Tag: Link Round-Ups

I’ve been away for two weeks and the guesties have been holding down the fort, but now that I’m back home and sifting through my email, I have many a link to share. So check out the good stuff I’ve missed:

Shotgun Adoption: The amazing Kathryn Joyce (author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement) has a piece in the The Nation about Christian adoption agencies coercing pregnant women into adoption.

“Third World” Men: Edwin Okong’o, who grew up in Kenya, responds to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s NYT article, The Women’s Crusade. He puts his finger on what bothered me about the piece: The condescension and stereotyping of both men and women in developing countries. Kristof and WuDunn do a great job at pointing out the myriad ways in which women face discrimination and abuse around the world, and it’s crucial that someone in sounding that alarm. And I don’t object to pointing out the fact that much of this discrimination and abuse happens at the hands of men. What turned me off was the tone — that those other people over there are so cruel to poor helpless women, and that the West is going to step in (with our superior track record on women’s rights, of course) and fix things.

Women and Motherhood: Researchers at the University of Mary Washington are conducting a study on attitudes towards feminism and motherhood. If you’re a woman over the age of 18 (feminist or not, mother or not), help ’em out by taking it.

Why We Needed Van Jones on the Inside: My adoration of Melissa Harris-Lacewell continues, as she illustrates why environtmental justice advocates need to be included in maintream politics — and why the ouster of Van Jones might be the movement’s death knell.

Read More…Read More…

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!

My apologies for putting off the Weekend Reads for a few weeks, but I’ve got some excellent stuff to get us back in the habit.

THE HEARTLAND: I don’t know why I haven’t seen much about this yet in my corner of the blogosphere, but Iowa is the first midwestern state to legalize gay marriage. GO IOWA!

RAVEN’S EYE: At the brand new blog (okay, a few weeks old since I’ve been running late) Raven’s Eye, there is an excellent essay on quilting as art and an act of resistance. Raven’s Eye is a group blog for women of color, cis and trans, that seeks to represent more WOC’s lived experiences. It’s a great read with lots of prestigious bloggers taking part.

KNOW YOUR COMPANY: Kyle Payne, “feminist” blogger and “ally” turned sexual predator, is out of jail and back to blogging like nothing happened at all. Renegade Evolution and Natalia Antonova have some words for him.

DIY ABORTION: Wisconsin teens have turned to animal medication to induce abortion, and conservatives are predictably blaming liberals instead of asking why teenagers don’t have access to safe, accredited health care.

BYSTANDER BEHAVIOR: When a woman in Queens was raped at a subway station, two transit workers stood by and opted not to intervene. Later, when she sued them for not answering her cries for help, a judge “concluded a token clerk and a subway conductor had no responsibility to intervene and were following work rules by not confronting the rapist.”

LEGENDARY LATINAS: Frau Sally Benz put together a whole slew of excellent posts on influential Latinas, starting with Frida Kahlo. Check them all out here.

PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE: Or are they? It’s disturbing what this police chief considers “people” — “If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names,” said [Homer, Louisiana Police Chief Russell] Mills, who is white. “I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested. We’re not out there trying to abuse and harass people, we’re trying to protect the law-abiding citizens locked behind their doors in fear.” — and until this culture changes police and state brutality will not stop.

CODIFYING MALE PRIVILEGE: Aunt B. has a thoughtful post on why it’s necessary to pass MRA-styled laws for family courts that aim to, literally, protect men from women, when men in the family court system can petition for joint custody or request paternity tests anyway, concluding that such laws preserve the vision that the world is men’s to glide through.

SAME ‘OL: I really do love the X-Files, Scully especially, but watching it again all these years later, I realized the gender roles are just as oppressive and banal as they are everywhere else on television.

NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY: The new review at Racialicious is up, and having seen it myself their review is right on. It’s a sweet show with lots of potential, and Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose make a diabolical pair. The only thing Latoya didn’t touch on: the horrible accents. (For further reference on rillah bad accents in premium programming, see True Blood.)

JOBLESS: Everyone’s been talking about the interactive map published by The New York Times on unemployment rates in the U.S. This instructive piece of info is useful for finding the areas of the country most affected by downturns in manufacturing and housing bubbles. Unfortunately the map is also accompanied by one of those class- and gender-dumb articles that asserts men and rich people are “more affected” by the economic crisis than everyone else, which is important because they’re more important. SEE ALSO: If you’re as lost as I am on the causes of the economic crisis, check out this collection of simple guides on how our economy went into the shitter.

NEIGHBORS OF JUAREZ: Violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is spreading and requires solutions other than superficial chest-beating, passive-agressive walls and empty sentiments about protecting “our” “borders”. We *must* protect Central American borders and people as well, and the poison that crosses from our state to theirs. (H/T)

WHAT IF HE DID IT?: Considering that the percentage of false rape reports is in the single digits, and similar to the incidence of false reporting with other crimes, why do people turn out in droves to defend public figures who have been accused of rape? It’s like rape is a special kind of crime that everyone hears about but no one actually commits. Maybe women just rape themselves.

SEX SELLS: Sure, but when naked ladies are the primary imagery used to push a product, it’s implicit that “primarily, women [are] sold to (presumably heterosexual) men,” and worse, that as women we have our status as sexual objects of the het male gaze sold back to us again, and again, and again, and again. No wonder people have body-image issues.

GENDER JUSTICE: Men of color are not the only people affected by police brutality. Also, police murders of men of color are a feminist issue.

SPEAK!: This women of color-led media collective of artists from all over the country put together a CD of spoken word poetry and song last summer, and it’s now available here for purchase. (H/T)

LITTLE KING: Lawrence “Larry” King was a biracal, openly gay, feminine-identified youth who was shot to death by his classmate, Brandon McInerney, on February 12, 2008, at E.O. Green Junior High School. Despite a documented escalation of behavior between King and his killer, all authorities turned away as they allowed children to beat their gender atypical peers, encouraged homophobic youth by remaining complacent to their homophobic behaviors, and wrote it off as mere “bullying.”

SEEING IS BELIEVING: The way we visually represent sexually transmitted diseases in sex education is revealing of class-related health care issues and also affects the way we seek treatment for them once we may be infected.

MISSING: Missing from conversation about abortion and ethics on Hardball: Women.

SCREENING: In the U.S., you will almost never hear about the downsides of breast cancer screens, in that “none of the literature [describing mammography] had even mentioned the major harm of screening: overdiagnosis and subsequent unnecessary treatment of healthy women. About a third of the literature even told women that screening leads to less invasive surgery or simpler surgery, when ‘it actually results in 30% more surgery, 20% more mastectomies and more use of radiotherapy.'” Not that I’m suggesting people don’t look out for their health, but more that much of the health care industry as it exists is about marketing to consumers, not patients, and driving up fear about disease.

TRANS 101: In which Helen lets cis people know what’s what.

NOVELTY AND CHOICE: After having a terrible 2008, Chen Xiao decided to let go, and let China’s netizens decide how she spends her days for the price of a small fee. She won’t do anything she considers illegal or immoral, but she will pick up dinner for your family, or deliver a hot lunch to the needy, or attend your baby’s birth. It’s an interesting experiment in autonomy and the social workings of the internet, and probably the only feel-good story you’re getting from me in this post.

SEXY OTHERNESS: At Muslimah Media Watch, guestblogger Cycads uses an offensive conversation about an “orientalist fantasy” to discuss the feminization and colonization of foreign bodies and lands.

BORDERS, BOUNDARIES AND RAPE: The presence of “rape trees” — “places where Mexican drug cartel members rape female border crossers and hang their clothes” — proves that this brand of sexual violence is officially present in the United States. Mexican and North American bureaucrats mostly deny this is true.

IT’S CALLED A SHIT SANDWICH, AND YOU’LL EAT IT AND LIKE IT: Schools across the country are “cutting budgets” by giving plain cheese sandwiches to children whose parents cannot foot the bill for a hot lunch, “singl[ing] out poor children in the most storied location of school-aged social hierarchies – the lunchroom.” My boy, Ethan, is terrified of being a cheese sandwich kid since they instituted this policy at his school. Sybil and Renee bring the outrage.

PORN COMES CALLING: Also from Renee, some entrepreneurs have offered Nadya Suleman another way of paying her bills — starring in a full-feature porn movie.

FIRST!: Last week King Abdullah threw out a bunch of reform-blocking cabinet members, and among other sweeping changes, named Norah al-Fayez as Saudi Arabia’s deputy education minister for women. She is the first female minister in Saudi Arabia.

ANTI-ABORTION ANGST: The right-to-life movement is feeling some angst about the ineffectuality of their activism so far, especially now that there is a general consensus that the movement is a political puppet in a panned Republican play.

RT @RANDOMDEANNA: Deanna Zandt’s “non-fanatical begginers’ guide to Twitter.” For people like my mom who still don’t understand what Twitter even is, and me, because I can’t explain it to her either.

WOMEN & THE STIMULUS: How the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act addresses women’s needs (PDF).

TESTING THE PREMISE: Are gays a threat to children? An impressively in-depth look at homosexuality, child molestation, and how the actual facts fly in the face of right-wing anti-gay talking points.

BEYOND CHRIS AND RIHANNA: A youth perspective on domestic violence, and the social and media narratives that play out (or don’t) when women and genderqueer people of color are the survivors. Written by two members of Females United for Action, which is a part of Women & Girls Collective Action Network. (More about them here).

DREAMS DEFERRED: A new film looks at the murder of a 15-year-old lesbian of color, Sakia Gunn, who was stabbed to death after she and her friends refused the sexual advances of a man in downtown Newark. Her murder garnered almost no media attention. During the murder trial, the maker of this documentary was the only person with a camera in the entire court room.

WHAT IS THE “STATUS QUO”? A Washington Post columnist proclaims Obama’s appointments to be “Good news for the status quo” because the picks trend towards old white guys with elite educations from Eastern states. Notably, though, Obama has appointed more people of color and more women than Bush or Clinton (and, I assume, more than any other previous president). And I’m not sure I find it all that objectionable that he’s appointed a fair number of academics — it’s certainly better than the cronyism we saw in the last administration, where jobs were doled out to incompetent pals.

TEENS AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT: Teenagers routinely face sexual harassment at work. Maria Hinojosa covers it for PBS.

WHEN A PICTURE IS WORTH NO WORDS: The Wall Street Journal covers genetic counseling, a field dominated by women (96% of genetic counselors are female). They illustrate the story with a picture of a dude.

LOVELEEN WHO? Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle is getting all kinds of praise and accolades (not to mention Oscars). Turns out the film was co-directed. Loveleen Tand, the co-director, cast the film, translated the script into Hindi, filmed much of the Mumbai footage, and shaped the film to be culturally appropriate and accurate. In other words, she made the film what it is. I didn’t actually watch the Oscars, but word is that Boyle didn’t even bother to thank her. And in most of what I’ve read, he’s been getting most of the credit, while her contributions have been ignored. Think that would be the case if she weren’t a woman and of color? (Thanks to greeneyed fem for the link.)

MEETING SURVIVORS’ NEEDS: Marcella walks us through a multi-state study of domestic violence shelters, and points out that the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, which was the primary federal funding source for domestic violence shelters, expired last fall. Head over to her place to learn about how you can flood the inboxes of everyone in DC to get this vital funding reinstated.

WHY I BECAME A FEMINIST: Because I’m past my prime of sexual excess. Aww.

WORDS MEAN THINGS: Do we really need to put the word “raped” in scare-quotes when a 13-year-old kills herself after being raped by a 39-year-old man? And considering that other under-age girls have come out and said that Paul Nicholls raped them, “pedophile” might also be an appropriate term to throw in the article. (Thanks to Cindy for the link).

WANTED AND DESIRED, AND RAPED: Rapists make movies and have sympathetic documentaries made about their rape confessions, and numerous famous others turn out in droves to defend their art and legitimacy. But even though Roman Polanski and his team of lawyers tried desperately to keep as many balls in the air as they could, it comes down to one thing: He raped a 13-year-old girl, her story clearly implicated him, and he offically admitted doing it. Moreover, he served no sentence and received no punishment for the act — not even the death of his Hollywood career — except fleeing for Europe, where he’s lived the high life for the last thirty years. Polanski is trying to revisit the case and prove his innocence, not of raping the girl, mind you, but effectively arguing a miscarriage of justice, by trying to move the case out of L.A. where he would have to surrender himself to the courts. On Tuesday, thankfully, “Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if Polanski, who fled on the eve of his sentencing, in March 1978, wanted to challenge his conviction, he could — by coming back and turning himself in.”

ASSAULT: [Serious trigger warning] Police have sexually assaulted a woman who called them for help, and are now suing the news station that exposed them. They picked her up on accident instead of picking up her attacker and subjected her to a forcible strip search that violates their own procedure. There is a clip of the news story at the link that includes some footage of the strip search and it is very disturbing, but it gets worse: subsequently five more women stepped forward and are alleging similar treatment. Also related, the social and emotional impact on survivors when embroiled in sloppy and inconsistent police investigations.

WITHOLDING AND CONTROL: M. Leblanc shares her story about a different kind of rape that is enveloped in the confusion of an emotionally abusive relationship.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: Renee asserts that in our work to resist violence and fight racism the work of feminists of color can not be ignored.

MOTHER OF FOURTEEN: Despite the various ethical arguments against Nadya Suleman’s decision to undergo in-vitro fertility treatments as a single mother without any income, the coverage of the case in contrast to other media outlets says a lot about what kinds of large families we will celebrate and why.

WILL WORK 4 JOB ADVICE: What to expect when you’re expecting lay-offs.

TPS REPORTS: Flair, the working class, and corporate attempts to tamp down worker expression and individuality.

LOVE LESSONS: Elle and her son have a genuinely heart-warming talk about whether Valentine’s Day is really just for girls.

BABIES’ BABIES: A controversy is raging in the UK over a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old having a baby together, mostly because the 13-year-old father looks like a doe-eyed baby himself. Even I, with my own sexual history and statistical and academic knowledge of sexual relationships, had a hard time with this one because of the family history and assumption that there is more going on here than a couple of horny teenagers going at it. Thoughts welcome in the comments.

DOUBT: A review of the Oscar-nominated movie “Doubt” that presents the barriers of fear and self-interest when it comes to challenging patriarchal norms. A fair and challenging review, but, warning! Lots of spoilers.

COOKIE CUTTER LIVES: Thinking beyond the mom/dad/kid/dog family formation patterns.

NAKED AMBITION: PETA has long made the assertion that nude protests are a necessary and radical component to their activism. But why aren’t more men getting naked?

VICTIMHOOD: If being a victim is living with what someone else has done to you, why is “victim” such a dirty word?

TALES FROM A SURVIVOR: Why didn’t she just leave? Because she couldn’t until she did. See also, other things that let abusers off the hook.

OH BABY: If you aren’t having an orgasm during your delivery, as in, while you’re pushing a baby out your vaginal canal, ur doin it wrong.

LADY MUSIC: The folks at Post-Bourgie debate whether female rappers have “credibility,” or whether they are/were another “gimmick thunk up as yet another money-making angle for catering to men.”

THE OTHER MOTHER: Exploring race and gender in the new film Coraline. (Name drop: One of my awesomely creative friends from high school is an animator on this movie! I will not actually drop her name as to preserve her privacy.)

TEACHING MOMENTS: How to persuade your students that gender justice might be relevant for them, now or later.

HEY GUYS!: On the importance of gender-neutral language.

IS BEAUTIFUL: A touching memory from The Black Snob on little black girls, beauty, and barbie dolls. [via]

ROSIE THE RIVETER: On the gender and class implications of the economic recession, and whether the media will freak out over a female-dominated workforce.

LADY BUMPS: If you haven’t heard, someone famous gained weight and everyone hates her for her sloth and moral failure.

GOOD HAIR, BAD HAIR: Renee and Michelle look at Chris Rock’s new documentary on blackness and the anxiety of having and maintaining “good hair.” [Reportedly the movie dominated the Sundance festival this year and is being well-received by critics. Has anyone seen it?]

WOMEN OF THE LONG HOUSE: Kai takes a fascinating look beyond the lens of whiteness on the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls.

BAD JOKE ALERT: If you’re a woman taking your shirts to the cleaners, you may get, um, taken to the cleaners.

AND BOOTY FOR ALL: Watchdog group Morality in Media tries to take AARP to task for insinuating that people past the age of sixty might possibly have active sex lives. The horror!

INVISIBLE MEN: Thomas wonders who is bidding on Natalie Dylan’s virginity, and why?

SEX AND THE FAMILY: AL struggles with whether she is slut-shaming, particularly because the one she is worried for is her own little sister.

BRINGING UP BABY (GIRLS): Are Anglo Westerners developing a preference for female children?

LOLWARZ: On feminist pet wars and cattiness. (This is the best feminist blog war ever. You ought to know what side I represent.)