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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
For Beauprez, abortion is a "black and white" issue
Colorado Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez is getting in trouble for spouting off about black women and abortion without actually researching the issue.
On Colorado Public Radio on Monday morning (audio here), he said, "in some of our ethnic communities we're seeing very, very high percentages of babies, children, pregnancies end in abortion... I've seen numbers as high as 70 percent, maybe even more, in the African-American community that I think is just appalling."
Beauprez obviously hadn't "seen numbers." According to the CDC, the abortion ratio for black women is 495 per 1,000 live births, or 33%. The Guttmacher Institute elaborates:
Black women are more than twice as likely as women overall to have an abortion, and Hispanic and Asian women have abortion rates slightly higher than average: Five percent of black women have an abortion each year, compared with 3% of Hispanic women, 3% of Asian women and 1% of white women.
Yes that's right. Abortion is illegal in Kenya and as a result thousands of girls and women die every year from back alley abortions. Now I don't know much about the government of Kenya, but I do know that part of Bush's foreign policy in Africa (in general, recognizing the Western bullshit of discussing Africa as though it is one whole country itself) is one that supports abstinence instead of actual reproductive rights, but anyways. . .
One organization – Family Health Options Kenya – says it’s time to “break the silence” about illegal abortions. Dr. Joachim Osur is assistant programs director. From Nairobi, he spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about illegal abortions.
“The maternal deaths that are related to pregnancy are still very high. About 590 per 100,000 live births. One-third of these deaths are caused by unsafe abortions. So, for every third woman who dies from pregnancy related problems, the death is because of an unsafe abortion,” he says.
Dr. Osur describes one graphic scene attributed to illegal abortions. “A few months ago, we had a lot of fetuses thrown in the streets. These fetuses had been aborted. And what it looks like is that someone was doing it illegally and did not know where to take these fetuses. So they were thrown somewhere and the public came across them.”
He says that some women who want abortions trigger them by inserting sticks, knitting needles or spoons, for example, into their uteruses. Others may go to traditional healers or people with some medical knowledge, but who know little about abortions. The result can be infection and sterility or even death, according to Dr. Osur.
I had wanted to write about this, but Jill at Feministe beat me to it. The New York Times discusses the revival of Islamic teachings in the secular state of Syria predominantly led by women. Naturally, this is a complicated issue between the growth of religious conservatism and clear empowerment of women through learning, reading and spreading the teachings. Do we have a handful of empowered young women or a serious *threat* to secularism?
Jill says,
Emracing religion is one thing; the regressive religious politics that we’ve seen sprouting up from Idaho to Istanbul are troubling, whether their Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or whatever else. Religious conservatism is certainly nothing new, but it does seem to be taking hold in countries that were previously more moderate. And it seems directly related to U.S. foreign policy — as we invade Muslim countries, and set our sights on others, Muslims in the Middle East feel threatened. When we position all Muslims as the enemy, we aid in establishing a collective religious identity that trumps nationalism.
The issue no one wants to talk about. How is US foreign policy DIRECTLY linked to the growth of Islamic conservatism in countries vulnerable to US invasion imperial overthrow? Plus I am pretty sick of Islam being discussed as a threat period and especially a threat to nationalism, as if nationalism is some picnic to women's rights or international foreign policy.
Women in the de facto soveriegn republic of Somaliland are challenging their expected role as subservient.
Hargeisa's marketplace is teeming with female workers, challenging assumptions about the subservient place of women in Islam.
"Of course women are working, they are strong, they do not have the luxury of being anything but strong," said Edna Adan Ismail, Somaliland's former foreign minister and founder of a women's hospital in this overwhelmingly Muslim region of the Horn of Africa.
The role of women in Somalia changed dramatically after the country's longtime dictator was overthrown in 1991, prompting the collapse of the economy and leaving scores of men unemployed. Women began earning money in large part by doing small tasks that men are too proud to perform, such as selling fruit, tailoring clothes or running beauty salons, said Shamis Barre, who works for the humanitarian group CARE International to help train Somali women in marketable skills.
So I've recently become obsessed with finding feminist-related graffiti on Flickr. I love it. It makes me happy. So if anyone has anything they want to share (pics, sites, whatever), pretty please send it my way.
Rhode Island women disengaged with political process.
Now, why would ANYONE be disengaged with the political process these days? (laughs with anger and tears)
Rhode Island women tend to be disengaged from politics and many don't regard political activity as an effective way to influence their world, according to interpretations of a poll released yesterday by the Women's Fund of Rhode Island.
The telephone survey of 507 women, ages 18 to 75, conducted last week, found that Rhode Island women are focused on their local communities, willing to volunteer, committed to voting -- but "cynical" about the political process, pollster Anna Greenberg said in presenting the results yesterday.
Quite frankly, you should be cynical of the political process (non-process) as it is right now. But being cynical and doing something about it and being cynical and disengaging are two separate issues.
A key reason, Greenberg asserted, is that Rhode Island has had few women elected to statewide office. This leaves women with the sense that their elected representatives do not have personal experience with the "kitchen-table issues" that worry women, Greenberg said.
Kitchen table issues? Women worry about a variety of issues, whether they are given the avenues to appropriately address them is a different issue.
Now this one really got me.
Additionally, women around the country tend to be less informed about politics, because they have more responsibility and less leisure time, Greenberg said. "When men get home from work, they sit down and watch the news. When women get home from work, they make dinner," she said.
Now in the places where this maybe true, what is this about? This 1960's attitude split between men watching the news/being engaged with the political process verses women cooking dinner/disengaged and worried about kitchen table issues.
I am finding this very hard to believe, but again I am a feminist blogger.
Religious leader is Saudi Arabia want to restrict how much women can pray at the Grand Mosque in Makka. Women activist have vowed to fight any such attempts.
At present, women can pray in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure inside the mosque, believed to have been built by Ibrahim (Abraham) - seen by Muslims as a prophet - and his son.
Osama al-Bar, head of the Institute for Haj Research, said: "The area is very small and so crowded. So we decided to get women out of the sahn [Kaaba area] to a better place where they can see the Kaaba and have more space.
"Some women thought it wasn't good, but from our point of view it will be better for them ... We can sit with them and explain to them what the decision is."
Uh, it was too crowded so we told the women to leave? That doesn't sound like a good enough reason.
Suhaila Hammad, a Saudi woman member of a body of world Muslim scholars, said: "Both men and women have the right to pray in the House of God. Men have no right to take it away.
"Men and women mix when they circumambulate the Kaaba, so do they want to make us do that somewhere else too?
In response to the violent murder of a woman by a man that was obsessed with violent internet porn, the British government ruled that violent internet porn is now illegal. Now, I am glad that the government took a stance on the issue and responded to the outcry, but I don't know how much the banning of internet porn is going to actually stop violent behavior. Violent imagery may incite violence, but is far from the cause of it. What about a culture that normalizes violence for men? What are they going to do to stop that?
It is already a crime to make or publish such images but proposed legislation will outlaw possession of images such as "material featuring violence that is, or appears to be, life-threatening or is likely to result in serious and disabling injury".
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker MP said: "Such material has no place in our society but the advent of the internet has meant that this material is more easily available and means existing controls are being by-passed - we must move to tackle this."
The move by the government would close a legal loophole.
"It is great news that the Government has not only listened but has responded to calls to outlaw access to sickening internet images, which can so easily send vulnerable people over the edge."
I agree that this stuff is nasty, but banning it may seem viable in the short term. But I think the ban ignores the circumstances under which it is made and the greater cultural factors that contribute to it's production. What is producing such images and what is creating a situation where they would be distributed and consumed?
The Detroit Action Network For Reproductive Rights is planning to picket a local crisis-pregnancy center to raise awareness about the misinformation spread by these places. In case you're in the area, here are the details:
Saturday, September 9 at 10:30 a.m.
at "Pregnancy Aid," 17325 Mack Avenue
(on Detroit's Eastside, directly across from Staples)
Email danforr@sbcglobal.net OR
Call (313) 378-2369 for more information
It's awesome that some local activists are taking on this issue. I'm not usually excited about clinic protests, but this one sounds pretty good to me.... Probably because places like "Pregnancy Aid" aren't really clinics. That term applies to places that provide actual health care, not just propaganda.
A few days ago, a lawyer friend sent me a daily law journal article about the paucity of female Supreme Court clerks this year-- 19% of the 2006 clerks are women, down from 37-41% over the five previous terms. Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Souter hired only male clerks this term.
Somebody must have sent Linda Greenhouse the same article, because she's all over it today. (Legal Times covered this back in May, when the clerkships were announced.)
It's really depressing that not only are there almost no women on the actual court, but the clerks (the people who actually write opinions and screen new cases) are also mostly male.
In a brief telephone interview, Justice O’Connor said she was “surprised” by the development, but declined to speculate on the cause. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed no such surprise. In a conversation the other day, she knew the numbers off the top of her head, and in fact had noted them in a speech this month in Montreal to the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, during which she also observed with obvious regret that “I have been all alone in my corner on the bench” since Justice O’Connor’s retirement in January.
Justice Ginsburg, who will have two women among her four clerks, declined during the conversation to comment further on the clerkship numbers. Why not ask a justice who has not hired any women for the coming term, she suggested.
Souter explains that this is "no more than a random variation," which is a really annoying excuse for his lack of female hires. I suppose the fact that there's only one female justice on the bench is also just a "random variation"?
The dearth of female clerks is certainly not for lack of women at prestigious law schools-- in fact, schools are where women in law have made the most progress. American Bar Association data shows about half of recent law grads were female, and the percentage of women in tenured positions at law schools increased from 5.9%5 to 25.1% between 1994 and 2002. Women are making professional progress, too, but the numbers aren't as dramatic when you start talking about positions of power after graduation.
It's also worth noting, as the Legal Times article did, that there are very few minority clerks, too:
Eight years after attention was first called to the dearth of minorities among high court clerks, it appears that only three of the 37 clerks serving at the Court this term are nonwhite. [...] It appears that the current number of minorities is substantially lower than in recent years. The three minorities this term compare with five last term, eight the previous term and a record nine in 2002. ...if the proof is in the pudding, the pudding, this term at least, is vanilla.
If she won't get an eating disorder on her own, CBS will do it for her
Wow. Looks like teeny tiny Katie Couric just isn't skinny enough for public viewing. CBS thinned her down (significantly) for its "Watch" Magazine in the grossest Photoshopped diet ever. TVNewser caught the altered image via a reader.
Via HuffPo.
You may remember the fabtime Samhita and I had at the WAM! conference earlier this year, so we're super excited to go again in 2007. And you should be too.
The Center for New Words is accepting proposals for the conference now, so hop to it! Here's a (very) shortened version of the call, get the full one here.
Women, Action & the Media: Making Noise, Making Change
MIT’s Stata Center, Cambridge, MA
March 30 - April 1, 2007
We invite you to submit a proposal for a workshop, panel, strategy meeting, multimedia presentation, or other conference session. We want to hear your ideas whether you’re a media producer or a PR strategist, a journalist, an activist, an academic, a community organizer, a funder or philanthropist, a “citizen” media watchdog, a media policy advocate, an alternative-network-builder, a blogger, writer, teacher, artist, technology trainer, deejay, (etc!) — we welcome any progressive concerned about women’s voices and power in the media. We especially encourage proposals from women of color, women under 25 and over 65, low-income women, professionals/producers working in broadcast and online media, and students.
At WAM!2007, we’ll share facts and ideas and develop skills and action plans to transform the media environment and amplify progressive women’s public voices—as analysts, opinion-makers, community members , and influential participants in civil society. But to do that, we need you. What questions, issues, and concerns do you want to hear debated? What thinking, strategizing, planning or skill-sharing work should happen at WAM as a step forward in building the movement to “make noise and make change”? What should we know, what should we be doing, and what should we be preparing for?
The deadline is for submission is 10/13/2006.
Again, get all the info here. Hopefully, see you there!
Over 50 items enclosed including the Purity Pledge, the Pink Abstinence Card , valuable information on STD's and your worth as a girl created by God! From nail enamel quick dry spray, a cute polka dot shower cap to nail glue, a pre-threaded sewing kit, and a dual make up sharpener...this kit is for you! Great for going off to College the Birthday Girl or even a COMING OF AGE gift for when she finally gets her period.
Because nothing says COMING OF AGE quite like a dating ritual with daddy a
