feminist blogs

What's behind the birth-control price spike?

A hilarious review of "daddy" comedies.

On the serious harassment problems with a high school ROTC instructor in Tennessee: "Flash your breasts at the chief and you could smoke cigarettes on campus, students alleged in statements to investigators. Run topless in the gymnasium during an unauthorized sleepover and the chief turned a blind eye to drinking rum in a West High restroom."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez decries the trend in his country of teenagers getting boob jobs.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye.

Iraqi refugee women and girls are being forced into prostitution in Syria.

Ok, ok, I know it's Rush Limabaugh and I should expect this. Still.

Jodie Foster talks about her latest role as a woman avenging a group of men who assaulted her. She says:

But is there a streak of feminist empowerment in your character's actions? A cop in the film says, "Women kill their friends, husbands, shit they love." You kill strangers in the street.
Such a big part of the female psyche is that we hate inwards. What if there was a woman who said, "I'm not going to be that kind of victim. I'm not going to hurt myself, I'm going to hurt you." What would that feel like? This was no feminist design on my part -- although I call myself a feminist -- but that's exhilarating to women who see this movie.

The fembot, reconsidered in light of the new Bionic Woman show and those awful Heineken ads.

A conference this weekend devotes itself to advancing the science for a male birth control pill.

Clarence Thomas says of Anita Hill, "She was not the demure, religious, conservative person that they portrayed. That's not the person I knew." In other words, that sexual harassment was totally warranted! If you're not demure, you can expect it.

On what happens when the Tyra Banks show tries to tackle the topic of women and porn.

Congress approves yet another 90-day funding extension for abstinence-only programs.

I’m stepping outside the usual fare because I saw something a few weeks ago that surprised me, and I was curious what others thought. I walked into a local discount store, and the first thing I saw was Big League Chew. For those who are unfamiliar, Big League Chew is bubble gum that is made to resemble chewing tobacco. It was really popular when I was a child, and at that time, chewing tobacco was popular with baseball players, so the idea was that if you had Big League Chew you could be popular like your baseball heroes. As the popularity of tobacco has declined, I haven’t seen this product as readily advertised or promoted–the same for candy cigarettes((Apparently there are also marijuana candies, but I’ve only seen them when a local TV station did an expose a few years ago.)). However, I was under the impression that these products are not only less popular today, but illegal. I personally wouldn’t support a law against pseudo-tobacco products for kids because I think it’s too much government intervention, but I would be more than happy to launch a boycott or letter writing campaign against companies who produce and distribute pseudo-alcohol, tobacco, and drug products to children. I’m not sure what correlation there is between the use of pseudo-tobacco/alcohol/drug products as a child, and subsequent use of tobacco/alcohol/drugs as an adult. What do you think?

Would you allow your kids to buy these products? Do you think the products should be banned? Do you think they affect children’s likelihood of using the “real thing” when they get older?

Monday, October 1 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar (Burma) to the United Nations
10 East 77th Street
(near 5th avenue, east side of central park)
New York, NY

Rally for Human Rights in Myanmar

Amnesty International members around the world are holding a series of demonstrations outside Burmese embassies and high profile public locations calling for the Myanmar authorities not to respond with violence, but to respect the human right to peaceful protest.

We urge you to act quickly to prevent an escalation in violence. Join us during your lunch hour next Monday, October 1st from Noon to 1pm.

Wish I could be there with you all. Thanks to Elaine for the info.

Until Midnight tonight (Sunday) your donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Please go donate now.

Despite the rubber bracelets* and the outraged Facebook groups,** the genocide in Darfur and the ongoing crisis in Sudan seems to have again slipped away from the world’s view. I suppose we can only handle one major humanitarian crisis at a time,*** and this week it’s monks in Burma. But 10 peacekeepers in Darfur were just killed, and while al-Bashir is feeding everyone his usual shit about settling the conflict, settlement is nowhere in sight. And this is just the current genocide that has wiped out 200,000 people are displaced 2.5 million; there’s still the rest of the country to deal with, and civil war has been raging since I was born. Many, many more have been slaughtered in acts that don’t technically fall under the “genocide” label; even more have perished as they tried to escape to refugee camps. They’ve been murdered, they’ve starved to death, they’ve died of disease, they’ve been killed by wild animals and by the elements while trekking for months trying to find a safe haven. They’ve been kidnapped and sold as slaves and concubines. They’ve been beaten, abused, enslaved, and raped. al-Bashir and the government in Khartoum has funded and encouraged it. In response, the opposition forces have grown more brutal. Neither side (if you can even divide it into “sides,” it’s grown so complicated) has the moral high ground here.

In the meantime, millions of people live in refugee camps. Some have been re-settled, many in the United States. But our asylum laws make it tough for people in conflict-ridden states to gain entry into this country. We have a “persecutor bar” which has been expanded to include a “terrorist bar,” both of which sound nice, but are devastating in practice. If you are found to have ever persecuted someone because of their race, ethnicity, religion, etc, you are automatically barred from gaining asylum in the United States. If you are found to have ever aided terrorism, you are automatically barred from gaining asylum in the United States. Again, both of which sound all fine and good — until you look at the breadth of those bars.
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In a column that inadvertently reminds us of the 'liberal' media's assault on reason -- or obsession with weighty issues such as John Edwards’ hair, Hillary Clinton’s cleavage and Al Gore's sighs, longtime liberal pundit and Al Gore basher Frank Rich joins in the media whining about Hillary Clinton’s laughter.

Turns out, Rich sees Hillary as just another automaton like Al Gore:

What I saw on television last Sunday was the incipient second coming of the can't-miss 2000 campaign of Al Gore. . . Like the former vice president, she often came across as a pontificator and an automaton — in contrast to the personable and humorous person she is known to be off-camera. . . Then there was that laugh. The Clinton campaign's method for heeding the perennial complaints that its candidate comes across as too calculating and controlled is to periodically toss in a smidgen of what it deems personality. . . Now Mrs. Clinton is erupting in a laugh with all the spontaneity of an alarm clock buzzer.

Yeah, cause who could possibly find the U.S. media laughable?

This from the liberal pundit who helped put Bush in the White House in 2000 with mindless commentary such as:

Frank Rich (3/11/00): Eight months to go—but hey, who's counting?—and we're stranded with two establishment, tightly scripted, often robotic candidates who are about as different from one another as J. Crew and Banana Republic.

Frank Rich (11/4/00): In 2000, the fool is the guy who works 24/7 and lets us see all the sweat. That would be Al Gore, who is a hyperventilating fount of worst-case scenarios and details we don't want to bone up on (Dingell-Norwood, anyone?). He is the truly stupid one.

Frank Rich (11/18/00): Collectively Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush have succeeded in uniting the country in exactly one bipartisan belief—that neither of them deserves to be president. While Mr. Bush may spare us Mr. Gore's insufferable, schoolmarmish tone, his “affable” alternative is to speak to us as if we've all been held back together with him in grade school.

Gee, I can hardly wait for the general election.

The New Old Frank Rich
From Rich to rancid (all in a morning's post)
That's Rich
NOW DO YOU BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY A DEMOCRAT WON'T BE ELECTED PRESIDENT IN '08?
Hillary Clinton: She Who Laughs

Frank Rich Politics News Hillary Clinton Liberal Media Al Gore 2000 2008 New York Times

Evangelicals are threatening to run a third-party candidate if Giuliani is the Republican nominee. Which puts me in a really tough place — I can’t stand Giuliani and I think he’s a dangerous and scary man, but boy would I like to see this.

Conservative Christians are downright terrified at the idea of a lady-president in the White House. Clinton is one of the most conservative Democrats running, and yet her name — and the vagina-ness that it exudes — apparently scare the shit out of Hellfire-and-brimstone crowd.

“I can’t think of a bigger disaster for social conservatives, defense conservatives, and economic conservatives than Hillary Clinton in the White House,” Mr. Bauer said.

Still, he added, “But I do believe there are certain core issues for the Republican Party—low taxes, strong defense and pro life— and if we nominate some who is hostile on one of those three thing it will blow up the GOP.”

…so you’re telling me that this is awesome either way?

To paraphrase our Dear Leader (and Kirstin Dunst), Bring it on.

Not even a good Christian education will teach you how to spell “infidels.”

Radically conservative Christian colleges are targeting students all over the country — and they’re literally looking to go medieval on your ass:

The students and teachers call what they are doing “classical Christian education.” They believe it’s much more than memorizing Latin declensions and Aristotle’s principles of rhetoric, though they do plenty of that. Doug Wilson, 54, the pastor who spearheaded New St. Andrews’ founding, puts the college’s purpose simply: “We are trying to save civilization.” He’s not alone in his mission. The C.C.E. movement began in the early 1980s among Protestant evangelical private schools and home-schoolers who scorned most conservative Christian colleges, which were long on classes in business management and Bible prophecy but short on history, literature and ideas. Now the movement boasts a host of home-schooling associations and curriculum companies, more than 200 private schools and college programs around the country. Evangelicals at New St. Andrews are using dead languages and ancient history to reinvent conservative Protestant education. As Matthew McCabe, an alumnus, puts it, “We want to be medieval Protestants.”

Nothing says “fine education” like wanting to regress a few hundred years. And, sorry dear readers, but you aren’t eligible to apply:

N.S.A.’s philosophy is that cultural change begins with right worship and community rather than with political activism. College life revolves around Christ Church and Trinity Reformed Church — both members of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a denomination based on “historic Protestant orthodoxy” that Wilson co-founded in 1998. The college handbook forbids students to embrace or promote “doctrinal errors” from the 4th through the 21st centuries, “such as Arianism, Socinianism, Pelagianism, Skepticism, Feminism.” If drawn to such ideas, they must “inform the administration immediately and honestly in a letter offering to withdraw from the College.” Cultural revolution cannot tolerate heretics.

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That’s the question that Katherine Seelye is posing on the NYTimes blog today. She recognizes that the entire premise of the question might be wrong, and that’s where I stand — I don’t think there are more men involved in online politics than women. I just think “women’s issues” and women’s voices end up being marginalized, silenced and ignored.

What do you think? Head over there and share your thoughts. I’d be curious to hear them over here, too, so double-post if you can.

Wicked witches cackle and so does Hillary Rodham Clinton, sayeth our liberal media.

From the New York Times, we learn that the first woman ever to rise to the position of viable presidential candidate -- or "hellish housewife" Hillary Clinton -- has a laugh that is better dubbed "The Cackle."

The Times columnist didn't exactly have an original thought - at the very least, he could have credited Rush Limbaugh.

But it seems like only yesterday when Hillary was a humorless and cold and calculating woman bitch with a voice that "'some men' think .. sounds like 'fingernails on a blackboard.'"

And the witch is not deferential, damn it!

But one of the many 'joys' of watching a woman run as a viable candidate for the U.S. presidency is the excruciatingly harsh spotlight that suddenly shines on the everyday sexism that continues to keep so very many women in our traditional place.

And the more they pile it on, the more a vote for Hillary looks like a vote against the sick sexism that assaults all women in this man's world!

That Clinton Cackle
The Last Laugh
Sexism (with a capital S)
No laughing matter
Hillary Laughs at Fox News (video)

Sexist Politics News Hillary Clinton Liberal Media Feminist Witches Cackle New York Times Misogyny Sexism