A woman’s right to choose by Jill, at Feministe 1:26 pm / 08 February 2010
Categories: 91
Superbowl Sexism: Tweeting asshole edition by Jessica, at Feministing 1:25 pm / 08 February 2010
Via Media Matters, I see that CNN contributor and RedState editor Erick Erickson was tweeting douchtastic last night.
I'm not going to link to his account, but it seems that the Twitter-feminist bashing has continued into today - complete with hackneyed comments about Birkenstocks, hairiness and having no sense of humor. I'm betting a tweet about castration is well on its way.
More on Anti-Asian Bias by Jenn, at reappropriate 1:02 pm / 08 February 2010
The idea of anti-Asian bias in college admissions is gaining further traction in mainstream media. This article in the Boston Globe perpetuates the rather simplistic idea that equates higher mean SAT scores for Asian applicants with an “Asian Ceiling” that discriminates against Asian American students.
The article draws on Espenshade’s study, which I reviewed last year, and which can lead to an oversimplification (dare I say “white-washing) of the situation. At least my friend Oiyan Poon gets it right:
“When you look at the private Ivy Leagues, some of them are looking at Asian-American applicants with a different eye than they are white applicants,’’ says Oiyan Poon, the 2007 president of the University of California Students Association. “I do strongly believe in diversity, but I don’t agree with increasing white numbers over historically oppressed populations like Asian-Americans, a group that has been denied civil rights and property rights.’’ But Poon, now a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Boston, warns that there are downsides to having huge numbers of Asian-Americans on a campus.
In California, where passage of a 1996 referendum banned government institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, Asians make up about 40 percent of public university students, though they account for only 13 percent of residents. “Some Asian-American students feel that they lost something by going to school at a place where almost half of their classmates look like themselves – a campus like UCLA. The students said they didn’t feel as well prepared in intercultural skills for the real world.’’
Oh yeah, and is anyone else creeped out that there was a seminar at a national college admissions conference that was titled, in all earnestness, “Too Asian?”
Jotwell Trusts & Estates Section Launches by Bridget Crawford, at Feminist Law Professors 12:49 pm / 08 February 2010
Over at Jotwell [the Journal of Things We Like (Lots)], the Trusts & Estates section is now live (here). Fellow contributors to the T&E Section include Feminist Law Profs Julia Belian (Detroit Mercy), Wendy Gerzog (Baltimore), Bill LaPiana (NYLS) and Laura Rosenbury (Wash U. St. Louis).
-Bridget Crawford
Mexico City’s Law Allowing Same-Sex Marriage is Scheduled to Go Into Effect on March 4 by Mike, at Feminist Looking Glass 12:23 pm / 08 February 2010
In December, I wrote that the Mexico City government had just voted 39-20 to allow people of the same sex to marry and to adopt children. This weekend, the New York Times had an article about the law, which is expected to become effective on March 4. I say “expected” because the Roman Catholic church has asked the federal government (which is conservative) to intervene.
Whether or not the federal government is able to stop the law from going into effect, there is other good news in Latin America. The Times reports that, in Argentina, while the debate over gay marriage is making its way through the courts, the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego had Latin America’s first gay wedding there on December 29.
Global Feminist Link Love: February 1-7 by Emily Heroy, at Gender Across Borders 12:00 pm / 08 February 2010
Hello global feminists,
Hope you had a wonderful weekend! Below are some international feminsit links from this past week for you to check out.
What have you been reading/writing this week? Self-promote your blog in the comments!
Sincerely,
the editors of GAB
From the blogs
Anti-abortion group targets black women from the New Black Woman
Study Links Title IX and Health Benefits [...]
Superbowl Sexism: Focus on the Family edition by Jessica, at Feministing 12:00 pm / 08 February 2010
After all the controversy surrounding Focus on the Family's ad featuring Tim and Pam Tebow - this commercial seems somewhat...well, meh.
Transcript after the jump
Outside of the inexplicable tackling (ha!), this ad doesn't really say much of anything. In fact, it seems like it really just serves to promote Focus on the Family's website - where, of course, you'll find all sorts of anti-choice rhetoric including an interview where Tebow's father speaks about "weeping over the loss of millions of babies in America that were never given a chance."
But really, I have the same question that Jesse does: "[I]f the anti-choice position is so true, so mainstream and so critical to the future of our nation, why did Focus on the Family spend $2.5 million to avoid saying anything whatsoever about it?"
Pam Tebow: "I call him my miracle baby. He almost didn't make it into this world. I can remember so many times when I almost lost him. It was so hard. Well, he's all grown up now, and I still worry about his health. You know, with all our family's been through, we have to be tough--Timmy! I'm trying to tell our story here."
Tim Tebow: "Sorry about that, Mom. Do you still worry about me, Mom?"
Pam Tebow: "Well, yeah, you're not nearly as tough as I am."
Categories: 91
Costa Rica Elects First Woman President by mole333, at culturekitchen - Feminism 11:53 am / 08 February 2010
Yet another country beats the United States to electing a woman President. Costa Rica has elected Laura Chinchilla as their next President. Thus Costa Rica joins India, Pakistan, Israel, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Liberia and Chile, to name just a few, in accepting a woman as a democratically elected leader. This is one way that the US remains a bit backwards.
Laura Chinchilla is fairly right wing in my book. Pro-free market (which is fine up to a point), anti-abortion and anti-marriage equality, she wouldn't be my first choice for President. Her predecessor and mentor, Oscar Arias, supported legislation to separate church and state in Costa Rica. Chinchilla's views make me wonder if she will be more right wing than Arias. Somewhat paradoxically, Chinchilla's party, the Partido Liberación Nacional, is a member of the Socialist International, which makes it's free-market stand seem a bit at odds with its supposedly socialist claims. It should be noted that there was an even more right wing candidate in the running, so Chinchilla would qualify as "centrist" to many.
As a minor aside, Costa Rica has been developing into one of the greenest and happiest nations on earth. It ranks third in terms of Environmental Performance Index, along with Sweden, Iceland and Switzerland (sadly, the US ranks 63, along with Paraguay, Brazil and Venezuela). And Costa Rica came out on top in terms of Happy Planet Index. And, I will add, they are the source of one of my favorite hot sauces: Iguana Mean Green Jalapeno sauce.
Viva Costa Rica!
Johnny Depp Defends Rapist by Alex DiBranco, at Change.org's Women's Rights Blog 10:30 am / 08 February 2010
Johnny, you make such a sexy Captain Jack Sparrow. And there will always be a special place in my heart for Edward Scissorhands. I have to admit, your version of Willy Wonka was just a little too creepy for me, but that didn't make me cherish your pirating days any less. Unfortunately, you've lost all your charm (and your place in my fantasies) with your defense of a child rapist.
It doesn't matter that you've joined a chorus of celebrity voices defending Roman Polanski for raping a 13-year-old. It doesn't excuse your comments that Whoopi Goldberg claimed what happened to the girl wasn't "rape-rape," although I don't know what else you would call it when a middle-aged man pleads guilty to statutory rape -- and the other charges of rape, sodomy, and drugging are only dropped to protect the victim from a having to undergo a painful and sensationalized trial. Where, apparently, a chunk of Hollywood would have come to her rapist's defense.
Depp thinks that, even though Polanski fled the country three decades ago to escape sentencing, now that we've finally convinced a country to arrest him so the United States could actually hold him responsible for his crime, we should let it go. And why? Well, because Depp thinks that his former director "is not a predator. He's 75 or 76 years old. He has got two beautiful kids, he has got a wife that he has been with for a long, long time. He is not out on the street." Um ... wait, if you don't want him in jail for his crime, doesn't that mean he is out on the street?
Not only does Polanski's current position fail to negate the crime he never served a sentence for, but, as a blogger points out on Shakesville, neither his age, wife, or status as a father mean that he won't rape again, or that it won't be another child. The Shakesville guest blogger writes, "The second man who raped me had a wife and children. ... While he was married. While his two young daughters were sleeping in the next bedroom." Depp is not only a rapist apologist, he also brushes off the rapes of women by married or older men as impossible occurrences, adding insult to injury for too many survivors. It's really the cherry on top of a constantly sickening situation.
Looks like I won't be watching Pirates of the Caribbean for the umpteenth time next weekend. It's just not as much fun when I can't get Depp's rapist-supporting remarks out of my head.
Photo credit: ATempletonPhoto.com
What is the effect of portraying college life as a catfight among straight women? In whose interest is it to describe the relationship among straight college women as essentially competitive and perhaps to blame for bad behavior on the part of college men? by Ann Bartow, at Feminist Law Professors 10:27 am / 08 February 2010
Those are two questions Historiann asks in this excellent post about yesterday’s NYT article, The New Math on Campus. The point of article in my view is to help sell the idea of making achieving gender balance at colleges a goal of the admissions process. There are certainly good arguments to be made in favor of gender balance as a general matter. A lack of gender balance in many quarters of the legal profession is deeply problematic. But not because law is supposed to be some kind of dating service. If men are not applying to or gaining admission to colleges proportionate to their population, hard questions should be asked, just as they should when women are not succeeding in any given environment.
Here are a couple of data points the NYT missed:
At Harvard University, for example, the pool of more than 22,000 applicants has remained equally divided between men and women, meaning that both sexes are admitted at an equal—if dauntingly low—9 percent. Harvard—again, a relative newcomer to coeducation—has seen its percentage of female undergraduates increase steadily over the past decade from 46 percent in 1997 to 49 percent in 2006. Princeton, Stanford, Rice, Duke, and Yale Universities are in the same boat; ditto for the elite liberal arts colleges such as Amherst, Williams, and Middlebury.
–Ann Bartow