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June 5th, 2008
01:48 pm - so damn glad
Life is good. School is double-dutch-done. I'm working on really interesting things at my internship. There are tomatoes and squash and peas in the garden (well, the plants, anyway) and the little Carolina jasmine in the front yard is slowly winding its way up towards the sun.
Oh, and the Democratic primary is effectively over. Thank all possible deities. Everyone vote Obama, because the only thing older than John McCain is his agenda. I know there's a lot of noise being made about women voters taking their ball and going home or going to play with the Republicans instead, but I suspect that there'll be very few of those, at least among my friend group. To those that are considering it, please consider that yours is not the only agenda; a McCain presidency will be worse for many, many people who are not well-off white males. Think of the wars he'll start, the benefits he'll cut, the Supreme Court justices he'll appoint (and the rights that he'll thereby constrict) and every other disastrous policy position of his that you desperately disagree with. Obama is preferable to that in any number of ways.
We'll have our day, we women. We will. There will be a woman vice president, and a woman president, some day. In the meantime, everyone reading this remembers 2000, where a few thousand votes could have made all the difference. Don't be the person who has to apologize for their vote this time around. A year from now, don't be ashamed of the decision you made in November.
Current Music: FYR
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May 18th, 2008
10:27 pm - i am that shrill harpy
Just saw Iron Man. On one level, it was hilarious and fun.
On another level, it was so goddamn tired. Summer movies are this universe where men, hot men, schlubby men, smart men, stupid men, walk around surrounded by beautiful women in ludicrous heels who tumble into bed at a moment's notice; I mean, here's Gwyneth Paltrow, for god's sake, an actress in her own right, walking around in 5" ankle-strap heels and a skin-tight pencil skirt taking Robert Downey Jr.'s dictation.
Women are an afterthought in this world. They're a momentary distraction, something pleasant for the eyes to wander across between explosions. There will never be a summer movie about women who are leaders, women who are technical visionaries, women who make hard decisions and fight other women for the fate of the world. There will never be a female Iron Man.
And I hate to be shrill. Because god knows, no one ever listened to some shrill feminist harpy going on about summer blockbusters.
But there's still so much to do.
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May 5th, 2008
10:10 am - looking back on Loving
Mildred Loving, of the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision, passed on today. I can only hope that forty years from now, we'll look back at the various DOMAs the way we look back today on the anti-miscegenation laws: to ask, how did that take so long? There is no rational reason not to allow gay people to marry, just as there was no rational reason not to allow members of different races to marry.
(Turns out Mrs. Loving thought the same, for what it's worth.)
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January 3rd, 2008
07:15 pm - I'll take 'Iowa' for 2008, Alex.
Obama is fine. I'll take Obama. Maybe he'll flesh out his platform now. Still waiting for the next/first female president- Nick mentions some congresswoman from Kansas as a possibility. It sure as heck ain't Feinstein or Pelosi or Clinton, although I couldn't tell you why beyond that people seem to dislike elderly women in positions of power. Better run before menopause hits, ladies, and don't forget your injections.
As for Huckles... well, we'll see. I'm overjoyed that Giuliani polled below 10%, and that Paul did 10% barely. Ron Paul: he's like Gachnar for Republicans!
P.S. Well, Huckles has his message, and I believe it is: 'Eat the rich. Also, CHUCK NORRIS!!'
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November 1st, 2007
07:20 am - Oh, for goodness's sake.
Erica Barnett, token feminist commentator of the Stranger, asks: 'Am I Obligated to Support Hillary Clinton Based on Her Gender Alone?'
Answer: No. This has been another edition of Short Answers to Unnecessary, Overhyped Questions. Vote for who you want to vote for, ECB, just spare us the notion that this overwrought article, as you've written it, with your wavering back and forth on whether or not to indulge in the apparently guilty pleasure of identity politics, is worthy of print.
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October 7th, 2007
10:46 am - lovely news for a sunday morning
From the NYT:
BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.
Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.
“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”
Pure awful. But if you care enough to keep reading, the rest is at this link. It's free, but still behind the subscriber wall. Read it, and tell me that shit doesn't need fixing.
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September 18th, 2007
10:37 pm
You know, I agree with everyone else- nothing says sexual liberation and gender equity more than a t-shirt that says 'Ride the S.L.U.T.' The pun is subtle, yet hilarious, and I'm sure that the dudes wearing said t-shirt mean it in the best and most respectful way possible.
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June 15th, 2007
06:38 am
I went in for a pedicure and french manicure on Sunday. It was good times, generally speaking, and I was pleased with the manicure. It lasted until this morning, and I've caught myself admiring my nails several times in the last few days. There's something alluring about the artificial perfection of it. There are other things that I admire this way- my face when I've used foundation and powder, my legs when they're freshly shaven, the wig that I wore for Halloween. I think it's something to do with the unfamiliarity, the artificality of one's own body thus modified. I remember a friend once waxing (hah!) rapsodic about having a bikini wax done for the first time- it hurt like hell and there was even a little blood, she said, but it was strangely addictive and she found herself wanting to do it again.
All beauty rituals are aimed at making the body a little more unnatural, a little more smooth and streamlined. The female (and, to a certain extent, the male) beauty standards are, at their root, fictitious bodies, inorganic bodies, drawn or rendered bodies rather than born bodies. It's been said many times that beauty is aspirational, that we want our outer appearance to conform to a mental ideal rather than to genes, environment or necessity, and our culture amplifies and echoes this desire. I can understand how that would lead into the further extremes of body modification, or tight-lacing, although I certainly don't subscribe to those practices.
There's no point to this. It's just a thought I had. I won't be spending $20 a week on a french manicure from now on, though. I need my nails for more important things, and when there's polish on it's like a sign reading 'For Display Purposes Only'.
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May 18th, 2007
06:10 pm - Thank you, Jaysus!
Ladies, you'll never believe it- Charles Mudede feels your pain!!! At long last!! Now I'm not sure- Mssr. Mudede being the seminal philosopher of our times, he could take this revelation in many different directions. I posit that this means he will finally a.) stop posting pictures of naked ladies to the Slog, b.) stop writing about women in weird quasi-philosophical abstractions, or c.) be so kind as to have sex with us when we're pregnant.
Thanks a bunch, Chuck. Snark aside, though, I do occasionally think that it would be great if more dudely types were to come to this realization. Apparently it's still pretty kosher for the male political wonks to say stuff like, 'So... what's the point of this whole feminist blogging thing?'
Well, golly, let's see... mostly we bitch about our periods, and talk about shoes and which guys we like, and sometimes we make secret guilty confessions about which brand of cookie dough ice cream we like to binge on while we're reading chick-lit or watching the daytime soaps, but mostly we blog about substantive, complicated issues that affect everyone, asshole.
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April 19th, 2007
06:24 am - all your uterus are... oh, you know the rest.
If you, like me, are an avid follower of, you know, important things that happen, you've probably alread heard about the Supreme Court's decision upholding the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. This law imposes punishments of up to two years in prison on any doctor who performs a specific procedure known as an intact Dilation and Extraction. This procedure is used in the second and third trimester, and is comprised of a dilation of the patient's cervix, followed by insertion of forceps into the uterus to pull the living fetus out far enough to crush/pierce and evacuate the contents of the skull, thereby killing it.
I am okay with this. As gruesome as the procedure is, a lot of surgerical procedures are gross or icky. It's the fetus-killing part that bothers you? Well, why only ban the one procedure, then? Since intact D&Es are no longer an option, doctors will have to perform nonintact Dilation and Evacuations instead. A nonintact Dilation and Evacuation is where they dilate the cervix, then insert instruments into the uterus and dismember it in vitro before pulling it out. Tell me that's not as gross or fetus-killing as an intact D&E. Furthermore, a nonintact D&E involves a greater risk of uterine rupture or infection than does an intact D&E.
The point of this is that I know what this procedure entails. And, if at some point in the future I become pregnant, and then sick, to the point where a doctor would recommend this procedure to me because it was the safest thing for me to do, I would request it in a heartbeat. Knowing full well that the doctor would pull the out the fetus, my soon-to-be son or daughter, the fruit of my loins, and kill it in a hideous and gruesome way. I would do this because I want to live to be a mother to my children, because there's no point to dying on the operating table so that my fetus can live, or worse, so that it can die as well. So where does Associate Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy, writing for the majority, get off by saying: It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound, when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast developing brain of her unborn child...
Hey Justice Kennedy- I already know. If doctors told them- if Congress were so smart as to pass a law to force doctors to tell them- other women would know too, and then you wouldn't have to worry about how profound their grief would be. You don't have to protect us by making the procedure illegal. So go back and overturn the ban, please. Thanks.
More on this decision here and here.
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