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

Month: July 2006

A Love Letter to the Bikini

“It is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing.”
-Modern Girl magazine, 1957

The bikini turns 60 this week, and I extend it well-deserved congratulations.

Why Not Lieberman?

Why have so many mean lefty bloggers abandoned establishment Democrat Joe Lieberman, opting to support his opponent, Ned Lamont, instead? Well, there’s his position on the Iraq war, for one. But that’s hardly the nail in his coffin. Check out, for example, his ideas about women’s rights.

Unfortunately, the establishment democrats are turning out to campaign for Joe, despite the fact that his opponent’s views are much closer to the ideals of the Democratic party and progressives in general. Joe Biden, Ken Salazar, and Barbara Boxer (!) are all heading to Connecticut to lend Joe their support.

And right here, my friends, is the trouble with the Democratic party.

Support Ned Lamont.

Solving the Homelessness Crisis

Jess sends on this article about a controversial Seattle program which gives homeless alcoholics a place to live — and allows them to drink in their rooms.

These are the “unsympathetic homeless” who beg, drink, urinate and vomit in public — and they are probably the most difficult to get off the streets, said Bill Hobson, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, the nonprofit group that owns 1811 Eastlake.

In 2003, the public spent $50,000, on average, for each of 40 homeless alcoholics found most often at the jail, the sobering center and the public Harborview Medical Center, said Amnon Shoenfeld, director of King County’s division of mental health and chemical abuse.

Mr. Hobson’s group expected the annual cost for each new resident of 1811 Eastlake to be $13,000, or a total of $950,000. It cost $11.2 million to build and is paid for entirely by the City of Seattle and county, state and federal governments.

Read More…Read More…

The New India

India has seen tremendous growth in the past decade, and certain segments of its population have seen their lives improve dramatically. That certainly deserves recognition and applause. But in looking at the Indian success story, let’s not forget that many Indians have been left behind:

But the increasingly common, business-centric view of India suppresses more facts than it reveals. Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country’s $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa and that, as the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report puts it, even if it sustains its current high growth rates, India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106.

Read More…Read More…

How Much CO2 Do You Emit?

Calculate away.

I emit 6100 pounds of Co2 each year, which is less than half of what the average American does (average: 15,000 pounds). And most of mine comes from flying home to Seattle once or twice a year. But then, I don’t exactly live like the “average American.” I share a small apartment with a room mate, and I live in a city with great public transportation, so I don’t have a car. If I had kids, or if I couldn’t afford to live in a pricey urban area (which, as a student, I barely can), I doubt my emissions would look quite the same.

Amanda has a great post up about what people in all kinds of different situations can do for the enivronment. Some ideas, from her post, this website, and my own pretty little head:

-Wear cool clothes in the summer and open your windows instead of turning on the AC in the summer (obviously, this isn’t possible everywhere, especially in humid climates and in places like offices, where there are lots of people)
-Throw an extra comforter on your bed in the winter instead of cranking the heat up
-When you use heat/AC in your home, moderate it. Keep it cool in the summer, but not freezing. Keep it warm in the winter, but not so hot that you have to walk around in shorts and a tank top.
-Reduce your meat consumption. You don’t have to go vegetarian or vegan (I abandoned vegetarianism after 10 years, so I’m not going to lecture anyone on that), but cutting down how much meat you eat (especially red meat) is good for the environment and even better for your body. And if possible, swear off the fast food.
-Plant a garden. Try growing some of your own vegetables.
-If you can, walk, bike, or take public transportation to work. If work is too far to walk, biking is a great idea, and will relieve you of the need to go work out in the evening or on the weekends. And it doesn’t have to be a daily thing — even riding to work once or twice a week helps.
-If you own your home, try installing solar screens. They’ll cut down your electricity bills, too.
-Use compact flourescent lightbulbs. They’re a more expensive, but they last much longer than regular lightbulbs, making them cheaper in the long run.
-Dry your clothes on a clothesline. This isn’t possible for a lot of people, and I definitely can’t do it in New York, but it’s a good idea nonetheless. And one of my favorite things about living in Europe is the clothesline-dried clothes. They smell better, they’re not wrinkley, your sheets are crisper… it’s great.
-Unplug your cellphone charger, computer and television when you aren’t using them. Just having them plugged in wastes energy.
-Only run your dishwasher if it’s full. If you live alone or with just one or two other people, try washing your dishes by hand.
-Insulate and weatherize your home
-Recycle
-Buy fresh foods instead of frozen
-Buy locally-produced foods. If there’s a farmer’s market nearby, buy your produce there.
-Keep your car tires properly inflated, and have your car inspected regularly.

And there are a million more ideas. This is obviously a list to pick and choose from — few people can do everything it recommends. And unfortunately, many of these options are only available to people of a certain income level. If you live in an urban area and the local bodega is your nearest grocery store, your access to fresh fruits and veggies probably isn’t the best. If you rent your home instead of own it, it’s a lot harder to install solar panels or new windows or demand that the heat is kept low in the entire building. If you have to drive your kids around town all day, it’s harder to be part of a carpool, or to spend the extra time walking or biking to and from work.

But I think it’s fair to say that everyone can do something to reduce the amount of waste they produce, and the amount of CO2 they omit. Feel free to add more suggetsions in the comments.

The Problem with Africa:

All those Africans.

Calderisi, a former World Bank official and a veteran of many years of working on African issues, exposes the dirty little secret harbored by so many saviors of Africa. Indeed, Calderisi has written a book that is positively boiling over with resentment toward Africans. They are dishonest and unfeeling. They are greedy and materialistic. They lack the values, training and even the motives necessary to govern themselves. They are religious, superstitious and prone to brutality. Were it not for Africans themselves, the saviors might actually notch some successes.

Calderisi excoriates Africans for “looking for excuses,” the title of his opening chapter, and hiding behind those they find. These excuses are, in his mind, predictable: colonialism and racism. Calderisi dismisses those who cite the history of European colonialism and the legacy of transatlantic slavery to defend Africans. Slavery wasn’t so bad, he says; at least the peculiar institution delivered some Africans from living in Africa itself. And colonialism had a silver lining. Without contact with Europeans, Africans would be even worse off, he insists.

To be sure, Calderisi does not express himself quite like this. In fact, he is even more blunt and more simplistic in his ideas about the failings of Africans. He has identified an “African character” and claims, “There is a darker side to the African character.”

Darker? Calderisi is deaf to the sound of his unintended pun.

Not to mention that he doesn’t say just how dark he finds the African character, perhaps because he’s impatient to make other sweeping generalizations. He finds, for instance, that “Africans are not savers.” “They are also superstitious.” “Most uneducated Africans are fatalistic,” he adds. “They accept and submit.” But they are not so accepting or submissive. Rather, “Africans can be brutal to each other, especially in groups.”

Read More…Read More…

My little sister has a blog

And so naturally I am blog-whoring for her. Check it out: The Further West, an examination of her time living in Morocco.

She’s been a busy lady — she spent last semester in Ecuador, and did an anthropology project on the cultural significance of smells in that country. Now she’s working in Morocco for the summer. She’s only got one post up, but head over and give her some encouragement! And tell her to post pictures, because she never emails them to me.