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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
As an update to Madeline's post on the CDC’s recommendation of the HPV vaccine to young girls, we’re not surprised to find that the Independent Women’s Forum thinksthis attempt to eliminate the disease will only trigger a much more serious epidemic: slutosis.
Fuck saving women’s lives, we need to save these girls’ souls! Barf. This argument is baseless. When I went to the doctor for shots when I was young, I didn't know or care what the hell it was for; all I knew is that it hurt like a mofo. What do they think the doctor's going to do, give her a condom instead of a lollipop when she leaves the office?
The anti-choice (pro-crazy) group Operation Rescue purchased a Kansas building that housed a clinic--and then they evicted them.
The anti-abortion group has evicted the clinic and plans to renovate the building for use as its headquarters and a memorial display, said Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue spokeswoman.
The clinic was only one of two women’s health centers that provide abortions in Wichita. Fuckers.
MN gives millions to anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers”
This is pretty fucked up.
It looks like Minnesota is going to be giving a shitload of money to the same “crisis pregnancy centers” that others are trying to regulate due to false advertising and scare tactics that intimidate women into not having abortions.
Tomorrow, a number of groups and clinics that specifically aim to steer women away from abortion will begin receiving $4.75 million from the state over the next two years. This is a part of the “Positive Alternatives Act” that was passed last year.
In the meantime, funding for family planning (which includes abortion services) is going down. And fast.
When I search for articles pertaining to women, I find a number of stories that have humorous, sexist, and/or dumb headlines that I feel like are too humorous, sexist and/or dumb not to share with others. Here are my three favorite of the day:
Jill at Feministe uncovered one of the eeriest (and most hilarious) anti-choice projects I've encountered, and it’s called “Grooms for Life.” It essentially pairs single pregnant women with anti-choice bachelors who are willing to marry them and be their baby’s daddy. After all, women wouldn’t have abortions if men were willing to marry them! My favorite line:
“female pro-lifers and married men could spend their time recruiting bachelors to their cause so that the screaming demonstrators outside abortion clinics would soon be replaced by swains in bow ties, holding rings and serenading the pregnant women.”
Not too creepy.
The one thing I do give these crazies props for is the upfront “we don’t care who you marry” attitude that only exposes them for who they really are.
With the U.S. Women’s Open kicking off today, it looks like there’s a new theme that’s attracting the audience this year: fashion. Ooh ooh, I got a joke. What does fashion have to do with golf? Nothing, but we’re talking about women’s golf, silly!
While I’ve always personally wanted an excuse to wear argyle socks (and don’t you just love the word “knickers”), this new style of fashion described is not-so-original and a wee “slutified” -- the three descriptors from the article that stand out in my mind are “mini-skirts,” “tight tops” and “pink.” (There’s also the “funky headscarves,” but that’s more cheesy than anything.)
Don’t get me wrong; I love short, tight gear and rock it all the time. But it really gets my knickers (a different meaning this time) in a twist when focus is put on the athletes' sexual appeal or something so stereotypically "female" as fashion to legitimize a women's sport.
Now this is interesting: A Biblical justification for limiting suffrage to men (or even to men with property). It started with one of those games where people are asked to answer questions, and the blogger answered a question about what she'd like to change in the world like this:
If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do? Hoo-boy, this is where I get in trouble, and that starts with "T" and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for "pool." I'd like to jump in a pool right now. Some may tell me to jump in a river for this one: I would remove women's suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership.
You can read the rest at Echidne. Does the bible say blacks shouldn't vote either? Gadzooks.
I am all about that. According to an annual study called the Kids Count, that measures the health and well-being of children and teens, less teenagers are having babies or dropping out of high school. Yet more teenagers are living in poverty. Hmmm.
The report measures each state's progress on 10 statistics, including infant mortality, poverty rates, single-parent families and babies born with low birth weights.
States in the Northeast and upper Midwest scored the best. At the top: New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota and Iowa. Southern states did the worst: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Nationally, there were improvements in eight of the 10 measurements in the 1990s, when the economy was booming, government-sponsored health care for children was expanded significantly and welfare reform helped move hundreds of thousands of families from welfare to work.
One issue that has continued to improve: teen pregnancies. Teenagers' birth rates fell from 48 per 1,000 females in 2000 to 42 per 1,000 in 2003.
"We see a continuing decline in births to teenagers, but we don't see any decline in the percent of children in single parent families," said Wade Horn, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Single parent families are tough, but a reality. Many women don't want to get married, but want to have babies and more power to them. But I am all for a decrease in teenage births. More education, more resources etc., that never hurts.
OMG?! Do you think sex education is helping this situation at all?
CDC committee recommends HPV vaccine for girls age 11-12... but the battle's not over
Contributed by Madeline Halperin-Robinson
This afternoon the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) unanimously voted to recommend routine vaccination against HPV for girls age 11-12. The committee’s recommendations are non-binding – it is now up to each state to decide whether or not to put these recommendations into practice and make the vaccine mandatory for all 11-12 year olds before they enter school.
But more hurdles to access must be cleared before we can declare victory over the STI that can cause cervical cancer. Typically, the committee's recommendations are adopted by each state and used as a guide for government and private insurers to decide whether or not to cover the vaccine. But we are not living in typical times. Feministing has already reported about the far right’s opposition to making the vaccine available to poor women and girls, and they may still succeed.
The ACIP committee's recommendations are great news for rational people who believe science should trump political ideology. All but two states allow religious exceptions to mandatory vaccines, and many states allow exemptions for philosophical reasons-- so fundamentalists will be able to say no to the vaccine for their own daughters. But that's not enough for the religious right. They want to foist their religious beliefs on all young girls. We may see individual states bow to these pressures and make the unprecedented move to go against the ACIP recommendations. This would derail efforts to make the vaccine available to all by weakening the incentive for insurance companies to cover the cost of the vaccine.
After gaining the right to vote and run in parlimentary elections back in May 2005, women will be participating in the Kuwaiti elections this Thursday for the first time.
How exciting!
Kuwait holds parliamentary elections on Thursday in which women can run for office and cast votes for the first time in a national poll in the oil-producing Gulf Arab country.
More than 250 candidates are standing, including 28 women determined to make headway despite daunting odds against any female candidate beating seasoned male opponents, many of them former parliamentarians seeking re-election.
"The participation of women in the elections makes this a historic day for Kuwait," said U.S.-educated female candidate Fatima al-Abdali. "The success of any woman will be a victory for all Kuwaiti, Gulf and Arab women."
How many women are actually elected is yet to be seen, it is still a radical shift in the electoral process. via Reuters.
As you already know, conservative groups have been less than enthusiastic about the vaccine, claiming that it could make girls promiscuous (I know). Let’s hope the panel makes a judgment based on science and health, not politics.
Still amazed and saddened by how little media coverage this, you-would-think, very important topic has gotten by mainstream media. OH, wait, who owns mainstream media? Oh, yeah, that's right.
The Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday rejected a network-neutrality amendment, handing cable and phone broadband-access providers yet another victory over a coalition that has demanded the application of strict nondiscrimination standards against entities that control access to millions of Internet users.
The panel voted 11 to 11 to defeat an amendment sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who had backing from Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft and other firms that deliver voice, video, and information services and applications.
Under Senate rules, a tie vote means the amendment failed.
"Peacebuilding cannot be successful if half the population is excluded..."
Beyond Victimhood: Women’s Peacebuilding in Sudan, Congo and Uganda, a new report out on the remarkable peace building work that women are doing, discusses how women are being left out of the peace-building process and what needs to be done to incorporate more of the work and resistances of these women.
In all three [countries], an array of women’s organisations and leaders are doing remarkable work, under difficult circumstances, especially in community organisations and informal conflict resolution mechanisms. Still, women remain marginalised in formal peace processes and post-conflict governments. Donors and others in the international community all need to do much more to offer sustainable support rather than just rhetoric.
“Peacebuilding cannot succeed if half the population is excluded from the process”, says Caty Clement, Director of Crisis Group’s Central Africa Project. “Our research shows that peace agreements, post-conflict reconstruction and governance work better when women peace activists are involved”.
Diverse opinions are always necessary in any type of alliance or peace building negotiations, but it is also important to see how militarization is a gendered machine and is based on a model of patriarchal aggression. It is not safe to say that just the inclusion of women in such a process would challenge that fact (although in this case it seems that it is), but it would indeed disrupt the male domination of war/peace politics.
The report says,
The stereotype of “women as only victims” should not be reinforced. An array of women’s organisations and women leaders are doing remarkable work in each of the three countries, under difficult circumstances. The daily struggle for survival greatly limits the numbers who have become peace activists but their potential is significant. Because those who are courageous and capable enough to involve themselves as catalysts in peacebuilding are an endangered minority, they should be safeguarded and strengthened with funding, training and inclusion in assessment missions and other decision-making mechanisms that shape fundamental questions of security.
This is not the first time I have read about this.
Women metabolize nicotine faster than men do — especially women who are taking oral contraceptives — according to a new report. The researchers say this could affect women’s smoking behavior, as well as their response to nicotine-based quitting aids.
And let us not even get started on the corporate culture of addiction, marketing and big corporations that support it (and why I really, really need to quit smoking).
via Reuters.
