Dear Ms. Gloria Steinem, you got served!!!!

HA!!!


http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/14/race_and_gender_in_presidential_politics


Go. Read. Transcript. Now! So many quotables!

*Dances with glee*

Update: one of brownfemipower's posters pointed to this part of the program on youtube.

1/4

2/4

3/4

4/4

From youtube user:donovonc.

Now if the candidates were spoutiung rhetoric like this and backing it up with action, I would

be having the time of my life!

From :http://blackwomenvote.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-black-women-want-set-our-money.html

What black women want: SET OUR MONEY STRAIGHT!!!


Bearing in mind that:

• Black women make 66 dollars for every 100 dollars that white men make for the same work.

• Black women make 85 dollars for every 100 dollars that Black men make for the same work, and are more likely to live in poverty than Black men.

• Even with these economic disparities, Black women are significantly more likely to be the head of the household and therefore have more mouths to feed.

• Black women are work longer hours than white women to make ends meet. African-American women work, on average, 1,923 hours per year, compared to the 1,734 hours per year worked by college-educated White women. So we’re working close to a MONTH more than white women each year – and not getting the promotions and raises that we deserve in return.

• Black women pay more for necessities than in other groups. One study shows that black women were quoted higher prices for new cars, than any other group, and also were not given as much cost-negotiating room as white women or men of any other race. Oh yeah, and we pay higher prices for food in our neighborhoods, too.

• Black women are as much as five times more likely to receive subprime mortgages than white men with the same credit status.

• Working women will lose $250,000 in lifetime wages because of the gender pay gap, and that number is higher for Black women.

WE WANT:

• A gender based tax deduction until America gets with the program and pays us equally. (Men: Don’t EVEN pretend that you wouldn’t demand the same thing if you were in our shoes) Put teeth into the Equal Pay Act, instead of lip service.

• Legislation that will raise severe penalities to companies that show disparities in pay drawn along gender and racial lines.

More funding and resources for entrepreneurship for women of color.


As a matter of fact, don't just stop there with black women. Bring it across for everyone. Its past time for equal pay for same work between men and women regardless of whatever else becomes a reality. WAY PAST TIME!

Dear Huckabee, Its "We the people" NOT "In the name of God"

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_Amend_Constitution_to_meet_Gods_0115.html

Dear Huckabee,
For the last time, you fundamentalist Christian theocrat, America was NOT built on religion. In fact, our founding fathers went to great lengths to get religion OUT of the constitution, because, they saw the devastation that the mix of religion and government had on Europe. Go and read your blasted history! Even if history is too complicated for your Bible-addled mind to understand, however, may I present to you a couple of the Middle-Eastern countries who have unwisely not observed a strict and defined separation of church and state: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Their populations are miserable, their governments are UN-democratic and their rights are heavily curtailed. the image that they are projecting is by NO MEANS the image that Americans have traditionally strived for. Look here, darling. You keep your Bible in your church and in your home. That's your right. But don't you dare come trying to trample on MY rights. If that's your intention then STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY GOV'T!!!

No love,
A VERY annoyed atheist, feminist American who DOES NOT want to be told what to do by a theocrat.

Politics and Misogyny: Mr. Herbert, I do believe you have won the internetz.

EDIT: Upon research, I fins that I do have issues with his characterization of sex workers, however.  Not all sex workers are tools and pawns of the patriacrchy, some of them, believe or not, choose their work and are actually feminists. A more balanced view say from http://iambecauseweare.wordpress.com/a-statement-about-sex-work-sex-workers-and-sexual-assault/
would be best. Too many sex workers are deprived of their agency by what amounts to moral indignation over their sexual habits, which is problematic and doesn't help them in their quest to achieve their rights. Mr. Herbert has apparently been contacted by several organizations of sex worker activists who would like to educate him as to the realities of sex work, but he has alledgely  not responded. So ignore the sex work part and pay attention to the rest.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/opinion/15herbert.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


Politics and Misogyny


Article Tools Sponsored By
By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 15, 2008

With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s win in New Hampshire, gender issues are suddenly in the news. Where has everybody been?
If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America. Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it’s the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football.

Little attention is being paid to the toll that misogyny takes on society in general, and women and girls in particular.

Its forms are limitless. Hard-core pornography is a multibillion-dollar business, having spread far beyond the stereotyped raincoat crowd to anyone with a laptop and a password. Crowds of crazed photographers risk life and limb to get shots of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears without their underwear. At New York Jets home games, men regularly gather at Gate D to urge female fans to expose themselves.

In its grimmest aspects, misogyny manifests itself in hideous violence — from brutal beatings and rape to outright torture and murder. Fifteen months ago, a gunman invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five.

The cable news channels revel in stories about women (almost always young and attractive) who come to a gruesome end at the hands of violent men. The stories seldom, if ever, raise the issue of misogyny, which permeates not just the crimes themselves, but the coverage as well.

The latest of these obsessively covered stories concerned a pregnant marine, Maria Frances Lauterbach, who had complained to authorities that she had been raped by a fellow marine. Her body was found last week buried in a backyard fire pit in North Carolina.

It just so happens that the Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning this week in the misogyny capital of America: Nevada. It’s a perfect place to bring up the way women are viewed and treated in this society, but don’t hold your breath. Presidential wannabes are hardly in the habit of insulting the locals.

Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada and heavily promoted even where it’s not. In Las Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but flourishes nevertheless, Mayor Oscar Goodman has said that creating a series of legal, “magnificent” brothels would be a great development tool for his city.

( Read more... )

Apparently, when poor people have the money, they make an effort to eat well. Who'd have thought?

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-farmers-market-effect/



January 15, 2008, 10:51 am
The Farmers’ Market Effect
Tomatoes at a farmers' market.Tomatoes at a farmers’ market in Larchmont, N.Y. (Alan Zale for The New York Times.)

Vouchers that permit low-income women to shop at a local farmers’ market increase fruit and vegetable consumption in poor families, a new study shows.

The research, published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, comes just as states are making important changes to national nutrition programs. For years, the federally-funded Women, Infants and Children (W.I.C.) program, which subsidizes food purchases for low-income women and young children, hasn’t included fruits and vegetables, except for fruit juice and carrots for breastfeeding women. After a push by health groups and a recent report from the Institute of Medicine, the United States Department of Agriculture in December revised W.I.C. to include monthly subsidies for fruits and vegetables. States will begin implementing the new rules in February.

( Read more... )

(no subject)

x-posted to feminist

From http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/01/five-reasons-why-teach-women-self.html

Five Reasons Why "Teach Women Self-Defense" Isn't a Comprehensive Solution to Rape
| posted by Melissa McEwan | Tuesday, January 15, 2008 | permalink |
Before I start this post in earnest, I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that women should not take self-defense courses, that women should not get involved in martial arts, or that there's no such thing as a woman who has successfully defended herself against assault, sexual or otherwise. What this post is intended to address is the exceedingly common recommendation in rape threads that women should "learn how to protect themselves" as the (one-and-only) solution to rape, and the equally frequent comment that people have enrolled their daughters in martial arts classes so they "will know how to take care of themselves."

Self-protection is, at best, one part of a comprehensive solution to rape—and it's not even as straightforward as it may seem. Looking at the complex and practical realities of what teaching women self-defense in regard to rape prevention really means is the focus of this post.

Its raison d'être is the progressively frequent references to rape's inevitability and women's need to learn self-defense as the only surefire way to prevent rape. (See An Angry Old Broad's comment here, in the Bob Herbert thread, as an example of how this meme is disseminated in the media.)

* * *

Reason #1 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Self-defense instructors can be rapists, too.

Increasingly, martial arts classes are being marketed to young women and the parents of young girls as "self-defense," in which is implicit an unspoken narrative about the prevention of sexual assault. (They are also being sought after in the same way; see another comment from An Angry Old Broad, in the same thread.) The brutal irony is that, as ever, sexual predators endeavor to infiltrate programs where they will be given a trusted position and unsupervised contact with a steady stream of victims. And so we end up with stories like this (via Marcella):
A self-defense instructor in Forest Lake, Minnesota has been charged with having sex with a 15-year-old female student.

Ladislao Enriquez, 48, faces one count each of first-degree and third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

According to the charges, the girl told police she took the class because she was sexually assaulted more than two years earlier.
And this (note that "having sex" is yet again used as a euphemism for rape):
A Yakima karate instructor has been accused of having sex with two underage girls.

( Read more... )

When some prejudiced gay activist hijacks the history of the civil rights movement and uses the

fictitious argument of incremental rights to bolster the argument that the trangendered need to wait their turn, this is what you tell them...

http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2008/01/americas-never-ready-to-expand-rights.html


Tuesday, January 15, 2008
America's NEVER Ready To Expand Rights


Like many peeps in the transgender community I was incensed, but not surprised by Susan Stanton's unfortunate and ignorantly naive comments. She echoed crap that I've heard for over a decade from Barney Frank and HRC when she stated that America isn't ready for transgender civil rights.

It was ironic because her St. Pete Times interview came out literally 24 hours after I posted a commentary warning that she was being groomed by HRC to become the next spokessellout.

"I think we need to do a whole lot more educating before we’re going to be able to realistically have the support on the national level to get this passed. I personally don’t feel denying the rights of one group should be perpetuated unless everybody has those rights."

But in the spirit of Dr. King's birthday, instead of excoriating Susan for her less than enlightened comments, I'd rather 'ejumacate' Ms. Stanton.

Susan, since you're a newbie to living as a minority, let me hip you to something since you spent the past forty plus years basking in white male privilege.

America is NEVER ready to grant rights to people it despises.

The despised folks have to fight tooth and nail, claw, scratch, cajole, protest, write, march, shame, embarrass, vote, call out and educate until America does the right thing and finally has the moment of clarity that says, 'hey, they're right, it is wrong to discriminate against these people and we need to do the morally right thing and correct it."

( Read more... )