First World Feminism

My article on what women can learn from men with trophy wives

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:45:02 -0500

My article on what women can learn from men with trophy wives

International Women's Day Versus Everyday

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:25:00 -0500

International Women's Day Versus Everyday:

Photo by gettyimages

A blogger in the UK shares her thoughts on the significance of International Women’s Day.

Take Action on International Women's Day

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

For more than 30 years the U.S. has failed to ratify CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women), the most complete international agreement advancing basic human rights for women.

Take action by signing NOW’s petition online or use these talking points to call the White House at (202) 456-1111 or fax them at (202) 456-2461.

Three Feminist Oscar Moments

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Photo by dailymail.co.uk

1. Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman in Oscar history to win Best Director. Her film, The Hurt Locker, also won Best Picture.

2. When Mo’Nique won for Best Supporting Actress, she thanked the Academy “for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics.” That would be her performance, which she was unapologetic about nailing.

3. Sandra Bullock thanked the other nominees and described them as women she had “fallen deeply in love with,” even though they were her competition. She also singled out “the moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from,” who “never get thanked.”

Forwarded Joke from My Mom

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:45:54 -0500

Photo by jamblichus.wordpress.com

A teacher wrote “A woman without her man in nothing” on the chalkboard, and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the boys in the class wrote:
“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

All of the girls in the class wrote:
” A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

Punctuation is powerful!

"New York Magazine: You’ve said that actresses shouldn’t need to lose weight, then you..."

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:56:22 -0500

“

New York Magazine: You’ve said that actresses shouldn’t need to lose weight, then you lost a lot.

Janeane Garofalo: They shouldn’t have to, but I was heavier and it really gets you almost nowhere. So yeah, I fucking sold out. It’s just easier.

”

-

Photo by news.about-knowledge.com

A Louisiana public school asks the girls to sit quietly and watch the boys learn.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:25:21 -0500

A Louisiana public school asks the girls to sit quietly and watch the boys learn.:

The ACLU filed a sex segregation lawsuit in September 2009 against the Vermilion Parish School District in Louisiana. The school district segregated its classrooms by gender (only allowing the girls to join the “special needs” co-educational classes). The hearing, regarding sex-segregated classes in coeducational public schools, is currently taking place at a federal court in Louisiana.

Finally, an iPhone app that does the opposite of objectify women.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:24:49 -0500

Finally, an iPhone app that does the opposite of objectify women.

Treaty for the Rights of Women

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:54:00 -0500

Photo from hallavenueblockclub

Officially known as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Treaty for the Rights of Women is the world’s most complete international agreement on basic human rights for women.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the treaty in 1979, and 30 years later 186 countries have ratified it. Among the seven countries that have not are Sudan, Somalia, Iran and the United States.

Ratifying CEDAW would take 67 votes in the U.S. Senate. This would be easier if the Senate was composed of 30 percent women like those of 23 other countries, including Rwanda, Argentina, Angola, Costa Rica and much of Europe.

If you’re in New York City in March, check out the following event:

From:      Women’s Club of New York
Event:     Linda Tarr-Whelan, international expert on women’s leadership, will speak about the CEDAW Treaty, the dismal lack of women in leadership roles, and strategies to empower and elevate women as full partners in the public debate.
Date:       Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
Time:       12:30 PM: Program and Q&A | 12:00 PM: Registration & Networking
Venue:    33 West 60th Street (between Broadway & Columbus), 5th Floor
Cost:        No charge for WCC members and students; $15 for non-members

It's a "coincidence" that only white men are qualified to edit anthologies.

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:29:42 -0500

It's a "coincidence" that only white men are qualified to edit anthologies.

Jessica Valenti and The Purity Myth

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:09:00 -0500

On Tuesday I heard Jessica Valenti speak at New York City’s The Tank about her new book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women. The event was hosted by Paradigm Shift. Following are 10 things I left thinking about:

1. Five months before the book was released, anti-feminist conservatives used words like “slut” and “whore” to describe it. These critics had only seen the title and the innocuous cover, but as Valenti said, for them, “the only alternative to being a virgin is being a whore.”

2. Relatedly, it is much easier to commit acts of violence against “sluts” and “whores” than “women” or “girls,” because these derogatory terms dehumanize them.

3. When reports come out about young people and promiscuity, the concern isn’t about young people having sex, it is about young women having sex. There is rarely concern about young men having sex.

4. The FDA held up Plan B and the HPV vaccine because of fears that it would encourage young women to have sex (FDA documents include the phrase “teen sex cults”). Bill Maher likened this to fearing that those who received tetanus shots would run out and jam rusty nails into their legs.

5. Vaginal rejuvenation is the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery in the United States.

6. A 2007 law dictates that women who are raped, who appear to be intoxicated, are denied rape kits. Also in the law, once a woman gives consent and penetration occurs, nothing after that can constitute rape, no matter how violent.

7. The power of “patriarchal rewards” leads women to turn on other women in order to garner the favor of men. This includes women calling other women “sluts” and women saying that they only want to hang out with men. (Notice that men don’t do this in reverse.)

8. The virginity movement teaches women that their only real worth is their ability to remain pure and to refuse to be sexual. By this logic, a woman cannot be a moral person if she has premarital sex.

9. The virginity until marriage movement does not value women, rather it values wielding power over a specific type of (white) woman. These virgin-obsessives don’t focus their energies on sex trafficking and prostitution, which largely involves nonwhite women.

10. 95% of women have premarital sex, and these women are happy, educated and socially engaged (despite anti-feminist funded studies that attempt to prove otherwise). Taking the joy out of sex isn’t going to make women not have sex but it is going to make them enjoy it less.

My Interview with Marcia Pappas

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:26:53 -0500

My Interview with Marcia Pappas:

I interview Marcia Pappas, President of the National Organization for Women (NOW) - New York State, who explains how “feminism” became a dirty word, the problem with the women’s rights industry, and the greatest feminist challenges left to overcome.

Disturbing Op-Ed About Rape and Accountability in The Daily Princetonian

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:20:00 -0500

Iulia Neagu, a Princeton Freshman, wrote an op-ed this week about the “ambiguous situation” of date rape called “The real ‘Sex on a Saturday Night.’” Among the many inaccurate and victim blaming points in her piece, she writes:

We live in times when sexual discrimination has, more or less, disappeared from our society. Yet it still prevails when talking about a ubiquitous thing like sex. If both people were drunk and if the girl has the right to make the accusation of rape, then why shouldn’t the boy enjoy the same privileges? If a culprit is required, then both of them should be guilty or there should be no culprit at all.

A more eloquent feminist than myself should explain all of the reasons this piece is rife with dangerous messages, but here is a short list:

It implies that the victim is to blame for being raped because she was intoxicated. Note: The victim is never to blame.

It reinforces an already misogynistic rape culture in which it is on the woman not to get herself into potentially dangerous situations. In this culture, men are not told not to drink too much or to curb their violent tendencies so that they don’t rape, but women are told to behave appropriately so that they do not bring acts of sexual violence upon themselves.

It implies that women commonly get drunk, have sex with men and cry rape. To say that situations like that are rare is an understatement. It is much more common that rape goes underreported because op-eds like Neagu’s create a society where the victim is guilty until proven innocent.

It questions why the guy is “always to blame,” when any rape study will show that women are overwhelmingly the victims of rape by men, and that even in cases where men are raped, other men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators (99% of all rapists are men). There are pretty obvious biological reasons why it is easier for men to rape women than vice-versa.

It attempts to level the playing field on sexual assault by implying that the victim shares the responsibility of the crime. That the victim is willing, even. From Neagu’s piece:

[By drinking] the girl willingly got herself into a state in which she could not act rationally. This, in my opinion, is equivalent to agreeing to anything that might happen to her while in this state. In the case of our girl, this happened to be sex with a stranger.

I learned tonight that the reason the media has always sexualized black women is that back in the day sexualized victims gave slave owners permission to rape their black slaves without the burden of accountability. Similarly, a victim who is “asking for it,” because of the alcohol in her system, allows the victim to share in the accountability of the crime.

It is horrifying to me that a woman wrote this op-ed.

Response from Princeton Sexual harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education (SHARE) peer advisers and SpeakOut advocates.

Jessica Roy’s take in NYULocal, “Princetonian Op-Ed Plays the Rape Blame Game.” The comments here are almost as upsetting and ill-informed as Neagu’s original op-ed.

From Nathan Schrader’s Blog of the Nation

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:47:59 -0500

From Nathan Schrader’s Blog of the Nation

Look for me and Jerin 7:08 minutes in.

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:53:11 -0500

Look for me and Jerin 7:08 minutes in.

Photos from the March Across the Brooklyn Bridge for Health Care...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:22:00 -0500

The Brooklyn Bridge

Some facts about health care

A dog wearing a stethoscope

Jerin and I

Dr. Manisha Sharma

Photos from the March Across the Brooklyn Bridge for Health Care & the ‘Change Agenda’ on Saturday, February 20th, 2010.

Coverage of the Health Care March across the Brooklyn Bridge

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Seven hundred of us marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday, February 20th, for health care reform. Following is some coverage of the event, as well as information about the state of health care in the United States:

A Beautiful Day to March Across the Brooklyn Bridge

Hundreds March for A Public Option

HCAN press release

CBS 2 News Brooklyn Bridge March

Response to the Dodge Charger Super Bowl ad, courtesy of...

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:59:00 -0500

Response to the Dodge Charger Super Bowl ad, courtesy of Jezebel.com.

Math and Science Don't Come Easily to Most Men Either

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:09:48 -0500

Math and Science Don't Come Easily to Most Men Either:

Photo from educationcenteronline.org

A woman who was “bad at math” talks about overcoming cultural cues to become a mechanical engineer.

Ex-Safety Officer Sues Bucknell for Gender Discrimination

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:55:29 -0500

Ex-Safety Officer Sues Bucknell for Gender Discrimination