I’ve been busy but here’s some skims!

Hi reader(s?)

Sorry I’ve been so absent from posting, life has taken a turn for the busy. So I thought I’d give you some food for thought since I’ve found a minute to do some reading of my own in the Feminist Blogosphere! Thank god some people get paid for this!

• Most EXCITEDLY check out the lady Catholic priests being ordained in Boston earlier this week!!
• Wait, so is this saying we should get the HPV vaccine? Weren’t we angry a while ago that this vaccine is so expensive yet treats only a fraction of disease-causing HPV…post a comment if you have insight!
• Jessica at Feministing reports on a really weird review of Purity Balls in Time Magazine…ew
• And something related–a Purity quote that might make you vomit a little bit in your mouth.
• Convert your bra into a face mask in the event of biological war!
• A review of the New Fat-chick video game by feminist blogger and game designer Holly
• This girl speaks for so many….sexism from the mouth of Brook Hogan (daughter of Hulk)
• Environmentalists HATE AMERICA!! you’ll get a chuckle at the sarcasm.
  
• Rape still being called “sex” ..

Rape is also a war tactic, the UN says

I didn’t post about this before because I thought that there was just so much other stuff being said about it out on the internet. But it keeps coming up that people haven’t heard yet, so here it is. The UN Security Council a few weeks ago voted unanimously for a resolution to call rape a war tactic. Read this article for more

The news that led to this vote is all very sad, in the same vein of all of the other extremely sad truths about sexual violence: the rape of female military soldiers by their fellow soldiers; the rape of Iraqi women by U.S. soldiers; and more rape (graphic) if you don’t believe that one; the rape of female contractors working in the middle east by their own co-workers all while the military hushes things; the sale of children from poor countries to camel racers in the UAE to be used as starved, beaten, camel jockeys and sex slaves; the sale of girls into the sex trade all over the world in poor countries and the men from wealthy countries who support it; the belief in much of the middle east, in African countries, and in parts of Asia that girls and women are worth no more than the worth of an animal; genital mutilation of girls and boys in the Muslim, Christian and Jewish religions; the teaching of sexual shame to little girls and boys; domestic violence everywhere, it’s all everywhere.

The only comment I have for this, and the UN’s 2003(?) declaration of rape as a casualty of war, is…Why’d it take so long? Why do women always come last. Why is it acceptable for peace and aid workers to rape little girls in the countries in which they are sent to relieve suffereing? It’s all very sad.

Dissent, that’s what it is.

The other night I got to hear about a friend’s troubles with an old perv she has to work with. She’s been slowly building up resistence, she told us, and was thinking that it was leading to a straight up cut-off, telling him she can’t interact with him about anything but work. The perv in question is twice her age and makes pathetic advances to try to win her attention, calling her his “girlfriend,” and other unmistakably patronizing and objectifying languate. He also manipulates her into paying attention to his “bad days,” pretty often, and she’s begun to respond to his “Oh, I’m not doing so well this moring”s with “Well that’s too bad, see ya!”

It’s interesting to hear about how her voice of dissent is taking formation each day as she thinks about how to approach this and other situations.

Once you become aware of something–whether it is sexism, racism, ageism, abuse of someone–you come to a cross roads where you can choose action and dissent, or cowardace and detachment. Unfortunately, for most people in most cases, we choose to detach. I know that sounds like a generalized cliche, “most of our culture sucks most of the time, blah blah.” But what I’m talking about, my friendly Feminist reader, is YOU! And ME! Us progressive enlightened guys and gals, acting like the jokes people tell and the side comments made, don’t ultimately reflect bigger ideas and concepts that cause discrimination, objectification, and hate.

I’m talking about those times when someone (or you) makes a call to you on the street, and you just keep walking; or when some dude (or you) calls you his sweat heart while excusing himself for bumping into you in a store, and you just roll your eyes at your friend and keep going; or the times when the guy at work (or you) to whom you’ve made it clear that you don’t wish to be friends keeps cornering you at the water cooler for a friendly come-on, and you jiggle it out of your head so as to not cause too much turmoil in the workplace; the countless times someone (OR YOU) cracks a joke at women’s expense, and “it’s just a joke,” so you don’t say anything; and how about those family functions or work parties where the dudes engage you only in that chatty banter about sex or relationships, saving their more intellectual moments for their male counterparts; or how about when you were a kid or when you see kids now, not being chosen for sides during a sport or game because they are a girl or not being given as much credit for a project or experiment because it is assumed the boys around deserve it more?

It happens ALL the time, and there are so many more examples, and the point is: if you’re aware of them, and you brush them off, you are choosing to detach from a personal interpretation of them. You have the “Yeah but he doesn’t mean me!” syndrome. In his Documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhyme, Byron Hurt demonstrates at length why black women tend never to speak up against hip-hops misogyny and rape of its women: because they don’t think the pimps and gangStars are “talking about me,” when they are whistling for their hos, among other things. He explains that these women don’t think of themselves as being targeted for abuse and discriminated against, although documentary-watchers see the statistic on the screen that black women are 35 percent more likely to be raped, and that, yes indeed, those RapStars are talking about them when they swing their bling and call to their multitudes.

And in all of our everyday situations we’re faced with the same things, presented differently from time to time, and we have to choose. My friend is learning how to choose dissent. I call it desent because when you speak out against sexism and discrimination in these small situations, you are not only defending yourself against another, you are speaking out against a system that holds misogyny and sexism as a norm and works against your essential being to feel safe, respected, and free.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has done it again

I had to read this article twice, because I couldn’t have read it right the first time: First off, the title of the article calls this guy Barlow a “Polygamist” and not a pedophile and rapist; second, they didn’t arrest him on the aforementioned charges. Unfortunately, the second time around didn’t settle my outrage.

What does this statement by authorities mean: “But at this point, Dale is not being arrested, and we are working cooperatively with them, and we made very clear to them that they have made a mistake.”? Is that the way men who rape girls but have lots of money get slapped on the wrist? “Don’t do it again or we’re gonna call your Ma,” type of shit? Let me ask you this Mister Authority: What exactly was the mistake? Since Barlow isn’t being arrested for anything?

Not only does the 16-year-old girl in question say she was beaten and raped, but she already has a child with 50-year-old Dale Evans Barlow and is in a “Spiritual marriage” with him. Pause. ..no wait, let’s pause again-HOW IS THAT NORMAL?

And “Barlow served 45 days in jail and is on three years of probation after pleading no contest last year to charges of conspiracy to have sex with a minor.” Still not enough evidence? When police raided the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ ranch last week, they found over 400 children, most of whom were girls….where’d all the boys go? Who are the mothers of these children? Of the 11 to 17-year-olds, how many of them are “married” and having sex with this guy, or other grown men?

How is this not a really easy case-closed crime against girls and women?

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.

No words…

Click here.

life, death, rape, control

I believe there is an emerging cultural movement that isn’t just about women being allowed to wear pants and spit if we want–it’s about a deep, personal, spiritual, and empowering ownership and pride of our own feminine definition of life, politics, and the world. And it’s about sexuality–controlling it ourselves, honoring it, not being ashamed of it, not being used for it.

Getting to this definition inevitably will require healing, the same healing and forgiveness that is needed in our relationships over race.

I like what Sue Monk Kidd says about Patriarchy–that patriarchy is not men or man’s authority, rather patriarchy is a system in which the male authority has been schewed. In many ways Patriarchy is wearing thin, but still we need to step up to over and over in our daily lives in order to press on with honoring our right for a definition of life and systems that includes respect and wholeness for the feminine. In many ways we can be dismembered when we show resistence, but the key to remember is that systems can be changed, the human experience, both male and female, is ever-evolving if we are open to such revelations.

That being said, yesterday at the magazine I work for, some colleagues and I were talking about an interview we are publishing in April about a man on Texas death row, Karl Chamberlain, for tying up, raping, and murdering his female neighbor when he was in his 20s in 1991. It’s been 16 years, and he’s aparently come around 360–carving out spiritual understanding of his fate in a way as to make you believe he is a living example of transforming power and human potential for righteousness.

Well, that isn’t my opinion. I had already read his bio. online a few months ago after I saw some of his poetry in a previous issue of our magazine, some of which touched me deeply. And I was outraged at his crime. This, along with the constant reminder in independent media about women being raped during their work for the military and for security companies and then punished for it, while the men are protected, being slapped on the wrist or promoted, depending on which way the wind is blowing that day; and the constant reminder in my neighborhood of women abusing and neglecting their children, oblivious of what that says about their own abuse (I don’t really see men abusing children, because there are never any men with their children–invisible abuse); and regular reminders from D about his clients (he treats people addicted to drugs, most of whom are members of the poorest socioeconomic class in the country) who are men abusing and cheating on women and women abusing and being raped and used by men–this all informs my daily world view.

So, after reading the article, I hated the way Karl Chamberlain was asking for our readers’ time and attention. I hated that he knew our readership is mostly a demographic that does not believe in capital punishment. And I REALLY HATED that he writes (online) bio after bio about how wonderful he is now, including his understanding that he committed a horrible act by murdering his vicitm, without a single mention of the rape that preceded the murder. That he had gone to her apartment to borrow sugar, then left, and then went back with duct tape with which to tie her to her bed. Where are his notes about that? The nightmares or suffering that caused? I was outraged that he apparently is not repenting for the rape–at least not publicly.

Instead Chamberlain repeats the sentiment over and over that he thinks that punishment by death would be too easy on him. That living with what he’s done would make a far better punishment. To me, his tone smacks of martyrdom. I’m sure he has received a lot of hate mail. But there are also people writing him letters, reading his poetry and giving him a reason to fight death–THIS is why he is appealing his sentence, not because he’d like to live to suffer more.

I don’t know this man, nor do I know what kind of person he’d be if freed from his sentence or even prison. But I do know that I can’t reconcile what he has done with what he now claims to be. To fight for Karl Chamberlain’s life because one does not believe the death penalty is effective or because one believes that the death penalty should also be considered the murder of life that’s better off alive, is to jump over all the mess in the middle where Karl Chamberlain used his power to strip a woman of hers in the most henious way possible. It’d be the argument of someone who hasn’t suffered equally, who doesn’t understand the terrorizing pool of missery and helplessness that people like Karl Chamberlain create in others. I guess it’s possible that the argument against Karl Chamberlain’s death could be the argument of someone who has suffered such, but who has become spiritually transformed enough to forgive–but that could just be a made up story, too. I fear that many of our readers are in the first category, and it pisses me off that he gets to use them and their time in so many pages.

We’ll see when the letters to the editor start to come in, which I’m sure they will! I hope that people will be responding to more than just his story and the surface topics of the death penalty/murder/spiritual therapy, and we’ll be justified in printing his interview with deeper dialog about crimes against women and and the structures of patriarchy that make them possible.

By the way, I don’t believe capital punishment is effective or fair, just as I don’t believe our judicial and prisons system are effective or fair. But these days I am leaning towards not understanding why we hold onto life and death as such precious and holy events as though we have any control over it. The more practical concept to hold onto to me would be to make our current lives as enjoyable and comfortable as possible (including the use of great health care), which would require ridding the world of people who cause this much suffering in others. I believe we should revere life and honor it. But to value it over death philosophically might cause more harm than good………