feminist blogs

I hope everyone had/is having a fabulous holiday! I haven't been able to write a post in a few days because of the festivities, but here's what's been going on:

• With more and more people becoming aware of the fact that abstinence-only programs do not work, supporters of the no-sex-until-marriage curriculum in schools are looking for its revival in the health care bill.


• Both pro-choice and anti-choice activists are displeased with the final Senate version of the health care bill.


• Sarah Thomas has become the first woman ever to referee a college football bowl game.


• Mexico City has legalized adoption and marriage rights for same-sex couples.


• Jill of I Blame the Patriarchy wrote a post yesterday about an anti-feminist blog run by a husband and wife team, called The Art of Manliness. Eesh.


• Cara of Feministe sheds light on the sexual trafficking of Native American women.


• Check out Racialicious for commentary on the new Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog.


• It isn't just the painful phrase "no homo!" that is becoming prominent in pop culture, but its counterpart "no lesbo!" as well. Commence banging head against wall.

I found this on the blog "keep your coins -- I want change" here. There are so many forms of patriarchal injustice; locking up a teenager for killing her rapist-pimp of three years is one of them. Because, after all, pimps raping, turning out, and killing "their" girls and women is no crime at all. What makes me sad and enraged while watching this is not only that her life is being wasted in

[Found via Racialicious. But all that follows is from here.] Child Poverty Rising, Report Says A Homespun Safety Net Brave New Welfare Published August

an initiative to end sex-trafficking every woman free, every child in school [image of logo and statement is from here]  TRIGGER WARNING: HORRENDOUS STORIES OF SEXUAL ABUSE OF GIRLS AND WOMEN IN SYSTEMS OF PROSTITUTION AND SEXUAL SLAVERY Why does someone have to be some man's mother" or some boy's sister to be SOMEBODY!? And why does being a prostitute and sexual slave make a girl or woman

[image of feminist journalist/filmmaker Ruchira Gupta is from here] “Our groups seek not to mitigate the circumstances of sex-trafficking but to end sex-trafficking. We seek complete transformation, not simply reform. Our members who are victims and survivors of sex-trafficking want a world in which it is unacceptable to buy or sell another human being and to imagine an economy in which one is

I'm reading Half the Sky. It is a brilliant and important book that I think everyone should read.

I am on an early chapter about keeping girls enslaved as prostitutes by drugging them with meth.

It struck me that my husbands family used this same approach to keep him compliant. I think giving minors drugs or alcohol is the most despicable act I can think of. When money is involved, it is a hard life to get away from.

"Neth and Momm underscore that Many prostitutes are neither acting freely nor enslaved, but living in a world etched by ambiguities somewhere between those two extremes. After her return, Momm was Bound to the brothel by drugs and debts, but the owner let her leave freely with customers, and Momm could have easily escaped if she had wanted to do so." 39

"...so the girls would have to go into debt to the trafficer. That's a classic means of gaining leverage over girls: The debts mount with exorbitant interest rates, and when the girls can't repay the loans, the trafficer sells them to a brothel." p 41

The situations these girls are in are terrible and unimaginable. In any case, reading this book has been empowering to me. I am surprised at how hopeful I feel when I put it down. There are a lot of horrible stories, but overall I feel like this is something we can all tackle.

The big thing that has been coming to my mind is that addiction keeps you centered on yourself. Even if you are the co-dependent, you are centered on the addict and the harm caused to yourself by having them in your life.

The thought that I have is, why aren't we helping people who want to be helped?

I mean really, there are millions of young girls being trapped into slavery around the world. Why not try to help those women who want out of that life?

Adult addicts can step out of their hell anytime they are ready to. But millions of young people do not have such choices.

Instead of spending money on alcohol or things that might enable an addict, why not sponsor a young woman abroad? Many people around the world live for under $2 a day.

So, I am hoping that more of us take back our power by helping those who are truly powerless. I recommend this book to everyone I know. I would highly recommend it to people who have addicts in their lives. Our world is bigger than the small, hellish one we create for ourselves.

www.halftheskymovement.org

 [Image of bust of a slave boy is from here. He has a Trajanic haircut and was named Martial Roman, 98-117 CE/ECD. Marble. Photographer: Getty Villa.] ***TRIGGER WARNING: THIS IS FICTION ABOUT BEING POSSESSED AND ABUSED BY PIMPS AND ALL THAT CAN ENTAIL*** by Julian Real, 2009 The Preacher peeled his facemask off and revealed he was a Pimp. The next thing that happened was that the Pimp

Prostitution used to be legal in the state of Rhode Island. But earlier this month the state’s General Assembly closed a loophole in a 1980 law that unintentionally legalized brothels. According to NPR:

Back in 1980, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a law meant to speed the prosecution of streetwalkers. But in the process, legislators unwittingly decriminalized prostitution that took place indoors. This loophole didn’t attract much notice for years.

Then, in 2003, a court case made it clear that prostitutes were free from prosecution if their sex trade occurred behind closed doors. The result has been a growing number of so-called Asian spas that critics say are thinly veiled brothels.

On Nov. 3, Gov. Donald Carcieri closed the loophole by signing a bill that immediately banned indoor prostitution. “Prostitution, outdoors or indoors, is a bad thing,” he announced. “I think it’s been a black eye, frankly, in our state, that we’ve allowed this to go, for whatever the reason is, for far too long.”

What a prude. All work is a form of prostitution in my opinion. Some work just happens to be less stigmatized than other forms of labor. But let’s be real – I’d rather get paid to suck dick than flip burgers or change a colostomy bag. I’m just too lazy to get out there and hustle.

The real black eye for the state of Rhode Island, and any other state that criminalizes sex work, is that the laws are disproportionately enforced against women, not men. How many johns will end up in jail when Rhode Island starts cracking down on brothels? And were are the alternative jobs for these women? It’s a down economy, and the job market is tight, even for sex workers. It would make more sense for the state of Rhode Island to put their time and energy into creating more jobs for folks, rather than criminalizing the jobs that do exist. But that’s capitalism for you.

For more info on the Rhode Island bill, check out Sex in the Public Square. For the latest from Tracy Quan, one of my favorite pro-sex-work authors, check out The Daily Beast.

[this image is from many places, including here]WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS SEXUALLY AND SEXISTLY GRAPHIC:This is a quiz. How many of the following questions or statements demonstrate heterosexually active men (HAMs) being honest? And how many demonstrate HAMs being respectful and caring of women? (There might be overlap. You'll see.) I seriously wonder how many HAMs out there ask women these

The above image comes from this website, which has a short article by AN HONEST MAN about men's use of internet pornography. The text of this short article reads as follows:There's no point in lying about it. We know you do it. In fact, if it weren't for your porn habit, the Internet probably wouldn't have taken off the way it did.According to a new survey, one in four men views pornography