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Plan B?

For those of you who have been following the issue of pharmacists deciding not to fill hormone prescriptions due to them following their conscience, US District Court Judge Jeanne Scott of Illionois just ruled in favor of Ethan Vandersand – one such pharmacist, who refused to fill a prescription for emergency contraception.

Despite a 2005 law issued by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) that requires Illinois pharmacists to either dispense or ensure timely access to Plan B upon request, Judge Jeanne Scott ruled that Vandersand was protected under the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. Wal-Mart and Walgreen Co. — which have both terminated or disciplined employees for refusing to fill Plan B requests — maintain that Illinois’ conscience laws do not apply to pharmacists.

From the Feminist Daily News.

I’m curious if there are any reported instances where a pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for a trans person’s hormones.

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Julia Serano Does New York

We’re back from a lovely couple of days in PA with my family & will get right back into the groove with Julia Serano’s reading tomorrow night at Bluestockings.

She’ll be reading from her book Whipping Girl at 7pm, & of course we’ll be there. If you’ve never been, you can find directions on their website. If you haven’t read her book yet, do, but in the meantime you can read the interview with me & Julia in a recent issue of Curve (which I’m told is not quite on newsstands, but will be soonly). & If you’ve already read that, & can’t make the reading, then go read some of Julia’s writing on her website – I especially recommend her “Barette Manifesto.”

& Yes, I’ll be doing a Five Questions With… interview with her soonly.

But wow is the weather better in the mountains of PA.

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Is This New York City?

Or Berkeley? The NY City Council apparently has resolved every other problem in New York, as now they’ve gotten around to banning words. First was the N word, & now the B word is on the list.

The B word? What is this, fourth grade? The word is bitch. & This whole idea is idiotic. Please leave our language alone, & maybe instead help women who are suffering with domestic violence, sexual harassment, or who are having a hard time raising children while working full-time.

Surely the NY City Council has some real problems to solve, or I’m going to write them a letter bitching them out.

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Coal Country

Betty & I are spending some time with my family today & Monday; we plan to be back sometime on Tuesday. We’re going to coal country, where my mother’s peeps are from, as it’s my grandaunt’s 85th birthday – yes, she’s my grandaunt Helen, there really is only one page in the Polish baby names book – while my parents are up north for a visit, too. We’ll go revisit some of the places they brought me as a kid, but with my sister’s kids, who’ve grown up going to that region on their summer holidays and tromping around what they call “the bush” (otherwise known as the woods) the same as I did.

It’ll be four generations in two cars, which to me is always a lovely, if complicated, experience.

Since I’ll be in coal country, I’ll be thinking about those trapped Utah miners & their families, of course. This bullshit cowboy mining should be illegal, by the way. I’m sure John L. Lewis is turning in his grave now that they’re even stripping the pillars. Greedy bastards. Please keep in mind, folks, that while trapped miners are always a good “human interest” though tragic news story, we don’t often hear about the accidents that just kill miners outright – not here, or in China, or in India.

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I’m Your Girl.

A woman on Hardball keeps referring to Hillary Clinton as a “radical feminist.” Um, for the record, Hillary Clinton is not & never was a radfem. Nope. Not. At. All.

What’s interesting is seeing an African American woman defend the use of the word “girl.” Interesting because I can’t imagine her defending an African American man being called or calling himself “boy.” For damn good reasons.

If Chris Matthews says “spunky” one more time I’m going to stuff a bra in his mouth.

I don’t care what Hillary calls herself. It was her vote on the war in Iraq that’s the problem.

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Here We Go Again

So it seems that numbnut J. Michael Bailey has gotten more press, this time in a New York magazine article published in June that’s just now been picked up by feministing.com. Apparently Bailey, this time around, can tell whether someone’s gay by measuring their ring and index finger.

Next up: J. Michael Bailey gets taken seriously for telling people that they have the sissy gene by asking people whether they look at their nails by holding their hands palms down or if they bend the tops of their fingers over with their hands palms-up.