"I love feministing.com and always learn from it." Katha Pollitt, The Nation
"Many people need a morning "fix." For some, it's coffee. For others, it's "SportsCenter." For me, it's Feministing.com." Katie Stone, The Denver Post
"Feminism is fun again! Every bit as edifying as your women's studies books from college, but with a biting sense of humor that keeps things punchy, not preachy." Marie Claire, December 2006
For the low, low price of one dollar, you too can have a glowing free-floating fetus!
ABC News reported on a study in Minnesota showing that many women who had an abortion last year said they did because of the worsening economy. And this was the image to go along with it. Is it just me or is this the craziest weird-ass illustration ever?
I wanted to write a post about how annoyed I am about Midol's"Reverse the Curse" commercials. (Seriously, the curse?) But I couldn't turn up any videos on the damn internets. What I did find however, was this commercial from about 10 years ago that is a damn lot more progressive than the commercials the product has now.
It also fit very nicely into one of the double standards I talk about in my book (shameless plug alert!): "He's Angry, She's PMSing." Indeed.
So, dear readers, where are the cool progressive ads about women's health? Why are we stuck with curses and fish references? Please, if you find any cool, funny ads - send them my way!
Here's a charming one. Via Jezebel, we find out that the attorney for 26 year-old Kelsey Peterson - a 6th grade math teacher who plead guilty to raping her 12-year-old student - is blaming the victim by using racist stereotypes:
"I resent the term 'child.' You're baby-fying this kid. This kid is a Latino machismo teenager."
You know, so he was asking for it. Just disgusting.
So yeah, there’s sure a lot of work to do in this damn country if we really want to eradicate institutional sexism, racism, classism etc. Yeah, we’ve got major media bias and a real problem with corporate conglomerates owning everything and people being consumer-obsessed. We’re still involved in a deadly, unjust war and have a “big daddy” for a president.
BUT, I want to take this opportunity—the day before hot dogs and fireworks—to acknowledge that we also live in a country where a lot of shit is done really right, a country where there is a democratic process (though it doesn’t always run smoothly) where people can change laws, get help, fight injustice. A country this is constantly striving to be better, that is made up of incredible immigrant stories, that has been transformed by feminist movements in innuberable ways. Here are five things I thank America for. Please feel free to add your own:
1. Title IX
2. Eleanor Roosevelt
3. The freedom of the press
4. Roe vs. Wade
5. Hot apple pie with cold vanilla ice cream on top
Alternet has a piece up on insomnia in women (originally printed at Ms. magazine) that I found pretty interesting. I've actually suffered from horrible insomnia since I was a kid, and it was only recently (though the miracle of Melatonin) that I started sleeping through the night. I never knew how much getting a real night's sleep could change your life.
A couple of weeks ago, my apartment lock fell out in my hand. A little disconcerting, yes. Unsolvable, no. I looked up some local locksmiths online and gave a couple a call to compare prices. One guy, a bit gruff on the phone, promised me a low price and immediate help, so I invited him to send someone over.
The guy who came was nice, but what happened when he was done was not. First of all, he charged me three times the promised price (because they hadn’t understood the extent of the problem blah blah blah) and, what’s worse, said that his boss required me to pay in cash in full. Since I stopped dealing drugs a few years ago, I didn’t have $300 cash lying around, and ATMs give $200 total, so I asked if I could write some on a personal check. He said I should get in his car with him (PT Cruisher, sketchy friend in the passenger seat bumping bad music) and they would drive me to a bank. Um, yeah. I’m going to get in a car with two strangers and go wherever with my ATM card and absolutely no scruples.
When I refused he made me talk to his boss, who yelled at me on the phone:
Me: Is this your business practice—to make customers get in cars with strangers?
Him: Look bitch, we’re not making you do anything! You just have to pay in cash!
Mmm….finally I convinced them to let me pay part in cash, part with personal check. When they left, I have to admit that I closed my door, turned the lock, and cried a little. Not because they got me. I was proud I stood up for myself. But because I was so pissed that if my boyfriend had been home, the whole experience would have been different.
I hate that little things, like needing a new lock, turns into a shitty experience drenched in sexism. Dudes, I just wanted a lock and to be safe. Why does that make me a bitch? It is moments like these when my feminism is reconfirmed. If I didn’t have a switch in my head that turned on in moments like those, I think I would take it personally, feel stupid, maybe even let assholes abuse me. But because of feminism, I get mad, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, write a bad review online on SuperPages, and tell people about it.
No doubt you’ve heard more than you ever wanted to hear about how stress is bad for your health. Cortisol floods your system and breaks down your capacity to heal, be happy etc. Many call it the fight or flight system—that physiological reaction to our psychological scares.
But not enough of us are aware that there is also a calm and connection system, as Dr. Kerstin Uvnas Moberg, puts it. Reporters rarely tell us that, yes, stress is bad for you, but joy, pleasure, and passion are actually good for your health—both short and long term. She explains:
This calm and connection system is associated with trust and curiosity instead of fear, and with friendliness instead of anger. The heart and circulatory system slow down as the digestion fires up. When peace and calm prevail, we let our defenses down and instead become sensitive, open, and interested in others around us.
This system is jump started with oxytocin—an amazingly complex hormone that for years was thought to only be associated with childbirth and breastfeeding. In fact, it is released at all kinds of interesting moments, most associated with a sensual experience of pleasure. I like that.
So get out there, get calm and connect. In the long run, your immune system will be boosted, your capacity for memory and learning will be enhanced, and your risk of heart disease—the number one killer of women—will be reduced.
So, as you can see, we've temporarily brought the old site back. Here's the full story: We got recommended a host for the new site who is absolute shit. Even after we bought a very expensive dedicated server, they couldn't handle our traffic load. In addition, their support people are total jerks who actually suggested we Google instructions on how to make the server work. So, yeah, we're in the process of switching back to our old host and rebooting the new site this weekend. (Note to people looking for hosts: Don't go to HostGator. Ever.)
I brought the old site back in the meantime so we could get back to blogging as usual. Apologies a million times over for the craziness that was this week at Feministing. I promise we're doing everything we can to make sure when the new site comes back up, it will be kick ass.
Thanks to everyone for your support - I'm ready to cry in frustration over this nonsense, but the nice emails we've gotten have made it a lot better. So thanks...
While we're working furiously to get the site back up, please enjoy one of my fave YouTube finds - Jem as Le Tigre. Right now, it's the only thing that's cheering me up in the midst of our tech catastrophe.
So yeah, our new site crashed (either from some suspicious activity or because so many people signed up for new accounts). We'll be back up and running shortly; in the meantime we've put the old design up so there's not that annoying error page there. Apologies for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience!
Hey folks! Just want to give everyone a heads up - we're switching over to the new site tonight, so things may be a bit wonky until the morning. First thing tomorrow, I'll have a post up explaining the changes in the site and how to use it. In the meantime, thanks for your patience!
ICE raided a garment factory in Houston, and over 70 percent of those arrested were women.
The FDA chose not to approve Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, for women ages 27 to 45. This doesn't mean women those ages can't get it -- it just means your insurance is not likely to cover it.
Male members of Phoenix golf club are harassing those who protest the no-girls-allowed policy.
Actions and Events
The Hip Hop Culture Center in Harlem is holding Rapathon 3: The Female Takeover. The Rapathon is a 24-hour cipher that features over 100 rappers who rhyme non stop with no vulgarities.... Our objective this time is to amass over 100 female MC’s with hot lyrics, great energy, and stage presence... For more info, please contact Natassia Seward at 212-234-7171 or hiphopculturectr@aol.com
Today the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court injunction, allowing South Dakota's "informed consent" legislation to take effect. The legislation requires doctors to inform women seeking abortions that the procedure "ends a human life." Because, you know, women are stupid and are just getting abortions willy-nilly, without thinking about it much. We need to be told "the truth," because clearly no woman is aware that carrying a pregnancy to term is an option.
Last April, Sarah Blustain wrote about this case and other "informed consent" laws for the Prospect:
This line of thinking makes clear that women are too ignorant to realize that they are carrying some sort of nascent life in them, and too weak to possibly decide for themselves whether to have an abortion. Even worse, drafters of the South Dakota law do not think women are competent to state whether they have absorbed all of this helpful state information properly: The law would require the doctor to certify, in writing, that he "believes she [the pregnant woman] understands the information imparted."
"Informed consent is good," says Yale's Reva Siegel (who wrote about these issues with me in TAP last year), "but not if the only abortion decision the movement recognizes as 'informed' is the decision to carry a pregnancy to term; if this is the premise on which the regulation and litigation rests, then the law is premised on an offensive view of women seeking abortion -- weak and confused and failing to conform to their natural role as mothers -- and will function to pressure and intimidate those women."
Ugh. The case is now headed back to the lower court.
There's a really interesting story in the New York Times about sworn virgins in Albania, a custom that's said to have declined because of an increase in gender equality:
The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the family patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely.
They dressed like men and spent their lives in the company of other men, even though most kept their female given names. They were not ridiculed, but accepted in public life, even adulated. For some the choice was a way for a woman to assert her autonomy or to avoid an arranged marriage.
“Stripping off their sexuality by pledging to remain virgins was a way for these women in a male-dominated, segregated society to engage in public life,” said Linda Gusia, a professor of gender studies at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo. “It was about surviving in a world where men rule.”
It’s an interesting look at the fluidity of gender butting up against the rigidness of gender roles — while it’s possible for people born as women to “cross over” and live as men (and be totally socially accepted and understood as men), the only way they can do that is to fully embrace traditional gender roles.
