. Once my sharp gorgeous joints lose their beauty, I know that I'm fucked. (Seriously, I will be laughing over "less attractive in the face" for the rest of the day. I hope you'll join me.)

Newsweek profiles Dr. Leroy Carhart, and spotlights what it's like to be one of the country's few remaining later-term abortion providers. Carhart on Tiller's killers: "We have to realize this isn't a difference of opinions. We need to fight back."

An interesting take on Mad Men from Michelle Dean: "I find it really problematic as a show to recommend to people who aren't feminists, or who aren't, at the very least, what I would call ready for a serious discussion of gender roles." Plus, a great post on Mad Men from Shark-Fu's sister, Crystal Merritt -- an ad woman herself!

Amber Rose poses for a series of photos for Complex that reference some notable photos of Grace Jones. And Naomi Campbell plays a wild African queen in the September issue of Harper's Bazaar. As Tami said on Twitter, "Will the black women=animal, exotic meme ever die?"

The New York Times surveys the state of women in combat. I think it downplays the ways in which the military's refusal to formally acknowledge women in combat roles has had negative repercussions for the women themselves. (It's hard to demand better services -- services in the field, PTSD and other health services at home, etc -- when, on paper, you're technically serving in a limited role.)

On the vitriol spewed at Harriette Harman and Hillary Clinton this summer.

A socially-conscious video-production class in Chicago created a video on rape culture "to spread awareness and get people thinking about how and why rape happens."

Colbert takes on hormone replacement therapy and Wyeth pharmaceuticals.

In an incredibly cruel review of the new JCPenney in Manhattan, the Times even manages to fat-shame the mannequins.

Jesse at Pandagon dismantles the "Whole Foods Health Care Plan."

Abortion coverage in health reform is getting a lot of press these days, but what about pregnancy coverage in our current health system? It's deplorable.

Sexual harassment is a crime of power, not passion, Latoya points out.

Can community gardens have an impact on crime rates?

Internet rumors say that Lady Gaga came out as intersex. Lisa at Questioning Transphobia says really, it's none of our business. Sady has more. (Plus a bonus comment from Gaga herself on gay culture.)

What are you reading/writing this week? Leave links in comments...

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Hi Professor Foxy,

Happy but safety conscious kinkster

Hello Happy Kinkster -

I hear you. While I am often a fan of Mr. Savage's advice, I have to admit that the meeting someone over the internet without a shit-ton of safety precautions feels like a really bad idea.

On the other hand, your needs and desires are clear. There are still sex/kink parties around, but they can be difficult to find and are much more of a private party type these days. So what's a kinky girl to do?

Have an email exchange about what your boundaries and desires are. Discuss how you want this to progress and gage the response. If you are satisfied, move on to the next step: either phone calls or meeting in person. If it is phone calls, keep your inner check in on. Does this still feel right? When and if you are ready, move on to the step below.

I would ask if you have a friend that you are out to about this behavior. If not, I think you need to figure out who you can come out to. If your partner is ok with it, have them play this role. When you place or answer an ad on the internets that describes your kink, at a minimum your friend needs to have all the person's contact information in addition to where you are meeting and setting up pre-arranged times to call. In a best case scenario, when you meet this person your friend is sitting a few seats away and is keeping an eye on things.

I would also carefully lay out boundaries with the potential hook up. First meeting in a completely public place with no chance of sex or sex play. At this meeting, lay out what your boundaries are and what you are and are not willing to do. How does the potential hook up respond? Does she/he agree? Ask probing questions? Seem genuinely respectful?

If all goes well, I would suggest trying to find a public dungeon or sex party to go to with the potential. You should meet there so you have your own transport. See how the potential hook up acts. Same things as before - respectful, genuine?

Since your kink involves a great deal of safety and trust, I would also do ramp up on the activities. If you like being fully trussed up, start off with having sex in which the hook up demands you stay still, but you can still move. Then do feet or hands, and keep moving the action up to where you can get what you desire.

In all of this you need to listen to your gut and listen hard, too many women ignore their instincts in our society-molded desire to please and not to offend. This is about you and your safety.

Best,
Professor Foxy

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

Your Friday feel good cute cartoon for the day.

Check out Jaclyn's new column at Amplify Your Voice.

On Tyler Perry's Gender Problem at The Nation by Courtney Young.

The Onion takes PETA to task.

The long awaited trailer for Chris Rock's documentary, "Good Hair," via Wiretap Magazine.

A law has passed in Afghanistan that allows a husband to deny his wife food, if she denies him sex.

Have a great weekend folks!

Transcript after the jump.

Absent from reporting on the imprisonment and release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, which has taken the disturbing turn of focusing on the power dynamic between the Clintons, is the story the journalists were investigating in the first place. A piece by Ji-Yeon Yuh at the Women's Media Center discusses this story: human trafficking.

Proportionally, the trafficking of North Korean women into China is a small part of an enormous worldwide criminal enterprise. However, of North Korean women and girl refugees in China, an estimated 80 to 90 percent are victims of trafficking. This is likely the highest percentage of trafficking in a single population.

...

The available evidence points to a dramatic expansion in the trafficking of North Korean women over the past decade. Based on the aid workers' estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the female refugees are trafficking victims, there could be as many as 168,000 trafficked North Korean women and girls in China, and thousands cross the border each year.

It is no longer a case of local Chinese gangsters tricking North Korean women already in China and selling them as wives to rural bachelors. It is now a systematic, albeit sprawling industry operating in both North Korea and China that lures North Korean women with promises of jobs and then sells them into commercial sex work or into servitude as personal laborers and sex slaves--"wives"--for men. While once North Korean women were sold primarily in areas bordering North Korea, now there is evidence that they are being sold throughout the area north of Beijing.

The fact is, the slave trade has not gone away. Two women just went through hell because of this. Millions more people, the overwhelming majority of whom are women and girls, are trapped in this horrific reality. Human trafficking deserves much more of our attention.

The president of the International Olympics Committee announced yesterday that women's boxing is going to added to the 2012 Olympics in London.

While I'm thrilled about this news, I just don't understand why women ski jumpers have had to struggle so hard to get a spot in the Olympics over the last several years. In fact, a group of women ski jumpers are set to appeal in court in November to the decision made not allowing them to participate in the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. You can sign their petition here.

(Random disclosure: I know the woman in the pic on the left, Alicia "Slick" Ashley, and she rocks the house. She volunteered for GGE when I was there, teaching our girls how to box; as a 5'5'' world champ, she made me all the more sure that smaller women can kick ass too. Awesome.)

I am in Pittsburgh for the Netroots Nation conference. This is my first time and so far it has been filled with run-ins with some of my favorite bloggers and lefty communications folks, meeting a famous NFL players who I didn't know and his son who is running for Mayor of Pittsburgh and of course getting to know the Pittsburgh nightlife, with a quick blogger party at the Andy Warhol museum.

I am heading to my first set of panels now and don't forget if you are here to check out my panel with Jill, Amanda, Linsdey and Pam tomorrow, "Woman Bloggers Found."

If you are here, say hi and you can follow the official Netroots Nation twitter feed here and follow me on twitter at desifeminista.

*Trigger Warning*

Because being raped isn't traumatic enough, let's throw in some blame shame. Via Hartford Courant.

The woman allowed Fricker to go through her wallet and told him to take it, but Fricker demanded she take off her clothes. He then sexually assaulted her for several minutes while he pointed the gun at the children and threatened to sexually assault one of them. The attack stopped when another car pulled up and the woman screamed. Fricker fled and was arrested three days later in White Plains, N.Y.

In the civil suit, the woman claims Fricker had been in the hotel and garage behaving suspiciously days before the attack and on the afternoon of the attack, but the hotel failed to notice him, apprehend him or force him to leave, the Stamford Advocate reported. The suit also claims that during the attack security personnel did not see Fricker or stop him.

The hotel claims in their special defense that the hotel had not been notified about Fricker and that his acts were unforeseen and beyond their control, the newspaper reported

Thanks to Jaclyn for the heads up.

TIME says that the May Gallup poll reporting that the majority of Americans are pro-life was a fluke. The latest poll is in, and the "pro-life" majority has disappeared.

The percentages of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are essentially the same (47% for pro-life; 46% for pro-choice). Meanwhile, the positions they hold--a more useful indicator than the labels people choose for themselves--haven't budged. A solid 78% think abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances.

Reporter Amy Sullivan also notes that one of the more interesting aspects of the poll is that about 60% of people who describe themselves as "pro-life" think abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances.

Anti-abortion activists would say they're not really pro-life, just like they insist that politicians like Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) who support the use of contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies should not be described as pro-life. But clearly many Americans are comfortable thinking of themselves as "pro-life" and at the same time holding the belief that abortion should be legal. Now that's a story.

Via RH Reality Check.

Check this out from PassiveAgressiveNotes.com:

k, so court in michigan met this guy out at a bar. he seemed harmless enough, but court knew right he wasn't her type. still, she didn't have the heart to give him a flat-out "no" when he asked for her number. (she couldn't give him a fake one, either, 'cause he the did the "dial his number into the phone and call" thing.)

says court: "the first time he called, i talked to him and decided right then i definitely wasn't interested." by the end of the conversation, she figured he'd gotten the message...but then he kept calling. and then, texting. when she didn't respond, court says, "i assumed he'd take the hint...but i'm not too sure he did." um, yeah, you could say that.

Um, scary. Entitled much?

While Kelly Clarkson's body has apparently been airbrushed away in SELF magazine's September cover, members of the UK Parliament are calling for disclaimers on advertisements that have been airbrushed. Love it.

Airbrushing is sadly no new trend in women's magazines and ads, but the thing about Clarkson's "slimmed down" cover that's particularly disturbing is that September is SELF's "Total Body Confidence Issue," not to mention Clarkson talks about her (non)issues with weight fluctuation in the piece and the media's hissies that she just doesn't get:

"My happy weight changes. Sometimes I eat more; sometimes I play more. I'll be different sizes all the time. When people talk about my weight, I'm like, 'You seem to have a problem with it; I don't. I'm fine!'"

In the meantime, UK Democrats from the House of Parliament just released 42 recommendations to "help improve the lives of women in the UK," with one of the most controversial being the suggestion that airbrushed ads have a disclaimer saying so.

What really pisses me off is the contention by fashion folks supportive of airbrushing that it somehow benefits the subject being airbrushed. Photographer Nigel Baker said in response to the proposal:

"The idea is that you want to produce the most flattering image possible . . . The reason why talent in the modeling industry is so young is because of this desire to have flawless-looking women. But with good retouching, you can have older-looking women working longer. You can show her maturity, but perhaps you don't show every wrinkle and line. What you are seeing are older models having longer careers that they never would have had because of retouching.''

See, airbrushing is good for women! We're allowing older, "flawed" women to continue to work even though they shouldn't be! In response to Clarkson's airbrushed cover, SELF editor Lucy Danziger says the "retouching" was "only to make her look her personal best." But how could that be her personal best when it's technically not even all of her there?

h/t to Ethan for the link.

If you're a dude, that is. Ladies, continue to starve yourself per usual please.

Filament, an erotic magazine for women featuring semi-naked men, can't get a printer to publish photographs of aroused men, even though their readers say it's what they'd like to see.

Nancy Griffin, a tennis player in Raleigh, is suing the city for refusing to let her play against men. An actual quote from the article: "Men have invoked both their wives and God to avoid matches against her." Wowzer.

For an -ism (sizeism, classism...) packed punch from the New York Times, don't miss this piece on J.C. Penney coming to Manhattan's Herald Square.

New study indicates that the choice of major explained 19 percent of the income gap between college-educated men and women.

What else did you find interesting today?

Spencer Jones and Tyler Barrick were married at San Francisco City Hall on June 17, 2008, the first day California gay couples were legally allowed to do so.

Happily ever after? Well, sort of. But now their hometown paper, The Spectrum, in St. George, Utah, refuses to publish their wedding announcement. An excerpt from the gladd blog:

At first, the paper said they could run the announcement in the "celebrations" section of the paper - but only if there was no picture.

Jones and Barrick objected to being told their picture would be excluded, and in response president and publisher Donnie Welch decided that no announcement would run at all. He told the couple, "As our policy is to run marriage announcements recognized by Utah Law, I have made the decision to not run this announcement."

They are trying to get as many people as possible to email and call the publisher over the next few days, so do your part if you've got an extra minute:
Donnie Welch, President/Publisher, The Spectrum
435-674-6222
dwelch@thespectrum.com

My day job is with an amazing organization called the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC), which works to promote and protect the sexual and reproductive rights and health of all women and young people, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I work in communications there, doing research, writing for the blog , and, of course, performing admin duties :-) I've been working there for a few months now, and one of the most interesting parts of my job, in my estimation, is identifying and outlining the parallels between the challenges women face in the United States and the challenges we face internationally. I'm constantly reminded of the interconnectedness of our struggles, but I don't know that this interconnectedness is always on the radar of all U.S. based feminists. To that end, I draw your attention to recent happenings in the Dominican Republic surrounding reproductive rights and health.

The same drive to exert control over women's bodies that manifests in the U.S. in anti-choice efforts such as "fetal rights" laws is showing up in the Dominican Republic as, well, this. Proposed changes to a piece of legislation in the Dominican Congress called Article 30 would define life as "beginning at conception" and thus could effectively make any type of abortion unconstitutional and outlaw several forms of birth control. More after the jump.

Karen Pittelman--poet, author, musician, activist, and writing coach extraordinaire--guest reviews for us this week. Thanks Karen!

It's the mark of a good poem when you absolutely must pull it out of your bag in the middle of the street and start reading out loud to a friend. Which is what I found myself doing last week with the title piece of Katha Pollitt's new collection, The Mind-Body Problem. As I recited her lines on the body's struggle to assert its simple desires--"wanting to be touched the way an otter/ loves water, the way a giraffe/ wants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling/ the tender leaves at the tops of the trees"--my friend and I slumped contentedly against the wall of the corner grocery and sighed. Who says poetry has to be esoteric? Pollitt's language here is as lucid and accessible as the prose in her well-known essays. Columnist for The Nation and author of four books of essays including the recent Learning To Drive: And Other Life Stories, Pollitt also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her 1982 collection of poems, Antarctic Traveller. The Mind-Body Problem heralds her first return to the form since then, and it's about time.

Pollitt has a masterful way with the details of daily life. More than just graceful observations, these are the moments on which her poems turn. Casting an unflinching eye on a world at war, "a world whose predominant characteristics are futility, cruelty, loneliness, disappointment," the poems nevertheless search ceaselessly for moments of everyday beauty strong enough to sustain us. There is "a woman coming out of the subway carrying an immense bouquet of white lilac wrapped in white tissue paper, like a torch." In "Near Union Square," peddlers sell "Windex-blue ices" and "three-dollar lime-translucent sandals," and "suddenly out of nowhere the roof of every/ flaking office building flares gold." People are still, "saved every day/ by a sparrow, a foghorn, a grassblade, a tablecloth." Even the dead are drawn to return, in the poem "Visitors," "not to startle us with fear or guilt or grief," but just for the simple pleasure of "hefting and sniffing cantaloupes at Key Food."

In her essay, "Webstalker," from Learning to Drive, Pollitt writes of the "small ordinary word, like 'orange' or 'inkstain'... that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away, like the roughness on a pebble in a creek bed, but... if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core." That's a good explanation of what is at work in these poems, the quiet glint of life and language she is mining here as fuel for a more passionate engagement with the world. It may not always be enough. Still, in one of the book's most powerful moments, "Trying to Write a Poem Against the War," Pollitt reminds us, with a bit of a sly smile, that though the task may be as futile as "mailing myself to the moon/... yet what can we do/ but offer what we have?"

Aung San Suu Kyi, the PM-elect of Burma, was sentenced Tuesday to 18 additional months of house arrest for being secretly visited by an American who swam to her house.

Of the last 20 years, Suu Kyi has been imprisoned for 14. For the first time, other South-East Asian nations have condemned the Burmese government's sentence, widely seen as a preventative measure against allowing Suu Kyi mobility to participate in the Burmese elections, scheduled for May 2010. In the 1990 multi-party elections, Suu Kyi's party won 392 out of the Burmese Parliament's 485 seats and was denied power. Suu Kyi, the Prime Minister-Elect of Burma and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is the daughter of General Aung San, the "father" of Myanmar. She has been offered freedom if she leaves her country, but refuses under fear of being denied re-entry, remaining under house arrest even while the father of her children died of prostate cancer in Britain. She is widely referred to as "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi," as "Daw" roughly means "aunt."

Women are frequently rallying points for political movements, and even more frequently referred to as relatives, "Mothers" or "Daughters" of political activism. The familial rhetoric serves not only to endear these leaders to their followers, but also to uniquely characterize each movement as friendly and nurturing in media coverage to the international community.

Don't miss Judith Warner's awesome piece on Hillary, and so-called "women's issues." An excerpt:

Women's issues are being framed by this administration in terms of realpolitik: U.S. security depends on women's empowerment. Global economic growth depends on women's participation.

Women's empowerment won't be delivered at the end of a gun or through economic sanctions or even overt criticism, if it cuts into accepted cultural practices. This is messy stuff; some of our most sensitive allies have horrific records on women's rights. Programs that show success tend to be slow-moving and incremental. Can all this complexity attract -- much less sustain -- the attention of the public?

Maybe -- if we stop viewing everything Clinton does as entertainment.

So, yesterday I went to a town hall meeting with Senator Claire McCaskill. It was not a pleasant scene, but it was also not the out of control festival of anger the press has been making these things out to be. Despite the rather impressive ability of some folks to vocally project their foolishness for two straight hours, the crowd was rather mixed on the issue...kind of like Missouri is.

Here's my take - these town hall meetings are pretty much worthless if people take the angle many news outlets are taking and focus in on the people behaving as if they have no home training...

...but they do have value if you are able to hear and listen to the rest of the people in the room....not just supporters of health care reform like me, but also the Not as Louds that I suspect are the majority of folks in the room.

Who are these Not as Louds?

I am so glad you asked!

The Not as Louds are the folks who were sitting in the middle of the room...who at first seemed to be booing health care reform with the No Home Training team. But then Senator McCaskill asked for a show of hands on how many folks in attendance were on Medicare...and a bunch of those Not as Louds' hands went up in the middle. And then she asked how many of them wanted to see Medicare go away...and only three of those folks raised their hands again.

Blink.

Yep, these were the same people who booed when government and health care were said in the same sentence....publicly demonstrating that they liked their health care with some government mixed in.

The Not as Louds are the opponents of health care reform who are against it because they do not understand it...

...and we must work hard against becoming so distracted by the flamboyant shouters that we ignore the opportunity to educate those folks who aren't exactly shouting for either side.

Vanessa and I went to hear Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal in Prospect Park last night and I was, once again, reminded of why Bonnie Raitt is literally one of the coolest women alive (Taj was awesome too, of course!). Many people don't know Raitt's story and it's a truly radical one. From her official bio:

In the late '60s, restless in Los Angeles, she moved east to Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a Harvard/Radcliffe student majoring in Social Relations and African Studies, she attended classes and immersed herself in the city's turbulent cultural and political activities. "I couldn't wait to get back to where there were folkies and the antiwar and civil rights movements," she says. "There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge." Also, she adds, with a laugh, "the ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind."

Raitt was already deeply involved with folk music and the blues at that time. Exposure to the album Blues at Newport 1963 at age 14 had kindled her interest in blues and slide guitar, and between classes at Harvard she explored these and other styles in local coffeehouse gigs. Three years after entering college, Bonnie left to commit herself full-time to music, and shortly afterward found herself opening for surviving giants of the blues. From Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sippie Wallace, Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker she learned first-hand lessons of life as well as invaluable techniques of performance.

"I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids," she says. "I was especially lucky as so many of them are no longer with us."

In a time when so many white musicians seem to take what they want from historically black music and then promptly get amnesia about where it came from, Raitt has always honored her influences and been deeply involved in social justice work. Her truly unique voice and stunning guitar skills are gracefully situated in the blues she was brought up in and she's constantly creating opportunities for the somewhat forgotten blues greats to get on stage and enlighten people.

Thanks for eighteen albums and forty odd years of bad-assery Bonnie!

Here's another in our series on intergenerational feminism in partnership with the Omega Institute. We're all getting excited about next month's conference, Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations. Check out this reflection on feminism by Essence magazine writer Charreah Jackson.

I stumbled into feminism through the back door. And honestly, I am still finding my footing. Growing up in a Black neighborhood in Atlanta's suburbs, going to Black schools, having Black ballet teachers and dentists, I was always exposed to women in powerful positions while being educated on the historical struggles of my people. So the thought that I could be denied things for my gender in this day was a slow one.

It was a big eye-opener to begin to network with powerful women journalists right out of college and be schooled on how recent many breakthroughs for women are in the business and still how far we have to go. Instead of being so tuned in to the lack of Black people in power at a company, network or editorial page, I was also counting the few women too. I left my Black bubble and came back to Earth, where women were only in bigger numbers when it came to births.

I had a new word to describe why my blood boiled when a male professor wanted to call me sweetie and pat me on the back like a dog. While volunteering with Heads Up, I had a new word for the explanations I gave my kindergarten charges on why the boys could help with the dishes during playtime.
And I had a new underdog that I was looking at in the mirror and millions of faces around the globe.

Sometimes I still feel in the back of the room for the causes I fight for, and seeing some feminists attacks on our President during his race had me examining my new found feminism.

Twilight Barbie. For serious.

Victory for the author whose book cover was "white washed"

I've been seeing these ads everywhere in NYC so I'm thrilled that Miranda took them on.

Amanda continues to blog about Nice Guys (shudder)

Betty Draper takes aim at stereotypes, thanks to Mad Men's women writers

If you're anything like me, you can barely contain your excitement that season 3 of Mad Men begins on Sunday. It took me awhile to get around to watching the show (I didn't bother to get a converter when TV went digital, and won't shell out for cable), but finally my coworker Dana Goldstein convinced me: "Ann, it's all about sexism and vintage fashion. How can you not watch?"

And indeed, I love how the show paints an unvarnished picture of '50s gender roles and how the female characters are so three-dimensional. They don't easily map onto the sorts of stereotypes prevalent in TV shows and movies set in all decades. The bookish achiever (Peggy) is also kind of a slut. The slut (Joan) is also kind of a bookish achiever. And the devoted wife (Betty) is primed for a feminist awakening. (I've often wondered if the character was named after Betty Friedan.)

So I wasn't surprised to learn that 7 of the show's 9 writers are women, and in this upcoming season, women directed 5 of the 13 episodes. Compare that to elsewhere in Hollywood...

According to the Directors Guild of America, the labor union that represents film and television directors, about 13% of its 8,000 directors are female. Women comprised 23% of television writers during the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season, a 12 percentage point decrease from the same period a year earlier. Nearly 80% of TV programs in the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season had no women writers...

Maybe if all TV shows and movies had a better proportion of women writers, actresses wouldn't be considered past their prime at age 35 and would be given way more substantive leading roles. Turns out women-written movies and shows also tend to be pretty fucking popular.

I did notice that the seven Mad Men writers pictured all appeared to be white. While the show has touched on the issue of race (namely, when lead character Don Draper has an affair with a Jewish woman, and when one of the copywriters dates a black woman), it is a far less common theme than gender. I wonder if that would change, too, if the demographics of the writers did.

Who else is counting the minutes 'til Sunday night?

Related:
Funny ladies of Hollywood discuss getting "old"
An Entourage of Their Own
Unnoticed sexism: Movie Trailer Narrators
Women Make Money at the Movies, But Don't Say Much
On roles for women of color in Hollywood

Also see Amanda's writing about Mad Men, and two posts on Racialicious. (But be forewarned, they're spoiler-ridden!) Plus, watch Jezebel's 15 feminist moments from Mad Men.

A new study presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco today shows that about 70% of Americans believe that women should take their husband's last names when they get married and 50% think it should be a legal requirement.* Say what?

I knew that the majority of American women who marry men take their husbands last names - but shit is just shocking. Not to mention depressing.

Now as many of you know, I'm getting hitched (in like 7 weeks, craziness). The thought of taking Andrew's last name never even occurred to me - not once. Why not? Because it's not my name. Why would I change it? It's not like it's easier - it's actively going out of my way to adopt someone else's identity. (To be clear, I'm not hating on women who do decide to go this route - it's just not for me, and I don't get it.)

What's really distressing about this news - Laura Hamilton, the study's lead author says that when respondents were asked why they thought women should change their last names, "they told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family."

"This was a reason given by many," Hamilton said. Really? Things like this - deeply ingrained sexism - rarely shock me. But I am actually astounded that such an antiquated notion could be held onto by so many. (Though I'm still holding out hope that this study is proven to be bunk. Sigh.)

*And for those of you think the legal requirement thing is too out there to worry about, consider that it was not so long ago that a couple in Washington, DC was denied a birth certificate for their child because they wanted to give the baby the mother's last name. Also, in 2004 a Pennsylvania court denied a petition from a woman who wanted her daughter to have a hyphenated last name; they said it was "in the best interests of the child" to have only her father's last name.

Related: Two years and a lawsuit later, CA man gets his wife's last name
What's in a name?

Via Broadsheet.

My first ever profile picture! Taken on the night we decided to start Feministing, at a bar in the East Village.

Since our inception in 2004, we've published over 9400 posts. Since launching the Community blog just over a year ago, you all have published over 5000! (Damn, catching up with us!!)

Feministing has over 200,000 comments on its entries.

Two of the top search terms that bring people to the site are upskirt and ball busting.

Our look has changed significantly.

Since I started writing in the Feministing Community I have seen the idea of a safe space come up when comment threads take offensive turns. I find the notion of creating a safe space on a highly trafficked website dubious. Hate speech should never be tolerated but, though we can edit comments and ban users, it cannot be completely prevented.

I think there is a bigger problem with the idea of safe spaces that goes beyond the internet, though. I have come to believe that creating safe spaces is an unrealistic goal and that labeling a space as safe is highly problematic.

The goal of creating a space free of violence, including verbal violence, is a lofty one. But we all have our own personal histories and it is impossible to know what might trigger any one person. I am consistently surprised by what words and actions trigger me the most and gain new insight into my own experience of trauma as a result. How can I expect anyone else to anticipate all my triggers?

Members of marginalized groups all have our own triggers. There are certainly shared histories that give us insight into what might negatively impact the psyche of members of a group as a whole. This is where we get an understanding of hate speech from. But identity is nuanced and complex, and each person's feelings and experiences are their own. A space that includes members of multiple groups can easily give rise to triggering moments from well meaning people who do not understand member's of another group's identity based trauma. But even closed identity based spaces can feel incredibly unsafe and be home to deeply hurtful words and actions because of intersecting identities and individual experiences not accounted for by broad social categories. Identity based spaces are important, but we need to recognize we cannot promise safety even in these spaces.

Check out Katha Pollit's piece about UN press officer and general badass Lubna Hussein, who is standing up against the sexist Sudanese government. Hussein was one of the 13 women charged under Sudan's Article 152 Criminal Code, prohibiting "indecent" dress, on July 3rd. Their crime? Um, pants. 10 of the 13 women accepted a plea bargain, but not Hussein. Pollit reports:

Lubna Hussein and two others insisted on going to trial-- even though losing in court will mean forty lashes and a much bigger fine. In fact, Hussein resigned her UN post so as not to have immunity -- she wants to win this battle on principle, not a technicality, and have the dress-code law abolished. 'I will take my case to the upper court, even to the constitutional court,' she told The Guardian . 'And if they find me guilty, I am ready to receive not only 40 lashes, I am ready for 40,000 lashes. If all women must be flogged for what they wear, I am ready to be flogged 40,000 times.'

Support Hussein and her crew here.

The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. - along with all of its descendants - is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh. Check out this interesting meditation on having babies and your carbon foot print by my friend Molly May.

Check out this interesting round up of responses to the controversial New York Times article on Japan's hostess culture. In the original article, the following phenomenon was explored:

with that line of work, called hostessing, among the most lucrative jobs available to women and with the country neck-deep in a recession, hostess positions are increasingly coveted, and hostesses themselves are gaining respectability and even acclaim. Japan's worst recession since World War II is changing mores.

It would be easy to say that the downturn economy has done these young women a favor by destigmatizing their work, and therefore, allowing them to earn a living without the previously requisite shame. But the economic reality reveals a far less simplistic picture:

But behind this trend is a less-than-glamorous reality. Employment opportunities for young women, especially those with no college education, are often limited to low-paying, dead-end jobs or temp positions...Even before the economic downturn, almost 70 percent of women ages 20 to 24 worked jobs with few benefits and little job security, according to a government labor survey. The situation has worsened in the recession.

Aya Ezawa, a sociology lecturer in the Japanese Studies Program at Leiden University in the Netherlands, seems to have hit one of the major missing points smack on the head:

At a time of economic downturn, it is worrisome that the media in Japan and abroad portray hostessing as a glamorous job and a woman's road to success. Instead of focusing on the hostesses, it would make more sense to examine the attitudes of the men who are willing to pay a high price for being entertained, served, and pleased by women with short skirts and heavy makeup.

And, of course, I would add, expanding economic opportunities, especially for young and low-income women so that they can make a true choice about being involved in hostess work or doing other kinds of work that more genuinely match their interests and gifts.

Hey everyone--I'm back from my month long hiatus in the land of book writing, homemade pasta, and internet disconnection (otherwise known as the Bellagio Centre in Italy). It was truly an incredible, life-changing month for all sorts of reasons, and I plan on writing about some of them over the next few weeks (especially the incredible international artists that I met). I wanted to start by reflecting a bit on Virginia Woolf's old idea about women needing their own space and time. I have never felt this more acutely than when I finally got it. Woolf wrote:

Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.

The Bellagio Center was actually created because an Italian princess who owned the villa bequeathed it to the Rockefeller Foundation with the explicit instructions that it be used as a place for international artists and scholars to come and have interdisciplinary interactions aimed to promote social justice. On my residency alone there were women and men from Kenya, South Africa, the Netherlands, India, Nigeria, Japan, Azerbaijan, and more from the U.S. They came from a variety of class and ethnic backgrounds, and worked in a wide variety of fields--from law to international development, from sculpture to anthropology.

Thanks to my peeps here for picking up my slack, and thanks to that Italian principessa for having the vision to provide people, especially women, with a room of one's own. I feel so honored to have had the opportunity and will do my damndest to make sure others get the same kind of affirmation, time, and space. Admissions is currently closed, but will reopen in the fall. Here's info on the process. And feel free to add info about other residencies in the comments section!

Apparently, Merkel's cleavage is more important than her platform in Germany.

Deeply Problematic writes about a triumph over transmisogyny by trans woman Andre Edwards who was fired for wearing nail polish and wearing skirts on the job, but then rehired for (gasp) being able to do the job!

Women organize in Nepal after the government tries to pay men to marry widows.

Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe gives major donation to The Trevor Project via Pam's House Blend.

And that is all I have today, I am busy getting ready for Netroots Nation so please add more in comments!

A very common right-wing anti-feminist argument is that women in the United States need to STFU and be happy we have it as good as we do, because we could be in *insert so-and-so 3rd world barbaric country* where we would really be treated badly. It is the old one two, first asserting that women have nothing to fight for in the States so, "quit yer bitchin" and second, that we are better than other countries, less barbaric, more civilized, etc. It is an old and tired attack, but unfortunately, sometimes it works.

Bob Herbert's Op-Ed from last week rightfully discussed the idea that in the United States we live in a culture of misogyny.

I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women -- not so much of an uproar.

According to police accounts, Sodini walked into a dance-aerobics class of about 30 women who were being led by a pregnant instructor. He turned out the lights and opened fire. The instructor was among the wounded.

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment.

To much surprise, Double X ran a piece by Anne Applebaum in protest to this idea of a culture of misogyny and I think it speaks to some of the arguments that feminists have been trying to make with regard to cultural appropriation, relativism and clear ignorance to the role of US backed mis-treatment of women, world-wide.

Herbert's thesis echoes the drumbeat of self-pity that has been coming out of paleo-feminist groups and women's studies departments for decades: America, in their view, is a country where "barbaric treatment of women has come to be more accepted," where we are all so inured to the victimization of the female half of the population that we don't even notice it anymore. Presumably because he is unable to prove this ludicrous proposition in any other way, Herbert uses the case of a single, certifiably insane mass-murderer to argue that all of American culture is anti-woman. The implication: All American men are, deep down, in sympathy with this crazed killer, thanks to our mass media that denigrates women, etc.

I realize Applebaum is blinded by her patriotic lust for the United States (after all, that is her wrapped in an American flag isn't it?), but I think it is clear that for her the US is a safe-haven. As in for her and other people like her, that don't live in poverty, are white, haven't been victim of nefarious immigration policy, the prison industrial complex, homophobia or lack of access to health care and/or reproductive rights. Right, for her, the US is a safe-haven and if you keep yapping, she thinks you should go to Iran so you can see what it is really like to not have rights. Perhaps she needs a crash course on what not to say about Muslim women and I wonder if that is what the feminists in Iran are thinking, who have explicitly defined a feminist movement for themselves outside of the purvey of the Western gaze as have many feminist movements around the world, but I digress. (Oh yeah, and doesn't Germany have a female president?)

In academia, there has been a move in studying women around the world from a relativist approach to one that is relational and understands that based on where someone is and what community they are part of, they experience life and therefore misogyny differently. It is a useful exercise and informs activism to the sense that, we can only work within what we know, for when we try and work elsewhere, it is our agenda that is put forth. It is step one in any type of effective coalition building across difference.

So while we may sometimes have the urge to suggest that we have it better here, what I consider better and what you consider better might be two different things. Applebaum and I have seen a different America, and that difference rests in who we are and what communities we have been part of her. As someone who studies the ways that patriarchy functions in the United States and as someone who is a woman of color in the United States born to immigrants that have struggled through sexism, racism and poverty, Herbert's point resonates clearly for me. Frankly, I don't really need to have had this experience to agree with Herbert says, since the evidence is so clear, but I can't deny standpoint.

I suppose, when you are functioning in a frame of fear and don't want to assess the level at which patriarchy afflicts life in the United States, it is much more comforting to suggest that Sodini's act was not informed by his hatred for women, as Jessica put it yesterday. But since so much evidence has come out to the contrary, it is hard to deny, that there is a relationship between misogyny and his deplorable act.

If we are to build any type of feminist movement and/or stop violence against women we have to acknowledge the ways that misogyny produces hatred towards women and the role the media, popular culture and the government have in it. We have to structurally recognize the way that misogyny plays out in day to day life in the United States and what that looks like here, may be different than what it looks like somewhere else, but the implications are relationally unjust.

As Ariel mentioned in her post, yesterday when Secretary of State Clinton was in the Congo to discuss the issue of death and rape, a student asked her (not verbatim) "what does your husband think about this, through you, his wife?" There is some speculation that the question was translated wrong, but I think it is worth looking at the video, which has been characterized as Clinton "losing her head, " and being "outraged."

I think she handled it pretty well, but this video has garnered sexist news headlines everywhere describing Hillary as losing her cool.

But that is not really the point and speaks to the larger issue, that this is being used as a distraction from what we are planning on doing in the Congo to change the current situation. While the answer to this question and speculating over Clinton's lack of self control, gives the media another opportunity to fixate on Clinton's "attitude" problem, the systematic violence towards the people of Congo and the use of rape as a weapon of war, is what needs our attention. According to the NYTimes, Clinton unveiled today her plan to allocate $17 million dollars to the Congo specifically towards the issue of sexual violence.

Speaking during an unprecedented visit by an American secretary of state to Goma, in the epicenter of Congo's war-torn east, she said the American government would help train gynecologists, supply rape victims with video cameras to document violence and dispatch military engineers to help train Congolese police officers to crack down on rapists.

"This problem is too big for one country to solve alone," she said at a round table meeting here with doctors and human rights advocates.

"I'm not here to leave a business card, but I can't wave a magic wand either," she told the human rights workers who pressed her for concrete assistance.

Tami, Dana and Jessica_arant on the community site have more.

Is this kind of stuff really still happening?

Well, today it is in Canada. While the news has been flying around about Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien's recent acquittal on the charges of influence peddling, not many are mentioning that the key witnesses' recollection of a conversation was deemed "of little weight" by the judge in part because she commutes to work every day while her kid stays at home with her husband.

That's right, politician Lisa MacLeod's testimony was declared unacceptable for corroboration by Justice Douglas Cunningham of Ontario Superior Court, implying that being a working mom has made her life too complicated for her to appropriately account her statement. Said the judge:

"The defence was able to demonstrate that there were a number of rather significant things going on in her life when she gave her statement to the police. ... "

"She was commuting regularly to Toronto for her work, leaving her husband and child in Ottawa,"

Because the overwhelming combination of working while a mom (gasp!), leaving your kid with the stay-at-home dad (double gasp!) on top of a long commute to work (wowowow!) is just too much for our little lady brains. MacLeod, the Conservative MPP for Nepean-Carleton, said the judge's comments were "pathetic" and "surreal."

"I didn't know truth had a gender or a family."

Pic via the Globe and Mail.

Sergia Santibañez, a Legal Permanent Resident in the U.S., was held in a Detention Center and then deported to Mexico, leaving behind her five children who are all U.S. citizens. The reasoning? She was driving in a car with people she did not know were undocumented immigrants. This short documentary reveals the impact of zero tolerance laws on one family.

For more information on deportation see Samhita's recent post.

h/t to Seth Wessler.

This is sort of astounding:

Women with a family history of breast cancer may have a new weapon against the disease: breast-feeding. In a new study of more than 60,000 women, nursing a baby for at least three months cut the risk of breast cancer in half for those who had a family history of the disease.

The researchers say that breast-feeding could be the equivalent of taking the drug tamoxifen for five years, which is a well-known way to cut breast cancer risk in women with a family history of the disease.

While breastfeeding didn't affect women who don't have a family history of the disease, for women with at least one close relative with breast cancer, breastfeeding cut the risk of premenopausal cancer by 59% compared to those who didn't. That's pretty significant.

Since needing to feed your hungry child apparently isn't good enough reason, maybe folks won't be so opposed to women breastfeeding in public, knowing it could potentially be life-saving and all. (Though something tells me not to hold my breath.)

In Kinshasa, Congo yesterday, a Congolese student asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton her husband's opinion on an international economic issue.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not secretary of state, I am," she replied.

Since Pres. Bill Clinton's productive visit to North Korea, Secretary Clinton has faced this line of questioning, which endangers American foreign policy efforts.

On the day that Pres. Clinton went to North Korea, I predicted there would be a media backlash about her absence. Now we see U.S. media, including not only Fox but also Huffington Post, perpetuate the idea that Bill Clinton succeeded where Hillary failed. Why send a woman to do a man's job? Clinton had obviously lost credibility with the North Koreans, but U.S.-North Korea relations had soured during the Bush administration, long before she arrived.

Fox News may have started it with the declaration that Hillary was excluded from negotiations, because she had to "eat crow" after calling North Korea an "unruly child", and couldn't "show her face" in the country. But Huffington Post continued the insult with their front-page headline, which dangerously falsifies an imagined rivalry between Bill and Hillary.

Why not Hillary?

Purity pushers are bringing sexy back.

Carl's Jr. says Padma is "more than just a piece of meat." Well that's a relief.

The Daily Mail (always good for a laugh) says that "modern women are turning their husbands into 'male-female hybrids'" by wanting silly things like equitable division of household chores.

A new study says that female managers are three times as likely as their male peers to underrate their bosses' opinions of their work.

The responses to the recent Pennsylvania shooting speaks volumes about how we view (or ignore) misogyny.

In the aftermath of George Sodini's horrific crime, I took some solace in the fact that the media was covering the crime as one targeted towards women. (Something they failed to do several years ago when similar shootings occurred.) And this weekend, I was even more heartened - and not at all surprised - to see Bob Herbert of The New York Times link the shooting to our culture's hatred of women:

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment.

Yet despite the links being made in the mainstream media, and the numerous bloggers and reporters who have shown that Sodini had ties to the "pick up artist" community and probably would have fit in well with the "Nice Guy" sect as well - some people are aghast that anyone would link Sodini's crime to a larger culture of misogyny.

Take, for example (and this is just one of many), conservative anti-feminist blogger Cassy Fiano - who after a roundup of feminist blogger responses to the shooting, writes:

...To say that it is a "culture-wide problem" because America is apparently just still so misogynistic is ridiculous and wrong. And feminists know that. Most men do not harbor secret fantasies of forcing women to have sex with them whether they want to or not, nor do most men dream about enacting violence against women. Yet it doesn't keep feminists from labeling men this way.

What I think it boils down to is that feminists no longer have anything to fight for. And so, a movement that once was dedicated to fighting for equality between sexes has now resorted to slandering all men as angry, violent, women-haters in order to further their own feminist agenda. George Sodini is a sick, evil man who I hope rots in hell for what he's done. And while I don't think feminists are evil, they should still be ashamed of themselves for exploiting a tragedy of this nature in order to continue to smear men.

I genuinely find this kind of reasoning completely fascinating. Calling feminists opportunists and conflating cultural criticisms with man-bashing seems to serve only one purpose - denial. (And some head-patting from misogynists, of course - but that's a post for a different day.) Seriously, I have often wondered why anti-feminists spout what they do. The only answer I've been able to come up with is denial, and an extreme desire to believe that if they're not one of those women (feminists, sluts, etc) then they will be safe. If they can separate themselves from the reality of most women's lives, and the terrifying culture that is misogyny in America, then somehow they will be immune to it all.

Thanks to Community blogger BackOfBusEleven, I'm now obsessed with Current's Bryan Safi.

Carleton University is being sued by an assault victim who says the school failed to have adequate security measures in the building where she was attacked. In response, Carleton has said that the student didn't keep a "proper lookout" for her own safety and should have locked the door to the lab where she was working.

Erik Halliwell, president of the Carleton University Students' Association, says, "We're quite saddened that it seems the university has viewed this sexual assault in a pretty dismissive manner."

Trigger warning and spoilers ahead

Via Lisa at Sociological Images, we're introduced to Deadgirl - a lauded movie making the independent film circuit. Oh yeah, and it's about kidnapping, rape and necrophilia. Good times!

As if the posters weren't enough to give you pause - you really have to love the tagline "You'll never have anything better" and the sideways mouth-as-vagina - the synopsis reveals just how horrifying this movie actually is.

A must see video about the impact of deportation on two villages in Guatemala by Greg Brosnan and Jennifer Szymaszek.

The immigration debate is only discussed in terms of how this "problem" of epic proportions is hurting Americans. Proposals to allow day laborers, domestic workers and other types of service work are generally supported because they support the business and personal interests of the rich. A consideration of the suffering experienced by those that attempt to migrate goes under the radar. But a little investigation reveals the severity of the situation and racist claims by people like Michael Savage become that much more infuriating. This above mini-documentary video Miriam passed on to me speaks to this situation, from the risk of migrating to the amount of money owed to the person that transported you and the corresponding debt, along with the devastation of being deported. The situation is grim.

For some staggering statistics on ICE raids check out the report by the Cardoza Law School, Constitution on Ice: A Report on Immigrant Home Raid Operations.

And to stop the abuses and ensure effective immigration reform, watch the video below and sign the following petition.

Don't let this fall off the national agenda.

As you all know, we get tons of charming email - one I got this weekend, for example was just "fuck you" copied and pasted three hundred or so times. (You at least have to give him credit for staying on message!) But it was this recent email that I really enjoyed from ellie8d:

Please don't have children. The world already has too many hate filled people.

My husband always said, "Even the most beautiful woman becomes very ugly when she uses vulgar words." I couldn't agree more.

OMG. Are you calling me 'beautiful'?! Swoon!

Seriously though, I love emails like these even more than our standard "fuck you cunt" messages because their authors seem to believe that they're actually good people just passing on friendly advice. (As if sending a perfect stranger an email telling them not to procreate because they curse too much is a perfectly normal thing to do.)

If you're out there, Ellie, I just want you to know that I'm going to start having unprotected sex - lots of it - just for you. Cheers!

We got the good news last week that Euna Lee and Laura Ling were returned home. To add to that feeling of relief that came upon hearing the news, I also wanted to share this video of Laura Ling speaking of the experience and Bill Clinton securing their release.
Tear-jerker warning!

Go Bill!

Thanks to Neela for the link!

So no Weekly Feminist Reader this week - it will be back in full force next Sunday!

In the meantime, check out this must-read from Esquire, "The Last Abortion Doctor."

We had technical difficulties for most of yesterday so apologies for this going up so late, and for the lack of posts yesterday afternoon. We are working on getting to the bottom of these technical problems, so thanks for hanging in there with us and sorry for all the interruptions in comments, posting to the community site and accessing content. We are back up now.

Your feminist funny, Will Arnett doing a dramatic reading of Are You There God? It's Me Margaret.

More from Amanda about George Sodini, misogyny and the rhetoric of "nice guy," in the scary world of pick-up artists.

According to the government of the city of Seoul and Time Magazine, the kinds of things that make women happy are heel-friendly streets and pink parking garages.

On sexism against female sports writers.

The trend to suggest that young women of color are lascivious continues. The Woodburn police department is suggesting a teenager has had "inappropriate relations" with the person who kidnapped her, to suggest she is not in danger.

A woman's name was run repeatedly on a local TV station as an example of "sexting" for millions to see. When she complained to Hearst the owner of the TV station and they countered her lawsuit with a donation to a journalism school in their name? So she is suing them.

File this under, things that make you go, "WTF???" A pageant for landmine victims is canceled in Cambodia.

Have a great weekend folks!