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

Month: June 2007

The Rejection: The Magic Kingdom’s Carousel of Progress.

It hurts me to say this because Walt Disney World holds a landmark place in my heart. But the Carousel of Progress, in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World, is watchable only as an artifact of an American narrative we no longer want to tell. Queue up and watch the 21 minutes of patriarchal late capitalist GE-approved “progress.”

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And The Lord Smited Rudy

Did you hear? God struck down lightning on Rudy Giuliani, just as Rudy was about to discuss his stance on abortion. It’s amazing. God has again demonstrated his hatred of abortion rights, just as He did in the Bible, when he never mentioned abortion at all.

You want to know what else God hates?

The home at 831 Cascade Drive, in the Beechwood subdivision near Denbigh.
Little girls who sell school coupon books.
Strawberry festivals.
English mid-fielders.
iPods (or perhaps just Metallica).
People who pray.

Repent now, sinners.

Justice for Julie Amero

Julie Amero, if you don’t know, is a former substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, who was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison after her classroom computer, infected with malware, started uncontrollably displaying pornographic pop-ups that were visible to the junior high school students she was teaching that day. As Lindsay Beyerstein wrote back in January,

On Jan. 5, 2007, a Norwich jury found Amero guilty of four felony counts of “injury or risk of injury to, or impairing morals of, children.” Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years and while it is unlikely that Amero will receive the maximum penalty, incarceration remains a very real possibility. Even if Amero avoids jail, she will be stripped of her teaching credentials unless the convictions are reversed.

News of the guilty verdict sparked widespread outrage, particularly in the IT community. How could a 40-year-old woman with no prior criminal record be facing such serious charges over a few pop-up ads?

“The fact that the machine was never scanned for spyware by the investigating authorities is outrageous. In fact, this alone should have resulted in the case being dismissed, as the defense found a major spyware infection by their expert forensic evidence,” wrote Alex Eckelberry, the president of Sunbelt Software, a Florida-based firm that makes anti-spyware products.

Now, Amero has been granted a new trial, because — surprise! — the failure of authorities to scan for spyware *before* the trial led to the jury getting erroneous evidence from the state’s “expert.”

In setting aside the guilty verdict, Strackbein ruled that the witness the state presented as a computer expert, a Norwich police detective, provided “erroneous” testimony about the classroom computer.

“The jury may have relied, at least in part, on that false information,” said Strackbein.

The motion for a new trial was filed on Tuesday by Amero’s attorney, William F. Dow. The motion said that evidence gathered after Amero was convicted in January of four counts of risk or injury to a minor casts serious doubt on her guilt.

The judge cited a forensic computer analysis conducted by the state police crime lab – conducted after the guilty verdict – to support the argument that the verdict should be set aside. She said the lab report “contradicts testimony of the state’s computer witness.”

The state is not taking a position on the motion for a new trial, meaning that it’s unlikely Amero will be tried again. It seems like the prosecution’s tactics in the first trial were grounded in hysteria about kids seeing porn — even though they’re quite likely to be downloading it in their rooms at night. That Amero couldn’t have stopped the popups if she’d tried didn’t matter; Something had to Be Done to Protect the Children.

H/T Desertrat and Lindsay.

Posted in Law

Crazy? Or rational?

I posted about this a bit in the roundup post below, but I wanted to put it into its own post.

Here’s what I wrote a few days ago about this movie, and about Burt and Linda Pugach:

****Finally, we’re getting some really bizarrely chirpy PR emails about a new film, Crazy Love. I mean, check this out:

Hi there,
Crazy Love has been released in selected cities, starting today! To celebrate, I have selected a particularly juicy clip from the film, in which Burt goes off the deep end when Linda breaks up with him. His crazy eyes haunt me in my dreams!

Do you know who Burt and Linda are? Burt Pugach was a married man in 1959 when he pursued the young Linda Riss. When she got fed up with his unfulfilled promises to leave his wife, she broke up with him.

The going off the deep end bit? He hired a couple of thugs to throw lye in her face, blinding her. He spent fourteen years in prison for the crime, during which time he wrote Linda long letters which largely went unanswered. Nevertheless, he was the only man who wanted her now that she was blind and her world was shrinking, and she ended up marrying him when he got out of prison.

From reviews, it sounds like the film makes her out to be just as nuts as he was. But was she? She was from a time when a woman was nothing without a man; was it an unreasonable choice for her to agree to marry the man who’d blinded her if no other man would have her?

Manola Darghis made a good point in her review, which I think needs to be highlighted here:

When reporters have written about what happened between these two, they sometimes have used the phrase crime of passion, one of those slyly misleading idioms, like collateral damage, employed to paper over ugly reality. Crimes of passion have often been viewed as categorically different from other crimes because they supposedly originate in lust and desire, an argument that has been used historically and even legally to rationalize violence against women, including rape. What is odious about the notion of so-called crimes of passion is how the phrase necessarily implicates victims, because it is the very desirability of the victims, after all, that provokes their assailants to madness (passion). All of which makes the image of Mrs. Pugach standing by her man squirmingly uncomfortable.

It’s the chirpy PR people and their “juicy” talk that are nauseating.****

I haven’t seen the film, but the clips on YouTube are pretty interesting. She’s not all sappy about him, she doesn’t seem to sugarcoat what he did to her, and she doesn’t admit that she loves him. But she does say that she is now damaged goods, and he’s a good husband to her. Even her friends and family members, who were horrified that she married him when he got out of prison, grudgingly admit that he treats her well.

It seems to me that she made a rational choice, given the options she had available — and even though his acid attack limited those options for her. That’s not to say that what he did was not reprehensible, or that her decision is above reproach. But who can honestly say what they would do in her shoes?

Thoughts?

Is Feminism Global?

I am in many ways a hybrid. I am an African girl who has lived abroad for such a long time that both European and African cultures have become fused together in me. One thing that I struggle a lot with when I return to Tanzania for my holidays is the traditional female role that I have to slip back into in order to integrate with everyone else. I love returning back home – the food, the music, the hilarious Tanzanian TV shows. Yet what pains me the most is how people expect and in fact want me to act like a “woman”, ie, do not wear trousers if you are a girl and do not watch football with the men of the house (the former and the latter which I do all the time).

Why are we always assigned certain images that we must live up to? In the West, there is a certain amount of freedom given to women as we can choose what we want to do with our lives and whatever we want to wear just judging from how liberal society is here. Yet when I return to Tanzania, I see that while the country’s cosmopolitan cities are embracing women to have freedom in terms of how they move in society, not all of the citizens of the country are embracing this ideology. In my midriff baring time, it used to irk my grandmother so much as she thought I was showing off my flesh. I suppose this is natural in traditional societies but from what I can see when I return to my mother’s village, no one wants this to change.

Women have their place being reminded that they have their duties ie, keeping the house spotless, raising the children and being submissive to the patriarch of the family. No doubt things are changing in our neighbouring country Kenya where Rebecca Lolosoli started her own all-female village to help Samburu tribeswomen who were being beaten yet general attitudes towards women don’t seen like they want to change at all because that would be “un-African” to embrace feminism. That appears to be the bottom line for many people at home that feminism is a foreign parasite that is trying to destroy African communities.

Feminism is becoming global I believe and encompassing all women of ethnic backgrounds too which is incredibly important to that it has scope. The problem that is lying ahead for it is to penetrate Africa. The HIV/AIDS crisis needs a breakthrough – and who knows? Perhaps the women’s movement is the answer.

Renewing the Craig v. Boren Strategy for Hate Crimes, or Why Tucker Carlson’s Stupidity Must Be Confronted Head On.

On May 14th, Joe Solomonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign, paid a visit to Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show to talk about HR 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. Here is the transcript of the show. In it, Carlson makes the conservative case against hate crimes laws generally. Solomonese (and the bill) would have been better served had he revived a strategy reminiscent of Craig v. Boren, the Supreme Court decision that held that heightened, or intermediate scrutiny, must be applied to judicial review if the challenged law classifies in terms of sex.

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Pro-Life Group: “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor”

Nope, couldn’t make it up if I tried. The full press release (emphasis mine):

“Abortion is an act that takes the life of an innocent human child,” said Erik Whittington, American Life League’s youth outreach director. “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor and ignore the deaths of untold millions of babies. Abortion is poverty and the number one priority of our day should be its demise.”

This past weekend, Sojourners opened Pentecost 2007: Taking Vision to the Street, a conference aimed at placing “poverty at the top of our nation’s agenda.” Today, Sojourners will host a march that will run from National City Christian Church to the Upper Senate Park. American Life League, through its youth outreach project Rock for Life, will be there to present to conference attendees the importance of putting abortion, not poverty, at the top of the list of social concerns.

“Mother Teresa, the universal icon for fighting poverty once said, ‘It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.’ While we commend Christians for working towards eliminating poverty,” said Whittington, “we must not forget that abortion kills a human person, and leaves the mother spiritually and psychologically broken. Abortion ends the lives of more than 3,500 American babies a day. This bloodshed dwarfs any other issue, including poverty.”

What is it with this week? I feel like the running theme is “Wingnuts finally say out loud the abhorrent things we always knew they believed, but thought they were smart enough to keep under wraps.” I thought the “They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure” comment couldn’t be beat, until they came out with “The old procedure [standard D&E], which is still legal … means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling” — that had to top all, right? Admitting that they think it’s a good thing that more women will have their uteruses perforated? I was sure we had a winner. Sadly, it was beaten out by “Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification.” Which is most surely the champion — abortions make all the ladies come? It’s incredible.

But no. Now Christians should be ashamed for helping the poor.

Let me re-contextualize this statement: It’s a press release. Not dumb, unscripted O’Reilly-style verbal diarrhea. Not an off-the-cuff comment to a reporter. Not something penned by a notoriously pathetic and vile dude who spews wingnut insanity on the regular and probably writes his columns in crayon. A press release. A planned, vetted, thought-out, purposeful statement, deemed important enough to release to news organizations. It’s a whole new level of unbelievable.

And it should make all of us pause for a moment and recognize just how emboldened anti-choice groups have become in the wake of the “partial-birth” abortion Supreme Court decision. It’s no coincidence that these kind of atrocious views are finally being verbalized now.

Pro-choice advocates have long pointed out that poverty relief and choice go hand in hand — the more financial security a woman has, the freer she may feel to choose to give birth. The inability to support a child is one of the primary reasons women give for terminating pregnancies. You’d think that “pro-life” activists, then, would be supportive of poverty relief programs, and would place women’s economic well-being at the top of their list.

But if you were under the impression that “pro-life” activists were actually about lowering the abortion rate, you would be sadly mistaken. If that were the case, they’d not only support poverty relief and social welfare programs, but they’d support contraceptive access and comprehensive sex education, two tried-and-true methods of lowering the unintended pregnancy rate. Instead, they’re advocating against basic birth control and against medically accurate health classes. We should not be surprised that they’re now advocating against poverty relief.

And yet somehow, I was still shocked to read “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor” in a press release from a Christian pro-life organization. Chalk it up to my youthful innocence.

Thanks to Amanda for sending this on.

Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification.*

baby
Celine Dion proves her commitment to feminism by preparing to eat this baby.

Sweet Jesus I wish I could have made that headline up myself.** But no, that is Mike Adams’ new definition of feminism. Verbatim. And if you don’t think it’s totally hilarious, you were probably an abused communist emotionally disturbed child, and you have no sense of humor.

I would write more, but that would actually require me to read Mike’s column, so you should just go here instead. Per usual, Mike is responding to yet another feminist bull-dyke stripper abortionist named Daisy who either approached or emailed him and yet again confirmed that all feminists are crazy bull-dyke stripper abortionists, but who also imparted upon him the wisdom that feminist bull-dyke stripper abortionists have sex with anything in sight so that they can get pregnant and have hundreds of orgasms at Planned Parenthood. Really. It’s turning into the latest teenage sex craze. It’ll be in Dear Abby next week.

World O’Crap really nails it:

(You know, some day that strident dyke who always accosts Dr. Adams after a speech will climb into the cab driven by that guy who cruises around La Guardia all day waiting for a chance to vindicate Thomas Friedman’s preconceptions, and we’ll finally get the whole world straightened out.)

A girl can dream, right? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go “slaughter some innocent children,” as the kids are calling it these days.

via Amanda.

*Who knew that the Bush administration has so many feminists in its ranks? And if you don’t think that’s funny then you are a humorless disturbed conservative who has just proven my theory that conservatives are defined by being humorless and disturbed. So thank you. I expect to see my check from Town Hall any day now.
**Clearly this is an ongoing problem: I try to mock these dudes by being battier and more hyperbolic than they are, and they still out-crazy me.