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

Month: February 2011

On Charlie Sheen

It probably isn’t super surprising to hear that I can’t stand Charlie Sheen. The fact that Two and a Half Men exists makes me believe that none of us deserve nice things. I think he’s a jackass and an abusive, egomaniacal coward. So while I can’t feel all that sad for him about his very public meltdown (clearly he is BI-WINNING), I’m a little disturbed that his pattern of violence against women never got him booted from any of his projects.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad his anti-Semitism finally got him canned (because contrary to a lot of the reports, it was his emphasis on the Jewish-sounding name of the Two and a Half Men creator that was so offensive, not just the fact that Sheen insulted his boss). But…

In addition to wreaking all manner of havoc on himself with drugs and alcohol that has put him in the hospital and the show on hiatus, Mr. Sheen has done a lot of damage to the people around him, women in particular.

In 2006, his wife at the time, Denise Richards, filed a restraining order, charging that Mr. Sheen had pushed her down, thrown chairs at her and threatened to kill her in person and on the phone. The couple eventually divorced.

Mr. Sheen then had a series of very public relationships with sex film stars, which is certainly his prerogative — talent is as talent does — but he also continued to exhibit a pattern of violence toward women.

Mr. Sheen was charged with a felony for an incident on Christmas Day in 2009 in which he threatened to kill his wife, Brooke Mueller, while holding a knife to her throat. According to the police report, Mr. Sheen “started to strangle Mueller then he pulled out a knife he always carries on his person and held the knife to Mueller’s neck and threatened, ‘You better be in fear. If you tell anybody I’ll kill you.’ ”

Last fall, Mr. Sheen went on a rampage in the Plaza Hotel in New York. A hired escort who had locked herself in the bathroom claimed he had put his hands around her neck and threatened her while his former wife Ms. Richards and his children slept down the hall.

Yeah. When Mel Gibson is calling you to offer his support because you’re such a damn mess, it’s time to re-examine your life. And despite the obvious… troubles… he’s going through, it’s shameful that we’re so willing to look the other way while he abuses women.

Also? I know it’s wrong to inject humor into a post like this, but: Charlie Sheen on Charlie Sheen’s favorite drug:

“It’s called Charlie Sheen,” said one of the highest paid actors in television. “It’s not available because if you try it once you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

God bless him. Whoever has him in their Celebrity Death Pool is going to be coming up roses pretty soon.

Monday Reads

The Oscars were last night, and all the predictable winners won. I’m always more interested in the dresses (THE DRESSES!), so, my winners were Mila, Scarlett, Halle, Michelle, Hailee and Mandy. Losers were Nicole, Amy Adams, Natalie (SORRY GIRL), Penelope, Reese, and Sandra Bullock’s face (WHAT did she do to it?). And I would have loved Cate with some adjustments — that boob-porthole was just too large.

Now onto more important things: Molly Lambert writes about how to survive the boys’ club, and she is awesome, and everything she says is totally right.

Behind the assault on Planned Parenthood: Ryan Grim takes an in-depth and important look.

How McDonalds manages to ruin even oatmeal — one of the simplest healthy breakfasts out there. It contains more sugar than a Snicker’s bar and almost as many calories as a cheeseburger; all kinds of weird processed ingredients are added to turn healthy oats into an artery-clogging sugary mess. And of course it’s being marketed as “wholesome” and “natural” and “healthy.”

Social Q’s tackles two gender-related questions: Women who don’t offer to pay on dates, and men who sit with their knees wide apart on the subway. I think he gets them both right.

A nice summary of the GOP’s War on Women. It’s not just attacks on reproductive rights — Republicans are also going after low-income women and their children:

Their continuing resolution would cut by 10 percent the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers, and infants each month, and has been linked in studies to higher birth weight and lower infant mortality.

The G.O.P. bill also slices $50 million from the block grant supporting programs providing prenatal health care to 2.5 million low-income women and health care to 31 million children annually. President Obama’s budget plan for next year calls for a much more modest cut.

Charles Blow details the ways in which Republicans are pro-life only insofar as the life in question is in the womb; once a baby is born, all bets are off, and we now have the highest maternal mortality rate of all countries with advanced economies.

Paul Krugman also comments on the GOP’s child-centered budget cuts, using Texas as an instructive example — that state is fiscally conservative when it comes to child welfare, and has one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the country, ranks fifth in child poverty, and leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. Only 78 percent of children in Texas are in excellent or very good health (well below the national average). That’s the model the GOP wants to use for the nation.

This piece about Facebook being a window into lives you absolutely would never want is interesting — there is an assumption, I think, that when you hit a certain age (late 20s / early 30s) and you’re still single, you must look at pictures of your friends with their babies and their families and feel envious. And… nope! Probably the same way for women who do have babies and families — I’m sure they aren’t looking at pictures of me and my cat and feeling super jealous.

There were rallies to support Planned Parenthood all over the country on Saturday; Brooklyn Vegan has some great photos of the one in New York.

You can do more than just rally: You can donate to Planned Parenthood in John Boehner’s name.

Why I cannot live in Park Slope. Get a hobby / job, you guys.

Let’s never talk about the price of sex again. Hear hear! Also? Quit using that study where strangers walked up to people on college campuses and offered sex as “proof” that men desire sex more than women. Perhaps consider that women may want sex just as much, but have spent their entire lives hearing about how sex with strangers is a terrible, dangerous idea, leading to the (probably correct) understanding that the only kind of men who would approach you in broad daylight offering sex are men who are either serial killers or sex offenders or at least total fucking creeps?

Kathryn Lopez says “contraception is not the solution” to… something that she doesn’t specify. Happiness? Baby-having? Unclear. She does say, “That’s why I want to turn back the clock — to a time when we valued love and marriage and didn’t expect, support and even encourage promiscuity.” And to a time where women really couldn’t have marriage and also lives outside of (and before) marriage, apparently. Apparently marriage should be #1 on a woman’s To Do list, and also married women never use contraception. Because “marriage” magically turns sex into something that only makes a baby when you want it to?

Victim-blaming in Canada: A judge rules that a convicted rapist can go free because the victim sent signals that “sex was in the air.” How did she send these signals? She went out to a bar with friends, wearing a tube top, heels and make-up. So obviously she wanted to be raped in the woods behind a parking lot. (But don’t worry, the judge also made him write a letter of apology to the woman he raped). Thanks, Matt, for the link.

Jill Stanek thinks punching women so they have black eyes is hilarious

LOL the GOP is punching people in the face. Hilarious.

That link goes to a cartoon of a man armed with a GOP-labeled boxing glove. He stands next to a woman with a black eye whose name tag says “Planned Parenthood,” and men with black eyes whose name tags read “Unions” and “NPR.” A man with a “Wall St.” name tag is smiling and unhurt. It’s a cartoon by a liberal commentator, who is illustrating the fact that the Republican party is attacking Planned Parenthood, unions and NPR in the name of budget cuts, while letting Wall Street off unscathed.

Stanek says, “Excepting the liberal bias in this first one, I like the Black-Eyed PP…”

Of course she does. This is the woman who feels sympathetic to a fictional serial killer because he’s “pro-life” (lolz), and says that The Godfather II is a pro-life movie because Michael Corleone hits his wife after she tells him she had an abortion — and “That spontaneous slap was the reaction of a real man who a woman had just told she aborted his baby.”

But sure, nothing about the anti-choice viewpoint is founded in hostility towards women. No undercurrent of misogyny at all. No desire to see women harmed.

Rally for Women’s Health Tomorrow

Be there! Details for New York:

Right now Congress has 1 agenda item: take away your access to reproductive health care.

The U.S. House of Representatives has just voted to bar Planned Parenthood health centers from all federal funding for birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and other lifesaving care. It is the most dangerous legislative assault in our history, and it cannot go unanswered.

IT’S TIME TO FIGHT BACK!
…
Join us Saturday, February 26th at 1:00pm in Foley Square!
Stand with thousands of New Yorkers and voice a common message:
WOMEN’S HEALTH MUST BE PROTECTED!

See you in the square!!

RSVP here TODAY: http://bit.ly/eX9rEb And share this event with your friends!

You can RSVP and find out more information here. There are Marches for Choice happening across the United States tomorrow — find one in your area.

Dear Rep. Franklin: I submit my used tampon as evidence.

There’s a new bill in Georgia sponsored by Rep. Bobby Franklin that would require women to file police reports when they miscarry, since fetuses are Georgia citizens and their deaths are potential crimes. I’m going to write more about the bill later — it’s actually really horrific and scary and basically turns all women into potential criminals — but in the meantime, I think we should help Georgia out. Since life begins at conception, and a fertilized egg is a human being with all of the rights of any other citizen of the great state of Georgia, we need to make sure that all egg-deaths are properly accounted for, and that all zygote-Americans receive a proper burial and an investigation into whether their deaths were caused by foul play.

Devery Doleman, an Actual Woman, writes a letter to Rep. Franklin requesting that he investigate the potential murders going on in her pants. I think she’s on to something. I support Devery’s idea of sending Rep. Franklin the evidence of the potential murders committed in our uteri. Now, we can’t actually send used tampons through the mail — sending bio-hazardous material to an elected official can get you in BAD TROUBLE, so don’t do it — but we can certainly send photos. So! Next time you’re on the rag, photo-document the results. Why? Because somewhere around 50% of fertilized eggs naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the body. It’s an act of God, sure, but still — that’s a 50% prenatal death rate for Georgia’s smallest citizens. Your womb, basically, is a serial killer. And Rep. Franklin is very, very interested in using the Georgia state police to investigate any possible death of a Georgia citizen.

So! I recommend you photograph your period paraphernalia, and attach it to a letter thanking Rep. Franklin for his good work in standing up for human life. Here’s a form letter you are welcome to use:

Dear Rep. Franklin,

I applaud your efforts to support the rights of zygote citizens of Georgia by criminalizing miscarriages and investigating every instance of fetal death as a potential crime. The Georgia State Assembly knows that life begins at the moment of conception, and a fertilized egg death is a human death — a death that we should all grieve, and of course investigate to the fullest extent until we find the responsible party and bring them to justice (the death penalty, which your bill prescribes as the punishment for killing a pre-born Georgia citizen, is definitely appropriate here). I couldn’t agree more, and I would like to help.

As I’m sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs –Georgia citizens! — naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way. This must be remedied. I would like to be sure that I am not killing any more Georgia citizens — and that if I am, they are able to receive a proper funeral and not a burial at sea, and that our state police can dedicate valuable time and resources to investigating their deaths.

To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself.

Please let me know if I can make an appointment to give you these items. Or, since I appreciate that you are a very busy man, please let me know when the police will be by my home to collect them, as my next cycle is rapidly approaching and they are starting to smell. I cannot keep them in my refrigerator for much longer.

Thanks for all the work you do to further the pro-life cause.

Sincerely,
Jill Filipovic

Yes, this is totally serious. Send Rep. Franklin evidence of the potential crimes happening in your uterus, which if my calculations are correct should begin in approximately 4 days (we’re all on the same cycle, right?). You can contact Rep. Franklin at:

Rep. Bobby Franklin
401 Coverdell Legislative Office Building
Atlanta, Georgia 30334

Phone: 404.656.0152
Fax: 404.656.5562

bobby.franklin@house.ga.gov

All systems go. (And if you’re spreading the word on this — and I hope you do! — please be sure to credit Devery, who came up with this idea in the first place).

I’m not married because I’m a selfish bitchy slutty shallow liar

Actually, all of those things other than “liar” are totally true.

Mad Men writer Tracy McMillan explains to all of us ladies why we aren’t married (and we all want to be, obviously — just admit it, girls). How does Tracy McMillan know why we’re not married? Because she’s been married three times. Loves it. Loves it so much she does it over and over again, even with people who kind of suck. “Getting married is the best.” -Tracy McMillan. So even though she married “a very nice liar and cheater who was just like my dad, if my dad had gone to Harvard instead of doing multiple stints in federal prison,” the marital problem in America is you (“you” being you, woman). Obviously. Allow her to explain:

1. You’re a Bitch.
Here’s what I mean by bitch. I mean you’re angry. You probably don’t think you’re angry. You think you’re super smart, or if you’ve been to a lot of therapy, that you’re setting boundaries. But the truth is you’re pissed. At your mom. At the military-industrial complex. At Sarah Palin. And it’s scaring men off.

The deal is: most men just want to marry someone who is nice to them. I am the mother of a 13-year-old boy, which is like living with the single-cell protozoa version of a husband. Here’s what my son wants out of life: macaroni and cheese, a video game, and Kim Kardashian. Have you ever seen Kim Kardashian angry? I didn’t think so. You’ve seen Kim Kardashian smile, wiggle, and make a sex tape. Female anger terrifies men. I know it seems unfair that you have to work around a man’s fear and insecurity in order to get married — but actually, it’s perfect, since working around a man’s fear and insecurity is big part of what you’ll be doing as a wife.

Actually, that is totally why I’m not married (although I’ll point out that Kim Kardashian isn’t married either, so). And this is also why McMillan’s whole piece is kind of genius — in explaining why we’re not married, she makes it really clear that it’s totally easy to find someone to marry you, if you’re willing to act like a complete doormat without a personality. Leaving any halfway intelligent reader to conclude, “Hmm, maybe I don’t want to get married just for the sake of Getting Married! Perhaps I will wait to find someone who actually likes women who have thoughts.”

The rest of the list is instructive — if you want to get married, you must never think about yourself; you must have no requirements for a man’s personality or physical appearance other than his willingness to commit; you must make it clear that you want to get married without actually ever saying the words “I want to get married;” you must not have sex, except with the man you want to marry you; and after you’ve accepted the fact that you aren’t married because you’re a bitch and a slut and a liar and shallow and selfish, you must — MUST! — love yourself.

The end. Happily ever after.

More on Kay Hymowitz

So I should probably stop beating this Kay Hymowitz horse to death, but her “successful women have made men TERRIBLE” really stuck in my craw. In her piece, she suggests it’s a big problem that “Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance.”

Matt Yglesias has a really great response:

Since I’m still in my twenties for a few more months, I thought I’d actually look up the median age at first marriage for American males. The most recent year the data is reported for is 2007, when it was 27.7 which is indeed a few years older than it was “not so long ago” in 1960 when it was 22.8 years. But in 1920, it was 24.6 years. In 1890, it was 26.1, presumably because everyone was too busy watching Judd Apatow movies. Or maybe this number just bounces around over time and it’s always been the case that some people are sometimes frustrated with some members of the opposite sex.

World of Warcraft was invented in 1890, right?

Kay Steiger, who shares a first name with Hymowitz but little else, also has a piece worth reading, and rounds up a lot of the internet-talk about the original article.

The best news you’ll hear today

The Obama administration has ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, because it’s unconstitutional.

President Obama has decided that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and has asked his Justice Department to stop defending it in court, the administration announced today.

“The President believes that DOMA is unconstitutional. They are no longer going to be defending the cases in the 1st and 2nd circuits,” a person briefed on the decision said.

The administration will formally notify Congress later today. The act sought to restrict single-sex unions.

The President has won favor with the gay community recently by winning a repeal of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” policy, which was passed during the lame duck Congress in December. At that time, he reiterated his support for repealing the DOMA, passed under President Clinton in 1996, but did not take further steps toward repeal.

His administration defended the law as recently as January, when the Justice Department defended the law against a ruling that said it violated the rights of states to set their own marriage policies.

Bam. That’s why electing Democrats matters. The DOJ statement is here.