Posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by s.e. smith
As Sady just noted at In These Times, 2012 is going to be a year of anti-reproductive justice laws, specifically targeted at effectively ending abortion in the United States. In shocking news, a recent study concluded that when abortion is illegal, rates of unsafe abortions rise, and globally, we are having a serious problem with access to safe abortion services. Conservatives in the United States are warring not just on the right to access reproductive health care, but also quite literally the right to be alive with their proposals to ban abortion. Scaremongering and dramatic tactics are going to be on the increase among anti-choice ‘activists,’ and they’re coming out swinging already: An Oklahoma legislator just introduced a bill to ban the use of fetal tissue in food.
Because, you know. Fetal tissue in food is a pressing public health issue that requires immediate action.
We’ve just been reminded by Rick Santorum that pregnancy after a rape is ‘a gift from g-d,’ indicating the extreme to which some anti-choicers will go to protect ‘the sanctity of life.’ For people who think life is a gift from the heavens, though, they’re surprisingly cavalier with the lives of people providing reproductive health services:
Since 1977, the National Abortion Federation has documented eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, 175 instances of arson, 391 invasions, 100 butyric acid attacks, 662 anthrax threats, 523 instances of stalking and 418 death threats against clinic workers. (source)
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Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 by Flavia Dzodan
“This is a chance for me,” said Ms. Sinclair. “The Huffington Post gave me a chance.” (The New York Times)
I love chances! I do! I do! Especially when they vindicate the downtrodden, the ones that have been beaten up, those who are finally rewarded with a possibility, with an opportunity. Anne Sinclair, newly appointed editorial director at The Huffington Post in France got a chance. Anne Sinclair, the wife of former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn who is now under public scrutiny because of how the silent support of her husband reflects on her new role as head of a major media outlet.
In the days preceding the press event where Arianna Huffington introduced her to media, Ms. Sinclair gave an interview with French magazine Elle. She didn’t have many kind words for those she described as “self proclaimed feminists”:
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Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012 by s.e. smith
The attack on reproductive rights in the United States is likely to heat up in 2012, and we have an early entrant in the race to the bottom in the form of a court decision that went through on Friday, ordering the immediate enforcement of a mandatory sonogram law in Texas. More specifically:
The law, enacted in 2011, requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound on pregnant women, show and describe the image to them, and play sounds of the fetal heartbeat. Though women can decline to view images or hear the heartbeat, they must listen to a description of the exam…unless she qualifies for an exception due to rape, incest or fetal abnormality.
This is not the first state with such a law and I fear it’s going to become a growing trend in the US, right along with dismembered fetus anti-abortion ads on television. The right wing is bent on making abortions as difficult to access as possible through every possible means, and that includes coercive, invasive, and unwanted interference from their medical providers. As spelled out under the law, this is yet another hoop in the series people with unwanted or dangerous pregnancies must jump through to get access to medical care, and it’s a humiliating and shaming one.
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Posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 by Flavia Dzodan
Jizz on your face! A FACIAL! Let your guy cum on your rosy cheeks because it is the latest act of feminist empowerment! Moreover, IT’S CLEANSING! Didn’t you hear? Jizz on your face is better than a detox diet! It has “purifying” properties. Or so says Hugo Schwyzer, Professor Feminism extraordinaire in his latest installment at Jezebel, He Wants to Jizz on Your Face, but Not Why You’d Think:
A female student turned to the guy who’d brought up the topic of semen and validation and asked him, “So you’re saying that when a man comes on a woman’s face, it’s not about making her dirty — it’s about making him feel clean?” The young man blushed, the class tittered. “Yes,” he said, “that’s it. And that’s what makes it so hot.”
Only oh, I forgot to mention, the purifying act is not for you, feminist woman, target audience of Professor Feminism’s column. The cleansing is for him!
Wait. Cum again? Exactly how is this defense of the act feminist? Or how is this justification for the act based on its benefits for women? Or how is this a pro woman stance?? HOW DOES THIS JUSTIFICATION PUT THE FEELINGS, WELL BEING AND SEXUALITY OF THE WOMAN INVOLVED AHEAD OF THE “PURIFYING” PROPERTIES FOR THE JIZZER? It doesn’t. And that’s because in spite of all his claims, all his protestations and even his academic position, Hugo Schwyzer is not a feminist. He is a feminist poseur. Which is a very different beast.
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Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by s.e. smith
People are heading to the polls in New Hampshire today, kicking off the official primary cycle in the United States. This year, a lot of eyes are on tactics used to prevent people from voting, particularly targeting low-income communities of colour and nonwhite people. There’s a laundry list of voter suppression tools that are getting significant coverage in the news, but one in particular is receiving almost no media coverage:
Voting while disabled. Yes, we vote!
The exact number of inaccessible polling places in the United States isn’t known, although this undated article puts the number at around 20,000, in direct violation of multiple laws. Various clauses which enforce accessibility in polling places to some degree can be found in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Accessibility for Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. That’s a whole lot of legislation. 22 years after passage of the ADA, we’re still struggling to make polling places accessible, let alone address full access and inclusion in society for people with disabilities. (Continued)
Posted on Monday, January 2, 2012 by s.e. smith
One of the most insidious and commonly repeated tropes about mental illness is that people can bootstrap their way out of it; they just need to ‘try harder’ and ‘stop moaning’ and they’ll magically get better, even if this defies all known knowledge of neurochemistry, human emotion, and psychiatry. There’s tremendous pressure on people with mental illness to ‘snap out of it’ and a common belief that we will do so if we want to…so obviously, if we’re still mentally ill, we don’t want to get better.
The military has been struggling for some time with a growing suicide rate among veterans and soldiers, along with general mental health problems in the military community. Stress of participating in extended military conflict tends to put people at risk of, or exacerbate, mental health conditions. While aware of this, the military hasn’t figured out an effective way to deal with it. Perhaps because the most effective way to deal with it is to take soldiers out of combat, which isn’t being presented as a viable option.
Trying to find a way to address the rising rates of mental health problems, and the negative public associations that come along with it, the military has cast about for a variety of solutions. The latest is a real doozy. Welcome the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Programme, which aims to change everything for military mental health both by assessing soldiers more fully when they join the military and providing them with discussions about mental health issues as part of their training.
In theory, this might seem like a good idea, but of course the execution is something very, very different. It’s boostrapping supreme, as the poster child of the programme illustrates, and before we go on, be advised that this article, and what I am about to quote, have a strong content warning for rape. (Continued)
Posted on Friday, December 30, 2011 by Emily Manuel
The end of the year brings, as we know, many many lists. But you should read mine anyway.
1. Nicki Minaj – “Super Bass”
Minaj’s consummate craftsmanship as an artist—in image, flow and production choices—makes her nearly anachronistic among contemporary hiphop acts. Originally thrown onto last year’s Pink Friday as a bonus track, “Super Bass” . The constant minute shifts in intonation showcase Minaj as one of the year’s most compelling personalities, sounding like no-one else around. “Somebody please tell him who the eff I is…” as if it could be anyone else but Nicki Minaj.
2. Bon Iver – “Calgary”
Bon Iver is one of many in a lineage of similar-sounding male songwriters. With his sexy beard and flannel shirts revealing just a hint of chest hair, Iver has built quite a fanbase, drawn to his good looks and sultry crooning. Despite his narrow focus on men’s issues, Iver somehow overcomes the limitations of his sex and triumphantly pulls together an anthem for all of us.
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Posted on Wednesday, December 28, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan
I. “My feminism will be intersectional” redux
I set myself up for failure. I know. I like big, unachievable goals that I will, all on my own, conquer. Because I am a sucker for failed end of the year balances. Because when this time of the year rolls by, I sit and ponder on what I have not yet achieved. To that purpose, I start every year with some big, unattainable resolution. For 2011, I had set two such objectives (probably to ensure failure at least on one account), and it seems I managed to fall through on both: I did not succeed in making anti racism a mainstream component of Western feminism and I failed at defeating racism as an institutionalized practice in The Netherlands. And it hasn’t been through lack of trying, that much I can tell.
Now, leaving snark aside, I would say that, as both a writer and an activist, those are my main two goals. Not half joking hyperbolic new year resolutions but the kind of issues I center every day when I decide what I am going to write about. These are also the issues I try to bring forth in every political meeting I attend. Selfishly so, perhaps. As a Non Western foreign woman living in The Netherlands, I find both issues to be very personal and very political. I am a feminist, even though I struggle with some of the most damning aspects of mainstream feminism. Even though I sometimes angrily express my disappointment, I still claim the label. Perhaps because I grew up in an environment where such label was subjected to disgust, derision or contempt. Because I was socialized to believe that feminism was alienating and only the realm of “sluts” and “man hating” women. So, one day, I decided that’s what I was. Probably because it was one of the most offensive labels I could inflict on my reactionary surroundings. To me, the label preceded the politics. It took me years to learn the more theoretical aspects of feminism (which I don’t even know as well as people who learned them in a more structured manner). I read Sartre way before I even knew who de Beauvoir was. Back home, when I was a student, we didn’t have “women’s studies”, at least not in the institutions I frequented. If such a thing existed (and I am sure it did), it was certainly not mainstream. Post dictatorship Argentina was not exactly a progressive place prone to discussions of equality or gender matters. It took a couple of decades for these topics to take a center stage. But I digress.
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Posted on Monday, December 26, 2011 by s.e. smith
Last year, I covered the Deportation by Default report issued by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. The report highlighted significant problems in the US immigration system with regards to mentally ill, developmentally disabled, and intellectually disabled detainees. The study found that up to 15% of immigration detainees had disabilities that impaired their understanding of the proceedings against them, yet were often in a position where they were forced to represent themselves in immigration court.
Because immigration is treated as a civil matter, detainees do not have a right to court-appointed attorneys. They can pursue counsel for assistance in court, but the court doesn’t need to provide it, or any other assistance. They also, of course, need to pay for that counsel if they want to secure attorneys to assist them with immigration proceedings, and a good immigration lawyer can be quite expensive. For disabled detainees who don’t even fully understand why they were in detention or what is happening to them, this creates an extremely unjust situation. Some judges aren’t sure what to do with detainees who are clearly legally incompetent to represent themselves, and as a result, disabled detainees can be mired in the system for years.
In cases that do proceed to court, deportation orders may be issued in a case that is really just a mockery of ‘justice.’ People are deported because they don’t understand what is happening and can’t defend themselves, even when they are in the United States legally, and in some cases are US citizens. They are deported even if it means returning to a situation where they may be subjected to torture, torment, and abuse, all because they have no legal representation to help them navigate a system that is deeply, deeply confusing.
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Posted on Monday, December 19, 2011 by s.e. smith
I want to expand a bit on Flavia’s recent post discussing the Foxnewsification of the Internet and ideas about ‘all points of view being valuable’ and needing to be aired on blogs. Discussions like this inevitably bring up cries of ‘free speech’ from people who apparently don’t understand how free speech works; as was pointed out, a comment section is more like a letters to the editor page. It is thoughtfully curated by staff who read all the letters, consider them, and decide which should be published.
Those letters may well include opposing views, as well as expansions upon the discussion or more topical letters. Newspapers are not accused of violating free speech rights when they decline to publish letters to the editor; The New York Times, for example, didn’t violate my rights when they declined to publish an op-ed I recently submitted. Likewise, the comment sections on blogs, on online newspaper articles, and in other areas of the Internet, are not free speech zones. Because they are published by private entities, not governments, and we have no obligation to publish all views. You have a right to speak: That doesn’t create a correlating obligation to publish. (If it did, imagine how much bad poetry would clutter The New Yorker.)
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