The Chronicle of Higher Education reported the findings from a study conducted by a group of researchers from Brooklyn College. The study found that the percentage of women coaching women’s sports is at a 29 year low. Here is a quote:

The representation of women among coaches of those teams, however, is at an all-time low. Only 42.4 percent of the head coaches of women’s teams this year are female, down from 44.1 percent in 2004 and 47.7 percent in 1996, the update found. When Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination by institutions that receive federal funds, women coached more than 90 percent of women’s teams.

According to the report, less than 2 percent of men’s teams have female head coaches, and only 17.7 percent of head coaches of all college teams are women, down from 18.8 percent in 2004.

This is the sad paradox of the recent rise in the status of women’s sports. As women’s sports have become more prestigious the number of women coaching women’s teams has declined; suddenly women’s teams have “become worthy of male coaches.” In contrast, the opportunities for women to coach male teams are extremely limited. One would expect that the increasing number of female college athletes would lead to an increased pool of women are are highly qualified to be coaches. In all likelihood we are more qualified than ever before, so why are we suddenly being shut out??

This is one of two paradoxes of Title IX. The other is the fact that women of color have not benefited much at all from this legislation. I certainly support Title IX, but we have to look at how opportunities can be expanded to include all women at all levels of the sports bureaucracy.

My blog-reading lately has somehow formed a debate between optimism and pessimism about our current political situation.

Over at Balkinization, Sandy Levinson quotes a late-1980s essay about the Iran/Contra mess by Theodore Lowi, arguing for the side of pessimism.

“[We must] recognize that the Iran-Contra affair and the Cincinnati are reflections of a constitutional problem: What is there about the White House that makes its occupants do bad things? Pressure to produce results for the American people has made diplomacy and the presidency natural enemies. Each recent president has been pushed close to or over the brink of personal disgrace by one or more efforts to directly alter the history of a weak country that we have the military power to wipe out but lack the power to change.

For something written over 15 years ago, there’s quite a bit of relevance to our current situation, isn’t there? That Lowi’s essay still seems timely makes his argument that the problem is structural, rather than simply a matter of the personal failings of any particular president, seem credible.

Levinson writes:

…Might we might say that the seeds of the present constitutional crisis were laid by spineless Democrats who refused to take seriously the prospect of impeaching Ronald Reagan and who refused to raise a ruckus when President George H. W. Bush engaged in his infamous Christmas pardons of 1992 that effectively shut down the investigation of Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh into the culpability of Secretary of Defense Caspar Winberger and Bush himself? And, of course, Bush pardoned Abrams as well, who is now back in service in George W. Bush’s administration. No doubt, some of these Democrats are still around, opposing Sen. Russell Feingold’s mild-mannered suggestion that the President at least be censured for manifest contempt for the law. And so it goes…..

So there’s another structural problem: the utter unwillingness of Democrats to stand up to Republicans. Democrats in power seem unwilling to go on the offensive. It’s quite possible that the Democrats will manage to lose, and lose badly, in 2006, despite polls showing that Bush has become almost as popular as bacon-wrapped steak at a PETA convention.

The (liberal) Girl Next Door makes another case for pessimism, asking “when is it time to panic”? She’s got a good point, I think.

I’ve been a member of the “let’s not panic” school, but what is it, precisely, I’m waiting for? My tendency is to believe that as long as political parties respect the results of major elections, then democracy is basically safe. But we’ve had one recent presidential election stolen by the Republican party - in a blatantly racist manner, to boot - and virtually no one in the US noticed or minded, not counting the Irrelevant Left. Tom Delay’s Texas redistricting made it explicit: Elections are decided by politicians and courts, not by voters. But as long as we still get to move through the empty gestures of voting, most Americans think things are fine. After all, we’re the Greatest Democracy On Earth!®

From (liberal) Girl Next Door’s post:

I don’t want to panic before it is warranted, but I sometimes wonder if we will recognize the last straw. Don’t we remember that in Germany, the Nazis took control of government, not in a violent coup, but by passing laws that gave them increasing power and control over the people and the news they received? We keep hearing that it’s not time to panic just yet, but if history has a lesson for us right now, it’s that panicking too late won’t do a damn bit of good. Do we really, as a country, want to sit idly by watching evil become a way of life? Most of us judge the German people not as victims, but rather as willing accomplices. Will we judge ourselves the same?

Time to hear from the opposition, arguing that there’s light at the end of the cliche. Bernard Weiner of The Crisis Papers argues Bush Is Going Down, pointing out that even Republicans are increasingly failing to support Bush’s agenda. (The link consists mostly of quotes from various conservatives admitting that the Iraq invasion has been a disaster, both in terms of the military situation there and in terms of how the Iraq war has warped domestic politics). It would certainly be nice to believe that the Republican coalition is crumbling.

Next up arguing for optimism, The Count, declaring himself a “cynical optimist,” argues that the American people can and should be trusted.

Our tradition of democracy should not be underestimated. Just as it is very hard to bring democracy to a country with no history or even desire of it, such as Iraq, it is equally hard to go the other way and impose a dictatorship or imperium on folks with many centuries of democratic traditions and a strong desire for it. A few folks have talked about Germany’s pre-World War II silde into Nazism, but that’s a scare tactic. Germany never had a real democratic tradition and the Weimar Republic became the butt of all jokes. Indeed, it took total war and the first-hand evidence of what Hitler did to shake up the collective conciousness of Germans. The extreme political and religious (more on this group in the next installment) wingnuts will continue to exist on the fringe. Yes, they are opportunistic bastards who, like the camel trying to enter the tent, try to inch their way in through every concievable method. But, big BUT, their extreme fringe views will always come out as repugnant in the end. Some of us may see it sooner, we may have to endure years of it, we may, sadly, suffer from it (in the short term) but once the critical mass is reached, they, their ideas, and their works will always be beaten back under the rock from which they came from.

That’s what the poll numbers are saying to me. These fringe malcontents are starting to “awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve” (from Admiral Yamamoto in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! A good line even if he didn’t actually say that.) In reality, from the time Yamamoto spent in Washington D.C. as a Japanese naval attache, he did learn that the American people are just and decent and who can wreak terrible wrath on their oppressors… they just need to be awakened… and they’ll wake on their schedule, not ours. It is, however, our job to continue to speak out and (like Deanna Troi) point to the obvious. Seriously, who here actually thinks that the American people would actually allow a Theocracy (for example) to come into being? No, no matter the scare mongering of one side or the fondest, most wishful thinking of the other side will that ever happen. I do believe in the American people.

It’s a complete coincidence that I read the Count’s essay right after I read (liberal) Girl Next Door’s, but it could have been written as a direct rebuttal - even addressing the Nazi comparison.

So which side do you think wins the debate?

Remember getting chickenpox as a kid? The parties that mom’s would have where kids would all go to someone’s house that had contracted it so they could get the virus and work it out into immunity? Nowadays they have vaccinations for everything - even the chickenpox. As these advancements continue to surface, the concerns about the potential side-effects of these vaccinations surface along with them, and the result is the requirements for vaccinated children are becoming a hot topic. Matt and I struggled at first with the different choices regarding the vaccinations of our daughters. We agonized through each one because of the frightening things we heard about vaccinations and their potential effects on children. As a side note, both Sydney and Maddox are being vaccinated and have done well with them.

So anyways, in another thread on Alas, vaccination discussions have surfaced due to the controversial HPV vaccine. What was interesting to me was that instead of the debate being about whether or not trace amounts of mercury are going to cause reactions, or whether by immunizing against anything we are weakening ourselves against everything, the theme is whether forced immunizations are similar to forced pregnancies. Gee wiz, I’d never even considered it that way, but I can see how the comparison could be made. So it got me to thinking, and here is how I feel the two are different, and how they are the same.

Herd Immunity v. Individual Choice: The most interesting idea to me that first grabbed my attention was the notion of ‘herd immunity’. Barbara made a good post explaining herd immunity this way:

Someone made the point that when it is forced on someone for the sake of others, how is that different from forcing someone to bear a pregnancy. For pro-choice people, we argue that we should after all have the right to decide what goes in and comes out of our body, full stop, right?

M had a pretty good response to this, that as a parent of a five month old infant I can certainly understand:

Even so, after some time thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I don’t agree with forced vaccination, but I don’t agree that it’s like a forced pregnancy either. This is why; a forced vaccination is intended to protect and secure the health of the individual it is forced on, as well as others around them that are fully endowed with all rights given to a born person. A forced pregnancy on the other hand is to protect and secure the health of a potential person that is not fully or even partially endowed with the same rights at the expense or health of a fully endowed person. That to me seems like a pretty big difference, regardless of which end of the forced or suggested spectrum you fall within regarding vaccinations.

Forced versus Pressured: Is ‘forced’ used in the same context or does it have the same meaning in these two cases. When we look at what forced means in the context of vaccinations, the force is of a bureaucratic nature. It occurs by schools refusing to teach children that have not been inoculated, or refusing to allow them to come to school if they have gotten a waiver when outbreaks occur. That doesn’t really seem like ‘force’ to me, but instead precaution. I’m hard pressed to think of what a legitimate argument would be to this being a form of discrimination or undue force. It has options that are reasonable for the people who choose to forego on vaccinations. Forced pregnancy, on the other hand, has the very real potential of compromising and altering the health and physical make-up of the woman hosting the pregnancy. Forced pregnancy doesn’t offer choice, other than adoption, which isn’t really what I’d consider reasonable after making a woman go through the entirety of a pregnancy.

So at the end of the day, while I don’t agree forcing vaccinations on others (though I do strongly recommend that people research and consider vaccinations for the sake of their children and others), I’m going to have to give a thumbs-down on the argument that forcing vaccinations and forcing pregnancy are like arguments.

So recently in the comments section of my blog, one of my readers said , “can we stop using the term minority now. it is obvious that whites are the minority.” I think her point is well taken, and I think it provides and excellent opportunity for me to talk about some issues related to language that I grapple with in my research and in my everyday life.

A few years ago in my class, we had a great discussion about the term minority. Several of the students in my class, all of whom were African American, argued that they didn’t like the term minority. One of the students argued that she didn’t like the term minority because it means “less than.” She went on to argue that she didn’t want to be associated with any term that marked Black people as less than. I was a little sympathetic to the argument, but my definition of the term minority was much broader than the way my student was using it, and I used it in a much broader way then the term is used by the typical American.

In sociology (and several other academic disciplines.) the term minority group(s), refers to any group that has less access to power; in other words any group that is underrepresented in the power structure of a country or culture. A synonym I use in my classes is subordinate groups. Some minority or subordinate groups would include women, children, Muslims, Jews, Asian Americans, African Americans, gays, lesbians, the disabled, poor people, the working class, and so on. In contrast, the majority group or dominant group, the most powerful groups, would include whites, men, the wealthy, able bodied people, and so on.

So here is the problem, most people don’t think of the term as something related to power. They think about numbers. There are way more people in this world who are not considered White than there are Whites. So people of color are a numerical or mathematical majority, even if they are a sociological minority. The same is clearly true for women.

Once I talked about using power in the definition, several of the students argued that because of the confusion over whether or not the term is being used from a sociologically or mathematically we may need to come up with another term. Moreover, several students pointed out ways that the term “minority” is used in a derogatory or inappropriate way. One student said he didn’t like anyone telling him he is “a minority.” His argument was that it reduced him to one status and was disempowering. He said, if someone was referring to his race, he wanted to be called “an African American.” I liked his point. I agree that there is a distinction between referring to a minority group as opposed to an individual who may be part of a minority group, and I also like the point about how the term is disempowering. So I asked the students, what do you think about the term subordinate group? Many felt it was not as bad as minority, but it was still disempowering. I asked, about the terms marginalized people or oppressed people. Both of which they thought were even more depressing and disempowering.

One student suggested the term people of color, but I argued that the term may be used to about racial minorities in the US, but wouldn’t be broad enough to cover other groups. (I should note the class was called prejudice and discrimination, and we focused on racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and to a much lesser extent ableism. We were searching for a term that could encompass all of the groups that are oppressed based on these systems of inequality.). 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. My final problem with this term is purely practical. No matter how often I explain that the terms “people of color” and “colored people” are not the same, I still have students who use the term “colored people.” Even though I thoroughly explain the difference, somebody uses it every semester; it is usually Whites, but I am increasingly seeing “people of color” using the term “colored people.”

As we were discussing the issue and struggling over the language, I made the following statement. Are we looking for a nice and polite term to talk about discrimination…something that is clearly not nice. Is there a nice was to talk about oppression, and if we do find the “nice words” to talk about marginalization and domination, are we Whitewashing the problem? I think so. In fact, I think that is the problem with much of the language of contemporary racism. It uses terms like diversity, multiculturalism, or code words that have to be interpreted. People use politically correct terms to say really bigoted things, but many people don’t notice the bigotry because the language it is wrapped in is part of a really pretty package. What politically correct language takes out of the equation is racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and so on. We find language that avoids the crux of the problem: discrimination, oppression, and dominance. I am by no means here to defend the term minority, minorities, or majorities. I’m not even sure I can pick out the best term. I think my students had some fair points about how language is used, and even though people like me dedicate our lives to trying to figure this stuff out, the fact of the matter is that everyday folks react to what feels uncomfortable to them. Even if those feelings are not critical or come from a gut reaction, they should not be dismissed.

I really don’t have the perfect answer or the perfect terms. In fact, I spend quite a bit of time talking about language in my classes…even though I think the English department should be doing more about this. The language we use is very powerful, and the more I learn the less I like the language choices available. I would like some new terms. What do other folks think? How do you feel about the terms minority and majority? What about oppressed or marginalized people?
A slightly longer version of this is posted at my blog.

An anonymous writer from GQ made a list of the top 10 reasons Republicans were better in bed (David Farrar got quite excited). Ann from Feministing replied with a list of top 10 reasons liberals were better in bed. Here’s #5:

5. Foreplay. Liberal men are so intellectually sexy that everything is foreplay. Republicans might get started in the cab after dinner, but the liberal man’s in-depth knowledge of (and vehement opposition to) various state-level abortion restrictions has got me all hot and bothered before we’ve ordered our entrees.

While this made me chuckle (and in a personal sense it’s not inaccuarte). I also found some of the comments at Pandagon very amusing.

But I kept on coming back to ‘but….’, I can’t accept this argument even as a joke.

I’ve known left-wing men who couldn’t grasp the radical notion that women were people. I’ve known left-wing men who treated women as objects for their conquest. I’ve known women who were raped by left-wing men. I’ve known women who were beaten by their left-wing boyfriends.

I wish that wasn’t true. I wish that you could know that once a guy knew how to talk like he thought a woman’s body was her own, you could trust him. I wish I could . But unfortunately it’s not true, and I think it’s foolish and dangerous to pretend that it is.

Also posted on My blog.

I have a plan to write a long post about the responses to False Advertising a post in which Morphing into Mama says that she believes that to significantly change your appearance after you get married, for instance by cutting your hair or gaining weight, is false advertising.

Before I go any further I do have to quote Twisty:

And, lard-jesus no! MIM, who says she “works” to maintain her figure “for myself and my husband,” goes on to suggest that a person’s weight is indicative, not, as a rational person might imagine, of how much she weighs, but of her degree of “self-respect.” Overweight people, MIM asserts, are probably “depressed.” She asks, “can you imagine still maintaining the same level of physical attraction for your mate when he’s depressed?”

There has been a huge response to MiM’s post, and it’s that collective response that I want to write about. But before I can do that I have to express disbelief at the context in which she reached this particular conclusion:

Recently, in my psychopathology class, I was reminded of this conversation with Husband. My classmates and I were discussing a journal article on bulimia nervosa and speculative reasons were being tossed around as to why the majority of the women sampled were married.

“Maybe married women feel more pressure to be thin for their husbands,” one young, unmarried classmate said.

“Really? Because when I’m in a relationship, I get all comfortable and actually tend to plump up,” said another, very honest young woman to my left.

“Well, first I don’t think it’s fair to say that being married caused these women to be bulimic ““ especially since being in a relationship can make one conscious about one’s weight just as being single can. When you’re single, you want to be in good shape not just for yourself, but so that you can feel confident about how you look and feel like you can attract a partner. When you’re married ““ and especially after having kids ““ you’re conscious about your weight, which may motivate you to watch what you eat and exercise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll develop an eating disorder. I am conscious of my weight, so I don’t snack, and I exercise. Personally, I think it would be unfair to Husband if I gained a bunch of weight and did nothing about it.”

She was having a conversation about why eating disorders were more commmon among married women, she thinks about her body, food and exercise, within her relationship, and her conclusion is that it wouldn’t be fair to her husband to gain weight.

I’m reminded of last year’s anti-feminist women’s rights co-ordinator at the local university. She wasn’t into ‘No Diet Day’ so she renamed it ‘Love your body day’. How do you love your body? By eating fruit and doing yoga.

I don’t want to blame her for thinking like this, there’s a lot of resources poured into to making women feel like this. It just makes me terribly, terribly, sad and angry.

Also posted at my blog

Please use this thread to post whatever you’d like, including links to your own stuff. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of good reading out there:

Wampum: Final Voting for 2005 Koufax Awards
“Alas” didn’t make it to the final round (sob! wail!), but many great bloggers did. Go vote!

Salon: The Battle To Ban Birth Control
Curtsy: Blackfeminism.org

Persephone’s Box: Inside Every Polite Woman is a Valerie Solanas Screaming to Get Out

A Womb Of Her Own: In Which Melissa Is Shocked By Racism In Midwifery

Definition: Trans Issues Are Women’s Issues

The insistence that transwomen are not “real” women, is, at its heart, fueled by the idea that biology equals destiny: the idea that one’s body parts define that person completely, that there is no individual room for change or variation, that a woman is only as good as her ability to give birth (therefore, as good as her uterus), or to serve as a sex object (therefore, as good as her vagina, as good as her breasts), or as a caretaker, a mother, a housewife, a passive decoration (therefore, as good as her ability to conform to “acceptable” gender roles).

And that, no matter how you disguise it or dress it up, no matter what excuses you might give about male privilege or socialization or experience in a transwoman’s history, is not feminism.

Peek: Quick! Vote While The Black People Are Gone!
How hurricane Katrina will help the GOP grab more elections.

Big Gay Blog: Blogger Strong-Armed By Ex-Gay Group

Well if you haven’t yet heard, the ex-gay group Exodus International has served Mr. Watt, and at least one other blogger, with a cease and desist order for creating a parody of a billboard ad Exodus sponsored in Orlando, Florida.

Life, Law, Gender: Life In Hell

Transgender women are more likely to end up in prison than virtually anyone else. The oft-quoted statistic about African American men … that one in four has a history of incarceration … is dwarfed by the available stats on people who are male-to-female, or MTF. A San Francisco Department of Public Health survey conducted in 1997 found that almost two thirds of MTF respondents had been incarcerated. (Curtsy: Jay Sennett.)

Marginal Notations: feminism and authenticity, a.k.a. “i’m more of a feminist than you are”

ASCENT Blog: About that maverick congressman who proposed to censure Bush. No, not Fiengold; Conyers
Why does it take a white maverick to get progressives’ attention?

Woman of Color Blog: a conflation of desperation with enjoyment

No recreational facilities exist, and they prohibit residents from holding meetings or informal social gatherings in the community. As a result, leisure time for males is largely spent drinking alcohol. They prohibit news letters, bulletin boards or other forms of communication as is the installation of cable television services. Many residents we spoke with expressed concern with the level of social control in the community, a worker explained to us that they threatened them with losing their job and sending them back to their country if they were seen talking to outside agencies.

Tennessee Guerrilla Women: 400 Disabled Protesters Take Over Downtown Nashville
Whoo-hoo! They’re protesting cuts in Medicaid.

A Quote From A “Pro-Life” Philosopher: Remember, abortion is all about father’s rights

Both man and woman are parents, and the woman carries the child. Yet surely to be a parent, a generator of the fetus, a procreator, is to have a closer relationship to the fetus than merely to contain the child physically. And we can raise the question, again, of whether in fact such a husband is allowed to live out his pro-life convictions in our society. It is not even clear that the husband is “free not to have an abortion”, as the bumper sticker alleges, if his wife wants to have one.

Bloodless Coup: On Those Anti-Globalization Protesters Arrested in 2002

Long story short, the police arrested a number of people (the article says “about 30″) who were guilty of (wait for it…) looking like they were going to break the law.

Giant Lego Aircraft Carrier
Wow. Curtsy: The Argument Clinic.

New Statesmen: Was It Worse Under Saddam?

On 8 March, International Women’s Day, Yanar Mohammed, leader of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, announced that more than 2,000 women have been kidnapped since the fall of the regime.

Many women live isolated lives, their social contact limited to conversations over the telephone. Those who continue going to work, particularly in the Shia south, can find themselves harassed by Islamic militias. “Morality police” in Basra are likely to stop them as they enter schools and government buildings, checking they are wearing the hijab. This Taliban-style enforcement continues despite guarantees under the new constitution that women should be free to choose how they dress.

Ilyka Damen: “Shut Up, Sit Down and Scale Back” Is Not Feminism

I said I wasn’t going to attempt to define an “official feminist position” on any issue, and I am not.

But I am going to tell you what I think of Cathy Young, IWF, iFeminism, and former Bangles lead singer Christina Hoff Sommers: I think they’re more convincing as misogynist apologists than as feminists.

Pandagon: Bush admin decides that being queer is a security risk

Creative Destruction: The Wisdom of Jonah Goldberg

I have found a number of bloggers out there who are really good at presenting their own point of view, while also being intellectually honest about the views of people who disagree with them. There are also a lot of bloggers (of all stripes) who seem to be victims of the Moral/Intellectual Fallacy: the idea that anyone who holds Wrong Views must do so because of personal evil or personal stupidity.

Bloodless Coup: New Survey Shows That Students Think Liberal Professors Are Fair Graders

Professors who students think are liberal are generally rated more favorably by students on whether students are encouraged to present their own viewpoints, whether grading is fair, whether the learning environment is comfortable, and whether they care about the success of students.

Mind the Gap!: White Privilege Blogging

Reuters: Women’s Rights In Syria

Though such cases are greatly underreported, Da’ad Mousa, a prominent Damascus lawyer and women’s rights advocate, said that more than 100 cases of so-called “honour killings” were reported in Syrian newspapers between 2000 and 2003. The majority of the men involved, who killed a female relative suspected of an illicit sexual affair in the belief that the liaison tarnished the family’s “honour”, went unpunished.

Vegankid: Gender Is Required
This cracked me up.

Brownfemipower: Getting Priorities Straight

Right now, i think that many of us have no choice but to position ourselves (that is PROTECT ourselves) in a way that is mean or offensive to white folks. when i know for a fact that most of the white parents in my neighborhood look at my little chicano/a kids and see *trouble maker* *Drop out* *teenage pregnancy* *poor* *uneducated*, I really don’t feel much like working on trusting white folks much–cuz i’m not going to let my kids be fucked up by *their* shitty beliefs. i’m not going to work to dispell their beliefs about my kids, i’m going to talk to my kids and give them the power, education, self assurance and self love to realize that those folks are fucked up individuals. That way my kids deal with racists on *their* terms, not the other way around. (Curtsy: Egotistical Whining.)

Indymedia: Iranian Police Attack International Women’s Day Demonstrators

Iranian police and plainclothes agents yesterday charged a peaceful assembly of women’s rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women’s Day, Human Rights Watch said today.

Blac(k)ademic: Fuck the L-Word
Just when you thought TV can’t get any more racist or offensive…. Blackamazon concurs with Blac(k)ademic’s view of The L Word.

The Bloviator: Background Information About Wafa Sultan
This powerful video of Wafi Sultan speaking out for women’s rights and against terrorist violence has been getting tons of links and email rounds (the video is very entertaining, but if you prefer there’s a text transcript here). (Note that the link is to Memri, a group that has been accused of anti-Arab racism.) On the one hand, it’s thrilling to see a woman speaking out on Al-Jazeera against misogyny and violence; but on the other hand, I can’t help but be suspicious of a video that plays so fully into a Western triumphalism narrative. For a fuller background on Ms. Sultan - containing both negative and positive - be sure to read the Bloviator’s post.

NOW Breaks With Democrats, Endorses Alan Sandals For Senate
The Democrats, in contrast, are endorsing anti-choice candidate Bob Casey.

TMPCafe: Credit Reporters Give Special Privileges to V.I.P.s

Did you know, for example, that while you need to sweat out your credit report,the credit bureaus keep a special “V.I.P.” list of prominent citizens whose reports are specially tidied up so they look cleaner than they really are? If the big boys never experience the harassment or increased costs of a credit ding, then they are a lot less likely to insist on more legal oversight.

Political Animal: One Way Having A Woman On The Supreme Court Matters

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Should Children Have The Right To Vote?

Pandagon: IWF Rejects Amanda’s Submission To Their College Essay Contest
Gee, I wonder why? Here’s a sample:

A month later, my roommate approached me in one of her usual panics. “Amanda, I’m pregnant again!” she said. I guess she’d taken my lectures about the evils of the birth control pill a little too closely to heart. She explained to me that she had the cash, but she still needed a ride to the clinic. She swore up and down that this was only her 5th abortion, but I had learned not to believe anything she said after she kept swiping Sudafed out of my purse to keep her dorm room methamphetamine lab in operation.

Reappropriate: Anti-Fat Bigotry on “The Apprentice”

I really like to assume the best of everyone, even people I disagree with.

And I try hard to take what opponents say, at their word.

But sometimes it’s hard.

A lot of people who favor forced childbirth for pregnant women say that they believe that an abortion, even early in pregnancy, is identical to child murder. Have an abortion, shoot a four-year-old in the head; morally, it’s the same. Or, anyhow, that’s what they claim to believe.

In contrast, pro-choicers tend to think that the abortion criminalization movement is motivated by a desire - perhaps an unconscious desire - to punish women for having sex.

I used to reject that latter view as a pointless ad hominem attack. Nowadays, I’m not so sure. Although I’ve met some rank-and-file “pro-lifers” whose policy preferences were consistent with a belief that a fetus is morally indistinguishable from a child, those folks usually have policy preferences which are totally out of step with the abortion criminalization movement as a whole.

In contrast, the leaders of the abortion criminalization movement have consistently put their political weight behind policies which make little or no sense if they genuinely think that abortion is identical to child murder. And those same leaders routinely endorse policies that make a lot of sense if their goal is to penalize women who have sex - to, as I’ve heard many of them put it, make sure women “face the consequences” of having sex. And they’ve done so with the apparent backing and blessing of the vast majority of the rank and file. Let’s review:

Almost none of their policies make sense if they really see no difference between the death of a fetus and the death of a four-year-old. However, nearly all their policies make sense if they’re seeking to make sure that women who have sex “face the consequences.” are punished. After years of seeing this pattern repeated again and again, it’s difficult to take them at their word.

Recently there was a conversation on the safety of contraception for women, and whether or not it was ever fatal and how. I got this in the mail today due to having used ortho products in the past, and decided to share it as a heads-up to any women that might use or have used the Ortho Evra contraceptive patch. By the way, this is by no means offered in any ‘anti-birth control’ manner; in fact I’m very much for the safe and informed use of contraception period. So anyways it seems a potential class action suit is being prepared and they are seeking women who might have suffered effects by using Ortho Evra contraceptive patch - here’s what I got:

If nothing else, this is good information to have / know when you’re in the market for contraception, or someone you know is in the market for contraception.

My credit card companies keep on mailing me “convenience checks.” These are checks I can use just like an ordinary check, except that the money will be charged to my credit card and I’ll be charged fifteen bucks for the privilege.

What puzzles me is that they’re called “convenience” checks. As I recall, the sales pitch for credit cards (back when mass-marketed credit cards were new) was that they were supposed to be much more convenient than writing checks. Okay, so now, in order to make the credit cards I use instead of checks because they’re more convenient yet more convenient, I’m now supposed to write checks instead of using credit cards?

Yeesh.

In fact, they’re damn inconvenient, because I can’t just throw blank checks into the recycle bin and leave it on the curb; I’m fine with people going through my recycling for the bottles with deposits on ‘em, but blank checks is another matter. So they have to be shredded.

But we here at “Alas” headquarters prefer not to give our money to the corporate fascist makers of paper-shredding machines. So we’ve developed our own all-natural and holistic method of safely disposing of those “convenience” checks.

(Bet you were wondering what any of this had to do with baby blogging!)

In my most recent link farm post, I posted a link to a story about Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani calling a fatwah against homosexuals. The blogger Zeyad apparently translated this from an page in Arabic on Sistani’s website:

Q: What is the judgement on sodomy and lesbianism?

A: “Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.”

Juan Cole also believes the story is true. However, Ginmar, who has significant expertise in this area, is arguing that the story is false. From an email Ginmar sent me (reprinted with permission):

Here’s the evidence. Sistani has a long history of taking fatwas extremely seriously and always issuing them in the service of non-violence. The other part of the fatwa incited Shi’ites to violence against Sunnis. While homophobia may be old news, this not and all the major news organs would have reported that. It directly contradicted Sistani’s earlier fatwas, ordering Shia to stand down from acts of retaliation. After the bombing of the Al Askari mosque this year he ordered Shia not to protest violently.

The original tip reported he was the leader of the BADR Corps and SCIRI. This is manifestly not true. The tips have come from one source, the guy cited in the 365 gay article. I’ve never heard of him before. Amongst other things, the guy got just about everything wrong and appears to have no real knowledge of conditions in Iraq. Chat room murders? People don’t go out at night for fear of bombings and kidnappings. Furthermore, homoerotic friendships are common in Iraq to the point where you see men walking hand in hand down the street. Homosexuality is commonly but not openly practiced.

Finally, it appears that Sistani’s website has been hacked. It’s not like he has 24/7 internet access in An Najaf.

I spent a year studying the guy’s actions in Iraq. This fatwa contradicts a long-established pattern of behavior and public statements, not to mention earlier fatwas issued when the stakes were far lower. Sistani’s primary concern has always been the safety of the people of Iraq. He’s what’s known as a Quietist: he believes that religion should be an influence on people’s lives, and their lives will then influence their politics.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with his website, but this is the guy’s character: he’s the last person to incite violence when it’s this dangerous, so something’s going on. I was going to print out his website and have my NCO read it. That’s the only thing I’m not certain of.

You should know this, too: Sistani issued a fatwa early in the war that instructed Iraqis not to resist the invasion. That’s how concerned he is with loss of life. My biggest fear is Zarqawi’s oft-expressed urge for a religious war. Iraqis don’t fear each other nearly as much as they do the Iranians, and assassination of Sistani is the one thing that would guarantee a civil war. That country is like an abyss covered by tightropes supported by razor blades.

I don’t know what the truth is; hopefully things will be clarified soon. But I wanted “Alas” readers to be aware that the story has been called into doubt.

This Ain’t Living has posted the second call for submissions for the second Big Fat Carnival. Less than two weeks left!

I realised that I hadn’t explained myself very well in my Body Shop thread. Or rather I’d paraphrased an argument without actually making that argument.

I hate The Body Shop, have a for very long time. I’ve never had a use for the dumb soaps and gels and whatever they make (although I did go through a stage when I was 14 of buying them as presents for friends, if I didn’t know what else to get them). They’re such a huge part of the idea that it’s alternative and a moral good to be healthy, and what it means to be healthy is to fit a traditional idea of beautiful that I’d happily watch as every single one of their stores burnt to the ground.

I wanted to explore the link between health and beauty, and the idea that health is a moral good, a little bit more to explain.

The equation of ‘beauty’ and ‘health’ is really common and really insidious. The most obvious example is weight, and (despite rather a lot of evidence to the contrary) the conflation of thin and healthy. In circles (usually middle class and slightly politically aware circles) where it’s not acceptable to talk about weight loss straight up, generally exactly the same conversations take place, but people are talking about ‘health’. If someone is nervous of complimenting a woman for losing weight, they’ll talk about ‘healthy’ she looks.

But it’s much more common than that. Most of the examples are just laughable. Beauty sections in magazines are now called ‘health’ sections. Hair products claim they will promote ‘healthy looking hair’ (because ensuring that your dead-cells are healthy should be the priority of everyone). The state of your skin is seen as indicative of your overall health. Performing beauty routinues, like moisturising or body scrubbing, are portrayed as part of maintaining your health.

Some are more scary:

The American Cancer Society offers the “Look Good…Feel Better” program, “dedicated to teaching women cancer patients beauty techniques to help restore their appearance and self-image during cancer treatment.”

Of course this is bullshit, you can’t tell someone’s health by looking at them, and a lot of so called health routinues won’t increase your longevity, or your quality of life at all.

Now this is partly just a marketing technique, the more women challenge beauty standards, the more useful it is to have different justification for selling exactly the same products. But I think it’s become a lot more significant than that, because health is portrayed as a moral good. This particular conflation is a very powerful one for fucking with people’s minds, and very useful for ensuring certain sorts of behaviour (mostly buying stuff, but also not challenging the way our society is organised).

The first step to believing being ‘healthy’ is moral is to show that ‘health’ is something that is under your control. Now personally, I reject this idea as deeply offensive, as well as being wrong. Wile there are some things that you can do that will promote the length of your life, and increase the ways you can use your body, most of it is just luck. Either it’s your genetics, or it’s a result of environmental factors you can’t control (like poverty, or being exposed to depleted uranium). It’s very tempting to believe we can control our body, how long we live, how far it holds out, but most of us won’t be able to.

To give a rather silly example of this I have had a number of people tell me about the quality of their teeth, how they don’t have fillings, and they each give a different reason for this (they brush every day, or they eat a lot of cheese). Now it seems to me that it’s far more likely that fluoridated water, and improvements in detal practice are the reason my generation’s teeth are better than our parents.

That’s why I think it’s wrong, the reason I think it’s offensive is it promotes an idea that everyone could get better if only they tried hard enough. It turns illness into a form of personal failing. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a fantastic article about this in relation to the breast cancer industry (and yes unfortunately it is an industry):

My friend introduces me to a knot of other women in survivor gear, breast-cancer victims all, I learn, though of course I would not use the V-word here. “Does anyone else have trouble with the term ’survivor’?’ I ask, and, surprisingly, two or three speak up. It could be “unlucky,” one tells me; it “tempts fate,” says another, shuddering slightly. After all, the cancer can recur at any time, either in the breast or in some more strategic site. No one brings up my own objection to the term, though: that the mindless triumphalism of “survivorhood” denigrates the dead and the dying. Did we who live “fight” harder than those who’ve died? Can we claim to be “braver,” better, people than the dead? And why is there no room in this cult for some gracious acceptance of death, when the time comes, which it surely will, through cancer or some other misfortune?

The idea that ‘health’ is a result of our individual actions is now dangerously firmly placed. We can beat heart-attacks, breast-cancer, alzheimer’s, arthritis, dementia and everything else if we try hard enough.

As well as being awful in its own right, this idea turns anything that is promoted as improving health as a moral good, even if it doesn’t actually improve your longevity or use of your body.

This idea is so insidious that it has often been adopted by the left, where being ‘healthy’ can be portrayed as not just morally good, but alternative - or even radical. So we end up reinforcing our own version of the mainstream ideology. Constantly things that are supported for political reasons (say veganism) are promoted for their supposed health benefits, as if good politics and good health, automatically go together (I have a much, much, much longer rant about this particular topic, but it’ll have to wait for another day).

I started writing this whole post because mythago asked me “why is buying soap kowtowing to patriarchal, capitalistic ideals about beauty?” I want to make it really clear that I don’t think the solution to the problems that I raised is to stop eating in a particular way, or buying a particular product, or trying to live in a way that you find nourishes and sustains you.

What I do think is important is we challenge the ideology which equates beauty, health and morality, and promotes health as something we can control. We can stop praising people for being healthy, we can stop telling people they look healthy, we can stop assuming that just because we agree with something politically it’ll be good for our bodies, and we can stop using moralistic language to describe food.

And that’s why I hate the Body Shop.

Also posted on My blog.

The pro-choice movement can be a little insular; we are in a valley whose boundaries are defined by Roe v Wade on the one side, and the ever-shrinking practical access to abortion on the other. Cherry at Tortillas Duras has written a terrific post that attempts to look at reproductive rights from the hilltop, where a broader view is possible. What reproductive rights issues are those of us in the valley missing?

Here’s a sample of Cherry’s post. I don’t agree with everything Cherry says (for instance, would ending transnational adoption actually help “individuals who are not able to parent their children due to conditions created through imperialism,” and how do the needs of those individuals balance against the needs of people who are discriminated against by domestic adoption agencies?), but all of it is interesting; I’d really recommend reading the whole thing.

Feel free to post anything you’d like on this thread, including links to your own (or other’s) work. Now, here’s some of what I’ve read recently:

Carnival of the Liberals Number 8: The Haiku Edition

One Good Thing: Letter to Alex and Chris, 12 Years In The Future
Flea reflects on rape, Hugh Thompson, and raising sons to be human beings. I can’t find high enough praise to describe this letter; I won’t be surprised if this wins the 2006 “best post” Koufax.

BlackAmazon: I Ain’t Having It
BlackAmazon kicks patriarchal ass, in an amazing manifesto responding to threats of violence against black women in the Nigerian blogging community. Make sure you also visit Woman of Color Blog for the background to BlackAmazon’s post.

Coalition for Darfur: The Silence of Bystanders

In Darfur, we have even less excuse than in past genocides. We have known about this for more than two years, we have photos and eyewitnesses, our president has even described it as genocide, and yet we’re still paralyzed. Part of the problem is that President Bush hasn’t made it a top priority, but at least he is now showing signs of stirring … and in fact he’s done more than most other world leaders, and more than many Democrats. Our failure in Darfur is utterly bipartisan.

Vigilance: How We’ve Created Freedom In Afghanistan and Iraq
In Iraq, a powerful Shiite cleric calls for death in the most painful way possible for lesbians and gays. Meanwhile, an Afghan faces the death penalty for converting to Christianity.

UPDATE: Ginmar seems certain that the above-listed Iraq story is false.
On the other hand, Zeyad, who can read Arabic, claims that the call for death to homosexuals is on Sistani’s official website. I don’t know the truth of the matter, so I suggest you read both posts and draw your own conclusion.

ACS Blog: How the Bush Administration is undermining Title IX and women’s sports

Den of the Biting Beaver: If God Is Just, Then Why Is There Rape?

Fabulosa Mujer: Anarcha-Feminism & Supporting Mothers and Children

…You don’t need to “like” kids in order to support them, and their rights, as you should all people…. Mothering [is] a feminist pro-choice thing - we have the right to birth control, abortion, AND prenatal care, resources to support us after birth - the choice to have a kid as well as to not have one.

Fabulosa Mujer: Women and Weapons

Pseudo-Adrianne: Reproductive Rights Under Attack in Tennessee

A Womb of Her Own: Manley Men Lift Furnature
Melissa quotes from a hilarious interview with manhood-obsessed professor Harvey Mansfield.

Shrub.com: How To Be A Real Nice Guy

Slant Truth: Yeah, More On Why Crash Was Bullshit

Pinko Feminist Hellcat on The OC Rape Case
Sheelzebub coverage of the OC Rape Case has been nothing short of stellar; now, happily, she’s set up a post category for her many posts on the subject, so they’re all available at a single link.

Ally Work: Refuting the Slavery Apologists

Lucky White Girl: Impromptu Carnival: Privilege in the blogosphere
Lucky White Girl gathers some recent posts regarding the feminist blogosphere’s on-going fight over privilege, civility, and moderation policies. Unsurprisingly (and, some would say, self-servingly), I agree with Noumena’s view.

One Tenacious Baby Mama: On (patriarchal) (male) “Feminists”
This is one of the most interesting criticisms of “Alas” I’ve read in a while. (Note: There a nude image of a woman contained in this blog’s background image.)

Feministe: Opting Out Of Opting Out
What if they held an opt-out revolution and nobody came? (Feministe appears to be offline right now, but I hope this link will work again soon.)

The Well-Timed Period: Fisking Mr. Saleton on 2nd Trimester Abortions

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Why the Health Exemption Matters

But I do enjoy the cinematography in Triumph of the Will!

Hit and Run: Breathalyzers Come Under Fire

“It seems to us that one should not have privileges and freedom jeopardized by the results of a mystical machine that is immune from discovery,” Florida’s 5th District Court of Appeal ruled…

Dispatches From the Culture Wars: Mor(e)on Christian Martyrs

[The ACLU and the courts are] “basically cleansing America of religion and particularly Christianity. It’s almost like a genocide. It’s a sophisticated genocide.” –Richard Thompson, Christian right legal activist.

Vigilance: Japanese Feminist Censored by Japanese Government

Waiting For Dorothy: Abortion, Truthiness and Sciency Language
Occasional “Alas” comment-writer Emily1 critiques the South Dakota Task Force’s report on abortion and finds it wanting. This is the first in a series of posts; the second can be read here.

Running With Symbols: Talking with my 11-year old daughter about abortion

Reappropriate: The V for Vendetta Buzzcut

why is it that the mainstream media seems to be focussing almost entirely on the shock of a Hollywood actress willingly cutting her hair for a role? The article I link above talks about Portman flying in the face of beauty myths, but it strikes me as sexist that almost all the publicity surrounding this film seems to be interested only in Portman cutting her hair. As if her experience as an actress are irrelevant, only what she has done to her appearance.

Sivacracy: TBogg is sexist crap.

Crooked Timber: Demography is not Destiny
Good refutation 0f the “conservatives will breed their way to victory” hypothesis.

Spore looks really cool
A sprawling game, originally named “Sim Everything,” in which the player begins as a microscopic creature in a drop of pond water, and evolves her way up, and up, and up, until she’s zipping around the universe in a spaceship fostering intelligent life on various worlds. What’s most interesting, however, is the “massively single player online game.” If you’re interested in this sort of thing and have 20 minutes, I recommend watching the demo video. Curtsy: Catallarchy.

Some Links Regarding Lesbian and Gay Rights

A Womb of Her Own: De-gaying the White House Easter Egg Roll
The Religious Right blows a gasket because some children of same-sex parents might be at the White House’s Easter Egg hunt. The horror! The horror!

My Amusement Park: 60 Minutes on The “Science” of Sexual Orientation
EL provides a great round-up of blogger reactions (as well as his/her own comments) to a recent 60 Minutes report on the (alleged?) physiological causes of homosexuality.

Peter Toscano: How Sexual Abuse Made Me Ex-Gay

Having been sexually abused did not make me gay; I was gay anyway. But living with unresolved childhood sexual trauma made me the perfect candidate for the dehomosexualization process.

(Via Fetch Me My Axe, who also has some thoughts).

Basic Rights Oregon: Oregon Taxpayers to Fund Anti-Gay, Church-Sponsored School

Since she didn’t write an introductory post for herself, I’d like to welcome guest blogger Rachel S., of Rachel’s Tavern, and also of the excellent new anti-racism blog Ally Work.

Rachel is super-cool, and that’s all you need to know about her. But in case you want more, here’s her bio from Rachel’s Tavern:

Rachel E. Sullivan lives and blogs in the New York City metro area. She teaches sociology at Long Island University. Her research and teaching focus on race, African American Studies, gender, sexuality, and popular culture.

In the days after 9/11 I was glued to my TV, watching what seemed to be the same cable news stories over and over and hoping that someone was going to tell me why this happened. The only refreshing new stories were the ones that followed heroes…the everyday folks who risked their lives to save others. Indeed there were many 9/11 heroes, but I quickly became frustrated at how few of those who were portrayed as heroes were White women or men and women of color. I just kept thinking; the rest of us are heroes too. Certainly, the firemen and police officers who died trying to save people in the World Trade Center were heroes, but the media and many average Americans seem to be much more content with white men as heroes. In fact, because of our race and gender stereotypes white men are constructed as brave, bold, dependable, powerful, righteous, and strong…all of the makings of a hero. Certainly the rest of us have many of those traits too, but what keeps our heroism out of sight? The contrast in the construction heroes in the aftermath of World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina reveal how much racism and sexism shape our definition of heroism.

One of the biggest factors is the occupational segregation that makes jobs filled primarily by White men heroic occupations. The best example of this would be the New York City fire department. In a city where about 23% of the population is white and male, 92% of the firefighters are white men. This is not a reflection of personal preferences, many women and minority fire fighters have faced harassment and discrimination. What makes this even worse is that the number of Black and Latino firefighters in New York has decreased since the 1960s…yes it has decreased. The police department fairs somewhat better, but still does not reflect the ethnic make-up of the city.

After 9/11 the racial and gender make up of the fire department was very obvious to any outside observer who watch the numerous pictures of heroes. On that day, out of over 300 firefighters only 12 Latino firefighters, 12 Black firefighters and no women fire fighters died. What was even more telling was the controversy that emerged over a proposed statue to honor the firefighters who died. The statue was based on the now famous photo of three White firefighters who raised the US flag in still smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center. The controversy erupted, when artists designing the statue want to deviate from the photo by having a multiracial group of firefighters depicted in the statue.

The media and many of the Americans consume it also contribute to this problem by anointing White men as heroes and ignoring others. One of the heroes was a black woman flight attendant Cee Cee Lyles, who called her husband and provided some of the information about what was going on www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028f… target=”_blank”>Flight 93, which later crashed in Pennsylvania.

While her story was mentioned it never inspired the same media coverage as those of the Whites who died. Media outlets know that Whites make great victims and heroes, and they actively seek them out, when they anoint heroes in the wake of tragedy.

Now we have had another major American tragedy. Much of the city of New Orleans is destroyed, and the search for heroes is much different. Unlike 9/11, the media as had not had the convenient White male heroes for a few reasons. First and foremast the racial makeup of the city and the first responders was not as White as it was in New York. Rather than anointing the police as heroes, reporters noted that many police disappeared, and they admonished the Black police chief for this. A quick google search on Katrina heroes produces interesting results. The three groups most commonly mentioned–hospital workers; people rescuing animals, and the coast guard included numerous women. No political leaders, a la Rudy Giuliani, few mentions of police officers, and very few stories telling the stories of specific people. To many Americans, the working class Blacks of New Orleans make great victims, but they don’t make great heroes like White male stock brokers, politicians, firefighters, and police men.

No the heroes in New Orleans are not the usual suspects. Their mayor and the governor are not White men, and they are being held up to more scrutiny than Giuliani and Pataki (some of it rightfully so, but still much more). Everybody knows President Bush in his fly over analysis of the Superdome was not a hero. The police were unable to patrol the city given the mass destruction, and most of the middles class White men that fit the mold of our commonly held stereotypes were almost nowhere to be found, and because the usual suspects are not available the media and many Americans have been forced to look outside the mold for heroes. This has really created a dearth of heroes; I’m not saying there are no heroes, but the New Orleans heroes have been nearly invisible compared to the 9/11 heroes

Two young African American males really exemplify New Orleans heroism. One is 6 year old Deamonte Love, who helped to take care of his younger siblings and neighbors when they were separated from their parents, a tall task for a small child. Another hero was Jabbar Gibson, who commandeered a bus and drove over 50 people to the Astrodome, even though he had never driven a bus before. Even though Gibson helped evacuate people when no one else was, people had a hard time seeing him as a true hero. The local media even speculated about what the legal ramificationswould be since Gibson took the bus.
The good news is that many people realize that Gibson is a hero, in spite of the limited media coverage. In fact, someone has started an online petition to award Gibson with a scholarship and the Presidential Medal of freedom.

Heroes come in many forms, and our ability to see and create heroes is often related to racism and sexism. Who gets to be a hero? What do you think could be done to reframe heroism and overcome the racism in sexism in the media and in the structure of our occupations?

This weekend is the third anniversary of invasion of Iraq. So I hope you spent at least some of it at an anti-war protest (unless you support the occupation, in which case).

The Wellington demonstration was fantastic. The numbers were up on last year. While 250 people doesn’t sound like that much (particularly if you live somewhere big), our numbers are up on last year (which ruins a perfectly good theory of mine about the relationship between activists involved in organising a protest and people who turned up, oh well won’t stop me using it). There were even people there who I didn’t recognise, but what really excited me is that some of those people’s didn’t just turn up, they had organised to do stuff.

But that’s not the main point of this post, because towards the end of the protest someone got arrested and this lead to the usual chain reaction and four more people were arrested (even that isn’t the main point of the post, however frustrated I may be about protesters inability to count. If the police outnumber us then they can do whatever they want and the best idea is to get out of their way as soon as possible). What I want to write about is the gendered insults protesters were yelling at the police.

The police were all men, and both male and female protesters were playing up the way they were acting was a sign of failure of their masculinity, some of the comments were actually about the size of people’s dicks.

Now feelings were quite high. I’d made ‘Louise Nicholas is a Hero’ patches and given them out to a bunch of people on the demo. The police were even more violent than usual (and I’m semi-used to police attacking my friends).

But to me that’s all the more reason to reject traditional ideas of masculinity (and I think it’s just plain stupid to taunt overhyped, specially trained, violent cops about their masculinity).

Also posted on my blog.

They certainly know how to protest in France. There the government proposes fire-at-will legislation, and 120,000 people take to the streets of Paris, where they occupy buildings. Here we’ll be lucky if it gets beyond a few grumpy blog posts. Unfotunately I don’t speak French, but if you do the Paris indymedia site looks interesting.

When I said in my post on the body shop that I don’t have any time for ethical businesses, it’s not because I don’t think there’s any hope of creating change, but because I think obsessing about your shopping can distract people. It’s because I believe if people work together collectively and organise together to challenge existing power structures, then we can be stronger than they are.

Also posted on my blog.

I hate The Body Shop, have a for very long time. I’ve never had a use for the dumb soaps and gels and whatever they make (although I did go through a stage when I was 14 of buying them as presents for friends, if I didn’t know what else to get them). They’re such a huge part of the idea that it’s alternative and a moral good to be healthy, and what it means to be healthy is to fit a traditional idea of beautiful that I’d happily watch as every single one of their stores burnt to the ground. So I was highly amused when I heard that The Body Shop had been bought by L’Oreal, and that Anita Roddick is personally over 100 million pounds richer.

Now The Body Shop is particularly awful, other ‘ethical’ businesses are built on something slightly more solid than making money on women’s insecurities about their bodies. But that doesn’t mean that any form of ethical businesses will make any difference to the way our worked works. If it makes you feel any better to buy ‘fair-trade’ coffee and chocolate then go ahead, it won’t harm anyone.

The thing is that consumers who want their products made in a certain way are no threat to capitalism. It doesn’t matter whether people want pink products, or products that are slightly less exploitative, if there are enough of them (and they’re prepared to pay) they become a market and that need can be met. You’re not going to challenge capitalism by buying stuff (or even by not buying stuff). L’Oreal buying the Body Shop is the natural and expected outcome of a project that was always about making money.

Also posted on my blog.