Update:Tiffany at Blackfeminism.org has an excellent post to elaborate of how the slang of the late 80s ended up leading to the media and police incorrectly coining the concept of wilding.

The Duke Lacrosse team rape case has really touched a nerve with me, and one of the things that bothers me most is the discrepancies between how White men’s crimes and black men’s crimes are covered in the popular media. Since it is no longer politically correct to use blatant racist language or explicitly racial terms in these cases, we have to look beyond the surface. Black men who are accused of committing crimes against Whites, especially White women, are not directly labeled “scary Black men” but everything about the way the story is told promotes the “scary out of control Black man persona.” One of the most troubling ways this is done is by the use of special terms coined in honor of Black men’s crimes or criminal involvement.

The most famous example of this is the term “wilding.” The term wilding was used to describe the attack of a White woman in Central Park in the late 1980s. Scared Whites suddenly worried that groups of young Black and Latino men would descend on innocent White women and attack them, like that has supposedly done to this woman. The term was almost exclusively used for young Black and Brown men, and as such has became synonymous with them. What is even more striking it that through DNA evidence and a confession by an imprisoned man, we later found out that this group of young men didn’t attack the Central Park jogger and in 2002 their sentences were vacated (DNA evidence confirmed that it was a lone attacker, who was a Latino man.). Why not use the term wilding to talk about what the rape survivor said happened at Duke. One of the regular commenters on my blog, Anthony, reminded me of this term, when he argued that the attack at Duke was an example of wilding. I wondered if popular media outlets will use the term wilding, or will they come up with some special code word that referred to groups of young White men who attack women (especially Black women). Probably not. When White men behave badly it is usually framed as a problem with the individual White man or the small group of White men involved, but it is almost never a collective statement about the problems with White guys in America.

Another example of this is the whole “Stop Snitching” phenomenon, which has been labeled as a huge threat to the criminal justice system. The term “Stop Snitching” has been connected with an underground video out of Baltimore. “Stop Snitchin’” has also been advertised on T-shirts that have become very popular mostly among young urban Black and Brown kids. If you watched shows like America’s Most Wanted or the nightly news, you would think the “Stop Snitchin” phenomenon is new and young Black men created it. However, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the idea of not snitchin’ has been around for a long time, way before Hip Hop and way before the T-shirts. In fact, I was watching the Abrams Report, since he has been covering the Duke case, and he kept alluding to the editorial that he was going to do at the end of the show. The editorial was about “Stop Snitchin.” My initial reaction was good somebody finally gets it. These Duke boys are living by the “Stop Snitchin” code of ethics. It’s not just poor Black and Brown people and Hip Hop artists. Well much to my chagrin Abrams didn’t even connect the Duke case to this phenomenon even though it was so blatantly obvious…the Duke lacrosse players need to start snitchin.

The trend of giving special labels to Black men’s bad behavior (or in some cases alleged bad behavior) makes it seem as if Black men invented gang rape or the code of silence that prevents snitchin. If the young wealthy White men can hide beyond their attorneys and say they are not “snitchin” on advice of counsel, the outcome is the similar…the crime is harder to solve. If a group of these White guys decide to have a party where they invite strippers and engage in wilding, the outcome is similar–another woman is sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, most people(especially White folks) in American culture don’t see these behaviors as similar. They think that one Black person’s bad behavior is somehow representative of all Black people, not the individual Black person or people involved. They think subconsciously or consciously that Black men are dangerous and White men are the innocent boys next door. So next time you hear a special lable for Black men’s bad behavior. Please think twice.

PS–And just as a side note, the attorney for the Duke lacrosse players needs to think twice before he decides to describe the rush to judgment of these young men as a “lynch mob mentality.” Lynch mobs didn’t kill White men who were accused of sexually assaulting Black women. Read your history.

Also posted at Rachel’s Tavern

The jury has found Brad Shipton, Clint Rickards, and Bob Schollum not guilty of raping Louise Nicholas.

[deleted]

Obviously some members of the jury believed Louise Nicholas, or else the deliberations wouldn’t have taken this long. I pay tribute to them, and wish they could have had the evidence that would have convinced the jury.

Chris at Creek Running North has written a post entitled “why I am not a feminist.” Chris (who is male) begins by expressing irritation with a statement Hugo made in comments on Feministe (I think), during a recent discussion of privilege in the blogoverse:

One of the bloggers at the center of the storm opined that perhaps the reason he and one other male writer were taking such heat … some of which I delivered … was that there are so few male feminist bloggers, and thus he and the other were the subjects of rather high expectations.

This irritated me for a couple of reasons, one of which I spoke up about in response to his statement. That was this: there are quite a few male bloggers who write thoughtful stuff about feminist issues, on non-single-issue blogs.

I remember wincing when I read Hugo’s statement, for exactly that reason. (Although under the circumstances I’d definitely cut Hugo some slack; no one is at their best when they’re at “the center of the storm,” and I’ve read enough of Hugo’s work to feel sure he wouldn’t intentionally exclude anyone.) (Full disclosure: In case anyone is unaware, the other person at the center of that particular blogstorm was me).

Chris goes on to write (and this is just a bit from a longer argument, so you should go read the whole thing):

I read Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua’s This Bridge Called My Back the year it was published, and found it invaluable in understanding a part of American culture I had until then missed. Were I to call myself a Chicana as a result of my poltical support, I would be laughed out of the planning meeting. I have been marching in Pride Parades for a quarter century, and had mainly gay friends in college for a decade before that. Even with broadening definition of the term, calling myself a “Queer activist” would almost certainly raise eyebrows. I cut my political eyeteeth working on the defense of the Attica prison riot defendants. That does not make me a Black Power activist.

My goal is to be the best ally to feminists I can be, in the political realm and in the much more difficult personal realm.

But I cannot call myself a feminist: the label is not mine to claim.

The discussion in Chris’ comments - and also on Feministe and Reclusive Leftist - is fascinating (although the comments at Feministe are unfortunately ruined by an anti-feminist who won’t shut up). Interestingly, most of the folks agreeing with Chris are men (including Hugo), while most who disagree are women. For example, Dr. Virago eloquently responded to Chris’ argument:

Leaving aside the whole “gender and sex are culturally contructed” argument, and assuming that there are definable identities such as “man” and “woman,” and accepting your claim that you are indeed a “man,” I still think you’re a feminist. There were white people who were abolitionists and civil rights activist, despite being neither slaves nor black; there are white collar labor activists (and indeed, lawyers especially are pretty necessary to the modern labor movement); there are straight people working tirelessly for gay rights; and so on. These political activities don’t make these activists black, working class, or gay, but they’re still activists.

Feminism is a political position that can be held by anyone. “Woman” is (perhaps) an identity that only some can claim. You are not a woman, but you are a feminist, given your political claims above.

And from Jill, in the comments at Feministe:

Personally, the idea of a feminist man makes sense to me, since I see feminism as working against a system that hurts everyone (it hurts women substantially more, of course). The person I dated all through college never shied away from calling himself a feminist, but also recognized that there were some things that he just didn’t understand. I identify as an ally to the queer community and an anti-racist, but I also recognize that there are a lot of things that, being white and heterosexual, I just don’t get. I find greater solidarity in men feeling like they have a place in the feminist movement … in being committed activists in the feminist movement … than I do in men saying, “I support feminism, but I’m not a feminist.” I suppose this comes from so often hearing the word “feminist” used as if it’s dirty, with people asserting feminist positions and then following with, “…but I’m not a feminist.” I think we need as many feminists associating themselves with feminism as possible, and not being afraid to define themselves as active members of the community, not tacit supporters.

I agree with Dr. Virago and Jill. But it’s not a debate I’m usually inclined to get into myself, and I respect the view that it’s better for men to be called “pro-feminist.”

Years ago, I used to get into arguments about the “feminist” versus “pro-feminist” question, but then I began to wonder: Why am I spending time arguing with feminists? Is it my job as an ally to care about what these people I want to support choose to call me? If I get into long debates about what I should be called - or if I’m a feminist at all - aren’t I both wasting the time of feminists who might have better things to do, and making myself the center of feminist debate? (For that reason, I’ve more-or-less stopped going to female feminists’ spaces to argue about feminism - if I have to argue with someone, it’s better that it be an anti-feminist, or at least that the argument take place on my own space rather than appropriating someone else’s.)

I still call myself a feminist - frankly, I think more men should be calling themselves feminists, especially in public. But at the same time, I call myself pro-feminist if I sense that’s what most feminists in a room would prefer. It’s not helpful to feminism if I get into women’s faces and make demands about what I’d like to be called. In the end, I think the content matters more than the label. (Of course, there are feminists who argue that my content sucks, too).

Hissy Cat made what I think was a similar point in Chris’ comments:

Having thought about this a bit more, I think part of being a feminist, for a man, includes knowing when to shut up– or at least take a passive role. I think that, as a a reflective thought activity, there is value in a man thinking of himself as a feminist– in consciously looking at the world through a feminist lens– that there is not in just being some guy who is pro-feminism. This is not unreconciliable with Chris’s experience of refraining from self-identifying as a feminist in radical feminist spaces where, for any reason, that stance would taken as unwelcome or possibly as threatening: in that situation, to defer to the judgements of radical women feminists on whether or not Chris should call himself a feminist is the feminist decision: for a man to be a feminist in an ethical (as opposed to political) sense, if it means anything, means respecting women when they tell him to stop, to leave them alone, to back off, to go away. Period. There are most definately times when it is inappropriate for the most committed man (or woman, really; so much of this, when it plays out in the world, comes down to ugly shows of ego) to make claims about his feminism (for starters, “I’m a feminist” constitutes neither an argument nor a legitimate defense of one). But there are also many, many situations I can think of where the (ethical) feminist thing to do is (if it is asked, if it comes up, if it is appropriate) to say “I am a feminist.”

Exactly.

* * *

Finally, since this is my own blog, a point about why I’m a feminist. Partly it’s because I want gender justice. But partly it’s because I don’t think men and boys can ever be free until women and girls are. (This next bit, atypically for me, gets a little personal, so if you don’t want to read that shit this is your exit).

When I was a kid, I could not - really, really could not - “do” masculinity. And because of this, my peers (aided by too many adults who should have known better) taught me to hate myself. It took years, but I was an eager student, and I learned. I used to stand in front of mirrors interrogating my reflection, asking why I couldn’t just be “normal,” beating myself as hard as I could with my tiny balled fists (in retrospect, thank goodness I was a weakling!).

Can you punch yourself, as hard as you’re physically able to do, on your face? I can’t now - I reflexively stop myself. But I did it back then, many times. That’s how well I was taught to hate myself.

I wonder if it’s ridiculous, in my thirties, that I’m still stuck on stuff that happened to me over a quarter-century ago. It often seems ridiculous, to me. But I am stuck there. I’ve often said that I have no memories of my childhood, and to a great extent that’s true. But the truth is, I do remember - vividly, with immediacy, far more clearly than I can remember conversations I had just yesterday - isolated moments of shocking humiliation and self-hatred. Those moments are my primary childhood memories.

I’ve recovered, to a great degree. I’ve come to realize - largely thanks to feminism - that the self-hatred I was taught back then is sexist bullshit. But at another level, I’m not free of it. The self-hatred is still with me, lurking below the surface, at times astounding me with its immensity and urgency. I really don’t know if I’ll ever be free of it.

I’m not saying this to throw a pity-party for myself. Nor am I saying that my experience is worse than what happens to many women in a male-centric society - on the contrary, I realize that my experience of being bullied is negligible compared to the far more extreme abuses so many girls and women survive.

I am just trying to explain that, for me, feminism is not only the movement to liberate women. Feminism for me is not charity work, and is only partly ally work. Feminism is also, selfishly, the movement to liberate myself, the boy that I was, and boys like me who are going through similar experiences all over the world.

I am not a feminist because I was bullied. I am a feminist because I’ve spent years thinking about the issues and examining the evidence, and I’ve become convinced that being a feminist is the only position that makes any damn sense. Feminism is the only movement in the world that has anything at all sensible to say about how gender roles are used as a whip to keep people in their place. But I do think my childhood is one reason that I was drawn to examining these issues in the first place, and one reason I was open to feminism.

There’s an expression so well-worn it’s in danger of becoming a cliche: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then let’s work together.” Cliche or not, that quote encompasses a lot of why I’m a feminist.

The pattern last two days for me has been dominated by making sure I was listening to the radio every hour, on the hour. National radio marks the hour with their six pips, and I listen to the news, I’m waiting for a verdict. I’m not alone; there are other women listening as intently as me. During a meeting today I popped into someone else’s office to listen to the one o’clock news - another woman came in “is there a verdict?”

We’re reading entrails. I got a text message saying “Jury came out to ask judge as question - good sign i reckon’. I agree and the question they asked was a good one. Each hour the jury’s deliberations stretch on (they’ve spent 8 hours yesterday, and 12 hours today) I wonder if it’s a good sign. “At least someone believes Louise Nicholas” I say, “I hope they stay staunch” whoever I happen to be talking to at the moment replies.

We listen and wait and worry because we believe Louise Nicholas.

We believe Louise Nicholas, because we can imagine being her, because we’re terrifying of going through what she went through.

She was 18 when she moved to Rotorua, 18 and tiny. They were police officers, strong men, and there were three of them. They came and raped her. They raped her in her house. They drove her to one their houses, and raped her there. She weighed 48 kilos (106 pounds), she had no chance of fighting back agains the three of them and they gang raped her.

She wouldn’t have felt safe anywhere, she would have lived in terror. Rotorua is not a big town, she couldn’t escape. What was she supposed to do? She was being raped by the police; who was she supposed to go to? She was 18, and new to town, one of them was a friend of her brother, what supported networks was she supposed to use to stop it? Who was she supposed to turn to? What else could she have done?

Now they’re saying she didn’t act like a rape victim should. The defence lawyers say that the fact that she wore a white muslin dress again, after police officers raped her with a baton while she was wearing it, shows that she wasn’t raped. The fact that someone remembered her showing a garter to one of the rapists, shows she wasn’t raped.

We listen, wait and hope. Hope for Louise Nicholas to get the guilty verdict she’s been fighting for, but not just for Louise Nicholas. For all the other women these men might have raped. All the other women who have been gang raped, from Kaitaia to Bluff.

Also posted on my blog

I would think that Alec Baldwin using macho homophobic baiting to insult a right-winger would be the grossest thing I’d read from a male lefty celebrity today:

SEAN HANNITY: You don’t have the courage to answer questions.

ALEC BALDWIN: And what are you gonna do? And what are you going to do about it, Sean Hannity. If I come on your program, what are you going to do?

MARK LEVIN: He’s going to show that you have a two digit IQ - that’s what he’s gonna do. [...]

BALDWIN: And who’s that - who’s your little cabin boy there with you.

LEVIN: I’m not a cabin boy, butt-boy.

BALDWIN: What are you doing there, cabin boy? … I now dub you Sean Hannity’s cabin boy.

Gee, thank goodness we have such articulate, smart lefty celebs to make our case for us, right?

Anyhow, I would have thought that would be the most annoying example of male lefty macho hateful bullshit I’d encounter today. But that’s because I hadn’t counted on Sean Penn weighing in on his funny doll of a famous right-wing woman:

Hollywood activist SEAN PENN has a plastic doll of conservative US columnist ANN COULTER that he likes to abuse when angry. The Oscar-winner actor has hated Coulter ever since she blacklisted his director father LEO PENN in her book TREASON. And he takes out his frustrations with Coulter, who is a best-selling author, lawyer and television pundit, on the Barble-like doll. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Penn reveals, “We violate her. There are cigarette burns in some funny places.

A great actor, but still an asshat.

Y’all know the drill, right?

BlackProf: One Response To The Attack On Diversity In Law School Hiring
A rebuttal to the “everyone knows whites are more qualified to be hired” letter a professor at Rutgers-Camden Law School wrote. See also The Debate Link, which compares c.v.s.

Definition: Street Harassment & Misogyny

Definition: “Male, Female, or Other” Causes Gender-Panic

I’ve run across so many articles which talk about the feminist agenda of demolishing gender roles, establishing gender and sex as a continuum, etc, etc, and, without fail, these articles simply cite that as if it’s some self-evident flaw in feminist reasoning.

Family of African Musician Finally Wins “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” Royalties
Although not before one of the siblings died because she had AIDS and the family couldn’t afford to buy medication. I remember reading about this case in Rolling Stone many years ago; I’m glad they’re finally getting a little bit of the money due to them.

One Tenacious Baby Mama: Pregnancy, Pap Smear and Me

These pictures of my pap examination are about a month and a half old. [...] I like them because they don’t romanticize my cunt and surrounding area. One of the things this deviant mama has found so problematic about most of porn I’ve seen is the emphasis on rendering female genitals into something to be consumed (er, pardon the pun), something air brushed, unreal, clipped and polished.

Make Your Own Tahoe Commerical
Chevy has a “make your own Chevy commercial” feature. See this one before they wise up and remove it from their site.

Broadsheet: Not one pro-life group in the US supports the use of birth control

At best, such groups, like the National Right to Life Committee, take no position on the question. At worst, pro-life groups have been actively working to redescribe traditional means of birth control, such as the pill, as “abortifacients,” and have been fighting state laws mandating insurance coverage for birth control by falsely saying they fund abortions. [Curtsy: Bitch PhD.]

Garance Franke-Ruta: The New York Times’ Women Problem

A Prospect examination of the authors published between late February 2004 and late February 2006 found that 90 percent of writers — including staff columnists — who discussed abortion on the Times op-ed page over the past two years were male. These men wrote 83 percent of the op-eds that mentioned abortion.

Even more surprising, more op-eds that mentioned abortion in the Times were written by pro-life men than by women of any belief system. [Curtsy: Feministe.]

Majikthise: Regarding Pro-Male Affirmative Action In College Admissions

Bitch|Lab: Good Advice From Gloria Yamato For Whites Who Want To Be Anti-Racist

LA Times: Abortion Lessons From Latin America

Lesson 1: Outlawing abortion does not stop women from having them. [...] I have spoken to women who used knives, knitting needles, rubber tubes, even pieces of wood to pry open their uteruses. Some got access to abortive medicines that in theory lower the possibility of direct infection but that caused serious complications when they took them without medical assistance. Affluent women suffered fewer traumatic ordeals, often traveling to the U.S. for the procedure or sneaking off to upscale private Latin America clinics where, on paper, they had surgery for appendicitis. [Curtsy: Feministe.]

Written World: Marriage Counseling, Superhero Style

Persephone’s Box: Cultural Appropriation and the Blessingway
Interesting essay in which the (white) author describes her participation in a sweat lodge ritual.

Womens Enews: South Dakota Ban Drives Media Out of Hiding
Interesting overview of media coverage of abortion post-South Dakota.

Reuters: Mexican Rape Victims Often Denied Right To Abortion
In theory, Mexico’s broad abortion ban makes an exception for survivors of rape. In reality, the system finds ways to block access to abortion, even in cases of rape.

AP: World Abortion Trend The Opposite Of US

Over the past 10 years, more than a dozen countries have made it easier to get abortions [...] The trend contrasts sharply with the United States, where this week South Dakota’s governor signed legislation that would ban most abortions in the state.

The World Health Organization says 19 million women _ nearly all in the developing world _ have “unsafe” abortions each year, done by someone unskilled or in a place with poor medical standards. Of them, 600,000 die from complications.

Reclusive Leftist: Kristin Davis is Fat? Whaaaa?

Appletree: Photos Show Hitler’s Gift for Empathy (Or Sociopathic Mirroring)
Curtsy: Reclusive Leftist

Darleen’s Place: Debate in Comments About “Partial Birth” Abortion Ban
I’m debating the blogger, who is pro-choice for early abortions but favors banning intact D&X abortions, in her comments. It’s not an especially great debate or anything, I’m just posting it here so I don’t lose the link.

Above: Photo from a vigil held outside the house where the rape took place.

* If you want to follow this story, the blog to read is Justice 4 Two Sisters.

* 15 of the lacrosse team members have been arrested before - mostly minor stuff, like drinking.

* Duke has canceled all lacrosse games until there is a “clearer resolution.”

* From the blog Life In The Chocolate City:

One of the young ladies was held down, beaten, choked, raped and sodomized. The police reports say that in the house they found her fingernails, her make-up bag and her cellphone. This is certainly the customary items a woman leaves behind after entertaining a group of athletes right? It’s typical for a white guy to holler out “Thank your grandpa for my cotton shirt” while getting a lapdance from a Black woman right? Of course it isn’t. [...]

Let’s just imagine that this assault took place at a predominately Black university and the victims were white, this would’ve been front page national news. [...] It seems to me that this story has remained local to the North Carolina area. Their media is covering the story completely, but what about the rest of the nation. You can’t tell me that this isn’t newsworthy. It sure is newsworthy to African-Americans.

He’s right.

And regarding the details of the rape: These are mainstream, clean-cut, normal young American men. But look at the miles-deep reservoirs of woman-loathing and Black-loathing they were carrying around, just waiting for the right (wrong) situation.

Are all men like this? God no. But too many are - too many for it to be called abnormal. Cultural masculinity is a sickness that can turn men into monsters, and men in college sports are exposed to more of this virulent stuff than anyone. Do I excuse these rapists? No, of course not - they are responsible for what they’ve done, and I fervently hope they rot behind bars. But until our culture completely changes the way we construct masculinity, boys with their heart set on demonstrating their masculinity to their friends/teammates/frat brothers/whatever are going to keep on committing gang rapes.

Porn spam I routinely delete from comments sometimes uses phrases like “teen rape” and “black bitch gets raped” for a sales pitch. Why do they think they’ll make money with ads like that? Presumably, because they are making money with ads like that. Ordinary men, drawing on their own internal woman-loathing and Black-loathing, are plunking down money to masturbate to porn labeled “black bitch gets raped.” How awful is a culture in which that’s seen as no big deal?

Anyhow, more posts and articles worth reading:

Blackfeminism.org

I’ll put the race issue aside. This is also the result of universities allowing a negative athlete culture. More than a few studies have shown that athletes and frat boys are more likely to rape than other men, in part because all-male environments encourage aggressive and violent displays of manhood.

Q Grrl: Background From The Local Community

The town is pissed. Royally. And we’ve been pissed at the lacrosse team players and coach for the last ten years … even though the players obviously rotate out after 4 years. The team is notorious for it’s disruptive behavior in the neighborhoods around Duke. I lived across from the main lacrosse house for 7 years … and I can no longer count my calls to 911. In fact, a call I made a few years back resulted in 67 citations for underage drinking … the coach didn’t bat an eye. Similarly, I know that at one point, campus women were aware of sexual assault and harassment by lacrosse players. The house they lived in was repeatedly toilet papered … and once, upon seeing the black-clad women tp-ing the house I asked why. Their reply: to warn other undergraduate women that a woman had been assualted while at a lacrosse party.

Pinko Feminist Hellcat: Race, Entitlement and Rape

Don’t doubt for a minute that these women will be slut-baited. We already know what happens to women who are deemed sexual–they are sluts, whores, asking for it. They are suddenly trying to recapture lost virute. They are golddiggers trying to get cash on a false rape charge. Maybe they’ll be deemed crazy and therefore uncredible. Maybe the defense will decide that they really, really need their medical records and–ooops!–just release them accidentally on purpose. It’s happened before.

David Wright: Message to Duke Lacrosse Players

There are only two possibilities I see here. Either you come forward with the truth that reveals none of the criminal allegations actually happened or you come forward with the truth that at least with respect to some of your teammates, some or all of the allegations are true. To refuse to come forward with either version is to take the absolute worst course of action. If indeed that girl was raped, she is certainly some father’s little girl, and she could be some brother’s sister. If she was your sister, would you refuse to come forward with the truth to protect the “code” among your teammates?

(See David’s other posts on the subject, here and here).

Ruth Sheehan: Team’s Silence Is Sickening

Jill Hopman: Duke’s Lacrosse Players Still Defiantly Partying

Reflections of a Redhead: Break Room Conversation
Wouldn’t it be great to live in a country which had gotten beyond “well she deserved it” attitudes?

Dreams Into Lightning Pulls Together A Lot Of Interesting Connections

The iPinions Journal discusses how media coverage varies according to race.

Sporlitics

Lacrosse has always been chock-full of the same types that later commit the white-collar crimes like Enron: rich, white kids whose only possession greater than their wealth is their cockiness and general sense of untouchability. The only difference between them and what they will become thirty years down the road is a total misunderstanding of consequences, a dangerous ingredient.

* * *

Backwards Assholes Read Newspaper Websites
The readers’ comments at the News Observer blog are pretty appalling. Some examples:

These men have been hanged in the court of public opinion, justice and liberty be damned. Witch hunts in days of yore are referenced by feminazis as examples of historical misogony. They don’t question their own actions however when they are the ones hunting for punishment.

Yes, because getting angry and demanding an investigation is exactly the same thing as burning innocent people to death.

But what do I know, I’m still assuming that if 3 actually are guilty, forty some other guys aren’t. But that’s crazy, men are evil, right?

I don’t think that men who watch and do nothing as three of their buddies drag an unwilling woman into a bathroom are innocent. I’m not sure what exactly it is that they’re guilty of, but I sure hope a courtroom soon finds out.

Praising protestors (who may have in fact been trespassing) for supporting a woman who may very well have been breaking the law (in working for an escort service) due to her allegations that have NOT been proven to be true is shoddy writing, no matter if the writer is a reporter or a columnist.

Yes, trespassing; that’s what we should be focusing on here. That, and laws broken by the victim.

In an earlier post, Rachel wrote:

I also have to admit I don’t like the term people of color, and I used it reluctantly. (I also reluctantly use the terms biracial, Black, White, Asian American, Latino, and African American.) My problem with that term is threefold. First, the term is completely power neutral, and second it reinforces the racial language of color. I also keep thinking: are there people without color? Then, I wonder if the term reinforces the normativity of Whiteness and the notion that Whites are somehow raceless.

Nubian at Blac(k)academic has written a response to Rachel’s post, focusing mostly on the above passage. Rather than trying to find a representative passage to quote, let me encourage “Alas” readers to head on over to Nubian’s blog, and read/participate in the very interesting discussion there (which includes a response to Nubian from Rachel).

Dollars and Sense has a terrific interview with Lani Guinier (via Blackfeminism), questioning how the idea of “merit” has been applied in law school admissions. Here’s a sample, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

Relying on things like the LSAT allowed law school officials to say they were determining admission based on merit. So several colleagues told me to look at the LSAT scores because they were confident that I might find something to explain the significant differences in performance. But we found that, surprisingly, the LSAT was actually a very poor predictor of performance for both men and women, that this “objective” marker which determined who could even gain access was actually not accomplishing its ostensible mandate.

I then became interested in studying meritocracy because of the attacks poor and working class whites were waging against Affirmative Action. People were arguing that they were rejected from positions because less qualified people of color were taking their spots. I began to question what determines who is qualified. Then, the more research I did, the more I discovered that these so-called markers of merit did not actually correlate with future performance in college but rather correlated more with an applicant’s parents’ and even grandparents’ wealth. Schools were substituting markers of wealth for merit. [...]

RP: Can you talk about the Harvard and Michigan studies?

LG: Harvard University did a study based on thirty Harvard graduates over a thirty-year period. They wanted to know which students were most likely to exemplify the things that Harvard values most: doing well financially, having a satisfying career and contributing to society (especially in the form of donating to Harvard). The two variables that most predicted which students would achieve these criteria were low SAT scores and a blue-collar background.

That study was followed by one at the University of Michigan Law School that found that those most likely to do well financially, maintain a satisfying career, and contribute to society, were black and Latino students who were admitted pursuant to Affirmative Action. Conversely, those with the highest LSAT scores were the least likely to mentor younger attorneys, do pro-bono work, sit on community boards, etc.

So, the use of these so called “measures of merit” like standardized tests is backfiring on our institutions of higher learning and blocking the road to a more democratic society.

Interesting stuff.

I am making it my personal mission to get the word out this terrible story. 46 members of the Duke Lacrosse team are taking DNA tests after some of the players were accused of gang raping a woman who they invited to be a dancer at a party. I also don’t want people to think about this story as a gender issue, but as incident that reveals how racism, sexism, and classism intersected to make this young woman particularly vulnerable to a sexual assault. If you read this report from ABC News you will hear very little about race. However, if you this story you get a better idea of what most likely went on. A group of young wealthy White men felt that it was ok to assault this woman, raping her and yelling racial slurs at her. This should be blowing up in the blogosphere folks. This is also one of those “if this had happen to a White woman would we have already heard about it” stories.

Here’s what the local paper said happened,

The woman who says she was raped last week by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team thought she would be dancing for five men at a bachelor party, she said Friday. But when she arrived that night, she found herself surrounded by more than 40.

Just moments after she and another exotic dancer started to perform, she said, men in the house started barking racial slurs. The two women, both black, stopped dancing.

“We started to cry,” she said. “We were so scared.”

The women subsequently left the party, but decided to come back after one of the men apologized. When the women went back into the party, “Two males then pulled the victim into a bathroom as three men sexually assaulted her for an approximate 30-minute time period, according to the warrant,” according to the student newspaper

The woman was able to get away and call the police, and she was subsequently admitted to the hospital. When the police came to the house to investigate, the men refused to cooperate, and now the police are testing 46 out of 47 of the men on the team ( I saw one report saying that the victim’s cell phone, purse, and an acrylic fingernail were found at the house when they finally got in.). I understand that these young men are legally innocent until proven guilty, but the evidence in this case seems very strong.

On a more positive note, the student paper is reporting that about 250 students and community members have been protesting for 3 days outside of the house where the incident happened. It seems that the house has receive complaints from neighbors in the past.

The young woman is a student at North Carolina Central University (a historically Black University), and she is the mother of two. She was working for the escort service as a dancer to support her family and pay for college.

The race/class/gender dynamics of this whole case are really scary, and they reveal a great deal about our power structure in this country. This young woman ended up in the vulnerable position of being a sex worker because she was trying to better her family and her education. The two young women left the party after the racial slurs began and they feared for their safety, but I can’t help wondering if they were thinking about how they were going to pay their bills or feed their kids when they went back in, something most of these young men don’t even have to think about. I wonder if these guys were thinking about how much power they had over this young women when they yelled racist slurs and when they physically and sexually assault this women? I also wonder if those guys who remained silent were more concerned about protecting their buddies than stopping this terrible assault. How much do they think this woman’s life is worth?

One of the people quoted in the student paper said that the school spends so much time protecting students from the people in the community, but in this case clearly shows how the people in the community also need to be protected from the students.

I encourage people to put up the story on their blogs, and put pressure on the University to investigate the team and level some sort of disciplinary actions, and of course this legal system also needs to do its part to put these men behind bars. I think one way people in the blogosphere may be able to help, in addition to agitating for the full force of the law to come down on these men, is by setting up some sort of fund to help this young woman pay for college (if anybody knows how this can be done). (Thanks to Baft Rage for the heads up on this.)

Also posted at Rachels Tavern

One of the arguments people often make about gender is “I had a kid, and I never treated him/her at all differently because of her/his sex, and yet look how little Brad loves playing with toy guns/little Janet loves wearing dresses!” This argument was even used by soon-to-be-former Harvard President Larry Summers in his famous (or infamous) 2005 speech:

So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something.

I’m sure that there are some little girls who are totally femme, and some little boys who are totally butch. But my bet is that most kids fall somewhere in between, and adults then pick out from a range of available traits to illustrate whatever gender storyline they’re already inclined to believe in.

Sydney’s Traits That Prove Girlhood is Innate
* Instinctive attraction to “my little ponies.”
* Adorably affectionate with baby sister - she strokes Maddox’s cheek, kisses her head, and so on.
* Likes mermaids and barbies (and mermaid barbies).
* Likes Dora.
* Physically very pretty.
* Like to cuddle.
* No interest in trucks at all.
* Likes having her nails painted.

Sydney’s Traits That Prove Boyhood is Innate
* Likes dinosaurs. Likes waving them in the air and saying “grrr!”
* Loves pirates. In Sydney’s view, pirates are the pinnacle of all culture. Yaar!
* Loves being roughhoused by Daddy.
* If there’s a high place or a dangerous perch, Sydney is there.
* Favorite movie: Monsters, Inc.
* Mad dashes for freedom and independence in supermarket.
* Pretends that a ruler is a weapon (a sword).
* Mostly indifferent to clothing, dresses, etc. But she does like shoes - especially bright-colored high-top sneakers.

At two and a half, Sydney is already a complex person, and she gets more so every day. If she had parents who were interested in gender-typing her (which she doesn’t), there’d be enough evidence points to support a “girls are just naturally girlish” argument. But if she were a boy, but otherwise exactly the same in personality, there’d also be plenty to support a “boys are just naturally boyish” argument.

I’m sure that there are girls who are all girl, and boys who are all boys. But I think most girls and boys - like most of humanity - lives somewhere in the enormous overlapping middle. A lot of the time, when adults look at little kids, they just see a mirror reflecting back their own gender beliefs.

Amanda of Pandagon wants folks to know that Pandagon is down due to too many hits (a victim of her own success!), but she’s working on it and hopes to be back online soon.

I wanted to write a little bit more about my position on immigration, because I think it’s an issue that doesn’t receive enough attention.

One commenter on my post wrote:

But I have been surprised that many of the people that are vehemently against corporations outsourcing jobs to India and China have no problem with domestic outsourcing to illegal immigrants driving down wages for many Americans.

This sort of rhetoric on immigration is really dangerous, because it drives a wedge between those with work permits and illegal immigrants, and it’s wrong. The reason illegal immigration can drive down wages and conditions has nothing to do with the fact that people come from some country with browner skin, in fact it has nothing to do with the immigrants at all, it’s because the employers use the power they have over illegal immigrants. If all illegal immigrants were allowed to work legally then their wages and conditions would go up, because they could utilise labour legislation, and it would be easier to organise.

I don’t actually care about American jobs any more than New Zealand jobs, or Chinese jobs and Indian jobs. No borders isn’t just rhetoric about immigration - it has to be a commitment not to privilege one group of workers above another.

I also oppose tarriff reduction regimes for different reasons than this commenters. While the arguments about relationships between tarriff changes in the first world and job losses (and not just in the first world, but that’s a longer post) are important. The real reason I oppose tarriff reductions is that they give companies more power. The more free companies are to move around, the more they can leverage from different localities to move where they are. Improved transport has meant that manufacturing can reasonably easily be moved from one location to another. This has given manufacturers the power to leverage zones where no labour legislation, or most other forms of legislation, apply to them. It’s this power, not the job losses, that I object to.

I don’t actually believe that ‘no borders’ could be achieved under capitalism, neither could women’s liberation, but steps in that direction are worth fighting for.

Also posted on My blog.

The jury in the Louise Nicholas trial will probably retire tomorrow or the next day. The Crown has complete its summing up, all that is left is for the defence lawyers to spend a day or so calling Louise Nicholas a liar and a slut, and say that she didn’t behave in the way someone who has been raped should behave.

I’ve been really disturbed by the coverage. Five Crown witnesses were supressed, but most media haven’t mentioned this fact. This gives a false picture of the trial, although not as false as the one given by the descriptions of Clint Rickards, assistant police commissioner, and one of the accused rapists. The focus on his appearance, talking about how authorative he was, as if that says something about whether or not he is a rapist (well actually I think it possibly does, but not in his defence). The Dominion Post went even further:

You can’t see the weighty pounamu pendant that hangs around his neck. Just the shoulders of his crisp white shirt and the tight knot of his blue-green tie rise out of the dock. There is the occasional glimpse of a silver watch peeking out from beneath a shirt cuff and the jagged tips of the tattoos that adorn his right arm.

I’m scared about the out-come, I will be so upset, so angry, if these men are let off because of their power. But I do hold out hope. The jury convicted in another historical rape trial, where I was convinced they were going to let the off. All it takes is one person that sees that the kind of man who wears his police uniform to court, to show his power and intimidate people, is the kind of man who would use the power and intimidation that comes from being a police officer to get what he wants.

Also posted on my blog

Interesting finding from the latest Pew poll (curtsy: (liberal) Girl Next Door):

Gay marriage remains a divisive issue, with 51 percent opposing it, the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found. But almost two-thirds, 63 percent, opposed gay marriage in February 2004.

“Most Americans still oppose gay marriage, but the levels of opposition are down and the number of strong opponents are down,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. [...]

The number of people who say they strongly oppose gay marriage has dropped from 42 percent in early 2004 to 28 percent now. Strong opposition has dropped sharply among senior citizens and Republicans.

These new results are pretty similar to the results from July 2003 - before the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s Goodridge decision. Post-Goodridge, opposition to SSM jumped way up (and support for SSM dropped), and has only now receeded to 2003 levels. So the question is, will the numbers keep on moving in the pro-SSM direction, or have we just returned to the “norm” of pre-Goodridge level support?

Speaking of polls, last year the anti-SSM organization IMAPP triumphantly pointed out that support for same-sex marriage among college freshman had dropped. From the front page of their report (pdf link):

Most strikingly , a recent UCLA poll showed support for gay marriage dropping among college students. Between 2003 and 2004 the proportion of college freshman who support gay marriage dropped almost 3 percentage points, from 59.4 percent to 56.7 percent, or down to about the level of support for SSM last recorded in 2000. This is the first recorded drop in support for same-sex marriage since the question was first asked in 1997.

They can say that because they’re a right-wing think tank. If the report had been published in a peer-reviewed journal, the peer reviewers would have forced them to acknowlege the obvious: When a long-standing trend reverses itself by a tiny amount for a single year, there’s a good chance that what’s going on is statistical noise (the possibility isn’t even mentioned in the IMAPP paper).

This year’s UCLA poll shows an upward trend compared to last year - 58%. I don’t think these tiny year-to-year fluctuations mean anything - but if IMAPP were to be consistant, they’d have to report this year’s slight rise with the same prominance they reported last year’s slight decline.

Joshua Baker, the author of the IMAPP report, says he plans to issue an updated report later this year. My bet is that now that the trend isn’t in the direction he’d favor, he’ll mention what he should have pointed out last year - which is that year-to-year fluctuations might be meaningless.

Another point not mentioned in IMAPP’s report: When religious colleges are excluded from the sample, support for same-sex marriage moves up from 58% to 65%. I emailed this finding to Professor Baker, so he can include it in this year’s report.

Los Angeles saw one of it’s biggest protests ever yesterday when between half a million and a million people marched against anti-immigration laws. The laws would make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant, and calls for walls to be built along the border. I understand they’re due to be debated in the Senate on Tuesday.

The mobilisation against this legislation all over America exceeded media expectations (although the organisers seem to have known how important it was to people). I’d like to pay tribute to everyone who atteneded those protests, and particularly those who put in the organising work to make it happen.

I think it’s easy to get complacent about this issue in New Zealand, to assume that just because it’s difficult for illegal immigrants to get here, immigration is less of an important political issue here. We get the occasional high profile refugee case. The most famouse is Ahmed Zaoui, an Algerian who was detained for a number of years, after he was given refugee status, because the SIS didn’t like him. Or when the government sedated a 16 year old girl in order to deport her back to Sri Lanka where she had been repeatedly raped by her family and feared the repercussions (she has since been given refugee status, and is going to Canada). But although dawn raids to get rid of illegal immigrants still happen, more people probably know the band than the practice.

Businesses exploit illegal immigrants, and it is the immigrants who are punished if the businesses are caught. Last year one bakery was caught paying one of their employee’s below the minimum wage and not providing him with holidays for 8 years. He was deported, they were fined $2,000. Employers have huge amounts of power over illegal immigrants, and the only way to change that is to say that those workers should be entitled to live here under the same conditions as everyone else.

I think it’s fantastic that it is a people’s issue in America, although I imagine it’s not for good reasons. My sister met a US border guard at a party (he had brought his border guard badge with him to New Zealand, which was probably the first sign of trouble), he said his job was to shoot Mexicans.

In New Zealand at the moment, the only people who talk about immigration, are people who want it restricted, or businesses who want workers. It’s obviously different in America, you don’t get hundreds of thousands of people on the streets to promote business interests. I think it’s really important to draw a line between people who support a more open immigration policy to suit the needs with business, are confused with people who think that immigration policy should suit the needs of people (so there should be no limits on immigraton)From the Guardian:

Bush sides with business leaders who want to let some of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants stay in the country and work for a set period of time. Others, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, say national security concerns should drive immigration reform.

By making immigration a tap that gets turned on and off to suit the labour market, employers can try and drive down wages and conditions by treating workers in other countries as a reserve army of labour.

So all power to the protesters, and I’m sure they’ll continue to draw a line between those who put people first, and those who put business first, as well as fighting the racist fucks who put up legislation like that up in the first place.

If you live in America and didn’t make those protests you get another chance, there’s a national day of action on April 10, you can find out more at the immigrant solidarity network.

Also posted on my blog

As usual, feel free to post anything you’d like in the comments, including links to your own stuff.

Angry For a Reason: The Eleventh Carnival of Feminists!
Hooray!

Blac(k)ademic: April 22nd is Blog Against Heteronormativity Day!
Go and leave a comment if you’d like to participate.

UPDATE: And check out Twisty’s comments, too. “Not coincidentally…because I am against practically everything…I am totally against heteronormativity. Heteronormative againstness oozes from my every pore.”

Rad Geek: Today is the 95th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
(For a stunning mural depiction, see Pen-Elayne).

Written World: Interesting Discussion of Sexism and Wonder Woman
When Ragnell posted the announcement for the 12th Carnival of Feminists, she illustrated it with a drawing of Wonder Woman and some other residents of Paradise Island (she scanned the image from a DC comic book). The unplanned-for result was a discussion of how women are presented for the male gaze in mainstream comics.

Activists Demand That “American Doll” Line Add Asian Characters

With its characteristic emphasis both on diversity and independent female role models, American Girl - which is owned by Mattel - added Addy, an African American doll from the Civil War era, to its historical collection in 1993. Josefina, a Mexican American doll from the early 1800s, appeared in 1997, followed by Kaya, an American Indian doll from the 1700s, in 2002. [...]

But where’s the Chinese American doll with the story line set in San Francisco at the turn of the century? Or the Japanese American doll? Or the Vietnamese American doll? [Curtsy: Angry Asian Man]

Findlaw: The Reality of Polygamy
Marci Hamilton discusses the real-world misogyny, child abuse and poverty that Big Love de-emphasizes.

Audio File: A Conversation Between damali ayo and Tim Wise
Interesting conversation between two anti-racism activists (one black, one white). I thought Wise’s point about the race division in American elections - that racial voting patterns explain much more than red state vs. blue state - was spot-on. Curtsy: Blac(k)ademic.

Den of the Biting Beaver: Rape By The Numbers
How many rapes do there have to be before our society commits to addressing the problem?

VeganKid: I Wanna Dance Naked
VeganKid is thrilled by a photo of fat women dancing - and then distressed by the context in which it was presented. Great post.

Mamita Mala: Racism at Parent Teacher Conferences

“Your son should be reading at B level and he’s reading at A level. You don’t speak English so obviously no one can sit down and read the books I send home every Monday. If no one can help him read in English then I don’t know why I should bother sending the books home with your son who is going to have to repeat kindergarten anyway”. The teacher began and then looked at me to translate.

Angry For A Reason: Paying Rent With Sex

FBI: One In Three Missing and Kidnapped Children Is Black
That’s hugely disproportionate, and disturbing. And it makes the media’s preference for focusing on missing white children, always inexcusable, even more appalling.

Professor Kim: Questions Journalists Should (But Don’t) Ask Opponents Of Hate Crime Laws

Written World: Men With Breasts
A discussion of (generally sexist) comic book fans complaining that some female superheroes are “men with breasts.” One thing I found odd about this post was the apparently unquestioned assumption that it is always a bad thing if you can’t tell a character’s gender from the way they act; but there really is a ton of overlap between how women and men behave, and not everyone exhibits gender-typed behaviors.

The Headpiece For The Staff Of Ra: Answers to 20 Questions For Pro-Choice People
Noumena answers a challenge issued by a pro-forced-childbirth ethicist.

Diary of a Goldfish: Sexism and Disablism

Unfortunately, the effects of being a little less of a man or a woman in a sexist society is not to free you from the constraints of gender, but to reduce your value as an individual. Gender remains so important in our lives that if you do not fulfil your assigned gender role, you are a little less of a person.

Ilyka Damon: What Do You Think Feminism Is?
Interesting discussion in the comments.

Ilyka Damon: Blogging Against The Strawfeminists
A series of posts, likely to be of interest to “Alas” readers, refuting and discussing the various strawfeminists conservatives like to attack. The “main entrance” (above link) is hilarious and a must-see intro, but here’s a different link if you want to get right to the strawfeminist posts.

Feministe: 90 African Women Die Every Day From Unsafe Abortions
Is there any example, anywhere, of “pro-lifers” attempting to do something about this tragedy they’ve caused?

Legal Affairs: Debating No-Fault Divorce
The pro-no-fault side wins by a large margin, at least in this debate. Curtsy: Family Scholars Blog.

Bitch | Lab: What Does “The Personal Is Political” Mean, And How Is It Misused?

Online Film Critics Society: The Top 100 Overlooked Films Of The 1990s
The most surprising entry? “Babe: Pig In The City.” Curtsy: The Countess.

Doctor Science Knows: Refuting “pro-life” arguments against contraception

Persephones Box: Little Boy in a Skirt (Adventures in Feminist Child Rearing)
I love this anecdote, although it has a sad ending.

Red State Feminist: Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) Critiqued

Grand Mental Station: Pro-lifers Create Nude Statue of Brittney Spears Giving Birth
No, really. Satire may not be dead, but it’s becoming pointless. For more comments, see Women of Color Blog and A Womb of Her Own.

Chris Uggen: Does it seem strange that students convicted of rape remain eligible for federal financial aid but students convicted of misdemeanor drug possession are ineligible?

Bad Feminist: Catholics, Please Get Out Your Writing Stationary
“The Arlington, Virginia Catholic diocese has lifted its ban on girls and women serving as altar servers, leaving Lincoln, Nebraska the only diocese in the country to continue the prohibition.” Bad Feminist is trying to start a letter-writing campaign to encourage the Lincoln diocese to mend its ways.

Feminist Law Professors: Women Should Be In Politics Because They’re The Good Gender
The Democrats try to spin sexism in their favor, or something. I was reminded of how some suffragettes made similar appeals to women as the morally pure, uncorrupted gender, as an argument in favor of letting women vote.

See Culturekitchen for more comments on this story.

Rad Geek: More on Slavery Apologists

Figleaf’s Real Adult Sex: Why Statuatory Rape of a Willing 14-Year-Old Boy is Wrong

From Indianz.com (curtsy: One Tenacious Baby Mama), one reaction to South Dakota’s sweeping abortion ban:

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

My first reaction was: How awesome is that?

But at the same time, it’s too easy to go “wow, that’s great” and not give it any further thought. For a more thoughtful take, read this post from Brownfemipower, criticizing how white feminists too-often discuss race-related stories:

But almost *none* even question why there isn’t *already* an abortion clinic on Pine Ridge. Almost *none* of these bloggers understand that Native peoples are serviced by tribal hospitals–and tribal hospitals have been forbidden by Federal law to give abortions since the 1980’s.

They also don’t know that Native women are raped indiscriminately by white men who know they can’t be tried under tribal laws, Native domestic violence shelters are forbidden from mentioning colonization as a reason for the high rates of domestic violence in Native country, and that Pine Ridge just so happens to be the poorest community in the entire U.S.

(See also Melissa’s comments at A Womb of One’s Own).

An article in Indian Country discusses why this issue is especially important to American Indian women:

”I have very strong opinions of what happened. These are a bunch of white guys determining what a woman should do with her body,” Fire Thunder said.

Fire Thunder was a nurse and has worked with women who were traumatized by rape.

”When a woman is raped and becomes pregnant she does not have the choice of aborting. How many men at the state house have ever been raped?” Fire Thunder asked.

American Indian women will be impacted, if the law takes effect, in greater numbers than any other group. According to national statistics, American Indian women are sexually assaulted at a rate 3.5 times higher than all other racial groups. That means there are seven rapes per 1,000 American Indian women [that statistic is per year, I presume. --Amp].

”It is very important that we have access to safe, legal pregnancy termination services, whether it is emergency contraceptives right after the assault or an abortion service,” said Charon Asetoyer, director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center located on the Yankton Sioux Reservation.

She said her organization gets asked weekly by women for referrals. She added that her organization refers the women to Planned Parenthood.

American Indian women who live in the western part of South Dakota must either travel the few hundred miles to Sioux Falls or to Nebraska, which in both cases becomes expensive.

”This will force women out of the state and would cost more money and more time and a lot of women may not realize they have that option. It increases the trauma for those who have been sexually assaulted,” Asetoyer said.

”It’s this big myth that Native American women don’t terminate pregnancies; they have always terminated pregnancies, do now and will in the future,” she said.

Most of the stories I’ve read make it sound as if Fire Thunder is acting in isolation from the broader pro-choice movement. That’s not true; among other things, she’s on the board of directors of South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, the group running the initiative campaign to repeal the abortion ban. On the other hand, Planned Parenthood doesn’t appear to be entirely on the same page as Fire Thunder; they’ve released a statement thanking Fire Thunder, but also saying “We have no intention of closing our existing clinic in Sioux Falls, nor do we plan to open another clinic at this time.”

For more background information about President Cecilia Fire Thunder and Pine Ridge, check out this post at Wampum, reprinting a brief article from this past December.

If you’d like to donate some money to help support the proposed new Planned Parenthood (or the Oglala Sioux Tribe in general), Bitch PhD has the address. If you’d like to contribute to the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, here’s the info. If you’d like to contribute to the SD Campaign For Healthy Families, click on the image link to the right.

The thing about blogs is they let people talk about whatever they like. So there are an awful lot of blogs out there about women’s experiences. Sometimes I wonder if this could be used for something more. If the barrier between feminist blogging, which is primarily about other women’s lives, and blogging on ‘women’s topics’ where feminist women (and non-feminist women) write about their lives, could be broken down. What would it look like if feminists who were writing about body image issues and reproduction, linked more to personal stories on weight-loss blogs and mother blogs (and yes it’s scary that those are the two female blogging topics that come to mind) and vice-versa. Because I do think that feminist analysis is stronger the more it links to women’s experience, and I think talking about women’s experience can be something more, it can be consciouness raising.

This is in response to the great ‘false advertising’ debate. I’ve read a lot of posts on this issue. I feel like I understand the issues around the role women’s bodies play in a relationship, particularly in middle-class white America, but I think many of those observations would apply outside that specific context (incidentally I’ve also developed a plan, if I am in a relationship with someone who thinks a change in my appearance is ‘false advertising’ I will simply tell a couple of my female friends about it, and they will take care of him).

But while I know more, I’m still feeling really ambivilant about the debate, because I’m not sure it’s what I’d call feminism. In supposedly feminst blogs and comments women have been attacked for feeling like they owe it to their husbands to keep their weight down. From I Blame the Patriarchy

Regarding said ass: Women of some races naturally have asses like that. Women of some races naturally have hair like that too. But the kid’s white, and both hair and butt look bought to me. Also besides, being as they are both staunch supporters of the patriarchy, I assume she’s read the fine print. As soon as her ass goes south, he’ll have (and probably take) the option to find another, younger butt.

I get it, I really do. I understand the frustration, the desire to get angry at a woman for accepting and perpetuating so much shit. When I read this:

My boyfriend, the man I thought I was going to marry, brok up with me after 4.5 years. Because I gained weight. To be fair, it was a significant gain (about 25 pounds).

I wanted to yell at the woman why the fuck are you being fair to a man who leaves you because you’ve gained 11 kilos? You should be dancing Numfar’s dance of joy that you got out. But I don’t think that that helps build anything, except the idea that I think I’m better than her. And I’m not, I have my own issues, and I don’t write about them on my blog, except with eight layers of feminist analysis. But does that just make me less honest than her?

Despite these ugly personal attacks, there were real benefits from reading so many different perspectives on one issue. One of the things that really disturbed me, and showed how good the patriarchy (still don’t like the term) is at colonising our minds, was that we shouldn’t just want to attain beauty standards to catch a mate, we should want them for ourselves. From a comment on I blame the patriarchy

I’ve met women who have “let themselves go” after marriage out of the idea that they already have their man, so they don’t have to try anymore. To them, the idea of putting any kind of effort into themselves was a tool to get a mate, and once they had the mate, they could stop doing those things. I’m not saying that one has to wear make-up, exercise, whatever to be happy, but it disturbs me greatly to think that I should only care about my appearance to trap a man, and once I’ve got him I can just “let myself go.”

A slightly different version of the same thought on Tertia

It doesn’t matter if you are 10, 15 or 50 pounds heavier than you were when you got married; if you take pride in yourself and dress nicely, do your hair, spray some perfume on, wear pretty earrings etc, you will feel nice and you will look nice. And I am sure that is all that most men want. They want us to like ourselves and to be happy. Because they know, the happier we are within ourselves the sexier we will feel, and that can only mean good things for the long suffering husband. A happy wife makes a happy husband.

Unfortunately, I can’t really have a conversation here about what these women have said, I’d be attacking them, attacking what they said. Informal, unsure conversations, where you learn stuff together - it’s easier to do that in person.

Which is a shame, because the analysis I found most interesting came from blogs that would probably identify more as Mommy blogs than feminist blogs.

Moxie seemed afraid that everyone would hate her when she came to I Blame the Patriarchy, but I thought her analysis was really useful.

I’ve been thinking about this topic all day. The notion that a woman owes it to her husband or her relationship to keep her body thin (or whatever way the culture decides is beautiful–I’m sure there are women in Africa who feel pressure to stay fat) is part of the truth that when a woman gets married her body no longer belongs to her, but instead is the property of and a symbol of the marital unit.

It’s the woman’s responsibility to get and stay pregnant. Even if she gets pregnant easily, she’s the one who takes the entire physical hit of the pregnancy. Heartburn, acne, sciatica, backache, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, PSD, tendonitis, skin tags, stretch marks, insomnia, swelling. And the labor and delivery is a horror, featuring pain and often cutting or tearing, even when it’s relatively easy. Even if a woman loses all the pregnancy weight, her body is never the same. She sacrifices her body for the family unit.

She goes on to explore what happens if a woman can’t conceive and how this changes as the baby gets older. It’s a really good point, and so much more of what so many other writers say makes more sense when it’s put in this context.

I’ve been reading Jody from Raising WEG for a while, I love her analysis and her writing (and freak out at the very thought of triplets).

As Moxie points out far more eloquently than I could, stress and our mental responses to stress affect our eating habits, too. And exercise that comes naturally to single people gets very hard for parents to find. And I’ll also point out that I don’t believe we are our bodies, and that there’s a difference between living well in the body you have, and trying to make your body into something it was, or should be, so that it looks better to other people. It’s been my experience that it’s not any more work to learn to love your body as it becomes.

[....]

Your body isn’t your self. Your relationship with food isn’t your relationship with your body. There are many ways to be attractive, and they don’t remain static over time. And the thinner women in our neighborhood? I’m pretty sure at least two of them are anorexic. Anything is better than an eating disorder.

I’m going to end with my favourite story. The one that makes me think that maybe this sort of conversation is worthwhile. Maybe it will give women strength, and show them that they are not alone. This is Jen Creer from inkstains

The reason I thought this is because my husband clearly thought differently about me when I was thin and then when I had gained weight in my marriage. One year, when we had two small children, he started running and playing tennis and racquetball and lifting weights. He told me finally that he couldn’t sit around and become a fat slob like me. He said, “No man can respect a man with a fat wife. If you don’t lose the weight, I will leave. If you gain more weight, I will leave.”

I will never forget that conversation. We were sitting in the bathroom at two o’clock in the morning. I was sitting on the lid of the toilet, and he was sitting next to the tub. Our sixteen-month son was sitting in the steamy tub, suffering from the croup. Our four-year-old son was asleep in one bedroom, and our three-week old baby was asleep in another.

Yes, that’s right. I was three-weeks postpartum when my husband said those words to me. And the time that he chose to get back into shape? Was when I was pregnant with his third child. I had a total of three C-sections, and I was not even allowed to pick up our middle child, let alone exercise when he sat and said the coldest words I’ve ever heard from someone who was supposed to love me more than anyone.

Ok that’s not happy, but her next sentance was:

That was the night I stopped loving him

There’s more to the story. Awful horrible stuff that makes me furious, but three years later she did leave him.

I do think bringing together different women’s experiences of the same problem can be helpful. I even think this debate is. But without trust, without sisterhood (with all the problems that brings), I’m not sure this is building anything much. I’m worried that it’s just making ‘feminists’ another group of women with special interests and experiences.

Also posted on my blog.

So I was doing some web surfing which I tend to do nightly, or at least when the kidlets and life in general allows for it. Some masochistic part of liberal me keeps surfing on over to DailyKOS, which I’ve done for several years now, and it never ceases to amaze me how often sexism finds its way into the subtext of the blogging that goes on there.

So yeah, we’re all pretty much aware that conservatives don’t have the market cornered when it comes to sexism, but it still rankles when I come across the more blatantly sexist remarks that are left completely unchallenged at DailyKOS. At this point, I’ll explain what it was I saw, and let you all be the judge as to whether I’m being perceptive or judging too harshly.

Ever since last years repeated snarks against women and women’s issues on KOS, I’ve taken the time every now and again to search for keywords to see if the tone has improved any. Suffice it to say I’ve rarely been pleasantly surprised; however I did find a little gem tonight that I had to share.

In a nutshell; a Kossack named Arion (I wasn’t sure at this point of whether they were a man or a woman) decided to analyze the decision to use ‘choice’ as the tag name for abortion. They felt that we should address the issue more honestly and call it the ‘freedom of abortion’ movement, since the real question was one of liberty. Well, the argument wasn’t that strong, and I found myself kind of bewildered at some of the comments, but they weren’t all in left-field. One person (woman I think) replied with ‘I’ll stick with choice thanks’, and another explained that the word ‘choice’ is hard to twist. Another person felt that the term had been tarnished because choice wasn’t implying enough seriousness to the issue ““ they suggested ‘motherhood choice’. About here I went from kind of bored browsing to furrowing my brow and muttering at my screen ‘wtf?’ Are feminist blogs so secret and rare that our fancy-schmancy terminology of ‘reproductive choice and freedom’ is just our well kept little secret?

At this point is where I started reading with a lot less charity. So the thread continues on to claim that really ‘we’ need a new frame for the issue that will work. It was then suggested that perhaps we ought to make inroads through pointing out gun control as being a potential ‘next’ on the chopping block with regards to personal liberties and rights, since the government cared that much about what wives are doing with gynecologists. That seemed a reasonable enough reminder when taking on the issue of abortion. Next came the part where I began to cringe as the fog was lifted and I was faced with some commentary that was absolutely idiotic, sexist and patronizing. Bottom line, we’re totally screwed if this is the average representative of the moderate democrats that should be our allies on these issues. Why, oh why, do the big name networks and politicians think that DailyKOS is all that.

…I mean really. Thanks, chum, for giving us women a place of pride on this issue. WTF???

So here’s the question, am I just being a judgmental meanie, or does this sort of commentary come off as chalkboard torture to anyone else? Or am I simply spoiled at the level of intelligence and freedom from sexism that feminist blogs offer compared to our generic liberal contemporaries.