Deborah Siegel, over at Girl w/ Pen, is trying to start a little infectious blog quiz. If you’ve got one, paste these questions and add one of your own, then post it up at your blog so we can spread the knowledge.

1. In 2009, women make up what percent of the U.S. Congress?
A. 3%
B. 17%
C. 33%
D. 50%

2. How many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are female?
A. 12
B. 28
C. 59
D. 84

3. Who was the first First Lady to create her own media presence (ie hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column and a monthly magazine column, and host a weekly radio show)?
A. Eleanor Roosevelt
B. Jacqueline Kennedy
C. Pat Nixon
D. Hillary Clinton

4. The Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced to Congress in:
A. 1923
B. 1942
C. 1969
D. 1971

5. Who was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?
A. Phyllis Wheatley
B. Alice Walker
C. Toni Morrison
D. Maya Angelou

6. What percentage of union members are women today?
A. 10%
B. 25%
C. 35%
D. 45%

7. What year did the Griswold v. Connecticut decision guarantee married women the right to birth control?
A. 1960
B. 1965
C. 1969
D. 1950

8. The only person to win two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences was both female and Polish. She had a relative who won one as well. Those people are:
A. Marie Curie & her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie
B. Marie Curie & her husband, Pierre Curie
C. Marie Curie & her son in law, Frederic Joliot-Curie
D. All of the above

Answers after the jump… & thanks to Prof. Megan Pickett for my question.

ANSWERS: 1:B, 2:A, 3:A, 4:A, 5:C, 6:D, 7:B, 8:D

Young male lizards in South Africa imitate females to fool aggressive older males into leaving them alone, in an example of transvestism in the natural world, according to South African and Australian reaseachers. They found that young male Augrabies flat lizards (pictured) delayed

displaying the extravagent coloration of sexually-mature males until they were able to defend themselves adequately.

Of course in the natural world that means dressing down, as the males wear the bright colors and the females are something like dun.

Then again, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf seemed happy enough in her plain black house dresses.

& What a mess he inherited, but still it’s incredible.

Here are some of the references made today, either directly or indirectly:

• Lowery opened with the words of what’s called the “negro national anthem” – called “lift every voice and sing” – originally written to introduce Booker T Washington.
• tanks into tractors = swords into plowshares. Interesting choice for a wartime president.
  
• the reference in the poem not just to picking cotton but to picking lettuce, which was a reference to the UFW & Cesar Chavez.
• Feinstein mentioned the ballot or the bullet, which is Malcolm X’s most famous speech.

Anyone catch any others?

Queerty (tongue in cheerk) predicts Memphis will reach out to the trans community as a result. I doubt it. They’re 2nd in homicides in the country, which means everyone – not just trans people – have been victims of violence (via Grand Divisions).

What a way to start a new year.

The Best of Miriam Makeba and the Skylarks – recorded in the 1950s – is one of my all-time spirit lifters; I have no idea what I’m singing but I sing along whenever these tracks come on. (I’d highly recommend this one, especially, to anyone who loves rocksteady.)

She had such a sparkling, clear voice – the kind that makes you think of beautiful sunny days.

The Trans for Obama campaign continues! It’s your time to stand up & be counted, trans democrats, independents, and republicans! If you’re voting for Obama, why not make your vote count twice?

First, here’s a reminder of an event way early in the campaign that has been forgotten by the “they’re both against gay marriage” set: Obama made a point of shutting down homophobic sentiments when he could have just let the moment pass. For those who think that them both being against gay marriage means there’s no difference between them when it comes to LGBT issues, please remember that McCain chose a running mate who is for “ex gay” therapy.

Then go look at these photos. I love that this photographer just kind of knew – as did Richard Avedon (watch till the end) – that Obama would become President Obama. Look at the one of his shoes. Of him cleaning up the drips from his ice cream. At the faces of the young people listening to and looking at him.

My firm belief is that Obama is an extraordinary president for extraordinary circumstances. That we are in the latter is in no doubt, considering this week’s economic news; there are lay-offs happening in all sectors of the economy. That the former is true – that Obama is the right president for this time – is only something I can be sure of in my head and heart. His decision to run when he did, his unbelievable good planning with making it to the nomination = all of these things, the odds he’s beat, tell me that his time is now.

And now it is yours. Go out and vote – early, if you can, to avoid the lines, or on November 4th.

Obama Pride is honored by the enthusiastic support of so many in the transgender community and we congratulate all the participants in Trans Blog for Obama day for their huge success!

We’re very proud of us, too, and of Obama Pride for keeping LGBT issues visible for us all.

What’s even more important is that one of my favorite bloggers has written a remarkable piece about Obama from the perspective of someone who is female, African-American, and trans. Monica Roberts is a shining star in this community, and wow is that apparent from this current post of hers. My apologies that she did not hear about Trans for Obama Day until noon on Monday; the event’s organization happened very quickly, and while I tried to get to everyone – and tell them to let everyone else they knew to get on board – Ms. Roberts should have gotten her own invitation.

Sara also has a new post up about why she’ll vote for Obama now instead of voting for Kucinich in protest. & That’s exactly what Monday – and indeed this whole Trans for Obama week – was all about.

But I find this show’s real appeal is the cultural history & the music: because it’s historical, they play a lot of good shit when they’re recreating a scene in the 1950s, or 60s, or 1978, or 2004. Lo & behold, someone has compiled all of the music from all the different episodes. Like Episode 21, “Torn,” which has music by Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton, or Episode 6, “Static” with Gene Vincent and Little Richard.

Musicheads, do check it out. They show hours & hours of it late at night on TNT.

Now Women’s Voices is plunging North Carolina into the same confusion. State officials tell Facing South they are still receiving calls from frustrated and confused voters, wondering why “Lamont Williams” is offering to send them a “voter registration packet” after the deadline for mail-in registration for the primaries has passed.

In correspondence with North Carolina election officials, Women’s Voices founder and President Page Gardner merely said that the disruptive timing was an “unfortunate coincidence” — a strange alibi for a group with their level of resources and sophistication.

There are other questions about Women’s Voices’ outreach efforts. Although the group purports to be targeting “unmarried women,” their calls and mailings don’t fit the profile. Kevin Farmer in Durham, who first recorded the call, is a white male. Many of the recipients are African-American; Rev. Nelson Johnson, who is a married, male and African-American, reported that his house was called four times by the mysterious “Lamont Williams.”

Please let anyone you know in North Carolina that these robo-calls are probably illegal & contain misleading information. How much WVWV’s intent is to buck up Clinton’s chances in the primary remain to be seen, but in a state where something like 45% of the voters are African-American, sending voters confusing and wrong information is anti-democratic. If it’s intentional, then I’d call it racist, too.

White feminists, you’re really fucking up here.

(via Daily Kos).

So without pointing out every phrase and person involved, I’ll just say a few things as a white feminist who really only consciously became a feminist after reading Michele Wallace, and who, for nearly 10 years, worked for author Walter Mosley, who has written and talked about the absence of POC in the publishing industry, specifically.

The under representation of WOC in publishing has been a problem for a long time. The under representation of POC has been as well, in general. It’s not just chronic; it’s really fucking awful.

As a CCNY student, I’ll tell you what I’ve seen: that mostly the way this kind of discrimination and prejudice play out is that people hire people they know, or they hire people that other people they know recommend to them, and they all tend to know the same people. The networks of power & privilege in this country are still white, & largely male, but where they’re female, they’re also mostly white.

& It’s a sad state of affairs. Again, this coming from someone who found most of my feminism through the words of WOC, whether it was Wallace or hooks or Anzaldua. Being from a working class background that didn’t necessarily encourage intellectualism, it was the WOC who wrote about feminism who I understood best, and who spoke more closely to my own experiences of extended family, matriarchy, and invisibility. But of course I couldn’t understand what they were saying about what it’s like to be black in the world. I could try, but mostly I couldn’t ever understand it, and could only learn when to STFU and let WOC speak, which is what I try to do.

It’s not the job of WOC to educate white women about themselves. White women need to learn about WOC precisely because of their own privilege as white (just as non-trans people have a responsibility to learn about trans people, just as men have to learn about women, etc.). It is vital for white women to recognize WOC in whatever field they’re in and go to extra lengths to make sure they’re credited, because if there’s one thing white feminists need to understand it’s that if we have it rough, WOC have it harder, hands down. If white women are objectified, sexualized, assumed to be incompetent, and underpaid, black women experience all that x2. Maybe to the power of 2, actually.

If you want to read more on this particular brouhaha, there’s more to read:

• Seal Press blog post on the subject and Brooke Warner’s apology.
• BlackAmazon’s original “fuck Seal Press” post.
• AngryBlackWoman’s solidarity statement.
• Salon’s broadsheet review.
• The post by the woman whose book this was all about.
• a final word for BFP.

There are all sorts of links within those, if you really must keep reading.

A final thought: one of the good things about having gone to CCNY is that I was in the minority as a white feminist; my asking questions or otherwise being ignorant didn’t become a burden to the one black woman available, as it might be at a lot of private colleges where the majority is still white women and minorities are still too few. That is, my ignorance could be spread around; it was the job of 15 black women to school me, as opposed to it being the job of one black woman to school 15 of her white peers. That made a huge difference. Still & all, I was lucky for being of a socioeconomic class where that was possible, and for being in an educational situation where my learning anything cross-cultural was encouraged but believe me, mostly I listened and read, a lot, before I even opened my mouth. The thing is, there were 800 languages spoken on campus, so that African-Americans learned from black South Africans and Caribbean Americans; Muslims learned from Hindus and Christians, etc. In a nutshell, the cross-cultural experience wasn’t only racial, which made it a lot easier to be an ignorant white person from the suburbs; it was always a revelation to many of my peers and writing students that all American white people weren’t rich, too. But white women in many other contexts can be quickly accused of fetishization or cultural imperialism if they want to learn from WOC, which is why more campuses and workplaces need to be diversified so that everyone is learning about everyone else. Otherwise, white women need to seek out women like Jasmyne Cannick, whose talk I presented here yesterday, in order to learn. In a pedagogical setting, or an activist setting, learning is much less of a problem. Creating more spaces where black people can talk about their issues is vital, as well.

In a sense, then, white folks: don’t make your ignorance someone else’s problem. It’s yours. Check out this stunning piece by joan olsson for white anti-racists in the meantime, and learn when to check yourself.

But do I think any feminist press should be boycotted? No. Any publishers still around right now are surviving by a string; female authors generally aren’t power brokers themselves. Putting pressure on feminist presses before putting it on mainstream presses seems foolhardy to me – the usual fight over the bottom rung of the ladder.