"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
A 17-year-old girl who is four months pregnant and whose child cannot survive outside the womb has gone to the High Court to challenge a decision by the Health Service Executive to stop her leaving the State for an abortion.
The girl is in the care of the HSE and is challenging its decision to contact gardaí and not to let her travel for the abortion unless she presented as a suicide risk.
After hearing this news, the girl made a decision to travel to the UK for a termination but the HSE asked gardaí not to permit her to leave the jurisdiction.
So this girl will literally be held by the police (gardaí ) if she tries to leave. It's sickening. She's challenging the ruling in court tomorrow; our thoughts are with her.
It’s a well-known fact (at least, to Slate’s William Saletan) that pregnant women who seek abortions actually have no idea what abortions are. Let alone what a fetus is.
Critics complain that these bills seek to "bias," "coerce," and "guilt-trip" women. Come on. Women aren't too weak to face the truth. If you don't want to look at the video, you don't have to. But you should look at it, and so should the guy who got you pregnant, because the decision you're about to make is as grave as it gets.
…The image on the monitor may look like a blob, a baby, or neither. It certainly won't follow some senator's script. All it will show you is the truth.
Because obviously women who have made the decision to end a pregnancy won’t understand the “truth” unless it’s put up on an easy-viewing screen. As Amanda so aptly noted in an email exchange: "If women only knew that they were getting abortions when they got abortions!!!!!"
You can’t get much more repulsive than Saletan’s rhetoric. He claims to “trust women” while simultaneously making the case that women don’t understand what they’re doing when they get abortions; that we’re incapable of making an informed decision without a helping hand from the state.
My favorite line in this mess of an article, though, has to be this: “Ultrasound has exposed the life in the womb to those of us who didn't want to see what abortion kills. The fetus is squirming, and so are we.” Are we, now?
The New York Magazine featured “The Lesbian Bride’s Handbook” yesterday, which is not necessarily a handbook but more of a way-too-adoroble story of Ariel Levy's wedding. (Reminder: Levy is the author of the oh-so-controversialFemale Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture.) Congrats to Levy and her wifey. (And that hot-ass dress!)
Although New York is generally viewed as a “safe state” in regards to reproductive rights, its actual current legislation is totally outdated. Abortion is even technically criminalized under New York’s homicide statute.
Not only would the bill make sure that women will be able to make decisions about their own health and private decisions, it could serve as an model to other states. There’s not much we can do to change the SCOTUS decision, but we can at the very least we should do what we can to protect the rights we have left.
Check out the actual bill and the Governor's memo here.
P.S. Spitzer also introduced a bill last week that would legalize gay marriage. Go, Gov.
I just wanted to give a big old thanks to everyone who showed up to our third year bash on Friday. I think everyone had a fantastic time. (As evidenced by the pics here, here, and here.)
And I wanted to say a special thank you to my sister, who worked her ass off to plan an amazing night; and to Gwen and Gwynn (and again, Vanessa) for the speeches that made me cry. Now if I could just lose this lingering hangover.
On Wednesday, a bomb was found right outside of a women’s clinic in Austin, Texas. The good thing is that at least one culprit of the attempt was caught.
Reproductive rights organizations have been alerting abortion providers of potential acts of violence due to the decision:
"We know that when abortion is in the news, we also see clinics targeted for increased violence and disruption," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation.
Like we haven’t had enough upset lately regarding choice. Sigh.
NPR had a segment on the new Amnesty campaign to end violence against Native women. One of the shelters they featured, Pretty Bird Woman House, is holding a fundraising campaign. Click here to donate.
One of the men who used the services of the "D.C. Madam" is... one of Bush's abstinence appointees. Yep, the guy that Bush hired to push abstinence-only programs abroad was, uh, engaging in extramarital sex here at home.
Riverbend (of the Baghdad Burning blog) is leaving Iraq.
Remembering a vocally pro-choice woman who led the Republican party in the late '70s. (Kind of like the anti-Schlafly?)
The New England Journal of Medicine says "both health care providers and patients should be alarmed" by the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion. And Cynthia Gorney explores what this will mean for doctors.
...and in the wake of the ruling, the Supreme Court returns a handful of related cases to the states.
A sports columnist announces his upcoming surgery to make his body match his brain, which he says is "wired female."
Daisy Hernandez is the Managing Editor of ColorLines, a bimonthly progressive magazine based in Oakland, CA that takes the issue of race in America to the forefront of national debate. It is published by the Applied Research Center based in New York City.
Daisy is the co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Today’s Feminism. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Ms., Newsday, National Catholic Reporter, The Progressive Media Project, Bitch, Curve, Criticas, and In These Times.
"I don't know where Lydia gets off acting like the big cheese all the damn time," said James Halterfeyer of his boss, whom he described as "bossy." "She acts like what she says goes, even if I don't agree with it entirely."
Roughly 65 percent of Bernoldini employees echoed Halterfeyer's sentiments, specifically mentioning her refusal to be addressed as "Lydia" and the fact that female employment had swelled to 35 percent of the company since Bernoldini took over from her father in 2002.
UPDATE: A savvy reader made a very good point about Amazon. If folks who have read the book want to leave a review...it would be super helpful. Thanks!
Anyone who has been tortured by some of the really bad movies getting way too much play at the local theater these days probably wasn't surprised to read the New York Times story yesterday about the shortage of female power in Hollywood. Despite the fact that women make up 51% of movie goers, three of the four women who held top jobs at Hollywood's major studios have left in the past 14 months. All have been replaced my men.
I'm no fan of essentialism (i.e. women always make movies other women like because they share some innate sensibilty a.k.a bad romcoms), but there is something unarguably frightening about one of our nation's most powerful messaging industries being in the hands of only men. There seems to always be a heavy line up of unnecessary sequels, horror and violence at the box office, usually with a little sprinkle of objectification of female bodies throw in for misogynistic measure. Certainly this has something to do with who is holding the purse strings.
Apparently Nintendo DS has a game out called Doki Doki Majo Saiban. And what is the object of the game? Touch the scantily-clad prepubescent looking girl to see if she is a witch! And the description from a gamer blog:
It's the most infamous DS game we've never played. And we know surprisingly little about Doki Doki Majo Saiban. Intertube reaction has run the gamut of amused (us) to critical (others) and in denial (others). Some are claiming the title is flat out porn, while some state that there's no way Nintendo would let that happen. We doubt that the game is at either end of the pole and still giggle at the newly minted touch-a-girl-to-see-if-she's-a-witch sub-genre.
Yes, because there is nothing cuter than young gamers who already have fucked up ideas about women because of the weird ways they are depicted in most video games to connect the dots from young and *slutty* to witch-ly.
An Indian judge today issued arrest warrants for Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty for contravening the country's public obscenity laws by embracing and kissing at an Aids awareness event, a report said.
Not only are people totally freaking out about this in India, including burning effigies of Gere (wtf) but Shetty is being constructed as the "virgin" of the Hindu nation (who must be protected from the nefarious influence of Western influence, which, I think is too late to do, since she was on the UK version of Big Brother, but I digress). I mean I understand inappropriate displays of affection may make some people uncomfortable, but to make such a huge media spectacle out of it is a little over the top. It must be a publicity stunt.
This video, "A Little Too Late," features Toby Keith singing to this tied-to-a-chair-in-the-basement-girlfriend. He threatens her with a shovel, then it looks like he's going to drown her, or maybe bury her alive. It's fucking sick and scary.
After the strip a while back that implied that feminism is no longer needed, perhaps Trudeau is attempting to make amends by talking about women's beauty standards in a recent strip.
