Recently in Bad-Ass Women Category
New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice is competing for funding from the "Women and Girls Foundation. The group is led by badass young women of color and they are being considered for a 10,000 dollar grant if they get enough votes through the web. New Voices is also a member of SisterSong, which folks may remember from the post on Loretta Ross last week. Here is a brief description of the project New Voices wants to take on:
The "FOCUS on Women" Campaign, a grassroots community organizing initiative, will redress the current conditions of non-violent female offenders housed in Allegheny County Jail (ACJ), including reproductive and general healthcare, nutrition and as well as trauma-informed care in human services delivery. Our campaign centralizes the experiences of women who are currently or have been previously incarcerated in ACJ, organizes women/communities of color through Human Rights and Reproductive Justice and develops new voices for leadership in Pittsburgh.
Here are some facts about incarcerated women, most of whom are single moms, from recent coverage:
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of women behind bars has increased 843 percent in the last three decades, growing from 12,279 in 1977 to 115,779 last year.
As University of Pittsburgh is my alma mater, I have worked with New Voices personally. Their organization was one of the many orgs that were conceived during the 2004 March for Women's Lives. I can tell you that they are some of the most organized, dedicated young women in the feminist movement right now. Voting ends at 5pm today. Support badass young women of color who are advocating for justice for women.
This afternoon, I participated in a conference call with Loretta Ross, National Coordinator of SisterSong Reproductive Health Collective on the notorious Stupak Amendment. I have known her for years and she has mentored me from fledgling feminist thought to where I am today. I hopped on the call while my head was still reeling from the auctioning of women's rights on Saturday. But hearing the voice of Loretta, a woman who once regaled me with stories about her days tracking extremist hate groups in the South, made everything all right. She is that elder feminist that puts her hand on your shoulder and makes you feel like the impossible is in reach.
What I admire most about Loretta Ross is that preserving and restoring women's human rights is central to her analysis. "Health care," she said "is not an option, not a privilege -- but a human right." She described Stupak's amendment as "a loss and injury to the human rights of women" and referred all members on the call to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the U.S. government in 1948. Articles 12, 16 and 18 discuss privacy, the right to find a family and the right to "manifest faith" as one sees fit -- all tenets that Stupak ignored. This isn't just a document that has shaped America's Bill of Rights. In it lies the ethics that encompass what Obama has referred to as the character of our country. "This frame of human rights," Loretta argues, "has potential for feminists to situate women at the center of the debate allowing us to call attention to our rights to our body and control over our money."
In the end, she had no negative sentiment towards Obama, who in recent days has voiced dissatisfaction with the Stupak Amendment. But she maintains that this has got to be an approach from the bottom-up. "Sending an e-mail," she said, "may not establish a long-term relationship that will allow us to advance the agenda for women's rights." Of the hundreds of protesters affiliated with SisterSong who banded together on Saturday in DC to oppose the bill, "70 percent made advocacy visits," she said. The callers agreed that a reenactment of 2004's March for Women's Lives may very well be on the table.
Stringer Bell is confused. "Whaddaya mean The Wire's not feminist?"
The Wire, the HBO series that ran for five seasons, will apparently live on, despite its shelf life, in a class at Harvard. And Professor William Wilson, the self-admitted "huge fan" who will be teaching the class, is high off of The Wire's Kool-Aid:
"I do not hesitate to say that it has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality, more than any other media event or scholarly publication," Wilson told the audience before poking fun at himself, "including studies by social scientists."
As a racial justice advocate who loves politics and sexually diverse representations of people of color, one can't help but be a sucka for The Wire. (Also, I am not going to lie. I might have dedicated a Facebook status, or ten, to good-God-what-have-you-done-to-me Idris Elba.) But when you fasten your feminist goggles and take another gander, you are bound to get bamboozled, psyched out and sucka-punched by yet another attempt to be progressive -- hold the feminism.
Elizabeth Ault, a bad-ass feminist at the University of Minnesota, begins to sum up The Wire's gender problem in the title of her paper: "You Can Help Yourself, But Don't Take Too Much": African-American Motherhood on The Wire. At one point she states,
The Wire is quite capable of creating sympathy for the struggles of men... shows us characters like alcoholic police officer Jimmy McNulty, strategizing drug kingpin/real estate developer Stringer Bell, and corrupt (okay, maybe just stupid) cop Thomas Hauk, and doesn't dictate how we interpret their storylines; rather, much of the show is full of precisely the sort of representational ambiguity that obviates calls for "more positive representations" and earns the "authentic" plaudit--except, again, when it comes to black mothers, women without the social or cultural capital of those men.
Then she goes for the jugular:
The institutions that The Wire is so devoted to condemning have failed these women too. In order to make its damning assessment of urban politics within its own institutional context of Time/Warner-owned HBO, The Wire must make some compromises. In this case, black mothers' sexualities, their subjectivities, their desires, and therefore their fitness as parents is the price the show, like so many before it, is willing to pay.
Her paper has not been published yet. But it's chock full of good stuff about the director's decision to opt-out of "woman of color feminism" and her analysis of the director's reinvestment in "heteropatriarchal family." I don't know what Wilson has planned on the syllabus, but he needs to give our girl Liz a call. Because the urban inequality problem he rails on about is gendered.
Congratulations Professor Foxy!
As of this morning, Professor Foxy holds an elite, exclusive, and hard-earned membership to the club "Lifesite news targets." I, too, am a member, so I can tell you- she's in for a real treat!
This special membership offers guaranteed access to: having your name misspelled and/or your title incorrectly described; having your words taken out of context; being blatantly misrepresented; having your views on an issue warped and manipulated for the anti-choice agenda; experiencing infuriating condescension from a number of sources; and, my personal favorite, having anti-choice news sites show up at the top of the page when your name is googled. Fun!
:-/
I joke, but for real, I am proud of our very own Professor. My mantra is and continues to be, that you know you're doing something right when you're pissing anti-choicers off.
"As a child, I never saw a confident woman; I only saw women being abused. That's why I am here... I want every girl and woman who walks through this door to know that she is loved, no matter who is telling her she isn't loved."
-- Mary J. Blige, announcing the opening of the Mary J. Blige Center for Women in her hometown of Yonkers, NY (As Samhita noted last year, Mary founded an organization to empower women in their lives and careers.)
And with that, I think it's time for a little music, no?
[Video: Mary J. Blige - Family Affair]
Thanks to the lovely Becky for the head's up.
Transcript of lyrics after the jump
Poet Joan Kane, an Inupiaq Eskimo woman, received the prestigious Whiting Writers' Award. (It comes with $50,000!)
"My husband jokes that he's probably the only start-up lawyer whose practice is being kept afloat by his poet wife," she said.Some of the money will buy health insurance, she said.
She'd also like to take her children and her mother to King Island, an expensive and difficult proposition.
The remote settlement in the Bering Sea was abandoned under pressure from the government in the 1950s. Memories of the deserted village contribute to overtones of loss and change that haunt Kane's poems. King Islanders retain a strong sense of identity with the place, though members of the younger generation -- including Kane herself -- have never been there.
Kane hopes to visit small communities in the future, to talk about writing and "bring books to others."
"As a writer, you have to be concerned when you see all of these towns without bookstores," she said.
Now here is a Barbie that you don't see everyday. This one was done by Loanne Hizo Ostlie. She is a bad-ass artist who sells Barbies on ebay with the hair re-rooted in diverse styles that are more representative of Black women today.
I often have this image on my desktop because it's the closest image of Barbie that resembles my look and we all need a little affirmation every now and then. It's not to say that Barbie with locs is problem free. But this work is an important contribution and it should be acknowledged.
I don't know if I am on a hair kick because I am still reeling from Chris Rock's Good Hair shenanigans, but I can't help thinking about this image in the wake of the disappointment regarding these new black Barbies that were released this month.
Here are just some of the notable quotables about the hair texture of these new Barbies:
A 'So In Style' hairstyling set that allows girls to straighten their dolls' hair completely has alarmed observers, who say it will fuel the "beauty issues" that many black girls have ."Black mothers who want their girls to love their natural hair have an uphill battle and these dolls could make it harder," said Sheri Parks, an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland.
Barbie's skinny figure has long come under fire for promoting an unrealistic body image. But Kumea Shorter-Gooden, author of Shifting The Double Lives of Black Women in America, said the diminutive, primarily Caucasian frame of Barbie dolls had a more negative impact on black girls.
"They are already struggling with messages that 'black skin isn't pretty and our hair is too kinky and short'," she said.
Mattel needs to employ Loanne as a consultant if they truly want to create a doll that represents black women.
So our newest contributer Rose is being honored by the National Sexuality Resource Center with the Trojan Student Journalism Award, next to Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood. The event is tonight for those of you in the Bay Area and can be followed on twitter.
From the program:
We are proud to acknowledge the 2009 NSRC Trojan Student Journalism award winner, Rose Afriyie. The award recognizes college journalists who demonstrate outstanding sexual health reporting in their college print, radio, television or online media outlet, including journalistic blogs. The Student Journalism Award is founded in the belief that an open and honest dialogue about sexual health, especially among young people, is essential to improving the poor state of sexual health in America
Yay Rose! I have been working with Rose since we met in my summer class at the National Sexuality Resource Center Summer Program, and she continues to be a bright and constant force for change and continues to redefine what feminism means to her. I had the honor of being awarded by the NSRC in the past and I applaud their constant commitment to honor diversity and young women's voices.
Remember the amazing Lateefah Simon we wrote about when we were at the Omega Institute? Well she has been nominated by a friend for Glamour's Woman of Your Year. Voting ends tonight, so go over and voice your support and show the Glamour world that we support feminist women of color that do on the ground work and make profound differences in our communities!
Good news (via Matt Yglesias): Women in Kuwait have been granted the right to travel without their husband's permission.
The article abolished by the court dated back to Kuwait's 1962 passport law which required a husband's signature on a woman's passport application.
Aseel al-Awadhi, one of the new MPs, welcomed the passport law ruling as a "victory for constitutional principles that puts an end to this injustice against Kuwaiti women".
Women's political rights have really improved in Kuwait over the past few years. Women were granted voting rights in 2005, and first voted and ran for office in 2006. This year, the first female members of parliament were elected. And this month, two of the four women MPs, Rula Dashti and Aseel Al-Awadhi, announced they would not wear the hijab in parliament. When a fatwa issued shortly after their announcement, the Dashti tabled an amendment to repeal a rider to the 2005 law that says women must follow sharia law. But that doesn't mean she's given up.
[Dr Dashti] said Kuwait's constitution stipulated freedom of choice and equality between the sexes and did not incorporate sharia.
"There's a group of people who know they cannot Islamise the constitution so they try to Islamise every issue when it comes up," she said. "I'm going to examine anything that violates the constitution, taking it law by law."
Bad ass. The new passport rights are a step in the right direction. And make no mistake, this would not have happened without the activism of Kuwaiti women like Dashti and Al-Awadhi.
Nan Robertson died last night.
She was the author of The Girls in the Balcony, a book chronicling the class-action gender-discrimination lawsuit brought by female employees of The New York Times. (The title refers to the standing-room-only accommodations for female journalists at Washington's National Press Club before it admitted women as members in 1971.) Because the case was settled out of court, Robertson's book remains the most comprehensive account of discrimination experienced by women at the Times in the 60s and 70s.
Robertson also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for an article chronicling her near-death experience from toxic shock syndrome (TSS). While her illness wasn't caused by a tampon, she helped to raise awareness about the risks of tampon use.
A totally inspirational, pioneering woman journalist. She will be missed.
Amanda Marcotte has a piece up at the Guardian giving us the many reasons as to why Rachel Maddow has become the best talk show host in the country.
Last night, I had the pleasure of meeting Lydia Cacho, Mexican, feminist, journalist, human rights activist -- and overall badass in general. Thursdays are my crazy days because I have 7 and half hours of classes, but I couldn't pass her up. Because, after all, I am a sucka for hot, feminist, women of color getting the recognition they deserve for feminist advocacy. She was at my stomping ground, University of Michigan, receiving the Wallenberg Medal L. And, I must say, the Lydia Cacho experience was such an affirmation to my quirky black-girl self. It reminded me that although things like the George Sodini murders or the threat of rape keep me up some nights, I cannot allow the ills of sexism to jade me. I always have the resources to share a smile, count my blessings and prioritize love on my to-do list.
Her feel-good points were like India Arie's third album rolled into a lecture. She spent a large part of the evening explaining to over 100 students and Ann Arbor residents that, unequivocally, we all had the right to sexual pleasure and to live free from violence. While these concepts may be Women Studies 101 for some folks, many audience members were having an a-ha moment. It was a beautiful thing. The part of her talk I enjoyed the most is the notion that we can be change agents and enjoy this life thing along the way. Sounds good to me.
I love this quote, from Precious star Gabourey Sidibe:
"They try to paint the picture that I was this downtrodden, ugly girl who was unpopular in school and in life, and then I got this role and now I'm awesome," says the actress. "But the truth is that I've been awesome, and then I got this role."
And this one, too:
"I learned to love myself, because I sleep with myself every night and I wake up with myself every morning, and if I don't like myself, there's no reason to even live the life. I love the way I look. I'm fine with it. And if my body changes, I'll be fine with that."
Beautiful words from a beautiful woman.
Just a quick update: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was admitted to the hospital last week because of "light headedness and fatigue," was released on Friday and back to work the same day. That's what I call bad-ass.
The Washington Post reports that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was admitted to the hospital yesterday when she got sick after being treated for an iron deficiency.
Ginsburg, 76, "developed light headedness and fatigue" in her chambers about an hour after receiving an iron sucrose infusion, according to a statement from the court. A court physician determined that Ginsburg's blood pressure was slightly low and administered fluids. Ginsburg's symptoms improved, the court said, but the justice was taken to the hospital as a precaution at 7:45 p.m. She was expected to remain there overnight Thursday.
Justice Ginsburg battled pancreatic cancer earlier this year. Please send good thoughts her way.
Via this interview in the Rumpus, I discovered Trucker Desiree. She describes herself thusly:
"California is where I was born & raised. I am of a Family of Migrant Field Workers who came to California before the Freeways. I grew up at the beaches in Venice, Oxnard, Malibu, Arcata, Trinidad and Carlsbad as a child of the Welfare System."
"After a life of struggles as a Single Mother, I am now an "Over the Road" Trucker.
For the past year, she has been sharing her story at AskTheTrucker.com. On her own site, she writes,
My initial concern was student truckers, primarily women who have had violence acted upon them during their student phase and simply quit because they are made to feel ashamed or responsible.
She also works to expose the problems she saw in trucking school -- especially as the industry increasingly looks to recruit women.The (slightly outdated) stats on women in trucking:
Today, there are nearly 170,000 women truckers, making up 5% of all U.S. trucking jobs. By the end of 2007, that number is expected to attain 200,000. What motivates these women to leave the general work place? You will find that independence and the irrepressible challenge of truck driving jobs are the two most common motivations given. Another important reason is the wage-earning aspect. Truck driving averages 20-30% higher wages than jobs' women usually enter into. Woman in trucking is on such a rise in the United States that it is the cause of such great organizations such as the National and International Women's Trucking Association.
While Desiree expresses some concerns for her safety in this industry, her interview with the Rumpus has some humorous moments, too:
Rumpus: Do you ever wish you could pee in a bottle?
Desiree: That's Funny! I actually did not know truckers did that or anyone else for that matter before I went to CDL [trucking] School. I find a Super Big Gulp cup works fine and I pour it in the grass.
Forget the P-Mate or the Go Girl, apparently all you need to do is buy a 64 oz. fountain drink.
Follow Desiree's tweets from the road.
In case you hadn't noticed, I haven't been blogging for a few days and it is because I have decided to take the month off and finish up my long lingering MA thesis (please, just shoot me now!). I wanted to take a few weeks to really buckle down and focus and well as you know, all us feministers have 9 different jobs and I am trying to only have 2 (OK, maybe 3) for the month.
But don't worry, you won't miss me! Meet Rose Afriyie, our newest guest blogger who will be covering for me while I am gone. I met Rose this summer in the class that I was teaching at National Sexuality Resource Center and I knew she was the one when she told me that even while recognizing the troublesome relationship women of color have with feminism, "it was one of the most transformative experiences of her life.
A little about Rose:
Rose is a black feminist who has a B.A. in English Writing and Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh with a certificate in communication. She has organized and lectured in several states on issues of gender, race and sexuality. Her articles have been featured on media justice blogs, university publications, TheRoot.com and in the Chicago Tribune. She is currently pursuing a Masters in public policy at the University of Michigan.
All this and she is only 25. You may have seen Rose's writing on the community site as well. Please give Rose a warm welcome and treat her well while I am gone until the middle of October.
While I and the rest of the world mourn the death of Patrick Swayze, I hope the death of another amazing and important figure in American history doesn't slip through the cracks. Today the AP is reporting the death of Crystal Lee Sutton, labor organizer and activist for the working class, whose story of fighting to unionize textile plants in the South was depicted in the film "Norma Rae."
From the AP:
In 1973, Sutton was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at J.P. Stevens when a manager fired her for pro-union activity.In a final act of defiance before police hauled her out, Sutton, who had worked at the plant for 16 years, wrote "UNION" on a piece of cardboard and climbed onto a table on the plant floor. Other employees responded by shutting down their machines.
Even though Sally Field won a best-actress Academy Award for playing the character inspired by Ms. Sutton, the AP reports today that she never made much profit off the movie. I wonder if that was because the film execs didn't give her her fair due, or because she was too much "of the people" to get rich from the story. Or some other unknown reason.
Either way, she is completely bad-ass and her work is inspirational to me. As a female labor organizer in the 70's fighting against low pay and poor working conditions for "ordinary people," both black and white, she was certainly a trailblazer.
May she rest in peace.
Check out Lateefah Simon - who has us all in awe of her. More video of the conference to come.
The Feministing crew is still at the Women & Power retreat at Omega. Kicking off today's speakers is Sakena Yacoobi, who founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995. After the Taliban closed girls' schools in the 1990s, AIL opened underground home schools and women's learning centers. Today AIL is still working to empower Afghan women, and Yacoobi continues her work despite constant threats to her safety.
One of the biggest consequences of her nation being at war for decades, Yacoobi says, is the loss of the educational system. If people can defend themselves through communication, they don't need a weapon. But through years of war, the educational system was demolished. So she wanted to do more than teach people to read and write -- and think critically. And so she began opening schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
In a matter of one year, her classes went from 300 students to 1500. All girls. "These girls are very bright. They wanted to have a future," she says.
Since the government has taken over many of the schools AIL founded, many people have become distrustful of the schools. So AIL began opening Women's Learning Centers as an alternative. The centers teach some curricula that the government-run schools don't: peace education, democracy, ethics, health, family planning, sex education. These are the topics, she says, that lead to electing better leaders, making a more peaceful country, empowering women.
Why has her organization been so successful? "We work with tradition, culture, religion." No matter how much the technology advances, people's traditions must be treated with respect.
"A lot of good things are happening in Afghanistan," Yacoobi says. "But the government is not doing that much. We don't have roads, electricity, clean water, shelter, basic rights of human beings. The Taliban, day to day, are getting more power. And our people are tired of fighting. Those people close the door of education. Women can't even walk down the street. They have no mercy."
On the recent election: "The men are scared to go to the polls because the Taliban announced that if you go and vote we'll cut your finger. And they did that. But women did go. They went to those polls. Through the leadership workshop we teach them how to choose their leader, why it's so important you get involved in politics, why it's so important for you try to negotiate and communicate. So women are going and voting."
Yacoobi continues, "The news is that Afghan women are empowered. They are intelligent. They are courageous."
"You might hear there is war. People are killed. Acid poured into faces of girls. Every day there is bombing, rocket shelling, torturing. But the women of Afghanistan get up in the morning and say goodbye to their family and go to work and go to the learning center. They found out that this is the only way they can stop the problem. They must be educated. And they are learning. And they are not afraid."
Sean Lennon and girlfriend, model Kemp Muhl, were photographed for a recent issue of French magazine Purple imitating the famous Rolling Stone cover of Sean's parents, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (The original and the imitation are after the jump -- probably NSFW.)
I've always loved the John and Yoko photo. The original was transgressive, powerful, emotional in its reversal of gender roles -- her clothed, him naked. It says so much about the vulnerability that comes with truly loving someone, and about forging an egalitarian relationship in a fucked-up world.
Here's how photographer Annie Leibovitz describes the shoot:
"John took his clothes off in a few seconds, but Yoko was very reluctant. She said, 'I'll take my shirt off but not my pants.' I was kinda disappointed, and I said, 'Just leave everything on.' We took one Polaroid, and the three of us knew it was profound right away."The re-interpreted version isn't profound. It's just porny. Something we've seen a thousand times before.
Sungold took the words right outta my mouth:
Funny how John's boy-nipples weren't even exposed. His pose is more fetal than erotic. Remarkably Yoko Ono is shown as a sexual creature without being reduced to a sexualized male fantasy. The reversal of convention is so much more powerful than the capitulation to cliche in the newer photo. John and Yoko's photo is both more intimate and more innocent.
That's not to say Yoko was against the female body being photographed nude, or ashamed of her body. Here's what Beatles-loving feminist Cara has to say about Yoko, nudity, and John and Yoko's infamous full-frontal album cover:
Just look at it (obviously NSFW); there she is in all of her bare glory. Just like John standing beside her, she isn't attempting to arouse the viewer. She's not using her nakedness to express sexuality at all. And she looks equally as confident as he does. John once said that they purposely picked the least flattering photograph, and especially by today's standards, Yoko would be considered downright unphotogenic by the mainstream. She has full pubic hair, some hints of cellulite on her thighs, a waist that is not particularly defined, and most shocking of all, large breasts that do not defy gravity, and an unremarkable yet undeniable bit of hang with nipples pointing downwards.In other words, she looks like an average woman. Her body resembles the one that most of look at in the mirror more than the ones we see in magazines. It exists not for the pleasures of others, but for her.
(Emphasis mine.) I know Cara is writing about a different photo, but I think the sentiment probably applies to the Rolling Stone cover as well. In the imitation, the photo of Sean and Kemp, Kemp's body is presented the way we always see the female body represented: for the pleasure of others. Which is why it is not actually an homage to the photo of his parents. It's actually the exact opposite.
UPDATE: Read Cara's take here.
It is always interesting reading what different people get out of conferences and how they apply it to the work they do. Netroots is one of those spaces that are unique in that people from all walks of life converge for something they are passionate about, something that they often don't get paid to do and something that is trying to bring some semblance of justice and accountability to our legislative process. It is this process that Feministing has given me some access to, by having such a loud megaphone to discuss issues that I think are important and I want you, the voting public, to read about.
Netroots was an interesting experience for me, but not for the same reason it may be for other bigger bloggers, or bloggers that are professional, maybe more moderate and often, don't write about their personal experiences or opinions in the way that I do. Netroots was exciting because it connected me with a subculture of people that drift around the Netroots and connect everywhere we go, constantly engaging in what we have learned thus far, how far we have come and what we can do to better incorporate the voices of our most marginalized in our coverage.
I won't lie, I was critical of how I would feel at Netroots, similar to how I am critical of many mainstream conferences that are consistently by and for a very specific subset of able-bodied, heteronormative, white, male, middle class, college educated constituency. And I was right, the conference at a cursory glance was not as diverse as say, The Allied Media Conference or the US Social Forum, or Sister Song and other spaces that foster and centralize diverse voices.
But what was notable, and made me happy to be there was to be able to connect with all the people that make my world go round and to further make our impact known in a world that has been historically dominated by certain voices. Perhaps it was the hallway conversations with Baratunde Thurston and Jill Filipovic. Or the late night drinks with Amanda Marcotte and Khari Mosley. Or bumping into Melissa Harris-Lacewell and James Perry (or rather, them catching us staring at them and admitting what big fans we are, FYI MHL loves Feministing!). Or late night eats with Davey D and Goddess Jaz. Or bumping into Biko Baker and Billy Wimsatt in front of the convention center. Or partying with Jaclyn Friedman and our very own Ann. Or hanging out with the bad-ass ladies of the Media Consortium. Or finding out that Atrios knows who I am? Or seeing a fantastic panel on Immigration coverage with Rinku Sen and Cheryl Contee and some other awesome folks and watch them call out progressive bloggers for their inability to effectively cover immigration. Or the sit down I was graciously invited to with Jerry Nadler, aka "one of the good ones." Or perhaps it was sitting on a panel with some really talented lady-bloggers and watching as people inhaled our every word, that made me realize, again and again, we need to be here.
It is easy to have our voices drowned out, even in a crowd that may have the same values as we do. But despite that reality, we cannot deny the constant murmur of justice as held by the figureheads I named above and the impact of the work they do, to not only bring diversity in the Netroots but in bringing the power of the netroots to their diverse constituents.
That is what made Netroots rock for me, and yeah, that story is not about specifics on how to change policy, how to use these tools in accountability or how to reframe the healthcare debate. But all of that is affected by the diversity of the people doing the work, and the more diverse it is, the more effective and comprehensive any change we make using new technology will be.
Vanessa and I went to hear Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal in Prospect Park last night and I was, once again, reminded of why Bonnie Raitt is literally one of the coolest women alive (Taj was awesome too, of course!). Many people don't know Raitt's story and it's a truly radical one. From her official bio:
In the late '60s, restless in Los Angeles, she moved east to Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a Harvard/Radcliffe student majoring in Social Relations and African Studies, she attended classes and immersed herself in the city's turbulent cultural and political activities. "I couldn't wait to get back to where there were folkies and the antiwar and civil rights movements," she says. "There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge." Also, she adds, with a laugh, "the ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind."Raitt was already deeply involved with folk music and the blues at that time. Exposure to the album Blues at Newport 1963 at age 14 had kindled her interest in blues and slide guitar, and between classes at Harvard she explored these and other styles in local coffeehouse gigs. Three years after entering college, Bonnie left to commit herself full-time to music, and shortly afterward found herself opening for surviving giants of the blues. From Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sippie Wallace, Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker she learned first-hand lessons of life as well as invaluable techniques of performance.
"I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids," she says. "I was especially lucky as so many of them are no longer with us."
In a time when so many white musicians seem to take what they want from historically black music and then promptly get amnesia about where it came from, Raitt has always honored her influences and been deeply involved in social justice work. Her truly unique voice and stunning guitar skills are gracefully situated in the blues she was brought up in and she's constantly creating opportunities for the somewhat forgotten blues greats to get on stage and enlighten people.
Thanks for eighteen albums and forty odd years of bad-assery Bonnie!
At one point during Monday night's Green Day show at Madison Square Garden, Billie Joe Armstrong announced that he needed someone on stage who could play the guitar. And not just for a "three-chord song," he added, "for one with four, five, maybe six chords" -- "Jesus of Suburbia." After rejecting a few wannabes he stopped and asked a girl in the mosh pit if she knew how to play, then looked unconvinced when she said she did....The girl -- her name later was revealed to be Stephanie -- was wearing jeans shorts, a torn Misfits t-shirt, and a head scarf over her pigtails. Mr. Armstrong handed her the guitar, conferred with her briefly, then let her sit on an amp to get started. And then she...ripped! A few bars in she was wandering the stage like a pro and when Mr. Armstrong introduced her at the end, the crowd was shouting "Ste-pha-nie! Ste-pha-nie!" in appreciation.
Exciting news. Next to the Senate for confirmation.
The committee voted 13-6 to send its recommendation to the full Senate, which is expected to confirm Sotomayor's appointment next week.With all of the committee's Democrats supporting Sotomayor, Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin called the president's nominee "a thoughtful, careful and intelligent judge" with "a perspective that the court sorely needs. ... Not only will Judge Sotomayor be the first Latina to serve on the court, and the third woman, but also the first with experience as a trial judge."
I love this post from Miranda at Women's Glib in its entirety (a response to conservative sex scare tactics concerning young people), but it's this quote that had me cheering in my seat:
Young people are certainly not the only group whose bodies are subject to public scrutiny and moral debate, but this backlash against the use of appropriate protection and enthusiastic consent to seek pleasure is an almost laughable example of the "keep your legs closed, you silly youngsters!" mentality. Is there a magical button, somehow pressed when a person turns 18, that suddenly allows them to experience sexual desire, pleasure, and satisfaction? Of course not; you and I know this is a ridiculous idea. But conservatives are all caught up in it when they act as though teenagers are across-the-board immature and utterly devoid of agency.It's not a secret: we know -- because we're doing it -- that sex feels good.
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This is awesome. 15 year-old Kimberly Anyadike of Los Angeles flew across the country in 13 days (making about a dozen stops) with Levi Thornhill, 87, who served with the Tuskegee Airmen.
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,
Oh, snap. This is awesome. (Back story: some women interrupted an anarchist conference to show this video and speak out about sexism in the movement.)
Thanks to Gwen for the links!
Earlier this week, Chicago blues queen Koko Taylor passed away.
...she said she gave little thought to pursuing a career in music until she was living in Chicago, working as a cleaning woman by day and frequenting the city's blues clubs with her husband by night. At Robert Taylor's urging, she began asking the performers to let her sit in.In 1962, Willie Dixon, an influential behind-the-scenes presence in Chicago blues, heard one of her impromptu performances and said, as she later recalled, "I never heard a woman sing the blues like you sing the blues." He took her to Chess Records, where he was a talent scout and producer, and wrote a number of songs for her, most notably "Wang Dang Doodle," which she recorded despite her initial trepidation about its raunchy lyrics. It made her a star.
Her voice was just amazing. Have a listen:
More at Shakesville.
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..)
Ellen DeGeneres gave a really inspirational commencement speech at Tulane last week, in her usual humorous tone, but was shockingly self-revealing with a handful of quips about how she never went to college and look at her, she is just rich and famous. I love her.
Thanks to Cole for the link.
Love her, love Elmo. (Transcript after the jump.)
A lot of folks have written lovely things about Bea Arthur, mourning her loss. I don't know that I have anything particularly enlightening to add, but I thought I'd share some of my favorite Bea Arthur moments. Love this woman.
A snippet of the groundbreaking episode of Maude.
Today Congress will unveil a new bust of Sojourner Truth in the U.S. Capitol. She's the first black woman to be honored there. This is a far cry from the last time Congress proposed "honoring" a black woman, Melissa Harris Lacewell writes:
It is important to remember that Truth is not the first black woman for proposed to be enshrined on federal land. In 1923, Mississippi senator, John Williams proposed a bill seeking a site for a national Mammy monument. The Richmond, Virginia chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was prepared to pay for the statue, which would stand on federal land "as a gift to the people of the United States . . . a monument in memory of the faithful colored mammies of the South." The statue would have been in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, which had just been dedicated a few months. The "mammy bill" passed the Senate in February 1923 just weeks after the Senate defeated the Dyer anti-lynching bill. In other words, even while refusing to protect African American citizens from the domestic terrorism of the lynch mob, the Senate referred the mammy monument bill to the House of Representatives.Whenever I am in Washington, DC I try to imagine the psychic assault I would suffer if I had to walk past a granite mammy statue while on the National Mall. Thankfully, fierce and prolonged resistance to the mammy monument undertaken by the black press, black women's organizations, and ordinary citizens kept this horrifying possibility from being reality.
Black women's organizations defeated the mammy memorial nearly 100 years ago and today they are largely responsible to raising up the bust of Sojourner Truth. The National Congress of Black Women, Inc. (NCBW) worked tirelessly to cultivate donors and supporters for this cause. Because of their efforts, instead of a monument to the mythical figure of a happy, faithful, feisty, loyal black woman slave, America will today memorialize a dedicated, serious, freedom-fighting black woman. In commemorating Truth the nation invests in remembering the deeply human and complicated stories of the lives of black women.
Wow. Certainly puts today's milestone in a whole new perspective, doesn't it?
For those of you that are hip-hop heads this is a must see video interview with Sheri-Sher who discusses her experience with being a female MC back in the day (late 70's and early 80's). There is a book out about Sheri-Sher, the Mercedes ladies, hip-hop and the Bronx called Mercedes Ladies. They were the first ever all female hip-hop crew.
There is also a part 2 after the jump. In part 2 she gets into why they chose not to be overly sexual, but rather focus on their lyrical abilities and a little about how and why they were generally ignored by the larger hip-hop community. I recommend watching both parts. Apologies for not having a transcript.
A group of women from three different continents convened in Seoul, Korea to discuss the international state of oppression via patriarchy and to come up with some new forms of activism to counter-act the harsh realities faced by most women through militarism, economic oppression, sexism, imperialism and fundamentalism. Their solution was to create a School of Feminism and a network for what they call "Glocal" Activism.
The network will start with 5 glocal points (GPs) in China, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa."To deal with global economic crisis, we need to explore new attempts and forces. Mutual interaction between local and global will bring about new energy for feminist activism. It should be based on green (ecology)-red (Marxism)-Purple (Feminism)," says Patricia Martha from Mexico.
Glocal is a combination of 'global' and 'local.' The organisers say this is created to refer to mutual responses and relationships between 'local and local', and 'local and global'; different from the existing concept of the South, the third world or transnational, for instance.
This is a much needed initiative as women's rights continue to be ignored or scaled back world-wide. Pass this post on, let's make sure they get tons of international recognition and support.
You can read more about the entire network here and check out the website for the Network for Glocal Activism.
Thanks to Jonathon for the link!
Kay Steiger recently interviewed Sarah Haskins, who revealed she has sold a screenplay!
"I just sold a screenplay with my writing partner, a friend I knew from college. That's very exciting. The protagonists are two girls," she said. "That's been awesome and hopefully it'll get made. That's sort of the Hollywood thing and where you don't know if any of that will ever happen."
Here's hoping it does.
Not just want. Need.
Today, Kai Wright has a great piece in The Root about Lorraine Hansberry -- and how "she engaged both a personal and a political search for sexual freedom and articulated a still-urgent understanding of its relationship to gender equality." Kai writes,
It's unclear whether Hansberry would have called herself a "lesbian," primarily because she and others were still in the process of developing the concept of such a clearly defined sexual identity. But she dated women and, more strikingly, joined the country's first-ever lesbian political organization, the now-defunct Daughters of Bilitis, at a time when doing so made you a target of federal law enforcement.After joining the group, Hansberry wrote a series of provocative letters to two gay journals. Daughters of Bilitis began publishing its journal, the Ladder, in 1956. Hansberry chimed in to it in May and August of 1957, while she was writing A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry is known for her drama, but she was a prolific political writer and speaker, dating back to her early 1950s activism and editorial work for Robeson. And in her essay-length 1957 letters to the editor, she challenged members to consider the feminist case against homophobia.
"I think it is about time that equipped women began to take on some of the ethical questions which a male-dominated culture has produced," Hansberry wrote in one letter, explaining, "There may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma."
As Adam writes over on TAPPED, A Raisin in the Sun is a play that most of us read in school. It's undeniably a classic. But that's not all Hansberry wrote. We remember her for her anti-segregation activism and anti-racist writing, but not so much her bold statements (oh, and you better believe they were bold!) on gender inequality and homophobia. As Adam puts it,
When Hansberry was taking on the evils of segregation and "we just want to be left alone" white racism, we applauded, but when she started talking about "homosexual persecution" we stopped listening.
Props to Kai for getting us to listen.
I recently discovered comedian Luenell. I had seen her in Borat, but I didn't know who she was until I watched Katt Williams: American Hustle (which is equal parts funny, equal parts sexist). However, Luenell stole the show for me, she is funny as hell and also raunchy, so, you have been warned!
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.
There's been lots of talk about clean coal these days. Have you seen any of the industry's commercials? But what you haven't heard much about since Robert F. Kennedy visited the region back in the day is where coal comes from -- the Appalachian Mountains. His son continues to speak out about the region. Ashley Judd a long with many folks in her home state of Kentucky have been doing a lot of activism around mining and the disparities in the Appalachian Mountains there. Judd recently spoke out about a piece Diana Sawyer aired on 20/20 last week called "Children of the Mountains on Appalachian life in Kentucky -- Diane Sawyer is also from the state. The piece sparked some reaction in the blogosphere from folks who have been in the trenches working on these disparities just about their whole lives.
I decided to ask Theresa L. Burriss, the Assistant Professor of English & Appalachian Studies at Radford University, about everyday life in Appalachia and what she thought about clean coal and Diane Sawyer's piece. (Diane Sawyer did a follow-up piece last night on "Mountain Dew mouth".)
Here's Theresa...
I'm a little late to this, but did you catch the Times' profile of amazing artist/singer/songwriter Neko Case? In it, she gets political:
IN HER RATTLY BROWN CHEVY VAN, Case returned to the issue of abortion. She deplored some recent movies that raise the matter as one of its crucial plot points -- "Knocked Up" and "Juno," for example -- and then "solve" it with a sweetly positive ending or a miscarriage or some other sidestep. "Just have the abortion," she said of "Juno." "Just have it and get on with your life." She continued: "Years ago, I went to Planned Parenthood in New York -- for another reason -- and I saw these girls waiting there, and it was just awful. It was cold, they were in gowns that didn't really close, and their boyfriends and parents weren't with them, and they were sitting under these bright lights, and the people were mean."Surely this experience lies behind one of her most readable songs, "Pretty Girls," on "Blacklisted":
The TV is blaring and angry,
as if you don't know why you're here.
Those who walk without sin are so hungry --
Don't let the wolves in, pretty girls. . . . .
Don't let them tell you you're nothing.
Love her.
Angry Black Bitch has been around for four years! Go leave Shark-Fu some congrats over at her pad.
One undercurrent of Lauren's recent post on work life was about geographic divisions. While I may reside on the East Coast now (and have also lived on the West), I was born and raised in Iowa, went to school in Missouri, and consider myself fundamentally Midwestern in many ways. And today I'm inspired today to give a shout-out to some of my personal favorite places and things about the Midwest: (Yes, I realize a lot of this list is about food. So?)
- The Chicago skyline
My first big city! As a kid, I remember staring out of the car windows on family vacations, looking at the buildings and busy streets. I will always associate this city with excitement and possibility. - Happy Joe's Taco pizza
Nom nom nom. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. - Milwaukee!
The Friday fish-fry and polka brewery tour, awesome local artists, Broad Vocabulary, that regional delicacy known as cheese curds. Where the bloody marys come with a High Life chaser and the lake is gorgeous and blue. Home to my best friend in the whole wide world, a truly awesome, amazingly crafty Midwest lady. - REAL frozen custard
Seriously, fuck Danny Meyer and his knockoff custard stand. The Midwest is home to the real deal. - The thrifting
The second-hand stores in my home region are second-to-none. I maintain that I was at my best-dressed when I lived in the Midwest. - Midwest feminists
Yes, they are a slightly different breed of awesome. Shout out to the fine broads and dudes of Lil Mama's Burly-Q Revue, the good people who put together Venus Zine, the clinic workers, the Midwest Teen Sex Show, the DIY mavens, Leslie Hall. And, of course, Shark-Fu and so many other wonderful Midwest-based feminist bloggers.
Dear readers who identify as Midwesterners, what do you love about your home region?
Since we were on limited posting last week we missed the boat on posting about the monumental loss of Eartha Kitt. The infamous singer of Santa Baby passed away on Christmas Day this year. Eartha was a legend in her own right and a visible woman of color in a time where there weren't many. Furthermore, as I learned recently she was also an advocate for the rights of inner city youth and openly opposed the Vietnam War right on the steps of the White House.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson shares via New American Media,
The smile on Eartha Kitt's face was unforgettable. It belied the pain, ridicule and turmoil that she had endured after she was unceremoniously placed near the top of then President Lyndon Johnson's enemies list. But that seemed to be the furthest thing from her mind that late spring afternoon in 1978 when she greeted me at the old Aquarius Theater in Hollywood. Kitt was in Los Angeles starring in her tour production of the musical Timbuktu. I was assigned to do a brief interview and a review of the production.Kitt's smile and infectious energy melted the awe and nervousness that I felt at being up close too and actually talking with an entertainment legend. Then there was the "incident." That was the furor that Kitt ignited when she denounced the Vietnam War and poverty to Johnson at that White House luncheon in January 1968. A decade after the controversy still got the tongues wagging.
Her performance in Los Angeles was in part Kitt's American comeback after being virtually banned in the United States after her White House outburst. Her performance was also in part a brash effort to reclaim the luster that had made her virtually a household name and an icon in the entertainment world in the 1950s an early 1960s.
Eartha might have sang about old fashioned girls, but she couldn't have been further from that. I keep thinking in light of current events how few celebrities stick their neck out and actually take a stance on unjust wars. She will be missed.
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
This was the healthiest way for me to deal with the frustration I feel sometimes from being a self-proclaimed feminist blogger. It is quick and to the point and happy hour style late.
Enjoy your weekend folks.
...because the Accolade, a rock band made up of four women, is looking for one. I know we're a little behind on this, but it's never too late to recognize some bad-ass women:
"In Saudi, yes, it's a challenge," said the group's lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) "Maybe we're crazy. But we wanted to do something different."In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship -- the theme of "Pinocchio" -- would once have been unimaginable here.
But this country's harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed, especially in Jidda, by far the kingdom's most cosmopolitan city.
The band's namesake is this painting, which guitarist Dina says she likes "because it shows a woman who is satisfied with a man." In some ways, all women-only music groups are transgressive. But the Accolade takes it to a new level.
Here's how the band describes itself:
Dina -the ( guitarist ) was so interested in music.. especialy rock & metal music. Her dream was to make a band!she started learning how to play the guitar at the age of 16.. Also, Dareen ( bassist) was a huge support for her and even shared the same dream, so they started to look for members to create the band.. they met Lamia (vocals ) & Amjad who happened to be intrested in the same thing. By 2008, they took things seriously and started to practice and create their own music!!! Their music is inspired from paintings that tell a story of certain situations in our lives...it's a blend of art & music..
Hear them on their MySpace page.
In Iran a cab company has started that is by and for women only. It has provided employment for widowed women and given them ownership over their own means of transportation.
At the centre, the women drivers are also given lessons in basic car maintenance and such essentials as how to change a burst tire. All the operators at the centre are women too. But the concept was the brainchild of a man, Mohsen Uruji, who says he spotted a gap in Tehran's transport system."What was missing was a role for women," he says.
"By setting up this purely private sector company, we've been able to provide jobs for many women, as well as a service for other women who want to travel around in a more relaxed way."
Many of the drivers are war widows or divorcees who really need the work, and are referred to the agency by some of the big welfare foundations.
The project has grown in popularity and is hoping to have 2000 women run cars soon. I think this is interesting and very cool all at once. As the article says, it does both reinforce traditional gender roles feeding into the very idea that women and men can't occupy space together alone, but at the same time solves and relieves many problems women are dealing with on a daily basis.
Here's Wanda Sykes, at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday:
"You know, I don't really talk about my sexual orientation," the Emmy Award winner said. "I didn't feel like I had to. I was just living my life, not necessarily in the closet, but I was living my life,""Everybody that knows me personally they know I'm gay," she continued. "But that's the way people should be able to live their lives." [...]
Sykes said the ban (also known as California's Proposition 8) made her feel like she was "attacked."
"Now, I gotta get in their face," she said. "I'm proud to be a woman. I'm proud to be a black woman, and I'm proud to be gay."
Awesome.
Need more reason to love Rachel Maddow? Probably not, but it is always good to love her more. In response to Palin's accusations of bloggers not being real media or not doing enough research, Maddow responds. Just watch it, it is so funny.
Rachel Maddow wins.
Swoon!
This video keeps putting me in tears. I have to say after yesterday's tactics by the McCain/Palin campaign that were blatantly racist, I really started to think about what this election means to myself and to the people in this country that have experienced racism and never been allowed to talk about it, had the tools to deal with it and have always been told covertly and overtly that we are inferior. You never quite fit in but then you are told you are imagining it when you experience racism. It means something to us that Obama is so close to the presidency.
It is good to see some mainstream media heads actually take it there.
I love her.
via Jezebel.
It is rare that armed resistance movements are given positive news coverage. And understandably so when groups use brutal force on civilians. However, the dialog of acceptable and unacceptable moments of violence has been dominated by a history of colonization. Basically, war is only acceptable when it is protecting the interests of rich and white people. But for those of us that believe in a more fair and just world where everyone should have access to the means of production and women should not be enslaved by patriarchy it is good to hear in some places people are fighting for their own rights. I don't support their tactics of hurting or killing civilians, but I do see what they are fighting for.
The women of the PKK (Kurdistan Worker's Party) believe that without a dismantling of patriarchy no one is free. They have been branded as a terrorist organization by NATO, Turkey, Iraq and the United States. The PKK wants an independent Kurdish state in Kuridistan. The women's demands are simple,
"We want a natural life, a society that revolves around women -- one where women and men are equal, a society without pressure, without inequality, where all differences between people are eliminated," says Rengin, the head of a female battalion of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
Perhaps this is a leap of imagination for those socialized to think there is only certain types of right and wrong violence. We don't want violence in our communities or anyone else's. But given the context they are working with in, a country ravaged by war and a place where women are subject to inhumane conditions, I can actually empathize with their frustrations.
Revolutionary movements have been around for decades now, both using violent and non-violent tactics to fight for the world they want and generally focused on an anti-colonial stance (one notable example being the Zapatistas, who also believe in gender equity). We may not agree with them, but I think it is important to understand them.
So for those of us Feministing gals (Jessica, Vanessa and myself) that went to school in that sleepy upstate town known as Albany we all have a special place in our hearts for Barbara Smith. One of my most formative feminist "click" moments was seeing Barbara Smith lecture at SUNY Albany when I was a young women's studies undergrad (11 years ago, eeeek, LOL).
If you have never heard of her, well she is an anti-racist, feminist, socialist activist and one of the framers of early identity politics. Frankly, her humility extends so far that she rarely gets the recognition she deserves. I am sure her constant calling out of white feminism for their inability to truly incorporate an analysis of race and class certainly has kept her on the sidelines as well.
I was pretty excited to see that Colorlines magazine (always on top of it) has a Q&A with her and what she has been up to, including running for public office. Check it out.
For a woman to be a high ranking police chief in Afghanistan is in fact a profound statement and considerable gain for women. So it is a statement that the Taliban assassinated one of the top female police officers in the country. An anti-woman statement.
The police officer, Malalai Kakar, who was in her mid-40s with six children, was an iconic figure among women's groups in Afghanistan and abroad. Often profiled in the Afghan and foreign news media, she was one of the leading totems for the wider freedoms gained by women when the Taliban, with their repressive policies toward women, were ousted from power by an American-led coalition in 2001.
I just love her so much.
This is awesome. A group of women started a collaborative YouTube channel, Project LifeSize, which aims to give a voice to women of size, to discuss and dismantle ridiculous beauty standards and inspire young women. Check out the casting call above, and some of their amazing videos.
If you didn't listen to WBAI's Hip-Hop Takoever-Election Style this weekend, you definitely missed out. But lucky for you, we have a segment that you can listen to right here: "Politics for Goddesses Rising: Our Relevance in Election '08."
Hosted by Feministing friend jaz and Nida Khan, the show featured Rosa Clemente, VP Presidential Running Mate of Green Party and Presidential Nominee Cynthia McKinney and Kevin Powell, who is running for a Congressional seat in Brooklyn. The show takes on how women's issues are being addressed in this election; the importance of local politics and politicians, the media's lack pundits who are women of color and more...
WBAI 99.5 FM's Hip-Hop Takeover was 17 hours of non-stop hip-hop programming - but this is definitely the hour to listen to!
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From the NYTimes City Room:
Paratroopers are drifting down to earth -- well, down the side of a Brooklyn apartment building -- and slowly being helped back on their feet. This scene has finally come into full view in Sunset Park, where a group of young women this summer painted a mural that was their response to military recruiters in their schools and neighborhoods.
The mural project was sponsored by the Groundswell Community Mural Project.
Badass.
Thanks to Veronica for the link.
We here at Feministing heart Margaret Cho, so we couldn't have been happier to find out she was getting her own show on VH1. If you missed the first episode, you can watch it right here!
Rest of episode after the jump....
Del Martin (right) with her wife, Phyllis Lyon
Sad news: LGBT rights activist Del Martin has died.
Martin, who married her longtime partner Phyllis Lyon on the first day same-sex marriage was legal in California, co-founded (with Lyon) the first national lesbian rights organization, the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955.
Lyon released the following statement on Martin's death: "I am so lucky to have known her, loved her and been her partner in all things. I am devastated, but I take some solace in knowing we were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed." (Emphasis mine)
This is incredibly sad, but what an amazing woman - and an amazing life!
A reader sent in this story of a woman who intervened when she saw a girl getting physically abused, and I thought it brought up a lot of interesting questions about when to get involved.
I was waiting for my bus up to Ye Olde Transit Centre early this morning, and I noticed a young couple scuffling outside the Youth Employment Centre near my bus stop. They were older teenagers - the boy was 17 or 18, and the girl looked to be about 16. She was crying and yelling something at the boy, and suddenly they started pushing and shoving.She took a swing and he grabbed her hand (he was easily 6' and she must have been 5'2 and about 100lbs) and he threw her up against the building and grabbed her throat. I was alone at the stop and reacted instinctively: I pushed my way between them and told the boy to back off. Predictably he started screaming at me to "stay out of his business" but I ignored him and worked on leading the girl away. She kept sobbing in apology, and flinched when the boy tried to grab her hand. The boy kept yelling at me to "stay out of it" and I told him that he if was going to assault his girlfriend on a public street than it damn well was my business, and that if he didn't back off and move away I was going to call the police.
...He muttered, "Fucking feminist bitch!" and moved away up the street.
Telling that he called her a feminist as a pejorative, but I digress. I've often seen things in public spaces that I found upsetting and/or well, criminal, and I've spoken up when I've felt safe. But how can we gauge safety, or if other women want us to get involved?
I'm reminded of two stories...
A women's studies professor I had as an undergrad told my class about how her sister was in an abusive relationship - his battering her was so loud that the neighbors called often the police. However, the police generally made things worse: Not just because they didn't arrest her boyfriend and treated her as if she was the criminal - not believing her, asking if she had attacked him - but also because once they left, she was beaten even worse. My prof went on to say that from then on whenever she saw or heard a woman being abused, she asked if the woman would like her to call the police - assuming that she knew what was best for her own situation.
Related: Babble snagged an interview with her - jealous!
Love. Love. Love.
Big Think, a site dedicated to fostering discussion outside of the "talking heads" model, has a series of interviews with women scientists. We're going to be featuring them on Feministing in the coming weeks, so be on the look out.
Above, Dr. Bonnie Bassler - a professor at Princeton - talks about the challenges associated with being a female scientist.
Rebecca Traister has written a profile of Feministing crush subject Rachel Maddow for The Nation. A tiny taste:
Unlike her beautiful, bilious conservative female counterparts or the cocksure boys-on-the-bus analysts, however, Maddow didn't get here by bluster and bravado but with a combination of crisp thinking and galumphing good cheer. Remarkably, this season's discovery isn't a glossy matinee idol or a smooth-talking partisan hack but a PhD Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist.
SWOON.
Read the rest here.
Newly-appointed UN human rights chief Navanethem Pillay has long been an advocate for women. A co-founder of women's rights organization Equality Now, Pillay also served as President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and was the first woman of color on the High Court of South Africa.
Pillay replaces Louise Arbour in the position.
Read more about Pillay here and here.
Thanks to Martha for the heads up.
Because I certainly do. And my crush was re-established last night when I got to see her in action (along with Paul Rieckhoff) at Lizz Winstead's Shoot the Messenger. It was bad-ass. Since a video of the show won't be up right away, I figured I'd get my Maddow-fix elsewhere for now. Above is a somewhat recent video of her take on McCain's birth control stumble, which also features the super cool Nation editor (and fellow outer borough native) Chris Hayes. Enjoy!
We've posted before about India's Gulabai Gang, but it's even better seeing them in action!
Is this some kind of comic book? A woman in Iraq protested by holding up a naked picture of a woman in front of her while dressed in hijab. She was making a statement against the US soldier use of x-ray machines to look under female clothing to ensure they are not strapped with explosives.
Jaberi explained that she was protesting her treatment while going through the various security checkpoints on the way to her job at the Iraqi parliament building. It was the scan that Jaberi particularly objected to, because, she said, guards are essentially able to see a woman naked as she stands in the scanning booth. The picture she displayed actually looks like a naked female alien, blue-tinted and bald, because the scanner doesn't see hair or clothing. What it sees is the body itself, plus the dark outline of any jewelry or, presumably, any concealed weapon.
Hmm, sounds a little creepy right?
Moon Duchin, a 1993 Westinghouse finalist, is one cool woman. After Duchin's success in high school, she went on to Harvard to study math and kick some patriarchal ass:
[B]ut even as she pursued a fairly traditional track for a promising young mathematician, she was becoming suspicious of the traditional great "Men of Mathematics" (to quote a famous book title) concept. "Does it hinge on specific people or is it inevitable it will come out that way?" she asks. The Great Man model of a genius working alone in his garret "started to seem like it was obscuring some of the important community aspects of mathematics, and like it was controlling who would even think to enter the field," she says. Duchin stuck it out because of her 7-year-old dream and "adolescent stubbornness," but "it wasn't always easy to see my way through. Meanwhile, I'd picked up an enduring interest in cultural practices and philosophical issues in science."So at Harvard, Duchin wound up double majoring in math and women's studies. She did a mathematics research thesis, and also one for the women's studies department looking at "Why the notion of genius is so attractive with thinking about math and how it functions, and what it does to math as a field," she says. "Lots of people think this is a non-social field—would math come out differently in a society with a different social organization?" While she's not trying to debunk the existence of genius ("there really are people you meet in math and you learn about who just synthesize things in ways that other people don't have access to with any investment of time"), the Great Man theory "definitely stilts the narrative. A real intellectual history is harder to do but it illuminates the math very differently."
Oh, and if that isn't enough to win you over - Rush Limbaugh once called her a feminist ringleader in one of his trademark rants. Hot.
Thanks to David for the story!
Here's some baffling news. The Boston Globe reports in "The freedom to say 'no'," that women "just aren't interested" in science and engineering.
When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.
Huh. For folks who "aren't interested" in the sciences, we sure do seem to be winning a lot of awards in the field. In fact, the top three prize winners in this year's prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair were all girls.
Pictured above, Sana Raoof, 17, of Muttontown, N.Y., Yi-Han Su, 17, of Taipei and Natalie Saranga Omattage, 17, of Cleveland, Miss., won for projects on the Computation of the Alexander-Conway Polynomial on the Chord Diagrams of Singular Knots, Efficient Hydrogen Production Using Cu-Zn-Al Catalysts Prepared by Homogeneous Precipitation Method, and Development of Biosensors for Detecting Hazardous Chemicals, respectively. Whew. What was that again about girls not liking science?
Thanks to Cathy for the link!
No, but I can always love her more. Mary J. Blige has started a women's group to help women develop confidence and increase success in their careers.
Mary J. Blige and Steve Stoute, who founded a youth-oriented brand-consulting firm, say they're setting up the Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now.The foundation will concentrate first on the Yonkers, N.Y., area where the 37-year-old Blige grew up. The charity will fund scholarships, grants and programs that help women gain confidence and skills to succeed in their careers.
Bad-ass.
Mary's songs always gave me more confidence.
Mildred Loving passed away last week, a black woman who had married a white man and couldn't live in the state that she resided in, without getting arrested because interracial marriages were illegal. That was in 1957, not that long ago. After returning to Virginia, they were charged and sentenced for engaging in miscegenation and had to relocate to DC where they filed a motion against the judgment which led to ultimately striking down anti-miscegenation laws nation-wide.
I have never been a big fan of marriage, but if the government wants jurisdiction over marriage and it is considered a protected right, when someone legally can't get married it is a violation of their guaranteed rights. It is pretty crazy that this was only a few decades ago, but the battle for marriage rights continues today.
Check out Rebecca Traister's latest: An interview with Amy Poehler and a review of Baby Mama that puts the humorless feminist stereotype to rest. (Finally.)
I have acne, my knees are round, my left breast is bigger than the right one, my abs are not flat (and never will be), but surprisingly enough, I’m OK with all of these things. Two years ago, though, I would not have been. I am a girl who has gone from being obese to weighing practically nothing. While I did not necessarily suffer from anorexia, I dangerously flirted with the disorder. I felt as though my entire body was socially inadequate, so in high school I determined that the only way to be accepted was to be skinny like all of the celebrities that were in my home state of California. In a mere year and a half I lost 70 pounds, at the end of it I looked like a skeleton and was in critical health. After years of therapy and seeing a nutritionist, I am finally at a healthy weight. Now as a college freshman in Texas, I try to promote more realistic expectations of the female form through my work with the campus Women’s Center.
At V to the 10th in New Orleans, we had the privilege of attending a panel regarding body issues that was lead by Rosario Dawson (RENT), Kerry Washington (The Last King Of Scotland), Ali Larter (Heros, Legally Blonde), and Amber Tamblyn (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants).
This is horrible news:
The Triqui indigenous community of San Juan Copala, which declared autonomy on January 21, 2007, has suffered the bitter loss of two young women. Felicitas Martinez, age 20, and Teresa Bautista, age 24, were traveling in a rural part of Oaxaca state on route to the statewide meeting “For the Defense of the Rights of the Peoples of Oaxaca,� when gunmen opened fire on their vehicle late Monday. The gunfire killed the two women, and wounded three others in the vehicle, a man and wife and their three-year-old child, the Oaxaca attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Did you catch that? They were 20 and 24 years old, respectively. For me (someone who works in journalism), this news was a stark reminder that being an independent lefty journalist means very different things and carries very different burdens depending on where you live and the color of your skin. These women were infinitely braver and more dedicated than I will ever be.
The community radio station they worked for is called La Voz que Rompe el Silencio (“The Voice that Breaks the Silence�).
Feminist Peace Network has information on which authorities to contact to demand an investigation into the murders and punishment of those responsible.
I know y'all love Michelle Rodriguez, because Girlfight was named over and over in our favorite feminist movies thread. And I thought she was great in her (all-too-brief) role on Lost. So I wasn't surprised to read her awesome response to repeated prying questions from journalists about whether she's secretly into girls.
She explains: “I picture [the journalists] turning into pigs, slime coming out the side of their mouth, and I picture them jerking off. I don't answer those questions.“I just keep it to myself and it's nobody's business. If I wanna f**k a girl, a boy, a dog, that's my business. That's why there's bathroom doors."
She adds: "What the majority of (people) want to know is what I'm doing with my vagina, and I think that that's sick.
"What do you care who I'm dating? I can tell when somebody just wants to know about sex. And it makes me sick."
She is rad.
Last week the U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted to to rename Squaw Peak in Arizona for Lori Piestewa, the Hopi woman who was killed in combat in Iraq in March 2003. Cecelia notes that because the word "squaw" has long been used to denigrate Native women, the name change to honor Piestewa is especially welcome.
From a Rolling Stone profile of Piestewa:
The attack made Jessica Lynch famous. U.S. Special Forces later plucked her from an Iraqi hospital and rushed her to safety, and the media seized on the daring rescue to create a tale of American heroism and valor. But the real story of what happened in Nasiriyah that day -- and the clear warning it offered of things to come -- involves a different soldier, one who gave her life to protect her friends. Lori Piestewa, born and raised a Hopi on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, became the first American woman to die in the war, and the first Native American woman ever to die in combat on foreign soil. Only twenty-three years old, Piestewa saw herself as a Hopi warrior, part of a centuries-old tradition developed by a people who once resisted an invasion and occupation by the U.S. military -- much as the Iraqis are doing today. She went to war, but she believed above all in peace, in doing no harm to others. "I'm not trying to be a hero," she told a friend just before the invasion. "I just want to get through this crap and go home."
At the V to the 10th in New Orleans, activism is the word of the weekend.
Playwright and founder of V-Day, Eve Ensler, informed us that "Our destiny will not be changed by the people on top." In other words, this weekend was all about the grassroots movement. We can no longer rely on elected officials to eventually come around and see the light on issues that affect women worldwide; we must take back the power, motivate allies to increase our strength in numbers, and develop our own solutions.
Besides visiting the amazing Activist’s Lounge where a ton of feminist and environmental groups were giving out information, we sat in on a number of panels, one being the fantastic discussion "From New Orleans to the World: Women in Conflict Zones."
We followed a line of women (and a few scattered men) into the Superdome early Friday morning. After being thoroughly searched and promising never to turn on our video camera, we were allowed admittance. The entrance was decorated with a selection of feminist art pieces such as poster board sized pages of a graphic novel entitled, “Oh fuck, I’m a Victim.� In it, artist Vicki Rabinowicz depicts a woman who is followed, kidnapped, and raped. In one frame, she is drawn small enough to fit in her attacker’s hand as he masturbates onto her entire body then flushes her down the toilet. At the end of the strip we discover that the victim is the artist and that she drew this on her 28th birthday, tens years after the attack. Not all of the pieces were as jarring though. To the left lay a ball of bras (think office ball of rubber bands) roughly five feet tall. The only thing holding this work together seemed to be the very godforsaken wired hooks of each boulder holder. Along the back wall was a timeline of shirts, bags, posters, and other promo items representing performances from around the world. Near that was an altar with lit candles to honor those who fell to final rest when Katrina hit.
Past the welcoming gallery inside is where we all met. We were an international collection of women and girls. Represented in the audience and on stage were activists from Bosnia, Kenya, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Iceland, Afghanistan, France, Guatemala, The Philippines, Iraq, and displaced Americans from New Orleans.
So I don't know about you, but I am a HUGE fan of the HBO series the Wire. I haven't written about it much because I was watching it mostly in the month that I was not present here due to personal issues. Ironically, the Wire ended up being the reason I had to move out of my apartment because the not-so-well man living below me thought that the Wire was my actual life which was how he justified that I was trying to have him killed. Yes, he thought I was running a drug cartel out of my house and he knew about it and I was therefore trying to have him killed. But I digress.
I have so many favorite Wire characters that it is hard to rank them. But I have to say for those of you who have seen season 4, Felicia Pearson, who plays Snoop is awesome. She is one of the most terrifying characters ever written into television. Interestingly, she is not a trained actor but was discovered by Omar at a bar (you can here about it on fresh air) and was one of the local Baltimorians included in the HBO hit. Somehow my homies at Wiretap were able to get an interview with her which is apparently very hard to do. Check it out here.
Depictions of sexuality and gender are very complicated in this HBO series. From gay gang bangers to lesbian cops you get the full gamut of gender and sexual identities. I think the honesty of Felicia's character and the subtle ways she resembles other women's lives is notable to say the least. Her character is not a common one and therefore I think makes it groundbreaking.
Who is your favorite Wire character? (You can have more than one, hehe).
Last month Parvin Ardalan, a famous Iranian feminist activist, was given the Olaf Palme prize for outstanding achievement. She was however banned from leaving the country to accept the award. Instead she left a pre-recorded message. We are late to this-but enjoy.
Some of those issues sounds familiar don't they?
Wajeha Al-Huwaider, a women's rights activist in Saudi Arabia marked International Women's Day this past weekend by defying the ban on women driving. Bad. Ass.
Sorry I couldn't find a video with English subtitles, but there is some translation of what she's saying here.
A couple of you have asked in comments and emails for some occasional cheer-up posts, to temper all the bad news we've been getting. So here you go...this is my favorite happy-making video. (Yes, I know I've posted it before, but it never gets old to me.)
Juno star and Oscar-nominated actor Ellen Page isn't afraid of using the f-word.
From an interview with The Washington Post: "I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am 'cause it's about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you're working in a patriarchal society when the word feminist has a weird connotation."
And then I swoon.
Thanks to Andrew for the link.
I saw Leslie and the Ly's live tonight. It was amazing. Their rendition of "Midwest Diva" nearly reduced me to tears of joy. Leslie Hall does all Midwest ladies proud. (Especially those of us from Iowa.)
I also nearly passed out upon discovering that Leslie is a fan of Feministing. Swoon!
Leslie and I strike our fiercest "I'm from Iowa, bitch" pose. (Photo by fellow Midwest diva Kay Steiger)
Tori Shoemaker and Cheyenne Byrd, two eighth graders in St. Louis protested their school's abstinence-only education program by wearing shirts to school adorned with condoms, reading "Safe Sex or No Sex." For daring to speak out, they were suspended for two days from school. The superindent said the shirts were inappropriate and a "distraction" at school. Yes, because a "distraction" in the form of free speech is clearly much worse than spreading dangerous misinformation about sex to teens. Uh, wait...
So kudos to Tori and Cheyenne - you two are heroes in our book.
In her Zapotec village in Mexico, women aren't allowed to vote, attend town assemblies, or hold elected office. But Eufrosina Cruz decided to run for mayor anyway.
The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn’t a “citizen� of the town. “That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women,� said Valeriano Lopez, the town’s deputy mayor.Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious, national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government, known as “use and customs,� which were given full legal status in Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping across Latin America.
“For me, it’s more like ‘abuse and customs,�’ Cruz said as she submitted her complaint in December to the National Human Rights Commission. “I am demanding that we, the women of the mountains, have the right to decide our lives, to vote and run for office, because the constitution says we have these rights.�
The "use and customs" law was enacted in 2001 as part of a series of reforms after the Zapatista uprisings. But, especially given the major role Zapatista women played in the revolution, it's important to note that it's not (as the Newsweek headline implies) as if indigenous rights and women's rights are diametrically opposed. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Rebecca Solnit attended this year's encuentro (or "encounter"), where Zapatista women speak about the state of the movement. She quotes one woman as saying:
This slipped passed us, but last week Cambridge, MA voted in it's first black lesbian mayor, making her the first in the country.
The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has made history after the city council chose Denise Simmons to serve as the first black lesbian mayor in America.Gay political activists in the US praised Ms Simmons' selection by her fellow city councillors. Her predecessor, Ken Reeves, was also gay and black.
The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which campaigns to increase the number of LGBT elected officials, said: "We are enormously proud of Mayor Simmons. Like Mayor Ken Reeves before her, she is among our community's trailblazers. Today is a day to celebrate another broken glass ceiling."
Ms Simmons has served on the city council since 2001.
I originally read this on Perez Hilton! *ducks*
Thanks to Jessamyn for the link.
While everyone is asking why it took so long for Jodie Foster to come out of the closet (maybe because it's none of our damn business), it's great to see she's gone public regardless.
I also want to take this opportunity to give Foster props for playing such strong feminist characters in her movies (The Accused, Panic Room, and her most recent The Brave One). What's your favorite Jodie Foster flick? (I think mine is Contact.)
Check out the fabulous Amanda Marcotte's interview with the also fabulous Miriam Pérez, doula, writer, blogger and Senior Advocacy Associate of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. And the rest of Amanda's podcast rocks too (as always).
Within the first time in the comic book character's 66-year history, a woman is serving as an "ongoing writer" for Wonder Woman, reports the New York Times.
With issue No. 14 hitting the stores a couple of weeks ago, Gail Simone began her new title. Her thoughts on the character:
“She’s just the best kind of person. . . She was a princess who didn’t need someone to rescue her. I grew up in an era — and a family — where women’s rights were very important, and the guys didn’t tend to stick around too long. She was an amazing role model.�
Awesome.
Aretha and Annie are here. This has got to be within the top three feminist music videos of all time.
Thanks to Michael.
Every time I read about feminist activism in India I can't help but start to get really excited and want to jump up and down and point and say, loooook, look what they are doing! But you can't really help it when a group of women get together in pink saris, call themselves a gang and fight against injustices done to their communities.
Meet the Gulabi gang, via BBC.
The pink women of Banda shun political parties and NGOs because, in the words of their feisty leader, Sampat Pal Devi, "they are always looking for kickbacks when they offer to fund us".Two years after they gave themselves a name and an attire, the pink women have thrashed men who have abandoned or beaten their wives and unearthed corruption in the distribution of food grains for the poor.
They have also stormed a police station and thrashed a policeman after they took in an untouchable man and refused to register a case.
Now I will say the story itself is alright, but it is always a little annoying when reporters put in their sexist, infantilizing two cents. I mean I was willing to look over the fact that they called the leader "feisty." When are aggressive men ever called feisty? But then to further qualify this tone, he goes on.
The pink sorority is not exactly a group of male-bashing feminists - they claim they have returned 11 girls who were thrown out of their homes to their spouses because "women need men to live with".That is also why men like Jai Prakash Shivhari join the "gulabi" gang and talk with remarkable alacrity about child marriages, dowry deaths, depleting water resources, farm subsidies, and how funds are being stolen in government works.
Why are women that work for the rights of other women labeled as potentially male bashing? I am going to assume as this is written in the Indian and British media that this description is greatly influenced by Western feminisms bad PR that made it overseas. Either way, amazing story.
Thanks to Katherine for the link.
OK back to my male bashing. . .
but, I have always thought nuns were really cool, to be honest. I mean something appeals to me about a simple life away from the consumer marketing of mainstream culture and the woes of relationships with men. But the whole, anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-gay, dogmatism kinda makes it a bad choice for anything other than sociological study on how religions make some people act crazy.
But this story does stick out to me, because it transcends some of the awful, bad, terrible communications strategy/PR of the Catholic church and gives us a sense of something real.
The real geekery of a nun.
Her cell phone has a custom ring tone. She frequents the Internet's most popular social networking sites. She gets jittery when she can't check her e-mail or post on her blog. She communicates with her family mostly by AOL instant messenger. And she's a 50-year-old nun.Sister Anne Flanagan has been a Daughter of St. Paul for almost 30 years, and lives with five other nuns in a convent upstairs from a Catholic bookstore near Chicago's Magnificent Mile. She teaches Bible study classes, edits Catholic books and magazines and roams the Internet looking for cool technology, although, she wryly notes, "a vow of poverty tends to limit one's access."
A nun excited about Wired. C'mon, that is pretty cute. The interview is worth a read, she talks about online prayer and mobilizing environmentalism through religion.
Courtesy of Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library
In lieu of an interview this Saturday, I thought we could use this weekend's post to give shout outs to bad-ass women you would like me to interview. Let's pay tribute!
Please include their full name, their website if they have one, why they kick ass, and why you find them so inspiring, and I'll get working on interviewing them.
Holla!
Women fighting on the front line in defense of Kurdistan play an important and vital role in the movement. They are fighting for the rights of Kurd women and Kurdish autonomy.
The women are mostly former Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters who say that they now pursue more of an educational and co-ordinating role in support of Kurdish women’s rights. Airstrikes have become a regular hazard as tensions rise between their outlawed organisation and the Turkish Government.Treated as equals by their male counterparts on the battlefield as well as in the political arena, women fighters are trained to use Kalashnikovs, grenades and other weapons before being dispatched in mixed and single-sex units.
The best women fighters are also able to climb up the ranks to positions of command, with the “self-defence� armed wing of the PKK operating an obligatory 40 per cent female quota.
A look at many of the revolutionary struggles through out history, women are often asked to join the frontlines to fight for their countries. Most wars have allowed women to leave traditional gender roles. But when the war is over, it is all "get back in the kitchen!" So I am apprehensive when women die for the cause, as often the cause doesn't end up serving them.
At first the Turkish Army did not take the women rebels, who have been part of the PKK’s armed struggle since it was begun in 1984, seriously.“Then they realised that the women are as tough if not tougher than the men,� said Ms Surbuz, an attractive woman with short, bobbed, brown hair.
“After this the soldiers stopped distinguishing between the male and the female fighters. I think they are now more afraid of the women because the women are more disciplined and they will never surrender.�
“We will either kill or be killed,� she added. “For me it is freedom, success or death. It is simple.�
I don't know. Amazing on one level yes. But sacrificing so many bodies for the nation and female bodies at that, I have issues with that. This battle has been fought for a long time. Will Kurdistan be a feminist state?
via TimesOnline.
I always like interviews with bloggers, because it helps to debunk some of the myths (like we get paid, LOLZZZ) or that we believe that the revolution will be internetized. I especially like interviews with the bloggers I read on the regs. So go check out this interview with Pam from Pandagon and Pam's House Blend. She breaks down some of the myths of political blogostopia. (Wow, I just made up a lot of words.)
She's only the 11th female Nobel Laureate in Literature ever. My colleague Phoebe, who's a serious Lessing fangirl, has more:
She's best know for The Golden Notebook which is usually hailed as a feminist text, but is just as bold an experiment in literary form. (Side note, check out this audio snippet of her reading from the book.) I highly recommend her Children of Violence series, which has some of my favorite writing about women struggling to maintain identity within political movements.
Remember the judge in Nebraska who banned the word "rape" at a rape trial? (Cough, asshole, cough.) Remember the bad-ass woman who refused his order? Well, she's suing.
The accuser in a sexual assault case is suing a judge because he barred the word "rape" and other words from the trial.The federal court complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, Neb., claims Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront violated the accuser's First Amendment right to free speech by barring her from saying words including "rape," "victim" and "assailant" during the trial of Pamir Safi.
Good for her, cause that was some bullshit. By the way, there have been two mistrials in this case because of the controversy over the language ban. Prosecutors are planning on seeking a third trial.
A Wrinkle in Time was a huge favorite of mine. I fucking loved Meg. She was smart, but reassuringly imperfect. In 4th or 5th grade my class took a trip to New York to meet her. It was great. Except a certain boy I had a crush on accidentally stabbed me with a pencil. You can still see the scar on my palm. That part sucked.
Anyway, great series of books. Very sad news.
This interview in Pitchfork with the fabulous, Sri Lankan via GB, M.I.A. bangs out just what she thinks is wrong with the way that she is portrayed in the US media. That perhaps the US media focuses on the "who" is behind the production and lyrical genius of M. I. A., as opposed to recognizing that she is responsible for her own creativity.
M.I.A.: Yesterday I read like five magazines in the airplane-- it was a nine hour flight-- and three out of five magazines said "Diplo: the mastermind behind M.I.A.'s politics!" And I was wondering, does that stem from [Pitchfork]? Because I find it really bonkers.Pitchfork: Well, it's hard to say where it originated. We certainly have made reference to Diplo playing a part on your records, but it seems like everyone plays that up.
M.I.A.: If you read the credits, he sent me a loop for "Bucky Done Gun", and I made a song in London, and it became "Bucky Done Gun". But that was the only song he was actually involved in on Arular. So the whole time I've had immigration problems and not been able to get in the country, what I am or what I do has got a life of its own, and is becoming less and less to do with me. And I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can't have any ideas on my own because I'm a female or that people from undeveloped countries can't have ideas of their own unless it's backed up by someone who's blond-haired and blue-eyed. After the first time it's cool, the second time it's cool, but after like the third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it's an issue that we need to talk about, maybe that's something important, you know.
She is awesome. However, in response to Diplo not helping her mix the album, well I heard maybe that is not true, but who knows.
Hotel mistakes Nobel laureate for bag lady
She was wearing a Mayan dress, the traditional attire of indigenous people in central America, and the hotel's response was also traditional: throw her out.
The woman was Rigoberta Menchu Tum, who was asked in an interview before receiving her Nobel Peace Prize in 1992,
Q: Do you personally feel the effects of racism?A: Definitely. During the last summit in San Jose in Portugal, with all the Central American Presidents present, the Guatemalan delegation threatened to leave the summit if I entered the main session to present a document on the development of Guatemala.
It was inconceivable to them that an indigenous woman, self taught, born to a humble family in the mountains, who ate roots and leaves, didn't go to school and who has no professional title would appear there. It was the greatest shame. The racists won't stand for the presence of a person who is not of their race and convictions.
She also said, in the same interview, "We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism."
It is always nice to be reminded that when women suggest they need more rights they are protested, slapped, exiled and/or censored. Bangladeshi poet, author, feminist and activist Taslima Nasrin was barraged by protesters, at a book reading in South India, accusing her of suggesting changes to the Quran.
Dozens of Muslim protesters led by three lawmakers attacked an exiled Bangladeshi writer at the release of her book in southern India on Thursday, calling her “anti-Islam,� and telling her to go back to her country.About 100 people burst into the Press Club in Hyderabad, shouting insults at Taslima Nasrin and ransacking the place, throwing chairs in the air and overturning tables.
Organizers pushed them back, and Nasrin escaped unhurt. In the melee, one of the protesters slapped her, witnesses said.
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman in 1944, refused to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus headed to Baltimore. She was arrested and jailed for her bold move, but her contributions resonated. Kirkaldy died last week.
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman whose refusal in 1944 to give up her seat to a white passenger is seen as a precursor to the US civil rights movement, has died at the age of 90, reports said Monday.Kirkaldy's determination, more than a decade before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus to allow a white person to sit down, led to her arrest and incarceration and eventually to the Supreme Court, which said the law used against her was unconstitutional.
Kirkaldy, nee Morgan, was taking a Greyhound bus from her mother's home in the state of Virginia to Baltimore in neighboring Maryland.
A few miles after she boarded, several white passengers got on, and Morgan and another black passenger were ordered by the driver to move to the back of the bus.
When they refused, the driver stopped the bus and called law enforcement officials, who showed up with an arrest warrant.
What amazes me about this story is that 1944 was not that long ago. My father was born in 1942, and my best friend's father who fought in the Korean war, had to sit on the back of the bus. And while the SCOTUS relies on the belief that racism is over and all that was done to people of color in this country has in some way been rectified, those of us that can see get to sit with the bitter reality that it wasn't that long ago, and not much has really changed.
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy was truly a hero.
via Rawstory and NYTimes.
These ladies are busy! With the first issue just released and second issue coming soon, the new feminist magazine make/shift is seeking new submissions for their third (summer/spring 2008) issue. So if you're a writer, photographer, poet, artist or...well just check out the call for submissions and join the feminist bad-assery.
Former Feministe blogger and dear friend Zuzu now has her very own blog, Kindly Póg Mo Thóin.
Congratulations, Zuzu!
I am shamefully late on writing about this and I meant to write about this two weeks ago when the Wimbledom actually ended, but, ey, better late than never. I will be honest I don't know much about sports, but I always watch Serena and Venus Williams play tennis. First of all, because of how they have made history by overcoming serious odds and making it in a sport that has been historically dominated by white people. Also because of the nasty way that the media has covered them in the past and how they may disappear, but always come back, defy the media and whooop some butt. This clip of Serena at Wimbledon still has me tearing. I just had to share.
Serena unfortunately lost in the quarter final. Venus, on the other hand, ended up winning the tournament as the lowest ranked player to ever win Wimbledon.
Seriously, inspiring.
This is what bad-ass woman of the day, Renuka Chowdhury, Minister of Women and Child Development, told millions of Indians on Monday. One of the ways that women in India are getting infected with HIV is from having unprotected sex with their husbands. Husbands who are contracting the disease elsewhere.
"You cannot trust men or your husbands, with apologies to the men present here," Chowdhury told the inaugural meeting of the National Women Forum of Indian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (INP+), attended by a few men."If you believe that men will be careful, then you can forget about protecting yourself."
India has around 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS -- the world's third highest caseload after South Africa and Nigeria -- with about 40 percent of those infected being women.
India just launched a 28.5 million dollar campaign to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS with a heavy focus on condom usage. For states that are resisting, Chowdhury says it is a hypocrisy for the people to not talk about sex when the population is so high and AIDS/HIV are spreading at such a fast rate.
She said public figures and leaders should speak the language of the people so that they could clearly understand health issues, particularly HIV/AIDS. "We have a population of one billion and we don't want to talk about sex. We have to be vocal on such issues. If we don't then it will affect the generations to come," she said. Chowdhury said her ministry would be setting up hospices for HIV positive women abandoned by their families through the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh fund.
To be real though, if my man is having sex with other women and I don't know if they are having protected sex or not, that relationship would probably be over. I am thinking a lot of these women are either unaware that their husbands are cheating or they are not consenting to the sex in the first place.
via Reuters and Times of India.
In an interview with Parade magazine Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, says that she's a feminist. Nice.
“There are too many stupid girls in the media,� Watson observes, her dark eyes lighting up. “Hermione’s not scared to be clever. I think sometimes really smart girls dumb themselves down a bit, and that’s bad.� Watson admits that there is quite a lot of herself in the confident and bookish Hermione. “I’m a bit of a feminist,� she proclaims. “I’m very competitive and challenging.� Though she resented it at first, Watson has come to appreciate the emphasis on Hermione’s brains rather than her appearance. “When I was 9 or 10, I would get really upset when they tried to make me look geeky, but now I absolutely love it. I find it’s so much pressure to be beautiful. Hermione doesn’t care what she looks like."
Though you have to love how Watson's comment about the way young women are portrayed in the media gets turned into this headline at People: Emma Watson: 'There Are Too Many Stupid Girls'
Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco presented a letter to President Bush signed by 50 presidential scholars who were visiting the White House urging him to "stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants."
Amazing.
Via Alternet. (Thanks to Melissa for the link!)
Katha Pollitt takes on Knocked Up [SPOILER ALERT] on her new blog (yay!), And Another Thing.
One comment: I'm sorry, but am I the only person in the world who thinks Seth Rogen is frigging adorable?
Watch as she gives Ann Coulter a good spanking. Oh, and this. Bad-ass indeed.
Check out this interview with the fearless and awe-inspiring activist Malalai Joya. As a vocal advocate for women's rights in Afghanistan, she was elected to parliament, only to be ousted last month after criticizing the government.
Joya calls her suspension "an illegal act" and doesn't regret her harsh words. "I stress that most of these parliament members are worse than an animal stable, because they massacred 65,000 innocent people and [committed] lots of violence against women," she says, referring to fighting that took place in Kabul in the 1990s when ethnic militias battled for control, killing, maiming and raping civilians in the process. Several of those responsible for the violence now hold high-level posts in Hamid Karzai's government.Joya admits, "it's more risky than ever" for her to return -- one parliament member said he would put a bomb on himself and kill her, she alleges. After at least four assassination attempts, other documented incidents involving threats of rape, murder and water bottles being thrown at her within the Parliament, Joya vows to return.
"Even with these risks that I face -- for example, I'm going outside wearing a burqa, I must have bodyguards, I'm changing houses, I can't live with my family -- but just because of that, I want to go back to this warlord-ism, druglord-ism Parliament to tear their masks off in front of them in their own house, because nobody dares to."
For more on the film about Joya, Enemies of Happiness, click here.
In a major demonstration in Toronto this weekend, hundreds of women occupied an abandoned building to demand more affordable housing. They called on the government to raise social assistance, revamp national housing policies, and use some of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's $5 billion in reserve funds to renovate deteriorating buildings and create more livable space -- particularly for women, who are statistically more likely to be hungry and homeless. Not only did the women garner media attention, their actions were cited in a speech in the House of Commons. Awesome.
Check out the video here.
It's taken me forever to get around to posting this, but Beth Ditto's bare-it-all cover of British music mag NME has got everyone talking.
My initial reaction? YES! She looks fabulous. It's so incredible to see a mainstream music magazine put a sexy, anti-sizist, feminist artist on the cover, who stands apart from your typically emaciated covergirl and presents an entirely different beauty standard. Size-positivity! Armpit hair! It's as if NME declared May "Love Your Body Month." Ditto has long been an ambassador for all the girls who don't fit the media construct of "perfect female form" -- she's also posed nude for the Sunday Times of London and is fond of stripping down during her live shows.
But I've got a few reservations, too. I'm not generally in favor of serious female musicians having to get naked in order to make it onto the cover of a mainstream magazine. It's worth noting that NME is not Maxim. It's not even comparable to Rolling Stone in terms of fleshy photos. It does not regularly publish cover shots of any naked woman. (I wonder if they considered shooting Ditto with her clothes on?) This post speculates that NME would have come in for more criticism if it had published a naked cover photo of a thinner woman, possibly facing accusations that it was turning into a lad mag when it supposedly focuses on music. But because Ditto does not have the body of a conventional, skeletal cover model, NME was shielded from this argument. (Thoughts?)
Ditto has had some interesting interactions with super-skinny stars who we typically see on magazine covers. Back in February, Ditto complained that she was up against Kate Moss for the "Sexiest Woman" title at the NME Awards, saying "I don't even know why she's here. Just because she's sleeping with a singer and sings a few backing vocals she thinks she's it." But after a serious heart-to-heart, now Ditto and Moss are apparently best pals. Ditto said recently:
"Kate is amazing. I spent one night talking to her and she just said the most amazing things about bodies," explained Ditto. At first I didn't think I was going to like her, but she just turned up to one of our shows and said, 'Do you know what I hate Beth? I hate it when people tell my big girlfriends, 'You have a beautiful face...' I mean, that's a really radical concept."
Ditto was also praised by Keira Knightly in a recent issue of In Touch, where Knightly said, "Oh my god, that woman is so sexy. She has the most amazing body." Check out the photo juxtaposition that accompanies the quote. It's that image that convinces me to quit fretting and celebrate the nekkid NME cover. Her cover photo is transgressive. It's groundbreaking. And putting on the newsstands an alternate version of what is normally presented as SEXY is incredibly important. So kudos to NME. And Ditto rocks.
(Thanks to Becky for the link, long ago.)
Check out this NY Times piece on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and how she's using her current Supreme Court term to speak up. Literally.
In both the recent federal abortion ban case and this week's discrimination ruling, Justice Ginsburg read dissents from the bench:
But the words were clearly her own, and they were both passionate and pointed. In the abortion case, in which the court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act seven years after having struck down a similar state law, she noted that the court was now “differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation.� In the latest case, she summoned Congress to overturn what she called the majority’s “parsimonious reading� of the federal law against discrimination in the workplace....The oral dissent has not been, until now, Justice Ginsburg’s style. She has gone years without delivering one, and never before in her 15 years on the court has she delivered two in one term. In her past dissents, both oral and written, she has been reluctant to breach the court’s collegial norms. “What she is saying is that this is not law, it’s politics,� Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor, said of Justice Ginsburg’s comment linking the outcome in the abortion case to the fact of the court’s changed membership. “She is accusing the other side of making political claims, not legal claims.�
Gee, I wonder why.
A friend of Ginsburg's, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, says "shehas always been regarded as sort of a white-glove person, and she’s achieved a lot that way...Now she is seeing that basic issues she’s fought so hard for are in jeopardy, and she is less bound by what have been the conventions of the court.� Thank goodness. Now let's just hope people will listen.
Along with Ann's post of the Salon article about Michelle Obama, a post by Malena at Racewire also has some really good analysis.
She says:
Everybody's been talking about Michelle Obama these days.Since she announced her decision to leave her high-ranked job at the University of Chicago hospitals to join Barack Obama on the campaign, she's had more time to make speeches and do interviews.
In the process, top journalists continue asking her to explain what it means for her husband Barack Obama to be a Black man running for presidency.
And every time, Mrs. Obama slam dunks the answer and offers stronger race analysis than Mr. Barack. Overall, she uses less political correctness to interrogate the issues. And I love her for it. She ought to be campaigning for her own presidency.
Take this February video for example. When asked if she's concerned about Obama being assassinated because of his race and position, Mrs. Obama said: "as a Black man, he could get shot at a gas station.
Along with this little sound byte:
Read more at Racewire. Thanks to Andre for the heads up.
Thoughts?
From WIMN's Voices: A Group Blog on Women Media and News written by, Sonali Kolhatkar:
Twenty eight year old intrepid Afghan MP, Malalai Joya, has just been suspended from Parliament for comparing warlords in power to donkeys. Joya is the youngest and most outspoken member of Parliament and has survived 4 assassination attempts for denouncing warlords, many of whom were funded at various times by the US government in the fight against the Soviets (1980s) and the Taliban (post-9-11).
This story is amazing. Read more here.
A big congratulations to Feministing friend Nancy Goldstein who, along with her wife, was featured in a NY Times article today about same-sex couples in New York and their marriage rights...
The two women have a pleasant Park Slope apartment, an excitable dog named Juno and a marriage certificate signed by the town clerk of Provincetown, Mass. Ms. [Nancy] Goldstein, 45, and Ms. [Joan] Hilty, 40, were two of the gay and lesbian New Yorkers who rushed to cities and towns in Massachusetts to get married in May 2004, after it became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriages.In the three years since then, the validity of their marriage certificate has been something of a question mark. But Ms. Goldstein and Ms. Hilty learned last week that a judge had ruled that same-sex couples from New York who married in Massachusetts from May 2004 to July 2006 have a legally recognized marriage.
“I got married,� said Ms. Goldstein, a director of an advocacy group for pregnant women. “I did not get civil-unioned. I got married.�
Damn straight (heh) you did. Now the only question is whether or not Nancy will forget all the little people now she's all famous.
While I was trying to find a quote on Wikipedia (don't ask, I'm obsessive), I stumbled upon this page for Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris. She was the first woman ever ordained as a bishop in the United States Episcopal Church. And, she's been a close friend of my family for as long as I can remember. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good bio of her. They talk about her road to election as a bishop in 1989. I haven't seen her for a long time, but when I think about the women that inspire me, she's on the list. One of the things I love is that while I can't relate to her deeply held religious beliefs, she has (like I try to) always fought for the rights of women in her world. Sadly, of course, the Episcopal Church hasn't gotten past the fighting that occurred when she was ordained. In fact, things have gotten much worse.
I also found this great copy of a sermon she gave on the 25th anniversary of the first ordination of women in the priesthood in the Episcopal church. (Incidentally, the sermon was delivered at the church where I was baptized, which didn't turn out so well, but it's still a great place) Check it out, the whole thing is awesome.
Now I want to try to speak a little truth here tonight. And I am going to be brief and, as often accused, I am going to be blunt. I do, however, have to choose my words very carefully in that I not only tend to be quoted, I frequently tend to get misquoted. I don't mind the former, in context - it's the latter that ticks me off.To begin with, last year's decennial gathering of apostolic eagles - which included its share of turkeys - the Lambeth Conference, brought a defining melding of these two questions.
Despite the development of a critical mass of ordained women, including eleven bishops, at Lambeth we were left wondering what had happened to the dream of a kinder, gentler church. The conference resolution concerning ordination of women and its odious amendment - authored by two women bishops in concert with some conservative male bishops - totally ignored any positive impact the church has experienced through ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate over the past 25 years. It was a stunning denigration of the more than 6000 women in Orders from Utah to Uganda, to say nothing of those who have yet to respond to God's call. Rather, having tasted blood with the much amended resolution on human sexuality, the princes of the church moved in for the kill on the people they really hold in low esteem - WOMEN.
What a gift it was to have someone like her in my life. She's just one of the many people from my childhood that lead me to the feminism. And now that I'm thinking about it I feel like I need to look her up for a talk.
P.S. Writing this without cursing was tough, but I figured I owe it to Barbara. Not that she would really mind. I remember the smoking, drinking and trips to Atlantic City.
Our very own Jessica Valenti, founder and editor of Feministing.com, has published her first book Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters; released late April 2007. The book has since sparked discussions across the political spectrum.
Jessica has a Master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University. In addition to founding Feministing.com, Jessica is a co-founder of the REAL hot 100, a counter campaign to Maxim magazine's Hot 100, that instead highlights the important work young women are doing across the country. She has worked with such organizations as NARAL Pro-Choice America, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), Planned Parenthood and the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). Her writing has appeared in Ms. magazine, Salon, The Guardian (UK), Bitch, Alternet, The Scholar & Feminist and Guernica.
Here's Jessica...
The following is from a very good friend of mine, Jennifer Conrow, who works at a clinic that provides abortions. I'm hoping this post will just be a preview of this important, and usually missing perspective. I can't speak to whether or not this Jen is currently hungover.
In the wake of the most recent anti-choice ambush of Planned Parenthood, I wanted to take a moment to introduce everyone to the world of independent abortion provision and the philosophy of care that most independent abortion providers strive for. This philosophy often gets lost in all of the hullabaloo surrounding the Big Scary Abortion Debate because most independent providers don’t have the money or time to launch a high profile campaign about the level of care provided within our walls. Our priority is helping the women (and their families) who seek our care while simultaneously trying to navigate the murky waters of public policy and ensuring the safety of our patients as they wade through protesters and have surgery. We are so often put on the defensive, waging never ending legal battles that we rarely have the opportunity to talk about how we care for patients.
My facility is one of only two dedicated abortion providers in my state that provides terminations to 24 weeks and 6 days in a pregnancy (yes, that’s 6 months; a fact that can sometimes challenge even the most pro-choice among us and is not lost on the small percentage of women who have terminations at that stage in pregnancy). What differentiates us from the other provider is our dedication to a holistic approach to abortion care. In our world abortion is not just about the physical removal of a pregnancy from the body, but it’s about the heart and emotional well being of our patients as well.
From left to right: Make/shift founders Jessica Hoffmann, Stephanie Abraham and Daria Yudacufski. Photo by Christopher Bazin.
The first issue of Make/shift magazine is now out and about. Founded and created by Jessica Hoffman, Stephanie Abraham and Daria Yudacufski, make/shift creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art.
Based in Venice, California, make/shift is produced by an editorial collective that is committed to anti-racist, transnational, and queer perspectives. According to the magazine's mission statement, "We know there’s exciting work being done in various spaces and forms by people seriously and playfully resisting and creating alternatives to systematic oppression. Make/shift exists to represent, participate in, critique, provoke, and inspire more of that good work."
The second issue of make/shift is in the works and will be released this fall. Here's Jessica, Stephanie and Daria...
Barbara Carrellas is an author, sex educator, and theater artist. Her most recent books are Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century and Luxurious Loving: Tantric Inspirations for Passion and Pleasure. She conducts Urban Tantra workshops throughout New York City and is the co-founder of Erotic Awakening, a groundbreaking series of workshops which toured the United States and Australia. Believe me, her list of amazing accomplishments goes on and on.
Barbara is currently directing her partner Kate Bornstein in Kate’s new solo show, “Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger.� They also frequently perform and tour their sex positive, gender-bending lecture/performance piece, “Too Tall Blondes Do Sex, Death & Gender.� Barbara is also the Dean of Femmenergy at Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want To Be Girls, a crossdressing academy.
I corresponded with Barbara over email on her new book Urban Tantra. Here’s Barbara…
Wow. For once a newspaper has selected a truly awesome women's advice columnist: Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the Gossip, a fashion icon, and a thoroughly fab, fat, feminist lesbian. She will be answering questions in a new column, "What Would Beth Ditto Do?", in the Guardian's G2 on Fridays.
Of her new gig, she writes:
There have been a lot of times in my life when I wished that someone was around to be really honest with me, to say, "What the fuck are you doing?" Realistically it's often easier if that doesn't come from your friends, but from someone at a distance. That's why I'm so excited about starting this column in G2, addressing your questions and dilemmas. I'd love to be able to help convince people to accept themselves and to let go of what other people think of them - I think that's one of the most important things you can do. [...]I didn't read a lot of teenage advice columns when I was growing up, partly because I couldn't relate to them. I would read them and think: "I don't have trouble with boyfriends - I'm scared that my mom can't pay the rent." I was brought up by a single mom in a poor town in Arkansas and while some aspects of smalltown life were really positive - like the fact that everyone there is really sweet and hospitable - there is also this close-minded mentality, and that naturally made me want to rebel.
So. Awesome. In her column last week, Ditto tackled how to come out to your co-workers.
Thanks to Becky for the link.
Buthayna Nasser is a Saudi newscaster, and goddamn she is awesome. Not to mention brave.
Thanks to Sand gets in my eyes for the link!
