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Johanna Kruppa thinks feminists are too uptight in their denouncement of "nudey pics" in Playboy.

"I think they suffer from lack of knowledge and tunnel vision. How many of those self-important, so-called 'feminists' have been on the set when a celebrity shot a Playboy spread? There you go. What is feminist about discriminating a photo shoot just because it involves female (partial) nudity that happens to give men pleasure? Pathetic," Krupa told Tarts in an exclusive interview.

Well, let me unbunch my panties so I can effectively debunk this idea that feminists are too uptight to see how empowering posing for magazines like, Playboy and Maxim are for women.

Feminists have opposing view points on pornography and other forms of erotic art, that is not a new story, but suggesting that feminists don't get how "empowering" it is to fit into society's standards of able-bodied, white, cis-gendered, thinness, well let's just say we totally get that. I am not saying the act isn't empowering for her, like she said, I wasn't there, but the process that empowers her is embedded in a really specific idea of what a woman should look like and the kind of woman that "turns men on." It is not the function of turning men on that is the sexist part to me, but the unrealistic expectation put on women through the production and proliferation of images like Kruppa's and the corresponding value put on women's bodies through this very same process. And the corresponding sexist vitriol spread in magazines like Maxim. Put a big girl on the cover of Playboy. Just once. Prove me wrong.

What is interesting is that Kruppa combines her criticism of feminists with America's inability to embrace sexuality over violence. She has a point there, it is true that in many ways violence is more acceptable in popular culture than sexuality, but that is not a problem of feminism, that is a function of sexism. Feminism can only make that better.

Related:
Sex and the Simpsons: Marge's Playboy cover

Ann linked this piece from Davey D's blog of an interview with KRS-1 where he discusses the lack of women in hip-hop:

CP: What do you think is missing in hip-hop today?

KRS ONE: "I am not just saying this because you [a woman] are asking the question, this is my real answer: More women. More women. Not just emcees or b-girls, but women taking control of hip-hop. Let me be culturally-specific- hip-hop's women should teach hip-hop's men how to speak to them. Because when we learn how to speak to you, we can learn how to speak to the whole business world. It's not just about respecting you...it is...but it's deeper than just respecting another human being. Everytime you degrade a person, you degrade yourself, because you are standing next to that person. You can't diss a person, and not diss yourself...I should say 'she's a queen.' And what does that make me? A king. So now at the end of the day, what's missing in hip-hop? Knowledge of self, that should only come from women. I know that sounds feminist, but that's real talk.

The New York Times Magazine that made Precious actress Gabourey Sidibe a cover girl was almost a too-good-to-be-true moment. All at once, the world was a more inclusive place for people of dark complexions, ample body sizes and for people living in the shadows of the less visible differences her Precious character embodies. It's crazy how powerful representation can be. I am a dark-complected, Harlem girl who has survived violence. And while it's on the self indulgent side, I must admit: seeing that chocolate girl on that measly little cover with her pride held high made all the difference to me.

A few days remain until Precious debuts across the country on Nov. 6th. The story, originally told by Sapphire through the novel Push, is an ode to negotiating inclusion and exclusion in the media. It's about much more than the New York Times' account: a "Harlem girl raped and impregnated by her abusive father." (That's practically all the ink dedicated to Precious the character despite an accompanying a column that extends for 5 pages.) It's about inclusion and what it says about who is valuable in our society. That's best captured in Push, when Precious explores this:

I am comp'tant. I was comp'tant enough for her [Precious' mother] husband to fuck. She ain' come in here and say, Carl Kenwood Jones--thas wrong! Git off Precious like that! Can't you see Precious is a beautiful chile like white chile in magazines or on toilet paper wrappers. Precious is a blue-eye skinny chile whose hair is long braids, long long braids. Git off Precious fool! It time for Precious to go to the gym like Janet Jackson. It time for Precious hair to braided.(64)

But what I love about the book is that Precious is not a defenseless subject. She is a survivor who resists against her exclusion by striving for her own inclusion. She does this by learning how to read. She then uses her literacy to read about the lives of Black women through writers such as Alice Walker, Ann Petry, Ann McGovern and others. The story ends with her literally penning her own story fully epitomizing the agency she had all along despite sexual trauma and despair.

I definitely took pause reading this excellent column by Michele Goldberg at the American Prospect about the potential for a feminist justification of war. She writes,

Women for Afghan Women (WAW), a nongovernmental organization that runs women's shelters, schools, and counseling centers in three cities in Afghanistan, has watched with alarm as American opinion has turned against the occupation. An American withdrawal, its board members say, would be catastrophic for the women they work with. "Every woman who we have talked to in Afghanistan, all the Afghan women in the NGOs, in the government, say the United States and the peacekeeping troops and NATO must stay, they must not leave until the Afghan army is able to take over," says Esther Hyneman, a WAW board member who recently returned from six months in Kabul.

As an anti-war feminist, it is hard for me to hear that women in Afghanistan would want to keep the troops. She goes on to write that there has been reluctance in coming to this positive, however many activists believe this is what is best for women. Part of what makes this challenging to read is because these types of sentiments are often interpolated by the right to justify military expansion covertly for the purpose of the war on terror, not actually feminism. In their book Just Advocacy, Wendy Hesford and Wendy Kozol, write about the strategic use of women's rights as a justification to expand troops in Afghanistan.

Both the events of 9/11 and the subsequest use of women's rights to sell the Bush administration's war on terrorism in the weeks following 9/11 (Smith) renewed interest in the anonymous Afghan girl depicted on the 1985 cover. In her radio address to the nation on November 17, 2001, Laura Bush claimed that, "the brutal oppression of the women is a central goals of the terrorists....Civilized people throughout the world are speaking out in horror--not only because our hearts break for the women and children of Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan, we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us...I hope Americans will join our family in working to insure that dignity and opportunity will be secure for all the women and children of Afghanistan.

This is a compelling narrative, if it were not drenched in racism and colonial fantasy. A feminist narrative for increasing troops in Afghanistan is not a new one, however, it is new when it is coming from women in Afghanistan, or is actually feminist, not just a cover up. And like any other country women have different positions on the presence of troops and align themselves with different parts of the political sphere in Afghanistan, some for and others against the occupation, but it still forces us to ask what role should the military have in Afghanistan?

This competition in narrative from what they want and what we want, is a plague to US based progressivism, where often what we are calling for is not what "others" may want in their home countries, but our ideology on war, terror, justice and feminism guides our political affiliations nonetheless. I suppose I am at a loss in finding a way to reconcile this difference, but I do wonder if Obama truly has democracy as his intention for increasing troops in Afghanistan, we have greater leverage to demand that military presence be for feminist good. But I don't have that kind of faith. Will the American public or military support such an initiative or is the focus perpetually on the terror threat?

The Daily Mail says women might imagine being drugged and put at risk of rape, but in reality they just drank too much.

Dr Adam Burgess, from the University of Kent school of social policy, said rumours about the prevalence of date-rape drugs were little more than an urban myth.

This led young women to underestimate real risks of alcohol misuse, which can include impaired judgment putting them at risk of sexual assault.

'The reason why fear of drink-spiking has become widespread seems to be a mix of it being more convenient to guard against than the effects of alcohol itself and the fact that such stories are exotic - like a more adult version of "stranger danger".'

The study, published in the British Journal of Criminology, found that three quarters of students identified drink-spiking as leading to an important risk of sexual assault - more than drinking too much alcohol.

If a journal of criminology is making these conclusions, you can start to understand the thinking that informs the legal system when dealing with rape cases. The person who analyzed this data set either hates women or is not a woman because (a) "oooh, I was drugged," is a far cry from an exotic story and (b) being drunk isn't what puts a woman at risk of sexual assault--being near a rapist does.

Perhaps looking at the increase in use of alcohol by women and its harrowing effects on self esteem on the body or the mind, or who is providing the alcohol to the victim, creating said circumstances for violence, might be helpful. But no, it is so much easier to blame young women and suggest they have rape fantasies about "stranger danger" and lie about their irresponsible boozing. Anything else you got that will shame women about their habits and suggest they were "asking for it?"

via Daily Mail.

Thanks to Hannah for the link.

I wasn't planning on writing much else about getting married because I figured folks were getting sick of hearing all about it. (If I'm tired of hearing about it, I can't imagine how others feel!) But over the last few days I've seen coverage of my wedding/marriage online - from Salon to Playboy to The Nation - with responses ranging from the congratulatory to the cruel. So I feel like I have to jump in.

When I first wrote about getting married the title of my post was, "Does the personal always have to be political? (And can't it ever be private?)," because one of the biggest issues I was struggling with was how to have a personal life that was well...personal. I was trying to figure out if it was possible to be public in some regards, while still maintaining a modicum of privacy. Apparently the answer is no.

One of my biggest struggles when I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area as a South Asian, was the unapologetic way self-proclaimed new-agers would appropriate Indian culture. Wearing Indian inspired clothing, listening to Indian music, eating Indian foods, studying Indian traditional medicine and of course, practicing yoga (including all various types of chanting and instrument playing). It has never been an easy line for me to tow. I believe that culture is fluid, it doesn't necessarily belong to any one person and South Asian culture is the jam, so it is easy to understand why people are drawn to its complexity.

Or are they? Perhaps it was curious exploration, but to me it has always felt like the new-ager obsession with India feeds into the belief that Americans don't have their "own" culture, so they need to participate and steal from "mine." Even though I had adopted a Western lifestyle and it was definitely "my culture"--one trip to India made that very clear. Furthermore, it felt very convenient for people that hadn't experienced life as a person of color and an immigrant in this country to participate in a culture by choice, one that I had been discriminated against for being a part of. My ambivalence to Westerners adopting and often distorting what I knew as my "home" culture has only grown, where yoga practice for me is sometimes my fight to deal with my anger around cultural appropriation.

This very personal confrontation I have had with cultural appropriation (and the fact that I am human) makes me think the incident with the Oprah-approved self-help guru, James Arthur Ray who took some 50-odd people to a retreat center in Sedona, Arizona, had them fast and then sit in a sweat lodge, after which 2 of them died and 19 were hospitalized, is especially disgusting. The blatant lack of recognition of cultural appropriation, how dangerous and deadly the situation turned out to be and the chilling reality that perhaps this could have been anyone of the new-agers I encountered in San Francisco, starved and craving a culture of their "own," is irksome at best.

Indigenous leaders agree. Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle, writes personally on NDN News,

As Keeper of our Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle, I am concerned for the 2 deaths and illnesses of the many people that participated in a sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona that brought our sacred rite under fire in the news. I would like to clarify that this lodge and many others, are not our ceremonial way of life, because of the way they are being conducted. My prayers go out for their families and loved ones for their loss.

Our ceremonies are about life and healing, from the time this ancient ceremonial rite was given to our people, never has death been a part of our inikag'a (life within) when conducted properly. Today the rite is interpreted as a sweat lodge, it is much more then that. So the term does not fit our real meaning of purification.

Who knows what Ray's intention was, but not knowing how to do the ceremony properly led to the unnecessary death of 3 people and injuries to countless others. According to CNN the deaths will be investigated as homicides.

I am so deeply disturbed by this.

Hey Folks! I'm back from my five week hiatus wherein I focused on life outside of the internet and worked on my MA thesis (which is almost done!) in Women and Gender Studies. In the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to push aside writing online to delve into my thesis research which is an exploration of the production of identity vis-à-vis the internet and specifically how people articulate, vet out and circulate ideas about race, gender, class and sexuality in online worlds. Academic writing is so different in many ways from journalistic or blog style writing; citations are more formal, arguments more nuanced, obviously pieces are longer and filled with complex terms. But in some ways it is the same, since as a blogger, we strive for more nuance, we clear theoretical ground and we hat tip those that said it before us. There are benefits and pitfalls to both and I think the two types of thought production hold the potential to compliment each other very well.

In researching, thinking about and writing about what identity means on the internet and how meaning is produced through how we discuss issues, where we fall along political lines, I got an opportunity to really think about the power and pitfalls of blogging. I am lucky to be in a position where I have a captive audience that listens to and engages with the work I put out there. But I also thought about the ways feminist discourse sometimes runs in a circle and becomes a constant game of she said/she said, difficult to break through with innovative new ways of engaging, when historical inequities and the language we use to describe them, has not changed.

For a few years, I disengaged myself from my academic writing, feeling constricted by what I felt its jargon and exclusivity. But after careful reflection on many of the events that have happened in the last few years at Feministing and the reactions to them by other bloggers, conservative bloggers and the greater news-reading public, I realize we have only but to gain from the intersectional analysis of authors such as Patricia Hill Collins, Donna Haraway, Audre Lorde, Kimberle Crenshaw, Lisa Nakamura, among many many other, anti-racist feminist, socialist feminist, cyberfeminist and radical feminist scholars that paved the way for us to be able to do the work that we do and engage with the ideas we engage with. Many of the battles being fought online and in feminism are battles that have been fought before, ideas engaged with and categories, like gender, destabilized. Of course, repetition is the name of the game, and hopefully every time we engage in a conversation, be it old or new, we learn something new.

That is a long-winded way of saying, despite the inherent exclusivity and accessibility issues around academia and blogging, I am glad to be back engaging with what feminism and social change means to us, as a movement, as clusters, as subgroups and as complex imperfect humans. I have a renewed energy and belief that telling our stories and writing our words is the most powerful and effective step towards creating the world we want to see around us. Perhaps in Lorde's vision, it was never possible for us to move forward like this, using the tools of the oppressor in this way, but maybe through our repetition and mindful diligence, it actually is making a difference.

Bear with me as I catch up with the news cycle!

As you all know, Jos, Vanessa and I have been attending the 5th Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initative this week in Manhattan. We've put up several posts already about the event, including coverage of the opening session, photos from the first day, and coverage of Wednesday morning's Plenary Session on Investing in Women and Girls.

I'd like to offer a different kind of coverage here, one that tries to understand if and how the broader thematic goal of the Meeting- namely, cross-sector participation in addressing the world's problems- works, and how it will ultimately affect women and girls globally.

In other words- Can business interests and NGO interests ever align productively? Can the World Bank really make positive contributions to social change, given its rather horrific history of debt-mongering and culturally insensitive politics? Or are these interests mutually exclusive, in constant battle over zero-sum resources and therefore doomed to clash? CGI suggests convergence and collaboration can benefit all. I ask- what kinds of compromise on women's issues does such an ambitious mandate demand?

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.

Yesterday, Jessica posted her criticism of the new show on ABC, Defying Gravity, rightfully noting the anti-choice attitude she felt the pilot reflected. It turns out that the daughter of the lead writer and producer of the show reads Feministing and passed our critique on to her dad, James Parriott. He sent us a statement regarding his stance on choice with regard to the show.

I don't want to give away the plot on the blog. But our position on the show is that abortion should be legal and the choice of the woman. But, too often, the Right to Lifers, paint the choice position as being glib, easy and insensitive. What we, in our storyline, say is that that simply isn't so. It's a tough, considered choice that can have repercussions -- but it is a choice that must lie with the woman.

Thematically, this show is about man's self determination vs. the need to follow orders. It's about what we can't control vs. what we can -- and the grey area in between. It's about the price we pay for both.

Zoe makes the decision to abort (against the govt) to achieve her dream. It isn't an easy decision (as right to lifers often portray it). It's an agonizing decision that Zoe will carry the rest of her life. But is was her decision to make. Not the government's.

Donner makes a decision on Mars that he regrets. He followed orders (by Goss; the government) and lost two people dear to him. He's paying the price of not following his own gut.

Jen, in growing her bunny (making the choice of having her "baby"), will also pay a price. She'll endanger the crew and the ship for something that never should have been allowed to grow in the first place. (again, this is a choice message, not right to life).

We have a scene upcoming, where Ajay, who knows Zoe aborted a baby, will tell her directly that she made the right choice. Sometimes we need to make our own path and her path is in space. She should not worry about her aborted baby - Hindus believe that the soul simply moves on to another body.

Even religious Paula will come to challenge her own right to life beliefs.

So... we explore the subject from a number of directions. I imagine we'll take heat from people on both sides of the issue - but they should certainly wait and see how the story develops."

It is rare that we write about popular culture and those involved actually respond to us. James Parriott has been the lead writer and producer for a variety of shows, including Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy among others. I am a huge fan of Ugly Betty and I felt that it took a progressive stance on gender, race, immigration, sexuality and class issues so I will check out the next few episodes of and see how the plot develops. And not just because I have a crush on Ron Livingston. I know, a shameful crush since he delivered that one line that took dating books by sexist storm.

Seth MacFarlane, writer of the Family Guy a show filled with dirty jokes and political anti-correctness announced on a panel at Comic Con that he is producing an episode about abortion in the upcoming season of Family Guy, but it looks like 20th Century Fox will not air the show.

MacFarlane revealed he's producing a controversial episode about abortion for the upcoming season. But he and others on the panel said that Fox was unlikely to air the episode.

"20th Century Fox, as always, allowed us to produce the episode and then said, 'You know what? We're scared to f--king death of this,'" MacFarlane said.

The episode will probably be available on DVD, he added.

A Fox spokesperson said that no decision has yet been made on the matter.

There were few details offered about the content of the episode, but given the show's penchant for political incorrectness -- it has in the past featured a character wearing a McCain/Palin button on an SS uniform, among other flourishes -- it's unlikely Planned Parenthood would use the episode in a PSA anytime soon.

They are not sure if they will air it or not and it doesn't surprise me that Fox would be "afraid" to air it. I wonder if another network would air it. This is brilliant marketing for them, since Family Guy is known for pushing the envelope and if they release it on DVD, they will sell that many more.

I guess no one is seeing the real humor in that unless you are avidly pro-life and anti-women's right to chose, abortion is not really a fringe topic that is so edgy it must be banned from TV. Again not shocking, but maybe they should try something easier like period jokes, until they can get with the really big scary stuff.

via Think Progress

Update: Fox released a statement that they will not be broadcasting the episode.

There is a new series starting tonight on FOX called, "More to Love." It is the brother show of The Bachelor, but the difference is that this show is for "big" girls.

MORE TO LOVE, the new dating competition show from Mike Fleiss ("The Bachelor"), follows one regular guy's search for love among a group of real women determined to prove that love comes in all shapes and sizes. The inspirational new series is hosted by iconic supermodel Emme.

Luke Conley is a 26-year-old former college football offensive lineman who stands 6'3" and weighs over 300 pounds. He's a successful sub-contractor and real estate investor who has his sights set on building a long-lasting ...relationship.

My first instinct when I saw the trailer was how I feel whenever I see trailers for these dating/marriage reality TV shows, "this is bullshit." And as I watched, my opinion didn't change. The problem with these reality TV shows about marriage and finding the one isn't just about how they are sexist, but how they make fetish of romance and love and play on outdated ideas about romance. I have to say of all my guilty pleasures, The Bachelor, Tough Love, Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire and Millionaire Matchmaker are not on the list (I am more of a Top Chef, Fashion Show, Project Runway kind of gal), but most definitely because I have a specific ambivalence to weddings and the romantic industrial complex (to put it nicely).

But that is not what is unique about this show. More to Love is different because it features women that are fat. When I am using fat here, I am using it as a descriptor, not as a pejorative. Similarly, Marianne Kirby writes at the Daily Beast,

So when I say fat, I mean it as a descriptive term, not an insult. I work toward a concept known as Fat Acceptance--the idea that, really and truly, your body is OK just the way it is.

Unfortunately, the general TV watching public may not have the same attitude. The reality is that the nature of these shows is making spectacle of people, so now the gaze has shifted to fat women and the men who love them. (A very common fetish in the porn world.)

Outside of the fetish spectacle of the whole thing, my second thought when seeing an ad for it on TV was relief. I am fat and I appreciated seeing other fat women on TV, not on a show about weight loss, but on a show about accepting themselves as is and finding love as is. But as I watched the commercials, something continued not to sit right with me and Kirby hits the nail on the head,

Does every fat woman have a story about the date invite that was actually a humiliating joke? What about the one where the fat girl strikes up a conversation with the cute guy at the bar...and he asks for her thin friend's phone number? I try to remember that meeting a good partner is a challenge for everyone, but it's hard in the face of these stories not to feel like the show's producers are conflating "fat women" with "pathetic, sad women" and leaving it at that.

Still, as I started watching the first episode, I could certainly identify with these women's dating struggles, even as I sat comfortably on the couch next to my husband. The show's creators have tapped into something with this. But then they fall back on stereotypes, yet again.

The women on the show look amazing; great fashion, great hair and makeup. They are all individually gorgeous, even if they don't look a thing like the mainstream beauty ideal. It feels really great to watch them strut and shine. But...they are all strutting around huge plates of food.

So while the mere act of these women being on television does disrupt beauty standards, you have to wonder what the desired outcome of this show is and what the producers are playing to. Are they using catchy almost feminist ads to shore up support, only to break it down when you actually watch the show and realize these women are "pathetic?" Are they creating a fetish of fatness for Americans to tune in in awe, to make jokes and laugh about how these "fat girls" are trying to find love?

This story has been written about to death, but it is rare that you have a high profile black academic maligned by the police, spoken about by the POTUS and a national conversation about racial profiling and the police state. Yesterday the 911 call that was made was released and it turns out that Officer Crowley misquoted the caller. She never mentioned race on the call, making the police report highly suspect.

But outside of the details of this case, I read a comment over the weekend that really struck a chord with me and I wasn't going to write about it since it is a few days old, but as I sit here thinking more about it, I really want to share it. It was a comment from Ta-Nehisi's blog, (paraphrased via PostBougie),

Setting aside all of the other meta-discussions on race and class that surround this issue, the thing about all of this that creeps me out the most is that so many people are willing to defend this officer who, assuming the most charitable possible interpretation, arrested a guy because he didn't like his attitude. That is what [Mike Barnicle] is defending. That is what the execrable Mika Brzenski is defending. That is what I have read numerous commenters on a multitude of sites from the entire political spectrum defend.

They are, as far as I am concerned, defending the indefensible... [The panelists] were saying that if you cannot agree that arresting Gates was just plain wrong then there is no possibility of moving the argument forward. There is no good faith argument to be had without starting from the point that officers do not get to arrest a guy because he says unkind things to him.

I have decided that I no longer have anything to say to people who can, with a straight face, defend this nonsense. Forget about race. Forget about class. Forget whether or not Gates or Officer Crowley are nice guys who treat their mothers well. The bottom line here is that an officer used the authority of law to restrict the liberty of a man who was expressing displeasure with him. If you think that is right, then you fundamentally disagree with the basic principle of a free society.

That is not hyperbole. If you are willing to grant any individual with a gun and a badge the authority to arrest people because they don't like them, then you and I share no common principle on liberty and the right of people to be free from oppression. None.

Emphasis mine.

I think this gets at the heart of this issue. People seem to get blind sighted by rage when you talk about the police and race and it descends into a conversation between innate qualities between two groups of people, a battle of good and evil. The question of justice never enters the conversation, folks are generally stuck on, "well he shouldn't have done that," "wrong place at the wrong time," or "the cops were doing their job." It is rare we step back and think about what that job entails and what it would really look like if it was done properly.

It is after many years of blogging that I cringe every time another woman is forced through a "trial by media," because she has brought up rape charges, especially when it is against someone that is high profile and loved by all. Our newest example is accusations against Pittsburgh Steeler Ben Roethlisberger. He has a lawsuit against him for allegedly raping a woman in a hotel last summer in Lake Tahoe.

Obviously, it would be premature to speculate the outcome of this lawsuit as this story has just out and I have learned that it is best to reserve those judgments for after the facts come out...or don't come out as the case may be. However, the story about the media and it's coverage stays the same. We can still evaluate the way the media portrays women when they bring about rape charges, the extent to which the general public will defend and accept athletes that have been accused (or down right guilty) of sexual assault, sexual abuse and/or domestic violence and lastly, why ESPN has failed to cover the story.

The story has only been out a few days, but people are already asking if she is "woman scorned," or comments on news sites continue to decry that she is "crazy and imagined it." Rape apologists will deny anything that makes their heroes look bad, but the evidence is clear, when a woman brings up a rape lawsuit publicly, she is considered guilty of lying or is deemed "crazy," "delusional" or "money hungry" before given any legal proceedings whatsoever.

Last night while watching Obama address the country on health care, I was indeed shocked like everyone else when Lynn Sweet asked Obama what he felt about Skip Gates. I was both, disappointed that she was derailing the focus on health care and anxious about the potential answer. Obama has not talked much about violence or police brutality, even though during his administration there have been many incidents of violence between police and people of color.

So what did he actually say? Watch the video below.

(Transcript after the jump.)

I never imagined that he would make jokes about "getting shot in front of the White House," and how "it could have been me." These comments show an understanding of racial profiling that no other president has ever had. Being so candid in expressing these comments, I almost wondered if it was political suicide. Granted, Obama has worked on the issue of racial profiling in Chicago so he has experience on the topic and maybe it would seem odd if he were to deny it.

But what are the implications of what he said? As Adam Serwer said on twitter (yes on twitter), " Reporters are going to act like this was a "betrayal" of a post-racial promise Obama never actually made." Obama is defying the most popular election/post-election meme which is that we are in a "post-racial" time. Many whites in this country are committed to the idea of being in a post-racial space, it makes them feel relieved and less bad about the racism of the past. It also gives them a pass on harboring racist sentiments about things like affirmative action. Furthermore, Obama's comments reminded Americans (who are more committed to the task of remembering to forget racism) that Obama is actually black like "those" that can be picked up by the cops, not "almost white" or a "decent black," that isn't a threat to you. That racism is so endemic in our society even the POTUS can't get away from it. I have written about this tension amongst moderate/liberals about the legibility of his blackness (and will shamelessly quote myself here),

Cuz I am going to be there! And I am going to be on an amazing panel of bloggers including Jill from Feministe, Amanda from Pandagon, Lindsay from Majikthise and Pam from Pandagon and Pam's House Blend.

Our panel is about feminist blogging. Shocking, I know :)

Women Bloggers Found: Has Feminist Blogging Gone Mainstream? Saturday, August 15th 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM Panel, 317 Time: Saturday, August 15th, 3:00pm - 4:15pm Room: 317

A few years ago, male bloggers 'round the liberal bloglandia were wondering out loud, "Where are the women bloggers?" Many of the women in the feminist and progressive blogospheres responded with frustration--we were there, and had been, the whole time. Today, the blogosphere looks awfully different, as feminist bloggers are increasingly mainstreamed and able to exert stronger influence on online discourse. But "blogging while feminist" isn't always easy, and feminist bloggers have faced harassment and threats that are uniquely gendered and sexualized. Feminists who have been most successful at running bigger blogs have also been mostly young, white, heterosexual and middle-class--so their issues have been presented to the mainstream progressive movement as the whole of feminism. This panel will look at what has changed, what hasn't and who remains on the edges of progressive blogging. It will also examine how female bloggers--and feminist bloggers in particular--are treated in mainstream spaces, and what we can do about it.

I am excited. I am sure I will learn a lot, but will also have a lot to say so expect live-blogging!

In this week's New Yorker there is a great profile of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. (Sorry, the full text isn't online.) Although it contained a lot of stuff I already knew about Arpaio -- that he's virulently racist, sexist, anti-immigrant; that he is dedicated to creating the most inhumane conditions possible in his jails; that he is a major attention whore -- it made a few unsettling points really hit home.

Arpaio is popular because he's hateful. He racially profiles Latinos, his ratings go up. He divides families and goes out of his way to deport peaceful people who are just here to make a living, his ratings go up. He treats jail inmates -- some of whom have not even been convicted of a crime -- as subhuman, his ratings go up. He sort of functions as a conduit for the worst impulses in our society.

The sheriff also raises a question I think about often: When do we call out hatemongers who are looking for attention, and when do we decide the best course of action is to ignore them? In Arpaio's case, I think it's important to call it out -- even though what he desires most in the world is more attention. And this is the reason:

Maricopa County is not a modest, out-of-the-way place. It includes Phoenix, covers more than nine thousand square miles, and has a population of nearly four million. Joe Arpaio has been sheriff there since 1993. He has four thousand employees, three thousand volunteer posse members, and an over-worked media-relations unit of five.

In other words, whether we like it or not, he's powerful. When it comes to the immigration issue, one federal policy that empowers him is the 287(g) provision, which essentially allows local police and sheriffs to act as national-security officials. It is this provision that has enabled Arpaio to turn his law-enforcement unit into a racial-profiling and immigrant-hunting unit. Even when this provision is wielded by non-crackpot sheriffs, Nezua points out,

It's simply not a good idea to give police, who are (in ideal) in existence to help the community, the powers to enforce the borders of the nation--a job that is normally in the province of the military

Many organizations have called for the repeal of 287(g). However, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano recently announced she is actually expanding this program, despite some evidence that in 287(g) districts like Arpaio's, actual crime-fighting is suffering because of the focus on immigrant-hunting. Let's collectively smack our palms against our foreheads, shall we?

What the New Yorker profile underscored for me is that Arpaio is more than your average Fred Phelps or Pat Buchanan-style hatemonger. He is one of the most popular politicians in Arizona. And, disgustingly, he has built that popularity by doing everything he can to push people who are on the margins of society even further out. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be closer to the center should be doing everything we can to disempower him.

Chris Brown is sorry. Or at least he is sorry enough to almost say what he did (without quite saying it), furrow his brows and remind you that he is still a good boy and you should definitely continue to buy his records.

I don't buy it. I am sure on some level he is sorry, but that is not really the point. This is about what he is saying, accountability for what he did and the quickness with which the American public is willing to take an apology from someone that brutalized his girlfriend to the point of putting her in the hospital. What is most frustrating about this video is that his fans are probably swooning. And the message is clear; beat, bite, punch and strangle your girlfriend, and as long as you apologize, you are a-OK. You might think I am being too harsh, but let's be clear, dominant narratives indicate that when women are victims of violence, the first question people ask is "what did she do wrong?" That was true when the story first broke, message boards everywhere were asking "what she did wrong?" and "it wasn't that bad..." Or let's not forget the headlines that were out and surveys that found young men felt it was Rihanna's fault.

Furthermore, generally when people apologize they mention what they are sorry about. He doesn't mention what he did, while calling it the "situation." Ann just mentioned to me over IM, maybe if we spliced in the picture of what actually happened to Rihanna after the assault, "the situation" wouldn't be so vague and we could remember the extent of her injuries. I am obviously not actually endorsing this and we have written and talked about how TMZ shouldn't have published her picture. The public was fascinated by the picture, but apparently TMZ's claim about "raising awareness" really was bullshit, since so many have quickly forgotten. Anna at Jezebel has a really good analysis of the video. She writes,

By going the vague route, Brown allows fans to forget the visceral reality of what he did -- assaulting Rihanna until her face was swollen and bruised -- and instead focus on all the nice things he says about his mother, his "spiritual advisors," and his commitment to change. By saying he's sorry he didn't "handle the situation better," he casts the beating as a response to a bad "situation" -- and instance of poor conflict resolution, not of flying off the handle. And by implying there was something that needed to be "handled" in some way, this statement subtly implicates Rihanna too.

I concur. But ultimately we are not the ones that this video is for. We know this is bullshit, but the target of this video are other young men and women that might be in this very same situation. They might have to navigate a tense situation, violence might be used and if this is what our role models do, we don't have much to look up to. And while I appreciate him actually discussing that he experienced domestic violence so as to gesture towards cycles of violence, the moral of the story is, "it wasn't really my fault." It was a "bad situation" that he "didn't deal with well," and he himself is a "victim" which is true, but shouldn't be used as an excuse to not have to take direct accountability for his actions.

Yeah, I'm mad. What could he have said to make this an effective apology? Thoughts?

PS: If you really want to feel horrified read what people are saying on twitter about his apology.

Related:
Black women's bodies, voyeurism and Rihanna
Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: An interview with Elizabeth Mendez Berry
The media reminds us, famous women have no right to privacy.
Rihanna and Chris Brown might be getting back together, allegedly.

I haven't been able to write a post on the loss of Michael Jackson. Not quite sure why, but I have read so many amazing posts looking into how complicated a figure he is and all the different thoughtful positions folks have taken in understanding his story.

I am sure you are sick of reading about MJ at this point (I am not and continue to listen to his music and read more about him), but please check out Jay's newest video on the tragedy of fame that played out in Michael's life.

I think this is essentially a feminist reading of the way fame played out in his life, looking at the production of fame. Also, I have been looking for some queer readings of Michael and his play with masculinity. My friend Cole passed this link along.

Watching the confirmation hearings of Sotomayor, it makes me wonder if Sotomayor wants to scream, "hey white dude, you are partial to your own life experience as well..." The Sotomayor hearings are pretty painful to watch, and should put to the side any belief that we are in a post-racial space. Session's attempts to grill Sotomayor on this question of impartiality reveals the obvious ignorance that when white men hold partial beliefs they are natural and objective, whereas when women of color do, they are unable to effectively do the job.

It seems the question of whether Sotomayor's experience adds value, verse whether it impacts her ability to be objective in her rulings is at the core of the questioning, which is almost a pre-multiculturalism line of questioning that only a Republican would concern themselves with them. At least Democrats are up to the multi-kulti frame, where the more diverse we are, the better things are. It is not perfect, but it is better than the belief that white men are objective and everyone else is holding to much baggage to do their work.

Watch more here.

What do you think? Consider this an open thread for those that are watching the hearing as well.

I think that Askmen.com wouldn't be so offensive if it didn't come from such a place of venom and woman hate. Every time a reader sends in another awful thing they have wrote, I appalled at not only the male anxiety displayed in the advice but also the straight up hatred of women. If these guys hate women so much why do they work to figure out ways to be with them, I seriously don't get it. Today's spectacle of sexist male anxiety is about how to make your woman "hotter," or rather "how to upgrade your woman." Cuz you know, women are like cars, phones and computers or something.

For many guys, it can seem as though the quest to find the perfect girl is never ending. When you finally do get your ideal lady it can be a bit disheartening to think that while she is a pretty young thing now, she might not be so appealing in a few years. As time passes your love for her might grow, but so will her love handles. She might be perfect for you in most ways but some things are just a little off, and even though you might not appreciate those imperfections, you would still struggle to think you would end up with anyone else.

It is perfectly acceptable for men to age, get "love handles" and be imperfect. It is women that must always look like caricatures of femininity, forever young, forever thin, forever wrinkle free. The list is ten ways you can make her stay hot including taking cooking classes, or explore culture (racist!) or "take her to a spa," which all seem like the normal fare for sexist, classist and racist examples of things middle class, straight, white couples can do to enjoy themselves. It goes into super crazy-ville when you get to number one and the advice is to "put her under the knife."

If things are really desperate, it might be time for your other half to go under the knife. With the advances in medical science and the current obsession with celebrity culture, cosmetic surgery is becoming more and more common. While it isn't something to be rushed into, nor something to persuade someone to do, surgery can do wonders for the confidence of someone who is less than a sight for sore eyes. And you'll have the bonus of a parading around town with a stunner on your arm.

I wouldn't be so disgusted by this if the rest of society didn't put similar pressure on women to stay thin and attractive as they age, but to also push the idea on men is not OK. I realize Askmen.com is a place for men to feel good about hating women, but ultimately it is just sexist crap that is peddled as advice for the modern day anxious man. I am deeply saddened for the kind of people that buy into this type of thing.

Danah Boyd gave a thoroughly thought-provoking presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum this week about how the politics of class play out online -- and thoroughly debunked the idea that the Internet is a Utopian paradise in which we are "all equal."

To get specific, Boyd looks at the divide between Facebook and MySpace users. She quotes Kat, a 14-year-old from Massachusetts:

"I'm not really into racism, but I think that MySpace now is more like ghetto or whatever, and Facebook is all... not all the people that have Facebook are mature, but its supposed to be like oh we're more mature."

That's right, a "ghetto." Boyd goes on to note that teenagers from wealthier backgrounds are more comfortable engaging in "adult" environments than teenagers from poorer backgrounds -- hence wealthier teens are probably more likely to favor the "mature" social networking site, Facebook. And here's the part where I am just going to quote from Boyd's analysis extensively, because she is so freakin' smart:

The fact [is] that MySpace is still quite popular among a certain segment of the population. Only a month ago, I was doing fieldwork in Atlanta where I found heavy usage of MySpace among certain groups of youth. They knew of Facebook but had no interest in leaving MySpace to join Facebook.

Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. It wasn't just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality... What happened was modern day "white flight." Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by "choice" but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

This dynamic was furthered by the press, an institution that stems from privilege and tends to reflect the lives of a more privileged class of people. They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet while Facebook was the utopian savior. And here we get back to Kat's point: MySpace has become the "ghetto" of the digital landscape. The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society. And many of us have habitually crossed the street to avoid what is seen as the riff-raff.

The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to everyone out there. And if we think back to the language used by teens who use Facebook when talking about MySpace, we should be truly alarmed. Those who are from privileged backgrounds tend to be far more condescending towards those who are not than vice versa. Many of us in this room come from privileged worlds where we want to "help" those who are not well-off. Here is where a privilege-check is necessary. How often do our language and mannerisms reflect a problematic level of condescension? Perhaps we should look at our teens. They are certainly speaking in a manner that reveals distrust and condescension.

You could say he was just another celebrity, another pop star, the King of Pop, but Michael Jackson did have an impact on our society. For his time, he made it ok for white girls to scream at a black man, to say that they wanted him. He made it ok for white boys to do the moonwalk. But you know, it wasn't ok for Michael Jackson to be Michael Jackson. It was written all over his face -- or the face that he changed into. And that's a shame.

Adrienne Maree Brown on the responsibility of his fans:

When it became clear that the boy's face we had loved had become the face of a man who didn't love himself; we judged him. We tore at him and he fell apart. He was living proof of the impact of our rabid pop culture, an early sacrifice to the new mechanisms of fame which allow no privacy, no time to learn, no mistakes.

Still, he kept producing for us.

When the rumors and the truth were all too prevalent (the children, both his and others), and he wasn't getting the psychological support and accountability he needed, we turned from him and derided him. We made the distinction of loving the child, but ridiculing the man.

Toure at the Daily Beast on how Jackson broke the color barrier with his music:

I like Off the Wall and Dangerous better, but I can't help but think about Thriller's massive socio-cultural impact. Rev. Al Sharpton referred to Michael as a pre-Obama Obama-esque figure in that he's a black man who knows how to make millions of blacks and whites fall in love with him. He's an integrationist, a racial unifier. He made two pop songs as overtly about race as anyone's ever made: Ebony and Ivory with Paul McCartney and Black or White. He was a Motown guy, after all. But he left Berry Gordy's house and went to CBS/Epic, a big-time label, to forge an adult solo career. CBS pushed his record as hard as they did their huge white stars and Off the Wall was a huge crossover success: young Michael was established as not an artist for black fans but an artist for everyone at a time when that was rare. Four years later, when Thriller came out it broke the radio color barrier: black and white stations played its singles until MTV, which had not previously played videos by black artists, had to play Michael. For a while they played Thriller every hour at the top of the hour. Back then he was MTV's Jackie Robinson.

After seeing the video of the Iranian protester Neda being shot through the heart, the world has been forced to think about role of women in the fight for a democratic Iran. Dana writes at Tapped a little bit about why women might be so involved,

Only 13 percent of Iranian women participate in the paid work force, compared to over 25 percent of women in Turkey and over 38 percent in Indonesia. With the permission of a court, fathers can arrange marriages for daughters under age 13. Polygamy is legal, and under Ahmadinejad, Parliament even tried to ease restrictions on the practice. Women cannot run for president, and family law discriminates against them when it comes to divorce, child custody, and inheritance. Dozens of feminist political leaders have been arrested and detained since 2006, when police violently attacked a women's rights demonstration in Tehran, leading to the founding of the One Million Signatures Campaign for women's legal equality.

Women have a lot to lose if Ahmadineajd returns to power. Mousavi clearly has a better stance on gender with more room to change policy concerning the lives of women and specifically because his wife, Zahrad Rahnavard, is a known advocate of women's rights.

It is in historical moments like this that I often reflect on a powerful book I read in my MA program in Women's Studies called the Eloquence of Silence by Marnia Lazreg. I continually go back to the chapter on nationalism and how nationalism produces itself in times of conflict. She calls out feminists that minimized the involvement of women in the Algerian resistance as women somehow being duped into fighting. She was writing about Algeria and the fight against colonization so the context is different, but she discusses specifically this idea of how women in the Middle East are homogenized and not written about in their full complexity.

Similar to previous forms of feminism, the mainstream media sometimes represents women protesting in Iran with shock and awe, even heralding them as fallen angels or martyrs. This is not to downplay the tremendous power being built by women in Iran or to suggest all the coverage has been in this vein, but this shock directly stems from assumptions about a homogenized group of women "Middle Eastern" or "Arabic" that are complacent, oppressed, without agency or will. Ultimately, my hope is that as the conversation expands and more and more talk about the role of women in the historical fight for democracy in Iran, perhaps this trend is changing.

But finally, the video that has been passing around the internet is creating that similar "shock," which is not to say its content isn't jarring. I haven't watched it actually, I can't get myself to. Kate Harding has a good explanation of why she couldn't either and I think the point she makes of exploitation is a solid one. In deciding to finally watch the video, she writes,

Dave Letterman made a bad joke. Here is him talking about it.

Whoops, bad joke and a PR fail as he will lose to the angry antis that are ready to cry sexism on their ideal future of feminism, her majesty Ms. Palin. Yes, I think it is funny that people who clearly do not support full human rights for women, decry sexist jokes. That said, his jokes were in bad taste at best. Megan at Jezebel writes,

David Letterman's "jokes" about Palin's daughters -- which, as Rachel Sklar pointed out today, Barack Obama suggested people stop doing last September -- struck me last week as pathetic and gross. Just because he said it was supposedly about Bristol -- you know, 'cause she's obviously "slutty" or something -- doesn't make it ok. Just because you don't like Sarah Palin or think she's using it to score political points with her base doesn't excuse the jokes in retrospect. On this point, Anna and I vociferously disagree -- I think it's pretty easy to defend Sarah Palin because I don't want those jokes told about the Obama girls; because I've commented repeatedly on how shitty it was when Rush Limbaugh and John McCain made them about Chelsea Clinton; and because I come from a family and a background where you just don't stand for people insulting your family or your friends. Maybe she's playing it up -- she is, after all, a politician and every politician is going to try for a homer on an easy pitch like Letterman handed her -- and maybe she's pissed (the fact that Todd Palin said anything after months of basically being told to keep his trap shut is, to me, telling) that Letterman went there, sexually with her daughters. Either way, I still think it's gross and indefensible.

I have no problem saying that Sarah Palin is a jerk because of her politics, yet I don't think it is OK to make sexist jokes about her or her daughters. Amanda Hess does a good job deconstructing the following debate between Huffington Post's Katharine Zaleski and the Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter discussing Letterman's joke.

Letterman apologized last night and while I think Letterman's jokes were in poor taste, let's not forget that Palin's actual stance that has been legislated and made into policy is far worse. Does this make joking about her or her daughters OK? Definitely not. But watching those two women duke it out, I think it is so interesting listening to conservative women use feminist talking points. It is smart and calculated and plays so well into the often rudimentary understanding Americans have about the fight for women's rights.

Last week was the World Economic Forum on Africa with a critical focus on the role of girls in the economic development of Africa. The World Economic Forums are a series of convenings led by a Swiss non-profit of the same name. Their platform focuses on the role of economic development and its relationship to social development with the simple vision to be, "the foremost organization which builds and energizes leading global communities; the creative force shaping global, regional and industry strategies; the catalyst of choice for its communities when undertaking global initiatives to improve the state the world." I suppose it is always hard to understand the depth of intent of these types of meetings without being present and while I am critical of top-down economic focused development plans for "developing nations," I think they still make profound contributions, if not just in giving us statistical and analytical data.

Maria Eitel, president of Nike Inc., and the person nominated by Obama to be in charge of the Corporation for National and Community Service (they run Americorps and Peacecorps) was at the meeting and took some interesting notes that I found via Huffington Post that included the following themes discussed at the meeting,

1. 1. Investing in girls as smarter economics
2. 2. Economic solutions are often masked by culture
3. 3. It's urgent - we can't wait. We must reach girls before they are 12
4. 4. Girls won't count until we count them...specifically
5. 5. A little bit of support is not enough

I think these are apt conclusions considering the precarious conditions for girls in Africa. But I do wonder is it empowering for these girls to have outside organizations doing development work? Or is that the only way at this point? I struggle with this questions a lot.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a genius and this article is a perfect example of why. In response to Tavis Smiley's TV special Stand (a film about a bus trip with Smiley and his "boys" exploring the black male experience--trailer above) she dissects the myopic view of identity politics, black history and social change that they explore through the film and the lens through which they determine that Obama doesn't talk about race enough.

She writes,

Its low production value, wandering narrative, flat history and self-important egoism did little to reveal the shortcomings of the Obama phenomenon. Instead, the piece exposed and embodied the contemporary crisis of the black public intellectual in the age of Obama.

The film and its participants (two of them my senior colleagues at Princeton University) appropriated the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to implicitly claim that they, not Obama, are the authentic representatives of the political interests of African-Americans. They used King's images and speeches, gathered on the balcony where King was assassinated, and explicitly asserted their desire to play King to Obama's LBJ, and Frederick Douglass to Obama's Lincoln.

This question of authenticity in identity is a very frequent theme in argument between different types of feminists and specifically different generations of feminism. The older "watchdogs" are disappointed with what they see is a diluted brand and less than tough stance on issues by younger generations. The reality that material conditions have changed for women, people of color and other disenfranchised communities is not explored in depth, which has allowed for different types of political identifications, different types of movements.

She continues,

African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.

The men of "Stand" yearned for an imagined racial past. By their accounting, this racial past had better music, more charismatic leaders and a more-involved black church.

Their romanticism ignores the cultural contributions of contemporary black youth, forgets the dangerous limitations of charismatic leadership and revises the fraught, complicated relationship of black churches to struggles for racial equality. And these men ignored the democratizing effect of new media forms, which revolutionized the 2008 election.

Black people were not duped by some slick, media-generated candidate. African-Americans were co-authors of the Obama campaign. Through social networks, YouTube videos, political blogs and new-media echo chambers, black people were equal partners in shaping the candidate and his campaign. There was no need for the entrenched pundit class to tell black voters what to think or how to behave; they figured it out for themselves.

Still, there is plenty to criticize in the young Obama administration: the refusal to prosecute those implicated in the torture memos, civilian casualties caused by drone attacks, bank bailouts and inadequate defense of gay rights to name a few. But black communities are already engaged in these critiques and many others. Black local organizers, elected officials, bloggers, pundits and columnists have taken substantive, specific positions on a broad range of issues.

Read the whole article as she lays out perfectly the tension and oversight by public intellectuals, thinkers and journalists that are resistant to new modalities of social change. It is interesting this tension between recognizing that political discourse around race has changed as have lived conditions for people of color, yet we are not in a post racial space.

As I have written about before, this tension between recognizing progress and claiming wins in the service of people of color verse the post-racial stance (most liked by moderates, where radical positions on race are ignored or made fun of) is at the heart of the tension in current racial dialogue. We are at a crossroads where we have to recognize the nuanced ways that racism (including tokenism) plays out, even in liberal politics and then the strategic and nuanced ways we are winning, at least in the conversation, if not via material conditions.

Obviously, my ideal hope is when we start to have a conversation so nuance that we see the way homophobia and sexism are tied into racism, but like I said last week in talking about Sonia Sotomayor, it is a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of situation (aka, I love you, I can't touch you anymore.)

*Trigger warning, this radio cut of pro-life Pastor Wiley Drake is a scary view into the mind of the wing-nut*

Well, if that was not scary enough for you check out the more "friendly" pro-life apologisms of Ross Douthat. According to him, religious right-wing fundamentalists that use scare tactics and kill abortion doctors do it because they feel disempowered and don't have enough access to legal avenues to stop and "keep humane" abortion laws.

If anything, by enshrining a near-absolute right to abortion in the Constitution, the pro-choice side has ensured that the hard cases are more controversial than they otherwise would be. One reason there's so much fierce argument about the latest of late-term abortions -- Should there be a health exemption? A fetal deformity exemption? How broad should those exemptions be? -- is that Americans aren't permitted to debate anything else. Under current law, if you want to restrict abortion, post-viability procedures are the only kind you're allowed to even regulate.

If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically. Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester -- as many advanced democracies already do - would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions.

The result would be laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases -- and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller's murder.

If you can stomach it read his entire "persuasive" argument about how to find a common ground with right-wing terrorists that harass, intimidate and kill doctors. He throws in some slut-shaming disguised in the form of making legible the difference between excusable and inexcusable forms of abortion (and highlights women that have *gasp* multiple abortions).

Jamelle at USJ breaks down two key things that are off about this column,

This is my ballad to identity politics in America.

The conservative reaction to Sonia Sotomayor has not only been telling of the clear paranoia and fear that conservatives have around women of color and their appropriate place in our society, but is also really predictable. That doesn't change how racist it is. Lindsey Graham's testament to how he is critical of Sotomayor for her "fiery" temperament is probably the best encapsulation of white male fear of a woman of color in a position of power. Fiery is frequently a term used to describe women of color that are considered outspoken or hot. It is both racist and sexually demeaning, catering to fantasies about Latina women's sexual potency. It wouldn't make sense as a pejorative if the one accused was white or was not female.

There has already been a lot written about Sotomayor, both about her stance on judicial issues (imagine that!) and about the racism endemic in many of the criticisms of her. All I can really add to this is that it is a sad state of affairs that she is being called a "reverse racist" and as Roger Simon discusses in anunusually solid piece (or, as Mattbastard called it, so full of WIN), it seems the only kind of racism conservative white men get enraged about.

How come the only racism that bothers some people is reverse racism?

People of color have been oppressed for centuries in this country, and while progress has been made, it has come slowly.

But Sonia Sotomayor makes one speech suggesting that her background as a Latina might actually give her superior insight or wisdom to a white man, and there is an explosion -- an eruption! a volcano! -- of indignation.

She is a reverse racist! She has dared to suggest that a nonwhite woman could ever be superior in any way, under any circumstances, to a white man. So how can she now sit on the Supreme Court (a court that for most of its existence has resembled a country club board)?

Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the House, called her a "Latina woman racist" and said she should withdraw her name from consideration.

Pat Buchanan, an MSNBC commentator and former Republican presidential candidate, said on "Hardball With Chris Matthews" that Sotomayor was an "affirmative action" choice for the job.

And so while the Repubs play their unwieldy and inaccurate "damned if you do, damned if you don't," game of identity politics, liberals have been forced to call it out for the racism it is. And while I obviously fall on the leftier side of things, I am concerned about this kumbaya attitude about Sotomayor feeds into the post-racist doctrine a tad bit. Sotomayor is a good person for the job and then also happens to be a person of color. The way that racism functions, we can't have both things without them being related to each other. Liberals want her to be a POC because this shows that the American dream works, POC can be whatever they want irrelevant of their POC-ness. Conservatives want to highlight her POC-ness to show how she is different and play off stereotypes of how she is both unfit for the job and also because she doesn't deny that she is a POC or the keen and unique insight this might give her, is also a reverse racist.

Sotomayor is caught in the trap that most women of color face when they gain any degree of visibility. Their race and gender is necessary to the conversation for both camps to justify or deny her progress. It is still a form of tokenism, even if an unavoidable form. It is progress on one level that she is a WOC that is going to be on the SCOTUS. She is hardly the most liberal person for the job, which is what keeps her in the running and such a smart choice. But the question I am grappling with is, is this really progress or just another round in the identity politics game? Is her nomination going to change the way Latina women are treated globally? (Or am I the one "asking the wrong questions and opening the wrong doors"...as Stephin Merritt would say..)

I suppose it would follow that, after a byproduct of anal sex has been named after you because you do things like group together gay sex with incest, you would shut up and never open your stupid mouth about anything that has to do with copulation, dating, or really anything. You would think that, but that is not the way of Rick Santorum. Only this time it is about how black men don't like to get married and if the Obamas want to be a role model they better stick to some more normal and regular dating rituals.

via Salon quoting Santorum,

Number one, I think it's great that the president has a date night with his wife. He's a role model.He's a role model in particular, whether he likes it or not, in the African-American community.

And you have an African-American community, particularly in the poor inner city areas, we're looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent (sic) of children being born out of wedlock. Marriage is an institution that's a bridge too far for too many African-American woman and is not desirable among African-American males

Um, what? Conservative logic is baffling and will stop at nothing to demean, since it is not just gays that are destroying the institution of marriage it is those "welfare queens and deadbeat dads too." Santorum has to play off every stereotype he can find.

But he continues,

Here we have a president of the United States who says that marriage is cool. You have respect for your wife, and you treat her with the respect and dignity that she deserves. And she is part of this team. And it's not just part of professional team, but it's also part of a personal, romantic team. I think that's all great. So I think it's important that he keeps having his date night.

I think he has to realize that flying to New York is self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot and a beer. It does not matter where you go with your wife, is that it's with your wife. That's really the point... I would make the argument, the simpler the date, the more normal it is.

Santorum is so glad that Obama is being an Upstanding Black Man, but lest he get too showy, Santorum must put the Obamas on notice, since he knows how to be "normal."

I know it is hard to deconstruct something that is so devoid of logic, you start to feel like you are talking in circles. It is not just an insult to the black community that they are "looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent (sic) of children being born out of wedlock." That is not just offensive but it is inaccurate. Statistically more women are choosing to have children out of the institution of marriage. It is certainly not a sign of a crumbling world and a crumbling community, but instead showing us that marriage is not something that should be the backbone of our society as would have it.

Personally, I think the date thing was not something to get all in a fit over, but I also didn't fall for the "oooh ahhh they love each other so much, marriage is so great and the Obamas have shown me why!" Great, people are excited that the First Lady and her dude have a great thing going, but the bigger issue of what constitutes as normal marriage and not hasn't changed. The Obamas have to play up their marriage as stable and normal so they can fight every ignorant stereotype about black people and marriage, along with reinforce that fundamental to the American dream is getting married, being "normal," staying married and having some babies within the sanctity of that marriage. It is quite a conundrum.

That's right, if you need any more proof that conservative policy agendas hurt women, then look at this study of fathers of daughters as opposed to sons, who tend to vote more liberal on issues of reproductive rights, among other issues.

via FiveThirtyEight.

Andrew J. Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee write:

In remarkable research, the sociologist Rebecca Warner and the economist Ebonya Washington have shown that the gender of a person's children seems to influence the attitudes and actions of the parent.

Warner (1991) and Warner and Steel (1999) study American and Canadian mothers and fathers. The authors' key finding is that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. This result emerges particularly strongly for fathers. Because parents invest a significant amount of themselves in their children, the authors argue, the anticipated and actual struggles that offspring face, and the public policies that tackle those, matter to those parents. . . The authors demonstrate that people who parent only daughters are more likely to hold feminist views (for example, to favor affirmative action).

By collecting data on the voting records of US congressmen, Washington (2004) is able to go beyond this. She provides persuasive evidence that congressmen with female children tend to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues such as teen access to contraceptives. In a revision, Washington (2008) argues for a wider result, namely, that the congressmen vote more liberally on a range of issues such as working families flexibility and tax-free education.

Interesting stuff. What if your child is gay, lesbian, queer, trans, etc? Are they then also more liberal? I feel like we have some examples to the contrary, but would be interesting to see what patterns are in general. Thoughts?

Yesterday was the birthday of the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X. He would have been 84 years old. I often wonder what Malcolm would say about race relations today. Would he think we have come far? Would he feel satisfied that we have a black president? Was Malcolm's sole motivation the symbolic shifting of race relations in this country or was it the actual change in the material conditions of the black community?

As an up and coming activist there were few books that influenced me as much as the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Not only was his life inspiring and continues to inspire myself and others committed to the movement for social change world-wide, his voice of dissent to mediocrity masked as social welfare to benefit the black community, as opposed to full self-determination and self-actualization, has yet to be replaced. His voice maintains in the background always motivating us for true equality, for basic human rights, and to demand a better world, "by any means necessary" for those that have survived a brutal history of colonization, racism and slavery.

So happy birthday Malcolm X. Your spirit continues to inspire those of us that see injustice and continue to work for a better world. I can't imagine where we would be without you.

Check out this great video of one of his most influential speeches.

Also, check out Grace Lee Boggs on knowing Malcolm X, Adrienne Maree Brown on the application of Malcolm's teaching to building power in communities around violence and Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the legacy of Malcolm X.

My best friend in high school was gay and I still tear up thinking about the harassment he received. We were freaks, outcasts, geeks, and we became close friends because I was teased for being a "smelly Indian" and he was straight up harassed for being gay. We were teenagers and we built power amongst each other against the ignorance of those around us, but that doesn't mean I am not still angry. Well, I guess I made a career out of my anger. That was 15 years ago and I still remember how poorly the school treated the bullying received by not just him, but all my friends that were "different."

In the last month there have been two incidents of young children that have committed suicide from homophobic harassment at school. Things haven't changed. Bullying is passed down from generation to generation.

NC has anti-bullying legislation going to the house that has added sexuality as a cause of bullying. Of course, there was opposition, but it was added anyway. Opposition to anti-hate legislation is bone-chilling since it so clearly articulates the stand-point of these crazy people. They don't believe in the rights of those with different sexualities, ethnicities, backgrounds, whatever it might mean. They are essentially saying, you are not a valuable person we don't value your life.

What frustrates me about bullying and therefore bullying legislation is that bullies grow up and become politicians, cops, lawmakers and apparently wing-nut Christians. Assholes continue to bully, just the mechanisms through which they bully changes. Trying to convince people that were bullies that bullying is a problem feels like an uphill battle. Obviously, legislation is a step in the right direction. In addition to policy that supports the rights of victims of bullying, we need education for young people around masculinity, sexuality and what the impacts of bullying are.

Check out this surprisingly informative piece from the sexpert over at Fox News (yeah, I did a double take as well), Yvonne Fulbright about the reported decrease in sex organ functioning and loss of sex drive due to anorexia and bulimia. She writes,

*Possibly triggering*

Having an eating disorder is also linked to deficient sexual functioning in women when they become sexually active. When a female severely reduces her intake of food to the point she's consuming hardly anything, naturally, her reproductive system shuts down.

With low body fat, her body fails to produce sufficient amounts of sex hormones, namely estrogen. Thus, she'll quit menstruating, making pregnancy difficult for those hoping to reproduce. These endocrinal changes have a domino effect, starting with a lack of vaginal secretions.

This loss of vaginal lubrication makes intercourse painful and uncomfortable. As a result, many develop an aversive reaction to sex and further loss of interest. Lack of orgasm is also common in women with anorexia nervosa.

That is the medical advice, prior to this Fulbright goes into women with eating disorders and how their low self esteem affects their sex drive. I think her analysis is apt.

The one thing that is rubbing me the wrong way (and perhaps I am reading into it to much!) is the way this is couched as advice on how to have better sex as opposed to how to have a healthier self-esteem. I guess it is a sex column, but the reason women should stop having eating disorders is because of their sex drive, not because it is unhealthy? Also, I was hoping that when she wrote the tag line to the article she was going to suggest that having a curvy figure is sexy, as well, to counter-act the reason that so many women have eating disorders; they are taught that thin is sexy.

Finally, doesn't the advice border on, "you better stop it with that eating disorder, because it is NOT sexy?"

Bob Herbert has a really interesting Op-Ed at the NYTimes about how the coverage of white murders tends to be more extensive than the coverage of the murder of people of color. He writes,

[T]he press is still very color conscious in the way it goes about covering murder. Editors may not be asking, "What color is that victim?" But, on some level, they're still thinking it.

Which is why we've heard so little about an awful story out of Chicago. Some three dozen public school students have been murdered since the school year began, most of them shot to death. These children and teenagers have been killed in a wide variety of settings and situations -- while riding a city bus, playing in parks, sitting in the back seats of cars, in gang disputes, in robberies, in the crossfire of sidewalk shootouts.

It's an immense and continuing tragedy. But these were nearly all African-American or Latino kids, so the coverage has been scant.

In contrast, the news media gave the public enormous amounts of information about the Wesleyan student, Johanna Justin-Jinich, and -- in another big story -- about Julissa Brisman, the masseuse who had advertised on Craigslist and was killed in a Boston hotel room last month.

I think that we can recognize the tragedy in these stories and still have an analysis of the rate of coverage of different communities. I actually think that Herbert is giving them an easy way out suggesting that it is just that mainstream media frequently overlooks the deaths and murders of people of color. When people of color are involved in the death or murder of a white person, that is definitely headline news. Or when a person of color lives up to their given "stereotype," i.e. terrorists, cop-killers, "hookers," etc., that is also all over the news.

So, while Herbert is suggesting that the stories that cover the murder of women of color, poor people and other disenfranchised communities are far less, it is not just that they are overlooked, it is that they are strategically woven into the narrative of good verse evil. White women are pitted against communities of color, contrasting innocent verses guilty. Not only does it tell us, as Herbert suggests, how we see each other, it also shows us that white women are considered helpless, innocent, and need the support, coverage, protection and watchful eye of the news media, along with legal counsel, police and politicians. And that people of color are perpetrators of crime, always guilty, not victims and therefore need our harshest penalties and strictest of eyes.

By Julia Serano

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been called the "bible of mental illness" because it lists and defines all of the "official" psychiatric diagnoses according to the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM is in the early stages of undergoing its 5th major revision; each previous revision has seen the total number of mental disorders recognized (some might say invented) by the APA greatly increase. Last year, trans activists were particularly concerned to learn that Ken Zucker and Ray Blanchard had been named to play critical lead roles in determining the language of the DSM sections focusing on gender and sexuality, especially given that these researchers are well known for forwarding theories and therapies that are especially pathologizing and stigmatizing to gender-variant people.

Blanchard has recently presented some of his suggestions to revise the "Paraphilia" section of the DSM. In the past, this section has generally received little attention from feminists, as it has been primarily limited to several sexual crimes (e.g., pedophilia, frotteurism and exhibitionism) and a handful of other generally consensual but unnecessarily stigmatized sexual acts (such as fetishism and BDSM) that are considered "atypical" by sex researchers. However, there are two aspects of the proposed Paraphilia section revision that should be of great concern to feminists, as well as anyone else who is interested in gender and sexual equality.

Expanding "Paraphilia"

First, Blanchard is proposing a significant expansion of the DSM's definition of "paraphilia" to include:

"any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners."

The first concern here is the term "phenotypically normal" (meaning "normal" with regards to observable anatomical or behavioral traits). Thus, according to this definition, attraction to any person deemed by sex researchers to be "abnormal" or "atypical" could conceivably be diagnosed as paraphilic. So, do you happen to be attracted to, or in a relationship with, someone who is differently-abled or differently-sized? Or someone who is gender-variant in some way? Well congratulations, you may now be diagnosed with a paraphilia!

Seriously.

Nicholas Kristof writes an op-ed for the NYTimes about the appalling amount of time it takes for rape kits to actually be tested and how sometimes they are not even tested. It is something that as feminists we have talked about extensively and sexual assault survivor advocates have organized around. The lackadaisical nature of rape kit testing and the general nonchalance or downright ignorance with which police do not investigate rape cases, it becomes damn near impossible to prove someone has been raped. Unless of course, it is to disprove it to save someone's reputation, but I digress.

In discussing the evasive procedure of "testing" for rape he writes,

It's a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a "rape kit" -- which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn't tested at all because it's not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

So while we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren't using them properly -- and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn't justice; it's indifference.

True. Disgusting. Telling. Unjust.

UPDATE: Courtney wrote a column on this very subject this week.

Sorry, not OK to rename the swine flu to the "Mexican" flu. Channing Kennedy writes at the Racewire blog,

Let me be among the first to say that the move by some to rename 'swine flu' to 'Mexican flu' is offensive on its face and in its roots. It does everything to fuel unfounded fears, and it politicizes a serious health crisis in a thinly veiled effort to stoke hatred toward an already-vulnerable group. Worst of all, it doesn't even blame the right people!

And better yet, renames it to Spring Breaker flu. Go read the rest. High-larious.

It is not just that Miss California spoke her mind about gay marriage that makes this uniquely a feminist issue, but it does make her an asshole. For all the arguments defending her right to speak on this topic, to me, it is so sad that people so quickly fight to defend the rights of bigots to speak. So, I obviously fall too left of that argument to even participate in it. Or rather, I just agree with Jill,

It's not "religious persecution" to say that someone is a bigot for having bigoted views. It's not "religious persecution" to argue that those who want to deny basic civil rights based on sexual orientation are bigots. It would be persecution to, for example, pass a law stating that a consenting Christian adult wasn't allowed to marry another consenting Christian adult because of his or her faith, or to criminalize consensual sex between adult Christians. That's persecution. Not, "I didn't win a beauty pageant and then Perez Hilton called me a bitch."

As Jay Smooth pointed out in his video, the issue of pageantry and their role in our society raises bigger concerns. The reliance on heteronormativity and beauty standards in pageants is indeed a point of inquiry.

As a feminist, I hate when women's breasts make the news, since it is rarely to uncover the sexism embedded within a system. The fact that Carrie Prejean got breast implants is not newsworthy to me. The fact that the California Pageant Association paid for them, well that is. Not because it is scandalous, but because it shows that pageants aren't about highlighting women as they are or for their talents, but for their physical appearance and to make spectacle of a specific type of femininity.

Pageants only make sense because of binary gender roles that cater to mainstream understandings of femininity. They are a fetishized spectacle of femininity to the point where it is even OK if they are artificially constructed as long as they are pushing a normative ideal of what a "real woman" is. As feminists we know already that ideal is socially constructed. Her blatant homophobia just adds to the already established straight, cis-woman and white standard of beauty necessary for pageants to exist and to perpetuate the illusion of binary genders.

Check out this video by Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley reporting from Tokyo on the women who are speaking out about the problem of domestic violence in Japan.

Transcript after the jump.

And pro-life activists are pissed. Via Washington Post.

The battle against Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kans.), President Obama's nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has gone better than many pro-life activists had hoped. Yes, it's true that Sebelius is expected to be confirmed after an eight-hour debate and cloture vote are held in the Senate today. It's also true that activists have not managed to dislodge the support of Sebelius's home state senators, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, both Republicans -- an embarrassing setback that has prevented the Sebelius nomination from becoming quite the abortion rights showdown that they had hoped for. But they can count some small victories.

They feel so powerless, they are even making up stories. Via The Hill's Blog, the newest meme seems to be that the swine-flu epidemic is actually a cover-up to the confirmation of Sebelius. CWA President Wendy Wright states her case that, "Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through," Naturally, Tony Perkins runs with this and puts out the following email (full text from Hill's Blog):

Sebelius: The Real Public Health Scare

What do sick pigs have to do with widespread, taxpayer-funded abortion? More than you might think. This week, as panic spreads over a potential swine flu pandemic, liberals are already scheming how they can use the health scare to win the confirmation of pro-abortion extremist Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kans.) as Secretary of Health and Human Services. No doubt the empty seat at HHS was keenly felt this weekend, as Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, stepped into the void at HHS and declared the swine flu a "health emergency." Although the Senate leadership will use the urgency of the flu to try to force Sebelius through the chamber, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the government's response to the outbreak "has not been hindered by the lack of a secretary at HHS."

As someone who is often called an aggressive driver, I take personal offense to this stupid piece via Yahoo News Canada in the "car research" section listing 10 inarticulate and sexist reasons women supposedly can't drive. The piece is from Askmen.com, which means it is actually not humor, even if to us that website is hilarious since it is drenched in the cowardly spirit of men that are afraid of vagina.

One of the reasons women can't drive,

No.4 - They have no interest in cars

Another reason women can't drive is a matter of interest -- or rather, a lack thereof. You can't do well at something when your give-a-damn meter reads zero point zero. Women have no interest in cars beyond them serving as appliances of transport. As long as it starts, all is well. So when dash lights flash, components make ugly sounds or smoke appears, it may or may not resonate with the female driver that these are less than ideal operating characteristics.

Right, just like women don't like trains, airplanes, computers and any other modern technological marvel that helps us get somewhere.

Joking aside, I do think there is something to be said about women feeling secure in their driving abilities, since they are told that they are bad drivers and that driving is a manly thing to do. One of the first things you internalize when coming of age as a teenager is that women (along with some ethnic groups) are not good drivers.

Before we start the convo with, "but women really don't have depth perception" I know some really really good female drivers that are aggressive, confident and rarely if ever get lost or in accidents. So, based on my own empirical evidence and recognition of the sexist expectation that women aren't as good of drivers, I call bullshit on the premise of this article. Shame on Yahoo Canada for running such a sexist piece of crap.

Last week I talked about the impacts of media consolidation on independent magazines and press. Something I touched on, but is elaborated on Freepress's blog Stop Big Media, is that actual impact this has on coverage of disenfranchised communities. If who you cover is based on ratings, there is a good chance you are not going to make an effort at covering issues equitably. Jordan Berg looks at the case of the coverage of missing women.

The Seattle Medium, a local, independent newspaper, highlighted one particular way Big Media is harming citizens: by failing to report on missing persons based on race.

The article's investigation shows, "...national media operations often fail to present what is in fact a very diverse missing persons population," instead focusing primarily on white victims.

Why the preferential treatment? The corporate news media approach missing persons as another news segment that will draw advertising revenue. In other words, only a certain segment of missing persons is viewed as important enough to cover.

Take, for example, Latasha Norman, a black Jackson State University honor student who went missing for more than two weeks in late 2007, and barely got the media's attention. It was only after her body was found in Greenville, Miss., two weeks later that CNN picked up the story (only to quickly drop it).

At the same time, Stacey Peterson, a Caucasian woman who also disappeared, was becoming a household name due to constant media coverage on all the major TV stations. This is not to say that Stacey Peterson's disappearance should not have been covered. But why weren't both women given equal airtime when they went missing and needed the public's eye to help find them?

As anti-racist feminists this is something we talk about endlessly, but it is rare we discuss the actual reasons for disproportionate coverage of missing white women verse missing black women. Outside of blatant racism, if we can't sell the 10 o'clock news, our stories are probably not going to make it on there. This is a clear violation of what the purpose of media should be, which is a watchdog for our communities and a supplier of information.

Learn more about the work of FreePress and the organization I work for, the Center for Media Justice, two organizations working nationally to stop media consolidation and petition outlets for balanced coverage on the issues that impact our most historically disenfranchised communities.

Also, take action now to Stop Media Consolidation.

Just go read this whole post that Cara wrote and was reposted on Racialicious about Lil' Wayne discussing on Jimmy Kimmel how he "lost his virginity" or rather was raped, when he was 11 years old.

*trigger warning*

This leaves me speechless, but to be honest I have hated Jimmy Kimmel since the Man Show, but Cara gives more analysis then my stumped ass can do at this point.

Last year I attended Burning Man and wrote a piece about my experiences with what I considered the culture of unapologetic appropriation at Burning Man in the name of freedom and art. This post started a huge flame-war, both here at Feministing, along with Burning Man message boards across the country. I knew I had hit a nerve but this latest incident between the Burning Man community and the indigenous community in the Bay Area sheds more light on the point I was trying to get at.

via East Bay Express.

There was supposed to be a "private" Burner party last Saturday night at the Bordello in Oakland, complete with three hundred guests, twenty DJs spinning thumping techno and bass, dancers, a fashion show, micro-massages, raw food, an absinthe bar, and coconuts. Instead, the event ended in tears.

More than fifty Bay Area Native American rights activists converged on the historic East Oakland property at 9:30 p.m. to ensure the shutdown of popular Burning Man group Visionary Village's "Go Native!" party. The fired-up Hopis, Kiowas and other tribal members spent more than four hours lecturing the handful of white, college-class Burners about cultural sensitivity until some of them simply broke down crying. The emotional crescendo capped a month-long saga that started with a tone-deaf dance party flyer, led to an Internet flame war and a public excoriation of Visionary Village's young, neo-hippy leaders before real tribal elders in the East Bay demanded a cancellation of the event.

"Go Native?" Wow, just wow.

Thanks to Legba for the heads up!

One of the best panels I went to at the Women, Action and Media Conference was about the state of non-profit media models and how to sustain and thrive as a non-profit magazine in a competitive marketplace, where you can get material for free on the web, you are not supported in investigative endeavors and you are already marginalized for being lefty. Yeah, the conversation was a little bit depressing.

According to Katharine Mieszkowski at Salon in the article "Spare Change," about non-profit media models, things are looking grim for business media, so many local papers are looking for alternative types of funding. The question is, is this a viable solution.

But newspapers have been driven to the brink by the expectation of making the kind of double-digit profits that large corporate owners demand, and by the financial shenanigans, including loading up on debt, that corporate ownership has brought. That's why some observers, notably financial experts, believe the future of the news business is not business at all.

On the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, David Swensen, chief investment officer at Yale University, and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst, argued that newspapers should operate through endowments, like universities. San Francisco investment banker Warren Hellman convened a meeting about possibly taking the San Francisco Chronicle nonprofit in an attempt to save it from extinction.

The challenge for nonprofit journalism is both daunting and exciting. Long before the current recession and radical cutbacks, many newspapers had lost their community watchdog function, no longer bothering with the expensive and time-consuming work of investigative reporting. A 2005 survey by Arizona State University of the 100 largest U.S. dailies found that 37 percent had no full-time investigative reporters, and the majority of the major dailies had two or fewer.

As many of our readers who work in non-profit funded magazines can tell you, it is a daily battle to stay afloat and many, many good magazines have shut down over the last few years due to an inability to find consistent funding sources. I have even heard of editors and publishers working for no salary for months at a time in an attempt to keep their magazine open.

We have multiple issues here, from the variations in different types of magazines and newspapers, to the dearth of investigative journalism, to the corporate take-over of media, and the increase of new media and blogs that have changed the media game as we know it, but the underlying issue of access remains the same. The American public has the right to news in its varied, complex and multiple incarnations and one of the side effects of corporate takeover of media has been an increase in independent news sources (monetizing and non, ahem) to bring the truth to the people. The problem isn't trying to figure out if the non-profit model will work on a theoretical level. It should work, but it is generally not sustainable. The problem is that when media became corporate-owned and corporate-driven, it became commodified and the basic belief that access to media and fair representation in all aspects of media from production to reporting-is as fundamental a right as education, health care and housing-went out the window.

Hey, if you can get your newspaper to stay afloat by using a non-profit model I am all for it, but we must critically think about the role of the news in the life of the American. The representations of women and people of color in mainstream corporate owned media based on stereotypes and non-truths as opposed to evidence and investigative methods have had detrimental impacts on our communities, and we have a unique opportunity to organize around that while we risk losing even more control of public media.

Thanks to Neela for the link.

Go check out Courtney's newest column at the American Prospect about the need for female veterans who are sexual assault survivors and are suffering PTSD to be classified as disabled and eligible for services.

It makes a certain amount of sense that the Veterans Affairs Office is compelled to differentiate combat from non-combat veterans. Those who have been exposed to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the stress of direct negotiation, and the trials of patrol on a daily basis certainly have a higher rate of PTSD and other disabilities following their tour than those who have not. But it's not a zero-sum game. When the sexual assault rates among female veterans are so astronomically high -- at least 30, and as high as 70 percent, according to Helen Benedict, author of the new book The Lonely Soldier -- the "combat" classification becomes a moot point. Keep in mind that sexual assault is a hugely underreported crime; even the Pentagon admits that only 10 to 20 percent of cases are probably being reported.

Add to this the reality that military culture is built on breaking down some of our most basic psychological instincts through humiliation, deprivation, and submission, and it becomes less and less logical to separate the soldiers who have seen combat from those who haven't. Everyone who signs his or her name on the dotted line of a military contract is destined for psychological trauma of one kind or another, especially if they're female.

I think this point of the culture of humiliation, deprivation and submission is not only a helpful frame in understanding the culture within the military, but also in thinking about the mindset that motivates the military to then create those types of conditions amongst the communities we are warring with be it via prisons or the use of rape as a weapon of war. It seems logical to us that a US military culture that demands a certain level of emasculation, would create, produce and sustain a culture of sexual violence.

Remember when Bristol Palin basically admitted that abstinence doesn't work? Well, sounds like she (or rather her mom on her behalf) is singing a different tune now and I am going to have to agree with Renee that there is something fishy, sad and manipulative about using your teenage daughter to further your political agenda.

In response to Levi Johnson being on the Tyra Show yesterday discussing openly that the Palin's knew they were knocking boots, Sarah Palin released the following statement:

"Bristol's focus will remain on raising Tripp, completing her education, and advocating abstinence," [spokeswoman Meghan] Stapleton continues. "It is unfortunate that Levi finds it more appealing to exploit his previous relationship with Bristol than to contribute to the well being of the child."

See Levi's clip from the Tyra Show here.

Seriously, they didn't have safe sex every time? And here I thought it was immaculate conception (/sarcasm) As one commenter remarked at Renee's place, Levi is effectively getting out of being a father. While his story holds more water and helps us understand what bullshit abstinence-only is, he ends up benefiting from this very same conservative doctrine and it is at the cost of Bristol Palin's ability to advocate for herself. Between what her mother wants and her baby-daddy walking away, she ends up without an effective narrative to support her story. Both frames of "abstinence-only" and the "the dad that walked away" are stories well fleshed out and justified by the right. Abstinence-only dogma hurts the very thing it claims to protect; the lives of young women.

Related:
Bristol Palin lost her Voice and her Autonomy.

Sarah Haskins takes on the douche factor in Carl's Jr's ads. I have written about some of their ad campaigns before which are definitely heavily laden with the dude-bro sentiment.

I got to see Sarah Haskins give a presentation at WAM. And you are jealous.

via Feministe.

UPDATE: For those wondering how could I use the word douche (!) here are some thoughts on the matter from Ann and from the Bitch blog.

I stumbled across the Annual Asian Women's Blog Carnival via Hyphen and it is a must-read selection of pieces by Asian women. This year's focus is on identity and is an extensive selection of posts about shattering cultural stereotypes, racism and other issues that affect the lives of Asian women.

Check it out now and give them some comment love as this is a very important and exciting new carnival.

Let's jump right on in, shall we?

My 38 year old brother is autistic, hyper-active and aphasic. I have lived my entire life with autism in the mix...watching my parents struggle to understand the undefined, listening to doctors and specialists cast blame while recommending the unthinkable (institutionalization) and enduring the stares and giggles of others who didn't understand my brother's public displays of difference. I have also witnessed the fantabulous and never boring force of nature that is my brother, the empowerment that can be found through advocacy and action and the strength of community.

Five years ago I moved back home to Missouri to do what I always knew my sister and I would eventually do - take on a guardianship role with my brother. Our father passed away several years ago and our mother is not emotionally able to tackle the stress and drama that is all too often a part of guardianship, so my sister and this bitch are sibling co-guardians. Our brother lives in residential treatment near the neighborhood we grew up in with two roommates that he's known for years, so we're very lucky.

My sister and I are now fluent in the languages spoken by the Department of Mental Health, Medicaid and social services. We balance our role as sisters with our role as GuardianAdvocateWarriors...and I try not to resent the fact that more hours are spent going to war than just being a sister.

My brother's entire life is wrapped up in his Person Centered Plan...a couple of hundred pages of recommendations and therapies that result in funding from various state agencies and monitoring from all manner of sources. My sister and this bitch are in there too...the frequency of our visits, our likes and dislikes and the activities we enjoy together are listed in bullet points on white pages in Arial font right above our brother's nutritional chart.

And it is that plan...my brother's Person Centered Plan...that I can't help thinking about when I think of autism awareness.

I wish his plan could reflect his strength...the years it took him to learn to say the few words he does or the unbelievable ease with which he communicates without words.

I wish I could make the world aware of the healing power of his smile, the cure for bitterness that is his laughter or the soothing warmth of his hugging embrace.

I am so unbelievably frustrated that I lack the creatively to make my brother come alive for people...to bring awareness of the person he is so that politicians and the powerful would want to fight to protect him and support him just as much as I do.

But all I can do is try...and then try and try again.

'Cause my brother is autistic and every month is autism awareness month.

He's not a cure that has not yet been found. He is more than a diagnosis and far more glorious than any definition assigned by humans.

He's magic...outstanding...and sometimes loud as hell and annoying (wink).

This April I am aware of the caregivers, advocates, champions, teachers, social workers, activists, friends and family members that make my brother's life possible.

And of the individuals with autism who make life extraordinary and all that we need to do to support them...

This past weekend the media was full of violence. Between the tragic Binghamton shooting and the shooting of three police officers shot and killed in Pittsburgh, (and that was only the weekend, we have several examples in the last few weeks of violence) it seems that violence is very much a part of 2009.

I write a lot about the relationship between violence and oppression, but this post is not about that. I realized it is rare that we talk about how we deal with hearing all these violent stories, how we deal with experiencing violence in our lives or how we cope with the trauma of hearing, knowing, experiencing and internalizing violence and trauma.

Reading, writing and thinking about violence so frequently gets depressing and I realized if I wanted to hack it in this type of work I needed some ways to cope. These are some of my strategies to stay positive:

1. Look at pictures of kittens and/or play with my very very cute cats. It has apparently been proven that there is a decrease in blood pressure upon the petting of an animal.

2. Work out! I am a fan of yoga, running, walking, biking and rock-climbing. I go to the gym at least 4 times a week. It has done wonders for stress management.

3. Read motivational books about spirituality and enlightenment and write in my journal. My favorite book to read for inspiration is Daily Mediations for People of Color by Iyanla Vanzant. I keep a copy next to my bed and go to it when I feel I need some positivity.

I realize there is so much work that needs to be done in the realm of violence, both physical and psychological and one of the ways I seek to find solutions is by keeping myself as centered as possible. I channel a lot of my anger at injustice into my writing, but sometimes that causes more anger and well, it goes on and on. It is a daily struggle.

What are your strategies for staying positive and centered?

Should pole-dancing be approved as an Olympic sport? According to the Collette Kakuk, founder of the Pole Dancing Association, yes. She believes pole-dancing should not be marginalized or shamed, but brought into the light as a difficult, healthy and competitive activity that makes you fit.

I guess my question would be, would making pole-dancing an Olympic sport bring to light some of the horrible treatment of exotic dancers and give them a standard wage with some worker rights? Most of the participants in the PDA appear to be white and as the article discusses as a sport, pole-dancing generally attracts middle to upper middle class housewives.

But this is interesting. Thoughts?

(Thanks to Daffodil for the link.)

Last Tuesday's post on the man in Oakland that killed 4 police officers yielded heated responses and I wanted to follow up after everyone (especially me) had some time to mull things over. I want to draw from some of the themes that came up and to update the news that broke last Tuesday night that Lovelle Mixon was also linked to the rape of a 12 year old girl. This act, along with the murders of John Hege, Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai, are reprehensible acts. I am stating this upfront so that it is not lost that this is a tragedy and there is no excuse for this kind of tragedy.

There seemed to be some concern that the way I approached my discussion of this topic made me sound like an apologist. Perhaps a matter of semantics but despite some folks understanding it was not my intention, there still seemed to be a need to accuse me of it. To clarify, there is a big difference between understanding what creates a condition/thought/action and then justifying that said action.

Thea Lim at Racialicious gave a very thorough breakdown of the fall-out around my post last week and the idea of trying to hold two thoughts at once. She writes,

Now, Mixon actually was guilty. But Mixon's guilt doesn't neutralise the rottenness of the system. In other words, just because Mixon was actually a dangerous felon doesn't mean that we are absolved from the duty to question how justice and innocence is defined and meted out in our culture.

It is not only possible for us to hold these two facts at once, but it is imperative in understanding the consequences of Mixon's actions for the greater community in Oakland and also for understanding how the youth in Oakland are dealing with this atrocity. Perhaps the huge backlash against my piece was due to a desire to use Mixon as an excuse to voice their own racism, whether conscious or subconscious. As lefties it is our job to point out these subtle nuances, as the implications are deadly.

With regard to the poster I chose to repost here, after posting the artist's statement and some conversation via comments and emails, I would just like to clarify why I thought it was powerful. I should have known that putting it up would make me look like I was complicit in making Mixon a poster-child, but the poster says, "Cop-Killer" not "American Hero" so I thought that the fact that I didn't think he was a hero was pretty self-explanatory. What I saw in that poster was several questions come up about what we need to be American. We need our villains, we need our heroes or the story is never complete. In short, people of color become the poster children for whatever we want them to be, Obama is on one side of the American dream, Mixon on the other. Also, while I don't totally agree with all of Weston's take, the one part I do agree with is that Mixon is a product of a culture of violence in America and we can either address that or we can write this off as a one off crazy man.

It is understandable why many different people are bound to the 'one off' point of view. It makes us feel comfortable to think that someone like Mixon is a 'one off' case because it takes responsibility off of us to look at, and, ultimately, change the systemic causes of violence. On the other hand, the belief that he is not a 'one off' incident will most definitely be used to justify further violence in the black community in Oakland and that is what we are afraid of. It is almost effective and more logical for those that live in the community to write this off as an aberration (which statistically it is) as opposed to part of a systemic problem.

But this story is not just about Mixon and his inability to get out of cycles of violence. This is about all the themes and ideas that have come out around Mixon and what that tells us about public perceptions of police brutality, black masculinity and why Oakland youth might be so juiced about this issue. As Puck clarified at the end of the comments section,

Regardless of whether or not she believes cop killing is a message of hope (and it's pretty clear that she doesn't), it's important to recognize that an image like the "poster" was created in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. It's important to recognize that there are a lot of people who see this as a tit-for-tat situation... and there are a lot of people who are conflicted - at once feeling sorry for the people who were killed (and their families) and simultaneously feeling like the system had it coming. Recognizing that these are perspectives that are very real and shared by a lot of people is not the same thing as holding such a perspective. Ignoring that such perspectives are worth considering or even exist stifles our capacity to understand all the angles on a tragedy such as this.

Mixon is a difficult person to build a narrative of police brutality around, but this story isn't about him. He is dead, he can do no more harm. But the police state can, and most likely will, use this case as an excuse to continually police and brutalize people of color in Oakland. Mixon was a very extreme example of violence, but he is still part of an entire system of violence. The more we have a repressive police system that engages in extreme forms of violence, the more people will support the actions of a cop-killer. Some have suggested that if perhaps Oakland police and stood up against what happened to Oscar Grant, Oakland youth would be singing a different tune right now.

Most industries are facing difficult times right now. Media, and independent media in particular, have long faced uphill battles, but the economic emergency is pushing many state and local newspapers to fold. As the bad news continues, I wanted to speak with someone about the possible ramifications of these losses.

Tracy Van Slyke, former publisher of the progressive, independent magazine In These Times, is the program director of the The Media Consortium, a network of the country's leading independent journalism organizations. (Full disclosure: Feministing is a member.) From their website:

"Millions of Americans are looking for honest, fair, and accurate journalism. We're finding new ways to reach them. Our strategy has three focal points: Making Connections, Building Infrastructure, and Amplifying Our Voice."

Here's Tracy...

In case you missed this Sunday's blog talk radio hosted by Tami from What Tami Said, I just wanted to put up the archive and give a big-ups to my fellow showmates Latoya Peterson from Racialicious and Jill from Write Like She Talks, with call in questions from superstars such as Renee from Womanist Musings and Monica from Transgriot.

It was great to hear everyone's perspectives on how they got started blogging, what negotiations and sacrifices we make to blog, self-care and blogging, where we hope blogging can lead us and tips of the trade for newcomers to this thing we call blahg.

This study is really interesting (link it to a PDF), if by interesting you mean deeply tragic and horridly upsetting. According to the Times UK, 1 in 7 people find it is sometimes justified to hit women.

One in seven people believe it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is dressed in "sexy or revealing clothes in public", according to the findings of a survey released today.

A similar number believed that it was all right for a man to slap his wife or girlfriend if she is "nagging or constantly moaning at him".

The findings of the poll, conducted for the Home Office, also disclosed about a quarter of people believe that wearing sexy or revealing clothing should lead to a woman being held partly responsible for being raped or sexually assaulted.

If that is not upsetting enough, Jess at the F-Word breaks the studies down even further. and concludes,

These figures appear to actually show the situation is worse than we thought from that pivotal 2005 poll by Amnesty. For example, Amnesty found about 1/3 of people think women who've been flirting are responsible if they get raped, whereas the Home Office poll puts the figure at a shocking 43%. About 50% believe that women in prostitution bear some or all of the responsibility if they're raped.

The article also suggested that older populations (over 65) and what they call "lower social groups" had a higher percentage of supporting that violence against women is sometimes justified. I actually have no idea what they mean by "lower social groups," and find that language really problematic, especially if they are talking about working class communities and communities of color. I looked through the study and found no delineation by age or background.

Despite those perhaps journalistic assumptions made, this data is appalling.

Thanks to Meg for the link and community post.

This post got this song stuck in my head. If you haven't heard Santogold, do so immediately.

I love Michelle Obama. I really do. It makes me so happy to see a woman of color in the White House and I have written before about the sexism embedded in making spectacle of the way the first lady looks while concurrently it being important that historically white standards of femininity and grandeur are being disrupted by having a black first lady. That said, this article really annoyed me in the way it characterizes Michelle Obama as a good role model for black women. It is not that I don't agree that Michele Obama is a positive role model, I just don't think it is appropriate to characterize all other black women that are not like Michelle, as bad role models.

Her youthful, striking looks and dynamism, coupled with the fact that she understands what it means to be a working mother, juggling family life with a successful career, makes it easy for many women to relate to her.

But for black women in particular, Michelle Obama's soaring popularity and high, positive visibility marks a huge step forward.

"If you think of the stereotypes of black women, they are either bossy and emasculating or sexually promiscuous, and Michelle Obama is neither of those," said Andra Gillespie, a sociology professor at Emory University in the southern state of Georgia.

"A woman who has an accessible beauty, is considered feminine and lady-like, has a husband and has kept him for more than 15 years and a husband who clearly loves her -- people are not used to seeing black women in that position," she said.

OK, so yes, Michelle Obama is a good role model. And she doesn't live up to stereotypes because (gasp!) they are stereotypes, which are a function of racism and produce racist images of black women. It is not that successful, working black mothers don't exist, they don't exist in media depictions of black women and black women's sexuality. So, while it may be shocking for the rest of white America that Michelle Obama "dresses nice, speaks well and isn't mean," it isn't for those of us that exist in communities of color.

On the other hand, it is frustrating that the reason Michelle Obama is popular and well liked is because she isn't threatening or castrating in nature, the way the popular imagination characterizes black women. Stereotypes aside, what is wrong with being "bossy and emasculating or sexually promiscuous." Why is that diametrically opposed to being a "good woman?" Is Michelle Obama's popularity rating high because she doesn't threaten traditional notions of femininity and as a result people can breath a sigh of relief and say, "oh at least not ALL black women are like that!"

Probably both yes and no. It is not that Michelle Obama isn't demure, well-educated, polite, pretty and "well-spoken," along with being super bad-ass. The point is that assuming most black women are not, is racist. And the belief that when any woman disrupts our notions of acceptable femininity makes her less of a "lady," well that is sexist.

Related:
"Mocha Moms" takeover the White House.
Michelle Obama is not a militant, a victim, or an albatross.
It's not about Michelle.

In light of my upcoming panel at SXSW, I was graciously interviewed by Belinda Acosta of the Austin Chronicle with two other panelists, Latoya Peterson and Steve Swedler, about social justice, activism, changing people's minds and the internet.

A snippet from the Austin Chronicle story,

AC: From your perspective, what is the "revolution"? What role do online communities and social networks play in it? What role do you play in it?

Peterson: All revolutions should be revolutions of thought - an ongoing evolution of ideas, the encouragement of the critical thinking process, the willingness to look past things that keep us stagnant and will allow us all to move forward. I have been re-evaluating my whole purpose for being online recently and I ultimately came to the conclusion that I want to facilitate conversations and spread information. I feel like that is the most powerful thing you can do - to provide someone with an argument or an idea they can mull over, accept or reject ... or revisit later.

Mukhopadhyay: I think a revolution can only happen with changes in mindset, yes, but also strategic campaigns using grassroots organizing models. ... But even prior to that, I think changing people's minds is important work with respect to policy change, I just don't know if blogging does that. Changing people's minds is hard and I'm not sure if it just allows people to debate and if not, reify what they believe. On the other hand, I get tons of [e-mails] from women that have never heard about the things we write about at Feministing [saying] how it truly changed their lives.

Swedler: In my opinion, the "revolution" is undefined. It is up to every individual. My revolution might be very different than yours, but online communities can only be as effective as you make them. The level of discomfort in getting up on your soapbox on Facebook or Twitter is equal to the extent you are willing to go to make a difference in your "revolution." It can be difficult to be sure, evidenced by the complete lack of McCain support on Twitter. Is it because no one on Twitter voted for him, or was it because it was too uncomfortable to speak out in the vast sea of Obama supporters?

This interview really got me to thinking about the role of new media and political blogging in changing people's minds about different issues. I think this is one of those trends that is really hard to quantify. Does blogging raise awareness, get people on board with critical decisions and therefore impact policy changes?

I have found that blogging has led to an increase at the rate at which information can flow and the way in which people can intercept with ideas, that traditionally may have been more difficult to access and interact with. But as Steve mentions early in his interview, there are still more people off the internet than on. Outside of mobilizing my own personal voice and that of my co-bloggers and commenters, does blogging do more than give voice to issues and certain people? Does blogging change people's minds? Or does it just allow people to debate more about issues they already feel a certain way on? What do you as members of our community, commenters and/or lurkers and readers think?

In a talk I gave a couple of weeks ago in Virginia, I mentioned how the covers of anti-"hook up culture" publications often depict women as disheveled and distraught. Since I didn't get to show folks what I meant then, I thought I could post a couple now for your viewing pleasure (or perhaps more accurately, viewing horror).

Here's a study funded by the Independent Women's Forum, Hooking Up, Hanging Out and Hoping for Mr. Right.

The cover of Laura Sessions Stepp's Unhooked is a bit more subtle, simply showing a faceless woman taking her shirt off.

But it's Miriam Grossman's Unprotected that really takes the shaming cake, with two different covers relaying the same sad message.

I wonder why Grossman decided to go with such a decidedly upbeat cover for her publication with the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute - Sense & Sexuality. (Since she's pretty grim in the book - telling readers that young women who have pre-marital sex are likely to end up depressed, diseased drop outs.) I'd like to think it's because the word 'rectum' looks so pretty in cursive.

If anyone has any more anti-hook up covers, link them in comments!

I have talked a little bit about the process of moving and living at home and some issues it has brought up. I haven't in a while, but this article in the Huffington Post reminded me that my dad recently, concerned with my lack of romantic prospects in my life, offered, in the most friendly and optimistic way, to create a profile for me in indianmarriage.com or some such website like that. It was so amusing that I actually laughed, only to realize he was serious.

Although this article is about parents in India trying to set their children living in the US up with potential mates, it captures some of my same reservations, along with a brief discussion of mating practices in modern transnational South Asian culture.

Historically, evolution of matrimonial matchmaking in India can be traced to the late 19th century, said Rochona Majumdar, assistant professor at the University of Chicago's Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Marriages arranged by family, both extended, or by the parent of the man or woman involved, usually were made on the basis of matching income levels, caste and the like. The process of finding a suitable partner went through many changes, said Majumdar.

"First it was through caste journals and caste magazines, gradually it moved to newspapers, now from newspapers to online sites," she said.

Modern technology, however, highlights the differences in expectations of parents regarding the age at which they think their children should get married and the speed at which they take that step, and, on the other side, the children's desire to take more time in choosing life partners.

"People who are on the matrimonial Web site probably want to get married soon, and I didn't want to get married to someone I just met," said Deokule.

Yeah, I am even more radical than that, I don't want to get married at all. Plus, I don't need one more social networking site to bog me down. Dating sucks we all know it and some feel they have to do it. I don't really do it, that is not because I am against it, but because it is generally a waste of time. But I definitely don't need my parents helping me out with it. Sorry Dad.

I am a huge fan of TED. I watch their videos every week. One of our readers sent this in and I thought it was really interesting. Brenda Laurel did years of research to design a game for young girls. She discusses that two types of people were her opposition. Male gamers and feminists. And what we have in common is we don't listen to children. Well, I know she isn't talking about me, hehe, but it is really interesting. It is from 10 years ago and things have changed in terms of video games and young girls since then, so even more interesting.

How do you create video games for girls?

via TED
Thanks to Colleen for the link!

Lately, there have been some things going on in the loose, yet bizarrely limiting category of the feminist blogosphere. They have gotten me to thinking about social change, feminist activism and how it is connected to blogging and new media. This is one of those, "I am going to think out loud posts," so bear with me.

In light of recent conversations about inclusion and exclusion within the blog world, there are some facts that are apparent. Some voices are considered more legitimate than others and it doesn't exactly take rocket science to figure out why. Online interactions or power relations mirror the real world in many ways, so if you look at who is dominating dialog in mainstream media, sometimes you see those same patterns online. It is not true across the board, but generally, the words, thoughts and analysis of not just certain demographics, but also certain points of view, for example more centrist liberal ideology, is privileged.

But, I guess I already know that, since I have been blogging here for a long time and have felt first hand what it means to be a woman of color that says radical things in a very public way. It means getting threatened, it means being challenged, it means having my credibility laughed at, it means sometimes and often feeling delegitimized and stupid, it means not being linked, even when I wrote about something first. And blogging for what is considered a big feminist blog, it means being made to feel like an outsider, a betrayer to my community, someone who has stepped outside the confines of home and community, speaking my truths on someone else's soil (even though it is my soil, I have tilled and planted and I get to decide what grows and I have ownership of my croppage, and total rights to replant, haha, to continue with the metaphor if you will...). And obviously, I don't agree with all these criticisms, I can hear them, but in general, I know what I am doing and why I am doing it. I own that shit. But I am human and shit gets under my skin. I am sensitive, I get affected, I even cry (probably more often then I should.)

This analysis of race and class has been extended to which voices get heard in the feminist blogosphere. I don't want to minimize the extent to which it has been discussed, but I am not going to rehash old debates. I have written about the topic of racism and feminism before. But right now, I am just going to talk about myself. My work speaks for itself and I have let go of the belief that I can make everyone happy. Sometimes we won't get along, sometimes we just won't be friends.

What I am wondering about though is what is the meaning of all of this? Why do we blog? And is the reason we blog for our own individual voices to be heard? Or the voices of our communities? Hell, what does community look like online? I love many co-bloggers and commenters, both on Feministing and off, but my real friends are the ones I have met face to face, that have looked in my eyes and I into theirs. That does not mean that the community I build online isn't meaningful, it is. It is just different.

After working in the social change sector, I learned that everything is strategic and blogging has become one way to rally support around key issues. And it is a powerful way to do it. It is not perfect by any means, but despite all the opposition I have faced and despite all the racism that is embedded within this powerful tool and the inequitable power relations that are reproduced online, I realize this tool is not just about my own voice. It is about the stories we give light to, it is about the campaigns we support, it is about the tragedies we expose. Oftentimes, I am just the fire starter.

For me, staying rooted in a vision for social change and social justice allows me to make sense of the day to day pain of the racism, sexism, classism or othering I have experienced frequently here on the internet. I know I have a community of support behind me and I support them in the work that they do, by highlighting their campaign and their on the ground actions. That is why I blog, but obviously it is not the only reason.

I also blog because I know that I have had certain life experiences that are not documented in mainstream media or in mainstream feminism and I know there are young women everywhere that can relate to my stories. I also know there are people that appreciate my point of view and my analysis on issues, a perspective that is not often given in mainstream media. I blog because I have been given this tremendous opportunity that comes with great responsibility and I don't take it lightly. I do my best with the resources I have and I am here and I am present and I am "Fired up and Ready to Go!"

And sometimes, I get to meet people face to face and they tell me about how I changed the way they look at something, or someone running a campaign tells me that my exposure helped them get more support. And I feel really good about that and I realize that despite all the drama and all the problems with the tools themselves and the way they have manifested, I am doing what I want to be and I am accountable to who I need to be. I don't want to seem naive, because I know, we should all be so lucky. But I must say, I am lucky and I am thankful and I love blogging. And I am not going to apologize for my success at it.

Rumors are out that Chris Brown and Rihanna might have gotten back together. Whatever Rihanna does will be judged by everyone, but the reality is she is doing the best she can and the fact that this is a media spectacle makes it unusually trying I am sure. Jaclyn Friedman at the Yes means yes blog tells us what it doesn't mean if they do in fact get back together and let's just say it doesn't mean that Rihanna is "stupid" "should know better" or "doesn't know what is good for her."

It doesn't mean she is stupid. Leaving an abusive partner is hard - really, really hard. Some studies have shown that it takes an average woman 4-7 tries before she can leave her abuser for good. Why? Because abusers aren't transparent assholes all of the time. They can be very manipulative, and most of the time will wear down their partner's self-esteem quite thoroughly long before they start with the physical violence. They're also often charming and can be very loving and doting and romantic when they're not being violent. They can talk real pretty about what they've learned, how sorry they are, how they're going to change, how they can't change without the help of their wo/man. And of course, we want to believe that we haven't been so blind in choosing a partner for ourselves.

Go read the entire post, it is very important and flies in the face of all the bullshit that is going to come out about Rihanna's choices, along with the reality that it will not be her fault if she is assaulted again. And then circulate widely. We need to reframe the way we talk about women that have been victim to domestic violence.

And, no Kanye, we can't give Chris a break.

Related:
Black women's bodies, voyeurism and Rihanna
Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: An interview with Elizabeth Mendez Berry
The media reminds us, famous women have no right to privacy.

And it took a white director to make sure we got there! OK, OK, I will try to be less cynical. I know, I should be totally psyched that Slumdog Millionare won so many Oscars, including best picture. Any visibility for South Asians is good right?

Right. And wrong. I personally didn't think Slumdog Millionare was an Oscar worthy movie. I thought it was creative, beautiful, interesting and had a great soundtrack, but I didn't understand how it was Oscar worthy. Where was the complexity of the characters? Where was the deep cross-cultural analysis that helps us understand the South Asian condition? Where was there any agency displayed in the character of Latika? How did this story help the plight of the South Asian national citizen outside of reinforcing stereotypes of India?

I guess I have more questions than I have answers. And the questions I ask were certainly not the ones considered by the Academy in choosing this film. To be clear, I loved this movie and I saw it twice. The second time I brought my family, and my father a staunch Indian nationalist, hated it. He didn't like the way it portrayed India. I do not hold the same politics as my father and I felt that it actually held more truth about poverty and corruption in India than we would like to admit. But once you sift through the amazing imagery, adorable kids and soundtrack you are left with a coming of age story, only the story is not really for Indian audiences.

And despite its attempt at a narrative of social progress, Slumdog reinforces that which is hopes to ameliorate. Mitu Sengupta has an excellent piece up at Alternet about the policy implications of films like Slumdog Millionare that lump together the stereotypes of the poor.

It is ironic that "Slumdog", for all its righteousness of tone, shares with many Indian political and social elites a profoundly dehumanizing view of those who live and work within the country's slums. The troubling policy implications of this perspective are unmistakeably mirrored by the film. Since there are no internal resources, and none capable of constructive voice or action, all "solutions" must arrive externally.

After a harrowing life in an anarchic wilderness, salvation finally comes to Jamal, a Christ-like figure, in the form of an imported quiz-show, which he succeeds in thanks to sheer, dumb luck, or rather, because "it is written." Is it also "written," then, that the other children depicted in the film must continue to suffer? Or must they, like the stone-faced Jamal, stoically await their own "destiny" of rescue by a foreign hand?

Go read her whole piece, it gives a vastly different view on the film than what has been discussed in the mainstream media.

Finally, as a feminist, I had a really hard time with the character of Latika. I understand that in Boyle's imagination, Latika was like any third world woman. A helpless victim that can't speak up for herself and stays in an abusive relationship, until she is saved by another man. Outside of oversimplifying the complex ways that women of color experience AND resist violence within their own communities, it reinforces stereotypes of helpless third world women. I must say, I tried to ignore this plotline in the beginning. Perhaps if I thought about it too much, I would come out against a film that is supposed to "help" my people or because I just wanted to enjoy something for once without the nagging reality that this story doesn't make sense without the depiction of a violent patriarchy. But the unfortunate reality is that in order for South Asians to make it into the mainstream, they have to cater to the lowest common denominator of universal experience. And that is of course one where women have no agency, especially in the context of the third world. I mean that is why we are fighting all these wars right? To save women!

So yes, of course I am excited that Slumdog did so well at the Oscars. It makes me happy that all these South Asian actors are in the spotlight along with the genius of AR Rahman and MIA. However, it is only one step and we must resist the desire to homogenize the Indian experience that we know so little of in actuality, based on a fictitious film directed by a white man.

Earlier this week, I was in Virgina speaking at Emory & Henry College at the school's winter forum - it was a day-long group of discussions on gender and sexuality. This talk was different than others I've done - generally I speak about Feministing and my writing. But the organizers at E&H wanted me to speak about the so-called hook up culture on college campuses, and they wanted me to have a "discussion" (a debate) with this woman, Elizabeth Marquardt. (I actually felt very odd about debating Marquardt because she was so damn nice and friendly - I don't know that I'm cut out for this kind of thing. More on this in an upcoming post...)

In any case, I had a lot of fun with the talk, because a lot of it related back to the work I did for The Purity Myth. So on the chance that anyone gives a shit, I thought I'd repost my speech here...dirty jokes not included.

You don't say! This study has found that when men look at what they maturely term, "girlie calendars," not only are they aroused, but they don't think of them as people that are thinking beings, but objects.

When men are shown images of women in bikinis, the part of the brain they use when thinking about DIY tools and other objects lights up.

At the same time, the region they use to try to tune into another person's thoughts and feelings tunes down, brain scans showed.

I was under the impression that the entire culture of marketing already realized that and sells women as part of the product. Her sexuality, her image, her body, her skin, whatever you want, she is yours. Right?

The last line of the article takes the cake.

Asked if women were likely to view half-dressed men in the same way, she said that women tended to rate age and bank balance over looks.

Surely there is *some* biological desire that makes women automatically think about whether men can provide or not, but that desire is minimal considering that we must also factor in common sense. I think this argument proves that despite some pre-historic desire for men to get horny over scantily clad women and for women to want rich husbands that provide security and ability to nest (this is what evolutionary psychologists would argue), most of this desire comes from cultural conditioning. If you are exposed to something enough, you have trouble distinguishing between what you want and what you are supposed to want.

On the other hand, can there be sexy images of women without them inherently being sexist or objectifying?

To us there is an obvious relationship between a woman's libido and her lived experience with sexism, but some researchers chose to deny or ignore it.

Amanda clears it up and calls it out. Check it out on RH Reality Check.

Every year I write a scathing critique about Valentine's Day and the cultural forces of heteronormativity that make all different kinds of people feel bad about themselves and their partners, singlehood, sexuality or class status. It is frustrating, it is emotional and it is annoying. This year I didn't. This year I am single, I am 30 and I am writing a book about love, romance and dating and I couldn't garner the energy to write about how much I hate Valentine's Day, not because I don't have the same feelings, but because I don't have the same feelings in the same way.

While I support anything that is a celebration of love, I can't remove my critique of corporate culture from how I see Valentine's Day, but I also can't remove the fact that Valentine's Day subconsciously makes my single friends go bonkers. I spent this weekend in NYC and knew on some level that I didn't have the right to make plans with my friends that are in relationships because it was their special night. Even friends that I know share my critique of Valentine's day and the romantic industrial complex. And sure enough on Sunday, I got phone calls from several friends that were having romance problems.

The insider/outsider status of dating someone verse being single can be so frustrating. Realistically, I love being single, but the pressure to be with someone confuses me and my actual desire to be with someone gets further pushed down as I feel that it is not myself that is wanting it, but surrounding cultural forces. Why are so many of my 30-something, powerful, independent, educated, successful, working female friends single? Is it our inability to make those negotiations in independence and identity that come with coupling that has left us in the lurch? Or is it just plain patriarchy? I know and have read (mainly for research, but also for myself) many books that tell women what they need to do or change about themselves to be in a relationship, but honestly, fuck that.

This year, I really started to think about love. Maybe because I am writing about it or maybe because I am reading about it. I am currently reading, All About Love by bell hooks. If you haven't please do. In her introduction to the book she says,

Only love can heal the wounds of the past. However, the intensity of our woundedness often leads to a closing of the heart, making it impossible for us to give or receive the love that is given to us. To open our hearts more fully to love's power and grace we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice.

As hooks discusses throughout this book, it is so little we know of actual love, instead we internalize these images that have been produced to tell us what love looks like via what we consume, where we go, and how many cultural signifiers of love we buy into. It is a difficult and tangled web to navigate, loving someone in a time when individuality is rewarded and love, like actual love, is considered feminine, needy and even irrational.

Women may love deeply, but we often resist spreading that love for fear it shows our vulnerability or lack of feminism or because we have a history of abuse. But I am starting to realize in a world that is full of self-hate, jealousy, violence, objectification, war and abuse, loving yourself and someone else is one of the most revolutionary things you can do and we can't judge others or hold them to unfair standards for loving. And sometimes, maybe sometimes, it is OK for us super independent gals to love in that-crazy-irrational-uncontrollable-way too. Not too crazy of course though.

I suppose it is asking too much that when we cover the politics of complicated artists such as M.I.A., we not call them terrorist. In last week's NYTimes Thomas Fuller calls her politics "dissonant" and implicates her with supporting a well-known "terrorist" organization. Being a transnational feminist is exhausting since you have to problematize everything with quotations. Ha!

Let me not pretend I know any more about the conflict in Sri Lanka than you do or this reporter. But, in general, when a group is marked as "terrorist" by Europe and the United States, I read that implication with a grain of salt, feeling the need to hear both sides of the story. It has been a long time since we have actually waged a just war and have frequently labeled groups fighting for their own land, rights, freedom and resources as terrorist. This is not to suggest that the Tamil Tigers, who Fuller claims that M.I.A. supports, haven't been ruthless in their tactics, but to ask us to read both sides of every story.

And perhaps all of this would be more serious if M.I.A. were a politician, not a recording artist, but I can't help but see irony in implicating a woman-that performed on stage at the Grammies 9 months pregnant, has made clearly feminist statements about the recording industry and its sexism and has discussed intersectional identities within the context of Eurocentrism-with support of "terrorists." M.I.A. already pushes the average viewer out of their comfort zone, calling her a terrorist empathizer is the next logical step.

Would a white male folk singer be labeled the same if he were to show direct or indirect support for an international cause? Is M.I.A. only legible as an "other" because she is foreign and South Asian? Can she not have complicated political analysis without being implicated in supporting terrorists? I mean, seriously.

Boondoggle has more.

UPDATE: More from Amnesty International on M.I.A. and her criticism of the Sinhalese government and how this criticism does not make her a supporter of the Tamil Tigers. Furthermore, this assertion has led to a decrease in the attention genocide in Sri Lanka is getting from the international community.

I really just love her.

I think it might be decidedly so. And Ellen Friedrichs at Nerve agrees and backs it up with a bunch of evidence.

It's not that I envision the President endorsing the "Head O State" dildo, or promoting the benefits of masturbation for prostate health, but I'd like to think that in addition to having the occasional cocktail or staying up past nine, Obama will also be looser on matters regarding the sexual behaviors of the public.

To be sure, people were still getting it on during the Bush era. But that era also saw a rise in unwanted pregnancies and infections, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was an associated rise in the numbers of folks walking around with psychological or emotional hang-ups regarding sex. Apparently, Bush initiatives like pushing welfare moms into marriage and promoting abstinence until the age of twenty-nine didn't quite succeed the way he probably hoped.

You can read the rest at Nerve. Now while I support what Friedrichs discusses in this article, the discussion of Michele and Barack Obama's sex life, while explored tastefully, reminds me of this NYT opinion piece about having sex with Obama, which is not as tasteful.

Let me know what you think. It is not that I want to suppress fantasy, or deny that it is probably normal for Americans to be having sexual fantasies about Obama. I am just more interested in what policies he supports to uphold the sexuality rights of our communities. Furthermore, It is hard for me to write about or discuss Michele and Barack Obama's sexuality, without a criticism of the racism embedded in deciding that Obama is "fuckable," given the historical embellishment and manipulation of what is considered black men's sexual potency. It just doesn't sit well with me.

As a feminist I believe that the personal is the political. In other words, what you do is political, and yes, it is complicated. All of us at Feministing have bore our personal lives on this blog and they have been picked apart, reprinted, chastised and cherished. But instead of writing a really personal post about how difficult this process is (I will save that for another post), I want to focus on another internet phenomenon that is about sharing. Specifically, the "25 things meme," on Facebook where you share 25 random facts about yourself and tag people to do the same or at least read the ones you put together.

Last week there was an article in the NYT and TIME magazine about the 25 things meme. I specifically found the Time piece to be powerful. The author really hates the 25 things meme.

But it's just so stupid. Most people aren't funny, they aren't insightful, and they share way too much. Facebook is a loose social network; a "friend" on Facebook might translate to someone you'd barely recognize in real life. I don't care that my college roommate's sister is anemic or that my stepcousin's boyfriend gets nervous around old people (apparently he's afraid they're going to die)

My immediate reaction was pity for this woman, because it sounds like her friends are super boring. I had a completely different experience with sharing 25 things and reading those of my friends. Most of my friends are amazing, actually all of them are, they are interesting and amazing to me, and I found that reading about their lives gave me more insight into who they are and why they do the things they do, are passionate about the things they are passionate about. It was a story-telling tool.

But maybe, I have a different relationship with these lists. I have lived a very public internet life for the last few years. Who I am is what I do in many ways, that is how my identity plays out. I blog under my own name and you can easily find pictures of me. I have also had to make personal sacrifices with knowing that people that I know from all walks of my life have probably read about what I do, so I can't pretend to you know, not be a feminist or something. So my sense of personal privacy is different then someone who has a boss that might read their list.

But given that Facebook has really effective privacy settings, I find this hatred for 25 things really interesting. I find it an honor to be tagged in someone's note, that they wanted me to read these things about them. But other's find it to be a chore, embarrassing and difficult to manage. They would prefer to get to know people as they chose and in the real world.

I find criticism of oversharing to be complex. I think as women and as women of color it is hard enough to speak truths on our lives, so if we are doing it, we should be supported in doing it and say fuck you to internet standards and etiquette. I have never been one for etiquette.

On the other hand there are a lot of things I do not share on the internet. What is your experience with sharing on the internet? When is sharing, oversharing?

Lauren had an understandably strong reaction to Courtney's post last week about her daily schedule. In a follow-up post, Lauren described her own work life -- and the economic situation surrounding her -- and wrote:

The other day, when I wrote, "a room of one's own is a privilege most of us don't -- and won't ever -- have," I wasn't trying to score some dramatic rhetorical point, or punish a successful person for being happy or having fulfilling work. In today's economic hierarchy some of us will be stuck on Maslow's lower rungs while others celebrate their own impending self-actualization -- this isn't a debate. But only one of these climbers gets the microphone.

She takes this a step further -- asking how, as the feminist blogosphere comes into more prominence, the writing of Professional Feminists might diverge from that of non-Professional Feminist women. While I wouldn't identify as a Professional Feminist -- I have a full-time day job that's not explicitly in the movement -- I am an editor and writer by profession. (Incidentally, I have actually been Lauren's editor before!) And I am grateful nearly every day that I have a full-time job that fulfills both my economic needs and my personal passion. Having a job I love is a privilege. And I do acknowledge the fact that this privilege affects not only what I write here on Feministing (and occasionally on TAPPED), but how I assign and edit articles. When I recently blogged about The New York Times' coverage of how upper-middle-class two-parent families are coping with the recession's gender implications, I wrote:

I understand that it's more interesting for the Times to write about gender dynamics in two-partner families where the male is the breadwinner. But, after awhile, the disproportionate coverage of impact of the economy on the upper-middle-class sends the message that these are the people who are most affected. That simply isn't true.

I've heard many people retort that, well, the people who read/buy the Times are upper-middle-class, and so that's the population they predominantly cover. But I don't think that's the whole story. I think it has way more to do with the economic status of the editors and reporters at the paper. Their friends are upper-middle-class professionals. They hear their friends discuss gender and the recession. They write an article that, surprise, happens to focus on upper-middle-class families. In their daily lives, I'd wager they don't actually hear from too many laid-off Midwest workers. (Which isn't to say they receive no coverage -- just demonstrably less, especially considering who's being impacted by the recession.)

Bringing it all back to Lauren's post and the Professional Feminist quandary, I think much of this applies to blogging, too. Most bloggers I know (especially women bloggers), feel most comfortable speaking to their own experience and community. Understandably so. It takes a concerted, sustained effort to write about people and dynamics beyond your personal experience, your own community.

This gets thorny to pull apart, because this conversation gets personal -- and folks get defensive -- really fast. I know both Courtney and Lauren personally, I know they are both incredibly smart, talented, and driven women. I know they both come to this conversation willing to, well, have a conversation! (Which is awesome.) It's not that one has done more to "earn" a career she loves, and neither one is getting rich. While it is indeed a privilege to make money doing what you love, for most of us, it is not lucrative.

A lot of this is lurking in the background of stories about job loss and career-shifting during this recession. Work is SO deeply tied to identity in this country, for better or worse, and so when jobs are at risk, everyone (yes, women too. duh.) feels pretty damn vulnerable. Talking about how our work-lives intersect and overlap with and inform our feminism is a conversation I want to continue. As Courtney wrote in comments to her post,

The post wasn't intended to be some sort of arrogant display of my day. As I said in the intro, I'd like to hear how others' days are composed in many different professions. I think privilege comes from secrecy and I was trying to be open about what one real day was like for me for those who are interested in the fields I work in.

I've already asked a friend of mine to write a guest post about how she is coping with being unemployed, as this is an experience I can't speak to personally. I would love to publish more stories from Feministing readers about how the recession has affected you -- and about how your daily routine affects your feminism. Send them to me at ANN [AT] FEMINISTING [DOT] COM.

A new multimedia tool from the Population and Development Program out of Hampshire College chronicles the history of beliefs about population control. Stop the Blame: Population Control Imagery (1933-2008) is available for download or on CD, and lays out a ton of images from newspapers, magazines and other media from the last 70 years. The images illustrate exactly how our beliefs about population, developing countries and the environment have been shaped by eugenics, racism and many other ideological factors.

This digital flash archive displays historical prints, posters and articles that articulate overpopulation anxieties and illustrate population control policies. The interactive presentation offers a rare overview of the visual media of past and present population control agendas in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. It is a tool that can be used in classrooms, activist trainings, and public talks. Each image is accompanied by a written description that provides context and food for thought.

They were nice enough to send me a review copy of the CD and it is really a fantastic teaching tool. My blurb about the project:

The Stop the Blame multimedia project does what a simple written history cannot: it shows us the interplay between race, population, eugenics and the environment.... This project should be a required teaching tool for all history and sociology courses.

It's worth checking out, and best of all, it's free! You can download it or request a hard copy here.

Michael Steele has been elected as the chair of the RNC. The question of whether he is a token or not is probably laughable considering the history of conservatives and their strategic use of people of color to further their agenda that rarely benefits the needs of people of color. But I have to say, I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates, that while it is obvious that similar to Sarah Palin, Micheal Steele is a symbol, I can't really complain that they chose a black man to be the head of the RNC. It is as though, they want the joke to be on liberals, but the joke is kind of on them. As in they are playing into our agenda a little bit and they might just be becoming more progressive. I have no problem with conservatives alienating their white supremacist constituents and at least begin to move the right back towards the center.

But let me not get too optimistic. Calling someone a token is generally problematic. It assumes that this person, whether it be a woman, a person of color, a queer person or another member of a historically disenfranchised community, didn't work to get to where they are and they are probably not qualified, but instead they function as a symbol. I think given the history of the right-wing in strategically recruiting people of color to be spokespeople for them makes it difficult to think that they actually believe in the advancement of people of color and/or other disenfranchised communities. And by believe in, I don't mean, just a thought or a prayer, but creating, endorsing and passing legislation that will change the lived realities of disenfranchised communities.

So it is a bittersweet nomination as the right gears up to build back after the election that destroyed any belief Americans had that right-wingers are not total racists. Unfortunately, the way that racism functions in this country, people of color are not always put in leadership positions to help their people, but to make white people feel better about their racism. We are entering a very interesting time, where our leaders may be diverse and representative, but disenfranchised communities are still disenfranchised. Will the majority now be marginalized? After all, he may be black, but he is pro-life and against gay marriage, not to mention a supporter of other conservative measures. Not that I was expecting his views to be any different, just restating the obvious.

Well, this is great.

House Democrats have removed a provision from their stimulus bill that would exempt states from the need to get waivers for covering family planning under Medicaid. The family-planning aid has been the subject of repeated Republican attacks over the past few days, and health care advocates were dismayed by the Democrats' decision to give in on its removal.

The revision the Dems have caved on would have merely allowed states to continue doing what they already do. As I mentioned this morning and Ann mentioned in her column at Tapped,

Not only will this expand health care services and take some burden off states, it will eliminate the need for states to go to the federal government and obtain a waiver.

Apparently, caving on provisions that are commonsense and make the government more efficient is how we will win the support of the right, especially when it compromises reproductive services and health care access to poor women and women of color.

I agree with what Elana Schor says at TPM,

I'm certainly receptive to the argument, relayed by Matt Yglesias and others, that the family-planning provision wasn't genuinely stimulative, making its removal from the bill a minor decision. And I'm not accusing the Obama team of getting rolled by the Republicans on flaps like this one.

But other aid provisions in the recovery bill, not directly targeted to women's reproductive freedom, do not create jobs or boost GDP -- yet are meeting with less agitation from Republicans and remaining intact.

So why was this provision rallied against so hard?

I completely forgot that back in November on election night, someone was taking video of our reactions to Obama winning and to Prop 8 failing. I was in CA for the historic election this year and I felt this video captured the moment so well and the tension in all our hearts that this moment was so great and so tragic at once.

Read more about it here.

The book, He's Just Not That Into You, inspired me to write a book about dating, because I was deeply disappointed in the messaging geared at young women on what they should be doing to meet a guy, the games we are taught to play and the constant stream of sexist rejection we have to deal with. I realized that there was no language for young feminist women that want to date, but think heteronormativity is bullshit. The most frustrating part of the-he's just not that into you-attitude is that the author of the book, Greg Behrendt, believes he is helping women by reinforcing women's ongoing desire for heteronormativity and men's constant asshole-like tendencies. I guess for some the book is like a bible, but the entire market of books and magazines geared towards young women telling them what they can and should do to meet the "man of their dreams," is at best annoying and at worst leads women to live really unfulfilled lives.

But all of that aside, I am even more shocked that He's Just Not That Into You, has been turned into a movie.

Latoya has more on the reliance of black women's stories as the backdrop of telling the story for the lives of white women.

You best believe I will be writing a long, long review. Will keep you updated. Has anyone read the book? Thoughts?

I am glad that Obama said something about Rush Limbaugh. I know it is usually "classier" to ignore someone as ridiculous as Limbaugh, but as myself and others have reminded readers before, Limbaugh has a pretty serious following and while I am sure a percentage of his listenership is for shits and giggles, I think it is telling that he has so much support. I do believe that he is considered right-wing thought leadership, which I think further highlights the need for the right-wing to reassess what types of thought they support. But I digress, these two gems really take the cake.

The first is that he hopes that Obama fails and secondly, he made the sexist statement that if you want pregnancy rates to go to down to post a picture of Pelosi in your bedroom. His "bully in the schoolyard" speak is not political punditry, it is frat-boy-esque humor and shows that he has no arguments left that actually counter logic. Someone needs to let him know it is the era of the nerd! We prefer evidence and science to prove the things that wing-nuts bullshit and evangelize.

House Minority leader Boehner is at it again, only this time him, along with his conservative colleagues, are suggesting that since the stimulus bill has a section about state coverage of family planning, this somehow translates to, "hundreds of millions on contraceptives." The actual text published originally at Think Progress reads,

State Option to Cover Family Planning Services. Under current law, the Secretary has the authority under section 1115 of the Social Security Act to grant waivers to states to allow them to cover family planning services and supplies to low-income women who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid. The bill would give states the option to provide such coverage without obtaining a waiver. States could continue to use the existing waiver authority if they preferred.

As Pelosi explained, covering family planning services will actually reduce costs in the state since it will increase the effectiveness with which states can address the needs of their residents, along with bypassing excess administration. It appears that one of the main differences in what is considered effective cost cutting between the right and the left is that the right believes that just denying those that "haven't worked hard enough to deserve it" will save the economy, where as it is seems liberals recognize the governments responsibility in providing for its people in the most efficient way possible.

Pelosi's comments were grossly misinterpreted as suggesting that, "birth control will help the economy" and Rush Limbaugh even had the audacity to suggest that if we want to keep pregnancy rates down to, "post a picture of Pelosi in every motel room in America," but more on that later. Apparently, the GOP is hanging on to every last argument they can, no matter how banal and imprecise. It is clear that state spending on family planning services not only save the state money and time, but have greater long-term benefits for the health of our people.

UPDATE: Obama might drop funds for family planning from the economic stimulus package. Argh!.

Well, this is just rich. According to this commentary by Kathryn Lopez for the Washington Times, the reason abstinence-only education doesn't work isn't just because of our slutty, sex-obsessed culture, but because we don't respect teens enough to make their own choices. Because apparently, giving them only one choice is respecting their ability to choose. Huh?

But the problem goes beyond lumping in a simple, cut-and-dried oath with the complicated issue of abstinence education. The conundrum boils down to this: It's not all about sex. It's no shock to anyone who understands human nature, never mind kids, that any virginity pledge that fixates on brute carnal relations is not going to work. Repeating the mantra "Don't do it," even when you've got a teen doing the repeating, isn't enough. How could it work? Popular culture is obsessed with sex. We can't even manage a family dog movie ("Marley & Me") without Jennifer Aniston taking off her clothes. And until that changes, of course, a hormone-mad teenager will be sorely tempted to join in the seemingly ubiquitous fornication, pledge or no pledge.

So naturally, abstinence-only education and purity pledges that focus on brute carnal relations will work? Seriously, am I missing something? She is setting up the perfect rationale for why her agenda is failing. Failing, as in-it-has-been-proven-over-and-over-again, that is doesn't work. But I digress.

Does that mean we pass out condoms at school because we're not going to change the culture anytime soon? No. It means kids need support and reasons engage in activities other than sex. Abstinence has to be about saying "yes" to something in order to work. We need to focus on the idea kids can actually think, and should want more from a relationship than sex. We need to be open to programs that aren't all about copulation, but about character education.

What is up with the fear that passing out condoms in schools means all other extra-curricular activity will stop? That condoms are somehow promoting sex? Young people are having sex, with or without condoms.

Read the rest, mainly for the humor value and all the blatant contradictions.

RELATED:
One more time with feeling: Virginity pledges don't work.
Knocked up by Gossip Girl?
Abstinence shocker: Engaged couples don't want to forgo sex.
Pure lies: Inaugural Edition
Time Magazine hearts Purity Balls

This last year was an amazing year in art, music, literature and politics, not to mention some serious personal transitions including a 3000 mile coast to coast move back to my hometown in NY. Here are some of the things I loved this last year.

Favorite movie: Milk. You can read what I wrote about it here. I haven't felt so inspired by a motion picture since Ghandi. Honestly, Slumdog Millionare was a close second, but Milk was my favorite because it combined both great film and a brave and beautiful story.

Favorite Album: Benga, Diary of an African Warrior. For those of you who don't know me personally, you don't know that my other personality is that of an electronic music nerd that goes all over the place to dance to new and interesting forms of electronic music. My most recent favorite being a form of music called dubstep. This album got me up and out of my chair consistently and does what we would call, "bring the noise." Check it out if you dare and remember to keep an open mind.

Favorite art exhibit: Josue Rojas, Deporting the American Dream. Yeah, I know Josue personally, that might be part of it, but his short lived art exhibit in San Francsisco was hands down the best art I saw this year which mixed media, images and one of the most powerful stories, not being told in mainstream media.

Favorite book: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz. Diaz won the Pultizer for this this. I can't speak highly enough of this book, I have sat to write reviews about it time and again and I feel I have to read it again to do it any justice. If you are a fiction fan, it is a must read. You can also listen to an interview with him here. The man is an inspiration to the aspirations of immigrant writers and artists.

Favorite live show: Erykah Badu with the Roots. Do I really need to say more?

Favorite city: New York. After 7 years on the West Coast I made the move back to NY and fell in love with this city all over again. San Francisco will always be in my heart, but right now, New York is who I am dating.

Favorite moment of 2008: When it was announced that Barack Obama is to be the 44th president of the United States of America. Yeah, that is cheesy and everyone else's moment, but damn, it was pretty great.

What were your favorite things of 2008?

I have never been a fan of New Year's Resolutions. When I was younger they always had to do with losing weight or to quit eating cookies or some such thing that I was told if I do would unlock the secret to the life I always wanted. As I have gotten older and more in touch with myself and my feminism, I realize that negative self talk or putting myself up to tasks that are based on insecurity and hold the 'secret to everything I am missing' is rarely successful and never makes me feel good. So I moved to focusing on being as healthy and positive as I can be. But this year, I am coming out of my anti-New Year's resolution attitude with a few resolutions that have to do with things I want to do, not things I think I should do.

1. I commit to doing more video-blogging.
2. I want to get my personal website/consulting business up and running.
3. I will continue to write for Feministing, building on the work we have already done as we move to building relationships in the real world.
4. I will continue to not give a shit about my weight, but live a full, happy and healthy life based on self reflection, deep breathing and love.
5. I will finish my book. Hopefully. (Ha!)

Once I let go of resolutions that were based in self hate and things I didn't want to do, I realized that this is actually pretty fun, like a to-do list for the year, filled with positivity, aspirations and ways to move forward.

What are your New Year's resolutions this year?

I have written previously about top ten lists that measure beauty and brains and concluded that generally they are gender biased. Women's lists are always about how they look and men's lists (or pageants) are about what they do first and then how they look. When I wished upon the world to create a list that was about women taking into consideration their brains, occupations and looks this is about as far from what I could have conceived of. Self proclaimed hiphop writer hater Touré has created what he believes is the thinking man's list of sex symbols.

He starts,

A man has two minds. The lower mind is a brainless whore excited by any woman with breasts, curves, and a thong. The upper mind, which works with actual grey matter, is more persnickety. The upper mind, when employed, is moved by intelligence, success, power, self-confidence, a smart sense of humor, and, of course, not having a castrating nature.

What counts as having a castrating nature? If you get too 'ballsy' do you actually want to be a man so bad that you will (figuratively) castrate him and claim your own masculinity? I am going to assume he means feminists are castrating. I think this above description is more disparaging to men than anything else. Thank you for feeding into every myth about male sexuality and their inability to make a connection between what happens between their legs and between their ears.

But the real gems are in the descriptions of the pictures of the women he chose and why he chose the "smart babes" that he did. None will really surprise you, but note that they are all women that don't really disrupt normative ideas of beauty or act outside of patriarchy and for Touré, their intelligence exists to feed his own male ego since he has to describe repeatedly why their smarts don't threaten his own. I think some of these women would resent being on this list.

Every line is like a work of art.

This past Sunday I finally got to see Milk at BAM in Brooklyn. It was a late showing so the theater wasn't too packed which made me feel relieved since I am a big cry baby at the movies and I knew with this one I would let it all loose. And it lived up to all the tear jerking I thought it would. I cried so much I think I actually was embarrassing my brother sitting next to me. I couldn't help it, some things are so close to my heart, that crying is the only way I can process them. Plus, I just lived in San Francisco for 7 years and I miss that special place.

Milk is about the later life of Harvey Milk a New Yorker that flees to San Francisco to live life as an openly gay man and ends up as an organizer that builds power in the Castro and beyond. After multiple tries is finally elected to be part of the San Francisco city of Supervisors. It was one of the most brilliant portrayals I have ever seen of a civil rights leader.

I was not taught about Harvey Milk in school. As a school teacher in San Francisco, I had to learn about his life in order to teach my students, but never to the extent that was portrayed in this film. I never understood the depth of his character, just that he had been unjustly murdered and about the bullshit "Twinkie Defense."

Everyone of the actors in this film was on point. Penn killed it, one of the best roles of his life, as did his long time lover in the film, super hunk, James Franco and even the crazy right winger that ends up taking his life, Dan White, played by Josh Brolin. The story was real and it was timely. One of the key things that he fights for after in office is opposition to Prop 6 which at the time was calling to have all out gay teachers and their supporters fired in an effort to get the "perverts" out of the schools. What disturbed was the realization that this struggle was fought the year I was born, 1978, and well, that is just not that long ago. There are multiple scenes protesting different anti-gay legislation throughout the country all shot in the Castro and looked no different from those that only happened a few weeks ago after the passage of Prop 8, where protesters were also asking for the basic civil rights of gay people. As I watched the movie and as I have thought since the election, what will it take for our civil rights leaders to understand that gay rights is an issue of civil rights?

The story told in this movie is timely and relevant and a brilliant portrayal of what it took to build power in a community that had previously been powerless. It also shows how the majority of the organizers for gay rights were white men which is what has led to a predominantly white led movement for gay rights that has often ran in tension with lesbian rights and queer people of color movements for building gay power. The movie is cut with pieces of him recording a tape that is to be listened to if he is to be assassinated and at the end of the movie he declares that it is not just about gays, but also about Asians, blacks, immigrants, workers and the rights of all of what he calls, "us," a brilliant message that shows that the "other" is actually the majority. But Milk's dream of "us" has not been true in queer organizing since then and building an attempts at building international solidarity in building gay power.

So while the story of Milk is amazing, it is important to look at the impact his legacy. The Castro is currently one of the richest, whitest neighborhoods in San Francisco, where its base of gay men, has turned into wealthy gay white men, marginalizing most other types of people. It is known to be a hostile environment for youth of color that are frequently picked up by the cops and has had several of its bars protested for inhospitable treatment of black clientèle. Simply put, I have very few gay friends that hang out in the Castro anymore.

Milk adds to the mainstream dialogue around organizing that popped up after the Obama campaign. People are seeing what it looks like to build power in communities that have been previously unheard or rendered invisible, generally at the mercy of an unjust government and legal system. So then I had to think, what would an inclusive gay rights movement look like today? One that included single moms that are demonized as "welfare queens" and clearly disrupt heteronormativity to "sexual deviants" and radical queers. How do we align around the issue of our rights being protected or guaranteed? There are more of us that disrupt heteronormativity than there are that don't. And frankly, I think the most disturbing for many about the passage of Prop 8 and all the other anti-gay legislation around the country was the display of homophobia, even more so than the actual loss of the rights. What will it take for the majority of Americans to see queer people as deserving of civil liberties?

Go see the movie, it was really inspiring.

A while ago I had written for the American Prospect about the blog Stuff White People Like and discussed some of the trends in race in America it so accurately highlights both intentionally and unintentionally. At the time there were several blogs that were spin-offs, but I guess I missed this most important one, Stuff Desi People Like. It is as though my analysis can come full circle.

My immediate feeling, stumbling upon such a blog was relief and humor. Even the first entry, #36 Fair Skinned Kids, is one of those dirty secrets that I keep close to my chest about my mother's preference for lighter skin, that I find to be frustrating and often fight with her about the racism embedded in such beliefs.

Check out the blog, I think it is pretty funny actually. But I always feel when mocking ethnic minorities it is different than mocking the dominant culture. At the end of the day, we are still not the dominant culture and there is still a sense of voyeurism and curiosity that turns into judgments and racist assumptions about ones culture. As a person of color, the culture I come from is but one part of who I am and does not limit me from understanding the diversity of this country. The onslaught of cultural productions about South Asians/Desis has excited me while leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Since I spent most of my life with people not knowing anything about India or Indian culture (outside of food and yoga), it is frustrating when people are in the "we think we understand your experience now" space. But it is also exciting.

So I guess in looking at SDPL, I suggest we laugh, but don't laugh too hard, because there are so many things that are just not able to be translated effectively given the racist assumptions we all hold about different cultures.

Courtney and I have both discussed before our love/hate relationship with Oprah. The woman is complex and frequently, I disagree with her but I do respect her greatly and the work that she has done. And as a feminist, the way the media treats Oprah in talking about her weight, well, I think it is sexist.

Yesterday, I watched an entire segment on CNN devoted to Oprah's weight. Two female news anchors concluded that it was a hyperthyroid that has led to her fluctuation in weight. yet other news outlets weren't so forgiving or "scientific" in there assumptions. One google news search brings up how much she gained, her denial in it and calling her chubby and "heffer."

I am so disgusted by this, I almost don't know where to begin. First of all, why is weight gain newsworthy? Oprah is one of the most accomplished business women of our generation who has shown to not only be smart, but interesting, complex, well-read. Why does her weight make major headlines? Secondly, between having a health problem and being really busy, yeah she might gain weight and the fact that this is looked down upon shows us loud and clear the unfair standards put on women to not only be uber-successful but to also be svelte.

I know what you are thinking. But Oprah put this out as news herself! Probably to sell her brand even more! Yes, I think there is some validity to this argument, Oprah herself has pushed the, "I gained weight and this is why" story. But I guess it is important to ask, is Oprah creating this narrative herself or is she merely buying into a narrative that centralizes the way a woman looks before what she does? She is after all a savvy business woman. I don't agree with her using her weight as a selling point but really the joke is on the US consumer for buying into it.

As I have written about before, I struggle with this myself. I am really busy and don't have time to watch after my weight non-stop. Frankly, I don't care enough to since I think I look great anyway, but the constant barrage of comments I get about my weight is infuriating. I am successful in my personal endeavors, not to mention managing multiple relationships, projects, familial obligations and so much more, yet there are some people that only notice that I gained weight.

Bottom line, it is sexist to focus on Oprah's weight in the media. Men don't have this same pressure. You would never see a special on Lou Dobb's weight gain, nor would it be lucrative for him to have a special on his weight gain (although this sentiment is changing). As long as popular culture and mainstream media outlets stay fixed on women's physical characteristics we are bound by these constraints, holding our bodies as representations of who we are. It is not fair and we shouldn't stand for it.

Related:
Kate Harding: Dear Oprah
Rachel Setzer:Oprah done with fat shaming

Yesterday Jessica took to task this diminishing and poorly thought out article in NY Mag about gender equality and drinking. Jesscia did a great job parsing the bullshit in the article as blaming feminism for women's rate of drinking and I wanted to add to her analysis from a different angle, as that of someone who has had many close friends enter recovery.

In the last few years, I have had several close friends come to a cross-roads with their drinking where they have either decided that they can't drink as much as they used to or they have entered recovery. Many of the transformations have been painful, they have been introspective for all of us and they have harnessed on the collective strength of women supporting each other in making the best decisions for themselves. Feminism has played a key role in this. Many of my female friends drink in excess, not because they wanted to be "one of the guys" but because they had lives that were difficult as women, either for internalized sense of failure, experiencing abuse, depression around money, depression around social stature or failed relationships. I am not just talking about drinking for fun, of course women engage in that as well, but I am talking about drinking as a way to numb the pain, difficulty and reality of this often cold cold world.

It has been through the support of feminism and the fundamental belief that women have the right to enjoy life and not hate themselves for the failures that society has in many ways set up for us have we found the strength to take care of ourselves. So while the type of thought expressed in the above article blames feminism for allowing women to act more like men, I am arguing that it is the pressure of patriarchy, racism and poverty that have frequently led women to drinking in excess and feminism that has given us the framework to understand it is not our fault, but a system built on our failures.

This is just awesome. And although there are multiple cultures throughout the world that have always had a third category for gender, it always makes me happy to see some mainstream coverage of the ongoing negotiation of gender in non-Western communities. This NYTimes article focuses on the "muxe" or a accepted third gender in Oaxaca, Mexico. I went to Oaxaca a few years ago and I loved loved loved it, but now I love it even more.

But nowhere are attitudes toward sex and gender quite as elastic as in the far reaches of the southern state of Oaxaca. There, in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call "muxes" (pronounced MOO-shays) -- men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.

"Muxe" is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish "mujer," or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.

Similarly, my mother used to always tell me of the hijra in India, similarly considered a third gender, yet often they don't stay with their families but roam together. I am sure they still face discrimination, fear and hatred but it is good to remind mainstream trans/queer rights movements in the United States that binary gender systems have been shown to not be inherent or natural in many other contexts.

Via NYTimes.

Thanks to Karlos for the link.

Latoya has a new series up at Racialicious, "The Things We Do to Each Other/The Things We Do to Ourselves" about the ways that race intersects with other movement building efforts and despite our attempts at moving to more nuanced understandings of race in America, outside of community based organizing that is explicitly anti-racist, it is rare that you see an actual centralization of race in the mainstream gay rights movement. In discussing how we as identity-based workers and folks working for policy based changes to increase rights in our communities, we overlook the ways that we marginalize other voices. In the case of the organizing and coverage of Prop 8 it was the voices and contributions of queer people of color.

I think it is safe to say that an apt parallel is the women's rights movement and its returning insistence of centralizing the voices of white women. Whether it is intentional or not, feminism frequently recenters itself around the needs and lives of privileged women, and I think this is a point to make. Feminism has dirty baggage in its tokenization of women of color and there have been many many conversations, anthologies and organizing efforts around displacing the white center for mainstream feminism. But those of us that work from the margins can only change the history and image of feminism, along with the way that it plays out in organizing efforts, so much. If the mainstream image of feminism continues to insist that feminism is for white women, how can we reclaim it for our own communities and break it down as something that is potentially useful across sectors?

What am I trying to say? That despite our attempts at including voices of color, mainstream feminism always comes back to revolve around the voices of white women and women of color are generally put in the position of token or an addition and after thought after the omission has already been made. This stems from internal turmoil sure, but it also is damaged by mainstream messaging, marketing and distribution of resources along the lines of privileged women being centralized. The theory being, well feminism has always been for white women, so isn't it just going to be like that?

I never thought about drinking until equal rights came along!

Feminists are all too aware that we get blamed for a lot of ridiculous shit; everything from destroying the family and killing chivalry to YouTube "catfights."

And the idea that feminism (and women's equality more generally) is the reason behind ladies boozing it up has certainly been making the rounds lately. This article from New York Magazine, however, which argues that "drinking has become entwined with progressive feminism," takes the feminist-blaming cake. Cue scare tactic subhead:

More women are drinking, and the women who drink are drinking more, in some cases matching their male peers. This is the kind of equality nobody was fighting for.

While I don't doubt the statistics about women drinking more than in years past, the connection that reporter Alex Morris makes to feminism is based largely on nonsense: personal anecdotes, a couple of quotes, and hackneyed ideas about what feminism is. Morris even cites the Jezebel Thinking and Drinking controversy and falls back on the stereotyped notion that Third Wave feminism is "something akin to the type of reasoning that paints Girls Gone Wild participants as sexually liberated." The bullshit, it burns!

The thing that pisses me off most about this article - besides the fact that it perpetuates a well-loved lie about what young feminist are (Girls Gone Wild! I choose my choice!) - is that drinking is a serious problem for young women and men. But instead of serious, nuanced media coverage on what to do about the drinking culture among American youth, we get article after article hawing about the consequences of equality.

And frankly, Morris' argument is the exact same one used when conservatives and anti-feminists talk about "hooking up" or casual sex - that young women now "act like men" sexually. (Equality: the slutmaker!) Seriously - it's tired. Not to mention incredibly sexist : the underlying message is that gender equality is bad for women.

So if folks are actually concerned about young women and drinking, how about we talk about the consumer culture that markets liquor (something Morris touches on before quickly returning back to feminism) or how drinking is being used to blame women who are raped? Because despite the picture that Morris paints of young feminists boozing it up (cause it's empowering and stuff!), we're actually out there working our asses off. Maybe its time others followed suit.

Last week I wrote about an article run by Salon about "upskirting" and "downblousing" using a quote from John Morris at the Center for Democracy and Technology that certainly set off some alarm bells.

From my post,

Unfortunately, the debate that ensues is a question of whether or not your privacy is being violated since you are on the street and as a public place is free to be photographed with all participants or as John Morris, from the Center for Democracy & Technology, says in the article, "If you don't want to be photographed walking the street, don't walk down the street -- it's a public street."

I have a friend that works at CDT and felt this was a bad characterization of the goals and values of their organization and brought it to the attention of the Director and CEO Leslie Harris, who has released this statement.

The recent Salon article, "Porn in a Flash," contains a quote from our General Council John Morris that was taken out of context. John's quote: "If you don't want to be photographed walking the street, don't walk down the street -- it's a public street," spoke to the broader, general question of whether someone has an expectation of privacy in a public place. Placement of the quote, however, made John sound unsympathetic toward "upskirting" and "downblousing." Of course these practices are wrong, and of course there is a difference between a snapshot on the street and this sort of invasive voyeurism.

CDT is a strong advocate of personal privacy and commends the steps states have taken to criminalize these nefarious practices. Federal privacy laws were passed before the majority of today's portable technologies existed outside of Dick Tracy comic books. That's why CDT is pressing Congress to rewrite the privacy laws and bring them up-to-date with today's technology and provide the sorely needed protections missing from the law as it stands today. We fully believe that state invasion of privacy laws can, if carefully drafted, adequately address these upskirting and downblousing practices.

Leslie Harris
President & CEO
Center for Democracy & Technology

This picture is from a series of very moving pictures that can be found here. This one was my favorite and has the captions: These two boys waited as a long line of adults greeted Senator Obama before a rally on Martin Luther King Day in Columbia, S.C. They never took their eyes off of him. Their grandmother told me, "Our young men have waited a long time to have someone to look up to, to make them believe Dr. King's words can be true for them." Jan. 21, 2008.

I have never been an overly patriotic person, maybe because I grew up in a South Asian household that dreamed of returning to India, but the role of the US military world-wide has always dampened any belief in the strength or character of the leaders of this "great" country. Despite growing up hearing, "well if you don't like it here, you can always go back to where you came from" more times than I would like to recall, I have always had a love hate relationship with this country that my parents decided to move to in the early 1970's. I claim a US citizenship, but have never felt like a real citizen as most of my life, no one has believed that I am. So yeah, it makes being patriotic for a country that doesn't really see you as part of it, difficult.

But despite my cynicism, I have always worked for the benefit of America, partly because that is the only kind of work available for liberal arts major, but also because I believe in the importance of civic duty. I was a school teacher in some of the most underfunded schools in America that are failing from neglect and racism, I have worked in non-profits and now I am a political writer. Despite my cynicism, like many Americans, I was still committed to making this country a better place. But as a result of the Bush Administrations regressive policies, irrelevant of my commitment to the public sector, I am in debt, I have no money to invest or buy a house or even think about raising a family and, oh yeah, I don't have health insurance. My country has betrayed me.

I voted for Barack Obama because all of these issues are ones that he has talked about and I believe he will change or affect in some capacity that will reinstall the good that comes out of civic minded work. I don't want to regret that I went to college, I don't want to be hateful that I worked for a public school district and I don't want to go into debt if goddess forbid something happens to me or a loved one and we don't have health insurance.

The American dream is bullshit and a ploy to ignore the actual conditions and struggles of people's lives in this country. My parents came to this country for a better life and we have lived a life of struggle and that struggle continues as my parents retire with no savings and limited social security. But even my cynical father said to me last week inspired, I am willing to give Barack Obama a chance because he on some level sees me and understands the struggle of immigrants. The election of Barack Obama will not be the end of our struggle for equitable rights for the people of color and immigrants in this country, but I do believe he is a step in the right direction.

I voted for Obama because I agree with his stance on reproductive justice and will fight to protect my right to choose, I think he will work to get people like me health insurance, I believe that he will fight for me to keep more money in my pocket and most importantly because he wants to begin to talk about stopping the illegal and expensive war in Iraq. I am also voting for Barack Obama because as a person of color in this country, I have never believed or felt that I belonged and I have watched young people of color through my work as a teacher never believe they have a shot. Is Obama's presidency going to all of a sudden solve racism in inner city and rural America? Probably not, but it will be much more effective working to hold someone accountable that at least on some level can understand where you are coming from. I, like many others, am not voting for Barack Obama simply because he is black, but it does mean something different and special to me, to my community, to my friends and to my students. I am still not feeling amazingly patriotic, we have a long way to go, and even writing this post is making me feel a little nauseous (where did radical anti-establishment Samhita go???), but I do think we have the chance to move this country in a better direction. At least I hope so.

This just looks really good. Aaronette M. White, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz has a book out called, "Ain't I a Feminist? African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom," that delves into the intersection of race, manhood, sexism, family and feminism. It is a series of in-depth interviews with man who have transformed their relationship with themselves and the women in their lives by embracing feminism. White's main point being, sexism hurts everyone.

For black men, feminism can be a positive force that enhances romantic relationships, friendships with other men, and relationships with children, said White, whose findings are based on in-depth interviews and an extensive written survey administered to each participant. Her subjects, whose identities are not revealed in the book, were hand-selected from a pool of about 50 men, all of whom were self-identified feminists.

"These men have defied the odds," said White, whose book breaks new ground in the empirical study of black feminist men. "Their lives help define what it means to be a feminist and an ethical human being."

Via.

And as her title suggests borrowing from Sojourner Truth's pivotal speech, she calls her subjects the sons of Sojourner because, "they refuse to place race above gender, or gender above race."

This looks like a powerful read, and I appreciate the juxtaposition of black masculinity and feminism as they are usually diametrically opposed. I guess the question begs to be asked, which is what makes this a controversial book on some level, is can men be feminists? I think they absolutely can, but what do you think?

Thanks to George for the link!

So, Campbell Brown keeps having these moments where she calls out sexism and I really like it.

I agree with her that there is an enormous double standard in focusing on what Palin is wearing and not cross-checking it against how much male candidates are spending on their images. However, 150K is a disgustingly huge amount of money to spend on "prettying up Palin" in the middle of a financial crisis. Furthermore, what Brown doesn't mention is part of Palin's whole appeal is to make her a "sexy" gal next door and the money was spent to create that image. The Republicans are using her look as part of her appeal and manipulating the sexist double standard to boost her popularity with voters that adhere to normative standards of feminine beauty. You know, the gal next door that looks "normal," but for women to look "normal" they need to spend tons of money on hair, make-up and clothes. Hillary's image was not used in this way because she didn't brand her self as the "sexy" mom next door, but was scrutinized nonetheless for her not being feminine enough.

Either way, they can spend 2 million dollars "prettying up Palin", but that will not cover up or distract any of us from her horrid politics, policies-history of government abuse, misinformation and corruption-or deplorable stance on women's issues. Seriously, can this election be over already.

This past weekend, after failing to get tickets to see W., I went to see Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I mean who can say no to Michael Cera's sarcastic, self-conscious, nerdiness, that makes feminists gush. Yes, I like quiet, shy, nerdy boys. So. What.

I love movies that try and capture youth culture. Maybe because I am obsessed with youth culture, or have participated in almost every sub-culture of my generation, but I am always fascinated with Hollywood depictions of spaces and places, most people don't have access to or know about. I always relate to characters that are underdogs, that don't fit in with the popular kids and choose to hang out with the punk/goth/skater/hip-hop kids. I especially like movies that depict one eventful night where they are spending the whole night chasing a party, band or DJ. Those movies make my heart smile because I spent so much of my youth chasing parties, DJs, bands, boys, or the next fun thing in the night. They allow you to see what I saw-nerdy kids go to parties, we have fun and adventures without the judgment and gaze of the mainstream normative non-queer world.

MJ: One question I did have. I really do appreciate the work PETA has done but it has gotten a lot of criticism for using women in some of its ads. A lot of times in bikinis, or scantily clad, I think there was a striptease campaign that came online recently. What do you say to people who criticize PETA and say that it's not women-friendly, that it denigrates women?

IN: Well, it's rubbish because the organization is run by a woman, who is me. I marched in the earliest of rallies, I am an adamant feminist, but I'm not a prude and I think you can go to the beach and see people who are in less than you can in a PETA ad. Our people are all volunteers, no one has asked a woman to take off her clothes. I've done it myself, we've all marched naked if we want to, and I think that it's very restrictive and in fact wrong. I would expect someone in, say, Iran to tell us that we should cover up, but I don't expect women or men in this country to criticize women who wish to use their bodies in a form of political statement, to tell them, you need to cover yourself up. There's this idea of 'naughty bits' and I just think it's funny more than anything else. It's not sexist, it may be sexual, but no. No woman has ever been paid to strip. She has decided to use her body as a political instrument. That's her prerogative and I think it is anti-feminist to dare to tell her that she needs to put her clothes back on.

Via DCist and The Washington Times:

The paper signs began arriving last week in the mailboxes of the roughly 1,200 violent and child-sex offenders across the state with a letter explaining how they are to comport themselves on Oct. 31.

"Halloween provides a rare opportunity for you to demonstrate to your neighbors that you are making a sincere effort to change the direction of your life," the letter states.

In addition to posting the sign, the offenders must stay at home, turn off outside lights and not answer the door, according to the letter obtained by The Washington Times.

Samhita has written about this before, CA law requiring former sex offenders to live a certain distance from parks and schools, and GPS tracking devices. I know the subject of policing of sex offenders is a touchy one, but I think I agree with Samhita that these policies don't get at the overall problem here, which is the lack of services to address the underlying problems. Also, the stigmatization of formerly incarcerated people is a serious problem. Once someone has been incarcerated, regardless of how law-abiding they might be for the rest of their lives, they are consistently discriminated against.

Also I think this plays up on the idea of Halloween as a heyday for child predators. You know all those tales parents tell their kids about razor blades in unwrapped candy? Maybe it's linked to religious campaigns against Halloween, a celebration with pagan roots.

What do you all think?

This PSA just about takes the victim blaming cake and plays off several inaccuracies about sexual violence towards young women.

TRIGGER WARNING.

Cara takes it to task at the Curvature. I am disgusted by this video.

Update: After thinking about this some more, I think what is upsetting about this is that it perpetuates the belief that rape is a young woman's fault and that if parents buy their daughters alcohol they are putting them at risk of rape. I am assuming that there is a harm reduction campaign around parents monitoring alcohol intake of youth by providing it for them and probably providing a place for them to drink it.

It is victim-blaming to suggest it is the fault of parents for buying alcohol or the fault of their daughter to be drunk and therefore gotten herself raped. What about telling young men to not rape drunk women? That is what the focus of the PSA should be. Perhaps another conversation about youth and alcohol consumption is needed, but let's not tangle the issues. Alcohol is not the cause of misogyny and sexual violence against young women.

via Pam's House Blend.

So, I am sure by now most of you have caught a glimpse of some of the videos capturing hate and vitriol towards Barack Obama at the McCain/Palin rallies. If you are like me, they probably make you sick, embarrassed and even frightened for what the Republicans have come to stand for. When people tell you racism doesn't exist anymore please refer them to the picture above and the countless examples of wing-nuts screaming, "terrist" and "commie" at some of the McCain/Palin events. Epithets such as "terrorist," show us the fear and anxiety that lies at the intersection of race, education, potential political affiliation, class and sexuality and the possible threat to normative forms of white male power. But these tactics are nothing new. Adam Serwer at the American Prospect delves deeper. In discussing Congressman John Lewis bold calling out of McCain's use of racist tactics he says,

It's no wonder that the tone at McCain rallies remind Lewis of the bad old days. In recent months, conservatives have sounded increasingly retro with their attempts to paint Obama as a socialist or communist. In some ways, this accusation is typical far-right boilerplate. Obama certainly isn't the first Democrat running for president to be accused of communist sympathies. And as usual, the accusations are rarely linked to policy specifics. But the difference with Obama is that, in the eyes of the right, it's not just his political affiliation that implicates him as a socialist. It's his ethnic background.

The hysterical accusations of socialism from conservatives echo similar accusations leveled at black leaders in the past, as though the quest for racial parity were simply a left-wing plot. Obama may not actually be a socialist or communist, but his election would strike another powerful blow to the informal racial hierarchy that has existed in America since the 1960s, when it ceased being enforced by law. This hierarchy, which holds that whiteness is synonymous with American-ness, is one conservatives are now instinctively trying to preserve. Like black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Obama symbolizes the destruction of a social order they see as fundamentally American, which is why terms like "socialism" are used to describe the threat.

Growing up in a country where overt and covert, interpersonal and institutional racism are par for the course, it is not only difficult to watch what is happening and nerve-wracking, but it is indicative of what is coming to a head through this election. This unabashed display of racism is humiliating for most Americans, but it shows us that there are two ways ideological standpoints held by the American public, one that is clinging to yesterday's racist attitudes and one that wants to move forward away from a painful history of racism and abuse against our more disenfranchised members. Also, if you look at the history of calling someone a "pinko commie fag," despite not having to use racialized descriptors, it was generally understood that this was an activist, probably a person of color or someone who fights for the rights of people of color, poor people, queer people, etc. So it is describing an emasculated and raced person, the ultimate threat to nationalist understandings and forms of white masculinity. Obama makes the white boys feel less manly, so they have to call him a "commie" to make them feel less paranoid and anxious.

So their campaign rhetoric is surprisingly on point-a vote for Obama is a vote for change. But I don't need to tell you that. You are already there.

So I watched CNN all day yesterday waiting for the vote on the bailout bill, but I noticed that even though I don't have any money to really lose (just the hope that they may not notice how much debt I have) I still felt stressed out. I also realized that when rich people lose money, it is a national crisis. But poor folk have trouble making ends meet every single day. Where is our news coverage?

The thing with money stress, for most of us, it is always there. So why this panic and media frenzy? Because the Dow Jones dropped? Or because we need to sensationalize everything and create fake scenarios to see how our to be presidents will react? Now, I am not saying that the financial crisis isn't real. Giving out money that doesn't exist will lead to problems. But this has problem didn't happen over night. As Naomi Klein would suggest,

[R]ight-wing governments use the shock generated by disasters or other crises to push through unpopular free-market policies when the population isn't in a position to oppose such programs.

via Chronicle Herald.

So instead of taking a jab at some shoddy economic analysis (which it seems like a lot of people are doing), I thought I would give you all a chance to share your thoughts on the economic crisis. I realized after watching the news all day I started to feel really panicked and started revisiting all my bills and stressing out about money. I also realized the spending on the war in Iraq is almost as much as the amount that is needed for the bailout.

Talk to me.

My gay boyfriend Merv and I, caught on the scene (well more like at my apartment) probably after getting our thizzle dance on.

Now this is really really bad. It is so bad that I can't even believe I am admitting it. And not just because of the rampant misogyny in rap music videos (which is over the top, grotesque and unapologetic), but because I am considered a hip-hop head that should stick to the *real* shit mayne! There is just something about certain mainstream pop-like rap tracks that get under my skin and stuck in my head and before I know it I am head bopping with the best of them and sometimes even wearing my hat to the side with some electro-glasses on.

Mind you most of what I am listening to isn't even hip-hop, there might be some rapping but it is basically R&B and it has a groove that I can't resist. For example I love this Lil Wayne track with Lloyd, it just gets me up and singing. And it isn't just the super mainstream stuff, I like whatever young people are listening to all over the country. I just left the Bay and although it has seen its heyday, boy can I get down with some hyphy music, like E-40 or Mac Dre.

I have written about negotiating my feminism with my love for hip-hop, so this is something I have given a lot of thought to. And frankly, sometimes I can handle it, but most of the time I am thinking, was that really necessary? And there are moments that are so over the top (like Nelly's Tip Drill track) which is just too much for me and I am grossly offended and ready to boycott the artist.

Does this music have sexist attitudes in it? It sure can and a lot of times yes. But it is also what my friends and my community listen to and not all of it is horridly offensive. Some of it is just cute. I actually got into commercial rap by hanging out with lesbians (well that and working in public schools for 5 years). I am not going to make a case for some type of reverse signification where we are reclaiming the music. We aren't, we are human and we like good beats with cheesy bass lines and corny lyrics and relate to the universal themes of sexual attraction, love and heart break.

I have no idea how I will continue to reconcile my love for mainstream commercial hip-hop since I am aware of its nefarious corporate packaging, mistreatment of members and a form of music that people of my generation (from the golden years of hip-hop) consider to be responsible for ruining hip-hop as we know it. However, I will make the argument that I don't think rap/hip-hop is any more sexist than other male dominated forms of music. So maybe your guilty pleasure is cock rock and mine is faux mainstream gangsta' rap. Either way, if you see me dancing somewhere and you are like, "omg is that Samhita from FEMINISTING" just know I recognize the potential contradiction, but also, like everyone else like to have a good time, dance with my friends and have taken myself to the task of mastering the balancing act of hip-hop love and feminist self-preservation.

So, my friend Deanne sent me this picture last week (that quickly got all over the internets) of "Teen Pregnancy Barbie." After several google searches failed me, I realized that if I just look at the website, "Teen Pregnancy Barbie" is a multimedia art project by artist Nina Westerberg (powerpoint of process here). Now, I have talked about Barbie art before and many people didn't agree with my opinions, but since I am a glutton for punishment, I will try here again.

I think this is supposed to be ironic and tells us a story about youth, motherhood and that the Barbie American dream isn't peachy and perfect, like Barbie wants us to think it is. This is OK, but let's talk about the real state of young women and motherhood so we can get appropriate education and resources where we need them.

What do you think? *ducks*

Click for larger version.

A reader sent us a link to this cartoon, and wrote,

I hate the implication that the faux-feminist Sarah Palin has overcome the glass ceiling, when if anything she's working hard to reinforce it and add some bullet-proof layering as well.

Which is one way of looking at it.

This cartoon is also (inadvertently) an interesting illustration of something I think a lot of people get wrong about the proverbial "glass ceiling." The glass ceiling is a metaphor for the idea that women as a group are prevented by sexism and other gender-related factors from rising to the upper echelons of politics, science, business, you name it. (I'd actually argue there's one glass ceiling for white women, and another, harder-to-crack glass ceiling for women of color.) It is not something that can be busted by the achievements of one single woman.

In this way, it's apt that the cartoon above shows Sarah Palin walking on a still-intact glass ceiling. She hasn't shattered it -- it's still holding back women as a group, despite her personal success. And to be totally fair, I don't think Hillary Clinton's nomination for president (or even her election as president) would have, in and of itself, shattered the glass ceiling, either. That's because when we talk about the invisible ceiling holding women back, we're talking about broad, systemic problems that can't be solved by one woman, no matter how fierce. In an essay for the Prospect after Clinton dropped out of the Democratic primary, I wrote:

Outliers like Pelosi and Clinton -- and Fortune 500 CEOs like Xerox's Ann Mulcahy -- do not in themselves amount to the shift necessary to make lasting change. When a magazine hires a female editor-in-chief, the number of women's bylines does not automatically increase. I would argue that the reason sweeping change doesn't occur is not because these remarkable women aren't doing enough. It's simply that one woman at the top cannot change an entire culture. Looking at these numbers across the board, it's clear that the real ceiling is not limiting individual women's ambitions. It's keeping women as a group from breaking the 25 percent barrier.

If we want to cross that threshold, we need to look at the system.

Now, that's not to say I don't think women at the top are more empowered than women at the bottom to implement the kinds of changes that actually will crack the glass ceiling. Hillary Clinton would have been a far greater ceiling-smasher than Palin -- not because Clinton was a presidential candidate while Palin is a VP candidate, but because Clinton has shown she actually cares about dismantling the ceiling that holds all women back. She has advocated for policies guaranteeing equal pay and paid family leave, and elevated many women to positions of considerable power within her campaign. Palin has done none of these things. In fact, as our astute reader pointed out, the McCain/Palin campaign seeks to keep the barriers to women's advancement firmly in place.

So it actually makes sense that, in the cartoon above, Sarah Palin is trotting across a very-much-intact glass ceiling. The next time she says she's "one of those 18 million cracks," I would love to explain to her why she's wrong. No individual woman -- not even a vice-presidential nominee -- can break the ceiling. Policies that help all women advance are what will really crack the glass.

Discrimination against transgender people is still commonplace in many work environments, but more so in highly political government security related fields. Diane Schroer, is suing the Library of Congress for not getting an assignment because she had transitioned. The job was to support to run a new anti-terrorism organization.

He had been selected to organize and run a new, classified antiterrorism organization, and in that position he had routinely briefed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He had also briefed Vice President Dick Cheney more than once. Schroer had been an action hero, but he also had the contacts and intellectual dexterity to make him an ideal congressional analyst.

But now, about three weeks before Schroer was to begin work at CRS, he told Preece over a Chinese lunch that he had a personal matter to reveal: after years of cross-dressing in private, he was preparing to start living full time as a woman. He would also probably have sex-reassignment surgery. And so he planned to start at CRS as Diane Jacqueline Schroer, not David John Schroer.

So granted this is in Time Magazine, but the article actually brings up some good points and reinforces that Schroer's gender has nothing to do with her ability to do the job.

According to Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act employment discrimination because of sex is illegal. This can potentially be stretched to cover transgender, but I am in the camp that believes their needs to be an explicitly stated law that makes discrimination against transgender/intersexed/middle-sex/gender non-conforming people illegal.

But I think this article brings up another issue and that is the connection between anti-terrorism and patriarchy. It is not just Schroer transitioned and was then discriminated against, but it was about the particular job she had been hired to do wherein her being a man was important. A strong, pro-war, tough on terror man or as the article says, "a super-hero." Anti-terrorism functions as an extension of military and government intelligence based on racist and sexist ideas about "terrorist" threat and masculinity. Not only is it attempting to negate the masculinity of supposed terrorists it is clear that there is a sense of paranoia and fear the notion of "terrorism" by foreign men of color brings to the white male ego.

This case relies on the intersection of race, gender and nation making not only the initial discrimination problematic, but the context of it telling of conditions for transgendered folks within the military and government system.

Thanks to Twanna for the link!

So it has taken me days to filter through all the different things going through my head about Burning Man. For those who have never heard, Burning Man is an annual party that attracts almost 50,000 people around the concept of art, life as art, self-sustainability, self-reliance, hedonism and music and to experience all of this in the desert for 1-2 weeks. Living in San Francisco for the last seven years, I certainly crossed paths with many that were life-long burners and had my own preconceived notions of what to expect. Some of what I had heard resonated, but nothing I had ever experienced matched up to going to Burning Man. What does a feminist woman of color see at Burning Man?

Well first and foremost, the art at Burning Man is as incredible as everyone claims it to be. I always hated those people that said, "sorry man, you don't understand, you have to see it to believe it," and I will spare you such proclamations. However, there is something about the huge scale of the art set in the dustiness of the desert that creates surreal visuals that can't be compared to much else I have seen before. The art made my trip to Burning Man worthwhile.

But, you are in the desert with almost 50,000 people in city built in weeks with streets, neighborhoods, themes and entire communities. Obviously you see much more than art. I will attempt to express what I felt, saw and experienced in the most coherent way possible.

The theme of this year's Burning Man was the "American Dream." Sounds corny, but my assumption was that in a space like BM we would see multiple moments of disrupting what we understand to be true of the American Dream. Perhaps new ways of envisioning borders, critical perspectives on the legal status of human beings or anti-war statements. Well, clearly I got a little too post-colonial fantasy making on myself, because every attempt at playing on the theme that I saw at Burning Man, failed. If I saw another American flag/peace symbol juxtaposition I thought I might keel over. When driving in they had quotes posted from key framers of American democracy, Alexis de Toqueville, Milton Friedman, even MLK. But they didn't have a quote from a single woman. Apparently, woman have never had anything to do with the framing, design or development of democracy.

And this time to add to the classiness, they are being marketed as the "Afrika" collection. Please get ready to see self proclaimed, post-racist, ironic hipsters near you wearing this fall trend. You know because this isn't totally racist or anything. This company well never cease to amaze me, in every way. (Unfeminist guilty pleasure soon to come.)

So, after watching a few of the clips from the Obama and McCain appearance at an evangelist church, I am actually not sure why Obama agreed to doing this. Tactically, it appeared to be on McCain's home court and many have speculated that McCain had even heard the questions before hand while Obama was answering them. That said, I am concerned by the way that Obama answered the question on abortion (and I am not afraid to say it!).

Personally, I think he blew it. Now, I know many liberals have argued otherwise and while I hear the arguments, that Obama is more nuanced in his approach and was obviously playing with the idea of a "higher power," in his answer, I think he should have come out and said point blank, "I believe in the reproductive rights of families and women", instead of pandering to a crowd, he will never win over by trying to cater to their anti-abortion attitudes. It ain't gonna happen, at least not with the evangelists.

I know there is this fear about calling Obama out on his talking points because we don't want to give the right something to run with, but I do think we have to use the media to hold all our politicians accountable, now and after the election. It is clear that Obama's talking points on repro rights need to be fleshed out with regard to a conservative, evangelist audience, since most of us (on the supposed left) know where Obama stands on most issues of reproductive rights. As my coworker Karlos and I discussed on the train ride home from work yesterday, we understand why he couldn't explicitly say, "pro-choice" on the onset. I may not agree with that, but as a frame it is very difficult to push on this crowd. However if he had pushed reproductive rights as a human rights issue within the frame of reproductive justice and the responsibility of the state to protect and provide reproductive health services for everyone, mothers, babies, families, etc and then discussed how abstinence-only sex education has done absolutely nothing for the number of abortions in the last 4 years, it might have positioned him better on this issue.

As feminists we can't be afraid to demand what we want to hear from our politicians regarding abortion. There has been an assault on pro-choice and the language has been co-opted to make it look as though the pro-choice camp doesn't care about families, babies or mommies. And that couldn't be the furthest thing from the truth. It is the transparent and documented truth that access to reproductive health for women creates a healthier and happier society, is what motivates us to continue fighting for pro-choice legislation.

via Renee comes the latest PETA nekkid-lady ad, featuring U.S. Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard:

The argument against this ad is not that Amanda Beard is being exploited. The issue here is that once again PETA is employing the tired old tactic of using a conventionally beautiful woman with conventionally "perfect" body, posed naked or nearly naked, to call for animal rights. But the thing I hate most about this particular PETA propaganda is that it takes what should be a message of empowerment, Love-Your-Body-style, and turns it into yet another affirmation of the female ideal. As Renee puts it, "It seems that they respect the rights of animals far more than they respect women. Consider that they don't use images of male nudes, nor do they use images of women with varying body sizes."

As you'll recall, PETA has defended this advertising strategy with the weak response that "sex sells." It's an excuse I expect from Axe and Maxim, but not from a movement that is supposedly about justice.

Oh, and we're not done yet! From Debbie at Bitch (via Vegans of Color) comes the horrifying news that PETA now wants to advertise on the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.

While many view the contentious border fence as a government fiasco, an animal rights group sees a rare opportunity.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals plans today to announce an unusual marketing pitch to the U.S. government: Rent us space on the fence for billboards warning illegal border crossers there is more to fear than the Border Patrol.

The billboards, in English and Spanish, would offer the caution: "If the Border Patrol Doesn't Get You, the Chicken and Burgers Will -- Go Vegan."

WTF?! I have no words. This is so fucked-up, even for PETA.

Please check out this excellent op-ed from the Sunday Times about the lack of justice for women violently sexually assaulted in indigenous communities.

Some tidbits,

ONE in three American Indian women will be raped in their lifetimes, statistics gathered by the United States Department of Justice show.

The situation is unfair to Indian victims of all crimes -- burglary, arson, assault, etc. But the problem is greatest in the realm of sexual violence because rapes and other sexual assaults on American Indian women are overwhelmingly interracial. More than 80 percent of Indian victims identify their attacker as non-Indian. (Sexual violence against white and African-American women, in contrast, is primarily intraracial.) And American Indian women who live on tribal lands are more than twice as likely to be raped or sexually assaulted as other women in the United States, Justice Department statistics show.

Rapes against American Indian women are also exceedingly violent; weapons are used at rates three times that for all other reported rapes.

They pretty much say it all.

Sometimes I google things like "feminism" or "sexism" and this time via a google search for sexism I came across this gem. It is a series of clips from Disney movies depicting masculinity and then deconstructing the ways these characterizations of manhood deploy as standard.

There are some other ones in the 'related' section such as this one on racism in Disney.

Yesterday the Meredith Corporation-responsible for some of the most gendered marketing on the block (Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Parents, Ladies' Home Journal, More, Fitness, etc)-released a study discussing a new demographic of women, Gamma women. These are women that are different from alpha women in their desire for success, money and stature. Gamma women thrive on sharing, changing the world around them and social networking, online and off.

The Gamma woman is one of 55 million American women* creating a groundswell in today's new media and marketing landscape. Using multiple media--both online and off--she shares ideas, information, and recommendations with her vast network. The Gamma woman stands in the center of a web of positive personal connections: she aims to bring out the best in herself and others. Her sense of self is guided by her internal beliefs, passions, and priorities. She is motivated by the desire to interact, rather than to impress. She is her family's strong center, her friends' trusted ally, and she models the change she wants to see in the world.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this new demographic of women has yet to be properly marketed to.

The Gamma Factor: Women and the New Social Currency, explains how the social behavior, media habits and sheer magnitude of Gamma women represent a tidal force that is redefining the marketing model. By providing strategies and anecdotes for capturing the attention and advocacy of Gamma women, the report reveals how information travels within the Gamma landscape, and how marketers can effectively communicate with Gamma women to leverage the power of this vast and influential segment.

Reading the WSJ article and the executive summary of the report it is hard to figure out if they are talking about women or robots, but I think it is interesting that one of the groundbreaking lessons here is that women should be engaged with, not talked at. Is this an example of feminism going into the field of marketing? Ha, I wish. Corporate-driven, gender-based mass marketing makes no exceptions, everyone is a possible target for a strategic product sell.

Courtney has an awesome column up at the TAP -- one that really resonates with me -- about how seeing her queer friends excited at the prospect of getting hitched has caused her to reexamine her own views on marriage.

I've spent more time than I'd like to remember in the past three or four years explaining to family, friends, and perfect strangers why I'm not dying to walk down the aisle (note: he has spent at least half as much time doing so, an incredibly irritating discrepancy). Usually my answer goes something like this: 1) I don't want to participate in an institution that's been historically sexist and currently discriminates against my gay friends, especially considering that my partner and I couldn't have been married in some states just 40 years ago (we're miscegenators), and 2) I'm uncomfortable with the "till death do us part" rhetoric that seems to suggest that two people parting ways is an inherent failure, rather than, as is so often the case, a necessary moment of growth and change.

For the latter explanation, I usually get a pitying look and an onslaught of romantic counter-argument, as if I am a princess in a fairy tale who has suddenly lost faith in the glass slipper. (Never mind the cold, hard fact that over half of marriages end in divorce.) For the former, I get little more than skeptical silence; people always suspect that the political argument is just a big cover up for my boyfriend's frozen feet.

Public reaction aside, I'm starting to doubt my own justifications. What am I to make of my commitment to not participate in a sexist, historically racist institution when my own gay friends are flocking to the coasts so they can join in the gift registry and the white-dress hoopla? Of course they deserve all the legal protections and economic benefits of a legalized marriage; according to the Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, there are over 1,400 state and federal rights guaranteed by marriage, while there are only 300 state benefits and no federal protection for civil unions. But do these rights really trump the woman-as-property history and discriminatory present (on a state by state basis, of course)? Why do so many of my gay friends have such faith that they can transform the institution when I'm still so unsure?

Go read the rest! And for another perspective on marriage, check out Miriam's writing on the subject.

Sitting in on the interview with creators of the Midwest Teen Sex Show. They are awesome. When asked why they started MTSS they said, "We started by doing something that was funny and entertain ourselves." It has turned into one of the most effective forms of harm reduction around young people and sex, along with educational and honest.

The moderator asks, "Why is humor so effective in trying to reach this audience?" They reply, "Sex is funny, repackaging info in a way people will listen. Not talking down to kids (and sometimes) we are making fun of them. We are building a relationship with youth through humor."

In my opinion everything should have more humor and MTSS is a great use of humor while putting out information for young people around sex and sexuality. Because of the nature of their content they have gotten negative feedback along with positive, but hey, isn't is always like that.

When asked about their favorite episode they chose this the older boyfriend.

They also gave a Feministing shout out from the stage! Thanks Nikol and Guy. We love you!

Sitting in the panel, "Are girls the new geeks?" with Nancy Gruver from New Moon Girl Media, Allison Keiley from Girls, Inc., Holly Rotman from eCRUSH/eSPIN and Courtney Macavinta, Founder and CEO, Respect Rx.

They start with the knowledge drop: 55% of web content is created by women. Other things overheard, "Girls need to know that their voice is being heard and respected." "Even celebrated."