Everything you ever wanted to know about men's rights activists, but were afraid to ask.
Hot local Purity Ball action! Organizers say there have been more than a thousand of these things in the past year. And apparently, not all of the sorta similar events for boys are called "Integrity Balls." Some are "a Knight to Remember." Ahahahahaha.
Reviewing Susan Faludi's new book on gender in post-9/11 America. (Terrible headline, huh?)
I have mixed feelings about Newsweek's cover story on women leaders. Check it out for yourself.
"If you are kidnapped or missing, it helps to be the right race, age, social class and gender. Otherwise, don't expect the media to cover your story."
On honor killings in Iraq's Kurdish region.
A Catholic college rents space to a conference on teen pregnancy, and the Catholic hierarchy is not pleased.
On the heels of the WaPo piece, the New York Times notices how white the runways are.
In his new book, Tom Perrotta tackles the "only oral/anal sex until hetero marriage" movement.
The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families is knocking on doors, asking people to sign a petition asking the legislature not to consider any more abortion bans. (One local media outlet called this "silencing the debate." As if that were possible.)
Margaret Cho talks about her new show, The Sensuous Woman.
Check out Feministe's hilarious Twelve Days of Christmas Pussy.
Home Depot decides to open stores that cater to the ladies. That is, ladies who aren't into hardware, only home decorating. Or something. And how, um, toolish is the store's name, Her Depot?
A woman is thrown out of the women's bathroom in a New York restaurant because the bouncer wouldn't believe her when she said she was a woman.
On making work/life balance a campaign issue.
Contraception access on college campuses is declining dangerously.
I talked with New Voices magazine about my experience in talking to Al Jazeera English about Israeli's Maxim PR campaign.
On the NY Times Book Review poor history with feminist authors.
"Can evangelicals and liberals come together over abortion, gay rights, and the role of religion in public life?" No.
A judge tells a criminal defense attorney she has a "nice butt" in open court. Classy.
Rebecca Traister sits down for a chat about the movie business with ten powerful Hollywood women.
A pretty general piece on the gender of the Democratic frontrunner...
Vancouver sexworkers are creating a cooperative brothel in anticipation of the 2010 Olympics.
A display honoring those killed by domestic violence was vandalized in Wisconsin. Cara has more.
An appalling story about a guy who raped at least 30 women he met on Match.com.
On the state of abortion rights in the South.
Finally, a group calls out Unilever's hypocrisy.
The declaration from the first-ever Black European Women's Congress
How messed up is the concept of MyFreeImplants.com? Ugh.
More on Nicaragua's first year as a "pro-life" nation. Death toll so far: at least 80 women. (Check out the HRW report for more details.)
"Video vixen" Karrine Steffens talks to NPR.
Marion Jones's admission to using steroids leads Robin Givhan to ruminate on the strength and glamour of female athletes.
What life is like for women in Kashmir.
And more and more and more nooses. Dumi writes, "While these incidents may be isolated in the forensic sense they are bound in the sociological sense by their support of a White supremacist ideology. A noose is not a joke, a noose is not a prank, a noose is a symbol of violence and threat."
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I'd also add that Duquesne University, a Catholic institution in Pittsburgh, has forced the local NPR station (located on their campus) to refuse donations from Planned Parenthood.
Did anyone else see this article too?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7028449.stm
"...Push open the door and you walk into what is believed to be the world's first retirement home for prostitutes..."
wow...anybody else depressed by the what-is-rape mismash that the comments on that match.com rapist piece is getting?
Ah, MRAs. I was just remarking on how they seem to comment on every single YouTube video that has anything to do with women.
Even this clip from Mystery Science Theater isn't safe.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pPBSD3tOoDA
The first comment even! Jesus! Do they just round up everything with a "women" tag and go to town?
It amazes me that people don't see date rape as "real" rape, and, in many ways, worse than being grabbed off the street. There's a violation of trust and a deeply personal element to date rape that causes a great amount of harm.
The Holy Cross uproar makes sense. If my super-liberal college campus had rented space to an anti-GLBT forum, I would expect uproar, too. The Catholic mission is even more explicit than a general campus zeitgeist.
Apropos of the Deep South article, I have ZERO sympathy for these pro-choicers who claim to be harassed by pro-lifers. Such bullshit. One of my friends was gunned down and almost run over on Saturday, while holding a sign that says, "Abortion hurts women." She and about a dozen other people were silently praying outside of a Planned Parenthood when some jerkoff decided to run them down and came within a foot of her.
The Deep South’s reproductive rights community has few political allies. In Mississippi and Louisiana, Democrats run on anti-choice platforms
It's not anti-choice; it's pro-life. If you don't want to be called anti-life, don't call us anti-choice.
Oenophile, I really don't care what pro-forced-birthers call me, so I'll carry on calling them what I like.
And your friend was "gunned down"? That would require a gun. But obviously you're right. Your anecdote means that all pro-choicers everywhere deserve to be harrassed by pro-forced-birthers. It's not like we have any anecdotes about, oh, a 70-year-old clinic escort being shoved down so hard by an anti-abortion protester that she suffered a concussion.
Yes, it is bad to run over anti-choicers, but it is also bad to harass and intimidate women. And if they think that God will answer their prayers, why do they have to pray outside the clinic? Can't they pray at home? Or were they trying to make the women seeking services and the men and women working inside uncomfortable?
Good point, JLP. I seem to recall a bible verse warning against broadcasting one's piety or something like that. Praying in public was frowned upon by Jesus.
As a man, I've always been insulted that Maxim Magazine is marketed towards me. It could be written by 12 year olds.
It's pretty amazing that Israel wants to use beautiful women to excuse it's human rights abuses. I'm a little worried that that ploy might work...
Another great week of articles! I've been trying to decide whether to read Susan Faludi's Terror Dream; the review made me think it will be interesting, but not to put it at the top of my list.
One solution to women being thrown out of women's bathrooms: unisex bathrooms! I live in a graduate dorm right now with unisex bathrooms. They have stalls. We all wander in and out in our bathrobes. It was a little disconcerting at first, but I got used to it in, like, 48 hours.
Plus, then you've eliminated the problem of making people choose their gender (and get other people to agree with that choice!) just to use the restroom.
Speaking of nooses, I would NOT surprise me if a noose was found at a Planned Parenthood clinic. After all, all anti-choicers are white supremacists, in addition to being male supremacists.
And we can now increase the maternal death toll to at least 200 in Nicaragua.
Sorry for going OT, but the US maternal death rates are NOT going down as the Washington Post reports, the maternal death rates are steadily going up, because of barriers to abortion. In the South, maternal deaths are skyrocketing every day.
And about the South, the anti-choice tactics described in the blog In These Times are in fact the exact same tactics used by the Ku Klux Clan and all other white supremacists. This is why I would designate all anti-choice groups as terrorist organizations.
"It's not anti-choice; it's pro-life. If you don't want to be called anti-life, don't call us anti-choice."
Yeah, but you are anti-choice. Because you don't think women should be able to make a choice about their own bodies. Pro-choice is not anti-life, in that some women will choose to not have abortions, and we support that choice as well. How is that hard to understand?
kittentheverb-you're not the only one. That story is fucking horrible, and things like that are part of the reason I'm not completely against the death penalty. I mean, would the death penalty really be too harsh of a punishment for that guy??
I can't access all of the link I want to, though, because living in a communists country means a lot of websites are censored by the government. Every day I thank Godric Gryffindor that I can still read Feministing.
It's not anti-choice; it's pro-life. If you don't want to be called anti-life, don't call us anti-choice.
Well, I think that outlawing abortion would lead to a death increase amongst women who attempt to terminate their own pregnancies. Some "pro-life" people react to this by saying she "deserved to die" for trying to "murder her baby." Sorry, I don't see that as being pro-life in any way. I see it as anti-choice AND anti-life.
Apropos of the Deep South article, I have ZERO sympathy for these pro-choicers who claim to be harassed by pro-lifers. Such bullshit.
For those not in the know, here's a quick recap of what oenophile thinks is "bullshit":
Every morning when June Ayers arrives for work, she scans the parking lot for suspicious people and packages before getting out of her car. Ayers owns Reproductive Health Services, one of seven clinics that provide abortions in Alabama. She’s been followed home, trailed at the mall and harassed on her front porch.
But of course oenophile's one friend trumps what this woman has to go through EVERY DAY. But I'm sure for oenophile, if she didn't want it to happen then the silly bitch would stop trying to help women exercise their state, federal and bodily right.
Another gem oenophile believes to be "bullshit":
In March 1993, Gunn died when a protester shot him three times in the back outside of his clinic in Pensacola, Fla. The doctor on Ayers’ staff now wears a bulletproof vest.
But of course oenophile doesn't believe this ever happened, why? Because she's got her fingers in her ears, eyes pinched shut and singing that familiar tune, "la la la la la la la I'm nooooot lissssteninig!"
And the capper:
In the early-1990s, researcher Loretta Ross noticed the anti-abortion movement was borrowing tactics from the Ku Klux Klan—things like “Wanted� posters and targeted bombings.
I'm sure, 50 years ago, oenophile would have been one of those lovely women who were just DISGUSTED by those uppity negros who had the nerve to think they were as good as white folk. She'd probably be upset to learn that they didn't like having people burn crosses on their lawns. Those people were just expressing how they felt, after all.
oenophile, even though I doubt your "story" about your friend being "gunned down" (thanks, EG, for pointing out in order to be "gunned down" there needs to be a gun) here's a bit of wisdom: sometimes, when people who have been continuously harassed get fed up with being harassed, they FIGHT BACK. And sometimes, people who are on their last straw will use the same dirty tactics that they're adversaries use in order to make the point that they wish to be LEFT THE FUCK ALONE.
As JP pointed out, if they wanted to pray they can do it in church or at home, they don't have to block sidewalks in front of a legal clinic to do it.
I default to the term "anti-abortion", because I believe it is objective and accurate. I refuse to say "pro-life", given that anti-abortion advocates are often pro-war, pro-death penalty, and commonly care very little about what happens to the "child" once it becomes an adult.
Anti-choice works fine, too. But 'pro life'? Certainly not.
that should be "their" adversaries. typing too fast.
The MRA screed appears to be factually incorrect and reads more like a swift-boat attack rather than an intellectual analysis of MRA beliefs. The MRAs can certainly be criticized on legitimate issues rather than descending to the tactic of character assassination. I found many of the "troll" comments to be more interesting and nuanced than Jeff Fecke's post. Perhaps it's the fact that it is 99% unlikely that a woman will even bear my child that allows me to step back and look at the issue more objectively - but I felt several of the posts on divorce, parental rights, and paternity issues to be compelling arguments. Of course, I would never support the MRAs conservative positions on marriage (ending what they and the fundie Xtians call "no-fault divorce"), their bigoted position on gay rights (which apparently isn't included in "men's rights"), and their anti free-love and anti libertine positions.
Oh dear. It appears that after reading the "everything you need to know about MRA's", I have discovered that I share a specific view with MRA's. I guess I shouldnt show my face around here again...
If you're going to talk about honour killings can I get a plug in for our campaign at www.stophonourkillings.com. It's a collaboration of volunteers from many countries and cultures dedicated to exposing and eradicating the crimes and oppression committed in the name of 'honour'.
Did anyone else click on the link in "everything you wanted to know about mens rights activists" article, that leads you to the National Centre for Mens Voluntary Parenthood site? I have rarely been so sickened. Esepcially the "how to win the argument" section. I can't believe that these men, acting like bloody children who have been told off, have the nerve to go shouting about it in public. "Forced parenthood?" All there problems might just go away if they accepted one defining truth of our (and most species) biology; EVERY time you have sex, there is a chance that the woman may get pregnant. So, for all you poor fellas out there who may be "tricked, trapped, or forced" into parenthood, the outlook is good! All you have to do is not have sex until you are ready to cope with the fact that your actions may have consequences!!
As above, should have typed "their" instead of "there". Furious typing frenzy syndrome.
Oenophile: I'm curious was there any direct connection between pro-choice activists and your friend almost getting clipped besides her protesting at the time. I mean, I was nearly clipped in the Target parking lot the other day, and the car was a lot closer than a foot away, but I didn't assume it was because I was carrying Halloween decorations.
When I was a pro-choice escort, the anti-abortion protesters would frequently almost get clipped by cars. The clinic was on a busy city street and they would bub in student from a local Christian college and over pack the 10'x6' protest area, spilling onto the sidewalk and the street. Protesters would often try and physically block and "bump" people walking down the sidewalk, they weren't supposed to but claimed it was due to over crowding. When the protesters wandered into traffic, their near misses were not a politically charged act, despite some claims to the contrary.
I'm sorry your friend was frightened, but that does not cancel out the countless threats and acts of violence carried out by supposedly pro-life advocates.
Do you guys remember a few months ago when a Glamour staffer said that black women shouldn't wear Afro's because they're unprofessional?
Cindi Leive, Glamour Editor-in -Chief finally responds:
http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2007/10/leive_letter
Isn’t it funny Oenophile always has a very convenient story about one of her friends that prove some universal truth, despite tons of news stories, statistics and evidence to the contrary? I am thinking in particular of another one where one of her friends or someone she knew was tricked into having an abortion at a PP clinic; the point of that story being that it’s not just crisis pregnancy centers that lie to women.
Phlegmatic and Sgt.York, If you find yourself having *anything* in common with MRA’s I think it is a very good idea not to show your face on Feministing, especially Sgt.York who is known as an ardent rape apologist around here.
Okay, I guess Ill just have to take my "men should have an equal say on NOT becoming a parent" and keep it to myself. I have said my feelings on it here before, and quite frankly, I have been puzzled as to why feminists would reject the idea that, under certain circumstances, men should be able to avoid becoming a parent without taking away women’s rights.
But then, Im not a feminist, nor an MRA, so its not big loss. Thanks sojourner.
Men can avoid becoming a parent without taking away women's rights. They can use condoms or get vasectomies. Just like women, they have the right to bodily integrity. Because pregnancy takes place in women's bodies, women's right to bodily integrity includes abortion. In fact, men and women have exactly the same right. Once a kid is born and exists, men and women continue to have exactly the same rights and responsibilities--the non-custodial parent has to pay child support to the custodial parent. If both parents wish to give up parental rights, they can put the kid up for adoption. Period. End of story.
I very much agree on that point EG, so please dont think Im screaming about some major injustice here. I just feel that, although Im not in a position to know since I dont have sex, there is sometimes more involved than that. After all, if it were so clear-cut, couldnt having to make the choice to become a mother or not ever actually have to take place? If those methods, and peoples ability to use them, or agree on them, were so immaculate, there would never be any complications anyway, would there?
I just think it should be acceptable for someone to say "I dont want to become a parent". And I dont just mean that in a “women have abortion, men should be able to walk away� sense. I would see no difference if the woman were to have the child, and then give it to the father, and that would be the end of it. No child support for a child someone didnt want to support in the first place. Not quite, as I have been accused of saying here before “wanting to give men the right to fuck and walk away�.
But other than that vague point, Id say fuck year, if you don’t want to be a parent, don’t engage in the activity where you run the risk of putting yourself in that place.
I very much agree on that point EG, so please dont think Im screaming about some major injustice here. I just feel that, although Im not in a position to know since I dont have sex, there is sometimes more involved than that. After all, if it were so clear-cut, couldnt having to make the choice to become a mother or not ever actually have to take place? If those methods, and peoples ability to use them, or agree on them, were so immaculate, there would never be any complications anyway, would there?
I just think it should be acceptable for someone to say "I dont want to become a parent". And I dont just mean that in a “women have abortion, men should be able to walk away� sense. I would see no difference if the woman were to have the child, and then give it to the father, and that would be the end of it. No child support for a child someone didnt want to support in the first place. Not quite, as I have been accused of saying here before “wanting to give men the right to fuck and walk away�.
But other than that vague point, Id say fuck yeah, if you don’t want to be a parent, don’t engage in the activity where you run the risk of putting yourself in that place. Or at least dont do it unprotected. But still...
Sorry for the double post, I got an error, corrected my post and reposted it not realised it had done so when I got the error in the first place.
This actually has nothing to do with any of these links, but I was wondering if anyone else saw the "Anna Rexia" halloween costume? Have eating disorders become so trendy that people feel this is ok? (And I'm sorry if this isn't the spot for this, it just really bugged me and I had to get it out there)
"if the woman were to give the child to the father and that would be the end of it." Therein lies the issue: the woman always already has the child. The man is always already somewhere else besides physically attached to it. That's why the choice is about her body. And haven't fathers been walking away from their children from centuries?
This actually has nothing to do with any of these links, but I was wondering if anyone else saw the "Anna Rexia" halloween costume? Have eating disorders become so trendy that people feel this is ok? (And I'm sorry if this isn't the spot for this, it just really bugged me and I had to get it out there)
Hey Staar, there was a post about that costume a few days ago--it should still show up on the main page if you scroll down.
Also, mirm, let's point out that that's not the end of it. If the woman decides to go through with the pregnancy and then gives the baby to the father, guess what? She is then responsible for paying child support. Just like a man would be if he ditched his kid! Surpise, surprise--the situation is already equal.
I have to agree slightly with phlegmatic. The reason why women have the right to choose is personal bodily privacy, but the reasons given for abortions are usually not "because I wanted to have control of my body." The reason is usually, I'm not economically capable of supporting a child, I don't have the ability in my career right now, etc. Women get a second chance on opting out of being a parent. They could have decided not to have sex, and therefore not gotten pregnant. Then, if they do get pregnant, they have the option of aborting if they don't feel they are ready. However, if a man gets a woman pregnant and he doesn't want a kid and she does, he can swear up and down to deny parental rights, but he will still be paying child support because of a choice he has no say in. I don't want men to have a say in whether or not women get an abortion. I don't want men to have any control over women's bodies, but I think men should be able to deny all parental rights before viability. If they deny all parental rights, they never get to see the kid, be near the kid, have any sort of interaction in the kids life...but they also don't have to pay for it. Then it gets into the tricky area of women getting abortions because they won't have the support of the father. Gosh, the whole issue just confuses the heck out of me.
Also, mirm, let's point out that that's not the end of it. If the woman decides to go through with the pregnancy and then gives the baby to the father, guess what? She is then responsible for paying child support. Just like a man would be if he ditched his kid! Surpise, surprise--the situation is already equal.
Well, in my view it isnt. Why should she have to pay child support? If she decided to give birth to the child, but not to raise it, why should she have to support the child? You can put a child up for adoption for people who want to raise it, but you cant leave the childs welfare to the parent who wants to raise it? Im just confused as to why that is?
Ive already stated that I feel this is just as valid for men and women in my view.
It's been said a hundred times, but I'm going to say it again.
CHILD SUPPORT IS FOR THE CHILD'S WELFARE.
Once a child exists, it's welfare must be taken care of. Child support is paid in order to support the child. It is not for the mother. It is not for the father. It is for the child. Allowing someone to say, "No, I just don't want to do this" will only end up punishing children. There is no other way around it. Regardless of what you think about the various levels of choice involved, child support is really about the kid and only the kid. And we can't punish them because Daddy doesn't feel ready.
But if mommy doesn't feel ready she can shell out $300 and not have to worry about paying for a kid for 18 years.
I think I agree with FemiDancer and others; it doesn't seem fair to say to guys "you had sex, deal with the consequences," when one of THE things we advocate for in terms of reproductive rights is to say tha