March 2013 – Page 4

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Promote yourself.

Don’t Change Your Name When You Get Married

Putting this up on a Friday evening because it’s already causing Outrage on the Guardian, Twitter and my personal Facebook account: Women shouldn’t change their names when they get married.

Weekly Open Thread with the Hope Quilt

To mark International Women’s Day, this week’s threadful host is the Hope Quilt, symbol of the Hope for Housekeepers campaign against unfair work practices for hotel housekeepers (a mostly female workforce). Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything you like* over this weekend and throughout the week.

* with a few netiquette exceptions

Happy International Women’s Day!

It’s International Women’s Day, and I’m working with UN Women to help spread the word. Michelle Bachelet has issued a call to end violence against women world-wide, and UN Women has released a lovely song from 25 artists around the world:

What Racism Looks Like

As usual, Ta-Nehisi Coates is correct, and cuts right through the standard rhetoric to truth:

In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist. In 1957, neighbors in Levittown, Pa., uniting under the flag of segregation, wrote: “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.”

VAWA and the far-right GOP

I’m writing in Al Jazeera today about how the fight over the Violence Against Women Act exemplifies the increased extremism of the Republican party. A bit:

We need the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

The National Women’s Law Center pulls together real women’s stories to explain why we need the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which makes sure that all pregnant workers are able to get the minor workplace adjustments they need to continue working during their pregnancies. These aren’t major changes in job duties; they’re reasonable and small accommodations that make all the difference for pregnant people. A few examples:

Christian college fires pregnant woman for having premarital sex, offers a job to her fiance

Teri James was fired from her job as a financial aid specialist at San Diego Christian College for being unmarried and pregnant. Clarification: She was fired because the pregnancy was evidence that she had “engaged in activity outside the scope of the Handbook and Community Covenant that does not build up the college’s mission” — namely, premarital sex.

Arrested for carrying condoms

Go read this piece about how the NYPD can arrest you for carrying condoms and someone please explain to me in what universe any of this makes sense. Trans and carrying condoms? You must be a prostitute, and condoms are the proof! Wearing a tight t-shirt and carrying condoms? You must be a prostitute, and condoms are the proof! A sex worker who is trying to keep herself safe in her work? You are actually a prostitute, so go to jail, or at the very least get your condoms taken away so your work is more dangerous. The condoms-as-evidence policy serves absolutely no one.

Surrogacy, paying for pregnancy and whose rights end where

This entire story about a surrogate mother, Chrystal Kelley, pregnant with a fetus with severe abnormalities, is disturbing and heartbreaking. A low-income woman, desperate for money, agreed to be a surrogate for a wealthier family, something she had done before. Everyone was excited. Then, an ultrasound showed the fetus had several abnormalities — heart problems, organ problems. The parents, who had given birth to two premature babies before and knew the difficulties of raising children with health issues, wanted to terminate the pregnancy. Kelley did not.