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

Month: July 2008

Grisly attack on bus in Canada

(Trigger warnings apply.) I’m very sorry to punctuate your day with something like this, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, but this is a piece of news that I simply haven’t been able to get out of my mind for the last several hours.

In short, a man of about twenty or so years was stabbed to death and decapitated by the 40-year-old man next to him on a Greyhound Canada bus travelling between Edmonton and Winnipeg. The victim was sleeping with his head on the window at the time. After a standoff of several hours, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police apprehended the assailant. At this time, there have been no reports of a motive, or indeed anything resembling an explanation.

This afternoon on the bus in Vancouver, everybody seemed a little bit on edge, furtively scanning their neighbours for signs of who knows what. I’m sure that things will eventually settle down to normal again soon, but in the meantime many people around here are still in a something of a state of shock. I fervently hope that some sort of resolution can be brought to the victim’s family and friends, and that justice can be served for this awful, terrible crime.

Why yes, I am several days behind in my Google Reader, why do you ask?

In the middle of a rather marvelously frightening piece detailing the background of the now-infamous “Dimitri the Lover,” tigtog quotes PUA (see) Chris as saying:

As an aside, I find Community advice towards relationships preoccupied with power dynamics and the guy always having the upper hand

That’s one hell of an aside. It pretty much sums up the entire PUA community, of course, but it’s also a rather tidy wrap-up of how many men approach relations with women (intensified where sex is involved, but also family, work and social relationships) across mainstream society. Considering it came from a (quasi/former) PUA himself, I’m damn impressed.

Considering the Toothless Firefly, Among Other Things

Disney’s attempt at FINALLY writing a story about the first black Disney princess went poorly the first time around. The princess character’s story, about a girl named Maddy who was employed as a chambermaid *cough* in 1920s New Orleans, came under so much criticism they had to go back to the drawing board. Apparently,

Disney’s original storyboard is believed to have been torn up after criticism that the lead character was a clichéd subservient role with echoes of slavery, and whose name sounded too much like “Mammy” – a unwelcome reminder of America’s Deep South before the civil rights movement swept away segregation.

Wise move.

According to the Wiki article about The Princess and The Frog, it will be set in New Orleans in the 1920s Jazz Age. All I know about the main character is that she will be part of the grossly saccharine Disney Princess franchise, the “fastest-growing brand for the company’s Consumer Products division.” The cynical side of me believes that the addition of a black princess to the Disney Princess line, which has “generated $3 billion in global retail sales since 1999,” is an attempt to round out a business model that overlooked a major demographic of sales potential.

No doubt there will be some extra attention paid to the race and class issues in this movie, what with the timeliness of choosing New Orleans as a set and the lack of timeliness in choosing an African-American girl as a lead character. Considering the, uh, unfortunate representations of an amalgam of “barbaric” Middle Eastern culture in Aladdin, and that they’re reprising the same story production crew that did Aladdin, Disney has a long row to hoe. Add the recent national conversations about New Orleans and Katrina, poverty and blackness in the United States, long-lived racist stereotypes of black people, and especially considering that this movie takes place during the salad days of Jim Crow, Disney had better tread very, very carefully. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for progressive or feminist representation here, and Disney has a long history of epic failure in this arena.

This week, Disney released an offical teaser for the newest version. The main character is renamed Tiana, she is no longer employed as a white woman’s chambermaid, and as per the official statement released at the same time as the teaser,

Princess Tiana will be a heroine in the great tradition of Disney’s rich animated fairy tale legacy, and all other characters and aspects of the story will be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity.

I see.

Well, at least Tiana looks pretty cute.

UPDATE: In comments, Little Light points to additional criticism of the movie from Brownfemipower who also links this great take on the movie by lifelong New Orleans residents Bint Alshamsa and daughter VanGoghGirl.

Lauren Notofchef

It’s not often at work that something warms my cockles, but yesterday, when a foreign couple came into work to set up a new account, it was revealed that they have different surnames. “Even though we’re really married,” the wife explained. “I know that’s weird in your country.” The husband smiled apologetically.

“No, actually! I have a different last name from my husband, too.”

Most of the time I try not to get into politics at work, especially with the customers. I’ve been told some of the nastiest, racist, sexist, homophobic things I’ve ever heard in my life while helping out the regulars, and since I can’t stick up for myself and my beliefs I usually try to keep things airy. But this, this surname thing, something that always sets the femosphere aflutter — I was not going to let this woman think it was a sign of non-commitment in the US to keep your birth name when married, even if many mega-corps can’t manage to keep a handle on it.

They both looked a little surprised as I continued to enter their account information into the system. After a pause the wife asked tentatively, “Was that your choice?”

“Yup!” I confirmed.

And then she squeeeed! a little and clapped her hands. I squeeeed! a little too on the inside. Feminism in teaspoons.

Call me biased…

…but I just can’t wrap my mind around anti-choice rhetoric. I am fairly skilled at seeing both sides of most complex social issues and I even try to give credit to those that oppose my view if their reasoning is sound, but anti-choice stuff…it is just totally illogical to me. I completely understand why a person could be morally opposed to abortion and why someone might choose to call themselves “pro-life,” but how anyone can be politically opposed to safe, legal abortion and reproductive health services? And let’s not forget: almost all of the anti-choice organizations are also anti-birth control and oppose comprehensive sex education despite that fact that their “pro-life” constituents often hold more mainstream beliefs. 98% of American women use birth control at some point in their lives and 82% of Americans believe that abstinence-only sex ed isn’t enough. Clearly the anti-choice organizations are out of touch with reality. But I’m preaching to the choir…

As most of you know, I work in public affairs at a Planned Parenthood affiliate. In my job, I try not to focus on the anti-choice groups because…well, it’s counter-productive, reactive, and mostly just makes me frustrated and angry. Better to stay on the offense. It’s kind of like getting in a fight with the class bully–in the end you give the bully the satisfaction of getting a reaction out of you and still end up getting your lunch money stolen. What’s the point?

But tonight, I am feeling kind of silly and I would love to share with you a sampling of my favorite (crazy-pants) anti-choice groups and why they drive me nuts with their scientifically inaccurate misinformation. I know this just feeds the beast (and drives traffic to their websites), but indulge me. Just once. And then vote for the anti-choice group that is the most outrageous to you! Rabble. Rabble. Rabble. Or, if you find this post to be petty and frivolous, which it may be…just skip to the very bottom after the jump for an awesome video of Sonya Renee performing “What We Deserve.”

This content below may not be safe for work.

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Blacks, Latinos, and the precariousness of “middle class”

Today I listened to a segment on Democracy Now! about a new report that’s out from Demos and Brandeis University on the state of the Black and Latino middle class in the United States. The study, entitled “Economic (In)Security: The Experience of the African American and Latino Middle Classes,” finds that three-out-of-four Black and four-out-of-five Latino middle-class families are economically insecure and at high risk of slipping out of the middle class. From the report, which can be downloaded as a PDF from the Demos website:

African-American and Latino families have more difficulty moving into the middle class, and families that do enter the middle class are less secure and at higher risk than the middle class as a whole. Overall, more African-American and Latino middle-class families are at risk of falling out of the middle class than are secure. This is in sharp contrast to the overall middle class, in which 31 percent are secure and 21 percent are at risk. Specifically:

  • Only 26 percent of African-American middle-class families have the combination of as- sets, education, sufficient income, and health insurance to ensure middle-class financial security. One in three (33 percent) is at high risk of falling out of the middle class.
  • Less than one in five Latino families (18 percent) is securely in the middle class. More than twice as many (41 percent) of Latino families are in danger of slipping out of the middle class.
  • African-American middle-class families are less secure and at greater risk than the middle class as a whole on four of the five indicators of security and vulnerability [named by the report as assets, education, housing, budget, and healthcare]. Latino middle-class families are less secure and at greater risk on all five indicators.

Jennifer Wheary, a senior fellow at Demos and one of the co-authors of the report, elaborated on Democracy Now!:

And what we found was when we compared the situation of white middle-class families to African Americans and Latinos, there were vast differences. You know, and what was astounding to us was really looking at—these are, you know, African American and Latino families that, by all sense and purposes, have achieved the American dream, people who, you know, have two earners, two professional earners in the household, you know, maybe are trying to own a home or do own a home, you know, very—have achieved all the aspirations that we typically go for. But even among those people, when you look at, you know, where they’re weak economically, we found that about two-in-five Latino middle-class families are in danger of falling out of the middle class. They’re so financially vulnerable, don’t have assets. Maybe somebody in the household is uninsured. And one-in-three African American middle-class families are also in danger, so vulnerable, so weak, that they’re in danger of falling out of the middle class.

I haven’t read the report yet, but when I do, I fully expect to cry. In fact, as I listened to the segment on the bus home today, I actually found myself tearing up; not only because the larger injustices behind what I was hearing, but because it hit a very personal chord.

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