September 2007 – Page 2

More from Burma

Unsurprisingly, things in Burma have not turned out well. I watched a lot of CNN World and BBC this weekend, and they’re covering it pretty thoroughly. From nytimes.com it seems like American media is doing the same — any thoughts from American readers who watch the TV news or read other papers?

And as our eyes are turned that way, it’s worth noting that the injustices in Burma extend far beyond the violent suppression of peaceful protests; Burma/Myanmar is also home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The current situation is Burma is a large-scale version of what’s been happening on smaller stages for years: Pro-democracy agitators are routinely harassed, jailed, and attacked.

Details are sketchy because the military junta has shut down nearly all access to the outside world, but Burmese bloggers are taking the incredibly brave step of writing about what’s happening on the streets of Rangoon. And citizens are doing more than blogging — they’re recording their own footage and sending it to the news media, which has been barred from entering the country. It’s a potentially momentous turning point for citizen media, and a testament to how powerful individual access to technology can be. Mainstream journalists, too, have risked everything to report on the situation, with Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai shot and killed by the military.

As international outrage grows, perhaps things will turn around. But I’m not too optimistic.

Interestingly, the Catholic Church has decided not to get its hands dirty with this little mess.

As for the cries of “Well what can we do?,” one option is to put pressure not only on China (although that’s important too), but on the multinational firms that are competing for Burma’s resources and bankrolling its military government. (Oil? Who would have guessed?).

Police assault on queer and trans people in NYC

via Angry Brown Butch:

NEW YORK – On the night of Wednesday, September 26, officers from the 9th Precinct of the New York Police Department attacked without provocation members of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and of its community. Two of our community members were violently arrested, and others were pepper sprayed in the face without warning or cause.

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (www.srlp.org) is an organization that works on behalf of low-income people of color who are transgender, gender non-conforming, or intersex, providing free legal services and advocacy among many other initiatives. On Wednesday night, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project was celebrating its fifth anniversary with a celebration and fundraising event at a bar in the East Village.

A group of our community members, consisting largely of queer and transgender people of color, witnessed two officers attempting to detain a young Black man outside of the bar. Several of our community members asked the officers why they were making the arrest and using excessive force. Despite the fact that our community was on the sidewalk, gathered peacefully and not obstructing foot traffic, the NYPD chose to forcefully grab two people and arrested them. Without warning, an officer then sprayed pepper spray across the group in a wide arc, temporarily blinding many and causing vomiting and intense pain.

“This is the sort of all-too-common police violence and overreaction towards people of color that happens all the time,” said Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. “It’s ironic that we were celebrating the work of an organization that specifically opposes state violence against marginalized communities, and we experienced a police attack at our celebration.”

“We are outraged, and demand that our community members be released and the police be held accountable for unnecessary use of excessive force and falsely arresting people,” Spade continued.

Damaris Reyes is executive director of GOLES, an organization working to preserve the Lower East Side. She commented, “I’m extremely concerned and disappointed by the 9th Precinct’s response to the situation and how it escalated into violence. This kind of aggressive behavior doesn’t do them any good in community-police relations.”

Supporters will be gathering at 100 Centre Street today, where the two community members will be arraigned. The community calls for charges to be dropped and to demand the immediate release of those
arrested.

I was out of town this weekend and so I missed this story on Thursday; thankfully, all of the arrested individuals have been released.

Jack will be keeping us updated on what we can do to make sure that incidents like this don’t happen again. The East Village is my neighborhood when I’m not living in some far-flung country, and I really wish I could be there right now in solidarity. This kind of injustice in unacceptable, there or anywhere. Keep checking Jack’s place for updates, and I’ll post them as well as soon as I see ’em.

Good news: Lactating woman will be allotted time to pump during her medical exams

A Harvard student is being given extra time on her medical licensing exams so that she can pump breast milk. Awesome.

The fact that a woman was denied pumping time during a medical licensing exam is particularly galling. You’d think they’d be aware of the physical complications that can occur if they refuse to let the woman leave the room to pump. It’s a two-day nine-hour exam, with a total of 45 minutes of break time. That’s difficult for anyone, but a huge disadvantage to a woman who isn’t able to fully pump during the allotted breaks, and is then forced to take the test while in significant amounts of pain.

The medical board is appealing to protect the “integrity of the exam.”

Let’s hope the current ruling holds.

Thanks to Miss Kate for the link.

Revenge of the Female Nerds

This is awesome:

And muchas gracias to evil fizz, AJ, and Thomas for sending this on. It makes me especially happy that three people thought of Feministe when they read it.

Looking for some volunteers from the British Isles or Australia

To try out this thing:

It’s the Faveo Freedom Bra, and its inventor, Joanne Morgan, swears it’s comfortable and supportive for large breasts. It just, well, it looks weird. And entirely counterintuitive.

But if it’s really true that it’s supportive and comfortable, I’d shell out the $90 it’d cost me to have the thing(s) shipped from England. One of my biggest problems with bras is the band digging into me at one particular spot, probably because one of my breasts is bigger than the other, so the bigger one pulls the whole bra off-center and the band on the other side digs.

So this is where you come in, dear readers: if you have large breasts and live in the British Isles or Australia (currently the only places where these things are available in person), please go try a pair of these things on and let us know if they’re really all that. I’m also curious to know if your boobs still swing around, even if they’re supported.

Thanks!

Not to mention: if this works, halter tops!

H/T: Kristen

Please, someone shoot Chris Matthews with a tranquilizer dart

His gender issues are just embarrassing.

No one escapes the Baby Inquisition

Beth Ditto sure hasn’t:

All that said, as a 26-year-old lesbian, with a not-so-child-friendly career, I sure don’t have a burning desire to reproduce. You might think my circumstances would spare me from the inevitable baby pressure, but no! Just like my straight friends, I am repeatedly asked when I plan to have kids, and have been told many times, by various branches of my bloodline, that “even lesbians can have babies these days”. I have found myself in the midst of hour-long debates over artificial insemination v adoption, which I usually try to escape….

Thankfully, I am able to see through the fog and enjoy my life baby-free. For women who are worrying about this, though, I think the most important thing is to analyse where these feelings are coming from. Are they a result of outside pressure? Do they stem from the “I wanna be a grandma” funny business that so many of us encounter from our moms?

If so, then it’s time to separate their feelings from yours – outside pressure shouldn’t come into it. The recent travails of Britney Spears stand as testament to the fact that children aren’t the right choice for everyone, especially if you’re not really ready…..

Having children brings a lot of happiness, but it is also hugely romanticised. Consumer culture has created a soft- focus, nappy-commercial view of what parenthood entails. In moments when I question if I should be having kids, I think of all those phone calls from my sister-in-law, in which, 3,000 miles away, I hear my nephews screaming for her attention. I tell her I have to go because I am packing to leave for Europe, and her tone flatlines: “That must be nice.”

This archaic idea – that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural – will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous. Please, let’s all make a pledge. Ignore it!

This goes two ways, as well: it’s all very well to advise women to ignore such questions, but there should also be some effort to send the message that it’s rude to ask such questions in the first place if the woman in question hasn’t indicated that she wants kids.

Well, at least it’s not pink

When Marie Claire asked Mia Kim from Popgadget to design a “ShePhone” — a women’s version of an iPhone — she didn’t go the typical route and slap a pink coat of paint on a product and charge more for it. But that’s not to say she* and Marie Claire didn’t girlie it up:

That’s right, folks: apparently being a woman is so stressful that we must have Xanax and booze at the ready at all times, and be prepared to fuck (with others or ourselves) at a moment’s notice, and then pee on our phone to take a pregnancy test if those condoms stored near a hot battery didn’t hold up.

Honestly, the only thing on here that I’d like to see put on a real phone is the breathalyzer, and I find the corkscrew kind of amusing in a Swiss-Army-knife kind of way. But this just reinforces the message that women are fluffy, don’t care about quality electronics, and are poor delicate dears who can’t cope with life. And given Marie Claire’s demographics, I’d say that this was reinforcing the message that single women are this way, in particular.

And, yes, I get that it’s a joke. It’s just not funny. Whoohoo, stereotypes!
__________

*Kim defends the ShePhone, which she says she didn’t have final control over, at Wired:

I’m being dubbed the “designer” of this concept phone, but other than a few of the interface features, I can’t say I had anything to do with the finished product. But after the initial surprise- you know what, I’m not bothered. I’m happy to see that anything about technology is in a traditional women’s magazine. It’s still a lot less salacious than anything that would be in T3 Magazine.

It’s funny, because I started Popgadget to combat the whole image of women only using gadgets so we could stick them in our cleavage, but the sexist marketing imagery is so pervasive that people still think “women+tech = sex toy”.

But there’s a lot of interest- negative and positive- so just you wait- we’ll have it on the market by next X-mas. We’re looking for male models who can wear deep décolletage for our ad campaign.

Via Susi Weaser at DollyMix.

Friday Random Ten – the Vienna edition

I’m gone again. The lovely Ms. Lauren will be servicing you for the rest of the weekend.

1. The Notwist – Consequence
2. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Cocks ‘n’ Asses
3. Des Ark – Yes Sir, Yes Way
4. The Mountain Goats – You Or Your Memory
5. Yo La Tengo – Let’s Be Still
6. The Cramps – Goo Goo Muck
7. Bonny Billy – A Dream of the Sea
8. D’Angelo – How Does It Feel
9. Tom Waits – Yesterday Is Here
10. Amr Diab – Allah La Yehremny Minnak

I had forgotten how great this video is until it came up on the random 10 this week:

See you Monday!

I learned how to binge-drink while Amy Winehouse was in diapers, thank you

There’s really nothing that can’t be blamed on a woman, isn’t there? Here’s the latest: Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss are teaching young women to drink and have sex!

Amy “No Rehab” Winehouse and “Cocaine Kate” Moss may not be ideal role models, but are they really to blame for teenage binge drinking?

According to a report by British organization Women in Journalism, teenage girls find “encouragement” in “the soap opera-style lives of glamorous women,” even if those women are falling over drunk and look like hell.

Sure, teens (of both genders) are attracted to images of celebrities supposedly living it up. That doesn’t mean they want to replicate every aspect of their behavior. Why pin it on Winehouse? She’s far from the only celebrity disaster, and hers is a pretty clear-cut cautionary tale. It’s hard to believe that teens see her stumbling around with blood on her satin ballet flats and scratches all over her face and think, That should be me!

Gosh, how did anyone ever have drunken hook-ups before them? Oh, yeah: the usual way.

Teenagers are wrestling with all kinds of influences, but no one of these things is forcing them to become binge drinkers or drug addicts. In a recent study, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse cites predictable factors like low self-esteem, peer pressure and concerns about weight and appearance as the top motivations for girls to drink. That these things aren’t sensational doesn’t make them any less troubling.

Not to mention, kids look to their friends for their cues for certain behaviors. If their friends drink, chances are they will, too. If someone they know who’s cool smokes, it might increase the allure. But I seriously doubt that any kid other than the most obsessed looks at a celebrity’s behavior and decides to imitate it, independent of any other influences.

Eryn Loeb also notes that the WIJ is particularly up in arms about the idea that Winehouse might lead girls to have s-e-x. Which, again, is a stupid concern. They’re going to have sex. The best you can do is prepare them by educating them about contraception, giving them access, and teaching them that they’re the ones in control of their sexuality, which means that no means no, yes is nothing to be ashamed about if it’s an enthusiastic yes, and that they don’t have to accept anyone trying to make them feel bad for either wanting or not wanting to have sex.