August 2008 Archives

I do not need to take women's studies or read women's history, for it has been written in the lives of the women I know.

And oh, what a world.

This world where I am relieved to have experienced sexual harassment? Why am I relieved? Because I am not:

The girl, my friend, who struggled with anorexia.
The girl, my mom, ashamed, traded her A cups for C's
my mom, abused.
The girl, my grandma, forced into housewifery.
The girl, my friend, assaulted at the bus stop.
The girl, my friend, molested by her step father.
The girl, my friend, date raped by a "friend".
The girls, my friends, and countless others.

A world where the worst thing to happen to me as a woman is just a little harassment?

What in the world?

So I pick up the books anyways, out of solidarity, hope and peace of mind

I note that a dichotomy between "feminist" and "woman" has taken a form that is distinctly not to the feminist advantage.

This was made as clear by Palin for American feminism as it was done by Thatcher for British. In both cases women ascended to the highest eschalons of a reactionary party, with almost no celebration from the feminist movement that had longed to see exactly that.

'Lo there. I'm a long-time reader, first-time poster, so bear with me.

So when did you first get into feminism? I remember identifying myself as a feminist after reading a book called Girl Talk , which was basically Feminism 101 for kids, when I was around nine years old. I'd be interested to hear your stories about how you got into feminism.

I am sick of reading and hearing how easy divorce and premarital sex are breaking up society. I'm sick of being told that marriage, tradition and the nuclear family are a reliable formula for happiness and serving society, and how everything else is somehow inferior. You know why? Because I've grown up with the whole load: traditional nuclear family, working father, housewife mother, blahblahblah, and it's not all that.

The above might seem like I'm very naive, like I feel I've been duped by fairytales or something. That's not the case at all. Nor is it the case that I have an awful family. We're not bad. We're fine. We have our moments where we make a great team. But they are also the reason that I look to the modern way of doing things, the shedding of tradition, and am not scared at all. Because I have seen the other side of the situation. I have seen what it is like when two people who fell out of love twenty years ago remain married because it's 'proper', because they feel like they have no choice and they don't want to contribute to the apparently unfortunate epidemic of 'failed' marriages in society.

This November, Coloradans will vote on Amendment 48, an initiative that would amend our state constitution to define “person” and grant constitutional rights from the “moment of fertilization.”

But the "moment of fertilization" is not a medically accepted definition of pregnancy. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), pregnancy begins when a fertilized egg implants in a woman's uterus.

The ACOG also reports that between one third and one half of all fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus. There is no medical test available to determine the "moment of fertilization" and many of these eggs simply metabolize back into the body or are passed during a woman's monthly menstrual period. Amendment 48 would define even those eggs as "persons," inviting government intrusion into our most private spaces.

The proponents of Colorado's Amendment 48, a group ironically named Colorado for Equal Rights, want Coloradans to believe that 48 would be a "simple" constitutional change and that it would be up to the courts to determine how it would be interpreted. They are right that courts would be required to re-interpret every single law dealing with "persons"--which makes it anything but simple. Literally thousands of laws would be affected, from when property rights are granted, to inheritance rights, to access to the courts.

I understand that many Coloradans are morally conflicted about abortion rights who may be inclined to vote yes on this measure because it would restrict access to abortions. But Amendment 48 is not a measure that can be easily squeezed into this over-simplified "pro-choice" or "pro-life" debate. I urge these voters to take a closer look at Amendment 48 and to understand that it would not only ban all abortions in every instance--even in the cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman is at risk--but would also threaten stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, common hormonal birth control methods (like the Pill), and access to emergency contraception for rape and incest victims.

My family is in the midst of wedding fever and one thing I am sick of hearing about weddings is women who 'get to be a princess for a day'. I'm sick of the whole princess thing full stop, it drives me mad. From little girls being marketed crap to grown women being marketed crap. Yet it's not the consumerist crap that bothers me so much it's the ideas behind this princess bullshit.

Why oh WHY is being a princess seen as something we should aspire to? Something that every girl and woman wants?

Why would I want to be someone who's elevated to a position of unfair privilege based only upon an accident of birth or marriage?

Why would I want to be judged upon my looks, my social ranking, who I'm married to and have my person achievements overlooked and ignored?

Why would I want to buy into some backwards misogynistic ideal that portrays women as docile, subservient, there to look pretty and shut up while the men do the important stuff?

My Sister Friends' House (Mita Maske Ti Ki), a women's shelter for victims of domestic violence in South Dakota has lost its government funding and needs to raise $11,000 by today to keep from closing. Their long term goal is $35,000 to cover three months past September.

They have filed for grants and are waiting to see if those to come through, but it seems as if they may not last through that.

From their blog:

Mita Maske Ti Ki has been helping women and children escape from Domestic Violence and sexual assault in Sioux Falls and neighboring communities since 2000. Their clientele has been primarily Native American, up to 85% of the women they see identify as Native American. They have operated under the auspices of other Domestic Violence prevention programs... the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assualt (SDCADVSA) and more recently, Project Safe. However, the grants used by these organizations to fund Mita Maske Ti Ki have run out and, like so many social services in this day and age, have not been renewed.

It's not like these organizations don't want to fund Mita Maske Ti Ki - Chris Jongelingwith the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (SDCADVSA) emailed me today to let me know:

Mita Maske Ti Ki (My Sister's Friend House) ihas fulfilled a burgeoning need in Sioux Falls. Many Native Americans in South Dakota do not live on reservations, and many women who have experienced domestic violence move to Sioux Falls because of its larger housing and job market...

...This program is not supported by State funding because there are so many programs and so little money that helping Mita would constitute a reduction in funding for other domestic violence programs. Mita was funded by a private Bush grant for several years, and when that private funding ran out there was a federal grant available to keep it afloat for one more year.

To donate and find out more about the situation, you can visit their blog. Video after the jump...

I'm 13 and proud to say that I'm a feminist! But the downside of being a 13 year old feminist is that we are the minority. My eyes were opened to this when the other day in my English class we were discussing a poet who happened to be a feminist. After this was mention about 4 girls in my class all asked, "what's a feminist?!" after our teacher explained this and I shared with them that I considered myself a feminist and a friend of mine did the same (I was unaware that she was a feminist) the girls started exclaiming, "KARIS! Are you one?! (a feminist)" and the girls went back to saying things like, "I really don't get why they care" I then had a bit of a rant and I think you now get the picture.

My Point is; why are so many girls unaware of what feminism is? Why don't they care about their rights or how the women before us fought for the rights we have now? I actually find it quite sick that their parents haven't educated them about this, I'm not saying that they should be feminists, just aware of their past and their rights and how girls and women all of over the world are still fighting for equal rights. 2000 years worth of fighting and we still don't have them. I just wish there was a way I could help, and I think making myself heard in the feminist community could be the first step.

So I was bored since I'm in my dorm and not at home on this fine Labor Day weekend, and decided to check out the links from various Feministing blogs. And then came across this lovely gem after taking a link to the lovely Loose...erm I mean Luce Ladies.

On the whole man-hating thing, I guess they missed the one where the woman comes to love her vagina after the man tells her it's beautiful.  I guess eating out put their brains into overload. No honor in mouth-to-genetalia pleasures.

Ultimate irony: I found this while wearing my V-Day shirt.

I am wondering how more hypocritical McCain can get. Since he doesn't support equal pay for equal work, maybe that's why he picked a woman to be his potential VP. I mean, he can offer her less money for the job than Romney with a sound conscious. Further, McCain doesn't even have a section on women's issues on his website. Barack Obama's is here: http://my.barackobama.com/ page/content/womenissues

Obviously McCain thinks women are so stupid that we're now going to vote for him even though he and his running mate have very anti-woman policies. The audacity of this candidate is not surprising. He ditched his first wife, who had a horrible car wreck that left her disfigured, even though she stood by him during his years as a POW because he wanted to play around. Then he finally married into money, which enabled him to rise to the power he has today because of her family's connections with the Reagan's.
Well all if this pandering doesn't fool this woman.

Roaxana Prunty
Texas Young Democrats
Women's Caucus Chair

I came to the town I went to high school in to mobile microblog the RNC, but it got a little crazier than I expected, much faster than anyone predicted. Follow me on Twitter for regular updates, or check codepink4peace.org/blog for photos and more--assuming I'm able to stay on top of these stories.

What exactly does it take to get whistle-blower and former FBI agent Anne O'Hare McCormick, retired Army Colonel Ann Wright, and a roomful of dirty anarchists together in an unkempt rec room that, until a few hours ago, was locked on specious charges of fire-code violation? Not much, it turns out.

At about 9 p.m. on August 29th, several fully armed police officers used a battering ram to force their way into the re-worked institutional building now known as the RNC Welcoming Committee's Convergence Space, threw by some accounts 30, by others 60, activists of all ages--from the pee-in-their-pants-young to the health-issue old--to the floor, handcuffed them, and detained them for a couple hours or so, busting through doors on the way in and then confiscating their equipment on the way out.

 Rebekah, a 15-year old from Madison, WI, was there. She spent two and a half hours laying on the floor facedown before officers noticed her and released her--clearly having forgotten about her (and her status as a minor). It's actually not legal, she knows, to set her free her unless she's released into the custody of her parents, but they didn't care: there's some question too about whether or not they should have raided the building without a warrant, shoved loaded guns in the faces of minors, photographed everyone present, and handcuffed and intimidated young children in the first place, so there's some grey area here.

What had she been dong when the raids hit? "I was coloring this," she gestures to a picture she's finishing up, a glittery pink and purple thing with elephants and flowery handwriting. "Reclaim the elephant," it says. There are also sunflowers. It's very cute.

She's dedicating it to other survivors of the Convergence Space raids.

Another woman perhaps in her 60s, a teacher, was cuffed for slightly less time, two hours, and describes the two waves of officials that stormed into the building: first sherrifs, then police. She and some friends--one a very young boy--were upstairs watching a movie. Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers. When the police confiscated the DVD player, they also stole her movie.

Inspired by anti-feminist bingo, and the rest of the bingo cards I found links to on The Curvature, and by some damn frustrating conversations with anti-choicers, I've made my own contribution to the growing stack of cards surfacing on the internet.

My special favourite has to be the 'rape victims can just get a c-section' one. Which is your favourite?

A vagina does not make you a feminist. Selecting a woman as your running mate doesn't make you a feminist.

You can't fool me, John McCain. I was a Hillary Clinton supporter and this little shenanigan isn't going to cut it. I DON'T VOTE FOR ANTI-CHOICE POLITICIANS. Barack Obama is the best candidate on women's issues, family issues, education, the war, the economy and John McCain doesn't deserve my vote. He doesn't deserve your vote, dear voters. I was a Hillary Clinton supporter and I cried when she suspended her campaign. But this isn't about one woman. It's about all women.

No self-respecting supporter of Hillary Clinton can justify voting for the McCain-Palin ticket. If you supported Hillary Clinton because of her experience, her values, and her record on the issues, you simply CAN NOT vote for John McCain. He is the opposite of everything Hillary Clinton stands for. It would be sheer lunacy. It would be moronic. It's not about one woman. It's about all women.

I am not voting for McCain/Palin.

However, Palin's selection as veep has created a discussion unlike any other I've seen in this election. I spend far too much time in the liberal blogosphere (partially because I have a hard time finding reasonable conservative blogs-- I'm always up for referrals, though!), and it's too easy for me to just say, "Oh yeah, Obama's great, McCain is bad. *yawn*"

The discussion following McCain's announcement, especially on this site, has included a lot more intelligently conservative argument than I have heard in months. It forces me to look hard at my beliefs and ask again, "Why am I supporting Obama? Why is McCain the antichrist?" (Okay, he's really not, and I always know that. But it's hard to respect someone who so strongly disrespects women.)

It was difficult having to think over the entire election from scratch again and realize that I had been blindly following Obama for months. I'm still following Obama-- but it's with a lot more thought and temperance. In this, I am very grateful to McCain/Palin for starting a necessary discussion, and most of all to the Feministing community for providing the opportunity for rational people to discuss this openly.

I love Neighborhoodies , generally. I have more custom clothes from them that I care to think about. In their last e-mail newsletter they included, along with their other 50 new "readymades" (clever pop culture referencing tees and hoodies for much less than completely custom items) was a design that had images of Obama and Clinton with the text "Bros before hoes."

I was appalled, and immediately emailed them about it: "I love Neighborhoodies, but I can't get behind a readymade that calls Hillary Clinton a ho! Wtf, neighborhoodies?? Misogyny is not okay."

Cameron from Neighborhoodies responded: "You misunderstood! It means that Obama and Hilary are bros! We love Hillz 4evs."

My last response: "It doesn't really look that way to me. "Bro" is not usually a term for a woman. You guys might want to rethink that one. Just saying."

I've posted up about this on my own blog, and showed a friend the design IRL, and they reacted the same way. It just seems so utterly bizarre to me, coming from a company that "love[s] Hillz 4evz." I'm not crazy, right?? Maybe if more people emailed them about it they might edit the design to be more clearly pro-woman/Hillary or pull it entirely.

Amidst the swirl of controversy surrounding McCain Vice President pick Sarah Palin--a woman some believe is not ready for Presidential politics but was chosen for her "vaginal" assets--I saw this LA Times piece:

"UCLA accused of illegal admissions practices: A professor resigns as an admissions committee member, saying the university is factoring race into acceptance decisions, a violation of state law."

The article basically delineates two camps: the resigning professor, who's upset that the admissions people wouldn't give him access to compare the files of admitted students to determine whether race played an illegal role in their admission, and the Admissions office people, who maintain they followed their usual "holistic" guidelines for considering a whole package of traits for every applicant, of every race and gender.

"With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he’s been a governor for three years, he’s been able but undistinguished. I don’t think people could really name a big, important thing that he’s done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America ... It’s not a big town. So if he were to pick Governor Kaine, it would be an intensely political choice where he said, `You know what? I’m really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States?"

Karl Rove, August 10 2008, on why Virginia Governor Tim Kaine would be a poor Democratic VP choice, without regard to the “responsibilities of president."

SOURCE

I love the Daily Show so much.

Start at 2:53... that's the good stuff.

Watching the Daily Show last night, I was so pleased to see Samantha Bee sum up why women will all be voting for McCain now. One word says it all: boobies.

A lawyer defending Baluchi tribesmen who shot women and buried them alive "told a packed and flabbergasted Parliament on Friday that Baluch tribal traditions helped stop obscenity and then asked fellow lawmakers not to make a big fuss about it."

wtf??? And these are Western allies????

by Karina
Web Editor
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund

I hope that all of you got a chance to watch the now official, democratic nominee for President, Barack Obama deliver his historic speech this past Thursday. (if not, here it is )

Earlier this summer, Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed Obama ---we really feel that he is committed to working to advance the health and rights of women. This is in strong contrast to his opponent, John McCain, who is fervently anti-choice and doesn't even want to focus on reducing the number of unintended pregnancies through practical solutions like comprehensive sex ed and funding for family planning to increase access to birth control and other contraceptives.  To borrow a phrase from Obama's speech last night, John McCain just "doesn't get it."

Luckily, in Barack Obama, we have a candidate who DOES get it.  And he demonstrated that in his speech with just one short sentence.

"We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country."

Obama gets it because he knows that we are never all going agree on the abortion issue.  But he believes strongly that we can use common sense measures to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and thus avoid abortion bans and restrictions, while simultaneously retaining reproductive rights.  If that's not a silver bullet, I don't know what is!  

But John McCain DOESN'T get it. He'd rather enact laws that insult women's intelligence and pick away at their rights. He'd rather appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.  He'd rather cater to the extreme right and support inefficient programs like abstinence only education.   And McCain thinks he can win over women voters by acting like a "maverick" and selecting a woman to be his VP. Too bad his VP selection, Sarah Palin, is also fervently anti-choice.  

So if John McCain thinks he can get women's votes with his anti-women record, he's got another thing coming. To quote Cecile Richards, President of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund:

"A Woman Voting for John McCain Would be Like a Chicken Voting for Colonel Sanders"

I don't know about you, but I am one woman who is not about to let John McCain deep-fry my rights.

Show your support for electing Pro-Choice president, Barack Obama, by embedding this handy dandy Countdown to a Pro-Choice President Widget .  And keep talking to your friends about the truth about John McCain.

Conservatively speaking, I would be a Democratic Socialist. That is about the only conservative thing you can say about me. And, as such, I don’t have much in common with John McCain, his campaign, or the Republican party as a whole. But, needing to give credit where credit is due, I find McCain’s (political advisors) tactic of selecting Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as his running mate to be nothing less than a stroke of genius.

Mrs. (as I’m certain she would refer to herself) Palin has what I like to call “The Mommy Factor”. In short, “The Mommy Factor” is the American conservative to moderate need to view women as productively (and reproductively) female before anything else. They need to appeal, above all, as women and both embody and ascribe to archetypal “female” roles. Palin, brilliantly, does. And, somehow, she manages to assert some of the strengths of Hillary Clinton’s mold-breaking run while downplaying those characteristics much of American found to be too “masculine”. Genius. Mrs. Palin, herself, is The American Dream Girl: married to her high-school sweetheart (a native Eskimo, nonetheless), a former Miss Alaska runner-up, sportscaster for television news, and actively-reproducing at the age of 44. She smoked pot while it was legal in Alaska, but “didn’t like it”. Just last December, she posed for a photo spread in the fashion magazine Vogue.

Recently, I met a woman of about 30 at place where she and I go regularly.  She and I engaged in some brief conversation, and she said she was a feminist.  I thought, "Wonderful, always a pleasure to meet a comrade in our struggle for social justice."  A couple of days later, she and I were in the same place, though we weren't talking, and she made a loud comment to no particular person about the lack of chivalry being practiced by a couple of guys who were well able to hear her.  Specifically, they were going to get some of their stuff of a shelf, and a couple of girls, who had some stuff in the same place, were also going to get it.  The guys got their shortly before the girls, and thus got their stuff first.  This so called feminist, then proceeded to rant about how they should have let the girls go first.  The guys, hearing her rant, put their stuff back and walked away, looking ashamed.  I fully understand that this is a tiny incident, but I was disgusted by the message that this so called "feminist" is sending to guys.  The very concept of chivalry revolves around the idea the women are weaker than men, and can't or shouldn't perform basic tasks.  It is my opinion that chivalry is a misogynist tradition.  In fact, I would even go so far as to call it an attack on womens social equality.  Only people that actually think women are weak fell the need to treat them that way.  Yet here is a so called "feminist" embarrassing guys into acting that way.

I have to admit that there are some things in her life story that resonate with me. A mom who takes on politics to make a change in her community. It's a beautiful story.

How do you argue with a woman who made the choice to have a child that she knew would be born with Downs Syndrome? Easy, you acknowledge that she made the choice that was right for her life and her family. This is exactly what Roe V. Wade is all about. Case closed.

I pray my daughter never has to make such a choice. But I can't protect her from everything, so I pray that she has access to all aspects of medical care and medical information to make the choice that is right for her.

Okay, so back to Palin. How has she benefited from Roe V. Wade? That's easy, a physician laid her options out and she made a choice. Let's face it, that's why so many of those prenatal tests are performed. Why else would you need to know ahead of time if your child has a birth defect or medical condition?

This is happening near my hometown.

Basically, 3 high schoolers on the baseball team were charged of sexually assaulting at least one other student on the baseball team.  The charges included inserting a foreign object into the rectum of one of the students attacked.  Now, the charges are all being dropped in order to refile the charges as misdemeanors and keep the trial at the town level.

The part that got me even more?  The fact that one of the defendant's lawyers actually said "boys will be boys" in defense.  Excuse me?  Boys will be boys is not an justification for assault of any kind, let alone sexual assault!  The lawyers are saying that things were "blown out of proportion" and that the fact that the charges are being refiled at a local level demonstrates that their wasn't enough proof to file felony charges.

Apparently minors being penetrated by a foreign object isn't anything to worry about.  I'm beyond disgusted right now, and I want to know what's happened to the victims.

What would you do if you were in charge of advertising for Tampax?

I'm asking because this has come up recently, both on here and on Jezebel, and everyone seems to find different things offensive.

Tampon ads can't talk about how they let you wear tight pants. Midol ads can't talk about how periods suck. Advertisements can't tell you to have a happy period.

My favorite tampon ad of all time is the Beaver ad that caused a minor controversy in Australia a while ago. It shows a woman being friends with her vagina (her "beaver") and giving it the gift of U tampons. It's funny and clever, and it shows that every woman should be friends with her vagina.

I hate my period. It gives me cramps and disrupts my sex life, and I have to spend the entire day worrying about whether or not I'm leaking. That said, I don't think my period is gross or disgusting, even if it is inconvenient. It's just part of nature, and most women do it at some point in their lives, and everyone should get the fuck over it. 

So I understand commercials that show cranky menstruating women, and I don't find those particularly offensive, and tampons do let you wear tight clothing and that's on of their main selling points, so I understand that. Midol and its ilk wouldn't exist if periods were pain-free moodiness-free events, so of course they're going to depict periods as unpleasant. The mysterious blue liquid in advertisements for pads pisses me off, but I understand why they do it. Their job is to sell pads, not educate people, and the sad fact is that I suspect a lot of people would freak out if the ad used anything that looked more like blood.

What would your perfect feminine hygiene ad look like?

Really? Palin is a surprise pick? When the Obama camp announced Biden, it became obvious the only thing for the Republicans to do now was pick a woman running mate. It would of course also have to be a woman who wouldn’t trail far from the party line, a sidekick, not someone well-known.

I’ve gotta say that as a feminist and former Hillary-supporter, I had a big twinge of jealousy to have the Republicans be the ones to represent both sides of humanity on their ticket. But I was quick to remind myself that Palin is the portrait of right wing hackery. It is yet another way John McCain is completely out of touch, in not realizing women aren’t manipulated so easily.

I am so disappointed in the Feministing community today. This is a great day for women! We have a reform-minded strong female candidate on the REPUBLICAN ticket.

You don't have to vote for her, but at least don' t put her down because she doesn't believe in exactly what you believe in. She fought the boys club in Alaska and won - that is a huge accomplishment - and it does take a strong woman to tackle that issue.

In honesty, I am a Republican - and I am a Republican because I am not a socialist. As a regular reader of Feministing, I regularly feel excluded and pushed away from feminism because the message I hear is: if you are a feminist you believe in - universal health care, state run day care, the pay-check fairness act (which, btw is not about pay-check fairness - it is about the government mandating business practices, we already have anti-discrimination laws that can be used when you take your employer to court), and saving the environment at all costs. 

Shock waves went through the American public this morning when McCain announced his choice for VP candidate was none other than Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin.

Some might say that it's a wise choice - an appeal to women who feel disaffected by Hillary's loss in this past election.

But I'm sorry, does McCain really believe that by adding a former runner up in the Miss Alaska pageant to his ticket he can win this election? Does he hope to appeal to women simply by adding XX chromosomes to his ticket?

I'd like to think that whatever our frustration, women today are too smart to vote for someone who is currently under investigation for corruption in her home state. I'd like to think that women today are too worried about the economy to vote for someone under whose Governorship has seen unemployment in Alaska has consistently risen. I'd like to think that women today are too smart to vote for a candidate who is a staunch opponent of reproductive rights, and who has supported some of the most restrictive anti-choice bills in the country. Or for someone who has been described as our nation's most prominent advocate for drilling the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge - a tactic that has been called a short term band-aid for our country's oil dependence at best and a natural disaster in the making at worst. In fact, Palin is so concerned about giving oil companies free rein in Alaska that she sued the federal government in an attempt to remove Polar Bears from the endangered species list.

No matter how you feel about Sarah Palin's achievements, a vote for her as Vice President is still a vote for McCain - a man who's publicly opposed pay equality, reproductive rights, and commonly makes very public disparaging comments about his wife. Picking a young woman as his running mate doesn't make McCain any more in touch with the economic woes of our country, any less explosive of a person and it won't change McCain's stance on keeping us in a failing Iraq war.

Instead I can only think that it's John McCain's low opinion of women that led him to make this choice. He's chosen a woman with little to no experience - over many more qualified candidates - in a desperate attempt to sway women voters he's otherwise scared off. McCain, what do you take us for, an idiot?

I'm done.  This world has gotten to me.  As a women and being a feminist all of my life I have come to the conclusion that there is too much work that lies ahead for women.  I've been silenced.  I've been unseen.  I've been disempowered.  I've been discriminiated against because of my race, class, gender, sexual orientation and martial status.  I am weary of the workload that lies ahead for all issues affecting women that need fixing and healing.  I battled self hate, anger, deep depression, suicidal thoughts and abuse towards myself for so many years.  I've dealt with an eating disorder for 6 years.  I've got all this education, been searching for jobs but I am not finding one.  Ther is so much more to say but I know that being a women is not an easy task.

I'm done.  I want a sex change.  I don't want to experience discrimination anymore.  I want to be heard.  I want to be seen.  I want to feel empowered.  I want to know what it would of been like to live without an eating disorder for 6 years.  I want to know what my life would be like if I were a man.  If my breasts didn't ache and hurt when I am on my period.  If I didn't get cramps or become irritable before my period.  If society didn't have preconcieved notions about reproduction, marriage and family and the fact that I don't believe in any of that.  Recently I awoke one morning.  I felt unethused, sad and depressed in a world that downsizes my gifts capabilities and overall existance.  I felt burdened and tired of my yearly income being well below the poverty level earning.  That my student loans are piling and piling up and I keep having to put them on forbearance because I can't pay them.  Tired of looking for a "job" when I feel like Ani DiFranco as she sings her song "Not a Pretty Girl," because "I have been working all of my life ."  In that morning I felt my breasts, uterus, stomach and my whole body.  Not loving it.  Not admiring it.  Not holding it up on high like an angel in her throne.  Not hugging it.  But wondering why as a female do I have to go through all of this.  I reached a breaking point that morning.  A point of me as a feminist wanting a sex change.

As it hasn't been officially released yet, I don't know if this is true.  But if it is, good grief.  Via CNN:

           "Sen. John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate on the             Republican ticket for the White House."

When a woman gets into office, I do feel a little bit of pride.  It's hard for women to be taken seriously in the political arena and it really is an accomplishment to be elected or even considered for a high office.  So, good for her.  I won't be voting for her because I don't like her or McCain's policies, but just the same, good for her for doing something difficult.

That said, if picking a woman VP is some lame attempt to sway Hillary supporters (and here at the Oppression Olympics it damn well could be), give me a break.  We said it in the primaries and we'll say it again:  WE AREN'T VOTING FOR WOMEN BECAUSE THEY'RE WOMEN.  I vote for policies, I vote ideas and I vote for the people that I think can uphold them.  Being a woman doesn't necessarily qualify you.

Palin may also have been picked because she is the pro-drilling Governor of Alaska.  For a candidate whose environmental policies are as backwards as his beliefs about women, having the assistance of the the former Alaskan Governor to okay drilling would be an asset.

If Sarah Palin is the VP choice, congratulations Gov. Palin, and I sincerely hope you lose.

So John McCain has chosen 44 year old Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. The news media is saying that they didn't see this coming, but come on... I think most people can. He wanted to get a woman on the ticket to try and grab the disenfranchised Hilary vote (because all women still vote with their vaginas...) and to put a fresh face on the ticket since his has been in the media for so long. I love how already they're saying as part of her mini bio is that she was a runner up for Ms. Alaska... they've said it about three times already...

So far here's what I hear:

- Anti-Choice & Member of Feminists for Life

- Lifetime member of the NRA

- First term Governor & has only served a year and a half

- Has 5 kids and one has down syndrome

- Overall, Very Conservative

- Overhalled the Alaska government and got rid of corruption

- Has 80% approval rating in her state

Cnn.com has more on her on their front page. News obviously is still coming in because it was only announced about 15 minutes ago.

Bodysnarking in disguise: Sienna Miller and the Great Slut Debate

• by Anne Fitzgerald, Elastic Waist , on Fri Aug 22, 2008 8:59am PDT


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Just Jared

I have to point you over to this post on The Frisky about the Great Slut Debate, and why, exactly, we keep flogging it over, and over, and over again. Amelia sums up the debate brilliantly:

Got this from IMDB:

"Desperate Housewives star Ricardo Chavira has taken issue with the show's writers over an upcoming childhood obesity plotline - because his sister battled weight issues throughout her childhood.

His character Carlos' young daughters both suffer from obesity issues in the upcoming fifth season of the hit show - and the actor admits he's a little uncomfortable about where their storyline might go as the series goes on.

Chavira tells TV Guide magazine, "Seeing it (obesity) in my family and (considering) the childhood obesity issues in the United States right now, should we be making fun of it?"

But Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry has assured him that the plotlines surrounding his overweight TV kids will be dealt with sensitively, and the word 'fat' has been banned from the set."

I recently had a conversation with my brother about who we plan on voting for this November. I gave him a piece of my mind about why I'm not voting for McCain, the candidate my brother supports, but also listened to his side of the argument. However, when it came to my feelings on legalized abortion and Roe v. Wade and my problems with McCain's background on women's right and the comments he has made in the past, my brother had this to say: "Well, if you're a one-issue-voter, then that's what it comes down to."

Time passed, my brother left to go finish his Masters degree, and then I realized the unfair nature of that comment.

I mean, I'm a woman! I have breasts, I menstruate, I may eventually bear a child, and have two X-chromosomes. Of all my traits and characteristics, I'd say that being a woman is the one that comes closest to defining or encompassing me as a person. And as a woman, I feel that one of the most important issues for me to defend is the right to govern my own body and not have it be governed by others. Is that really the same as  deciding who to vote for based on their position on the economy, education, healthcare or whatever?

I guess the answer to that question, when it's time to vote, is yes. Not all women share my opinions on access to birth control, safe and legalized abortion, and I respect that. Still, something about that conversation bothered me. I feel like a lot depends on electing the candidate who believes I should be in charge of what or what doesn't happen to my body. I mean, the economy doesn't have much to do with my vagina (I think). I'm going to live my whole life in this body, and for me prioritizing my rights as a woman this election seems like a lot more than voting on just "one" issue. And if it is, then I consider it to be a pretty damn important issue. But then again, I'm just part of the "female vote", aren't I?

Went out to dinner at the teppanyaki restaurant* last night with my relatives visiting from abroad. (At a teppanyaki restaurant, the eating surface surrounds a large griddle, and the chef cooks your food in front of you.)

*Often called in the U.S. a hibachi restaurant or Japanese steakhouse.

Nowadays, teppanyaki is a mixture of cookery and performance art. The chef prepares the food, but also juggles utensils, tosses eggs with his spatula-thing, stacks rings of an onion into a volcano shape and sets it on fire, catches things in his hat or pocket, things like that. It's really pretty neat.

But something I noticed this time: teppanyaki chefs* are exclusively male. The restaurant employs women, but they're the ones who bring your soup and drinks and take away your dirty plates - in short, waitresses; the waitstaff is all female. Women don't get to do the cool stuff.

Vladimir Putin accuses the US of encouraging Georgia to attack South Ocetia in order to benefit John McCain. And the press is reporting it!

Today is the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.

Today, Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. Barack, the first half-white-half-black man to accept this nomination, and will be elected the first half-white-half-black President of the United States. Barack, whose life story is much like yours and mine, who has lived the American dream, will today make history and take one giant step toward making Dr. King's dream a reality.

This isn't just a breakthrough for Black Americans. This isn't just a breakthrough for racial minorities. It's a breakthrough for America. Whenever justice is done, it is a victory for all Americans. Whenever adversity is overcome, it is a victory for all Americans. No matter who you supported in the primary, no matter who you support in the election: when Barack Obama accepts the nomination tonight, it is a victory for all Americans. For you and for me.

Don't let hate come between us. Don't let the color of our skin make us less proud as Americans. We are all Americans. In the words of Barack, there is no white American and Black America, there is the United States of America.

Let us remember Dr. King today. Let us rejoice when his dream comes closer to being realized. I have a dream today! We have a victory today!!!

Mny of us have heard of the Duggar family. The Duggars are adherants of the Quiverfull Movement, which, in a nutshell, believes that limiting how many children you conceive and give birth to to be denying gifts from God, thus they have many children and do not practice any form of birth control. The Duggars are arguably the most prominant Quiverfull family there is after their Discovery Show "The Duggar's Big Family Album." In total they have seventeen children, and Michelle Duggar is currently pregnant with number 18, due on New Years Day 2009.

Many reactions have been had in response to the massive family that are the Duggars. Most complain of the welfare they must be using (The Duggars are self-sufficient, and are debt-free). Some merely say "To each their own." Some rail against the religious 'brainwashing' Michelle and the children must have undergone. Others find Michelle's character and body fair game for insults.

Ok, so I watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians. I admit it. I really like the fashion and the ridiculous, over-the-top antics. I know this is a scripted 'reality' show. To loosely quote Joel McHale from E! show The Soup, Kim Kardashian is 'famous for having a big butt and a sex tape.' She is also the daugther of the late Robert Kardashian (lawyer for O.J. Simpson) and stepdaughter of Olympic champion Bruce Jenner. The DVD cover for the first season for the show looks like this:

There are few among us who don't love our jeans.  They've been with us through thick and thin.  We can pair them with a nice blouse and go to work.  We can pair them with a pair of heels and hit the bar.  We can pair them with a ratty t-shirt and lounge all afternoon.  Yes, we love our jeans, and our jeans love us.  But the people who make our jeans?  Not so much.

it wasn't long ago that we were talking about Wrangler's "We are animals " campaign, but they aren't the only denim manufacturers with disgusting ad campains right now.  Jezebel recently brought to our attention Mark Ecko's "Hot Girls Make Great Clothes " thong fest, complete with videos of bikini clad women slaving away to make sexy jeans, which, of course, none of them are wearing.  And Levi's latest "Live Unbuttoned" campaign isn't much better.

Apparently jeans aren't for wearing, they're for taking off in scandalous, sexually suggestive situations.  What's the deal?

The following article, Elizabeth Grove man spared jail for having sex with 12-year-old is from AdelaideNow. I came across the story when Hoyden About Town talked about it today and I was horrified.

All emphasis is mine.

AN "immature" 24-year-old who continued a sexual relationship even after learning his girlfriend was just 12 years old has narrowly avoided a prison term.

The District Court today suspended Jarrod James Hean's two-year, 10-month sentence on condition of a two-year good behaviour bond.

Hean, who is now aged 25, of Elizabeth Grove, pleaded guilty to three counts of unlawful sexual intercourse and nine counts of breaching his bail conditions.

In sentencing, Judge Wayne Chivell said Hean had met his now-former girlfriend in March 2007.

She was 12 years old at the time, but lied and said she was 16 - Hean, who was 24, lied and said he was 20.

"When you learned she was 12, you continued to have a sexual relationship with her," Judge Chivell said.

"By that time, you say you were in love with her, and somehow convinced yourself it was appropriate to continue.

"That was immature and irresponsible on your part, but I accept that you were not acting as a predator."

Judge Chivell said the relationship - Hean's first - persisted despite authorities warning the couple to stay away from one another.

After he was arrested for unlawful sexual intercourse, Hean saw the girl on nine more occasions - resulting in the breach of bail charges.

Although he faced a maximum of life imprisonment, Judge Chivell said Hean's crimes were "at the lower end of the scale".

"Girls and young women need to be protected from their own immaturity and sexual curiousity at that vulnerable age," he said.

He imposed a 20-month non-parole period, and said there was "good reason" to suspend the sentence.

"You are unlikely to offend again, and the relationship is now over," he said.

In another article from ABC News Australia the judge is quoted as saying:

Judge Wayne Chivell said it was an unusual case because it was clear the girl was highly sexualised before the pair had met and an enthusiastic participant in the relationship.

Read the rest of the story here

About 3,000 demonstrators, a coalition of activist groups, are just now marching down the streets of Denver to convene at the city's Pepsi Center, where delegates have just nominated Obama . It's about time, many people say. Dozens of media reports and local residents here have insisted the activist turn-out so far at this convention has been surprisingly small ; they were expecting to be overrun.

For those (like me) immersed in the demonstrator world here, it's tough to lift your head from the sand to notice the activist presence hasn't been quite so overwhelming. Which may explain why police seem to outnumber protesters two to one at every action, why some respond with disproportionate aggression (as they were trained to respond with such urgency) and why reporters have rushed to cover any sort of demonstration (although, in contrast with the conventions of 2004, few seem attracted to cover the anti-choice and anti-gay demonstrations of disgusting, propagandizing enormous posters picturing bloody fetuses and homophobic Biblical messages. They somehow seem tired issues, overshadowed by the convention-goers focus on change and progress, and activists' emphasis on ending the war, healthcare reform and alternative energy).

It's impossible however to expect thousands upon thousands of activists to take leave from their jobs and their family obligations, spend hundreds of dollars on airfare and housing. Those who have the privilege to do so most likely made the trip here (and of course, those with privilege most likely have little to protest). And the Democratic Party has not exactly welcomed activists' voices with open arms, but an enormous cage out of sight and earshot of delegates. So much for rights.

The Roma in Europe have been discriminated against since the middle ages not only because they look physically different, but also because of their one time nomadic lifestyle and the absence of any cultural homeland. They are the only group of people that at no time in modern history could be called indigenous. They are not only Europe's largest minority, but also the most systematically discriminated against minority in Europe--and by many accounts the world. They were also the second largest ethnic group targeted by the Nazis. Recently there has been an amazing amount of progress in bettering the plight of the Roma in Europe. Last year the European Court of Human Rights ruled that exclusion of the Roma from mainstream European schools is discrimination and had to be ended. States have as a rule been slow to comply with the decision and desegregation has other hurdles not inherent in other desegregation programs like the one we had here in the US. Today the BBC had an article on the reality of the education situation in the Czech Republic.

This video was shown at the DNC yesterday to pay tribute to the fabulous Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.  I don't know if the ladies of Feministing have had the chance to watch it, but I thought it was very well done and wanted to share if with the rest of the community.  I hope everyone enjoys the tribute to this bad-ass woman as much as I did.

This letter is a to a private school in which I interviewed for a job that I did not get. I have had enough with the shoot to kill privileged elite folks in this world. So here is my letter to them. In the letter you will notice that there is no mention of the school, cities or anything like that. Because for me, this is just venting. As a feminist I have interviewed for over 80 jobs since finishing graduate school. I have made nothing beyond poverty level wages. I am very tired of looking for jobs and interviewing for them. I have been discriminated many times in a job and I feel the privilege folks in the job world keep trying to shoot and kill me.

I drove 500 miles round trip in my 14 year old rusty car to inteview for a job that I got rejected from. I asked for reimbursement on the gas that I paid for, roughly $70 dollars and they said no. You might find this funny. When she said no I said, "do you want me to send you some rust from my car?" I was going to do that. Why not take some rust with your privilege?

With all this said here is my letter....

To Whom It May Concern:

Your privileged and elite private school is something that I do not want to be a part of and I am glad I did not get the job. You can't reimburse someone who came all the way up north but you can take money from "economically" privileged families in your city to line your pockets and your salary. Excess is a demise of a nation and you play a part of that excess. Go ahead and think you are living your idealistic lifestyle working at a private and elite school. Remember people in the inner cities (15% unemployment in the major city near me) who are suffering in a reality of homelessness, poverty, depression, violence, pollution and environmental racism because of your failure to understand the interconnectedness of this failed capitalistic system. You should feel guilty.

With your costs of education for an infant or toddler costing more than one year of college is absurd. You should be ashamed and disgusted with yourself considering you can't reimburse someone who drove a round trip of 500 miles.

I would rather work in an inner city helping children who really need help. Or better yet I would rather work on a reservation where Native American children are the brunt of this terrible system. Since my Native American heritage is a huge part of my life and today I am your brunt in your excess and thinking you live an idealistic life.

Open your eyes for a change!

Sincerely,

The Angry Native Woman

When does it end? 

The very first line of this article: "The anticipation over Sen. Hillary Clinton's speech Tuesday night was as high as her pantsuit was orange."

thank you yahoo for your insight. *eye roll*

Ok, a certain Center City Philadelphia ultra-fragrant soap store, which shall remain nameless because I don't want to give them the business (also which gives you that "you're probably going to get a yeast infection from using that soap feeling), had their employees stand outside the store handing out flyers completely nude, except for a little apron, in the name of publicity. Because you know, sex sells.

While perusing notoriously anti-feminist Clare Boothe Luce Institute's website for amusement, I cam across a column by Ashley Herzog titled: " College Classes for Conservatives to Avoid," in which she laments her time her classes that deal with " writings of some allegedly oppressed group, such as 'Gay and Lesbian Literature' or 'Women and Writing.'” She was so upset to not be assigned reading by Charlotte Bronte, but God-forbid, take a step out of her white privilege to read about the interesting life of Assata Shakur . And it doesn't take a background in sociology or ethnic studies to understand that things would be different without this white fear surrounding the Black Panthers, and had she been white, her storylines would have played out very differently.

She then advices like-minded conservatives to stay away from sociology in general, anything labeled non-Western or multicultural, "queer theory" (the only subject she had in quotes, and nothing in U.S. history that doesn't reiterate the one-sided view of our history).

What is disturbing about this is that she is suggesting that the best way to survive the baccalaureate core curriculum of the undergrad years is to stay away from any class that points out that the U.S. isn't a meritocracy, and that people of different race, class, sexual orientation, ability, religion, class, weight, etc (and various combinations of privilege and oppression) experience the world in very different ways. College is supposed to be about challenging our understanding, not picking and choosing what one wants to hear and ridiculing the reality of other peoples lives.

Hello, fellow Feministing Community members.  In the past couple of months since the Community Blog was started, I have seen how supportive this place can be for young feminists in a world that is often hostile to what we believe in.  Yes, we have our occasional miscreants and trolls—but do we take their crap?  No . 

I’ve written here and on my own blog about my experiences as a survivor of rape.  Because justice for fellow survivors is such an important issue for me I often find myself reading posts on other blogs about developments on this topic.  Yesterday, while commenting on The Curvature (a favorite of mine and well worth reading, by the way) I ran across another commenter named Marta who agreed with me on what Cara had to say. 

Later, Marta contacted me on my own blog, and while initially our correspondence was a dance of apologies over my paranoia and her thoughts that she might have offended me (I can be very abrupt with commenters on my blog if I’m not sure I understand their intentions, I’ve had some assholes on there before and I’m pretty quick to pull the ‘block’ trigger), we quickly began a conversation about our experiences and feminist resources. 

You see, while I am currently attending a college with a small but close-knit and lively band of feminists, Marta is dealing with the hell known as high school.  She identifies as a feminist and is, like me, a survivor of sexual assault.   I recommended the Feministing Community blog to her as a place where she can write about her experiences and find the kind of support she told me she does not receive in her daily life.  I’m not sure yet how often she’ll be posting and commenting or what she’ll want to write about, but I ask all of you here to welcome her into our community.

In the past few years it has become abundantly clear to me that dealing with difficult experiences is only possible with the support of others, and that it is impossible to survive the worst parts of life alone. 

I was either a freshman or a sophomore at Miami when I heard about this case initially.  You can find a lot more information in a Google search, but the basic story is that a sex offender was allowed to return to campus, victim and other students were not notified, offender victimizes another female student, she almost bleeds to death from the attack, and offender found guilty of drug charges but acquitted of rape charge.  Now he wants to change his name...

New at Voice of Dissent - Fabulous Feminist Photos From Flickr.

I've been scouring Flickr a lot lately and after seeing all of the great feminist imagery decided to do a feature here on the blog. I hope you enjoy them and feel free to reply with links to your favorites.

View the rest of the article

Once upon a time
In a land far away
A beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog
As she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle

The frog hopped into the princess' lap and said "Elegant lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dopper young prince that I am.

And then my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother. Where you can prepare meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so."

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sauteed frog legs seasoned in white wine and onion cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself...

I don't fucking think so.

:-D

This is my first post here at Feministing, so I'm sorry if this seems off topic. I thought I'd share this with everyone else who seems to be frustrated by the election coverage.

Eric Kleefeld of talkingpointsmemo.com notes this most recent development in the comedy of errors that is the GOP:

Wow -- a leading Republican appears to have just inadvertently admitted that the GOP's spin machine set up to counter Barack Obama during the convention is a propaganda machine spewing nothing but lies.

The GOPer in question is Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, who accidentally made the admission when describing the GOP's war room in Denver set up to hammer Obama during convention week.

Wadhams described the GOP's outfit thusly to the Denver Post : "Just consider this the Ministry of Truth."

Um, as anybody who has ever read George Orwell knows, the Ministry of Truth exists to disseminate false propaganda about how great the ruling regime is, continuously rewriting both history and the present-day facts in order to maintain total control over the population.

"The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation," Orwell wrote. "These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink ."

It truly boggles the mind. Should I laugh or cry? It makes me wonder if there's a correlation to the controversy unleashed by the Bush administration's recent attempt to redefince contraception as abortion.

OK, so when I was a kid, Highlights magazine was my favorite reading material and they always had a Hidden Pictures feature: you were given x number of random items to look for in a huge illustration, which kills oodles of free time when you're six. However, this "Hidden Pictures" misogyny I found in the latest CNN commentary of Michelle Obama wasn't that hard to spot. See if you can find it with me!

From CNN's Report Card for Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention:

So, let's break this down, commentator by commentator.

The new ad campaign by Mark Ecko "Hot Girls Make Great Clothes," left me nearly speechless when I saw it this afternoon. I am appalled that Ecko Unltd has the nerve not only to exploit and objectify women by putting only traditionally "beautiful" and skinny women in bikinis in their "factory," but that they would dare to mock the real women and girls who actually DO work in sweatshops around the world under nearly unbearable conditions. I find it utterly disgusting that this clothing company has gone one step further than ignoring the problem of sweatshop labor, they are now pretending that the people making their clothes are happy, gorgeous, scantily-clad bikini babes. It's almost impressive the amount of offensive material they were able to squeeze into one ad.

After a heated discussion with my mom last night, I got to thinking about all those little things that really are discriminatory but we never think about as being so. Last night came across this one...

By Louise Melling, Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

Last Thursday the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released proposed regulations (PDF) that could seriously undermine women’s access to reproductive health services, including birth control and abortion. Now the public has 30 days to let the Bush administration know precisely what we think of these regulations. Click here for our Action Alert , which will allow you to send comments to HHS.

The Bush administration is trying to spin the proposed regulations as a necessary means of protecting health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions. But federal law has long carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients’ access to reproductive health care. It’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

What’s really new about these proposed regulations is that they appear to take patients’ health needs out of the equation. They expand the ability of health care workers to refuse to provide complete and accurate information and counseling to women who seek services. Moreover, both the regulations, and Secretary of HHS Michael Leavitt’s public comments about them, leave the door open as to whether institutions and individuals can refuse to provide contraception.

Make no mistake: that lack of clarity is intentional. As the Washington Post reports, "…when pressed about whether the regulation would protect health-care workers who consider birth control pills, Plan B and other forms of contraception to be equivalent to abortion, HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt said: ‘This regulation does not seek to resolve any ambiguity in that area.’" Indeed, the Wall Street Journal notes Leavitt’s admission that some medical providers may want to "press the definition."

Not reassuring.

Ditto for Leavitt’s justification for issuing the proposed regulations, which is based on his willful misinterpretation of last November’s statement (PDF) from the ethics committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist. ACOG said that doctors should either be prepared to perform "standard reproductive services" or else refer those patients to someone who will. Leavitt claims that ACOG’s statement could potentially strip noncompliant doctors of their board certification, never mind that both ACOG and the executive director of the certifying board have explicitly told him otherwise .

But these regulations aren’t about responding to facts. This administration has, time and again, put its political and ideological concerns above the best interests of the American people.

They are, however, a very serious threat to women’s health and to existing patient protections that ensure that even in the face of religious refusals women can get the health care they need.

Click here to go to our Action Alert , which will allow you to submit comments to HHS. The deadline is September 20 and volume counts, so please act quickly and tell your friends.

just felt like getting this off my chest...

I get up at 6:30 AM and brush my teeth.

I shower then eat breakfast.  

I drink my Starbucks Frapuccino.

I put on my shoes.

I get into my car and I fill up at the gas station.

I drive 30 miles and I arrive at work at 8:30 AM.

I struggle with the project I need to finish.

I grab my keys and phone and go to lunch and I throw money away at Whole Foods.

I am amazed by the amount of hype for Michelle's celebrity speech. Am I missing some information about her running for anything? I checked! Michelle Obama is running for the First Lady spot! That is of course a very important and influencial position worth supporting! Yes, vote for Barack Obama so that Michelle can become the First Lady!

Yes, she is probably an amazing woman. Like most of us. But, she is in no way making a history. She is supporting her husband as all the other First Ladies did in the past. There is nothing to celebrate except the same old, same old. Stand by your man...

So, this morning my mom came by my house to drop off a Cherry Coke and a coffee for my fiancee. She didn't have to be at work until 11:30 am because her boss is taking "flying lessons," so she had a bit of spare time.

After exchanging small talk and catching up a bit, my mom's phone rang. She said that it was someone calling about another job opportunity for her, so I asked her what was wrong with her current job. She then told me that she absolutely loves her job (she is a nursepractitioner who assists in gastric bypass surgery and lap band procedures), but she has been having a problem with her boss for quite awhile.

It all started last year, when my mom asked for a raise. She really had to fight for this raise. She works for an independent physician with a big ego, who actually turns out to be a chauvanistic pig. When she stated her claims and compared her salary to those that other nursepractitioners make doing her line of work, his comment was , "You know, this is the first time anyone has come to me asking for a raise, because I treat my employees very well."

I guess my mom's boss has also been making sexual comments, to which some of the female employees perpetuate. For example, one of the secretaries will say something to the extent of, "Oh, you're gonna like this patient. She's a twenty year old student."

My boyfriend and I have butted heads on the topic of privilege more than once. Usually it comes up in the context of scholarships and bursaries. He feels that more should be given for adademic merit, only, and is opposed to awards given to students who meet certain personal criteria- namely, awards given to people who are minorities.

I've explained that the reason why those awards exist is because of privilege. He, as a white, heterosexual male, has an advantage over people who are less privileged. Scholarships and bursaries which can only be claimed by minorities exist to give people who lack his privilege a chance that might otherwise be unobtainable. It's a means of leveling the field in a society that does not provide equal opportunity for all.

Well, he mentioned this to one of his professors, in the physics department, and now that professor would like to meet me, and discuss this more. The professor wants to hear this argument coming from a person who is in a position to benefit (or not benefit) from scholarships. Thus the reason for my post, here. I'm looking for examples of privilege- what it is, who has it, and how to recognise it. The more information I can provide, the better my case. Who knows, maybe it'll mean more money given to students at my university who don't have as much privilege as my boyfriend and I do!

Just found this article about a woman stopped at security and asked to allow security personnel to further investigate her boobs.

Also, this commentary from Boing Boing.

This journey has indeed been a long one. I have learned and am still learning to accept who I am. Who I am is mommy, wife, supporter, provider, educator, daughter, granddaughter and most importantly WOMAN .

I want to first share my blog with you to give you a little background on why I decided to start this post.

The blog post can be found here: http://madliberalmommy.blogspot.com

I am a sex-positive feminist, and I wanted to write about what exactly that means to me.

The last time the idea of sex-positivity came up on the community blog, people said that they don't like the term, because it creates a false divide, because who identifies as sex-negative? I disagree. I've come across some very sex-negative ideas in feminist circles.

The first time I read someone (I believe it was Twisty at I Blame The Patriarchy, which I'm not going to link to, because I don't like her.) seriously claim that women cannot consent to sex because we are oppressed, I understood how a lot of Christians feel about Jerry Fallwell. Aren't conservatives the ones who are supposed to tell me I can't make decisions because I'm a woman?

This is what I think it means to be sex-positive.

Berkeley woman misses flight when bra triggers alarm .

In the post-9/11 world of heightened airport scrutiny, Kates, like most travelers, is familiar with the drill: Take off shoes and belts, open the laptop, carry shampoo in 3 oz. bottles.

For Kates, on Sunday, though, the security check got too invasive. A big-busted woman wearing a large underwire bra, she set off the metal detector. She was pulled aside and checked by a female TSA agent with a metal-sensitive wand.

"The woman touched my breast. I said, 'You can't do that,' " Kates said. "She said, 'We have to pat you down.' I said, 'You can't treat me as a criminal for wearing a bra.' "

The last time I flew I wore a tight cami (barely containing 40DDs) under my shirt instead of a bra. But lots of women fly spontaneously, can't find wireless devices that fit, or feel naked without a wired bra and dislike being fondled (IN PUBLIC). Airport security is best describe as security theatre and is a total joke. (Like how I accidentally brought an opened coke bottle through security and was told if I wanted to drink it, I'd have to go back through the line. WHAT???)

(Disclosure: Also posted to my blog The Social Exchange.)

Since the birth control pill was first approved for use by the Food & Drug Administration in 1960, it has been a controversial and integral part of American women's lives. A study by the Centers for Disease Control in 2002 found that, in women of reproductive age, 82 percent had ever used the birth control pill. Despite its popularity, there is still debate over its use and justification. There are those who believe that hormonal contraceptives encourage immoral and destructive behavior in the very people who are supposed to model morality to society, and are not permissible under any circumstances. I contend, however, that not only is using hormonal contraceptives morally acceptable, there are circumstances in which using hormonal birth control is morally imperative.

Not sure if anyone's seen the newer Midol commercial, but they have the oh-so-catchy phrase "Reverse The Curse!". I was a bit irritated they'd use such an old and sexist term.I couldn't find the commercial, but if you can, pleae feel free!

Also, sorry if this topic has been covered.

You can write them here:

http://www.bayercare.com/emailus.cfm

Here's my letter:

Bayer:

I'm not sure how many letters you've received, if any, regarding your new Midol commercial.
I find it to be pretty irritating, and pandering to negative stereotypes, using an old a superstitious phrase. "The Curse"? Really? Is that necessary? How many of your commercials feature that phrase where men's and women's (or just men's) health is involved...and what year is this?

There is an entire section on the Midol website devoted to teens and their questions. I think referring to a young woman's natural body function as The Curse" is a really negative way to approach menstruation. It's also body-shaming and archaic. As if women don't have enough negative attention regarding their periods.

It's really, really disappointing when your commercials from 10 years ago (the woman talking about how she was herself-opinions and all-again with Midol) are MORE progressive than the ones you feature now.

I don't particularly love cramps or food cravings, but it's nothing to be ashamed of, and this is clearly sexist advertising. Having a woman narrating the commercial doesn't make it less so.

I really hope that with the money Midol has made, they can hire some advertising staff that are a little less sexist. I doubt your sales would plummet if you stop implying that this beast takes us over once a month. Maybe even include some pro-body images or humor.

Thank you.

This is my first post, and I’m sorry that it is a little long. I should start out by saying that I am relatively new to feminism (a couple of months of being interested in any meaningful way) and I do not feel empowered AT ALL, but reading about it is helping.

I felt like for you understand how I am feel everyday at work, I should give an overview of what has been my experience here for the last four years. I also needed to get this off my chest, which I feel able to do now that I am leaving. I work on the public services staff of the law library at a major university. One might think a law school would be more concerned with how they deal with some of these issues, given their first-hand knowledge of the litigious nature of American society, but alas, at least at this institution, the needs of (argumentative, paying-buttloads-of-money-to-receive-their-education) law students will always trump those of the non-professional staff members trying to serve them.

Over at The Feminist Underground , we've got a guest-blogger today who reviews Soul Calibur IV for us.  Look, I like his review, but after pointing out the ridiculousness 'fighting dominatrix' Ivy's ever-increasing chest size and ever-decreasing clothing, he then makes the claim that the game isn't sexist - because both genders are objectified.  Riiiight.

Perhaps this is poor form (OK, definitely), since he is a 'real world' friend of mine, but if there are any feminist gamers on the Feministing Community today with some free time on their hands, I'd love it if you'd stop by and give an informed opinion.  And, no, you don't have to agree with me that the game is, in fact, terribly sexist and a sure way to keep a lot of women thinking that games just aren't for them... but you can if you want ;)

According to RAINN , college-age women are four times as likely to be sexually assaulted (I guess compared to other women...?).

RAINN Day, RAINN's annual campaign to stop sexual assault on college campuses, is coming up September 25th and is an activism opportunity for: campus fundraising and educational events, volunteer drives, speakers, petitions, posters, and passing out RAINN Day cards and volunteer handouts.

You can become an organizer by signing up on the RAINN site . 

There's downloadable materials on their site , like an event planning guide, media tips, sample press release, petition, and friend e-mail. If you have questions or need help planning your event, contact their RAINN Day Coordinator at rainndayATrainn.org

Here we go again with CNN articles about studies that include no critical analysis. This "gem" is called Bartering sex for stuff and services :

"A recent study of 475 University of Michigan undergraduates ages 17 to 26 found that 27 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women who weren't in a committed relationship had offered someone favors or gifts -- help prepping for a test, laundry washing, tickets to a college football game -- in exchange for sex. On the flip side, 5 percent of the men surveyed and 9 percent of the women said they'd attempted to trade sex for such freebies."  ...

"It's the biology, stupid

As we continue to hear stories, statistics, personal experiences, and research on the ineffectiveness of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Sex education, it is harder and harder for me to comprehend how so many staunch advocates of this harmful type of education are still pushing. Therefore, many like me are still having to "push back", meaning advocating medically accurate sex education. I was doing just that on Friday, sitting behind a table at a public event, promoting safer sex and sex education, when the funniest thing happened...

A young girl (college aged) walks up to the table. I say hello to greet her and notice her T-Shirt. It wasn't a flashy shirt, but the text caught my eye. In large letters it read "I Stop at Third Base" with smaller type under indicating the t-shirt came from a particular "1987 Abstinence Conference." My first thought was that I really wanted this t-shirt, for the irony, and had a little laugh to myself. my second thought was, I remember 1987 quite well, but I doubt this young girl does, or was she even born yet? Assuming her clothing choice was made out of irony, I decided to strike up a conversation.

I said, nodding to her shirt, "So, you don't look old enough to have attended a 1987 conference."

She looked at me, never cracking a smile and said, without any intonation in her voice, "No, I was conceived there."

Seriously. Never laughed so hard in my life! This, my friends is yet one more testiment to the ineffectiveness of Abstinence Only Sex Education.

This is my first post here so bear with me! (Oh gosh, what category does this go under? *flails*)

Are condoms really that far out there when birth control options are considered? Are they simply used to prevent STIs when the sexual health of another partner is unknown?

I ask these questions because I tend to get really strange looks from my peers when I mention that my birth control method of choice is condoms. I'm 21 years old and I have been in a monogamous relationship for close to a year now. And this whole time my partner and I use condoms. Yes, I know the plethora of pros and sound reasoning people use to explain why they don't use condoms. It's a hassle, it doesn't feel as good, condoms can be more expensive, it takes away the spontaneity, it's not as intimate. Also some women are allergic to condoms. These are all good points to not want to use condoms, and I'm glad these couples have found a birth control method that works for them. Yet, I wonder if this decision in my relationship is really all that uncommon? And sometimes it seems like condoms for some couples are not even considered. Is it just expected that if there's a monogamous couple who have been dating longer than a month that they don't use condoms?

I do martial arts. I'm not amazing, I'm not rubbish. But I'm certainly ambivalent about it. Some days I like it, sometimes I don't, and I'd have to say this is mainly to do with being a young female in a class of mostly older males. When I'm doing martial arts in a group is the only time I wish I could wave a wand and make myself male, or everyone else female. That would solve a million problems. Like, the guys not wanting to attack me properly, which is understandable, perhaps, but frustrating. They often assure me they 'won't hurt me' and 'not to be nervous', which annoys me no end. I am not nervous. I do not worry about getting hurt. No amount of saying this seems to convince anybody, since I'm the 'little girl' in with all the men. There are times I feel like taking something pink and frilly and whacking them over the head with it.

I've already posted something about this in response to Rebecca's post 'on touch', where I elaborate on this subject and talk about how the same guys who don't want to hit you will touch you on the arm or shoulder during conversation without a second thought. But that's another post.

Am I alone in this?

Yeah I love The Onion too! Check this article out...

To the few who knew her, Edith was an unattractive, awkward little girl who failed to stand out among her first-grade classmates at Jefferson Elementary School. And it is this lack of social grace, more than anything, that makes her all-too-brief life—and its all-too-brief ending—all the more not-compelling and non-poignant in the eyes of a city and a nation.

Haaaahaha. It's funny because it's true! Pretty white girls are the only murder victims who get any air time. Are you sick of it too?

From Yahoo news:

"The first beauty pageant for nuns debuts next month with the advent of "Miss Sister Italy," aimed at erasing a stereotype of nuns as being old and sad, a newspaper reported Sunday.

(Advertisement)
"Nuns are above all women and beauty is a gift from God," priest Antonio Rungi of the southern Italian diocese of Modragone told the daily Corriere della Sera.

"This contest will be a way to show there isn't just the beauty we see on television but also a more discrete charm," he added.

Nuns wishing to participate in the contest should send their picture to Rungi, who will publish it on his blog. Internet surfers can then vote for their favorite nun online.

"You really think all nuns are old, stunted and sad? This isn't the case any more, thanks to the arrival in our country of young and vital nuns," notably from Africa and Latin America, Father Rungi added." ------------

Thoughts?

Just today I saw The Accused again, with Jodie Foster (and yes she was riveting). It was hard to watch. Really hard. The film was supposed to be empowering, showing that no matter how women dress or act they don't deserve to be gang raped in a bar, it was depressing because it highlighted the fact that 1) you need witnesses and 2) it all has to happen in public with lots of guys before anyone takes you seriously.

I'm not sure if anyone agrees. But the film triggered serious anxiety memories for me because as a teen, I was raped several times and never reported it. Like 99 per cent of women who were "date raped."

Another issue that's been simmering in my head, the issue of touch and personal space. Prompted by an event I'll explain a little later in this post.

I am really, really touch-shy. I jump if someone puts their hand on my shoulder; I apologize if I accidentally touch someone else in a crowd. It doesn't matter who - I don't like my parents touching my stomach or my feet or my hair either, or my grandmother patting my behind or putting her hand on my leg. (I'm only waiting for the day when I have to tell my mother, "Ten years from now, do you really want 'I love you' to be a valid excuse for letting someone touch me when I don't want them to?") I get awkward and confused when greeting relatives I don't see often and kissing them on the cheek.

This awesome article by Erica Jong is more than a year old. I read it when it first came out, and lately I stumbled across it again. She tackles the chick lit dilemma, and concludes that women writers are ghettoized when they write about topics that seem feminine. "War matters; love does not," she writes. This got me thinking.

Useless leisure activities that are stereotypically female are usually thought of as much more frivolous, stupid, and pointless than similarly useless leisure activities associated with men.

I could tell you that I like fashion, chick lit, and celebrity tabloids. You'd all decide that I am very shallow, and probably not too bright.

Or I could tell you that I like video games, ESPN, and golf. You'd all decide that I'm an easygoing woman who's into sports. I'd be a great girlfriend.

(And no, I'm not interested in all these things. I don't think I'd have time to breathe.)

The fact is that NONE of these activities has much in the way of usefulness. Why should the first group get me so much more distain than the second?

(Okay, I'm sure you could find something useful in all of these. But nothing significant and certainly nothing you couldn't find another, more effective way to get elsewhere.)

Every once in a while, I find myself explaining Lindsay Lohan's relationships to someone, and I catch myself thinking, I feel like this knowledge is actually making me stupider. And it probably is, but it's not any dumber than knowing how to work a video game controller.

 "Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted." 

--John Lennon

So reading this article it says during a sting the cop had sex with a sex worker. Twice? Why twice? That sting was awesome- let's do it again? "I had to have sex with her for my job." WTF? And now he's on trial. Interesting....

Carolyn Hax is the fantastic relationship advice columnist at the Washington Post. She was away this week, but when she's gone she runs columns with advice or personal testimonies from readers. Today's writer's story made me feel so sad for her loss but so lucky at the same time to be alive during this time in history, and not the time she was raised in:

A Preface: This post is a response to some of the discussion and debate on Feministing and other sites about Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi--e.g. are they butch/femme? Is Portia a lipstick lesbian? femme? feminine? I what follows, I hope to shed some light on what these labels mean for me and other femme-identified queer women. You can also check out this post on my blog.

***************

Yes, I adore lipstick and never met a MAC lipgloss I didn't like, but please, don't call me a lipstick lesbian! I'm a femme.

What's the difference, my pretty? Is there one? Clearly, it depends who you ask.

Here are my definitions of these terms, which are based on my own experience and how I have observed others using them. Obviously, much more could be (and has been) written about these categories-their subtleties, changes over time, regional differences, etc. What I've written is not intended as the last word! Please share your own thoughts on what these terms mean to you and how you use them (or don't use them). Feel free to add/suggest other words you think should be on this list.

Saturdays are typically pretty boring for me at my job as an "Admitting Represenative" at a hospital Imaging Center, so I bring a book with me. Last week I had a woman co worker gawk at me for reading a book on feminism.

What REALLY ticked me off, was the male who gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and everyone talked about how SICK and DISGUSTING it was and that we will "not be seeing him in heaven, thats for sure."

Tattoos? AND Piercings?! Well then, I must be a whore.

I know it is their opinion and I respect it, but I know they would not respect mine. And its a place of work..I dont want to get involved with my private life,especially with the comments they make on things that I support. So I keep my mouth shut..but its getting much harder and I just want to scream in their faces OPEN UP YOUR MIND!!!!!!!!!

I worked for Borders before the hospital and I was just accepted for who I was. But the hospital pays me way more. I would love to quit and be able to be myself but right now, financially, that cant happen.

I know Im not the only one who goes through this crap at their work. What do you all go through and do you stand up for yourself? Its so hard not to.

I love Sarah Haskins and wish I could be one tenth as clever as she is.  Showing my boyfriend her videos also helps as fun 2-3 minute forays into feminism.  I.E. - look at what we have to put up with!

As a woman who is found of movies that are usually marketed to a male audience the barage of repetitive chick flicks is as old as the barage of repetitive action flicks.  (Though I will confess an unabashed love for When Harry Met Sally)  I greatly enjoyed Sarah's newest Target Women, and I hope you do too!  (If this has already been posted, I apologize, I didn't see it and I want to share Sarah's awesomeness with everyone!)

I was crying.

I was actually crying. Watching the Cho Show had made me cry because it was brilliant, hilarious, and felt so connected with Margaret as she made me see that I'm truly not alone in feeling alienated by parents and by community.

Being half-Korean, I can't say that I can fully identify with Margaret's struggles but I still can sympathize with a lot of the things she's been through. Especially with demanding Korean parents who have a vision set for their children and fully expect their children to follow that "Doctor/Lawyer" or other professional career path as they see it as a true marker of success in America.

I just finished watching a 20/20 special entitled "Babyland," a one-hour show about infant mortality in Tennessee.

The special focused primarily on teenage mothers in Memphis, located in a county where one baby dies every 43 hours. The vast majority are African Americans.

They documented the journey of a young woman named Precious Simpson, who lives in a Memphis neighborhood burdened by poverty and crime.

A wealthy white woman named Terry, from a suburban Memphis neighborhood, mentored Precious throughout her pregnancy, providing guidance, friendship and financial assistance. She heard about the opportunity from a church bulletin.

She seemed very nice (even though she claims to have "helped Precious make the decision not to have an abortion").

Cross-posted (slightly edited) to The Mind of Genevieve

So, I read a lot of blogs, mostly of the feminist/progressive sort.  And being an observant person, I've come to see a lot of the same sort of behavior from 'dissenters' in comment threads.  One of the most common patterns:

Feminist [/anti-racist/fat activist/LGBT rights] Blogger: This degrades women [/people of color/fat people/LGBT people]

Privileged Trolls: Nuh-uh !  My fiancee[best friend/co-worker/brother]'s a woman[/black/fat/gay], and [sie]'s not offended by it!

It's really, really easy to scoff at this kind of crap.  Possibly because we see it all the time.  People don't like having their privilege called into question, so whenever anyone does, they have to assert that we're all talking out of our asses so that they can go on mindlessly consuming their various forms of pop culture in peace.*

So, I have varying levels of in-head meanness towards these trolls, and from meanest to nicest (and even my nicest isn't totally nice):

Dear Feminist Consciousness Changer,

I am writing to you today because as I help you I am helping myself.  You are a consciousness changer.  You are a rebel with a cause.  You are a world lover who cares for women, men, children, families, single folk, tribes, communities, cities, towns, villages, counties, states, provinces, nations and countries all over the world.  As a feminist consciousness changer you must understand that you do much more than help women.  As a feminist you empower women to empower themselves and these women empower everyone they come in contact with in their daily lives. Feminism is also not just about feminism.  You as a feminist consciousness changer are involved in changing consciousness in other areas such as: environmental, social justice, racial/cultural, housing, communities, education, art, family/parenting, health/medicine/holistic health, GLBTQ, disability, military, immigration, human rights/civil rights, work place issues, family/parenting, international relations, urban/suburban/rural and religion/spiritual issues and aboriginal/first nations/indigenous/native issues.  You are able to take several of these areas and merge them into what drives you to live your life as a feminist. 

Today, I had a pretty depressing conversation with my mother about rape. She is a liberal person, always brought me up liberally and is pretty feminist. But she seems to have absorbed some of our society's oldest attitudes about rape, i.e. that 'she was asking for it'. Here's how it went, in an abridged version:

Me: I always feel hopeless about juries. Because they're just made up of normal people, and most people have stupid attitudes about rape. Even the police, have been known to ask things like, 'why were you dressed that way in the first place?'

Her: Well. They have a point. If you go out LOOKING like a hooker, how can you be surprised someone thinks you are one?

I struggled with deciding whether to write this today, especially now that my partner is reading feminist blogs (at my request), but following talking it out with him, I felt it could be beneficial to bring it out here:

Initiating sex when someone is asleep is not sexy. It's terrifying. I know there's a whole somnophilic subculture out there, and I'll admit it sounded pretty good to me, but the actual experience turned into one of the most frightening things that has ever happened to me. I didn't know where I was, I didn't know what was going on, I was not aroused, and because "things had already passed the point of no return" I felt unable to say a word. At one point I resisted, than I realized I was resisting, was stunned by the implications and just withdrew.

Bro went back to college today, so for the first time, I'm the one at home while my brother is the one at school. It's the perfect time to reminisce (while making a tiny bit of a point).

When Bro and I were little, we often shared our toys. They were either gender-specific or gender-neutral, rarely items intended for the opposite gender. But we used them in quite creative ways.

my blog.

I was surfing the net and came across this article from MSNBC and searched for the New York Post article that they refer to, which can be found here .

Both articles describe and critique (to a certain extent) a frightening new trend in hair removal.  First off, I'm not a huge fan of hair removal.  I understand some people prefer it, and I have no problems with them, but for me it seems silly.  People go as far as to call not shaving "unnatural" (I hope people see the irony in that).  Anyways, if it were just another article shaming women into trying a new painful hair removal system, I would've just rolled my eyes and moved on, but it wasn't.

This disturbing new trend is marketing hair removal (particularly waxing) to "tween" and "pre-tween" girls - some as young as 6.  I was absolutely disgusted.  And we're not talking just eyebrow waxes.  Everything from eyebrows to legs to BIKINI WAXES.  Some salons are even offering specials for "virgin hair" removal.  That's right.  Supposedly you can prevent these little girls from ever growing pubic hair (you know a sign of becoming a woman) with 2-6 waxing sessions at an early age.

I'm so horrified and angry I can barely find the words to express my outrage.  Not only are little girls being taught that their bodies are something to be shameful of and things that need to be "fixed."  They are also being stripped of their autonomy (in the future) to make decisions about their bodies!  I am so afraid for the self-esteem and body image issues that the girls of today are going to grow up with.  And who are these parents that they are bringing their daughters in to get waxed at the age of 6!  There is no reason to force children to cosmetically alter their bodies.  This is just disgusting.  Read the articles, because I can't write about this anymore.  It's really upset me.

I've been watching the Olympics religiously for the past week and a half. I've been reading various posts on Feministing about women and the Olympics. But the subject I haven't seen is the women who are not on center stage, the women who seem to act as living props (Chinese women, I think it's important to note). These are the women who carried the country signs in the opening ceremony. The women (though, to be fair, there were also men) who acted as cheerleaders, stomping and clapping and smiling for the entire opening ceremony while acting as a human fence. The women who carried the signs around on the gymnastics floor. The women who carried the medals and flowers for the medal ceremonies, handing them to a man to give to the athletes. I'm sure there are plenty of other women in such positions who I haven't even noticed but who still deserve to have their position as scenery questioned.

Disclaimer: This post talks about periods, tampons, and pads. If you don't want to read about female hygene products, don't read this post. I realize that some women prefer tampons, but I think they're evil -- but you're not if you use them.

I hate tampons, and I know I'm not alone. My first experience with them was during middle school when I went to the nurse for female hygene products and all they had were tampons. I was 12 and had a hymen, so it felt like there was a stick in me for the rest of the day. (My next experience was very similar when at a cousin's and we wanted to go swimming. Still had that hymen though, so no swimming for me.)

Eventually I was able to use them, but it was always a hassle, and 10 years into my menstrual years, I can no longer use them for the same reason I had been unable to use them when I first got my period: PAIN! Now it just makes my cramps unbelievable, but I've come to the conclusion that my vagina does not like them and so I avoid them.

I don't know if other clinics are noticing this as well, but we've seen lots more servicemen and women over the past year. I don't want to use this post to make any overly-simplistic arguments like Iraq War = more deployments and hardships for military families = more abortions, but I do want to mention some of the challenges that military families face when choosing abortion.

To celebrate Women's Suffrage, The Globe featured this witty article detailing the many set-backs society has offered this year.  We can vote, but how far have we REALLY come?

What do you do when your partner is an asshole? Not a dyed-in-the-wool jackass, but on those off days, or more likely in our culture, in those frequent nearly subliminal ways that undermine you. Does he readily blame conflicts on your feminist leanings? Does he make casual sexist remarks out of habit or social indoctrination? Since marriage and/or kids, does he find it easier to discount your intelligence? Is his work or activities de facto more important than yours, or when your views differ, do you notice that the burden of proof is always on you to justify your perspective? When you start to look, even the healthiest and happiest relationship turns out to be a warren of inherited sexism. Left unreflected on, even for the footloose and childfree, the matrix of attitudes and assumptions that crop up in the average Western/American heterosexual partnership, especially marriage, can grind a woman down. Younger women can be particularly vulnerable. On the flip side, these things are pervasive and insidious, trying to root them out can turn into a death struggle. You can easily become so fixated on the smallest expressions of these problems that your nitpicking (it can feel like nitpicking, even to the blamer) takes over your home life. To some extent, I'd guess all women have to weigh up these low level conflicts, but once again, maternity ups the stakes.

Anyone else get frustrated when your feminist-identified male friends have extremely anti-feminist moments? IE:

a)    they make a rape joke (“it’s funny when it’s bro-rape!!”)

b)   they reduce other women to anatomy (“OMG boobies and tits”)

c)    they assert “expert” opinions on issues like street harassment, abortion, and sexism in the workplace (“women should wear modest clothing so they won’t be harassed!”)

d)   they make a “woman joke” around you just to piss you off (“you’re so cute when you are angry!”)

e)    they pretend to be manly around you just to piss you off (“oh, I’m a MAN, ha ha ha, what are you going to do, WOMAN?? Ha ha ha”)

Etc etc.  Don’t get me wrong—I love when guys say that they are feminists and mean it.  I’ve had great discussions with men who support my ideas and/or expand my ideas with their own unique takes on gender issues.  But some guys don’t get that feminism isn’t just a “sometimes” belief—it’s a way of life. 

(note: do women do this too? I have never had a female friend like that, but maybe they are out there.)

my problem with sex and the city: the movie.

however many tears it evoked, or how many smiles it brought to my face, or chills it sent down my spine, i couldn't seem to take off my feminist goggles and just watch it for what it was.  as an avid, often questionably obsessed, sex and the city fan, i was definitely expecting much more from the ground-breaking hit television-series.  as possibly the only show on television that tackled issues of gender, sexuality, power struggles and glass ceilings, the movie was definitely a step backward.  the ladies were still as quirky and entertaining as ever, but it was as if they were completely different people than they were in the show.  yes, i'm very aware that the show's premises surrounds the (mainly) heterosexual relationship problems the girls encounter, but the movie had this concept amplified to a point where it was almost unbearable. 

Barelypolitical.com launched in June 07 with the video "I have a crush on... Obama" ...which was recently named a 2007 video of the year by YouTube, AOL, Newsweek, People Magazine, the AP, Adrants, Nerve.com and a couple other places. It has since come out with many more political comedy videos including other characters such as Guilianigirl and McCaingirl.

When I saw this on E! i had to wonder if Obama really needs this kind of publicity. With girls who have an "ideal body image" jumping around making fun of the candidates. I know its supposed to be political satire but I don't feel right laughing at this.

How does anyone else feel about this?

I got my financial aid award letter a few days ago, and have been discussing it with my financial aid officer ever since. The ridiculousness of it is astounding. Even with two jobs, ManPants and I are basically at the poverty line, and yet they expect me to somehow find thirteen hundred dollars to pay for my tuition.

First off, I'd like to thank everyone for their comments from the previous post. They were very helpful ^.^

Later that night, I ended up apologizing to my friend for calling her ignorant. After all, a small bit of politics isn't worth friendship. She accepted my apology and further explained that she can't help how she feels since she is Catholic (an excuse yes, but one I can live with). She went on to say that while she adamantly believes in pro-life, that wasn't to say she was totally against women's rights in the church and firmly believes that women should be allowed to be priests.

At that point, even if she wasn't apologizing, I forgave her. It occurred to me that I was the one being ignorant. I find sometimes we get caught up in our own beliefs so much, we forget that other's have their own. Just because she's pro-life doesn't make her any less of a feminist, just like being pro-choice doesn't make me any less of a Christian. So with that, we both agreed to disagree. I hope someday she'll at least learn that abortions in case rape-pregnancy can be permissible. I'd be quite content with that. Until then, I'll just accept who she is and what she believes. I think that's all I can do.

This is something I ponder quite often, as I am currently a student in the "How To Raise a Five Year Old Boy" school. My son is beautiful, smart, and extremely capable. Obviously, this terrifies me. I have spent a lot of time asking myself this very, very important question: How do I teach my son to not abuse his privilege?

To be sure, I recognize the privilege my son received by accident of birth. He was born to two white, middle-class parents. I have a college education, as does my current partner and my son's father. He is an only child, and has four grandparents in his life that absolutely dote on him. There is a never-ending supply of love, learning, and involvement. My son has opportunities that many children are not blessed with. Obviously, I don't think I'm the perfect parent, nor is his environment guaranteed to always work in his favor. I make mistakes, I do stupid things, and I don't spend nearly enough time thinking about how my parenting reflects my feminist beliefs.

However, I do spend a lot of time analyzing the role that early childhood shapes who we become, and especially how parental beliefs can conflict with what society teaches our children. Below are some of my musings - I would love to have a conversation about how we should be raising young boys to actively engage in our world in a feminist manner.

While my boyfriend and I were en route to a restaurant a couple of nights ago, a woman jogging alongside the road brought up the subject of catcalling, and how offensive and threatening it can be. What began as a fairly light discussion about the objectification of women rapidly morphed in to an emotional conversation which left me seriously reconsidering our year and a half long relationship.

My boyfriend is currently reading the book, Full Frontal Feminism, by Jessica Valenti, primarily to understand some of my feminist opinions and beliefs. As he reads, he often asks about my perspective on the issues that are discussed. Over the past few weeks, we have had numerous discussions about women's rights, which has resulted in him having a better understanding of modern feminism, and in both of us having a firmer grasp on how the other views our society. Up until this last blow up, all of our conversations about women's issues and feminism have been very calm, with absolutely zero conflict involved. That is why this last debate was such a shock.

I was a heavy kid. I hated running, but I loved soccer. To this day, though the sport has one of the smallest television audiences in American sports, youth enrollment, especially among young girls, is at its highest. We can give credit for that to two things. One is the inherent accessibility of the game. Soccer is a sport that nurtures all body types. The heavier girls muscled people off the ball, the smaller ones worked to speed past them, and everybody had to run. In a world where girls are told that they are too thin or too fat, too tall or too short, the only thing that matters on the soccer field is who runs and who gets the ball.

The second cause for the general excitement about the sport is the success of the US Womens Soccer team. What's ironic and very exciting is that the international superpowers in women's soccer often come from countries where cultural attitudes still nurture sexism  and laws condone it (Brazil, China, maybe even the United States). In the 1999 Women's World Cup Final, the United States and China fought hard for 2 hours and ended the game with penalty kicks. When Brandi Chastain, scored on the fifth kick, she ripped off her shirt to reveal her black sports bra and dropped to her knees. In that moment, millions of little girls cheered and took the field. The American women had acheived what the men had not. They had won a World Cup and would go on to medal at every subsequent Olympics.

Now we know it was not a fluke. Those young girls have played in their own Olympics. A very young American team, containing none of the members of the 1999 World Cup team has just defeated Brazil to win a Gold medal in Beijing. 

I no longer play soccer, but every time the United States wins a soccer game I remember the fourteen odd years I spent playing soccer and the strength, both physical and mental, that it brought me. It taught me that I could run with the boys and even outrun them. So I would like to say a public thank you to the American women who inspired my generation to run hard, no matter what the context.

Last Saturday, Ellen Degeneres and Portia De Rossi married one another at their home in front of a small number of guests. It looked like a gorgeous ceremony and the two of them just glowed. (Of course, they probably had a fab photographer, unlike the guy I got off Craigslist for $200.)

This ceremony was obviously much more than any simple celeb wedding; it's the first time a Lesbian celebrity couple has married legally. It is an out there example of how marriage is evolving from a heterosexual institution goverened by gender and economics to a statement of love and committment that anyone can make. And what did Ellen have to say about it in People?"

DeGeneres described herself as "the luckiest girl in the world''.

"She's (referring to Portia De Rossi) officially off the market. No one else gets her. And now she'll cook and clean for me.''

Oh. Oh. Maybe it was the wedded bliss talking, but something really didn't sit right with me about that whole "she'll cook and clean for me" line. I think if my partner said that on our wedding day, I would have thrown a punch. And why would Mrs. De Rossi be the cook and cleaner? Is it because she is more "femme" than Ellen? That looking a certain way entails certain domestic duties? I know, I know, Ellen was just trying to be funny, but her saying that seemed to reinforce gender divides and "butch/femme" roles in relationships; roles that are often reflections of homophobia and misogyny. Thoughts?

Sure, the racks of pink, purple, and Disney Princess bedazzled clothes are a clear and present testament to our national fascination with feminizing the little uterus-ed ones, but the problem is, naturally, more insidious than that. Call it the neonatal beauty standard: girls have it, boys don't. Like many new and gender dynamic conscious mothers, I reckoned I could simply trawl both departments for gender neutral clothing and my problem would be done. I made my objection to obnoxiously pink clothes clear throughout the family and rested on my feminist laurels. Well, truth be told, our fierce little girl now has a wardrobe of dainty pastels. Why? Because the carefully chosen, high quality not pink dresses were, admittedly, much nicer than the sweaters, flannels, t-shirts, and jeans from the boy's section ("gender neutral" is simply not available in the girl's department, all little girl's must be clearly labeled as such, apparently because society will collapse if an opportunity to rub in the fact of her less-favored-status is missed). Maybe it was because the boy's clothes seem to come in three different colors per year, none of them found elsewhere in nature or our communities, excepting shit brown which is apparently quite popular these days. And, for better or for worse, our daughter loves those dresses, sage jackets with patchwork owls (Target shoppers, you probably know the one), and fruit emblazoned tees. I had a momentary crisis that I might have already indelibly imprinted my impressionable child to prefer these symbols of femininity, but then I recalled that I've yet failed to indelibly imprint her to not run away when it's time to change a diaper or not climb and dance on the wobbliest furniture.

Olympians...world class athletes or fuck toys? Depends on if the athlete in question is male or female.  High-acheiving men are revered for their accomplishments, but the women athletes are still judged on their attractiveness and fuckability.  The Facebook group linked below states that Alicia Sacramone "sucks at gymnastics" (yeah, so why did she make the Olympic team then?!?) but, hey, a whole lot of assholes say they'd still fuck her anyways.  Great statement of values there.

If you are a member of Facebook, please sign in, go to this group, and report it.  It's just offensive and Facebook needs some input from people who do not accept that it's okay to publicly talk about women this way.&

(I've just started a new blog dedicated to feminist issues and other things close to my heart. I wasn't sure where to start, so I ended up writing a fairly generic piece about how feminism has personally affected me and how it ties into my interest in other social justice issues. I figured it would be a good way to start posting on this community as well.)

Living my Feminism

Elle m’a dit: “Garde tes tresors,
moi je vaux mieux que tout a
Des barreaux sont des barreaux, meme en or
Je veux les memes droits que toi
Du respect pour chaque jour,
moi je ne veux que de l’amour ”

She said to me: “Keep your treasures,
Me, I’m worth more than that.
Bars are still bars even if made of gold.
I want the same rights as you
and respect for each day,
Me I want only love.”

I’m a feminist. Capital F, -eminist. I’ve been a feminist my whole life but it’s only relatively recently that I’ve learnt to claim the term for myself and have begun to actively identify with a movement of women all over the world who have one thing in common: the tenacity to fight for full equality and the audacity to be content with nothing less.

Just a heads up, this post does contain some contemplation about collecting menstrual blood without diverting to references of any sort of feminine hygiene product. If that creeps you out, maybe you would be more interested in just reading the original article.

After success in healing injured mice, a team of American and Canadian researchers are hoping to begin human trials to test the affectiveness of stem cells found in menstrual blood. Full story here.

Reading so many posts about name changing for marriage makes me think about my own name-changing debate. I'm not particularly inclined to get married, since the history of the institution makes me slightly sick to my stomach, but I've been considering for a little over a year changing my name.

As soon as I was old enough to sit down for several hours in a row without fidgeting, my mother would take me aside and tell me long stories about growing up in South Korea, her relationship with her sisters and her father, and stories her mother had told her.  She always did this when my father was out of the house.  He systematically isolated her from her family, discouraging her from visiting her sisters or going back to Seoul.  He did not accompany her to my grandmother's funeral and wouldn't let me go either.  Nor did my mother have many friends.  So when I got older I deduced that I was the only outlet for her feelings of isolation.  I was, and continue to be, the recipient of all of her family's history. 

When I finally escaped the small southern community where I grew up (sorry, South; I love you and I hate you in varying measure), I was able to compare my experiences with other first generation Asian-American women.  To my surprise, they had never had these long mother-daughter talks.  Guilt trips, to be sure, but never an outpouring of familial history.

This disconnect begs the question in my mind: is there an oral tradition of passing on stories, wives' tales, lineage, etc. between mothers and daughters specific to Asian cultures?  Was this a unique condition created by the pressures of loneliness and isolation?  Is this a normal mother-daughter thing?  I can't help but feel that my mother is telling me all of this so that I can pass them to any daughters I might have.  It's a disconcerting thought.

You can call me crazy, but I think the term pro-life is losing us the abortion wars.

When the first, I'll admit, brilliant PR person coined the term under Regan, it was the beginning of the end. Catchy and self-explanatory, pro-life has had the unfortunate effect of painting those of us in favor of abortion rights as pro-death. We can correct folks as much as we want, there's no way to combat the more than two-decade long use of the term.

At least there was no way, until now.

Never let anyone tell you that you have to behave a certain way or dress a certain way just because you're a girl.

Follow your heart. Find activities that you enjoy and and do those. Never let anyone tell you there is a job you can't do or a sport you can't play. Know that once you have your heart set on something, there is not a force in the world that can stop you.

You are beautiful. No matter what MTV and Cosmopolitan magazine will have you believe, you are beautiful just the way you are.

If you knew me at all, you'd know that I'm not an avid sports fan. At best, I'll sit through a football game for my partner's benefit, but I'm usually asleep by half time. So it probably comes as no surprise that I'm not following the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. However, its not because I'm not interested or because I have better things to do, or any of this guy's reasons .

Let me first say this: the idea of global brother- and sisterhood is beautiful. The notion that we can put aside our differences for "a few shining weeks" and all hold hands and unite under the banner of anything is noble (thanks a lot, Morgan Freeman and Visa ). But there are some things that I don't think can, or should, be tolerated or ignored in the name of athletic tradition. I think that we should use this global forum to call attention to the betterment of mankind instead of turning a blind eye to the obvious human rights abuses that are being committed, not only by China, but by a multitude of nations competing in the Olympics.

I am a feminist. I am also a person who wears an engagement ring. And there've been numerous posts and books and commentary on how consumerist, anti-feminist, and generally terrible diamond engagement rings can be. These discourses have been nuanced and thoughtful, and I agree that everything that has been said about the negative aspects of the ring are true. And the commentary has made me think, and respectfully put forth into words why I am at peace with the ring I wear.

Yes, its a diamond. It is not a blood diamond, as warranted by the guy who sold it -but that doesn't mean it is not an oppressing diamond, a racist diamond, a diamond that was found by someone who died of a treatable, preventable disease, someone who died of poverty. I am pretty sure it is a poverty diamond. Show me one that isn't. Show me one piece of jewelry that at some point in its creation was not exploitative.

But it is also a love diamond, one that was researched and found by a tall string bean dork of a guy who got me something old-fashioned and also honored the ban against blood diamonds. It is the piece of compressed carbon that he placed in a small manila envelope and traveled across the Atlantic to meet me, burning in his pocket. It is the token of love that he fished out of that burnt pocket, that crumpled manila envelope and put on my finger on Millennium Bridge, on a rare sunny London afternoon two years ago today.

If all goes according to plan, a continuing column on the issues mothers of daughters face in our misogynist society. This edition shamelessly inspired by the How Do You Deal With It? post below.

I'm a lion in my house, I rule from the kitchen with a heavy cast iron pan and walnut rolling pin, or a cranky zinger when interrupted at my desk. Even the man of the house, with his endearing manly swagger, treads lightly when he knows I mean business and leaves the gender role play for another time. In the bedroom, I'm a lynx who pursues my own pleasure and agency, much to the aforementioned man's delight. With my baby I'm a mother bear, known to drop dinners and jump ottoman hurtles at the delicate sound of a sniffle. But on the street, I'm a mouse. I don't want to be seen, I don't want to be noticed. That guy in Jamaica that "complimented" my figure in a bathing suit by leaning on his pickup truck horn as he slid past at 2 mph made me want to die. I didn't say anything. I giggled nervously to my mother who was with me and tried not to cry.

What's an otherwise ballsy lactivist to do now that her even bigger and better breasts are attracting attention in the public sphere? I'm fortunate enough not to receive the anti-nursing nagging, but the indiscrete leering is more unnerving. And though I'm usually accompanied by my partner out and about, we live in what seems like the street harassment capital of the Eastern seaboard. When I glance into my daughter's sweet brown eyes to avoid the aggressive male gaze across the street and pretend I don't hear the frat boy analysis of my fuckability, I start to seethe. As a feminist mother, do I have the right to keep sweet under this duress? What message does my silence and beet red blushing send to my newly aware toddler?

I'm angry today. Angry that street harassment here is backed up with a very real threat of rape and assorted violence. I'm angry there are enough assholes per block that they can clot into packs that intimidate. I'm angry at the compromises I must make. Do I nurse my hungry baby and attract the attention of the wolves over there? Do I stand up for the coed running the gauntlet at the building door? Do I let them bully me out of whole sections of the city? Do I buy the rhetoric that their menace is so much my fault, that it is my responsibility to prevent their harassment by just not existing? Will she notice and absorb these choices? Do I want her to? Then I snapped. Bro #640 oggled and dripped his lechery on the steaming sidewalk for all to hear. Hot, grumpy, and decidedly not feeling like a sex object for Bro's consumption I snarled "what would your mother think?" Ok, it wasn't witty and it didn't make him fall into the earth, but it did make some pedestrians chuckle at him and his fragile ego wasn't up for that. Since then it's come a little bit easier. "What? Were you bottlefed?" "Never seen breasts before?" "Didn't your father teach you any manners?" "Aren't you embarrased being so desperate?" But standing up to an adolescent's bravado or a frat boy's display is shooting fish in a barrel. I still hold my tongue in certain parts of town, I still choose my battles. I'm sick of structuring my day around where the degenerates gather, I worry my little girl will figure out why. When will we be past this stage?

I make no claim to be perfect, and I can usually point out my flaws.  Today's most prevalent?  I question the reasoning behind the teen recanting her rape allegations.  I'm the type of person who will believe someone reporting a rape no matter what, until the police prove that it was not rape.

According to the article, "major aspects of the story has [sic] changed," which is why they're saying she recanted.  Okay, which major aspects?  Here's the original version.

The alleged victims initially told police that they had recently met Witham, a newly hired ticket collector for the carnival’s rides, and that they had spoken to him on their cell phones before he went to one of their homes on Sunday, according to court records.

They said he arrived at the home when they were alone, entered their living room, and began to touch them inappropriately. “The suspect then grabbed victim #1 and took her into her bedroom down the hall and climbed on top of her on her bed,” according to a police report of the incident.

The report added: “She told him to stop and kept saying no but he proceeded to have intercourse with her and wouldn’t get off of her. She then said he eventually got off of her and went back into the living room, where he then assaulted victim #2 again,” who was sitting on a couch in front of a computer.

After the alleged rapes, Witham began to get upset because he couldn’t find his clothes, according to the report. “Both victims were in fear of him and tried to locate his clothes, so that he would leave as soon as possible,” according to the report. “Jeff kept getting more angry while looking for his clothes.”

The girls then took the opportunity to flee the house, but he caught one of them outside. “The suspect grabbed hold of her and bit her on the neck,” according to the report. “He then started dragging her into the woods as she attempted to fight him off. Victim # 2 said she was scared she was going to get raped again.”

The report said that Witham “grabbed her by the throat, chocking her as he was dragging her into the woods across the street against her will. Victim # 2 stated that she was telling him to stop and to let her go repeatedly with no success.”

The girls then called one of their parents, who called Marshfield Police.

That's a pretty hefty lie to make up.  And yet, now that the newspaper is saying the teen "recanted" (which we don't know if she did or not, only that parts of the story changed), chances are that people won't believe her, even if she was raped, but not in as violent a manner.  For all we know, the teen in question did want to have sex with him, and then changed her mind, but he kept going.  Or he pushed her into having sex, saying he couldn't resist her beauty and it was her fault, and she didn't know what to do or if such an idea could be true.  That's also rape.  

So yes, I will sit here and believe that the two girls were raped until I get the whole story, and even then, I'll question whether or not they're changing their story because of intimidation or fear, or because they're young and they don't have the best judgment of the situation.  So sue me.

[cross-posted ]

I saw this in today's Guardian and I thought I'd share.

It's a nice piece on female singer/songwriters. As much as I'm sick of the whole 'singer/songwriter' stereotype of women in music it has some good stuff, I'll be checking out the records I don't have as soon as I get myself down to a record shop!

I have been thinking a lot about sustainability lately. Specifically how accessible a diet of sustainable food is how much of a role class and privilege play. Speaking with my cousin, Mia, a few weeks ago got me thinking about the image associated with buying and eating local foods. Even Stuff White People Like jokes that farmer's markets are a place for white people to placate "their undying need to support local economies, and the idea of buying direct from the farmer helps them assuage the fears instilled in them from reading Fast Food Nation (and yes, every white person has read this book)." Mia talked about an upper class, pretentious image that is often associated with this lifestyle and the inaccessibility many feel because of this. I agree. Image is definitely one concern, others include actual cost, accessibility, and time.

What is causing healthy food access problems? (via)

Poverty, or the lack of resources with which to acquire food, is the primary source of food insecurity in the United States. However, extensive documentation shows that the lack of access to food in low-income urban neighborhoods -- the simple inability to buy it there -- is an important additional factor. Compared to people living in higher-income areas, residents of low-income urban neighborhoods have very limited access to high quality food, enjoy fewer options in the variety of goods that are available to them, and pay higher prices for their groceries when they are available.

There have been efforts made to increase accessibility of healthy foods to low-income families including farms that accept food stamps. This is a great start but the vouchers go a lot further at the grocery store than at the local farmer's market. In May, Thomas wrote,"All modern famines are failures of entitlement, not of food production. There's enough food, but some people due to poverty or other barriers cannot get it." This certainly makes food a feminist issue.

And some of them fight back!

Bikini Barista Throws Boiling Water on Flasher.

From the article:

Jamae Feddock, a bikini clad barista at Java Girls, said she first thought the man dressed in women’s underwear and exposing himself was a sick joke, until the man came back several times.

[...]

Feddock and another barista were working around 5 a.m. last Thursday when the incident happened. They tried to get a look at the man’s license plate, but that too was covered up with women’s underwear.

When the man came back a third time one of the baristas took a cup of 220 degree water and doused him with it.“

Kylie opened the door and threw boiling hot water on his face and his chest and he said oooh yeah,” Feddock said.

Police agencies around Pierce County said they are seeing more and more incidents of indecent exposure -- as more coffee stands open -- many with women dressed provocatively -- or barely dressed at all.

This trend in baristas in bathing suits was brought up on the main page a few days ago.

While I don't think that anything a woman wears is an invitation to sexual harassment or abuse, I have to wonder if less women will be willing to serve in bikinis if they continue to be harassed in such a way.

I originally posted this on my blog, www.fortworthfeminism.com, but it's a subject that keeps coming up (most recently on Jezebel) and I find that a lot of people have experienced some of the same crap that I have when it comes to changing your name when you get married. I find that the mainstream feminist community is a little lacking when it comes to advice for married women as opposed to single women, so I hope I can provide some insight as a married feminist. (In fact, there isn't even a "marriage" category to put this entry into, hint, hint).

A lot of people ask me why I hyphenated my name instead of just changing it to my husband's when we got married. Others flat out refuse to use my entire name or ask me rude questions like "don't you respect your husband?" Here's the story.

From the Marine Corps Times:

---------------------------------------

"The performance-based pay system, called the National Security Personnel System or NSPS, was launched two years ago. The performance evaluations, raises and bonuses handed out in January were the first large-scale test of the new system, covering 102,000 employees at agencies, bases and commands across the Defense Department."

"The first large-scale payout of new pay-for-performance raises and bonuses, completed in January, was riddled with inequalities, an analysis by Federal Times has shown."

This caught my eye because they stated in the title that there were gender discrepancies, so I thought, "Here's another example of women not getting paid as much as men!" But look what it said!

...And women received larger total payouts overall than did their male counterparts even though they both received the same performance ratings, on average.

What do you think of that?

One of my very good friends got home a few weeks ago after living abroad for two years.  This friends had helped me through an extremely emotionally abusive relationships, and so his homecoming forced me to revisit that time in my life.  I've been lost in thought about the experience for a few days, and thought writing about it might help me wade through it all.

Despite the nearly two years that have elapsed since the end of this abusive relationship, I still feel incredibly hurt and sad at what happened.  To give you a very brief idea of the nature of the relationship, I'll say that for the duration of the relationship I was called a fucking bitch, a manatee (I weighed about 115 pounds...), and a fucking psycho on a regular basis.  My friends were his friends, and they joined this person in his abuse, completely isolating me.  After a year and a half, a very good friend helped me to gather the courage to leave the relationship.  In a way, I believe she saved my life.

My boyfriend is a partner at a big, important software development company, and today he emailed me about something that happened at work that really, really, really bothered him because he's a good Feminist BoyfriendTM. Below is the edited text of his email.

1. We have a public comment-ratings board that I helped build for employees to make general comments about the company, and projects.

2. A while ago, we got a new receptionist who happens to be male.

3. Someone posted a 1-star comment this week. Quote: "Silly admin: Front desk is for chicks! Dudes belong at Jiffy Lube!"

As you can imagine, some of the partners are pretty pissed off. I am too, BUT I am reasonably certain that I know who it was. My guess is it's the dude I work with that I've told you about. I know he's talked about "mackin" on the "hotties" at the front desk before, and he chats up the female receptionists. It sounds like him too. I'm not privy to the information but they've looked him up in the database and he's going to be dealt with.

[Cross-posted to my blog, Out of the Locker]

"I oppose abortion except in the case of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger."

Some questions for the Senator...

1) Where will this raped woman get an abortion? 88% of US counties have no identifiable abortion provider. Additionally, training for medical students who want to learn how to perform abortions is hard to come by. Assuming abortion is made illegal in all cases except rape and incest, it seems like the number of clinics and doctors who bother to learn to perform the procedure would drop significantly - so how is a woman in a rural area supposed to get access to these services?

I think I am safe in assuming many people here have been harassed. Maybe all of you, I don't know. How do you cope with the stress of being objectified by a stranger while you are just walking down the street? As a child (yes, I got harassed as a child... oh the joys of developing early), I would say nothing, and just fearfully creep by. As an angry teenager, I would flip them the bird or tell them to fuck off. As a young adult, I would smile nervously, acknowledge their existence to satiate them, and go about my business.

Today I was talking to a friend of mine about Olympic women’s soccer and I asked if she remembered the 1999 Women’s World Cup

When she told me she didn’t, I actually didn’t believe her. I kept asking was she sure? Was she completely sure? Was she really truly 100% positive? She really didn’t remember at all? Not even the part where one player ripped her shirt off in an impromptu victory celebration? Really?

I woke up on Friday morning more invigorated and excited than I thought possible, considering I was waking up from a Tia Tequila-esque sleeping arrangement (push two double beds together and see how many people you can fit into a hotel room!), unshowered and still sore from driving seven hours across the Midwest, from Minneapolis to Chicago. And what was the cause of my joy, you may ask? The kick-off for the International Femme Conference! As one of the roomies and I walked downstairs to pick up our registration packets and search out liquid happiness (i.e. coffee), I found myself immersed in a sea of fabulousness - friendly smiles, shy and boisterous greetings, people with whom I felt instantly connected. Every time we would walk by someone wearing the conference lanyard I would turn to my friend with a "YAY!" It is a powerful thing, to be in a space with a large group of people who share some aspect of your identity; to have amazing, powerful presenters and keynote speakers articulate the unifying forces of femme and femininity; to be challenged to better ourselves, and our community, which reaches far beyond our social circles, queer spaces and fellow conference attendees.

Over the next few days I'll be putting up posts, recalling the immensely powerful and life-changing keynote addresses by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha , Dorothy Allison , Julia Serano and Veronica Combs, AKA Vixen Noir , some of the incredibly informative workshops (The Trouble with Femme History, Femmeizm Manifesto, Femme Community Organizing, among others), and the subversively sexy performances that occurred on Friday and Saturday night.

I'm going into my junior year of high school next week, and I was browsing a PBteen catalogue for a new desk lamp.  When I reached the appropriate page, the first thing I noticed is that the books on the left side of the book shelf are dark blue, and the books on the right side are bright pink.  This immediately let's you know which products are geared towards guys and girls. 

Dear Sir,

I wonder, what possessed you to yell “pussy” out the window as you were driving by my dog and me this afternoon?  Was it my unwashed hair? My baggy exercise apparel?  The way I was holding the leash?  Perhaps you like beagles and thought the best way to compliment my taste in dogs was to shout out a vulgar profanity and then speed away.  If so, thank you; I appreciate the gesture.

But why did you drive away so quickly?  I realize the light turned green, but I would have liked to have a conversation with you. We could have chatted about, oh, the weather, or the beauty of nature, or even the reasons why a middle-aged white man would single out a teenager to prey upon.  It’s too bad you couldn’t muster up the courage to face me.

If I met you again, would you remember me? Would you recognize my confused expression as I turned my head to glare in your direction?  Or was I just another body to you, a female without a face?  Just another woman.   

Thank you for disturbing my peaceful walk with my dog. Thank you for ruining a few hours of my life.  Thank you for giving me another reason to be fearful in my own neighborhood. Thank you for justifying the knife I carry in my back pocket.

I hope you have a nice day, asshole.

Sincerely,

Lauren

I'm a middle-class cisgendered white male in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship.  I know, great way to start a post on a feminist journal, right?

I've always thought of myself as the progressive sort, but as time goes on I'm starting to realize how much privilege has permeated my life, and how that has affected my judgements and my perceptions.

I think about the people I spent time with in high school and college.  About the jokes wrought with racism, classism and sexism that were "okay, because we don't really mean it".  I don't want to get into it, but the drill's pretty familiar.  Rationalization is great: it's okay to be wildly offensive and make light of other people's trauma because hey, it's just a joke.  Makes everything aaaall better, right?  Yeah, right.

Even now though, it's important to me, to recognize that no matter how much I educate myself, I will always have the life experience of somebody who is privileged, and not somebody who's been oppressed.

FEMME SHARK MANIFESTO!

FEMME SHARKS DON’T EAT OUR OWN.
FEMME SHARKS LIKE TO EAT THOUGH
FEMME SHARKS RECOGNIZE THAT FEMMES COME IN ALL KINDS OF SIZES AND EACH KIND IS LUSCIOUS. WE WORK TOWARDS LOVING OUR CURVY, FAT, SKINNY, SUPERSIZE, THICK, DISABLED, BLACK AND BROWN FINE-ASS BODIES EVERY DAY. WE REALIZE THAT LOVING OURSELVES IN A RACIST/SEXIST/HOMO/TRANSPHOBIC/ABLIST/CLASSIST SYSTEM IS AN EVERY DAY ACT OF WAR AGAINST THAT SYSTEM.
FEMME SHARKS DON’T THINK ANOREXIA IS CUTE.
WE THINK EATING A BIG-ASS MEAL IS SEXY.
WE SAY SCREW “HEIGHT WEIGHT PROPORTIONATE PLEASE” IN CRAIGSLIST WOMEN SEEKING WOMEN ADS AND IN LIFE.

Yes, that could be me.  If I didn't have parents to lean on is these so called "tough" economic times I would have to go the welfare office and do the whole dehumanizing process of applying for welfare, food stamps and whatever else I need.  On some website I read that good people have bad things happen to them too. 

Now I sit hear in my childhood room at age 26 (almost 27) and wonder where the heck my life is going.  On my desk is a book about nonprofit information as I am supposed to be gathering information on starting a nonprofit.  Although I feel completely unmotivated.  I have some flyers on powwow's in my state.  I also have these two books out, "The Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome, by Wayne Kritsberg," and "Resolving Unfinished Business: Assessing the Effects of Being Raised In A Dysfunctional Environment, by Anthony S. Dallman-Jones, Ph.D."  I have my planner but not much is filled out in there, three books of poetry I have filled out in the past three months and some other things like a ceramic cup of pens and pencils.  I have plenty I can too but I am bored and tired.  I am bored because I am a very energetic person who needs various outlets to channel energy into.  I am tired because of this situation of being broke, living with my parents, feeling confined in my childhood room in more ways than one.  I feel confined sexually like I have an energetic chastity belt preventing me from having any sexual life or even enjoying my own sexuality by just being with me.  Not only am I dealing with all of this but I have those two books on my desk for a reason.  Although my family and I have done an amazing amount of healing and inner work to heal the effects, challenges, wounds and traumas of being on the same ship of the alcoholic family system there are still some things within me I feel are unfinished business.

Hi Everyone, I saw this in the bbc news today and I though it would be of interest, especially since it's good news.

I don't have much to say because I'm just in shock that a doctor would feel entitled to refuse the patient in this way.

I opened my inbox this morning to get this article staring right back at me:

Table tennis is desperate to attract more viewers and some in the sport believe a simple enough solution exists: get the women to wear skirts and shirts with “curves”.</i> ... <i>We are trying to push the players to use skirts and also nicer shirts, not the shirts that are made for men, but ones with more curves,” International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) vice president Claude Bergeret said.

First off, what exactly are 'curves'?  Is it against decorum to just come out and say 'tits and ass'?

So anyone who actually looks at the Internet has seen the coverage on how women's teams have been competing in far more revealing utfits than the men's, though at least there they try to come up with some sort of bullshit excuse about 'freedom of movement' of 'improved performance'.  None of those excuses from the ITTF!  Just plain, unadulterated, 'people will only watch that sport you ladies excel in if you show a little more skin'.

What are the men's teams to do, anyway?  Is there really that huge of a gap in ratings between men's and women's ping pong.  Maybe we can get a little flash of six-pack from the guys between serves!

Sigh.

Hello Feministing community. I am having a dilemma about my feminism and some music that I like. For example, I love Led Zeppelin, and I recently read their biography, and by the end of the book it was apparent to me that they have little respect for women. Jimmy Page more than the others, he was quoted in this book to have said,
''I don't think much of women, and never have.'' I mean do I stop listening to their music because Jimmy Page is a misogynist?

I have been thinking a lot about sustainability lately. Specifically how accessible a diet of sustainable food is and how much of a role class and privilege play. Speaking with my cousin, Mia, a few weeks ago got me thinking about the image associated with buying and eating local foods. Even Stuff White People Like jokes that farmer's markets are a place for white people to placate "their undying need to support local economies, and the idea of buying direct from the farmer helps them assuage the fears instilled in them from reading Fast Food Nation (and yes, every white person has read this book)." Mia talked about an upper class, pretentious image that is often associated with this lifestyle and the inaccessibility many feel because of this. I agree. Image is definitely one concern, others include actual cost, accessibility, and time.

I am hoping that some smart, sensibly Feministing ladies or gents can help answer this question, because my pharmacist seems to have been trained to read printouts of drug company info over the phone and completely ignore my actual question.

I've been on Yasmin for about three years now, and this past cycle I started my new pack of pills two days early, taking only five inactive pills between packs instead of seven. (ie: I normally begin a new pack on Thurs., now I begin on Tues.) I assumed that this would make no difference in effectiveness: the active pills suppress ovulation, so it should not matter when I begin taking a new set as long as it is no more than seven days after stopping the last set. After all, it is possible to skip the inactive set entirely and have no period, and some brands even come in packs with only four inactive pills. My pharmacist, however, says that the effectiveness of the pills has been decreased because I "didn't follow the instructions."

Is she right, or is my logic sound?

Here's the dealio. I have been debating about whether or not to start BC. In fact I did start Ortho Tri Cyclen for about five days before I started to have chest pains and other weird things. I can't seem to find a reliable source or level headed friends to talk to; so naturally I am coming to the Feministing community for some good advice! With lots of personal stories and opinions thrown in of course! :)

Question time. Does being on birth control really help with the insane emotional rollercoaster I am on during my period? (seriously, it's scary) Has anyone else had bad experiences with the pill? The first time I tried was a little nerve wracking, what with the chest pains and swollen left ankle. Not to mention I got three periods in six weeks. Baaaad timing. :( Anyway, that is not an experience I would like to repeat seeing as how school is about to start up. If anyone has help/experiences they would like to share that would be great!

I am a feminist. I am 29. Educated. Well rounded. Traveled the globe and I hate politics. I want to start a girls school...based on Shulamith Firestone and Susan Faludi. I want shop classes, women's rights classes, people's history classes.. I want to influence our youth...our female youth. So that they don't have to go through what we've gone through. Hope is in education. I want to see if there are others out there that have the same passion and dedication to do this. I think there needs to be a revolution in education...and it must start with the female youth!! Please, write back if you are with me. Politics and protests don't work anymore. We need to find a new niche and we need to empower our youth before it's too late.

I knew it was bound to happen.  I mean, she was Catholic.  I shouldn't have pushed it.  But she wanted to be a feminist, and I wanted to prepare her.  So I brought it up.  I brought up abortion.  The conversation went as badly as I figured it would.  I argued with everything I could muster, but she wouldn't listen.  "Life starts at conception."  I hate that argument.  She started telling me about biology, and I threw back that I knew about the biological process and a blastocyst is no more of a human than an acorn is a oak tree.  Things followed quickly downhill.

I could've curbed my temper, but when she made it very clear that a woman didn't have rights the moment she became pregnant, I couldn't hold it any longer.  How dare she even think about being a feminist when she would so quickly disregard a woman's rights for a clump of cells.  I called her ignorant and closed the discussion. 

I hate pro-life arguments.  I really do.  And I know I should blame the ideology, but I have lost a lot of respect for her.  She can't see how Roe v. Wade has kept women from being found dead with hangers up their wombs.  She can't see that most women don't want abortions.  She can't see that women have rights to their body.  All she sees is that clump of cells. 

What's worse, is she's not the only friend I have that's like this.  I have lot's of friends that are Catholics, and I find it hard to talk to them even about contraception.  I've only met one that wasn't totally pro-life, and he was merely neutral.  His statement was "I'm a man, and I have no say in what women do with their bodies."  I gave him like 200 kudos right then.

I know I should apologize for calling her ignorant.  But right now I think the term is fairly on the mark.

How the hell did this guy ever get voted into office? A mayor of a remote Australian mining town has put out a call for "beauty-disadvantaged women" to head to his municipality, as men outnumber women approximately 5-to-1 and apparently are less concerned about attracting model-perfect women as wives and girlfriends. Read the original article here.

The mayor, John Molony, has refused to apologise for his comments and insists he "respects women." I doubt whether many women will have respect for him after this, however.

When we often talk about taking a spouses last name, there will inevatible be the woman who admit that they're doing it because they hate their last names. But then the question becomes why does it always seem like women hate their last names, while men with shitty last names seem to have no problem keeping them and passing them on to unsuspecting offspring.

Well, via Jezebel comes a post about Kris Dyer , who thought his name was "rubbish" and decided to take his wife's, only to find that they made their friends uncomfortable with their "non traditional" decision.

It's an interesting read on how tied people are to traditions, and the underlying assumption that women will always take their husbands last name in marriage and what happens when that assumption is challenged.

It's actually refreshing to see a man taking his wife's name, though whatever it is the couple is comfortable with shouldn't be judged by others (as long as no one is being forced or coerced).

In what could potentially be a landmark decision, retired Army colonel Diane Schroer will finally have her day in court Tuesday, in a case that could set a precedent for federal transgender anti-discrimination laws. Schroer is a retired US Army colonel, who, after 25 years of service, including going to Ranger school and being Special Forces qualified, applied for a job as a terrorism analyst with the Library of Congress. After accepting the job, she came out to her future boss that she was transitioning, and the offer was withdrawn.

This has been bugging me for years, but I didn't have the forethought at the time to make any notes on it.

In my (junior year, I believe) American History class, I remember the history text we used gave the information about the women's sufferage movement, the 19th Amendment of 1920, and the election of 1920 as the first year women got to vote for president.

It is my memory that the text couldn't help but say something about the result of the election and how Warren G. Harding was often considered the more handsome of the two candidates running.  It left the part about women mistaking a presidential election for a male beauty pagent unsaid.  I just double-checked Wikipedia and it did mention that while Harding photographed well, he also had supported the 19th Amendment. (I'm positive that this was brought up in my high school text because I haven't had a history text since high school and I haven't been interested in Harding enough to look him up EVER, so I'm not remembering falsely or using a more recent memory as something that I learned in high school.)

Does anyone remember/have a citation for this text?  Was my school the only one who used it?

Does anyone else have stories of sexism actually taught as part of the text in your school experiences?

I've slowly been making my way though the last book of the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn . Slowly because about every ten pages something happens or is said in the book that makes me so angry and upset; these books have quite the following, and I'm just sickened at the way the main female character, Bella, excuses and downplays the fact that she's been physically hurt by her vampire boyfriend --well, it really isn't that bad, I'm really fine, it's nothing.

So, I'm reading this, and I start to get really uncomfortable:

"There was stiffness, and a lot of soreness, too, it was true, but mostly there was the odd sensation that my bones all had become unhinged at the joints, and I had changed into the consistency of a jellyfish" (88).

". . . large purplish bruises were beginning to blossom across the pale skin of my arm. My eyes followed the trail they made up to my shoulder, and then down across my ribs. I pulled my hand free to poke at the discoloration on my left forearm, watching it fade where I touched it then reappear. It throbbed a little" (89).

"I threw up my hands in frustration, feeling an ache in my shoulder that I ignored." (91).

We went camping on the Oregon Coast last weekend, and while it rained the entire time, Stewie had fun on the beach on the last day we were there. We've come to an agreement though: all future camping is to be done in hotels and resorts. (No Jimmi, wherever you are, no cabins.)

From Tacori.com, The Tacori Gentlemen's Guide to Engagement.

The Gentlemen's Guide begins innocently enough. "Getting engaged is one of life's biggest milestones and you want to do it right," the site declares. It's a sentiment which I can agree with, and which probably applies to many. Clicking forward to the "guide" itself, I am faced with a page dotted with solid blue circles, each with a title, such as, "What Women Want." I can already feel myself getting mildly irate, as I have yet to see that particular phrase used in a non offensive manner. This time is no different. Moving my cursor over the, "What Women Want," icon displays four options: "Designer vs. Generic," "Her Ring, Her Style," "The Surprise vs. The Plan," and "A Symbol of Love." Clicking on these displays four short videos, featuring either a woman who talks with her hands way too much, or a man who also uses his hands more than necessary, while speaking in clipped, somewhat aggressive tones. The videos are all very short, and essentially try to guilt trip guys in to spending a fortune on an engagement rings at the Tacori store. (I know, big surprise there, right?) What I found most annoying however was not the pushy sales tactics, but all of the damn generalizations and sexist stereotypes.

I found this article from CNN interesting.  It describes the way in which fashion trends have become more "modest."  One part in particular that caught my attention was when the article said, "Last year, an American Psychological Association task force reported that cognitive performance and health can suffer when teens and young women make themselves into sex objects by wearing sexy clothing or styling themselves after sexy celebrities."

First of all, the only person who can turn you into an object is the person objectifying you. Also, it's extremely problematic to say that a women who dresses "modestly" or "demurly" dresses that way for herself whereas a women who dresses provactively dresses that way for male attention.  This only feeds into society's "she was asking for it" attitude towards rape survivors. 

Finally, I find it kind of creepy that mom's are celebrating their daughters dressing like 50's housewives...and don't get me started on the "one-night stand" look.

One of my favorite bloggers, Ren from Renegade Evolution, is guest-blogging at Feministe this week. True to form, she starts off her guest tenure with a "controversial" post , which includes a rant about language and swearing. When you read this post, you will understand why I love Ren so much -- she's strong, she's opinionated, and she's certainly not going to let anyone get by without knowing what she's about. Upfront, honest, clever, intelligent, and a fucking potty-mouth: everything I want to be. I look up to Ren, and I just want everyone to know it.

(Excerpted from a post at The Feminist Underground )

Othering is "a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an 'other.' " It is the "[s]implistic recognition of normal human diversity, combined with ethnocentric thinking [that] can lead to a tendency to depict ‘others' ...as somehow, categorically, topologically, intrinsically, DIFFERENT." It is also incredibly common.

When it comes to sexual harassment I have seen it all.  I lived in a small town in Saskatchewan called Lucky Lake that was absolutely infested with mysoginists.  At 12 years old I learned to expect having loose change hurled at me from passing cars driven by leering teenage boys.  Throughout the years many dudes have had conversations with my breasts.  Many others have hurled compliments at me from moving vehicles while I was pushing a baby carriage.  At the time I laughed it off as "Well I guess they whistled at me because my kids are proof that I put out."  But really, I was simmering with unexpressed rage.  But what was the point of saying anything?  Any time that I tried to say anything about it to famiy members I would get brushed off or laughed at. 

I just thought I'd mention this, because I found it very disturbing, as did many of the women around me at the time.

I was at Warped Tour in Carson, CA yesterday and saw the band All Time Low. At one point during their set, a man took a swing at a woman in the crowd. The lead singer (I don't know his name..) called him out on it, but then one of the other band members said something to the extent of "Yeah, never hit a, woman unless you're married to her." What gave this man the urge to joke about domestic violence is beyond me, but I thought that his joke was anything but funny.

I'm sure some of you will agree with me too.

Note: this post makes reference to things that may not be considered pornography in the academic sense, but which I believe are being used for the same purposes as porn.

* * *

Theoretically, I'm okay with people choosing to look at pornography.

I feel about it similarly to the way I feel about bondage, swingers, etc.: Those choices should be available to the people that want them, but they are not for me or my loved ones.

It's the "or my loved one" part that's causing me problems of late.

It sometimes seems to me like PETA is bent on hurting animals by trying to make the term 'animal rights activist' synonymous with 'self-absorbed, ignorant jack-ass.'  So what's their newest tactic for sullying an otherwise decent cause?  Billboards on the border fence warning people who which to cross that getting fat from eating meat might be the most serious danger facing them :

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

"We think that Mexicans and other immigrants should be warned if they cross into the U.S. they are putting their health at risk by leaving behind a healthier, staple diet of corn tortillas, beans, rice, fruits and vegetables," said Lindsay Rajt, assistant manager of PETA's vegan campaigns...

PETA says its billboards would picture "fit and trim" Mexicans in their own country, where their diet is more in line with the group's mission. Another image on the sign would portray obese American children and adults "gorging on meaty, fat- and cholesterol-packed American food."

Guanabee breaks down for us just how ... ugh... this new PETA campaign really is:

Why not just eat lean meats and take care to avoid processed or fast food? Or, right, because not everyone has the monetary resources to eat a healthy vegan diet and buy fresh produce or enjoy the luxury of having time to shop, prepare and cook nutritious dinners instead of working support oneself and, quite possibly, several family members back home. This is just so ignorant on PETA’ s part, on so many levels. And the kicker is, we know the entire organization cannot possibly be made up of remedial, naive jackasses with the combined cognitive capacity of a 12-year-old on meth. We know they’re aiming for publicity. In which case: There. You’re welcome. Please consider this enough to not have to resort to covering an immigrant woman in body paint to drive your message home any further. Thanks.

To quote a Guanabee commentor:

Ay, pero que cosa mas fea! What is wrong with these people, have they no sense or shame?...WHO DO THESE PEOPLE THINK PICKS ALL OF THEIR FRESH VEGGIES IN THIS COUNTRY??? How about some rights for the Mexican migrants and their families, who move constantly and can’t educate their children, who have limited access to healthcare, who are exploited and abused by employers without any recourse?

Fortunately for those truly interested in animal rights, and not just attention, we have the Humane Society - which does real work to promote the welfare of both animals and humans .

What is up with the men who call women “honey,” “babe,” “dear,” “doll,” etc?  I don’t mean the creepygross guys on the street or the subway, I mean the “nice guys” who are your superiors, the ones you know and even like.

Take my former boss, for example.  He’s a friendly, funny man in his 50s (I am 18)--  we got along well throughout my year working for him.  Everyone once in a while, though, he would throw in a “babe” while talking to me and the other female employees (we were all girls; this was at a retail store).  What is that about?  Did he feel some sort of fatherly bond for me?  Is he just unaware of boundaries?  Is it because he is an older male with authority and feels like he can get away with it?

The same thing happened with a high school teacher of mine: he’s a very nice, middle-aged man who I respected and liked.  Yet every so often he would call the girls in the class “honey” or “dear” or something like that.  I doubt he even realized he was doing it, but it annoyed the crap out of me.  It seems so patronizing.

Unfortunately, I never got up the nerve to confront either of them.  I would want to if I ever got in this situation again though. What would I say? Anyone else dealt with this?  

Metafilter is my favorite online community and I've been reading it for years.  There is a section of the community dedicated to finding answers from other users, ranging from the practical (a good bar in midtown) to the more emotional, like this question:  How did your abortion affect your relationship?

Here's the link.

The poster is having an abortion, a decision she made with the love and support of her partner.  The answers so far have been thoughtful, non-judgmental and truly supportive:

Do not listen for a nanosecond about the stories you may hear, here and elsewhere, about all the relationships that failed because of an abortion. You don't know these people, and you don't know exactly why these relationships failed. You do, however, know yourself and your partner, and to an extent (though perhaps not fully, yet) you know your own strength. Your commitment and compassion for each other is an enormously good thing, and with that I think you already have the wherewithal to endure this.

Like most of the people who've already answered, I think the key is being thoughtful in your decision (which it seems you have been) and being careful and cognizant of how you and your partner feel about the termination, before and after. In a way, it's like any other crisis you will go through together; if you have a strong relationship, there's no particular reason you won't be able to weather it, but it's not necessarily going to be easy. Like Ironmouth says, you are a pair of human beings with the capacity to recover from nearly everything; I would add, you have the capacity to make the right decision for yourselves, and it seems you have. Good luck and take care of each other.

This thread gives me hope.

The employees at the Women's Center of Ramapo College of New Jersey prides itself on being a fun and feminist place to work. We have a pretty cool position available and I thought there would be no place better to find an excellent candidate than on feministing, since we all know and love the site! Below is the ad for the position:

The Graduate Assistant for the Women's Center is a paraprofessional position on the Student Development team and reports to the Coordinator of the Women's Center. The Graduate Assistant will have primary responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the Center, assisting the Coordinator with the supervision and training of staff, the organization of all events, as well as presentations on responsible intimacy, body image, gender issues, and healthy relationships. The Graduate Assistant will work 25 hours/week plus limited evening and weekend event supervision.

Hello Feministing-ers, I'm seeking career advice.  I've been so impressed by the support this cyber-community offers, and I'm hoping that your diverse experiences can provide me with a bit of guidance.  I began my undergraduate education assuring my parents that a B.A. in English Literature would be a safe route to law school.  But ever since I opted to have an abortion last fall, I've been hesitant to pursue this career path.  Now, I feel compelled and impassioned to interact with women per reproductive health, perhaps through pregnancy options counseling, or in some other related capacity.  I'm entering my senior year of college (set to graduate in May with a major in English and a minor in Gender and Women's Studies), and I'm unsure of how to fulfill these aspirations.  MSW?  MPH?  MPH with a concentration in maternal and child health?  I'm leaning towards a master's in social work. 

I would love to hear about your experiences in these fields.  Any advice will be much appreciated!

I was checking my email on yahoo and I saw the big headline, "Almost America's sweetheart " with Shawn Johnson's picture next to it.  I haven't been following the olympics much but I immediately wanted to hear what kind of shit someone had to say now, so I clicked on the link.

The first sentence made me angry already; "Shawn Johnson came here to win four gold medals, a half-pint, half-Phelps."  Oh no, she was only competing for FOUR gold medals?  Because if I went to the olympics I would be shooting for about twenty.  And of course, you have to compare everyone to Michael Phelps even though it's a completely different event.

Throughout the article, the author, Dan Wetzel, repeatedly says that the gold medals were "stolen" from her and that she "lost to" someone else.  Apparently, the U.S. teams owned all of the gold medals to begin with and they had to be stolen away.  He doesn't say at any point in the article that she WON three silver medals.

He also quoted her several times.  It's clear that she had a positive attitude about her whole experience.  Wetzel, however, makes it sound like she is such an innocent, naive little girl, calling her "America's sweetheart".

And finally, "She came to win gold, and while that hasn't changed, she's learned to savor silver, too."

I'm so sick of the media trying to find drama in everything.  I think Shawn Johnson's accomplishments are awesome and she should be proud of herself, as she obviously is.  Most people couldn't come close to competing in the olympics, let alone winning three silver medals.

Hi Feministing Community,

This is my first post ever, and I thought that you guys might be interested in reading the interview I did with Margaret Cho.

http://punchlinemagazine.com/site/2008/08/margaret-cho-reality-strikes/

Enjoy!

Ok. I'm tired everywhere I go especially being around hispanics, they immediately think that being a woman (first), and being Mexican (second) I should biologically love to cook! My boyfriend's mom thinks it's wrong that I don't find enjoyment in cooking, so does my boyfriend. He tell's me that he would cook for me everyday, not because it is a role but because he loves me and wants to see me happy. I tell him that I would appreciate that but he doesn't have to because I wil love him wether he does that or not. Then he also says that I shouldn't let my feminist views control all my life, that I should learn how to cook because is needed, not because I'm a woman.

Hi, FeministingCommunity.

I'm posting today because I feel like society is kind of fucked. I feel like a lot of men feel very entitled when it comes to trying to get laid. I'm not talking about all men (not that I really have to tell you that, ya'll know what I mean), but it seems like a lot of guys just do not give a shit if they make you uncomfortable or scare you when it comes to trying to get you into bed. It's like they think they have a God given right to proposition you.

I'm quite a night owl and usually go to the grocery store at night. I'm not afraid to because I don't live in a terrible area and I'm always careful (I lock the doors as soon as I'm inside the vehicle, I try to be aware of my surroundings, I park near the store doors in a well lit area).

Guys try to chat me up sometimes, but they're usually harmless and back off when it's obvious I'm not buying what they're selling. Last night, however, was a different story.

I felt like every creep in Flint had crawled out from under his rock to go to the store. I wasn't too bothered by the guy who followed me from the produce section to the chocolate isle and walked by five times, never picking anything up and shooting glances at me. He was about my age and I think he was probably just trying to work up the courage to talk to me. I didn't mind the few guys who did the whole, "How you doin' tonight?" with a cheesy wink and smile routine. I didn't mind the guys who wax the floors and haven't realized the mullet went out decades ago checking me out and talking about me as I walked by.

I wasn't even bothered when a man twice my size and more than twice my age who I had noticed giving me a weird look in the chocolate isle a few minutes previously stopped in front of me and said, "Those look nice." as I was on my way to get hair ties. I get weird comments like that sometimes, all women do, so it wasn't a big deal to me. I muttered something to him and went on my way. I didn't know if by 'those' he meant my ratty sweatpants, my glasses, or my tits, but I really didn't care either. I just went about my business.

In this article from what another commenter here termed the “Daily Hate Mail”, Anna Pasternak continues the long-standing tradition of shaming women who don’t conform to the traditional model of Western womanhood. I know that similar articles have been covered here before, but the definition of femininity that Pasternak promotes here is so constraining and, for most of us, erroneous, that I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pick it apart.

She opens her article by recounting a couple of her dating experiences with men who are clearly insecure when faced with a woman who is successful in her career. A doctor tells her that she is “not in touch with her femininity” because she doesn’t “flirt or wear much make-up”, and a “successful, high-profile entrepreneur” tells her that she is “so in control [that it’s] scary”. Instead of pointing out the rather obvious fact that these men are trying to hide their own insecurity with their moralizing, Pasternak takes their comments to heart and embarks on a quest to embrace her “core femininity” (which translates here as retrograde ideas about what it means to be feminine).

I just returned from a beach vacation with my family.  My boyfriend came along with me just like he did last summer. On our last day at the beach, he and I were lying in our lounge chairs when I began to cry. He looked at me and said, "We're at a 5-star resort drinking free beers on a nice day. How can you be upset now?" I told him that my family had been making comments about my weight.

I have gained a little weight recently, but I haven't really been concerned about it. I'd been a little stressed and eating more fast food than usual, but I know that there are more important things to be concerned with so it didn't bother me. But I knew that when I put on a bikini, I would be hearing it from my family. It was enough hearing it from my siblings, but the worst was when my mom mimicked me as I was putting sunscreen on my stomach. She stuck hers out and puffed out her cheeks. She also asked me if my boyfriend and I had any news (implying that I looked pregnant.) I am 22 years old, 5'3" 130 lbs with big boobs and thick thighs; I look normal and I think I have a cute figure.

As we sat there, I explained to him that I wasn't insecure about how I looked but I was still hurt by their comments. It made me upset that they couldn't be proud that I had just graduated college with a high GPA and I have a job I love.  Then my amazing boyfriend looked over at me and told me he was proud of me. He grabbed my thigh and kissed my belly and said, "You look fine to me. I love you the way you are."

When your loved ones make negative comments, they can be very powerful. But you can't let them be as powerful as the positive ones from those who not only love you, but support you as well.

Well, now.

So this new job at a restaurant which I've recently signed on to, has enlightened me as to how different it is to have men as your working superiors than it is to have women. I've worked for women who were amazing and inspiring, and truly good employers, and I have worked for women who are awful. So men certainly don't have a monopoly on treating their employees like shit. However, this is much different than anything I've experienced under even the most difficult female employers.

Hopefully I don't get in trouble (I will be an intern for UCSD's Women's Center this fall) for writing about this but I need to get it out of my system. Precautionary measure here, the opinions expressed on here are solely mine and do not represent the opinions of the UCSD Women's Center or any of their affiliates.

During my group interview for an internship at the Women's Center one of the questions asked was, "How would you respond to a group of students coming in inquiring about starting a Men's Center?"

As old an argument as this is, I've been hearing plenty about it from shovinistic men, and even women, lately, and I think this really needs to be said.  It is widely believed that men are have superior physical capabilities to women.  That is a total misconception.  Many times I heard people chastised for saying that women are no weaker than men.  They are called silly, or dreamers, or much to my surprise, they had even been called socialists.  ( Though I have some socialist sympathies, I do not feel that non-sexism has anything to do with socialism.)

Hello everyone,

I've seen a couple other posts like this, and I just have a lot to get off my chest, and unfortunately, no one I talk to will listen.

I'm 21 years old. almost 22. I'm going into my senior year of college, which will be followed by my super senior year. I'm double majoring in history and women and gender studies, and I really want to become a women and gender studies professor. Meaning, I want to get my phd after I graduate.

That being said, I'm still dating my high school sweetheart. I love him a lot. We live together, and have for a couple years. While our life is going just fine, he totally supports my dreams to go off to graduate school and always encourages me when stuff is falling apart.

However, everyone else seems to think there is a problem with us. As cliche as this sounds, all of the other highschool sweethearts in our graduating class are married/engaged/have kids. except us. While this doesn't bother me, cause I love my life, and as much as I love my boyfriend, we both realize that with the type of school I want, and with the economy being such crap, that there is a possibility that I could end up going to school on one end of the country, while he gets a job on the other. Which could either end our relationship, or at least put it on a standstill until I finish school.

However, what bugs me, is everyone TELLING me that we should be engaged. Asking why I don't have a ring. that my biological clock is running out. ONE i'm only 21. TWO i NEVER want kids. i never have. its not that i dont like them, i just dont want to be responsible for another human being. sorry, thats just my opinion. But when I say those things, everyone just laughs and tells me i'll change my mind.

Does anyone else out there feel the same way I do? I dont tell my friends that having a kid or being married at 21 is stupid. Why do they have the right to tell me that not being engaged/wanting kids is the wrong thing to do?

Thanks so much for letting me rant.

In a day and age where there are little to no taboos left, why is it that something as ridiculous as homophobia is still around? I have seen people be more accepting of my brothers IV drug habit than they are of my being gay. I have encountered my fair share of homophobia, especially throughout high school, where I had been physically and verbally abused, I had even once had a dead gopher with the words "die dyke" carved into it's stomach put in my locker. Needless to say, this made angry. But what made me even angrier was my schools blatant refusal to do anything about it. I couldn't get a new lock, because all locks had to be school issued, I had to dispose of the poor animal myself, and not once had anyone offered to help. I had been kicked out of gym class because the girls wouldn't change while i was allowed in the change room, for fear that I would try and jump them. When i came out, I was jumped by several kids from my town. I ended up with bruises and scratches, but I will never forget the intense fear i felt at that moment.

(Cross-posted from our home at Evil Slutopia - it's kinda long but has a whole mess of links for anyone who is interested in this topic.)

We wrote the other day about our confusion over the very slight discrepancy between the men's and women's beach volleyball uniforms. Today we're thinking that at least those women were able to come and compete in the Olympics, because here in the year 2008 there are still a few countries who do not allow women to participate.

Ever since I neglected to get my high-school grad photos retouched, my parents have been on a crusade to take a decent portrait of me. This month, the "Mission Accomplished" banner went up: I had my picture taken for when I was interviewed about current perspectives on sexual liberation. I e-mailed a PDF copy to my dad, who was staying with my mom and my little brother at the lake while I was working in the city. They unanimously agreed that the picture was beautiful. Which it was, I must say.

One problem, though. They forgot to give their feedback on what the picture was for.

Well,

I have always found feministing's posts on street/subway/internet harassment to be pretty fascinating. Of course it's something I'd experienced for a long time, but I'd never thought overly much about the implications or the scale of it before reading feministing.

I'd tried different approaches to handling it, on my own. I've tried the "ignore it" approach, the "flip the bird" approach, the "smile and move on" approach (especially if the comment was not overly rude). The first one often tends to end with the guy persisting, or else tossing an insult. With the second one, most often they ignore it, sometimes they seem a bit stunned or offended. I don't know that it's ever done much to change their minds, though.

The smiling approach usually seems to get me off the hook, but then I wind up feeling subjugated and slightly annoyed.

Anyway, I think reading feministing had helped me frame the argument in my own mind for why street harassment, even of the less-threatening kind, is a problem. So I was walking down the street today during my lunchbreak, and this guy behind me (who couldn't even see my face) did the whole "smile for me" thing. "Smile, baby. Hey beautiful, smile." (I keep walking) "Hey why won't you smile for me, it's a beautiful day?" So then I stop... turn around... and replied quickly in a slightly annoyed voice as follows:
"Why should I have to give my time to every guy who says something to me on the street? If I'm walking down the street and 20 guys say something to me, what do I owe to each of you, huh? You know what I mean?..."

And then, he actually hung his head, and said: "You're right. No, you're right..."

I was... surprised. I ended with "It's nothing personal, but..." and I turned back and was on my way. I felt a little warmed, actually. I think I will have to try this again.

I was walking to the grocery store today. On the side of a liquor store (one that also has signage of bible quotes... wierd right?) was a liquor ad that was so nasty I had to stop and get a closer look.

I am a photographer, I've shot nudes. I understand that sex sells. I'm OK with nudes used in perfume ads for example, because that's more of a lifestyle product. But a nude lady in a liquor ad? On the side of a building?

Well why don't you just take a look.

There's more on the liquor company's website , both print ads and a flash thing involving the model's nipples. I guess the idea is if you show a bottle of this spirit to a woman she's going to rip off her clothes and have a writhing orgasm on the floor for your viewing pleasure.

Also ridiculous is how terribly the bottles have been photoshopped in.