Just the headlines today, folks...
The Curvature: Actual Rape Victim Jailed for "False Report"
FiveThirtyEight: Will Iowans Uphold Gay Marriage?
Feministe: Unions, Women and Fair Labor Practices: Why the Employee Free Choice Act is a Feminist Issue
Muslimah Media Watch: Hard Times in Gaza: the BBC looks at Domestic Violence in Gaza Strip
Jump Off The Bridge: I Hear It's Immigration Awareness Month... (on the Binghamton shooting)
McSweeney's: The Sexually Fluid Person's Guide to a Seamlessly Uneventful Coming Out.
Huffington Post: Israel: Women Photoshopped From Cabinet Picture To Cater To The Ultra-Orthodox (and a related post over at Sociological Images)
Pandagon: How anti-vaccination hysteria is about sex, accidentally helping Big Pharma---anything but science
The Guardian: Outcry in Pakistan after video of a 17-year-old girl's flogging by the Taliban is shown on TV
NPR:Women Pay The Price For Health Insurance
DREAM Activist: If you are gay and undocumented, you are NOT alone.
Democracy Now: A 21st Century Hooverville: Seattle's Homeless Population Builds "Nickelsville," a Tent City Named After the City's Mayor (Related: New America Media: Tarp Nation)
What About Our Daughters: CNN Covers Slaughter of Chiquita Tate:Black Woman Lawyer Stabbed 38 Times-Husband Suspect
Feminocracy: Goddamn R****ts! Excuse my French (on iTunes censoring the word "rapist")
And Lauren's got more links...
What have you all been reading/writing this week?
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http://mzbitca.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/new-feature-fml-fail/
I just started a new feature on my blog called FML Fail.
BAsically with all the random humor websites that people use to take up there time we can see some pretty scary signs of rape culture etc. So I decided to start a feature calling attention to them.
I wish there'd been a warning: "These sites are addictive". :)
This week, I reviewed The Purity Myth and also had some thoughts about Freud's Five Lectures in Psycho-analysis, which I read for a graduate course in intellectual history.
I commented on Courtney Martin's The End of the Women's Movement and my housemate Hanna had something to say about about historian David Starkey's complaint that women historians have ruined history.
I also gathered a few recent links on women's bodies and the cultural policing thereof that I feel deserve some attention.
I wrote on the eerie silence about gender in the AP article about the recent shootings.
That story about the police imprisoning a woman for a "false rape report" is just too horrible and terrifying for words...I don't understand. "False" based on what? What did they justify her imprisonment with? How the hell can they--the people paid to investigate sexual assaults-have enabled a rapist and get off clean and easy?
I don't think every cop is a Neanderthal who washes his/her hands of rape victims and am SHOCKED when fate/the system actually reward good people by giving law enforcement who DO give a damn some evidence to work with so that the rapist is caught and put away. But how could these officers justify their negligence when the consequences were so disastrous?
Is there some other part of this story? Is there ANYTHING to justify the police not investigating further, if not their imprisonment of Sara Reedy?
I know - the story is infuriating, and I don't understand it in any way. But it doesn't seem like too much of an anomaly - check out the comments on the post - seems like something that happens somewhat frequently. I honestly can't even believe it.
that story is very sad. i work in that area of law, doing civil rights litigation, and i'd be curious to see the decision from the judge. If the story is as the blog laid it out, i don't see how the individual defendants should not be held liable. some facts are likely missing, or the attorney messed something up
Ok, I read some more on the case. Apparently the cops were held liable and the plaintiff was awarded $45,000 in damages for the days she was held in jail. I dont know if that's a fair amount of money in that part of the country, but in NYC it'd be higher. the allegations were dropped against the municipality, and i'm guessing it was because a municipality can't be held liable unless the plaintiff can show their actions were part of a policy and practice of the municipality.
Ack. I read "policy and practice of the municipality" on my day off from studying for fed courts, and my brain exploded.
lol, yeah i know. i'm working on my "day off."
Where did you read that? I clicked through to this article which says her lawsuit was dismissed:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09093/960350-100.stm
I wish the article had given some reason why the police didn't believe her. Something like... from the angle of the security camera it looked like nothing happened, or they weren't off camera long enough compared to her story, or *something* to make it sound like the police had some reason for that decision. The way the article is written it sounds like they just dismissed it out of hand. If they did that and then put her in jail with no evidence against her, they should be held strongly liable-- maybe even some criminal charges for false imprisonment.
I've got posts on women's sports, a response to the gargantuan Focus on the Family/bathrooms thread here earlier this week, and a bit about image citation (partly inspired by Samhita's first Lovell Mixon post).
Huh. Now that I think about it, the bulk of my posts this week are responses to Feministing posts. Weird.
What's new on Women's Glib this week...
Phoebe asks why oh why all we hear about Michelle Obama is what she's wearing.
Silvia feels guilty.
Shira on discovering Lilith magazine and bridging Jewish and feminist ideology.
I reposted an obnoxiously misogynistic ad for headache meds, via Copyranter.
Joel discusses the role of women in the changing economy.
I just started reading the most amazing book - 13 Women: Parables from Prison, ed. Karlene Faith - which documents different women's experiences in prison, and their lives leading up to being incarcerated, all in their own words. I'm in complete awe over these women, it has seriously woke me up to the realities of women and the justice system. Highly recommended!!!
I wrote a post on the sexual submissiveness in Ciara's new video featuring Justin Timberlake and another about Hapshetsut and the myth of evil stepmothers.
And for Easter, I will be doing some post on women & Christianity/ Feminist Theology.
Dickist of the world unite: Looking at why we need to stop slut shaming women for enjoying sex with men.
Michelle Obama Reborn: Why it is racist to continually compare the FLOTUS to Jackie O or Princess Di
Milk Skimmed: Dr. Tomás Almaguer Speaks About The Roles Of Men Of Color In The Biopic Milk
Too Hard On The White Folk: Looking at why charges of reverse racism are ridiculous and why we need to call out racism no matter who does it.
Re: Too Hard On The White Folk
"The term reverse racism necessarily implies that racism is something that should only be geared towards people of color. Another 101 fact, racism equals privilege and power therefore, it is not possible for a person of color to be racist. We may have individual prejudices but racism is an impossibility. I would furthermore point out to you that calling someone a “reverse racist” is nothing more than a silencing technique."
This is something I'm having a bit of difficulty with. I see the problem with calling an instance of racism "reverse racism" based on who its directed at. I completely agree that calling a member of a minority group a racist can be a silencing technique. But I'm not getting the prejudices-based-on-race cannot be racism if the person holding the prejudices is not in a position of power and privilege thing.
Certainly racism is more powerful, oppressive and problematic when it comes from a person or group in a position of power and privilege and is directed against people in a weaker position. But racism at its core (at least according to the dictionary) is just "discrimination or prejudice based on race" and really has nothing to do with who the person being racist is. Is there something that I'm missing here?
I absolutely agree with you and I had the exact same problem when I read that article. I even commented on it and said more or less the same thing you did and I included a personal anecdote of racist comments made in my presence by a POC.
Someone responded to my comment by saying that the person who made the statement indeed had prejudiced attitudes but "[did] not exist with the social power to realize any of her animosity." So therefore it wasn't racist?
Racism is a form of prejudice. And anyone can be racist. We are all susceptible to it as much as we'd like to think we're not. To claim that one is somehow immune to racist attitudes is incredibly irresponsible and ignorant.
And I find this response extremely disturbing and insulting to the person who made the racist comment. So this person doesn't have any social power because she's black? What a horrible (and racist!) assumption to make.
Absolute bullshit and extremely offensive.
I think your problem lies here: There are two definitions of racism currently in use. Yours seems to be "Prejudice based on race." The academic definition is, "Prejudice based on race and the power to act on it." In the second definition, racism is more of a force, and people do and say racist things that aid the force of racism. (I suggest now that you remember the definition of prejudice; prejudice doesn't mean intent, it just means preconceptions, however unconscious). Every person walks around with prejudice towards just about everything--it only becomes racism (or sexism or whatever) when the prejudiced person's prejudice affects the entire group.
This is why PoC cannot truly be racist--even if they hate white people, they have no ability to oppress them. Same goes for women being sexist, they can hate men, but they lack the ability to hurt men as a whole (when sexism hurts men, it's male prejudice doing it).
Additionally, it's important to recognize the -isms and phobias as a force, rather than something individuals feel or do, as well as focusing on it being something that people with power do. Hatred will always exist but we have a much easier time combating a force than a multitude of individuals, and our time is much better spent ending oppression over ending impotent hatred.
I have to say that I think the "academic definition" is doing a disservice by co-opting a term that has a very simple meaning to the vast majority of lay-people. By not using a slightly differentiated term to indicate that they're not using the standard definition they're causing a lot of confusion and consequently causing people to talk past each other.
I gotta agree with that. To the vast majority of people, racism means prejudice based on race. If my grandmother sits alone at home and makes comments to the TV about how Obama is black and must be incompetent, its racist even if she never does anything about it or says it to anyone else.
I've never even heard of that other definition of racism, despite taking some black studies classes in college. It seems needlessly obscure.
I gotta agree with that. To the vast majority of people, racism means prejudice based on race. If my grandmother sits alone at home and makes comments to the TV about how Obama is black and must be incompetent, its racist even if she never does anything about it or says it to anyone else.
I've never even heard of that other definition of racism, despite taking some black studies classes in college. It seems needlessly obscure.
Its also silly to say that by definition a person of color doesn't have the power to act on racism. People of color are in all sorts of positions these days, including, say, hiring and firing for their company. If they are racist against other groups, they can totally act on that. Even if someone doesn't have obvious power like hiring and firing, they can still affect the minds of everyone around them.
Exactly. White people certainly still have disproportionate power in society compared to POC but that in no way means that an individual POC is powerless to act on any racist notions they may have.
And I completely disagree with the idea that women are incapable of being sexist. Of course they are and I've been guilty of sexist beliefs and actions in the past (against men and women and, probably when I was much younger, against trans or intersex people). I take great pains to examine my thoughts these days to make sure I'm not contributing to sexism. I do the same thing when it comes to racist ideas.
I may not be a racist or a sexist person but I'm still subject to the conditioning of society. I make a sincere effort to make myself aware of my subconscious prejudices and to work on correcting them.
Anyways, my point is that people can have all kinds of prejudices that they're not even aware of and can ACT on those prejudices without even realizing. And to presume that someone doesn't have any power in society because of their race is just absurd and backwards and insulting.
But what counts as being in a position of power? It just seems like you are defining away the ability for POC to be racist, against whites or against other POC.
My friend who is white attended middle school at a predominantly black school. She was beaten up and had her backpack and belongings stolen multiple times, solely because she was one of the few white students. It wasn't a socio-economic difference either, as my friend was very poor. In this situation, at school, the black students were able to exercise a great degree of power over my friend. Perhaps they didn't have that power outside of school, but what they did to my friend was racist. What else do you call beating up and stealing someone's stuff purely because they are of a different race?
Does PoC only apply to ethnic minorities in majority caucasian Western countries? What about white Zimbabwean farmers, is there no racism at play there?
Also, what about racism by PoC against other PoC? I don't know if it's a problem in the US, but in the UK it's a huge issue - Pakistanis beating up Afro-Caribbeans and vice-versa.
The phrase "in Western countries" really needs to be tacked on there, since otherwise it ignores countries where the people with power aren't white (like China and Japan)...
I loved the point you made in "Dickist of the World Unite." Here on feministing I sometimes feel like I'm going to be shamed for being heterosexual and liking men. It goes directly against the whole grain of feminism that women can choose what they want, and not have to feel bad about it.
I loved Womanist's "Dickist' post too, even though I don't self-identify as such.
But I actually take the opposite view of feministing. I find it to be an exceptionally "easy to swallow" [totally NOT meant to be a pun] feminist pill for actively heterosexual women who may be young and recent feminist converts, to boot. In fact, the site has had some criticism lobbed at it precisely because it's perceived as being unquestioningly accepting of sexual expression that has, in other feminist circles, been picke to pieces [e.g. porn and sex-related work].
I don't find many of those arguments convincing, and perhaps this is no comfort to you if you still feel marginalized while here, but I did want to let you know that other people interpret feministing's approach to sexuality issues differently.
We were away for part of the week attending the WAM! conference and exploring Boston, so we scheduled a couple of posts while we were going through internet withdrawal - a look at what happens when good toys go bad, a Women's History Month roundup, and a "breaking news" update for April 1st.
As soon as we got home, we had to share the story of a group of our fellow members of the International Women's Writing Guild finishing a book for a dying friend.
And then, of course, the tale of our Boston trip, complete with lots of WAM! shoutouts, links, goofy pictures, bad TV reviews, and random details. And dessert.
Well, the attack occured in July 2004 and she was charged January 2005, (not just with making a false report, but with theft and recieving stolen property). So the police did investigate further rather than just arresting her when she made the origional report.
Great, the police aren't negligent, just incompetant.
To be fair, the HuffPo Israeli cabinet story is a bit of a distortion. The title of the article makes it sound like the government enforced the censoring of women from the photos, but it was really just two fringe religious (ultra-Orthodox) newspapers. The mainstream papers ran the photos undoctored, and I'm sure wouldn't ever consider doing so. The mainstream Israeli papers are pretty liberal/secular in regards to showing photos of women.
Not really news worthy, in my opinion.
I'm really glad that you clarified that. I sent this in because I took it to mean that the Government had doctored the photo themselves to give out to the various media. However, if this is just a fringe newspaper being a jerk...it's a little different.
Yeah, it's a paper that has a policy of not publishing pictures of women. If you click through the Sociological Images link, there's a link to a photo where, in a shot of a big crowd of kids, they photoshopped all the girls out. (Really sloppily, too.)
One of the other haredi papers, with that same Cabinet photo, just put black boxes over the women. While I don't agree with either method, at least the black boxes show that the women were there, but that the paper just doesn't want to publish their images. The photoshopping done by this paper makes it look like the women weren't there in the first place.
This isn't really feminist but I thought this was an interesting read.
Facebook Saves British Teen
A kid announced plans to commit suicide on Facebook and a friend called the police who went to his home and saved him.
I submitted a comment with two reproductive rights articles two hours ago. I actually did it twice. Should I try again or assume that you just didn't click "approve comment" for some reason?
And that answers it! Funky formatting!
The Huffington Post had two articles this week that were great. One was by Lynn Paltrow regarding personhood laws and those who support them The other was a criticism by Jennifer Block of a recent anti-midwife article in New York Magazine.
I'm having trouble with linkery right now, so just take my word for it that they were great articles. Kidding... you can go track them down at www.huffingtonpost.com ...
"Extreme Birth, Indeed"
"Do People Who Support "Traditional Values" Value Pregnant Women?"
This isn't the only tech difficulty I've had this weekend. Argh.
. . . can you tell I'm procrastinating?
Here are your links :):
Jennifer Block: Extreme Birth, Indeed.
Lynn Paltrow: >Do People Who Support . . .?
Let's try Paltrow again: Do People Who Support . . . ?
That last one is excellent.
concerning McSweeney's post on gender fluidity, she creates some hypothetical tipsy girl who knows nothing about gender fluidity because "she went to a state school." THIS IS CLASSIST BULLSHIT. besides for the fact that, last I checked, MY state school has one of the first women's studies programs in the nation, it assumes that if you don't have a barnard or smith degree then you're somehow gender retarded.
we can do better than this, I hope.
the McSweeney's piece was a satire!
The McSweeney's post is satire. It is phrased that way specifically to point out how classist and ridiculous it is.
fine fine redeemed
Fred Clark of Slacktivist (famous for "Left Behind Fridays") is currently analyzing the jaw-dropping misogyny in the second Left Behind book.
Also, one of the Slacktivites pointed out No Longer Quivering, a blog for former Quiverfull women.
Commenting on "The Curvature" story:
But they sure treat their damn dogs with respect!
http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/police/html/canine_division.html
Commenting on "The Curvature" story:
But they sure treat their damn dogs with respect!
http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/police/html/canine_division.html
Does anyone have the contact info. of the Taliban cretins who beat the 17-year-old girl? I have a "complaint" to make.
Got some good gender- and race-based conversation going in the comments section on Urbzen.com on a post about Steve Harvey's advice book for women, "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man."
Take a look, and please add your thoughts:
The Cow is Not for Sale
"The cow is not for sale" is the best comeback I've ever heard to that old saw about cows and milk.
Will all my comments be swallowed by the great Feministing system?
Feminist Reviews this week...
Breaking Poems by Suheir Hammad: Hammad embraces life at the border, refusing to translate her identity to fit a bounded-identity construct of what it means to be Palestinian or American...Exploring the theme that wars are fought on women’s bodies, Hammad writes, “in gaza still flesh is ashed/wa smoked wa denied/a women’s chest caves in/smoke escapes legs.” (Wa means "and" in Arabic). In fact, the violence in Gaza is a constant topic in her poetry, summoning us to act and react as she evokes images of exploded bodies, rubble in place of homes, and empty stomachs.
Slumdog Millionaire (or I Want to Sue the Indian Government: Memories of Gods, Lovers, and Slumdogs): As a little girl growing up in Iran, and like millions of others living in Eastern countries, I loved Bollywood movies. They were all colour and glamour and rosy pictures of India, that heaven on earth; the country of love and flowers...We all wanted to steal the heart of the main actor, Amitabh Bachchan. I would have done anything (and I mean anything) to get his attention if he ever showed up in my neighbourhood in Tehran! In that way, I was just like little Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire.
Natalie Tran/CommunityChannel: The reigning queen of Australian YouTubers, she is a young, fresh-faced woman with self-deprecating humor who picks on the mundane snags of life that often get under our skin. It's a Seinfeld approach to humor, except this channel features a smart-mouth Vietnamese woman who begins each video with a quirky wave and smile.
Supergirls Speak Out: Reading the stories inside is one warning shot after another to parents, teachers, and others in our society who keep telling our kids—girls and boys—that if you don't do well in elementary school, you can't get into the top high school and then you might as well start picking out safe schools for college.
At my university:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/college/bal-movie0402,0,3273550.story
The abrupt decision to cancel the showing of Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge was made by UM President C.D. Mote Jr., according to university system lobbyist P.J. Hogan. As a debate on the sexually explicit film broke out this morning in the Maryland Senate, a behind-the-scenes negotiation took place between university and legislative officials. The film was to be shown at the student union and had been approved by a student programming committee.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a Republican from Baltimore and Harford counties, suggested amending the state's annual budget to deny any funding to a higher education institution that allows a public screening of a film marketed as a XXX-rated adult film, unless it is part of an official academic course.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller indicated he would vote for the budget amendment, giving substantial backing to the threat of denying the university tens of millions of dollars in state funding.
From another article, "Said the state Senator, Andrew Harris [M.D.], 'Occasional viewing of porn is more dangerous than occasionally lighting up a cigarette.'"
I'm worried about the precedent set by threatening to withdraw funding whenever something a senator doesn't like shows up on campus.
They can jail women for simply REPORTING a rape now, just because the cops decide to pretend she's lying? Urge to kill rising...