What We Missed

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Tweet by Obama with text "Clear eyes, full hearts" with image of Obama throwing football.
Can’t lose, Mr. President. Can’t lose.

Men are increasingly entering traditionally women-dominated professions. As one male dental assistant says, “The way I look at it is that anything, basically, that a woman can do, a guy can do.”

Good point from Jamelle Bouie: For women, social issues are economic issues.

Missouri passed a bill allowing employers or health insurance providers to deny coverage for birth control or abortion if it violates their moral convictions.

So awesome: Melissa Harris-Perry talks to a panel of actual young women about feminism today and if 2012 might be the year of the young woman.

Women farmworkers refer to the fields in California as “fil de calzon” or the fields of panties because sexual harassment is so widespread.

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Malawi’s first woman president vows to repeal anti-gay laws

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Joyce BandaJoyce Banda, who became Malawi’s first female president last month, is hitting the ground running. In her first state of the nation address, she announced that as “a matter of urgency” she’ll seek to repeal the country’s laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Banda seems to have enough support in parliament to get the laws overturned, but Malawi is still a conservative country, so it’s a gutsy move. Banda’s predecessor pardoned two men who were imprisoned for the crime of wanting to get married but maintained that they “committed a crime against our culture, against our religion, and against our laws.”

Gay rights activists in the region hope that a change like this in Malawi, which is hosting the African Union summit this summer, will send a message to the entire continent. Thirty-seven African countries outlaw homosexuality and recent anti-gay bills in Nigeria, Uganda and Liberia aren’t exactly offering hope that they’re moving in the right direction. An activist in South Africa, the only African country where same-sex marriages are legal, says, “Symbolically, I think it is very important for Africa.”

Photo via the BBC

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Dharun Ravi sentenced to 30 days in prison

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In a rather lenient sentencing, a New Jersey judge sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail also suggesting that he not be deported. A probationary sentence for Ravi, who earlier this year was convicted of bias intimidation and a handful of other hate crimes for bullying his Rutgers roommate Tyler Clementi. Why did they throw the book at him? Because shortly after Ravi had broadcast Clementi’s affairs online–Clementi committed suicide.

This case has been provocative and the outcome unsettling. Long sentences are rarely effective, deportation inhumane and we can pretty much guarantee that Dharun Ravi will never bully someone again. But we will also never know exactly why Tyler Clementi committed suicide, or what he went through. His family will never get to see him again and he won’t be graduating college or get another chance. And another young man lost his life most likely because of a culture of homophobia–where he didn’t feel safe. So unsafe that he took his own life.

via Slate.

Related:

Tyler Clementi’s roommate Dharun Ravi convicted of hate crime

Dharun Ravi and anti-gay sentiments in the South Asian community

 

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Where are the women? Cannes Film Festival edition

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At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, 22 films directed by 22 men will compete for the prestigious top award. But to feminist criticism of that dismal lineup, Cannes says, essentially, “Well, you can’t make us pick a girl just because she’s a girl.”

Of course, those numbers are pretty standard for Cannes. Last year there were a record-breaking four women in the running for the Palme D’Or, the festival’s top prize. But apparently that was but a minor blip in the long dude-dominated history of the event. Two years ago, there were no women either, and in the 64 years of the festival only one woman–Jane Campion–has ever actually won the Palme D’Or.

The French feminist group La Barbe took the festival to task in an op-ed in Le Monde last weekend and almost two thousand people, including many prominent women filmmakers, have signed a petition calling for “transparency and equality in the selection process.”

The Cannes board, for their part, stands by the selections and considers themselves to be great defenders of “universal rights”–or, at least, the universal right to choose whatever films they damn well please.

“The Festival de Cannes — in order to maintain its position and remain true to its beliefs rooted in universal rights — will continue to programme the best films from around the world ‘without distinction as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.’”

Quoting from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would perhaps be relevant (though still annoyingly pretentious) if anyone had actually accused the festival of blatantly discriminating against women. But I doubt anyone believes there’s some grand conspiracy keeping women out. (I mean, it’s 2012–things aren’t that bad still.) Of course, defending themselves against accusations of sexism is only half of what they’re saying here. They’re also biting back at their critics by implying that people who would like to see a bit more diversity in the lineup are demanding (reverse) sexism.

No one actually called for that either. I’m sure Cannes juror and filmmaker Andrea Arnold, who said she would hate the idea of being selected solely because of her gender, is hardly alone among lady directors (or, ya know, women in general). Nobody wants to be a token. But it’s an especially obnoxious brand of white male artist bullshit to so confidently claim that 1) there is such a thing as the objectively, universally “best” films and 2) that simply by having a purportedly gender-blind (and race-, nationality-, etc.) selection process, you’ve successfully found them.

Which is really all the petition was saying anyway. It never said the selections were wrong. It simply called for greater transparency about how they are made–out of a recognition that judging film is an inherently subjective thing: “We judge films as human beings, shaped by our own perspectives and experiences. It is vital, therefore, that there be equality and diversity at the point of selection.” Cannes has shown no evidence that they grasp this fundamental basis of the criticism. They believe they’re running a true meritocracy, so if there’s no women, that’s simply because there weren’t any women good enough.

It’s true that there’s a dearth of women directors in general–and so it’s likely that to a large extent the Cannes lineup is simply a reflection of the larger problem in the industry. (Which is how it goes when it comes to other gender gaps as well.) But I’d be a lot more understanding–and have a lot more hope for the future at Cannes–if they hadn’t been so pompous and clueless about the whole thing.

Related:
Where are the women?
Where are the women? National Magazine Award edition

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Shorter Priebus: “If Obama wasn’t so black, the GOP wouldn’t have to be so racist.”

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OK, maybe not exactly what Reince Priebus, RNC chairman, said over the weekend on CNN–but he did essentially blame the Obama administration for calling out a Super PAC plan proposing race-baiting. According to Priebus, the Obama team wants to focus on this instead of the real questions about his leadership at hand. Well, if that is the focus of your campaign against Obama–why not admit that a plan that seeks to unearth a buried and inaccurate fallacy about Obama’s black nationalist roots is deeply problematic? Oh, because you are using that strategy, you know–where you say one thing, but do something completely different.

via Think Progress, Priebus on Candy Crowley’s State of the Union,

I know how it works. It’s the Democrats and Barack Obama that want the story out there. He wants the story to play out in the media, because for every day that [Obama adviser] David Axelrod and this President don’t have to talk about their broken promises when it comes to jobs, the debt, and the deficit — the more time they can talk about hypotheticals that may or may not come true — is a day they want to win on. So, look, this president’s got a bigger problem and his problem is no matter what he puts out there, no matter what distractions he puts out there, he can’t change the truth and escape the reality of where we are in this American economy. And it’s no good.

Unfortunately for them, it’s actually a racist trillionaire that is providing the distraction. We’re just pointing out the obvious.

Romney had a similar moment when he invoked the name of Reverend Wright in an attempt to smear Obama. When asked, he claimed he didn’t remember–but he “stands by what I said, whatever it was.”

I didn’t realize when Mitt Romney said that his campaign was like an “etch-a-sketch” he was talking about inside his own head.

 

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