2013 January Archive | Feministing

Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet

If you haven’t yet, go read @ClinicEscort‘s account of explaining the importance of abortion rights to an Amtrak-full of students heading home from Saturday’s “March for Uterine Conscription” (scroll down to January 26).

The NYT on the BS lawsuits challenging religious groups’ responsibility to provide insurance that covers birth control under the new health care law.

The Boy Scouts are close to ending their ban on gay members and leaders.

In case you haven’t heard, Hillary Clinton might be the next U.S. president.

And her supposed disinterest in running has become a bit less convincing over time.

Family Inequality ranks workplace gender discrimination bills.

Spoiler Alert: What we should learn from Downton Abbey about maternal health.

On queer rights, ...

The NYT on ...

By Samhita • 11 years ago

Senate proposes bipartisan plan for immigration

Launching a ramped up effort to prioritize immigration reform under the Obama administration–8 Senators (4 Republican and 4 Democrat) have proposed bipartisan plan to reform immigration law in this country. After four years of disastrous immigration law enforcement and border patrolling splitting up thousands of families, leaving children orphaned and subjecting undocumented immigrants to a slue of human rights violations–is there hope in sight?

Yes and no. The proposed law does propose pathways to citizenship, but only after there has been an increase patrolling on the border and in places of work.

Seth Freed Wessler writes at Colorlines:

The plan is a mix of legal immigration programs for undocumented immigrants and additional immigration enforcement measures. The path to citizenship will kick in only ...

By Alexandra Brodsky • 11 years ago

Happy 200th anniversary, Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice was first published on January 28th, 1812, 200 years ago today. While Austen’s work isn’t exactly an experiment in radical intersectional rebellion, she was a proto-feminist thinker who created independently-minded female characters, identified obstacles that kept other women from writing, and paved the way for female writers after her. If you’re a fan looking to celebrate with like-minded readers, or just gawk at all the fuss, you’ve got some options:

Fight your way into a reconstruction of the Netherfield Ball hosted by the BBC. Or, more realistically, spend the day figuring out how to get BBC2 by the time a program based on the event airs in the spring. Explore the feminist literature ...

By Alexandra Brodsky • 11 years ago

Birth control shots were forced on Ethiopian immigrants to Israel

Five years after allegations were first levied, and over a month after the issue again attracted mainstream attention through the Israel Educational Television documentary “Vacuum,” the Israeli government has admitted that Ethiopian women were coerced into accepting long-acting birth control shots, likely Depo-Provera. Haaretz writes:

…While the women were still in transit camps in Ethiopia they were sometimes intimidated or threatened into taking the injection. “They told us they are inoculations,” said one of the women interviewed [in “Vacuum”]. “They told us people who frequently give birth suffer. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.”

The widespread practice is thought to account for the last decade’s near-halving of the Ethiopian birth rate in Israel. ...

By Samhita • 11 years ago

You’ve come a long way, lady

Ann has a great piece in the (newly launched and very beautiful) New Republic about ladies who call each other, well, ladies. Sifting through the intergenerational interpretations, rap lyrics and colloquialisms, she writes,

….the word “lady” has become core vocabulary of feminism in the age of irony. With its slippery meaning—associations range from grandma’s lavender-scented powder to the raunchiest of rap lyrics—it encapsulates the fundamental mutability of modern feminism.

And goes further,

…..“lady” splits the difference between the infantilizing “girl” and the stuffy, Census-bureau cold “woman.” (Both still have their place—just not in the witty conversation that young feminists want to be having.) It’s a way to stylishly signal your gender-awareness, without the stone-faced trappings of the second-wave. It’s a casual synonym ...

….the word “lady” has ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

Weekly Feminist Reader

http://youtu.be/QDz-rSVj_e4

Happy birthday, Etta James.

Good news: Domestic violence screenings will now be covered under Obamacare.

How the concept of modesty hurts trans and intersex people.

Morocco is planning to change the law that allows rapists to avoid charges if they marry their victims.

NPR erases trans people from the history of Stonewall.

Trans people in Sweden will no longer face forced sterilization in order to legally transition.

Jessica González-Rojas and Lynn Paltrow talk with Bill Moyers about the current state of reproductive rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt was “FDR’s most important, and most progressive, advisor.”

A must-read by Rebecca Solnit on violence against women.

“The rule is that if you are a woman in America, you want nothing quite so much as you want to be ...

http://youtu.be/QDz-rSVj_e4

Happy birthday, Etta James.

Good news: Domestic violence screenings will now be covered under Obamacare.

How the concept of modesty hurts trans and intersex people.

Morocco is planning to change the law that allows rapists to avoid charges if ...

By Anna • 11 years ago

The Feministing Five: Jax Jackson

In 2010, Tyler Clementi was a freshman at Rutgers University. After his roommate secretly recorded him kissing another man in their dorm room, Clementi jumped to his fate off of George Washington Bridge. It’s a story we should never forget and, unfortunately, one of many cases in which bullying and anti-LGBT sentiment has led to youth suicides.

Teddy Ferrera is a play loosely based off Tyler Clementi’s story and playwright Christopher Shinn’s (a Pulitzer Prize finalist) own experiences. It runs from February 2nd – March 3rd at Chicago’s Goodman Theater and features the theater’s first transgender actor.

Casting cisgender people for transgender roles has long been a habit of Hollywood (think Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, Felicity Huffman in

By Samhita • 11 years ago

Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet

The best 3 minutes you’ll spend today. Watch all of it.

The brilliant and brave Emily May is interviewed in VICE talking Hollaback! This is important, people read VICE (even if you and I don’t).

The nationalist political party in India, Shiv Sena, is handing out knives and chili powder for women to defend themselves from rape. I appreciate the sentiment here, but this plan could easily backfire. And it doesn’t get to the root of the problem–rape is not inevitable!

Soledad O’Brien pwnd an opposer of women in the military and got him to admit to endorsing racial segration.

The best 3 minutes you’ll spend today. Watch all of it.

The brilliant and brave Emily May is interviewed in VICE talking Hollaback! This is important, people read VICE (even if you and I don’t).

The nationalist political ...