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

Month: July 2009

Anti-gay professor will not teach at NYU

A follow-up to the NYU Law/Dr. Li-ann Thio drama: Apparently Dr. Thio has decided not to come and teach at NYU, citing hostility from students. I put in my two cents about Dr. Thio here. I actually think it’s good that NYU didn’t ask her to withdraw, and that instead students took the lead in voicing their concerns and refusing to enroll in her class. But the whole situation does bring up interesting issues of academic freedom and where we draw the line when it comes to bigoted viewpoints.

A good friend of mine, who also went to NYU Law, emailed me about the situation, and I found her perspsective pretty compelling. With her permission, it’s posted below:

So this rarely happens – and i should add that i don’t know much at ALL about this Dr. Thio character BUT- I think I disagree with you about your feelings on this.

I think this is a great point (from a petition in opposition): “To harbor Dr. Thio under the banner of “academic freedom” is disingenuous, untenable and unacceptable. The full dignity of LGBT persons is beyond debate and the criminalization of private sexual conduct between consenting same-sex adults is a tool of oppression. While Dr. Thio believes that “diversity is not a license for perversity,” we believe that academic freedom is not a license for bigotry.”

But I worry more about what it means to close the door to diverse viewpoints. I think there is something important to be said for her opinion not in the sense that it is “right” but in the sense that it represents an important social phenomenon. That people from politically, socially and economically repressed places oftentimes find scapegoats to dehumanize, criminalize, and humiliate. Maybe the purpose is to create a new kind of social hierarchy? In many cultures homophobia has become the last frontier of discrimination. People use gay people as a reason to perpetuate hate, but more importantly to continue to establish that there are “haves” and “have nots.”

I think I’m uncomfortable with saying this professor shouldn’t come to NYU less from a first-amendment free-speech standpoint and more from a concern that if liberal people silence the viewpoints of those they disagree with, where does that leave us? It seems contrary to so many liberal beliefs to advocate for the erasure of a particular viewpoint. I guess the argument can be made that we should not give Dr. Thio a forum to teach her ideas, and the recognition that would surely come with an NYU teaching position, but still it bothers me a bit that people haven’t looked to the larger implications of what it means to say that “we don’t like your viewpoint and you aren’t welcome here.” In any other context that would be so wrong.

I remember in undergrad we had this professor, Peter Singer, who — and in distilling this I’m going to pervert what he really stands for — has some really controversial views about the right to life, that some argue border on a kind of eugenics. I remember before his lecture, people stood outside his class and protested and were disgusted that this person had a forum to express his views that are so contrary to the value and dignity that all persons deserve. I remember thinking how much I hated his ideas but that he had the right to possess them and to teach. I didn’t take his class, nor would I take Dr. Thio’s.

None of this is to excuse her views or to say in any way that they are “right” or justified (as maybe one of the paragraphs above might suggest). I’m more just worried now, and always have been, about the way liberals (and particularly trendy New York liberals who chant from ivory towers and penthouses about justice and equality yet do so many things within their own personal day-to-day lives that reinforces, albeit, a different form of haves and have nots) are quick to cast-aside and condemn views (that are clearly wrong, and even morally reprehensible) but also different from their own. It just seems to me that this is maybe the wrong or a misplaced battle to fight.

Baby taken away after mom refuses C-section

A woman in New Jersey refused a c-section during labor. She gave birth vaginally, and the child was healthy. But the baby was taken away and placed in a foster home, because the woman allegedly “abused and neglected her child” by refusing the c-section. She was also accused of behaving “erratically” — to which I can only point out that she was in labor. I hear that hurts a lot.

Apparently when women are pregnant, they give up their bodily autonomy, civil rights and right to informed consent. Louise Marie Roth pretty much covers it:

First, from a legal perspective, individuals have a right to informed consent and bodily integrity. In obstetrics, informed consent is a blurry concept since many hospitals perform obstetric procedures on laboring women without informing them of the evidence concerning those procedures or their risks. Perhaps this legal case illustrates how paternalistic hospitals can be with respect to pregnant women — assuming that the hospital staff know best and that informed consent is unnecessary. Never mind that hospitals tend to be run with organizational efficiency, rather than patient interests, in mind. In this specific case, one obstetrician who tried to convince the mother to consent to a c-section concluded that she was not psychotic and had the capacity for informed consent with regard to the c-section. It is clear within the law there is no informed consent without informed refusal, so this obstetrician’s conclusion should have made V.M.’s refusal to consent to the c-section her decision alone. If this mother is not legally permitted to refuse major abdominal surgery, then she is clearly stripped of her civil rights to informed consent.

In fact, individuals are not legally required to consent to invasive procedures even to save other individuals, including fetuses that lack full legal status. But in this case the district and appellate courts subverted a pregnant woman’s informed medical decision-making in the name of fetal rights, arguing that her refusal was a form of abuse and neglect of the child that had not yet been born. This is another dangerous precedent, along with other court-ordered cesarean cases, that will allow all pregnant women to lose their rights to bodily integrity and informed consent. It may be understandable, if not excusable, that the courts don’t understand medicine or recognize that medical judgment is fallible, but it is hard to understand how they could so fundamentally misinterpret the law, in which performing surgery on an individual without that person’s permission can constitute criminal “battery” under common law.

Troubled Waters: Women on Waves Faces Many Challenges

NRC Handelsblad has a long article up about changes in laws around abortion in the Netherlands, which is pushing the amazing organization Women on Waves to cancel upcoming boat trips to provide abortions and information to women who cannot get them in their home countries. Rebecca Gomperts, who founded the organization ten years ago, is interviewed in the piece as well and talks about shifting attitudes toward abortion. Women on Waves was founded with the idea of creating a fleet of ships that would sail to countries in which abortion is illegal, transport women in need of abortions to international waters, and then provide safe abortions outside of the reaches of a nation’s restrictions to abortion. This never quite panned out – the financials needed to underwrite such a huge project would be, well, huge. What the organization has done, however, is another really amazing online activist project: Women on Web. Women on Web helps women gain access to medical abortion if they live in countries where such access is restricted. The site has information in Arabic, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese. The organization is now being prosecuted for distributing abortion pills off the coast of Spain in October 2008.

Unfortunately, in addition to the shifting Dutch laws, the work of Women on Web is being further restricted by none other than Google. At the beginning of July, my IWHC co-worker Lori Adelman blogged at Feministing about the fact that Google AdWords policy disallows ads for abortion services in over a dozen countries. (we’ve got a sample letter that you can use to complain to Google about this, should you feel so inclined).

Thanks to Linda Mans for the link to the NRC Handelsblad article on Twitter.

Questions…and generalized misanthropy.

Right then…in my intro post I described myself as curmudgeonly, I think now is where and when I exhibit how and possibly why…

It will, undoubtedly, be asked, either in public or on the aside what I am doing blogging here since I do not identify as a feminist.  Let’s go ahead and say right now that I’m here because I was asked to be here, and you can save your wondering because whatever one might say about it has already been said and the question just clogs up the comment threads…so, if you want answers on that one, read last years intro post and save everyone some time.  However, the why I don’t ID that way…well, let me show you.  No, what I am about to do is not particularly nice, but then again, when this is tolerated and unquestioned as appropriate feminist behavior…well. that’s just not something I can overlook.  I mean, there is a lot of (IMHO) woman hating in the following group of words.  The topic, porn, the statement:  “Do I want to look at some plastic-surgery enhanced woman who doesn’t even look human being porked”, the subject, how women who perform in porn (or are in the sex industry at large) suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.

Now see, that just chaps my ass in all the wrong ways.  I mean, a huge thing that you see coming from anti porn feminists is that they hate the porn because it dehumanizes and degrades the women in it.  But see, I am not sure how someone saying those very women do not even look like human beings is anything but dehumanizing and degrading?  You know what?  I am willing to bet that every single woman in porn breathes, sleeps, eats, gets the occassional zit or dry skin, sweats, thinks, has emotions, and does every other thing that qualifies her as human.  Hell, I will go as far as to say, holy shit, those women are real women too!  Enhanced or not.  They are…get this…people.  They might never actually get treated like real people, but sweet Krishna on a Lotus, they are!  So yeah, I have issues identifying with or as a memeber of a group of people who refuses to see them as such.  I can’t be a part of something where those women serve as one of two things:  victim poster girl of the week or non-human being.  Don’t like it?  Well, this surgically enhanced cyborg fails to care.  I have my reasons, and yep, sure enough, I think they are good ones.

And nah, I’m not done yet.

I was looking over the Feministe linkage today, and I started to wonder… “what the hell am I doing here?”  Yep, this is my third stint here- but I’d not noticed this until today.  This summer, a lot of (well, three so far that I’ve noticed) of the guest bloggers are sex workers and sex worker activists.  I suspect that perhaps the group of us were asked to be here because of that…yet…I see no links to sex worker blogs here at feministe…no Bound Not Gagged, no waking vixen, so on, no links to sex worker outreach orgs like Scarlet Alliance or SWOP, HIPS, or UBUNTU, and no links to Sex Worker media like $Pread or the Sex Workers Art Show.    See, IMHO, sex workers rights and outreach are not a summertime gig, they are a full time gig, and while yes, I am a bit of a loud-mouthed angry freakshow who causes strife merely by breathing, if one is interested in these things enough to have three of us for the summer tour, perhaps an all year commitment or at least  links to those who feel it is so is in order?  I would at least expect BnG to get a link in the blogroll or something. 

Gods I have no manners, I am calling out the folk who were nice enough to let me blog here.  Eh, such is life.

And when people ask me, as the non-identifying sort what is wrong in the world today as far as women and girls are concerned…well, this sort of thing (warning, may be triggering) bothers me more than pole dancing classes and what Michelle Obama was wearing…yet you know, I saw two, and only two, blog posts about it.  There may have been more, but I read a lot of blogs, and I saw…two. 

Sheesh, you see what a buzz-kill this teehee fun expat feminist becomes when she has insomnia?  Next thing you know, I will be on about plastic surgery…and filming what they are doing to my neck so you can see how fun that is too!  Glitter glitter!

A West-Coast Introduction

You know, it’s not easy being a west coaster in a world of east coasters. I always feel like I’m late to the party. Life happens. News comes and goes. Catastrophic events occur, are reported on and seem to float away. And I’m just waking up and enjoying my first cup of coffee, ready to greet the day.

So it is with my first post as a guest blogger this week! Yes, I know. It’s 9:30pm on the east coast. But here in Seattle it’s a respectable 6:30pm and, as a mom, I’m really just getting to my non-child-related-activities-of-the-day (or evening. or night. as the case may be).

With that in mind, thanks for having my west-coast-late-to-the-party blogginess, Jill! And to all of you most fabulous Feministe readers, I’m thrilled to converse with y’all over the next week. I’m not very good at witty, interesting introductions so I’ll just go with the ole standard, if that’s okay?

I’m currently the Managing Editor at RH Reality Check, a publication covering global reproductive and sexual health and rights news. I’ve been an advocate for sexual and reproductive rights and health issues for a long time. I started my advocacy oh-so-many years ago, after graduating NYU and working in television and film. Ultimately moving out to Seattle, I started making short video documentaries, produced one on women & body image, worked for a handful of years at a feminist women’s health center as their communications & outreach director, while also engaging in my mama-activism through groups like Mothers Acting Up. My role as mama to my two children is by far my most activist, demanding, rewarding and engaging.

My activism, my writing, my passion revolves around creating unity amongst all of women’s reproductive and sexual health and rights. That is, whether we talk about safe abortion, access to contraception, choice in childbirth as it relates to midwifery/out-of-hospital birth/VBACs, newborn feeding choices, pregnant women’s rights (here’s a story I’m working on now), health care disparities on the basis of race/sexual identity/ethnicity/gender/age and more, we are talking about inequity and injustice that must be corrected.

Right now, I’m particularly obsessed with the push to ensure greater access to certified professional midwives and out-of-hospital birth – both of which have been shown to help reduce our nightmare maternal and newborn mortality rates in this country.

My other compulsion at the moment is related to a short video documentary I’m producing on breastfeeding & feminism. I’m just back from North Carolina where I shot my first interview with an incredible woman from the Carolina Breastfeeding Institute (thanks, Emily Taylor!)  about the ways in which our society must see breastfeeding as a public health imperative to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. We also discussed how clearly this is a feminist, reproductive rights issue. Stay tuned cause I have a feeling I’ll be yammering on about the societal changes that must take place in order to help new mothers with their newborn feeding journeys…

So, here I am in Seattle with my children, my husband, my two dogs, two toads and my three chickens, and so glad to share this week with everyone here!

Love Crime/Hate Crime: Banning Baby Be-Bop

[Ginny Maziarka] cautioned that her group would let people know that the library was not a safe place unless it segregated and labeled YA titles with explicit content.

I’ve always thought of the public library as being a safe place. Part of it is just the way I’ve always romanticized books in my head, but there’s also always been the liberating feeling that I am free from all judgment as to what I read and check out. I know this might not be everyone’s experience with the libraries in their area, but in my mind, the ideal public library would make media available, not tell people which media is culturally appropriate. Particularly with the price of books and database subscriptions being so high, it seems incredibly important to have a place where reading and information are free. If some materials do not meet people’s standards, well, even terrible trash can spawn valuable discussion. And sometimes I think all of us, regardless of our views, would benefit from at least reading the other side of the story (agreeing is a different matter.)

So when my friend, who’s working toward her MA in library science, sent me this article, it gave me a lot to think about. Here’s the long and short of it: After the West Bend Community Memorial Library in Wisconsin included Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop (link goes to Powell’s) in a library display, several groups of locals were outraged, and the book found itself the target of blistering hate. City residents Ginny and Jim Maziarka demanded that the library segregate “sexually-explicit.” Another local filed a suit with the Christian Civil Liberties Union, asking for $120,000 in damages (seeing the book apparently damaged them emotionally,) and the resignation of the West Bend Mayor.

From a certain standpoint, this is nothing new–I mean, it’s old for reasons aside from the fact that the ALA article came out in June. Of course, books, particularly books for children and adolescents, face antagonism all the time. From Harry Potter to In the Night Kitchen (yes, the Sendak one,) people can come up with infinite reasons as to why a book is obscene. Nevertheless, the hatred this book in particular has aroused terrifies me:

…[T]he complaint by Braun, Joseph Kogelmann, Rev. Cleveland Eden, and Robert Brough explains that “the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library,” specifically because Baby Be-Bop contains the “n” word and derogatory sexual and political epithets that can incite violence and “put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.”

…

[T]he plaintiffs also request West Bend City Attorney Mary Schanning to impanel a grand jury to examine whether the book should be declared obscene and making it available a hate crime.”

Other bloggers have talked about the sudden outrage over this book, but many of them hadn’t read it.  I had: I discovered it back in Jr. High, and read it over and over. I remember lying on the couch in the living room, sick with some sort of bug, re-reading it all in one sitting (Admittedly, this was not a huge feat—it’s only about 100 pages.). Over the years, I had forgotten about it; I had left it behind with most of my other Jr. High favorites, but it never left me.

Read More…Read More…

The Urge to Help: International Feminisms and Advocacy

Before starting to work at the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) last fall, I hadn’t really had much interaction with feminists and women’s health and rights issues outside of the global north. I had traveled internationally to work and lecture, but my travel had been limited to Western Europe (not that I’m complaining, getting paid to go to Europe and talk about sex on the same bill as Annie Sprinkle is pretty amazing). My work in academia had also been very local – I have a masters in American Studies.

So to say that this job and the perspectives I’ve been introduced to has been a kick in the ass might be a bit of an understatement. I do know a lot of stuff – but wow, there is so so much stuff that I don’t know. So I’ve been on a bit of a quest to get educated about women’s health and rights in the regions in which IWHC has partners: Asia, Africa, and Latin America. That’s no small task – and so far, what I’ve realized is mostly that I don’t know anything. The framework I’ve been educated with is a rights-based approach that values individuality and the choices of women, an approach that trusts women to know what’s best for themselves, and has prepared me to listen to women’s stories, which in turn should inform policy, research, and academic work. Which is all well and good, but also very much embedded in the concept of individuality that Americans hold so high.

I want to be useful – probably most of the people reading this blog feel that way too.

But being useful to women in faraway lands is very different than being useful to women in my immediate community. And so, I’ve been learning and relearning the power of listening, of support, and getting out of the way when necessary (which is a lot of the time).

Back in February I attended my first board meeting at IWHC and I got the chance to interview Mabel Bianco, who until recently was our Board Vice Chair. Mabel is a medical doctor by training and is the founder and president of the Foundation for the Study and Investigation of Women (FEIM), a research and advocacy organization based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that has advised both government and civil society on women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights since 1989. Suffice to say, she’s pretty amazing. Since she’s on her way out of being on the Board, I was charged with the task of asking Mabel about her involvement with IWHC over the years and her initial impressions of the organization when she met our founders, Adrienne Germain and Joan Dunlop. She leapt into talking about the tension between feminists from the global north and women from the global south, and the suspicion that women from the global south rightfully have about helpful feminists (and their NGOs) from the global north. She was impressed with Adrienne and Joan, but the history of helpful-cum-imperialistic organizations from the global north is hard to live down. In this one minute video, Mabel gives her three tips for how advocates from the global north can be supportive of women from the global south.

An earlier version of this post can be found on Akimbo as Supportive Advocacy and Solidarity.

Please allow me to introduce myself…

yes, I am listening to the rolling stones…

In any event, I’m Ren, from Renegade Evolution, and yep, they’ve invited me back.  Woohoo.  I am a sex worker, sex workers rights activist, and generally curmudgeonly kind of gal.   Truth be told, I have no idea what I might actually write about whilst here, could be things most strange and unusual, or not…I’ve not yet decided.  Since I covered sex workers rights almost exclusively last time I was here, and you’ve got Audacia and Hexy here as well, who knows what I might come up with…sexism in comics?  The coolness of nudist resorts?  Strange things in the state of Florida?  Who knows…

But in any event, here I am…Hey y’all!