May 2010 – Page 3

Happy Birthday, Malcolm X

Malcolm X rests two fingers to his head and glances off to the side in this black and white photo.

I’m getting to it late in the day, but it remains worthy of notice that today would have been Malcolm X’s 84th birthday. Renee has written a wonderful tribute to the great revolutionary, activist, and leader. Be sure to go check it out.

Feministe Feedback: Why is Inclusion of People with Disabilities Important?

A Feministe reader has been asked to give the “parent’s point of view” on inclusion for her city’s recreation center. She writes in looking for information, talking points and a wider context so that she can most effectively advocate for people with disabilities.

She writes:

Why is inclusion of people with disabilities important? Especially in terms of childcare and recreational services for children with disabilities.

Having affordable childcare for my child with a disability (autism) that offered inclusion services has been invaluable to me as a mother who works outside the home, especially as a single mom/bread winner. But it has also been important for my son, who gets to experience the same things as his NT peers do.

I have been asked to give a little talk on Saturday to some newbie Inclusion Specialists at the city Recreation Center. My son has gone there for childcare and rec (swimming, etc.) and been supported by an inclusion plan. They want me to give the “parents point of view” to the new employees.

Anyhow, I just want to make sure I have a lot of insight. I know my situation and my son’s, but that is a narrow strip in the bigger picture of disabilities and childcare.

Advise away! And remember that you can send Feministe Feedback questions to feministe-at-gmail-dot-com.

If you want to know the best places to eat in New York…

Dinner on the rocks, originally uploaded by JillNic83.

Ask marijuana users. This article basically lists half of my favorites places in NYC (Frankies, Roberta’s, Momofuku, Prime Meats, the Breslin). Wow. Apparently I like haute stoner cuisine. But really, who doesn’t? (Communists, that’s who).

Hypocrites!

Conservative blogger Cassy Fiano is mad because we at Feministe have not yet written about a story that just came out yesterday in a Jerusalem newspaper that none of us read. Because if a woman did something awesome somewhere and we didn’t hear about it and therefore failed to cover it, it proves that we are fake feminists who only care about TV and non-stories like child rape. Also, this one time Cassy Fiano held a gun and told us that we’re all sluts and that celibacy is “the new craze” in New York City (“You sluts are such squares, you aren’t even hip to the new celibacy craze! Kids these days, bumping and grinding! Don’t give it away like they do in the hippy-hop videos and on the YouTube! Wait for the bling-bling! Something about cows and milk!”). She is clearly a way better feminist than we can ever hope to be, is my point.

Anyway, in going forward with Cassy’s logic, she obviously is a bad pro-lifer and a bad skeptic-of-government, since she hasn’t written about the seven-year-old girl who was killed by police in Detroit. “I hate children and love government.” -Cassy Fiano. That argument makes sense, right guys? Trump card?

“Cougars” out, “Sugardaddies” in

Google has made the decision to block ads for “cougar” dating sites, which advertise the ability to set up older women with younger men. If Google were taking a stand against quasi-pedophiliac advertising (if that’s what the cougar ads even were), that would be fine. But they still allow ads for “sugardaddy” websites, which set up older men with “sugarbabies.” The problem seems to be with older women behaving in a “predatory” manner. It’s ok if older men want to exchange money and gifts for sex with younger women, but women wanting to have sex with younger men for the sake of mutual pleasure? Family-un-friendly!

Bits and Pieces

Wire Derby Horse Names: The greatest Twitter hashtag of all time. I would definitely bet on a horse named Hamsterdam.

Miley Cyrus releases a video in which she’s dressed up like a bird in a cage. For some reason this is a big deal? I don’t understand, but I am elderly compared to your average Miley fan, so. Some women think that the song lyrics are Girl Empowerful, which is great. I couldn’t force myself to watch the video or listen to the song more than once (spoiler: IT’S NEW LEVELS OF TERRIBLE), so I’ll just link to Gabe, who sums up my thoughts.

Vajazzling: The Newest Threat to Your College Son. Hilarious.

On Needing Your Mother, Still. This piece by Jessica Grose had me in tears. I’m a little late on posting it, but it’s a Mother’s Day must-read.

Military bloggers on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

This editorial in The Nation basically sums up how I feel about the Kagan nomination.

The protests in Thailand are getting increasingly violent.

In case you needed another reason to be disgusted by Woody Allen

Funny movies? Check. Creative and talented guy? Check. Shockingly abhorrent human being? ~~Double~~ triple check.

First there was the creepy marrying-his-stepdaughter thing. But that’s old news.

More recently, Allen gives us this New Yorker article, which I understand was supposed to be humor piece about Warren Beatty’s sexual prowess but which is actually a really sexist and creepy look into how Woody Allen thinks women view sex (for example, sex is “really good” when we are “ravaged,” wake up in a recovery room with a nurse giving us tea, and don’t remember anything). New Yorker, I love you. I read you every day on the subway. But I wanted to tear you up into a million little pieces when I read that piece.

And now Allen is (again!) standing up for Roman Polanksi, after another actress came forward and said Polanski raped her when she was a teenager. According to Allen, Polanski is “an artist and is a nice person” who “did something wrong and he paid for it.” Except (a) nice people don’t rape 14-year-old girls; (b) even if Polanksi is really really nice and saves kittens on the weekends, that isn’t a Get Away With Rape Free card; (c) neither is being an artist; I mean, John Wayne Gacy was a clown, so, great guy, they should definitely have let him go; and (d) Polanski actually has not paid for what he did wrong. Unless by “he paid for it” you mean “he won numerous awards, made hundreds of millions of dollars, had a long and successful career, but couldn’t enter the United States and for a few months was not allowed to leave his enormous Swiss chateau.” In that case, ok yeah, he paid for it. Can I be a criminal and face the same kind of punishment as Polanski, please?

And can people like Woody Allen please be socially marginalized, please?

Good News

Juvenile offenders — other than those found guilty of murder — cannot be sentenced to life without parole. This is great news, but I wish that the court had gone further and held that no juveniles can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. After all, this decision doesn’t apply to people like Sara Kruzan, who was put in jail at 16 for killing her abusive pimp.

It’s important to point out that this isn’t about giving anyone a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s not saying that no juvenile should be in prison for life. But juveniles do not have the same brain development as adults — they lack the same degree of impulse control and the ability to fully appreciate the consequences of their actions. This case simply allows a parole board to evaluate the offender’s record and efforts at rehabilitation. If the person who was a juvenile when they committed a crime goes before a parole board 25 years later and that person is still dangerous, the board can reject the application for parole. Alternately, if you have a kid who committed two armed robberies at 16 and 17 and twenty years later isn’t a danger to anyone, the parole board can recommend his release.

It’s also worth pointing out that more than half of all juveniles serving sentences of life without parole are first-time offenders. At least 74 of the 2,574 people currently in prison for life for crimes they committed as juveniles were under the age of 14 when they committed the crime. And African-American youth are serving sentences for life without parole at about ten times the rate of white youth.

This is a thoroughly common-sense decision, and comes on the heels of the Court finally ruling that it’s cruel and unusual to execute juveniles. Perhaps some day we’ll see the court extend this line of juvenile justice cases even further.

7-Year-Old Girl Killed By Detroit Police While Sleeping in Her Home

A 7-year-old black girl named Aiyana Stanley Jones sits in front of a poster of Disney princesses. Her hair is in braids with colorful clips at the ends. She wears a white shirt and smiles at the camera.

Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of police violence and gun violence.

Aiyana Stanley Jones was 7-years-old. On Sunday morning, she was asleep on the couch in her family’s home.

Aiyana is now dead. She is dead after the home was raided by police. Police, searching for a murder suspect, threw a flash grenade through the window around midnight. According to Aiyana’s father, it landed on the couch, setting Aiyana on fire. A police officer’s gun then went off, and shot Aiyana in the head or neck.

Aiyana was asleep on the living room sofa in her family’s apartment when Detroit police, searching for a homicide suspect, burst in and an officer’s gun went off, fatally striking the girl in the neck, family members said.

Her father, 25-year-old Charles Jones, told The Detroit News he had just gone to bed early Sunday after covering his daughter with her favorite blanket when he heard a flash grenade followed by a gunshot. When he rushed into the living room, he said, police forced him to lie on the ground, with his face in his daughter’s blood.

“I’ll never be the same. That’s my only daughter,” Jones told WXYZ-TV.

Arizona Nun Excommunicated for Saving a Patient’s Life

Because the patient needed an abortion, and the nun — who sat on the hospital’s ethics committee — approved it.

Sister Margaret McBride has been demoted from her position at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ after participating in the approval of an abortion for a critically ill patient in 2009. McBride was part of the hospital ethics committee that approved an abortion for a patient with pulmonary hypertension, which can be made fatal by pregnancy. Hospital officials say the procedure was necessary to save the patient’s life.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, the leader of the Phoenix archdiocese, said McBride was “automatically excommunicated” for acting to save a woman’s life. What role Olmsted played in McBride’s demotion is unknown.

Nice, you guys.