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

Month: April 2007

New Feministe shirts!

“Ask Me About My Agenda” now on sale at Radial Rags. Scroll to the bottom for all the Feministe shirts.

And even more good news: Plus-sized shirts are coming very soon. We’re just in the process of figuring out a wholesaler that doesn’t rely on sweatshop labor and is relatively affordable. American Apparel is an option, but there are ongoing labor and feminist issues with that company. But a wider variety of sizes will appear very, very soon, and I will keep you all updated.

I will say, though, that this process has been pretty eye-opening — there simply aren’t a whole lot of sweatshop free, affordable wholesalers that make t-shirts to fit a whole range of women’s bodies. Larger shirts — which, really, only account for a few more inches of fabric — are significantly more expensive. And yet women’s shirts, which are generally smaller, usually cost more than men’s. And the solution offered to plus-sized women is “just buy a men’s shirt.”

It’s shitty, especially since the average American woman is hardly a size XS. If you have wholesaler suggestions, please leave them in the comments. And hold tight for just a little while longer — I promise that we’ll be selling shirts to fit every feminist body very soon.

Friday Random Ten — the missed deadlines edition

Yeah, I know it’s two days late. Sorry.

1. Amr Diab – Habibi Ya Nour El Ein
2. Wolf Eyes – The Driller
3. Mark Lanegan – Come to Me
4. The Notwist – Formiga
5. Jay-Z – Change Clothes
6. Dirty on Purpose – Your Summer Dress
7. Tom Waits – Down, Down, Down
8. The Avett Brothers – The New Love Song
9. Chet Baker – There Will Never Be Another You
10. Modest Mouse – Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset

Now, a Friday (Sunday) bonus video. I don’t really even like this song, but it kind of encompasses how I feel about one or two of my ex-boyfriends. Especially the laxative part, because that’s always hilarious. Although if it were me, I’d pee on his toothbrush.*

*No, I’ve never actually done that, but goddamn if I haven’t thought about it. Trust me though, he’d totally deserve it.

Posted in Uncategorized

If Zuzu gets to post Xtina, I get to post Beyonce

And, to preempt complaints, no, there is absolutely no reason that this should be posted on a feminist blog. At all. Except that (1) I like her imitation of Jay-z, (2) I love her ridiculous giant hair extension braid, and (3) I like her little knee-dance. And the scarves that her dancers wear.

Also, I’ve concluded that if I were a famous singer, I would want to be just like Beyonce. I’d make ridiculous shiny videos where I dressed up in all kind of ridiculous shiny outfits, sat in the trunk of a car that’s worth more than my life, flipped a giant braid around, did a spot-on imitation of my (borderline hideous but very talented) famous boyfriend (and still managed to look really hot as a boy) and had a small alligator walking around for no discernible reason. Just because small alligators are neat, and I can.

Candyman

I’m a sucker for anything 1940s-themed. Jesus, everyone looked good in the clothes they had then, and the music was all good. Plus, it’s a fun song.

A couple of years ago, I spent Thanksgiving at the house (a brownstone, bought insanely cheaply because it’s more or less in Flatbush) of a friend from the dogpark. Her dad had served in the Navy during WWII, and got to tell his Battle of the Coral Sea story again (interestingly enough, with a woman who’d grown up in Japan in the room) to new people.

My grandfathers were too young for WWI, too old for WWII. My dad got a college deferment during Korea (he did join the Navy as the war was winding down, and his big duty as a Lt. JG was securing enough condoms in Japan to let the men off the minesweeper.

My maternal uncles served during the Vietnam era. Jackie was a flight surgeon who probably got sent into Cambodia and never talked about that. Uncle Bren got drafted, but happily got sent to Germany, to Elvis’s former unit. The enlisted club, donated by Elvis, was AWESOME.

My brother did serve in the Gulf War*, and his wife was sent to Afghanistan, but I haven’t heard too many stories about all that.
___________
* The Gulf War service brought together the home-front stuff of WWI with the modern military. Mike, my brother, wrote my grandma during his many months in the desert with nothing to do to tell her that his tent flaps were flying open. Now, Mike learned early on that sewing and cooking were survival skills (not to mention, they helped with meeting girls in high school during home ec class), so he had his own set of curved upholstery needles. But the Army-issue thread wasn’t doing it WRT the wind in Saudi Arabia.

My grandma, who never threw anything away but somehow manged to make her house neat as a pin anyhow, dug out some silk thread that her mother had used to stitch up parachutes during WWI and sent it to Mike.

And, lo and behold, the stuff held. His was the only tent whose flaps stayed down, with 70-year-old silk thread.

BTW, to give you an idea of my grandma’s resourcefulness with everything she encountered, my mom was helping her clean out the basement after her stroke, and she found a jar full of white plastic things. “What are these?” “They’re pop-up timers from chickens and turkeys.” “And…why… do you have a jar full of these?” “I thought I could make a fence for a Christmas village.” And, y’know? Before her stroke, she woulda done just that.

IOW, get your older relatives talking, on tape. My grandparents were all born around 1900, half of them were from immigrant families, and there were all kinds of weird and random bits of info. Such as, my grandfather’s job as a teenager was delivering milk by horse-drawn cart to various clients in New Jersey. Including Thomas Edison. Who got very pissed that Grandpa’s horse ate his lawn.

Also, my grandmother used baked potatoes as handwarmers in her pockets.

You never know.

Speaking of anti-choice hypocrisy…

Georgetown law student Daniel Hughes, who threatened the GULC administration that he was going to go to Catholic church higher-ups if they continued to allow students to work at pro-choice organizations, is reportedly an openly gay man who sits on the board of OutLaw, the Georgetown Law LGBT organization.

One certainly does not have to be pro-choice just because one is gay. But if your reason for being anti-choice is because of religious doctrine, then it might be worth looking at what that religious doctrine says about you before you go around throwing stones. It’s relatively clear, though, that Dan isn’t as much concerned with following religion than he is with cherry-picking issues which result in the oppression of other people:

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said. “But the most bedrock Catholic teaching is the protection of life. No advocacy group that works against that principle should be supported by the university.”

Hughes said he doesn’t understand the complaints. Students, he said, need to realize that there are tradeoffs to coming to a Jesuit institution, such as the fact that some alumni donate because they support certain beliefs associated with the church.

Well, were Georgetown to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue, Dan would be in a spot of trouble, no? And I wonder how those alumni who support “certain beliefs associated with the church” would feel about groups like OutLaw? Or Georgetown offering funding for students who work at organizations like Lambda Legal Defense?

Hughes argues that “protection of life” is the most bedrock Catholic teaching, which may very well be true. But “protection of life” has not always had to do with fetuses and zygotes, given that the Church didn’t take a stand on contraception or abortion for much of its existence. But way, way back, Christian leaders did loudly argue that the only acceptable sex was for procreative purposes between two married people, even if the Bible doesn’t mention a whole lot about that (kind of how the Bible never prohibits abortion). While the history of abortion in Christianity is pretty mixed, even St. Augustine did not consider abortion to be murder — and for a good period of time, the sins of oral and anal sex were punished more heavily than abortion. According to one source:

Pope Stephen V (served 885-891) wrote in 887 CE: “If he who destroys what is conceived in the womb by abortion is a murderer, how much more is he unable to excuse himself of murder who kills a child even one day old.” “Epistle to Archbishop of Mainz.”

Pope Innocent III (?-1216) wrote a letter which ruled on a case of a Carthusian monk who had arranged for his female lover to obtain an abortion. The Pope decided that the monk was not guilty of homicide if the fetus was not “animated.”

Early in the 13th century, Pope Innocent III stated that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of “quickening” – when the woman first feels movement of the fetus. After ensoulment, abortion was equated with murder; before that time, it was a less serious sin, because it terminated only potential human life, not human life.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also considered only the abortion of an “animated” fetus as murder.

Pope Sixtus V issued a Papal bull “Effraenatam” in 1588 which threatened those who carried out abortions at any stage of gestation with excommunication and the death penalty. Pope Gregory XIV revoked the Papal bull shortly after taking office in 1591. He reinstated the “quickening” test, which he said happened 116 days into pregnancy (16½ weeks).

There’s no question that the Catholic church is currently opposed to abortion and birth control. But to argue that opposition to abortion has been more “foundational” to the Church than opposition to homosexuality is just factually inaccurate. I happen to disagree (strongly) with the Church on both counts. But if Georgetown law students are making attempts to de-fund their classmates under the guise of religious requirements, perhaps they should take a good hard look at all of those religious requirements, and ask themselves if they really want to study law at a place that imposes the whole range of Catholic doctrine.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

Wellll, this is interesting. Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis has been ordered to the federal pokey. Seems our boy Joe got a wee bit testy during settlement negotiations in the federal lawsuit seeking damages against him for filming underage girls on a Florida beach:

Los Angeles- The millionaire creator of the Girls Gone Wild
video series has been ordered to jail in connection with a lawsuit
alleging that his film crews pressured girls to appear in sexually
explicit situations, reports said Friday.
US District Court Judge Richard Smoak issued the order following
the breakdown of court-ordered mediation between Francis and lawyers
for the seven plaintiffs, who claimed that Francis had threatened
them during the negotiations and hurled obscenities at them.

Smoak ruled that Francis’ behaviour had placed him in contempt of
court. A lawyer for Francis has appealed the jail order while Francis
himself risks a further contempt judgment with his withering comments
about the judge.

“This judge has gone as far as to call me the devil and an
evildoer,” Francis said. “It is a case of a judge gone wild.”

Well, I wouldn’t call those “withering” comments. More petulant.

Of course, if the comments don’t get him in trouble, failing to report for his sentence will do the trick:

Despite a judge’s order to surrender himself by noon to begin a jail sentence for contempt of court, Francis was a no-show.

Ronn Torossian, a spokesman for Mantra Films Inc., the company that produces the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, said late Thursday that Francis had no intention of honoring the court’s order.

“We’ve all seen crazy Florida judges, but this development takes the cake,” Torossian said. “This is a case of judges gone wild.”

He said Francis was “very busy” on Thursday “running a business.”

Torossian said Francis was the victim of “extortion” in this case.

“For a judge to tell someone to settle a case or go to jail is a foreign concept to us,” Torossian said. “To threaten someone with jail over a civil case is unheard of.”

Jesus. Where is this guy’s lawyer? Though I suppose Francis does whatever he wants and doesn’t listen to counsel when counsel tells him to shut the fuck up already.

Yes, absolutely, you can go to jail for contempt in a civil case. Contempt is one of the ways the court enforces its orders to litigants. Once you submit to the authority of the court, you’re bound by its rules. And one of those rules is that you don’t act abusively to the other parties, particularly during court-ordered proceedings like mediation. And you don’t tell a federal judge that you won’t be obeying his orders because you’re too busy.

But this is a guy who has a little problem with throwing tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants.

Via Majikthise.

Georgetown Caves to Anti-Choice Pressure

“Pro-life” religious hypocrisy in a nutshell:

Daniel Hughes, president of the student group Progressive Alliance for Life, said he is among the students who have confronted administrators with concerns over summer internship funding. He said he threatened to take the matter to the church officials if action wasn’t taken. Aleinikoff said Georgetown’s decision had nothing to do with external pressure.

Hughes said the university is finally taking the appropriate action by honoring church teachings.

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said. “But the most bedrock Catholic teaching is the protection of life. No advocacy group that works against that principle should be supported by the university.”

Hughes said he doesn’t understand the complaints. Students, he said, need to realize that there are tradeoffs to coming to a Jesuit institution, such as the fact that some alumni donate because they support certain beliefs associated with the church.

Yes, whiny titty-baby Daniel Hughes threatened to go to church higher-ups if Georgetown didn’t de-fund his fellow students. And he doesn’t really care if Georgetown abides by other Catholic doctrines (anti-war, anti-death penalty) as long as they can continue to oppress women.

The background is this: Georgetown University Law Center has a public interest program that provides funding to students who take unpaid summer internships. Students have long accepted positions at a wide variety of organizations, including pro-choice groups. But this year, a student who was hired by Planned Parenthood’s public policy and litigation department was denied funding because of Planned Parenthood’s support of abortion rights.

Particularly problematic here is that students were blindsided by this policy. There are many pro-choice students at Georgetown, and they had no warning that the public interest program would not apply to them. After all, students still receive funding to work at other organizations that violate Catholic doctrine. As one student says:

“If Georgetown wants to be a Catholic University it has the freedom to identify as such,” she said. “If the school wants to abide by Catholic doctrine it should do so consistently and prevent all activities the Church disagrees with. This includes prosecutors’ offices that impose the death penalty, gay rights organizations, political candidates and judges that hold positions that disagree with the Catholic church, military law organizations and human rights organizations (the majority of which support reproductive rights, as well).

“When we apply to Georgetown Law, the most you hear about the Jesuit tradition is that [the school] supports students doing work in the public interest,” she added. “If I ever knew that taking part in women’s rights issues would lead to a chilling effect, I don’t know if I would have ever considered coming here.”

I have a feeling, though, that Georgetown won’t prevent the DA’s office from working on campus, or de-fund students who work for pro-war conservative legal organizations or think tanks. I’m pretty sure that there are at least a few non-Christian students at Georgetown — do they refuse to fund students who are working for other religiously-based legal organizations? Or, say, the Anti-Defamation League? I suspect they don’t. But advocating for something that saves hundreds of thousands of women’s lives every year, and improves the heath and well-being of millions more? Unacceptable.

I’ll repeat the quote from anti-choice student Daniel Hughes:

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said.

…because that might interfere with my job prospects, and we can’t have that!

The thorough hypocrisy of people like Hughes never fails to amaze me. And Georgetown’s emphasis on curtailing women’s rights instead of taking a holistic life-affirming view is disappointing, but not surprising. Georgetown of course has a right to fund what they want to fund, and refuse to back organizations that depart from their institutional and religious values — but that isn’t the case here, at least not in any sort of consistent way. This is just about being loudly misogynist and anti-abortion.

I hope this results in a serious application decrease next year, and plenty of bad publicity for the law school. And if I were a law student at Georgetown, I’d put in my application to transfer — or at least write a letter to the dean expressing my disappointment, and letting him know that so long as Georgetown embraces the curtailing of women’s rights, I won’t even consider “giving back” after graduation.