feminist blogs

Speaking of queering pop culture...

Lyrics here.

You can watch the original a capella version of this video by the University of Rochester Yellowjackets here.

h/t to Professor Foxy

Representative Bart Stupak, formerly an obscure Member of Congress who rose to notoriety when he introduced the anti-choice Stupak Amendment to health reform, is being challenged in the Democratic primary in Michigan. From TPM:

Connie Saltonstall, a former commissioner in Charlevoix County, told me this evening she's challenging Stupak over his refusal to allow health care reform to move forward without abortion language attached.

Saltonstall told me her "two passions" are health care reform and choice. And after spending the last 20 years voting for Stupak, Saltonstall said he managed to run afoul of both of them.

I don't know much about Saltonstall yet except that she is, in her own words to RH Reality Check, "Without a doubt pro-choice." That's already a big improvement over Stupak, who has been urged by the DCCC to run for re-election.

I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about Saltonstall soon. I hope she turns out to be a great candidate with a range of socially just positions, and that folks in Michigan help her create a positive campaign that can successfully unseat this anti-choice zealot.

Now is a great time, when the campaign is just getting underway, for folks in Michigan who want to help shape the agenda of their next Congressperson to learn more and get involved.

Responding to hateful speech from Howard Stern feels almost silly - after all, being an asshole bigot is what the guy does for a living. But I'm too damn pissed off by his comments about Gabby Sidibe to leave them alone.

Stern and Robin Quivers, a black woman who lost 70 lbs through extreme dieting, went off on Sidibe following the Oscar ceremony, mostly targeting her for her weight. Stern called her, "The most enormous fat black chick I've ever seen." And the hate just kept coming:

"You feel bad because everyone pretends that she's part of show business and she's never going to be in another movie," Stern added. "What movie is she going to be in? 'Blind Side 2,' she could be the football player."

Stern tried to frame the fat shaming as concern for Sidibe's health:

"You just want to say to her, listen honey, now you got a little money in the bank, go get yourself thin, you're gonna die in like three years."

What a load of crap. Hollywood runs on the disordered eating of female celebrities. We watch actors get thinner and thinner and thinner and be praised for it. We read about the fad diets that are really dangerous eating disorders with trendy names. But the health concerns only come up when talking about an actor who's fat?

The radio segment is also a huge racism party. Stern gets Sidibe's name wrong in as many ways as he possibly can, which is apparently hilarious. Then there's Stern and Quivers' take on the, "Ohmygod, Gabby Sidibe is not Precious Jones!" meme. See, some folks are really struggling with the idea that Sidibe isn't Precious, as if the character is the only kind of person a fat black woman can be and out of an inability to recognize that someone who looks like Sidibe can, um, act. Stern and Quivers aren't buying that Sidibe is a real person, though - of course she must be Precious!

Robin Quivers: Look at that girl, she's had despair. 

Howard Stern: She does despair. You don't think she walks around like Precious?

Well, in Sidibe's own words:

"When I was 14 I decided that whatever people say and no matter what I look like, I was going to be happy with myself - it's like a force of will. And it worked for me."

Stern and Quivers sadly can't seem to see why Sidibe is so popular among celebrities and fans alike. She's a total fan girl and is not letting her new-found fame change that. How do you not love her when she aces 'N Sync trivia (with Lance Bass' help) on Leno or hits on Gerard Butler on the red carpet? And Sidibe doesn't look like your typical Hollywood star. She's refreshingly relatable, like that friend you talk pop culture with all the time actually became a star and is still awesome. Sidibe's a great role model for followers of pop culture who don't meet Hollywood's ideal of beauty, meaning, to varying degrees, anyone.

Stern and Quivers' rant wasn't just cruel to Sidibe, but to everyone who looks up to her as a model of change in pop culture, especially fat black girls who finally get to see someone like themselves in a positive light when they turn on the TV or open a magazine.

And I know this isn't actually relevant to the discussion, but I thought Sidibe was one of the most gorgeous people on the Oscar red carpet:

As for the claim that Sidibe will never work again? Sadly, this hits home - there are not a lot of parts in Hollywood for black actors or fat actors. Prove Stern wrong, Hollywood.

If you want to subject yourself to the whole segment like I did you can listen to it on YouTube (I haven't been able to find a complete transcript, but there's not great subtitles available for the video). You can contact the Howard Stern Show to let them know what you think about their fat phobia and racism here.

When Angie Jackson live tweeted her abortion she was speaking about what women have been told must remain private, secret, and yes, shameful. I support women telling their own stories without judgment or stigma. I want a culture where women can talk comfortably about their abortions, even if it is still a difficult choice for some, where women's choices aren't judged. Speaking openly about abortion helps to create this world.

In a piece published yesterday at Salon, former Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island Mary Ann Sorrentino argues Jackson's choice and the procedure she underwent shouldn't be talked about in public. Sorrentino attempts to make a generational argument, claiming pre-Roe feminists understand how bad illegal abortion was and how hard they fought for it, and know their aim was to gain a private right. The author spins the legal right to privacy argument into a condemnation of uppity women who give voice to their own abortion experiences - this private procedure shouldn't be talked about so flagrantly.

Sorrentino's argument has nothing to do with generational divisions. It's an argument that women shouldn't speak their truth in public.

Sorrentino suggests Jackson is irresponsible for not choosing sterilization. Not wanting to carry another pregnancy to term does not equal wanting or being able to have a tubal ligation. But I get the sense Sorrentino has limits on what she considers morally acceptable, and tying your tubes when you decide not to have more kids but still want to have cis hetero sex is apparently the responsible choice.

Sorrentino says Jackson caused the rest of the universe "anguish" and calls her public tweets an "abuse of reproductive rights" - as if abortion is always a severely painful decision that must be kept secret, or you're doing it wrong. She accuses Jackson of having "bad judgment." Sorrentino makes sure to point out Jackson has the right to speak publicly about her abortion, but it's just not the proper thing to do.

Sorrentino's piece reads like she's telling Jackson to be ladylike, to be a "good girl." There are certain things a woman just shouldn't speak about in public. This isn't the feminism of a previous generation - it's an argument that the divides between public and private should be maintained, with women's experiences kept in the private sphere. It's an argument for silence, for stigma, and for an appropriate way of being a lady.

This goes against the approach to destigmatizing abortion that I learned from pre-Roe organizers. The Redstockings Abortion Speakout in 1969 began a traditional of women telling their abortion stories publicly to humanize the procedure, to bring it into the public sphere, and to remove shame. These women didn't listen when they were told their stories should be kept private. Jackson used new technology to share the experience as it was happening, a new twist on an old consciousness raising technique.

Jackson's live tweeting of her abortion actually has its roots in pre-Roe work for abortion access. Sorrentino's argument has its roots in anti-feminist understandings of the appropriate place for women's decisions and experiences - out of sight.

To hear Angie Jackson's reasons for sharing her abortion experience in her own words check out this CNN interview:

Full transcript here.

Chloe's post earlier this week about The Little Mermaid got me thinking about my own experience with this film. I definitely identify with the experience of looking back at something from childhood through a feminist lens and seeing it very differently. I agree with Chloe's critiques, as well as many of the critical and positive interpretations in the comments to the post - the film does have a lot of problematic elements, but there are also some positive messages in the story.

The post got me thinking about what I personally brought to this film, though, what I read in the story that connected with my own experience. This sort of read of pop culture is a staple for members of marginalized communities who see ourselves so rarely at the center of mainstream art that we read our own experiences into those stories. It's a favorite game in the queer community, something seemingly all my friends learned to play before we found out anyone else was doing the same. I think children and grown ups alike are susceptible to the messages we get from pop culture and able to read something liberatory into the media we consume.

The Little Mermaid is unquestionably racist and sexist, and contains one of the most disturbing anti-consent songs I've ever heard. It is also, for me, a trans fairy tale.

As a child I remember connecting with Ariel. I certainly didn't watch the movie as often as Chloe or dress up as the character. I didn't watch Disney movies when I was dressing up as a girl, so my costumes were Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene and Santa Lucia. By the time I saw The Little Mermaid I'd been pushed toward swords and pirates. I often outwardly mocked the fiction that gave me that funny feeling inside - related to the first tinglings of sexuality, but so much bigger, deeper - and I remember making a disparaging comment or two about Ariel. But I identified with her instantly. Her problems made so much sense. Her whole world was wrong - she knew where she belonged, but no one could understand. And she didn't care, she went for it anyway, became the person she knew she should be in the world where she knew she belonged. When I heard she turned into foam at the end of the Hans Christian Andersen story that tragedy made more sense to me - the fantasy was far too good to be true.

When I learned words and concepts for what I'd felt about myself for years I also gained a vocabulary to understand my version of The Little Mermaid. Ariel was a trans girl. Her toys were a secret collection of human artifacts, similar to me playing with my sister's Barbies, a way to access the identity I belonged in. She tried to explain herself, but her father couldn't understand - he had a picture of who his daughter should be, and she was saying she belonged in a whole other world! Ursula was only half a villain for me - she was also the twisted drag queen fairy godmother who could give Ariel the body she knew she belonged in (Ursula made that funny feeling shoot sparks). Ariel's happy ending was far too good for my young self, who'd been pushed towards being a person I just wasn't, to believe - Triton accepts Ariel as a human and lets her be herself! And, as commenter zes points out, Eric still loves Ariel after she's outed as trans.

Some of the themes that I connected with are definitely in the film - not fitting in, parents not understanding you - but took on new meanings connected to my own personal experience. Then there's the broader theme of mermaids, who speak to a lot of trans children. It's not that my version of the story is there, overtly, but, just as social critique of media matters, so does our personal experience. And for me, Disney's The Little Mermaid was the rare fairy tale I strongly identified with.

Trans themes can be read into other Disney films as well - Mulan, for example. And there are other ways of reading The Little Mermaid - The comments on Chloe's post include discussion of the film as a fable of interracial romance. This doesn't undo the problematic and offensive elements of the film, but it does speak to our ability to see ourselves reflected in pop culture and build our own personal mythology using the tools available to us.

When I was little, hearing themes I was struggling with in "Part of Your World" did me a lot of good. If the Disney princess was singing about what I was feeling maybe I wasn't so alone, so weird and wrong, after all:

Lyrics here.

Today, March 10, is the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. The many health care professionals who make abortion access a reality by providing counseling, scheduling appointments, and assisting with or performing abortions are doing necessary work despite immense stigma and hatred, and they have my heartfelt thanks.

Today is also the anniversary of the 1993 assassination of Dr. David Gunn, the first abortion provider killed in the U.S. because of his job. This past year we lost another provider, Dr. George Tiller, to antiabortion violence. The threat of violence is constant for many providers and, in a year when a provider was assassinated for the first time in over a decade, that threat is on everyone's minds. Yet doctors, nurses, therapists, and other clinic staff keep going to work, because they know the legal right to abortion means nothing if everyone is too afraid to perform the procedure.

The National Abortion Federation (where I work part time) is collecting names, messages, and photos showing appreciation for abortion providers. Head on over to there site to express your thanks and support.

The Brooklyn District Attorney's said Monday that ACORN employees caught on tape advising conservative videographers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles did not commit a crime. That's right, the video that was used as evidence to halt federal funding to ACORN and nearly led to the community organization's collapse doesn't actually contain criminal activity.

From a source inside law enforcement:

"They edited the tape to meet their agenda," said the source.

No! I'm shocked. Shocked! You're saying editing can be used to manipulate information? And that folks trying to take down ACORN weren't fair in their editing of their own video? That was completely not obvious at all!

*headdesk*

The editing process included splicing shots of James O'Keefe wearing an absurd pimp costume into the footage. O'Keefe never wore the costume inside ACORN offices, yet the outlandish outfit was used to draw attention to the video stunt. And the New York Times not only reported this false information, but is unwilling to retract those reports, saying of O'Keefe, "We believe him." Yeah, that guy's totally a trustworthy source.

I'm consistently baffled that politicians just accepted the contents of this video, that Republicans could use it to nearly destroy an organization providing vital services to low income people, and that Democrats played right along. And then I think about who ACORN serves and I remember racism, sexism, classism...

Read The Daily Femme's interview with Feministing's new Executive Editor, Samhita Mukhopadhyay.

Hundreds are dead or missing after a mudslide in Uganda.

'Tis the season for fubar anti-choice legislation...

The Oklahoma House voted 87-7 to require women seeking abortions to be shown an ultrasound and told specific information like the size of the fetus. EIGHTY-SEVEN TO SEVEN. The Oklahoma Supreme Court would like to remind the House they already ruled mandatory ultrasounds unconstitutional. So that was a nice waste of everyone's time.

A bill to criminalize midwifery was defeated in Mississippi today.

President Obama wants an up-or-down vote on what's now being called health insurance reform. Looks like he's willing to pass the bill through reconciliation, if the votes are there. The anti-choice Nelson language appears to be staying in the bill, which will make abortion even more difficult to access. The language keeping undocumented immigrants from purchasing health insurance in the new exchanges looks to be staying in as well.

Photo from DCist.

It's a big day in the nation's capital as same sex couples are able to apply for marriage licenses for the first time. A collection of stories from around the web:

The first couples in DC to apply for marriage licenses. And here's a profile of couple #1.

Gay marriage day in pictures. And even more pictures.

Westboro Baptist Church shows up to protest, wave around angry signs about how God hates pretty much everybody, shout things that make no sense, are largely ignored. "This nation's DOOM will come!" Photos of fab counter-protesters here.

RHRealityCheck has a roundup of gay marriage news in DC and beyond.

Congratulations to everyone who got their marriage license today!

We need models of responsible male sexuality, including examples of how to responsibly talk about and use contraception. So why does this PSA from Sex Really waste its time on a disgusting representation of men and rehashing stereotypical gender roles? A warning that the video (and some other content at the Sex Really website) may be triggering:

Transcript after the jump.

So the motivation for having safe sex is that the guy you're sleeping with is an asshole and you're too clueless to notice? Otherwise sure, getting knocked up on accident would be no big deal!

And the best way for us to learn this is to listen to sexist, racist, homophobic "humor?"

The stereotypes in this ad are offensive to men and women. I find the idea that women have naive, tame, baby-obsessed conversations and that men are raunchy and sex-obsessed completely absurd. I've had the fairly unique experience of being in groups of both straight men and straight women talking about sex in a space understood as single gender. This is obviously a generalization, but in my experience women are much more open, honest, specific and yes, graphic about the sex they have and the sex they want. And of course I've also had plenty of conversations with men who are incredibly focused on their desire to have kids.

But it's also been my experience that groups of cis men have trouble talking openly and honestly about the sex they've had and the sex they want. A PSA that models this sort of conversation with an emphasis on safer sex would be great to see. This ain't it.

I'm struck by how much this PSA sounds like abstinence-only curriculum material, minus the nod to safety. It says men are horny and gross and that's just the way it is and women are too focused on baby making to notice. Maybe this isn't so surprising - as Shelby Knox points out at This is Misogyny, Sex Really, a project of the increasingly conservative National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, is run by Laura Sessions Stepp. Yep, that Laura Sessions Step, who introduced us to the term "gray rape," who says women who like sex make men impotent, and who authored the slut shaming book "Unhooked." Not exactly the person I want running a campaign about responsible and safe sexuality.

Guy 1: And I'm able to grab one titty as I'm doing it and I grab the other titty this way and I was very happy.

Guy 2: Anybody ever do this, the Arabian Goggles, you know where you put your balls on the chick's eyes.

Guy 1: You know I don't know if there's a tribal council or someone you can go to to decide if it's a threesome or not.

Phil: You don't have two dicks. You can't bang them both at the same time. Wait I think I've done that, but we call it the Michael Phelps, cause of the chlorine you have to wear the goggles.

Guy 3: She sounded like a duck, she's be like quack quack.

Guy 1: I'm sitting there I'm like OK it's over, why don't you get the fuck out of the apartment and she goes, can you do me a favor? And I was like, what? And she's like, uh, it's weird to ask. And I'm like well just fucking say it, I just fucked you all over my fucking abode.

Guy 2: [Unclear] knew how to handle a woman.

Phil: Some busters where you just haven't got any in so long so you just stop giving a fuck. You'd hit that but if that wasn't there you might suck a dick. Like, it's that close.

Guy 2: Whenever I see a girl wearing tight tight jeans I think of yeast infections. That's why I would never fuck a girl in the circus, cause they ride elephants.

Guy 3: You skull fucked?

Guy 2: No I had a friend of mine who used to like to skull fuck.

Phil's girlfriend (on the phone): I don't think it'd be that big a deal if I got pregnant. Well first off it would be a beautiful baby, and second I think he'd be a great father. He's just such a sweetie.

Phil: I know, if she's gonna wear a dress like that who's not gonna lift that shit up.

Guy 2: When I fuck a chick I feel like I'm doing charity work sometimes.

Guys are a@#$%^&. Be safe. Every time.

Sex.Really.