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"Feminism is fun again! Every bit as edifying as your women's studies books from college, but with a biting sense of humor that keeps things punchy, not preachy." Marie Claire, December 2006
It looks like the League of Women Voters have created a randy new program that has a great potential to mobilize young people to vote -- when they turn 18, that is! The News Review reports.
The League of Women Voters of Oregon are seeking high schools and middle schools across the country to participate in a mock election that will take place next month. More than 10 million students took part in the mock elections during the last two presidential years. The purpose of the program is to get youngsters interested in politics and the electoral process, as well as motivate them to get out there and vote when they turn eighteen.
I think this is a fantastic idea that can really inspire young voters and future voters. So if any of y’all are teachers (or students) and wish to participate in the nation's largest voter education project, click here to get more information about getting your school involved!
There was a great article on Women’s eNews yesterday about voters in Berkeley, California that are considering the possibility of decriminalizing prostitution, which would greatly increase social services to the prostitutes in the city. Many people, however, consider it even more of a risk and claim that the measure would only give more business to pimps.
Robyn Few -- a former prostitute and founder of the Sex Workers Outreach Project -- is one of many who are reaching out to voters to think about this measure, which would essentially put prostitution at the bottom of the police department’s list of priorities of city crime. With this in effect, violence and rape against prostitutes would decrease, health care would increase, and it would enable prostitutes to get off the streets and stimulate statewide reform. "We want to show the state that Berkeley believes that prostitution should be decriminalized to save the lives of women and to end discrimination against women." states Few. Berkeley would be the first city in the country to decriminalize the profession.
How would all of this reform take place? If prostitution is decriminalized, the city would be required to direct a good amount of the $ 1 million it spends annually on enforcement of prostitution towards social services for prostitutes. The city council would also lobby new state leaders that oppose current prostitution laws.
Many are arguing against this possible measure, including the city’s police department. They claim that pimps will become businessmen and prostitution will only spread. They also complain that under decriminalization, even more valuable street time will wasted on complaints of discarded condoms and open sex acts. Wasted time? This is their job, is it not? And we wonder why prostitutes never go to the police when they’re raped or abused...
What we should think about is the 2,000 prostitutes that are murdered every year. Murder is the number one cause of death among street-walkers. Decriminalizing prostitution would be giving prostitutes some power over their lives, like the power and freedom to go to a health care clinic that will test them for HIV, or to the police if they are raped and/or beaten. The lives of these women should be priority, no?
Everyone’s always screaming about young Americans' political apathy and our inability to make it to the polls. But what about election officials—instead of supporting youth participation—try and make it more difficult for us to vote?
The NY Times reported in an op-ed yesterday about the recent trend of discouraging student voters from registering in their college’s state—even though the Supreme Court says they have the right to:
In Texas this year, a county district attorney threatened to prosecute students from Prairie View A&M University if they tried to register. The students had to file a lawsuit before he withdrew the threat and apologized. A student at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., was told that he was not a "permanent resident" and had to vote from his parents' home in another state.
The Feminist Daily News Wire also reported recently that after a group of feminist activists at University of Arizona organized a registration drive on campus, they were warned by a Fox News reporter that they were committing a felony by registering out-of-state students. The Tucson Fox affiliate later carried a report with the same inaccuracy.
In addition, the NY Times op-ed also points out that election officials also are generally averse to putting polling places on campus and have very few registration drive resources—steps integral to making student voting easier.
This strikes me as more than a little hypocritical: young people are disparaged for not voting, but those in charge are actively trying to make it harder for us to do so! Craziness.
Some random food for thought: Why is it when talking about the “youth vote,” everyone concentrates on college students? A lot of young folks don’t go to college, it’s a privilege not everyone can afford—where’s the discussion of those voters? Just wondering…
According to a new book, young women want nothing to do with feminism or politics. Here we go again…
“The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy—Women, Politics and the Future,” says that young women today don’t want to be labeled by their political beliefs, especially by being called a feminist.
A Seattle Times review of the book says, “It's a tough pill for some of us to swallow, but ‘feminist’ is a near-insult to many young women today.”
For fuck’s sake—what is so crazy about calling yourself a feminist?! I know the debate over young women shying away from the f-word has been done a million times over, but it never fails to baffle me.
Author of “The F-Word,” Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, seems to posit that it’s not anti-feminist views driving women away from “feminist,” but rather a disdain for being labeled at all—by “political party, sexual preference, ethnicity, religion, race or physical ability.” And that includes feminism.
Maybe so. But I still think that it’s the stereotypical notion of feminists that is scaring young women off. It pains me to say this, but it seems that so many young women are afraid of making waves, or of not being considered attractive to men that it’s keeping them from speaking out about their political beliefs. How many times do I have to hear, “I’m not a feminist, but…” followed by some insanely intelligent feminist perspective!
Ladies, I love you all—but what the fuck?! Why is “feminist” so off-putting? Please, someone tell me…
Justice Dept. to appeal Nebraska ruling on “partial-birth” abortion
In a not-so-shocking move, the Justice Department said yesterday that it will appeal the Nebraska ruling which struck down the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf declared the ban unconstitutional earlier his month, following similar rulings by federal courts in New York and San Francisco.
As predicted by NARAL interim President Elizabeth Cavendish, these rulings striking down the bogus act have become “just a speed bump on the fast track to eliminating women’s right to choose entirely.”
These were a big hit at our fundraiser this summer, so we've decided to make them available online. We apologize for the poor quality of the pic; our scanner is a little outdated!
To buy our Feministing magnets, just click on the image...
Shocker of the day: Candidates not speaking to women’s concerns
A new survey released today by Women’s Voices, Women Vote (WVWV), a non-partisan project, says that Bush and Kerry are not discussing issues that resonate with unmarried women--like health care and equal pay. And guess what: despite what the media has been feeding us lately, 40& of unmarried women want to hear less about terrorism.
Almost two-thirds of the women polled (61 percent) want to hear more about affordable healthcare, and nearly three-quarters want to hear candidates talk more about equal pay between men and women (73 percent), and about a higher minimum wage (75 percent). Two out of three women polled also want to hear more from presidential candidates about retirement security (64 percent) and more educational opportunities (63 percent).
Page Gardner, co-director of WVWV says, "The security issues these women want to hear about are economic security, health care security and retirement security. The candidates are missing an important opportunity to engage and mobilize this huge cohort of 22 million non-voting women who overwhelmingly say they are certain to vote this year. Unmarried women are a most important voting bloc and candidates cannot afford to ignore them."
If you're a decent artist and looking to get active, you should check out the National Organization of Women's 2005 Love Your Body Campaign. It's a poster design contest with the intent of responding to society's negative body images that effect women's and girl's esteem and health. They are looking for the following in their art-eest:
"Winning images will provide a visual response to advertisers who attempt to link smoking, drinking, and dieting to women’s liberation; fashion magazines who imply that anorexia is the path to beauty; and marketers who tell us that more expensive cosmetics will improve a woman's sense of self worth."
The grand prize winner recieves $600, and a her/his poster with be part of a national campaign that challenges the industries that prey on women's insecurities with their bodies. Sounds dandy to me! (Now, if only I could draw...)
Cause who knows better about women's health than those that hold business meetings at Hooters?
The best part: the main information about women's health that will be available at their event is The Book: Recipes for Living Well, "a book packed full of tips and recipes on healthy living and eating."
Yeah, bitches--get cooking! Apparently equal pay won't make you healthy, but getting your ass to the kitchen will.
I had both a relieved and angry reaction to the article in yesterday's Times, Men, Women More Different Than Thought. Turns out the medical profession is finally acknowledging that there is more to "women's health" than what goes on in our uteri. As the article says, there is a "quiet but revolutionary change infiltrating U.S. medicine as a growing number of scientists realize there's more to women's health than just the anatomy that makes them female, and that the same diseases often affect men and women in different ways."
HELLOOOOO? What year is it? I'm glad this transformation is finally happening (because for years women have been misdiagnosed and mistreated for lack of female-specific research on disease), but I can't help but feel angry that it took them until 2004 to do this. Think of how many women have suffered as a result!
I'm super thankful for women's involvement in the medical profession. Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association,
"became the journal's first female editor in 1999, [and] says she has made it a mission to publish only research in which data are broken down by sex unless it involves a disease that affects just men or women."
YEE HAW! Final-fucking-ly!
For more information on women's health (NOT JUST REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH!) see our Health issue page.
The Porn For Kerry DVD claims to be the "hottest political porn ever shot!" The summaries on the website are priceless: "Scene 1: After a particularly heated TV debate, blonde bombshell conservative Ann Cunter and quirky comedian Al Frankenbeans blow off some steam in the dressing room ... Scene 3: Jorge Bush thought his hot tub business meeting with King Fahk of Sexy Alabia would be, well, all business. But his highness always knows how to entertain guests with his personal squad of sex minions!"
Plus, all proceeds go to the Kerry campaign.
Any thoughts? Strategic humor, or tasteless activism run amok?
Federal employees to be offered Catholic insurance plan...
Yikes! The Bush administration announced a new plan last week that would offer federal employees a Catholic health plan that deliberately excludes coverage for birth control, abortion, sterilization and artificial insemination.
This “faith-based” insurance plan, while touted as a way to “empower” employees to have greater control over their medical care, is just another way the Bush administration is attempting to blur the line between Church and State.
…some critics expressed concern that this trend in health care might grow into a wider phenomenon. Is this "explicit denial" the first step in "denying federal employees a normal benefit that has been traditional for 30 years?" asked Philip R. Lee, a professor of social medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a former assistant secretary for health in the Clinton administration. "Is this simply the opening wedge?"
Of course it is! And that’s exactly what Bush wants; he isn’t offering this plan because he wants Americans to have more insurance options, he’s putting it in place as part of his larger agenda to limit our options concerning reproductive health. What could be more obvious?
Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) told the NY Times: “Medical care is a science. Getting medical care and religion mixed together is just as bad as getting church and state mixed together.”
I would say it’s not just as bad—it’s the same thing.
I got the chance to go on Janeane Garofalo's show The Majority Report on Friday night...super exciting. If you didn't get the chance to listen, you can hear the archived show here. You have to create a user name and password to listen, but it takes but a second...
Feministing's segment is about 1:34 into the show.
Bus drivers in Swaziland have said that they will rape any female passenger wearing a miniskirt. No, I'm not shitting you.
Check this out:
They have banned women from wearing revealing clothes on buses after three men were arrested for allegedly gang-raping an 18-year-old schoolgirl at a bus station in the town of Manzini.
Witnesses said the men - a bus driver and two conductors - shouted abuse at the girl for wearing a miniskirt.
When about 1,000 women demonstrated against the attack, drivers and conductors threatened to do the same again. One conductor said: "Women who wear miniskirts want to be raped, and we will give them what they want."
Ah, yes. Didn't you know that the universal "fuck me" fashion was wearing a miniskirt? Completely appalling.
A new ballot measure in California calls for the state to spend almost $3 billion dollars in stem cell research over the next ten years—particularly the kind of research that cannot receive federal funding because of Bush’s current policy. Go California; you guys aren’t screwing around! This kind of cash is pretty much what is being spent now by the federal government on embryonic stem cell research.
According to the NY Times, the ballot measure—Proposition 71—“would expand embryonic stem cell research far beyond the 20 or so cell lines that can be studied with federal support under the Bush policy, thus allowing the fuller range of research that most scientists deem important.”
What’s even better news is that Proposition 71 is likely to pass in November. A survey by the LA Times showed that after reading the proposal, the majority of voters supported the measure; 54 percent of voters in CA said they were inclined to vote for it.
The NY Times asks an interesting question, however: whether the nice folks in CA want to pay for advances in science that will benefit not just their state, but the whole of the country. That’s a mighty big burden to take on—one they wouldn’t have to shoulder alone if Bush would start supporting science that could save lives instead of pushing regressive policies. Just another reason to vote…
Mantra of the Day: Never allow the enemy to block you
The AP has a VERY FRIGHTENING article about the evangelical Christian get-out-the-vote movement. These people want Bush back in office, and they want it bad. Don't believe me? Check out this quote from Thomson, an active member of the Christian Coalition.
"Never allow the enemy to block you. Get around them, run over the top of them, destroy them -- whatever you need to do so that God's word is the word that is being practiced in Congress, town halls and state legislatures.''
Wow. And aren't those the same people we just gave access to assault weapons?
One of the legislative lobbyists for the Christian Coalition explained: "If you asked people in this group their top priority, the first thing they would say is changing the U.S. Supreme Court. These people want Roe v. Wade overturned and that authority returned to the states."
The Christian Coalition has created voter guides which outline politicians' views on a Constitutional marriage amendment to ban gay marriage and abortion. In the 2000 election they distributed 70 MILLION voter guides--they plan to increase circulation this year. Scary, huh?
If you haven't yet, PLEASE register to vote. Thirty-two states have voter registration deadlines between October 2 - 8. The Right is ridiculously mobilized, so we have to FIGHT BACK! If they are going to do everything they can "so that God's word is the word that is being practiced in Congress, town halls and state legislatures'' then I'm going to do everything I can to preserve and promote a feminist-friendly/queer-friendly/person-friendly progressive agenda!
Anyone have any recommendations on progressive voter guides?
I am absolutely obsessed with a new selection of ecards I've found, thanks to BUST.com. When a birthday or holiday comes up, or even when you just feel like you've been a shitty friend, ecards can be a perfect and convenient way of reaching out to loved ones in the midst of our crazy lives. And I don't know about you, but I feel like most ecard sites out there, well, suck. BUST cards are a damn good choice to use.
For example, one of my favorites to send to a friend simply says, "You're the Breast!" I'll let you check out the pic yourselves! They also have a choice of music you can put with your card, examples being "I'm Too Sexy", "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "Into The Groove". I love it!
