Kansas: The First Abortion-Free State?
Kansas is apparently set to become conservative Christianity’s Mecca. Via Mother Jones:
If new guidelines from the Kansas health department are enforced, the last three abortion clinics in the state could be forced to shut their doors this summer. A court fight over the rules is almost inevitable. But anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue are already claiming success in making Kansas “the first abortion-free state.”
The state’s latest approach—with its remodeling requirements and so forth—is often referred to as “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.” TRAP laws are intended to make it difficult, if not impossible, for clinics to operate, and they have become increasingly common around the country.
The new requirements require facilities to add extra bathrooms, drastically expand waiting and recovery areas, and even add larger janitor’s closets, as one clinic employee told me—changes that clinics will have a heck of a time pulling off by the deadline. Under the new rule,…
Madame Restell: The Wickedest Woman in New York
Madame Restell was a flamboyant 19th century abortionist whom history remembers as ”the wickedest woman in New York” —but had she been? Victorian Gothic takes a critical look:
The cover of The New York Illustrated Times for February 23rd, 1878 depicts the arrest of the notorious abortionist Ann Lohman, alias “Madame Restell,” by the moral crusader Anthony Comstock. Flanked by reporters and deputies, the statuesque crime-fighter is pictured with a search warrant in hand, which he reads to the lady villain in the attitude of a holy messenger, banishing evil by its sacred words. Comfortably situated amongst the opulent furnishings of her Fifth Avenue mansion, Madame Restell wears a cool, appraising expression, as if to say “Ah, Comstock, my nemesis—I have been expecting you.” Her right hand is clenched into a fist, which overlaps the womb of a veiled woman who weeps with shame in the background.
Dubbed the “wickedest woman in New…
Religious Newspaper Removes Hillary Clinton From Situation Room Photo
Minor controversy erupted after people noticed that a Brooklyn-based, ultra-Orthadox Jewish newpaper’s version of the iconic “Situation Room” photograph had Hillary Clinton mysteriously vanished.
The story is an interesting and ironic example of a number of things — the literal erasing women’s accomplishments, and religious fundamentalists’ use of technology in postmodern fashion in their efforts to turn back society’s clock. From New York’s Daily News:
A Hasidic newspaper got into the business of revisionist history Friday when it printed a Situation Room photo that was doctored to remove Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Brooklyn-based publication Der Zeitung published the now iconic photo showing only men present to monitor a daring 40-minute Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist. National Security team member Audrey Tomason was also scrubbed from the historic image.
As a rule, Der Zeitung does not run images of women that could be considered “sexually suggestive,” Jewish…
Punk Icon Poly Styrene Dies
Feminist punk innovator Poly Styrene, former frontwoman for the British band X-Ray Spex, has succumbed to cancer at age 53, Pitchfork reports. Born Marian Joan Elliott-Said, Styrene broke boundaries in the macho realm of punk rock, influenced future generations (i.e. the riot grrl movement) and made a batch of extremely catchy music. In her words, “I said that I wasn’t a sex symbol and that if anybody tried to make me one I’d shave my head tomorrow.”
Below, from the documentary Punk in London, performing circa 1977.
Why Do Girls Wear Pink?
No, it’s not an immutable law of nature. In the 1920s, retailers began encouraging pink (a strong color) for boys and blue (a dainty one) for girls, before the trend reversed after World War II. For centuries prior, both boys and girls wore white dresses.
In light of hysteria over a photograph in J. Crew’s new catalog depicting a mother painting her son’s toenails pink, Smithsonian Magazine explores how we got to this point:
For centuries, children wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says.
The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the…
The Anomalisation of Male Rape
From Feminist Critics:
Feminists, do not focus upon male rape generally, or male prison rape in particular. This is unsurprising, and not, in itself, particularly problematic.
What is problematic with feminist discourse about male rape is not that they don’t discuss it at all – clearly they do – or that they don’t discuss it enough. The problem is that they anomalise it, that is to say, they treat it as some kind of anomalous variant of rape which, according to them, is something which normally happens to women. The latter is simply “rape”. Rape that happens to men in prison is “prison rape”. Rape that happens to men outside of prison is “male rape”. The word “female” is sometimes used as an adjective with “rape” to contrast it with male rape, but “female rape” is not used by feminists as a category designation in and of itself. It’s just “rape”. “Male rape” and “prison…
Rape Culture 101
Melissa McEwan writes on shakesville:
Frequently, I receive requests to provide a definition of the term “rape culture”…
Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to “cure” queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and “the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms.”
Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another (”I’ll make you my bitch”). Rape culture is making rape a ubiquitous part of male-exclusive bonding. Rape culture is ignoring the cavernous need for men’s prison reform in part because the threat of being raped in prison is considered an acceptable deterrent to committing crime, and the threat only works if actual men are actually being raped.
Rape culture is 1…
Who’s Afraid of a Beautiful Woman?
Via the First Church of Mutterhals:
There’s some exhibit at a museum in Pittsburgh featuring never before seen photos of Marilyn Monroe. Now, I’m not some retrograde star fucker who pines for the golden age of Hollywood when all the men were either latent homosexuals or confirmed rapists and all the women were hopped up on pills. But seeing Monroe’s ethereally beautiful mug plastered all over this city quickly became one of a few bright spots on my otherwise dreary morning commute.
To my horror, this morning I saw that someone defaced one of the billboards touting the exhibit. Under the copy, in awkward, sloppy lettering, stood the hastily spray painted profundity ‘women are not objects’ followed by some bastard amalgam of an anarchy sign and the symbol for female. I guess the self defense class let out early last night and someone was feeling frisky.
I’d like to address the trog that…
Naomi Wolf: What Price Happiness?
Naomi Wolf. Photo: David Shankbone (CC)
Are women really less happy now than they were 40 years ago? Naomi Wolf stirs up the debate, writing at More:
In September 2009, Marcus Buckingham—a motivational speaker and trainer who now claims the improbable job title of “the world’s leading expert in personal strengths”—rolled out Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently. His headline? Women have become less happy in the past 40 years. Unstated but clear: What happened 40 years ago is that feminism reappeared on the scene.
Buckingham’s announcement immediately stirred a press sensation. His findings were featured on the home page of the Huffington Post and worried over by Maureen Dowd on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Blogs, newsmagazines and daytime talk shows all agonized over the notion that feminism—all that freedom, all those choices!—was making women sadder. The data seemed to touch that…
The Dreaded Patriarchy Claims Another Victim
From Mutterhals at Black Sun Gazette:
I read an article in Jezebel that irked me, which is why I don’t usually read Jezebel. I’m not a huge fan of anyone who feels the need to loudly assert that they are a card-carrying feminist. These are the same people who balk when you fail to assert the same and immediately assume that you must be some docile Nazi house wife.
The article mournfully retells the story of a female business blogger, who claims assuming a man’s identity online improved her standing in the fast paced, super-elite world of business blogging (nevermind the fact that her real sex was listed on her blog and available to everyone with two eyes and one functioning finger). In her words:
Business opportunities fell into my lap. People asked for my advice, and they thanked me for it, too.
No hassles. Higher acceptance. And gratifying respect for my talents and round-the-clock work ethic.
Will Women Rule Over Men In The Future?
Joshua Glenn writes on Hilobrow:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women will likely overtake men in the American workforce some time this month or next. In August, women held 49.9 percent of the nation’s 132 million nonfarm jobs. Why? Because 80 percent of the 5.1 million people who have lost their jobs in this recession are men; and women are gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing.
Doesn’t having, then raising children keep many women out of the workforce? Not so much. A chart posted to the NY Times’ Economix blog notes that women across the board have entered the labor market in higher numbers over the last three decades, but the biggest increases have been among mothers with young children.
What does this mean for men, you ask? John Broome, author of “It’s a Woman’s World,” a science fiction story that appeared in the DC comic book Mystery in Space (#8), asked the same thing way back in July 1952. As the panels shown here demonstrate, Broome predicted that women would one day cruelly discriminate against men — force them to work in the home, while women ran businesses and fought wars.
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