feminist blogs

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.

It might seem odd to celebrate Christina Hoff Sommers during Women's Month.  However, without the gains made by the feminist movement, there would be no place in the world for Hoff Sommers. Well, there would, it would be in the kitchen. She, like many of us, would be sat at home, isolated, lonely and wishing the world was a bit different.  Luckily, it is!  And in this different world we get to hear the 'insights' of a woman who seems bent on maintaining the status quo. 

Here's a recent article from Hoff Sommers.  In it, she argues that women are changing the male dominated culture of science. For Hoff Sommers, this change in culture is leading to bad science:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0301/opinions-women-national-science-foundation-on-my-mind.html

I suppose her message is: Girls, if you can get in and do science, please do it like a man. 

My response: You do what you need to do to get paid, Christina.  It is, afterall, all about the bottome line.

Via Media Matters, I see that CNN contributor and RedState editor Erick Erickson was tweeting douchtastic last night.

I'm not going to link to his account, but it seems that the Twitter-feminist bashing has continued into today - complete with hackneyed comments about Birkenstocks, hairiness and having no sense of humor. I'm betting a tweet about castration is well on its way.

Via Feministe.

After all the controversy surrounding Focus on the Family's ad featuring Tim and Pam Tebow - this commercial seems somewhat...well, meh.

Transcript after the jump

Outside of the inexplicable tackling (ha!), this ad doesn't really say much of anything. In fact, it seems like it really just serves to promote Focus on the Family's website - where, of course, you'll find all sorts of anti-choice rhetoric including an interview where Tebow's father speaks about "weeping over the loss of millions of babies in America that were never given a chance."

But really, I have the same question that Jesse does: "[I]f the anti-choice position is so true, so mainstream and so critical to the future of our nation, why did Focus on the Family spend $2.5 million to avoid saying anything whatsoever about it?"

Pam Tebow: "I call him my miracle baby. He almost didn't make it into this world. I can remember so many times when I almost lost him. It was so hard. Well, he's all grown up now, and I still worry about his health. You know, with all our family's been through, we have to be tough--Timmy! I'm trying to tell our story here."

Tim Tebow: "Sorry about that, Mom. Do you still worry about me, Mom?"

Pam Tebow: "Well, yeah, you're not nearly as tough as I am."

CNN contributor Erick Erickson is right — watching Tim Tebow tackle his mom during a Super Bowl commercial last night really inspired me to give up the whole thinking-thoughts thing and get back in the kitchen. It’s a shame I’m too ugly to get a date, because now I have all of this food and no one to give it to. How many brownies do you think 14 cats can eat?

Ah, Rush Limbaugh. Always so charming.

Transcript after the jump.

Thanks to Think Progress, who also point out that Limbaugh held a "Female Summit" to find out how he could "own women."

CARLSON: So for those who were critics of you in judging this pageant, and saying that you haven't been a supporter of women in the past --

LIMBAUGH: Oh, I'm a huge supporter of women. What I'm not a supporter of is liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose, and feminism has led women astray. I love women. I don't know where all this got started. I love the women's movement -- especially when walking behind it. This idea that I don't like women is absurd. This is Miss America. And if there's a Mr. America out there, it's me.

I'm sure you're well aware of the controversy over CBS' decision to run an anti-choice during the Superbowl. After all, blogs are writing about it non-stop and women's organizations from NOW to the Women's Media Center are organizing against it. 

What you may not know, however, is that CBS has been working with Focus on the Family for months on creating the ad.

Dana Goldstein at The Daily Beast has the story:

"There were discussions about the specific wording of the spot," said Gary Schneeberger, spokesperson for Focus on the Family. "And we came to a compromise. To an agreement." Schneeberger declined to comment on exactly how CBS changed the ad's message.

..."We've worked with [CBS] almost since the beginning," Schneeberger added. "Our senior vice presidents talked to CBS executives throughout the process. It was a very cordial, very professional, fruitful relationship."

CBS declined to comment on the details of its work with Focus on the Family on the Tebow ad, but said such cooperation is not unusual. Abortion rights advocates see it differently. If CBS did vet scripts for the ad, the cooperation is "appalling," said Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women.

So not only is CBS running the ad, they're helping anti-choicers refine their message and vet scripts?!  I wonder how many other of their advertisers get such personal attention.

Johanna Kruppa thinks feminists are too uptight in their denouncement of "nudey pics" in Playboy.

"I think they suffer from lack of knowledge and tunnel vision. How many of those self-important, so-called 'feminists' have been on the set when a celebrity shot a Playboy spread? There you go. What is feminist about discriminating a photo shoot just because it involves female (partial) nudity that happens to give men pleasure? Pathetic," Krupa told Tarts in an exclusive interview.

Well, let me unbunch my panties so I can effectively debunk this idea that feminists are too uptight to see how empowering posing for magazines like, Playboy and Maxim are for women.

Feminists have opposing view points on pornography and other forms of erotic art, that is not a new story, but suggesting that feminists don't get how "empowering" it is to fit into society's standards of able-bodied, white, cis-gendered, thinness, well let's just say we totally get that. I am not saying the act isn't empowering for her, like she said, I wasn't there, but the process that empowers her is embedded in a really specific idea of what a woman should look like and the kind of woman that "turns men on." It is not the function of turning men on that is the sexist part to me, but the unrealistic expectation put on women through the production and proliferation of images like Kruppa's and the corresponding value put on women's bodies through this very same process. And the corresponding sexist vitriol spread in magazines like Maxim. Put a big girl on the cover of Playboy. Just once. Prove me wrong.

What is interesting is that Kruppa combines her criticism of feminists with America's inability to embrace sexuality over violence. She has a point there, it is true that in many ways violence is more acceptable in popular culture than sexuality, but that is not a problem of feminism, that is a function of sexism. Feminism can only make that better.

Related:
Sex and the Simpsons: Marge's Playboy cover

Congratulations Professor Foxy!

As of this morning, Professor Foxy holds an elite, exclusive, and hard-earned membership to the club "Lifesite news targets." I, too, am a member, so I can tell you- she's in for a real treat!

This special membership offers guaranteed access to: having your name misspelled and/or your title incorrectly described; having your words taken out of context; being blatantly misrepresented; having your views on an issue warped and manipulated for the anti-choice agenda; experiencing infuriating condescension from a number of sources; and, my personal favorite, having anti-choice news sites show up at the top of the page when your name is googled. Fun!

:-/

I joke, but for real, I am proud of our very own Professor. My mantra is and continues to be, that you know you're doing something right when you're pissing anti-choicers off.

This is just, wow. I have no words. Ok, that's a lie. I have one word: Bullsh*t. Make that two words: Hilarious bullsh*t.

This website aims to "expose choice as the killer it is".

How, you ask?

Why, by selling T-shirts and bumper stickers with pictures of babies being stabbed by machetes, of course!

But don't worry, that's not the only technique this campaign is using to convince the world of how wrong it is to give women autonomy over their own bodies. They've also created a mascot- That's right folks. Meet Judy, the talking embryo. All she wants is to "get out of here alive." Unfortunately, a machete (the abortionist's tool of choice, don't ya know) enters and puts an end to that dream. The fate of the woman whose cartoon stomach has apparently just been stabbed with a machete is left unclear.

There are a billion things wrong with this picture- the absence of recognition of a woman's personhood being one of them- but the most egregious in my mind is the cheesiness. I mean, as Chloe points out, can we at least have a little creativity? Some alliteration or something? Can I get an Emilia the Embryo?

Additionally, the "testimonies" from the models are hilariously fake, as evidenced by the tiny disclaimer after the fake comments and pics:

"*typical comments from typical young women but not necessarily these models"

Vomit. Next time you're going to launch a campaign against women's autonomy, maybe you should consult some real women first.

Big ups to Audacia Ray for the link.