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Just because Fox News regularly scrapes the bottom of the barrel in providing offense and biased content, doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for a single thing they do. There is such a thing as "crossing a line," even for them. That's why Change.org Gay Rights Editor Michael A. Jones wants Fox & Friends to stop bringing extremists on their show as guests.

While there have been many undesirable guests on Fox & Friends, a Fox News morning show, the straw that broke the camel's back was Bob Enyart's visit as a family values expert. Oh, family values.

Enyart's family values include asserting that doctors who provide abortions, a perfectly legal procedure, should expect the possibility of being killed just like a criminal assassin would. "If a Mafia hit man gets killed, people recognize it's an occupational hazard," Enyart commented following the murder of Dr. George Tiller, who was gunned down in his church by a Christian extremist that objected to his reproductive health practice.

Then there's Enyart's classy habit of gleefully reading the obituaries of LGBTQ persons who have died of AIDS while "Another One Bites the Dust" plays behind his voice. Nothing like a little 80s music to lighten the mood when you're looking to celebrate the prolonged and painful death of human beings who all have family and friends that mourn them. And, to round out his "family values," Jones points out that Enyart spent two months in jail for beating his seven-year-old stepson with a belt. Oh yes, wise Mr. Enyart, do lecture to us about proper family values.

Fox has also welcomed guests like Bradlee "I think we should kill gays and lesbians" Dean to make use of their wavelengths to spread their message to the world. It's time for this to stop. Please sign the petition asking that, even if Fox News can't do fair and balanced, Fox and Friends at least stop bringing extremists on the show and dubbing them experts. I know both words start with an "ex," but that doesn't make them interchangeable.

Photo credit: peupleloup

Girls have long battled sexist stereotypes about their academic prowess, particularly in the field of mathematical ability. A Kaplan, LA, middle school implemented single-sex classes under the rationale that girls are "content to simply observe" in class while boys "enjoy argument and lively classroom debate" and must be given more dynamic classes accordingly. But the "boys will be boys" mantra, often frustrating to girls who see their male classmates get away with far more trouble than they do, can actually be harmful to the boys themselves.

A new study out of England finds that boys (and girls) are more likely to believe that girls are harder working and better behaved, which creates a "self-fulfilling prophecy." When boys are expected to be the class clown, getting up to "schoolboy pranks," and asked, "why can't you sit nicely like the girls?" they live up to expectations. Just like when girls score worse on tests when they hear their sex can't do math, boys do worse at academics when they're treated like goof-offs from the start. When, for experimental purposes, it was announced before a test that boys don't do as well as girls, the boys scores are lowered.

The solution to this is one that will help both boys and girls: not promoting gender stereotypes in the classroom, not treating boys or girls as better or worse at something because of their sex, and not playing boys-vs-girls games that reinforce the concept of difference. Sexism and gender stereotypes must be viewed as matters of universal concern, detrimental to all children no matter their chromosome configuration.

Photo credit: Liz (perspicacious.org)

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, France's first lady, caught Iran's attention by publicly speaking out against the stoning of a mother for adultery. (Though international outcry spared Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani this punishment, she still awaits execution by hanging.) Angry about her role in forcing Iran's hand to a slightly less extreme human rights abuse, the Kayhan, a state-run newspaper known for its conservativism, called Bruni-Sarkozy a "prostitute" who had "kicked up a human rights fuss."

Certain people wondered: um, did we hear you right? Did something get lost in translation? Why, not at all, responded the daily. In fact, they followed up, because of her "perverted lifestyle" and alleged extramarital affairs, the first lady should suffer the same fate as Ashtiani. In the paper's words: "This shows that in reality she herself deserves death." Yikes. Usually, advocating killing the first lady of another country is not the best idea for a state-run paper.

The Iranian government did suggest that this kind of personal attack was maybe not a great idea, attempting to back away from being included in any blame for the mud-slinging, and advised: "The media can properly criticize the wrong and hostile policies of other countries by refraining from using insulting words." On Salon's Broadsheet, Tracy Clark-Fiory translates this statement as: "Next time, make your murderous ire a little more subtle, dudes." Subtlety was clearly the last thing on the Kayhan's mind in this instance.

I will mention that, though the Iranian paper is using "prostitute" as an insult, there's nothing wrong with being a sex worker. And it's a significant truth that, whether or not the extramarital affairs allegations are true, Bruni-Sarkozy's life would definitely not be acceptable under Iranian law: the former model and pop star has said she becomes "easily bored with monogamy," and has had a number of steamy relationships with famous people such as Mick Jagger. (That makes it sound pretty good to me, though.)

Bruni-Sarkozy, however, deserves to be put to death just as much as a woman accused of adultery in Iran does — which is to say, not at all. Yet, remember, Ashtiani still faces death by hanging, and her children believe that Iranian officials are just waiting for the international community to get distract and forget about her to go ahead with the execution. People around the world need to continue to put the pressure on: respect for cultural differences is one thing; giving violence against women a free pass is entirely another.

Hopefully, going after a popular foreign official in this way will backfire on Iranian conservatives by simply shining a bigger spotlight on the injustice of their laws. As much media attention as the planned stoning of Ashtiani received, calling the French first lady a prostitute will probably garner so much more. The media just can't resist a great headline.

Photo credit: dpcom.fr

When conservatives are looking to play the blame-game regarding what they refer to as the decline of the "traditional family," feminists, LGBT persons, and Hollywood liberal elites are generally on the dice. But Alex Henderson writes on Alternet that if they want to find the true culprit, they should look in the mirror.

What right-wingers mean by family values is something along the lines of a man and woman getting married, on the young side before they've sullied themselves with any premarital sex, pop out a bunch of children (sans contraception), and perish the thought of divorce. But one thing any parents (and most non-parents) know: kids are expensive. When people decide to have children later or not at all, when a greater number of people are interested in permanent sterilization, when marriage gets delayed, economic considerations are at the top of their reasons.

Wealth in America has become more concentrated in the hands of an elite few, while an average worker's wages have not kept up with inflation on basic necessities. Conservatives blocked comprehensive health care reform under the Clinton administration, while the bill that President Obama managed to squeeze through Congress falls far short of what the nation needs. We have inadequate or nonexistent maternity leave, paternity leave, sick days, subsidized day care, and other vital elements of a social safety net. What kind of impact do you think this would have on responsible individuals considering having a family?

In truth, what conservatives deem the "traditional family" was never the sole family make-up in existence, and reducing the stigma attached to child-free women, single parents, divorce, and same-sex parents is a good thing in my book. But providing better social services benefits families of all stripes, and anyone who wants the "traditional" family structure shouldn't feel locked out of raising kids just because even someone who works hard with a fairly decent job often can't be sure of their security in taking responsibility for a child who relies totally on them. If conservatives want to talk family values, it's time they put their money where their mouth is.

Photo credit: Corey Ann

Year in and year out, legislators think of new and exciting ways to impose control over a woman's body ... or they just try, try again to pass the old and uncreative means of letting women know we were silly to consider our bodies our own. While we're never particularly celebratory over these developments, 2010 has seemed like an especially bad year for reproductive rights. With most states done with their 2010 legislative session, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) today released an overview of this round's changes and what's popular in violating a woman's bodily integrity this year.

With President Barack Obama busy shoving health reform through Congress, it seems the only soundbite we heard as often as "death panels" was "government-funded abortion" (or "baby killer," or some other such permutation). Anti-choicers won a victory with the Nelson Amendment, which imposed mandatory restrictions on abortion coverage while giving states the green light to make life even harder for women, should the mood take them. Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee took them up on that offer with their own exchange bans, and Florida and Oklahoma would have followed if it weren't for the woman-friendly pen of their governors. Never mind that organizations from the World Health Organization to the American Public Health Association tout what a vital element of health care abortion is.

Other winners on America's Top Anti-Choice Legislation were laws requiring doctors to counsel women with scientifically unfounded information (also knows as lies to the more blunt of us), mandatory ultrasounds even for rape victims (because having your body violated once wasn't enough), and parental notification laws that endanger abused girls. Attempts at personhood ballot initiatives that declare against both science and many people's personal beliefs that life begins at conception have also been popular, but luckily these unconstitutional attempts to define all abortion as murder have failed to win over the voters.

For more information and a state-by-state breakdown of the worst offenders, check out CRR's website.

Photo credit: Jerry Nadler

Pornography: one of the great dividing points in the feminist movement. Is it good? Is it bad? Do anti-porn feminists feel uncomfortable getting in bed with the Religious Right? Do sex-positive pro-porn (or "erotica") feminists get a funny feeling about objectification?

Clarisse Thorn has an article raising this issue on Alternet: "Why I Sympathize With Anti-Porn Feminists — And Love Porn Anyway." On the one hand, many women just get an icky feeling when it comes to porn. On the other hand, this can be attributed to the fact that the pornography industry caters to men (and often the macho, misogynistic male side at that): it's the type that's the problem, not the whole concept. (This is about where I fall.) If porn is seen as degrading to women, is that because of the hyper-focus on cum-shots, rather than an inherent degradation involved in watching somebody having sex? Porn is rarely so attacked as degrading to men, after all.

And there are plenty of women out there — like Thorn herself — who both enjoy porn and think it's beneficial to society. Why should they be denied their sexuality or the right to appreciate porn just as men do? It reinforces the purity myth that surrounds women. In Thorn's article, she basically tells anti-porn feminists: I get it. I used to be like you, too. But I have learned, and what I have learned is: porn is good. Yet there's other evidence that porn, or the type most common today, can normalize sexual harassment and violence for boys. There's also the separate problem of exploitation and even trafficking in the porn industry, but then again, we don't advocate banning the production of T-shirts because many of them come from sweatshops — we just push for better regulation and labor standards.

Some of the comments I ran into when I recently decided to write about Eminem and Rihanna's song about domestic violence made it clear that many people don't understand the difference between non-consensual violence and consensual BDSM. This kind of knowledge gaps can only be addressed by bringing sex more into the public view. How can you expose people to an eyeful of what range of sexual behaviors exists without resorting to porn? Can you call it something else if it's educational? Viewing the diversity of porn lets people know that their own desires aren't so out-of-the-ordinary, that there is room for exploration and creativity, as long as it all stays within the bounds of consent.

Is there something inherently bad about depicting humans engaging in sexual acts? Even a Hollywood romantic film draws viewers in with make out and sex scenes, and while they aren't as explicit as porn, most movie-goers are disappointed if they leave out the scene where the main characters get hot and heavy. So where is the line that makes something pornographic or not? Do you just know it when you see it? No doubt what is seen as porn is subjective and changes over time; ankles aren't exactly the sinful things they used to be.

There is power in pornography, if nothing else is certain. Our culture isn't exactly sex-positive, and even most comprehensive sex education classes stick to the vanilla (and often heteronormative) stuff, so porn teaches youth what they don't get elsewhere, to positive or negative effect. So where do you weigh in on the great porn debate?

Photo credit: Adrian Wallet

In the United States, abortion is supposedly legal, despite state restrictions that infringe upon the time and manner in which the procedure can be performed. In Mexico, the country makes no bones about abortion being illegal, with Mexico City the one small exception to the rule. Yet Laura Tillman reports at The Nation that American women are crossing the border into Mexico to address unwanted pregnancies. What gives?

While Roe v. Wade protects American women's right to an abortion only up to a point. Even during the first trimester when an elective abortion is legal for any reason, many women find that the procedure is inaccessible. Cost is a major factor: just a few days ago, I wrote about low-income women resorting to do-it-yourself abortions due to the prohibitive expense of a legal medical procedure that is nonetheless kept out of all public and some private insurance coverage. Other factors, which vary on a state-by-state basis, include a lack of abortion providers in the area, 24-hour waiting periods, restrictions on how far along the pregnancy can be, parental consent, and stigma.

In Mexico, on the other hand, though abortion is illegal, the Guttmacher Institute reports that the abortion rate there is actually 40% higher than in the U.S. It turns out that for women in America who live near the southern border, heading down to Mexico to buy a cheap bottle of "abortion pills," usually Misoprostal, can at times look like a better option. And if you need to resort to getting an abortion without a doctor's care, using Misoprostal to induce a miscarriage is a less dangerous option than many other forms of illegal back-alley or do-it-yourself procedures — although it still carries significant dangers such as internal bleeding or birth defects should the fetus end up being carried to term.

Tillman's article takes a peek at another fascinating reason why using a pill like Misoprostal might be preferable to going to a clinic for an abortion: women who have been brought up to believe that abortion is wrong can convince themselves that when they miscarry from a pill, it's not really an abortion. Diana, a 30-year-old single mother of two, rationalizes that, yes, she took the pill with the desire of inducing a miscarriage/abortion, but she doesn't know for sure that the pills caused her miscarriage and it didn't just happen naturally. Since "abortionists" removing a fetus are demonized by opponents of legal abortion, taking a pill in private and later undergoing a miscarriage can seem less at odds with a woman's religious upbringing.

A miscarriage, of course, is just a spontaneous abortion. This fastidiousness about language doesn't alter what's occurring; the intention in taking that pill is the same as when a woman walks into a reproductive health clinic to have an abortion, and, if all goes as desired, the outcome is the same. Given that illicit use of a pill like Misoprostal is more dangerous than a legal abortion from a doctor, women shouldn't be driven to jeopardize their health and lives for the false comfort of a tactic that doesn't look quite like the devil they've been taught to abhor.

Photo credit: sonyaseattle

Do-it-yourself projects can be fun, but an abortion is not like a crafts project. Unfortunately, the lack of abortion coverage in health insurance is forcing low-income women to attempt to DIY abortions because they can't afford a safe procedure.

As Robin Marty writes on RH Reality Check, women are turning to the improper use of the drug misoprostal, while others are resorting to more risky, desperate acts such as throwing themselves down a set of stairs or getting punched in the stomach. In a country in which abortion is a perfectly legal procedure, and one that is very safe when performed properly by a doctor, it's deeply disturbing that women still have to resort to such dangerous methods. The Hyde Amendment's ban on government funding for abortion puts women in a position where they cannot access health care for their bodies.

Last month, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg warned that while abortion rights are secure for women with money, even if Roe v. Wade were to be repealed, low-income women's reproductive rights are not on such solid ground. In fact, it seems clear that poor women are already de facto deprived of their reproductive rights by the lack of abortion coverage in health insurance.

Women will continue to take matters into their own hands if financial constraints keep them from getting an abortion. Three-fourths of women who obtain abortions cite the inability to afford a child as one of their primary reasons; if they cannot pay for the procedure out-of-pocket, that's not going to stop them from making certain they're not bringing a life into the world they can't support. We should jeopardize women's health out of ideology.

Photo credit: Demion

Female prisoners in Colorado are now forced to spread open their labia so that guards can peer into their genitals at close range. Does this strike anybody else as overkill?

Stephanie Hallett at Ms. Magazine's blog reports that Colorado already had an invasive policy of "bend over, squat, spread and cough" for anal cavity searches, but this new addition takes the standard prisoner strip search to a new level of humiliation and violation. An estimated 80% of female prisoners have a history of being sexually abused and some suffer from PTSD as a result, which means that flashbacks can be triggered by a practice that forces them to lift their labia and sometimes clitoral hoods so that a guard can leer in from inches away with a flashlight beam. Prisoners who have tried to refuse compliance have been threatened with pepper spray.

This extreme policy on strip searches for contraband makes me wonder just how much and how easy they think it is for a woman to stuff items in there. Colorado must have a really, really bad problem with contraband, and being searches those repeat offenders who simply can't be trusted not to be especially devious, right? I mean, they wouldn't needlessly do something tantamount to sexual assault, triggering PTSD and reducing women inmates to tears, right? Well, the ACLU and ACLU of Colorado, which are calling for an end to this policy, say that this "degrading, gratuitous and unconstitutional" search is being used in searches where guards have no suspicion that the prisoner is actually trying to hide contraband.

This kind of invasive search of a woman's body is not necessary for the safety of the prison, does harm to women's well-being (especially sexual assault survivors), and seems more intended to humiliate than anything else. Tell Ari Zavaras, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, to rescind the degrading new policy immediately.

Photo credit: paper or plastic?

Antoine Dodson became an internet sensation after voicing his anger over the attempted rape of his sister Kelly, a rant that was remixed into the "Bed Intruder Song." The song, which has been deemed hilarious by the internet masses and received over 12 million views on YouTube, was sold on iTunes, where it raised enough money to allow the Dodson family to move out of their home in the projects to a better neighborhood.

But while that seems like a happy ending, bloggers like Tamara Winfrey Harris on Race in America want to know: "What's So Funny About Antoine Dodson?" Harris writes, "Part of the Dodson meme is, I fear, about laughing at mannerisms that the mainstream associates with blackness, gayness and poverty. There is nothing amusing about a young woman assaulted in her home. And so, I worry that people are laughing at Antoine: his flamboyance and perceived gayness; his use of black colloquialisms, like 'run tell dat,' his grammar and accent."

In an updated YouTube video, Antoine and Kelly thank the people who helped them make this change through their financial support, while Kelly tries to explain that, well, she can't explain what she's feeling as a sexual assault survivor. She refers to her fears and those of her two-year-old daughter, and how the attempted rape has had a huge impact on her family. If Antoine hadn't heard the intruder and intervened, Kelly would have been raped, or, she fears, even killed. This is something that gets lost when people are laughing over Antoine's rant-turned-rap, and though Kelly now expresses gratitude that the song help provide a better life for her family, she still complained, "I was very upset about it because they were taking it as a joke and I was feeling like they were not looking at the part where I was the victim."

In some ways, the Bed Intruder Song and the popularity Antoine Dodson has received because of it has a very positive outcome. Financial support for the individual traumatized and widespread attention for the issue of sexual violence, one that rarely gets the kind of coverage it deserves. But, unfortunately, the money comes at a certain cost, because it also seems to trivialize the assault.

Antoine stood up against the rapist in a way we rarely see: he was loud, he was angry, and he didn't make excuses. Rape is too often swept under the rug, and Antoine didn't do that. It's hard to parse out how many viewers are simply laughing at Dodson, as Harris fears, and how many appreciate the message he is sending standing up to decry violence against women. I like the Antoine Dodson "Bed Intruder Song" too. I like it because he tells the rapist, you were wrong and you're going to be caught, and I and my sister and my family are stronger than you.

The song remix is unavoidably catchy and made to be humorous, but it's also an empowering in-your-face statement against perpetrators that it's refreshing to hear. Maybe most people don't hear that when they're listening, and it would be great if those millions of viewers could also be convinced to visit an anti-sexual violence site like RAINN. However, this is still a song that's firmly anti-rape, so I think there has to be some benefit to its popularity.