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

Month: October 2012

DOMA ruled unconstitutional by the 2nd Circuit

Big news: The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. You can download the opinion at Above the Law. A few notable things: First, the opinion is written by Jacobs, a very conservative justice. Second, the court evaluates DOMA using intermediate scrutiny, which is really important. Explainer below, for the non-lawyers (or non-legal-nerds) in the audience. From the opinion:

Same-Sex Marriage Support Up Among Basically Everyone

Republicans have been trying to use same-sex marriage as a wedge issue to secure more votes from Latino Americans — a group that the GOP has actively marginalized because of the GOP’s general racism and anti-immigrant policies — assuming that Latinos tend to be more religious and socially conservative than many other voting blocs. Well, whoops: It turns out that more than half of Latino voters support marriage equality. Sorry Republicans, but you’re on the losing end of the electorate (and history) on this one.

What We Really Learned About Romney Last Night, Beyond the Binders Meme

In just one question last night, Mitt Romney told us everything we needed to know about how disconnected he is from everyday women. His answers reflected a shockingly retrograde view of working women, and a total lack of interest in women’s issues. Behind his answers lies the reality that a Romney presidency has no plans to do anything to rectify gender inequality in the workplace.
When asked what he would do as president to rectify the fact that women earn 72% of what men earn for the same jobs, Romney stumbled unbelievably. It became clear that Romney has never given much thought to the economic inequalities faced by women, and was woefully unprepared for the question.

Romney’s “Binders Full of Women” line that spawned a thousand memes? Not exactly true.

Remember last night during the presidential debates when the candidates were asked about pay equity, and Obama talked about concrete steps his administration had taken to ensure equality (the Lily Ledbetter Act, which he signed his first day in office), and Romney talked about how he would let a female staffer go home early because women need to cook dinner? And Romney also talked about how he was assembling his cabinet when he was elected governor of Massachusetts, and wouldn’t you know it, every single qualified person who applied was a man. Every single one! And so Big Daddy Romney, caring as much as he does about women in the workplace(?), went to women’s groups and asked them for qualified women. And they sent on “binders full of women” (cue internet memes). And then he hired a bunch of those women, and then according to a survey of all 50 states, “mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.” That is a really nice story. It turns out that it’s not at all true.

Exposing Internet Creeps

Adrian Chen is fucking awesome. And I have very little sympathy for cries about “privacy” from people who make it their primary hobby to violate the privacy of others. Sorry, but the internet is not, in fact, 100% anonymous. Just because you are online doesn’t mean you’re not interacting in the world. And “free speech” does not actually mean “the freedom to say whatever I want, no matter how awful, with zero pushback.” Content note on that link and the rest of this post: Violence, misogyny, sexual assault, racism, and just about anything else foul you can think of.