So I watched CNN all day yesterday waiting for the vote on the bailout bill, but I noticed that even though I don't have any money to really lose (just the hope that they may not notice how much debt I have) I still felt stressed out. I also realized that when rich people lose money, it is a national crisis. But poor folk have trouble making ends meet every single day. Where is our news coverage?
The thing with money stress, for most of us, it is always there. So why this panic and media frenzy? Because the Dow Jones dropped? Or because we need to sensationalize everything and create fake scenarios to see how our to be presidents will react? Now, I am not saying that the financial crisis isn't real. Giving out money that doesn't exist will lead to problems. But this has problem didn't happen over night. As Naomi Klein would suggest,
[R]ight-wing governments use the shock generated by disasters or other crises to push through unpopular free-market policies when the population isn't in a position to oppose such programs.
So instead of taking a jab at some shoddy economic analysis (which it seems like a lot of people are doing), I thought I would give you all a chance to share your thoughts on the economic crisis. I realized after watching the news all day I started to feel really panicked and started revisiting all my bills and stressing out about money. I also realized the spending on the war in Iraq is almost as much as the amount that is needed for the bailout.
Talk to me.
UPDATE: Listen to Naomi Klein explain the "shock doctrine."
My gay boyfriend Merv and I, caught on the scene (well more like at my apartment) probably after getting our thizzle dance on.
Now this is really really bad. It is so bad that I can't even believe I am admitting it. And not just because of the rampant misogyny in rap music videos (which is over the top, grotesque and unapologetic), but because I am considered a hip-hop head that should stick to the *real* shit mayne! There is just something about certain mainstream pop-like rap tracks that get under my skin and stuck in my head and before I know it I am head bopping with the best of them and sometimes even wearing my hat to the side with some electro-glasses on.
Mind you most of what I am listening to isn't even hip-hop, there might be some rapping but it is basically R&B and it has a groove that I can't resist. For example I love this Lil Wayne track with Lloyd, it just gets me up and singing. And it isn't just the super mainstream stuff, I like whatever young people are listening to all over the country. I just left the Bay and although it has seen its heyday, boy can I get down with some hyphy music, like E-40 or Mac Dre.
I have written about negotiating my feminism with my love for hip-hop, so this is something I have given a lot of thought to. And frankly, sometimes I can handle it, but most of the time I am thinking, was that really necessary? And there are moments that are so over the top (like Nelly's Tip Drill track) which is just too much for me and I am grossly offended and ready to boycott the artist.
Does this music have sexist attitudes in it? It sure can and a lot of times yes. But it is also what my friends and my community listen to and not all of it is horridly offensive. Some of it is just cute. I actually got into commercial rap by hanging out with lesbians (well that and working in public schools for 5 years). I am not going to make a case for some type of reverse signification where we are reclaiming the music. We aren't, we are human and we like good beats with cheesy bass lines and corny lyrics and relate to the universal themes of sexual attraction, love and heart break.
I have no idea how I will continue to reconcile my love for mainstream commercial hip-hop since I am aware of its nefarious corporate packaging, mistreatment of members and a form of music that people of my generation (from the golden years of hip-hop) consider to be responsible for ruining hip-hop as we know it. However, I will make the argument that I don't think rap/hip-hop is any more sexist than other male dominated forms of music. So maybe your guilty pleasure is cock rock and mine is faux mainstream gangsta' rap. Either way, if you see me dancing somewhere and you are like, "omg is that Samhita from FEMINISTING" just know I recognize the potential contradiction, but also, like everyone else like to have a good time, dance with my friends and have taken myself to the task of mastering the balancing act of hip-hop love and feminist self-preservation.
So, my friend Deanne sent me this picture last week (that quickly got all over the internets) of "Teen Pregnancy Barbie." After several google searches failed me, I realized that if I just look at the website, "Teen Pregnancy Barbie" is a multimedia art project by artist Nina Westerberg (powerpoint of process here). Now, I have talked about Barbie art before and many people didn't agree with my opinions, but since I am a glutton for punishment, I will try here again.
I think this is supposed to be ironic and tells us a story about youth, motherhood and that the Barbie American dream isn't peachy and perfect, like Barbie wants us to think it is. This is OK, but let's talk about the real state of young women and motherhood so we can get appropriate education and resources where we need them.
A reader sent us a link to this cartoon, and wrote,
I hate the implication that the faux-feminist Sarah Palin has overcome the glass ceiling, when if anything she's working hard to reinforce it and add some bullet-proof layering as well.
Which is one way of looking at it.
This cartoon is also (inadvertently) an interesting illustration of something I think a lot of people get wrong about the proverbial "glass ceiling." The glass ceiling is a metaphor for the idea that women as a group are prevented by sexism and other gender-related factors from rising to the upper echelons of politics, science, business, you name it. (I'd actually argue there's one glass ceiling for white women, and another, harder-to-crack glass ceiling for women of color.) It is not something that can be busted by the achievements of one single woman.
In this way, it's apt that the cartoon above shows Sarah Palin walking on a still-intact glass ceiling. She hasn't shattered it -- it's still holding back women as a group, despite her personal success. And to be totally fair, I don't think Hillary Clinton's nomination for president (or even her election as president) would have, in and of itself, shattered the glass ceiling, either. That's because when we talk about the invisible ceiling holding women back, we're talking about broad, systemic problems that can't be solved by one woman, no matter how fierce. In an essay for the Prospect after Clinton dropped out of the Democratic primary, I wrote:
Outliers like Pelosi and Clinton -- and Fortune 500 CEOs like
Xerox's Ann Mulcahy -- do not in themselves amount to the shift
necessary to make lasting change. When a magazine hires a female
editor-in-chief, the number of women's bylines does not automatically
increase. I would argue that the reason sweeping change doesn't occur
is not because these remarkable women aren't doing enough. It's simply
that one woman at the top cannot change an entire culture. Looking at
these numbers across the board, it's clear that the real ceiling is not
limiting individual women's ambitions. It's keeping women as a group
from breaking the 25 percent barrier.
If we want to cross that threshold, we need to look at the system.
Now, that's not to say I don't think women at the top are more empowered than women at the bottom to implement the kinds of changes that actually will crack the glass ceiling. Hillary Clinton would have been a far greater ceiling-smasher than Palin -- not because Clinton was a presidential candidate while Palin is a VP candidate, but because Clinton has shown she actually cares about dismantling the ceiling that holds all women back. She has advocated for policies guaranteeing equal pay and paid family leave, and elevated many women to positions of considerable power within her campaign. Palin has done none of these things. In fact, as our astute reader pointed out, the McCain/Palin campaign seeks to keep the barriers to women's advancement firmly in place.
So it actually makes sense that, in the cartoon above, Sarah Palin is trotting across a very-much-intact glass ceiling. The next time she says she's "one of those 18 million cracks," I would love to explain to her why she's wrong. No individual woman -- not even a vice-presidential nominee -- can break the ceiling. Policies that help all women advance are what will really crack the glass.
Discrimination against transgender people is still commonplace in many work environments, but more so in highly political government security related fields. Diane Schroer, is suing the Library of Congress for not getting an assignment because she had transitioned. The job was to support to run a new anti-terrorism organization.
He had been selected to organize and run a new, classified antiterrorism organization, and in that position he had routinely briefed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He had also briefed Vice President Dick Cheney more than once. Schroer had been an action hero, but he also had the contacts and intellectual dexterity to make him an ideal congressional analyst.
But now, about three weeks before Schroer was to begin work at CRS, he told Preece over a Chinese lunch that he had a personal matter to reveal: after years of cross-dressing in private, he was preparing to start living full time as a woman. He would also probably have sex-reassignment surgery. And so he planned to start at CRS as Diane Jacqueline Schroer, not David John Schroer.
So granted this is in Time Magazine, but the article actually brings up some good points and reinforces that Schroer's gender has nothing to do with her ability to do the job.
According to Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act employment discrimination because of sex is illegal. This can potentially be stretched to cover transgender, but I am in the camp that believes their needs to be an explicitly stated law that makes discrimination against transgender/intersexed/middle-sex/gender non-conforming people illegal.
But I think this article brings up another issue and that is the connection between anti-terrorism and patriarchy. It is not just Schroer transitioned and was then discriminated against, but it was about the particular job she had been hired to do wherein her being a man was important. A strong, pro-war, tough on terror man or as the article says, "a super-hero." Anti-terrorism functions as an extension of military and government intelligence based on racist and sexist ideas about "terrorist" threat and masculinity. Not only is it attempting to negate the masculinity of supposed terrorists it is clear that there is a sense of paranoia and fear the notion of "terrorism" by foreign men of color brings to the white male ego.
This case relies on the intersection of race, gender and nation making not only the initial discrimination problematic, but the context of it telling of conditions for transgendered folks within the military and government system.
So it has taken me days to filter through all the different things going through my head about Burning Man. For those who have never heard, Burning Man is an annual party that attracts almost 50,000 people around the concept of art, life as art, self-sustainability, self-reliance, hedonism and music and to experience all of this in the desert for 1-2 weeks. Living in San Francisco for the last seven years, I certainly crossed paths with many that were life-long burners and had my own preconceived notions of what to expect. Some of what I had heard resonated, but nothing I had ever experienced matched up to going to Burning Man. What does a feminist woman of color see at Burning Man?
Well first and foremost, the art at Burning Man is as incredible as everyone claims it to be. I always hated those people that said, "sorry man, you don't understand, you have to see it to believe it," and I will spare you such proclamations. However, there is something about the huge scale of the art set in the dustiness of the desert that creates surreal visuals that can't be compared to much else I have seen before. The art made my trip to Burning Man worthwhile.
But, you are in the desert with almost 50,000 people in city built in weeks with streets, neighborhoods, themes and entire communities. Obviously you see much more than art. I will attempt to express what I felt, saw and experienced in the most coherent way possible.
The theme of this year's Burning Man was the "American Dream." Sounds corny, but my assumption was that in a space like BM we would see multiple moments of disrupting what we understand to be true of the American Dream. Perhaps new ways of envisioning borders, critical perspectives on the legal status of human beings or anti-war statements. Well, clearly I got a little too post-colonial fantasy making on myself, because every attempt at playing on the theme that I saw at Burning Man, failed. If I saw another American flag/peace symbol juxtaposition I thought I might keel over. When driving in they had quotes posted from key framers of American democracy, Alexis de Toqueville, Milton Friedman, even MLK. But they didn't have a quote from a single woman. Apparently, woman have never had anything to do with the framing, design or development of democracy.
So what was the role, place, and experience of women at Burning Man? Obviously, I can't generalize, there were so many different kinds of people there I can only elaborate on what I saw and what I felt. The first day I was there, a middle aged doctor, wearing a skin tight leather skirt started a friendly conversation with me. He asked what I do and of course this got into a conversation about feminism, which he was very supportive of, claiming his North Berkeley roots. He stated, "well Burning Man is really a feminist space, if you think about it...." So I did, I took myself to task to think about the idea that Burning Man was a feminist space. As I looked around at all the naked bodies slinking around everywhere. Noting that there weren't many people of color or really many different kinds of bodies. What i saw was thin, white bodies. Most of them weren't totally naked. Usually they were wearing something, like hot pants, or a cowboy hat, showing the rest of their body. I immediately realized that I wouldn't feel comfortable naked. I would stick out, because I was curvy and brown. That didn't feel very feminist.
Playa barbie on the other hand doesn't have this same problem.
Taking my top off to feel free on the playa, didn't feel free to me. It appeared that one of the keys ways for women to participate in the freedom of the playa was to show off what they got. But according to the video above and much of what I saw, I was alone in my criticisms.
So what do they mean when they say Burning Man is a place of freedom? You don't need money once you get there sure. However, you DO need money to get there. A lot of it. Tickets go for 2-300 dollars not to mention the thousands of dollars spent on gas money and equipment to survive in a climate that is not inhabitable. They might as well have said, "we are having a party on the moon, hope to see you there!" The free, liberatory space the BM claims to be, can only be so, if you have the resources you need to get there. When I wake up dreaming of freedom, I am not thinking there is a massive door charge.
So after assessing in my head the bogus hypocrisy of all the rhetoric and politics of BM, I also had no choice but to take to task the dramatic underrepresentation of people of color in music, attendees and art. There isn't much to be said because so few people of color in attendance kind of says it all. Beyond the expense of the trip, they don' do much to make it appealing to people of color. It is not the kind of space where we are made to feel welcome, it is not our space and it was not meant to be. Given that Burning Man must make at least 10 million dollars on the door fee alone, you would think some of that money would go to outreach or funding artists and musicians of color, but it didn't appear to be that way.
This lack of a POC presence also had a strong impact on the music. The majority of the music was trance (mostly psy-trance) house and breaks. Almost all of these forms of music originate in either world of American black music, but there was a total lack of recognition of this fact. More working class, people of color oriented forms of electronic music (dub-step, drum and bass, techno, electro-breaks, hip-hop or reggae) was not to be found, except in a few key places, my people and I were very happy to find. This total lack of inclusion to world music and the music of working class people and people of color felt strategic, even if it was simply an oversight. As much as BM wants to exist in a bubble, let's be real, nothing that happens in the US is in a bubble. If you are having a party and everyone is white, something is not right. Right?
Now this total lack of people of color wouldn't be as startling if there wasn't an over representation of all things people of color. White people on the playa felt very comfortable donning "ethnic" cultural artifacts, styles of dress, architectural and artistic styles. The influences were profound. I saw at least 5 white men wearing full Native American headresses and tribal face paint. This is made worse because Nevada is home to some of the poorest reservations in the country, so not only was this insensitive but it is blatantly offensive (even if it is done in the guise of their version of the "American Dream"). Similarly, I saw many folks wearing traditional Arab dress and wrapping kafiyah's around their heads. In one instance a young man actually took his off when sitting next to us. I will never know if he did it because it was hot or because he couldn't figure out if we were of Arab descent or not, but it occurred to me that he wouldn't have even thought he might run into some folks that might be offended. We caught him in his free space.
It were these key moments that colored the ways that I experience Burning Man, even though I did come back with kaleidescope eyes planning my next years return. For the people of color that were there, it was nice to see them and I can only hope this gets into the eyes of someone that cares enough to take up the task of making BM a more equitable space. I understand that is not the purpose of BM, (frankly, it is not green friendly AT ALL, but we can only cover so much here) but if you are going to unapologetically appropriate different cultures, I think it is important to recognize the broader social, cultural and race implications of such a move. In order to stay true to the supposed progressive roots of BM there must be some recognition to the race, class, culture and gender dynamics at play.
The search for making a culture of their own, the majority white constituency of BM have created a culture of dramatic appropriation, elitism, consumption and lack of inclusion all within the guise of freedom. It is another American holiday like any other and honestly, it is fun. I suppose it doesn't get more American Dream than that, now does it.
And this time to add to the classiness, they are being marketed as the "Afrika" collection. Please get ready to see self proclaimed, post-racist, ironic hipsters near you wearing this fall trend. You know because this isn't totally racist or anything. This company well never cease to amaze me, in every way. (Unfeminist guilty pleasure soon to come.)
So, after watching a few of the clips from the Obama and McCain appearance at an evangelist church, I am actually not sure why Obama agreed to doing this. Tactically, it appeared to be on McCain's home court and many have speculated that McCain had even heard the questions before hand while Obama was answering them. That said, I am concerned by the way that Obama answered the question on abortion (and I am not afraid to say it!).
Personally, I think he blew it. Now, I know many liberals have argued otherwise and while I hear the arguments, that Obama is more nuanced in his approach and was obviously playing with the idea of a "higher power," in his answer, I think he should have come out and said point blank, "I believe in the reproductive rights of families and women", instead of pandering to a crowd, he will never win over by trying to cater to their anti-abortion attitudes. It ain't gonna happen, at least not with the evangelists.
I know there is this fear about calling Obama out on his talking points because we don't want to give the right something to run with, but I do think we have to use the media to hold all our politicians accountable, now and after the election. It is clear that Obama's talking points on repro rights need to be fleshed out with regard to a conservative, evangelist audience, since most of us (on the supposed left) know where Obama stands on most issues of reproductive rights. As my coworker Karlos and I discussed on the train ride home from work yesterday, we understand why he couldn't explicitly say, "pro-choice" on the onset. I may not agree with that, but as a frame it is very difficult to push on this crowd. However if he had pushed reproductive rights as a human rights issue within the frame of reproductive justice and the responsibility of the state to protect and provide reproductive health services for everyone, mothers, babies, families, etc and then discussed how abstinence-only sex education has done absolutely nothing for the number of abortions in the last 4 years, it might have positioned him better on this issue.
As feminists we can't be afraid to demand what we want to hear from our politicians regarding abortion. There has been an assault on pro-choice and the language has been co-opted to make it look as though the pro-choice camp doesn't care about families, babies or mommies. And that couldn't be the furthest thing from the truth. It is the transparent and documented truth that access to reproductive health for women creates a healthier and happier society, is what motivates us to continue fighting for pro-choice legislation.
via Renee comes the latest PETA nekkid-lady ad, featuring U.S. Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard:
The argument against this ad is not that Amanda Beard is being exploited. The issue here is that once again PETA is employing the tired old tactic of using a conventionally beautiful woman with conventionally "perfect" body, posed naked or nearly naked, to call for animal rights. But the thing I hate most about this particular PETA propaganda is that it takes what should be a message of empowerment, Love-Your-Body-style, and turns it into yet another affirmation of the female ideal. As Renee puts it, "It seems that they respect the rights of animals far more than they respect women. Consider that they don't use images of male nudes, nor do they use images of women with varying body sizes."
As you'll recall, PETA has defended this advertising strategy with the weak response that "sex sells." It's an excuse I expect from Axe and Maxim, but not from a movement that is supposedly about justice.
Oh, and we're not done yet! From Debbie at Bitch (via Vegans of Color) comes the horrifying news that PETA now wants to advertise on the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.
While many view the contentious border fence as a government fiasco, an animal rights group sees a rare opportunity.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals plans today to announce an unusual marketing pitch to the U.S. government: Rent us space on the fence for billboards warning illegal border crossers there is more to fear than the Border Patrol.
The billboards, in English and Spanish, would offer the caution: "If the Border Patrol Doesn't Get You, the Chicken and Burgers Will -- Go Vegan."
WTF?! I have no words. This is so fucked-up, even for PETA.
Please check out this excellent op-ed from the Sunday Times about the lack of justice for women violently sexually assaulted in indigenous communities.
Some tidbits,
ONE in three American Indian women will be raped in their lifetimes, statistics gathered by the United States Department of Justice show.
The situation is unfair to Indian victims of all crimes -- burglary, arson, assault, etc. But the problem is greatest in the realm of sexual violence because rapes and other sexual assaults on American Indian women are overwhelmingly interracial. More than 80 percent of Indian victims identify their attacker as non-Indian. (Sexual violence against white and African-American women, in contrast, is primarily intraracial.) And American Indian women who live on tribal lands are more than twice as likely to be raped or sexually assaulted as other women in the United States, Justice Department statistics show.
Rapes against American Indian women are also exceedingly violent; weapons are used at rates three times that for all other reported rapes.
