First of all, please don’t comment on this post by saying you don’t the title of one of my favorite TV shows, “Ugly Betty,” because lead actress America Ferrera is actually quite dishy. Yes, she is - in fact, it would be hard to name a sexier actress on TV nowadays - but that objection misses the point, and it’s getting old.

A review in Salon by Rebecca Traister gets it:

But those who have taken the title’s bait and examined only the aesthetics of the show have missed the point. “Ugly Betty” is not about being unattractive, or at least not simply about being unattractive. It’s about class. And ethnicity. Its smart take on cultural and economic differences, enmeshed as it is in a fresh, funny package, makes it positively subversive television.

Betty Suarez is the 22-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants. She lives in Queens with her widowed father; older sister, Hilda; and Hilda’s son, Justin, a fashion-obsessed preteen. But when we first meet Betty, it’s in the marble lobby of Meade Publications, where she’s awaiting a job interview with an H.R.-bot who needs only an eyeful of her metal-mouthed grin to shut the door in her face. […]

“Ugly Betty” is the American adaptation of the Colombian telenovela “Yo soy Betty, la fea,” which began airing in 1999 and has since been translated and remade around the world. […] “Betty la fea’s” creator, Fernando Gaitán, who is also a producer on “Ugly Betty,” told the Guardian in 2000 that telenovelas “are all about the class struggle. They’re made for poor people in countries where it’s hard to get ahead in life. Usually the characters succeed through love. In mine, they get ahead through work.” The U.S. version of “Betty” offers a bracing look at how those class struggles are further fraught by cultural diversity and intolerance, thanks to “Betty” producers Salma Hayek and Silvio Horta, who insisted that it retain a Latina heroine.

The scorn with which Betty is treated at Mode has less to do with her looks than with her place of economic and cultural origin. “Are you DE-LIV-ER-ING something?” enunciates receptionist Amanda when Betty first arrives, assuming that a brown girl in a bad outfit could only be a messenger. “Sale at the 99-cent store?” she later remarks when Betty misses a party. When Daniel frets because Betty has taken the “book” home to Queens, Amanda purrs, “You’re going to get it back and there’s going to be chimichurri sauce all over it.”

“Ugly Betty” is an unabashed soap opera, with all the silliness and melodrama you’d expect. It’s just that this soap is situated in a world in which classism and racism are subtexts lurking behind almost everything.

Although the Salon article doesn’t comment on it, sexism also lurks in “Betty’s” reality. Betty’s boss is a good guy within the show’s plot, but his constant sleeping around - and his objectification of and indifference to his many sexual partners - is treated harshly by the show’s writers. Betty’s boyfriend, Walter, is cute (in a totally non-mainstream-media way) and sweet, but he’s also petulant and whiny whenever Betty makes her career a higher priority than being Walter’s always-on-call girlfriend.

Still, the show’s critique of sexism is soft compared to its razor-sharp depiction of classism and racism. From the Salon review:

But the show again escapes the too-good-to-be-true trap by making clear that Betty is not above wanting to belong or look good. In Episode 3, at Hilda’s urging, she undergoes a makeover. “You want to fit in with these people? They’re not going to change. You have to,” says her sister. “The hair, the face, the clothes. You gotta look it to be it.” She whisks Betty to Choli, a local beauty technician who works her magic on Betty’s hair, nails and wardrobe.

Betty’s transformation is dramatic. With hair piled on top of her head, an outfit of jangling jewelry, a tight skirt and heels, Betty becomes a goddess to the men who catcall her (”She’s hot!” exclaims one) as she walks to the subway the next morning. But the look doesn’t translate in Manhattan, and it provokes the most scathing round of jeering she’s yet received. The other assistants photograph her as if she’s a zoo animal, and Wilhelmina scoffs, “It looks like Queens threw up.” The message is clear: Queens pretty is not Manhattan pretty. Poor pretty is not rich pretty. Latina pretty is not white pretty.

Switching into total fanboy mode, one more thing I love about “Ugly Betty” is that as the show has gone on, the villains who mock and torment Betty have become increasingly humanized. My favorite such moment so far is a brief encounter between Betty’s nephew Justin, an effeminate 13-year-old who loves fashion, and Mark, a flamboyantly gay co-worker who constantly mocks Betty (on Halloween, he comes to the office dressed in cruel Betty drag). After Justin admits that his schoolmates don’t like him very much, Mark sympathetically advises Justin to “Be who you are; wear what you want. Just learn to run real fast.”

Sometimes, “Ugly Betty’s” fish-out-of-water story seems like a metaphor for “Ugly Betty” itself. Like its title character, “Ugly Betty” is optimistic, sincere, and smart, which because of these traits sticks out among the cynical, mean-spirited, and clueless TV shows / co-workers surrounding it. I’m an addict.

(Hat tip: Racialicious).

I have been wanting to write about male violence within activist scenes for a number of weeks. I haven’t known where to start. So I thought I’d talk a little bit about my personal experience

I feel very hesitant about these snapshots. This blog is semi-anonymous, but I am not - most people in my life know about this blog. There would be few left-wing activists in the country who couldn’t find out who I was if really they wanted to. If I wrote seriously about my experience of male violence against women within the activist scenes then a lot of other people would be identifiable as well.

I’m anonyminising this up as best as I can.

*************

New Zealand is small - travel is easy - you can have a national weekend or conference for almost anything - and we do. This weekend was one of many that I’ve spent in similar circumstances, speeches, workshops, and all the most interesting conversations happening in their corridors.

I was hosting a whole bunch of people in my house, because I had some space. I was working on my thesis at the time, so I didn’t go out with them on the Saturday night.

I knew before I woke up that something was wrong - the house had been noisy at the wrong times and quiet at the wrong times. A man had told one of the women who was staying with me that he had no place to stay. He did have a place to stay, and he’d deliberately not been billeted with any women - but I didn’t know that, and neither did the woman who invited him back. When back at my house he had tried to rape a woman who had already gone to bed.

One man heard her, got up and beat the shit out of the rapist - I’ve never felt more grateful to anyone in my entire life.

**********

A friend wanted me to come to a feminist meeting, I didn’t really know the people so I didn’t want to come, but I did. It was being held in a woman’s house - I couldn’t put a face to the woman’s name, but when I met her I knew that I’d seen her around.

She had two black eyes - her boyfriend had hit her. She said that they’d been play fighting and he didn’t know his own strength. She said he felt terrible.

She hadn’t left the house since it happened. She wanted to spend the meeting talking about the abuse we’d suffered at the hands of men.

Whenver I think of this story, often when I think of him, I feel my failure like a weight. We did what she asked that night, we talked about male violence against women. But I didn’t offer her anything more. It’s a kind of arrogance, to think it would have made a difference - that something I said could changed her reality.

Still I wonder what else I could have done.

**********

Right at the time I met that woman, her boyfriend was busy using his position within the political scene to defend a rapist.

I wish I could say the two stories I have told are the only times I have had to deal with a male violence and abuse within activist scenes, but they’re not. I have known too many men who claim to be fighting oppression, but exclude the women they’re abusing from that fight.

I think it’s fantastic whenever a woman can talk about the abuse she has experienced. But whenever it does happen a bit inside of my sinks, and feels a lot like a bowl of petunias. Because I’ve seen too much to expect anything, but to be disappointed by the reactions of men.

It’s not the rapists, abusers, or violent men, that make you despair of men as a group. I know that violent men exist, and they’re not all cops, or other unsavory types. I’ve learned, I guess every woman learns, that they may be people I know.

What leads me to despair, is the men who support, cover up, minimise and defend abusive and violent men. I’ve known so many men who have choosen an abusive man over the woman he abused.

I’m left with this deep sense of disease and distrust. Because too many men hear tales of abuse and rape and automatically put themselves in the place of the abuser. Everytime a man does that I feel a little bit less safe around him, I wonder a little more about his past.

Our standards are so ridiculously low, but men fail again and again. If a man who has been abusive acknowledged what he did was wrong (ideally before he was outted, but I’m beyond hoping for that), took action to change that, and didn’t talk trash about the woman involved, then I’d be so shocked I’d probably stop being angry.

From men who have never abused a woman all I want right now is that they will choose a woman who has been abused over a man who abused her.

It doesn’t seem like asking much, but it seems impossible to get, and what little we do get needs to be constantly fought for. So while hate is too strong, I do distrust men. I wish I didn’t have to, but there’s only so many times you can be surprised.

I am probably going to try and write more posts inspired by my recent experiences. It’s difficult to do so without being too vague to be useful, but I’ve got some things to say.

Comment Moderating: This post is only open to feminists and pro-feminists.

It’s been a little over 20 years since Basketball star Len Bias died of a drug overdose. The publicity following Bias’ death, which was (wrongly) attributed to crack cocaine, helped push through the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which established a wildly disproportionate punishment for crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine. To quote a recent ACLU report (pdf file), “distribution of just 5 grams of crack carries a minimum 5-year federal prison sentence, while for powder cocaine, distribution of 500 grams – 100 times the amount of crack cocaine – carries the same sentence.”

The law, in practice, is racist and does incredible damage to the Black community. From the ACLU report (emphasis added):

The racial disparity in the application of mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine is particularly disturbing. African Americans comprise the vast majority of those convicted of crack cocaine offenses, while the majority of those convicted for powder cocaine offenses are white. This is true, despite the fact that whites and Hispanics form the majority of crack users. For example, in 2003, whites constituted 7.8% and African Americans constituted more than 80% of the defendants sentenced under the harsh federal crack cocaine laws, despite the fact that more than 66% of crack cocaine users in the United States are white or Hispanic. Due in large part to the sentencing disparity based on the form of the drug, African Americans serve substantially more time in prison for drug offenses than do whites. The average sentence for a crack cocaine offense in 2003, which was 123 months, was 3.5 years longer than the average sentence of 81 months for an offense involving the powder form of the drug. Also due in large part to mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, from 1994 to 2003, the difference between the average time African American offenders served in prison increased by 77%, compared to an increase of 28% for white drug offenders. African Americans now serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense at 58.7 months, as whites do for a violent offense at 61.7 months. The fact that African American defendants received the mandatory sentences more often than white defendants who were eligible for a mandatory minimum sentence, further supports the racially discriminatory impact of mandatory minimum penalties.

Mandatory minimums limits a judge’s discretion to make allowances for mitigating circumstances. This has particularly nasty consequences for people who are financially dependant on crack dealers, or who suffer from domestic violence - which means, most of the time, women getting screwed over. From the ACLU report:

Mandatory sentencing laws prohibit judges from considering the many reasons women are involved in or remain silent about a partner or family member’s drug activity such as domestic violence and financial dependency. Sentencing policies, particularly the mandatory minimum for low-level crack offenses, subject women who are low-level participants to the same or harsher sentences as the major dealers in a drug organization.

The primary difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, as far as engagement with our legal system goes, is that most people convicted for possession of crack are Black, whereas most people convicted for possession of powder cocaine are white. That is systematic racism at work, throwing Blacks in prison and ripping apart Black families. It says something horrible about our society that we find this state of affairs acceptable.

You could argue that this sentencing mismatch wasn’t intended to be racial when it was first passed - but the racial effects of these laws have been known for well over a decade. Despite knowing that the effect of the sentencing guidelines to put Blacks into prison for years more than whites, for the same or often lesser crimes, Congress has three times refused to reform the law. (Protecting the 100/1 ratio is the only time Congress has ever refused to follow the unanimous recommendation of the committee that advices Congress on sentencing).

Will a new, (barely) Democratic-dominated Congress restore some measure of justice to sentencing? I’d like to think they will, but many of them are probably afraid of being labeled “soft” on crack users.

[Cross-posted at Creative Destruction, where we sprinkle powder on top of rock and consume them together.]

Blackacademic points out yet another case of young whites deciding that putting on the blackface is just, y’know, hilarious. And she also points out that the University President’s letter, which is mainly about saying “it was just a few bad apples, there’s no larger problem to be addressed here!,” manages to avoid ever using the word “racism.” Because using that word would apparently be in bad taste or something.

Look, it’s not that complex: If you’re white, put the blackface down. Whether you’re a frat boy or a liberal blogger, put it down. If you’re not white - well, even then, you should probably put it down. (Ebogjonson has a very fine blackface appropriateness test that bloggers of all colors who considering blackface should consult.)

Because if you happen to be an artist of Spike Lee’s caliber, then maybe you’ll be able to use blackface in a way that is both genuinely interesting and genuinely anti-racist. But you know what? Odds are very very high that you’re not Spike Lee.

Just leave the goddmaned blackface alone, already. It’s not… that… hard.

More reading: Zuky, Wampum, Dark Sun, Prometheus 6, Slant Truth and Pen-Elayne.

UPDATE: Carmen at Racialicious reports on a constructive approach campus administrations can take when students wear blackface.

UPDATE 2: And do check out this post on My Private Casbah:

To ask whether or not this was “Racism or Stupidity” is to create a false dichotomy. Is there some reason why it could only be one or the other? I’m going to go out on a limb here and introduce what might seem like a really far-fetched notion to some. Could it be that it was racist stupidity? I know it’s anecdotal but, in my experience, racism and stupidity are not exactly strange bedfellows.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

Via Beat The Press, I learn that the University of Alabama is suing artist Daniel A. Moore for using the colors red and white. From the New York Times:

Mr. Moore’s paintings, reproduced in prints and on merchandise, violated the university’s trademark rights, the suit said. It asked a federal judge to forbid him to, among other things, use the university’s “famous crimson and white color scheme.”

The University isn’t suing Moore because it doesn’t like how he paints their football team. The University is suing because Moore’s paintings are available on merchandise (calendars, coffee mugs, etc.), and the University — which has its own football-related calendars and mugs to sell — is hoping to wipe out a competitor.

I think this is censorship, both in the technical sense of the government (through the court system) shutting people up, and in the broader sense of unfair duress being used to shut people up. U of A football games are public events, and an important part of local culture; as an artist, Moore has every right to paint about football games. The U of Alabama owns their team franchise, but they don’t own Mr. Moore’s mind, or Mr. Moore’s paintbrush; if they want to protect themselves from the horror of artists painting what they see, they should stop allowing the public to view their games.

* * *

Arguably, if the Court rules in the University’s favor, that will be viewpoint based regulation.¹ If Moore had done critical paintings of the U of A football team — had he, for example, created paintings criticizing the football team (justly or unjustly) for racism, sexism and homophobia — then he would have been entitled to strong First Amendment protection. But because his paintings boost the team, rather than criticizing it, it’s quesitonable whether Moore’s protected by the first amendment.

This is true of all sorts of fan creations, not just sports paintings. Henry Jenkins writes:

One paradoxical result [of current copyright law] is that works that are hostile to the original creators and thus can be read more explicitly as making critiques of the source material may have greater freedom from copyright enforcement than works that embrace the ideas behind the original work and simply seek to extend them in new directions. A story where Harry and the other students rise up to overthrow Dumbledore because of his paternalistic policies is apt to be recognized by a judge as political speech and parody, whereas a work that imagines Ron and Hermione going on a date may be so close to the original that its status as criticism is less clear and is apt to be read as an infringement.

[…] A key point here is that I regard all or at least most fan fiction to involve some form of criticism of the original texts upon which it is based — criticism as in interpretation and commentary if not necessary criticism as in negative statements made about them.

The public has a right — or it should have a right, anyway — to react to and interpret the culture surrounding us, including by making culture of our own in response. This has become especially important in the internet age. Before the net, fans still created “response art,” in zines and in APAs; but this art was for the most part hidden from the view of corporate legal departments.

Jenkins coins a phrase that I think should spread:”The public right to cultural participation.”

For me, the phrase, the public right to cultural participation is a key concept underlying the book’s discussion. If I had my way, the right to participate would become as important a legal doctrine for the 21st century as the right to privacy as been in the late 20th century. I argue elsewhere in the book that a right to participate might be abstracted from the combined rights listed in the First Amendment and the right to participate would include the right to respond meaningfully to core materials of your culture. In that sense, I might go beyond our current understanding of fair use.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. Viewpoint based regulation is “The regulation of expression because of the particular opinion or position that expression supports or rejects. Viewpoint based regulations are unconstitutional.” (back)

I’m a bit late with these, but here are the pumpkins Vince, Meg and I carved this past Halloween. I’m not at all in Vince and Meg’s class as pumpkin-carvers, of course, but it’s my blog so I get to show my pumpkin anyway. :-)

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Growing Up With A Disability presents: The Third Disability Blog Carnival!

A Blog Without A Bike presents: The 26th Carnival of Feminists!

Tiny Cat Pants
So many great posts here. See, for example, this brilliant post on objections to dieting and women’s suffering.

Newspaper Rock
This blog is focused on racism and pop culture from a Native American perspective. Although it’s not exactly a blog entry, check out the author’s brilliant essay/collection of quotes arguing that racism is systematic, not abberant.

Racialicious
Race, racism, and pop culture. This has quickly become a must-read blog for me.

Wampum: Sixteen Things The Democrats Won’t Try To Fix

Obsidian Wings: What Democrats Can Realistically Do

Fetch Me My Axe: Anger, Feminism, “The Secretaries”
This post, much of which consists of quotes from the play “The Secretaries,” is the most interesting post I’ve read all week. Check it out, please.

The F-Word: Women In Afghanistan Are As Bad Off Now As Under The Taliban

Faux Real: Class And Feminism

I firmly believe that Jill’s tongue-in-cheek ownership of the phrase “fun feminist” — a term which should be banished to the high hills along with Hirshman’s “lumpenproletariat woman” — was received so bitterly because of people’s perception of her class status and embrace of femininity. Welcome to the feminist blogosphere, where no one is allowed to process out loud without having taken a firm stand.

On The Whole: How campaigns to “prevent obesity” hurt those they purport to help

The Gimp Parade: The Disability Hierarchy

The misleading idea that ability and disability make up a binary situation leads to questions of whether or not an individual is truly impaired or disabled. At what point is one legitimately disabled? How can you tell who’s a fake? What if your condition is intermittent or varies daily? How much of a developmentally-impaired individual’s behavior is abnormal and how much is just not accepted by a narrow-minded public? Are you still disabled if your bipolarism is controlled by medication? If your prosthetic limb works so well no one would know that it’s underneath your pant leg, do you qualify or not?

Cognitive Daily: Chocolate Doesn’t Make Children Hyper

The Countess reports another election victory: An MRA-sponsored “mandatory shared parenting” ballot measure lost. Be sure to read The Countess’ op-ed explaining why these laws are bad for children and bad for society.

Reappropriate: Historic images of anti-Asian racism

The Angry Black Woman: The Price Of White Guilt
Hee hee.

Stephanie Coontz: We Shouldn’t Depends On Marriage For All Our Emotional And Social Needs

Kenji Yoshino Audio Lecture: “Covering” and Authenticity As A Civil Rights Issue
Professor Yoshino argues that the cutting-edge expression of bigotry is the pressure on minorities to “cover” whatever identifies them as not part of the majority culture. Really interesting stuff. Curtsy: Blackfeminism.org.

Punk Ass Blog: “Nothing pisses off privileged folks like a poor person spending money on something that makes her happy.”

Brownfemipower: Israeli Army Attacks Group Of Unarmed Palestinian Women

Christopher Hayes: Right-Wing Bias In Teaching Econ 101 (pdf link)

Conservatives have long critiqued academia for the ways professors use their position to indoctrinate students with left-wing ideology, but the left has largely ignored the political impact of the way people learn economics, though its influence is likely far more profound. […] “A little economics can be a dangerous thing,” a friend working on her Ph.D in public policy at the U. of C. told me. “An intro econ course is necessarily going to be superficial. You deal with highly stylized models that are robbed of context, that take place in a world unmediated by norms and institutions. Much of the most interesting work in economics right now calls into question the Econ 101 assumptions of rationality, individualism, maximizing behavior, etc. But, of course, if you don’t go any further than Econ 101, you won’t know that the textbook models are not the way the world really works, and that there are tons of empirical studies out there that demonstrate this.”

(Curtsy: Ezra Klein).

Colours of Resistance: 25 ways to tokenize or alienate a non-white person around you.
Curtsy: Racialicious.

A Womb Of Her Own: Blackbeard Brand Rugged Tampons
I’d buy ‘em for the box alone.

Brownfemipower: White Women Speaking Out On Racism And WOC Issues

…There is a difference between speaking out as an ally and speaking “with authority” on a subject. White women will never ever know what it is like to be a woman of color. Period. But white women can and absolutly DO speak out as allies to women of color. Just peek over at some of the links on my link page, and you’ll find a whole bunch of white women speaking on all sorts of issues that are relevent and very important to women of color. But the thing is, they are not trying to speak as a woman of color or “for” women of color, they are calling white people on their shit.

My Private Casbah: Thirteen Fun Things To Do When You Have Incurable Cancer!
Curtsy: The Gimp Parade

The New Republic: Why Black Republicans Keep Losing
According to this article, the truth is that the Democrats do deliver policies that benefit Black voters, and Black voters respond to this. Just putting a Black Republican on the ticket doesn’t fool Black voters, in other words.

The Republic of T: It’s Not Nice To Fool Black Voters
More links and discussion about why the GOP keeps on losing the Black vote.

Tiny Cat Pants: Questions About Feminism and BDSM

Why are feminists so uncomfortable with talking abut non-vanilla sex practices? When we do talk about such sex practices, why do we so quickly devolve into fights about what’s acceptable and what’s not? But if we’re interested in power structures and how power dynamics work, why are we not more open to folks who think a lot about how power dynamics work?

Fatshionista: Why Having Naked Pictures Taken Of My Fat Body Didn’t Kill Me

Alternet: Gender, Globalization and Beer
Curtsy: A Womb Of Her Own

A Womb Of Her Own: Telling Boys To Pee Sitting Down Is “Meddling With God’s Work”
The hysteria over fragile masculinity subtext in this story from Norway is so blatant, I’m not even sure it can reasonably be referred to as “subtext.” (Supertext? Ultratext? Textytext?)

Ordinary Victories, by Manu Larcenet.
I just read this comic book, and it’s wonderful; unusually thoughtful yet not heavyhanded. There’s a review with some sample art here.

Racialicious: The T-Shirt Is Racist Enough, But The Ad Copy…!

Boing Boing: David Copperfield Fooled Muggers Into Thinking He Had No Wallet To Steal
What are the odds?

Glenn Greenwald: Beltway pundits are ignorant and wrong about everything

The Blog Of Lot’s Daughter.

The Republic of T: Split Me, Baby, One More Time

Britney has been legally married twice — once for 55 hours and once for just over two years — and apparently without much more forethought than one might give to choosing choosing a flavor of bubble gun. I have been all-but-legally married for over 6 years, which required a lot of forethought about how to protect our relationship.

Yet, in both of Spears’ marriages she’s enjoyed benefits and protections that my husband and I are do not, even though the depth of our commitment to one another and our family is no less than Spears’ commitment to hers. And though her first husband didn’t sign a pre-nup, while her second husband probably did, they both had rights and protections in the midst of divorce that same-sex couples do not, including custody and visitation rights. And it goes without saying that their children get all the benefits and protections of having parents who can legally marry. Ours do not.

Someone, please, tell me — explain it to me like I’m four years old (or like I’m Britney Spears) — where is the justice in all of the above?

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

This photo Kim Sara took of Maddox is so cute it makes my eyeballs want to explode with glee.

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I saw this study a few week ago, and at the time I didn’t have much time to write about it. The study has important ramifications for women’s rights and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections.

The general findings indicate that at the national level (not the individual level) westerners have more sex partners and fewer sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This challenges some common myths about HIV in Africa, and it seems to me that this study furthers the case for condom distribution and comprehensive health care. Here is a quote:

“We did have some of our preconceptions dashed,” she said, explaining that they had expected to find the most promiscuous behaviour in regions like Africa, with the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

That was not the case, as multiple partners were more commonly reported in industrialised countries where the incidence of such diseases were relatively low.

“There’s a misperception that there’s a great deal of promiscuity in Africa, which is one of the potential reasons for HIV/AIDS spreading so rapidly,” said Dr Paul van Look, director of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organisation, who was unconnected to the study. “But that view is not supported by the evidence.”

Professor Wellings said that implied promiscuity may be less important than factors such as poverty and education – especially in the encouragement of condom use – in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.

The study’s findings don’t bode well for people who advocate marriage as a way to lower STI transmission, and they show a connection between the status of women and the spread of STIs. Specifically they found that gender equality seems to be correlated with fewer STIs.

Researchers also found that married people have the most sex, and that there has been a gradual shift to delay marriage. While that has meant a predictable rise in the rates of premarital sex, experts believe this doesn’t necessarily translate into more dangerous behaviour.

In some instances, married women may be at more risk than single women.

“A single woman is more able to negotiate safe sex in certain circumstances than a married woman,” said Dr van Look, who pointed out that married women in Africa and Asia are often threatened by unfaithful husbands who frequent prostitutes.

There is much greater equality between women and men with regard to the number of sexual partners in rich countries than in poor countries, the study found.

For example, men and women in Australia, Britain, France and the US tend to have an almost equal number of sexual partners.

By contrast, in Cameroon, Haiti and Kenya, men tend to have multiple partners while women tend only to have one.

So my sense is the more sexual freedom for women, the better the economic and education opportunities for everyone, and the better the health education system, the fewer STIs are spread.

Yes, there is a pun in that title, but before i get to that let me explain a few things first. You’ll notice the name change from Letter Writing Sunday. This is due partially to the fact that i rarely post this on Sunday and partially because most of the actions were actually emails, not letters. I haven’t posted a letter writing campaign in quite some time. my apologies, i’ve just been busy with other things. But i’m gonna get back in the habit of posting a regular action (ideally every week, but don’t hold me to that). With the formalities aside, let’s get to it.

Due to my absence, i’m highlighting two campaigns. The first is in solidarity with the 1,700 office cleaners who are currently on strike in Houston, Texas. The office cleaners, who were tired of scraping by on $20 a day and no benefits, decided to unionize with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). On October 23rd, the workers went on strike. They are fighting for a wage increase to $8.50/hour, more working hours, and health insurance in a citywide union contract (which would benefit all 5,300 office cleaners in Houston, not just those on strike). The workers are up against companies like Chevron, which pays office cleaners in other big cities $10/hour or more and managed to bring in $14 billion in profits last year. Here’s a video from Ercilia Sandoval, a striking worker in Houston living with breast cancer and raising two daughters:

You can get more information about the campaign and watch several more videos at the Houston Justice for Janitors website. You can head over to LabourStart and send an email to Chevron CEO David J. O’Reilly. November 15th is Chevron Day of Action, but feel free to call them any time and ask them to support the striking workers.

The second campaign is to stop the annual dolphin slaughter in Taji, Japan. From Oceana:

From October to April, Japanese fishermen will kill more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises as part of their annual hunt. Officials claim the slaughter is a form of “pest control” to offset the amount of fish the dolphins eat. But, the reality is, the butchered dolphins are sold off to supermarkets and grocery stores.

Yes, that includes grocery stores in the US. The campaign to stop the slaughter has really been gaining momentum and the international uproar has just about shut the practice down. A simple email to the Japanese Embassy can help make this the last dolphin slaughter in Japan.

(warning: this video has some graphic images. and it may make you scared of that old Simpsons episode)

You can get more information from the Earth Island Institute.

One of the hot topics in the recent US election was immigration. Pundits, like Lou Dobbs, are on a mission to “fix our broken borders” by cracking down on illegal immigration. They argue that immigrants are taking jobs from American citizens, refusing to assimilate, changing American cultural values, and engaging in criminal activities. As I listen to these arguments, I am always reminded of my class lecture on European American immigration patters. The rhetoric of contemporary nativist activists like Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan is nothing new. In fact, it follows almost exactly the same rhetoric of earlier anti-immigrant backlashes. While Latinos are the primary targets of contemporary nativists, in the early years it was the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, and the Chinese, and the “problems” were the same.

Before we can understand the significance of anti-immigration backlashes, it is also important to explore the variation waves of immigration and how they are shaped by policy and economic conditions. The earliest European immigrants were primarily English, and since the English became the dominant group, they were also able to set policies and social norms for other immigrants.¹ One of the primary social norms that British set was the norm of Anglo-conformity, which was proposed by Milton Gordon² Under the system of Anglo-conformity immigrants were expected to model the English American customs and language to the point that they became indistinguishable.

During the earliest years, the US had a fairly open immigration policy. European immigrants were welcomed and encouraged to come to the US, and there were few laws or policies that limited immigration. Most immigrants in the earliest years came from England, Germany, and Ireland (along with a small contingent of Scandinavian immigrants). The German and Irish immigrants were very much vilified, as this quote from a recent Washington Post article highlights:

Still, European immigrants found plenty of backlash. Nativist sentiments ran strong, and white Protestant reformers championed English-language instruction and temperance, the latter reflecting the Establishment’s disdain for hard-drinking immigrants. The Germans set up 121 breweries in Brooklyn and Manhattan alone.

From the 1700s to the late 1800s immigration was open for these immigrants. Very few immigrants were turned away and there were few laws limiting immigration. As the Washington Post article states:

Until 1918, the United States did not require passports; the term “illegal immigrant” had no meaning. New arrivals were required only to prove their identity and find a relative or friend who could vouch for them.

Customs agents kept an eye out for lunatics and the infirm (and after 1905, for anarchists). Ninety-eight percent of the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were admitted to the United States, and 78 percent spent less than eight hours on the island. (The Mexico-United States border then was unguarded and freely crossed in either direction.) “Shipping companies did the health inspections in Europe because they didn’t want to be stuck taking someone back,” said Nancy Foner, a sociology professor at Hunter College and author of “From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration.” “Eventually they introduced a literacy test,” she added, “but it was in the immigrant’s own language, not English.”

In the later half of the 1800s the first major restrictions against immigrants were imposed. The Chinese were primary the targets of these laws, and the Naturalization Act of 1870 made Chinese ineligible for citizenship. This act also targeted the wives of Chinese laborers, and all people born in African or of African descent were made eligible for citizenship. Then in 1882 Chinese were banned entirely from entering the country.³ The backlash against Chinese often stemmed from fear that they were taking away jobs.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s immigration from southern and eastern Europe skyrocketed, and there was also a backlash against these immigrants, which lead to much greater restrictions. In 1917, the restrictions against expanded to include an “Asiatic Barred Zone,” which extend over Asian and the Pacific Rim; moreover, immigrants were required to take literacy tests, and “anarchists” and other radical were also barred. This was one of several laws that lead to the National Origins Act of 1924. According to History Matters,

In response to growing public opinion against the flow of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the years following World War I, Congress passed first the Quota Act of 1921 then the even more restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act). Initially, the 1924 law imposed a total quota on immigration of 165,000—less than 20 percent of the pre-World War I average. It based ceilings on the number of immigrants from any particular nation on the percentage of each nationality recorded in the 1890 census—a blatant effort to limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, which mostly occurred after that date. In the first decade of the 20th century, an average of 200,000 Italians had entered the United States each year. With the 1924 Act, the annual quota for Italians was set at less than 4,000.

This act radically changed immigration by setting quotas that gave preferences to groups that were already represented in the US. While there were other immigration restrictions imposed during this period, this law had the greatest impact. From the 1920s until 1965, the number of immigrants entering the US dropped dramatically and at it’s low point in the 1970s the percentage of the population that was foreign born was only 4.7%.

So the first major wave of immigration, which ended in the late 1800s, included immigrants mostly from western Europe, and these immigrants faced very few restrictions. The restrictions in this era were based on race and mental health, but complex immigration processing or laws did not exist at this time. It was until the second wave of immigration from the late 1800s-1924 that much greater restrictions were put on immigration. These restrictions were explicitly racialized and directed at Chinese and Eastern European immigrants. Over both of these waves of immigration similar concerns were expressed about the fitness of immigrants. Nativist believed that immigrants threatened the American way of life, and the arguments used are remarkably similar to those of the contemporary nativists like Lou Dobbs or Pat Buchanan.

Next in this series I’ll discuss the Immigration Act of 1965 and it’s effects on our current population.

1. Of course, I haven’t forgotten about the indigenous people of North America or the involuntary African immigrants, but the focus here will be on voluntary migrants. (back)
2. Gordon, Milton. 1964. Assimilation in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press. (back)
3. This ban on Chinese laborers was not lifted until the 1940s. (back)

Does anyone know where the quote “Difference is what we all have in common,” or something close to that, originates? If so, please clue me in. Thanks.

And of course, the bigots are gloating. Pam’s House Blend provides this quote from leading bigot Rabbi Yehuda Levin (pictured¹):

This is not the homo-land, this is the holy land. Today is a great victory for religious power. The sodomites are back in the figurative closet. They are not free to provoke.

Despite Rabbi Levin’s victory dance, however, it appears that it was the threat of Palestinian reprisals to the recent Israeli shelling of civilians in Gaza which convinced parade organizers to switch to the stadium rally. So in effect, the good Rabbi is gloating because threats of Palestinian terrorism have forced Israelis to avoid the streets.

DovBear has some background on Rabbi Levin (who is an American, by the way). As Pam points out, fundamentalist Muslims and Chirstians also tried to have the march cancelled (although as far as I know the Christians didn’t overtly call for violence).

1. So sue me - I’m feeling immature today. (back)

Lauren at Faux Real is looking for help for a new project, Help Us Help Ourselves.

This compilation of how-tos, written by you and me, aims to help people with little in the way of resources and expertise get through unfortunate situations relating to money, finances, and bureaucracy.

This is a super-cool idea. Lauren’s planning to kick things off with a HUHO carnival on November 29th, and both bloggers and non-bloggers are invited to contribute.

A few days before the election, Rachel blogged that “women were poised to make gains in election” and asked, “If the number of women increases, do you think this could affect policies or do you think we will start to see the women politicians join the ranks of the ‘good old boys’?”

There are two reports from the Institute For Women’s Policy Research that suggest that more female legislators does mean more feminist and pro-woman laws will be passed. The first, “Does Women’s Representation in Elected Office Lead to Women-Friendly Policy?” (pdf link) looks at how many laws benefiting women, such as “protection from violence, access to income support (through welfare and child support collection), women-friendly employment protections, legislation protecting sexual minorities, and reproductive rights,” have been passed in each of the fifty states.¹

What the IWPR found is that the more women are in elected office in a state, and the more powerful those elected offices are, the more woman-friendly legislation gets passed.

As the authors point out, the direction of causation is ambiguous. Maybe more women in office leads to more “woman-friendly” laws; but it’s also possible that states that are open to these laws are more likely to elect women legislators. I think it’s likely that both are true.

On an aggregate level, women’s presence in legislatures and other state-level elected offices is closely associated with better policy for women. This suggests that having women in elected office may be important to encouraging states to adopt policies relevant to women’s lives. Conversely, women’s resources and rights may influence the number of women elected to public office.

The second IWPR report, “Gender Differences in Bill Sponsorship on Women’s Issues” (pdf link), examines who sponsors which bills. From the report:

Within each party, women are more likely to sponsor women’s issue bills than are their male colleagues.

Across both Congresses, between 23 percent and 27 percent points more Democratic women than Democratic men utilized their scarce resources of time, staff, and political capital to develop women’s issue legislation. Among Republicans, 83 percent of Republican women sponsored a women’s issue bill in the 103rd Congress, compared to just 37 percent of Republican men. However, in the 104th Congress, the proportion of Republican women sponsoring women’s issue bills dropped to 59 percent, only 12 percentage points more than Republican men. This 24 percentage point drop was largely due to the election of six conservative Republican freshman women, none of whom sponsored any type of women’s issue bill. […]

The influence of gender on a member’s legislative behavior is highly dependent on his/her specific political ideology. All Democratic women and moderate Republican women are much more likely to sponsor women’s issue bills than are their male colleagues of the same party and ideology. In contrast, conservative Republican women are not more likely to sponsor women’s issue bills than are their conservative Republican male counterparts.

So it appears likely that having women in government does make a difference to what laws are proposed and passed.

Although these reports are several years old, they’re especially relevant today, since we have now elected record-breaking numbers of women to congress, and we will soon have the first female Speaker of the House in US history. (I really love Jen’s take on that).

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. The three best states for women, by this measure: Hawaii, Vermont and Washington. The three worst: Tennessee, Mississippi, and Idaho. (back)

Feminist essayist (and Redstockings cofounder) Ellen Willis has died. Bitch | Lab has a post with dozens of links to pieces both by and about Ellen Willis - check it out. (And then look through B|L’s other recent posts for more about Willis, including Willis’ NY Times obit).

From Willis’ 1998 essay “We Need A Radical Left”:

No mass left-wing movement has ever been built on a majoritarian strategy. On the contrary, every such movement- socialism, populism, labor, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, ecology-has begun with a visionary minority whose ideas were at first decried as impractical, ridiculous, crazy, dangerous and/or immoral. By definition, the conventional wisdom of the day is widely accepted, continually reiterated and regarded not as ideology but as reality itself. Rebelling against “reality,” even when its limitations are clearly perceived, is always difficult. It means deciding things can be different and ought to be different; that your own perceptions are right and the experts and authorities wrong; that your discontent is legitimate and not merely evidence of selfishness, failure or refusal to grow up.

The Labour government is obviously committed to doing something about the wage-gap between men and women - they’ve released a study. This study compares the wages in male dominated industries, such a building and painting, with wages in female dominated areas, like hairdressers and caregivers. This research does show that wages in male dominated industries and female dominated industries tend to have similar start rates, but after five years workers in male dominated industries earn over 45% more. However, the conclusion the Minister of Women’s Affairs comes to is ridiculous:

I have a theory that if women knew more about the potential earnings and career opportunities in some of these trades more traditionally occupied by men, their choices might be different. We quickly realised however that there was a dearth of information about what young people earn in different trades and occupations. So the Ministry commissioned a piece of research on ‘Wages & Training Costs in Male- and Female-dominated Trade-related Occupations’ and I thought this was a good opportunity to release the findings, because I think they are relevant to any young woman making decisions about her career, something that has always been a priority for the YWCA.

If only women had realised there was a wage gape earlier sooner then we would have solved it long ago!

There are some structural reasons women don’t go into male dominated industries. It’s not like girls and boys emerge fully formed at 18 to decide what to do with their life. My all-girls school did not have a wood-work department or a metal-work department - there was nowhere within the school was there anywhere where you could learn these sorts of skills.

Being the only women in a male dominated situation is often an extremely unpleasant experience. One of the way men have continued to dominate the male dominated trades is to act in a hostile way to any woman who enters. I haven’t personally organised in male dominated trades, but I know women who have, and women who know the female apprentices. Not everyone has a hard time of it - not every male-dominated worksite has a misogynist atmosphere, but enough do that it’s not easy - and for many women the risk may not be worth the pay-out.

Knowledge is the last problem that needs to be solved. But even asking the question “why aren’t more women painters?” ignores the more pressing question “why aren’t caregivers paid more?” If we’re going to look at the wage-gap we have to look at the low-wages.

For the government to tut-tut about women only being 8% of the modern apprentices is hypocritical. When they set up the modern apprenticeship scheme it didn’t cover hair-dressing, or any other traditional female trade. They could have included female trades in modern apprenticeships, but they didn’t - that’s the reason this scheme is male dominated.

But the bit about that speech that most enraged me is that they studied caregivers. The government is probably the funder for at least 80% of caregivers employed in this country. If they wanted to do something about the wage gap, then getting pay-equity for caregivers would actually be a really good start.

The wage-gap is complicated, I’m aware that I’ve only covered a few of the many ways in which sexism, misogyny, and capitalism work together to screw women over, but I’m fairly sure I’ve got a better grasp on it than Lianne Dalziel does.

Note on comments: I’d like the comments to focus on the reasons we don’t have pay-equity and how to achieve it.

It’s good that same-sex marriage happened in Massachusetts first, because the Massachusetts constitutional amendment process is designed to move slowly, encouraging deliberation and second thoughts. In Massachusetts, ballot measures amending the state constitution can’t be sent to the voters until after a quarter of the legislature votes in favor of the amendment, in two sessions in a row. So if the SSM¹ ban passes the Massachusetts legislature tomorrow, then it has to pass it again in 2007, and only if it does that do the voters get a crack at it - in 2008.

This has put anti-equality activists, who have no rational arguments on their side but who excel at harnessing bigotry and fearmongering, at a disadvantage in Massachusetts. It wasn’t possible for them to pass a SSM ban were unable to take advantage of the initial shock following the Massachusett Supreme Court’s Goodridge decision.² And now that Massachusetts voters have seen firsthand that the sky doesn’t fall when lesbian and gays legally marry, it seems unlikely that an SSM ban could pass there. From the Boston Herald:

State House News Poll results released Sunday show 56 percent of respondents say that when the Massachusetts Legislature meets in Thursday’s Constitutional Convention, members should advance a ban on gay marriage. However, if the ban reaches the ballot, 63 percent of poll respondents would vote against it and 31 percent would vote for it.

It’s sad that SSM bans are passing in so much of the country - but in the long run, these bans won’t stop equal marriage rights. Marriage equality wasn’t really on the table in Tennessee or Georgia or even Oregon anyway (although I expect we’ll have civil unions in Oregon soon). I don’t ignore the real harm those bans do, but I don’t think they’re the whole story, either. Massachusetts is the front line, and it’s where marriage equality will be won. Massachusetts is where reality defeats fearmongering.

Every night, anti-equality activists go to their beds praying for catastrophe in Massachusetts; praying for divorce rates to skyrocket, for children to be in pain, for families to collapse, for disaster and horror to swoop down on every family in Massachusetts. They clutch their little hands and screw shut their eyes and fervently beg God to make Massachusetts families suffer, suffer, suffer. Because they know that if this doesn’t happen, they’ve lost. Married queers in Massachusetts are winning the fight for marriage equality, just by leading ordinary lives, rather than being harbingers of the Apocalypse.

Over the coming decades, as each new generation is less homophobic than the last, and as the Massachusetts sky stubbornly continues to unfall, the fearmongering arguments against marriage equality will become more and more embarrassing. The anti-SSM votes we’ve seen - all of them - will be undone. The 63% who oppose banning SSM in Massachusetts today are the mainstream of America by 2050.

(Curtsy: Marriage Debate.)

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. SSM = “same sex marriage.” (back)
2. Unable to take advantage of it in Massachusetts, I mean. They certainly took advantage of it in the rest of the country! (back)

The minimum wage was a winner in last night’s election. In the six states (Montana, Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Nevada) with ballot measures to raise the minimum wage, the ballot measures passed. Even better, all six laws are indexed to inflation - meaning that the MW in those states will automatically go up over time, rather than having to be fought for again and again.

Here’s a summary table, from this Economic Policy Institute page:

If trends in these six states mirror national trends, then about 60% of the 1.5 million workers getting the raise will be women. A disproportionate number of the 1.5 million will be people of color.

Interestingly, this is the first time in US history that the majority of states have state-level minimum wages which are higher than the Federal minimum wage. That’s a reflection of how much the Federal government has allowed the real value of the minimum wage to drop, forcing the states to step in:

(Curtsy: Angry Bear).

Plus, new overlord Pelosi has said that raising the minimum wage will be at the top of the Democrats’ national agenda (one of a bunch of items at the top, admittedly). Fresh from a electorial beating, Republicans won’t have much stomach for fighting a minimum wage increase - polls show that raising the minimum wage is popular with voters of both parties.

A couple of links:

Dean Baker points out that when restaurant owners say that raising the minimum wage would hurt them, and anyway waiters may a ton in tips, the numbers don’t add up.

This Economic Policy Institute brief from 1999 — “The Minimum Wage Increase: A Working Woman’s Issue” — is, sadly, still current today. EPI has a bunch of good articles about the minimum wage, by the way.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

Other people’s elections have two important elements that make them better than my own, first my emotional detachment and my intellectual detachment match. In NZ elections I know Labour sucks, and I know it’s not going to matter that much, but I still end up caring, and I find that frustrating. The other thing is that other people have first past the post voting systems, which while fundamentally undemocratic, are really fun to watch.

I think it’s basically the geek in me that likes elections. I suspect the part of me that decided that all X-files episodes that began with the letter ‘P’ were of superior quality (this was back in Season three, I make no claism f), is exact