io9, that groovy scifi mag, has a series of French postcards of “women of the future” which were created in 1902. They’re kind of adorable since the women – even in masculine military costumes – seem to be wearing corsets.
That said, they did get rid of the term “mademoiselle” in time for this year’s women’s day, and of course they did also give us Joan of Arc and Simone de Beauvoir.
It turns out the woman who Rush called a slut is also a pro-trans advocate, too, who has written on the discriminatory practices of health insurance companies which don’t cover GRS. And this from an article that wasn’t happy and excited about it except to expose her as “out there”.
So, trans community, what we’ve got here is an amazing synergy of arguments for bodily autonomy and personal agency. In other words, a trans feminist has just helped clarify exactly why the trans & feminist communities are innately related and politically coherent.
Sounds like my kinda bandwagon.
In the meantime, something like 28 advertisers have pulled out of Rush Limbaugh’s dumb-ass show. Amazingly enough, it doesn’t take an advanced degree for people to figure out that a man who thinks taxpayer-supported birth control means the public owns women’s bodies is, well, an atavistic, arrogant jerk.
Or, as we used to say: FLUSH RUSH.
Rush Limbaugh (kinda) apologizes for calling a woman a slut, and does so by explaining that birth control is somehow a conversation about “sexual recreational activities.”
Talk about not getting it. Amazing how arrogant someone who can’t get pregnant can be about birth control.
France has officially dropped Mademoiselle from the lexicon, as there is no equivalent for young men. Abbreviated Mlle., the term was often used to imply a woman’s unmarried state; symbolically, her virginal or simply youthful state.
But there is no equivalent for men, as “monsieur” is used for married & unmarried (& we assume, virginal and sexually experienced) men.
Long overdue, in my opinion, but it’s great to see this change codified.
“You know who’s not ‘all Catholics now’? All Catholics now. 98% of Catholic women have used birth control and the other 2% are the ones always trying to get the softball team started.”
Speaking of: if the real thing is making birth control free, I highly recommend homosexuality, but I’m pretty sure Santorum won’t get behind that.
Not only has NJ passed a marriage equality bill through the state house & senate, but they don’t have enough votes to over-ride the governor’s (expected) veto.
That would be 8, folks.
It’s cheering to see so much progress, even while the usual misogynist bullshit comes out of the GOP.
Yay, everyone’s happy Komen changed their decision. But I am a cynical, suspicious type, and I read their statement, which says:
“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”
That last bit, the “while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions” just left a back door, wide, wide open. By which I mean, Komen just figured out a way to say, the next time they don’t fund Planned Parenthood, that their FUNDERS choose not to. And if they tend toward finding funders that are more conservative – which this current Director of Komen seems likely to do, Komen will have found an official way not to fund Planned Parenthood and to Pass the buck.
… is 39 years old today, & still, thankfully, the law of the land. It is not, of course, guaranteed, and the pro life forces are quite aware that the next presidential choice of a Supreme Court justice is incredibly important, and they’re feeling pretty cocky after the 2010 elections.
So for those of you who are “fiscal conservatives” – I put that in quotes because I don’t think you can separate fiscal issues from social ones, since how we make and spend money, is, ultimately, a moral issue – who are thinking of voting against Obama, but who are feminists, think twice.
Being Pro Choice is not being Pro Abortion. I have yet to meet anyone – feminist or not – who is pro abortion. What we are, rather, is feminist, and think a woman’s life – which is actual, apparent, and breathing – should have at least some influence on the potential life – which is debatable, uncertain, and not breathing – she is carrying.
I love this. A “Plus Size” model – in scare quotes because I find the phrase idiotic – did a photo shoot with your average (skinny) model, exactly to show the difference.
What’s striking to me is how much she looks like an adult woman to the other model’s more child-like appearance. And honestly, that kind of freaks me out.
Anyway, I think she’s gorgeous.
Wow. Margaret Cho rightfully lost her shit & in so doing wrote us all a manifesta:
I grew up hard and am still hard and I don’t care. I did not choose this face or this body and I have learned to live with it and love it and celebrate it and adorn it with tremendous drawings from the greatest artists in the world and I feel good and powerful like a nation that has never been free and now after many hard won victories is finally fucking free. I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.
I fly my flag of self-esteem for all those who have been told they were ugly and fat and hurt and shamed and violated and abused for the way they look and told time and time again that they were “different” and therefore unlovable. Come to me and I will tell you and show you how beautiful and loved you are and you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the mirror and truly believe it. If you are offended by my anger and my might at defending my borders and my people you do not deserve entry into my beloved and magnificent country.
Read the whole thing at Jezebel or on Cho’s blog.
I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not pretty enough, that you curse too much, that you don’t like the right things, that you are “‘different’ and therefore unlovable”. They are only keeping you from your freedom.
It’s profoundly moving to see that someone like Margaret Cho – famous, funny, rude Margaret Cho – still needs to punch back so hard against someone who is telling her to be something other than what she is. Makes me feel an ounce better about having felt the need to do the same thing when I was told what I needed to do to fit in here. Sometimes I wonder if those of us who “grew up hard and am still hard” get read as a lot tougher than we are, & so people feel free to critique when they might not if a person were obviously vulnerable. Hrm.
Women make 10% of the world’s income, but own only 1% of the world’s property while contributing 66% of the labor.
No, really. It’s almost something out of a feminist sci-fi:
Women fearful of being raped can insert the Rape-Axe condom inside themselves like a diaphragm or tampon. If her worst fears come true, and a man attempts to rape her, the Rape-Axe’s inside hooks attach themselves to the penis and don’t come off, instead getting even tighter and stopping the man from being able to urinate. The only way to remove it is by seeing a doctor—which will obviously help with prosecution.
Oddly enough, via Gizmodo.
Topeka, Kansas isn’t currently enforcing domestic violence laws put on the books to protect women. They say they can’t afford to.
& Honestly, I’d like to know when exactly we’re going to realize that our courts are clogged with minor drug offenses instead.
This article on women characters in movies – skip to the end – is very funny. I think her Ethereal Weirdo is my favorite, although I will admit to having women like her. They’re usually stoners. I’ve always thought of her as the Cortazar Hopscotch fantasy woman, because I dated a guy who actually admitted, out loud, that he fell in love with the woman in that novel when he read it.
This girl can’t be pinned down and may or may not show up when you make concrete plans with her. She wears gauzy blouses and braids. She likes to dance in the rain and she weeps uncontrollably if she sees a sign for a missing dog or cat. She might spin a globe, place her finger on a random spot, and decide to move there. The Ethereal Weirdo appears a lot in movies, but nowhere else. If she were from real life, people would think she was a homeless woman and would cross the street to avoid her. But she is essential to the male fantasy that even if a guy is boring he deserves a woman who will find him fascinating and perk up his dreary life by forcing him to go skinny-dipping in a stranger’s pool.
But no post about women in film is complete without Bechdel’s Test for Women in Movies:
Some days it’s hard to come up with any that do pass the test. Help me out, readers?
There is a rapist in my old hood of Park Slope, and the NYPD are completely fucking up the investigation. They’re following women home without identifying themselves and asking them about their clothes. It’s unbelievably obnoxious, staggering in its stupidity.
So sign the petition from change.org to get the Chief of Ds to pay attention. More
An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk, it’s titled, but it should be called how to dismantle white privilege in feminist movements, or something similar.
Black women in the U.S. have worked tirelessly since the 19th century colored women’s clubs to rid society of the sexist/racist vernacular of slut, jezebel, hottentot, mammy, mule, sapphire; to build our sense of selves and redefine what women who look like us represent. Although we vehemently support a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants anytime, anywhere, within the context of a “SlutWalk” we don’t have the privilege to walk through the streets of New York City, Detroit, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, L.A. etc., either half-naked or fully clothed self-identifying as “sluts” and think that this will make women safer in our communities an hour later, a month later, or a year later. Moreover, we are careful not to set a precedent for our young girls by giving them the message that we can self-identify as “sluts” when we’re still working to annihilate the word “ho”, which deriving from the word “hooker” or “whore”, as in “Jezebel whore” was meant to dehumanize. Lastly, we do not want to encourage our young men, our Black fathers, sons and brothers to reinforce Black women’s identities as “sluts” by normalizing the term on t-shirts, buttons, flyers and pamphlets.
The personal is political. For us, the problem of trivialized rape and the absence of justice are intertwined with race, gender, sexuality, poverty, immigration and community. As Black women in America, we are careful not to forget this or we may compromise more than we are able to recover. Even if only in name, we cannot afford to label ourselves, to claim identity, to chant dehumanizing rhetoric against ourselves in any movement. We can learn from successful movements like the Civil Rights movement, from Women’s Suffrage, the Black Nationalist and Black Feminist movements that we can make change without resorting to the taking-back of words that were never ours to begin with, but in fact heaved upon us in a process of dehumanization and devaluation.
Great stuff. Go ahead & read the whole thing, especially if you’re a white feminist who is excited about SlutWalk. It won’t ruin it for you – it’ll just give you some context and maybe a little humility.
She was a rock journalist before anyone was paying attention:
In 1952, she joined The Plain Dealer and was assigned, typically for the time, to the society pages.
She found her lifework on Sept. 15, 1964, the day four lads from Liverpool came to Cleveland. No one at the paper was interested in covering the Beatles, and Ms. Scott volunteered.
How women’s careers are born: good luck & excellent timing. It would be nice if women got the kinds of careers they deserve instead of needing both, but too often – especially for the “first woman to ____________”, we seem to need a lot more than talent and hard work.
