Ezra argues that Obama supporters should want Edwards to stay in the race. I’m convinced that Edwards needs to stay in, no matter how unlikely he is to win.
Melody Rose argues that Roe v. Wade ’s significance in terms of abortion rights is way overplayed, since so many women don’t have access. I agree with her, but also think that Roe was a significant cultural event that had a broader meaning than just the right to an abortion.
Poor people that get access to fresh, healthy food eat better. Also, grass grows better if it’s watered.
An organic gender-neutral pronoun has finally emerged: yo. I watched a documentary on “The Wire” and one of the actors talked about how odd it was using that pronoun on the show, because it’s gender-neutral. Considering that the researchers that put this paper out are based at John Hopkins, I have to wonder if the trend is just a Baltimore thing. The feminist they got to comment on this sounds like a stick in the mud, and not just a little bit racist.
High school students in Denver are demanding maternity leave. At my high school, practically the only time they granted you leave for long periods of time was if you were having a baby.
Huckabee calls for women’s submission.
Why no birth control pill for men?
“Juno” and the theme of older men who seek approval from young women.
Obama’s favorite character on “The Wire” is Omar. At this house, we love Omar so much that we considered calling our Rock Band band Omar. It’s still not out of the question. The sad news is that this proves that Obama had Stringer Bell killed. I can’t vote for the man who deprived me of Idris Elba like that.
I collect a lot of information about reproductive rights and sexual health for my gig at RH Reality Check, and not all of it makes the cut for reasons that are diverse and have exactly nothing to do with trying to step on anyone’s toes or ignore anyone’s favorite issue. Here’s a couple of items that I’ve been storing up and probably won’t use there, so I’ll use them here before they go stale.
I’m sure you’ve heard about how budget readjustments in D.C. have created a situation where drug companies are no longer offering deeply discounted birth control pills to college health centers. But did you know that the dramatic rise in price from 100%-400% affects 400 community health clinics that primarily serve poor women? The college girls are taking up their lion’s share of the coverage, which is a class issue mainly, and also driven by the fact that people love to read about the sex lives of nubile college women. Which is too bad, because the loss of these discounts to the non-college-but-poor community is even more tragic, because a lot of college women have more access to alternatives. The one good thing I see out of all this is that part of the college focus of the coverage is driven by the fact that college kids are organizing to reinstate the discounts. Anything that gets them out and organizing for sexual health is a good thing in my book.
Now that Roe v. Wade is in danger, the anti-choicers are chomping at the bit to get some abortion bans out there to challenge the ruling. The latest attempt is a ballot initiative in Missouri that seeks to ban abortion. I’m cautiously optimistic. People will certainly talk a big game about how horrible and immoral abortion is, but that doesn’t mean they are prepared to give up access to the service should they need it quite that easily.
Did you know that Medicare covers penis pumps but not abortion? Scott explains why this is further evidence that the Hyde Amendment is most likely unconstitutional.
Not a reproductive rights link, but still a WTF. Apparently, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s size 2 ass is too huge for the eyes and libidos of decent American men. I suspect the gossip media is trying to make the case, picture by picture, that humans possessing female bodies are all completely unfuckable, due to unholy amounts of flesh and skin.
Black Looks: Public Sector Strikes in Africa: Any Subversive Elements?
Women’s Experiences of Abuse as a Risk Factor for Incarceration.
Professor Black Woman has to deal with the racist stupid. (Hat tip: Shannon.)
I thought this was satire. Apparently, it isn’t. Maybe we can get MB to give her a new, “Most Unintentionally Funny Blog Post” award or something?
Shark-fu posts on the recent dustup between Brownback and Romney, and the uncomfortable reality for many conservatives that no, actually, not everyone’s Christian faith similar or palatable to others.
Psuedo Adrienne blogs about the stakes for Moroccan women in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Public sector workers in Israel may have to strike to get decent pay.
Finally, I know I’m an anti-consumerist pinko, but wow. These folks put me to shame. Then again, I don’t think I’d get such a sweet haul in the dumpsters in my neighborhood, which is definitely not affluent. You’ll find no working iPods tossed away.
From writers more productive than I:
Feel free to drop me anything interesting you’ve read (or written) lately in the comments. Yes, I am sneakily trying to connive you into doing my work for me. Is that so wrong?
UPDATE: Okay, let’s try this again: NORMAL PEOPLE, please feel free to drop me anything interesting you’ve read or written lately. Men’s rights activists with lame links to Livejournals relating anecdotes–shocking, shocking anecdotes!–about matricide in primates killing their little monkey babies, and how that proves bitches is evil, please commence shutting your fucking pieholes.
My coblogger, Genni, is crazy talented. She made this bag and a few others.
Photo: gennimcmahon
Stuff I didn’t get to this week because I am all trying to have a work ethic these days:
SEMI-BREAKING
THE TILLMANS’ WAR IS OUR WAR, TOO
JUST “DUH,” DUDE
In the ACLU filing, Santelli said the 31 percent figure regarding condoms and HIV was from an outdated 1993 study. More recent studies show that the risk of an HIV-negative person being infected by an HIV-positive partner is reduced by 80 to 87 percent if condoms are used every time they have sex, Santelli wrote.
Authoritative studies also show that the chances of an unintended pregnancy while using a condom are not 1 in 6, Santelli wrote, but about 2 percent over the course of a year if condoms are used correctly every time. And condoms break or slip off less than 4 percent of the time, not 15 percent, Santelli wrote.
Give people the facts, they might fuck more–and they might not even die from it!
EVERYTHING GIVES YOU CANCER
EVERYTHING GIVES YOU CANCER–EXCEPT ABORTION!
Anyway, now I’m more psyched than ever about this abortion, I tell you what.
BROADS ABROAD
Now if some could just respect what’s important to me, too, which is, oh, I don’t know, perhaps just tiny little things, like being able to leave the house in comfortable clothes and undone hair without fraternity brothers passing by in a truck leaning out the window to yell “BITCH!” at me, that would be swell.
But that, all that I will save for some other time, some time when I feel like starting a raging blogwar, which time is not now. In fact, please forget I said anything. I fucking love high heels! Bring me my negligee! Damnit, WHERE IS MY LIPSTICK?
From Jill.
Not much time for a real post this morning. See Punkassblog for why. (Coffee pot, work quickly!) Fiona is in a cage and crying, Dusty is all agitated because of some primitive sense of cat justice (My god, they’re locking us up randomly!), and bitch, bitch, bitch. So, link farming:
NARAL has a petition for the Freedom of Choice Act, if you can sign it. Since I’m crabby and working on too little sleep, I’d like to bitch about this. I really wish they’d have called it the Reproductive Justice Act, which is better and more accurate framing, for one thing.
Annalee Newitz makes the commonsense argument that the idea that women’s bodies belong to women means that women should be able to safely stifle menstruation if they want to, even if it makes some earth-mother-goddess feminists uneasy.
Ezra documents the shocking growth of inequality in this country. It seems to me that instead of asking why the rich as individuals should pay more taxes, we should ask why taxes aren’t assessed strictly by percentage of national wealth accumulated.
Fast food ads vs. reality: Pulitzer-caliber journalism.
More on the politics of food: Food advertisements are the most popular on children’s TV.
Contrary to sexist stereotypes that men are strictly into animal lust and women only enjoy sex for the emotional communion with their masters, it turns out that men spend more time examining the faces in sexual imagery than women.
In response to a poll finding that 75% of women don’t like their breasts, Jane did a spread of photos of “regular” women’s breasts with accompanying boob-love. I’m surprised that it’s as high as 75%, because if you ask many women point blank what they like about their bodies, most, in my experience, will say boobs. My fear is this means that only 25% of women could probably find much to like about their own bodies at all. This isn’t a feminist stamp of approval on Jane’s project or anything, by the way. Just thrown out there as “of interest”.
Hooray for Pandagon regular Tigtog, who’s come up with an interesting response to idle blogospheric wishing that someone would start an “Intro to Feminism” blog. One male noob after another has shown up in the comment threads at feminist blogs with questions like “what’s wrong with opening doors for women? I’m only trying to be polite and you all hate me” or “why did everyone jump on me when I pointed out that she shouldn’t have been out so late by herself?”, and regulars at these feminist blogs have grown understandably weary of rehashing the same old hash for the jillionth time. “Wouldn’t it be great,” these regulars were often heard to write, “if someone started a blog where we could send these guys to have their questions answered so that we can spend our time discussing whether you can really be a feminist if you give blowjobs while wearing lipstick more important feminist issues?”
And Tigtog decided to do something about it by launching Finally, a Feminism 101 blog: Frequently Answered Questions, a place to which clueless newbies (or, in the optimistic view, potentially sympathetic people new to feminism) can be referred to have their questions answered.
Or, in Tigtog’s words in the post “FAQ: I asked some feminists a question, and instead of answering they sent me here. Why?”:
Your question probably covered ground they have gone over many times before, and they didn’t want to derail the interesting discussion they were already having.
People find ignorant questions frustrating, and questioners find being ignored frustrating, and such mutual dissatisfaction can totally disrupt a discussion. By sending you here the feminists hope to avoid being interrupted, yet are also not completely ignoring your question(s).
Maybe you didn’t ask a question at all, but stated an argument that denied the importance of the topic being discussed. Feminists naturally don’t care for the thought of trying to run you through reams of introductory material before you gain the grounding to realise the basis whereby they perceive an important problem where you may not.
Either way, educating you on the basics would derail the discussion about the actual topic the feminists are interested in, just for you. That’s an awful lot to ask of people on the net who don’t even know you, isn’t it?
This blog exists to give you a few pointers to places you can find more information to answer your question (although we’re only in early days yet, FAQs will continue to be added until the basics are covered). Once you are better informed you will be able to contribute to lively feminist discussions productively, armed with facts and theory, even if/when you don’t end up agreeing with all the theories.
It’s a big project, and Tigtog could use a hand. Details there.
Oh, and speaking of things needing to be done for the jillionth time, Tigtog has written a Googlebomb post to help our pal, Feministe’s Jill Filipovic, regain her Google reputation from the asswipes at AutoAdmit. That Googlebomb post is pasted below the fold. Because that’s what we do with Googlebombs.
(more…)
“Intellectual Drunk” by commanderpho1
I was tagged weeks ago by Sage of Persephone’s Box to list five blogs that make me think. I put off responding because I didn’t want to have to narrow it down to just five of them. Even though I don’t always read blogs in order to spur my thinking–thus my addiction to some downright silly ones–there are nonetheless plenty out there that kick my brain into gear, often daily. So this list could easily be 20 or 30 blogs long.
–but it isn’t going to be, because life is cruel and them’s the rules! Suck it, bloggers who didn’t make my list! Rejoice, five thinkful bloggers who did!
People have been sending me mad links, and I can’t keep up, so time for a link farm!
Commenter six-oh-seven-nine sent me some pics from the Chinese lantern festival in Toronto. Here’s one:
For people interested in population issues, this site about the world’s population is interesting.
Apparently, they used to market “light” beer as if it was douche or something Also, it wasn’t light. The cans were just smaller.
A collection of artists was challenged to color a coloring book that mocks Pat Robertson. The results are here.
A group of Catholics have gotten together to start Condoms4Life, which is an attempt to get the Pope to overturn the anti-condom stance of the Vatican. You can sign their letter here. The Vatican’s refusal to face the reality of HIV transmission and the proven ways to slow the spread of the disease is a big blotch on their supposedly pro-life stance. This group of truly pro-life Catholics wants to rectify that problem.
Speaking of, I found this blog post by Hugo calling on men to wrap it up and be grateful they can’t get pregnant on accident to be well-argued and commonsensical. It’s only due to male privilege that people tend to recoil from the idea that men should share the burden of birth control equally with women. As usual, I find the comment threads as educational as the post, if for different reasons. In this case, a bunch of men immediately started to whine that showing respect for women’s health and taking responsibility is great and all, but they still don’t wanna, which neatly proved Hugo’s point about how excuses and defenses of male privilege sound weak. (He’s not arguing that condoms are best for everyone, just that he thinks they’d probably be used more than not if men had his attitude about it.)
August sent me an article about immigration in Mother Jones. It’s long, but it’s a great article.
There are many reasons to be a feminist and support women’s equality, most them involving the words “it’s the right thing to do”. But the links I have for you today demonstrate that one should not be an anti-feminist unless one really enjoys being in the company of massive douchebags. Smell the Summer’s Eve.
First up, Jessica at Feministing got a bona fide prank call from some anti-feminist weirdos. Her excitement turned to dismay when she realized that this was the lamest prank call ever recorded, with such witticisms as informing her that women menstruate and are silly. The search for an anti-feminist with a decent sense of humor continues in vain.
Meanwhile, on Raving Atheist conversion watch, we have an update. Zuzu reports that the Raving “Atheist” is seeking more excuses for why he can claim to be a rational person and still oppose women’s reproductive rights. Today’s line of horseshit is that it counts because he’s against the death penalty. For some reason, he wants this to mean that Jill of Feministe and I are hypocrites, which is really rich coming from an “atheist” who can’t find a non-Pope to quote in his “atheist” post on the death penalty. Simply put, there’s no hypocrisy. I believe all people have rights, including women (!) and criminals. Why I even believe that woman criminals have rights, so RA can just take his eyeballs off their uterine property as acceptable for commandeering for his reproductive purposes.
Sorry about the lack of posting lately. Earlier in the week I was a witness to a crime. Nothing too traumatic, really. But, as the sole eye-witness, I have been bogged down by bureaucracies of justice and their administrators, and the lawyers for the plaintiffs in what should be the civil component of the matter. I don’t want to comment any further out of concern for the implications such statements may have down the line, legally speaking. But here are some links to some things I would have liked to have blogged about, in no particular order.
Battlepanda on Rush Limbaugh and maintaining the progressive moral high ground.
Jerome Armstrong on early blog stuff and the Dean campaign and… Wesley Clark. Intriguing.
And, well, then there’s Marisacat’s take on that.
Much of the discussion at the Washington Monthly of Kevin Drum’s review of Lakoff’s latest.
Marty Lederman on the Hamden decision, which was the Supreme Court decision announced today, slapping down the lawlessness of the Bush administration’s procedures in Guantanamo.
Steven Poole making fun of the dissenters from the same case.
David Sirota with a post entitled “parties join hands to sell out America Again.”
News that the CIA concluded that Bin Laden was in favor of Bush’s re-election. Don’t remember where I saw it originally, but here’s a link to Kevin Drum with an excerpt.
I disagree with Nathan Newman on the Barak Obama speech. He makes a subtle point or two. But those subtleties aren’t worth much to me. If it’s so important to speak about faith, there’s no value in talking about the progressive inability to do so or lack of comfort in so doing. If Barak Obama wants to talk about his faith, by all means, he may. He won’t draw any ire unless he decides to pander to godbags. But there’s no value to anyone except Obama himself in the publicly tut-tutting over progressive discomfort with religion. Yes, that is positively Liebermanesque.
Ezra on the West Wing.
Culture Kitchen on implications of Peter Daou working for Hillary and what it says about the “netroots” as a grassroots force.
I may update this later, cause I feel like I’m overlooking a couple things.
New Carnival of Feminists, yo.
I made the Real Hot 100. Whee!
This story cracked me up, which will end up being used as evidence in the trial “Nice” Guys vs. Ms Amanda Marcotte. After warming up by suggesting that god might not exist, I move onto the big leagues and suggest the perfect sweet girl for every “nice guy” might also be a fantasy.
Illustrated history of the break from the song “Think!” I really like this cartoon. It’s thought-provoking to see how different DJs have chosen to use this break from a feminist-minded anthem.
Interesting article by Robert Jensen on the various fears that white people have on account of white privilege. I think he’s got a good read on it, and this is a useful way to look at privilege.
How to write an article on “girl gamers”.
Wrapping up your hostility to women in the “just a joke” guise isn’t as clever as you might think it is, dude. Jill has more.
100 Real Hot Women is about to come out. Jessica gets interviewed about it.
NBA: Ballet or hokey pokey? Also from Punkassblog, R. Mildred explains that when feminists dither, they are wasting precious minutes that might be better spent on blow jobs.
The Onion’s main article is about a pill that pro-lifers could really get behind.
NEW YORK—Pro-life advocates celebrated approval of the new anti-abortion drug UR-86 by the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday, calling it a “safe and effective method” for terminating pregnant women while leaving their unborn children unharmed….
Gender-equality advocates praised the introduction of the drug, calling it an “innovative solution” to the highly polarizing national abortion debate.
“This is a step forward for equality,” men’s rights activist Charles Hackett said. “For too long, women have had an unfair advantage in the outcome of a pregnancy. UR-86 levels the playing field for husbands and boyfriends across America.”
When the Onion slices at you, it cuts deep. Read the whole thing; a snippet doesn’t do it justice.
Belly laughs aside, I find myself having to do another link round-up.
The patriarchal frenzy to turn back women’s gains towards status as full human beings continues.
Ohio house bill 228 introduced by Tim Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, in April would make it a felony for a woman to seek to terminate her pregnancy and holds the same penalty if she chooses to leave the state for the medical procedure.
I wonder if Congress will pass something like the Fugitive Slave Act, to assist Ohio in tracking down its female property and returning them to their rightful owners after they escaped mandatory pregnancy. Which also makes me wonder if Ohio legislators realize that the official owners of said property generally support the abortion as well. Enforcement of these laws is going to be a nightmare–mandatory pregnancy tests at borders? Border patrols guards with gynocological examination rooms to check suspicious women coming in?
MB Williams updates us on the controversy caused by Celelia Fire Thunder’s proposal to allow Planned Parenthood to provide abortion services amongst other necessary services on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Earlier I suggested that this might cause some problems on the reservation, and unfortunately I was right–some people are agitating against Fire Thunder for violating “traditional” values. But the question is whose traditions?
Let’s get back to brainwashing. Some of the Indian people vehemently opposed to a Planned Parenthood Clinic are devout Catholics or of other religious denominations. When they first took up the mantle of Christianity they stepped outside of the beliefs of their ancestors. They embraced the religious beliefs of the foreigners who came to the shores of this continent determined to convert the Indian people to their own beliefs and to force them to denounce their own cultural and traditional beliefs….
One Lakota wicasa wakan (Holy Man) told me on the condition that I protect his anonymity, that those people attacking Fire Thunder do not know their own cultural history and he used the term I used at the beginning of this column. He said, “They have been so ‘brainwashed’ into thinking like the white man that they can no longer think as an Indian. Traditionally Indian men never interfered with the rights of a woman to do whatever it was she chose to do when it came to having or not having a child. He always assumed that the woman knew what she was doing and didn’t need direction from any man.”
I find the whole debate fascinating, because it’s such a perfect example of how anti-abortion activists are primarily driven by a larger pro-Christian theocracy goal. Conservatives like to equate “traditional values” with morality, a phrase that implies that all religions place the same value on male dominance, and in exactly the same way. The irritating term “Judeo-Christian” functions in the same way, to set up a false battle between godly people and secular humanists, but not only are not all religions in agreement on whether or not women should have reproductive rights, but apparently Judaism mandates abortion if the woman’s welfare is imperiled. (This is still a pro-fertility law, because from what I understand, the rationale is that if a pregnancy now destroys a woman’s health/welfare, she may not be able to have the full amount of children she could have otherwise had, which is actually pretty true if you think about it–I certainly know women whose actual children would have never been born if they hadn’t had an abortion in the past.)
Anyway, the editorial is great, because it really underlies how very racist abortion bans are, because as I’ve mentioned before, it’s actually easier for a family to thrive if they can limit their family size to one they feel they can take better care of. Anti-choicers occasionally pretend they are trying to stop a feminist racist genocide of non-white people, but the brutal truth is that if you look at what each family needs to do their best in society, the need to invest the maximum amount per child trumps the need to just have more and more kids. Truth told, mandating that women have more children than they would choose to have on their own disproportionately hurts lower income families–it’s easy for someone wealthy like Rick Santorum to blather on about having a big family, but for us paycheck-to-paycheckers, it would dash all our hopes of doing better by the next generation.
Thanks to morgan for the link.
Pandagon alumnus Ezra Klein has a big, fat article on wonk favorite Al Gore at the American Prospect. I have to admit, I like the idea of another Gore run–he’s won the Presidency before, maybe he can do it again. He’s my idea of what a Democrat should be–forward-thinking, creative. The reason the Republicans spread that odious lie that Gore bragged about “inventing” the internet is because they knew that was his strength–no one in the Republican party has the foresight and creativity to think of something like federal support to develop the web.
Also from the American Prospect, Garance Franke-Ruta has a must-read article on the way that the op-eds on the nominally pro-choice NY Times have drifted towards the anti-choice side. What startled me the most–83% of op-eds on the subject of abortion in the past two years have been written by men, who, needless to say, will never find themselves needing one and not being able to get one.
Ampersand is drifting to the dark side with those of us who aren’t overly interested in stretching credulity to give the benefit of the doubt to anti-choicers who claim they are in this to save babies, not to punish the dear but debased sluts. Being Amp, he’s created a nifty chart that I suggest using a lot when arguing that “save the babies” is a cover story for “punish the sluts”. If you judge anti-choicers by their actions instead of their words, or more succiently by their proposed policies instead of their sentimental claptrap (though even the sentimental claptrap is hoary patriarchal fantasizing that sperm is an all-magical life-giving substance), their intentions become clear. Chart after the fold.
NPR had a good breakdown of the Pollitt/Saletan debate on abortion that’s well worth checking out. They also interview Amy Hagstrom-Miller, the woman who runs a post-abortion counseling service that is genuinely pro-choice, as opposed to most of the religious ones that are guilt trip machines that only exist as the “charitable” arm of the anti-choice movement. Saletan and Hagstrom-Miller strike me as sincere in their pro-choice views but tone deaf to the sexism that is behind the anti-choice movement. The problem with discussing “moral ambiguities” when it comes to a choice that women can make independent of men–like abortion, taking the pill, etc.–is that anti-choicers don’t accept that women have the same moral agency as men and therefore aren’t particularly compelled by arguments that women should be free to make their own moral choices.
And me! Bicyclemark from Amsterdam interviewed me for a podcast on abortion rights. No discussion of “moral ambiguities” here, just some hardcore feminist calling out of the misogyny behind the movement to strip women of our reproductive rights.
Atrios clarifies the stance of the anti-choice, anti-sex-ed crew: Sex is icky. Amy Sullivan whips out some “sex is icky” misinformation, which weakens her argument considerably. What I never will understand about abstinence only education is why it is that people can understand that calculus, history, and economics class are all meant to build skills for post-high-school life, and yet they seem to think that contraceptive education only applies to life in the here and now. Do that many people think adults don’t use birth control? Hell, I bet there’s more pill prescriptions out now than there are teenage girls in America.
Twisty calls Bill Napoli a perv and makes me wish I could write like her:
The added stupidity is this: it precludes abortions even for the hard-luck cases—victims of rape and incest, and women whose health is put at risk by pregnancy— that occasionally tug at the heartstrings of those on-the-fence anti-choicers who, after a few drinks, become moved by the pathos of such a woman’s suffering, almost the way they might be moved by the suffering of a dog, causing them to declare, “Aw hell, it’s kinda mean to make her give birth to her own sister; let daddy’s little rape victim have her abortion.�
On that note, Jill wonders if there’s any value to the Lysistrata strategy to fighting for women’s rights instead of just against war. I doubt it would work–the anti-choice men are already convinced that the only way to keep the pussy coming is to have women under lockdown. No reason to give them a recruiting tool.
Natasha on the mask the patriarchy wears, knowing that open misogyny isn’t really as easy to sell as it used to be, back when you could just call women “sacks of shit” instead of wax poetic on the joys of forced pregnancy:
Though before we get into discussing that particular piece of rabid wingnuttery, I would like to hold out before you a shining gem of hope: Bitches aren’t fond of having their faces rubbed in their all-the-way-down-lowness.
Not even when they haven’t the foggiest notion of what a patriarchy is, or if they do, why they should blame it.
The patriarchy, in fact, knows this. At least the smarter members and most of the ones who are in charge, who are fully conscious of their unpopularity and know that they have to lie like rugs to continue presenting an air of affability and sweet, sweet reason.
Chris at Mixing Memory looks at an old anti-women’s suffrage argument and finds that the arguments of anti-feminists hold steady regardless of the issue being debated.
Parental notification laws don’t reduce the abortion rate. I’ve never been impressed with the argument that reducing the teenage abortion rate was a good thing. I prefer to say anti-choice advocates want to raise the number of children born to teenage mothers, which is, after all, the truth.
South Dakota bans abortion. Mark Morford suggests that all the single women leave the state, another variation on the Lysistrata theme. Again, the problem is that we women who get it are already disinclined to fuck men who want to chain us to the stove the first chance they get, so the net change if there was an official sex strike would be none.
Tbogg live-blogs Althouse live-blogging the Oscars. Althouse reveals some more of her mind’s strange inner workings:
Rachel Weisz wins. She’s wearing a black dress, which nicely supports big, swelling breasts, and she’s got tastefully dangly diamond earrings.
The reason that Althouse, who is nominally pro-choice, throws her support behind men who want to forcibly swell other female body parts, seems to be closer to surfacing any day now.
And one last “pro-life” comment about the importance of saving! miniature! babies!, via Word Munger.
I used to be a social liberal. I switched sides after my wife got a job teaching at an inner city middle school. Broken families are the norm, and most of the middle school children are repeating their parents mistakes. At dances you will see 13 year old girls on their hands and knees dancing while boys take turns spanking them and/or pantomining having doggy-style intercourse with them, or recieving fellatio. This at a middle school (although there are a lot of 16 year-olds who have stayed back). At that point I switched sides - all that conservative talk about the importance of family finally clicked.
The love of babies radiates, sweet babies, each more precious than the last. There’s babies made by sick, disgusting doggie style sex. And even more precious are the innocent babies made by perverse fellating teenage girls who we don’t want to punish, no siree. Babies, remember the sweet, non-existent babies.
When I went to the community garden sale this weekend, there was a guy there waving bloody fetus pictures. I’m not sure what his point was, but I suspect he was offended at the offense to the lord that is women gardening. Women aren’t for sowing seeds, you see. We’re for getting plowed.
Good news up front–Ohio federals court upholds the health exemption. Of course, the very existence of “health exemptions” presume that the law is a better judge of health than a doctor, but we take our victories where we can nowadays.
The NY Times has an article on shackling women to bed when they give birth, which many prisons do. I’m inclined to agree with zuzu that this is just one more way the existence of pregnancy is used to humiliate and degrade women. If people showed an ounce of respect towards non-prisoner pregnant women, I’d hesitate to say that, but between the blather about “snowflake babies” to all the horror stories I hear from my friends who’ve procreated about how everyone wants a piece of you when you’re pregnant, I can’t be optimistic.
On the front of punishing sexuality, there’s still rumblings out there that the upcoming HPV vaccine could be strongly resisted by the Wingnutteria. Actually, despite this blog post title, I don’t think that it’s sexuality so much that the wingnuts are salivating to punish, it’s being born female. A friend of mine wrote me the other day and asked if I thought that if HPV caused male cancer if it would be resisted and upon thinking it over, I have to say no. If there was a disease out there that the vast majority of people have that didn’t affect women but caused a certain percentage of men to have their dicks shrivel up and fall off, my guess is that we wouldn’t be hearing a peep from the Wingnutteria about a vaccine.
Well, unless the vast majority of men who lost their dicks were gay. Then conservatives would be agitating for funding cuts in the research. Not of course that there’s any disease out there that hits gay men way more than straight men that has been treated like a just “consequence” by conservatives or anything.
By the way, Blog Against Sexism Day is March 8th. We do that every day around these parts, but it’s a great time for bloggers who focus on other issues to weigh in against sexism. That’s also the day for another Carnival of Feminists, so get your submissions into Indian Writing by March 5th. I don’t see that she’s announced a theme, so I guess it’s open-ended.
Oh, the video hits way to close to home. At various points in my life, I’ve been both the perp and the victim in this little situation.
Bonus video: The truth about Marty and Doc.
And even though you know how this exciting piece ends, it’s still a teeth-grinding bit of blogging fun. And I get vindicated, which colors my opinion of the quality of the post in no way whatsoever. Bonus: I knew Dee Dee was my favorite Ramone.
Our favorite patriarchy-blamer has a post titled “Men Hate You*”, subtitled “Jesus appeared to me on a grilled cheese sandwich, and lo he did say unto me that cervical cancer prevents premarital sex.” today. Twisty has found an article that’s good, solid evidence that plain old misogyny is a driving force in politics today. Yes, the Twisty-named godbags are running loose in Australia as well as here in the U.S. and trying to drum up opposition to the HPV vaccine, mostly because it prevents a kind of cancer that only women get–cervical cancer. Evil motherfuckers–I wish I believed in hell, because I’d know at least that these self-righteous woman-haters would be burning in it soon enough.
And in woman-hating news in Iraq, here’s a heart-warming story of female soliders in Iraq dying of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids in the later part of the day so that they didn’t have to urinate at night, which meant taking a trip to the latrine and putting themselve in danger of getting raped by their fellow soliders. This is a classic example of how rape is a form of social control, a way to keep all women in a constant state of fear that reminds us of our social inferiority.
And from the “it’s men who make new life, not lowly women” file, a bill has moved forward in Indiana that is going to force doctors to lecture women seeking abortion on how “life” begins at conception. Or, in other words, once a man puts a bun in the oven, that uppity oven better just bake it and stop getting crazy ideas that she’s anything but a tool.
Okay, just finished another blogger call. This time I managed to speak before the phone cut me out. I hope it was a good call for the people listening in. The general idea is that Alito is coming across as the Freeper-style right winger he is. My main suggestion was that Alito’s clearly out for rich white guys and thinks everyone else can go shove it up their ass, legally speaking.
Lauren is collecting submissions for the 7th Carnival of Feminists. This edition’s theme is one near to my heart–feminism and pop culture. I’m still thinking of a topic, but in the meantime, fellow feminist bloggers, it’s something you may want to contribute to.
And one more link before I go run some errands–The Happy Feminist has a really awesome blog post on the subject of rape and how the tolerance of coercive sex is so far gone in our culture that women can be raped….and not even know it. She brings her experience as a prosecuter to bear on the subject, and discusses victims she spoke to who wanted to press charges but weren’t even aware that it was rape charges that were to be pressed. She suggests that some people think for something to “count” as rape, the victim had to have fought to the death–simply giving in under the threat of violence even counts as “consent” in some people’s views. To my mind, that demonstrates that we do have a chilling amount of tolerance for the notion that some amount of coercion is acceptable.
Trish Wilson has done some more blogging on fathers’ rights activists that is quite enlightening. First one post on the recent death of a prominent FRA and some of his writings that clarify how much of this entire movement is just about anxious masculinity. Particularly enlightening is how he wrote about how he feels men are in a corner where their choices are castration or suicide. The other post is about how certain fathers’ rights groups are imploding, which is something we’ve all expected for a long time. It’s difficult to have an organization where everyone involved has dominance issues and not have it devolve as they try to dominate each other, after all. Anyway, both worth reading, so I recommend checking ‘em out.
I’d also like to point everyone to this post by August Pollak at Campus Progress where he caught a conservative speaker trying to hitch the Social Security privatization crap to gay rights, by arguing that privatization somehow protects gay couples.
And if you want something fun to read, check out Pam’s post at Big Brass Blog where a reader of hers decided to tease an anti-gay activist who spends all his time “researching” by going to bathhouses and events like the Mr. Leather conference, even though his wife begs him not to, so he can write “exposes” on what happens there. He claims that this is necessary to stop homosexuality, but apparently lesbians don’t do anything worth exposing. One does wonder why.
Well, to squeeze a video game analogy for all it’s worth. But it’s true–there’s been some awesome feminist blogging lately, much of which takes potshots at those of us who are a tad too cozy with the patriarchy when it suits our ends. Consider me schooled, sisters and brothers. Well, not schooled so much as gleeful to see some of the serious smacking down that’s erupted in the past few days.
Roxanne went to the BlogHer conference and was pissed that so much of it was devoted to trolling and flaming. I agree with her point totally–one of the great pleasures of moving to Pandagon was picking up the whiny idiots who flame and don’t have the brains that god gave a peanut. Cathartic and entertaining all at once. But there is no doubt that female bloggers attract an uglier and frankly scarier type of troll and many of us have been physically threatened. So the question is–how can we deal with women’s particular issues with trolls and flames without it turning into a whinefest? Can we help each other express ourselves while maintaining personal safety with so many assholes out there?
(more…)
