October 2005 Archives
Goddamn, this woman likes vaginas! BadMimi, recently featured in The Chicago Tribune, has a whole website devoted to vagina-love.
While the commandment-style genital adoration is a bit much ("Thou shalt love your Vagina deeply and with reverence"), the products are pretty bad-ass.
So if you have a hankering to own a pussy pen or vagina candle, now you know where to go.
Personally I’m a big fan of the belt buckle (too tacky not to love) and this shirt. Cause really, who doesn’t heart vagina?
On Friday the Senate passed an amendment that would require the Bureau of Labor Statistics to continue gathering data on female workers.
In August, the bureau removed questions about working women from its monthly survey of payroll and employment data. A brilliant move. If the government doesn't collect data about women's earnings, we can't compare them to men's. That makes it all too easy for conservatives to say "What wage gap?" Without the numbers, it's pretty difficult for us to make the case that an earnings gap exists, let alone talk about ways to remedy it. So here's hoping the amendment makes it out of conference.
For more info see the National Council for Research on Women's report, Missing: Information About Women's Lives.
Thanks to Gwen for the heads up.
In addition to his indefensible opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Scalito's record is chock-full of information that should make every woman in America shudder. Happy Halloween:
Gender Discrimination
Alito has ruled in favor of a plaintiff in a sex discrimination case only once. In most instances, Alito issued opinions that made it far more difficult for victims of discrimination to get to court and prove their cases. In one sexual harassment case, Robinson v. City of Pittsburgh, a police officer filed a complaint that her supervisor was "unhooking her bra, snapping her bra strap, touching her hair and ears, telling her ‘you stink pretty,’ making comments about the size of her breasts..." The police chief took no action, and Robinson sued. Alito ruled that there was insufficient evidence that the chief knew of the harassment, even though Robinson had filed a report. (Alito issued similar opinions in Sheridan v. DuPont and Watson v. SEPTA.) Alito also struck down the anti-harassment policy of the State College Area School District in Saxe v. State College Area Sch. Dist. He wrote that "There is no categorical 'harassment exception' to the First Amendment's free speech clause." In other words, "harassment is protected speech!"
Family Leave
In 2000, Alito struck down portions of the Family and Medical Leave Act that would have allowed state employees to sue their states for failure to provide them with time off to care for family members. Alito wrote that a state's refusal to provide family leave has no greater impact on women than on men. (Chittester v. Dept. of Cmty. and Econ. Dev.) When the Supreme Court addressed the issue in 2003, it took the opposite position: that the FMLA does remedy historic discrimination against women, and state employees should be allowed to sue their employers for failure to comply.
Violence Against Women
Alito ruled that female public-schoool students who were physically and sexually abused by fellow students in class could not sue the state, because the state has no special duty in caring for them. (D.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Vocational Tech. School) Alito also participated in a panel holding that the Violence Against Women Act allows a court to order HIV/AIDS testing of a sexual assault defendant. (United States v. Ward)
For more on Scalito's record:
People for the American Way, Legal Momentum, Alliance for Justice and Legal Times.
UPDATE: Is That Legal? has the White House-approved responses to criticism of Alito's record. (via LiberalOasis)
NARAL Pro-Choice America has just posted some seriously troubling info on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, Jr. and his record on choice:
Alito took pains to distant himself from the longstanding constitutional requirement that abortion restrictions must have exceptions when a woman's health is in jeopardy. He did so when ruling on a law that effectively banned abortion as early as the 12th week of pregnancy and lacked an exception to protect women’s health. The health exception is a fundamental tenet of Roe v. Wade, and the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments about the need for the health exception this fall. Should Alito’s vote replace that of Sandra Day O’Connor, a fundamental right will likely be lost by next summer.Alito has argued that significant restrictions on a woman's right to choose are constitutional. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Alito argued that all of the proposed law’s restrictions on a woman's right to choose – including a spousal notification provision struck down by the Third Circuit and, later, the Supreme Court – were constitutional. Alito dissented in part because he would have gone even further than the rest of the court.
Alito would uphold state laws that place significant roadblocks in the way of women seeking abortion care. Alito concurred with the majority’s opinion in Casey that concluded that “time delay, higher cost, reduced availability, and forcing the woman to receive information she has not sought,” although admittedly “potential burdens,” could not “be characterized as an undue burden.” This opinion practically ensures that he would never find any burden to be undue.
Dear lord.
Now, I didn’t like Maureen Dowd’s NY Times Magazine article for a number of reasons: Dowd’s assumption (once again) that feminism ended in back in the day, the reliance on dubious studies, and--as Amanda points out--Dowd’s seeming penchant to blame everyone and everything but patriarchal norms.
But what really struck me about What's a Modern Girl to Do? is the extent of Dowd’s elitism. Determining a social trend based completely on the lives of the upper class isn’t exactly new, but I expected a bit more from an article on feminism. (Silly me.)
(Not to mention, Dowd’s insistence on measuring feminism’s success based on men and how women are faring in the romance department completely nullifies any truth there might be in the article. As I’ve said before, feminism isn’t a fucking dating service.)
Dowd’s reporting on the backlash against feminism and the “confusion between the sexes” relies almost exclusively on women within her social circles. Seriously--the people Dowd cites to make her case seem to be a bunch of her friends and acquaintances. (Mostly reporters, producers and a couple of actors.)
Other sources Dowd uses are just as class-based: the debunked New York Times piece on young women at Yale, a "60 Minutes" report that interviews women who went to Harvard Business School, and Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book that focuses on women who are corporate executives.
Really, is Dowd so egotistical to think that only certain “successful” women determine current gender relations? Perhaps if she expanded her circle of friends--or actually tried to interview the lowly secretaries, assistants, and nannies who are supposedly stealing up all of the men--Dowd would see that the future of feminism goes beyond her backyard.
UPDATE: Echidne's excellent take on the article.
I’m not feeling particularly festive this year, so I thought I’d throw up a couple of pictures to cheer myself up. The one above is of my favorite costume from a party I had last year. (When there was still hope.)
Anyone dressing up feminist-styles this year? I know Samhita had Wonder Woman plans...now if I could just convince her to post a picture...
One more pic after the jump--inspired by a Feministing post!
Damn, Bushie--rush much?
President Bush today named appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House's short list for the high court. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.
Sounds like a real winner.
By the way, how did folks feel about this Oct. 28th NY Times headline: Bush Is Not Expected to Feel Need to Pick Woman Again? Cause it pissed me the fuck off.
This is a good little piece discussing the death of Rosa Parks and how we should not just remember her own work (which was incredible) but remember the role of women and girls throughout the civil rights movement. Sister Rosa was one of the few that became fixed in history. But let us not forget the resistences of other women that worked towards making this country somewhat tolerable, but not written about in the history books.
This is so intense.
Amnesty International is renewing its call on the Japanese government to accept full responsibility for wartime crimes against women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army.
"Japan should immediately implement effective administrative mechanisms to provide full reparations to all survivors and remove legal barriers toward bringing claims before Japanese courts by reforming national laws," Purna Sen, director of the London-based human rights watchdog's Asia-Pacific Program, said Friday.
He made the remarks at a press conference in Bangkok to launch a report titled "Still Waiting After 60 years: Justice for Survivors of Japan's Military Sexual Slavery System."
Amnesty estimates that up to 200,000 women from China, the Korean Peninsula, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Netherlands were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military before and during World War II. Many were less than 20 years old, and some were as young as 12.
The Amnesty report says the government denied responsibility for the "comfort women" system until direct evidence was discovered by professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki in 1992. In 1993, it admitted the military had forced Asian women to serve as sex slaves and offered an apology.
But it has consistently refused to pay direct compensation to individual victims, saying all war claims were officially settled by postwar treaties.
Don't tell me not to be suprised. No matter how many times we report crazy stats like this, I am suprised, shocked and deeply disturbed.
Sexual violence is increasingly prevalent in Kenya and police statistics show that more than 2,800 cases of rape were reported in 2004 - an increase of close to 500 compared to the previous year.
Domestic violence is also a serious problem in the East African nation. A demographic health survey carried out by the Ministry of Planning in 2003 revealed that at least half of all Kenyan women had experienced violence since the age of 15, with close family members among the perpetrators.
And these are only instances that are reported.
Women who have been sexually or domestically abused are often too scared by the stigma attached to the crime to tell their families, let alone report their attacks to the relevant authorities.
"Stigma is such a big issue in many cultures. Women and girls blame themselves and fear that they will be ostracised from society if they admit to being raped, and they often are outcasts if they do so," Njogu said.
There has been some work towards helping this situation. In the spring the government passed the Sexual Offences Bill that will seek to reform existing laws. They have also opened a battered women's shelter in Nairobi.
One shelter!
According to this study, teenage pregnancy has gone done by 50% in the the last 25 years, but women in their 20's seem to be giving birth out of wedlock more frequently. Perhaps the oppressive nature of being in wedlock for many women is losing its appeal.
A record number of babies — nearly 1.5 million — were born to unmarried women in the U.S. last year. And those moms were more likely to be 20-somethings than teenagers, according to new federal data released Friday.
The data show that 35.7% of all births were to unmarried women. Births last year to both married and unwed mothers totalled more than 4 million.
By age group, almost 55% of the births for mothers ages 20-24 were to unmarried women. For those between 25-29, almost 28% of the births were to single women.
Teenagers, who accounted for 50% of unwed births in 1970, accounted for 24% of unwed births in 2004.
One researcher found this to be a troubling trend because many of these women have low income status. This is a really complicated issue, because financial obstacles to single parenting are real. But, I also think many women are realizing that the dream of happy white picket fence does not exist except for a select few groups of people, so it is not worth waiting for it.
This last year three of my closest friends had babies and none of them were married, all in their mid-20's and none of them rich, and they are totally happy raising the child on its own.
Oooh, this good! Bloggers such as Liu Man Yin aka Lost Sparrow, are breaking and shaking cultural taboos about talking sex in the public sphere with their openly so so sexual blogs.
Liu's outspoken posts about sex include a "bedside encyclopedia" of love-making noises, broken down by the type of response it can elicit from your lover, and by geographical regions in China -- that is, how pillow-talk may sound in regional dialect or slang. She talks openly about masturbation ("I have no worldly possession, except for two vibrators") and muses about why men are afraid to say "I love you."
Am loving it!
Liu is the latest of a string of Chinese women bloggers who have become famous, some even worldwide. They talk about sex and relationships openly, changing the dialogue between the sexes. In a culture where sexual attitudes are still repressive, the racy details shared by the women bloggers are thrusting them into the spotlight, despite China's most recent crackdown on the Internet news media.Women talking freely about sex is still taboo in most places, not just in China, and quite frankly sex talk is still for the most part dominated by patriarchal norms (read by and for dude-bros) and hetero-normative (read straight sex only!). Blogs have created quite a bit of space for women to talk amongst women (and others) about sexuality. Despite this, quite a bit of animosity exists within many of these discussions towards women's open and honest discussions on sex. (All of us repeatedly comment spammed feminist bloggers know this very very well!)
Anyway, this is rad. My favorite line...
"Nowadays, if you're on a date with a Chinese man, the first thing that comes out of his mouth would be, 'You're not going to blog about me, are you?'" she says.
HA!
And that’s an understatement.
It looks like Jean Van de Velde, who lost the British Open in 1999, is apparently upset about the decision by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R &A) to allow women to qualify for the Open. In retaliation to this preposterous idea that women should be allowed to play with men, he’s applying to play in the Women’s Open next year, reports Reuters.
Van de Velde's feelings are that the R & A should be attending “more important matters,” and questions why women would even want to enter a competition they would have no chance of winning. “Where do we draw the line?” he asks.
“If they allow me to, I’ll definitely go and play, just to make a point. I would be very happy to use the ladies locker room.” He also jokingly said he would shave his legs and wear a kilt if it meant him being able to enter the competition. You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Former Ryder Cup player Barry Lane is applauding Van de Velde, saying that “If 100 men decided to take the same stance and they all qualified off the ladies’ tees, they could take most of the Women’s British Open’s spots.”
A bit cocky, are we? So if that’s true, why are they so up in arms about women entering the tournament? After all, they’re going to lose anyway, right?
Sounds like our Frenchman is the sore loser to me. I could go on, but I don’t trust myself with this potty mouth of mine.
Check out the Younger Women’s Task Force’s (YWTF) new website, which was recently launched in their efforts to organize and advance the rights of younger women. Sounds like our kind of ladies!
A while back, Jessica posted on her and Lauryn’s visit to one of their meetings in D.C. Since then, this project of the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) has expanded significantly, for one by starting chapters across the nation.
If you’re interested in joining, take a look and see if a chapter is in your area.
Wendy Wright of our favorite anti-feminist group, Concerned Women of America (CWA), recently stated that there is a link between the higher rate in incarcerated women and the feminist agenda; in other words, we caused the shit.
While we’ve known that the number of women in prison has been increasing for quite some time, Wright claims that we’re leading American women away from the family and into lives o’ crime. After all, what else would we do with ourselves without men and babies?
She says that feminist ideology’s “radical individualism” tells women they shouldn’t be dependent on others, leading them to illegal activities “where they're forced to fend for themselves." I thought that was pretty funny considering the fact we’ve posted before on how Marc Mauer from The Sentencing Project blames this increase of incarceration on dependence itself:
“it coincides exactly with the inception of the war on drugs…It represents a sort of vicious cycle of women engaged in drug abuse and often connected with financial or psychological dependence with a boyfriend.”
Thoughts?
This is just one pic of many from this forward that someone had the audacity to send me this week.
Check out the rest of the pics below, the last one is my favorite. While I usually ignore forwards such as these, I couldn’t help gritting my teeth when it said at the bottom, “Make another women’s day, and share the smiles.” I just had to share.
I know nothing makes me happier than making fun of how incompetent and shallow us ladies are. Good times!
While I find high school homecoming court crap to be a tad ridiculous, I was pleased to find that Lincoln High School’s football team has a female kicker who, during halftime, walked across the field in her uniform to be crowned. Awesome.
Lentz is a senior at the school in Charleston, West Virginia, and decided to join the football team this past summer. “I’m the only girl, but it doesn’t bother me.” says Lentz. “The guys do a really good job of holding the line back.” I have no idea what that means, but it sounds cool.
It seems like this kick-ass, er, kicker deserves some royal treatment.
The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) released a really great report yesterday titled, “Tools of the Trade: Using the Law to Address Sex Segregation in High School Career and Technical Education.”
The report contains data from twelve different states -- Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina and Washington -- showing how female high school students are continuously underrepresented in nontraditional courses for their gender. In result, they suffer economically because of the fact that traditionally “male” occupations pay more. (Let’s not even add the wage gap on top of that disparity.)
The great thing about the report is that not only does it bring this issue to light, but also offers twelve state-specific toolkits that directly examine the laws in each state that are relevant to this problem.
Depressing report, great cause. Click here to read it.
You’ve gotta love how deluded people can be:
The Ku Klux Klan plans to rally in Austin to support the gay marriage amendment set for the Nov. 8 ballot.The rally planned on the steps of city hall the Saturday before the election will urge voters to favor proposition 2.
However, some who support proposition 2 don't welcome the KKK's assistance.
One such person is Pastor Ryan Rush of Bannockburn Baptist Church.
Rush said that a group that would come in that is characterized as hateful and bigoted is not welcome in this city. He said he doesn't want the Klan as a partner on any cause.
Cause it doesn’t make any sense that a hateful and bigoted group would support a hateful and bigoted amendment.
I guess some people who would vote against same sex marriage fancy themselves civilized haters; they’re not tacky, in-your-face bigots. Ugh.
In a way, I’m almost glad the Klan is planning this rally. Let those fuckers who would vote for the amendment know who their bedfellows are--and have to look them straight in the sheets.
Check out the latest from Mikhaela Reid, What's Your Fantasy?
Mine involves a Ad Rock-John Stewart hybrid.
Bluetooth technology has come to sex toys (and all of a sudden I want to become more tech-savvy).
“The Toy” is controlled by text messages sent to your vibrator.
Basically, it’s “worn internally” (let’s leave that one alone, shall we?) and when an SMS is sent from the phone it’s linked up to, it turns into vibrations, depending on what has been written (each letter has a different effect). Again, I’m going to leave that to your imagination. Oh, and in case you’re worried that your Bluetooth Vibrator is going to show up on everyone’s list of bluetooth devices, don’t fret. It will only show up on the one phone it’s linked to.
That’s too bad, I was hoping for some risqué three-way calling action.
In announcing the decision, Miers and President Bush cited their concern with the requests of members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for documents dealing with her work as White House Counsel that the administration has chosen to withhold as privileged.But the Miers nomination to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was in deep trouble, with little support in the Senate, open criticism from many Senators of both parties, and an outpouring of opposition from conservative activists and intellectuals.
Miers told the president in a letter of withdrawal that she was "concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interests of the country."
Bush responded that he was "reluctantly" accepting the decision.
Wow.
WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes, a forward for the Houston Comets, came out in the most recent issue of ESPN The Magazine.
From The New York Times:
[Swoopes,] the three-time Most Valuable Player of the W.N.B.A., disclosed today that she is gay, an announcement that she described as lifting a burden from her, and one encouraged by an endorsement she received from a cruise line that caters to lesbians....She is the first high-profile African-American basketball player to come out as gay.
"I was at a point in my life where I am just tired of having to pretend to be somebody I am not. I was basically living a lie. For the last seven, eight years, I was basically waiting to exhale."
"Hopefully, this will not have a negative effect on the W.N.B.A.," Swoopes said. "Me coming out does not change what the W.N.B.A. stands for as a basketball league. I don't think there's any secret that the huge support we get comes from the gay and lesbian community. It's unfortunate that people, and those not only in W.N.B.A., are not able to feel like they can be who they are. They lose endorsements; they lose friends and family."
Swoopes also talked about her concern over the lack of well-known gay African Americans who have come out, and the effect her coming out will have on her younger fans:
My biggest concern is that people are going to look at my homosexuality and say to little girls -- whether they're white, black, Hispanic -- that I can't be their role model anymore.I don't want that to happen. Being gay has nothing to do with the three gold medals or the three MVPs or the four championships I've won. I'm still the same person. I'm still Sheryl.
On the day the Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers was expected to submit more complete answers to a Senate questionnaire, she was instead confronted with more questions about her legal views on abortion and how she would approach cases involving President Bush's military policies.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Ms. Miers, in a 1993 speech in Dallas, spoke approvingly about a trend toward "self-determination" in resolving debates about law and religion, including those involving abortion rights and religion in public schools and public places.
"The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual woman's right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion," Ms. Miers said, according to a copy of the speech. "Questions about what can be taught or done in public places or public schools are presented frequently to the courts."
Ms. Miers continued, "The underlying theme in most of these cases is the insistence of more self-determination. The more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes the most sense. Legislating religion or morality we gave up on a long time ago."
She added later, "When science determines the facts, and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act."
This is naturally fueling quite a bit of controversy, such as our not so fave gal pals Concerned Women for America, who have immediately said she is not a qualified enough candidate and have joined in the complicated and frequently sexist Miers backlash.
They are SO predictable, but f them. What do we think about this?
Iran has banned foreign films promoting secularism, feminism, unethical behavior, drug abuse, or violence. The ban was approved by the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council headed by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. It is still not clear how strictly the ban will be enforced and how it will affect the film industry inside the country.
Can you guess which one?
Three female journalists recieved awards for bad ass journalism. via AP...
An Associated Press war photographer from Germany, a crime reporter from Bangladesh who was stabbed and beaten, and the founder of a magazine threatened with closure by Iran's government because of its coverage of women's rights all received Courage in Journalism Awards Tuesday from the International Women's Media Foundation.
The foundation's 15th annual awards were presented to Anja Niedringhaus, Sumi Khan and Shahla Sherkat at a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria attended by more than 500 people who support its belief that "no press is truly free unless women share an equal voice."
Sumi Khan, of the Samakal daily, is one of only a few women journalists in Chittagong and has received many threats over the nature of her work.
She has reported on politics, crime, Islamic fundamentalism and corruption. She was attacked and beaten in 2004.
Khan was presented with her prize at the foundation's 15th annual awards ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on Tuesday night.
"People always ask me whether I'm afraid," she said in her acceptance speech.
"No, I'm not. They are afraid. I believe my pen is mightier than all of their weapons. Long live courageous journalism."
Khan survived a near death attack and continues writing. If it were not for this type of journalism and the bravery of women like this, we wouldn't have a line to write. Straight, gangsta.
Despite all of the negative comments about Salon’s new Broadsheet, I’m loving it. This interview with Nan Mooney, author of "I Can't Believe She Did That! Why Women Betray Other Women at Work," is especially interesting:
There was a time when women were just breaking into these professional areas, when, yes, it was important that they give the appearance of supporting each other. It was an us-against-them setup. But one of the great victories of the feminist movement is that now we form an impressive, powerful professional body and we can start looking within that body at what the dynamics are.
True, it’s not fun to talk about women making things difficult for each other. But it happens. I know I’ve witnessed women sabotage other women (both intentionally and unintentionally) in the workplace— and also in overtly feminist settings.
Women in the workplace have a generation gap that men don't have. We joined the workforce so recently that women who came in 20 years ago really are having an entirely different work experience than women today.
The book presents a good opportunity to talk about how one of the things that second-wave feminists pushed so hard for-- more women in positions of power in the workplace-- has played out for women of younger generation(s).
Ladies, is it easier to work with/for men than women? And, at the risk of sounding like a human-resources video, any suggestions on how to collaborate with female coworkers and still retain your competitive edge?
For the bored and curious, Mooney's website has a quiz, Are you at risk for on the job betrayal?
The Houston Chronicle had a great piece yesterday on the Women’s Bassmaster Tour (WBT). Of course, I immediately thought of the lovely Vanessa (above). When we were kids, she was terrifyingly gleeful as she stuck dirt-covered worms on fishing hooks while I cowered in the corner of our cousin’s boat. Ew.
My fishing-fear aside, seems like women are making great progress in pro bass fishing. While the top men in the sport still earn much more than the women, author Doug Pike believes that this could change:
Maybe this time, maybe in this sport, there's a chance that women and men will compete on equal ground (or water, as the case may be) for equal money. Men don't cast any farther or straighter than women, and nobody could argue straight-faced that either sex is better equipped intellectually to know when or where or why bass bite.The WBT is on a roll, and women will be quick to benefit from this fledgling relationship. With the superpowers of ESPN and the Bass Anglers Sportsman's Society in their corner, they have an unprecedented opportunity.
This is the best shot women have ever had at shining bright lights on themselves and their angling abilities, and my guess is that they'll make the most of it. To have any chance at equality, they eventually will have to mix it up with the men. Each of them is ready.
Nice. Now if they could only do something about the worm-factor.
Anyone notice something a bit screwy about today's word of the day from Dictionary.com:
virago \vuh-RAH-go; vuh-RAY-go\, noun:
1. A woman of extraordinary stature, strength, and courage.
2. A woman regarded as loud, scolding, ill-tempered, quarrelsome, or overbearing.
What the hell?
Thanks to contributor Jess Wakeman for sending this along!
From Code Pink Women for Peace:
The sad day is here when the 2000th US soldier has died in Iraq. As we mourn for the 2000 dead and over 25,000 wounded U.S. troops, we must also consider the more than 100,000 dead and wounded Iraqis.Join Code Pink in today’s call for action.HOW MANY MORE MUST DIE? We must again remind people of the human cost of this war and call for the troops to come home now.
Who would have thought that Orlando Bloom and Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline would ever have something in common? Both the actor and the anti-choice litigator are featured in the November issue of GQ magazine. (Orlando has better hair though.)
The nine-page article carries the headline, "This man will do anything to stop abortion."The author of the article is GQ correspondent Andrew Corsello, who focused much of his attention on a lengthy dinner conversation he had with Kline and Kline's wife about abortion.
The second page of the piece bears an image of a fetus with a subhead that says "Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline says he wants to get people talking honestly about abortion, to make people think about abortion. So why has he become the most aggressive abortion litigator in the land, subpoenaing the medical records of abortion clinics and prying into our private sexual histories? Meet the future of the pro-life movement."
What I find bizarre: Kline’s spokesman Whitney Watson said Kline was “pleased with the article.” Pleased? Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Kline has no shame.
Check out this review from Bookslut:
Some recent books highlight girlhood’s splendor, and with them comes an increasing awareness surrounding two very important facts. The first is that our preparation for womanhood and the formation of ideas about being female begins long before its actual onset. The second: Barbie is an absolute slut.
Wait, so my Barbie wasn’t the only one who slept with Ken and never married him?
Having been raised by decidedly non-feminist parents, Barbies were a major part of my childhood. And even though there are a slew of reasons for feminists to detest Barbie, I really don’t think I was warped by her. Sure, my Barbie wore bikinis and miniskirts. But she also wore Ken’s sweaters sometimes. Her red convertible was one sweet ride. And she liked going out with both Ken and Derek (who played backup to her lead guitar in Barbie and the Rockers).
According to Sharon Lamb’s The Secret Lives of Girls, Barbie’s been dry humping Ken and even dabbled in some soft-core S&M for years now: “Barbie dolls help girls express what they don’t have words for yet, chiefly their sexual interest, which helps them to distance themselves from it at the same time. They can remain good girls while Barbie is the slut.”
Ok, I haven’t been through enough therapy to know if I was acting out some sort of virgin/whore thing with my dolls. But I do know that Barbie was probably my introduction to sex. When my friend Dana-- who was two years older and had a big sister-- put Barbie and Ken in the missionary position, it was my cue to ask all sorts of questions. By the time my mom sat me down years later to tell me where babies come from, I’d already learned everything from Barbie. (Well, from Dana. But you get the idea.)
Now Barbie serves as a cerebral landmark along our path to womanhood, an object we can recall when we need to remember our own history.
You can make lots of convincing arguments about the ways Barbie’s unattainable physique plants seeds of self-hatred in young girls. But Barbie did OK by me. I chose her over baby-dolls every time, because she ran the show. There was no one telling her to pick up her toys or eat her peas. I loved Barbie because she was a grown-up, even if I didn’t understand anything about adulthood yet. Least of all, sex.
I finally got around to reading some of the briefs submitted in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, the parental notification case that the Supreme Court will hear November 30.
This brief-- submitted on behalf of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Break the Cycle, and other groups—- makes the vital point that parental notification is dangerous or impossible for abused and neglected teens. It got me thinking about the politics of anti-violence and repro-rights groups working together.
Anti-violence organizations bring a lot of political weight when they stand up on choice issues (like those presented in Ayotte). And that weight is largely due to the fact that they are perceived to be somewhat neutral in the abortion debate. I can’t decide if this is a good thing. I mean, I don’t want to see anti-violence legislation dragged down because it contains pro-choice positions. But I get frustrated when the DV/sexual assault community isn’t more vocal on these issues.
Take, for example, the lack of an emergency contraception provision in the Health Care Response title of VAWA. Anti-violence groups didn’t want to see the bill bogged down in a polarizing debate on choice, so they didn’t include a national protocol for making EC available to rape victims. (Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced just such an amendment, but the provision was dropped. VAWA advocates wouldn't have backed it, anyway.)
I understand there are good reasons for this. Of course I’d rather have a VAWA with no EC provision than have no VAWA at all. And anti-violence groups have found other ways stand up for choice-- like submitting court briefs. Still, I wish we didn’t have to compromise at all. Because these issues are intertwined, whether or not it's politically acceptable to acknowledge that.
Warner Todd Huston at Renew America says Feminism has become silly, maybe even dangerous.
Funny, I would say the same thing about his mustache.
Groovy Q, makers of Dirty Linens products, have a super cute new pattern (with an unfortunately cheesy name) Girl Power. You can get it in sheets, lounge pants, boxers, and even wrapping paper.
I am a sucker for anything kitschy or pinup girl related--I just can’t help myself. (My birthday is next week, so I’m hoping my conspicuous gift-hinting will be successful.)
Kind of.
This headline cracks me up, Want more sex? Do the dishes!
But the sentiment is right on. I don’t think it’s news that women are less likely to want to have sex with a guy who sits on his ass while they’re busy cleaning the whole house. It’s so simple and logical, but for some reason guys need a reminder every once in a while.
But a new study shows that there are other benefits to men sharing the housework load besides getting laid more often:
...a new study has found that women aren’t merely more accommodating of the advances of men who help them – they actually find them more attractive....What’s more, children of dads who do their fair share of the cleaning will help with housework themselves. And, says the study, these children are likely to grow up more socially aware and better adjusted. They’re also more likely to have friends and less likely to be depressed or withdrawn at school than their counterparts whose fathers don’t help out around the home.
Fathers who did a share of housework were also more likely to show affection towards their children.
Good stuff.
Does it amaze anyone else that people still have to be told that discrimination is illegal?
The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday unanimously struck down a state law that punished underage sex more severely if it involved homosexual acts, saying "moral disapproval" of such conduct is not enough to justify the different treatment.In a case closely watched by national groups on all sides of the gay rights debate, the high court said the law "suggests animus toward teenagers who engage in homosexual sex."
Matthew R. Limon,18, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for having consensual sex with a 14 year-old boy. (Had the sex been with a girl, the maximum sentence for Limon would have been 15 months.)
Limon will now be resentenced--but he has already served more than five years. For having sex.
Amanda brings up a great point about consent laws, something that has always bugged me:
There's just too many examples of teenage couples with small age gaps getting in trouble for being interracial or gay or just not being the two kids that the parents wanted to see with each other. Then you have the flip side, with couples with alarmingly big age gaps being accepted because they fit into the patriarchal standard, such as the situation where the community supported a 13-year-old marrying a 22-year-old who had gotten her pregnant.
Unbelievable.
Salon launched Broadsheet today, a “cheeky” women’s blog:
The issues we'll tackle are limitless, really, given the fact that our subject includes half the world's population. Katie Holmes' pregnancy, Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination, the FDA's stalling over Plan B -- we've got something to say about all of it. Our goal is to be opinionated about topics that affect women, but also a filter by which we can look at the news from a (mostly) female point of view.
Awesome. Check out one of today’s posts, Rockettes refused maternity leave.
Really sad.
From the Associated Press:
Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday. She was 92.Mrs. Parks died at her home of natural causes, said Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."
...Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."
Among many other honors, Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal.
In 2000, Parks said "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die -- the dream of freedom and peace."
In a recent issue of the Journal of Popular Culture, authors James K. Beggan of the University of Louisville and Scott T. Allison of the University of Richmond argue that the women of Playboy magazine are getting “tougher.”
Beggan and Allison...found a pattern to the way that Playboy's wordsmiths described the women who graced the magazine's centerfold. They were typically strong, career-oriented, aggressive and, in a surprising number of instances, downright "tough." Adjectives suggesting vulnerability, submissiveness or passivity appeared less frequently.But are these women really as they were described? Perhaps not, Beggan acknowledges. But it doesn't matter: "This is the image of them that is being presented to men."
OK, but is the text describing the Playboy models really what men are paying attention to? If a woman is posed in a vulnerable an submissive position in her picture, I think that’s going to trump any “aggressive” text descriptions.
I couldn’t access the whole article--Tough Women in the Unlikeliest of Places: The Unexpected Toughness of the Playboy Playmate--but I’m also curious as to how the authors define what kind of language is ‘tough’ and what is ‘passive’.
Thanks to Rebel Dad for the link.
UPDATE: Check out Hugo for a more analytical take on the study.