"I love feministing.com and always learn from it." Katha Pollitt, The Nation
"Many people need a morning "fix." For some, it's coffee. For others, it's "SportsCenter." For me, it's Feministing.com." Katie Stone, The Denver Post
"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
The panel is actually titled New Media Distribution 202: Empowering Communities Through Online Tools led by the fabulous Deanna Zandt, and girlfriend knows her shit. (Which is exactly why she's working with us.)
One resource they gave that I really want to check out is this study, “Representin’ in Cyberspace: Sexual Scripts, Self-Definition, and Hip Hop Culture in Black American Adolescent Girls’ Home Pages” that was released this month in the international journal Culture, Health and Sexuality and led by Dr. Carla Stokes, the founding Executive Director of HOTGIRLS. While the study challenges the generalization that black teen girls aren’t tech-savvy and shows ways that they use the internet and hip hop to express themselves in creative ways, it also showed that much of the time, they actually choose to emulate the hypersexual, negative stereotypes of black women that are depicted in the media. All the more reason to have more online activism and outreach to these young women.
Oh gawd, they just put on “A Girl Like Me.” Great film, but I so do not need to be crying today.
Whew. So my panel is over and I can relax a little bit. (At least until tomorrow when I'm moderating a panel chock full of funny ladies, including Mikheala Reid.)
I'm at a panel run by the very cool Caryl Rivers on media myths like the "boy crisis."
Another media narrative they're discussing is the myth that professionally accomplished women make for bad wives, or have bad relationships. Well, shit...I've had my fair share of bad breakups but I'm pretty sure it didn't have much to do with how well I was doing at work.
I love these ladies...they're talking about how the Forbesdebacle actually turned out okay for women. Women were so outraged by the article that they really had to eat their words and admit, well, that they were full of shit.
I really need to get this powerpoint, they also have a lot of fantastic info and stats debunking the male brain/female brain differences myths. (And boy are there a lot of them.)
My question is--yeah, so what do we do? I mean, we see these kind of bullshit stories all the time...but how do we call them out in a way that does more than piss off a couple of feminist bloggers.
Beyond "Catfighting": Creating Strategic Collaborations within Feminist Media.
This panel is addressing the question of how to build actual collaborations between different types of feminist media and organizations. How do we partner with feminist organizations and media as opposed to fighting or competing for readers?
Jessica is talking about how feminist blogs can be a model for collaboration since we all work together, link to each other, guest blog for each other etc. Despite a healthy competition there is still a sense of community.
Even feminist media is caught up on the same stories. Why do we only hear certain stories, certain links etc? If all your research is done online there is the potential for missing local organizations that may not have strong web presences. Who has the entitlement to speak? How do we reach out to people that don't have authority to speak?
The exciting project of building online communities through blogging and social networking technologies is slowly but surely being realized. The hope is that these connections will translate to real world connections between media and non-profit and community organizations.
Do you think that is happening?
Oh and granted we are all doing really amazing work but how the hell are we supposed to make any money???
And Vanessa and I are intently paying attention playing with my macbook cam
So we made it to Cambridge for the annual WAM conference and it has already been tons of fun. Best moment so far? As I was registering a woman casually asks me where the registration is. I turn around and it is Cynthia Enloe. I embarrassingly and very uncooly blurt out "OMG you are Cynthia Enloe!" and she said, "Yes and you are?" Celebrity feminist sighting #1.
Kerrita McClaughlyn: International Diabetes Federation
Kerrita McClaughlyn (left) and colleagues at the International Diabetes Federation’s 19th World Diabetes Congress in Cape Town, South Africa in December 2006.
Kerrita McClaughlyn is the media relations coordinator of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) based in Brussels, Belgium. For over 50 years, IDF has been at the forefront of global diabetes advocacy. The Federation is committed to raising global awareness of diabetes, promoting adequate diabetes care and prevention, and encouraging activities towards finding a cure for the different types of diabetes that many people are not aware of.
Kerrita answered my questions over email. Here’s Kerrita…
GlaxoSmithKline has filed for FDA approval of its HPV vaccine, Cervarix. It would compete with Merck's Gardasil, which has been on the market since June.
GlaxoSmithKline counters that Cervarix is more powerful and may prevent up to 80 percent of cancers, thanks to the company's proprietary adjuvant, AS04, a key booster ingredient. It also is funding an unusual head-to-head comparison to try to prove Cervarix is more potent than Gardasil.
GSK has not announced how expensive Cervarix will be, but Gardasil costs $360 for the three-shot regimen. I had high hopes that the competition would bring the price down, but sadly it doesn't look like that's going to happen:
Jean Stéphenne, president of GSK Biologicals, the company's Belgium-based vaccine division, said in an interview last month that GlaxoSmithKline aims to win over physicians and others by proving Cervarix is better, not by selling it for less.
"If you start a price war, you give the impression that your product is of lower quality," Stéphenne said during a trip to Philadelphia.
...and Big Pharma doesn't get as rich.
FDA approval is expected sometime between October and January.
MassHealth officials aren't releasing the details on the investigation. The AP reports that his practice is based in Marblehead, MA. And indeed, that's the address on his state registration: 14 Willow Rd., Marblehead, MA. But when I called the phone number listed with that address, I got what was clearly a home answering machine, not a doctor's office. And a simple reverse-phone lookup shows it is indeed a residential address -- not a medical practice.
So where is Keroack's private practice that is under investigation, if not in Marblehead? The address listed for his practice by the hospital he's affiliated with, North Shore Medical Center, is 103 Broadway, Revere, MA. This is the address of one of the outposts of his crisis-pregnancy center chain, A Woman's Concern.
The AP report implied that, because Keroack's practice is supposedly located in Marblehead, where there is no branch of A Woman's Concern, that the Medicaid investigation into Keroack's "private practice" is not an investigation into his crisis-pregnancy center. Seems to me that could be wrong, and it's possible the investigation -- and Keroack's subsequent resignation -- are related to his affiliation with the crisis-pregnancy center.
Lawrence Roach agreed to pay alimony to the woman he divorced, not the man she became after a sex change, his lawyers argued Tuesday in an effort to end the payments. But the ex-wife's attorneys said the operation doesn't alter the agreement.
Roach says, "I have a right to move forward with my life. I wish no harm and hardship to that person...They can be the person they want to be, to find happiness and peace within themselves. I have the right to do the same. But I can't rest because I'm paying a lot of money every month." Talk about a class act.
If we're a little slow on posting today, it's because Vanessa, Samhita, Celina and I are on our way to the WAM conference in Cambridge. It will be super fun for multiple reasons: we're on cool panels with awesome women, networks galore, and this will be the first time ever I get to see my book printed up (apparently Center for New Words got it early).
So be on the lookout this weekend for some WAM live-blogging and please be patient with us today as we get our shit together and travel to MA.
I have it on good authority that "Dr." Eric Keroack, the abstinence-only nut and cartoon enthusiast who was appointed by the Bush administration to oversee reproductive rights funding is resigning.
This article in last week's NY Times brings up some hotly debated issues in the progressive LGBTQ movement. In reaction to the way that mainstream gay political movements have been overtaken by the fight for gay marriage, some radical activists have asked the question: Why marriage?
Activists like Mattilda Bernstein have pointed out that gay marriage is really an issue for mostly upper-class, white and privileged members of the gay community. It’s they who suffer from the tax penalties of not being legally married, and worry about how their inheritances will be passed on to their partners. She asks, shouldn't we invest our resources in fighting poverty, homelessness and discrimination? She also points out that we shouldn't be fighting for inclusion in a system that is corrupt and has inherently racist and sexist histories. She makes a similar argument about the fight for LGBTQ inclusion in the military.
The other side of this issue is the increasing commercialization of gay partnerships and ceremonies. Even though LGBTQ people can still only get legally married in MA (and the new civil unions in NJ) businesses all over the country are already catering to the gay wedding market. I went to the Gay Wedding Extravaganza in Philadelphia last year--where traditional wedding vendors came to sell their wares to LGBTQ couples planning ceremonies--even though there is no legal recognition in the state of PA. M any of these businesses had never even worked with gay couples before, but as one chocolate fountain vendor put it, "Money is money."
The RainbowWeddingNetwork calls these events "Same love, Same rights." It sounds deceptively political, and although they usually include a speech from an LGBTQ legal rights activist, really it's about the same rights to waste tons of money on stupid wedding crap, like tuxedos, cakes, chocolate fountains and the like. I've never been a fan of wedding ceremonies (gay or straight) because I think they can get overtaken by commercialism and people forget the real purpose: to celebrate the love and commitment of two people. What does that have to do with cakes, bridesmaid dresses, housewares, flowers or food? Especially when the average wedding the US costs close to $30,000. Yikes.
While I understand the desire to commemorate your commitment publicly, with friends and family, I think that LGBTQ people should seize this opportunity to do things differently, rather than replicating a model that hasn't really worked for straight people either.
Last night at Bates College, Phyllis Schlafly gave a lecture titled, "Conservatism vs. Feminism: The Great Debate" where at one point she contended that a woman can't get raped by her husband: "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape."
The fact that this woman has any merit within the political sphere is beyond me.
Lawmakers started hearings recently on a proposal to legalize abortion in Mexico City.
The city's Legislative Assembly is not scheduled to vote until mid-April, but passage seems likely. Mexican feminists say the legalization of abortion in this city of 8 million would be a landmark for the Latin American women's movement.
"We've been working for this day for 36 years, and it's almost here," said Marta Lamas, one of the nation's leading feminists and founder of the nonprofit Reproductive Choice Information Group.
Illegal abortion is a widespread problem in Mexico--and much of Latin America--and if this proposal passes, it would allow women to travel to the city to obtain safe, legal abortions. Fingers crossed.
