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

Month: March 2009

Feministe’s Next Top Troll, March Madness Edition: The GET A BRIAN, MORANS! Bracket

It’s March Madness, Feministe-style: We’re doing a troll run-off to highlight some of our all-time favorite comments and pick the winner of Feministe’s Next Top Troll, Season 4. This is Bracket Three, the simple but satisfying GET A BRIAN, MORANS! Bracket.

Potentially triggering troll comments below the image. Vote for your favorite of the GET A BRIAN, MORANS! Bracket at the bottom.

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You know you’re a bad person when…

You use a tragic plane crash that killed 7 adults and 7 children as “pro-life” fodder. Jill Stanek quotes anti-choice activist Gingi Edmond:

Some of you may have seen the major news story of the private plane that crashed into a Montana cemetery, killing 7 children and 7 adults.

But what the news sources fail to mention is… the [cemetery] contains… the Tomb of the Unborn… erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.

What else is the mainstream news not telling you? The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim’s memorial, is the family of Irving ‘Bud’ Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation….

…

In my time working for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, I helped organize and conduct a weekly campaign where youth activists stood outside of Feldkamp’s mini-mansion in Redlands holding fetal development signs and raising community awareness regarding Feldkamp’s dealings in child murder for profit. Every Thursday afternoon we called upon Bud and his wife Pam to repent, seek God’s blessing and separate themselves from the practice of child killing.

We warned him, for his children’s sake, to wash his hands of the innocent blood he assisted in spilling because, as Scripture warns, if “you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you.” (Ezekiel 35:6)

A news source states that Bud Feldkamp visited the site of the crash with his wife and their 2 surviving children on Monday. As they stood near the twisted and charred debris talking with investigators, light snow fell on the tarps that covered the remains of their children.

I don’t want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual “I told you so” moment, but I think of the time spent outside of Feldkamp’s – Pam Feldkamp laughing at the fetal development signs, Bud Feldkamp trying not to make eye contact as he got into his car with a small child in tow – and I think of the haunting words, “Think of your children.” I wonder if those words were haunting Feldkamp as well as he stood in the snow among the remains of loved ones, just feet from the Tomb of the Unborn?

If I were God, I would just go ahead and smite you for being such a world-class asshole. But hey, that’s the “culture of life” for ya — gloating over the death of an entire family, because they happened to be the daughters, sons-in-law, grandchildren, and family friends of an abortion provider.

Thanks to Chris for the link.

Here’s a genius idea during a recession:

Increase the cost of public transportation while you also cut service.

This could have been avoided (or at least somewhat mitigated) by imposing a toll on the Harlem and East River bridges. Some Democrats, though, opposed that measure, because they don’t think drivers should have to subsidize public transportation. I’ll just quote Baratunde:

Wrong. You SHOULD tax drivers precisely to subsidize public transit. That’s how it works. You tax the bad, evil, planet-melting crap to encourage a less apocalypse-inducing lifestyle. We tax smokers to subsidize health care, and we should probably tax short-sighted, incumbent politicians to subsidize the campaigns of thinking people who will run them out of office.

Feministe’s Next Top Troll, March Madness Edition: The GET A SENSE OF HUMOR, BITCHEZ Bracket

It’s March Madness, Feministe-style: We’re doing a troll run-off to highlight some of our all-time favorite comments and pick the winner of Feministe’s Next Top Troll, Season 4. This is Bracket Two, the GET A SENSE OF HUMOR, BITCHEZ Bracket.

Potentially triggering troll comments below the image. Vote for your favorite of the GET A SENSE OF HUMOR, BITCHEZ bracket at the bottom.

Read More…Read More…

Feministe’s Next Top Troll: March Madness Edition

I don’t follow college basketball, but March Madness is handily coinciding with an upswing in Feministe trolling, so I thought I’d bring our Top Troll contest to the next level. We’re starting with 16 comment contenders; I’ll post two competitions each day for you to vote on. The winner of each bracket will continue forward, until we have one lucky dude who is named Feministe’s Next Top Troll.

The games will begin shortly.

Religious zealots vs. Obama at Notre Dame

President Obama is set to speak at Notre Dame on May 17th, and some folks aren’t too happy about it. Why? Because he’s pro-choice, and giving him a platform would violate the rules laid out in Catholics in Political Life. The pertinent guideline reads, “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

Interestingly, George W. Bush spoke at Notre Dame’s 2001 commencement. Pretty sure that he’s in favor of the death penalty, and that under his leadership in Texas a whole lot of people were executed.

I guess those “fundamental moral” pro-life principles don’t apply to people after they’re born.

Feministe Feedback: A Women’s Health Platform

A reader writes in:

I’m writing to ask a question about women’s health in general. My mum, who is not very political (politicised?) just got elected to her town board. I’m not sure what that means, politically (a small town in Australia, dominated by the defense industry). She said she might choose the women’s health platform.

Being the feminist that I am, I immediately shot back with ‘great idea! Here are some key areas:…’ and then kind of ran out of steam. I’m not a very good feminist. This is the list as I have it:

– reproductive health – access to contraception, abortion clinics, sex
education, ..
– maternity leave
– ..

Yeah. I can think of a bunch of other issues that are important, but I’m not sure how to summarise a few key areas in women’s health. I don’t know how my fairly conservative (on some issues, not on others) apolitical mum will take the list, but that’s cool. If you were offering advice to a woman in a similar position, what would you say? How would you frame women’s health issues on a general platform?

I don’t know what actual powers/responsibilities her position entails, I imagine fairly smallscale, but I guess this puts her in a position to at least publicly discuss these things. Any help would be appreciated 🙂

Leave your suggestions in the comments.

You can write into Feministe Feedback by emailing feministe@gmail.com

Posted in Uncategorized

Standing with Amanda Terkel

Rachel wrote about this earlier, but just a quick follow-up for y’all who don’t click through links: Journalist, activist and ThinkProgress blogger Amanda Terkel was recently followed, harassed and ambushed by a production team from The O’Reilly Factor. Why? Because she wrote a post criticizing O’Reilly’s comments about rape victims, in response to finding out that he was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a foundation that supports sexual assault survivors and their families. Here’s what O’Reilly said about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old who was raped and murdered:

Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.

He followed that up by comparing rape victims to people who go on anti-Semitic tirades:

“I think it’s safe to say that if Mel Gibson didn’t get drunk, he wouldn’t be in this terrible situation he finds himself in,” said O’Reilly. “And if a young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Harrington Park, NJ, didn’t get drunk, she’d be alive today.”

Because drunk girls rape themselves, apparently.

It’s that kind of victim-blaming language that Amanda was objecting to. But O’Reilly’s abhorrent comments aside, his actions here are particularly disgusting. His producer followed Amanda by car for two hours from her home in Washington D.C. to a vacation spot in Virginia; they then accosted her on the street and accused her of causing “pain and suffering” to rape survivors and their families. They demanded that Amanda be the one to apologize to rape survivors. Amanda’s full account is here. Her conclusion is particularly important:

The main issue remains: O’Reilly should offer an apology/explanation of why, when a woman is raped and murdered, it’s relevant what she was wearing or how much she was drinking. O’Reilly never asked me for a statement nor invited me on his show before sending Watters to harass me. Since I’m a 5 ft, 100 pound woman with an opinion that he doesn’t like, perhaps O’Reilly believes I deserve to be treated this way.

You can email Jesse Watters, the O’Reilly Factor producer who followed Amanda, at Jesse.Watters@FOXNEWS.COM. There’s also a Facebook group in support of Amanda here. In the meantime, help spread the word by blogging, tweeting, writing and talking about this.