being a girl, pt 2

i'm totally bloated. and i have a date tonight. niice.

but this isn't about that.
if you haven't noticed, this week is not shaping up to be good to a girl.

for instance, if you've discovered that you're getting paid less than your male counterpart because you have ovaries and he has testicles (which somehow means that he needs his whole dollar and you don't - you only need .77 cents because once you have a baby that clearly means you've lost all right to a full paycheck - or something asinine like that), then the SCOTUS has something to say to you: Shut the frak up!

and, if you're a girl who lives in montana and you'd like to continue using the Pill, well, there's a certain pharmacist who has a special message for you, too: too bad, you whore!

[update: and did you read about this? an intern sent me this news item last week and it just about made my head explode. a highschool girl gets gang raped then rescued by 3 other women at a college party and, for some reason, the DA decides not to press charges against the 8-10 guys who raped her for 'lack of evidence' even though their were plenty of witnesses, including the 17-year old girl who was raped! aargh! the comment thread is really good.]

being a girl

thanks to my friend L- who sent me this article about the woman who stonewalled the inquiry at the justice department: How Monica Goodling played the gender card. - By Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine although i read newspaper reports i haven't been all up in this story. (i have a job, you know!)

but it's a smart, savvy take on gender performance and how our public eye is still more comfortable and accommodating when women weaken themselves rather than stand from a position of strength. (which gives credence to that recent study about 'uppity' women being targets of sexual harrassment more frequently than women who adhere to traditional gender roles.)
...
speaking of being a girl, it's dating season (for good or bad.)

had drinks last week with a very naughty actor guy and yesterday had dinner with a divorced father of two who lived in the burbs. (thanks, eharmony. those 29 dimensions really know how to pick 'em!)

but i think the surprise of the weekend was running into an old boss of mine in the supermarket and, while we were chatting and catching up, suddenly thinking, 'dude. he's totally hot.'

it's going to be a rough summer.

totally can't concentrate.

Roomie just reserved a villa in italy for next year!

we're going with a bunch of friends!
italy!
tuscany!
villa!
wine!
cheese!
pasta!
vistas!
i have to learn italian!

all of us are in a tizzy of planning (wardrobes, activities, day trips, food, music, wardrobes.) we haven't been able to work sensibly for the past hour.

dude. this is completely better than the cocktail date i have planned for tonight.

when it comes to women getting killed, the MSM is a little slow on the uptake

this is the front page story of today's paper: Iraqi girl's horrific death | Chicago Tribune.

this is the story when i first read about it on may 8 - on feministing. in between these two stories are 10 days of virtual silence - 10 days for a horrific stoning of a girl to make it to our mainstream, 'the pussycat dolls are feminist,' eyes.

in the trib article we have this reaction:

"Kurds, who include Yazidis, suspect Sunni Arabs of circulating the gruesome images to fuel anger against Yazidis and undermine the Kurdish community, which exercises a degree of autonomy in northern Iraq and is seeking more.

"It seems they are trying to make it big for political purposes," said Mohsen Gargari, a Kurdish member of parliament.

In an interview, he and two other Kurdish lawmakers condemned Aswad's killing. But they noted that in February a Sunni woman had been killed by relatives for having a relationship with a Yazidi man. "Nobody talked about it. Nobody filmed it or turned it into a big issue," he said."

in other words, it's 'normal' for this to happen, it happens all the time (over there), it's what happens to women and it's not about how women are still invisible and vulnerable and killed in our world because they're women, but about political power structures scoring points off other political power structures. it's about those people and their culture.

but 10 days before this article, samhita at feministing had this take and put the focus right back on the issue at hand - it's not about culture or religion, it's about patriarchy:

"Violence of this kind is a production of male ego and woman-hate and this truth is pitifully disguised when justified through religious or cultural circumstances. There is no cultural defense when it comes to mob mentality, woman-hate and violent murder. Unless, you want to talk about the global culture of patriarchy.

As I browsed articles, questions of whether or not the woman had converted to Islam, or whether or not it was just an honor killing, or if she fell in love with the wrong man, were used as possible explanations. As though any of those reasons can justify such a hideous display of violence."

i spoke with a hate crime investigator a couple of weeks ago and he said he didn't understand why crimes against women weren't called hate crimes. he said, 'i go into a neighborhood and this woman has been attacked by her husband or a boyfriend or a guy off the street - we've been called but there's nothing we can do. her being a woman doesn't give her the protection that the other categories of discrimination would give - even though we see crimes against women surging and we know they're targets because they're women.' i was surprised at his reaction. i honestly didn't think a man would get it. i wish more got it.

one of the demonstrators in the kurdistan protest carried a banner that said honor killings were terrorist acts against women. i wonder what the world would look like of women the world over began to fight against this kind of terror.

r. kelly: narsty ped

R. Kelly to magazine: 'I'm the Martin Luther King' :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State

if i had to compile a list of the most egregious women-hating men who make me gag, i think i'd put kelly right on up there with joe francis, jailed sleazebag. come on, 14 counts of child pornography??

i know there are black women who are disgusted by r. kelly but i wonder at the deafening silence coming from black male activists who don't call out kelly for being what he is: a nasty sexual predator.

Jerry Falwell: meh

Jerry Falwell, Leading Religious Conservative, Dies at 73 - New York Times.

"I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, USA Today Chat, quoted from The Religious Freedom Coalition, "The Two faces of Jerry Falwell"

'god-ordained minorities.' ah, that jerry. whatta guy.

manly men for god and nation

please, sweet baby jesus, tell me this isn't true:

What can we say about a country so anxiously hypermasculine that it can give rise to Godmen, a muscular-Christianity movement that seeks to lure Real Men back to church with services that feature guys bending metal wrenches with their bare hands and leaders exulting, "Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!"

read the article here.

all clear!

my ob gyn called today to let me know that my irregular pap is all clear! whoo hoo! the biopsies they took are clear, too! more whoo hoo!

i've been so worried about my fibroid (aka, Agatha) that i totally forgot i had a weird pap. so: no std's. no cervical weirdnesses (as of right now). just one poolball-sized fibroid to be eradicated.

life's good.

(oh, and i broke down and re-upped with eHarmony. frakking commercials!)

when law school students run amok

fascinating.
i wonder how you'd design an experiment to see how fast it takes for a group of guys to totally devolve into a pack of Lord of the Flies-ish anti-semitic, misogynist racists with rape fantasies.

i mean, does the transformation from clean cut ordinary dude to spittle-covered savage take an average of 24 hours? two weeks? a year? or, is it just something that occurs instantaneously whenever a bunch of them gather on an anonymous chat board?

Bitch Ph.D. writes about it here.

and if any of my law grad friends are out there, have you even heard of this board? what's up with that?!

the onion: smarter about the current state of choice feminism than most feminists

Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

my favorite part (other than the whole thing):

Whereas early feminists campaigned tirelessly for improved health care and safe, legal access to abortion, often against a backdrop of public indifference or hostility, today's feminist asserts control over her biological destiny by wearing a baby-doll T-shirt with the word "Hoochie" spelled in glitter.

"Don't tell this bitch what to do," said Kari Eastley, 24, a participant in the Oberlin study and, according to one of her T-shirts, a "Slut Goddess." "I wear what I want when I want, and no man is going to tell me otherwise. We're talking Pussy Power, baby."

and, in an eerie echo of linda hirshman's main thesis in her manifesto, Get to Work!, there's this part:

Klein said empowerment is now accessible to women who were long excluded.

"Not every woman can become a physicist or lobby to stop a foundry from dumping dangerous metals into the creek her children swim in," Klein said. "Although these actions are incredible, they marginalize the majority of women who are unable to, or just don't particularly care to, achieve such things. Fortunately for the less impressive among us, a new strain of feminism has emerged in which mundane activities are championed as proud, bold assertions of independence from oppressive patriarchal hegemony."

i bow to the onion. this piece is a fantastic skewering of how the women's movement has been rendered banal by the deliberate misreading of 'the personal is political.' bowing bowing bowing.



[the Big Idea in hirshman's book:

"The Opt-Out Revolution may be in reality only a leveling off, but in this context it is the end of the beginning. Deafened by choice, here's the moral analysis these women never heard: The family - with its repetitious, socially-invisible, physical tasks - is a necessary part of life and has obvious emotional and immediate rewards, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust." (p.24-25)]

ah, the female gaze

it's gettin' all springtime everywhere, and i don't know about you, but my sap is running. (it's running nowhere, but that's another, more private, post.)

yesterday, the roomie (who is, incidentally, enjoying her unemployment more than a normal human being should) went to Artopolis with a girl friend of ours. she saw some awesome art and came home swooning about industrial, metal furniture that she wants for our new place (when that happens, i'll let you know) but then the swooning over furniture evaporated when she started ranting about all the female nudes all over the place:

roomie: i couldn't believe it! i mean, if i saw one more nipple i was gonna die. painting after painting, statue after statue, naked women! i mean, what the hell?! even the female artists - all their feminist painting and crap and STILL ONLY NAKED WOMEN! i started to get seriously pissed off.

ding: hm. (keeping her mouth shut because roomie gets mad when ding mentions 'patriarchy.')

roomie: for the love of god, show me some naked men! where where the naked men? oh, yeah, over by the sensual masculine gay art! arrgh! you know? and, seriously, where do they expect me to mount a wall length painting of some naked chick and her pudenda? my dining room?!



anyway, Where Sheelzebub indulges in the female gaze at Pandagon.

of course, any and all beefcake suggestions are welcome down in comments.

heh.

the 'R' word - noticeably absent

Man Sentenced To 25 Years After Impregnating 9-Year-Old Girl - Charlotte News Story - WSOC Charlotte

i believe the word that's really appropriate here is RAPE.

but check this out:
"The judge gave him five years less than the maximum because he admitted to the crime and apologized to the girl's family."

what crime? he apologized for raping a 9 year old? or impregnating her? cuz, you know. that makes it better.

he RAPED a 9 yr. old girl repeatedly for 2 years.
why can't we call it what it is?
why are we so unwilling to see rape as the violent assault that it is?

it's not 'having sex with.'
it's not 'impregnating'.
it's rape.

there's a chicago campaign, sponsored by the Chicago Foundation for Women, that asks what it will take to stop violence against women and girls. it'll take men like this not raping 9 year old girls.

it's the last week of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and what a completely appropriate article to end the month with.

[h/t feministing]

plug plug plug

if you live in the chicago area and are looking for a great women's organization with an awesome mission and a really great history of civil and women's rights work, then make them your friend!

(no, no hidden vested interest in them at all...none!)

johnny get your gun: on violence, inadequacy and the crisis of masculinity

via truthout: Bob Herbert | A Volatile Young Man, Humiliation and a Gun

one topic that i've been posting about lately has been the increasingly apparent connection between male inadequacy and violence against women, girls and 'girly' Others. (see joe francis, the soldiers in iraq who killed an iraqi girl and members of her family, and the Amish schoolhouse killer; now we can also add the V-Tech shooter.) herbert makes a fine argument:

More than four decades later we still profess to be baffled at the periodic eruption of murderous violence in places we perceive as safe havens. We look on aghast, as if the devil himself had appeared from out of nowhere. This time it was 32 innocents slaughtered on the campus of Virginia Tech. How could it have happened? We behave as if it was all so inexplicable.

But a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may have occurred. In case after case, decade after decade, the killers have been shown to be young men riddled with shame and humiliation, often bitterly misogynistic and homophobic, who have decided that the way to assert their faltering sense of manhood and get the respect they have been denied is to go out and shoot somebody.

Dr. James Gilligan, who has spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, and as a professor at Harvard and now at N.Y.U., believes that some debilitating combination of misogyny and homophobia is a "central component" in much, if not most, of the worst forms of violence in this country.

"What I've concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal," he said, "is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one's manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act."

it makes me think about the imus firing, the conversations about racist and misogynist language in popular culture, the movies of quentin tarantino/robert rodriquez (and the Rapist No. 1 action figure that makes me go 'gick') and how all of these things are connected.

and once i'm home, i'll write more about it.

in addition to taxes, the virginia tech shootings, sexual assault month, equal pay day and alberto gonzales on the hot seat, there was the whole supreme court thing banning an abortion procedure with no exception made for the health of the mother.

and, as i predicted years ago, the inch by inch fight to control women's bodies wages on and the prospect that we will have to battle for a long time to maintain autonomous decision making about our own bodies looms larger. (could that sentence BE more convoluted?)

in other words, they're going to wage this fight procedure by procedure, week number by week number, until there's no margin at all and accessible abortions disappear.

so, in the eventuality that this 'abortion' fight becomes even more of an overall 'reproductive rights' fight, what do we really want?

i want over the counter access to Plan B for all girls/women - and i want the experience to be interference-free.
i want all forms of contraception to be covered by my effing health insurance.
i want comprehensive sex education in our schools and universities (you'd be appalled at what college students don't know.)
i want comprehensive pre-post natal healthcare to become an issue for our public officials.
and i want 'choice' advocates to change their message: it's not about choice. it's about comprehensive reproductive health care provision for women. it's about being able to have the best situation to have kids and the best situation not to have kids.

what's so freaking hard about that, people?


New Push Likely for Restrictions Over Abortions - New York Times

[and here is a link to Cecily, a mommy blogger who has a great post about what this ruling means in real life terms, as in, to women like her.]

plug plug plug: She Speaks Volumes

it's Sexual Assault Awareness Month and She Speaks Volumes is one of the events happening in the city. the event last year was awesome and this one looks to be just as good:

She Speaks Volumes Poetry Poetry Slam & Panel Discussion

Presented in collaboration with Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, Columbia College, Chicago

The She Speaks Volumes poetry slam and panel discussion fuse art and activism to impact social change. In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the event gives voice to the silence surrounding this issue. The event uses music and the arts to encourage young people to speak out against sexual violence and become activists for change in their local communities.

Featured artists, Diva Diction, are three powerful female poets both on page and on stage. Bassey descends from Nigeria, Amalia Ortiz from Mexico and Ishle Park from Korea. Their unique native roots may have originated from different countries but their cultured personalities blend powerfully together. All three women have competed in the National Poetry Slam and have been featured on Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO.

Special tribute will be paid to three outstanding women who demonstrate a commitment to anti-violence and social justice: Mary Jo Barrett, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Center for Contextual Change; C.C. Carter, Artist and Founder, Pow-Wow Inc.; and Kathy Kempke, Coordinator of Prevention Education, YWCA West Suburban Center.

When: April 26, 2007

Where: HotHouse
31 E. Balbo
Chicago, IL 60605
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Volunteer: For volunteer opportunities, contact us at events@ywcachicago.org

Tickets: Tickets for the event are $15. Click here to purchase tickets online. For VIP pricing, contact Tanisha Pleasant at 312.762.2743.

Contact: Tanisha Pleasant at 312.762.2743 or events@ywcachicago.org.

Join the artists for an afternoon discussion, "Where do we draw the line? Creative Expression vs. the Perpetuation of a Rape Culture."

April 26, 2007
Columbia College
Conaway Center
1104 S. Wabash, 1st Floor
Chicago, IL 60605
12 p.m.
Free admission

two down: Boy Gone Wild Joe Francis Cries

oh, how sweet it is when a disgusting piece of exploiting trash gets a comeuppance.

how many more to go?

mr. tax man

so i'm in the process of making sure i render unto caesar exactly what i ought and find myself on the phone with a federal tax guy because of a scary letter i got in the mail last week.

'so...apparently, i under-reported my income for 2003? i swear, i filed electronically and i thought it took all three of my W2s!'
'ms. Ding...'

'really! i don't know what happened. maybe it timed out, maybe i just misunderstood - but i have all the W2s! i can refile! i'll do whatever - i just can't afford this back tax thing...it'll kill me.'
'ms. Ding...'

'and i don't know what happened with my other tax refunds, you know? for tax year 2003, 2004, 2005. i mean, did you guys take them, all of them? are you about to garnish my wages? am i in trouble? i SWEAR i'll send you all the supporting documents - and they took taxes out! i'm not trying to get away with anything!'

have i mentioned i'm having this conversation while i'm at work? everyone can hear my panic.

meanwhile, tax guy is either laughing at me or choking. 'ms. Ding, you're fine. yes, we took your refunds and applied them to your tax debt. but now you're square. you don't owe us anything. we owe you nothing. we're square.'

'are you serious? really? like, nothing?'
tax guy doesn't say anything for a while. 'like, nothing.'

'jeebus, thank goodness. you have no idea how happy you've just made me.'
'i don't believe you but i'll take your word for it.'
'so...the return i just filed now. i'll get that refund, right?'
tax guy sighs. 'yes.'
'thank you, ID number 0657398. i appreciate all your help. really.'
'my pleasure, ms. Ding.'

my motto: when under severe threat by the IRS, playing dumb and panicky is a perfectly acceptable survival method.

bringing it home: twisty on patriarchy

"Do you guys get, I mean actually get, that our society is a patriarchy? Patriarchy isn’t just a gimmick for a blog. It really exists. There are actual implications. Do you get that a patriarchy is predicated on exploitation and victimization? It’s not a joke! It’s not an abstract concept dreamed up by some wannabe ideologue making up catch-phrases while idling away the afternoons with pitchers of margs. Exploitation and victimization is the actual set-up! A person is either an exploiter or a victim, or sometimes both, but never neither.

This means me! This means you!

This means that, until patriarchy is smashed, we ain’t got a chance.

Meanwhile, do you guys see that there is no other possible outcome, in a society based on exploitation and victimization, than for the Don Imuses and the Daily Koses of the world to shit, frequently, on members of the lower castes? Shitting on the lower castes is a privilege built into the system. When exercised with macho aplomb, it attracts advertisers. It creates prestige. It makes money. It entertains the masses."

so. at the risk of contradicting my own self, what's it going to be? is civility really a solution or just a more palatable hidey hole for the exploiters?


[and i really dig that top 'graph. you have to read the whole thing here.]

bringin' bougie back: or, do manners trump bigotry?

thanks to an old grad school friend's visit from out of town i spent the whole weekend doing pleasurable things: cooking, spending time with friends, laughing, drinking, eating, and cutting flowers to within an inch of their short lives. i had no time to spare on all things imus.

but today is different. all my doctor appointments aborted for reasons or another so now i have a rare loose afternoon to my self and i'm spending it thinking about manners. yes, manners. etiquette. the preferred way to treat one another. the 'please and thank you' moments of our lives.

manners are occupying my thoughts because it's just too hard to think and speak about race or gender. outside of academic or heavily politicized circles, regular people have no idea what i'm talking about when i say things like 'white privilege', 'race privilege,' 'internalized racism', 'misogyny,' 'minstrelsy' or 'hegemonic discourse.' they get upset when i say that patriarchy is a system, rather than a guy who sits across the bus from you. they don't want to look at power, context, our sexual or racial history or think about what it means to be implicated in cultural practice.

they just want to say bad words and get away with it because it makes them feel good. (sort of like how a child discovers the thrill of saying his first 'fuck.')

and the only way that people will get the message, especially (but not exclusively) white and black men, that saying these things (i.e., bitch, whore, nigger/nigga, nappy dug out and all the especially tart things men like to throw around their funky locker rooms or board rooms) builds up like plaque and makes all of us sick (especially those of us who are called bitch, whore, ho, nigger/nigga or nappy dug out) is to call them out on how very rude it is.

more than anything, white people understand manners, and for a long time, manners was also how the black community policed itself: whatever our actual economic status, we acted bougie. but bougie fell out of vogue once the huxtables disappeared from TV and now it seems we have to bring the bougie back. this is not without its problems; being bougie or suddenly becoming a culture of 'manners' is uneasily akin to 19th century behavior books. it concentrates on the manner of things rather than the matter, so to speak. for a feminist like me to say 'if only people weren't so rude!' - it sounds ineffective, school marmish and old fashioned.

but what else can our sexist, racist culture handle?
its proven it can't handle big, complex thoughts like sexism and racism; it has had at least a century to grapple with and discover its finer self. but it hasn't. so, like a spoiled, feces-throwing child in an episode of Super Nanny, it must be put on the naughty mat and made to face the corner and not move until it really means 'i'm sorry' and knows what it said and why it can't ever be said again.

calling for a national rebirth of civility and manners in our public discourse is infantilizing, i know. but, after all, isn't this what our parents told us whenever we got into trouble and whined about it: "if you're going to act like a child, expect to be treated like a child."