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Weekend Reads, Easter Sunday Edition

Lauren

AND NOW WE KNOW: Aunt B reveals a little more in the category of anti-abortion politicians for whom, if you have an abortion and it kills you, that’s a knowable and acceptable outcome to him and the people that vote for him.

POLICIES FAIL: A young woman reports her rape to the university health clinic, doing “everything she was supposed to do,” but finds out that she can’t prosecute her rapist because the health clinic didn’t do a rape kit. Because they didn’t think she was raped.

BAND OF SISTERS AND BROTHERS?: President Obama declared April Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and the U.S. Army unveiled a new sexual assault prevention and response program. (Which had an hour segment on NPR that I can’t find now — does someone have a link?)

O, MY: A surprisingly progressive Oprah agrees with sex expert Dr. Laura Berman, that when talking with your teen daughters about sex and sexual relationships, vibrators should be part of the discussion. Click through for the clip.

LESS SEXIST OR MORE AGEIST: If PETA’s had a change of heart about their marketing, it might be because Cloris Leachman is too old to be part of the sex class.

SHE MUST KEEP MAKING THESE RHETORICAL MISTAKES ON ACCIDENT, or GOD DAMN, LINDA HIRSHMAN, WTF?: Linda Hirshman, who makes me shudder, writes an essay asserting that we should blame women for their abusive relationships and eating disorders to respect their agency. Hilzoy and Dana McCourt set her straight.

And check out the first Asian Women Carnival — there is a lot of excellent writing there too!

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9 thoughts on Weekend Reads, Easter Sunday Edition

  1. Bedda Matri, Linda Hirschman pisses me off. What she knows about getting away from an abuser can fit on the head of a fucking pin. One thing that keeps many women from getting away anytime soon is……wait for it now…..THEIR JOB. You know, the jobs Hirschman is so concerned about? Not real easy to “just leave”, when your abuser knows exactly where he can find you. Of course, for a wealthy woman like Hirschman, quitting one’s job isn’t a real concern, nor is having your employer fire you when your abuser shows up to start trouble.

    For fuck’s sake. This woman could fall through the clue tree and not hit a single branch.

  3. My experience in the feminist blogosphere is limited, and I am finding my way around slowly. I’m relieved to finally bump into someone calling Linda Hircshman on the fact that she is not helpful. The links to fauxreal were fantastic, thank you. When she railed on stay at home moms, I didn’t hear the “big” feminists calling her on it and I felt forsaken. I can understand why people are more willing to call her on this crap about abused women, but I wish there was more acknowledgement that she is a fundamentalist who straps bombs on herself, blowing up the very people she claims to help.

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  6. To top it all off, Hirschman’s article just got a wide audience. It was featured as a link on MSN’s website today, via Slate.

    Scary that this is what the world is going to hear as the “feminist” message about this topic.

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  8. I’ve got to say that I don’t mind Linda Hirshman all that much. In terms of her rhetoric, I think you have to understand that she’s a bit of a polemicist — meaning, her extreme statements are meant to bring the conversation more into the middle.

    So, with this in mind, the core of what she’s saying makes some sense to me: that we should not lose sight of women’s agency and choices and encourage good choices. This is not the same as blaming; it can very easily coexist with a recognition of the larger structural forces affecting a woman’s choice. I think that Hirshman was right when she suggested that women really need to actively protect their financial lives (which is second-nature to men) and that women can and should make the choice to get away from their abusers. None of this negates the fact that women suffer from systematic discrimination with respect to wages, or that abuse is a complicated phenomenon that cannot be answered by saying “why don’t you just leave.” Ultimately, what Hirshman is saying is that individual women should be empowered to assert themselves and their own self-interests — and this to me is quintessentially feminist.

  9. Where did Hirshman say “that we should blame women for their abusive relationships and eating disorders”? I read her as saying that it’s a valid question to talk about why women stay in abusive relationships and that women have free will.

    Bottom line, people do things for reasons. People stay in abuse relationships for reasons and people leave them for reasons. Hirshman’s point is, let’s talk about the reasons.

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