feminist blogs

Yesterday was Sarah Palin day on MSNBC. I'm betting today will be too. There's nothing quite like watching Keith Olbermann and Eugene Robinson smirking about swimsuit competitions and discussing with great glee how stupid that woman is.

Too bad more women don't run for high office because Keith and Eugene have a real flair for this kind of politics. You know what they say, if politics is too dirty and thoroughly stupid for women, well it should be for men too. But they invented the game; we just get to play by their insane rules. Changing the rules requires a critical mass of women in the game. We aren't there yet, but it's something to work for. Is anyone else sick and tired of this never-ending and petty and thoroughly stupid election?

Palin Opens Up On Controversial Issues -- VP Candidate Speaks Frankly With Katie Couric About Feminism, Homosexuality, Abortion And The Environment:


Couric: Do you believe evolution should be taught as an accepted scientific principle or as one of several theories?

Palin: Oh, I think it should be taught as an accepted principle. And, as you know, I say that also as the daughter of a school teacher, a science teacher, who has really instilled in me a respect for science. It should be taught in our schools. And I won't deny that I see the hand of God in this beautiful creation that is Earth. But that is not part of the state policy or a local curriculum in a school district. Science should be taught it science class.

The governor told us though she's not a member of any church, she visits a couple of them regularly when she's home. She took issue with news reports that one of them, The Wasilla Bible Church, sponsored a conference where gays could be made straight through prayer.

Palin: Well, it matters though, Katie, when the media gets it wrong. It frustrates Americans who are just trying to get the facts and … be able to make up their mind on, about a person's values. So it does matter. . And you know, I don't know what prayers are worthy of being prayed. I don't know what's prayers are going to be asked and answered. But as for homosexuality, I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships. I have one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years happens to be gay, and I love her dearly. And she is not my "gay friend," she is one of my best friends, who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made. But I am not going to judge people.

Feminist Politics Gender Katie Couric Sarah Palin News Male Domination Sexism Misogyny Equal Representation Women's History Feminist Trailblazers

Gender Putin Politics Russia News Sarah Palin Alaska Sexist Comic Relief Obama Girl Misogyny

I've tried writing on several topics tonight. Not going to happen.

Instead, I offer you Wittgenstein's "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" or "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence." Well, I sort of offer you that, in a musical form. Hee.

Yes, I got kittens. Do I get my official Feminist Club Membership Card now?

Actually, one is mine and one is my room mate’s, but they are brothers and they are adorable. The bigger black-and-white tuxedo kitty, Leopold, is the room mate’s.

And my yet-to-be-named tiny grey kitten will be called either Percival or Omar Little (thoughts?).

They are the cutest things of all time. Leopold is bigger and more aggressive; Percival / Omar Little is a cuddly and sweet and tiny and purrs like a motorboat. A few more shots:

(Yes, that is a toilet in my kitchen. Don’t ask).

I’ve never been much of a cat person, and I’ve desperately wanted a dog in New York for a long time now. The thought of being a cat-owner never seemed appealing. But the idea of kittens came up, and I do love most little creatures, so we went to the shelter and I fell in love with little Percival / Omar Little; she went with little Leopold.

The major downside is that right after we agreed to adopt the kittens, our landlord agreed to renovate our apartment — so we have no kitchen, no bathroom, no toilet and no running water, and there are boxes and pieces of furniture strewn everywhere. Which means I haven’t showered in about 48 hours. Plus two kittens racing around. It’s hectic, and gross.

But I’m blogging with a kitty in my lap (Leopold, if you’re curious; yes, he is falling asleep), so I’m happy (plus I can shower at the gym tomorrow, which makes me happier). More pictures of the new little ones are here if you’re interested.

Dear Susie

Above: An artist's rendering of the men's rights trolls who populate this feminist blog and others. The jewels in their bellies give them magical powers that blind them to their own privilege!

Regular readers have probably noticed that the comment threads have been overrun as of late with a serious influx of trolls. We're not sure if it's just the Palin-related traffic lately, the general election frenzy, or some special link-lovin' from a men's rights site. In any case, we've noticed. We're on it.

What is a troll, you ask? A brief definition here.

More specifically, the breed of troll that's been showing up here lately typically...

• Has a username that's something vaguely female with some numbers at the end


• Makes racist/sexist/homophobic/generally ignorant comments


• Has a tendency to ask things like, "what about the MENZ?!" and "won't somebody think of the racism against white people?"

What to do if you spot a troll:

• Do not engage. It's a waste of your time, and the threads start looking very confusing after we delete the sexist/racist/otherwise ugly comments.


• Let us know. Send us an email with the trolling commenter's username, along with a link to the comment or thread in question. We are internet obsessives, so usually (sadly?) one of the editors is online at almost all times, but sometimes we leave to go eat dinner or interact with real, live humans or something. But we promise we'll delete the offending comments and ban the trolls as soon as we notice they're there.

We really value the comments threads as a place for everyone to engage and discuss and deepen our understanding of issues. Thanks so much for your patience while we work to resolve this. And double-thanks to our secret band of anti-troll vigilante commenters (you know who you are!) who have been so awesome about alerting us to trollishness on the site.

Early voting has started in Ohio, and already there’s voter registration problems brewing, one of which conveniently surrounds registered voters in urban, low-income areas.

One of the lawsuits deals with a law adopted in 2005 that requires election officials to send out notices to voters 60 days before an election. As many as 600,000 of the notices were returned as undeliverable.

Michael Slater, with the nonprofit group Project Vote, says: “Mail delivery in urban areas, primarily urban low-income areas, is unreliable. So that we can’t be sure that just because someone has a piece of mail returned to them, it doesn’t mean that they don’t live at that address.”

That’s why Brunner has decided that a returned notice isn’t enough to sustain a challenge against a voter.

In 2004, Republicans challenged 35,000 voters based on returned mail. John McClelland of the Ohio GOP declined to be interviewed for this story, saying they don’t discuss political strategy.

Of course not. We wouldn’t want to show our cards, would we?

Meanwhile, similar lawsuits are being filed elsewhere in Ohio and in battleground states like Michigan, Florida, Colorado and New Mexico. See a list of other reported incidents at the Voter Suppression Wiki.

In happier news, Meredith writes in about voting issues in her family:

As a 21-year-old, this is my first presidential election. I grew up in a household with a conservative Democrat and a moderate Republican. All that changed, however, when the Terri Schaivo debacle unfolded in 2005. It drew uncomfortable comparisons for my family; my grandfather
was in a similar vegetative state, and my grandmother disobeyed his living will and kept him on life support years past his body’s capability to remain alive. It was a watershed moment for my mother, a
lifelong Republican, who had already been appalled at my grandmother’s disrespect for my grandfather.

Today, I am pleased to report that my household is full of budding Democrats. I expect to receive my ballot in the mail soon; my little sister who is a freshman in college registered to vote the moment she arrived on campus and is a proud member of her College Democrats group. (I’d like to think that my decision to lend her Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism might have helped, as all of a sudden
she’s pro-choice and pro-feminism!) My mom (a former McCain lover) now changes the channel every time he opens his mouth. My dad for some reason had announced that he didn’t like Obama; with the selection of Palin, however, I think he’s back in the fold. Even if he’s not, we still outnumber him three votes to one, and in the swing region of the Sunshine State, all our votes are critical.

Send your stories to fauxrealtho at gmail dot com with “VOTE” in the title, including your name and a link to your website, and we will publish your stories as they come in along with additional information about voting registration, disenfranchisement, and election news. Send us what you’ve got.

Meanwhile, most states still have through early October to get registered to vote in the 2008 presidential election. Some states allow voters to register through the end of October. You can find out your state’s deadline here. If you haven’t registered to vote yet, DO IT NOW.

That's the new Conservative meme about the secret real reason for the financial markets crisis. Yup. It's the Community Reinvestment Act that caused it, forcing banks to lend to minorities:

Several conservatives in the media have recently blamed the Community Reinvestment Act for the current financial crisis -- when, in fact, the CRA does not apply to institutions making the vast majority of troubled loans underlying the crisis. It applies only to depository institutions, such as banks and savings and loan associations. Experts have estimated that 80 percent of high-priced subprime loans were offered by financial institutions that are not subject to the CRA.

Well, if it's not that particular act, it must be the minorities anyway. Except for this:

2008-ComplianceTech, a provider of technology and business intelligence for consumer lending institutions and government agencies, has released an industry report indicating that the majority of subprime-rate loans originated in 2006 were made to non-Hispanic Whites and upper-income borrowers (conventional, 1st lien, 1-to-4 family, owner-occupied, home purchase and refinance).The findings are contrary to the way subprime-rate lending has been portrayed. Frequent media portrayals and congressional dialogue refer to subprime-rate lending as a minority and low-income issue. Findings in the report are based on data submitted by lenders under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) analyzed with the data-mining tool LendingPatterns(TM).

The report concluded that a disproportionate share of loans made to minorities and low-income borrowers were subprime-rate loans, but the majority of subprime-rate loans were made to non-Hispanic Whites and upper-income borrowers. Of the 1,917,809 subprime-rate loans originated in 2006, non-Hispanic Whites had 70.82 percent of the loans, and 56.23 percent of the subprime-rate loans. Upper-income borrowers had the highest share of the subprime-rate loans at 39.37 percent, followed by 27.55 percent for middle-income borrowers and 20.99 percent for moderate-income borrowers.

Contrary to popular belief, low-income borrowers had only 149,173, or 7.57 percent, of 2006 subprime-rate loans. The report also concluded that the majority of subprime-rate loans were originated in predominately-White geographic regions (areas representing census tracts less than 30 percent minority).

I was planning to post today on Obama’s terrifying “Truth Squads,” but when I went for the video I was stunned to see that Obama now has something even scarier:

Oh, sorry, that’s not it. Here it is:

Unfortunately, if you’re like most people and you get your Obama news from the possum-infested media, this comparison will make no sense to you because you think Obama is a nice guy.

Just today I was trying to explain to my mother that Obama has run the sleaziest, most corrupt campaign since Nixon. The voter fraud in the caucus states was massive, with 2000 reported incidents in Texas alone. Almost every one of the baseless smears against Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin has emanated directly from his campaign.

“But if that’s true,” said my mother, “why doesn’t the media report it?”

Why indeed?

The media wanted Al Gore to lose in 2000 and so they convinced the public he was a flake who claimed to have invented the internet, and that George W. Bush was an honorable down-to-earth moral paragon. The media wanted us to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and so they convinced the public that Saddam was out to get us (WMD! 9-11! Anthrax!) and that the Bush Administration was acting correctly.

Now they want Obama to win, and so they’re persuading the public that he’s a wonderful guy (a “lightworker,” so help me) and his opponents (particularly, it seems, his female opponents) are crazy/stupid/evil.

You know what we need more than an election for president? We need an election for the media. We need to throw out these bums and elect a whole new squad.

GaryChapelHill at Riverdaughter got this in his email this morning, and I got it this afternoon. Damn scammers. Who could fall for this?

From: Henry Paulson [mailto:henrympaulson@gmail.com]
Date: 9/30/2008
Subject: URGENT Dearest One
Bright Greetings Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent and important business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had a crisis that has caused the need for a large transfer of funds of $700 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with renowned Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of Treasury in January. As a Senator of my blelegeaured and beautiful country, you may know him as the dear leader of the American banking deregulation movement of 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. All you must does is send a blank check. We will be receiving the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive you’re information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Wonderful salutations to you cherish friend from Republic of America.

Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson