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

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: 3

Letters, we get letters…
Well, email anyway, altho these days I kinda wonder why. For as often as I’ve posted anything this month, I might as well not have a blog at all. But then, I have been feeling the need for a break from the thing. I’m sick of it. I have nothing to say; nothing to add. Most of all, tho, I’m staying away from the blog because it feels like my real (ie, offline) life is careening into the future without me and I better start paying attention before it vanishes over the horizon.

So there I was just MMOB over the weekend: staying indoors (it’s been too damn hot); re-potting my office plants; doing laundry; shovelling out Kid 2’s room while he’s away (on Friday he left for three weeks in Japan). And then on Sunday I got this email:

I’m a PhD student from the English Dept, at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. I specialise in feminist theory, and am researching the effect that new technologies have had on gender and language.
One of my favourite areas of research is blogs, and I’ve been asked to present some of my work at the
20th Annual Feminist & Women’s Studies Association conference at Newcastle, UK.

(You can find me in the programme if you’d like to check that I’m for real!).

I did do that, altho I really wasn’t too much in doubt about her reality. Scroll down to Session Six on Saturday June 30th.

Anyway, I recently found a great image related to women and blogging online in the Obsidian Wings blog, which the blogger credits to you. (pls see March 29th post)

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2005/03/index.html

I would love to use this image as the introduction to my presentation, and would be very grateful if you would give me permission to use it. I would, of course, credit you in my presentation. Please don’t hesitate to contact me should you need to know any more about my research.

Many thanks and best wishes,
Katherine Harrison

Well that’s pretty neato. Of course I told her to go ahead and use it and with my blessing. I’m amazed at how those She Blogger pictures keep turning up every so often and ever- farther afield, two years after I created them for Elayne Riggs and her great series Estrogen Month, spotlighting women bloggers.

The conference sounds terrific; wish I could be there. All good wishes to Ms. Harrison and good luck with her presentation. I’m proud to be a part of it, however fleeting.

~~~~~

20th Annual Feminist & Women’s Studies Association conference

Newcastle, UK, June 28 thru July 1, 2007

~~~~~

Click on the image to see the full version:

The ur-She Blogger.

Beware the link-hungry hussies of Blog Island.

Link this, varmint.

We promise we won’t give you girl-cooties. Unless you want some.

That question again…

Posted: June 19th, 2007 under Feminism, She Blogger.
Comments: 4

“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

~~~

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]

~~~

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

(With apologies to Fred Pohl)

Echidne found a nifty thingy that counts the number of  pages on a blog that contain the word “he”  and the number of pages that contain the word “she” and then compares the two to arrive at a degree of “gender bias”.  

His Wegeness took note and proceeded to measure some local and national blogs by this yardstick, with mildly interesting results.  Case in point: 

Note the exquisite symmetry:   71% - 29%, 29% - 71%. 
In other late-breaking developments:  I say “po-TAT-o”, Mitch says “po-TAHT-o”.
But could we expect any less of the king of all feminists?

I wouldn’t call myself Mitch’s “accuser”, tho.  I mean, really — I never even looked at the guy’s blog until a couple days ago,  much less knew what a titan of feminism he is. Yes, incredible as it sounds, I managed to spend nearly 55 years living my life in total ignorance of the existence of Mitch Berg.  How thoughtless of me.  How selfish.  O the shameful wantonness of living a non-Mitch Berg-centric life.  Eheu!   

Anyway, I’ll bet it’d take some time to wade through the dense morass of his gimlet-eyed erudition* to find something decipherable enough to  “accuse” him of ,  if I were inclined to do that kind of thing, which I am not.  I’ll leave that to those lucky enough to be better acquainted with his legend than I.  
   
Meanwhile, if you mere mortals want to check your own blog’s gender bias, you can do that here.

 

* Ooh, check out this smackdown!  

“No, it was detailed explication of the philosophical underpinnings of feminism.”  

Now, that’s some studly wordslinging. Have a lot of success with that line, do ya, Mitch?

 

 

  
 

Posted: May 3rd, 2007 under Feminism, General, Local characters.
Comments: 2

And here we all thought Mitch was just being a pontificating putz as usual when he said:

“I am the most feminist person I know.”

O us of little faith… Check out the awesome truthiness of his claim, as also proven by this totally unretouched photo taken by BFF Camille Paglia.

Mitch, we hardly knew ye. (And I, for one, am quite happy to keep it that way.)

Oh, and don’t worry about all the girl germs you picked up from those other great feminists in the photo. All they can do is make you a better man, hon.

Posted: May 2nd, 2007 under Feminism, General, Local characters.
Comments: 3

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

 Wow.  That Senator Barbara Boxer is certainly a terrible person.  Just look how she attacks and ridicules that sweet little Condi Rice!

From the transcript of last Thursday’s Senate hearings:   

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER: The Military Times published a poll which found that only 35 percent of military members approved of the way President Bush is handling this war, and only 38 percent thought there should be more troops.

So from where I sit, Madame Secretary, you are not listening to the American people. You are not listening to the military. You are not listening to the bipartisan voices from the Senate. You are not listening to the Iraq Study Group. Only you know who you are listening to, and you wonder why there is a dark cloud of skepticism and pessimism over this nation. I think people are right to be skeptical after listening to some of the things that have been said by your administration.

For example, October 19th ‘05, you came before this committee to discuss, in your words, how we assure victory in Iraq, and you said the following. In answer to Senator Feingold, “I have no doubt that as the Iraqi security forces get better — and they are getting better and are holding territory, and they are doing the things with minimal help — we are going to be able to bring down the level of our forces. I have no doubt” — I want to reiterate — “I have no doubt that that’s going to happen in a reasonable time frame.” You had no doubt, not a doubt. And last night, the president’s announcement of an escalation is a total rebuke of your confident pronouncement.

Now, the issue is who pays the price, who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families, and I just want to bring us back to that fact.

[...]

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER:  So who pays the price? Not me. Not you. These are the people who pay the price.

So I want to ask you, since this administration has been so clear about how this has been coalition and a coalition. You’ve already said that we don’t have anybody else escalating their presence at this time. Is that correct? (No audible reply.) That is correct.

Have you seen the recent news that the British are going to bringing home thousands of troops in the near future?

SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I have seen the stories about what the British are going to do. I’ll wait for a confirmation from the British government about what they’re going to do.

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER: Okay. I would ask unanimous consent to place into the record the article from today that announces that that’s what they’re going to do, is bring home thousands of troops. And I want to point out to the American people: we are all alone. We are all alone. There’s no other country standing with us in this escalation. And if you look at this coalition, the closest to us — we’ve got about 130(,000), 140,000 troops. I don’t have the exact number. The Brits had 7,200. They’re going to be announcing they’re bringing home, as I understand it, more than 3,000 of those. The next biggest coalition member is Poland, with 900, and after that Australia, with 300. No one is joining us in this surge.

Do you have an estimate of the number of casualties we expect from this surge?

SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE: No, Senator, I don’t think there’s any way to give you such an estimate.

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER: Has the president — because he said expect more sacrifice, he must know.

SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Senator, I don’t think that any of us have a number that — of expected casualties. I think that people understand that there is going to be violence for some time in Iraq and that there will be more casualties.

And let me just say, you know, I fully understand the sacrifice that the American people are making, and especially the sacrifice that our soldiers are making, men and women in uniform. I visit them. I know what they’re going through. I talk to their families. I see it.

I could never — and I can never — do anything to replace any of those lost men and women in uniform, or the diplomats, some of whom –

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER: Madame Secretary, please, I know you feel terrible about it. That’s not the point. I was making the case as to who pays the price for your decisions. And the fact that this administration would move forward with this escalation with no clue as to the further price that we’re going to pay militarily — we certainly know the numbers, billions of dollars, that we can’t spend here in this country. I find really appalling that there’s not even enough time taken to figure out what the casualties would be. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Posted: January 16th, 2007 under Feminism, General.
Comments: none

Rox said this yesterday and I’m repeating it today.  We don’t say some things often enough:

For Nancy

By Roxanne

I’ve printed this before and thought today’s historic moment would be a good time for a repeat. Things sure have changed in my short 44 years on the planet. But, sadly, not nearly enough.

If you’re female and…

…you can vote, thank a feminist.

…you get paid as much as men doing the same job, thank a feminist.

…you went to college instead of being expected to quit after high school so your brothers could go because “You’ll just get married anyway”, thank a feminist.

…you can apply for any job, not just “women’s work”, thank a feminist.

…you can get or give birth control information without going to jail, thank a feminist.

…your doctor, lawyer, pastor judge or legislator is a woman, thank a feminist.

…you play an organized sport, thank a feminist.

…you can wear slacks without being excommunicated from your church or run out of town, thank a feminist.

…your boss isn’t allowed to pressure you to sleep with him, thank a feminist.

…you get raped and the trial isn’t about your hemline or your previous boyfriends, thank a feminist.

…you start a small business and can get a loan using only your name and credit history, thank a feminist.

…you are on trial and are allowed to testify in your own defense, thank a feminist.

…you own property that is solely yours, thank a feminist.

…you have the right to your own salary even if you are married or have a male relative, thank a feminist.

…you get custody of your children following divorce or separation, thank a feminist.

…you get a voice in the raising and care of your children instead of them being completely controlled by the husband/father, thank a feminist.

…your husband beats you and it is illegal and the police stop him instead of lecturing you on better wifely behavior, thank a feminist.

…you are granted a degree after attending college instead of a certificate of completion, thank a feminist.

…you can breastfeed your baby discreetly in a public place and not be arrested, thank a feminist.

…you marry and your civil human rights do not disappear into your husband’s rights, thank a feminist.

…you have the right to refuse sex with a diseased husband [or just "husband"], thank a feminist.

…you have the right to keep your medical records confidential from the men in your family, thank a feminist.

…you have the right to read the books you want, thank a feminist.

…you can testify in court about crimes or wrongs your husband has committed, thank a feminist.

…you can choose to be a mother or not a mother in your own time not at the dictates of a husband or rapist, thank a feminist.

…you can look forward to a lifespan of 80 years instead of dying in your 20s from unlimited childbirth, thank a feminist.

…you can see yourself as a full, adult human being instead of a minor who needs to be controlled by a man, thank a feminist.

–Author unknown

 

Posted: January 5th, 2007 under Feminism, General, Nancy Pelosi.
Comments: 1

MN Observer links to Ann Althouse’s scandalized shitfit so I don’t have to. Oh, and be sure to read the entire comments thread.

Now Jessica of Feministing (the object of this frenzy of onehanded wingnut conjecture) responds.

BTW, dear Jessica (says I): Keep standing up straight; chin up; shoulders back. You make me proud, kid.

*sigh* Yet again I find myself wishing I had a daughter, or daughters. No, not instead of my sons. In addition to!

Hey, where’d I put that “Estrogen: flaunt it if you’ve got it” pic I posted a year or two ago?…

Ahh. Here it is:

“ I could never be a woman, ’cause I’d just stay home and play with my breasts all day.” - - Steve Martin in LA Story

You might die of envy to hear this, Steve, but the attractive, agreeable, young (ie,  preferred) women and the fat old ugly man-hating feminists concur on this opinion:  Having breasts is fun!

UPDATE: When I posted this earlier today, I should have known that the fun had only just begun.

Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged to Ann Althouse:

Wank the fuck on, dear.

Hmmmm; I’ll bet Ann decides to take a different tack the next time she throws a tantrum because she wasn’t invited to lunch with the kool kids du jour and the Clenis.

Dr. Helen the Insta-Wife joins in:

We Don’t Support Gropers Except For Bill Clinton

..to which Amanda replies:

If you’re wondering what’s motivating Ann and Dr. Helen to hiss and spit in Jessica’s direction, the comments from their male readers in the threads bring it all to light. Ann even helpfully noted that she thinks that Jessica looks like Monica Lewinsky, so that her imagination-stunted readers put two and two together and got the idea—Lewinsky performed that oral sex we’ve been hearing so much about! This is important for some reason! Dark-haired girls must do that act we’ve heard about! If you want to start a research project on the relationship of sexual repression and right wing nuttery, those comment threads are a good place to start.

The fabulous Echidne has the last word (at least for the moment):

I am very tempted to join in the fray and to start sending arrows here and there, but I will restrain myself, don a neutral pin-striped business suit and write about something very erudite and academic.

Which is tits and their role in feminism. And don’t worry, I first bound my own breasts very tightly. If I stood slightly angled towards you I might come across as almost breastless. Or breast-free or something. Except that now I can’t breathe at all. Argh. Proper erudite feminism is damn inconvenient.

Posted: September 16th, 2006 under Being Female, Blogistan, Feminism, General.
Comments: 2