In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: December 2005

Happy Transit Strike!

I had a nice two-hour commute down to school today, which involved a 35-block walk downtown, and a 7-block cross-town walk (and if you’re a New Yorker, you know that those cross-town blocks are loooong). I live on the Upper East Side. I walked, basically, to the Empire State building. And if you’re familiar with New York — especially New York around the holidays — you know that walking from the UES to 33rd and 6th means walking through the most obnoxiously touristy parts of town, and getting bombarded by throngs of white people walking five across, slowly, wearing their brand-new bright white tennis shoes (because I hear in New York, you walk a lot!) and I Heart NY ski caps, hitting you with their Macys bags and standing on the corner of 34th and 5th going, “Where’s the Empire State building? I don’t see it!” (Look UP, it’s that big thing blocking the sun).

So that was fun. I even saw a guy — and I’m not kidding here — who was not only wearing Uggs with his tapered jeans tucked into them, but was also pulling a rolling backpack. Uggs. Tapered Jeans. Tapered jeans in Uggs. Rolling backpack. No, I did not laugh out loud, but I’ll admit that I smirked. (And to the sensitive person reading this indignantly and going, “Gosh, Jill, maybe he has back problems,” I repeat: Uggs. Tapered jeans.) By the way, I’d push my shit in a stroller before I’d use a rolling backpack.

So from 33rd street it was the PATH train downtown. For once in my life, I am grateful to New Jersey and the fact that their transit system extends into New York (I never thought I’d say that. I still support charging $50 a trip on weekend nights). Of course, the PATH, being a commuter train, doesn’t let you buy just one ticket — you have to buy, like 11 of them. Actually, the minimum is two, but their machines don’t take credit cards and don’t accept $20 bills. They take subway cards, but not the unlimited kind. And naturally, all I had were credit cards, $20s, and an unlimited subway card (what the hell kind of machine doesn’t accept a credit card?). But the nice PATH employees — and they really were quite nice — swiped me in for free.

Two hours after I left my apartment, I was snug and study-ready in the NYU Law Library. Now it’s just a question of how the hell I’m going to get home — walking for an hour in the cold at 11:30 at night just doesn’t sound pleasant, but I’m not sure how I feel about paying for a cab with these new strike-day “zone” rules (they charge $10 to go anywhere within the first zone, and $5 for each zone after that; I live many, many zones away from NYU, and it would probably be a $40 cab ride). Perhaps I will be camping out at the library tonight. Yay!

Look, I’m all for worker’s rights and I’m usually very pro-union, but this seems ridiculous (and not just because I’m personally inconvenienced). This will probably be a very unpopular sentiment in these parts, so someone please correct me if I’m misunderstanding things. But from what I’ve read, the MTA dropped the retirement-age issue, so workers can continue to retire at 55 with full benefits (I don’t know about you, but I plan on working long past 55; so do my parents). But in order to pay for those benefits, they’re asking workers to pay 6% of their salaries into their pension funds for the first 10 years of employment. Six percent is a lot, especially when the current payment is 2% — but if you want an early retirement age, you’ve gotta pay for it somehow, right? MTA employees also make something like $55,000 a year. Now, their jobs are dangerous and trying, and they certainly deserve every penny they earn — but they’re making $55,000 a year with no educational requirements and full retirement benefits at 55. If the city and the MTA was making unreasonable demands, or if they were refusing to compromise, I’d have more sympathy. But they’ve offered workers what seems to me like a pretty good deal (again, I might be wrong, I haven’t really researched this, so correct me if I am). To the credit of MTA employees, they picked a damn good time to strike — when holiday shopping is at its peak, and the tourist season is in full swing. Retailers are going to take a big hit if this continues, and will definitely be pressuring the city to fix it fast.

So we’ll see what happens. Anyone wanna drive me home tonight?

UPDATE: At least I’m not as bad off as some folks. My Starbucks was open, thank GOD!

At least some people will be getting lucky tonight. Lots of people, apparently. And then there’s the memorabilia.

And just in case it wasn’t clear: TWU members are high and mighty communist douchebag dialysis-obstructing murderers. Why can’t we be more like Iran?

Two Down…

Took my contracts final today. Not fun, but finished. To celebrate, I am drinking wine and eating spaghetti and cheese. Yum. And going to all my favorite guilty pleasure websites (can’t party too hard, I have to be back in the library tomorrow morning). The best of the silly stuff:

Wonkette: Bush sad when people think he doesn’t like black people.

Gawker: Ah, the obsessions of the New York City tabloids! Remembering Peter Braunstein. (Why do we love the Post? This is why). And as a special blast from the past, I remind you of STAB BABY. Gawker also gives us a gossip round-up so lovely we don’t even have to buy Us Weekly or read Page 6.

Am I the only one who laughed when I saw the cover of Time, and the glowering “I’m serious — I think about AIDS” expression on Bono’s face? And is it just me, or does Bill Gates look like he’s gonna laugh, too? (by the way, lamest “person of the year” EVER).

Overhead in New York, I LOVE YOU. Enjoy the frivolity after the jump.

Read More…Read More…

The Language of Reproductive Rights

David Morris takes on the issue of how we talk about reproductive rights in this country. As he points out, terms like “pro-life” and “pro-abortion” are pretty useless; no one is “anti-life,” few people are really “pro-abortion,” and a lot of people who are “anti-abortion” still don’t think it should be illegal and are actually pro-choice. Then there’s the problem with the representatives of the self-identified “pro-life” and “pro-choice” camps. The majority of “pro-life” individuals really don’t fit in ideologically with the leaders of their movement; this is also true (but I would argue less so) for pro-choice people. Indeed, a lot of people who identify as “pro-life” don’t want to see abortion illegalized; they think other women should have reproductive choices; they probably make reproductive choices (like using contraception) that “pro-life” leaders argue are part of our supposed “culture of death” (are you sick of quotation marks yet?).

I personally use the terms anti-choice and pro-choice, because when it comes to even the mainstream reproductive rights/anti-repro rights organizations, that’s what the issue comes down to. The National Right to Life Committee, the Pope, and fundamentatlist Christians don’t believe exclusively in preserving life. If that was the case, we’d see completely different behavior from them. Their MO is more about identifying a single choice as not only ideal, but the only one that women should have. They’re anti-contraception. They tend to harp on “traditional values,” which is basically code for the disempowerment of women. The only way reproduction should happen, in their view, is in a married heterosexual relationship, and it should happen as often as God wants it to, with no interference from the people doing the actual reproducing. And not only do they believe that this is the best way (which, arguably, wouldn’t be that bad), they want to legislate this belief across the board, and legally compel all women to follow it. Hence, anti-choice.

But Morris has a new title: Pro-Sperm.

Let’s begin with sperm. Many “pro-lifers” are really pro-sperm. Basically, they insist that the sperm has an inalienable right to try to get to the egg. Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League once even flatly announced that he thought contraception was “disgusting.”

The Pope and many Christian fundamentalists fall into the pro-sperm category (although as we shall see, only relatively recently did the Catholic Church itself adopt that position). In the 1990s, after 300 out of 1,000 students in one Chicago high school became pregnant and the school established a birth control clinic, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin lashed out at the “contraceptive culture.”

When Judge Bork advocated reversing the 1965 Supreme Court decision overturning state laws that made it illegal for married couples to buy contraceptives, he was clearly pro-sperm.

The vast majority of the U.S. population are not pro-sperm. Despite admonitions about the sinfulness of contraception by the last dozen popes, two-thirds of all American Catholic women now practice birth control.

Read More…Read More…

Stupid Abstinence-Only Site of the Day

Despite the snazzy design, it really doesn’t get much worse than this site, which claims to provide accurate sexual health information without judgment (via Feministing, which displays one of their lovely t-shirts). Well. Let’s see. I’ll bet you didn’t know these five fun facts about contraception:
1. They fail more often than you may know
2. In fact, 43% of all unintended pregnancies occur while using contraception
3. No method of contraception is perfect or guaranteed to work all the time
4. You can get an STD even if you’re using contraception
5. Despite all the many kinds of birth control that are out there, unintended pregnancy and STDs are at epidemic proportions.

So why even use ’em, right?

And what about condoms? Well, my friends, using a condom is just like a coin toss: You only have a 50% chance of being protected from an STD when you wear them. As for emergency contraception, “While some people think this prevents pregnancy, in some cases it acts like an early abortion, if the fertilized egg, or embryo, is prevented from implanting in the mother’s uterus.” Ah, FACTS!

Read More…Read More…

Music To Clean To

At 11pm Sunday night I was still in my jammies from Sunday morning. (In fact, I’m still in my PJs from yesterday morning. Gross.) Yesterday was devoted to cleaning house, paying bills, doing laundry, and wrapping Xmas presents, and today will be more of the same. Whenever I clean house I load up the full playlist and turn up the computer speakers, and thanks to paper thin walls you can hear the music all through the house, even in the basement.

As you know, I like me a good cover song. Get out your mops and your headphones.

This cover of “We Can Work It Out” by Stevie Wonder has been posted before, but it’s so damned good I have to share it again. While you’re at it, listen to Al Green cover “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” In my opinion these surpass the Beatles’ originals by far, but you can expect that from pure genius.

Another excellent cover that I recently acquired is Jon Brion’s version of Queen’s “Play The Game.” You’ll know Brion from his production on Aimee Mann, Kanye West and Fiona Apple albums, in addition to his work on the soundtracks of Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine. He put out a wonderful solo album several years ago on an independent label because it initially got shelved somewhat like Fiona’s finally-released recent effort. Get ahold of his song “Walking Through Walls” and fall in love like I did.

Our final brilliant cover song for the day is Bonnie “Prince” Billy (aka Will Oldham) and Matt Sweeney doing Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” I hate Springsteen almost as much as I hate John Cougar Mellencamp, thus admitting my incredible love for this cover is difficult to do in public. Meandering guitar and half-spoken half-sung vocals get me every time. It’s artsy and stuff. Last minute Xmas present for the aging hipster.

One non-cover song that graced my ears yesterday includes Bobby Conn singing “Never Get Ahead.” The boyfriend introduced me to Conn via this video of Conn singing a cleaned up version of “Never Get Ahead” (giving head to The Man/saying yes to The Man) on a kids’ public television show. It’s especially amusing when the kids in the background try and maintain a straight face when this wee little man goes nuts at the end of his performance. Listen long enough to hear him nearly flub the clean version and give the kids an entirely different kind of lesson on the politics of The Man.

Another non-cover is an old standard that I adore playing on the piano, “Lullaby of the Leaves.” This slinky, southern version is performed by Jerry Dougles and Peter Rowan. If you ever catch me playing this song when I think I’m alone, you can hear me singing along. Poorly.

Finally, don’t forget to catch Don Lennon making fun of Dave Matthews and DMB fans. We don’t pass up chances to poke fun at easy targets.

Also: I expect contrary and laudatory reactions and comments below. Give it up.

The Walking Wombed

Molly Saves the Day, a brand new fantastic feminist blog, comes out swinging on beauty culture:

Both men and women are expected to trim or even be completely bald — the more unnatural, the better. Their hair is supposed to fall in ways that cannot be achieved without products to keep it that way, and the skin of both sexes is now supposed to be exfoliated and cared for and moisturized with a different product for every body part. There’s one overriding theme here: all these things cost money. While women may fall for this crap more than men (more on this in a minute), corporations will exploit insecurities of either gender to make a profit. While I’d like to blame the patriarchy, it seems like it would be more appropriate to blame the productarchy.

But by far, more women fall for these ploys than men. While some men religiously follow “Queer Eye” and buy the 100 products sure to make women fall for them, most women wear makeup and follow expensive, time-consuming beauty standards. The reason has a lot to do with the second issue I have with this article: its mystification over women acting sexy in a sexually repressed culture…

…If society sees its women as walking wombs, it’s not surprising in the least that they would want to flaunt the only value they’re seen to have. Men may want to dress to show off their success, or their style, or their personality, but girls have been told from earliest childhood that men will only be with them for their arousal capacities. It is absolutely natural for girls to try to compete for mates with what they perceive as valuable. Today, the culture puts value in sex: not seduction, or teasing, or subtle innuendo. Conservatives want out and out, bed-rocking, baby-making sex. And until we teach girls that their uterus isn’t on the auction block, it’s a trend that will continue indefinitely.

Great stuff.