Feministing

Abortion in health care reform is at risk. Call NOW.

2009-11-07T18:33:30Z

The House of Reps is debating abortion in health care reform right now in Congress.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops met with leaders in the House of Representatives in their bid to eliminate women's access to abortion care under health care reform. Their efforts are working. Representative Bart Stupak has introduced an amendment to the health care reform bill that will result in women losing health care coverage for abortion. Now, Congress is considering the Stupak amendment to the health care reform bill that will eliminate choice for millions of women.
We need you, and your friends and family to call your representative now at 202-730-9001 and ask him or her to oppose the Stupak amendment.

You can urge friends on Facebook and Twitter to call Congress.

For Facebook, post this to your status:
EMERGENCY -- Representative Bart Stupak has just introduced an amendment to the health care reform bill that will eliminate coverage for abortion care. I just called my Rep. and you should, too. Call 202-730-9001 and ask him or her to reject the amendment.

Tweet this on Twitter:
URGENT- Call your Rep NOW to reject the Stupak amendment to health care reform. It would eliminate all abortion care. 202-730-9001. RT

Take action today, voices in support of access to abortion are crucial right now.

The Feministing Five: Jos Truitt

2009-11-07T14:57:27Z

Regular readers will have noticed that in recent months, Feministing has brought in a number of new contributors: Ariel, Jos, Lori, Rose and myself. No doubt you're getting to know them by reading their posts and engaging with their ideas in the comments section, but I also suspect that you might want to know a little more about these wonderful women (I know I do!). Over the next few weeks, I'll be interviewing my fellow new contributors so that you and I can get to know them a little better. This week I interviewed Jos Truitt.

Jos joined Feministing as a contributor this July, and in the past few months has been blogging up a storm (those of you who love Mad Men Mondays, you can thank Jos for that!). Jos grew up in Boston and graduated from Hampshire College, where she studied philosophy of race, feminist organizing and sequential art, which, she informed me, is the academic term for comics.

Jos now lives in DC, where she is pursuing her passion for reproductive justice. She recently started working part-time at the National Abortion Federation hotline and she serves as a clinic escort with the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force. She has also worked and blogged for Choice USA. In her spare time, she likes to bake and spend time in the printmaking studio, and when I asked her which feminist she'd take with her to a desert island, she gave by far the sweetest answer I've heard yet.

And now, without further ado, The Feministing Five, with Jos Truitt.

]]> Chloe Angyal: How did you become involved with feminist activism and writing, and with Feministing specifically?

Jos Truitt: I really wasn't exposed to feminist thought in any sort of overt way for most of my life, and certainly not through high school. I read one essay by an early twentieth century feminist that was about a page long at the end of senior year of high school. And I don't even remember what essay it was or who it was by. I just remember reading it and thinking that the ideas made sense to me. And it clicked. But I think that because I was raised in a very Christian fundamentalist family and in a Christian fundamentalist community, feminism was just really, really far off my radar. But at the same time, the way I understood the world and the things I cared about would have fit within feminism.

In college I came to feminism through critical race theory, through folks like Kimberle Crenshaw, and I was really intrigued by that kind of intersectionality. I was in this really amazing class on critical race theory with Falguni Sheth and Margaret Cerullo, and Falguni Sheth was going to be teaching a class on feminist legal theory the next semester, and I thought, "Oh sure, I'll check that out." I didn't really identify as a feminist, and I didn't really know that much about it, but the more feminist thought I looked at and the more I hung out with feminist organizers and the people doing this work, the more I realized how much these were the beliefs that were important to me and the issues that were important to me, and how much this was what I wanted to be doing.

As for Feministing, I was connected to Miriam in a few different ways. At Hampshire I worked for the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program, and Miriam was part of the organization's New Leadership Networking Initiative, so I'd seen her speak at a conference and I'd read her work a little bit. And then last November I was an intern at Choice USA and Miriam was working out of their offices while she was working for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. So we met there, and started to get to know each other a little bit, and that's also when I started blogging for Choice USA's blog Choice Words. When I moved back to DC, Miriam had already seen some of my writing and had encouraged me a few times to join the Feministing community. When there was a big explosion of trans issues within the community, I decided to start writing, and I got to know the community a little more. That was about the time the editors were looking to bring in some new writers and they wanted to bring in another voice on gender identity and expression from a trans perspective. So Miriam came to me about joining the blog. It's such an exciting opportunity; I get to keep writing about the issues I care about, and I have the potential to reach a broader audience.

CA: Who is your favorite fictional heroine?

JT: Buffy. I didn't in any overt way have a feminist analysis in high school, but I just have a really nostalgic memory of Buffy because that show helped me survive being a closeted, queer, trans kid in a very Christian household. Because of its representation of difference and exclusion, and of not fitting in and finding strength in that. So even though the show had some problematic elements and definitely failed on race a lot, and lacked a gender analysis outside of the binary, Buffy was the first feminist role model I was exposed to, before even realizing that she was a feminist or that I was a feminist. The fact that she could be femme - which I didn't completely understand I wanted to be but had some relationship to - yet strong, and powerful, and stand up for herself while also being a complicated person with weaknesses and struggle to fit into a world that she didn't really fit into, it spoke to me. And I think it really primed my brain for feminism.

CA: Who are your heroines in real life?

JT: The Black feminist thinkers who brought me to feminism in the first place, like Kim Crenshaw and Angela Davis. Their intersectional analysis is what showed me that feminism could be a politics and a worldview that made sense for me, because something that always stood out for me as I started to engage with issues of oppression and social justice were the intersections and complications of identity. And then Kate Bornstein gave me language and words and ways of expressing feelings and concepts that I had inside of me and never, ever knew how to articulate when it comes to trans identity and gender. So she's been a major influence.

And then, some of the really amazing role models I've had the privilege of working with and learning feminism from. I first read feminist thinkers in classes with Falguni Sheth and Margaret Cerullo, who both have incredible analysis and taught me how to think. And Marlene Fried, who runs the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program and who really gave me the opportunity to learn how to do reproductive justice organizing.

CA: What recent news story made you want to scream?

JT: It's been really hard to watch movement on some of the issues that have been touted as the current queer agenda or current LGBT agenda or current gay agenda, and have people saying they speak for my community when I really disagree with them. For example, hearing a trans organization talk about the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill as a victory, when I see it as a really big step back because of its support of the prison-industrial complex and because of the extra policing it's going to create in our communities. It's always really hard in these moments: it's the first real legal recognition of trans people at the federal level should be a gift, and instead, I see it as supporting these systems that I struggle against. So I wanted to feel really proud, but at the same time, the fact that it happened by increasing policing and sentencing and potentially putting trans folks at greater risk, is a real struggle for me. And I feel similarly about Don't Ask Don't Tell and gay marriage, the other two major pushes. The focus on the military-industrial complex and the focus on marriage, instead of trying to get civil rights and basic human rights for all queer people, is just not an agenda I can support.

CA: What, in your opinion, is the biggest challenge facing feminism today?

JT: I think it's the struggle to incorporate a gender analysis into feminism. I think a lot of feminist work, unfortunately but understandably, starts by accepting the world we live in in terms of gender as just fact, that the world that we live in is divided by gender in a binary way, and that within that reality we have to fight for women's rights, women's equality, women's liberation. I understand the gender binary, or the forcing of all people into boxes of "male" and "female," as a crucial tool of patriarchy. That binary itself is used to oppress everyone who doesn't fit into one box or the other. It's a way to keep the people who fit into the most limited and the most racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, classist and otherwise privileged definition of men in power at the expense of everyone else. And the work is happening, but it needs to be understood as a vital part of feminism that we have to critique and understand and dismantle the compulsion to force everyone into the gender binary. Until we do that, feminism's always going to hit up against that wall and only get so far. And as long as we accept that gender binary, it's going to keep us from reaching liberation because it's just going to hold us back that little bit more.

CA: You're going to a desert island, and you get to take one food, one drink and one feminist. What do you pick?

JT: I have to keep a feminist from the world? I would feel so bad about that! Well, I guess if I had to deprive the world of a feminist, it would probably have to be Kate Bornstein. Her ideas apply to my own personal life experience in such a powerful, intense way. They've just been so meaningful to understanding myself. My drink will be a dirty vodka martini with blue cheese olives, and for food I'm going to have to take pear pie with a gruyère crust.

What We Missed

2009-11-07T00:39:31Z

Actress Gabrielle Union blogs in a smart and honest way about the horrific responses to the Richmond rape case, and about her own rape. Via Shakes.

More research shows that comprehensive sex education results in increased condom use among teens and lowers their chances of contracting HIV.

Gawker argues that the woman who shot Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to stop his shooting spree is solid proof that we need to allow women in combat.

A new UK report finds that institutional racism in England schools prohibits ethnic minorities from being promoted and reaching top posts. 44% of folks reported being discriminated against.

Feminist artist Nancy Spero has died at the age of 83. She has written: "I have come to the conclusion that the art world has to join us, women artists, not we join it. When women are in leadership roles and gain rewards and recognition, then perhaps 'we' (women and men) can all work together in art world actions."

New campaign for HIV testing excludes women

2009-11-06T21:30:58Z

"Status is Everything": These are the words repeated in the new HIV testing campaign to be launched by the Newark, NJ African American Office of Gay Concerns (AAOGC).

The website is not functional yet, as the campaign will be revealed on December 1, 2009, and officially launched in January 2010, but their preview photo shoot for the advertising campaign was released on flickr this week.

Photos feature young gay African American men with the caption "Status is Everything," and the ad campaign will refer viewers to a hotline and website where they can schedule free HIV testing at local clinics.

Not found in this campaign, however, is the need for a cogent campaign that's inclusive of young women of color. In 2007, blacks accounted for 44% of the 455,636 people living with AIDS in the 50 states and District of Columbia. And as Advocates for Youth reports,

Black women and Latinas account for 79 percent of all reported HIV infections among 13- to 19-year-old women and 75 percent of HIV infections among 20- to 24-year-old women in the United States although, together, they represent only about 26 percent of U.S. women these ages.

One idea that has circulated this year accuses black men on the "down low," that is, closeted black men who have sexual exposure to other men while dating women, of contributing to the HIV epidemic and women's infection rates in the US. Yet, the director of the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, Kevin Fenton, concluded that the cause of increased infection rates among black women was instead the incidence of black men with multiple heterosexual partners. He cites data that shows a lack of bisexual self-identification among the community of HIV-positive black men. (Is it possible that the accusation that "down low" men spread HIV is an extension of the race-fueled trend of the feminization of black men?)

This advertising campaign, while potentially powerful in the gay male community, won't help the black women who comprise 61 percent of all new HIV cases among women.

One thing is certain: Newark's new campaign, while not targeted toward the women affected most by HIV, is a nice change from other disturbing HIV advertising we've seen.

Rihanna talks to Diane Sawyer

2009-11-06T20:35:25Z

We'll have more to say on this once the full interview is up, but for now, check out this moving excerpt of Rihanna's interview with Diane Sawyer.

The Wire's gender problem

2009-11-06T19:31:31Z

Stringer Bell is confused. "Whaddaya mean The Wire's not feminist?"

The Wire, the HBO series that ran for five seasons, will apparently live on, despite its shelf life, in a class at Harvard. And Professor William Wilson, the self-admitted "huge fan" who will be teaching the class, is high off of The Wire's Kool-Aid:

"I do not hesitate to say that it has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality, more than any other media event or scholarly publication," Wilson told the audience before poking fun at himself, "including studies by social scientists."

As a racial justice advocate who loves politics and sexually diverse representations of people of color, one can't help but be a sucka for The Wire. (Also, I am not going to lie. I might have dedicated a Facebook status, or ten, to good-God-what-have-you-done-to-me Idris Elba.) But when you fasten your feminist goggles and take another gander, you are bound to get bamboozled, psyched out and sucka-punched by yet another attempt to be progressive -- hold the feminism.

Elizabeth Ault, a bad-ass feminist at the University of Minnesota, begins to sum up The Wire's gender problem in the title of her paper: "You Can Help Yourself, But Don't Take Too Much": African-American Motherhood on The Wire. At one point she states,

The Wire is quite capable of creating sympathy for the struggles of men... shows us characters like alcoholic police officer Jimmy McNulty, strategizing drug kingpin/real estate developer Stringer Bell, and corrupt (okay, maybe just stupid) cop Thomas Hauk, and doesn't dictate how we interpret their storylines; rather, much of the show is full of precisely the sort of representational ambiguity that obviates calls for "more positive representations" and earns the "authentic" plaudit--except, again, when it comes to black mothers, women without the social or cultural capital of those men.

Then she goes for the jugular:

The institutions that The Wire is so devoted to condemning have failed these women too. In order to make its damning assessment of urban politics within its own institutional context of Time/Warner-owned HBO, The Wire must make some compromises. In this case, black mothers' sexualities, their subjectivities, their desires, and therefore their fitness as parents is the price the show, like so many before it, is willing to pay.

Her paper has not been published yet. But it's chock full of good stuff about the director's decision to opt-out of "woman of color feminism" and her analysis of the director's reinvestment in "heteropatriarchal family." I don't know what Wilson has planned on the syllabus, but he needs to give our girl Liz a call. Because the urban inequality problem he rails on about is gendered.

Target Women: Beauty Contraptions

2009-11-06T18:23:47Z

I just had to put this up, not only because Sarah Haskins is the awesome, because I've been meaning to post about that neckline slimmer for quite a while now. Intense.

My hometown now has an openly gay mayor

2009-11-06T17:09:12Z

By this point, you've probably all heard plenty about Tuesday's election. About the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia that went to Republicans, about the loss in Maine that overturned the legislative decision to allow same-sex couples to marry.

There was one piece of news that literally hit home with me on Tuesday--and that was the news that my North Carolina hometown, Chapel Hill, now has an openly gay mayor.

I often talk about what growing up in North Carolina was like for me--how in many ways my public high school experience there was pretty limiting. Being gay was just simply not an option in my teenage world in Chapel Hill. I didn't know any gay people, at least not any that I could relate with. My peers and I were very focused on dating, and dating boys specifically. I was in the closet for more than three years after leaving home--it took a while to undo some of the socialization of my childhood and meet those queer folks who I did relate to and whose friendship allowed me to explore my own sexuality.

Chapel Hill is an interesting place within North Carolina because in many ways it's much more liberal than the surrounding cities and regions. Jesse Helms, the well-known and always controversial former Senator representing North Carolina was often quoted for saying:

Why build a zoo when we can just put up a fence around Chapel Hill?

He was referring to the liberalism of my town--but what I've come to realize since leaving North Carolina almost eight years ago is that it is, in the end, all relative. Chapel Hill was liberal in comparison to the rest of North Carolina, but particularly for me as a young person there, that didn't mean too much.

So now, looking back, I wonder if having a gay mayor would have changed things for me growing up. Would it have made me see that being gay was an option, even for a political figure? Would it have opened up my world a little bit?

Maybe not. But after meeting a young person from my high school at a recent presentation and hearing him say that things there haven't changed so much since I left, I want to hold on to some hope that this could be the catalyst for a new reality for the young lgbtq people growing up in my town.

First woman ever broadcasts a World Series game

2009-11-06T16:07:37Z

It's about time.

Whether you're at the parade in New York today yet again celebrating the Yankees World Series win or cursing their existence, there's one thing I think we can all be happy about - Yankees broadcaster Susyn Waldman made history last Wednesday by becoming the first woman in history to broadcast a World Series Game.

h/t to reader Cathy.

Take Action Now to Pass Health Care Reform!

2009-11-06T15:14:41Z

On Saturdays, I am Professor Foxy, but the rest of the week I do federal level advocacy focused on improving the health of LGBT people. This Saturday, the House of Representatives has a historic opportunity to do just that by passing its reform bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), TOMORROW, November 7. We have never come this far before - this is our chance to help make history!

It is crucial for the LGBT community that this bill passes with a strong majority. The House bill includes numerous provisions that are key to the health and well-being of our community, including:

a strong public option that greatly expands coverage

data collection that includes sexual orientation and gender identity

strict prohibitions on discrimination in health care and insurance coverage

Our community is the under- and uninsured. We are seniors and youth, women, people of color, immigrants, people living with HIV and AIDS, and transgender people. We are too often discriminated against by insurance companies and health care providers and denied the care that we need. The status quo harms our community and our families, and we deserve better.

Tell your Representatives to pass LGBT-inclusive health care reform NOW. CALL Your Representatives using the toll-free number 1-877-264-HCAN (1-877-264-4226) and ask them to support the Affordable Health Care for America Act. You can also email them through the House's web site. Speak up today for LGBT-inclusive health care reform. Let's fulfill the promise of real reform by making our voices heard about the future of health care in America.

Emma Thompson to remove name from Polanski petition

2009-11-06T14:01:08Z

And because of a blogger, no less! As a big Emma Thompson fan, I'm relieved to find that after blog reader and blogger Caitlin to put together a petition urging Thompson to take her name off of Bernard-Henri Lévy's petition supporting Roman Polanski, it looks like the actress has had a change of heart. Reports Caitlin, who met Thompson after speaking at Exeter University:

Emma did not have much time between meetings, but she gave me all of the time that she had. I asked her why she had signed the petition, and she explained about how well she knows Polanski, how terrible his life has been, and how forgiving the survivor of the rape all those years ago now is. She said she thought the intentions of the judge were unclear, as were the intentions of those who arrested him recently. She told me that a lot of her friends had rung her up asking her to sign the petition, so there had been a certain amount of pressure. She said that she had already been thinking a lot about the petition, as others had expressed their dismay at her signing it.
I handed her our petition and the comments. She read them both through thoroughly, and came back to me. She said, while she supported Polanski as a friend, a crime is a crime. I don't know whether she had realised the extent of Polanski's crime, but she is now fully aware. She will remove her name from the petition - in fact, she said she would call today and sort it out. Even though, she stressed, Polanski has had some truly terrible experiences in his lifetime, experiences that we couldn't even imagine and which should not be taken out of the equation, she agreed that she could not put her name to a petition asking for his release.

She also asked Caitlin to pass along a message to petition signers, saying, "Know that I will remove my name because of you, and all of the good work that you have been doing. I have read your petition. I have heard you. And I will listen." Just awesome. So a big thank you to Emma, but more importantly - thank you Caitlin!

Via Shakesville, who had a hand in this too.

What We Missed.

2009-11-05T21:57:04Z

On sex panic and technology.

GLAAD has put out a media reference guide. Please check it out now.

New Moon Magazine is in need of support. Read about them and donate.

Justice who denies interracial couples right to marry has quit.

via Racewire on beauty pageants being racialized.

Why Won't Those Big Mean Feminists Let Me Have My Naked Playboy Fun?

2009-11-05T21:04:28Z

Johanna Kruppa thinks feminists are too uptight in their denouncement of "nudey pics" in Playboy.

"I think they suffer from lack of knowledge and tunnel vision. How many of those self-important, so-called 'feminists' have been on the set when a celebrity shot a Playboy spread? There you go. What is feminist about discriminating a photo shoot just because it involves female (partial) nudity that happens to give men pleasure? Pathetic," Krupa told Tarts in an exclusive interview.

Well, let me unbunch my panties so I can effectively debunk this idea that feminists are too uptight to see how empowering posing for magazines like, Playboy and Maxim are for women.

Feminists have opposing view points on pornography and other forms of erotic art, that is not a new story, but suggesting that feminists don't get how "empowering" it is to fit into society's standards of able-bodied, white, cis-gendered, thinness, well let's just say we totally get that. I am not saying the act isn't empowering for her, like she said, I wasn't there, but the process that empowers her is embedded in a really specific idea of what a woman should look like and the kind of woman that "turns men on." It is not the function of turning men on that is the sexist part to me, but the unrealistic expectation put on women through the production and proliferation of images like Kruppa's and the corresponding value put on women's bodies through this very same process. And the corresponding sexist vitriol spread in magazines like Maxim. Put a big girl on the cover of Playboy. Just once. Prove me wrong.

What is interesting is that Kruppa combines her criticism of feminists with America's inability to embrace sexuality over violence. She has a point there, it is true that in many ways violence is more acceptable in popular culture than sexuality, but that is not a problem of feminism, that is a function of sexism. Feminism can only make that better.

OK Cupid Study Finds Bisexual Women Most Likely To Consider Suicide.

2009-11-05T19:39:21Z

Last week I linked to a study from OK Cupid about race and dating. OK Cupid released some more data, including who likes to use strap-ons and what slang daters are familiar with, and who thinks they are a genius (guess who thinks they are geniuses more often than not?) The data I found most striking however, was the data on who has considered suicide.

OK Cupid blog notes that the straight identified people are less likely than "other" to consider suicide. But the number that struck out to me was that the most likely group to consider suicide are bisexual identified women.

Thoughts?

Thanks to Dave for the link.

Excedrin for Your Racial Tension Headache.

2009-11-05T18:49:00Z

A little old, a lot of awesome.

You know, we love the Queen here at Feministing, despite her complexities.