Wow; a week has gone by already since I spent a long Saturday, from 8 am to 11pm, at the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform. Bill Moyers’ keynote address and subsequent ambush by one of Bill O’Reilly’s producer-cum-attack dogs got a lot of attention. Especially satisfying was seeing Moyers’ complete and unequivocal rout of the pathetic little git.

The Mississippifarian has already shared the story of my brief encounter with Duncan Black (ZOMG! Atrios!!1!) that afternoon, but really –

despite what you may be thinking, especially those of you who were also at Yearly Kos last year and may remember how I spent all my time going Oooh there’s Digby! Oooh there’s Mahabarb! Ooh there’s Sara Robinson! Ooh there’s Lindsay Beyerstein! Oooh there’s Miss Lauren!…etc etc ad infinitum

– when I go to events like the NCMR I really don’t spend ALL my time being Fangirl, breathlessly agog over every A-list blogger I happen to see. Really. I don’t. It’s equally exciting for me to see local friends and acquaintances, so many of whom have substantial bona fides in the blogosphere and other media.

Let’s see, there was (MnIndy, Power Liberal, my fellow WOMBster, and Violet Jane’s mom) Robin Marty; Chris Dykstra, Jason Barnett and Chuck Olsen of The UpTake; the fabulous John Forde of Mental Engineering; plus a bunch of others that your kindly but doddering old Auntie Tild can’t remember now.

Better than all of that, tho, the absolute best part of the conference for me was meeting some great, not your typical celebrity type people for the first time. 

Susan Morris, host and producer of What Would Your Mother Say? on KZSU 90.1 FM at Stanford University.
Susan and I stood next to each other in the line for Bill Moyers’ book signing. Since it was a line that went half way round the perimeter of the exhibit hall and out into the lobby, and since we were near the tail end of that line, we had over an hour to talk about our children, share mom stories (both about our own mothers and about being moms) and the differences of experience that come from being (like Susan) a mother of daughters, and (like me) a mother of sons.  As we finally  neared  Bill Moyers’ table (where at this point he’d been signing books for nearly two hours) she asked if I would consider recording a brief motherhood-related story or anecdote and sending it to her for one of the show’s regular segments.   Heck yeah.  Stories?  Like moms everywhere,  I got a million of ‘em.        

Mary C. Johns of We The People Media in Chicago.  Later in the day I was at the same lunch table with Mary, who represents We The People Media, a Chicago organization which provides journalism courses and training to low-income people, as well as maintaining a television news program (currently being  squeezed by big media) and a community newspaper, both online and print editions.  
Once again we ended up talking for more than an hour, but not about media reform; mainly about our shared experiences in managing chronic pain and chronic fatigue, and how difficult it can be especially when you choose to do it without  pharmaceuticals and other perception-altering substances.   We agreed that yoga, walking,  and meditation/prayer seems to be the winning trifecta,  along with remembering such pearls of wisdom as:

When you’re exhausted, don’t eat.  Food won’t give you renewed energy and alertness.   When you’re exhausted, sleep!  Got that?  Sleep, not food, dammit! 

Jane Xiu-Hong Jin of  Federation for a Democratic China came in from Seattle for the conference, and to keep travel expenses low was staying at a youth hostel in south Mpls with 5 other conference goers.  We met later in the afternoon when we were lucky enough to be the only inhabitants of Blogger Row (re-christened Netroots Row, which didn’t seem to clarify the concept.  People kept mistaking us for the check-in site for radio/video/podcast interviews,  probably because all the interviews were taking place on a stage directly behind us. 

Jane, or Jin (she used the names interchangeably) had just heard the news about the death of Ruby Chow,  Seattle’s legendary political and cultural activist and restaurateur.    For Jin, a survivor of the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre, Ruby Chow was like a second mother,  a constant source of inspiration, a tireless supporter of Seattle area  Asian immigrants and restaurant service workers.    Jin burst into tears while telling me about the wise advice she got and the happy times she spent with the people she called Auntie Ruby and Uncle Ping.   For her  this was an intensely personal loss,  so much more than the passing of a longtime community leader.   

Amazing, isn’t it, how it sometimes happens (as it did with all three of these encounters) that strangers can meet,  talk, and after only an hour part company with hugs and exchanges of addresses and promises to keep in touch.   I felt so lucky and honored to have met and spent time with each of these women last Saturday.   Meeting them was far and away the best part of Fangirl Tild’s day.   

Posted: June 16th, 2008 under Being Female, NCMR 2008.
Comments: 1

Tild sez:   Still on the topic of  “the Woman vote”…
I get the feeling that I didn’t state clearly enough in my previous post  why I think Freud’s famous question “What do women want?” is nonsensical.    I intended to make the following anecdote a part of that post, but time got away from me a little and I ended up leaving it out.

 

 

 

 

Between December 26th, 1971 and January 31st, 1972 I was in the Soviet Union as  part of a 5-week Slavic Studies program tour.   There were 17  students in our group;  kids from Minnesota liberal arts colleges including Gustavus, St. Olaf, Carleton, Macalester, St. Kate’s  and St. John’s. 

Our itinerary:  we flew from MSP to Frankfurt, then to Helsinki, and then on to Leningrad.  Immediately upon our arrival we boarded a train for Ukraine and a weeklong stay in Kiev which included welcoming in 1972 at the flat- out best New Year’s Eve party I have ever attended or ever hope to attend.  Then, another trainride to Moscow where we spent a couple more weeks, with a brief side trip to Novgorod, and finally back to Leningrad again for two more weeks before we departed for Helsinki,  then again to Frankfurt, and finally back to the US.

In the past I’ve written a little bit about this trip…  about the salmon loaf that wasn’t; about the washing machine built out of three Oldsmobiles worth of steel;  about the temporary,  incredibly high tolerance for alcohol that we all acquired as a result of drinking vodka daily for five weeks.

One event I’ve never written about was the very odd meeting in Moscow between our group and a group from the Komsomol, a Scouts-esque national organization for Soviet young people; the Youth wing of the Communist party.    This get-together was a part of the study tour that had been arranged long in advance.  Your average US college kids meet with some typical Soviet kids of the same age group.  The friendly exchange of ideas.  The meeting of minds.   The reaching out across the ideological divide.  Hands across the water!  Can’t we all just get along?         

All these years later I don’t remember exactly where in Moscow this was;  some ballroom in some hotel or government building.  Down the middle of a long banquet table,  crystal bowls full of oranges and candy in bright colored wrappers  were interspersed with bottles of vodka.  We were ushered to seats on one side of the table, while our Soviet counterparts the Komsomol “youth” took their places on the other side.  

It would be an understatement to say that the term “youth” was being applied a bit broadly that day.  Nobody in the Soviet contingent looked a day younger than 35.   They were all probably Komsomol functionaries; adult advisors or ’scoutmasters’; long past their own Young Pioneers days.   

They had designated one man to be the speaker for all of them. He stood and started asking a series of questions,  most starting with “What is your opinion about… ? “,   after each of which he would sit down and with the rest wait expectantly  for one of us to stand and give the response for our group.   Except we never did it  that way. 

We hadn’t even thought about designating one person to speak for us all.  All 17 of us had at least a middling fluency in Russian at the time, and many of us were eager to show off our language skills, either out of pride at our level of accomplishment, or (and I definitely fell into this next group) we knew we were all too prone to make amusing mistakes in grammar and vocabulary, and had learned what a powerful icebreaker that could be in social situations. 

At any rate, for whatever reasons, each time the Komsomol Speaker Guy posed a question,  it got several different responses from several of the US kids.  

What is your opinion about the future of the US space program?  

7 answers.

What is your opinion about the Negro problem [sic]  in the US?  

11 answers.

What is your opinion about the Viet Nam war?  

17 answers.               

After an hour or more of this, Komsomol Speaker Guy had a brief whispered confab with his companions and then with a  note of exasperation asked:

But out of all of these answers, which is the American opinion?

Our response?   17  variations of:   There isn’t an ‘American’ opinion.  Or, there isn’t just one American opinion.   We each have our own opinions.

This went over like a solid steel Soviet washing machine size balloon, and it was a relief when  a 3-piece band –  one guy with a guitar, one guy on sax, and the 3rd on drums — came in,  set up and promptly launched into “I’m Your Venus”  (you know, the song by Shocking Blue,  that Bananarama redid in the 80s).  

The vodka bottles were finally opened,  and we all got up to dance. 

  
Tild sez:  Any questions?  Not even a “What do women want?”  Then here endeth the lesson. 

~

 

Posted: January 21st, 2008 under 2008 Presidential campaigns, Being Female, Feminism, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sexism, po russki.
Comments: none

Because women are not autonomous beings capable of using their own judgment to choose a candidate on any basis other than gender.

Because women routinely make their voting decisions based entirely on spite, or vengeance, or some other emotion.

Because a woman’s vote is never an actual vote for or against anything, but always just a reaction to what the real (read: men) voters think. (See? You were right, hon. Everything IS always about you!)

Minnesota Observer and Robin Marty get all credit for coming up with this wonderfully succinct and pithy comment on the hysteria over HRC’s “shocking” New Hampshire win. There’s only one thing wrong with it, imho: you can’t see the speaker rolling her eyes.

Without seeing that, or hearing the sweetly sarcastic tone, some people are bound to miss the irony completely and think it’s a serious statement. Or– a threat? Well, at any rate certainly just more “proof” that when it really gets down to it, women are always going to vote with their vaginas.

What’s this? Someone dares to malign, misrepresent, or even merely criticize a female candidate? Well! In that case screw all that ‘voting the issues’ crap! Rally ’round, sisters!

This past week I have accused a friend of channelling Sigmund Freud on this issue, wailing the nonsensical question ‘What do women want?” as if there is some monolithic single entity called “women” out there that has its own special list of answers to that question.

Instead, how about the questions posed by M. Le Blanc:

Where are all the women voters?

Last night, in my hours of MSNBC-viewing, I endured a shitload of conversation about how women were or weren’t voting for this or that candidate. The women came out for Hillary! Young women voted for Obama in Iowa, but now they’re voting for Hillary! How will the women vote? The women are voting for Hillary, and that’s why she won! But what about in the general election! Will the women vote then?!

This obsessive focus on how the women will vote makes me feel like I’m back in fucking 1920. You know, women have been voting for 87 years now. In fact, in the last few elections at least (I’m too lazy to do research at the moment), they have voted more than men. It’s kind of a thing, that we do, as members of this society. But pundits and other commentators insist on acting as if we’ve just admitted people with vaginas to the electorate, and it’s just so crazy because how will this affect the election?!

Given that Clinton had a 13% advantage with women, and Obama had a 13% advantage with men, it seems like hey, being a man can affect your vote, too. Imagine that! Especially given that more Republicans are men. And since 57% of the people who voted last night were women, it seems like we might give some attention to whether the men will come out, since they aren’t coming out as strong.

But no, we never talk about how men will vote, because it’s just not as interesting. Or scary. Men have been voting for years! They are the average voter! They don’t vote based on little things like crying episodes or whether someone is black. They vote the * issues*.

From now on, I will be presenting analysis of the man vote. Will they vote with their penises? Are they indignant? Do they want to see a man in the White House? [Italics mine]

That said, I still don’t know who I’m voting for in the primaries.

[M. LeBlanc at Bitch PhD]

Oh you gals, never able to make up your minds!

~

Update:   The talking dog has a few things to say to those who find HRC’s “calculatedness” so unacceptable (not to mention unladylike): 

Spot is not aware of any cases in the history of the United States where someone ran for president by accident. 

That is one very smart spotted pup.

~

Update:

The story of an odd meeting I attended  in the Soviet Union back in 1972 illustrates how silly the ”what do women want?” question really is.

~

 

 

 

 

Posted: January 16th, 2008 under Being Female, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sexism.
Comments: 1

From Joshua Holland’s article:

“Who is Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a household name in Europe. Her story would seem far-fetched if it were fiction. Born in Somalia to a critic of the dictatorship of Siad Barré, her family fled when she was six — first to Saudi Arabia and then to Ethiopia before finally settling in Kenya. There she attended a Saudi-funded religious school and was, in her words, “indoctrinated” into a traditionalist form of Islam. She recalls that she wore a hijab, supported the fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie and had a knee-jerk hatred of Jews. Until, that is, she started reading Nancy Drew mysteries. Fascinated by a female character who operated freely in society, Hirsi Ali would later say that the stories played a major role in changing her attitudes towards the West.”

I’ve been selling a real book of hers, Infidel , in the bookstore for the past week. Coincidentally, yesterday, November 13th, was Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s birthday.

The Strange Journey of Ayaan Hirsi Ali: From Devout Muslim to Outspoken “Feminist” Critic of Islam

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted November 12, 2007.

American conservatives embrace Dutch firebrand’s calls for destruction of Islam.

The former “liberal” who becomes an outspoken right-winger has become an American political archetype. Ronald Reagan and David Horowiz are two prime examples of the breed.

They use the rhetorical tool of claiming to be just as caring and compassionate as their previous political incarnation, but the left’s irrationality and hatred of (you pick it) the West, America, Christianity, capitalism, etc. caused them to wake up one morning and see the light. And having transformed from lefty caterpillar into a right-leaning butterfly, they present themselves as qualified to comment on liberalism’s moral and intellectual failures.

Recently, a related version of this turncoat persona — former Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali — has emerged: a “reformed” Muslim woman who favors crushing Islam under the boot of Western militarism. Once very devout in her Muslim beliefs, Ali has gained a great deal of media attention — including horrific tales of her abuse at the hands of Muslim men — and has transformed into an outspoken critic who bases her calls for the destruction of Islam on feminist and human rights principles.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a proud Somali woman raised in a devout Muslim family. She is poised to become the most recognizable face of naked Islamophobia in America. Expect to see her as a ubiquitous guest on cable news channels and frequent contributor of op-eds reinforcing the worst stereotypes about the Muslim world. She’ll validate already disturbingly common narratives about the perfidy of Islam, and she’ll tout the vast superiority of Western thinking in stark terms that would be shocking coming from a more traditional (read: white, Christian) right-wing commentator.

It’s a criticism of Islam, coming from the left, which has the potential to unite the Islamophobic right with an increasingly vocal secular movement. It also provides cover for extremist views, bringing hateful rhetoric that’s typically been confined to the margins into the mainstream and broadening the already frighteningly large constituency that exists in the U.S. for a series of “preventive” wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere.

She has been called an “enlightenment fundamentalist” in Europe and is a hated apostate in much of the Muslim world. She lives under a flurry of death threats and needs round-the-clock security.

Because she’s an intelligent and articulate woman who has suffered horrific abuses in a Muslim family, her generalizations about the entire Islalmic world are imbued with an unwarranted authority. There’s a real danger that people like Hirsi Ali — the tiny percentage of the Muslim world who believe that Islam really is “the problem” will skew the debate about U.S. relations with the Muslim world.

Thank God for the Enlightenment

Hirsi Ali has become a darling of those who believe in the benevolence of Western hegemony; The Economist described her as a “cultural ideologue of the new right.” But she’s more than that; Hirsi Ali occupies a unique space in the political landscape. Her outspoken advocacy on feminist ethical issues — roundly condemning “honor killings” and female circumcision — has also made her a poster-girl for the aggressive brand of atheism typified by figures like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all three of whom have held her life-story up as an example of the harms caused by religion in general, and Islam in particular. For them, she’s a living testament to the idea that rational liberal interventionists in the post-Enlightenment West have a moral duty to wage a new crusade against the Muslim world. Harris and Salman Rushdie penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times calling Hirsi Ali a “unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists.”

Neely Tucker wrote in the Washington Post that “Neoconservative, middle-aged white men … tend to swoon when she walks into the room.” Hirsi Ali is indeed charming and articulate, possessed of a rare intelligence and gifted with exceptional language and political skills. But she’s also an extremist, by any measure. She goes beyond others who embrace the idea of a “Clash of Civilizations” — people like Tony Blankley and Michael Ledeen — in her insistence that all of Islam is extreme. “There is no moderate Islam,” she told Reason. There can only be peace between East and West, she said, “if Islam is defeated.” When asked if she meant radical Islam, she replied: “No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.”

She calls the religion, with 1.3 billion adherents worldwide, a “death cult.”

That’s a popular claim in the post-9/11 era, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali is no doubt set for life. Her long journey has taken her from Africa to Europe and now, finally, to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute (she’s currently working out of Holland because the Dutch government refused to pay for her body-guards in DC). As long as the concept of a broken and dysfunctional Muslim world is used to justify Western militarism in the Middle East and Central Asia, Hirsi Ali will have a cushy sinecure somewhere within the right-wing media establishment, ready to be rolled out as exhibit A in the case against whatever country is that day’s enemy-du-jour and, perhaps more importantly, against anyone who views the Muslim world as anything other than a uniform bunch of blood-thirsty maniacs.

While Hirsi Ali is loved by some and loathed by others, what gets lost is that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is as genuine in her beliefs as she is wrong on the facts. She suffered a cruel upbringing in a stringent Muslim household — she describes the horrors of undergoing female genital mutilation at age five and claims she was forced into an arranged marriage in her teens (a claim her family and former husband dispute), so the issue is not whether she is sincere, but whether the victim of an abusive childhood should be viewed as an impartial and credible analyst. It’s the equivalent of a Catholic choirboy who, having been the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of pedophile priests, is asked for an impartial view of the church. That would never happen, but Hirsi Ali will be called upon to explain the dangers of Islam to an eager West as if she’s a knowledgeable but detached observer. That’s problematic in that she’s a woman whose views are colored by an upbringing that is: A) anything but universal within Islam and B) in no way exclusive to that culture.

Read more »

Posted: November 14th, 2007 under Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Being Female, Feminism, Islam.
Comments: 4

A while back I found a book tucked in with some old atlases and maps on one of the many bookshelves that adorn the walls of the remote fortified family compound known as Tildebunkport…

A post-it note on the book said “Found with Gramma’s things” but I knew immediately that the book had to have come to us by way of one of the hub’s flea market expeditions. None of us ever called our grandmas “Gramma”, for one thing.

Grandma Dallelie was a registered nurse and Grandma Tild, while never formally trained in nursing, worked with the Red Cross for decades, and was a temperance activist to boot. Both women also had highly developed bullshit detectors, so I’m certain neither one of them would ever have allowed a book filled with such seductively pernicious claptrap in the house, much less kept it with her personal effects.

“What Your Neighbors Say” Dream Book (no copyright date, but probably published circa 1900)

About the book

About Dr. R.V. Pierce (from the Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health)

excerpt from Substance and Shadow: Women and Addiction in the United States

More about Dr. Pierce, elected to the House of Representatives

More about Dr. Pierce, plus more about misdiagnosis and malpractice

A sampling of pages from “What Your Neighbors Say” Dream Book:

Diseases of Women, page 1

Diseases of Women, page 2

Oh! My! Such Pain!

How To Tell Unhealthy Urine By Its Appearance

A Healthy Woman Is Always Beautiful

Watch Your Daughter!

Healthy Mothers Have Healthy Children

UPDATE: Wondering what was in “Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription”?

Although The Ladies’ Home Journal was not involved in the investigation of adulterated food, its muckraking into another issue helped bring about the same legislation–the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Journal’s campaign against the “patent medicine curse” was the best known of the muckraking in any of the woman’s magazines.[45] However, the Journal was not alone in its niche in uncovering the “evils” of the patent
medicine nostrums. Good Housekeeping also carried stories about the content of patent medicines.[46]   However, this campaign took a secondary position to food adulteration.  Both magazines extensively covered the problem from 1904 to 1906, when the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed.[47]

Both had the freedom to do so because neither accepted patent medicine advertising. The Journal carried the greater number of stories and devoted the more editorial space of the two to uncovering the abuses of the patent medicine industry.  Editor Edward Bok wrote most of the stories; and while clearly he was reporting facts, the largest number of these articles appeared on the Journal’s editorial page.   One of the first stories on the issue appeared in the May 1904 in an editorial, “The ‘Patent Medicine’ Curse,” and accompanying sidebar on the alcohol content of various brands of patent medicine. The results were startling. Richardson’s Concentrated Sherry Wine Bitters had 47.5 percent alcohol; Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters, 44.3 percent; Boker’s Stomach Bitters, 42.6 percent; Parker’s Tonic, “purely vegetable,” 41.6 percent.  Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound had relatively little–20.6 percent.[48]

Bok saw a real problem.  Women were doctoring themselves and their families with dangerous alcoholic nostrums.  Temperance women were turning to “bitters” to cure their sluggishness.  Pregnant women used “Doctor Pierce’s Favorite Prescription”, which contained digitalis, opium, oil of anise and alcohol (17 percent). [49].

Why Women Should Confide in Dr. Pierce

Oh, and men: lest you laugh too hard, thinking that Dr. Pierce spared your gender from scrutiny, consider…

“Spermatorrhea”
or the emission of semen without intercourse, including 1: wrecked manhood, wanton waste

..a selection from Dr. Pierce’s bestseller “The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser; or, Medicine Explained” (63rd edition, 1895)

Well, enough hilarity. Funny; I think what I could really use right now is a drink.

~

Posted: October 25th, 2007 under Being Female, Books, Patent Medicine, R.V. Pierce, Women's Health.
Comments: 1

“Mother Nature” by Carter Goodrich

This is one of my favorite New Yorker covers of all time, if only for the wildly divergent jumble of reactions it elicits in me. Sometimes I can only identify with the Earth Mother, sometimes I feel completely like Career Girl, and other times I cannot see anything of myself in either one.

Apparently this cover hit a nerve with a lot of people. In her introduction to Covering the New Yorker: Cutting-Edge Covers from a Literary Institution , Françoise Mouly recalls:

A recent (May 15, 2000) Mother’s Day cover, by Carter Goodrich, of a Mother Earth type and a skinny woman sitting side by side on a bench (page 124) elicited the following range of responses: “Carter Goodrich is a genius.” “I LOVE this cover of the fecund Mother Earth and the pale angular New York career girl looking on with disgust and desire.” “A gross trivialization of motherhood.” “Working women everywhere will feel uplifted by the message that their professional endeavors are nothing compared to the ability to reproduce.” “Does the tortured expression on the face of the unhappy career girl signify aversion and disgust–or overwhelming longing for a child of her own?” “I’m surprised that so sophisticated a magazine would engage in such a stereotypical illustration.” “Carter Goodrich’s ‘Mother Nature’ is brilliant. It epitomizes the kind of social observation that The New Yorker considers its eminent domain.”

Of course, in real life nothing is ever as all-or-nothing simple. To be or not to be a mother: that is a question. Lots of choices, lots of possibilities, and despite what the forced-childbirth movement wants for all of us, there are no one-fits-all right decisions other than the decision to be true to one’s self, and the decision to trust one’s own judgment.

If you are a mother, or are in process of becoming one, if your mother is still alive or only lives in your memory, here’s an early Happy Mother’s Day greeting and an assortment of interesting links for your weekend reading pleasure…

Mother’s Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

–Julia Ward Howe, 1870

[Mother's Day for Peace]

~~~

What’s a Mother’s Worth?

This Mother’s Day let’s give mothers what they really need: a more secure old age. If you’re a woman, or a man who cares about his mother, sister, or daughter, there’s something you need to know. In the United States women over the age of 65 are twice as poor as men in the same age group.

There’s a reason poverty so disproportionately hits women. Most of these elderly poor women were, or still are, caregivers — and according to most economists, the people who do the caring work in households, whether female or male, are “economically inactive.” Of course, anyone who has a mother knows that most caregivers work from dawn to dusk. And we also know that without their work of caring for children, the sick, the elderly, and maintaining a clean home environment there would be no workforce, no economy, nothing. Yet current economic indicators and policies fail to include this work as “productive work.”

[What's a Mother's Worth?]

~~~

My Response to the McCain Campaign’s Attacks on Planned Parenthood

By Cecile Richards, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted May 11, 2007.

A McCain staffer has called Planned Parenthood “one of the most radical pro-abortion groups in the country.” Here’s Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards’ response.

John McCain’s presidential campaign has taken a troubling turn. This week, the Los Angeles Times reported that John Weaver, a strategist for John McCain’s presidential campaign, verbally attacked Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading reproductive health care advocate and provider. Weaver called the 90-year old provider of birth control, cancer screenings, sex education and abortion services “one of the most radical pro-abortion groups in the country.”

For the record: Ninety seven percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are focused on prevention, including family planning, contraception, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Three percent of Planned Parenthood services are abortion care. The remark was an attack driven by the McCain campaign’s need to score political points. So, I’ve fired off a letter to Senator McCain in response to his campaign’s incendiary remarks:

[Read the whole thing, including Cecile Richards' letter to John McCain, here.]

~~~

Come Back Tomorrow

[the door opens and woman in white coat sweeps into the small examination room, and she looks at her clipboard] Hello, Ms. . . . Ms.?
[a slender, nervous young girl looks up at her] Roe.
Roe?
Yes. Jane Roe.

You’re kidding.
No, really, that’s my name. Is something wrong?

Nothing’s wrong. That’s just a pretty famous pseudonym to a doctor who performs abortions. You know that, don’t you?
Not really.
Ok. Just tell me a little bit about your situation.
Well, I’m from Frosty Falls, up north. I left my waitress job a little early last night to hitchhike here with my boyfriend Jason. It took us most of the night. Jason works in the lumber yard and he’s missing work today. He’ll probably get in trouble for it.

Tell me about the pregnancy.
I didn’t mean for it to happen. I just feel so bad. Jason and I have been going together for a while now, might get married someday. Jason’s sweet. It’s my fault, really. We never meant to do it, you know, but one night we just got carried away. I didn’t think I would get pregnant the first time. We were just so ignorant about everything. I’ve missed two periods now.

It’s not your fault any more than Jason’s.
I guess.

You’re nineteen. Do you still live at home? Do your parents know you’re pregnant?
Are you kidding? I’m sorry. My Dad would kill me if he found out. See, me and Jason and our folks all go to the Solid Rock Pentecostal Church in Frosty Falls. Dad’s a deacon. My folks—and Jason’s folks, too—would be so ashamed if they found out. That’s why I gotta take care of this now.

[Read the whole thing at The Cucking Stool]

~~~

Why I won’t stay silent anymore

By Frances Kissling

May 11, 2007 | I spent my final 10 years at Catholics for a Free Choice refusing to take press calls about the “partial-birth” abortion ban. It seemed a no-win proposition. Rational arguments about protecting women’s health, preventing tragic births when the infant’s brief life would be filled with unbearable pain, and the doctor’s need to decide what type of abortion would be safest for her patient were simply too abstract to compete with even a measured and accurate description of what happens during this procedure, known medically as an intact dilation and extraction (D&X) abortion. The 20-plus-week fetus’ physical resemblance to a baby was the debate closer.

Even staunch pro-choice legislators had trouble when they looked at visuals of the D&X procedure. The late Catholic Sen. Daniel Moynihan first voted against banning it in 1995 and then voted for it in 1998. Moynihan said the procedure was just “too close to infanticide.” Fellow pro-choice Sens. Patrick Leahy and Joseph Biden, also Catholic, joined Moynihan in voting for the ban, with Biden recently repeating Moynihan’s oft quoted “infanticide” phrase on “Meet the Press” this April after the Supreme Court ruled in Gonzales v. Carhart that the ban on D&X procedures is constitutional.

Apparently the five Supreme Court justices in the majority, all of whom are Catholic, agreed with the senators. Their opinion upheld the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which prohibits the performance of a rare abortion procedure, performed most often in the second trimester of pregnancy, in which a doctor extracts the fetus intact, pulling out its entire body through the cervix and vagina, piercing the skull so that the head can pass safely through the cervix. The bill, or state variations of it, had been ruled unconstitutional by various courts, including the Supreme Court. None of these bills included an exception to allow the procedure to be performed when the woman’s health was threatened, which Roe and subsequent Supreme Court decisions held essential. Gonzales v. Carhart was closely watched as it was the first abortion case the post-Sandra Day O’Connor court would decide.

The opinion, written by Anthony Kennedy, who is considered the least orthodox of the five, was devastating. Beyond outlawing a method of abortion it deemed only possibly needed by a few women, the decision injected orthodox Catholic teaching into the interpretation of constitutional rights. Kennedy’s opinion, which affirms “the government’s right to use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman” as it cavalierly dismisses the need a few specific women might have for this procedure, could easily have been written by the late Pope John Paul II or the current Benedict XVI. Women are invisible in this decision as they are invisible in the writings of recent — and not so recent — popes. Now it’s impossible for me to remain silent.

The orthodox Catholic preoccupation with the morality of physical acts to the exclusion of the context in which those acts occur is evident in the amount of space the Kennedy decision gives to the description of the medical procedure (approximately eight pages), with only a few paragraphs on the possibility that banning the procedure would “subject [women] to significant health risks.” Kennedy and his cohort are satisfied that this is a “contested question” and “medical uncertainty” places no ethical or legal requirement on the court or legislature. Nowhere in the decision are the health reasons that lead doctors to perform this procedure rather than others discussed. No ambivalence exists. No competing values need to be weighed.

After all, the Catholic hierarchy still forbids assisted reproduction in large part because sperm is collected by masturbation. The good of enabling an infertile couple to conceive does not outweigh the evil of spilling one’s seed. It still prohibits the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV because the condom is also a contraceptive. In the same way, the reasons why a woman might need the D&X procedure, such as when a deformity truly inconsistent with life is discovered late in a wanted pregnancy, are totally irrelevant to orthodox Catholic anti-abortionists and are absent from Kennedy’s opinion or concern.

[Read the whole thing here] — must watch brief commercial first, unless you’re a Salon Premium member

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Lysistrata for the masses

In the last couple of years over 3,000 U.S. mothers have lost sons and daughters in Iraq. Over 26,000 have seen their kids injured there. Another nearly 400 have lost children in the invasion of Afghanistan. And for what? So they could fight terrorists over there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here? Sorry man, stupid plot that it was, the planned Fort Dix attack shows exactly how successful that tactic has been. Not to mention the sharp uptick in terrorism worldwide and terrorism recruitment thanks to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I’m not anti-war because I realize things happen and sometimes it’s the only option…but none of this was necessary or even useful to the cause.

[Read the whole thing here]

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And finally, I feel like revisiting a post about my own mother from a year or two ago…

Grace

Dad took this photo in 1954. My sister Diane’s on the left, then Mom, and — who said I’ve never been photogenic?!– yes, that is my adorable two-year-old self on the right.

Mothers…

hug ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

Happy Mother’s Day, everybody.

Peace.

Posted: May 12th, 2007 under Being Female, Feminism, Mother's Day, Reproductive Rights.
Comments: none

Women Catch Up With Men’s 2006 Earnings Today

By Heather Boushey, AlterNet. Posted April 24, 2007.

Today is Equal Pay Day — an anti-holiday that marks how far into 2007 a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned last year.

Equal Pay Day, on April 24, is not quite a national holiday. In fact, it’s something of an anti-holiday, marking how far into 2007 a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned last year. Although women have made gains over the last century, by the most basic measure — pay — they continue to earn 77 cents on the male dollar, even if they have similar educational levels and work in similar kinds of jobs as their male counterparts.

The gender pay gap should be a concern to all Americans, not just women. The typical wife in the United States brings home about one-third of her family’s income, and over the past generation, families with a working wife have been more likely to move up the income ladder. When women are short-changed, the whole family suffers.

This embarrassing fact — hidden in plain view — tends to trigger a barrage of objections from economic and cultural conservatives. Aren’t women just making poor choices? they ask.

While most women probably don’t “choose” to be paid less than their male colleagues, most women do continue to choose to work in different jobs than men and take on the role of primary caregiver at home. Let’s look at the reality. Women are disproportionately represented in lower-paid occupations like nursing, teaching, retail sales, and clerical work, and are more likely than men to work in the nonprofit sector. Women who attend college continue to choose majors that prepare for them for less-well-paid professions (but even within occupations, in the first year out of school, men earn more). And confronted with the reality of anti-family workplaces, women continue to not only do the most caretaking but also bear the economic brunt through lowered lifetime earnings.

So clearly, women, through their choice of occupation, college major and, ahem, “sensitivity” to the well-being of the young and defenseless, are making “bad” choices. If policymakers want to do something about this aspect of the inequality, they’ll pretty much have to focus on getting high school guidance counselors to steer women into nontraditional, higher paid jobs.

So it’s women’s fault, right? Not quite. Another chunk of the pay gap remains unexplained (41 percent, according to economists) by such basic life decisions. This means that if women worked in the same jobs as men and had the same educational and the same experience levels, they would still be making only 90 cents for every male dollar. How do we close this final gap?

[Read the rest]

Posted: April 24th, 2007 under Being Female, Feminism, General.
Comments: none

There she is again. For the 10th straight day this is the most-viewed and most-emailed photo on Yahoo news.

Here is the accompanying news story, in toto:

A prospective Denver Broncos cheerleader performs a routine on the first day of auditions in Denver, Colorado March 25, 2007. Over 250 women applied for the 34 slots. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (UNITED STATES) ATTENTION EDITORS - MOVING A PACKAGE OF EIGHT PICTURES FOR ESSAY ON DENVER BRONCOS CHEERLEADERS AUDITION.

That last bit isn’t even part of the story; it’s just a note to the editors that the photographer is sending 8 other pictures.
We are told that on March 25th of this year over 250 women applied for the 34 spots on the Broncos cheerleading squad. The other 8 photos in the package are of the finalists; this lady is not in any of those photos. No, she gets a photo all to herself. And her photo is the most viewed and most emailed of them all.

Am I the only one who’s wondering who this lady is and what her story is?

Please indulge me, dear reader. We all know why this photo is the most popular one out of all nine photos, don’t we?  Please just  allow me to go on in this disingenuous way a little bit longer, won’t you?  I have a few questions…

Why did she audition for the Denver Broncos cheerleaders?

What did she think would happen as a result of doing this?

What did she hope would happen as a result of doing this?   

Was it an April Fool’s stunt?

Is she by chance a stand up comic or some other variety of Fat Comedienne?

Did she lose a bet?  …Or win one?

Is she mentally ill?

Is anybody else on the intertubes posting anything about this lady?   I’ll answer that one right now:  

Those inveterate wits the Freepers know exactly what she is. She is manna from heaven, baby.  Shall we sample a few morsels from their banquet of bon mots?    

Want to bet she’s a Democrat?

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She’d make a great………offensive lineman…………

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Ease up. She just had a litter a week ago.

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You sure she isn’t auditioning for the mascot’s job?

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She is actually hoping for a walk-on spot on the offensive line. (npi)

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Ease up. She just had a litter calf a week ago.

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As Austin Powers would say “ That’s a MAN, baby! Yeah!”

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I give her 100% credit for trying.
The issue is one of the merits. If she can do the routines and meet the criteria then good for her.
More realistically, I wonder if the newspaper put this picture out because a) most of their left wing readers are ugly women who hate cheerleaders b) their readers are not interested in pretty women…

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She looks like a flatlander that grazed too much.

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when did Ward Churchill have the sex change?

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Geez, how will they stop her from grazing during halftime?

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That is one good looking hound.

 

Wow.  Thanks for clearing that up for me, Freeps.  

Well I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve reached the limit of my curiousity about this, at least for today. I  have a high level of tolerance for the ways of the world and its endless capacity for wankery and foolishness, but sometimes even for me enough’s enough.      

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Posted: April 10th, 2007 under Being Female, General.
Comments: none

..Or is it the oth