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

Month: December 2006

I have a question

And it’s about 30 years too late, but what the hell. The damn movie’s on right now.

So, in Star Wars, at the whole medal ceremony thingie at the end when Leia is giving out medals for the destruction of the Death Star —

Why in the fuck doesn’t Chewbacca get one? He was only piloting the Millenium Falcon while Han was up in the gun turret. But no, they just marched him up the stairs in front of everyone and then — psych! — didn’t give him a damn medal.

Unless Wookies are like Jehovah’s Witnesses or something and don’t, you know, do medals and awards. Though if that were the case, they probably wouldn’t do holidays, either, and we know they do. Or at least holidays involving Bea Arthur.

Help me out here.

Iranian women taking charge to secure their rights

Ali has posted a beautiful speech by Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Lily Mazahery. It’s a must-read, especially for those who think that women in majority-Muslim nations are silent. A taste:

Some of you may be familiar with the case of Atefeh Rajabi, a girl-child hanged to death in the city of Neka in the early hours of August 15 of 2004. Her crime was officially declared to be “adultery,” even though she had never married and was only 16 when the very judge who had condemned her to death served the added role of executioner by personally placing the noose around Atefeh’s tiny neck and ordering her body to be lifted. Unofficially, however, Atefeh’s crime was defiance – defiance of the un-natural and unreasonable rules that were forced upon her by the Islamic government; defiance of her status as something less than human; defiance of the inequality, poverty, and misogyny that has infested Iran in the past 27 years; and defiance of the binds designed to break the human spirit and destroy the essence of childhood. To the very end, Atefeh maintained her defiance. Witnesses speak of an unusual sense of calmness in her beautiful blue eyes to the last minute. They recount the girl-child’s insolent last words, which were: “At the very least, you could have given me a glass of water. Animals are slaughtered more humanely than this.”

Read it all.

Kansas AG’s harassment of an abortion provider fails again

Charges against George Tiller, brought by notorious anti-choice Attorney General Phil Kline (yes, the same guy who, as part of his anti-choice crusade, subpoenaed the private medical records of dozens of women and girls who had terminated their pregnancies), have been dropped — not only because they were entirely unsubstantiated, but because the DA herself requested their dismissal. And because Kline lacked the legal authority to file them in the first place.

Kline was ousted in the most recent election, and is using his final weeks in office to continue his persecution of Kansas abortion providers. The fact that he’s targeting Tiller isn’t surprising, as Tiller is routinely harassed by the anti-choice movement (he’s a favorite target of Operation Rescue), and has been a repeated victim of anti-choice terrorism. His clinic has been bombed, and he has been shot in both arms. A simple google search will reveal anti-choice sites that post pictures of his home, directions to his house, and give his personal address. Anti-choice groups have filed repeated unsubstantiated charges against him, none of which stick. But it’s certainly interesting (and unfortunately not surprising) to see a state official jump on board with the zealots who stalk, harass, and intimidate Dr. Tiller, and who often resort to violence.

Thankfully, Kline will be out in just a few days, and his Democratic replacement with undoubtedly be better.

What’s wrong with princesses?

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with “Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her “princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, “I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, “Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

“Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. “It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. “Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. “What’s wrong with princesses?”

Read the whole article.

She writes about the difficulties in raising her daughter in a culture that still constructs childhood along a clear gender binary — but one in which “female” not only means pink and princesses, but ambition and success, too. We rightly celebrate feminist milestones, like the fact that more girls are playing sports, that most colleges are at least 50% female, that medical and law schools have more female applicants than male applicants, that high-school girls are more highly-achieving than ever. The problem, though, is that these girls are loaded with the burden of not only being as successful and ambitious as their male peers, but looking and acting perfect while they do it. I look back at the girls in high school who were the Homecoming and Prom queens and princesses, and they epitomize this pressure: a single girl would be a two-sport athlete, a cheerleader, a club president, a member of Honor Society, and preparing to head off to a good four-year college. And sweet. And beautiful. I wasn’t exactly one of those girls (I was too mean), but I can certainly relate to the pressures of having to do well academically while being self-effacing and feminine enough to not come off as threatening. It’s exhausting. It takes a whole lot of effort, and a fair amount of money, too — because femininity is more of an achievement than a natural state, and it takes products and processes and little rituals and repeated denials and lots of work, on top of the “real” work of getting straight A’s or doing well at your job. So how Orenstein phrased it really hit home with me:

It doesn’t seem to be “having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time.

Catholic Church’s backwards logic

The feminist president of Chile helped to promote legislation that legalized the distribution of emergency contraception in her country. Reproductive freedom is very limited in Chile, where the age of sexual consent is 14 and 15% of all pregnancies are to girls under the age of 18. Access to EC is a big step in the right direction.

But here’s what the church had to say:

The influential Roman Catholic Church, however, has condemned distribution of the pill as a form of abortion that encourages promiscuity and intrudes on personal freedoms. In a statement, the national conference of bishops said the government’s actions are “reminiscent of public policies established in totalitarian regimes, by which the state aimed to regulate the intimate lives of its citizens.”

Wouldn’t limiting reproductive freedoms be more akin to regulating the intimate lives of citizens? Last I checked, giving women the widest variety of reproductive choices possible isn’t regulating their private lives; barring their access to contraception and throwing them in jail for having abortions sounds a little more regulatory to me.

Of course, it’s not only the church:

“When we are talking about girls between the ages of 14 and 18, parental consent is important,” said Senator Soledad Alvear, president of the Christian Democrats and Ms. Bachelet’s main rival for the alliance’s presidential nomination last year. “They can’t vote or drive a car or even buy cigarettes until they are 18,” she added.

Fair enough. But at 14, they can legally consent to sex — isn’t that a better standard by which to determine their ability to access contraceptives?

The concern about parental consent and totalitarian regimes seems a little misplaced in a country with an extremely high teen birth rate and laws which criminalize women for terminating pregnancies. One hallmark of totalitarian regimes is taking away freedom — not promoting reproductive rights. We’ve seen it everywhere from China to Rumania to Germany, and it’s the height of hypocrisy for the Church to shake its head at totalitarianism, and then support the exact policies that such regimes depend on.

Merry Christmas!

It’s a day late, sorry, but I hope everyone who celebrates had a very merry Christmas. I’m back at home in rainy Seattle, and between finishing up my last final, getting ready for the holidays, spending time with family, going to physical therapy for my stress-induced neck/shoulder injury (gotta love law school), watching the first two seasons of LOST on DVD, and only having access to my mom’s exceptionally slow computer, I haven’t been blogging much. I’ll shoot for a couple posts every other day or so, when I can drag myself away from the TV long enough to go to the local coffee shop with wireless access. But I’ll probably continue to be a bad blogger until January 5th, when I get back to New York. I did, however, find time on Christmas day to finally see An Inconvenient Truth, and I’m happy to report that we’re all gonna die.

I also have really cute doggy pictures, so you can all look forward to some Friday Dog Blogging, featuring my little muppet Ferris.

Reporter surprised that a woman’s brains do not leak out during a blowjob

How else to explain this?

There are moments that make you question your fundamental assumptions about the world. One of them took place a few days ago, when news emerged that Monica Lewinsky had just graduated from the London School of Economics.

She did not!!

Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond.

Monica Lewinsky may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

Moreover, just because what she happens to be known for is sucking the president’s dick doesn’t mean she can’t also be a smart person. Sucking dick doesn’t leach one’s brains, after all, something our reporter, Libby Copeland, might know by taking a poll of the newsroom at the Washington Post. Fifty bucks says there’s a cocksucker or two among the reporting staff there, and one doesn’t get a byline at the WaPo by being an intellectual lightweight.

(Hush, you. We’re even including Richard Cohen. Being a fool and/or a tool does not mean that one isn’t actually a smart person.)

I’m actually a little rocked by the idea that Monica Lewinsky is 33 by now. Damn. I guess I didn’t realize a) how much time had passed and b) that she was only 5 years younger than I was.

From what I know, through friends of friends in the publishing world who were involved in babysitting her during her book tour, Lewinsky was — many years ago — a bit needy. But then, she’d spent well over a year under intense scrutiny and federal investigation, waiting for her testimony and being the butt of jokes. And probably starved for the company of people her age.

But remember — she turned the hobby she picked up during this time, knitting, into a business. So she had the requisite experience in the business world to go to the London School of Economics.

Copeland’s article is all about the “dumb-but-smart” uh, “phenomenon.” And how, exactly, did Monica Lewinsky fall into this category? Because she trusted the wrong person and got dragged into a Congressional witch hunt. And then had the good sense to keep her mouth shut while the investigation was pending and the press was busy constructing a narrative that she was a dumb, fat broad who sucked dick in the Oval Office.

Support the Koufaxes this Christmas

Merry Christmas!

If you have any cash left to give this year (or if the rellies gave you a check or two), consider donating to Wampum. Mary Beth and Eric and Dwight run the Koufax Awards every year, and every year, the traffic gets higher. Which puts a strain on their servers. They recently got a generator so they can run their servers off the grid, but the servers need new hard drives if they have any chance at all of being able to put the Koufaxes on this year.

Chris Clarke has the details.

MB’s Amazon honor system page is here. There’s also a link to PayPal from the Wampum front page, though PayPal has been a little wonky sometimes.

UPDATE: Kevin has some more suggestions for where your donation dollars might go this year.

And We Thought the Problem Solved T-Shirt Was Bad

Check this out. Amy from Radioactive Quills shows us that the misogynist “Problem Solved” T-shirt has competition for the title of the worst thing out there:

In case you missed it, here’s another good reason to not shop at Wal-Mart.

As an alert consumer realizes, this symbol was used, from 1936 onwards, as the insignia worn by all members of the SS concentration camp service. In 1941 it was adopted by the 3rd SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf.

Didn’t anyone in the Wal-Mart corporation take a world history class in high school?!

Jesus H. If you want a shirt with a skull on it, use one of the other hundreds of thousands of skull designs. Don’t use the Totenkopf.