Category: feminism

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Blog for Choice

Today is Blog for Choice Day. It’s been 36 years since Roe V. Wade, & while a lot of feminists are breathing easier as a result of Tuesday’s inauguration of Barack Obama as our new president, you can’t really ever stop worrying about the way they get our laws all over our (female) bodies.

In a nutshell, I’m pro-choice because

  • because this planet is too crowded
  • because abortion will always be available, but it will only be available to wealthier women if it’s illegal, which is class discrimination
  • because women deserve to decide their own lives & when & how they want to have children
  • because they never, ever report on where the father is when a teenaged girl leaves her baby on someone’s doorstep (or in a local dumpster, etc).
  • because women don’t always choose when they’re having sex, even if they’re not raped
  • because younger women, especially, may not have the self-confidence to insist on safe sex

(But it really is a huge relief to have a pro-choice president. At last.)

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Raped Soldiers

Here’s another update – and more chilling news – about the astronomical levels of rape and sexual harassment inflicted on female soldiers serving in the US military. To really add insult to injury, the military’s health insurance plan doesn’t pay for rape kits in many circumstances.

This is embarassing and pathetic for us as a country.

In the meantime, Ann Dunwoody has become the first female four-star general. Maybe she can do something about it.

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Weiss Woman

More and more we’re starting to see some very serious venues take on some aspect of trans issues, whether it’s 20/20 last year with GID and trans youth or The Atlantic Monthly’s current article on the same topic.

But I didn’t really expect Harvard Business Review to publish an article about workplace issues, or rather, I wouldn’t have if I didn’t know how fantastic Jillian Todd Weiss is.

I had transitioned from male to female in 1998, and my new employer neither knew nor suspected that I was transgender. Now I was receiving the condescending treatment that some of my female colleagues had complained about all along. After several such incidents, I quietly left the practice of law, never to return. As a male attorney, my competence had never been questioned so harshly by my employers, so I assumed that reports of gender discrimination were bogus complaints brought by females who didn’t measure up. As a male, I had been privileged, though I didn’t know it at the time, to avoid much of the harsh treatment reserved for females in a male bastion.

I didn’t know Ms. Weiss before her transition so I can’t say “I told you so” but I’m going to anyway! No, women aren’t blowing smoke up anyone’s ass about this stuff. I appreciate her honesty in admitting she thought they were “bogus complaints” and am pleased to know that transitioners, as I expected, are turning out to be the last tool in the feminist toolbox.

It’s one of the reasons I find the slogan “equal pay for equal work” problematic, because so much of the struggle is getting people to see your work as equal to your male peers’ — even when it’s superior.

(via Bilerico)

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Gendered Policy

Dorothy Samuels wrote a great Op-Ed for The NYT on the whole issue of Wasilla charging rape victims the cost of their rape kits and forensic exams.

In the absence of answers, speculation is bubbling in the blogosphere that Wasilla’s policy of billing rape victims may have something to do with Ms. Palin’s extreme opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape. Sexual-assault victims are typically offered an emergency contraception pill, which some people in the anti-choice camp wrongly equate with abortion.

My hunch is that it was the result of outmoded attitudes and boneheaded budget cutting.

Mine too, but that’s still not an excuse, and we deserve an explanation. As Tony Knowles said:

“We would never bill the victim of a burglary for fingerprinting and photographing the crime scene, or for the cost of gathering other evidence,” said Alaska’s then-governor, Tony Knowles. “Nor should we bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies.”

And in case you’re wondering if there was any Federal effort to keep states from charging the victims, here you go:

That’s why when Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, drafted the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, he included provisions to make states ineligible for federal grant money if they charged rape victims for exams and the kits containing the medical supplies needed to conduct them. (Senator John McCain, Ms. Palin’s running mate, voted against Mr. Biden’s initiative, and his name has not been among the long list of co-sponsors each time the act has been renewed.)

This is probably the best example of why having a woman in office means almost nothing if her policy is blind to the needs of women.

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Another Betty

Betty White just gave out an Emmy along with Mary Tyler Moore, and she looks fantastic. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t had any work done, and honestly, she made Mary Tyler Moore – who’s had too much work done – look even weirder than she did already.

My opinion, only, but I really do feel that when women try to preserve their youth with too much plastic surgery, they kind of end up underlining that they’re old.

My guilty confession is that I’m a late-night Golden Girls addict, which is a genius show. Imagine, a comedy about four women over 50 who all have active sex lives! It seems like such a radical idea, even now. Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, Betty White and the late Estelle Getty were all exactly right for their parts, and the writing was corny in an 80s kind of way, but still funny.

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Vote!

Daily Kos has a state by state guide to voting rules, so you have no “I didn’t know when the deadline was” excuses. Go check now, and make sure you’re registered, or have your absentee ballot.

Women, VOTE! It gives me headaches to see the numbers Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote have listed for Election 2006, as in:

  • In New York – 1,428,141 women were unregistered. 738,858 were registered & didn’t vote.
  • In Ohio – 712,019 were unregistered. Another 446,994 were registered but didn’t vote.
  • In Colorado – 250,769 women were unregistered, and another 116,423 were registered but didn’t vote.

You need a better reminder to make sure you’re registered? Watch Iron Jawed Angels if you need to remind yourself of what it took for women to earn the right to vote.

And Democrats, remember: the more of us turn out, the more likely it is that the Democrat wins. So make sure you babysit for your Democrat friends with kids if they need you to, or give rides to people who need them. Just get them to the polls!