The House of Reps is debating abortion in health care reform right now in Congress.

From Planned Parenthood Action Center:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops met with leaders in the House of Representatives in their bid to eliminate women's access to abortion care under health care reform. Their efforts are working. Representative Bart Stupak has introduced an amendment to the health care reform bill that will result in women losing health care coverage for abortion. Now, Congress is considering the Stupak amendment to the health care reform bill that will eliminate choice for millions of women.

We need you, and your friends and family to call your representative now at 202-730-9001 and ask him or her to oppose the Stupak amendment.

You can urge friends on Facebook and Twitter to call Congress.

For Facebook, post this to your status:
EMERGENCY -- Representative Bart Stupak has just introduced an amendment to the health care reform bill that will eliminate coverage for abortion care. I just called my Rep. and you should, too. Call 202-730-9001 and ask him or her to reject the amendment.

Tweet this on Twitter:
URGENT- Call your Rep NOW to reject the Stupak amendment to health care reform. It would eliminate all abortion care. 202-730-9001. RT

Take action today, voices in support of access to abortion are crucial right now.

Regular readers will have noticed that in recent months, Feministing has brought in a number of new contributors: Ariel, Jos, Lori, Rose and myself. No doubt you're getting to know them by reading their posts and engaging with their ideas in the comments section, but I also suspect that you might want to know a little more about these wonderful women (I know I do!). Over the next few weeks, I'll be interviewing my fellow new contributors so that you and I can get to know them a little better. This week I interviewed Jos Truitt.

Jos joined Feministing as a contributor this July, and in the past few months has been blogging up a storm (those of you who love Mad Men Mondays, you can thank Jos for that!). Jos grew up in Boston and graduated from Hampshire College, where she studied philosophy of race, feminist organizing and sequential art, which, she informed me, is the academic term for comics.

Jos now lives in DC, where she is pursuing her passion for reproductive justice. She recently started working part-time at the National Abortion Federation hotline and she serves as a clinic escort with the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force. She has also worked and blogged for Choice USA. In her spare time, she likes to bake and spend time in the printmaking studio, and when I asked her which feminist she'd take with her to a desert island, she gave by far the sweetest answer I've heard yet.

And now, without further ado, The Feministing Five, with Jos Truitt.

Actress Gabrielle Union blogs in a smart and honest way about the horrific responses to the Richmond rape case, and about her own rape. Via Shakes.

More research shows that comprehensive sex education results in increased condom use among teens and lowers their chances of contracting HIV.

Gawker argues that the woman who shot Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to stop his shooting spree is solid proof that we need to allow women in combat.

A new UK report finds that institutional racism in England schools prohibits ethnic minorities from being promoted and reaching top posts. 44% of folks reported being discriminated against.

Feminist artist Nancy Spero has died at the age of 83. She has written: "I have come to the conclusion that the art world has to join us, women artists, not we join it. When women are in leadership roles and gain rewards and recognition, then perhaps 'we' (women and men) can all work together in art world actions."

"Status is Everything": These are the words repeated in the new HIV testing campaign to be launched by the Newark, NJ African American Office of Gay Concerns (AAOGC).

The website is not functional yet, as the campaign will be revealed on December 1, 2009, and officially launched in January 2010, but their preview photo shoot for the advertising campaign was released on flickr this week.

Photos feature young gay African American men with the caption "Status is Everything," and the ad campaign will refer viewers to a hotline and website where they can schedule free HIV testing at local clinics.

Not found in this campaign, however, is the need for a cogent campaign that's inclusive of young women of color. In 2007, blacks accounted for 44% of the 455,636 people living with AIDS in the 50 states and District of Columbia. And as Advocates for Youth reports,

Black women and Latinas account for 79 percent of all reported HIV infections among 13- to 19-year-old women and 75 percent of HIV infections among 20- to 24-year-old women in the United States although, together, they represent only about 26 percent of U.S. women these ages.

One idea that has circulated this year accuses black men on the "down low," that is, closeted black men who have sexual exposure to other men while dating women, of contributing to the HIV epidemic and women's infection rates in the US. Yet, the director of the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, Kevin Fenton, concluded that the cause of increased infection rates among black women was instead the incidence of black men with multiple heterosexual partners. He cites data that shows a lack of bisexual self-identification among the community of HIV-positive black men. (Is it possible that the accusation that "down low" men spread HIV is an extension of the race-fueled trend of the feminization of black men?)

This advertising campaign, while potentially powerful in the gay male community, won't help the black women who comprise 61 percent of all new HIV cases among women.

One thing is certain: Newark's new campaign, while not targeted toward the women affected most by HIV, is a nice change from other disturbing HIV advertising we've seen.

We'll have more to say on this once the full interview is up, but for now, check out this moving excerpt of Rihanna's interview with Diane Sawyer.

Stringer Bell is confused. "Whaddaya mean The Wire's not feminist?"

The Wire, the HBO series that ran for five seasons, will apparently live on, despite its shelf life, in a class at Harvard. And Professor William Wilson, the self-admitted "huge fan" who will be teaching the class, is high off of The Wire's Kool-Aid:

"I do not hesitate to say that it has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality, more than any other media event or scholarly publication," Wilson told the audience before poking fun at himself, "including studies by social scientists."

As a racial justice advocate who loves politics and sexually diverse representations of people of color, one can't help but be a sucka for The Wire. (Also, I am not going to lie. I might have dedicated a Facebook status, or ten, to good-God-what-have-you-done-to-me Idris Elba.) But when you fasten your feminist goggles and take another gander, you are bound to get bamboozled, psyched out and sucka-punched by yet another attempt to be progressive -- hold the feminism.

Elizabeth Ault, a bad-ass feminist at the University of Minnesota, begins to sum up The Wire's gender problem in the title of her paper: "You Can Help Yourself, But Don't Take Too Much": African-American Motherhood on The Wire. At one point she states,

The Wire is quite capable of creating sympathy for the struggles of men... shows us characters like alcoholic police officer Jimmy McNulty, strategizing drug kingpin/real estate developer Stringer Bell, and corrupt (okay, maybe just stupid) cop Thomas Hauk, and doesn't dictate how we interpret their storylines; rather, much of the show is full of precisely the sort of representational ambiguity that obviates calls for "more positive representations" and earns the "authentic" plaudit--except, again, when it comes to black mothers, women without the social or cultural capital of those men.

Then she goes for the jugular:

The institutions that The Wire is so devoted to condemning have failed these women too. In order to make its damning assessment of urban politics within its own institutional context of Time/Warner-owned HBO, The Wire must make some compromises. In this case, black mothers' sexualities, their subjectivities, their desires, and therefore their fitness as parents is the price the show, like so many before it, is willing to pay.

Her paper has not been published yet. But it's chock full of good stuff about the director's decision to opt-out of "woman of color feminism" and her analysis of the director's reinvestment in "heteropatriarchal family." I don't know what Wilson has planned on the syllabus, but he needs to give our girl Liz a call. Because the urban inequality problem he rails on about is gendered.

I just had to put this up, not only because Sarah Haskins is the awesome, because I've been meaning to post about that neckline slimmer for quite a while now. Intense.

By this point, you've probably all heard plenty about Tuesday's election. About the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia that went to Republicans, about the loss in Maine that overturned the legislative decision to allow same-sex couples to marry.

There was one piece of news that literally hit home with me on Tuesday--and that was the news that my North Carolina hometown, Chapel Hill, now has an openly gay mayor.

I often talk about what growing up in North Carolina was like for me--how in many ways my public high school experience there was pretty limiting. Being gay was just simply not an option in my teenage world in Chapel Hill. I didn't know any gay people, at least not any that I could relate with. My peers and I were very focused on dating, and dating boys specifically. I was in the closet for more than three years after leaving home--it took a while to undo some of the socialization of my childhood and meet those queer folks who I did relate to and whose friendship allowed me to explore my own sexuality.

Chapel Hill is an interesting place within North Carolina because in many ways it's much more liberal than the surrounding cities and regions. Jesse Helms, the well-known and always controversial former Senator representing North Carolina was often quoted for saying:

Why build a zoo when we can just put up a fence around Chapel Hill?

He was referring to the liberalism of my town--but what I've come to realize since leaving North Carolina almost eight years ago is that it is, in the end, all relative. Chapel Hill was liberal in comparison to the rest of North Carolina, but particularly for me as a young person there, that didn't mean too much.

So now, looking back, I wonder if having a gay mayor would have changed things for me growing up. Would it have made me see that being gay was an option, even for a political figure? Would it have opened up my world a little bit?

Maybe not. But after meeting a young person from my high school at a recent presentation and hearing him say that things there haven't changed so much since I left, I want to hold on to some hope that this could be the catalyst for a new reality for the young lgbtq people growing up in my town.

It's about time.

Whether you're at the parade in New York today yet again celebrating the Yankees World Series win or cursing their existence, there's one thing I think we can all be happy about - Yankees broadcaster Susyn Waldman made history last Wednesday by becoming the first woman in history to broadcast a World Series Game.

h/t to reader Cathy.

On Saturdays, I am Professor Foxy, but the rest of the week I do federal level advocacy focused on improving the health of LGBT people. This Saturday, the House of Representatives has a historic opportunity to do just that by passing its reform bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), TOMORROW, November 7. We have never come this far before - this is our chance to help make history!

It is crucial for the LGBT community that this bill passes with a strong majority. The House bill includes numerous provisions that are key to the health and well-being of our community, including:

• a strong public option that greatly expands coverage


• data collection that includes sexual orientation and gender identity


• strict prohibitions on discrimination in health care and insurance coverage

Our community is the under- and uninsured. We are seniors and youth, women, people of color, immigrants, people living with HIV and AIDS, and transgender people. We are too often discriminated against by insurance companies and health care providers and denied the care that we need. The status quo harms our community and our families, and we deserve better.

Tell your Representatives to pass LGBT-inclusive health care reform NOW. CALL Your Representatives using the toll-free number 1-877-264-HCAN (1-877-264-4226) and ask them to support the Affordable Health Care for America Act. You can also email them through the House's web site. Speak up today for LGBT-inclusive health care reform. Let's fulfill the promise of real reform by making our voices heard about the future of health care in America.