feminist blogs

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I'm going to start off this post with a feature on NPR, called "Hey Ladies: Being a Woman Musician Today." NPR says "We asked hundreds of women working as musicians today to tell us what it's like right now: the good, the bad and the same as it ever was. Read their responses, find new music and join the discussion." No doubt many of you have come across this already, but if you haven't, do spend some time reading the many parts of this piece. Much of it comes straight from the musicians, and it's really interesting. And, to be honest, I haven't heard of a number of these women, and I can't wait to look further into their music. (Pictured: Kelly Ogden of the Dollyrots.)

International news:

• Huffington Post: "Spain Burqa Ban: Spanish Parliament To Consider Banning Islamic Veils In Public." Following France's example, I suppose.
• CNN: "Afghanistan's 'Oprah' helps heal country's wounds."
• The Independent: "'Leave your job or we will cut your head off your body...'" This is about Afghanistan. The secondary headline says "With violence on the rise, Afghan women are terrified at the prospect of a deal between President Karzai and the Taliban."
• Illume: "Hillary Clinton Advocates for Women's Rights in Afghanistan."
• Color Lines: "MAC, Rodarte Say Sorry for Juarez-Inspired Makeup." I don't know how these companies get to plead ignorance.
• RH Reality Check: "Ending Child Marriage: It's a Smart Investment."
• New York Times: "African Studies Give Women Hope in H.I.V. Fight."
• Salon: "Women: The missing weapon against AIDS."
• Change.org: "Cambodian Sex Workers Raped, Beaten, and Electrocuted by Police."

Abortion:

• New York Times Magazine: "The New Abortion Providers." This is a lengthy article, and one worth reading.
• Chicago Breaking News: "Dead animals left at 2 clinics that perform abortions." I don't know about you, but I've always understood that leaving a dead animal somewhere is a threat of more violence to come. Here's another story about this.
• LifeSite News: "Rep. Chris Smith to Introduce 'No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.'" We already have this legislation; it's called the Hyde Amendment.
• Change.org: "A Woman's Body: Neither an Incubator, a House, Nor a Meth Lab."

Other news:

• Jezebel: "Jury Decides Consent Is Not Required For Girls Gone Wild." I've already posted this story on every social networking site that I'm on, but I still cannot believe this happened.
• Mashable: "For Women, Social Media is More Than 'Girl Talk.'" I think most women I know would agree with this.
• The Guardian: "Women are happy to let feminists get bashed."
• Ms. blog: "Serial Killers and "Nappy-Headed Hos.'"
• Huffington Post: "Club Monaco Mannequins Emaciated, Collarbones And Spines Show." This, to me, is really disheartening.
• New York Times: "Prone to Error: Earliest Steps to Find Cancer." This is about early stage breast cancer, and every woman should read it to learn about how often it is misdiagnosed.
• Have you heard about the blog "My Fault, I'm Female"? I highly recommend it. It's submission-based, and gives women the chance to share their stories of sexism and other related life situations they encounter. Check it out.
• Incite blog: "Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements."
• Gender Across Borders: "Denial of Service: Sex Workers Confront U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Protest the Anti-Prostitution Pledge."

Pop culture:

• Ms. blog: "Is Lilith Fair Feminist? Sarah McLachlan's Not Sure." What do you think?
• io9: "How Angelina Jolie fought to keep Salt from becoming "pretty.'"
• Gender Across Borders: "Are Gay Parents 'Better' Than Straight Parents?" Thoughts after seeing the movie "The Kids Are All Right."
• Feministing: "Degrassi to feature transgender character."
• io9: "Janelle Monae turns rhythm and blues into science fiction."
• The Washington Post: "On 'Friday Night Lights,' a brave and honest abortion story." This is one of my most favorite TV shows of the last 10 years or so, and I thought the way they handled this was excellent. But, the fallout for Connie Britton's character (Tami Taylor), is nothing short of infuriating. (I think that might be still to come in the series; I've already seen this season.)
• The Consumerist: "Barbie Can Now Spy On Your Enemies For You."
• And finally, this has nothing to do with anything except my own interests, but I love this story: "100 year-old whiskey frozen in Antarctic being thawed out." If you have any interest whatsoever in the early explorers of Antarctica, I can't recommend Ernest Shackleton's books enough. They are nonfiction and you will hardly believe all the trials he and his crew went through trying to reach the South Pole.

A recent story in the New York Daily News reports that a recent study shows promising results in the development of a potential breast cancer vaccine.

The research, at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, focused on six mice that were bred to be prone to breast cancer. After receiving the test vaccine, none of the mice developed any cancerous tumors. But when six additional breast-cancer-prone mice received a placebo vaccine, all six got breast cancer.

“If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental,” Dr. Vincent Tuohy, who led the research, told Sky News. He said initial tests suggest that the vaccine could not only prevent new cancers from forming but could halt the growth of existing tumors.

While I certainly support breast cancer research, I think that this study is hardly conclusive. First of all, there is the question of sample size. I hardly think that six mice are a statistically significant sample size. If this were an opinion poll, I doubt that anyone would say that six people’s opinions were representative of the community as a whole. The vaccine study would have to be replicated on a much larger scale in order for me to believe that these results show promise. 

Secondly, there is the ethical question of animal testing itself. I do not support animal testing, no matter what the stated objectives of the study are. I’m sure that many will argue that testing on animals for medical research is morally acceptable because it has the potential to improve or save human lives. I call bullshit on that. What about the negative impact that this has on the animals’ lives? Should we not care about that?

I am just as hopeful as anyone else that breast cancer will eventually be eliminated.  However, I think that we need to find ethical methods for developing a vaccine. Until then, I remain skeptical, rather than hopeful.

Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of how much we paid for beauty this week.

• 27 inches: The waist size of the new male mannequin, down from 33 inches in 1967. Because we love when body shame becomes equal opportunity. (Via Salon. Also, don’t miss Cathy Horyn’s fascinating New York Times piece about what mannequins tell us about ourselves. Yes, in case you can’t tell by my blog’s header, I’m a little obsessed with mannequins.)

• 2 staffers at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center are on paid leave pending an investigation that they were running a “makeshift nail salon” in the NICU. Yup, painting nails “on top of the high frequency ventilator.” Because babies in intensive care need a nice dose of formaldehyde, toluene, acetone and the gobs of other chemicals in nail polish. That’s how we’ll make them stronger. (Via the LA Times.)

• 38DD: The largest size that most bra manufacturers will make.

• 36DD: The median bra size of American women. Which means a whole bunch of ladies will pay for bras bigger than a 38DD. But the bra folks say they’re too hard to make. Dear bra-makers, stop make such cheap-ass bras. (All via Jezebel.)

• 40 percent of young breast cancer survivors are deemed “estrogen receptor positive.” Which means that exposure to estrogen can lead to a recurrence. Good thing beauty products are filled with so many types of synthetic estrogen and estrogen-mimicking ingredients says a new study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. (Via CBS Atlanta.)

• Required Reading:* Click: Moments When We Became Feminists (Seal Press) by J. Courtney Sullivan and Courtney E. Martin. Her moment involved fishnets.
• New favorite blogs:** Dances With Fat, who reminds us that hating on thin girls doesn’t solve the problem either. And Eat The Damn Cake, who wants you to wear whatever you want, no matter how you feel about your stomach. (I’m working on it!!)

*A new component of the Pretty Price Check wherein I direct you to some awesome new book about beauty, feminism, what have you. Mostly to help myself stay on top of this stuff. (You don’t actually have to read it. There won’t be a quiz. But you should.)

**Another new Pretty Price Check thing. Which is pretty self-explanatory. The other explanation being I was getting bummed about always ending the week on a lot of bad beauty news. So now we’ll be balancing all that with friendly reminders that a lot of awesome people are working hard to lower the price we pay for pretty.

[Male mannequin photo via New York Magazine, who has more fascinating size stats to share.]

Left breast

Right breast

Keep abreast of the situation

of the breast

the weight of the chest

that lies there threatening

to cut your breath

it steals your rest

this is just a test

of your breast

to ensure against

unwanted guests

who make their nests

like little pests

who could be cancer

fully dresssed

You must be certain lest

by death you are caressed

You’re just a chicken so obsessed

With your lumpy scary breast

Here’s a real life example of Job Crafting: The Pink Glove Dance.

You may already have seen this video of The Pink Glove Dance, which was created by hostpital staffers to raise awareness about breast cancer. I know that as soon as the music started, I thought it would be just like that now-famous wedding procession video (same music, also makes you cry).

But this video is also a great example of ad hoc Job Crafting. Each of the employees who participated in the video is creating an extra level of meaning to their work at the hospital, just by expressing the connection between who they are at work and their personal commitment to breast cancer awareness.

The phenomenon crosses all levels and departments of the organization– you’ve got surgeons, billing clerks and janitors all sharing part of themselves. While you can see why a surgeon might support breast cancer awareness, what’s in it for the billing clerks and the janitors?

Janitors and Job Crafting

The clearest example of job crafting is with the janitors (at minutes :48, 2:56 and 3:25). It was by studying hospital janitors & cleaning staff that Wrzesniewsk, Dutton, and colleague Geleye Debebe first noticed job crafting as a personal meaning-making strategy.

These scholars noticed that the janitors they were studying often went out of their way to engage patients in conversation, or even just silent interpersonal interaction. In addition to mopping up dirty floors, emptying garbage cans and cleaning up wastes the employees also comforted patients and visitors, demonstrated a respect for their privacy and an attentiveness to their needs, and even helped them get the nurse when a nurse seemed to be needed.

Making work more meaningful

Why would janitors make a special effort to converse with patients, especially patients who seemed lonely or scared? Because interacting with the patients helped make their work as cleaners more meaningful. The janitors realized that they could make a difference in the patients’ experiences, and so they learned how to interact with patients in a comforting, human, life-affirming way.

Janitors who crafted their jobs this way went beyond being cleaners, and became part of the hospital’s team of healers.

So when Bella says “My favorite part of the Pink Glove Dance was the janitor!”, you can recognize that she’s responding not just to his dancing, but to all that this dancing means.

See Also: How Job Crafting Can Get You Closer To Authentic Work

Citation:
Amy Wrzesniewski, Jane E Dutton and Gelaye Debebe (2003)
Interpersonal Sensemaking and the Meaning of Work
Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 25, pages 93-135.

An article in Wednesday’s LA Times really has me pissed off. (I know . . . that’s really not a new emotional state of being for me, but bear with me.) In it, Barbara Ehrenriech (the author if Nickled and Dimed in America argues that we need a new women’s movement, and that the current generation of feminists is fighting the wrong enemies.

Has feminism been replaced by the pink-ribbon breast cancer cult? When the House passed the Stupak amendment, which would take away abortion rights from women who get any government help purchasing insurance, the female response ranged from muted to inaudible.

Soon after, when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that regular screening mammography not start until age 50, all hell broke loose. Sheryl Crowe, Whoopi Goldberg and Olivia Newton-John raised their voices in protest; a few dozen non-boldface women picketed the Department of Health and Human Services. If you didn’t look too closely, it almost seemed as if the women’s health movement of the 1970s and 1980s had returned in full force.

Never mind that Dr. Susan Love, author of what the New York Times dubbed “the bible for women with breast cancer,” endorses the new research-based guidelines along with leading women’s health groups such as Breast Cancer Action, the National Breast Cancer Coalition and the National Women’s Health Network. For years, these groups have been warning about the excessive use of screening mammography in the United States, which carries its own dangers and leads to no detectable lowering of breast cancer mortality.

Nonetheless, on CNN last week, we had the unsettling spectacle of Cindy Pearson, the National Women’s Health Network executive director and noted women’s health advocate, speaking out in favor of the new guidelines, while ordinary women lined up to attribute their survival from the disease to mammography. Once upon a time, grass-roots women challenged the establishment by figuratively burning their bras. Now, in some masochistic perversion of feminism, they are raising their voices to yell, “Squeeze our breasts!”

Um, excuse me? Muted and inaudible response? What would you call the 1000 activists who showed up in DC yesterday to protest the Stupak amendment? What would you call the 96,000 petition signatures that NARAL collected in a matter of 3 days? I hardly call that muted or inaudible. She has some legit points about the new breast cancer guidelines, but it seems like Ms. Ehrenreich should spend a little more time on Twitter, and a little less time pretending to be a Wal-Mart employee.

The Abortion-Breast Cancer Myth – Passionate Provider
Mormons Used Drag Queen in Prop 8 Ads – Media Bistro
Katie Couric Asks Why Women Pay More for Health Insurance – Womenstake
Women Have the Most to Loose if Health Reform Fails – Huffington Post
Didn’t You Know? Choice Kills – Feministing
Sex 411: The Low Down on Lube – Essin’ Em
Does Choice Mean Abortion? – Womanist Musings
Court Blocks Oklahoma Abortion Website – RH Reality Check

I’m too pissed off about this to write a proper post, so this is gonna be kind of a connect-the-dots type thing. A few quotes and links, some pictures, possibly arrows.

Here we go:

If you’re a sentient adult female in this country, you probably know that “breast cancer awareness” is a pink sewer hole of foul commercialization. If you don’t know this (possibly because you’re new to sentience, or because you’ve somehow managed to get through life without ever coming within hurling distance of the Susan G. Komen Foundation), read The Artist Formerly Known As Twisty Faster for background:

• Just when you thought it was safe
• Pink: Hell Trembles at the Hideous Name
• Breast Cancer Awareness Month Finally Over: Retailers Descend Into Funk

As TAFKATF noted pithily in that last-linked post (emphasis mine):

My fucking problem is not that a few girls got a pink rose and a “mini-manicure,” or even that some well-meaning beautician thinks dipping cancer patients in paraffin is a good idea. My fucking problem is what these things represent: that breast cancer has been turned into a cult of überfemininity.

And now the next, inevitable stage in the evolution of the cult has arrived: pornification! Mais bien sûr. It’s the key component of modern American gender construction, the fabric of our lives, the thing without which none of us could function or dress ourselves in the morning or even know what sex we are. It’s our fucking North Star. Can’t make a cult of femininity without porn, man. Bricks without straw.

Well thank fucking god, the Good Ship Porn has docked.

As detailed in this horrifying post from some blog I’ve never heard of, “breast cancer awareness” is now basically just “breast awareness.” It’s an excuse for strip shows and porn sites and T-shirts that encourage men to look at women’s boobs instead of their faces. I suppose there’s a buck for cancer research somewhere at the bottom of that barrel, but jesus christ. What’s next, “Tricking for the Cure”?

You have to go read the whole post, but here are some of the ads and pictures:

I salute the author of the post (whoever she/he is — no byline is in evidence) for pulling together the exhibit, but I wonder at her/his weird optimism as to the location and velocity of this particular shit train. The mysterious author writes that “we can only hope this trend won’t go full-PETA, using overt sexuality to advance one cause at the expense of another.”

Knock me over with a Wonder bra, but I think that fucker has already gone full-PETA.

New, Cheaper Female Condoms Now Available – Hiphop Wired
Holland Imposes Stricter Rules for “Import Brides” – NRC
Breast Cancer is Not Just About Boobies – The Guardian
Is Soy the Ticket to Good Health, or Infertility? – Alternet
Second Trimester Abortion: Breaking the Silence & Changing the Discourse – Abortioneers