This and That Blog RoundUp

Sixteen Maneuvers to Avoid Really Dealing with Racism is wonderful and is at feministe. Hat tip What Tami Said.

Yesterday was International Women's Day. Women for Women International is a great organization: "sponsor a woman survivor of war and change a life!"

While some give their best, others give their worst. Here is Phyllis Schlafly on International Women's Day:

"The radical feminists want to remake our laws in order to eradicate everything that is masculine from our culture and create a gender-neutral society," concluded Schlafly. "The United States should seriously reconsider lending its stamp of approval to future IWDs."

I attended a speech by Schlafly one time. It was at a Jesuit college whose tuition was in the $20,000 per year range, which is quite a chunk of quarters to pay for an education if you are among the more than 50% female student body and what you should really expect is to stay home and have babies. We in the Women's Studies group attended, wearing matching t-shirts that had some sort of slogan on them (I can't remember now). Sometimes it was hard not to laugh. Hardly any actual students attended, other than our protest group. The audience was made almost entirely of old white Republicans. Apparently, the local Republican party had sent out emails about her visit, so that's who showed up at her speech.

Here, rightwingwatch dishes on this heapin' helpin' o' rightwing hypocrisy:

Why would such an independent-minded, ambitious, self-motivated and capable woman devote so much effort to making sure that members of her sex would benefit from their dependence upon men? How could Schlafly reconcile her professed anti-elitism and opposition to day care with the fact that, although presenting herself as a traditional wife and mother, she ran for Congress twice, campaigned hard for Goldwater, crisscrossed the country speaking out for conservative causes, wrote more than a dozen books and enjoyed the services of a housekeeper who stayed with her family for 26 years?

Kathryn Jean Lopez says that once Hillary Clinton's campaign is over, we can also do away with feminism:

It would mark the end of the silly-women-talk on the national political scene. The beginning of female candidates running as candidates, without a heavy serving of identity politics…America is ready to quit this feminist silliness that men and women are equal, and that women don’t have different, natural responsibilities to the children they give birth to than men do.
From Townhall.com

Right - because when women and people of color support candidates who look like them and may share their experiences in the world, that's called "identity politics," but when white doodz support candidates who are white and male, that's just called "voting." And god forbid parenting would be about men taking responsibility for their seed.

Let's explain it again for Schlafly and Lopez:

Translated from French, the above sign says, "Feminism never killed anyone; machismo kills every day." Hat tip The F-Word for these three items (and what a great name for a blog).

The Burning Times has a great post about the silencing of older feminists and how it prevents our passing on herstory. She also has links to two MORE great blog posts on this subject (dear dog, will I ever finish reading these internets??). I said this recently in a comment over at Heart's site, but I'll say it again. I am shocked every single day to discover how little herstory I know. We really do seem doomed to perpetually reinventing the wheel because our previous work on how to do it is constantly being erased. I am an educated woman. I was raised by a feminist to be a feminist (although my mom was a liberal and I'm a radical, but the point is that I was given more feminist tools in childhood than are most). I have a degree in Social Justice Issues with a Women's Studies concentration. I read all of the feminist herstory and theory I can find time to read. And yet, the more I read the more frustrated I become by my own ignorance.

The Burning Times also explains about "the porn test," with what may be one of the most insightful things I've ever read:

Porn does destroy women. Sometimes by tiny increments, sometimes in one fatal blow. It infringes upon women's lives, and is increasingly inescapable. The destruction of the individual woman by porn may take many years, but it is also a destruction of women as a class over many hundreds of years. For as long as porn exists, it will be destroying women, one by one, relationship by relationship, state by state, and globally.

on the death of ecofeminist Val Plumwood, covered over at the Society of Women in Philosophy

Memo to Sax and Gurian

Excuse me, modern pied pipers of biology-driven single-sex education, but I have some questions.

First, some background. I have a child who has a vagina. This would automatically put her into your girl category.

When she was little, she attended this amazing private school, where her teachers taught her using a variety of methods. They went on lots of walks and trips. They hardly ever had to sit still for very long. They built stuff, measured stuff, and investigated stuff. My daughter did well there.

We've since moved and my child is in public middle school. In public school here, the teachers only teach using what I like to call the "sit down, shut up, and memorize it" method.

Now I find out that there is apparently something wrong with my child, since she doesn't learn this way. After spending lots of money I didn't really have on private testing, I've learned she has something called an auditory processing disorder. This means that although she can hear, sounds and ideas get mixed up between her ears and her brain.

She would do best if she could go back to learning by building stuff, measuring stuff, and investigating stuff. Two years ago, my public school district almost implemented a plan that would have taught in precisely the way my child best learns, but the ACLU got an injunction because it turns out that this great other way of teaching was only going to be offered to children with penises. That's right. This school district, coached by Sax and Gurian, was going to teach boys and girls differently, and my child was going to end up in the wrong group (god bless the ACLU!)!

"Teaching Boys and Girls Separately" in today's New York Times explains to us how the brains of boys and girls are different and how they, therefore, need to be taught differently.

...two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes.

My daughter really likes snakes. She likes all animals. At Discovery School, the kids had lots of pets in the classroom. The students wrote reports about these animals and also took turns caring for them.

The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education.

Mr. Sax, have you ever been down south? Seventy five degrees is awfully hot indoors, Mr. Sax, when it's over 90% humidity. No one keeps their a/c that high, even women and girls. Are you trying to teach girls home ec by cooking them? Just askin.' Seriously, what if my child finds seventy five degrees too warm, even though she has a vagina?

Under Sax’s leadership, teachers learn to say things like, “Damien, take your green crayon and draw some sparks and take your black crayon and draw some black lines coming out from the back of the vehicle, to make it look like it’s going faster.” “Now Damien feels encouraged,” Sax explained to me when I first met him last spring in San Francisco. “To say: ‘Why don’t you use more colors? Why don’t you put someone in the vehicle?’ is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, ‘Well, this is nice, but why don’t you have one of them kick the other one — give us some action.’"

Mr. Sax, my daughter prefers the cool colors that you say boys prefer. I also notice that your sample directions for a boy are much more specific than are your sample directions for the girl. My child, who has both a vagina and an auditory processing disorder, needs very specific instructions given one step at a time. Also, she requires an emphasis on action. Action does not discourage her at all, unlike little Emily, even though they both have vaginas. In fact, she has really only ever been able to learn where there is lots of action involved. Lots of talk sounds like so much white noise to her, and it doesn't help her learn. And she loves anything that goes fast, just like Damien, always has. When she was little, I used to put her on every amusement park ride I could find. I was sometimes bemused to see other children crying to be let off of rides, since my child laughed hysterically at every twist and turn the amusement parks could offer. My child never wanted to sit still. Whenever she was strapped into a car seat, she screamed nonstop. Once, she screamed from western Montana, across the Idaho panhandle, and into eastern Washington - two hours, and I have it on videotape. Invariably, the moment she was free to run, she stopped screaming.

My mother once remarked that she admired my parenting because I always took the time to, literally, let my child smell the flowers; the truth is that she was such a ball of constant motion that giving her time to explore using her own senses was the only teaching I was able to do with her. She wouldn't sit still so that I could read books to her, although heaven knows I tried and tried and tried. Now I understand that all that talk doesn't sound like much to her.

School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught “by soft-spoken women who bore” boys).

My child, who, again, has both a vagina and an auditory processing disorder, is desperately frustrated by soft-spoken teachers who talk, talk, talk. Do you have any educational theories that would help her?

...claiming that his high school — where there are twice as many girls on the honor roll as there are boys — discriminated against males

My child also is falling behind academically, as the older grade levels shift completely away from activity based learning and use only what I like to call the "sit down, shut up, and memorize it" method. Even though my child has both a vagina and an auditory processing disorder, could high schools possibly be discriminating against my child too?

By this past fall, Sax says, that number had soared to more than 360, with boys- and girls-only classrooms now established in Cleveland; Detroit; Albany; Gary, Ind.; Philadelphia; Dallas; and Nashville, among other places. A disproportionate number of the schools are in the South (where attitudes toward gender roles tend to be more conservative) or serve disadvantaged kids. Sax claims that “many more are in the pipeline for 2008-2009.”

My child now attends school in the South. Should the school district find ways around the ACLU's specific complaints that won the injunction here, what will happen to children like mine who have both vaginas and auditory processing disorders?

Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys don’t hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys’ visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture.

My child doesn't hear well. I mean, her ears hear, but her brain doesn't. She has to sit at the front of the room during lectures, and the school may provide some sort of amplification device for her teachers to speak into. Does this mean there might be something wrong with her vagina or female reproductive organs? I wonder if I will ever be a grandmother!

Like Mr. Sax's boys, my child is really observant and good with action - shockingly so. One time, we were shopping at a video store's sidewalk sale. A man next to me apparently grabbed a stack of CDs, ran to his car, and drove away. I didn't even notice. My daughter, however, saw it happen and got his license plate number to report to the police. Another time, during a hurricane, we evacuated to Texas for two days, then drove to Arkansas to share a hotel room with my mom for a week, then drove home to Louisiana. On the drive from Arkansas to Louisiana, my child insisted that we had been in this particular gas station before. I laughed, explaining that after several days on the road, all gas stations start to look alike. She was insistent, however, and knowing how amazing her visual skills are, I finally checked a map. Sure enough, this one stretch of highway was the same one we'd taken from Texas into Arkansas and we had indeed been in that same gas station before. She is never wrong about what she's seen. Never. On the other hand, she is seldom able to process and retain what she is told.

On that November day in Foley, Ala., William Bender pulled a stool up to a lectern and began reading to his fourth-grade boys from Gary Paulsen’s young-adult novel “Hatchet.” Bender’s voice is deep and calm, a balm to many of his students who lack father figures or else have parents who, Bender says, “don’t want to be parents. They want to be their kids’ friends.” Bender paused to ask one of his boys, who said he was feeling sick, “Are you going to make it, brother?” Then he kept reading. “ ‘The pain in his forehead seemed to be abating. . . .’ What’s abating, gentlemen?” The protagonist of “Hatchet” survives a plane crash and finds himself alone by an insect-infested lake. Bender encouraged his boys to empathize. They discussed how annoying it is, when you’re out hunting, to be swarmed by yellow flies.

Meanwhile, in Michelle Gay’s fourth-grade class, the girls sang a vigorous rendition of “Always Sisters” and then did a tidy science experiment: pouring red water, blue oil and clear syrup into a plastic cup to test which has the greatest density, then confirming their results with the firsthand knowledge that when you’re doing the dishes after your mother makes fried chicken, the oil always settles on top of the water in the sink.

My daughter doesn't really cook, and she doesn't really do dishes. She also hates singing as part of a group, preferring to pound away on African drums instead. The books she enjoys feature lots of action. She would enjoy a book about a tough girl surviving a plane crash. She also likes to go fishing.

Sax credits Bender for helping focus a boy who was given a wrong diagnosis of attention-deficit disorder by telling him that his father, who had left the family, would be even less likely to return if all his mother had to report was the boy misbehaving in school. Sax also goes out of his way to note that Bender had this conversation with the boy “shoulder to shoulder,” not “face to face.” “Just remember this rule of thumb,” Sax tells readers: “A good place to talk with your son is in your car, with you driving and your son in the passenger seat.”

Mr. Bender, my father left me when I was a child. It broke my heart. Do you believe he didn't return because I wasn't being good?

Mr. Sax, it's interesting that you point out the best way to communicate with my child, even though you're prescribing for boys only. I didn't know anyone else was on to this trick! The way my child and I talk about serious stuff is side by side, usually in the car. She doesn't like someone looking her straight in the eyes. She prefers to be busy and talk while she's doing. Because she can not sit still long enough to study, what I've done over the years is to make flashcards when she has an upcoming test and then we walk around the neighborhood, moving and studying at the same time. I first tried this when I read that the Greeks studied while walking and I immediately thought of my fidgety would-be scholar. Do you think it's weird that a person with a vagina needs to study in this manner? The ACLU suit quoted some material of yours suggesting that in single-sex classrooms, boys will get more breaks and be allowed to move around more often than will girls. What about my girl?

Speaking to a group of sixth graders, Sax explained his theory that girls’ hearing ability is much better than boys’, as is girls’ sense of smell. The girls, just on the edge of puberty, sat utterly rapt, seeming to want to understand why their brothers, boy cousins, cute skater-dude neighbors and fathers were so weird.

Well, once again, my child's hearing ability is well below average. At thirteen, her ability to discern phonics is at the level of a typical nine year old, even though she does have a vagina; she lags developmentally in this area, as you suggest boys often do. Also, perhaps girls are seeming rapt, wanting to understand boys, because every single aspect of popular culture tells girls this is what they should care about. Surely "Cosmo" isn't destiny.

For several years before then, the boy had been withdrawn, uninspired and on multiple medications, but he had recently made a big turnaround, which his parents credited to having enrolled him in an all-boys school. Upon hearing this, Sax said to the boy’s mother, “With all due respect, I regard single-sex education as an antiquated relic of the Victorian Era.” To which he says she replied, “With all due respect, Dr. Sax, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” After visiting a handful of single-sex schools, Sax threw himself into studying neurological differences between males and females, eventually focusing on how to protect boys from a syndrome he calls “failure to launch,” which Sax often characterizes as caring more about getting a Kilimanjaro in Halo 3 than performing well in high school or taking a girl on a date. Among his early proposals was that boys should start kindergarten at age 6, a year later than girls, in order to ease the “sense of scholastic incompetence” that so many boys feel early on because they tend to develop later.

It's funny you should say that too! My child didn't do well her first semester of kindergarten. It was when we put her in a school that taught using a variety of active approaches that she finally "launched." For example, she finally learned the sounds associated with the letters of the alphabet when her new teacher bundled up the kids and took them for a walk in the snow to look for things starting with a certain letter. When she got to public middle school and this was no longer the teaching style, we did indeed end up having to hold her back a grade, just as you suggest is often a solution for boys - even though she is a girl.

For boys, he said: “You need to get them up and moving. That’s based on the nervous system, that’s based on eyes, that’s based upon volume and the use of volume with the boys.” Chadwell, like Sax, says that differences in eyesight, hearing and the nervous system all should influence how you instruct boys. “You need to engage boys’ energy, use it, rather than trying to say, No, no, no. So instead of having boys raise their hands, you’re going to have boys literally stand up. You’re going to do physical representation of number lines. Relay races. Ball tosses during discussion.”

It's almost like you've been following my life, Mr. Sax! This is exactly how my child learns and lives, even though she is a girl! I think she must have a nervous system too!

For the girls, Chadwell prescribes a focus on “the connections girls have (a) with the content, (b) with each other and (c) with the teacher. If you try to stop girls from talking to one another, that’s not successful. So you do a lot of meeting in circles, where every girl can share something from her own life that relates to the content in class.”

Um, Mr. Sax? That is a sure route to failure for my child. Any background chattering shuts down her brain's ability to "hear." Also, lots of kids in circles and group processing sounds like static to her. She will become frustrated by the constant static. Her mind will drift. She won't learn anything.

He opens “Why Gender Matters” with two cautionary tales: one about a boy who starts kindergarten at age 5, is given a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. and depression and ends up on a three-drug cocktail of Adderall, Wellbutrin and clonidine...

My child too was diagnosed in kindergarten with A.D.H.D. What helped was not a program specifically for one gender, but an active learning program for boys and girls.

Baby boys prefer to stare at mobiles; baby girls at faces. Boys solve maze puzzles using the hippocampus; girls use the cerebral cortex. Boys covet risk; girls shy away. Boys perform better under moderate stress; girls perform worse. Many academics and progressives tend to find Sax’s views stereotyped and infuriating, yet Sax does not seem to mind.

Well, I do mind, Mr. Sax. My child laughed at risk from the moment she was born. She was fierce and fearless! She was just born that way. As a baby, she didn't prefer staring at mobiles to staring at faces; she was desperately trying to reach out and grab and investigate anything she could see!

One of Sax’s core arguments is that trying to teach a 5-year-old boy to read is as developmentally fraught as trying to teach a 3 1/2-year-old girl and that such an exercise often leads to a kid hating school. This argument resonates with many teachers and parents, who long for the days when kindergarten meant learning how to stand in line for recess, not needing to complete phonics homework. Yet public schools are beholden to state standards, and those standards require kindergartners to learn to read.

My child also couldn't read until well into second grade and was starting to hate school until we found a place that knew how to harness that restless little girl energy.

One of the first things he noticed was that three boys were getting suspended for every girl, “and for the most ridiculous things in the world — a boy would burp, or he’d pass gas, or a girl would say, ‘He hit me.’ ”

A girl would complain about being hit? Well, the nerve!

Under Bailey’s guidance, the boys did two more pages of phonics, and then she jumped to her feet and announced: “Stand up if you need to get your sillies out! Put your hands on your belly. Ha . . . ha, ha . . . ha, ha, ha. Now get ready for a blastoff with me!” Bailey counted down from 10 to 1, crouched down into a squat alongside the boys and then exploded into the air. Then she promptly took her seat. “Sit up tall, fold your hands, three-two-one, here we go.” Bailey held up a page and put her index finger on a red dot. “Boys, let’s read together now. This . . . is . . . my . . . kitten....”

But it was inside Emily Wylie’s A.P. English class where the real social value of single-sex teaching was on display. Ferreira, among 20 other seniors, sat in a circle discussing “Pride and Prejudice.” Wylie asked the girls to call out which characters had which vices and virtues. A serious discussion of whether lust — Lydia’s lust — was a vice or virtue ensued.

My daughter would be bored to tears and staring out the window during this discussion. Can't she just be in the group that gets to stand up, get their sillies out, touch their belly buttons? Even though she has a vagina? It really is best for her education, I promise, even if it doesn't fit your neat little stereotypes.

Thank you again to the heroes of the ACLU! Who else would work to stop these idiots?

Potpourri

LonerGrrrl explains the need for women only spaces. Just brilliant! (hat tip to The Burning Times)

What brings this subject to the forefront just now is the inclusion of men at a Sheffield, UK, "Reclaim the Night" rally. At rallies I've attended in the past, there was a "SpeakOut Against Rape" portion that was indoors and included men as well as women. There was a march in the streets for women only. While women marched, men held some sort of consciousness-raising discussions indoors. I would have been very upset had men been allowed in the march. The idea is for WOMEN to insist on our right to be in the streets, unescorted, after dark.

Another thing bringing this subject to the forefront just now is the inclusion of men on the York Student Union's Women's Committee.

The latest Carnival of Radical Feminists is up.

There is also the latest Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution.

Hillary Clinton keeps campaign contributions from a CEO with a brazen history of sexual harassment. It's as bad as the Jack Nicholson endorsement. It makes me wonder why these men donate to a woman candidate anyway. Guilty consciense? Cluelessness? With Nicholson, he does have a movie clip in his endorsement film in which he says, "There's nothing sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning." Other than maybe repeatedly bashing a woman's head into the floor, I guess. What is it - some kind of domination fetish? Because we already know it's always about the sex. Always. Vote for Hillary because she's a member of the sex caste and it's sexy to pretend she's the boss. Pardon me while I barf.

The U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women is meeting this week.

On the American presidential campaign: "Leveraging the Power of Race and Gender".

Remembering Barbara Seaman

On the bus with Obama, in search of some Howlin' Wolf: here.

Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian keep pushing their gender stereotypes into public education.

Andrea Smith has been denied tenure - letter-writing campaign.

Linking misogyny and murder in the U.K.: here and here. (via feministing)

Charlotte Allen, who previously pronounced Katrina a good thing that happened to New Orleans now announces that women are really, really dumb (both stories at feministing). I realize I'm two years late commenting on her New Orleans column, but I must say that I would love to meet the local who told her Katrina had been a good thing for the city. I wish Allen had interviewed my grandparents, who are in their eighties, who have ended up spending these last years of their lives struggling to rebuild their home. I wish she could have seen my military veteran grandfather in the weeks after Katrina, driving dazed all over Baton Rouge, desperately trying to find new shoes to fit wide, weathered, eighty-plus year old feet, his eyes filling up with tears as he explained, "We try them out for a few days and then have to return them. Honey, when you're our age, you just don't go buy shoes at Wal-Mart." I wish Allen had met my mother-in-law, widowed just a year before Katrina, following forty years of marriage, gas mask on, trying to scrape mold off of things in her home; suddenly hearing every midnight noise magnified through the walls of her FEMA trailer; one night watching the police chase a man who jumped over her fence as she sat trembling in that little can of a building; suddenly realizing just how vulnerable she really was when she was sexually propositioned in her wrecked home by a contractor she informed about her recent widowhood; spending countless hours for more than a year calling government agencies, contractors, repair companies, delivery companies, utility companies, the mortgage holder, insurance companies, friends, family members. I wish Allen had talked to my mother, a schoolteacher who got transferred to a school 90 minutes and two toll bridges away from her home (without any compensation for increased gasoline costs), who lived in a rental property the owners refused to clean up (these owners threatened to double the rent when she complained), who slept each night for six months listening to the tree rustling inside of the ceiling above her bed, there where it had been lodged since Katrina, hearing critters scurrying around up there until she finally couldn't take it anymore, the nerve pills making her too dopey to work, so she finally moved 2400 miles from here. I wish Ms. Allen could interview everyone we know about now living under the threat of getting cancer as a result of exposure to the formaldehyde in their FEMA trailers.

Can I just say something to Charlotte Allen? Fuck. You.

(I know that last part wasn't especially well written, but I'm tired and that article really made me mad.)

Judge Obama by "Heart and Soul" Legislation

Charles Peters at the Washington Post says the best way to judge a legislator is by his or her "heart and soul" work. And here is what Peters finds about Barack Obama in that department:

And the "heart and soul" bill, the one for which a legislator gives everything he or she has to get passed, has long told me more than anything else about a person's character and ability.

Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.

Obama had his work cut out for him....

Obama didn't stop there. He played a major role in passing many other bills, including the state's first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois "one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure"). Obama's commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who "bundle" contributions for them. lots more

Hat tip to What Tami Said.

It occurs to me that I've been blogging about Obama a lot lately. It's because everyone else I know is for Hillary Clinton. I get beaten up for saying anything about it in email or at most of the women's groups where I usually post, so this blog has kind of become a much needed outlet for that topic.

Calling on Clinton to Reject and Denounce Nicholson

We know that this week Hillary Clinton was quick on the draw when Barack Obama said he "denounced" the views of Louis Farakhan. Senator Clinton wanted Senator Obama to "reject" Farakhan and the latter's support, which Obama agreed to do.

Today there is news that Jack Nicholson has endorsed Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton supporters have been spot-on in pointing out that overt sexism is socially acceptable while overt racism has generally been forced underground. I hope they don't miss this one, because it really disgusts me. Support from Jack Nicholson, and nobody flinches? This Jack Nicholson???

In 1997, Nicholson was sued by prostitute Christine Sheehan, who alleged that Nicholson had refused to pay for services rendered and had instead assaulted her, and repeatedly smashed her head onto the floor of his Hollywood home. The lawsuit was settled with a substantial payment from Nicholson, but Sheehan later alleged that her injuries were worse than she had originally believed. At last report she was seeking an additional $500,000 from Nicholson.

Or, as another report puts it:

Prostitute Takes Jack Nicholson To Court... Again
12 May 2000 (WENN) Jack Nicholson is being sued by a former prostitute who claims she is dying after he allegedly beat her up. Christine Sheehan says she was invited up to Nicholson's luxury Hollywood house in October 1996, but when she asked for payment for her services, the movie star got angry and allegedly beat her head against the floor several times. Sheehan originally filed a civil suit in 1997, and received $33, 000 after the SHINING star settled out of court. But now the former prostitute claims the money is not enough - and after legal and medical bills, the cash has all been used up. Her lawyer IRA CHESTER says, "About a year after she received the original payment her injuries and the damage to her brain stem got worse than originally thought... Now the injury is actually killing her. She has no vision at times and finds it hard to cope with the pain... The medical bills have already reached $60, 000, but if she is to survive she needs an important operation that promises to set her back $500, 000 (œ325, 000). The original settlement isn't enough." The suit was filed at Santa Monica Court last week and Nicholson is expected to challenge the action. Nicholson's publicist refuses to comment about the case.

It is impossible to find in the American media just how the case was eventualy settled. A British friend and tireless advocate for women recently reported to me that she had been in England at the time of the Jack Nicholson case, where there was extensive coverage. Arriving at an American conference of feminists against pornography, trafficking, and prostitution, this friend anxiously asked everyone what they thought about the Nicholson case. No one knew what the hell she was talking about. There had been a virtual media blackout in this country, where sexist pricks who hire hookers and even beat them can still be Hollywood cool. This friend, who got her news coverage in England, reported that the verdict, which is NEVER reported on American websites, was that Nicholson has to pay for 24 hour nursing care all the rest of this woman's life.

Oh, and what about homophobia? Heeeeere's Jack!

...Another time, the issue was ... sexual politics, but Nicholson proved less than radical. When some Hollywood celebrities called for a boycott of Colorado, in 1993, because of that state's referendum law excluding homosexuals from civil rights protection, Jack announced his opposition. Any boycott of the state where the actor happened to maintain two hideaway homes was, he told the press, "rubbish."

As a woman and an advocate against violence and for gay civil rights, I demand that Hillary Clinton BOTH denounce and reject any support from Jack Nicholson.

New Hillary Ad

Oops, wait, no, it's this one:

Obama just says no:

U.S. Prison Population - We're Number One

I don't have a link, but I heard on CNN last night that the U.S. now has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any nation on earth, with China and Russia coming in second and third.

A full one percent of our people is in prison.

One in 36 Latinos is in prison.

One in 15 blacks is in prison.

We're number one! I hope Michelle Obama is finally proud of her country!

Oh, and five states are now spending more on prisons than on schools.

Dear Sister of NOLAradfem and Certain Other Clintonites

Dear Little Sister of NOLAradfem:

Welcome aboard! We are glad to have your assistance (of course, we do strictly mean your assistance, as women are, of course, not equipped to lead)!

Thank you for helping to circulate our emails about Barack Hussein Obama being a Moslem, the son of a Moslem, the stepson of a Moslem, the son an atheist, the stepson of an atheist, an Islam denier, a liar, a Moslem candidate ready to free the Middle East from the Great Satan, a former Moslem student paying to attend a Catholic school in Indonesia, an anti-Semite, a black militant, and the parishioner of a profanity-spewing, black militant, anti-semite, Methodist preacher who is clearly a racist because he points out that the U.S. is a white, racist nation; that Obama calls a Kenyan woman with a very black face (photo helpfully included) "Grandmother;" that he is the product of racial mixing, the descendant of African slave traders (because, as all we all know, the really bad slave traders were the Africans themselves, so American slavery was their fault); that he wants to get us into war in Kenya (because even though he opposed the Iraq war, he is indeed just itching to get U.S. troops into Kenya!); that he lied about his WWII vet grandfather teaching him flag etiquette when he was two years old; that he won't say the pledge or put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.

Even though we also have at our website articles claiming that domestic violence protection orders discriminate against men; that a woman can't be president ever because it's unconstiutional; that hetero, Christian, white males are oppressed; that the Clintons are murderers and cocaine runners; that Pell grants discriminate against the middle class in favor of the working class; that the proposed law banning cops and soldiers convincted of domestic violence from continuing to have employment that involves firearms is another example of discrimination against fine, heroic men; that radical feminism is ruining the world; that global warming is a hoax and Al Gore a fraud; that John Kerry must be impeached, since under the constitution, no traitor may hold public office; that the ten commandments must be displayed in all public buildings and that all American governments, state, local, and federal, must immediately adopt a resolution stating that this is a Christian nation and that the wall of separation between church and state is a myth; that the "pro-Hanoi" actions of Senators McCain and Kerry caused the death of one of our soldiers; that John McCain is a traitor who broke under torture and has been programmed as a Manchurian candidate...even though our website says all of those things, none of which you agree with, we are heartened by your taking the time to forward our anti-Obama hatred to your friends and family members (not to mention glad that you didn't first bother to research us and our websites! who remembers the google anymore anyway! whew!)

As you might imagine, cramming that much contradictory crap into one email was quite a bit of work, so we're grateful for your help in forwarding it to as many people as possible. It's true we don't usually make common cause with people like you, Little Sister of NOLAradfem (liberal, feminist, pro-Clinton, believer in the separation of church and state, all that kinda stuff).

But, you know, when it comes to sliming and destroying that Obama dude, we reichwingers will take all the help we can get.

Thanks again for your blind support. We look forward to serving you beyond January of 2009.

Signed,
SwiftBoatVeteransForGullibleAndBitterClintonSupporters

Addressing The Issue Of My Middle Name

Some Republican operatives are insisting that Barack Hussein Obama needs to "address" the "issue" of his middle name.

Furthermore, during last night's presidential debate, Hillary Clinton insisted that Barack Obama's denunciation of Louis Farakhan was insufficient, demanding that he "reject" Farakhan as well as "denounce" him - which Obama did.

As a supporter of Barack Hussein Obama's, I feel it's only fair that I offer the same disclosure expected of my candidate.

And so, in the interest of full disclosure, I need to say, right here on my blog, that, yes, my middle name is indeed "Kaye." I don't know if my parents were trying to prove what intellectuals they were by spelling out a letter of the alphabet or what. I do know that they were ordinary New Orleanians, stationed in Alabama at the time of my birth, so maybe they were trying to get a little too fancy-schmanzy with that spelling, stretching a humble single letter into four. Or maybe they were trying to show pride in the culture of that particular time and place with their choice of such a strange, bland, monosyllabic, apparently Anglophylic name. Please be assured that had I been consulted about the issue at the time - and had I been lingual - I might have lobbied for a different choice. This election, however, needs to be not about the the desires of the parents of a newborn over forty years ago, but rather about the dreams and futures of the American people. I had hoped that at long last we were at a point in American history where we could be judged not by the letters filled in on our birth certificates but by the content of our character. Alas, our time may not yet have come.

Also, I am hearing rumblings about my middle name reminding some observers of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Although we share a name, a mere one letter apart just like Osama and Obama, I hereby denounce and reject her Republican policies. I also denounce and reject the religiosity of the Mary Kay cosmetics company.

If I have left out any other "Kayes" whose values do not reflect those espoused on this blog, please let me know. I will denounce them and then, if that still isn't enough, I am even willing to reject them.

Finally, I'm sure there have been at least a few people over the years who wanted to be my friend but who I thought were creepy, just as Senator Obama apparently feels about Louis Farakhan. I would confess their names if only I could remember them, but the truth is that I just didn't realize I would someday be responsible for them. If anyone has any dirt on me regarding creepy would-be friends I've rejected, let me know and I will be happy to denounce them and their beliefs. If that isn't enough, I will even reject them - again.

Thank you for your continuing support. I look forward to further serving you this important election season.

Dear Senator Vitter - My Modest Proposal

I just sent this to our prostitute-hiring, diaper-fetishing idiot of a senator:

Dear Senator Vitter,

I see that you have devoted time and effort to the pressing problem of the need to pass legislation ensuring that women receiving health care under the Indian Health Service can never get abortions there. You devoted time and effort to getting that passed even though the Hyde amendment has banned the use of ANY federal funds for abortions since the 1970s. Heckuva job, Davie, because what the voters in this devastated state really need is duplicate layers of legislation.

I understand though that you have a principled pro-life position. My suggestion is that, in that spirit, you should offer a Senate bill limiting contraceptive access for prostitutes and ensuring that the fathers of any children of prostitutes be genetically identified and then forced to pay child support. Politicians, who are, after all, the self-styled moral guardians of a nation, should submit samples of their DNA to a centralized database for these purposes, thus ensuring that any guilty parties may be identified and compelled to provide diapers for the duration.

Seriously, Senator, a man who rents women's vaginas and then legislates what they do with their wombs - what's with this obsession of yours? It's so obvious, and it's an embarrassment.

Sexually Harassed? Well, I Did Stay at a Holiday Inn Express Last Night

So imagine this. You are a woman travelling alone, staying at a hotel. Maybe while you're waiting to check in, a man who is also waiting casually asks you about your trip. If you do what I unthinkingly did recently, maybe you tell a bit about your business and then, as you insert the key into the door of your room, you realize too late that you have a big mouth and that now some dude in the hotel knows that you are here, all alone. Your heart starts to pound. Your breath quickens. You can't get the door open and then shut again quickly enough. You call home to be sure someone knows where to start looking, room number and all, just in case you are never heard from again. You check that weird metal arm thing on the door and wonder exactly what that does to keep an intruder out. You turn over the electronic key pass in your hands and hope it's true that the same pass is only good for a single stay.

So imagine my shock when the other day, I saw this new commercial (click "Bacon") for Holiday Inn Express. Showcasing the hotel chain's breakfast bar by playing it up as an actual bar, the ad involves several men standing in the dining area, ogling a woman alone, and discussing what breakfast item they should "send" her.

As BrandWeek describes it:

New work from Fallon, Minneapolis, cheekily calls attention to new hot entrees by positioning the breakfast bar as a nightclub. In one ad, co-workers mingle near the buffet while one guy tosses pick-up lines at his boss. Another 30-second ad shows men discussing whether it’s good form to send a cheese omelet, bacon or a cinnamon roll to a hottie they spot at in the buffet line. The effort also borrows nightlife elements like ladies night the designated driver and play up the free meal and breakfast to go service. Voice over mentions, “Check out the new hot bar in town.”

So, I went to Holiday Inn's web page and found the other ads, including this one (click "pick up") in which a male business traveller at the breakfast "bar" mindlessly attempts to pick up every woman in the place, including one who has to remind him that she is, in fact, his boss! Oh, ha-ha-ha. Sexual harassment is just so "cheeky," as Brandweek describes the ad campaign.

There is another article about the ad campaign at Hotel Resource:

The Express Start(R) Breakfast Bar relaunch coincides with the brand's newest series of TV commercials that began airing the week of Feb. 11. The new spots play off the idea of Holiday Inn Express offering the 'hot' new bar in town. The breakfast bar takes on a life of its own as the social scene for groups of business travelers who dine, flirt and socialize with colleagues in potentially awkward, yet humorous situations. The ads from Fallon Minneapolis have the unexpected, witty humor that is characteristic of the award winning Holiday Inn Express Stay Smart advertising campaign. The new spots can be viewed at http://www.hiexpress.com/, and will air on popular national cable networks like ESPN, The History Channel, Comedy Central, CNN and TNT. The ads also will air on CBS during the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

During basketball. Really? What, no "Lifetime?" As usual, we know to whom the pitch is really being made. And note the article's references to the ads' "potentially awkward, yet humorous situations," which leaves out the fact that the situations depicted are also potentially dangerous - at least for a woman who eats breakfast in the hotel lobby and then must return alone to her room before making several trips to load luggage into her vehicle.

Did no one at the ad agency or the hotel chain or in the t.v. production process ever think about the fact that being a woman staying in a hotel alone is somewhat frightening? Don't get me wrong - I loved my hotel room a few weeks ago. It was the first time in my entire life that I had ever had my own room and I loved it so much I threatened to never return home. Still, there were those moments, always that awareness inherent to living while female under the patriarchy. There was the guy at the desk to whom I accidentally implied that I was alone. Later, there was a man coming into the hotel some moments after me and I was terrified as I got my luggage to the internal staircase, brick, thick-walled, meant to be used in case of fire but also probably soundproof and a problem if I were attacked and needed to scream. My arms were full and as I waited for the stairwell door to click shut on its own, my heart was pounding even as I strained to listen carefully for footsteps. Then the door didn't quite click all the way, which meant the man in the hallway behind me could possibly follow me into the stair area. Scary stuff. A day in the life.

And Holiday Inn thinks it's oh-so innocent, safe, "cheeky" even to show men gawking at women and practicing their sophomoric sexual pitches right there at the hotel's breakfast bar.

Unbelievable.

Every space and every scenario in this country is seen as a potential venue in which men can objectify women - both in real life and in advertising.

Just to see if I was possibly overreacting (I have been accused from time to time, it's true), I did a quick google search of "hotel room rape." Of course, it's not overreacting when we women know we feel nervous about being assaulted a lot of the time, and that alone makes the Holiday Inn ads inexcusable, but I wanted to know if there is indeed a chance of a woman being raped at a hotel. And here is a sample:

"A Guest at the Plaza Hotel is Raped in Her Suite"

California Lodging Industry Association: "Hotel Not Liable for Guest's Rape, 7th District Rules"

"Safety of Hotel Employees: Rape at W Hotel New York"

"Hotel Guest Reports Rape by Security"

"Businesswoman Raped in Hotel Room, Jury Told" (the Hilton, Sussex, England)

tort case against Omni Hotels over rape of a woman attending a "Women in Steel" union conference in D.C.

more hotel torts, "Travel Abroad, Sue at Home"

It turns out there are even books on "Hotel, Restaurant, and Travel Law: a Preventive Approach."

Here is a summary of hotel and related liability lawsuits ("premises security liability suits"). Who wins these cases?

defendants: 52% of cases
plaintiffs: 21% of cases
remanded: 19% of cases

I will be contacting Holiday Inn Express customer service about these ads.

Shakes on the Obama Cowboy Hat Photo

Wolfrum at Shakesville compares cowboy costumes on politicians


to politicians dressed as Somali elders


and reminds us what dressing like the enemy really looks like:


Says Wolfrum, of the Obama-with-cowboy-hat photo:

When I first saw the photo, I couldn't believe it. I thought it had to be photoshopped, a hoax. After all, how could Barack Obama betray America so offensively? How could he insult the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm shaken to the core. Without question, Obama's patriotism must be called into question for appearing dressed like an enemy of the American people.

Brilliant, Wolfrum. Brilliant.

This reminds me of Bill Maher's "I'm Swiss"

What is with Bush wearing the cowboy hat and the cowboy boots and the cowboy belt? Memo! Um, there are no more cowboys, which means you're wearing a costume. OK? You might as well be dressed as Sherlock Holmes or a pirate.

As for Obama, like I said over at Shakes' place, I think politicians are pretty much required to do local pandering when they campaign. Here in south Louisiana, visiting politicians all visit Leah Chase

and get their pictures taken eating her gumbo (Owner Leah Chase patted Obama on his stomach and told him, "Get a little gumbo right quick. You’re too frail baby. We gotta fatten you up a bit.” Times Picayune)

It's all about kissing the civic ring.

not that Leah Chase doesn't deserve it though!

Starhawk Explains Obama's Magic

She is amazing! This blew my mind as surely as when I first read her books:

If politicians hired Witches or magicians as consultants, we’d tell them that your deep mind responds to positive words and images, and doesn’t get ‘no’. Linguist and political theorist George Lakoff makes the same point in his book Don’t Think of An Elephant. You can’t not think of an elephant—because as soon as you say the word ‘elephant’, that image fills your mind.

Magically speaking, then, Obama is casting a good spell. Whether he wins or loses, he’s filling the psychic and emotional atmosphere with words like ‘healing’ and ‘hope’. The effect is like a clean breeze blowing through a morass of stinking, noxious fumes. People want to believe, because they like the way he makes them feel about themselves.

And then:

In this country, we ask our politicians to do four main things: to make policy, to defend the country, to be good administrators, and to carry a huge load of our archetypal projections, embodying our hopes, fears, dreams and aspirations. The first three tasks are rational, the last goes much deeper. It falls into the realm of what we Witches call ‘magic’—the ‘art of changing consciousness at will.’

She has some advice for Hillary too:

In the contest of archetypes, women are at a disadvantage, facing a deep, unconscious sexism that limits our collective imagination. We so easily turn into Mom, either Nagging Mom, or Bitch Mom who doesn’t really love us, or harried, responsible but dull Mom, complaining about how she does all the real work while sexy, divorced Dad just takes the kids to Disneyland. My personal sympathies lie deeply with Mom’s cause. She does do all the diaper changing and the homework while Dad breezes in for Ski Week and holidays. But if I were Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor, I’d tell her, stay away from that archetype. Responsible Mom is not going to win over Aragorn the Exiled King. Instead, I would urge, be Joan of Arc. Find your vision, and be so passionately driven by it that you would stand forth and challenge kings and armies. Show us your courage, which we know you have. Tell us “I stood forth and went into realms where few women dared to go, because I care so deeply about the welfare of all of us.”

Whatever you do, don’t attack Obama on issues of faith and trust. Doing so will be just as effective as warning your teenage daughter that the sexy biker she’s fallen in love with has no history of gainful employment. more

Yale Sex Week Shows What Porn Is - Organizers Surprised

So, Yale University had itself a sex week.

There was a presentation by Dr. Ruth, natch.

There were three presentations on "What Do Girls Want" day. First was a talk about female orgasm (no talk about male orgasm though; presumably it's only women's orgasm that requires special trainin' and all). Second was "Pure Romance" givin' away some free sex toys (personally, I have always found cold plastic to be oh-so romantic!). Third was a "Girls' Night Out," with an open bar, and the first 100 women in line could get freebies from the sex toy company. Wow, so that's what Yale women want? Orgasms, sex toys, and getting drunk? I smell a rat - and it has a penis. This sounds to me like what men want women to want.

Then, on "Seduction" day, there were two events. The first was "Seduction: How to Get the Girl You've Always Wanted" and the second was "Mystery: the Mystery Method, Ladies Want Him, Guys Want to be Him," both from VH-1's "The Pick-up Artist" (which I've never seen, but I assume doesn't have anything to do with pinstriping the quad-cab). Of course, both events promising to instruct in the fine art of seduction were about teaching men how to get women. As careful long-time observers of the mating habits of humans within the patriarchy already know, heterosexual sex is something which the male of the species gets from the female. "Seduction" is, therefore, mission accomplished, the male getting from the female.

Friday night was a lingerie show, which I assume involved gawking at wimmenz in sheer, skimpy lingerie, but no male gawkees. Attendees were asked to wear "business attire," which makes sense because we've known for a long time that women belong half-naked while men are fully clothed.

Well, at least the lingerie show was for a good cause, as the proceeds went to AIDS prevention (translation: no need to feel guilty about a cheap display of women hypersexualized and pornified for the male gaze, since it's all for a good cause). No cheap patriarchal objectification here, cranky feminists; move along.

One day a "group product manager" from Trojan condoms was there, giving out condoms and also "vibrating rings" (I don't know what the rings are, frankly, but I'm definitely not gonna dis' free condoms).

There was a "skull and boned" party, which I assume, like ladies' night (above) was another exciting event at which young women were to be served copious amounts of alcohol (that's the "skull" part, as in "out of your") and then possibly fucked while they were too inebriated to give meaningful consent (that's the "boned" part, if you're a sex poz cool kid, and the "rape" part if you're a drag of a radical feminist like I am). Oh, and at the "skull and boned" party, Vivid pornography company was handing out free DVDs. Yeah! Freebies. Porn star and apologist Jenna Jameson tells us most women who start making porn are already victims of abuse, and once they are in the industry, they will likely experience pain, abuse, disrespect, disease, physical and emotional damage, disassociation from their own bodies and sexuality, degradation, greedy and abusive pimps/managers, substance abuse, groping and sexual demands from complete strangers, painful breast implants, plus the knowledge that the electronic records of their treatment are out there for the public's viewing pleasure in perpetuity. Step right up everybody, free samples right here! Don't worry about the ill effects on viewers either. Free DVDs, right here!

There was also a chance to meet the girls from Vivid. There was a contest to see which female Yale academics looked most like possible Vivid girls (presumably that would be in case the whole Ivy League thing doesn't work out).

Oh, yeah, and there was a debate about pornography itself. I know you're relieved to hear it. In the blue corner were Ron Jeremy and a Vivid "girl." In the red corner were...um...well, it looks like two church dudes. Oh, and one lawyer. Yeah! Was it a feminist lawyer like Catherine MacKinnon, who might discuss the civil rights ordinance idea in which women harmed by pornography could sue its manufacturers? Damn. Nope. It was just some "First Amendment" dude, obviously pro-porn.

Where were the feminist voices? Well, I've read over the schedule multiple times, but I just can't find any (geez, it's almost as if radical feminists are completely silenced; oh wait, that is because we are). So, I'm guessing the debate was something like "porn: liberative sex education tool for the masses or Jesus is disappointed when you use your seed for any purposes other than to make a baby within the context of heterosexual marriage." Who asked about women, about how the industry treats the actresses, about what pornography teaches men about women (that "no" means "yes," that all women really want it - hard penis-in-vagina thrust-thrust-thrusting - from all men all the time, that women enjoy pain, that women are stupid and objects and "cum buckets" and whores and here for amusement and to facilitate men's orgasms), and about what that means when men who've watched that stuff then interact with real women at work and at school and in the home and on the street? Who spoke for prostitutes and girlfriends and daughters and wives who have been pressured or even forced to act out what men see in these films? Who spoke for men who have realized too late that pornography has put a thick wall of inhumanity between themselves and the women they have loved, or at least tried to love? Nobody, it would seem. And that was billed as "the great porn debate." Great, eh? Doesn't sound so great to me.

Wait, there is this by Gain Dines. She wasn't at any events though, just got an editorial in the Hartford Courant the week before.

Okay, so, anyway, here's the punchline: Yale was going to show that porn is sex poz and cool, right? A porno flick, right there in the Yale Law School auditorium. It's so mainstream. It's so harmless. It's so...holy shit! The film started running and guess what? It was so hideous, the organizers of the event had to turn it off. Cinemus interruptus, right there in the Yale auditorium! Reports Yale Daily News:

...partway through the showing, graphic rape fantasies began to play onscreen. Rape fantasies, bondage, the piercing of a woman’s nipples and the labeling of a woman as a “slut” who “deserved” violent sexual degradation — this was some of the footage played at one of Sex Week’s final events.

No kidding. That's what pornography is like? It's as if those cranky feminists actually know what they're talking about (okay, please pardon me while I gloat just a bit; I feel I deserve it, and Gail definitely deserves it, especially because after her editorial ran, she was, predictably enough, called a "fascist," "hypocrit," and "pseudo-feminist" (because real feminists know that "Three in the Seat," "Gag on my Cock" (complete with actual vomiting), "Grudge Fuck," "Use 'em, Abuse 'em, and Lose 'em," "Vivian's Painful Examination," and anything involving Max Hardcore is empowerfulizing and healthy).

As the Yale Daily News article linked above points out, and this is exactly what I was going to say, the event's organizers have apologized for their failure to advance screen the material, but that completely misses the point. The point is that this is what pornography is like. This is what people are watching. And if you're going to be all pro-porn and promote the stuff, this is exactly what you're promoting.

Could it be that other examples of misogyny experienced by the bright young women of Yale about which I've read are in any way related to pornography and its objectification of women - and that all of the above are related to patriarchy and misogyny?

How about this story of a photo circulated of frat pledges standing in front of the Women's Center holding up a sign that said "We Love Yale Sluts."

How about this story about female Yale law graduates finding themselves unemployable because of male classmates posting things about them online - like their alleged participation in gang bangs and things about the men wanting to "grudge fuck" or rape them.

Connect the dots, anyone?

Hillary Clinton Mocks Barack Obama During Campaign Rally

Hillary Clinton, this is beneath you. I see the signs behind you that say "smart choice," and I agree that you're a smart choice, but there is no need to be a smart ass.

read more digg story

Woman champions black history

What do the traffic light, mailbox, golf tee, tricycle, spark plug, folding chair, escalator, disposable syringe, fire extinguisher and gas mask have in common? How about also adding a riding saddle, egg beater and baby buggy? Who knows? Who cares? Mary Francis Ozene cares.

read more digg story

5 dead in suspected murder-suicide

Five people were found dead, three of them children, in what appeared to be a murder-suicide in a home across the street from the Richard Nixon Library, police said Sunday. A 14-year-old boy called 911 about 11 p.m. Saturday to report that his father had shot him and his brother at their condominium, said Sgt. Peter Rodriguez..

read more digg story

(corrected headline: another man kills an intimate partner)

Police: Man Admits Killing Woman With Ax

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- The man charged with killing his live-in girlfriend and holding police at bay for 12 hours told authorities he struck her in the head with an ax, according to a detective's testimony.

read more digg story

(corrected headline: another man kills an intimate partner)

Two die in murder-suicide

Chalmette man kills girlfriend and then self.

read more digg story

This one is local.

(corrected headline: another man kills an intimate partner)

Because Even Death is Hawt on a Woman

You have got to be kidding me. I really want to throw up. This video - a public service announcement about drunk driving - lures the viewer in by giving the impression it's a woman having sex. It turns out, however, that something very different is going on. Check out the analysis at sparkle*matrix. I too immediately thought of that "America's Next Top Model" photo shoot. See also the section of "Gender Ads" that focuses on depictions of "sexy" dead women.

It's not often that I'm really shocked when it comes to sexism and woman-hating. Disgusted, yeah, every day, but not often shocked. This, however, I find really shocking.

Did You Know Early Flight Attendants Were Nurses?

I didn't know this - that in the early days of commercial aviation, flight attendants were nurses, but the airlines, aware of public concerns about flight safety (and, no doubt, aware as the patriarchy always is of the potential to use women to sell stuff), emphasized instead their availability as skybound sex kittens.

I'm also sitting here reading poetry of African-American women of the nineteenth century. You know, it really pisses me off how there just aren't enough hours in the day to educate myself properly about herstory. I am an educated woman. I even have a degree in Social Justice Issues, with a Women's Studies concentration. And yet, every hour that I am able to spend researching online, I learn just how little I really know. Our herstory has been erased. Erased! Why in the hell were these African-American women's poems not in my English textbooks? Why, dammit?

My Post to the Men Who Use Prostitutes

My comments on the original BBC article, although for some strange reason they have not seen fit to release my comments.

The men who are paying women for sex understand, on some level, that THESE WOMEN DO NOT GENUINELY DESIRE THEM. If they desired you, they would not require cash payment! I have certainly never asked a man with whom I desired to have sex to pay me! This means that, when a man is paying, he implicitly understands that the woman does not TRULY find him desirable. Yet he goes ahead and does it. Shame!

Helene, the reason so many prostitutes have drug problems is that the majority (85%, according to most studies) have been molested and abused as girls. They suffer from P.T.S.D. and fail to see themselves as anything other than objects for men's exploitation. They don't need legal and societal approval of their further exploitation, in the form of legalized prostitution. What they need is social services.

Gary and Sandy, if you do not understand that penetrative sex for money is invasive in a way that handing out burgers for minimum wage is not, there is truly something wrong with your heart - and your soul. Notice that when American troops at abu Graib wanted to do something REALLY humiliating and nasty to prisoners, they didn't force them to hand out hamburgers in the soldiers' mess hall. Instead, they stipped them naked and compelled them to do sexual acts. This suggests that we understand, at least on some level, that SEXUAL acts have the potential to be more humiliating - because they are more personal - than any ordinary, frustrating, mind-numbingly boring minimum wage labor.

Abi, I agree fully that the West is repressive of women just as Moslem countries are. Religious fundamentalists - Moslem and Christian - want to keep women under control and close to home. Liberal western cultures want to control women in the public sphere - yes, they may have careers, but their bodies are exploited for marketing purposes, and most liberal western men are enthusiastic about legalized prostitution, legal abortion, easy access to birth control, and lots of quick hook-ups. In other words, fundamentalists tend to focus on women's availability at home, liberal men tend to focus on women's public availabiity, but BOTH want women to be members of the sex caste and at their service.

Steve, You say that you are 50 and are not seen as attractive by most women you approach in bars. Then you go on to discuss your ideal prostitute, who is attractive and youthful. But YOU ARE NOT attractiveand youthful! I suspect you are trying to bed hawt young babes and then feeling frustrated by the rejection. Indeed, you mention that you often find you are expected to pay for things, which is what I have so often observed happening to middle-aged male friends who insist on trying to bag hawt young babes - these babes don't take them seriously and use them as sugar daddies if they bother with them at all. Duh! Meanwhile, women who are these men's peers, in years, experience, wisdom, and financial independence, women whose lovely bodies are rounded by childbearing and time and whose faces are creased by laugh lines are ignored by shallow, insensitive middle-aged men still focused on chasing the young girls. You can't get what you want without paying, Steve, because you are looking for all the wrong things.

P.S. to the BBC: These men don't sleep with prostitutes. This may seem like the polite, family-friendly way for the BBC to refer to it, but it also uses language to minimize what is really going on.

Fathers Are Not Like Mothers, Part 359

It's 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon. The mom isn't feeling well and hasn't cooked dinner. The dad makes himself a bowl of raisin bran - without saying a word to anyone else.

Have you ever in your life heard of a mother eating a bowl of cereal at 5:30 in the afternoon with no thought of feeding everyone else in the house?

Neither have I.

What Katrina Taught Me

As an activist, I have a habit of collecting stories about nasty stuff. I read a lot of horrifying stories and although they upset me, they also motivate me to work for change. That, the hope that things can be changed, is what keeps me going. Some people ask me how I can stand it (especially my mom), and I reply that I just don't know any other way to be.

What I've learned from Katrina though is that while stories about horrible things can make me upset, angry, or sometimes tearful, it is random acts of selfless generosity that really make me cry.

The week of Katrina, I was staying in a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. There I met a family who had been stuck at the New Orleans Convention Center during Katrina and who had spent a few days exposed to the elements on the interstate. Back in New Orleans, the husband had built a little privacy shield and makeshift toilet for his wife, who told me that he also never left her side, as there had been rumors of rapes. Her mother explained to me that most of her family had disowned her daughter when she married because they are white and the husband is black. "But," she said, "look at how he cared for my daughter. I will never again let anybody question their marriage. I don't care what anyone says. He proved he is a good man." The family had arrived in Little Rock by bus, and I ended up spending a day helping them get assistance at the Red Cross, get prescriptions filled, etc.

At one point, we were lost and so we stopped at a 7-11 to ask for directions. A man in workman's overalls approached my car, which has a bumper sticker that says "New Orleans: Proud to Call it Home." "Are you from New Orleans?" he asked. When we affirmed that we were, he opened his wallet and offered my passenger some cash. She hesitated to take it, but I told her, "You need it. Look, people are watching the news every day and they're pissed, and they can't figure out how to make it right, so if somene wants to do something for you, you should let them." So she accepted. As we drove away, she began to sob. She hadn't cried before - not when we talked about our the state of our beloved city, not when she talked about running from the rising water, not when she told me about being without food and water at the Convention Center, not when she talked about the fear of being raped, not when she talked about losing everything and not even having clothes for her children or her prescriptions or even eyeglasses. And yet, she began to sob over being handed $20. After all, she said, "I am a hard-working person, you know. I've never taken charity from anybody before."

And I have seen this happen again and again. People don't cry so much over what they've lost. They're much more likely to cry over what they are given.

I remember when the Red Cross explained to a woman in Little Rock that her debit card could be used anywhere. "Oh, good," she said, "I need to get these children some school supplies." "No," I told her, "don't spend it on that. Didn't you hear? Wal-Mart is going to give you credit to spend on school supplies. Show them your Louisiana driver's license, and they will give you school supplies." Her eyes opened wide and she said, "You mean, I can get these children some pens and some notebooks? Really?" When the Red Cross volunteer affirmed what I'd said, the woman moaned, "Oh- Jesus-thank-you-Lord," her face crumpled up, and she began to sob.

Even now, I hear stories about angels coming to New Orleans to help and these are the stories that fill my eyes with tears. Human depravity and cruelty can sometimes make me cry. But what Katrina has taught me is that the depth of human generosity almost always makes us cry.

Our government has forgotten us. The media remembers us only on anniversaries. The presidential debates commission won't bring candidates to the scene of the government's crime. And still, still, angels from all over the United States keep on coming.

high school kids from Rockford, Maine

people from Missoula, Montana

cops from Michigan, New York, and Oklahoma are still coming here to rebuild cops' homes (see video of a big New Orleans cop brought to tears by the generosity of others)

It's strange to think that the same species capable of such evil (the only one that sometimes kills without reason, the only one that makes war and fights its own kind not just to establish dominance but to the death) is also capable of such generosity. What I've learned since Katrina is that it's the latter that is most likely to make us cry.

Louisiana's Finest

(graphic)

Call Me What You Will, But Call Me a Drum Major For Peace

So, I support Obama for president. I voted for him. I wandered around New Orleans, in the neighborhood around the boarded up former Magnolia Housing Project, skipping the many homes still unrepaired and unoccupied since the great Federal Flood of 2005, and knocking on doors asking people to vote for Senator Obama. Some said they had already voted. One lady said she was scared to vote for him because "oh, honey, they are going to kill him if he gets it. They're not never gonna let no black man be president." Many young black men told me they "couldn't" vote, which of course means they have felony convictions, here in the only democracy on earth that prohibits those who have paid their debt to society from ever again attaining the full rights of citizenship. I was assigned to work alongside a schoolteacher, and we were an interesting pair: I, forty, white, the mother of one child, and she, sixty-odd, black, the mother of nine. As we walked from porch to porch, we compared perspectives on all sorts of things: feminism (I, feminist; she, antifeminist because, she said, children need mothers at home and besides, all this "women in workplaces and having lunch with men" just leads to too much adultery), Hillary Clinton's Iraq war resolution vote, divorcing cheating husbands (she did, I didn't, and of course Hillary didn't), why children aren't learning (I said parents aren't watching their kids; she, a teacher, said a good teacher should be able to teach any child, even one with neglectful parents), standardized tests (we both hate them), Barack Obama (we both love him), our experiences during many years of Democratic activism, the pornified culture of casual hookups (we're both against). Early in the day, when we were working opposite sides of Louisiana Avenue, she went inside a bar to ask people to vote. I was horrified for a second, but impressed. Those years as a military wife overseas taught me to be very leery of crowds of drunk men. Still, she went in, alone, and talked to people about voting. After that, I decided that if she dared go into places of business, I would too; if she were that brave, I would have to be also. So we went into a men's barber shop together, the place standing room only. And I went into a couple of corner stores by myself, handing out flyers and asking the shopkeepers to vote for Obama.

I've been following this story about how the Secret Service apparently gave up screening before all 20,000 attendees at a Dallas Obama rally had been checked for weapons. I'm glad, in a way, that this is finally being discussed because when Obama was here in New Orleans, at Tulane, I had some concerns about his safety, but I've hesitated to say anything (except I did come home and tell my husband). I was in the "overflow" crowd, meaning that not all of us got in, so Obama talked to us outside, before the actual speech. There was no screening of any kind and a crowd about ten persons deep was all that stood between me and the candidate. Since I am so short, I could only see the backs of people's heads, but had I been tall, like my husband, it would have been possible to aim over people's heads and...well, let's just say that I feel strongly that we should have been checked. I know he's doing these "overflow" crowds all over the country, and I worry about his safety.

So, yes, I am definitely for Obama now and have been for over a month. That's what I started out intending to write about. Go ahead and call me a member of a cult. I will laugh. Go ahead and call me a traiter to feminism. You might make me cry. But whatever else you say about me, say that, to paraphrase Dr. King, I really was a drum major for peace.


In the end, I chose the candidate who has always been against this war, even though I've longed to see a woman like me serve as president of my country, have wished for that every single day since, well, since I've been old enough to remember, since Congresswoman Lindy Boggs heard about how my teacher had told me I could aspire to be a nurse but not a doctor and the congresswoman knelt down, getting her navy stocking covered knees full of white dust, to hold my chin, look straight into my eyes, and tell me I could be anything I wanted to be. So, yes, I've wanted a woman president for so long. I know it isn't fair, that the patriarchy ensures that a woman who doesn't vote to go to war will be so marginalized that she will be unelectable, because she is already not-male, not macho, a wimp, a pussy, not to be trusted with manly matters like the defense of a nation. I know about patriarchy's double bind for Hillary Clinton, and the decision whether or not I could vote for her was torture for many months. In the end, I found Obama the best recipient of my vote, not because I'm part of a cult, not because I hate Hillary due to internalized oppression courtesy of the patriarchy, but because when I think of choosing a candidate, I close my eyes and can still feel the tight hug Cindy Sheehan gave me when I met her at Camp Casey the weekend of Katrina (she has the strongest, fiercest, and most unreserved hug, as if she's living through so much pain that she has abandoned unimportant stuff like shyness or self-consciousness), because, in the end, I want to be a feminist and a drum major for peace. I want to champion military women so that they don't get sent into "preemptive" wars. I want to champion working people, who overwhelming populate the military of the supposedly all-volunteer force, which is, in reality, a force that conducts conscription via race and poverty.

I think I've been faithful to those goals - and to feminism - in supporting Obama over Clinton. Still, reinforcement helps, like this video, which is in Spanish with subtitles, but which truly speaks the language of the heart:

"Si se puede cambiar" (yes, we can change)
For too long we've been sleeping
but we've been afraid to dream
daunted by the critics who tell us
that there is nothing we can reach...
but yes we can.

Today bombs fell on children
in an air strike south of Baghdad
how many have died because of lies
how did we lose our hearts
what was the purpose of this war
who profits from this injustice
who voted for this war
and who told us the truth

You Feminists Have no Sense of Humor!

These ads were proposed, then rejected by the company. Still, the ad agency thought this (at feministing) was a reasonable way to sell support bras - so that bouncing breasts don't leave women with black eyes and cut lips, which they were willing to depict. Oh, ha-ha-ha!

I know feminists council each other against giving out "cookies" to those who manage to do the right thing (meaning, recognize women as human beings deserving of respect and safety), but, you know, kudos to the company for being disgusted. A lot of disgusting, sexist ads do get published, so at least this company chose not to do so.

And something else that disgusts me and about which I'm sure I'm supposed to just lighten up is this video game in which women punch each women in the vagina (via feministing).

Abstinence Only Driver's Ed

The ONLY 100 percent effective method for avoiding car accidents is to ABSTAIN from driving until marriage. here

Wonderful! via feministe

Because It's Always Women's Fault

her: a slut, a tease, a seductress, a teenage mother, getting what she deserves, the cause of her own gang rape

the guys: brainless, witless victims of wanton women and their own irrepressible erections

Busted

Now the world finds out where my time goes...



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