feminist blogs

The House passed an anti-abortion bill in Louisiana by a margin of 85-17 that goes as far as rejecting exceptions for rape and incest.

http://www.leesvilledailyleader.com/articles/2006/06/02/news/news2.txt

The bill contains language allowing for medication to be used to block fertilization, therefore apparently eliminating the need for exceptions.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco says she will sign the bill when it comes to her desk, but at a rate of 85-17, it seems that the bill is nearly in place.

What has happened to abortion rights? Have we been sleeping? With all the women who have had abortions and those who haven't but support the right, how has progressed this far? I mean, I'm really wondering here. This is insane. According to the article, 11 states have introduced similar bills. Where is the outrage? I'm sickened. Is there anyone out there listening?

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Technorati tags: abortion discussion

I don't know if this has been posted here yet, but I thought I'd pass it along as it is the most frightening information I've seen in months.

From Savage Love (Dan Savage):

STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: After tossing nearly half of last week's column away on a straight rights update, it was my intention to give it a rest. In fact, every time I write one of these I think, "Banning abortion, evicting unmarried straight couples and their children, moving to ban birth control—things can't get any worse, can they?" Oh, but they can: Not satisfied with meddling in the lives of the relatively small percentage of women who are pregnant, the American Taliban is moving to regulate the lives of all American women.

"New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves—and to be treated by the health-care system—as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon," reports the Washington Post. "[T]his means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control... [I]t's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed."

Color me paranoid, but ordering American women to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant" because they may harm a fetus they don't know they're carrying opens the door to prosecuting women who harm their fetuses by failing to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant." How long until "women should... refrain from smoking [and] maintain a healthy body weight" becomes "women must..." Does that sound paranoid? Well, so did a war on contraception once.

Oddly enough, Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't urge straight men to regard themselves as existing in a perpetual state of "pre-fatherhood." Smoking, obesity, asthma, and diabetes could seriously hamper a man's ability to do the heavy lifting that comes with fatherhood. But Bush's CDC doesn't seem that interested in regulating the behavior of all those fat, smoking pre-fathers out there.

Gee. Isn't. That. Weird.

There is a bright side in the CDC's announcement: If we're going to regard all females as pre-pregnant, then we can, as my friend Gomez points out, regard all virgins as merely pre-fucked.

mail@savagelove

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Technorati tags: discussion reproductive rights

In 2004 at the one million one hundred thousand strong march in DC for Reproductive Rights were three women with a common enough family story of abortion (two in fact), pre Roe. Where their story was uncommon is that the police photo of their sister, mother and grandmother had been publicised by Ms Magazine in 1973 as part of an article on abortion, rights and Roe.

Leona Gordon, 74, of Westmoreland, N.H., said she remembers when all abortions were illegal. She recalls what she went through in 1964, with five kids and a bad marriage, to get one. And she recalls what it was like, a few weeks later, to claim the body of her sister, Gerri Santoro, who died after one.

"Oh, here I go," she said, beginning to weep, as she said she does most nights.

Gerri Santoro was one of her younger sisters, bubbly and trusting, the mother of two girls by a man who abused her and them. They separated, Santoro had a relationship with another man and became pregnant. When she was more than six months along, her husband contacted her: He was returning to her Coventry, Conn., home in hopes of reconciling.

Let's back up for a bit, when Gerri Santoro separated from her husband, he had moved her and the children to California, the following is recollection of one of her daughters, text drawn from a 1995 documentary on Gerri:

Our first trip out from Connecticut, we had a station wagon and my sister and I would sleep in the back and we'd wake up in the middle of the night and the stars would be out all over the place and my mom would be driving along, still, just driving along. It was, it was fun, it was fun. She made a long, horrible trip, fun.
[...]
I vaguely remember her dancing in front, it must have been American Bandstand or something, in the living room with us. She had a green dress, I remember that.

She went out to a New Year's Eve party or something with this, to me, it still seems like the shimmering emerald green dress and it was tight and beautiful.

This, from Gerri's sister Leona:

Trying to be objective, it's pretty difficult when it's your kid sister. But I think while she was out there, she probably was beaten as many times or as much as she was when they lived in Connecticut. And from the sounds of her letters, she was
very unhappy.

Again, from one of her daughters:

All kids want to believe that everything's OK. But I think
we saw enough, both my sister and I, to know that it wasn't really fun for
mommy. You know, it was just a game that daddy played and he liked it, but she didn't like it. And he did hurt her.

And so, as much as we wanted to deny it, when she was leaving, it wasn't like we questioned what was happening. We just kind of went along with it. We came home from school, and the car was packed. There was no playing, there was no phone calls, no saying good-bye to daddy, no saying good-bye to friends. It was in the car and we're going on vacation, we're going back to Connecticut.

From her closest childhood friend, Gerri had used the device of talking about a "friend" who found herself pregnant, until her friend saw thru it:

[A]ugust, that's when Sam was coming in. No wonder she had to have the abortion cause of Sam coming, that's about when the baby was due. She knew better. She knew it would kill you, she knew. But she was desperate. Sam would have taken the girls. I mean, back in those days, she would have never saw them again. But that's how desperate she was. Because Sam was coming back in August.

I don't think an hour went by and the two detectives came to the house and they wanted a name. And I remember one guy saying, one detective saying, she have many boy friends. And I said, she wasn't that type of person, and she wasn't. I mean, you know, there was only one name I could give and that was Clyde.

In desperation, Gerri and her lover had gone to a motel to induce an abortion, things went horribly wrong, Clyde panicked and left her to die alone.

I would feel better to think it was sudden and that she didn't have to lay there and be alone. But I don't believe that's what happened.

I believe she had some time to think. Because the way the rags were in her hands, you know what I mean, this was a woman who wasn't just sitting about and suddenly collapsed.

This was a woman who was in the throws of dying and was doing what she could to stop bleeding and stop, you know. From that picture, that's what it looks like.

Gerri Santoro's deadly induced abortion was pre Roe and she was pre Griswold as well, the forerunner that found for privacy rights for married couples to buy and use birth control.

I happened to see Henry Hyde today on the floor of the House. Hyde was the first public, elected, standard bearer in the chipping away, the war on poor women and federal funds used for abortion, barely three years post Roe. I am sure he was at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning.

The media, the Democrats (and a Judiciary Committee that failed, full court press, in front of us), right along with the Republicans, enjoy saying that Roe has been challenged and up held 38 times... That Justice Kennedy is likely the new soft center on the SC.

However if you have read moiv's excellent diaries and Bayprairie's invaluable weekly Reproductive Rights, Week in Review, you know this is fiction.

And if you are frightened for your future and the future of your children, you know talk of Kennedy being a new center, is just sleepy time talk. The elected leaders want us sleepy, mesmerised in fact.

Significantly, according to Alan Guttmacher Institute* only 13% of counties in the US have an abortion provider. Mississippi, the cut throat eye of the storm that is the Bible belt, has one clinic.

Back alley and self induced abortion is occurring:

“Most commonly, they ingest a whole bottle of quinine pills, with castor oil...we try to get them to the ER before their cardiac rhythm is interrupted...Sometimes they douche with very caustic products like bleach. We had a patient, a teen, who burned herself so badly with bleach that we couldn’t even examine her, her vaginal tissue was so painful....”

“Our local hospital tells me they see 12-20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions. Some make it, some don’t. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families...''

Canada approached over throwing their abortion ban in a different way from America, a crusading OB-GYN exploded the patriarchal system, defying the laws and enduring prison and trials. A Viennese Jew, a holocaust survivor of Auschwitz, Dr Morgentaler's crusade led, as of 1988, to there being no laws regulating abortion in Canada, it is between women and their doctors. Further, the Canadian rates of abortion run lower than America, year after year.

Women, given a chance, will care properly for themselves. Over and over, the patriarchal, theocratic societies (ours is that, more firmly entrenched everyday), in their perversity, refuse to trust (much less like) women.

Recently, William Saletan has published a NYT editorial on abortion (Star Tribune reprint).

Joyce Arthur, founder of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) answered him by letter. With permission, I use part of that letter, to honor Gerri Santoro, her daughters, sisters and grand daughter.

I believe Gerri's heart beat, a woman's, a mother's rising from the grave - the existence of that police photograph - says, trust women and leave it to them.

But it's essential to realize that women don't generally decide to have abortions because they think abortion is morally ok, or because it's their political right, or because they think the fetus is a meaningless blob of tissue. When it comes to abortion, the politics is separate from the personal.

Almost all women who have abortions do so because, essentially, they recognize the necessity of being good mothers, and that having a child (or another child) right now will undermine the welfare of themselves and their existing or future families. That is the true morality behind the abortion decision - the biological imperative to be a good mother - as well as the fundamental need to control one's own body and life (which is not an abstract right, but a sociobiological instinct).

Abortion is inextricably intertwined with pregnancy and motherhood - that is, good mothers will have both babies and abortions. They do so the world over, they always have, and they always will. Half of all women in the world will have at least one abortion in their lifetimes. The abortion experience is part of who we are as women, a fundamental element of our life experience, the means we use to optimize the survival of our families and ourselves.

Therefore, labelling abortion as bad is being judgmental against women's very essence. It denigrates our humanity. You are labelling women's behaviour as bad, when in fact it's just women being women.

When you say abortion is bad, you're literally saying that women are bad.

But not only is there nothing wrong with abortion, I assert that both childbirth and abortion represent what is most wonderful about women - our ability to give life and sustain life, and the freedom to control the circumstances under which it can best be done. Abortion liberates all of us, improves our lives enormously, and ensures our future survival. Abortion represents human power, freedom, and dignity - no other animal can control its fertility to the extent that humans can, and this allows us to control our destiny and shape the world around us. That ability to "play God," as it were, defines what it means to be human and elevates us above the animals.

Your premise that abortion is bad and should be reduced, lacks vision and fails to address the core issue. Which is - the American people do not trust or respect women as equal players in society, entitled and empowered to make their own decisions around their sexuality, ethics, and lives.

The bottom line is, if women were respected and trusted as equals, abortion would hardly be an issue at all.

*note the graph at the link for AGI, w/r/t timing of abortion, 9 out of 10 are first trimester. At greatest risk, not surprising, for a delay, is teenagers and those without funds.

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Technorati tags: human rights abortion Congress discussion privacy progressive values reproductive rights sexuality Supreme Court

Bible thumping schoolboys
pounding leviticus
and beating out the meter of the fried chicken wing

It worked once, didn't it?
Look at Lee Pappy O'!
So fiddle me up some preacher and let school yards ring!

Democrats in 2 Southern States Push Bills on Bible Study

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — Democrats in Georgia and Alabama, borrowing an idea usually advanced by conservative Republicans, are promoting Bible classes in the public schools. Their Republican opponents are in turn denouncing them as "pharisees," a favorite term of liberals for politicians who exploit religion.

::::more below the fold::: also posted at Our Word:::::

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Technorati tags: Democrats discussion

Oh this is rich, Knight Ridder (via Sirota):

The Democratic plan resembles the reform agenda unveiled by Republicans the day before, tougher in some parts, more lax in others. Democrats would ban more gifts to lawmakers, for example, but Republicans would ban more junkets.

Both plans would leave unchanged the flow of money to political campaigns, which government reform groups say remains a bigger problem than lavish meals, tickets to luxury skyboxes and junkets.

As if to underscore how some things would remain the same, Democrats later Wednesday used their reform agenda as the key to a new fundraising pitch to supporters, seeking contributions of $35 to $500.

With both parties urging reforms, it was unclear if the Democrats could successfully cast themselves as offering a clear alternative to a country that, as of now, thinks both parties are corrupt.

Again! the Republicans will cast themselves as both extremist AND moderate, or, in this case, "reformer". Democrats decline the national conversation 'til late in the game, and thus lose.

End of story, or would be, except they DO wash, rinse and repeat.

"You cannot take back congressional majorities if, like the Democrats, you propose solutions that are easily blurred by the majority," said liberal strategist David Sirota.

Party leaders hope otherwise, betting that the public will blame Republicans for the scandal surrounding disgraced lobbyist and fellow Republican Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to conspiring to corrupt public officials, among other charges.

Implosion, implosion, implosion forever! ... But then, they never do implode! They are cockroaches, can the Democrats not figure this out?

Couple of quotes from a January 16 piece in the SF Chron:

"The danger is that they are going to talk about a variety of proposals that will look more like window dressing than an institutional change in the way they do business," said Chellie Pingree, national president of Common Cause, a watchdog group pushing for broader change. [...]

"Congress as a whole needs to step back and look at the way it conducts its business," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has advised lawmakers on lobbying reform. "It's not just lobbyists influencing members of Congress, it's members of Congress shaking down lobbyists for money."

I watched the Dems, Reid, Pelosi, Obama and the Blue Etcetera on parade (apologies to Louise Slaughter, but if she is real, they will drown her out).... I have a lot of hope, don't you... ? I feel so renewed and refreshed.

Cover illustration by Andrzej Klimowski
for Harold Pinter's play,
The New World Order

To say that the "other side" is Dreier, Hastert, Blunt, Cornyn and Frist - and the Red Etcetera is meaningless and a flabby argument... Like a "conversation" about their ''investments'' that I once heard between McAuliffe and Marc Racicot, iirc, they both were Global Crossing boyos. Gag worthy.

Yes, now it is Howard and Ken. Well. To be frank, does not mean much. Mehlman has the support of his party and his president, leader of the party. Howard has state Dems who desperately wish for some grassroots money and a voice against the DC Dems. What will happen with Howard (and to Howard), whose heart is roughly, somewhat, pretty much (life is tentative) in the right place? Hard to say right now... we cannot be certain, not 'til it happens.

Cover illustration by Andrzej Klimowski
for Harold Pinter's play,
One for the Road

I say throw them all over.

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Technorati tags: Congress Democrats discussion Jack Abramoff lobbying politics rant Republicans

The Guerrilla Girls appeared to be having legal troubles in early 2005

In all honesty, I hadn't read anything about the Guerrilla Girls in ages. They were one of those groups that always brought interesting discussion to the table and although I had assumed they were still active, I never saw advertisements of any sort for Guerrilla Girls appearances, etc.

I stumbled across the previously linked New Yorker article while researching for a history presentation. I was a little shocked to see that the Guerrilla Girls are actually involved in such a legal battle...especially since it appears they are involved in a legal battle with each other.

Then my professor, Judith Roy, mentioned something that I had not even contemplated previously. The two members that are actually suing were members of the Guerrilla Girls from the inception of the group. These are women who wanted to focus on issues of sexism and racism in the art world. These are women who wanted to topple the 'isms' for the benefit of not only themselves but also for the benefit of future artists.

It's not as though the Guerrilla Girls had no impact. They certainly did have an impact, however, racism and sexim still pervade the art world. The Guerrilla Girls even discussed this fact themselves in their book, The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. This isn't for lack of trying on the behalf of groups such as the Guerrilla Girls--it's because sexism and racism are mindsets that have proven to be difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible, to erase.

The Guerrilla Girls did a lot to combat racism and sexism in the art world. Just exposing the issue is doing more than nothing--and the Guerrilla Girls took it a step further by calling out galleries, auction houses, art critics, and art collectors alike for their discriminatory policies.

It seems that as time has moved on, the art world has stopped evaluating racism and sexism within itself--and the focus of the Guerrilla Girls has changed as well. Their last book, Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes, is just one example of their departure from their original goal. Their website also has a parody of the color-coded terror alert released by the Bush administration that is visible here.

It's not that I think that such change is a bad thing. First of all, sexism and racism in all areas of life form a connected force that is harmful to everyone. Second, I love what the Guerrilla Girls bring to the table. They make feminism fun. They prove that feminists actually do have a sense of humor and that humor can be infused into all areas of life--even areas that are very serious. It just seems that this could be something that would be upsetting to original members of the Guerrilla Girls, especially since sexism and racism are still pervasive forces in the art industry.

Hopefully, the Guerrilla Girls will get all of their internal conflicts resolved. Lordisa knows they are still needed--both in and out of the art world.

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Technorati tags: discussion feminism

Blood Simple

(this was the article I could not finish in time for BAM...it lacks *pop and finish*)

How many times do we cut our finger and immediately put the finger into our mouths? It's a funny question because it relates to blood and we have many negative reactions to blood. We fear it, are threatened by it and sometimes it makes us a little sick to our stomachs to see too much. Yet over half the population sees blood 12 times a year for 30-35 childbearing years and those women are considered the more likely to have faint-hearted reactions to seeing it.

Sometimes blood equals death, but for women of childbearing age, blood equals life or at least signals the ability to create life. Menstruation happens at the end of a fertility cycle each month for women but is considered impolite and unpleasant to talk about. It is a time when cultural or religious dogma teach us that we are physically unclean and leads to our need to hide our menses from society. Even the term, hygeine products, teach us that we must keep our status hidden by protecting society from odor and the site of blood. Most girls fear that they will bleed accidently and be caught not with their pants down, but with blood on them. Odor, if it exists at all, must be masked with perfume and absorbtion must be maintained with wings and coatings and super-sized tampons. Some males and females prefer to keep themselves from sex, even when AIDS contraction is out of the question because of their fear of the mess of blood.

Menstruation is big business. Of the 240 million americans, over 125 million are women all of which will experience menstruation from menarche at approximately age 12 to menopause at approximately 50. During those 28 years, with the exceptions of pregnancies and skipped periods, they will deal with it 12 times a year and buy 360 boxes of tampons or pads in their lives. This generates a constant revenue of approximately $1000 per woman equalling $1.25 billion dollars in the US alone. There are alternatives to big market tampons and pads that include the more environmentally correct sponges, fabric pads and menstrual cups, all of which can be washed and reused.

The hot topic these days is menstrual suppression. In the fall of 2003, the FDA approved Seasonale, a birth control pill set up to limit the amount a periods a woman gets to four a year. In this heated debate is the argument whether suppressing the menstrual cycle is healthy overall for women.

Drs. John Rock and Gregory Pincus developed the Pill in the 1950's. It was designed to introduce progesterone into the body for three weeks thereby preventing the ovaries from releasing an egg and stopping the uterus from building a bed of tissue for the fertilized egg to attach. Essentially it worked by creating a "pregnancy", using the hormone developed by the body to stop another egg from being released while the body was already in pregnancy. If fertilization does not occur, the uterus sloughs off the extra tissue and blood and releases it, which is the definition of menses. The development of the Pill incuded a week of placebo which would allow breakthrough bleeding and the accompanying symptoms of a real menstruation. This "faux" period was created to make women more comfortable with the naturalness of their regular cycle. It was also expected by Dr. Rock, a devout Catholic, to be approved by the Church as it was an extenuation of the rhythm method. It did not kill sperm or mutilate the organs or frustrate the process like a diaphram. If the rhythm method worked by avoiding the fertile periods of the menstrual cycle, the Pill extended that period indefinitely. Dr. Rock knew then that the Pill could be taken without interruption and avoid menses altogether but he found it important to maintain what was normal.

The Catholic Church never did get on board with the Pill or any other artificial methods for birth control and it took 40 plus years for someone to merely remarket the Pill without the placebo week so that women could take it continuously for 84 days before having a break for bleeding. It's chemical makeup is exactly that of the Pill and yet the debate is just starting to heat up.

Many women find the idea of four periods a year to be a blessing and are signing up to take Seasonale or merely manipulating the current version of oral contraceptives as doctors have been quietly instructing their patients for years to avoid periods during an important event such as a wedding or a vacation. The Society of Menstrual Cycle Research issued a position paper in June 2003 against widespread use of Seasonale. They feel that not enough research has been done on bone density, blood clots and strokes as well as attitudes, concerns and preferences of women on this subject. Curiously, they do not recognize that during the 40 plus years the Pill has been available, women have been taking it for upwards of 15 years and have only had the "faux" periods that occur while ovulation is suppressed. And controlled studies with women taking placebos only would be useless as any subject would realize in a month that she was taking the real thing. Their position is based on what they believe is normal. But what really is normal?

The truth is, in the past, women did not begin menstruation as early nor did it last as long as menopause started much earlier. As birth control was not practiced regularly (children were the destiny of wives) or was ineffective, pregnancies and breastfeeeding limited the number of times a woman had her period. In this age, American women have on average 2.2 children and don't necessarily breastfeed or they cut the time of breastfeeding shorter and have far more periods than their historical counterparts. A study was done in 1986 by Beverly Straussman in Africa with the Dogon tribe of Mali where birth control is not used at all. What she found was that between a late menarche and early menopause, women were pregnant and breast feeding much of the time and only had approximately 100 periods in their lifetimes. This is in contrast to the 350-400 times of Western women.

Also argued is ovulation itself can incur pregnancy as the ovary bursts through the uterine wall which needs to be repaired each time. As women age, cell division slows down giving cells more time to deviate and turn cancerous. Women who take the pill for ten years cut the risk of ovarian cancer by 70% and her endometrian cancer risk by 60%. These cancers are relatively modern diseases, part of a century in which women have come to menstruate 400 times in their lives. [John Rock's Error, Gladwell dot.com]

Dr. Nelson Souscasaux, GYN, argues that since the Pill creates only faux periods, one or two "real" ones whould be taken per year in order to "renew" the uterus. Though he concedes that menstrual suppression is necessary in the case of endometreosis, he believes continuous use will contribute to female attitudes towards menstruation as unnecessary and unpleasant. He recommends psychotherapy as an alternative to suppression, as if women must menstruate in order to feel fully female.

And that's the case for the argument: it's natural and must be endured and if you can't get with it, you need therapy. What a crock! Women who responded on the bulletin board at MUM (Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health www.mum.org) overwhelmingly embraced the idea of less periods. They envy men who don't have to have them or put up with them. When women pursue careers and are not interested in lifelong pregnancies and breastfeeding, menses gets in the way. A significant drop in production for women (i.e. sick days) is a direct result of the pain and uncomfortability of menstruation which inhibits their ability to compete with men in the workforce. A recent survey (fully funded by Barr Laboratories, makers of Seasonale) resulted in numbers as high as 75% interest in finding out how to suppress periods with birth control. Letters to MUM mirrored the high proportion of women who'd love to live without their periods and find it absurd that a period is any definition of womanhood. They aren't ashamed and don't need therapy, they just don't want headaches, backaches, bleeding, irritability and aggravation. Who would want that? And why is tolerating it even thought of as necessary due to *nature* except to continue to cripple women in their pursuit of lives beyond having children? I think it falls right into line with pregnancy as punishment for having sex and periods are a constant reminder that women should remain slaves to biology.

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Technorati tags: discussion reproductive rights

I just want to cry my eyes out, and then stand on a tall building and scream
"THIS IS WHAT THEY WANTED"

I am reading blog after blog, post after post of
" told you so" ,
"the muslim uprising",
"the third intifada",
"stop immigration now",
"let them burn",
"you see what happens when the mud people get together"

(these are all actual quotes)

For more than a week now we have been watching the Paris suburbs burn. Two black boys are dead. But the loudest sound I hear is the right-wing and the extremists rubbing their hands together with glee. They no longer have to argue against immigration. Their answer has been handed to them on a plate. Their point has been made. Don't try and point out any shortcomings of government or society. To them, the evidence is plain to see. Immigration (especially Muslim immigration equals problems) And the left wing does nothing, as usual.

So how do I respond?

I understand WHY this is happening. But no-one is listening. It wouldn't make any difference if they were. I want to beg the people of those neighborhoods to stop. They are committing suicide. They are destroying every effort we are all making to improve our society by playing into the hands of those who would destroy us. No-one wants a bleeding heart liberal and no-one wants an angry black kid.

So how do I respond?

I was much closer to the Brixton riots or Broadwater Farm in England. They were closer. They were in my city. What I saw there, I see now. Fear and hatred. Anger and frustration. The response was the same. Fear and hatred. Anger and frustration.

So how do I respond?

I cannot pretend to know anything of what it is like to grow up the way these kids do. Although I am black, my upbringing was so far from what they experience as to be laughable. I did not grow up in a poor, black, immigrant housing project. Any understanding from me comes from intellectualising their experience. Being outside their experience. I cannot explain why these kids are burning cars and schools except from an outsider point of view. I have felt only a fraction of their rage. And still, I am angry with them. Angry that they are playing into the wrong hands. I do not want to hug them and give them hope. I want them to stop and see the foolishness of what they doing. The colour of my skin means that I must try, at least, to understand, and I do try. But it is really hard when I am arguing for immigrant/refugee/minority rights in the face of this shit. I will never be able to explain WHY this is happening to your average right winger, let alone the extremists. So again they won. By sitting back and waiting.

So how do I respond?

It's overwhelming. The feeling of helplessness and weakness I am feeling right now. My hands are tied and all I want to do is stop.

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Technorati tags: discussion personal

I just saw "Waiting" yesterday, a movie about one shift in the restaurant bizness. It was dead-on, but there was one scene that particularly resonates with me today.

A "redneck" and his woman are approached by the waiter for the drink order and he orders 2 shots and "what the hell, a coke for her".

It's insulting and ass-backwards way of thinking and living, but it's not only the *redneck* persona, dressed in ripped jeans and plaid and who answers the door later in his underwear. I've seen it in equal measure amoung the businessman/yuppie/urban male who are supposed to be enlightened.

A "favorite" story is the couple whose drink order I attempt to take. The man orders alcohol for himself first and when I turn to the woman, he interrupts: "She can't drink, she's pregnant." Makes me want to smack him every time.

First of all, let her speak. I'm asking the lady who is a whole other person and you don't need to suddenly step in and protect her from the evil alcohol pushing waitress. I'm pretty sure she can handle me. Second, it's not my fucking business that she's pregnant, she can order whatever she wants and third, I don't particularly believe some alcohol during a pregnancy is harmful. Before all those bar signs went up, women drank wine or some beer during the nine months and babies came out totally fine. It's the abuse, the over drinking that occurs every day, that causes fetal alcholism.

the funny is that I think the damage done to a fetus occurs during it's gestational and most vulnerable stage. and that's the time a woman is most likely to be unaware of her pregnancy and when she might be partying like it's 1999.

the other thing that really bothers me is when the partner goes out during the next 8 1/2 months and drinks the whole time. It's a slap in the face that woman has to immediately change everything in her lifestyle and the guy goes out and comes home with a shine on a couple times a week. Ha! Ha! Looky me, I can do this and you can't!
I know it's him hiding from his upcoming status, but it's also as though he has no responsibilites until the child is born. I've witnessed (and am witnessing) this behavior with many of my *enlightened* male friends and it pisses me off. You can't say, "We are pregnant", when we is one of you you and the other is behaving like a child. Show some class. You can give up alcohol too, you know. Participate in some way and respect your partner who has 95% of the burden.

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Technorati tags: culture discussion

This morning, in an effort "to piss-off the Deaniacs one more time," Roxanne posted a bit of a political rant that attempts to take progressives out to the woodshed for, um, losing touch with political reality. I think she does so from some mistaken assumptions, and ends up knocking down a straw man. Now Rox is one of my favorite bloggers, and she's even welcomed me as a guest blogger on her pages. But I think some of the things she claims today deserve a response. And since I have this humble little platform here, I'll give it a ramble.

There's an interesting throughline making its way around Leftopia today (and most days, these days): In order to win in '06 and '08, the Democrats must run on a unified "Progressive" anti-Iraq War platform. While I agree with you on many Progressive issues, I also wonder what country you all think you're living in. Let me remind everyone that

45% of American citizens still define themselves as moderate, compared to 34% who define themselves as conservative and 21% as liberal.

The first -- and main -- mistake here is equating "progressive" with "liberal." Now I'm one of the first to admit that there's a lot of overlap. But I feel, at least from my perspective, that there are some important distinctions between the two: progressive means having a dynamic, proactive government that actively participates in the economy and the fabric of our culture, while liberal comes with assumptions about the kinds of programs the government provides. In some ways, liberalism goes beyond progressivism in the manner and approach of such programs, while progressivism goes beyond liberalism in the scope and goals of what a proactive government can achieve. At least that's how I see it. (For the record, I consider myself a progressive who is sympathetic to the liberal cause.)

The second mistake I think Rox makes is conflating the anti-war movement with the conflated "liberal/progressive" political agenda. I think these are two separate issues.

I see no reason to assume that liberalism means pacifism, or that progressivism means isolationism, or vice versa. Rox argues that Lyndon Johnson was not a "true anti-War Liberal/Progressive," but that's because he wasn't anti-war. However, Johnson was very much a liberal, ready and willing to push forward on the war on poverty, even while he was carpet-bombing Vietnam. The schisms in the Democratic Party in 1968 were mostly over the war, not liberalism.

The third mistake is to read "progressive" as fitting into any neat category on the already-sloppy "liberal/moderate/conservative" spectrum. Let's go back to the percentages. (I won't quibble with them. I don't know their source, and could not offer an alternate, anyway.)

• 45% moderate
• 34% conservative
• 21% liberal

Here's where the distinction between progressive and liberal is important: Most people believe in an effective and efficient government that serves the people's interest. That is progressivism. When it comes down to it, only black-hearted dominionists, covetous plutocrats and dyed-in-the-wool anarchists in the conservative ranks would be hard-set opposed to progressivism. Even libertarians and progressives can find many areas to agree on. On the "liberal" side of things, authoritarian socialists would oppose the privacy values in progressivism, but would probably agree on pro-active government programs to address poverty and education and healthcare gaps.

The fourth mistake is to take people's self-identified political labels at face value. How are these labels used and perceived? Since Michael Dukakis ran away from the "liberal" label Bush the elder threw at him back in 1988, the Democrats have been in full retreat from that word (and, many would argue, what it stands for). For the most part, nobody has stood up for any liberal values for fear of drawing the wrath of the Atwater/Rove/Republican spin machine and their corporate media attack dogs. Since the 1980s, what suffices for political discourse in this country has been entirely within the frames and vocabulary of conservative ideology. (Don't even look for "progressive": it's not there.)

In other words, few people self-identify as "liberal" because the political and media leaders have given it a bad name. Nobody has been speaking up for liberal values, and so nobody else talks about them, either. It's a self-reinforcing loop that locks liberal values out of the discussion.

In the aftermath of Katrina, what's become bloody obvious for nearly all Americans is that we need effective government -- progressive government. The conservative ideology has proven its own bankruptcy. And political leaders who hold a philosophy based on vilifying government have no business running government.

The fifth mistake is labeling the peace movement as progressivism. To me, the anti-war movement crosses the political spectrum.

What's clear to most of us now is that, to this administration, the military is the answer to everything. Have a hurricane? Send in the military! Have a flu epidemic? Send in the military! Need to win the hearts and minds of people traditionally mistrustful of the West? Send in the military!

It's fucked-up logic. Small wonder people are skeptical! Especially when we have nearly 2000 dead men and women who had signed up as willing to put their lives on the line to defend our country. Are they defending us by killing people in Iraq? Are we safer as a nation by continuing to cultivate al-Qaeda recruitment in Iraq?

Our strongest weapons are our ideals of freedom and justice and democracy. They are so powerful that they worked throughout Eastern Europe, where our armies never went -- perhaps because our armies never went there. Yet our administration -- conservatives all (which is more evidence that war-making is not a partisan characteristic) -- tries to use bullets and bombs, which have no friends. The "accomplishment" of some 100,000 dead in Iraq does not win friends.

This is what the anti-war sentiments are about.

My own progressivism

I suspect Roxanne and I are of much the same mind when it comes to the peace movement. I am not in favor of "knee-jerk" withdrawal in an all-out retreat. But I am in favor of getting the hell out of there quickly, and getting our foreign policy back onto the footing of making friends rather than bullying neighbors. And that's not a progressive view. That's not a liberal view. That's what I consider an American view, a way of conducting international relations advanced by Democratic and Republican administrations in the past.

But where Rox and I differ is in her mislabeling "liberal" and "progressive." Calling Clinton one of "the most Liberal/Progressive Presidents during my lifetime" is almost funny. He was smart, and he was good at the talking game -- and, compared with either Bush the elder or Bush the lesser, his presidency looks pretty damn good right now -- but aside from getting the budget under control, he was not progressive or liberal. Too many corporatist policies were enacted under his watch to call him a progressive or liberal. Too much aggregation of federal government police power over individuals, and too many attacks on privacy rights, took place under his leadership to call him a progressive or liberal. Too many social programs were mangled without making them more effective or more efficient under his leadership to call him a progressive or liberal.

In fact, the last president who was anything like a progressive was Jimmy Carter, who, in spite of the oil crisis, recession and inflation, cut taxes and cut the federal deficit while establishing FEMA -- which Bush killed with cronyism -- and alternative energy programs using, among other things, tax credits -- which "tax cutter" Ronald Reagan killed in his first year in office. (What would our world look like now if Carter's alternative energy efforts were continued and expanded upon all this time? Would we be fretting so much about peak oil? Would gas be topping 3 bucks a gallon, and rising?) And while Carter was not at all charismatic, and had the Iran hostages and oil-crunch-inspired inflation around his neck, his programs and policies are the ones we value (and miss) today, after 25 years of conservatism.

I don't know why Roxanne and so many others on "the left" seem to be on the warpath against progressivism. But I suspect that part of it is in this fundamental misunderstanding of what progressivism is, and what the anti-war movement isn't.

There does seem to be a dearth of anti-war voices in mainstream politics. Senator Paul Wellstone was shooting up in the polls for his speaking out against the Iraq war run-up, before his plane mysteriously went down, taking him permanently out of the debate. And since then, precious few politicos have been willing to stand up against the jingoism of militarist-branded patriotism. Perhaps, with yesterday's stunning 90-9 vote in the Senate for clear-cut regulations on the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere, we're starting to see a shift.

And that shift is bipartisan. And that's because the public resistance to a bloody, costly and foolhardy war, as well as to authoritarian police state tactics at home, is bipartisan -- not "Liberal/Progressive."

It's time to speak out. Cindy Sheehan has helped give a voice to the anti-war sentiments that are widely and deeply held in this country.

But that has nothing to do with progressivism or liberalism. We have yet to hear strong progressive and liberal voices speak out in the public square in front of the cameras of the mainstream media. We have yet to see the mainstream media pay them any mind. While the anti-war movement is progressing in civil protest, progressivism remains largely unheard, a faith in a better future with effective government as a tool for positive change held by many of us in the blogosphere, a minority caucus within the Democratic Party, and in the majority of hearts and minds of mainstream Americans.

Let's not forget: While party politics have battled on like gang war for decades, the largest voting bloc has been that of the non-voter. They are still waiting for someone to speak for them. And so are many, if not most, of the rest of us.

It's time to change the frame of the debate. And that's not going to happen by running scared of Republican rhetoric or buying into Republican frames of what they claim "liberal" and "progressive" mean. We either stand up for what we believe, or we can continue to sit for all that we don't. It's up to us.

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