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What is missing?

Posted on Monday, May 2, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan

So, I was reading Jill’s post at Feministe (and the comments therein) about “call outs” and minority voices and who writes about what in the Feminist blogosphere (and subsequently, who/ which stories get attention). And that got me thinking a bit. So, I am going to turn to you, readers, for a second.

I have already posted a bit here so, I guess regulars might have an overview of what I am up to. Still, I would like to set some facts straight so that you have a better idea of who I am and where my perspectives come from:

I am a half Hispanic, half Eastern European cis woman, living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, by way of my home town of Buenos Aires (where I was born and raised). By now, I am a truly adopted Amsterdammer capable of cursing in three languages, after living here for almost a decade and a half.

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What does equality mean these days?

Posted on Thursday, April 28, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan

I identify as a feminist, in casual conversations, almost weekly. It’s a label that makes conversing easier because most people know the term well enough that I do not need to give too many follow up explanations. Especially in The Netherlands, where I live, feminism has been part of policies and political agendas for the past 30+ years. It is quite telling that, in Dutch, the word that politicians use when they speak of women’s rights is “emancipatie” (emancipation), which is more or less equivalent to the English “Women’s Liberation”, but always makes me think of its Roman Law origins in reference to the freedom of slaves.

Where I live, this “liberation” is on the news almost daily. Because, see, those of us labeled Non Western foreigners, apparently hinder the struggle for equality. We are the women who bring the country’s reputation down.

So, I’ve been thinking about equality quite some these days. At least, gender equality and what the term has been made to be in contemporary discussions about gender, immigrants and the rights of all minorities. Yeah, I know, too many intersections and variables that certainly do not lead to an easy answer. However, I did come across one point where all these variables seem to intersect: capitalism. The discussion has been hijacked by market forces. To be equal in today’s world means to participate in market transactions. We even frame the discussions in ways that highlight the necessity for market insertion: immigrants should have the right to work, women should have access to corporate boards, the glass ceiling, etc. It’s all about the “right to produce in a capitalist society”. Even the current attacks on reproductive rights seem to be shaped by “productive rights”: budgets, expenditures, “free” or “paid” contraception, etc.

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Toemaggedon, Toilets and Gender Symbols

Posted on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 by Emily McAvan

Behold and quake, oh inhabitants of the digital village, for pinky fresh doom is upon you. The end of days is here, and worse, the end of capitalism. I refer of course to the clear and present danger posed to civilisation in toto by the painted toenails of a 6 year old boy in a glossy catalogue.

In a widely publicsed comment, Fox News “psychiatrist” Keith Ablow called the ad “psychological sterilization,” adding that

encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts?

So, apparently everyone’s turning trans, and doctors are giving out sexual reassignment surgery out like they used to give lollypops. Who knew?

The controversy provoked in response to the J. Crew image might seem, to any reasonable reader, to be a bizarre, irrational overreaction to a fairly innocuous image of a mother playing with her son. But sex/gender is one area in which North American cultures are decidedly not reasonable.

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Olivia Munn To Bring “Stiletto Feminism,” Sandwich Hatred To Worst TV Show Ever

Posted on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 by Sady

Oh, fabulous news, everyone! Aaron Sorkin is making yet another TV show. No, wait, hold the phone: Aaron Sorkin is making yet another TV show… about Keith Olbermann.

I know! I know! I thought I was making it up, too! But I have checked, and this is not in fact my own personal nightmare: This is a real TV show, that is being made, and will probably be shown in the real world, and then people will watch it.

Now, we all know about my issues with The Sork. Oh, we don’t? Well, what a wonderful and unexpected opportunity for me to explain them: I believe The Sork to be a petulant, Internet-trolling, credit-stealing, narcissistic man-baby whose dialogue is composed of endless speechery, whose claim to “intelligence” is based on the constant dropping of migraine-inducingly obvious and middlebrow “references,” whose “politics” are always straight-up middle-of-the-road liberal sanctimony, and also, when people complained that The West Wing was sexist, he produced an episode of The West Wing where a sexy girl got sexually harassed, sexily, and then some plain un-boner-producing lady was all like, “this creates a social and professional environment in which women are valued primarily for their appeal as objects of the male gaze, and/or their compliance in response to sexual attention, and women may therefore be coerced into compliance out of fear for their jobs, or be pressured to present themselves in a highly sexualized manner in order to get productive attention, which eliminates the possibility for true sexual consent given the power dynamics in play, and also, recreates and perpetuates the eroticized imbalance of power between men and women in society itself,” and then everybody was all, “shut up lady, you’re ugly.” But then, which is the REAL ISSUE HERE, there came the stupidest slice of dialogue ever written by man, woman, or magical typing capybara, which, according to a transcript from www.menstuff.org (“The National Men’s Resource”), goes like so:

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VIDEO: The Legacy of Wonder Woman

Posted on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by Garland Grey

Wow. Never has something so relevant to my interests flown so far under my radar.

From Vaquera Films’ website:

THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE AS TOLD BY WONDER WOMAN is a feature film about female superheroes, warrior princesses and the “ideal” woman in popular culture. The film explores our culture’s love of comic book superheroes and raises questions about the possibilities for women within the genre.

Who wants to come see this with me when it comes out?

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Vote for The Gender Justice Uncovered Awards

Posted on Friday, April 15, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan

Women’s Link Worldwide is an NGO, started in Colombia, that strives to advance women’s rights through the implementation of international human rights law and strategic work with the courts, including strategic litigation. Founded in 2001, Women’s Link has 501(c)(3) status in the United States, foundation status in Spain and non-governmental organization status in Colombia. They have regional offices in Europe (Madrid, Spain) and Latin America (Bogotá, Colombia).

In 2009, Women’s Link started a project that got quite some press and media exposure in Latin America, the Gender Justice Uncovered Awards. The Awards seek to identify the best and worst decisions or statements related to gender made in English, Spanish or Portuguese within a judicial process. The three most sexist decisions receive bronze, silver and gold Bludgeons and the three decisions that best promote gender equality receive bronze, silver and gold Gavels.

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Marinelli Claims NOM Has Assembled a “Secret Online Propaganda Team”

Posted on Thursday, April 14, 2011 by Garland Grey

If you haven’t been following the story of Louis Marinelli’s defection, he was the engineer behind the National Organization for Marriage’s “Summer For Marriage” Tour and worked as a high-ranking staffer within the organization. Until last week, when he defected via an interview on the queer activism blog Good As You:

Having spent the last five years putting all of my political will, interest and energy into fighting against the spread of same-sex marriage as if it were a contagious disease, I must admit that it is hard for me to put the following text into words let alone utter them with my own voice. Whether it is an issue of disbelief, shame or embarrassment, the one thing that is for sure is that I have come to this point after several months of an internal conflict with myself. That conflict gradually tore away at me until recently when I was able to, for the first time simply admit to myself that I do in fact support civil marriage equality for all.

Now the former staffer is claiming NOM’s President Brian Brown instructed him to set up a system to reward those who clandestinely spread anti-gay propaganda for the organization with points they could redeem for fabul-ish prizes:

I was instructed to create a point system to reward the propagandists. Everything they do will be tracked and NOM plans to reward them. In the future, when this team gets off the ground, NOM intends to use the technology behind Mr. Brown’s ActRight conservative activism website to facilitate tracking, create a competitive atmosphere between the propagandists and allow them to redeem the points they earn in a variety of ways, including lunch with Mr. Brown himself.

Far from grassroots operation if you’re rewarding them with prizes and an all-inclusive lunch with the President of the organization. It’s appropriate for NOM though, considering the fact that those who do support them and spew their hate and rhetoric are completely comfortable doing so through a computer screen.

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Life Among The One Percent

Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 by s.e. smith

It’s a bit difficult to determine what percentage of the population is asexual, as we tend to be a rather under studied group; we are everywhere, but largely invisible, tacked on as an afterthought in trendy acronyms, but not actually included, except on rare occasions. One relatively recent study pegged the number at about one percent of the general population.

Many people are not very curious about what life is like among the one percent. In fact, most have an imperfect understanding of what asexuality even means and may be too afraid, or too indifferent, to ask. Despite efforts to increase asexual visibility, the asexual community sits very much outside other communities active in the social justice and activism communities, and many of us who are asexual tend not to address that particular aspect of our identities if we are active in the social justice community. Every time I talk about asexuality, asexual people creep out of the woodwork, reminding me of how many of us there are, here, and how silent we are about ourselves.

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What it’d mean to be really pro-life

Posted on Saturday, April 9, 2011 by Emily McAvan

Emily Manuel is the editor of Global Comment.  She can also currently be found at Bitch on women in electronic and on the Twitter talking about snacks.

I’m pro life, not “pro life.” Or, to put it another way, I’m pro living.

One of the things that frustrates me as a person of faith is how limited the understanding of life is for the “pro life” movement. Pro-life consists, in its entirety, of the complete conflation of sex with babymaking – first, by making access to contraception as bloody difficult as possible, and second with the familiar attacks on abortion. As I wrote this last night, the U.S Federal government seemed likely to go into a shutdown that is effectively driven by the Republican desire to unfund Planned Parenthood. And since the Hyde Amendment (boo hiss!) already prohibits Federal funding of abortion, this battle is (and make no mistake, it’s not over yet), misleading GOP framing aside, about the birth control and cancer screenings PP provides.

With the flurry of bills this year, the “pro-life” movement has made clear abundantly clear how little they value the lives of pregnant women (the pregnancies of trans men and female-assigned genderqueers are not even a blip on their radar). Previous exceptions for rape and incest are heading out the window, as are cases where the pregnant person’s life is in danger. That life does not count.

But what would it mean to be truly pro-life? It would mean valuing every life. Every.

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ADDITIONAL FUN! For People Who Really Like Bummers

Posted on Friday, April 8, 2011 by Sady

Oh, hey! What you up to? Enjoying the physical after-effects of a 2 AM bus ride home from Boston (TIRED. SO VERY TIRED) and the emotional after-effects of getting to go to Wellesley and realize that everyone there is stone cold amazing (JOY)? No? Oh, right, that’s me. Well, don’t feel too bad! I imagine you have your own stuff going on!

Also, here is something else you could have going on, if you pleased: You could check out this story I wrote, for Raw Story. I am looking, you see, for the under-covered stories of our time! And oh, here’s one: A guy currently up on charges of abduction and rape was actually a town official, despite having a 13-year-history of domestic violence? Yeahhhhh:

He allegedly met his latest victim after she responded to roommate want-ad that he posted on Craigslist. Many of the trial details are sealed to protect the identity of his victim, though news reports indicate that he held her against her will and raped her over the course of several days before he drove her to Boston’s Logan Airport and she was able to contact authorities.

Given the extent of his criminal past, it’s surprising to many that Gray was a free man, let alone an elected official. The Eagle-Tribune recently reported in detail on the earlier charges, which include multiple restraining orders and several convictions — including for assault. In 2003, Gray forced his then- girlfriend onto a bed “by grabbing her by the wrists and lying on her body with his body.” The womanʼs son heard her scream, and came to her. Gray reportedly punched him in the face.

And now, it is time for me to talk to several experts about exactly how something like this happens. And time for you to read it, too!

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