feminist blogs

Make sure to check out Katha Pollitt's latest column, "Backlash Spectacular," where she takes on Phyllis Schlafly getting an honorary degree from Washington University, the "Pill Kills" campaign, and the Lilly Ledbetter case.

Also, is it just me or does "Backlash Spectacular" sound like it could be a great name for a musical?

Is anyone else freaked out by this Dairy Queen commercial?

Michael Buday wanted take his wife's last name. "It was personal. I feel much closer to [her] father than I do mine. She asked me to take her name and I thought it would be very simple. I never imagined the state would make it so difficult."

He discovered it would take a $US350 fee, court appearances, a public announcement and mounds of paperwork to make a change on his driving licence that is routine for women who marry.

After months of frustration, the Los Angeles computer programmer and his ER nurse wife Diana [Bijon], 29, took their problem to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

A double barrel name would have been no problem, nor would Diana and Michael deciding to each keep their birth names. But California and some 40 other US states provided no place on the marriage licence application, and driving licence, for the groom to choose the bride's surname.

Their lawsuit led to a new California law guaranteeing the rights of married couples and domestic partners to choose whichever last name they want. Hopefully this is a trend. Recently, Oregon State Sen. Vicki Walker added an amendment onto a bill that will redesign marriage license applications so they include space where the couple can write what last name they will go by.

It's amazing to me that this is still a battle. Never mind people's personal decisions about names- which is a whole other story - but the idea that the government could still be so invested in keeping this tradition alive is ridiculously disturbing. It wasn't so long ago that a married couple in Washington, DC was denied a birth certificate for their child because they wanted to give their baby the mother's last name. And it was just in 2004 that a Pennsylvania court denied a petition from a woman who wanted her daughter to have a hyphenated last name; they found that it was "in the best interests of the child" to have only her father's last name.

I'd probably be a bad driver too if I was having some sort of weird road-sign induced acid trip.

Bloomberg LP, the news and financial data corporation founded by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is being charged with 58 cases of pregnancy discrimination. So far.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the charges in September when they had 3 cases, in which they now have 58 women who say their duties were reduced, or that they had been excluded from employment opportunities because they were pregnant:

The EEOC lawsuit claims the company discriminated against pregnant employees by cutting their pay and demoting them. It also claims the women were paid less when they returned from maternity leave and were demoted and replaced by 'junior' male employees.

The sad part is that I'm not surprised. At all.

Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the sex worker in the Spitzer scandal, has filed a lawsuit against Girls Gone Wild, which notes that Dupre was underage when she exposed herself on video.

GGW founder and known asshole Joe Francis' response: "But I think it's ironic that she charged Gov. Spitzer $2,000 for sex and she wants to charge me 10 million for taking some naked pictures of her...I feel like I'm getting a raw deal."

Warms the heart, no?

Thanks to Hilary for the link.

Fathers should not wax their daughters. Anywhere. (An obvious sentiment if I ever saw one.) They also should not pimp their daughters. Apparently both of these clearcut parental boundaries are lost on this guy.

A review of Baby Mama (whose problematic title is being discussed here) in The New Yorker gets a little...well, sexist.

Kate [Fey] stalks around bare-legged in skirts that lurch to a halt two inches above the knee, which is a length that Christy Turlington would struggle to carry off. It’s possible that Fey, like other television stars, is unused to being framed in full length, and, though in complete command of her delivery—dry, spiky, but unthreatening—she hasn’t yet made up her mind how funny her body is meant to be. She isn’t big enough to make a joke of her ripeness, like Bette Midler, but she’s no Lily Tomlin, either. She could do worse than steal a trick from Lucille Ball—a lovely, elegant figure who taught herself to be graceless.

Does this annoy the shit out of anyone else?

Thanks to Anne for the heads up.

This one is a keeper.

Thanks to Becca for the link.

Because what home would be complete without a kneeling ass chair?

Shakes has a ton more in her series on disembodied woman things...