Filthy Fuckers

Okay, it’s been a minute (ha) since I got REALLY angry over something REALLY pathetic (mostly because you get used to that feeling). There is a web site called boobsforbarack, where women are encouraged to “Write a message on your mammories, wear a bra, bathing suit, or go totally bare, if you support Barack, then show IT by showing THEM!”

I wasn’t going link to the site because I don’t think people should click on it. But you can go to the site and take ACTION without giving the nudey parts a click!!

Take a picture of a message of protest to these people and upload it at their sight at boobsforbarack.com

Here are some of the images I sent in already:

There isn’t a lick of information about who runs this site. And a lot of the pictures are photo-shopped models, not real people. But there are real people on there too. What the fuck, ladies? I’m ripping my hair out. Without any other forethought about the misogynist overtones of this website, there is a simple question that I think everyone of us ought know the answer to before hooking up to the internet: DO I WANT TO SEND A PICTURE OF MY BODY TO A WEB SITE WHOSE ORIGINS OR INTENTIONS I DON’T KNOW?

Barack Obama people–I implore you to not let scum bags use your campaign to take advantage of women.

Can She Get A Witness?

This morning I was listening to NPR as usual during my morning routine, and I have to say I am pretty disappointed because of their lack of coverage on how misogynist the media has been towards Hillary.

A woman was speaking when I first woke up to the radio alarm, a reporter for NPR reflecting on how the first female candidate for president has made some kind of impact on her as a woman and probably the rest of the world too, regardless that Hillary may not have even gotten her vote. Well that’s awesome, really it is.It’s just that the piece was just…well, it was weak. The reporter looks back to when she covered Geraldine Ferraro’s selection to the Democratic vice presidential position in 1984, the first woman to get to that spot, and ends the piece with a description of another female colleague and herself tearing up, still all well and good. But the impact of that short piece was less a tribute to how incredibly remarkable this even is, it came off with the taste of letting the girls have some fun for a while–oh look, a lady tearing up, how cute…

I was also left with this feeling of . . . but . . . but that’s it? What about all of the sexism and misogyny in the reporting around her? What about all of the really sickly pessimistic way so many people are predicting there won’t be another female candidate for president in a generation or more? Why are you still not covering this NPR?

How can we just kiss Hillary off with a “Well you did good, and we won’t forgetchya gal”? I’m not talking about political platforms and who is a better candidate, I’m talking about the mistreatment Hillary has been getting, and all women have been getting by extension.

Next, NPR’s David Greene is on with a a few interviews and close ups he’d done with Hillary earlier on in the race up through a few weeks ago. NPR’s aim was obviously to leave listeners with the feeling that Hillary did a good job, had supporters who told her NOT to give up (while pundits and commentators yelled that she is a sore loser for not quitting earlier), but still, I was left hurt and unfulfilled by it. First of all, why hadn’t NPR aired Greene’s interviews two months ago when almost nothing positive about her was being aired?

And secondly, why no in-depth discussion on the sexism in this race, the misogyny? I’m deeply disappointed with NPR.

The blatant hate that people spewed at Hillary this campaign needs to be accounted for, and the hate messages that came from middle-class liberals and others’ tacit support of it especially needs to be accounted for.

And if you’re still saying to yourself, what more do you want? Here is example the likes of which I wish NPR would cover so brilliantly so that more people would be exposed to it. It’s a post by a brilliant blogger, Melissa McEwan, that does more justice to the issue: For the Record.

And if you liked that, here’s her response to all of the misogynist responses she got to that post.

PS–If any of you have heard NPR cover this issue better, please let us know in the comments section.

Equality Now honors Joss Whedon in 2006

I just came across this while surfing and think it’s worth seeing again. An incredible speach.

It’s too bad..

Even as I’m affirmed by reading this, I’m saddened that so many people just can’t perceive the world from the same lens. I know countless women who claim they are not effected by sexism, are utterly confused or amused when I mention it. I think the horrible advent of American Slavery is the propulsion of the issue of racism to the font of people’s consciousness, which keeps people working on racism as an important issue and keeps individuals reflecting on ways they can not discriminate against blacks. (That’s not to mention other races–particularly Arabs or Latinos these days–who I think are all but ignored in the racism conversation.) Seriously though:

It’s too bad that rape, especially in war and in the military even when there is no war, is not seen as the emotional genocide that it is, stripping the self-wealth and humanity out of women all over the world. It’s too bad this doesn’t shove women’s rights to the front alongside racism.

It’s too bad that American sex-centered entertainment, which strips all fair and natural imagery and definition of sexual identity and sexual behavior out of human identity and replaces it with very few archetypes (the good girl, the fem fatal, damsel in distress, etc), isn’t seen as a cunning machine that causes disorder and distress in women, especially adolescent girls, and increasingly deviant behavior in all sexes because even while we are sex-crazed, we are offered no legitimately respectable model of sex and sexual behavior.

It’s too bad that in the U.S., strippers are often seen as empowered women using “what they’ve got” to get back what they can’t get in any other field of work–namely, equal pay (in fact women make more money than men in the sex industry), instead of a field that NO woman deems as their career of choice, where a majority of women are their because they are out of money, out of family, out of education, and have children to support on their own, where even the young women who choose to strip just to push the envelope or to make some quick money to support a college education, were coerced into it to begin with–gotten drunk, often by the owners of the clubs, and given preferential treatment as a “newby” so they want to continue, where women are subject to smoke, bad and flashing lighting, loud music, and the emotional instability of being called sexy and a whore in the same breath–it’s too bad that this position for women is completely reinforcing the image that woman are only worth what men can get from them–their sex (and reproduction).

It’s too bad that girls and women are sold all over the third world into brothels and sexual slavery, and this is not seen as enough evidence that misogyny and women’s rights should be in the front alongside racism.

The Business of Being Born

If you haven’t already, go get this movie. If you have netflix and a PC on hand, you can catch it in your Watch Instantly listings too.

U.S. culture and our healthcare system has a death grip–literally–on the way women give birth here. We have the second highest infant mortality rate in all of the developed world; and The Business of Being Born explains how medical interventions during labor domino each other to turn birthing into something to be cured of instead of an experience to behold and causes more complications than should happen.

But the movie isn’t just about exposing the statistic that one in three births in the U.S. are by Cesarean section, many of them planned, or that women are being cattle-shot through maternity wards in order for their doctors to get dinner on time. In addition to these staggering details, this movie ends up being largely about women’s empowerment, ancient women’s knowledge and intuition, and

Ricki Lake’s produced the film and Abby Epstein directed. I think the film is more universally understandable because these two women and others were so honest about their own births–the fears they had, the lack of information Ricki had during her first birth, and that they disclosed their process for the film. It doesn’t seem like such a radical idea because all of the normal questions and concerns came up: What about clinical monitors? What about being transferred to a hospital in case of an emergency? What about pain? What about the fact that most women are filled with fear and anxiety about birthing and so they lack the confidence in their own bodies and minds to think of having a natural birth? All of it comes up, including a nasty history of hosptial birthing, which helps with some answers to Why are we like this?

I stayed up way too late watching this film, but it was well worth it.

One gimmick at a time please

Just in case you get so drunk that the song Thriller and a platoon of dancing lizards doesn’t catch your attention, this Super Bowl ‘08 commercial for Sobe Life Water features a third gimmick——a ridiculously out-of-place leggy lady. WTF?