July 2009 Archives

My father is in an emotionally abusive relationship. I don’t know how this directly correlates with feminism, but I believe all victims of abuse, including men, should be addressed in the feminist dialogue. I am in need of some advice or feedback—my family and I are currently going through a very difficult situation and I have found Feministing discussions to be always helpful and engaging.

In December, my father married a woman who seemed, at first, to be ideal—poised, successful as a businesswoman, attractive, doting, and outwardly successful. When they were in the ‘courting’ stage, she was constantly doting on him, buying him gifts, and buying the rest of the family gifts. They quickly moved in together, and bought a house.

As soon as they got married, however, things took a completely dire turn. Her behavior changed suddenly and dramatically. I would awaken at 4AM to screaming fits of rage by my stepmother (let’s call her Linda). For days she would cry and whine and complain about my father, when I see no indication that he’d been mistreating her. She would make accusations that he treats her horrendously and cheats on her all the time. I live with them—I see that he obviously cares very much about her and displays it in his actions—cooking her meals, etc. My dad doesn’t go anywhere except for home or work (so logically, cheating would be impossible).

Her out-of-control rages usually end up in her crying and seeking the comfort and sympathy of my father’s family. She would say things like, “How dare he treat someone as beautiful as me like that?” or “He doesn’t deserve me! I am a perfect person”. No matter how much we try to rationalize with her, she would place all the blame on my father and make herself out to be the victim. If we do not agree with her, she shouts and fumes. She tries to keep the family away from my father and isolate him. The most trivial thing would set her off—such as my father not remembering a shirt was bought by her. And if she is not making a complete scene, then she is completely ignoring him—not returning his calls, not talking to him at all. Respect and communication are null. She does not handle criticism well, always believing she is superior to everyone because of her “beauty” and her wealth.

It has brought waves of anxiety to my entire family, including my dad’s sister, brother-in-law, mother, and me. My grandmother is so worried and distressed about my father’s situation (he has health problems) that she is constantly trying to appease Linda, even when she is unappeasable. The fact is when she forces us to listen to her make unfounded accusations against my father’s very character—even demonizing him—she does not listen to us in turn. I can already see the detriments to my father’s self-esteem and health. He is constantly anxious about doing even the slightest thing to offend her—and so is the rest of my family. My dad’s little sister, to whom she goes to vilify my father, is developing a sense of anxiety and fear as well.

It was only very recently that I learned to characterize Linda’s behavior as abuse. Before I thought this is just an aberration in her character, that she is isolated in her ability to manipulate others. But then I was researching it online yesterday, and indeed this behavior <a href="http://www.therapeutic-stories.com/articles/abusivewoman.pdf">is characterized as</a> emotional

abuse, and possibly of personality disorders like borderline or narcissistic disorders. It is just scary to me that in this particular list of traits, all of them apply to her (except for the child portion, but we’ll soon find out because her daughter is moving in soon).

Being a feminist, I tend to think of “abuse” in terms of domestic and emotional violence perpetrated by men toward women. But recent events shaping in my family have enlightened me to the fact that spousal abuse by women is entirely possible. And that the situation is incredibly delicate, but I fear for my father’s health and his mental well-being. He wants to keep this all from me, but it is clear that I have witnessed it myself.

Any thoughts or comments would be deeply appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Since i'm deciding to go along with starting a feminist club- which im going to aim for both boys and girls. Im going to try to give people the feelings that the club isnt only about women but how men have to live up to expectations that not all of them are comforable with.
In order to get attention, i was hoping to find some random interesting facts, that teenagers can relate too, about women and male issues.
Can anyone help me out?

As I near the official end of my teens (to the immense chagrin of my older sister, who claims she's not old enough for me to be twenty), the prospect of becoming a bonafide adult keeps encroaching on my consciousness.

But what does it mean to become a female grown-up in 2009? I've always assumed that 'growing up' mean settling in to who you are. For women, though, it seems that 'growing up' means finding more and more things to worry you when you look in the mirror.

A few days ago, I looked in the mirror and noticed for the first time in my life that my face was, gasp, shiny! Now, not too long ago, I don't think I would have noticed if my face glowed in the dark; the shiny-to-not shiny scale of beauty was not one by which I measured myself. Hell, as a ten year old, I *pursued* shininess, with the aid of massive quantities of $2 body glitter. Yet here I was, seriously considering spending money I don't have to defeat the (completely natural) presence of oil on my face. I guess this is part of being an 'adult.'

It's not that this is all that sudden; I think I just started noticing it. Through the years, I've constantly been told that 'it's time' to start adding this or that to my morning beauty routine, as though each addition were some important ritual of aging. "It's time" to start shaving my legs, using concealer, styling my hair, wearing fashionable shoes, etc. I've successfully ignored most of these warnings until recently, when the specter of adulthood has taken over my brain. I look in the mirror and I can't see an adult. Somehow, I've subconsciously accepted that while natural (read: frizzy) hair and shiny skin are acceptable for kids, grown-ups use expensive glossing and skin-"care" products (key word: expensive. Ah, capitalism).

I consider myself a feminist, but damn if it doesn't bug me every time I walk into a meeting, or even go out with friends, and realize I'm the only female not wearing make-up or heels. Did I miss that class during sex-ed? Did puberty forget me? Why am I such a kid?

There's nothing particularly profound in this post, but this has been on my mind a lot recently. Thus, I leave with my Women's Studies Professor's favorite quote: "It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."

I know there has been stuff about Erin Andrews everywhere lately, some good and some bad, but I just had to post this. Apparently she is now being harassed by the paparazzi (shocking I know!) and she recently made a 911 call about it. Of course, this call has found it's way to the interwebs and it is, also of course, being picked apart by various bloggers.

Well this one Yahoo sports blogger, Chris Chase, has decided that Erin Andrews' story of being filmed in the nude in her hotel room is "full of contradictions" and "there are shades of gray everywhere." Um, I'd like to give that a big: NO, and a big: What...The...Fuck...?!?!

According to Mr. Chase, people have been saying everything from about Erin Andrews from her being a victim to "she brought it on herself, blame the bloggers, blame the internet, etc. There is no right answer though." Yes, there is a right answer: she is a victim. A victim of a horrible crime of someone deciding to peep into her hotel room, video tape her while she was naked and post that video on the internet! That is the right answer Mr. Chase. How can one even begin to describe that situation as being one that has "shades of gray?"

And, of course, in his and many others' eyes her 911 call only furthers their idea that she's in it for the fame. Maybe she leaked the tape herself to get more popular? After all, she did refer to herself during the call as "the girl that was videotaped in my hotel room in the nude" and said she's been "all over the news." Doesn't that just mean she's an attention-seeking whore?

Generally I avoid comments on these types of horrid blog posts but two did stick out as actually using their brains and, I think, are worth noting:

Nikkithunder said: "I want to know how Erin "cultivated her sex appeal"....because she is attractive, that means she's automatically using her body to get more attention? It seems as if you are criticizing her for being upset about people all of a sudden prying into her personal life. You said that "she lived in front of the cameras". No she hasn't. She's done a job in front of the cameras...two totally different things. She has had her privacy taken away from her, and it seems as if it's being insinuated that she's being hypocritical, because now she has reporters outside of her house, and that makes her a bit upset. I hope the person who did this is brought to justice, and I hope that she could somehow revive her career, whether it be on ESPN, or anywhere else, b/c nobody deserves such humiliation. This post is overly judgmental and insensitive to me."

And Rich C: "Chris Chase...there are issues of gray everywhere? If you really believe that you are an idiot. She was filmed through a peep hole, what part of that is remotely acceptable? She isn't like Paris Hilton or Kim who filmed a sex tape. She wasn't doing anything other than staying in a hotel room, yet somehow she brought this on herself by clamoring to be on dancing with the stars? Are you crazy? She is a beautiful woman, and to assert that she brought this one herself because she wanted fame is ridiculous. Fame doesn't equal videos of you naked across the web, the fact that you would assert that is crazy. This is one of the rare issues that is black and white. Somebody filmed her without her knowledge in a private place, without her approval. That is illegal, and to assume that she was somehow asking for it sounds childish."

So how about a big Friday Feminist Fuck you to Chris Chase and the rest of those jackasses who think this situation has "shades of gray?"

I stumbled upon this article and video this morning on Yahoo about Anna Rawson.

I don't follow golf, but this article interested me because it's basically about how Anna Rawson wants to up the viewership of women's golf because she is concerned that the media doesn't give women's golf the same kind of coverage that they do to men's golf. This is a valid point, and something worth addressing and exploring. However...it appears that most of Anna's ideas for bringing in new viewership are quite sexist. Anna is not new to sexist advertising as she was declared Maxim's "sexiest athlete", and she is also a spokesperson for GoDaddy (a company notorious for their constant overtly sexist advertising). So it would appear that Anna has no concerns about being objectified.

The video implies that Anna wants to make women's golf "sexier" as a way to bring more people to the sport. In the video, an interviewer asks Anna "Are you selling professional golf or a sexual stereotype?". Anna's response to this question is simply "It's just more about getting eyeballs". Which doesn't actually answer the question in any way.

It would seem that Anna's attempts to bring in more viewership may be doing more harm than good. A few years ago, Anna was being interviewed by an Australian radio host about the lack of media coverage of the women's game and made the following statement: "...the mentality unfortunately has not changed among the media and the industry. They still think we're 25 years ago where the tour was full of a lot of dykes and unattractive females. No one wanted to watch and it's totally changed".

So basically what Anna is saying is that golf is not something anyone would want to watch unless it's filled with attractive, heterosexual females. Yeah, that's not sexist at all. Kristie Kerr, a fellow golfer made the following comment about Anna's interview: "She tried to address it in her own way but didn't think before she spoke so she almost put us back another 20 years with that comment".

I completely understand the frustration of women's sports not getting appropriate viewership, however I don't think that Anna's ideas are the answer that the sport needs. Granted, she has some non-sexist ideas as well such as running the womenss tournaments at the same time as the mens as a means of more media exposure. However I find Anna's mentality to be very disturbing: If we are low on viewers, then we must show more skin and make the sport "sexier". It almost seems as if the actual skill of the game is not even remotely important....it only matters if there is enough eye candy available for the viewers.

Why are my fashion decisions the first thing that people attack when I say I am a feminist? Let me explain why. I have always hated wearing pants. I find them uncomfortable and I just plain flat out don't like having thick denim next to my vulva, plus I have an hour glass shape and it makes it very hard to find pants that will fit right off the rack. I find nothing wrong with choosing to wear the clothing that makes me most comfortable and while most women find skirts confining, I feel exactly the opposite. Now I am not telling anyone else that they need to wear skirts instead of pants, its just a personal choice that I have made and am happy with. But apparently its not okay for a feminist to wear skirts EVER. When someone finds out that I am a feminist one of the first things that comes out of their mouths is but you are in a skirt, feminists can't wear skirts. I didn't know that feminism dictated that I wasn't allowed to wear certain clothing (I get a lot of looks when I pair them with t-shirts that have feminist messages on them) nor did I know that feminism came with some sort of uniform that we were all supposed to wear. What pisses me off most about the whole thing is that it seems like people can't take my opinions seriously just because I choose to wear certain items of clothing. Today was the last straw though. I was wearing a t-shirt that one of my friends who runs a very small screening business made for me for my b-day a couple of years ago with my favorite quote of all time on the front and the feminist rant on the back. Now I always get a lot of stares from people when I wear this shirt whether I have pants on or not ( I resign myself to wearing pants in the winter because it is plain flat out too cold to wear skirts) but a stranger came up to me while I was grocery shopping and informed me that it was not appropriate for me to wear tshirts with messages like that on it if I was going to put myself in such gender confining clothes. She was very rude about her comments and proceeded to loudly berate me for almost five minutes over how feminists fought for too long for the right to not wear skirts ect. for someone to provide such a contradiction is just "appalling". That got to me, mostly because the skirt I was wearing happens to be one of my favorites and because I don't think that its antifeminist to wear skirts, on the contrary I think that eliminating an entire portion of your wardrobe just on the basis of is it feminist to wear it is absurd. I wear what I like and what I am comfortable in above all else. In my mind that is all I should have to think about when deciding m wardrobe choices. So the question that I pose is are we as feminist instituting this awful propoganda or is it another attempt to make women hate feminism?

When I got married eight years ago I did not take my husband's last name. I've only ever had to defend this choice of mine once, when my sister-in-law asked in a rude way. I don't care what other people choose to do with last names when they get married, I love hearing about all the things people come up with to answer the "name question." For myself, I knew I'd never take another person's name, or hyphenate.

When my son was born four years ago, my husband and I decided that he would have my husband's last name as his last name and my last name as his middle name. Recently we had another child and we switched it. Our daughter's last name is my last name; her middle name is my husband's last name. I know that this sounds complicated, but I know that children often have no problems with things adults find strange or difficult to understand. It works for us, it is a true expression of our feminism, no one's last name is "more important" than the other's. (Side note: who got what name wasn't related to the sex of the child for us. But I know people who have done that, girls have mother's name, boys have father's name.)

However, this choice seems to be costing us in the family relationship department. We had been on rocky ground with my husband's parents for a while now, but I have the feeling very strongly that with this last name thing, they might never speak to us again.

Sorry to go on about inter-personal stuff here, but it's occurred to me that choices we make as feminists with things as intimate as what we name our children can really bother people. Why should children automatically have their father's last name? I have my father's name and I'm fine with it, but I also know that at the time I was born, not very many people were questioning who got what last names. Wasn't a woman "keeping her name" so very radical once? Maybe it still is for some people? I won't mind whatever my children do with last names and children's last names when they grow up and maybe marry, have kids etc., I just hope that they give it thought and choose whatever feels right to them and not have it dictated to them by patriarchal social norms.

Long time reader, though this is the first time I've actually written...anything here. As a fairly young person, I've always felt like I would have very little insight to add to the discussion here. I've always felt content to read and ruminate.

Today I have something to say. First, my background...I am twenty, have been enlisted in the U.S. military since I was 17. I don't meet many females. At all. In the past three years, I have had exactly 10 female co-workers (total. combined.) and at least three dozen male coworkers (total). Many times I have been the only female in the office/shop what have you, or one of two. I've decided this is unhealthy for me, but we'll talk about that later.

I am having ethics issues at my current place of employment and went to discuss them with a career counselor today, who happens to be a woman I've know my whole career and whom I respect and admire very much. And she says to me

"You know, I've always admired you? You are so smart, so capable...you are just great. You are going to have no problem making a career out of the military. You are just amazing."

I was floored. Here is this woman, thirty years my senior, who I have looked up to and admired for these past three years...and she thinks I'm worth a damn? That's...that's awesome. 

Please. Please. Those of you who may be older, wiser, what ever (quite honestly, just HAVING a blog makes you a bit of a celebrity)...even if YOU don't think you are an inspiration, you are. Us newbies, we watch you. We look to you. We value you. When you take the time to mentor us, take the time to let us know that YOU value US...it washes away the bull crap. It makes us stronger women. It enables us in a way that no amount of "Girl Power" posters in fifth grade ever could. 

Take the time today to tell a young woman the things about her that you value. Commend her honesty, her bravery, anything. It means the world to us. 

The following is crossposted from the FeministCampus Blog . I'm hoping for more input and thoughts, so I welcome comments!

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I have a somewhat vexed relationship with reality TV. Some days, there's nothing more enjoyable than collapsing on the futon and flipping to Bravo to watch mindless, ridiculous (and often staged) drama unfold.

However, I'd like to think I have my standards. You know, certain lines in the sand that I draw with the crappy-tv-world. When I first heard about FOX's new show, More to Love , I had suspicions that this would, tragically, be one of those series that crosses said line. Unfortunately, my suspicions were realized when I sat down to watch the first episode on Tuesday evening. Check out a trailer/clip below:

For those not familiar, here's the description of this new gem from FOX's website :

The tragic part is that this sounds like it could be okay. If I put aside my general disdain for dating shows, it seems like this could be a step in the right direction - breaking open the definition of what the public sees as desirable and even "normal." The show's trailers frequently made mention of the fact that the average American woman is a size 14, as opposed to the size 2 stars of most reality TV. Three cheers for But the issue here is that More to Love seems to fall prey to the binary standards of acceptance and tolerance it (hopefully?) sought to debunk. Here's a few examples:

1) Whenever the women are speaking solo (both introducing themselves and commenting on their experience) the caption beneath them states their name, age, occupation, hometown, and - get this - their height and weight . Now, in my experience, the best way to reify a concept of 'normalcy' is to shore up an 'other'. Excuse the dusty women's studies vocab, but I have trouble thinking of any other reason for the women's height and weight to be included other than to make sure that the audience knows that these folks don't fit the social standards of your "normal" bachelorettes.

2) The introductions were the most painful. Primarily because, with a few self-assured exceptions, the women introduced themselves by way of heartwrenching stories of unrequited love, failed relationships, and prom night agonies. All of this, of course, on account of their size.

Okay. As mentioned before, I really don't like dating shows in general - they seem to feature women as a) utterly weak and pathetic or b) extremely cutthroat. Also, these shows equate a relationship with happiness - ignoring the reality of both extraordinarily unhappy relationships and perfectly happy single people.

I'm starting to think, maybe I was giving this genre of TV and FOX itself too much credit here, with the assumption that by producing this show they would be carrying the message that "it's possible to be happy and to be greater than a size 2." Throughout the show, I was disappointed that most of the women spoke about their size and love lives with such disgust and sadness. If we're really trying to increase personal and social acceptance, it makes me cringe to see women giving credence to a flawed, arbitrary concept of normal and in fact blaming their lack of compliance for their misery. Isn't this just another way of underscoring the notion that living within a socially constructed norm equates with happiness, while everything outside of that will mean a life of unfulfilled misery? Awesome.

3) Also, I struggle with the choice of bachelor and emphasis placed upon his also-greater-than-"normal" size. With terrible euphemisms related to the size of both bachelor Luke and the women competing for his attentions, the show describes itself. "This brawny prince is searching for one curvy Cinderella to take on the romantic adventure of a lifetime." (Thank you, FOX, for your clever usage of a thesaurus and deliberate avoidance of the descriptor "fat.")

This gives me qualms. I am totally for increasing size acceptance for both men and women alike, but I'm struggling a little bit with the connotation here. Are viewers to take away the message that the only way a fat woman can be happy is if she's in a relationship with a fat man?

It seems to me that if we did the same for any other physical attribute, it'd be at best, silly, and at worst, extremely offensive. If I suggested a show where only black women competed for the affections of a black man, I'd be thrown to the dogs - and rightly so. What if we restricted the field of bachelors/bachelorettes based on ability? Or ethnicity? Hair color? And is it any better to restrict based on the trait of fatness than it was for the other reality shows to (tacitly) restrict the pool based on thinness?

Like I said, I'm a little torn over this one. Overall, obviously not impressed with More to Love. I'm disappointed because I wanted to believe it would exceed my expectations, and I'm anxious because I worry about the message it sends to viewers and to society. What are your thoughts?

One of my really good friends wrote this a few days ago and sent it to me, we had been talking earlier that day about the amount of pressure on women to be society's view of "beautiful" whatever that really is and then had gone home and was watching an episode of "whose line is it anyways?" So, one of the jokes that they had made was "Did you see the jugs on the woman in row four?" and I guess it kind of irritated her. This was her response:

Pretty and Smart

Did you see the jugs on the woman in row 4?
Did you look at the legs on the woman over there?
Did you notice the *** on the woman in front of us?
Did you glance at the stomach on the woman on the treadmill?
Isn't she hot?

Society's oppression.
The judgment.
Domineering individuals.
All keeping woman down,
Keeping them someone they're not.
Keeping them some kind of pretty.

Why do we never hear things that count?
Did you listen to that woman's ideas?
Did you hear that woman's beliefs?
Did you eavesdrop on that woman's opinion?
Isn't she intelligent?

Silent postulation.
Thoughts never heard.
Misplaced respect.
Feminists aren't all extreme
And deserve some respect.
Is the Woman's Suffrage
So easily forgotten?

I like it and asked her to repost it, to me this sums up why I am a feminist. I hope you all enjoy.

REMOVED AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.

By Anna Russo, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

As a native Texan and a young woman, I cling to the legacy of leaders like Barbara Jordan and Ann Richards. These women fought a tireless battle to end sex discrimination and to leave future generations a world where justice and compassion guide us. Unfortunately, Texas doesn’t always honor their legacy and pay tribute to their struggle.

A case in point: yesterday , the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit involving the unfair and discriminatory incarceration of a pregnant woman who violated her probation.

In 2005, Amber Lovill pled guilty to the crime of felony forgery and received three years probation. In July 2007, during a routine report to her probation officer, Lovill took a required drug test and informed the officer that she was pregnant. After testing positive for drug use, the state moved to revoke her probation and incarcerate her for the rest of her pregnancy. According to the ACLU’s brief, officers repeatedly admitted that if Lovill were not pregnant, less restrictive alternatives would have been the typical response to a positive drug test.

A lower court has already ruled that probation officers treated Lovill differently from others who violated probation, but were not pregnant. The ACLU has asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to affirm this ruling.

The state of Texas clearly discriminated against Lovill because she was pregnant. Lovill’s probation officers have openly testified that this was not the standard course of action in response to a positive drug screen, and that because of Lovill’s pregnancy, they were not willing to “work with” her and felt there were no “other options” besides putting her in jail. It sent her to Nueces County Jail, a facility known to be unsanitary and unsafe for the remainder of her pregnancy. The state sought to incarcerate Ms. Lovill regardless of whether the facility was safe and could meet her medical needs for both prenatal care and substance abuse, and regardless of whether it is legal to treat women differently simply because they are pregnant.

While drug use during pregnancy raises serious concerns, if the state really wanted to help Lovill get the care she needed, it could have placed her in a program that specifically treats pregnant women. In fact, not only did a residential drug treatment program that specializes in treating pregnant women and their families exist, Lovill expressed a strong desire to enter the program. “I was clean for 21 months and I had one relapse. And I know that I can stay clean again. I’d just like the chance because I want to keep my baby with me,” Lovill said. Nevertheless, the state locked her up in Nueces County Jail.

I hope that the Court of Appeals will uphold the lower court's ruling, and make me proud to be a Texan again.

by Merle Hoffman

On The Issues Magazine

There is one place where the definition of gender remains binary – in the womb. When it comes to sonograms, amniocentesis and standard pre-natal testing, there are no nuances. Here, the pronouncement, “It’s a girl,” can translate into fierce and instant parental rejection. The fact is that when the issue is “sex selection abortion,” the same sex is always being selected -- female.

Abortion has been regularly used as a method of sex selection in certain regions of the world, particularly China and India, where sons are more highly prized than daughters. But it was something of a surprise to doctors in Sweden . When the mother of two daughters arrived at Mälaren Hospital, seeking tests to determine the sex of her fetus. If female, she declared, she intended to abort.

The doctors were concerned enough to bring the issue to the National Board of Health and Welfare, inquiring how to handle requests where they felt "pressured to examine the fetus’s gender" without a clinical diagnosis. The Board came back and said that requests for abortions based on a child’s gender cannot be refused.

Here in the U.S. a recent New York Times article reported slight statistical variations among Americans of Chinese, Korean or Indian descent, suggesting that the cultural preference for boys in these societies is continuing in this country.

The story reported on research conducted by Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers’ say their analysis of the 2000 Census shows that the odds increase beyond what is standard for a third child to be a boy in Asian-American families from China, Korea and India if the family did not already have a son. The data "suggest that in a sub-population with a traditional son preference, the technologies are being used to generate male births when preceding births are female," they wrote in the paper.

Even though sex selection is illegal in India, and China has been struggling with this issue for years, Edlund, a professor in the Department of Economics at Columbia University, told the Times , "That this is going on in the United States -- people were blown away by this."

Blown away indeed. Most people find the idea of sex selection abortion unacceptable, and a Zogby Interactive poll taken in March 2006 found that 86 percent of Americans supported a prohibition on the practice. Sex-selection abortion has been banned in Illinois, Pennsylvanian and most recently in Oklahoma. Representative Trent Franks-- a pro-life member of Congress from Arizona -- introduced the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2009 , a bill that would ban sex-selection or race-based abortions.

Don't think this will trigger, but careful just in case! ;)

Hm. So, my younger sisters made a couple of rape jokes, and I called them on it. Literally, just said "Guys, rape jokes aren't funny." Cue flippage. They couldn't understand why I had a problem with the jokes, despite attempting to explain. I was asked if I had a problem with one fo them having acted in a play that was about rape, just because it was about rape.

So how should I try to explain why rape jokes aren't funny? Or should I just leave it?

Just a quick hit here.  A dear friend and I were thinking of spending part of Saturday in DC trying to find some new toys :)  And while I remember seeing several posts on the subject here, I can't recall any shop names.  If any one could suggest some great sex shops in the DC area to check out, we would really appreciate.  I've heard good things about some places in Balitmore, but we are stuck in DC proper for our shenanigans.  Thank you!

As the mother of two young daughters, I am acutely aware of the influences upon my girls and how the choices I make on their behalf are effecting them.  One of my goals as a parent is to raise strong, assertive, confident women which, though relatively abstract, does help me strive to make informed decisions about concrete aspects of their lives.  My question is, where does it start?  Is it enough for me not to buy pink or otherwise gendered toys?  Is it enough to read them stories with strong female heroines who do more than prance around in pink dresses?  Is it enough to discuss the problems with barbie dolls and encourage my children to aspire to something other than wearing Disney princess costumes for Halloween? 

Clearly, there are too many things – both insidious and obvious – that are influencing how my children view the world and their place within it.  However, what else can I do to make my case?  The way they see me and other female (as well as male) role models around them will likely have a lasting effect.  The way their father and I discuss gender roles, power dynamics and feminism will, I hope, be influential, as will practical actions like dividing household chores.  Despite this, I can’t contain or prevent media influences, peer influences, other adults who praise only my girls’ appearance while simultaneously encouraging “strong, smart” boys etc.  As a mother who acknowledges these issues and their complexity, where does raising empowered daughters begin?  And, can we really ever do enough?

Join Frances and Jen as we plan the organizational direction of Savvy Sex! We plan to discuss future events and political actions that are inline with our mission as well as our communications, fundraising, sponsorship and recruitment plans. We'd love your input! This is a wonderful chance to help guide the direction of the group and plan events, or to just sit back and drink wine with like minded people.

Please send us your contact info (cell) upon RSVPing as we'll send you ours so that we can make sure no one gets left out.

There is a $2.00 charge to cover Meetup costs.

We hope to see you there! Please contact us at SavvySex@ymail.com or on our meetup site with any questions you may have. For location, date and time details, please visit our site. Thanks!

*Savvy Sex is a new-wave organization devoted to the promotion of healthy attitudes and politics regarding gender identity, sexual orientation and sexuality.

AHAVA is an Israeli cosmetics company whose luxury products, like bath salts and botanical skin care, have long been sought-after commodities for visitors to Israel. Although the products are now widely available, AHAVA and its beauty and skincare products like mineral mud from the Dead Sea still hold intrigue for consumers. The company claims a commitment to environmental responsibility and doesn’t test on animals. Its name even means ‘love’ in Hebrew. Aside from caveats about how cosmetic companies target women and make them feel that they need to continually buy products to fix manufactured and/or imagined flaws, and then profit from women’s insecurities, AHAVA sounds like pretty nice company, right?

Unfortunately, behind its statements of environmental consciousness and message of love, AHAVA is hiding a dirty secret: although its products say “Made in Israel,” its plant is in the occupied West Bank. That means that the Dead Sea Mineral Mud is made from exploited natural resources – AHAVA is appropriating the mud from the Dead Sea and passing it off as an Israeli product. Under the Geneva Conventions, it is illegal for an occupying force to take from or profit from the natural resources of the occupied country. AHAVA’s products are illegally made and sold: they are stolen goods.

This week, CODEPINK Women for Peace launched its Stolen Beauty campaign to address AHAVA’s business practices and lies. CODEPINK wants the public to know that there is nothing loving about what AHAVA is doing to Palestine. With events across the nation and the world, the Stolen Beauty campaign encourages peace activists to ask local stores who sell AHAVA to stop stocking the company’s products, and to build a boycott movement of AHAVA. Stolen Beauty is CODEPINK’s contribution to the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which aims to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and to support human rights for Palestinians.

There have already been several high-profile actions worldwide: during a Gaza delegation, CODEPINK activists investigated for themselves the AHAVA factory and staged the first protest in a spa in Tel-Aviv’s Hilton Hotel. There have since been actions at a Tel-Aviv beach event in Central Park, NYC, at a cosmetics trade event in Las Vegas, and local actions at upscale beauty salons in Washington DC and Santa Monica. A group in Paris, France also staged a demonstration at the Champs-Elysées Sephora. You can see pictures and videos from these actions here .

Check out CODEPINK’s campaign at www.stolenbeauty.org to learn more and to find out how to stage your own local action.

This is a follow up to a post I made a few weeks back regarding the GLAAD panel on homophobia and virtual communities hosted by Electronic Arts.

The GLAAD blog has posted a run down of the event. Not only that, but also video of the panel. I have yet to read through or view the entirety of the article, but I am sure it will be enlightening to read/watch. It does look like some of the concerns raised in the previous post and its comments were addressed.

Here is Kotaku's run down on it.

I am glad so many prevalent members of the video game industry and the video game press were able to attend.

Today I decided to run with the boys cross country team (because the girls team doesn't start practicing till September) to get a little more practice for when competitions come around. Of course, I decided to "goof around" and began getting tired a little too quickly. So the boys started passing me, until I was maybe a few feet behind the last guy. Then one of the guys (one of the faster ones) dropped out to run with me. When I asked why he did this he said because he wouldn't leave a girl behind. Like it was obviously veryyy generous, but i feel like if it was another guy he wouldn't have done that. I really don't know how to feel about it thought- because he did help me out during the run, but like the fact that he thought I'd be unsafe a few feet behind. I don't know if I'm stuck in traditional ways thinking he was a gentleman for doing that.

(Trigger warning)

This Monday, Otty Sanchez murdered her child and then attempted suicide, claiming the devil had commanded her to do it.  It was a gruesome act of cannibalism.  Police reported that every officer was silenced by the scene.  And while this was a tragedy beyond comprehension for most people, the act’s similarity to Andrea Yates’ 2001 murders and the media’s response imply a larger problem.  Why does the media fetishize women cracking under pressure?

Andrea Yates

There is an undeniable similarity to Andrea Yates’ infanticide in 2001.  Like Sanchez, Yates claimed the devil compelled her to drown her five children.    Both lived in Texas, Yates around Houston and Sanchez in San Antonio.  And like Sanchez, Yates had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for psychiatric reasons twice, then diagnosed with postpartum psychosis within a year of the killings. 

Yates stands out for feminists because when she married, her newly adopted religious beliefs included the Quiverfull movement: 

“As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them”

Psalm 127:3-5

Members of the Quiverfull movement abandon contraception, natural or otherwise, and procreate as much as nature will allow.   Prior to the deaths, Yates experienced criticism from her church and family that she was not an adequate mother in the eyes of God.  She claimed it was this that drove her to kill her children, the belief that her spiritual failure had spread to her children, who would by extension never be saved.

Otty Sanchez’ story is reminiscent of this; the week of the killing, she had a nervous breakdown for which she was hospitalized and released.  Then, her boyfriend’s family also called the police about alleged child negligence on her part for failing to use a car seat.  Forbidden from driving upon threat of calling the police again, the boyfriend’s family allowed her to return to their house.  Sanchez was heavily reliant on her sister for help with the child at this time.

It’s possible that the pressures on these women, religious, familial, and otherwise, expedited their breakdowns.  Though Sanchez was additionally diagnosed with schizophrenia and quit taking medication, the parallels between the situations suggest an underlying problem of women being pressured to choose motherhood regardless of their well-being.

Also, postpartum psychosis affects 1/1000 mothers, while less-severe postpartum depression affects 1/10.   Sanchez had ceased taking medication for her schizophrenia, while her boyfriend still took medication for his.  This increased her risk for postpartum psychosis by 50%.

Here, the “devil made me do it” connection is strengthened. Richard Pesikoff, a psychiatry professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, gave the following testimony in Yates’ trial:

  “Postpartum psychosis is far rarer, affecting only about one woman in 1,000. Women with postpartum psychosis have delusions, frequently involving religious symbols and a desire to harm their newborn.”

Watching Eve Fall

The American media already has an unhealthy obsession with unhinged women.  Reality shows glorify women “cracking” or “breaking,” getting in fights and losing control of their emotions.  This is inherent to everything from Jerry Springer to Fox’s upcoming reality TV adaptation of the 1988 film, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. ”

Furthermore, even lightweight shows like Nanny 911 or Wife Swap put women under extraordinary scrutiny and encourage them to be suddenly self-critical of their parenting.  This perpetuates the idea that there is just one effective parenting style.  The larger theme of all these shows, of course, is that women are unpredictable and crazy.  And while an underlying cause of this was the lack of adequate schizophrenia medication, Sanchez’ diagnosis of postpartum psychosis is instead chalked up to the mythical power of “hormones” to turn the kindest woman into a raging monster. 

One question is, “Were Otty Sanchez a man, would his media coverage be the same?”  I can speak for my local paper of 17 years, the Sacramento Bee, that Otty Sanchez made the front page on Monday with a headline with the phrase “Eats Brains,” which they later changed to “Child dismemberment.”   And how common is front-page coverage of a man killing his child ?  It would possibly make it into the B section, titled “Metro”- just for local news.

The mainstream media mirrors the grisliness in shows like “Law and Order: SVU,”  furthering a desire of viewers to watch women as criminals.  There is an American fetish for building unattainable standards for women, and watching as women fall short and blame themselves .  This includes beauty, career, sexual, spousal, and parenting standards.  Just as tabloids satisfy the desire to see other women’s flaws, (“Celebrities without makeup!  You’ll never believe her cellulite!”)  there’s a desire to tear down mothers as crazy.    Furthermore, I would argue that this dates back past reality TV, past women being thrown in asylums, to the story of Adam and Eve that underlies the understanding of interactions between men and women today —audiences and the general public want to see women experience guilt and punishment for not measuring up.

Who’s to blame for Sanchez ceasing to take medication?  Did she feel it was stigmatized?  Did she lack the money or insurance to pay for it? Was she under religious as well as familial pressure?  Did she feel her diagnosis was dismissed as trivial? Was there any way to prevent this? 

I don't think she is an anomaly, and I think the media's glorification of the failure of women is a symptom.

OK, first I am going to say that I am angry. I am really furious. Lately I've been reading this awesome book by Naomi Wolf called Promiscuities about growing up in the 60's and how confusing and hurtful (as well as amazing) becoming a woman in modern society can be.

And then I hear about this: a program being run in Sydney by Christian evangelist group Hillsong, called SHINE, which brainwashes young women to adhere to 'traditional' Christian values. This program targets girls as young as 10 (going up to 20) and is PAID by schools for its services.

Here is some more information about the program, which is sure to make you as mad as me!

Unlike most of the News Media, I have been following the details relating to the unfortunate murder of Dr. George Tiller. Yesterday, I found an article on KansasCity.com about letters Scott Roeder (Dr. Tiller's assassin) wrote to his son from jail over the years. The letters span from ideals of rejection of the income tax and payment of child support to extreme religious fantasies.

Roeder’s son, Nicholas, is now 22 and has just recently read the letters in full.

The Senate Finance Committee is reportedly very close to finishing its healthcare legislation. But as the bill's details leak, anticipation is quickly turning to dejection in progressive healthcare circles. Early word has it that the almost finished a bill includes no public option, no employer mandate, and no insurance exchange. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly explains why the Senate Finance Committee bill is going to suck.

At TAPPED, Scott Lemieux argues that if the Senate legislation doesn't have a public option or an employer mandate, we'd be better off not passing a healthcare bill. Conventional wisdom is that even a bad bill would be better than nothing: Once we get the basic infrastructure for universal healthcare in place, it will be easier to build on that rather than starting from scratch. However, as Lemieux points out, a bill with no public option would only further entrench the insurance industry and make it easier for them to block reforms in the future.

Remember that the bill that comes out of the Finance Committee still has to be reconciled with other versions, like the version from the Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. So, it's possible that progressive Senators will win some concessions. However, as we've discussed before, the Senate is the key to passing healthcare reform, and the Blue Dogs are the key to passing the bill in the Senate. Whatever comes out of the Finance Committee is going to carry a lot of weight with the Blue Dogs.

It's no wonder we're fighting over a bunch of lackluster options. As Isabel MacDonald observes in AlterNet, corporate-run media has virtually banished all talk of single-payer healthcare. If you're a single-payer advocate and you want to get on TV, you have two options: Be Bernie Sanders or get arrested in the Senate.

Democrats should try implementing a radical progressive agenda one of these days--they'll be accused of doing so, anyway. Amanda Marcotte of RH Reality Check notes that even though universal healthcare is more likely to cover iPods than abortions, mainstream media and the anti-reform brigade insist on discussing abortion funding as if it were a live option. Here in the real world, pro-choicers don't even have the votes in Congress to overturn the Hyde Amendment, which bans the usual sources of federal funding for abortion. According to some experts I interviewed a few weeks ago for a forthcoming article, there might be a clever legal way to set up the healthcare program so that its funding wouldn't fall under the Hyde Amendment, but no one expects the Democrats to even try.

I had been debating back and forth whether or not to watch this show. Yesterday Samhita made a great post that highlighted many of the concerns I was having regarding this show. I do not usually watch "The Bachelor" type of reality shows, but I was interested to see how "More to Love" would portray overweight people, especially women. And also I felt that by giving the show more viewers it would be telling the executives at the networks that America is ready to watch television which star women over a size 4. I sure as hell am. Anyway, last night I sat down to watch the premiere and I thought I'd just share some random thoughts that passed through my head as I did.

- These women were all beautiful and seemed really sweet and nice...but according to the previews of course that changes (I mean, this is a reality tv show people).

- Each time a woman had her one-on-one with the camera it stated her height and weight. Why? We know this show is about overweight people finding love. Do we really need to know their exact weight every time we see them on screen? Is this going to continue throughout the whole season? Not a fan of this.

- Are they showing the bachelor guy's height and weight each time he has a one-on-one? No? But I thought he was overweight too...

- All of the insecurities these women related to the camera I could totally understand. I am not overweight anymore, but I used to be, and it was very easy to relate to the stuff they were saying. And even now when I'm technically thin I can relate to a lot of their feelings about just wanting to find love and thinking they're a great person and why hasn't someone just seen that in them yet? But I guess that's what most women on reality shows say, right? Everyone just wants to know why someone hasn't realized how great they are yet, right? I don't know because I never watch these kinds of shows. But it was touching.

- However, I hope they move away from these women just crying all the time (there was a lot of crying in the premiere) and show them loving themselves for who they are inside and out.

- Umm...I'm sure that most reality dating shows have this same problem but...I didn't see one single black woman on this show! Really?!?!

So those were just some of the thoughts that rolled around in my head while watching. I tried to just post my thoughts relating to the representation of overweight women and not reality dating show clichés and whatnot in general (because I could go on and on about that stuff as well). I'm not sure what I think of the show as a whole yet. I'm going to try and keep watching and figure it out, hoping to see a more nuanced portrait of the women on this show, hoping it doesn't just turn into something horrible like what everyone on IMDb.com is hoping for (the comments there are horrible, don't go!), hoping for fat acceptance.

Did any of you see the premiere? Have any thoughts to share as well?

A feminist and activist friend of mine alerted her facebook subscribers to this story (trigger warning), about a young person whose sexual history was put on public display by her mother and radio hosts and producers, despite the fact that she was a) a minor, and b) a survivor of sexual assault.

The radio hosts were obviously unaware of the fact that this girl was raped at the age of twelve, and we can assume that the same goes for producers of the show.  However, I'm not sure that this is as simple as blaming the mother for bringing her child onto the show and asking questions when she knew about the assault, which is what many commenters of facebook seemed to do.

I also don't think that it is acceptable to simply assert that the radio show is awful and that they should be taken off the air.  The fact that anyone thought that interviewing a child about her sexual history is okay is a massive problem, not just for the individual who thought it, but for society, since they also thought that it was okay for that information to be broadcast.

I don't listen to this radio station (for obvious reasons) and so I don't know who else has been interviewed with a lie detector on them, but I wonder how many people were asked questions that they did not feel comfortable in answering.  Would their requests to refuse to answer a question be respected?  And did this young person consent to the lie detector in the first place?  It surely doesn't sound as though she did.

I hate to think what might have happened if she hadn't had consensual sex had denied the fact that she had - something that could be entirely accurate, since she was raped - and the lie detector had shown a lie. Would she have been subjected to mockery, jokes, anger... when would it have stopped? I imagine that it would be only when she released the information that her sexual experience occurred without her consent.

What a stunning example of people forgetting that rape exists, and contributing to rape culture by assuming that people's sexual history has any bearing on how much privacy they deserve.

So yes, the parent is to blame, but the fact that someone thought it would be appropriate and would garner public interest to discuss a child's sexual history is symptomatic of a far greater problem, which is that we are all judged and treated as though we are our sexual history.

What do others think?

I am in the beginning stages of planning my wedding, and I am starting to get a bit overwhelmed. My parents are divorced and remarried, and so for nearly my entire life I have been raised in a blended family. I wouldn't say that my blended family is poor per se, but even a job with a decent salary can make it difficult to provide for two kids in college, plus younger siblings. That said, it is making it difficult to determine a wedding budget.

My parents are extremely loving and supportive of my engagement, and want to help out as much as they financially can. I have explained to them that it is much more important that I have their love and emotional support versus their money, but at the same time, it would be nice to sort of know where they're at with a wedding budget.

But in this day and age, why is it tradition that the bride's family has to pay for practically everything? Even people who don't label themselves as feminists have started to break down social constructs, so why is the wedding something where we have to fall back on tradition?

Apologies for this post lacking the theoretical framework I often try to include. This is an issue I've been thinking a lot of lately, and wanted to generate some open and honest discussion about the nature of feminist work and its problematic areas.

What is the proper monetary compensation for feminist work? Are feminist activists getting properly compensated for the work they put forth to create a better world? Further, what are the ethical and power implications of making money and getting rich off feminism? More explicitly, what are the connections between how much feminists are paid for their work, and what does it say about how feminism is viewed?

Time and time again, I've heard many young feminists, having graduated from college, express the desire to devote their lives to feminist work, but are also hit with the realization that within such work, little money is made, and that often times, the salaries paid within feminist communities simply do not compare to those with other careers. I've experienced it myself, previously having worked for a non-profit that paid me $1,900 a month to work six days a week, 12 hours a day, and having to drive about an hour each way to work.

After an 8-year marriage, I left, stayed with a friend (not male) for 2 1/2 months until i was able to get my house back. After moving in and being on my own for only about a month, I called him. We started seeing each other exclusively for 5 months but lived in separate places. I have been in a deep depression for what seems like forever and have really been struggling lately. I went out of state to visit family for two weeks and while I was up there, he told me he didn't want to see me anymore and he wanted to "go out with someone."

I have a question. When the abuser finds a new girlfriend, why is that so hard? Why do I want to analyze the way we interacted to try to figure out what went wrong? Why can't I stand the thought of him with another person? Why does it hurt so much? I have come very far on my path to establishing my own true self back, apparently not as far as I thought. My divorce will be final next month. I am dedicated to following through with it.

My kids (not by him) hate him and would leave me if we ever got back together so its a no-brainer but why do I have such strong feelings over still wanting his attention, still wanting to talk to him, trying to make him want me instead of her when I know he is a liar, a controlling manipulative user of people until they're of no value to him. Its like I have this craving for his attention but I don't want to be married to him. I like want him as my friend so we can still talk and have our conversations where we finish each other's sentences. Help. I feel like an idiot. Please tell me this is a "normal" phase to be going through and it will pass and I will hate him again like I did when he wouldn't move out of my house nor pay for it or the utilities or the cable bill. What is wrong with me?

Hello, I am new to Feministing but have always read about the website in Bust and Ms. Magazine. I attend a Catholic college in Boston, MA that no longer has a FemCo. After many excuses and what ifs, I am finally looking forward to founding the coalition at my school. However, I am obviously new to the fact.

I am a Media Studies and Women's Studies major, and not religious--however the fact I go to a catholic school makes the coalition even more interesting. I am really into learning about how the media portrays women and unconsciously forces women and men into thinking and consuming in a stereotypical manner. There will always be a need for women's studies, and I'd like to further spread and share our opinions and thoughts concerning feminism with as many people as possible.

Do any of you fabulous feminists have any pointers/ideas/ for a new founder of what could be an intense change to my school and the city of Boston? I am passionate about starting this and becoming active in it, and having as many followers and feminist friends as possible. Throw me a bone girls!

I just turned 18 and after the years of public school and the just wonderful education policies that they take on making sure that women are completely confused about their bodies I have finally started on my journey to undue the damage that they have done to me. (My mom assumed the stance that if I had any questions my health teacher or school nurse would know how to better answer my questions than she did.)

But one of the books that I had heard mentioned again and again was Our Bodies, Ourselves. So I checked out the book from my local library and started reading it. Now I have read other books about what is really going on with my body but nothing quite as complete as Our Bodies Ourselves, not one of these books really talked about menstruation in quite as much detail. I am still reading the chapter but there are a few things that really surprise me about the whole thing.

First, why are women not given a full range of options about their menstrual cycle, period coverage, and contraception. I didn't know about the risks associated with the chemicals in tampons and pads, I didn't even think about natural sponges as an option, or know that there was such a thing as a menstrual cup. I also didn't know that there were so many different options for contraception. What I want to know is why is this information so taboo. I don't want any woman to grow up thinking her body is dirty or shameful and I don't understand what is so wrong with talking about something so natural. I think that because it is necessary for us to have babies it should be something that our society embraces. But for some reason that is just unheard of. I'd like to here from other feminists who are wiser and older than I am why our society feels the need to do these things to women.

"Fox will not air Family Guy abortion episode according statement from network."

Now, I absolutely love Family Guy. However, analyzing the contents of Family Guy, Fox couldn't have come shorter from the racist sexist channel it is. Family Guy has a pedophile/rapist Quagmire, a pedophile, a child who is abusive, manipulative and wants to kill his mother, an inattentive, selfish and maybe alcoholic father, a daughter who is ridiculed and the only time she is respected is when she becomes an object (as a blonde singer), but will not air an episode on abortion.

I find it disturbing that pedophilia, rape, and violence are all acceptable and not controversial subjects, but abortion is according to the network.

In response to the New York Times' recent article on Japan's "hostessing boom":

The New York Times recently ran a piece on how the economic downturn is causing more and more Japanese women to seek jobs as hostesses. For those who aren't aware, hostesses work in bars that cater to male clients and are essentially paid to flirt with and lavish attention on the customers. They can make anywhere from $20 to $150 an hour, depending on where they're working and how popular they are. Sex usually isn't part of the package, though at the seedier clubs women may be pressured into having sex with long-time clients, and some hostesses choose to sleep with clients for extra cash. (Note: I'm referring predominantly in this post to Japanese hostesses--the world of American, European, and Southeast Asian hostesses working in Japan has a whole other set of issues attached to it).

I've always had mixed feelings about hostessing. Even as I wrote this post, I struggled with how I really felt about the idea of men paying women for companionship, and I found myself changing sides again and again. In the end, I think it's not the idea of paying for companionship (or even paying for sex) that I find distasteful--it's the sexist and materialist culture that surrounds hostessing as an industry. This sort of culture is of course not unique to Japan--it thrives in the U.S., where women are routinely celebrated more for their hotness than for their intellect. Hostessing in Japan just seems to be a very visible example of the negative impact of outdated, stereotypical ideas about gender and money.

On the one hand, if a girl decides on her own that she wants to get paid to flirt (and deal with a lot of sleazy men, and inhale gallons of cigarrette smoke, and constantly feel exhausted from partying every night), I think that's her business. And if a guy wants to pay a girl for affection, that's his business (there are male hosts and female clients as well, though they make up a very small percentage of the industry). Provided everything happens between consenting adults, I'd like to think that hostessing doesn't really do much harm. But then I read lines like this one from the NY Times article, and I feel kind of ill:

Young women are drawn nonetheless to Cinderella stories like that of Eri Momoka, a single mother who became a hostess and worked her way out of penury to start a TV career and her own line of clothing and accessories.

"I often get fan mail from young girls in elementary school who say they want to be like me," said Ms. Momoka, 27, interviewed in her trademark seven-inch heels. "To a little girl, a hostess is like a modern-day princess."

The other day I went to a talk about refugees. I thought I would share what I learned. This is a topic I didn't know much about until the other day and I'm betting a lot of other people don't know much either. This talk came in the middle of two changes Canada made in order to discourage refugees from coming here.

Refugees are people who have had to move to another country because their country has war or they are being persecuted in some way. In Canada, many people from Mexico attempt to be refugees. Refugees who make their way here on their own and then hope they will be allowed to stay here are called claimant refugees. They arrive in a city with the right office and make a claim that they should be allowed to stay in Canada as a refugee. It can take a year or more to find out if they can stay in Canada. They cannot apply to be considered refugees at the border or they will be automatically turned away and sent back to Mexico. Recently, Canada has changed the laws so that visitors from Mexico and the Czech Republic require a visa. This is supposedly because a lot of claimant refugees from Mexico are not actually being persecuted but are coming for economic reasons. Also, they say there are too many cases and they cannot handle them all. Refugees who know they will be allowed to stay here are convention refugees.

The main myth about refugees is they come here to get things for free. The government of Canada actually gives refugees a loan. They are even expected to pay back their plane tickets that brought them here if they came by plane. They cannot work until they have a work permit which can take 5-8 months. However, I am not sure if we get money from claimant refugees who are denied and have to go home. According to one article, they cost us billions per year because of their living expenses and paying the people who decide whether they can stay.

It can take a year or more for claimant refugees to find out whether they can stay in the country. This decision is made by one person in a trial-like hearing. There is no appeal process. If you cannot stay in Canada, you are sent back home. Some refugees get a "friendlier" interview type hearing, particularly if their case is taking longer. Who stays in Canada is based in large part on politics. It is unlikely for Columbians to be denied and unlikely for Mexicans to be accepted.

We were told the story of a Mexican who looked out his window at the wrong time and saw two people dealing drugs. Because he saw them, he was a target. His brother was mistaken for him and murdered. I believe he is currently in Canada hoping to stay here but the odds are against him.

A couple days ago Canada changed the laws so that if a person from Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Zimbabwe landed in America first, they cannot apply to be a refugee in Canada. They cannot cross the land border from U.S to Canada and apply for refugee status.

I recently watched Lost Boys of Sudan . It is a documentary that follows young Sudanese men as they adjust to life in America as refugees. I recommend it. It shows life is not easy for them but it's certainly not entirely terrible. It does touch on the issues of education for refugees that America needs to work on.

These are just some bare basics about refugees who come to Canada. I have found it is hard to get all the facts from newspaper articles. Some articles seem to assume people have background knowledge. Many articles on google news are opinions pieces but people might not realize this.

I still know so little. I advise everyone not to assume newspapers have all the information about refugees. Even if an article is supposed to be objective, the author can choose which facts to report. Refugees are a complicated issue. I'm sure not everyone who comes here hoping to be a refugee is about to be persecuted. That is what we must figure out as fairly as possible. How to be fair and not deport people who will be killed or tortured is not an easy question. I do wonder how much our government cares about being fair and how much we just want to discourage as many refugees as possible from coming here. There are many negative opinions about refugees, as shown by comments to online articles so I want to encourage people to get as many facts as possible about refugees and encourage others to do the same.

We often discuss how people on TV, especially women, are almost always very thin. Similar to this, I can't help but notice how nobody on TV has acne. Not even one zit. Nobody has anything other than perfect skin, unless a point is being made of it, and this is almost always in the form of that cliched storyline of children's sitcoms (think Nickelodeon shows) where a teenage female character gets one zit on her face before a date and spends days in her room sobbing that her life is over. I didn't use to watch that much TV as a child, but I still remember this storyline on many different kid's programmes of that decade, like 'Sister, sister', and this has also shown up on British children's channels CITV and CBBC programmes (I remember seeing it in 'Custer's last standup' and another in 'Bailey Kipper's POV', both truly awful shows, and even more because they had to resort to this awful cliche) My mother tells me this goes way back, she can remember it happening on 'The Brady bunch'. Apart from these programmes for pre-teens, no characters have acne at all.

TV adverts and articles in teen magazines follow the same pattern: teens - usually female - with absolutely immaculate skin, get one, isolated pink dot on their skin and freak out. In the fantasy land, this is solved by putting some product on your face. As we know, this is not the way acne works; unless you're very lucky you will not only have a little pimple like an island in a perfect face, but you will have a sea of red marks, discolouration and blackheads, even after you've got rid of your pimples. And if getting rid of them were that easy, no one would have them. If you were to watch TV and never meet a real person, you would not only think that fat, menstruation, leg hair and STIs are non-existent, but also that acne is almost unheard of. Even female characters in books who are supposed to have acne, or be fat, or not conventionally attractive, are cast in TV or movie adaptations with conventionally good-looking actors with good skin, and thin.

Why do I believe this is a feminist issue? Because women are held up to a much higher standard than men when it comes to skin, and this is just one more thing in a continuum of prejudice against people who look perfectly normal, which causes unnecessary worry. Boys also get insecure about acne, it's true, and I can see WHY they would use actors with good skin. But women are told that, not only should it be blemish-free, but it also must be hair-free, line-free, SHINE-free (and yet moisturized), and 'glowing' (whatever that means). A phrase which comes up more and more in adverts is 'virtually poreless' which seems ridiculous not to mention kinda creepy. Can anyone imagine a man being told he should be virtually poreless, have a radiant and shine-free complexion? Can you imagine the classic kids-sitcom-girl-gets-zit-and-her-life-is-over storyline being played out with a male character? It would just seem pathetic and unrealistic. Which it is.

Crossposted at Deeply Problematic

In Mobile, Alabama this week, policemen used lethal force on Antonio Love, a deaf and mentally disabled man, who would not come out of the bathroom.

Their excuse? He had a lethal weapon himself....an umbrella.

Love was in the bathroom, a place where everyone should expect privacy and respect. . In Love's words, given in sign-language, he had "a badly upset stomach last Friday and went into a Dollar General store to use the restroom."

When he had been in there an hour, store employees called the authorities, which is reasonable enough. The police appropriately identified themselves, but Love, who was scared and believed the Devil was trying to get in, did not respond.

They responded disproportionately to the absence of any apparent threat by spraying pepper spray through the door, using a tire iron to open the door Love was trying to get

After they realized he was deaf and disabled , what did they do? Did they...apologize profusely and let him go? Was ... disciplinary action taken against the authorities who overused force?

No.

They laughed at him.

And proceeded to charge him on disorderly conduct.

The right of disabled persons to function fully and exist with respect in our society is consistently deprived of them . This is obviously a difficult situation to navigate, but it's the responsibility of the authorities to be calm and careful and to restrain themselves from using force in a situation where there is no apparent harm. When they are dealing with someone who is unable to recognize themselves, they need to move slowly and deliberately to make sure that they are not doing ... exactly what they did.

Contact information for the Mobile police department can be found here .

Source

How I love The Onion. Study: Abstinence-Only Lunch Programs Ineffective At Combating Teen Obesity.

"Although these students were repeatedly warned about the evils of eating and made to take fasting pledges, the abstinence-only program did little to curb their overall appetite for food," the report read in part. "In fact, students at Woodbridge were nearly three times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than children who were given a portion of meat, whole grains, and green vegetables, and then encouraged to skip dessert."

Perhaps more troubling, students who completed the abstinence-only program were reportedly unable to answer the simplest questions about their own digestive systems, and some as old as 17 still believed they could catch high blood pressure from their very first Snickers bar.

Crossposted at AMPLIFY.

Trigger warning.

"The Land Where Rapists Go Free"  is part of a series called Global Diaries that the journalist Mariane Pearl does for Glamour magazine. (Marianne Pearl is the wife of Daniel Pearl who was killed in 2003 by terrorists in Pakistan, she wrote the book A Mighty Heart that was later adapted into film). Global Diaires are amazing peieces written profiling women in the US and around the world. In the series Pearl usually focuses her attention on a problem that is disproportionately affecting women and then profiles a local female leader trying to make a difference.

(cross-posted at The Feminist Texican)

Basically every feminist website is avoiding this one like the plague, but I actually went and saw The Ugly Truth opening night.  With my parents.  Don’t ask.

The movie poster pretty much sums it up for you:

Abby (Heigl) is a producer at a floundering television network.  Like all smart, beautiful career women, she’s also an overbearing cat lady with zero romantic prowess who hasn’t gotten laid in a year.  Her assistant is even more pitiful, living vicariously through Abby’s occasional interrogations dates since she has no chance of ever finding a man of her own.  As for Abby, her dream man is smart, handsome, well off, loves wine, and likes dogs, but prefers cats (she’s a cat lady, remember?).

At work, Abby’s production team puts on smart stuff that gets no ratings, so her boss ends up hiring Mike (Butler) to give “ugly truth” romantic advice on air in a last ditch effort to drive up the ratings.

With Sarah Palin making news again, I started thinking about how her views on abortion seem so out of touch with her personal experience.

A couple of months ago, Sarah Palin spoke to a group of conservative anti-choice advocates about her experience when she found out during her last pregnancy, that her son Trig had Downs Syndrome. You have to get about 4 minutes into the video before she starts talking about her experience, but the crux of her statement is that when she discovered at 13 weeks in her pregnancy that her son would be born with Downs, she did, in fact, consider terminating the pregnancy. Not only she did consider termination, but she also felt that she could understand why other women in her situation would consider abortion and perhaps choose abortion. She then goes on to explain that she used her personal faith and experience to make the decision to continue her pregnancy to term. In the next breath she states that her experience in making a personal decision about her pregnancy and family has reinforced her belief that abortion should be illegal, effectively taking away any other woman's ability to make such an important and personal decision.

I find this pretty remarkable coming from a woman who just stated that she not only seriously considered terminating her pregnancy, but that she felt she could understand why some women would make that choice. And yet here she is, publicly stating that her goal would be to deny other women and their families the ability to make these decisions in their own lives.

This is the part of the anti-choice movement that I simply can't wrap my brain around. I feel that being pro-choice is about respecting and honoring every person's ability to make decisions about their own lives regardless of whether or not I personally feel it is a decision that I would make on my own or whether or not it is a decision that I agree with. That someone would deny me or anyone else the ability to make personal life decisions is simply the most un-American thing that I can imagine.

There are times when I am with patients, listening as they tell me their stories and reasons for terminating or continuing their pregnancies, that I think, "Wow. That's not a decision that I would make," but I would never presume that I can know what the best decision for another person's life is better than they do. Could you?

I've written about my family on these boards before, but in the past few days, they have journeyed from our tiny town in Montana to visit me in Los Angeles, where I currently reside. My mother and youngest sister were walking down the street with me. We were in the park and sat down on a bench to rest. My sister was drinking from a juice box that, from the label, it was very clear that she was drinking Hi-C. A young woman (with her own toddler) was strolling by and felt compelled to let my mother know that Hi-C contains high-fructose corn syrup and is BAD for you. When my mother told her to mind her own business, the thick Midwest accent gave her away as a 'yokel'. The woman went on to state that Hi-C is not sustainable OR organic, and is detrimental to my sister's health. Thank God this didn't happen the day before, when we were in the same park with Kool-Aid!

Today, on my nightly news, I noticed a segment that placed a huge amount of blame for current healthcare costs on obesity and also suggested that a "vice tax" on unhealthy food, especially soft drinks and liquids in particular, could be foreseeable. These two incidents to me really get at a crucial aspect of current nutrition and food policy, and one that policy makers seem really loathe to address - and that is the classism inherent in the decisions being made about food.

Food policy in the US is messed up - I have no argument there. However, I really think vice taxes are a terrible idea. The products that would be taxed - those containing the dreaded high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, ect. - are also some of the cheapest foods out there. These low-grade, easy to produce ingredients make it so. So it logically follows that these foods would become staples of the middle and upper classes, as opposed to the better off. And that's exactly what has happened. Your far more likely to enjoy McDonalds and Coke and Twinkies if you don't have the money to buy anything else (or don't live in an area where alternatives are available). There's a great scene in Food, Inc. (which is actually quite good) where a woman explains to the camera that for the price of a small order of produce, she could buy a large order of meats and other, less nutritional foods and feed her entire family.

Yes, I have heard it repeated that being vegan/green/organic does not have to be expensive. And I'm sure that that is true. But I haven't seen it. For a week of groceries at Whole Foods takes almost my entire paycheck, whereas at Shoprite with non-organic versions, it's a lot less. Guess where I shop. It's also an issue of privileged availability. I eat better here than in Worden, where if it's not available at a fast-food place, Wal-Mart, or a local corner store, YOU DON'T EAT IT. And that's the way it is. But still, a huge amount of guilt and blame seems to be getting laid at the feet of consumers, who are made to feel terrible for makes choices that better fit their budgets. And I don't get it.

I understand that the environmental/green/sustainable food movement is important - and I support it. I love the idea of CSAs and revamping American food policy to better support nutrition and helping people make better choices. But those problems should be laid at the feet of the policy-makers, not people who are doing what they can do within their means. Making a judgment about a family letting a child drink Kool-Aid or Pepsi or eat packaged cookies is a classist action, and ultimately a really feel-good exercise in making oneself feel superior. Spare the sympathy, I say, and take up the fight with the people who can change the policy, not those affected by it. And no to vice taxes.

"Very Young Girls" is a harrowing film about a growing yet neglected problem in the US: child prostitution.  This film focuses on child prostitutes in New York but this is a problem throughout the United States and sadly not one that most people know about.

There are estimates that about 300,000 to 800,000 are children involved in child prostitution each year.  There are quite a lot of reasons that children get trapped in prostitution by brutal pimps. Some youth are street children and have been abandoned or run away from the foster care system. There are other cases of kids that had homes but were forced to run away because of abuse or violence at home. There are other cases of young gay or transgender prostitutes that are kicked out of their normal homes because of their identity and have no where else to turn. Some children are even betrayed into prostitution by parents, guardians or even babysitters.

Regardless of where these young people come from they face a live of depravity and brutality. They face violence and pressure from relentless pimps who see them as a source of income rather than vulnerable children. These pimps can sometimes be very manipulative and reel the children in with a sense of home and well being , only to ask them to work on the streets in exchange for that love. Other pimps may use drugs to entice drug addicted youth, and keep them in prostitution. These pimps often put very demanding prostitution schedules on their victims: one expected his child prostitute to have sex with 30 men over 4 or 5 days.

Beyond just this brutality from their pimps, these young prostitutes, male and female, face problems with the criminal justice system as well. Some child prostitutes have been tried as adults for crimes when they instead should be treated as victims .

There are many great programs out there that are working to fight child prostituion, find a safe home and rehabilitation for former child prostitutes. These programs need our support, even if it is just raising awareness about the problem and what they are doing to solve it.

TAKE ACTION:
1. You could raise awareness about these crimes by hosting one of these films at your high school or college. "Very Young Girls" documents the lives of child prostitutes in New York City and the film  "Carissa" documents the life of a former child prostitute who found a way off the streets to tell about it.
2. Support GEMS- which is Girls Education and Mentoring Services which was founded by a former prostitute from the United Kingdom. This organization works with child prostitutes and girls at risk to stop this scourge. They  have an online community called the Council of Daughters which you can join and make a difference through hosting events and other acitivities.
3. Support the Children of the Night which is another organization that has a residence to rehabilitate former child prostitutes.
4. Read more about the child prostitution problem in the US through this New York Times article, this USA Today article and this other Huffington Post article
5. Check out this PBS series about Child Prostitution in the US 
6. Read an empirical research paper on the Child Prostitution problem in the United States

So I'm watching TV (a rare moment of relaxation), and this commercial comes on.  I've never seen it before; I don't know what the ad is about yet.  But the content of it appears to be a father and a little girl building a treehouse together.  Seriously - together.  He's showing her how to use the tools, read the plans, and in general be involved in an actual construction project.  And I think, "This is great!"  The ad blatantly defies the gender stereotypes of mainstream advertising by showing a) a father interacting with his child in a competent, supportive, and non-discriminatory way, and b) a girl learning skills all too often considered "proper" for only the male segment of society.

I am thrilled.

I am elated.

I am vindicated to the point of joyful gasping.

This lasts approximately ten seconds.

The reason for the short lifespan of my joy, you ask?  Once the establishing shots of the ad run by, the girl springs up and declares, much to her father's confusion, that she will be right back.  

And then she runs off and makes him a sammich.

I cry out in pain and dismay.  I seethe with loathing for the cruel advertisers who have taunted me with their pretense of progressiveness.  And as the elitist and until-recently-sexist tagline reaches my ears: "Choosy moms - and dads! - choose Jif!"... I am no longer surprised.

The Jif advertisers have been a philosophical thorn in my side for many an ad, and had I known they were behind this one, I might have been more guarded - but alas, they have managed to hit me where it hurts.

You win this one, Jif.  But I'll be back.

(For the sake of illustration, I'd include a link to the ad here, but I could only find the 15-second version, which lacks the longer buildup and sharper backstab of the full 30-second version.)

Recently, there have been a lot of posts in the feminist blogosphere about rape jokes. I'm someone who long ago came to the conclusion that no topic should be universally excluded from humor, including topics that are serious and painful. I suppose this belief comes from the fact that humor is often used as a way of coping with pain.

When I became aware of the fact that most other feminists regard rape jokes as inherently wrong, I struggled to understand why.

Here I think a bit of background information is necessary. I grew up very sheltered from rape culture. I grew up around people who recognized the horror of rape, regardless of whether it was perpetrated by a stranger in a dark ally or by ones spouse. There was never any victim blaming. Rape was understood as an act of violence where "sex" was a weapon that had nothing in common with consensual sex. These understandings were considered self-evident and non-controversial. I was totally unaware of rape culture until I began actively researching rape, domestic violence, and the history of womens rights in the US. (This is not to imply that women are the only victims of rape or domestic violence, only that they are disproportionately impacted by it.)

My friends all grew up as sheltered as I did, and occasionally would make rape jokes. The only particular one I remember was "It's not rape if you yell 'surprise sex!' first." When we laughed, we were laughing at the absurdity of the idea that yelling "surprise sex" makes any sort of difference. Of course its still rape, how could anyone possibly be stupid enough to think otherwise?

A thing that bugs me is going to the doctor and being told you need to try to lose weight when you already are. Seriously, instead of assuming I was sitting on my butt all day eating brownies, they at least could have asked me about my physical/eating habits. If they had just asked instead of assuming, they would have learned I work out 2/hrs a day six days a week, and am a vegetarian that stays away from processed foods and eats brown grains. Suggesting I go see the nutritionist was the last straw seeing as how there is one at the place I work out that I have an appointment to see.

This really, really hurt me and could have been avoided had the person just asked about my current habits. I mean, I am really hurt and upset seeing as how I have recently lost 4lbs, but the nurse didn't know or care, to them I was just someoverweight person who needs to be told to loose weight and set up with a nutritionist. Damnit. Those four pounds are a big deal to me, and I would have loved the oppurtunity to brag about them, but whatever.

Also, I take pole fitness and love it, and get more than a bit sketched out when people hate on it, especially people who have no problems encouraging belly dancing for the purposes of sexuality. Why is it that some people are okay with one expression of sexuality through fitness, but not another? I believe it has a lot to do with the class association.

Kate Harding's November 2007 blog post, The Fantasy of Being Thin, really resonated with me. I just discovered it, after linking from the also-evocative, more recent post from Mean Asian Girl (The Fantasy of Being White), which details her personal struggles with self-hate and the dissonance between who she was and who she (thought she) yearned to be.

Both of these excellent articles are part memoir, part social critique. While reading them yesterday night I realized that I not only identify with them because I have struggled with both Harding and M.A.G.'s Fantasies (years with an eating disorder and some intricate skin color/racial identity issues). I identify with them because of another particularly relentless one: The Fantasy of Being Rich.

Now I don't mean rich like the Bush family. I've always had a particular affinity, due to my urban very white liberal community as an adolescent, for the upper-middle class. This was a community I identified with, thanks to my teenage trade-in of a fundamentalist Christian background for the "artsy" and "queer" districts in town to act out all my teen angst and tactile wonder. This fantasy has a strong racial dynamic, but that's a whole 'nother conversation, so back to my point.

I was middle class, much to my disappointment. This fantasy has gotten worse as I've grown older. Now at twenty-two I am what you would call "working poor," thanks to various financial shitshows over the past two years. The desolate feeling that quivers through me every time I think of what I can't afford, how terrifying an illness or accident seems, and how much I yearn for a sense of independence and comfort, drives me to fantasize about the woman I "would" be if I had money.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos and featured on Bitch magazine's website)

The following is a incomplete list of my many thoughts, objections, and suggestions concerning the current state of feminism and where we should be headed. All of the following points could be expanded upon. They are listed in no particular order.

Last week the Worthington trial concluded in Oregon.  I'm not sure how much national press this received, so here is a rundown of the basics:

The Worthingtons are members of a church that uses prayer and rituals to treat illness and distrusts doctors and the medical industry.  Commonly called "faith healing".  Last year their toddler daughter died of pneumonia and a blood infection, at the time of her death she also has a large growth on her neck.  She never saw a doctor and prosicuters claim that her condition was treatable.  Both parents were being charged with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment.  In the end, the father was convicted of mistreatment and the mother was acquitted.  The basis for her acquittal was that in their religious beliefs wives must always defer to their husbands, so even if she wanted to take the child to a doctor, she wouldn't have because her husband was opposed to it.  This is the first high-profile "faith healing" trail in the state and was possible because of a law passed a few years ago saying that people couldn't use their religion as a defense for crimes.

This situation has brought public debate about a whole host of issues from freedom of religion, government interference in raising children and criticism of western medicine.  I have strong feelings on those issues, as I'm sure most people do, however there are plenty of places to discuss those, let’s not dwell on them here.  I'm writing to gain a feminist perspective on the acquittal of the woman.

The mother's defense was that she defers to her husband and therefore takes no responsibility in the girl's death.  The news reporting insinuates that this a religious reason, but the law (as I understand it, I'm not a lawyer) is that religion cannot be a defense for a crime.  So does that mean her defense was that she was being controlled by her husband?  In my world-view that makes her a victim of domestic abuse.  And from that perspective, am I victim blaming when I feel anger and toward her? 

Mostly, I keep thinking that if I were on that jury I would have convicted her.  I am angry at both the parents for what I see as severe neglect and I cannot wrap my mind around the idea of watching a child die and not rushing them to the ER.  I cannot really believe that the mother simply was letting her husband call the shots and unless she either was in agreement about the anti-doctor stance (which seems to be the case) or she was being forced to defer to her husband/family/church.  Either way, I'm angry at her.  I'm angry at the foolishness of not wanting a doctor and I'm angry about not standing up to the people controlling her.  The latter sounds like victim blaming when I really think about it, the former does not. 

I don't want to contribute to the culture of blaming victims for crimes against them, so I don't know how to discuss this topic.  I'd like to hear some feminist perspectives of this, particularly the victim-blaming aspect . 

My best friend is a guy. He's been my friend for over 15 years now. He's great in many ways and I love him like a brother. I know that I can tell him anything and he'll always be there for me. That said, he, of course, like any human being, has his problems.

I am a rape survivor. It happened just over 8 years over. He is aware of this. He was one of the first people I told. He's tried to be there for me as much as he can but really he doesn't know how to help and I really don't know what I want from him other then the occasional shoulder to cry on or person to talk to about it. For the most part, he's really great about it. But there's one thing he does that's just horrible:

He tells rape jokes.

They really really upset me and I've told him this many times. I've told him calmly and politely and I've also yelled at him about it. No matter what he doesn't seem to "get" it and even though he says he'll stop, he often forgets and out comes another rape "joke" a month later.

One of his favorite "jokes" is to lean in and whisper to me "I'm going to rape you later." This sends chills down my spine for obvious reasons. I don't know why he finds it humorous, maybe because he likes seeing my horrified reaction? I always tell him "That's not funny and no you're not" in a very serious tone to make sure he knows I don't find it amusing and I'm not joking in any way. To which he usually responds something along the lines of "Well it won't be rape if you agree to it" or something like that. I think in his mind he somehow thinks he's giving me some sort of compliment.

Now, most of the time when he says a "joke" he's been drinking but I still don't buy that as an excuse, nor does that make it hurt any less. And he's not always drunk when he says them. He always seems to fall back on the whole: "This is how I've always been. You've known me for 15 years, I can't just change now." Granted, it's true that probably when I was younger I laughed at these stupid kinds of "jokes." I wasn't always a feminist and I wasn't always a survivor. I was immature and stupid and didn't understand why those kinds of "jokes" were NOT FUNNY. Even if you're not a survivor of rape they are NOT FUNNY.

These "jokes" used to be few and far between which made them much easier to deal with. But lately, for whatever reason, they've become more frequent. It all came to a head this Saturday night when we were out drinking and he told one "joke" too many and we got into a huge screaming match. He was supposed to stay over at my apartment (I live in the city and he lives in the suburbs so he usually stays with me after a night of drinking in the city seeing as it's a long, expensive cab ride home for him) but I ended up locking him out. He called me several times and I didn't pick up and I can only assume he hopped in a cab and went home. I tried to call him yesterday but he did not answer. I assume now he's made at me for "throwing a fit" and taking things "too seriously."

I don't really know what to do. Like I said, I think of him as a brother. I love him to death. I know this post makes him sound like a crappy guy and a bad friend but really he's not in almost every other aspect of our relationship. But these "jokes" just really piss me off and I can't take it anymore. I don't know how to make him understand and stop. Part of me thinks that I just need to take some time away from him for a while, but that won't help him stop telling those "jokes," it'll just help me not be as angry. I really want him to understand why rape isn't at all funny and why his "jokes" are completely inappropriate. I never thought it would be so hard to get him to realize this but it is!

HOT FLASH, a new documentary about Saffire-The Uppity Blues Women, is now available on DVD!

Introduce yourself to Saffire - three dynamic women who quit their day jobs in their mid-40s to form a blues band. They are now in their mid-60s and still going strong. The Saffire women are mature, empowered, and not afraid to be raunchy (one of their most popular songs is "I Gotta Silver Beaver"). These ladies serve as a terrific counter to our youth and image obsessed media. But even more importantly, they are fantastic musicians.

Check out Saffire's website at www.uppityblueswomen.com. The film is available there as well as on Amazon and iTunes.

Again and again on feministing, members leaving comments that are critical of an individual woman (usually someone in the public sphere) are critised for being anti feminist. Does being a feminist really mean that we should never criticise another woman for the way she lives her life or the choices she makes?

Of course many criticisms of woman in the public sphere are anti feminist. But I don't believe that this means that all criticisms of individual woman are anti feminist.

I fully believe everyone should check this out ASAP. It gives a visual to the already pretty widely known fact that the BMI calculator is complete and utter bullshit. I think this would be a wonderful addition to anyone's "you're not fat" arsenal. I made me feel better about some asshole male gynecologist telling me I'd be a 'less than' desirable candidate for egg donation because of my 'almost' overweight BMI.

I am not overweight, and no BMI calculator is gonna make me believe otherwise.

I've never really thought about feminism before. The women in my family never really discussed women rights or issues with me, maybe because they thought I was too young, or maybe feminism never really crossed their minds. So I acted as though the thing never really existed, sure i knew that their were women who still fought for their rights, but it was only something I learned in history class, nothing I would take into my own hands. Last year, during school, the girls in the class, including myself, were asked to set aside to listen to new course offerings, while the boys continued with their studies.

The courses that the discussion listed was as followed: cooking, taking care of children, and some "talking about your feelings and shit" class. I was deeply disturbed by the orientation this woman was presenting to us, and something inside of me just exploded. Towards the end, when she asked if we had any questions, i asked whether the boys were going to get the same presentation. Her response - no, she was running low on time. Those few words set me off, i immediately spoke to the assistant principal, and talked to multiple girls about the manipulating message they were sending to us. Not only were they offending us, but also the men who enjoy cooking,etc. - telling them that cooking was for women, and not them. The next day the opened the orientation for everyone - since then, I have been opening my eyes to women around me that are making a difference, and trying to learn from them.

There's only so much I can learn- since I'm only in high school and they don't offer a gender studies- they do have "club 19" - a female's rights group, but I don't feel like we do enough.

    I find it difficult to express how angered I have been by the reaction to the Skip Gates arrest, and some other racial incidents recently.  I am starting to feel like our language has truly been turned inside out.  Suddenly, the word “racist” has come to mean pointing out racism. Obama’s statement that it is “just a fact” that there is a long history of discrimination against blacks and Latinos by law enforcement, which should be remarkable only for its obviousness, is suddenly “playing the race card.”  The fact that, to use the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates , “officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them,” is terrifying, and has gotten lost in the “was too!”/”was not!” bicker over whether the officer was racist.1  I have been absolutely appalled by how many whites have rushed to the officer’s defense.  I don’t know what’s in Officer Crowley’s heart; I can’t say whether he’s racist or not.*  But the fact of the matter is that he arrested a man for talking back to him.  We cannot let this fact get lost in the discussion.  This is far from uncommon, and it indisputably happens more to members of less-powerful groups than it does to wealthy white ones. 

    I desperately wish that we could take this incident and turn it into a discussion of issues that are distinct but overlap so much they are frequently thought of as the same thing.  The first is police authoritarianism.  The second is the unjust and unequal treatment of minorities by the state.   They are so often talked about as the same thing because the authoritarianism of the police is disproportionately directed at minorities.

    These are two enormous problems. And if anything is ever going to be done about them, white people must stop being so defensive, so quick to see ourselves as unfairly slandered or even discriminated against.  This is visible any time a white person reacts defensively to an accusation of racism directed at another white person they do not even know, about a situation they haven’t witnessed or studied, and that has nothing to do with them.   What this shows is that it is easier for them to identify with the one accused of racism than with the alleged victim of it.   And that alone should tell us how far we have to go.

    The most grotesque example of this I’ve seen recently was in the emails of Dr. David McKilip, a Florida physician and conservative activist who has been organizing against health care reform .   He sent an email around to his mailing list depicting Obama as a tribal witch doctor , complete with loincloth, headdress, and a bone through his nose.  When this became public and initial criticisms started to come in, he wrote this to his mailing list:

Here they come. The first of what likely will be many emails accusing me of being a rascist (sic) for forwarding this email of Obama as a witch doctor.
…
So Talking points memo is apparently painting me as a racist for sending around a picture that points out that health care will get worse if the government takes it over…

This may be worth doing a story on about how these ultra liberal groups like to race bait and avoid the issue. Professional muckraker? Please. Now they are calling my office phones too!!! Yippee.

Lesson learned: Any attempt to discuss politics will lead to a race-baiting war. Also: Don't engage on anything that looks like personal attacks on Obama. It casues distraction that confuses the issues.

Don't let them bait you. I will choose to ignore them and always talk about the issues.

In his mind, sending around a picture suggesting Obama as a “primitive” African tribal witch doctor isn’t racist or race-baiting; it’s objecting to that picture that is baiting.  And what frightens me is not just that he can write such a thing, but that there will be millions of Americans who agree with him. 

In this post I have focused mainly on whites’ reactions to the Gates arrest and to accusations of racism in general. But so much more needs to be said, about police and authority and gender and race.  It’s hard to know where to begin.  But I hope this is a tiny little fragment of a start.

*And in fact I don’t even think this is a useful framing; the history of America means we breathe in racism our entire lives and can’t help but be affected by it.  Good intentions (or a lack of bad intentions) don’t mean that we don’t have racist beliefs and assumptions that affect our actions.  And, of course, it’s about more than individuals – people who sincerely struggle against racism can belong to racist institutions.

I have been thinking about getting my first vibrator for a long time now, but living at home with my parents/in a dorm room hasn't made that easy. So today, I found out I was going to have the house to myself for the day and evening. I decided to take a trek to the amazing store a few towns over. Now this is by far, the closest and only real sex store in the area. And it was completely surrounded and worked by men. I worked up the courage to drive there and sat in the parking lot for a few minutes before going in.

First thing, I get carded (good thing, I guess?) Then I notice the creepy looking old men in who are the sole customers in the store (paranoid?). I look around for a while, and find something that is discreet, inexpensive, and not scary looking. I walk up to the register. The guy who works there is nowhere to be found. I wait. He walks out of the bathroom. Apparently there are three doors which all say restroom on them (I don't want to think about why there are so many). He tells me there are no returns (very good!) and tests it for me. I really hope he washed his hands. He tells me to "Have a fun afternoon" with a straight face. How he did that I am totally unsure. He knew exactly what I was going to do when I left (trip to Barnes and Noble obviously).

I survived relatively unscathed, but I can't think of how much better I would have felt if I had the opportunity to go to a woman-owned or woman-friendly place. And in liberal Massachusetts I would think we'd be able to find that. But there is still so much stigma attached to women who dare to have sexual feelings. I was upset with how ashamed I was to be going in there, when I know logically, that it should be something that accepted and encouraged.

This New York Times Magazine article gave me serious pause. I'm familiar with otaku culture and its eccentricities. I even have some friends (both female and male) that are immersed in it. But pillow girlfriends, really? 

Whether the body pillows are "anatomically correct" or not, they represent characters who are between nine and twelve years old. A quarter of the Japanese population apparently remain virgins into their thirties, and the founder of the "2-D love movement" says that "Pure love is completely gone in the real world. As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one."

Sounds like a self-feeding phenomenon if you ask me. These men have such a rampant fear of women that they have wrapped themselves in an imaginary world where they can literally possess them, where they control every aspect of their behavior and appearance, because they are imaginary: "In Japan, it's not O.K. to like another person if you're already with somebody else. With an anime character, you can like one character one day and a different character the next."

Perhaps this is healthier because these men aren't objectifying real prepubescent girls this way, but I can't keep my stomach from churning. One of the businesses based around 2-D love is called Youkouro -which apparently transfers to "Furnace of Child Love."

Please tell me that I'm missing something here culturally, or that women do this as well. Please. 

I'm sure many women on here are familiar with the sexism currently present in the gaming community. I'm many of you, myself included, have been on the recieving end of sexism being both a gamer an female; everything from people assuming you are less apt and not a "ture gamer" to downright objectification and harrassment.

At this years Comic-Con, EA decided to up the ante, to bring sexism to a whole new level, by offering booth babes up as prizes in a competition. The competition , titled "Sin-To-Win", asks congoers to take a photograph of themselves performing an "act of lust" with a booth babe, to win a sinful night with two of the women.

And it isn't just their booth babes who are being offered. The competition applies to any booth babes from any vendor. Not only is EA encouraging people to sexually harrass their employees, their encouraging people to sexually harrass other company's employees.

They have since apologised , and said that it was meant to be a fun little competition, all tongue-in-cheek. Now, if the competition was just "have your photo taken with a booth babe" I would be fine with it, but their wording is appalling. It is also very heteronormative, and, yes, sexist.

A booth babe, "iola" has weighed in on the whole affair here , but beware reading that thread. There is a lot of victim-blaming going on.

A recent article by Heather Chaplin of National Public Radio discussed a new video game for PC and Mac called The Path. In it, the author calls the game "nothing so much as a rumination on the vulnerabilities of girlhood" with co-designer Auria Harvey chiming in, "...this [game] is about the various stages of life a girl has to go through in order to become a woman" and "the vulnerabilities of girls -- it's something that people don't deal with much in this particular format,"

Right. So, what is it, exactly, that is so goddamned vulnerable?

Yes, females of our species are not as strong, pound for pound, as males, but other than that, seriously, what is the difference?

Let me illustrate using two powerful animals as examples: The American Black Bear and the Cougar. The bear is twice as heavy and almost three times as strong, and despite its bulky appearance, surprisingly fast and agile. But when confronted, cougars (even females!) have been known to severely injure and even kill black bears to protect themselves, their territory, their kills, or their cubs. Sometimes they even start the fight. Just because cougars are not as strong as bears does not mean they pose no threat to bears.

The difference in size and strength is far less notable between human men and women. This in mind, you would think cautionary tales insisting "you're just a FEMALE child, don't talk to strangers; they might RAPE you!" really could do without the gender specificity thrown in there. Little boys are every bit as vulnerable to peer pressure, drugs, "stranger-danger" and physical abuse by authority figures as little girls are. Statistics notwithstanding; I'm talking biological differences, here. There is almost nothing so physically or mentally different between young/tweeny girls and boys that makes one more able to protect themselves (or make more reasonable decisions) than the other side.

Every game, book, movie, or song I've ever come across that claims to be about "what it means" to grow up female and "what it takes" to "become a woman" strikes me as just another artistic/commercial reflection of a mentality whose sole purpose is to reinforce the "second-rate human" status quo: you're a girl, so there are special dangers for you; males are out to molest you, better watch out; but better watch those pounds, or no one will want anything to do with you when you're actually looking for a mate. Conversely, vilifying men is just as damaging; kids so often grow up to be what they're told they are.

That said, the game itself is utterly beside the supposed point. Taking note of the gameplay, the screenshots, the dialogue, if you can call it that...the whole time, I'm thinking, "I'm supposed to relate to this? What are they talking about? I have nothing in common with this girl. This isn't about me, this is about someone else."

There's no commentary on femininity, here. It's a game inspired by someone's bad dream of a life.

Which is fine; I guess it's not the game itself I have so much of a problem with. That it's being treated here as some kind of window into A Day In the Life of the female gender is what raises my hackles. It feels insulting because what they're saying is that playing this game will somehow make someone understand me better. I beg your fucking pardon.

I was having a drink with a recently separated friend recently.

A few drinks in, he took a couple of minutes out to check his Facebook for new messages.  What appeared on the page made us both recoil.

The offending part of the page was an advert for a 'flirt and date' website.  (I have tried time and again to tell him that he should download Firefox & Adblock Plus, but, until now, it's been like banging my head against a brick wall....).

My friend is now listed as single....so, he gets served these crap dating ads all the time.

It has been covered on Feministing how shite these ads are, but, this time there was one major difference.

The picture that accompanied the advert was the profile picure of the daughter of one of our mutual friends.  (The daughter is in both our friends list - we are both a friend of the family).

I spoke to her as soon as I could - she had no knowledge that her picture was being used in this advertisment.

Doing some digging, it appears that Facebook have allowed advertisers to use it's members profile pictures in adverts.

While the picture is not pornographic by any stretch of the imagination, it does worry me that the fact that it appears in an advert of this nature will, in some, neanderthal (for want of a better word), eyes see her as 'easy' or 'available'.

I am seriously worried that as a result, she may be more prone to sexual assault.

I believe that in general terms, a profile picture in an adert is a gross violation of privacy if without the users knowledge (of course, if someone is ASKED about it and then CONSENTED to it, then that's fine, but, this instance makes it MUCH worse...

If you wish to complain about this, send an email to : abuse@facebook.com

As a feminists, marriage is a personal battleground for many of us.  Some of us can marry and happily use that commitment to rewrite the meaning of the institution, while others choose cohabitation.  (And plenty others, none of the above.)  But in a long-term feminist relationship, defining commitment in relation to norms can be tricky.  My personal desire has, for a long time, registered as "Definitely not marrying."  And a lot of it still does. But now that I'm a little older (a little) and in a professional career, I find that I'm struggling between what makes sense to me and what I want but know isn't the right reason.

Why I Don't Want to Get Married: 

Because I don't want to participate in any institution that discriminates against others based on their sexuality. I don't care about or even like any of the traditions: hate ceremonies, wedding rings, name changes, and ugly dresses. I am too young.  Or at least I feel too young. My relationship doesn't need it -- we've been together happily for almost six years. I don't want to be called (or to be) a "wife.

To be respected in society as a "real" adult. To be seen as "valuable" enough for someone to marry, which unmarried women are too often judged not to be. So that my family will be proud of my choices and view my relationship as legitimate. So people won't assume I'm a pitiful girl being used by a guy who doesn't care about me.   So people won't assume that the man I love is an asshole who doesn't care about me. So that people won't consider me the "cow" that's "giving the milk away for free." For the tax break.  Sorry.

So for others in similar positions, tell me your thoughts?  And for those who are still legally denied marriage rights, please give me your thoughts as well.  The inequality between marriage laws is an enormous factor in my thinking on the issue.

This is my feminist love letter to Hayao Miyazaki. I love you Hayao Miyazaki, for being brilliant, making me think, and getting me to care about characters if they are done by someone else I would hate them. I write this in a feminist community blog because A) Miyazaki has been described as a feminist ( I am unsure if this definition is self imposed) B) His work touches on issues of feminism. Most commonly that female strength comes in many varying shapes and sizes, showing women to be three demensional leading characters ( not 3-D animation lol Maiyazaki still draws by hand which I respect).

Who the economy hits harder

by Jeannie Babb Taylor crossposted at www.JeannieBabbTaylor.com

Have you heard the latest buzz? Some writers and commentators are now calling the recession a "he-cession." The new word, coined somewhere out on the blogosphere, incites fear and trembling in the masses because now the recession is actually affecting, well, men.

Times Online ran a headline: "Women are victors in 'mancession.'" Women may not feel so victorious while enduring lower wages, shift cuts, and job loss, plus carrying a heavier share at home. Charlie Gibson's touts the "he-cession" on ABC, serving up caricatures of women who just cannot respect their unemployed, apron-wearing Mr. Mom husbands.

Even Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond is falling for the hype. Thurmond released a white paper titled "Georgia Men Hit Hardest by Recession" in which he asserts that job loss is more devastating to men than to women. This long-held assumption implies that men's work is important, while women's employment is merely frivolous - perhaps an avenue to get out of the house, or to earn a little money for nail polish.

In reality, women's jobs are extremely important. In fact, 40 percent of women are the sole breadwinners for themselves or their families. Many women value their careers and identify themselves by their profession. Job loss is a major crisis, often on a par with divorce. To pretend that only men are deeply affected is ridiculous and inaccurate.

Worse yet, Michael Thurmond actually uses the term "he-cession" as if it were a real word. Thurmond's grammar teacher must be rolling in her grave. Surely she taught him about Latin roots. Perhaps she would like to remind him that "recession" consists of the Latin prefix "re" (back) and the root "cedere" (to go) and therefore refers to moving backward. If "he-cession" had any meaning at all, it would mean that "he" is moving on, not backward.

Reading Thurmond's white paper, something bothers me a lot more than the painful etymology of the newly coined word. If the recession has become a "he-cession" now that the lay-offs are skewed toward males - what was it in September 2008 when the data showed women were losing their jobs twice as fast as men? We never heard dire warnings about a "she-cession." In fact, the talking heads on TV and the Internet rarely mention women's unemployment. If they bring up unemployed women at all, it is to utter scathing remarks about "welfare moms."

The reason men have lost more jobs, is that men had more jobs to lose. 73% of men were part of the workforce before the recession, compared to less than 60% of women. According to the Center for American Progress, 20.6% of working-age women were already living in poverty at the outset of the recession, compared to 14% of men.

Thus, saying that "the recession hits men harder" is like saying, "The recession hit the rich harder than the poor, because the rich are the ones who had money to lose." Even during the so-called "he-cession," men still outnumber women in the workforce, and especially in managerial positions.

On average, women who do have jobs are paid 20% less than men with the same positions. The fact that women can be paid less for doing the same work actually increases male job losses, since cut-backs target higher-paid employees. Women are also more likely to be underemployed, working part-time jobs without health insurance.

There is no new thing called a "he-cession." The severe economic downturn affects us all. If a quirky new buzzword is needed, maybe "we-cession" would be more appropriate.

Crossposted at FeministLookingGlass.com

When I was 17 and in my senior year, my Texas high school held a mandatory assembly featuring some speaker who was an Abstinence Life Coach. The man was 35, a proud virgin, and pretty good at fear-mongering. He showed graphic STD slideshows, made a lot of awkward jokes, and waxed poetic about ‘true love.’ He also told a lot of tales about his ‘friends’ who died after having sex, and made us write “oaths” to remain virgins, which he then collected. He wanted everyone to remain “pure” until marriage. I can remember sitting in between two of my friends who were gay, and one of them wrote the following across his oath:  ”I can’t get married, you prick.”

Its true, he couldn’t– and still can’t in most states. And yes, the exclusion of non-heteronormative relationships clearly reflected privilege and ignorance-- but then again,  if an honest discussion about heterosexual sex wasn’t going to happen, an honest discussion about different sexualities was definitely out of the question.

The entire production may have been ridiculous, but it was pretty much the extent of my sex education. I never put a condom on a banana, talked about The Pill, or even watched that infamous Miracle of Life movie. Luckily for everyone in my town, we were affluent, educated in other ways, and had no shortage of access to information about sex if we needed it. I knew that the same could not necessarily be said for other towns, other schools, or other groups of kids, trying to navigate being teenagers in a world of adults who are too nervous to be honest with them. Suffice it to say that I have a personal grudge against abstinence-only education.

Which brings me to why I’m in a good mood right now. The House has just voted to cut out $99 Million of investment in abstinence-only education .

Abstinence-only education is a dangerous campaign of misinformation that was born out of fear, bashfulness, and religious teachings. None of these things deserves a place in schools, especially not over the health of kids. Abstinence-only education purposely avoids facts about a natural human instinct, facts that can save lives or futures. How many studies do we have to go through to be convinced that abstinence education does not work ?

Though I don’t agree with their position, if those who truly are pro-life really wanted to get serious about reducing abortions, they’d back comprehensive sex education. This would include talking about abstinence and letting teens choose that lifestyle if they want, because there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with it. But there’s also nothing wrong with not choosing abstinence. And besides, teenagers become adults, and adults have sex. And whenever they do, they’ll be equipped with the knowledge and tools to make healthy decisions. They’ll be using condoms to protect themselves, not Mountain Dew or bleach.

Originally posted at Adventures of a Young Feminist .

Today, I received an email from a reader who raised concerns about armchair philosophy and me not taking any action to further the cause of feminism.  From the outset, I would like to say that I have since addressed the issues that this individual had and we have worked towards a resolution, so this is in no way an attack on this individual.  I simply wanted to express my inspiration for this post.

The question I want to address is: is blogging an act of feminist activism?

Of course the blogging in question would have to be feminist in nature; not all blogging could be considered a form of feminist activism. (Note: feminist in nature does not necessarily mean specifically about feminism, just with a feminist leaning.)

I think that there is a general conception in society that feminist activism is all about marches and "taking to the streets."  In the 70s, that's what got people's attention.  "Sisterhood" was strong and radical things needed to happen (not that radical things don't need to happen today).  Today, in the third wave, we are all about individual freedom and choice (I know I am generalizing, which is usually not a good thing, but the purpose of this generalization is to show the difference in activism between the 70s and today).

Today, activism can take many forms.  Activism, to me at least, is all about enacting change in any way that you can.  This can be done through volunteering, participating in activism organizations, writing letters or otherwise contacting elected officias, companies with sexist practices, etc. with your concerns, and anything else you think can make some sort of change.  And yes, activism still involved protesting, but it is not the only part!

For me, part of feminism is making sure that everyone's voice is heard, especially the voices of people who are usually silence by society.  I see blogging as a great way for these voices to be heard.  Anyone can start a blog, therefore anyone's voice can be heard.

Feminist blogs are a great addition to the conversation that is going on in the blogosphere (I must admit that I am a little biased).  And because of this, the voices of the people who write feminist blogs (and comment on them!) are being heard.  While this may not seem like a lot, feminist blogs raise awareness about feminist issues, therefore are enacting a form of change.  Raising awareness about feminist isseus is an important part of activism and that is precisely what feminist blogs do!

I do not want this post to seem like some form of excuse of a guilty conscious for not participating in other forms of activim, because that is not true.  I started my blog as a compliment to other forms of activism that I participate in.  As the reader who emailed me correctly said:

any attempt to change must surely be active - it must involve a discourse between yourself and others, between culture and the individual, and through this active self sacrifice and imposition of a different 'narrative' the forms and connexions of power may shift in a way that you consider favourable.

Activism has to be active, has to be about conversation, and ultimately comes down to some form of self-sacrifice.

I see blogging as active because you are doing something about your personal beliefs in feminism rather than just sitting there wallowing in your anger over the state of the world.  But if you are going to enact change, there has to be more than blogging.  You have to partake in other forms of activism to enact change.  This is not to say that feminist blogging is not adequate activism (because I would not completely negate all that I just said).  Feminist blogging is just one aspect of feminist activism that is used to raise awareness of feminist issues and enact change.  So to Feministing and all the feminist bloggers out there: keep doing waht you are doing and be proud of the change that you are enacting through raising awareness about these very serious and important issues.

Today I sat down in front of my new Sky tv and chose to watch two sitcoms that I've heard high praise for from others; one was Everybody Loves Raymond and the other was Two and a Half Men. I was shocked at the level of sexism in both these supposedly funny shows.

In the first one the only two female members of the cast are both housewives and both seem fine with their fat lazy do-nothing-and-then-moan-about-it husbands. Is this really the type of message the show wants to send? That it's OK to act like a gigantic arsehole (if you're a man) because the women will put up with this until you say some remotely placatory statement designed to shut them up and they'll be happy? Please feel free to tell me if I'm missing some ironic point here, I have only watched one episode.

In the second sitcom, Two and a Half Men the entire premise of the show seems to be based around the fact that unbelievably attractive women are willing to throw themselves at an aging (I'm sorry but he is) Charlie Sheen while his Nice Guy brother (I open doors for women, I respect them, why won't they have sex with me?) has a shrill harpy wife who of course plugs him for all the child support money she can in her wicked woman way. Is it just me or are these shows really as sexist as they first appear?? All comments welcome x

by Lisa Codispoti, Senior Counsel, 
National Women's Law Center

This morning ten women members of Congress held a news conference on "how the Democrats' health care legisaltion [sic] will hurt women and affect their day-to-day lives."

The participants were Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA.); Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN); Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL); Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN); Rep. Mary Fallin (R-OK); Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NN); Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX); Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS); Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY); Rep. Candice Miller, (R-MI); Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); and Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH).

While NWLC wasn't invited to attend the press conference, I was interested to get my hands on some of their press statements - after all, NWLC is all about women getting the health care they need. From our perspective, the status quo is untenable: overall, 18 percent of women are uninsured. As we've pointed out on this blog many times before, even women who are lucky enough to have health insurance are still more likely than men to have health coverage that has too many gaps, from large deductibles and co-pays to life-time limits, and the exclusion of needed services (like maternity, for example) altogether. Women are also more likely than men to face challenges paying for their medical bills - making them more likely to skip necessary medical care. And then there's gender rating - the insurance industry practice of charging women more than men for the exact same coverage.

Yet the challenges women deal with every day in our current health care system was most decidedly not the focus of the press conference this morning - at least as evidenced by the press release issued by Rep. Rodgers (R-Wash), available here.

I'll give the Congresswomen credit where it's due: we need more of our elected leaders to bring a women's lens to the health care reform debate. But what they apparently didn't talk about is more important than what they did talk about. They didn't talk about how the current system is failing women, and that the status quo is not an option. And it certainly doesn't seem that they discussed any real solutions to the challenges that women face with our current health system.

Of course, if they had talked about how the current system fails women and proposed solutions to meet those challenges, then they would have had to admit that HR 3200 would actually help- not hurt- women. As Marcia Greenberger, our Co-President, has said, HR 3200 "addresses many of the obstacles women face in our current health care system, such as making health care more affordable and ensuring that women have access to the comprehensive health benefits they need."

Women don't just need better health care, they want it - now. According to a poll conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates before the 2008 Presidential election, 84 percent of women said that it was extremely or very important for Congress and the new Administration to guarantee access to quality, affordable, comprehensive health care.

What hurts women is our current health care system. What hurts women is Members of Congress who knock health reform legislation under the guise of caring about women's health. Because women know: when it comes to health care, the status quo is not an option.

Cross-posted from NWLC's blog.

Women and girls should reclaim baseball. As far ago as the mid 1800’s it was fine for women to play baseball. But by 1900 sexism shoved them aside. Baseball expert Jennifer Ring, explained in a July 19, 2009 article in the L.A. Times:

"This was the thinking: Girls needed exercise," Ring said. "But not too much because it could make them like men. And besides, by the '30s, baseball was being sold as the national sport. Back then, you don't want a national sport that is for girls. . . . Hasn't changed all that much" (“A national pastime for only half the nation,” by Kurt Streeter). Link.

Women and girls were told their alternative should be softball which had a lower rank, smaller field and used a softy ball which sexist people felt was more appropriate for delicate ladies. They were basically telling women we shouldn’t play “hardball.” Author of "Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball," Jennifer Ringer said “It's just a sham that our national game basically excludes half the population. Women are pretty much shut out of this game." How can a national game exclude half the nation’s population.? That’s wrong.

Seventies lawsuits finally allowed girls to play Little League baseball with boys. But even now almost every girl baseball player is forced to give up her dreams of baseball triumph by age 12 or 13.

Other countries such as Japan respect female baseball players. Japan’s Osaka Silver Sisters is made up of women who played professional baseball half a century ago! A July 15, 2009 Reuters article reported:

...the players meet every Friday for an hour of practice followed by a game with a much younger, all-boys team -- which they often win.

"I'm really surprised by the level of their baseball," said Hajime Morioka, captain of the Nakayoshi Genki Club which plays against the Osaka Silver Sisters.Link.

So if women in their 70’s can win games against young males, clearly women and girls can be excellent baseball players and deserve an equal place in our national Furthermore, women’s baseball should be an Olympic sport. Officials are currently working to add women to the baseball roster for the 2016 Olympics. The sexism should end. No more broken dreams. The future is bright and I see women’s and girls’ baseball glowing on the horizon.

I am so busy at work right now but I had to take a moment to acknowledge the death of E. Lynn Harris . I had the great fortune of requesting funds to bring him to the University of Pittsburgh, my alma mater, when I was editor of BlackLine, the Black student publication there. He was such a kind, gentle, and provocative man. I will never forget his lecture about the lies he told about himself when he was in high school because of the social consequences of being poor in a predominantly White school. Sounds of concern rippled through the crowd when he shared that he once walked almost ten miles home in the middle of the night because he was ashamed to tell his football teammates where he lived. That would only be the beginning of the stigmas he had to confront. As a Black gay man he was once so cornered by the rampant homophobia that proliferates in our culture that he almost took his own life.

I think my experience with E. Lynn Harris is important to feminist discourse because, for me, he was the first messenger I had on the subject of same-sexual romance. I am resolved that positive, feminist self-identity is based on one’s primary source on the concepts and ideas that we use to grapple with and resist our oppression. And he did this for Black same-gender loving people and their loved ones.  I ran into his writing in 9th grade on the New York subway when a passenger beside me was clutching one of his novels intently and I read along. From then on I was hooked and read everything he wrote.

His writing made me want to be a writer. In my life, he was arguably one of the most transformative, Black writers of the ‘90s that pushed Black people to talk about sexuality, race, the AIDS crisis and the fullness of relationships that we could arrive at if we dared to just love each other despite the consequences. He gave complexity and context to the men in our community who sleep with men through characters like Basil and Raymond. The world needs more writers like E. Lynn Harris—writers who are willing to tell the truth about the many different sexualities that exist in communities of color. This is especially true in the Black community where media coverage of the Obamas has rendered invisible the familial and sexual arrangements of Black people that more often than not do not take the form of the nuclear heterosexual family.

I hope the famous athlete who E. Lynn Harris loved so much—but never publicly—finally has the courage to come out, stand up, and be counted at his funeral. I hope that those who are homophobic, especially in the Black community, rethink this framework of hatred and discrimination and begin their journey to allophilia by picking up the Invisible Life trilogy. While some may cast E. Lynn Harris off as a typical Black author who abandoned form for content, he had a profound impact on many. I know his stories have opened the discursive space in my community to talk about our sexualities more candidly. I know I am a better person, writer, and ally because he took the time to write even one, single word. He will be missed.

Ivory Coast

Via BBC’s excellent slideshow highlighting “Natural African Beauty,” one beauty pageant in Côte d’Ivoire strikes back against the dangerous processing of skin bleaching and its underlying doctrine:  that only Caucasian is beautiful.

A song was commissioned for the competition: “African women, don’t lighten your skin.  It’s a gift from God.”

South Korea

Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s second most widely read newspaper, covered the story of the first trans contestant in S.K.’s Top Model equivalent.  Not only did Chosun used female pronouns in the story, but the network airing the show, Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) said this:

"If we disqualify a person who is recognized by the state as woman on the grounds that she is a transgender individual, we would view that as a violation of human rights."

China

On June 16 in China, a waitress was freed from jail after killing a Communist Party official who “demanded sex” and battered her.  Found guilty of excessive force but not manslaughter, the court found she acted in self-defense and released her.  China fired two of the man’s coworkers, and its state-sponsored news agency openly admitted it was a “sexual assault.”

This may not seem like good news. China has a poor history of prosecuting and reporting rape- six bloggers in Fujian province were jailed in 2008 for defamation after reporting a death from rape.  But the 25% of China’s population that has internet access- lawyers, women’s groups, academics, and citizens- flooded blogs and state-sponsored forums in her defense, influencing the court’s decision.  This was a victory not only in precedent, but in public opinion.

Hi Everyone!

I want to invite all of you (in NYC) to a couple of upcoming SAFER events, as well as plug some fundraising opps for us...

--On July 25, Cara of The Curvature will be participating in the 2009 Blogathon on behalf of SAFER. She'll be spending 12 hours posting about sexual violence on her blogathon sub-blog. You can still sponsor her , and because all donations go directly to SAFER's programming and upcoming projects, sponsors are beyond appreciated.

--On July 29, SAFER will be hosting a happy hour at the Village Pourhouse Bar in NYC (64 3rd Ave. at 11th st). For $5 at the door there will be an open bar from 6 to 7. Come have a drink and say hi! The facebook invite is here. 

--On August 3 SAFER will be holding a FREE Teach-In at the NARAL Pro-Choice NY Offices (470 Park Ave South, 7th floor) from noon to 2 p.m. This teach-in is a great introduction to the work we do with students on campus , and all interested college students and their advocates are encouraged to attend. Please RSVP by July 29th to contact@safercampus.org. You will need a government-issued ID to enter the building.

This is going to be an exciting year for SAFER as we expand our College Sexual Assault Policies database and launch our SAFER Info Shop, an online resource center for student activists. You'll be hearing from us a lot more soon and I thank ya'll in advance to listening and reading...

For a while now I've gotten my daily giggles at the site FMyLife.com. Sure, it's not always in good taste, but schadenfreude rarely is. In case you've missed out on the FML goodness, people submit very short stories which begin with the word "Today" and end with "Fuck My Life" (abbreviated as FML).

I was pretty disturbed today to come across not one, but two stories that clearly described sexual assault. Below is the letter I wrote to the FML administrators:

Dear FML admins,

Thank you,
Lily

TRIGGER WARNING: I'm reposting the FML's here for reference.

Today, my boyfriend decided to come clean. Apparently last week when I was drunk and asleep, he decide to wank all over me. Then laughed when I said I felt 'sticky' in the morning. FML

Today, I woke up with my boyfriend next to me, with his knob in my face. Apparently I'm a heavy sleeper, and he'd been shoving it in my mouth for months. FML

I haven't noticed any postings about this on Feministing yet so I wanted to say something briefly about it, to get a discussion going. This post concerns the recent New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G. case, and the issues raised about competency during labour and pregnancy more generally.

I recently read an excellent article by Louise Marie Roth at the Huffington Post on this case. I don't think I can articulate the arguments better but wanted to see what the feministing community felt about this, particularly the majority based in the USA, as there have recently been more setbacks than steps-forward in the arena of women's reproductive health and rights.

Briefly stated: VM was in labour and an obstetrician advised a c-section. She refused. The obstetrician found that she was competent to make the decision. VM vaginally delivered a healthy baby.  The baby was not handed over to her parents.  The judge in the original case agreed that the refusal of VM (and agreement of her partner BG) constituted abuse and neglect of their child and approved a plan to terminate their parental rights. 

The district and appellate courts not only placed fetal rights ahead of the bodily integrity of the woman giving birth but have now set a precedent for interfering with parental rights over decisions that are competently made and result in no harm to the child in question. I'm pretty sure the former is a more worrying trend but the latter isn't too fabulous either.

As I mentioned, I'm not adding much to Roth's article but wanted to draw attention to yet another example of paternalistic infringement of women's rights.

CNN today reported on the story of an 8 year old girl in Phoenix who was gang raped in a shed in her neighborhood by 4 boys who live nearby. The girl, and her four attackers, were Liberian, which I wouldn't feel compelled to share, except that that's where CNN went wrong.

The girl's family is blaming her, and describes the shame they feel that the crime has brought on their family. That's hard to swallow, but not necessarily an uncommon reaction. CNN had a Liberian man on via telephone to explain to all of us Americans how rape is dealt with in his country and community- are we supposed to believe that there is one response to rape in the Liberian community? While the reporter repeatedly made statements about how rape is treated in America, most absurdly after mentioning that since the family and perpetrators are here on refugee status, they needed to follow our rules and approach to dealing with things. CNN managed to make them sound like aliens and us like the world champions of rape victims. America's brilliant response to rape may not ring true in the memories of many victims/survivors in this country.

Hi. I'm new. Like a lot of you, I've learned a lot about feminism in the last few years and have slowly but surely learned to recognize that many of the things I used to be okay with, simply can't be reconciled with calling myself a feminist.

A lot of people use the word "bitch" in their daily vocabulary, especially when describing a woman they feel is rude, perhaps disrespectful, perhaps snotty or even bigoted. We use the word "bitch" as an adjective as well, saying something like, "That job was a bitch." But the term, whatever part of speech it is, is always derogatory.

We've accepted in this movement that the words "lame," "gay," and "retarded" (among others) are not appropriate. We go out of our way to explain to others why they shouldn't use the word "gay" to describe something or someone they don't like or that is unpleasant. Can the same thing be said of the word "bitch"?

The word originally meant "female dog" and apparently (according to Wikipedia -- I'm not going to do a lot of research right now) has been around in the derogatory form since 1400. It also is used to degrade men (i.e. "He's my bitch" in prison and "son of a bitch.")

Recently, however, the feminist movement has re-appropriated the term, similar to how the fat acceptance movement has reclaimed the word "fat."

But as those of us in the FA movement know, while you may be comfortable calling yourself fat, you probably aren't comfortable using the term to call someone else fat, regardless of their BMI.

Which brings up the question: When is it okay to use the word "bitch"? What do other feminists think about this? Is it okay to call yourself a bitch, but not okay to call other men or women it? Should you say something when someone describes a woman as a bitch in the same way that I would say something when someone uses the term "gay" in a derogatory way?

In other words, is the word "bitch" a dirty word?

We’re looking for bright, energetic, resourceful people with excellent research and writing skills. Our interns help gather and fact-check information, work on specific office projects, and participate in creating the magazine's National News section. This is a great opportunity to learn how the editorial side of a non-profit magazine operates -- from the inception of an idea to the final printed product -- and a great place to gain new feminist perspectives. Open to highly motivated undergraduates and recent graduates, the winter internship runs from October 1st through December 23rd at our West Coast office in Los Angeles, California.  Come join us for an extraordinary winter term and an opportunity to immerse yourself in feminist journalism! 

Applicants with background in both journalism and feminist activism will be given priority. Applications are processed on a rolling basis. Early applications preferred.

To Apply:
Mail or e-mail a cover letter, resume, writing sample (journalistic writing preferred), and two letters of recommendation or two references to:

Jessica Stites
Ms./Feminist Majority Foundation
433 S. Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
phone: 310. 556.2500
fax: 310. 556.2509
e-mail: jstites@msmagazine.com

As far as I could tell this hadn't been posted yet. Basically, a man working as a town manager in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, was fired when the Mayor found out his wife was a porn actress. By his employer's own admission he was good at his job and got along with everyone and his wife was the only reason he was fired.

For awhile on the Feministing community, I’ve noticed a great deal of commenting related to fandom. I think we all find ourselves enjoying different types of entertainment that call our philosophical ideals of feminism into question. I don’t feel like I have a lot of instances where my entertainment and social demands conflict; I insta ntly turn-off programming that heavily reinforces gender-normative roles, I won’t tolerate jokes from friends that inappropriately portray women or the LGBT community, and the final credits of The Hangover ruined the entire film for me. However, I love Lady Gaga, including her music, her method of performance, and her general persona.

I consider myself to be the type of feminist that doesn’t approve of images of beauty that reinforce unattainable, sexually-oppressive standards. I’m quick to label the behavior of women who engage in beauty-normative behavior as selfish or narcissistic. I am an anti-porn feminist, and that includes an opposition to strip clubs or even simple photographs in “lad mags” that don’t even include nudity. I also am opposed to images that reinforce sexual roles for women. I tend to follow Ariel Levy’s school of thought when it comes to “raunch culture.” While I know that sexuality is empowering for some women, I generally believe that the expectations that have been built up within raunch culture are just another slew of standards that keep women sexually oppressed. Women are often encouraged to be sexually appealing, but not sensual. The presentation of sexual behavior as enjoyable in ways other than fun, flirty, or cute are generally unseen in pop culture, save for a few daring women that people love to hate. This is where I believe Lady GaGa comes in, since her sexuality is usually self-appreciating and is often presented as unrelated to the pleasure of her male partner(s).

A combination of devil-may-care attitude and misandry, some of Lady GaGa’s messages seem to relate more to the pleasure and purpose of sex than attractiveness or appeal. Sometimes portraying herself as cruel or unfeeling, her lyrics suggest that she can enjoy sex in the way society has appropriated for men.

Here are some samples:

“I won’t tell you that I love you, kiss, or hug you. I’m not lying; I’m just stunning with my love glue-gunning.”

-Poker Face

“You’ve indicated your interest. I’m educated in sex (yes) and now I want it bad, want it bad. A love game, a love game.”

-Love Game

In the video for Paparazzi , GaGa is seen poisoning her boyfriend to regain fame and public interest. In a way, is this GaGa elevating a career above romance or simply elevating herself above her need for men?

In all honesty, I recognize the many ways that GaGa adheres to beauty standards and gender roles that are harmful to women overall, but I do question if her messages and personification of sex and lifestyle do anything to benefit women. GaGa has said, “ "It's all about starvation! Pop stars don't eat." However, she has also expressed her devotion to her career and rejection of priorities normally expected of women. Below is an interview in which GaGa expresses her desire for something different.

Is the work of Lady GaGa promotional of feminist ideals? Does it do anything to assist the progress of sexual liberation for women? Or is she just another pop-star? Does anyone else have a similar feeling or interest in other entertainers?

Oh , Elle (MacPherson).  Thank you for reminding me yet again of why we still need feminism.  In an interview today with The Guardian, the Australian fashion-model-turned-designer said:

Are you a feminist?

I'm somebody who truly honours femininity. And I believe in individuality, and uniqueness, and that's all I'm going to say on that.

But you shy away from the word "feminism"?

It's one of those coined phrases that has a lot of innuendo and not much meaning these days. There's a stereotypical perception that a feminist is somebody who believes in equal rights for men and women. Well, I believe men and women are different and they have different needs, therefore the concept of equal rights doesn't really sit with me in many ways.

Newsflash to Elle: It’s not a "stereotypical perception"; it’s what feminism is . And it’s thanks to all those “stereotypical” feminists who fought for equal –not different– rights for women that you have been at all able to become the successful model and businesswoman you are today.  You’re welcome.

This and other gems from Elle's interview are cross-posted on www.the-F-word.org

I've spent quite a few days now, since seeing the newest Harry Potter movie, in a bit of a snit over Emma Watson and her portrayal of Hermione.

Its not that Watson isn't a talented actress, she is; nor is she unappealing in any way. Actually, Watson is perfectly qualified to act the part of Hermione and perfectly lovely as well which, in a way, was my issue. Watson is undeniably pretty, beautiful even, and for awhile now I've been mad that the hair-and-makeup crew, the producers of the movie, even Watson herself did nothing at all to hide that fact. Nothing at all in spite that fact that Hermione is supposed to be the smart one of the trio, the talented and ambitious one... not the pretty one.

Then I read this :

A number of reviewers have been particularly put off by the lovely and lithe Emma Watson, who plays brainiac Hermione, complaining that her good looks make it impossible to accept her character's nerdy persona. It's as though we live in a society where women aren't supposed to be sexy and sharply intelligent at the same time--oh wait, we do live in that society. [...] But both the folks crying foul and salivating over Hermione's good looks ought to go back to the source material and feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

JK Rowling may not be perfect in terms of writing gender roles, but she does a great job illustrating how Hermione's intellectual assertiveness blinds the men around her to her growing attractiveness. In the fourth book, when Hermione dresses up in a gown, the boys who are her best friends literally don't recognize her because they've de-sexualized her. That's why Hermione's blossoming, and the other characters' eventual acceptance of her as both brilliant and womanly, has made her into a patron saint for girl geeks around the world who want to be proud of who they are without being pigeonholed as asexual.

I've been making Hermione something she was never intended to be; the heroine of my awkward and unattractive (at least in my own mind) adolescent self - someone not pretty, like me, who still had friends and had value as a person, who even found love all while not being a knockout.

In all honesty its been a long while since I've read the books so I can't say, with any accuracy, what Rowling may have intended or not intended for us to think about Hermione's looks. What I can do, however, is ask myself: why does it matter so much? Why am I so attached to my image of Hermione as a perpetually average looking, bushy-haired teenage girl?

Rowling broke major ground in terms of preteen and teenage girl's self esteem - giving them a role-model who can be both intelligent and visually appealing. My problem with the movies exists because that specific insecurity didn't apply to me;  as a small girl who preferred books to people quite naturally for a long time it never occurred to me that hiding my intelligence was a tactic that could make me more appealing to the peers that I found myself isolated from.

Hey feministing community -

I've written a few posts and comments on here over the last 10 months about my work with street harassment and my efforts to collect street harassment stories for a book I've been working on. Well, I am pleased to share that I got offered a book contract today and I am really happy!

After talking about writing a book, doing research, interviewing people, and collecting stories, being offered a contract finally makes me feel legitimate and makes the whole thing real!! Especially in this economy, I feel lucky to have found someone willing to take a chance on someone who has never published before, is only a few years out of college, and who has written on an underrepresented topic (in books) and one which will likely be very controversial.

My manuscript is due Jan 1 so I will be working really hard these next few months on it and I want to make sure I include as many points of view, stories, thoughts, and experiences as possible. So thank you everyone who participated in my informal survey last fall, and if you didin't but you have a street harassment story, strategy for dealing with it, idea for ending it, or if you're an activist on this issue and you want your info to be considered for inclusion in the book, please contact me at stopstreetharassmentATyahooDOTcom. You can also fill out an anonymous online form to submit the info to me.

:)

I've never created a post before at Feministing Community, but since I don't have a web-based forum of my own, I thought I would try putting some ideas out this way.

I'm wondering if anyone out there who has typical signs of what allopaths classify as 'polycystic ovarian syndrome' (regardless as to whether or not you adhere to that medical system or its diagnostic practices or categories-- I don't, personally) chooses to identify as 'intersex' on that basis alone? Although it appears that this 'condition' is usually not grouped under an intersex classification, I see no obvious reason that it should not be; it is caused by a particular genetic formation and is thus present -- even if not yet manifest -- at birth.

As a person with a mix of 'female' and 'male' secondary sex characteristics presumably attributable to this condition, I am considering adopting intersex as an identity category, and am wondering what others, particularly intersex people themselves, feel about this? (I have never felt I possessed an 'essential' male or female gender identity myself, but have generally gone along with my socially ascribed female one -- my female-typical fat distribution makes my 'femaleness' un-hideable. Yet my 'male' facial/body features often complicate maintaining/performing this identity.)

I can see an intersex identity being advantageous in the sense of helping me/others become more open and public about the 'male' characteristics (male-typical body and facial hair; masculine facial features and musculature; male-pattern baldness) that many of us possess  but generally minimize/hide. I also think this would help in moving us away from the allopathic construction of PCOS as a 'disorder' in need of 'treatment' -- or equally oppressive, as a 'risk factor' in need of 'professional monitoring' -- and toward its acceptance as a legitimate form of human embodiment. Yet, since many more people have PCOS or similar genetic hormonal 'conditions' than have traditionally been classified as intersex, I wonder if the existing intersex community would fear being 'swamped' by the potential influx or having their identity or politics diluted in some way? I really have no idea and am genuinely curious.

(Note: Please don't comment unless you're committed to honouring the non-ableist and anti-medicalization tenets of my position; i.e., no "But PCOS cauzes teh terrribal diseesez!!!111!" Living causes dying, in all people, without exception.)

Thank you.

No longer can traditional masculinity deny it is complicit to the objectification of women, and to a larger extent, sexism. No longer can the "good guys" remain silent, and by virtue of inaction, be absolved of the guilt of misogyny. No longer will finger-pointing take the blame off men who, while not rapists or abusers themselves, continue to feed into the sexism that dominates society.

Not after years upon years of objectifying Erin Andrews on sports blogs and in bar conversations. Not after Andrews' privacy was violated by a peeping Tom who drilled a hole in her hotel room wall to videotape her in the nude. Not after the millions upon millions of Google searches for the videotape that eventually made her the most searched for name over the weekend. While the violation of Andrews' privacy is an isolated incident, done at the hands of one man, her objectification - as well as the objectification of millions of other women - is systematic. As such, each one of us is guilty for the contribution to her assault.

The guilt is also mine. I am guilty for the times I tuned into ESPN only to make an objectifying comment to a friend about a female sportscaster. I am guilty for each Swimsuit Edition of Sports Illustrated I bought to share with friends. I am guilty for each time I clicked on a picture of a cheerleader to ogle at her, separating her body for her humanity. In doing so, I also reinforced traditional masculinity as well as contributed into the commercial exploitation of women's bodies, thereby adding support to the systematic objectification of all women, and by that extent, Erin Andrews.

Such guilt is also found in the men who participate in chat forums whose main discussions revolve around Andrews' and other women's bodies, their style of clothes and a rating system of these women, based on numbers from 1 to 10.

But the guilt isn't limited in just those who, using the excuse of being "sex positive" or that their misogynistic actions are merely "sexually natural," continue to excuse their own objectifying behaviors. Such guilt can also be found in professional sports - both as a money-making entity that promotes the domination of men over another on the field, and over women in the bedroom.

The guilt stems from the shots of cheerleaders acting as sideshows to men's performance of dominance.

Today I watched a trailer for Tucker Max's movie "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell." Instead of just focusing on the content, I want to tie the film to the larger topic of (Un)feminist guilty pleasures*. First, I'll describe how while I mostly like feminist-friendly media now, my guilty pleasures tend to be things from my youth, and then I'll go into how this trailer complicated that dichotomy. 

I tend to be fairly critical of the media I consume today, and if something strikes me as misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc, it usually makes my skin crawl. However, it hasn't always been this way. As an illustration, I'll share a recent example. A few days ago I walked into the living room, and asked my roommate what he was watching. He responded by saying "Enchanted. I think you'd really like it." This prediction was 100% understandable, given the fact that I have a Twilight poster in my room and several disney princess movie soundtracks on my iPod. (I know Twilight isn't that old...but I did read the first book ~2 years ago, and I'm only 21...so it seems like a long time ago :P). However, while I still enjoy those movies/books from my past, it's not that I actually appreciate or like their themes, but rather that my nostalgia usually wins over my feminism. With "Enchanted", there was no nostalgia, only nausea. 

Now, about Tucker Max. Although he might seem pretty far removed from Disney princesses, he too was someone I liked when I was younger: I started reading his website when I was 15. For those of you not familiar with his work, he wrote online stories and later books about his various drunken adventures, usually involving lots of sexism, fatphobia, ableism, etc. I loved them. There were numerous occasions where strangers would look at me funny after I burst out laughing while reading his stories in public. So, I did just about the same thing as my roommate: when I found out Max was making a movie based on one of his stories, I thought, "A Tucker Max movie. I think I'll really like it." 

Not so much. The first scene in the trailer depicts Tucker Max trying to pick up a girl by joking about how a fat girl across the room needs to die, since "Everyone knows fat girls aren't real people." It was difficult to watch. It was a weird moment where I felt a familiar comfort in his brand of humor, however I could still discern how horrible it was. I think I felt both reactions at the same time because although the trailer content was strikingly similar to that of his stories, the switch from writing to film made it seem new enough that my vision wasn't clouded by memories. 

"I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" comes out in September, and I'm excited to read more articles/posts about the movie as the date draws nearer. I'm also interested to see if any other feminists have read (maybe even enjoyed) his work. 

*Thanks to Miriam to introducing me to this term. 

Judge Samuel B. Kent was nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in 1990 by then-President George H.W. Bush.  Eighteen years later, after numerous problems with discipline, he became the first federal judge to be charged with federal sex crimes.  Between 2003 and 2007, "often intoxicated ," he initiated nonconsensual sex with two female employees.  Today, the impeachment charges against him were dropped in the Senate.

As the only justice in a one-judge district, Kent shared authority with no one.  After his conviction and sentencing to 33 months in prison, he preferred to retire, rather than resign, but was denied the disability status required to receive retirement benefits at 59.  He finally submitted his resignation (effective July 1, 2010) to deter the Senate from hearing the testimonies of his accusers, but the two brave women, Cathy McBroom and Donna Wilkerson, testified against him anyway.  He will continue to receive a yearly salary from the government of $169,300 while behind bars, until his resignation takes effect July 1, 2010.

An excerpt from his heartfelt letter to the Senate:

“Influenced by misguided emotions that probably stemmed from[..]alcohol abuse and[…]my first wife, Mary Ann’s slow, excruciating death from brain cancer, I began relating to Mrs. McBroom and Mrs. Wilkerson in inappropriate ways. {…}

Nevertheless, I remain proud of other aspects of my 18-year record of service on the federal bench.”

Sadly, he is not alone in the gaggle of men in authority positions who:

-Exact their power to initiate sexual contact with coworkers or employees

-Get caught

-Lie about it

-Go to rehab for “alcohol-related” problems

-Refuse to resign or retire

-Return to their families

Now that the hearings are complete, the the saga concluded earlier today in the Senate on CSPAN-2, with a live quorum in the U.S. Senate. The Senate discussed whether to dismiss all articles of impeachment brought against Kent upon request of the House. There is a transcript of the proceedings here, and a transcript of Mrs. McBroom's testimony is here.

I recently attended an anime convention, one of the major conventions in the United States, and I did “cosplay” a character from a Japan-related film.  I was Pyramid Head from Silent Hill, the movie version released several years ago.

Now, while I did it for my own reasons, which include challenging myself technically and taking on my own body image issues, there were incidents I had while in costume which got me thinking.

As a full disclosure, I picked Pyramid Head because it was a technically difficult costume.  It’s not one you can buy in stores and requires a large amount of labor to be able to do well.  I wanted to do it well, and right, so I put a tremendous amount of effort into my costume.  It did pay off well, as I got a lot of attention for my costume including being called “the good Pyramid Head”.

There are aspects to his character that are less-than savory.

**TRIGGER WARNING**

I met a very sweet middle aged couple on a trip, recently. It turned out we lived very close to each other. I really hit it off with the woman, whereas her husband was mostly very quiet and aloof. We talked about hanging out more on our trip, and since she didn't have a cell phone, she gave me her husband's number.
I called her husband's phone the next night, and he was incredibly rude to me and when I asked if they wanted to do something he simply said "no" followed by stoney silence.
I very much doubted that this was his wife's sentiment.
I recently sent her an e-mail (not mentioning the phone call), and sure enough "We thought about you and wondered if you were okay. We waited for your call".
So, he disrepected his wife, knowing that she wanted to see me and talk to me, and then lied about me calling.
Because this was so disrespectful, I feel I need to mention it in my e-mail response, but have no idea how to bring it up delicately. Keep in mind that I've met this couple only once, and they're 25+ years older than me.
What would you say?

This is my first post here.

I recently received my move-in pamphlet from my University and couldn't help but notice that lack of women who were not society's expectation regarding weight and size. All the female students portrayed in the pamphlet are thin and conform to beauty standards such as make up and hair styles.

Perhaps I am taking too much notice and getting upset too easily in regards to the decisions made by the University for advertising and images for pamphlets.

Apparently there are people who believe that Dr. Regina Benjamin, President's Obama's pick for surgeon general is overweight and is therefore not qualified for the position. (I tried to cut and paste an ABC news link but it wouldn't let me). I am interested in how the Feministing community feels about this. 

I am personally disgusted by such claims. First of all, these people who say she is overweight are basing their claims entirely on how she looks in pictures!!! None of these people know any facts about her health. Despite what many people think, you cannont always tell whether someone is clinically overweight by how they look. There are many many people who eat healthy and exercise but are still on the thick/bigger side because that is simply how their bodies are made. Instead of juding her qualifications and experience people are judging her because she doesn't fit society's beauty standards

So, I teach Pilates’ and I love it. I don’t love everything about it, but I love the way it allows you to connect with your body, strengthening it help it withstand stress and prevent injury. I love being able spend an hour at a time doing something for myself – when most of my day is wrapped up in what others need from me. I love being able to help others do the same; it is remarkable how often I work with women (and some men) who have been completely alienated from their bodies due to unmet beauty standards and even sexual taboos. I enjoy witnessing this visceral re-connection as they learn to breath and feel the work in their bodies.

However, there are aspects of teaching that make me uncomfortable, not surprising in our beauty and body obsessed culture. Teaching at a large studio in the Midwest, I encountered sunken, emaciated women who would beat all before missing their routine Pilates’ class. I heard countless self-deprecating comments and comparisons from women about their bodies and their inability to live up to internalized social expectations. Outside of the studio, when you turn on late-night infomercials you will more than likely encounter advertisements for Pilates’ related exercise equipment – complete with extraordinary before-and-afters and unusually thin celebrity spokeswomen.

How is this to be reconciled? I’d love to hear from any fitness instructors, trainers or enthusiasts out there about how they navigate these conflicts.

by Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire Blogger

Healthcare is dominating domestic politics this week, as Congress and President Obama outline their visions for reform. The president is pushing Congress to pass a bill that keeps healthcare costs in check before the August deadline. Obama must have been disappointed when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced last week that the Dem's healthcare bills won't cut spending. The president won't sign a bill that doesn't contain cost cuts, so legislators know they'll have to tweak the bill.

Obama's strenuous efforts to pass healthcare reform have invited comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal, which created the American social safety net. In Salon, Michael Lind argues that Obama's insistence on tying health insurance to employment actually betrays the legacy of the New Deal:

We decided that when it came to benefits our guiding principle should be a 'citizen-based social contract.' We chose this phrase, not to discriminate against non-citizens, but to express two ideas: first, that benefits like healthcare ought to be not a privilege but rather an entitlement of all citizens in our democratic republic, and second, that all benefits should be detached from employers and follow individuals through their lives. In thinking about healthcare, we rejected various options that would not move us toward a citizen-based social insurance system. Unfortunately, the health plan being promoted by Obama and Congress is based on one of those bad options.

Aides for Baucus told The Pos that the Finance chairman stopped accepting contributions from healthcare PACs after June 1 to eliminate the appearance of conflicts of interest. But he's not doing a very good job following through. On June 15, according to the Federal Election Commission, Baucus accepted $5,000 from the Schering Plough Corporate Better Government Fund.
Baucus's staff say the Schering Plough money has since been returned. No word on whether the money got sent back before or after the story hit the media.

Continue reading Weekly Pulse: The Rocky Road to Reform.

Posted by The Media Consortium - July 22, 2009, at 12:13PM | in Health

At an unknown time in the last year, ESPN sports reporter Erin Andrews was secretly and illegally filmed nude in her hotel room on hidden camera by a voyeur and the resulting video was posted on the internet. Without linking to or naming any publications disseminating this horrible breach of her rights, let's take a long view of Andrews's struggle with sexism in a male-dominated sports and media culture. While this voyeurism may or may not be an isolated incident, sadly, it is simply an escalation of the barrage of sexism and objectification that constantly surrounds her as she attempts to construct a career in a "man's sphere."

Erin Andrews is a sideline reporter for ESPN, a job that has always been linked to sexism. It is one of the few positions available to women in major sports broadcasts, but the women who fill the role are selected as much for their physical appearance as their broadcast skills. They are, in short, exploited for their sex appeal to straight male audiences and rarely, if ever, asked to provide opinions or analysis (presumably because the networks are not interested in the sports opinions of women, and certainly not these women). Female sideline reporters generally do not graduate to the broadcast booth or other high level on-camera positions. More often, they are phased out as they age and replaced by younger women.

Andrews, a former University of Florida basketball dance team member, has worked at ESPN since 2004, and while her popularity has always been unbelievably high among the majority-male audience, it has never been separated from her constant objectification. Her popularity has spawned dozens of devoted blogs, which often reduce her to her body, her breasts and the novelty of a woman with such a body talking about sports. She routinely is a top Google search, a popularity that sports and gossip blogs quickly learned to exploit to generate traffic. Sports blogs, from the reputable to the disgusting, have devoted columns to such non-newsworthy topics as analyzing her wardrobe and documenting her eating habits among all kinds of more appalling innuendo not worth mentioning here. Otherwise innocent camera angles and photographs that emphasize her breasts or show her eating are accompanied by innuendo and make up the bulk of her fan-created online presence. Meanwhile, Playboy.com voted her "America's Sexist Sportscaster" twice. To boot, last year, an internet hoax was created, alleging a sex-tape between her and a famous athlete she interviewed, and though the credibility of this hoax was easily disproved, it was largely embraced in gossip-media as news, or still exploited for traffic as news about fake news.

Inside the sports world, male athletes have been recorded treating her terribly unprofessionally--from ogling and hooting to a USC football player slapping her rear end at this January's Rose Bowl. ESPN, for its part, has "accidentally" included close-up clips of her behind during broadcasts, included segments devoted entirely to fan responses to her physical appearance, and even had male commentators talk about her sex appeal on air. This is hardly a professional way to treat a journalist, and does not even resemble the treatment of her male coworkers.

So, although this may be the first time many outside the sports world have heard of Andrews, this is not at all the first time she has been the victim of notable, appalling and unambiguous sexism. The whole of sports media--not to mention the gazing male audience--bears some responsibility for creating an atmosphere of demand for this kind of exploitation and subsequently feeding it. While many of these media outlets--including FOX News--feign outrage, they continue to cash in by posting partial clips or photographs of the video.

So don't hold your breath waiting for sports media outlets to apologize for the ghosts of sexist Erin Andrews coverage-past that made this terrifying, dehumanizing breach of her rights and privacy sadly inevitable.

This is a nostalgic and meandering trip I took analyzing the 1998-2002 WB series Felicity, a show I found to be very feminist at turns and rather unfeminist at others. Some of the discussion here is for pure unfeminist fun and obsession, but my thoughts about gender roles, masculinity/femininity, and relationship equality continually creep in.

Crossposted at: Library Cat

(Spoiler warnings)

This summer I marathoned the entire Felicity series with my sister. I was in college during its 1998-2002 run, but she, seven years younger, had never seen the show (and barely heard of it, actually). I hadn't seen it in years, save for a few re-runs on the WE network, although I had always, without question, reserved for it a special place in my heart. I wasn't quite sure how she would react to it, being a devotee of more recent shows like The OC, One Tree Hill, and Grey's Anatomy, and I basically had to twist her arm to get her to watch it at all. She was skeptical, it turns out. But as we popped in disc one, and freshman year started to unfold, she was sucked in -- immediately. And then we both spiraled into a DVD-fueled obsession that would. not. die.

So, here's the thing. I still love the show. I adore it, actually, probably more so than any other series, except for maybe Brothers & Sisters. Like B&S, the characters on Felicity are so well-crafted, flawed, and endearing, and the dialogue so smart, funny, and insightful, it's hard for me not to worship this show even when I admit I'm not in love with every storyline (cough, David, cough, Maggie, cough, Natalie, cough), or when I'm despising the second theme song (as much as I treasured the first) and fast forwarding through it as if to save my own life.

As we plowed through, I discovered my memory of each season was a bit hazy. It's amazing what you can forget over time, even about your favorite show. But, there were two things I remembered clear as day -- that she ended up with Ben, and that she and Noel never got back together.

I thought maybe that my feelings about these two facts -- being rather intense at that time, while I myself was in college -- might have lessened. But upon revisiting the Ben-Noel question all these years later, I found that my already-intense (thought dormant) feelings had only intensified.

Why the hell didn't she end up with Noel? (And I willingly admit that it's probably unfeminist even to think this! So, okay, why did she have to end up with anybody at all?)

I still -- I don't get that. In my eyes, although Ben had endearing qualities and had his own path of growth to follow as a character, and while I didn't even mind him and Felicity dating in order to answer some questions and satisfy Felicity's insufferable high school obsession (which, come on, you never end up with that person), it just always seemed to me that she and Noel had the best possible thing -- real, lasting love based on an amazing, solid friendship.

Think about it. Felicity and Ben were all grand disappointments and unrealistic expectations (as the "popular" guy and the "brainiac" girl, they were stuck in high school categories that made them insecure), while Noel and Felicity were more about idiosyncratic flaws, humor, and realistic possibilities (they could relate to each other on an equal level, in which mutual honesty about their individual shortcomings actually made them stronger). Okay, well, that's just my take on it. I know everyone can't -- and won't -- agree.

Both couples were charming, I'll admit that, but I can't help but register a major injustice when a show glorifies the most unrealistic type of relationship, while throwing away the one that could actually work. And it's not just Felicity that does this -- television and movies do it all the time, ad nauseam. I mean, talk about expectations! No wonder there's this screwed-up cultural obsession with fairy tales -- they're perpetuated every single day. As a feminist, I recognize a fundamental problem in the way a show like Felicity emphasizes the main female character's relationships with men above all else -- yet, I can't help but feel this factor could be mitigated somewhat were the main character to choose (if she must) a less stereotypically masculine, more nontraditional type of guy. Or, gasp, a girl.

And so here's where I admit that despite my love for Felicity, or maybe because of it, this show breaks my heart every time. And simultaneously pisses me off. And not just in that Felicity and Noel don't end up together. I would have enjoyed (and probably preferred) a more open-ended finale in which Felicity asserted her independence yet the possibility of a future relationship still remained for them, and in which the egalitarian nature of their relationship/friendship was stressed as romantically valuable over time (rather than as inferior to the Felicity/Ben tug of war, that so-called "force," which tended to be fueled by drama and rooted in the crisis of the moment). Because that's what Felicity and Noel felt like to me -- the real deal. Future life partners who respected (and admired) each other's spaces and choices. So when they married Noel off to Zoe and Felicity forgave Ben once again after another charismatic apology (orchestrated through the elaborate time travel dream in which Noel ends up dead, which I guess was supposed to resign us to an unquestionable Felicity/Ben "destiny" but only ended up feeling cruel for Noel, unsettling for Felicity (uh, how can she ever trust Ben again?), and bitter in that Ben seems to get everything he wants, without true sacrifice (meaning, Arizona was Lauren's chosen location, not his, so Ben "following" Felicity to his own hometown after Lauren magically agrees to move there just does NOT feel like a legitimate hardship)) -- well, that was a crushing blow, a sour pill to swallow. And hard to forgive, quite honestly.

Truth is, I've found it's almost too painful to watch the whole series beginning to end anymore. The fact that Noel ends up in therapy and on depression meds, and Felicity in a psych ward by the end of season 4, seems entirely appropriate given that by then that's also where I feel I belong. In a mental hospital. Because as I get caught up in the stories and the way the romantic arcs were set up, starting in season 1, the same thing happens -- every time. I get hopeful. Just about the time Felicity and Noel confess their love during "Docuventary," and they kind of, almost, get back together then -- I have hope. But then Ben swoops in under the pretense that he "likes" her, whoopee!, and Felicity and Ben take that mysterious road trip together, only to come back in the fall to find that Ben's utterly incompetent to be in a relationship... Well, but then hope returns in early season 2 when Felicity cuts her hair, drops pre-med, drops Ben, and wants Noel back -- well, at that point it all feels inevitable. Surely, these two must get back together. Even if they don't stay together, they must get back together at some point.

Except they don't. Although there are a few close calls, many endearing scenes, and even time travel, they never really get back together. Look in the freaking drawer, already. Damn it. But she doesn't. Or she does, but slams it shut. And so that unresolved suspense of the Felicity-Noel relationship, never satisfied, is a very particular form of storytelling torture. I think it's called hell.

It's like zoning out to your favorite song only to have the original artist come along and smash your iPod to the pavement before you can savor those last few notes of satisfying resolution.

Or, you know, it's like a held breath -- you're always waiting for them to get back together and they never do (those time travel episodes help ease the pain a little, at first, but are ultimately a bucket of salt in the wound, let's be honest). So you suffocate. You never exhale.

This all might sound a bit dramatic or overly analytical, but I have to say, in a TV landscape littered with McDreamys and Mr. Bigs, there was something really special about witnessing a relationship based on unconditional friendship and chemistry at the same time. Ben was definitely a McDreamy, a Mr. Big. But Noel was... Noel. I'm really not sure there is, still, any other male character quite like him. Not in my mind, anyway. He sort of transcends gender categories of masculinity/femininity in that he was the funny guy/computer geek/best friend/adorable boyfriend who wasn't a sexist "nice guy" and who wasn't afraid to be kind. Or talk about things. McDreamys, Bens, and Mr. Bigs -- they don't open up because at some level they're fundamentally freaked out about who they are. Which always seems to become, unfairly, the chief problem of the person they're dating, and not a problem they stand up and own and deal with themselves. In a word, they're cowards; yet because of their masculine charisma, they get away with it. Over and over again. Noel wasn't like that.

I will say, I think the appeal of Noel has a lot do with the way Scott Foley portrayed him. He was really incredible in that role. The character was written well and with depth, especially by J.J. Abrams, but I think Scott Foley was the clinching factor, in that he has that intangible something. A genuine, authentic quality that goes beyond gender. And even my sister confessed in the middle of our marathon that on most similar shows, she would have been all about the Ben/McDreamy/Mr. Big character, no questions asked... But on Felicity she was all about Noel. Swoon.

These gripes aside, in general I feel like the show has aged well. I still, overall, adore it. The themes -- self-discovery, survival, embracing and maintaining your independence, the definition of love, finding your way, finding your passions -- still ring true, even at age 30. There were also a few amazingly blatant feminisms, such as when Felicity leads a sit-in at health services to fight for the morning-after pill, not to mention a few episodes later when she runs for student council president. And who could forget that super short hair cut, or Felicity and Elena taking a self-defense class together? These empowerments, over time, sort of cancelled out the fact that she had followed high school crush Ben to New York in the first place.

But, more than anything, since I was in college while the show was running (1998-2002), Felicity also holds this intense nostalgia that will forever be bound up with my own college years. The music, the clothes, the hair. My god. Those plaid flannels, the Lilith Fair references, the lack of cell phones, subplots involving Episode I and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. These details make Felicity priceless to me, no matter how much of a malcontent I can be about the Noel question or the mixed bag of feminisms throughout the series.

Dear Yaz,

Fuck you. Just fuck you. I used to have periods that were light, cramp-free, and over in three days. Now, thanks to you, I am a clotted, bleeding mess for a week at a time, only comfortable when my body is contorted as tightly as possible into the cannonball position. Your advertisements claim to make periods better, and you have actually somehow made mine worse. Which is ironic, actually, because it's not even a real period, it's your nasty and unnecessary interpretation of it. You cavort around in the disguise of a "natural period", wreaking havoc to my uterine walls, when everyone knows all you are is just withdrawal bleeding. You disgust me.

What's more, you've turned the rest of me into a head-case. Where once I was even-keeled, I am now subject to violent mood swings. Where once I was feisty, I go whole days in a fog of lethargy and vague depression. In short, you suck. You are only good for one thing, and that is keeping me free of fetuses. But I've had it, Yaz. It's over. Your bad qualities vastly outweigh your contraceptive ones. Consider us through.

Signed,

My Uterus

PS - My Breasts would like to add that you made them larger, and they are not cool with it.

Ahem. That was my TMI way of putting a call out there to all of you heterosexual feminists. I had the misfortune of attending a Southern Baptist high school for the sex-ed portion of my education, and as such I need y'all to fill in the gaps, if you don't mind.

I have deemed August "Contraception Month," which is to say, I am taking a month to explore all the contraceptive options and asking women about their personal experiences with it, before making my own decision on a method. Obviously, my situation is slightly biased: I managed to land myself in a long-term monogamous relationship, so I'm not that excited about using only condoms, but I've also worked up a significant ire against hormonal birth control. However, I want to hear everybody's perspective. What I'm hoping is that this can serve as kind of a feminist guide to birth control that women who are frustrated with their options might be able to get a little bit of guidance from.

So, let's talk birth control: What positive and negative experiences have you had with different types of birth control? Does hormonal birth control work for most women, or have a lot of you encountered these sorts of problems? Is IUD insertion as painful as it looks? What financial concerns have you faced in looking for a good method of birth control? Have any of you been successful in procuring sterilization at a young age, or tried and failed? Has natural family planning worked for many of you, and if so, how? What the fuck happened to the sponge? Let me know.

I realize this post smacks of heteronormativity, but I think that this is an issue worthy of some serious discussion all the same, because there is a lot to discuss: my ever-growing suspicion that hormonal birth control was invented by men to emotionally subjugate women so they could keep claiming we are unfit to hold public office; what utter bullshit it is that, as women, we bear almost the entire weight of responsibility when it comes to contraception (excepting STD protection, obviously); whether there is really a good method of birth control, or if, as I suspect, they all suck to varying degrees.

Either way, let me know what you all think. Is there any hope, beyond the ever-illusive male birth control pill?

July 25th is the global day of action for Iran, there are events in over 60 cities around the world to stand in solidarity with the Iranian people. You can participate and show your support. Here is a link with more info: http://united4iran.com/

also, there is a 3-day hunger strike in front of the UN on July 22, 23, and 24. Several Iranian scholars including my own favorite Professor Nayereh Tohidi , chair of the women's studies department at Calstate Northridge will be participating. Drop by and show support if you can. Many prominent non-Iranians also expressed support. Here is a link on their blog, which includes a message of support by Sean Penn: http://strike4iran.com/?p=271

Alright. I really, really, seriously debated on writing this post. It's a very emotional process, but I feel like, given the recent post on Chris Brown, I wanted to share my perspective. Hopefully I can give some insight on abusive relationships, and what happens afterward if you decide to stay.

As some of you know, I'm married to an active duty soldier. Domestic abuse is rampant in the military community. However, I never thought that I would be a part of that unfortunate statistic. So here's my story:

This article (actually, it's a blog entry) discusses the difficulties faced by female sportscasters, pointing out the negative attention they often attract.

However, many of the commenters on this piece argue that voyeurism is not assault.

What do you think?

I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed but some surfing magazines are truly appalling.  I found this advertisement, if you would even call it that, in Transworld Surf Magazine. 

It’s for the Reed Surf Sandals Company and their Miss Reef Bikini Contest. (These are the online versions but the magazine featured these on a double sided pull-out poster)  Their motto: “Celebration 25 years of Taking the Focus off our Team Riders.”  Yeah…but only by objectifying women in one the most overtly dehumanizing campaigns I’ve ever seen.  One side features males with their faces showing, their names in each box, or in some amazing surfing stunt. On the other side is a series of faceless women doing, well you know, what they do best, wearing thong bikinis while playing in the sand. The magazine wants its audience to judge women solely on their “bottoms.”  

 It’s not just this ad either.  How often do surf videos feature the surfing parties?  They usually consist of “dudes” catching some waves during the day and then catching some “chicks” later that night.  Very rarely, with the exception of the end of the movie Blue Crush, do you see female surfers being taken seriously. Because women could never hope to rise to the ranks of men, right? So just stand their so those men have something to look at after a long, hard day of surfing. Great message.      

What Can You Do?

Send your thoughts or concerns to the magazine's advertisement manager or contact the Reef Company directly.

And Also Why I Have A New Sympathy For Women Who Have Surgical Abortions...

*This contains graphic info about my cervix. Don't read if you are icked out*

Hi, I'm PamelaVee and I am 24.

This all started about a year ago. I am one of the Americans that is not insured for health so I don't see the doctor. If anything is wrong, I wait in line forever at the low cost clinic. I see the Health Dept. for pap smears and birth control at no cost because I do not make enough. I do work and I am good with $, I just don't have a lot of it. But this isn't a debate about health care/insurance.

Anyhow, the health dept called about a year ago (terrifying to get a call from them) and said I had abnormal cells. I needed to get a colposcopy. That is like a pap smear but they take a little sample, like getting your ears pierced.

FYI- Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a cause of cervical cancer. There are over 100 strains of HPV and can cause anything from abnormal skin appearance, to warts, etc. The type I have if obviously the kind that causes abnormal cells. 3 out of 4 sexually active people have HPV.

A yahoo! sports blogger writes about ESPN's Erin Andrews' privacy invasion and brings up some excellent points in the process. Short and sweet.

So, I've been reading some community posts lately that have to do with sexual assault. I have thought about this a bit and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. My ex-boyfriend was not what I would call a high quality human being. He lied about a lot of stuff and generally didn't treat me with much respect. He often continued to ask me for sex after I said no and one time, after some alcohol consumption, we ended up in a really scary situation that would legally be sexual assault, but I don't know that that is what I want to call it.

So my question is this...would it ever be okay to tell someone that he is in a relationship with (he recently got engaged) about his behavior or should I let her figure it out on her own? My gut instinct is to just let it be...but maybe that's just because I am somewhat bitter and think getting engaged after nine months means you get what you sign up for...? And who knows, maybe he's not like that with her...?

Any thoughts or advice from others who have encountered this situation???

After being deservedly taken to task for my admission of some major faults , I wondered what I could possibly do next. 

I'd like to apologize for it.  The audience I assumed for it was homogenously modeled after myself; in my attempt to do some good, I did the exact opposite by saying things that no one should have to hear.  But I don't expect an apology to be enough.  Because it's not.  Hopefully I can amend my behavior satisfactorily in the future.

A major clue as to what my be better came in the form of Restructure!'s post, Declaring your anti-racist intentions may make you more racist. 

When I took a good look at myself, I knew that Restructure! was right.  It is easy for me to claim a pro-justice identity - and to think that I'm acting on it just because I claim it.  It's not so easy to actually live a pro-justice life. 

Here is an article about Clinton's speech at the Univ. of Delhi from the New York Times.

Unfortunately, I do not intend to highlight the good diplomacy undertaken by Hilary Clinton on her speech at the University of Delhi. I have to point out this statement she made:

"I eat way too much of the food at every chance I get," Mrs. Clinton said. "I have to go on a diet when I get back home, back to carrots and celery."

(OK side note - WHY the HELL did the NYTimes have to refer to her as 'Mrs. Clinton'?!?!?)

Really though? Even the SECRETARY OF STATE is required to make jokes about her eating habits...and indirectly, her weight? Great role model for young girls - eating carrots and celery after you've eaten too much - or more correctly, probably like a normal human being. This is crazy.

Even after all the great things she's done! Even during an important diplomatic event, which sparked serious thought and questions from the audience - someone even asked her if she thought her gender affected her candidacy for President. But we can't have a serious discussion with a woman in power without discussing weight. Without punishing ourselves.

Here's another excerpt fro the NYTimes:

"The state of women's rights worldwide remained a "mixed picture," Mrs. Clinton said, though for herself, she would never have predicted, as a student leader, that she would someday become secretary of state or seek to run for president."

But she did become secretary of state and she did have a historic run for president in the primaries. It may seem like an innocent, offhand comment, but the state of today's girls and young women cannot be joked about. The reality is many of us focus too much on our weight and not enough on our accomplishments. I know I do.

Reading what Hilary said (oh,excuse me 'Mrs. Clinton' - barf) really upset me. Ive been thinking a lot about this issue anyways - it's something I've struggled with and so it's something I want to fight so other women don't have to. And yet, the Secretary of State must diet when she returns home from a diplomatic trip.

It's all too much for me.

So, this is a topic that got raised in a few comments on the post Government Diet for Young Girls that I thought was worth spinning off.

The commenters were remarking on how for many school-age kids gym class is their main source of exercise, and yet the focus in many schools is on competitive games that often favor male participants. This leaves many less athletic kids bored, disengaged, and likely to hang on the sidelines...getting even less exercise time than their peers.

One might rightly ask "so where is the feminist issue here?" Well, in every gym class I have ever observed--most especially those from middle school on up--the majority of the sideliners were girls. Not all, certainly, and certainly there were girls in the athletic, competitive group that dominated the games played. However, the gender gap in participation was certainly noticeable.

This struck very close to home for me as I myself was one of those sideliners all through school, disinterested in sports, turned off by the male-dominated competitiveness and meanspiritedness that gym class seemed to draw out of my fellow students. At the same time, I have been a feminist from a very early age; I celebrate as strongly as anyone the progress women have made in gaining access to athletics, I also celebrate women who demonstrate that competition in all walks of life is not just for men.

So, now as much as then, I had some serious values-dissonance about valuing female competition and athletic participation...and yet wanting absolutely nothing to do with them in gym class. When I got to high school, I found that non-competitive, low-impact yoga classes made me feel much better exercise and about myself than gym class, but I also felt that the gender and class perceptions around yoga marred my enjoyment of it. (It is perhaps also relevant that I suffered from chronic insomnia in high school worsened by the insane decision to start the school day at 7:45AM. This sapped my energy to the point that climbing the stairs to homeroom would make me lightheaded...not the best incentive to be an active participant in gym class.)

The question I want to bring to the community, then, is what other feminists perceive to be the root causes behind low female participation in gym class. Is it ingrained attitudes about proper feminine behavior or the general toxicity of high school sociality? Is it unfeminist to think that gym class would be improved by segregating genders or by including more non-competitive activities? Where is the feminist balance between personal interests and preferences and the larger interests in encouraging girls to be active and compete?

So, Jezebel and I called it quits about a year ago after the start of what I thought could be a promising relationship. The reason for this was, of course, the Thinking and Drinking debacle. However, recently, I picked back up the affair where I had left off, and found the site to be much more appetizing. Sure, it's still first and foremost a site run under a regime of gossip. But pop culture's pervasity makes it a topic worthy of exploring, and I think for the most part Jezebel does it well. The feminist tinge and the Gawker-mandated quantity of posts make for some interesting reading. I have been turned onto a lot of women doing great work through Jezebel, and been alerted to a lot of things relevant to a young feminist. Long story short, it's not so much the quality of content on Jezebel I'm objecting to, it's the weird class structure under which it operates.

In other words....it's still Gawker. And being Gawker, it's got some really creepy-ass habits that I just can't seem to get past. I was weirded out enough by the fact that commenters had to "audition" for the privilege of commenting. But, I didn't comment on Jezebel anyway, nor did I have any immediate plans to, so it didn't really bother me. However, I am big on reading comment threads, and with their recent introduction of "starred" or "featured" commenters and their "best comments of the day" feature, I noticed a trend that is either alarming or just really, really stupid.

As discussed, the trend of men dominating the ranks of senior White House staff spans administrations. The Obama administration's July 1st report, titled the "Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff," was the first such report available (and searchable!) on the White House website. The Bush administration released the same reports from 2001-2008, which were posted on The Washington Post's website by none other than recently-fired Dan Froomkin. It would make sense that each administration would employ at least as much disclosure as the Bush administration did, but as the White House reminds us,
"Since 1995, the White House has been required to deliver a report to Congress listing the title and salary of every White House Office employee."
The Clinton administration invited this yearly report by refusing to disclose their White House staff salaries. In 1993, the Washington Post procured a printed list of White House staff and their salaries which was not even available, at the time, to the staff themselves. After publishing the full list on November 1, 1993, a kerfuffle ensued: White House staff learned that they really weren't getting paid so much, after all. This was great journalism on the part of the Washington Post. As a result, from 1995-on, the White House was incrementally more accountable to the public through the Annual Reports to Congress. It does make the 1993 data look skewed.

When I was fifteen years old I was violently raped by a man eight years my senior. Since that time I have also had other sexual assault experiences, which were not nearly as traumatic for me, though these experiences still made an impact. In the nine years since my first assault, I have been consciously and unconsciously trying to heal (by which I mean, at certain times my healing processes have been more purposeful then at other times, when I'm more or less ignoring the need to heal). I have also become an activist and done as much as I can to support survivors. I've learned a lot and grown and found strength - even if at times I'm still plagued by bouts of fear and depression.

Recently I started therapy to address these issues of sexual violence (as well as a few other things). I've only been with my therapist for a month or so now but I'm glad I made the decision to do it. The other day during our session my therapist asked me to try to imagine what I would say to my perpetrator if I were face to face with him. She wanted me to take the knowledge and experience that I have gained in the 9 years since the rape and use that to say whatever I wanted to this man who violated me.

I couldn't do it.

I have a very difficult time using my voice in response to the assault I experienced - in addition to every day life. I just generally have a rough time expressing myself. So I sat there thinking, trying to imagine how this scenario would go down. But I was stuck.

If I shut my brain down and followed my gut instinct.... If I shut down and just let my purest, raw emotions take route.... Well, I think I would yell and scream at him. It would probably go something like this,:

Wow!  The lengths we go to for beauty.

Jennifer Moore Conrow is the Director of Community Outreach & Education at the Cherry Hill Women's Center, a sister clinic to the Philadelphia Women's Center.

When I first started working here at the clinic, I remember wondering what I would tell people when asked the question, "what do you do?" I had never had any concerns about disclosing where I worked before. Even when I was doing public policy work around reproductive health issues, it never crossed my mind not to discuss the kind of work that I did.

For the first few months that I worked in CHWC though, I had a hard time just coming out and saying, "I'm an abortion provider" or "I'm a counselor at an abortion clinic." Not because I was ashamed of what I do, on the contrary, I'm quite proud to work in this field, but because I was afraid of the response that I might get from the person that I was talking to. I'm not one to seek out confrontation and I was truly afraid that by telling someone what I do, that I could cause, if not a fist fight, at least a really uncomfortable political conversation.

At the time I justified this avoidance by saying to myself, "I talk about abortion all the time at work, why would I want to talk about it on my time off." But if I really thought about it I could admit to myself that I was just scared. After a few months of telling people, "I'm in women's health care," I started thinking about my patients and about how most women are so hesitant to tell people in their lives that they have had an abortion. And I started thinking about how if all the women and men in this country who have been touched by an abortion experience in some way or another could find the courage to talk about their experiences, then maybe some of the shame and stigma and fear surrounding abortion would start to go away. When you consider that approximately 1/3 of the women in this country will have an abortion at some time in their lives, that 60% of the women in this country are already mothers when they have an abortion, that abortion is one of the safest and most common surgical procedures performed in the U.S., it seems ridiculous that anyone would be ashamed or nervous about talking about it.

Late night on Friday, August 14th and Friday, August 28th (technically Saturday mornings!), burlesque variety troupe The Candy Janes return to the Comix stage after a smoking debut.

Get ready for this saucy rock n’ roll dance revue with brassy belting singers and featuring live band The Spectacles jamming out to favorites from The Doors to Rolling Stones. Bring your sassy sweet tooth because these cabaret coquettes aren’t afraid to push the envelope. Just when audience members start to sweat from edgy choreography and a bit of burlesque, the show’s host and the comedic skits send them bursting into laughter. Wrapped in one delicious, sexy and funny little package of entertainment, you can have it all with the Candy Janes!

FRI, AUGUST 14th @ 12:30 AM

(technically Saturday morning)

FRI, AUGUST 28th @ 12:30 AM

(technically Saturday morning)

Comix

353 W. 14th Street

New York , NY 10014

Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 on the day of the show, p lus a two item minimum in the showroom. 

Tickets are available for purchase at the box office, by calling 212.524.2500 or online at www.comixny.com .   Full dinner menu available.

Hello everyone. I need your help. I am an editor for the National PTA and am developing with some of the best people in the field online articles with practical advice about how to raise children in a gender neutral way, and particularly, how to ensure that boys and girls get equal education through nonbiased course materials, teaching styles, testing, etc. My plan is to post this information on PTA's website, but I'm a little stuck. How often should it be posted--weekly, monthly? Should it be sent out in emails as well? How do we reach less-advantaged parents who may not have a fast Internet connection or even a computer? How about schools and teachers?

I really want this to be a success, but I don't have all the answers, nor do I have a lot of people to rely on for advice. That's why I hope you'll leave helpful comments here. Or you can send them to my personal email if you wish: pokerface_2001 (at) hotmail (dot) com.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cross-posted on www.the-F-word.org

I saw a commercial for the new film "The Ugly Truth " yesterday.  Starring Katherine Heigl and the dreamy Gerard Butler," the film seems to be of of the "Men are bumbling idiots who think only with the head in their pants" genre -- just check out the poster for it.

Yeah, yeah, I know... men have up to 20 times more testosterone than women which leads to differences in sex drives , yadda, yadda, but unbelievably, there are men who do have healthy levels of testosterone and yet have still managed to avoid devolving into cousin-humping rabbits.  It's important to remember that sexism, in all its forms, hurts us all, men included.

Driving down the hills of Lake Encino in the San Fernando Valley a few days ago, I was in shock to see a city roadside construction sign that said "Men Working Ahead" and another that said "Men Working." 

These signs were among three others which included "Utility Work Ahead" and two other signs portraying gender-neutral figures.  If alternative and all-inclusive signs exist, the need for sex/gender-specific signs and discriminatory language in the city of Los Angeles can stop being used right now.

Come to find out, I'm not the only person angered by sexist roadside signage. In Atlanta , these signs were covered or replaced after a woman was nearly arrested for spray painting "wo " in front of "men," starting a grassroots campaign.

I know there are some anti-equality mongers who violently hiss that "man" somewhere, somehow includes "woman." This same logic was in heavy circulation prior to 1920; women do not need to vote or hold office because men vote and hold office--and these men represent the interests of women.

No thank you. I would like to represent myself.

According to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, there are no city or state laws regarding this issue.  If you live in the Los Angeles area and would like to voice your opinion, here are some things you can do:

1) Call your LA City Council Member to report the problem. You can also call the office of Councilmember Paul Koretz (310-289-0353) , who represents my area, including where the signs were posted on White Oak Ave. for three days.

2) You can also call the only 2 female councilmembers : Jan Perry's office (213-473-7009) and Janice Hahn's office (213-473-7015)

3) Call the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (213-580-1177) . You can press "0" to speak with an operator and have the opportunity to leave a voice mail.

4) Send an email to the Bureau of Street Services within the Los Angeles Department of Public Works. The email address is bss.boss@lacity.org

You can check in for more updates at my blog, The Colonic

So, I went to Pitchfork Music Fest on Friday night. The bands who played were good, and I knew beforehand who they were, but I was quite disappointed by the lack of female-led groups. Even the bands on Saturday and Sunday are not female-led, or diverse in any way. I'm really kind of annoyed with this apparent "boy's club" at Pitchfork. What, did no women want to perform? I doubt that. Did they even ask? I don't think I'll go to Pitchfork again unless they change their ways... Anyone else go? What do you think?

Animal welfare is a feminist issue --- and not just because of the awful, objectifying campaigns that PETA runs. 

I've been a vegan and a feminist since I was 14, and am now 19.  Many of my peers, my teachers, and other adults in my life have responded patronizingly, treating it as an indication that I am overly upset and emotional, since, you know, women don't think, we only feel.  And we just love baby animals.     

When I told some people I had decided to become vegan, particularly guys my age, I was met with responses like "I think it's really sweet when girls don't eat meat."  Because, obviously, emotions are female, caring is female, and veganism is a result of overactive womanly tendencies towards nurturing.  Similarly, another common one is, "Cows aren't even cuddly!  Why do you care about them?" Because, again, the only reason to be vegan would be because animals are adorable --- not because of a desire to reduce pain when possible or a concern about global warming. 

Moreover, the perception that being a vegan girl meant that I couldn't tolerate images of violence or discussions of mistreatment of animals was also constant.  I felt this stereotype hanging out with friends watching horror movies, in class debates about animal welfare, and in discussions I had with teachers about completely unrelated issues.  Vegan was code for emotional. 

I think that my experiences illustrate the extent to which stereotypes about overly emotional women are used against us when we choose to take strong stands on political issues.  It is far easier to discount devotion to animal welfare, and many progressive social issues, as a product of women feeling too much then as a result of measured, thoughtful research.  I'm not a vegan because I feel; I'm a vegan because I think.  My gender identification has nothing to do with either. 

I was perusing my facebook last night when i came across a status update by a guy i used to go to High School with in the USA when i lived there. I have not seen this person in probably 2 years, we were not close friends but more like friendly aquaintances.

His status report was as follows...

"chelsea vs seattle...prepare the ass rape"

Now im not sure what sport this is referencing but im almost certain that he was talking about some imminent event that he was looking forward to. Obviously we all at feministing are aware of using such terms to describe something that has nothing to do with 'ass rape' in general. I was not furious, but understandably irked by such insensitivity.

So trying to approach this situation with a good heart to try to shed some light i replied to his status report, which can be seen by his friends on their wall (for those who are not familiar with the site). My response:

'with all due respect, words like 'ass rape' shouldn't be thrown around as a joke, it makes a mockery of the people who are actually affected by such things.'

to which he replied about 10 minutes ago

'then i'll be sure to walk on egg shells and follow the soft culture political correctness.'

So now im lost as to what to do. Some may say that i should not have replied in such a public forum so as to embarass him or cause him to be defensive. However if he is so willing to post something like 'ass rape' which is also public, do i not have a right to consequently voice my concerns if it is offensive. Also, he has approx 1000 friends, now im not going to go and count how many female friends he has, but assuming loosely that half are female half are male, and statistically speaking according to the UN 2/3 of women will be sexually assaulted at one point in their lives, is it not highly likely that at least one of his female friends has been raped or sexually assualted and may have been upset by his status also?

I have since sent him a private message saying that if he wants to discuss it further i would be happy to. I have yet to recieve a reply, but im not really sure how i would go about explaining myself without getting the common 'angry feminist, stop being so politically correct' response.

Any suggestions?

PS. this is my first post on feministing, and i'm not highly familiar with blog format or anything like that so if i messed up with grammar etc i apologise.

I was looking at another feminist website to keep updated on feminist issues and ran across an article that looked really similar to the one I saw on here the other day about Carl's Junior's terrible ad campaign, but this time it was burger king. They now have an ad campaign that makes it look like the blow up doll esque woman is about to give the sandwich which looks like a penis a blow job, which is exemplified by the wording on the message which claims that it will "blow your mind". I want to know when it became okay to use women's bodies to sell fast food. I will NEVER eat at either one of these establishments ever again. I don't care if they rescind the ads. Please join me in permanently boycotting these establishments

I was searching the Internet when I found this:

A new program developed by the U.S. government is tackling the obesity epidemic by helping "tween" girls and their parents make small but important changes to build a healthier lifestyle. The Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office on Women's Health launched BodyWorks in 2006 by training instructors in the hopes that they would bring the program home to their communities. All materials are provided free, but communities must find the resources to pay trainers and a place to offer the program...

Girls 9 to 13 years old who are overweight or obese are referred to BodyWorks through their pediatrician, or by word of mouth. Parents and caregivers attend 10 weekly 90-minute sessions, and girls are expected to show up for at least three. The goal is to give parents and caregivers "hands-on tools to make small behavior changes to prevent obesity and help maintain a healthier weight"...

The goal is not for girls to lose weight, Jones and Richter say, but for families as a whole to begin making healthier choices at the grocery store, to become more active and to spend less time in sedentary activities like watching TV or playing computer games...

Sounds ok, right? Not so.

Recently I have been fuming at the videos Onision (a youtube comedian) has been making about rape and sexual assault. This video has truly angered me on every level:

Before I get into my reactions to the video I want to go over some brief points.

First off I am a survivor of sexual assault and domestic abuse. I did not report what had happened to me for various sound and valid reasons. For example, mentally I was incredibly unstable. It took me months to be able to socialize and to even be able to leave my sister's house. I could not be around any male, period. Due to that talking to a police officer was out of the question. Also, I new it would be his word against mine as I had no proof. He was very careful not to leave bruises and furthermore when he tried to kill me he did so by strangling me. This is not difficult to do as you simply have to take your thumb and push the person's esophagus over, which then blocks airflow to the lungs. If you are then able to restrain a person by say sitting on their chest, very few if any marks will be left. Truthfully, I do not think nor do I feel the need to explain my decision to not file a report. If certain people want to think I am selfish for wanting my life back and to be able to move on, then so be it.

Do I think or feel that I owe society by reporting what he did to me? No. If society really cared then in my state (Ohio) the laws would be more prone to helping survivors then hindering them.

Do I think or feel that I owe it to other women to report what he did to me? Honestly I am not sure. I recognize my own autonomy to have the right to live my life pursuing a state of eudaemonia. Reporting would have not allowed me that chance as I have no doubt it would have damaged me to a point that was beyond repair. On the other hand I would hate to know that something awful had happened to another person by his hand. In truth I may even feel partially responsible if anything ever did.

Obviously by not reporting I have placed myself in a moral grey area. However that was my choice and I stick by it as I have the right to make the choice for whatever reason I see fit. I had given serious thought to reporting after it was all said and done. I spoke at length with my sister who was a pre-law minor in Uni and a survivor herself, so somewhat an expert on the subject. This of course took a few weeks after I got out of the situation and had been living with her since I got out. To illustrate how bad I was at the time: she told me months after the fact that when I first walked in her door I was like a wild animal. I did not trust anyone or even my surroundings. I did not speak or do anything except watch teevee as reality was too much for me to deal with. At the time disappearing into the television and dealing with one thing at a time was my dime-store therapy. When she had male friends come over she would tell them to keep their hands where I could see them and to sit at the other end of the room.

(cross-posted from my blog, at http://gudbuytjane.wordpress.com/ )

Despite growing up being the weird artsy kid who played in punk bands and dropped science classes after grade nine, I have in recent years become a tremendous fan of science. Since then writers such as Ann Druyan and Eugenie Scott have engaged in me an awe and wonder at the beauty and complexity of existence and the degree to which we understand the workings of our universe. One field I find particularly fascinating is astronomy and space exploration (I highly recommend Dr. Pamela Gay's Astronomy Cast podcast for an example of how poetic and beautiful the discussion of science can be), because, to put it in my laypersons' vernacular, holy crap the universe is so freaking awesome, big, and old.

Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963.

On Monday it will be the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing . I am fascinated that we went to the moon when we did, and the complexity and danger that entailed (essentially putting three people in a tiny tin can and exploding a nuclear bomb's worth of energy under them to get out of Earth's orbit). Really, you probably have more computer power at your disposal as you read this blog entry than the Apollo astronauts did trying to land on a moving rock 350,000 km away.

Watching archival footage, however, it is clear the moon landing was the endeavor of white men . So, when people remind you of the Apollo landing on Monday, remind them of the the many women astronauts and cosmonauts who have traveled in space.

Valentina Tereshkova , the first woman in space, in 1963. Sadly, after Valentina it took twenty years for another woman to return, but since then the list has been growing. Mae Jemison , the first woman of colour in space. Ellen Ochoa , the first Hispanic woman in space. Roberta Bondar , the first Canadian woman in space. Svetlana Savitskaya , the first woman to walk in space. Chiaki Mukai , the first Asian woman in space. Judith Resnik and Christa McAuliffe , who died in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark , who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Yi So-Yeon , not only the first Korean woman in space, but the first Korean, regardless of gender! That's boldly going where no (Korean) man has gone before.

Women aren't just involved as astronauts, they are engineers, designers, and scientists. As we prepare to return , I am excited for a new generation of girls to be inspired , and to look up at the night sky and wonder if they could set foot our distant satellite.

Over at JPG, I came across an interesting photography project regarding Gender Roles in society, whether traditional or nontraditional. Photographers explain that "gender determines our destiny more than we may realize." Of course over here at Feministing, we are already aware of this.

Either way, it's worth a look; there's some really rad photos and interesting concepts.

By the way, I haven't been able to look at all of them, so there's chance some might be NSFW.

I am at the fabulous Allied Media Conference in Detroit, and are getting my brain bombarded by information, inspiration and getting a sense of all the amazing thing that people are doing around the country.

One of the workshops focused on sex trade, the history of $pread magazine and thoughts on selling sex. One of the shortcomings of the AMC is that sometimes one way of thinking about an issue become what is obviously acceptable, and any other discussion is self-censored.

nobody wants to be the asshole, of course, that says the unpopular thing, or draws negative attention to themselves. The dominant discourse I perceived during the sex trade workshop was that selling sex is a good thing, and that the media only tells stories of the "tragic prostitutes". I felt conflicted. On one side I believe women ( and any person really) should be able to make whatever choice they feel is good for them, as long as they are not being hurtful to others.

At the same time it seems that the empowerment that happens through sex trade is one that happens within a system of disempowerment, of bodies being objectified, of one person holding a disproportionate amount of power in the sex trade relationships. saying that sex trade is good just seems too simple. even for the people that choose to sell sex, how much of it is a choice, when selling sex is pretty much the only way to make a livable wage?

People close to me throughout my life have engaged in selling sex at different points of their lives and for different reasons, but it was never simple, and for all of them, something that was hard and often left them feeling not so great. it might be just because of the stigma against trading, that i do not know. 

someone also brought up how divisive sex trading is within the feminist community, and proposed that such division is mainly a fluff story overblown by the media. It seems people have different views and feelings about selling sex, which is ok, i think. what is vital is that people that sell sex, whether because of choice of not, are not stigmatized and made to feel like shit about it. 

I still think i can be doubtful that sex trade is empowering, and absolutely respect the people that do it, accept and support their choices, and also support a society where people have more choices, and do not have to engage in sex trading as the only feasible mean to feed themselves, or pay rent, or afford medical care, or care for their kids.

I have been working in the legal/compliance dept. of a small investment advising firm in Manhattan for two and a half years.  I began as a temp., then was offered a full-time position as a legal assistant.  In February, I asked for and received a promotion.  I've risen quickly, despite my incongruent educational bg (MS in Art History) and and work experience (mainly civil litigation).  I also founded the staff newsletter and serve as its Editor in Chief.  No one at my firm would dare call me lazy or stupid, but I still receive plenty of marginalizing and xenophobia, mainly for my creativity and especially because of my gender.  Here's a prime example...

Thursday was my first time sitting in an investment meeting. Naturally, I was stoked. Since I have zero to say about investment decisions (I just regulate), I thought to sit on the outskirts of the room rather than at the table. Another woman--the only other woman in the room--did the same, as she heads Client Services. In hindsight, we looked meek. From now on, I will always step up to the table like I belong. 

(Slightly different version x-posted at my pathetic, untitled blog on ning Yay shamless self-promotion!)

So, I've seen this issue brought up a couple of times on feministing, but I don't feel like I've seen a true 101 post about it, so here is my attempt at one.

I'm pro-choice.

Duh.

Most people usually only apply that term to choosing to have an abortion or give birth. Sometimes we include the choice of contraception. However, I think it is about time we start applying that term to women who do make the choice to give birth and the consequences of that.

Because, frankly, in our current maternity care system, once you make that choice to give birth, you are treated like an incubator. Not as a woman who can make rational decisions for herself and her future child, but as a thing who can't make decisions about their childbirth, can't prevent unneccesary interventions, and can't choose where they give birth. A thing to make money off of. A thing to get done with fast, no matter what the woman wants, instead of letting nature take its course.

I have just completed a 40 hour training course to become a Domestic Violence Counselor. And part of our 'homework' in this course was to share what we learn with our friends. So, my friends, here is a short summary of what I have learned:

28% of homes experience domestic violence. This number is probably lower than it actually is.

1 in 4 women will be or are in an abusive relationship.

45% of women and 75% of men who grow up in an abusive household will pass on the abuse in their adult relationships by either being abusive (battering) or having an abusive partner.

95% of batterers are men. The number of women batterers is on the rise.

A victim usually leaves the batterer 5-7 times before ze leaves the batterer for good. (so be patient with your friends!)

75% of women who are killed by intimate partners are killed in the first 24 hours after leaving them. It is the most dangerous time for victims.

The leading cause of death in pregnant or recently pregnant women is homicide. Battering usually increases and worsens during this period.

Substance abuse is involved in 61% of domestic violence cases, but is NOT the cause of a batterer's behavior (though it may make it worse.)

Domestically Violent relationships happen about equally across all races, all economic classes (though perhaps less physical abuse in circles of higher Edu.) all religious communities, and in straight and queer communities. This touches everyone .

Many people who are in abusive relationships do not recognize them as such. The abuse may take physical form in hitting, bumping, strangling, stalking, punching, neglect (with respect to food, medicine, and more) etc. It may be sexual abuse such as rape, groping and unwelcomed touches. It may be intellectual in the form of restricting what the victim reads, or what information is available to ze. It may be spiritual in the form of forcing or prohibiting the victim to/from attending certain religious services. It may be psychological or emotional, using 'crazy-making tactics'. It may be verbal in the form of obscenities, hurtful comments, and the like. It may be financial in the sense that the batterer controls all the finances and/assets.

And the list goes on.

The law only recognizes physical abuse as domestic violence.

Here are some reasons why it can be hard to leave:

the victim loves the batterer the victim has kids with the batterer the victim wants to avoid the stigma of divorce (which may be more severe in different cultures) they are financially unable to leave (the batterer has seized all her assets, or is her source of income) they feel isolated and without resources or options their family and community does not support them in leaving

Domestic Violence is about control. It follows what is known as "The Cycle of Violence." First, there is the honeymoon period where everything is great. Next, tension builds (victims and survivors often describe it as a period of 'walking on eggshells'.) Finally, it is broken with a period of violence. After, it returns to the honeymoon period. Basically, he beats you up, then buys you flowers. There is an interim period of building tension, and then he does it again.

As the batterer's career continues, the cycles become more and more frequent . This is why some abusive relationships may begin with cycles that last a year or more to complete, but then progress to a month, a week, a day... It is also why on batterer may beat one partner once a year, but beat his next partner once a month. This cycle is the BATTERER'S cycle, not the victim's.

Batterer's treatment has a 4% success rate. Get out and don't look back.

If you or someone you know is being battered (which may be any sort of abusive relationship, not just physically), please call or refer them to this DV hotline: 909-988-5559

Crossposted to my blog.

An observation on what ensues in every single feminist argument about porn:

At which point I have to wonder when feminism became all about letting men off the hook for being assholes.

A decent human being of normal intelligence can watch lots and lots of porn, and, upon finally discovering that actual sex is not entirely the same thing, can accept that without being a dick.  A decent human of normal intelligence can watch hentai rape porn without thinking that women mean yes when they say no. A decent human of normal intelligence isn't going to go around copying everything he sees on TV.

And I'm sorry, but the problem isn't porn. The problem is your asshole boyfriend.

I'm sorry, he's not a "nice normal guy" who just happened to get afflicted with TEH PORNZ. He's an asshole who just happens to watch porn. And he'd still be an asshole if we lived in a sad, boring society without porn.

Let's try putting the blame on the asshole rather than the naked chick.

Crossposted at WireTap Magazine

On its newest cover , Ms. Magazine, a feminist publication that focuses on women, politics and culture, has represented a white woman in the form of South Asian religious iconography. With several arms each managing different tasks, the image appropriates South Asian gods and goddesses, many of which are depicted with multiple arms to signify varying roles and omnipotence.

The cultural appropriation of South Asian culture has become an increasingly popular trend, one that is often met with little resistance by mainstream communities. After all, isn't it a kind of flattery to have one's culture utilized in advertising, picked up by celebrities and influencing mainstream popular culture?

Actually, no.

The problem with the commodification of culture in this careless manner is that it's dangerous for South Asian and diasporic communities – it presents South Asian culture as a complete, fragment-free, unified category. What we wind up with is more Orientalist perspectives circulating through movies, magazines and stores, more South Asians having to answer for an entire group of individuals about everything from food to yoga, and more ignoring national, gendered, class and sexual differences within the community.

Furthermore, the appropriation of culture is a small and insignificant step in the process of "having arrived" in society. Bindis may have been acceptable for Madonna and Gwen Stefani to wear, but South Asian women who have worn them in public have faced racist acts of violence in their communities as a result. An oversimplified understanding of culture has not done anything for a larger racial justice movement and has surely done nothing to stop the stereotyping of a community.

Being a high school student, a girl who dresses girly, a girl who loves shopping and a girl who keeps up her frame, there's no way she can be a feminist right? Well that's what I've been going through Sophomore year when I finally decided to openly admit I was interested in feminism and to look more in it. I found out about feminism by coming across Feministing in a search engine but being a Freshman, I was trying to hard to fit in and when the upper classmen in the computer lab class started making feminist jokes, I closed the site immediately out of fear of being made fun of.

In my freshman year, I built up a reputation by being pretty and being hot that my appearance and how guys viewed me was all that mattered (especially the upperclassmen guys). For some reason my teacher told me that I was selling myself short and that she wanted me to embrace my intelligence and to find myself as a person. So she gave me the book Colonize This . I looked at it and said, "It's my chance to probably actually understand where feminism is coming from and it's a book about women of color!" But of course I didn't show my excitement to my friends. I just acted like I was being forced to read it for summer credit and they bought it since as a freshman, I couldn't stand school. So I ended up using my free time in the summer to read the book and I fell in love with (I'm a Junior and I still haven't returned it to my teacher yet). That's when I really did get where my teacher was coming from. I was selling myself short by just focusing only on my appearance and not my mind.

With Nicolas Kristof's patronizing reporting of sex trafficking in non-Western countries, I should not be surprised that he would use this gender-"ized" scare tactic to draw attention to a legitimate public health risk. However, I think that the framing of the health risks is very poorly done. It reinforces a Freudian-style castration-complex kind of anxiety. It's as if this article is written solely for men and mothers of sons. If the problem is genital deformity in both sexes, then the problem is not that boys are becoming girls, which implicitly suggests that it is bad to be a girl. The problem is toxicity and its various effects on both sexes!

Not only that, but even "humans," which I assume includes "women," will beome "undervirilized."

"[Phthalates] probably are not harmful to us adults, but it is another story for children. In girls, some research suggests that phthalates may cause early onset puberty. Most vulnerable of all, it seems, are male fetuses in the first trimester of pregnancy, just as they are differentiating their sex. At that stage, scholars believe, phthalates may 'feminize' these boys.

“'Commonly used phthalates may undervirilize humans,' concluded a study by the University of Rochester. The study, which was small, based its conclusion, in part, on measurements of 'anogenital distance' — the distance between the anus and the genitals, which is typically twice as long for males as for females. Some scholars believe that shrinkage of this distance reflects 'feminization' of male anatomy."

Also, I have no idea where he gets the idea that these chemicals are not harmful to adults. Just this week, I read that a study of college students, who drank bottled water, containing BPA, found that the chemical stayed in the body eight times longer than scientists thought. I also read yesterday in Ms. Magazine that these chemicals are linked to different kinds of cancer.

This is a valid problem to raise, but framing it the way that Kristof does is unhelpful.

Just wanted to share. Somewhere between Thank-you-not-quite-Thursday-anymore, brilliant women, and activism.

The Guardian has an interview with Katherine Rake, who has lead the UK's Fawcett Society.

After the mandatory "oh look, she's a reasonable human being! Not an angry ugly bitch at all!" the interview turns really well. And make sure you get to the end.

The piece can be found here.

by Christie Turner, MARGARET Fund Fellow, 
National Women's Law Center

This post is part of a series about the nomination of Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

As NWLC Co-President Marcia Greenberger noted in her reflection on Monday, this week is a historic one for women--one in which we see only the third woman ever to sit before our Senators at a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. And Wednesday's testimony started to delve into that precise subject. 

As a recent law school graduate myself--and I attended a school that had a slightly larger percentage of women than men students--it was a bit hard for me to imagine that in our not-too-distant past women made up a small minority of law school students. And it was even harder to fathom that Justice Sandra O'Connor, graduating at the top of her class at Stanford Law, was repeatedly turned down from jobs and offered secretarial jobs instead. Sure we have made progress, but this confirmation process also reminds us that we cannot take it for granted nor assume that our work to achieve equality is complete. We still have, after all, only one female justice on the highest court in our nation. As Justice Ginsburg has recently noted, the image of an all male Court is not one that we want our nation, and particularly the next generation, to see: "Young women are going to think, 'Can I really aspire to that kind of post?'"

Soon, I hope, other young women and I will have both more reason to feel confident in our legal system, as well as more reason to be inspired that we too can reach great heights when we see a picture of next term's Supreme Court.

Yesterday while at the gym I was listening to NPR and I heard this story, about a rather new computer game, The Path.  I am not really a gamer but I did enjoy Myst back in the day and it sounded interesting so I googled it.  I read some reviews and then I ended up downloading the Prologue, which is their substitute for a free demo.  I liked it so a bought the game.  

Warning: Please don't go buy this game until you read some reviews and at least listen to the npr story.  The NPR story does mention rape as one of the hinted at themes of the game and although I don't think the interpretation is so literal if you think you might want to pass this up please do so.

One of the creators is a woman, Auriea Harvey,  it has female main characters and it does seem to have a point.  It is very beautiful and it has kept my attention.  I haven't finished it yet so if there are "surprises" please don't spoil it for me but I would like to here some opinions.  

Is anyone out there playing this game?  Do you think it is expressive or exploitative? 

Here's an article about my academic advisor at SMU, Dr. Victoria Lockwood, who is embarking upon two small islands near Tahiti to study domestic violence from an anthropological perspective.

vocab
cisgender: another word for gender conforming, or a person whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.
transgender: umbrella term for anyone whose gender expression or gender identity is not the same as the sex they were assigned at birth
transphobia: fear, hatred, or discomfort with people who are or appear to be transgender
trans man: a person who was assigned female sex at birth but feels more comfortable as a male
trans woman: a person who was assigned male sex at birth, but feels more comfortable as a female
genderqueer: a gender varient person whose gender identity is neither male or female, between genders, or some combination of genders

It was absolutely idiotic for Salon, a mainstream feminist-lite website, to post an article entitled 'The trans bathroom debate'. This 'debate' was manufactured by transphobic people and institutions who saw creating a panic about "men in women's bathrooms" as the best way to keep transgender people from being protected under hate crime and discrimination laws.

The fear tactic relies on the incorrect belief that trans women are men in disguise (correct belief: trans women are women) and giving trans people equal protection will allow these "men in disguise" to use women's restrooms. It often includes some lies about trans people being mentally unstable, sex offenders, or child molesters as well (the same rhetoric used to justify the persecution of gays and lesbians). Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that while trans women are not actually a risk to women, many cisgender men pose a very serious, even life threatening, risk to trans people. While I don't know any trans people who are sex offenders, I know a few guys who might punch a girl if they found out she was transgendered.

Instead of offering any sort of valuable critique or pointing out that basic rights ought not be debated, the article asks readers (most of whom are probably unfamiliar with what it means to be transgender) what they think about this issue (which impacts the transgendered people the readers probably don't know anything about). The question is framed: Are single-sex bathrooms prudish, antiquated and insensitive to trans people? Or are these spaces still necessary to protect the privacy of both genders? This is pretty stupid, considering we could just keep two bathrooms and make them inclusive and safe for trans people. Or, we could have all three- male, female, and gender neutral bathrooms. This isn't, and doesn't need to be a one-or-the-other, two genders or no genders situation. Salon fails by portraying it like this. And, Salon fails by talking about "both genders" (read: two. male and female.) in an article about issues surrounding other forms (read: could be more than two!) of gender expression.

So I wrote this letter a while back to the site, but I guess it would have been better if I just posted it here instead:

Okay, so I have been a faithful reader of your newsletter since Jane Magazine first put out an article highlighting you. I love everything about your site...except for this. My name is Michaela. I'm a feminist. And I'm a military wife to a soldier who is just completed a 15 month tour in Iraq. And while you guys do post every so often about what a lot of the active duty military women go through. (such as your articles about the rape cases, etc.) I don't see anything about the everyday things we as milspouses have to deal with. In some ways I understand, b/c you can't get to everyone. But in every post on this site, it seems like there's something for every one. Ever been called an angry black woman? There's Shark fu's musings. Sick of the being a latina and getting denied proper rights or healthcare, we gotcha! But I never see much about the blatant sexism that we as military significant others go through. Let me give you a little insight:

Once you marry a man in the military, you are pretty much looked at as one of two things. One, you are either, a lazy, fat, baby making slob who just sits home and collects her husbands checks on the 1st and the 15th or, you're a cheating whore, who screws your husbands best friend as soon as he leaves for deployment. Or you got married just for the benefits. I'm a young, educated, black female and I dont' know many times, in fact I've lost count, when I've talked to some of my husbands superiors, and they are absolutely shocked that I can put together a sentence.

The sexism doesn't stop there. It's as small as your ID card. In the military, we wives are referred to at all times as dependents, and our husbands are our "sponsors". It doesn't matter if we are the breadwinners in our families, to the military we are just another chick cashing in on her husbands pension. (This is something a lot of us milspouses hate as well.)

One thing I tend to have a lot of trouble with is now being a freshman and being a feminist. Why? When you go to a very conservative school like mine, you tend to have a lot of opposition.

I go to a white, Christian, conservative, small public school. You tend to stand out and be questioned when you don't have a purity ring - and if you don't have one you better already have your order in.

Sex is a no no. Sure, we joke about it all the time but you touch a boy...you're a slut. I realized in about early 7th grade that most people don't wait until marriage - and there is nothing wrong with that. At my school, you are supposed to feel ashamed. I've had quite a bit of experience with slut, whore, hoe, etc. What I've found the most effective is just NOT using those words. Also pointing out the guy in the equation.

ex."Well, I think he's had more girlfriends than she's had boyfriends...is he a slut too?" Most people realize quickly of the double standard.

If you think sex is taboo, I sure hope you aren't gay or bisexu