March 2005 Archives

Never been quite the fan of Slate’s advice column Dear Prudence, but this latest bit of crap really got to me.

A 22-year-old lesbian wrote in asking about appropriate levels of public displays of affection, stemming from frequent arguments with her mother. One of her mother’s concerns was that her daughter and girlfriend were “inviting trouble, perhaps even physical trouble.”

Check out Prudie’s response:

Dear Polite,
Prudie's opinion about the ongoing head-butting is that anybody's PDA (hetero and gay) should be within the bounds of restraint. Handholding in public is fine, necking is not. (For everyone.) A spontaneous expression of love—a brief one—is fine if it's not for effect and there would be no consequences … for example, if you're in an environment known to be homophobic, you would be asking for trouble. If you know someone who might be discomfited by seeing two girls display physicality, skip it. As the erudite Roger Rosenblatt has written, "If you find yourself making accommodations, that does not make you a hotel." In this case, it just makes you thoughtful.

Um, what the fuck?

Under Prudie’s oh-so-PC veneer of “necking isn’t cool for anyone,” is a really disturbing message: it’s your fault if you’re a victim of violence based on your sexual orientation. Yeah, yeah…she said if “you’re in an environment known to be homophobic.” But the last time I checked, pretty much the whole fucking country is known to be homophobic. Are there any completely safe spaces to be gay?

Not to mention, her advice sounds way too similar to the common (bullshit) argument that sexual assault victims were “asking for it” by wearing certain clothes or walking alone late at night. But I doubt Prudie would ever write that…much easier to blame the victim when they’re gay.

On a smaller scale of annoyance: the advice to forego physical affection in front of someone who “might be discomfited” by it is pure shit.

Rant over. Whew.

Back in my Women's Studies undergrad, I remember reading about a group of women who formed an alliance in India to fight sex offenders on gender divided trains. I guess at the time there had been a lot of men breaking into the women's cars and engaging in acts of sexual violence. Not only did these women form a group, but they armed themselves with bats and when the men would break in, they would beat the crap out of them! Aight.

Following in this tradition, the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India just created the first the Tamil Nadu Special Forces Fifth Battalion: the world’s first all-female battalion.

Ms. Magazine reports:

Tamil Nadu has always been progressive regarding women, electing the first female chief minister (a state chief minister holds the power of a U.S. state governor). It boasts the first women’s university, first women’s engineering college, first female-staffed police station, first all-female police commando company, and now the first women’s special-forces police battalion.

Historically, women were allowed in police forces, but they were usually relegated to administrative positions. India’s first elected female chief minister, J. Jayalalitha believes that if 1/2 the population is women, then perhaps the police force should not only be representative of that, but sensitive to the needs of crimes against women. Prior to the creation of women's battalion, Jayalalitha had created the All Women's Police Station (AWPS), which were staffed by about 15 women, trained in crimes against women.

AWPS has been extremely successful.

Today, there are 188 AWPS, one in each Tamil Nadu district, along with two toll-free help lines — Woman in Distress and Child in Distress — through which anonymous complaints are pursued at the same priority level as regular complaints. The result: a 23 percent increase in reporting of crimes against women and children — and a higher conviction rate. Several other states have started pilot AWPS.

Finally, Kalpana Nayak, battalion commandant says, that “policewomen are equally motivated and fit to be on a par with their male counterparts. Before this program, the male-female ratio was 42 to one; it’s now 12 to one [85,000 men, 7,000 women], the highest in India.”

Following a historical legacy of warrior women in India, this is pretty rad. I definately support large groups of women trained to defend the needs of other women.

Not long ago, the Boston Globe featured an article, Step off, about "the objectification of black women -- both visually and lyrically --" in contemporary rap music and videos. Old news, right? Not so fast. Apparently, "as this years-old aesthetic reaches a crescendo, a rumble of complaint is emerging from black men and women."

As the article reports, students at Spelman College in Atlanta organized a protest of a campus fund-raiser by Nelly after getting a look at his ''Tip Drill" video, which shows the rapper sweeping a credit card down a black woman's buttocks. In January, Essence began a "Take Back the Music" campaign that was initially scheduled to last a year, but it will now ''go on until we see change." The magazine featured stories on the subject in its January and March issues, spearheaded a national weeklong campaign to write letters of complaint to programming directors at BET, MTV, and Fuse, and, last month, held a packed town hall meeting at Spelman to discuss the subject with six panelists, including representatives of BET and of TVT Records, the Atlanta-based home of hit crunk acts the Ying Yang Twins and Lil Jon. Next month the issue takes on a scholarly tone when the University of Chicago brings in more than 1,000 people to a three-day conference where professors, artists, and activists will talk about feminism's place in hip-hop.

And (though not mentioned in the article), let's not forget Sarah Jones.

The author of the article was careful to point out that these campaigns are not about indecency, but are a legitimate fight against (and examination of) the intersection of racism and sexism in our culture.

''While there's sexism out there in society," says Cathy J. Cohen, director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, "we have to be especially concerned with media images [of black women] because, in fact, that's how most people understand and interact with black communities. We live in a segregated society. People generally don't interact." And, the potential political implications are huge. ''Hypersexual deviance," says Tricia Rose, author of the seminal 2003 book on black women's sexuality Longing to Tell "has been associated with black women historically for a very long time. It's tied to the logic that cuts welfare policies for black women, right? The idea that they're promiscuous, they're irresponsible, or they're emasculating -- all of those kinds of representations impact policies."

Thank god people are rallying around these issues. Anyone still want to claim that "feminism is only for white women" or that "feminism is dead"?

Not really a choice I’d like to make. And certainly not one I should have to make.

But that’s exactly the “choice” that was given to Debora Hobbs of North Carolina when her boss found out that she was living with her boyfriend.

A former sheriff’s dispatcher, Hobbs was told by her employer “to get married, move out, or find another job,” supposedly because of the state’s law against cohabitation. Cause those who live in sin don’t really have the time for work.

Hobbs quit last May, and luckily got the ACLU on the case. Jennifer Rudinger, Executive Director of the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation, said that “the government has no business meddling in the private relationships of consenting adults.”

I agree, but it hasn’t exactly been the precedent set as of late. Just look at Bush’s marriage promotion programs for women on welfare. Who needs a job when you have a man? Ugh.

Clearly this specific case is just about some guy using a decrepit law to justify his blatant discrimination, and it probably won’t hold up in court. But taken in context with all the other crazy misogynist shit that’s been happening, it’s not something that should be dismissed too quickly.

Via Pandagon.

According to the New York Observer, tensions between Ms. Editor in Chief Elaine Lafferty and the magazine’s owner and publisher, the Feminist Majority Foundation, led to Lafferty’s recent resignation. Hmm…

Lafferty announces her resignation in the latest issue of Ms., due to hit newsstands this week, saying “in the last two years, I believe Ms. has been lively, provocative, thoughtful, and a fierce feminist example of advocacy journalism at its best…I wish the magazine’s owners all the best as they move forward with the kind of publication they envision.”

President of Feminist Majority Eleanor Smeal said of the resignation, “She resigned and that’s where it is. Change is constant and we know that, and we thought it had to happen at this stage, and we’re now onto another stage.” Sounds like she’s real broken up.

Apparently the main dispute was over control over content and the overall vision of the magazine. Lafferty said that the Feminist Majority Foundation “did not suggest any particular demographic or vision, other than very political and very narrow in their definition of a feminist… My vision of Ms. was that it would be a thinking woman’s magazine—a feminist magazine for sure, but my vision of feminism is a big…As the original Ms. was; they didn’t check membership cards at the door. I don’t believe in dogma, in exclusion or rhetoric. I thought it could be a magazine that invites women into the conversation about how we live today.” Wow…

Infighting and politics is certainly nothing new over at Ms.; they’ve gone through numerous owners, publishers and editors. But this recent debacle brings up an important question: can an activist organization with a specific political strategy successfully manage a magazine? Now, clearly Ms. is a feminist publication with a strategy of its own, but does that mean that it should compromise editorial control for (perhaps) more limited organizational goals? Any thoughts?

Definitely check out the whole piece, it gives an interesting inside look at this recent controversy, as well as some background on the mag that you may not have heard before.

Make sure to check out this piece from The Chicago Tribune, Plan B for pharmacists.

A snippet:

To dwell on the intricacies of the law is to lose sight of a larger point. Turning customers away is bad for business. Pharmacies are in business to sell drugs. It's not good enough to tell a customer to call back tomorrow when a different pharmacist is on duty, or just go somewhere else. That may be relatively easy in a big city, albeit a good way to lose that customer's repeat business. But in some rural areas, the next pharmacy isn't a few blocks away, but many miles.

...Pharmacists must be free to exercise their professional judgment.
Good business practice dictates that employees' moral qualms cannot be ignored. But in respecting one set of concerns, pharmacy owners need to make sure another doesn't get trampled.

Firstly, if you haven’t already seen NARAL’s new flash film, “You’ve come a long way baby! But how much farther do you still have to go?” go check it out...very nice stuff.

And then when you realize how much work still needs to be done, go and take action against the assholes who want to keep women from obtaining birth control and emergency contraception.

As you well know, in as many as 20 states pharmacies can refuse to fill women’s prescriptions for contraception. You know shit is getting ridiculous when you need a cop to help you get your BC pills.

So to take on this craziness, NARAL Pro-Choice America is telling the nation’s biggest pharmacies (Wal-Mart, CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens, and Eckerd) not to stand between a woman, her physician, and her reproductive health choices. Send a letter now!

The Supreme Court ruled today that Title IX not only protects against discrimination, but also protects people from retaliation. Yay!

It was a close one, with a 5-4 vote.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that “reporting incidents of discrimination is integral to Title IX enforcement and would be discouraged if retaliation against those who report went unpunished,” and that if there weren’t protections against retaliation, “individuals who witness discrimination would be loathe to report it, and all manner of Title IX violations might go unremedied as a result.”

The not-so-surprising dissenting judges, Justices Thomas, Rehnquist, Scalia and Kennedy argued that “retaliatory conduct is not discrimination on the basis of sex.” I call bullshit.

The ruling came from a case brought by a girls’ high school basketball coach in Alabama who after complaining about unequal treatment and funding lost his coaching position.

A program in Alaska which trains women in the construction trades just received an award from the US Dept. of Labor. (Now if we could only get them to continue reporting on women’s wages...but that’s a gripe for another day.)

Alaska Works Partnership Inc. received the 2004 Exemplary Public Interest Contributions Award from the DOL for efforts to promote equal-employment opportunities:

The program began in summer 2003 with a program that included 15 women. For five weeks, they were given hands-on experience and exposure to various construction trades, including operating, electrical, plumbing, pipe fitting, sheet metal and carpentry.

...Beginning later this spring, the program will conduct training in Anchorage. Fifty-one women attended the first orientation for the Anchorage program. Another 41 are expected this week for a second orientation.

Love it. Nontraditional employment for women is something that isn’t often discussed in feminism, but it’s a necessary workplace issue. Construction and other nontrad jobs pay great money and have flexible schedules, but women are often steered away from them.

Check out Legal Momentum’s Women Rebuild Program and Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) for more.

I was going to write about yesterday's wage gap story, but Amanda and Sheezlebub have already done an amazing job...I'm not into reinventing the wheel.

I've got to say though, as soon as I saw the headline, College-educated white women earning less, I knew the piece was going to piss me off. Why report on institutional sexism when you can just try and create competition among women?

According to ProudParenting.com, the conscience clause laws that pharmacists have been using to deny women birth control and emergency contraception prescriptions could also be used by doctors to refuse treatment to gay and lesbian patients. Looks like these laws are just chock full of discrimination. Jeez.

The ProudParenting piece specifically discusses Michigan’s law, which Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) notes “doesn't ban discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.” The legislation prohibits racial discrimination.

This isn't the first law as of late that discriminates against more than who it was intended for. Are these overlaps simply disturbing coincidences? Or is creating legislation that can be used against all kinds of us crazy "sinners" a deliberate strategy? Yes, perhaps slightly paranoid...

Via Lab Kat

So after a lot of thought (and talking through what exactly constitutes "selling out...") we've decided to take ads on the site.

As traffic has increased for Feministing, we've had to upgrade numerous times and it's all out-of-pocket costs. We're hoping that taking on ads will let us continue the site without going totally broke!

So if you want an ad up, or know someone who might, we would really appreciate the support! (And frankly, they're not very expensive....)

The ever-classy lad magazine Maxim is “pranking” the Bush twins in the April issue by featuring a heavily doctored photograph of the twins in lingerie. The faces are theirs, the bodies…not so much.

Now, I hate Bush as much as the next feminist and I’m not exactly a fan of the twins either. But “pranking” Jenna and Barbara this way seems more like total humiliation than a harmless jab. (Did they take a cue from She's All That? I wonder...)

Should the Bush twins decide to bare all themselves, I'd be fine with it; but Maxim ripping their clothes off (i.e. doctoring a bunch of photos) is just plain degrading.

And this is a minor point, but the cultural fetishism of twins and sisters has got to stop, too. Hello, it’s frigging incest!? Actually, Shari Waxman did a piece for Salon on the twin fetish via that gross Coors advertisement a while back…good stuff.

Any thoughts?

Contributed by Jess Wakeman

Dads and Daughters, a national nonprofit org committed to providing "tools to men to be better fathers and advocates for their daughters," just put out a great action alert: Get the White House to Value Achievement Over Looks in Female Officials.

The "Dads" are justifiably pissed that in discussing the appointment of Dina Powell to Assistant Secretary of State for Education and Cultural Affairs, White chief of staff Andrew Card and budget director Joshua Bolton essentially focused on how cute she was.

So they want Dads across the country to send a letter to Pres. Bush; here's my favorite part of their sample message:

The first words that your chief of staff, Andrew Card, used to describe Ms. Powell were “extremely attractive.” Before articulating Ms. Powell’s numerous achievements, your budget director Joshua B. Bolten described her as “young, attractive.”

We doubt that you or your staff ever promoted a senior male appointee because he was “extremely attractive.” Such a double standard seems to reveal ignorance of an essential truth: a person’s value is in what she can think and accomplish, not in how she looks.

Thanks to Rebel Dad for the link.

Make sure to check out this article on Speak Out: I Had an Abortion, by none other than our fab contributor Jessica Wakeman.

The film--by Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich (above)--features women talking about their experiences with abortion, in part to end the bullshit stigma surrounding the procedure.

Also read Karen Rosenberg's take at Alternet.

Similar to Phill Kline’s nonsense in Kansas, Attorney General Steve Carter in Indiana is seeking women’s private’s medical records to look for “evidence of abuse.” Yeah, sure.

Luckily, pro-choice forces are coming out to fight against this obvious privacy violation (and not so obvious anti-choice maneuver).

What makes me crazy though is those who would fools themselves into thinking that this search is really about protecting women. All I need to know about this one column defending Carter’s actions is that the author put the phrase ‘protecting privacy’ in quotes. Cause, you know...privacy isn’t a real right or anything....

Now let's let her rest. Just a quick update on the Schiavo case, her family has asked for protesters to chill. Also, Jeb Bush is saying that he can do no more, because he cannot violate a court order. This is after the Florida Supreme Court denied both his petitions: 1) To make Ms. Schiavo a ward of the state, and 2) to have her feeding tube reconnected. But clearly, this was not really about Terry Schiavo.

What do you think? Was this a political move and ultimately will this actually help good ole' Jeby and Georgey?

As many of you know, sex trafficking has been an ongoing problem throughout much of the world. Recently, Asmita Women's Publication Group conducted a study that found at least 17,000 Nepalese women forced into prostitution in four of India's major cities.

In an effort to combat this, the US has demanded that India make dramatic changes in its attempts at curbing the trafficking of sex workers. If India fails to comply they will be subject to economic sanctions in June.
An article in Hindustan Times reads:
Ministry sources said US Ambassador to India David Mulford met Home Minister Shivraj Patil over a week ago and conveyed to him that under the US's Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act, India's position could be downgraded for not doing enough to curb trafficking. If this happens, the US will be bound to vote against loans to India from international financial institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank.

An article on CNN reports that three times more women then men were killed by the tsunami on December 26th, 2004. As a result, there have been many reports of rape and forced marriage upon the female victims of the tsunami. The male to female ratio in Indonesia is currently 10-1 and it appears that 80% of the victims were women. A report done by Oxfam International, a British based charity, stated that the reason for the disproportionate number of victims was due to difficulty outrunning the waves or because they were at home and the men were out on the field.

The article states,
As a result, men now far outnumber women in crowded camps and scattered settlements where they are vulnerable to a range of abuses, the report said.

Indonesian women, according to Oxfam and women activists, are being sexually harassed in camps, forced or rushed into marrying much older men and victimized by abusive Indonesian soldiers who reportedly have strip searched them.

There aren't too many official stats at this point, but Becky Buel, Oxfam's policy director says that this will be a problem for years to come, unless the international community and aid efforts focus and address this problem immediately.

South Dakota Governer Michael Rounds signed four intensely anti-abortion laws last week that will seriously restrict a women's right to choose.
Ms Magazine reports, the four Bills include:

*The first requires doctors to inform women who seek an abortion that they will be terminating the life of “a whole, separate, unique, living human being” with which the woman has “an existing relationship."

*The final bill signed creates a state task force intended to study the history of abortion since it became a constitutionally protected right in 1973.

This is wonderful, really wonderful.

The overly publicized case of Terri Schiavo has become the new face/case to truly highlight the extent to which right to life religious fundies will go to prove a point. We get the message(albeit wack), Ms. Schiavo should be granted the right to life, but at what cost. This woman has been suffering for fifteen years and for the purposes of some inequitable political agenda or the "culture of life," must suffer more.

It is important to note that her parents have been spearheading this issue and as reported in the NYT yesterday,
[They] have been backed by an ad hoc coalition of Catholic and evangelical lobbyists, street organizers and legal advisers like the Rev. Frank Pavone, the Catholic priest who runs a group called Priests for Life and evangelical Protestants like Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, and the Rev. Pat Mahoney of the National Clergy Council.This is a pretty scary alliance. The article goes on to talk of how this alliance has extended to "promoting sexual abstinence education and opposing stem-cell research and euthanasia." Hello, SCARY!
This case has been voted down by Congress and is back in State courts, but as said in another NYT article,
At times this week, it almost seemed as if the Bush brothers were working in tandem; the governor's decision to re-enter the case once the White House had dropped it in the face of repeated judicial rebuffs may have saved the president criticism from the right.

Shocker. I know this issue has been going on for a while and getting way too much publicity, but we gotta pay attention. Many folks have argued that this is not in fact a political move on behalf of Jeb Bush, but that he actually cares. Sorry, the evidence is pretty clear.

Also check out this column about it in NYT by Maureen Dowd. She points out how awesome it is that we are warring in Iraq with fear of religious fundamentalists detering democracy, when, well...you get it!

I recently heard American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino's new song, "Baby Mama", and was curious to find out what kind of press it was getting.

Barrino won the ridiculously popular karaoke contest last year, and felt it was appropriate to give single mothers -- like herself -- their own personal anthem in her new album, Free Yourself. Yet the song, while quickly climbing up the Billboard R&B chart, has (unsurprisingly) received more criticism than praise.

For example, this article in USA Today scrutinizes the song. The author gives numerous statistics on single-parent households as her proof, claiming that the media shouldn't be portraying a woman's "poor choice" as a "badge of honor." (In the song, Fantasia says single mothers should have one.)

The song brings up a number of different issues that many single mothers have to deal with, including the shittiness of the welfare system and struggles with employment. I may just be a sucker, but I started tearing up when I heard the song for the first time. Single mothers are stigmatized enough as deviants, continuously shamed for their own "poor choices" and blamed for their economic struggle. The general theme of the song seems to totally subvert that idea. To me, this song is quite due.

Thoughts?

You must check out this awesome analysis by Legal Momentum of George Bush's potential Supreme Court nominees. The introduction of the report, "The Future of the Supreme Court", was written by president Kathy Rodgers, who gets the reader pumped before the good stuff:

"We need a massive public awareness effort to build the grassroots support to defeat ideologically motivated nominees. Our fundamental rights are at stake. We must be as determined as the opposition. But together, we can do it."

Word.

While the FDA stalls on making a decision of whether emergency contraception should be made available without a prescription, New Jersey has joined the short but increasing list of states that require hospitals to offer EC to rape victims. Good job, Jers!

The five other states -- New York, California, Washington, New Mexico and Illinois -- have had the requirement for all hospitals to, at the very least, offer information about EC and tell them where they can obtain it, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer (subscription). Colorado has just passed a similar bill as well, but needs to be signed by the governor.

The Department of Justice has actually been getting quite a lot of shit for omitting EC from the national protocol for treating sexual assault victims. A 141-page protocol was released in September after three years of work, but with not one reference of the method. Only four months later, a letter was sent out from a coalition of medical and advocacy groups requesting a correction for the “glaring omission.” The department hasn’t responded as of yet.

I guess we’ll just have to sit and wait on that one as well, won’t we. Sigh.

The new BUST magazine is out...How I love Amy Sedaris. And the interview is done by Maya Rudolph! I think I just messed my panties.

You would think it couldn’t get much better than having the lovely Ms. Sedaris in the mag, but it does. They have fucking Francine Pascal of Sweet Valley High fame featured as well. Love it.

Ok, but back to Amy Sedaris. Quick story: my boyfriend and I totally sat next to her at a restaurant in Woodstock, NY. The waitstaff—generally unimpressed by celebs cause Liv Tyler, Uma and Ethan (pre-breakup) and the like all have houses in the area—were completely freaking out that she was there. It was genius.

Last month, Feministing reported that a lower-than-low Ohio lawyer was trying to get his client out of domestic violence charges by using the state’s gay marriage ban. He argued that his client, who was not married to the victim, “cannot be charged with the felony because domestic violence charges should be reserved for married couples under the state's law defining marriage.”

I never really thought this argument would stick, but it seems that Judge Stuart Friedman—who ruled yesterday that domestic violence charges cannot be filed against unmarried people—found it compelling enough to screw unmarried women across the state:

Judges and others across the country have been waiting for a ruling on how the gay marriage ban, among the nation's broadest, would affect Ohio's 25-year-old domestic violence law, which previously wasn't limited to married people.

…Before the amendment, courts applied the domestic violence law by defining a family as including an unmarried couple living together as would a husband and wife, the judge said. The gay marriage amendment no longer allows that.

Un-fucking-believable.

I would say more, but I think Media Girl’s analysis sums up my sentiments exactly:

At least the battered unmarried women of Ohio can find solace in the fact that their suffering is for the noble cause of preventing gays from marrying. Here's to black eyes against gays. Here's to broken ribs to support heterosexuality. Here's to rape in the name of straight pride.

In the recent Salon.com article, “Adventures in the skin trade,” Priya Jain reviews The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, a book by Nina Hartley, and raises the age old feminist question: “Does pornography empower or degrade women who appear in it?”

I really appreciated this article – I am glad it was written and I think it does a fairly good job of identifying the insanely complex issues involved. Read it, in entirety. And when you do, consider the following, and then comment. I’d love to know your thoughts.

Jain talks about “the sort of mantra for pro-porn feminists everywhere”: “if I want to have sex on camera, who are you to stop me? My body, my choice, damn it!” She then raises a “gut-wrenching story” of a porn actress who was raped on the set “while the crew watche[d] in complicity” and continued filming.

Jain admits to being unable to reconcile these intense discrepancies, and reports that Hartley, and the women featured in the book, can’t either. She tries to find the positive and writes, “if the porn industry had been shut down, we…wouldn't have had the wonderfully sex-positive stars like Hartley, Seka and Sprinkle, all of whom found a form of expression that provided more than just a job, and a fulfilling life.”

Now, I haven’t read the book, but I have read a ton of theory on this and there are some things not mentioned which I think are interesting parts of the debate:

1) In our culture, sex is often used as an oppressive force. Women are the overwhelming victims of rape, incest, sexual harassment, genital mutilation, etc. When we, as women, support commoditized images of women being “fucked” and dominated (as is common in porn), are we allowing the women as fuck-ee, men as fuck-er paradigm to flourish?

2) Legal protection of pornography is premised on the idea that some level of social equality exists among the actors involved – that there is agency, free will, and liberty being exercised. But when we know that equality between the sexes doesn’t exist, can we really say that women are “freely choosing” this lifestyle? What about economic hardship that puts them there?

3) Is the ultimate goal for women to be empowered or equal, or for women to be happy? If women enjoy having sex for money, or if they enjoy the money it makes them/the status is gives them, should we deny them that?

This stuff comes from MacKinnon and Robin West. There is a lot out there on this topic and I think it’s essential for women to consider. Let me know what you think…

From the Chicago Tribune:

Nearly 100 people held a peaceful protest at lunchtime Tuesday outside a Loop drugstore where a pharmacist has refused to fill prescriptions for birth-control pills.

In a scenario reminiscent of the 1960s, protesters chanted, "What do we want? Access! When do we want it? Now!" and carried placards reading, "Your religion does not belong in my health care."

Check out the whole article...these conscience clause laws are unbelievable. When your pharmacist can tell you that you're "killing babies" when you try to get emergency contraception, something is seriously fucked up.

Check out this editorial from The Capital Times, Shameful women. Yeah, I know it's kind of old. But I don't care, read it anyway; take a look at the first bit:

Ellen Sauerbrey, Patricia Brister, Susan Hirschmann, Janet Parshall - are you familiar with these leaders in the women's movement?

Don't worry, neither is anyone else - because the foursome have absolutely no experience working for women's rights.

Nice...

Oh please. Columnist Kathryn Lopez (who is coincidently also an editor of the National Review Online) would have us believe that W does, in fact, stand for women.

However, Lopez doesn't really posit an argument for the validity of Bush's barf-inducing campaign slogan as much as she scoffs at those who would question it (including Feministing's parody). Apparently she also thinks the biggest problem facing women is cloning. That's right, cloning. See, so W really does stand for women, cause he wants to ban cloning!

I don't know what the frigging point of this article was...even her hook is a little late. I mean shit girl, the campaign is over. The fact that you're still trying to convince women that Bush is good for us tells me all I need to know!

I guess the abstinence-promoting clothing company Wait Wear didn’t hear the latest news about virginity pledges.

So really, shouldn’t that pink shirt say “Virginity Lane: Enter when married; until then take the back road”?

Via Nerve.

The Education Department has just made it easier for schools to meet Title IX regulations.

Currently, schools that receive federal financing must demonstrate their compliance with Title IX by either: (1) showing that the proportion of female athletes is comparable to the number of women in the student body; (2) proving that their sports programs for women is growing; or (3) demonstrating that their women's sports program "fully and effectively" meets the interests of female students.

Well, now, the NY Times explains that: "Under the new clarification, colleges can demonstrate that they are satisfying the demand for women's sports by taking an online survey showing that female students have no unmet sports interests. The Education Department says they may use e-mail to notify students of the survey...But, the department said, even if the nonresponse rate is high, nonresponse will be interpreted as a lack of interest."

While the Education Department claims that the change does not weaken the law's requirements, they are facing *a lot* of disagreement.

Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, explains that: "The new guidance changes the whole landscape. It's like you have three ways to comply, and first is to really comply by giving equal opportunities, and the second way is to keep trying, and the third way is to call your mother every week and tell her you love women's sports. They've made the third test so easy to comply with and so undemanding, and then set up the presumption that if you do the window-dressing efforts they call for, the government will presume you are in compliance and not investigate." (sigh).

For more analysis from NWLC, click here. And check out Ms. Musing's What's Up With Title IX?

This is just too upsetting:

When she learned that she was carrying a baby with almost no brain and no chance of survival, a devastated young Navy wife from Everett pleaded with a federal court in Seattle to force her military medical program to pay for an abortion...

She won her case and had the abortion. But more than two years later, the federal government continues to fight her, trying to get the woman and her sailor husband to pay back the $3,000 the procedure cost and trying to cast in stone a ban on government-funded abortions.

The government is doing no more than using this woman’s tragedy as a way to enforce a larger anti-choice agenda; it’s totally reprehensible.

Apparently this is being seen as a bit of a “sleeper case,” no one is paying attention now but when it hits it’s going to be huge--so make sure to check out the whole article.

Not exactly a holiday, but Back Up Your Birth Control Day is a damn good time to raise awareness about emergency contraception (EC).

At a time when EC availability is so tenuous—with these bullshit conscience clause laws and Bush’s overall rollback of repro rights—we need to ensure that this safe, effective method of back-up birth control is fought for.

This year especially, with the FDA still stalling on making EC available over-the-counter, we need to take action.

Some things you can do:

Encourage your local pharmacy to stock EC – send thank you letters to those who do and let those that don’t know that they’ll lose your business.

Create a resource guide for your community, listing area pharmacies that stock EC.

Click here for more ideas for action.

The Associated Press reports that a Harvard librarian has brought race and sex discrimination charges against the University, claiming that she has been repeatedly passed over for promotion because “she is black and is perceived as just a ‘pretty girl’ whose attire was too ‘sexy.’”

Since completing her MA in library science in 1999 (she also has a master's degree in English literature and seven years of experience in the library of Boston College), Desiree Goodwin says she’s been rejected for 16 jobs at Harvard:

“I feel no matter how much education I achieved or how many contributions I made, there was nothing I could possibly do that would impress them so that they would open the door for me to allow me to advance,” Goodwin said during a court recess.

She said she was shocked when, in late 2001, her supervisor told her she would never be promoted at Harvard. In court documents, Goodwin said her supervisor told her she was “a joke” at the university's main library, where she “was seen merely as a pretty girl who wore sexy outfits, low cut blouses, and tight pants.”

Multiple degrees be damned…wear a low cut shirt and you’re just a “joke.” Lovely.

The pervasiveness of feminist backlash never ceases to amaze me. Apparently men in Mexico are planning a rally to “demand their rights.” Ok…what rights are those? I’m game…

Lorenzo da Firenze and his followers, a group called the Masculine Circle, say the arrival of feminism is making wimps out of the modern Mexican man. They are calling for the men of Mexico City to take to the streets…

“It's time to stop the belligerent stand women have taken against men,” says da Firenze...

Firstly, I’m not going even to touch the “Masculine Circle” thing…it’s just too easy. I just like how this guy’s version of standing up for men’s rights has nothing to do with elevating men in some way and everything to do with putting women “back in their place.”

But wait, it gets better:

…da Firenze insists that men are the victims. “The Feminist Conspiracy” is the title of his latest book, which he hopes will lay the foundation for a movement to reclaim men's rights. Subtitled “Encyclopedia of the Third World War: Women Attack Men,” the cover features a series of female figures with the heads of animals, including snakes and alligators.

Oh my god. I want a cool animal head!

But da Firenze’s talents don’t stop at the Doctor Moreau-like fantasies of a worldwide gender war. He also has the amazing ability to explain violence against women…

“Why are women so quick to (unleash) verbal and psychological violence on men?” he said. “When a woman goes to trial and tells the jury her husband hit her, O.K., what came before that? It's what we would classify as female verbal violence.”

Hear that ladies? If you don’t want to get hit, you just shouldn’t talk—it’s as simple as that!

Luckily, this total nutjob isn’t being taken very seriously by the lady-folks over in Mexico. I love the response of Angeles Mendoza from Mexico City when asked about men trying to get back their rights: “It sounds illogical to me…When did they lose them? Where did they leave them?”

Women's rights activists in Iraq say they worse off than ever before, with increasing threats against their safety:

Women activists have been suffering since the last war in Iraq because of calls for improved rights and equality with men in this Muslim country, according to a report by the local Women's NGO association.

Islamic militants have killed 20 women in the northern city of Mosul and a dozen more in Baghdad since the beginning of this year according to local authorities. All of the victims were women who were looking forward to a better future. They include three gynaecologists, two pharmacists and students.

Let freedom ring.

I know it's not exactly news that “virginity pledges” don’t work, but the fact that it actually makes kids more likely to have oral and anal sex is just priceless. The folks at True Love Waits wanted to keep the kids from being fornicating heathens, and instead they turned them into sodomites! Love it.

Clearly I’m not pleased that teenagers (who have been given bogus info and unduly pressured) are taking part in high-risk sex. Especially since a 2004 study reported that “pledgers were much less likely to use contraception the first time they had sex and also were less likely than other teens to have undergone STD testing and know their STD status.” But you have to admit, this latest study definitely unleashes a nice dose of poetic justice on the sex-haters.

The report, After the promise: The STD consequences of adolescent virginity pledges, is published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health and notes that "advocates for abstinence-only education assert that premarital abstinence and post-marital sex are necessary and sufficient for avoiding negative consequences of sexual activity, such as STDs...This assertion collides with the realities of adolescents' and young adults' lives." No shit.

Lead author and Yale prof Hannah Bruckner said in the Toronto Globe and Mail that "eventually, even the most abstinent adolescents, the great majority of them will have sex. ... We need to provide education that helps in dealing with it when they do it."

Tell that to Bushie. Who knows, maybe the idea of good Christian girls taking it in the ass will motivate him to provide some real sex education. Wishful thinking, I guess.

Also check out Feministe and Pinko Feminist Hellcat.

$pread, a magazine by and for sex workers, launched this weekend in New York and San Francisco.

The mission of the mag reads:

$pread is a unique new magazine by and for sex workers of all genders, sexualities and backgrounds, and their allies, across the globe. Including writing by professionals in all areas of the sex industry, with a focus on personal experience and political insights, the magazine aims to provide a forum for marginalized voices and a sense of community and support among sex workers, as well as a balanced and honest view of the sex industry. $pread will also contain practical information, news and resources relevant to those working in the sex industry. Through this publication the editors hope to confront the various stigmas surrounding sex work, to raise awareness of the legal and political issues affecting sex workers and to encourage support for the improvement and working conditions and worker’s rights for all sex professionals.

While sex work as an issue gets pretty contentious, I think we can all agree that providing a new space for dialogue is never a bad thing…

Many thanks to my old high school bud Michelle for filling me on this one...

As an update to the incredibly long struggle of Barr Laboratories, who have been trying to get Plan B emergency contraception over-the-counter access, a new voice of the FDA gives us some optimism.

Check out the article from the Washington Post last week where the nominee to be the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration indicated that the drug will soon be approved for sale without a prescription.

Acting commissioner Lester M. Crawford implied the same at his Senate Committee Confirmation hearing last week. "The science part is generally done. We're just now down to what the label will look [like]. This is going to be a very unusual sort of approval."

Whatever that means. All I know is that I refuse to do any celebrating until it's officially approved and everyone has access.

For someone who is supposed to uphold the law, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline certainly seems to revel in breaking it...

Not only has Kline continued on his crusade to obtain women’s medical records, but now it seems he’s being accused of violating the gag order associated with his search.

Kline is accused of holding press conferences and giving interviews on his investigation while the order was still in place--it was lifted after a fight by pro-choicers who wanted to make sure that patients would be informed that their records were being sought.

At the end of the day, what really kills me about this guy is that he won’t even admit what this “investigation” is all about--to try and push his anti-choice agenda under the guise of protecting children. Grrr.

A new American Civil Liberties Union report was released Thursday on the drug war on women. Statistics show that women drug-offenders are being harmed a great deal, and in some cases, more than men, reports the Associated Press.

The report, “Caught in the Net”, was based on a national conference in New York where sentence-reform activists, criminal justice officials and others to review proposed policy and legislative changes. In result, the report is calling for an increase in treatment programs for women, says that incarceration should be a last resort, and recommends more efforts to maintain ties between mothers in prison and their children. In the report, they also show that:

-Many women are ensnared in drug investigations despite peripheral involvement, sometimes solely because they failed to turn in their partners to police. Sentencing laws fail to consider factors such as physical abuse or economic dependence that may draw women into drug abuse or deter them from notifying authorities of a partner's drug activity.

-Black and Hispanic women are imprisoned for drug offenses at higher rates than white women even though their rates of illegal drug use are comparable. Factors include prosecutors' decisions, policing tactics and selective testing of pregnant minority women for drug use.

Particularly concerning mothers, drug offenders are typically viewed harshly by lawmakers. Shocker.

"It's not just an issue of drugs, but of embedded moral values," says Bruce Bullington, a Florida State University criminologist. "We demonize these women, and it comes back to haunt us in a variety of ways."

Let’s hope that the report will lead to some changes in this fucked up system.

The NY Times Business feature this weekend is, The Pregnant Job-Seeker: What to Say, and When? While this piece does not place enought emphasis on the *illegality* of employer's discriminating against pregnant women, it is still worth a read if you are a pregnant job-seeker.

So, I've been wondering how to frame the new study from Duke University on the wonders of the X chromosome--but luckily, I didn't have to. Maureen Dowd did it for me. Her satiric piece on the study is definitely worth a Sunday read...

Some teasers:

"Alas," said one of the authors of the study, the Duke University genome expert Huntington Willard, "genetically speaking, if you've met one man, you've met them all. We are, I hate to say it, predictable. You can't say that about women. Men and women are farther apart than we ever knew. We poor men only have 45 chromosomes to do our work with because our 46th is the pathetic Y that has only a few genes which operate below the waist and above the knees. In contrast, we now know that women have the full 46 chromosomes that they're getting work from and the 46th is a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew."

Any my personal fave -- "The discovery about women's superior gene expression may answer the age-old question about why men have trouble expressing themselves: because their genes do." Ha!

Reuters reports on a very cool movement aimed at providing a retirement home for aging sex workers in Mexico City. The Mexico City government provided an abandoned building for the project, and with funds collected from private donors, organizers are well on there way to providing a home for at least 65 sex workers.

At a recent benefit for the retirement home, one young sex worker explained that: "Other people pay taxes and can retire with a pension. We are exploited by society then thrown away when we get old." Because sex work is illegal in Mexico, much of the income made by the workers is used to pay off local police or pimps.

Emilienne de Leon, head of a local women's rights group, Semillas, echoed this sentiment: "Sex workers are doubly marginalized. They are rejected by society and by their families. When they get old, either they sell themselves very cheaply or they don't have enough to eat. It's a very difficult world."

One 74 year-old sex worker explains that her clients often refuse to pay her, so she is forced to work for food.

While the retirement home is just a band-aid on a *much* bigger problem, I think it's great that there is a movement aimed at addressing the plight of these women. Click here, to find out about a movement to take of retired geishas in Kyoto. So when do you think the Bushies are gonna take up this cause? Ummmm, yeah...

The AP reports that a new Defense Department study found that women at military academies have faced 302 incidents of sexual assault since their enrollment.

The good news is that this study was done as a part of a new initiative to provide confidential reporting for victims of sexual assault. The bad news is that the Defense Department responded to the findings by noting that, "We are about where college campuses are, tragically. That's not, frankly, terribly surprising. These young men and women come from civil society." Wow, talk about outrage. (sigh).

In the study, 97% of female cadets and midshipmen at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Military Academy, and the U.S. Naval Academy were surveyed. Approximately 30% of men at these academies were surveyed.

The overall numbers aren't pretty--16% of the female respondents admitted to having been sexually assaulted, and 50% reported having been sexually harassed. The report also found that 2% of male respondents had been sexually assaulted, and 11% sexually harassed.

In a memo sent by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz yesterday, he told the other service branches that because, "a mandate of complete reporting may represent a barrier for victims to gain access to services when the victim desires no command or law enforcement involvement, there is a need to provide an option for confidential reporting." Finally!!! The AP reports that the schools have until mid-June to implement the policies.

From The Capital Times:

A Republican legislator says he is "outraged" that the University of Wisconsin student health service provides prescription birth control, especially the so-called morning-after pill.

LeMahieu criticized advertising by the student health service in student newspapers. The ads urged women going on spring break to "stock up" on emergency contraceptives.

"I am outraged that our public institutions are giving young college women the tools for having promiscuous sexual relations, whether on campus or thousands of miles away on spring break," he said.

Funny, my tools for having promiscuous sex generally require batteries, not a prescription. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself…)

And I love the idea that there wouldn't be wanton spring break sex if campus health centers didn't provide birth control. I can see it now: Girls Gone Wild...because they had birth control! "I was going to just catch up on my studies, but now that I have emergency contraception I feel the sudden urge to enter a wet t-shirt contest..."

A Texas lawmaker is trying to put an end to "sexually suggestive" cheerleading performances. Under legislation filed by Rep. Al Edwards, if a school district knowingly permits performances deemed too suggestive, funds from the state would be reduced.

I can just see the movie now...a combination of Footloose and Bring It On.

I mean seriously, let's compare (and try and get past the hilarity of a 26-year veteran of the Texas House saying "breaking it down."):

Rep. Al Edwards: It's just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they're shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down...And then we say to them, 'don't get involved in sex unless it's marriage or love, it's dangerous out there' and yet the teachers and directors are helping them go through those kind of gyrations.

Reverend Shaw Moore: If our lord wasn't testing us, how would you account for the proliferation, these days, of this obscene rock and roll music, with its gospel of easy sexuality and relaxed morality?

Add Kirsten Dunst to this mix, and we've got ourselves a hit...

Cause assholes like this still exist:

Before anybody gets too het up over the resurrection of the ERA, let’s give this some thought. In the first place, I can’t believe the old girls are that bored they’d bring up something that would be so damaging to their cause of female supremacy. It’s true, you know. An ERA would toss most of their manipulative anti-male, anti-family laws right out the window. This would include the wicked stepmother of them all, VAWA.

You think that's bad? Just wait till you read the whole post, especially the part about the attention the ERA is getting from "lots of minor feminist bloggers and silly girl(s)."

And you have to love a blog whose sub-head is STOP the Violence Against Women Act! Unabashed misogyny at its best. Fantastic.

Lots of great stuff out right now.

Katha Pollitt takes on the supposed lack of women columnists and bloggers in Invisible Women;

Anna Quindlen reminds us that We're Missing Some Senators;

and Ellen Goodman tells it like it is in Abortion's elusive middle ground.

Got to love that weekend reading...

Reuters reports that the Dems’ prevention amendment was defeated 53-47 in the Senate last night. I just don’t get it.

How can anyone not want a measure that seeks to limit the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions?

The amendment would have increased funding for family planning and teen pregnancy prevention programs, expanded health insurance coverage for birth control, and increased education about emergency contraception.

Real terrible, huh?

According to New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg, the measure would block funding to abstinence-only sex ed programs. You mean the programs that have been shown to be ineffective, misleading and dangerous? Yeah, that would be a real loss.

Clearly this is shitty news, but at least it shows the true colors of anti-choice Senators—their supposed concern over preventing abortions is nothing more than show.

Check out this article by The Guardian on a new study that revealing that a longer maternity leave in the UK would decrease the infant mortality rate.

"Boosting paid leave for new mothers in the UK from the current six months to a full year would cut the infant death rate by 6.8%, according to the study. The infant mortality rate - deaths of babies up to a year old - in England and Wales was 5.2 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2002, according to the Office for National Statistics, with 563,000 babies delivered in England in 2002-03.

The research, conducted by the academic Sakiko Tanaka of Columbia University in the US and published yesterday, underlines the importance of moves to extend statutory maternity leave. The UK government has pledged to increase paid leave to nine months from 2007, and aims to pay the full year's leave entitlement by the end of the next parliament - promises the Conservatives have not matched."

That's a shocker. Now only if we would get a hint.

Those of you in the Boston area might want to check out photographer Lauren Greenfield’s amazingly brilliant Girl Culture exhibit, on display until April 5th at the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, MA.

The exhibit, and much of Greenfield’s other photography as well, seeks to capture and illuminate the ways in which girls and women use the body as a site for the creation and performance of identity. As Greenfield states in her synopsis of the work:

The body has become a primary expression of individual identity for girls in contemporary American culture. Girl Culture investigates girl's relationships to their bodies and the ways in which they use body projects to establish their identities. The photographs explore the relationship between girl's inner lives and emotional development, and the material world and popular culture. They also reveal the exhibitionist nature of modern femininity through moments of vanity and performance in everyday life.

For some analysis of the themes of Greenfield’s work (as well as discussion of pieces by the gallery’s other featured artists, Alex McQuilkin and Barbara Zucker), check out Cate McQuaid’s review from the Boston Globe (again).

-- by Lauren

I’m a bit late on this, but there was a good debate last week on Democracy Now between NOW president Kim Gandy and Communications Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Phil Singer. You can guess what it was about.

As an update to previous coverage on talk of Democrats considering putting reproductive rights on the side (or I should say entirely out of the agenda) in order to obtain more conservative votes, we find that Pennsylvania and Rhode Island are showing signs of the Democratic Party’s support of this “big tent” approach.

Pennsylvania Democratic State Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. has recently announced his decision to run in the 2006 U.S. Senate race. Casey happens to be an abortion rights opponent, and has also happened to have been courted to run by senior member of the democratic party for the previous weeks before his announcement. Former State Treasurer and pro-choice supporter Barbara Hafer had made it clear she intended to run, but the governor asked her to step down so Casey could take the reigns. In the meantime, Rhode Island Secretary of State and pro-choicer Matt Brown has been planning to run in the race, but now the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is urging anti-choicer Rep. Jim Langevin to run. Gandy and Singer take on these recent cases in their debate.

While Singer tries to assure Gandy that this is merely a strategy that will put more Dems in Senate seats and actually help women’s reproductive rights, Gandy doesn’t buy it:

“One of the primary issues that energized the Democratic base was the issue of Roe v. Wade, the issue of the Supreme Court. It's what brought millions and millions of people to the polls. One point one five million of them came to Washington, D.C. last April to march for women's rights, and women's lives and reproductive freedom. That energized the Democratic base all over the country; and now the leadership of the party is slapping all of those people in the face and saying, ‘You know what? We don't really care about your rights. We're willing to throw your rights overboard so that’ – so that for what reason?”

Check out the full transcript, audio or video of the interview