March 2010 – Feministe

Bits and Pieces

First, a bunch of must-reads on the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal. Tim Fernholz writes a personal piece about why he will not be attending Mass this Easter. Amanda points to the victim-blaming and molestor-coddling coming from some high-profile conservative writers, and reminds us that the cultural and legal shifts in the 1960s and 70s that now allow survivors to come forward are to the credit of people that conservatives despise — feminists and liberals. ThinkProgress covers Bill Donahue of the Catholic League claiming that this is a “homosexual crisis” and not a “pedophilia crisis” — because some of the molestation victims were 14. As Maureen Dowd points out, “Donohue is still talking about the problem as an indiscretion rather than a crime. If it mostly involves men and boys, that’s partly because priests for many years had unquestioned access to boys.” And, of course, Hitch.

The Times Magazine covers homosexuality in the animal kingdom. There are some pretty incredible quotes from biologists in there, but I think my favorite line is, “And a bighorn-sheep biologist confessed in his memoir, “I still cringe at the memory of seeing old D-ram mount S-ram repeatedly.” To think, he wrote, “of those magnificent beasts as ‘queers’ — Oh, God!””

I agree with Matt: Short menus are the way to go! If I walk into a restaurant and the menu is enormous, I assume (a) that the ingredients cannot possibly be very fresh, and (b) the chances of me ordering something mediocre is high. A small menu, in my experience, reflects a few dishes that are very, very good and probably prepared by a small staff who are well versed in making those dishes perfectly, as opposed to a smorgasboard of so-so options prepared in a large kitchen by chefs without much training. My one exception to this rule: Shopsins, which has the largest menu I have ever seen and is also a delicious and creative fat-fest. And generally has one cook.

Thomas takes a swing at Rape Apologist Of the Week Alex Knepper, pointing that kink, fetishism, cross-dressing and an array of decidedly un-vanilla sexual practices are very much embraced and practiced by feminists, and that Knepper fails to realize that consent and mutual pleasure are pretty key to those activities.

Childfree, green and proud.

No matter what, we pay for others’ bad habits. Preach!

Hilda Solis: Pretty awesome.

RapeLay (trigger warning on the link and the forthcoming description) is a videogame where you can stalk, assault, rape and sexually torture women and girls. It was banned in the US, but has gone viral, and is stoking discussion of what types of games should be allowed to be produced in the first place.

This letter to Andrew Sullivan is… interesting. Dude is mad because he works hard and no one has legally mandated that he receive the wife to which he is clearly entitled. Women, on the other hand, are asking to be paid as much as men, and maybe some of them will also get married! So unfair.

Remember Jamie Leigh Jones, the woman who was gang-raped in Iraq and is now speaking out against her former employer and trying to get her day in court? Well, KBR is releasing statements basically saying that she asked for it. After all, she was drinking, and she may have voluntarily left a social gathering with a man.

Do you like cat videos? Would you not like to have them ruined forever for you? Then do not read this.

Rage on the Right: The year in extremism, by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

HATE: Nicholas Sparks. LOVE: Roger Ebert. Seriously, Roger Ebert has gotten so publicly badass lately that you are seriously missing out if you are not regularly reading him. For example: “I resent the sacrilege Nicholas Sparks commits by even mentioning himself in the same sentence as Cormac McCarthy. I would not even allow him to say “Hello, bookstore? This is Nicholas Sparks. Could you send over the new Cormac McCarthy novel?” He should show respect by ordering anonymously.”

Of course sixth-grade boys use Axe body spray to light themselves on fire. It sounds like something I would have done, because, although I was not a boy, I was a young idiot who enjoyed setting things aflame.

There is now a doner kebab robot and my life is complete.

Via Matt’s Twitter feed, an oldie but a goodie: The pussifaction of the Western male. I think my favorite part is where his great piece of evidence for Man’s Decline is a Cheerios commercial.

Transgender Day of Visibility

Today’s International Transgender Day of Visibility. Started last year as a movement on Facebook, the goal of today is to increase visibility and celebrate transgender identity:

“I went on Facebook and I was thinking… whenever I hear about our community, it seems to be from Remembrance Day which is always so negative because it’s about people who were killed,” [Rachel] Crandall, who heads up Transgender Michigan, recalled. “So one night I couldn’t sleep and I decided why don’t I try to do something about that.

“I thought, ‘why doesn’t someone do it?’ Then I thought, ‘why isn’t that someone me?'” –PrideSource

You can learn more about it at PrideSource and TransGriot.

Some are celebrating the day online by sharing their thoughts and experiences, while others are taking it into real life by hosting rallies, fashion shows, and other events. There’s also a Facebook event page for today for folks to keep track of what’s going on where.

Be sure to share your events and posts there, but also feel free to do the same in the comments to let us know how you’re celebrating International Transgender Day of Visibility.

Happy César Chávez Day

For those who don’t know, today is César Chávez Day. Chávez was a migrant worker from a young age and co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with the ever-awesome Dolores Huerta. (The NFWA would later merge with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the United Farm Workers of America.) In addition to being a champion of labor rights, he was also an advocate for civil rights and immigration rights, and he was a proponent of non-violence.

César Chávez Day is celebrated primarily in California, but I still think it’s damn awesome that he even has a day in his honor. It’s not so often that Latinos are honored with their own holidays. Of course, I’m slightly bitter that Dolores Huerta doesn’t have her own day, but whatevs, I love her beyond belief so perhaps I’m a bit biased there.

At any rate, Chávez was hugely important to the labor movement. There’s a nice bio on him on UFW’s website that’s worth checking out. And because I’m a lover of quotations, here are my favorites:

Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity?

You are never strong enough that you don’t need help.

How will you celebrate César Chávez today?

Your definition of “anti-sex” is not like mine.

See, I define “anti-sex” as you think sex is bad. Or that sex should be kind of like a punishment (or that you should be punished for having it). Or that you don’t think sex should be enjoyable. And I define “pro-sex” as thinking that sex is a normal and healthy part of the human experience, and that sex should be good and fun and fulfilling for everyone involved.

Apparently that definition is all topsy-turvy, and I am actually anti-sex for thinking that women should have a right to enjoy it and consent to it. [Trigger warning on that link and the rest of this post]. American University student Alex Knepper writes a nice long piece of rape apologia, basically saying that women who leave the house and drink beer are asking for it, because sex is about men dominating women and women being dominated:

Like the other great religions of the world, though, the goal of contemporary feminism and Gay Party activism is not to explain sex, but to abolish its passion. The yin and yang of masculinity and femininity is what makes sexual exploration exciting. Sex isn’t about contract-signing. It’s about spontaneity, raw energy and control (or its counterpart, surrender).

…which is funny, because Alex Knepper is also gay, which I think means he typically has sex that involves two yangs. However does he do it? Well, as he explained to Amanda Hess:

“Gay men—by which I do not mean the eunuchs who constitute the vanguard of so-called queer activism—are far more likely to understand that dressing one’s boyfriend up like a girl and fucking his ass with a dildo is to feminize him. The feminine element of sexuality is not literally about being female—it’s about surrender and submission. One might say that my homosexuality is the ultimate expression of my deep-seated hatred for women, though, right?”

Honey, it’s not your homosexuality that is the ultimate expression of your deep-seated hatred for women. Your continued written accounts of your deep-seated hatred for women are the ultimate expressions of your deep-seated hatred for women. Although your contention that the “feminine” element of sexuality is not about literally being female and is divorced from one’s physical sex sounds suspiciously like something you might hear in a gender-theory course. Watch out!

Bits and Pieces

On average, each African woman will experience seven unsafe abortions in her lifetime. In Nigeria alone, where abortion is illegal except to save the pregnant woman’s life, there are 760,000 abortions annually. Unsafe abortion is one reason why Nigeria has such a high maternal mortality rate, with 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births. For every woman who dies, 20 others are permanently maimed.

Sinead O’Connor on the Catholic Church abuse scandal.

Prom night and discrimination against gay and lesbian students. I’ll say it again: God bless the ACLU.

It’s not about race… unless I say it is. From Nate Silver: “Color me a bit confused. Did the same person who once wrote a book entitled The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma also just write an editorial entitled Note to Liberal Elite: It’s Not About Race?”

The Doggie Gaga Project. Thanks to Zuzu for the link.

The fine foreign company of international executions. The United States is in the company of some of the most backward “justice” systems in the world by allowing the death penalty.

Beth Ditto!

Carly Fiorina suggests we all “break bread” at Passover. Aww.

Beer was invented by women.

Lilith Fair — a women-centric music festival — is considering giving donations to anti-choice, misleading and dangerous Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

David Brooks has a question.

He would like to know if you would rather win an Oscar and be stuck with a cheating husband, or have zero personal or professional accomplishments but have a really happy marriage. If you take more than three seconds to decide, he says, you are an idiot.

Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.

Uh-oh. I’ll bet things are even worse for people like me who have no marriage at all. Perhaps now is the time to start adding to my cat collection?

He continues:

If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.

So if that’s the case and if marriage is so great, why is Brooks not a bigger advocate of marriage equality? Why isn’t he a bigger advocate of feminism and gender equality, which helps to improve marriages and lowers divorce rates? Why isn’t he a bigger advocate of contraception, which improves marital happiness by allowing couples to have sex without having more children than they can manage? Heck, if we are against Things That Make Us Sad, why doesn’t he support commuting reforms?

Brooks is right that the relationship between money and happiness is complicated. But so is the relationship between marriage and happiness. And the “traditional” marriages that conservatives, including Brooks, tend to fetishize? Are not the happy-making kind.

Also: It’s pretty easy to wax poetic about how great marriage is when you take for granted your right to enter into one. Just like it’s pretty easy to talk about how money doesn’t bring happiness when you have more than enough money to provide for the basics.

Contribute to Connie Saltonstall

She’s running against anti-choice Democrat Bart Stupak in the primary, and she needs all the financial help she can get. During the health care reform debates, and now that reform has passed, pro-choice women have been livid at conservative Democrats for waging a war against our most basic right to bodily autonomy. We’ve been angry at the party establishment for accepting the Blue Dogs’ demands, and for trading away women’s rights. We’ve said that we aren’t going to tolerate it anymore, not from the people who are supposed to represent us.

So let’s do that. For everyone who is angry at Stupak for his anti-choice shenanigans, and who thinks that Democrats should stand up for women’s rights, take a step toward kicking him out — contribute to Saltonstall’s campaign. I just did. It’s awfully easy to be angry and to stomp our feet, but unless we get out there in large numbers and support Connie and other pro-choice Democrats, nothing is going to change.

Cutting the Cost of Being a Woman

At least health care reform does that.

Until now, it has been perfectly legal in most states for companies selling individual health policies — for people who do not have group coverage through employers — to engage in “gender rating,” that is, charging women more than men for the same coverage, even for policies that do not include maternity care. The rationale was that women used the health care system more than men. But some companies charged women who did not smoke more than men who did, even though smokers have more risks. The differences in premiums, from 4 percent to 48 percent, according to a 2008 analysis by the law center, can add up to hundreds of dollars a year. The individual market is the one that many people turn to when they lose their jobs and their group coverage.

Insurers have also applied gender-rating to group coverage, but laws against sex discrimination in the workplace prevent employers from passing along the higher costs to their employees based on sex. Gender rating has taken a particular toll on smaller or midsize businesses with many women, like home-health care, child care and nonprofits. As a result, some businesses have been unable to offer health coverage or have been able to afford it only by using plans with very high deductibles.

In addition, individual policies often excluded maternity coverage, or charged much more for it. Now, gender rating is essentially outlawed, and policies must include maternity coverage, considered “an essential health benefit.”

This is all good news. It’s too bad that abortion coverage — also an essential health benefit for a procedure utilized by 1 in 3 American women — was stripped out of the bill, leaving promises of ending gender discrimination in health care ringing a little hollow.

Bits and Pieces

Lucky Girl: A must-read piece about being one of the “lucky ones” who could actually get an abortion when the procedure was illegal.

The new Erykah Badu video, Window Seat, is pretty awesome.

Matt Taibbi asks, in a predictably provocative piece, Is it time to dissolve the Catholic Church?

Should boys and young men be the new liberal cause?

Health care reform, but at whose expense? Aimee Thorne-Thompson says that the new bill isn’t all that great. Kate Michelman, who both lead a major pro-choice organization and had health care costs bring her nearly to financial ruin, also gives her thoughts.

Re-defining the wife.

Why Women Don’t Want Macho Men. Oh there are so many problems with this article and with the study (beginning with the definition of “macho”), but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.

Pie > Cake. Science proves it. I dare you to argue with me.

The life of La Gaga. [Article has some very problematic phrasing].

Attention men: What Not To Wear.

Republican caller is mad that CSPAN takes calls from so many black people.

The RNC has spent large sums of money on things like private jets, limos, and bottle service at topless nightclubs. Fiscal conservatism and family values!

The Rage Is Not About Health Care

But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
…
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.