Ack! I've fallen off the face of the blogosphere!

I'm still here. Bear with me.

And in the mean time, watch this video. It's a couple months old, but I just saw it and found it incredibly heart-breaking and, at the same time, uplifting. It's from the NoVo Foundation.

I hope everyone had/is having a fabulous holiday! I haven't been able to write a post in a few days because of the festivities, but here's what's been going on:

• With more and more people becoming aware of the fact that abstinence-only programs do not work, supporters of the no-sex-until-marriage curriculum in schools are looking for its revival in the health care bill.


• Both pro-choice and anti-choice activists are displeased with the final Senate version of the health care bill.


• Sarah Thomas has become the first woman ever to referee a college football bowl game.


• Mexico City has legalized adoption and marriage rights for same-sex couples.


• Jill of I Blame the Patriarchy wrote a post yesterday about an anti-feminist blog run by a husband and wife team, called The Art of Manliness. Eesh.


• Cara of Feministe sheds light on the sexual trafficking of Native American women.


• Check out Racialicious for commentary on the new Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog.


• It isn't just the painful phrase "no homo!" that is becoming prominent in pop culture, but its counterpart "no lesbo!" as well. Commence banging head against wall.

Come tomorrow I'm leaving for a four day much-needed vacation to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I most likely won't have internet access, so updates will resume on Tuesday. But here's a Buffet of the Week to tide my lovely readers over:

• The number of abortions in Wisconsin has dropped, 2007 statistics show. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin attributed this decrease to the availability of contraceptives.


• A Massachusetts state senator, James Marzilli, has been accused of sexually harassing four women. Oy.


• Ugh ugh ugh. A construction company in Portland dropped a project to build a Planned Parenthood this week because of pressures from anti-choice activists. Sigh.


• Great news: 22 states (plus the District of Columbia) have refused millions of dollars worth of funding to be used towards abstinence-only education. Good move.


• A young women talked to the press about the devastation she faced when someone created a fake Facebook profile that said she was a prostitute. Gotta love when people think it's okay to call women nasty and degrading names.


• Gavin Newsom, San Francisco mayor and gay marriage supporter, is considering replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger as "the governator" of California.


• Women activists in Zimbabwe enter their sixth week in detention, putting them on par with the country's longest-serving political prisoners.


• An Islamic organization in India ruled that the conversion of women to match the faith of the men they marry should be completely illegal.

That's all I got for now, but please feel free to comment if I missed anything. See ya'll next week!

Woo, it's been a long day. I'll be visiting family all weekend, so updates will resume on Tuesday. To tide you over, here's your buffet of the week:

• Ellen challenges McCain on gay marriage! Probably the best video I've seen all week. McCain gets his ass handed to him.


• Hillary addresses sexism in an interview with The Washington Post, calling it "deeply offensive to millions of women."


• In Colombia, women continue to fight for reproductive rights. A 13-year-old rape victim being refused an abortion? They have a long way to go...


• This is very upsetting: some Zimbabwean women are so desperate that they have begun to sell sex in order to buy food. Some perform sexual acts for as little as 50 U.S. cents.


• Huuuuge gap in pay between male and female lacrosse coaches. On average, men made $85,000 more in 2006.


• In Tanzania, girls can disappear and no one will raise an eyebrow. Human trafficking is all too common, where a girl can sell for $20.


• The US Senate passed a supplemental war spending bill on Thursday, which included a provision to restore government subsidies for birth control pills sold at university and low-income health centers.


• The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has brought a lawsuit against the Air Force that questions the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.


• Women seek to ban men's ski jumping from the Olympics because the sport excludes women from participating.

Anything I missed?

Here's some interesting current events from all around the world.

• In South Africa, police rescued eight women who were lured into forced prostitution.

• The Times printed an article about Fox News attempting to be more balanced by conducting interviews with both Clinton and Obama. We'll see how long their "balance" lasts. Click here to see an interview on Fox News with Obama, and here to see one with Clinton.

• Every minute, somewhere in the world a woman dies during pregnancy or in childbirth.

• TV personality Sam Newman went on a sexist rant recently, claiming that women serve "very little purpose" in AFL boardrooms and that women have done nothing for football. Umm... maybe because no one will let us.

• Several women have come out and accused Bloomberg L.P., a company founded by Mayor Mike Bloomberg, of discrimination against pregnant employees.

• AlterNet posted a video, showing a voter asking McCain if he really called his wife a cunt. Watch McCain get all flustered. It's fun. (For those of you who don't know, a few reporters came out and said they overheard McCain call his wife the C-word to her face a couple years ago).

• Pro-choicers and anti-choicers are grappling with one another in Tennessee.

• A new study shows that not all doctors are talking to their patients about breast reconstruction after a mastectomy. The results of the study show that doctors are more likely to tell educated white women about breast reconstruction, and less likely to tell less educated Hispanic women.

• Interesting article over at AlterNet that explores bisexuality.

If I missed anything significant, please comment!

Okay, I need to send a big "what the fuck were you thinking?!" over to the makers of the new Grand Theft Auto IV. I always knew that GTA was extremely violent and raunchy, but apparently creators made IV more sexually explicit than ever. The best part of Grand Theft Auto IV? Gamers can have sex with prostitutes, and then murder them afterwards. Cool. Just the message we want to send to our young boys.

This is a horrific consequence of the War in Iraq that many people are not aware of. It has been estimated that as many as 50,000 women and girls, some as young as 13, turned to prostitution after fleeing to Syria due to Bush's invasion of Iraq. From alternet.org:

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women's Will Association.

"70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis," 23 year-old Abeer told the New York Times. "The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."

Disgusting. I can't imagine the Bush administration giving two shits about this, however.

If you want to learn more about human trafficking, as well as find out ways to get involved to help put an end to it, you can visit the Global Fund for Women.

Eliot Spitzer should be immensely relieved. Because the lovely and talented "reporters" that have decided to take his sex scandal and milk it for all its worth are not focusing one bit on shaming him. Unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure all of you have noticed that information about and pictures of the woman Spitzer slept with are being littered all over the news. And frankly, I'm really fucking sick of it. No one has interviewed her, and no one has credible information regarding her... except what they have lifted off of her Myspace page and what they have heard from "sources." Numerous "journalists" have been picking her life apart, dissecting it and analyzing it until there's nothing left. The New York Post managed to get ahold of topless pictures of her and, demonstrating their taste and decency, have published them. Is this seriously what journalists are focusing on? Also in the New York Post was a column by Andrea Peyser entitled "BOO-HO! DON'T SHED ANY TEARS FOR THIS BUSTY BRAT."

Classy.

This issue is really bringing to light how many people lack journalistic integrity. Peyser writes:

Now, we are getting a clearer picture of this young lady of the evening, the last in a line of babes and C-cups for whom the governor of the state of New York threw away his career, risked his health and maimed his marriage in search of what his madam ominously called "basic" sex. In the version she's putting out, young Ms. Dupre is the victim.

First of all: NO, we are not getting a "clearer picture" of her. We are getting bits and pieces of information from every possible source except from the woman herself. Second: "in the version she is putting out"? In order for her to "put out" anything, she needs to actually be involved in this investigation of her life. If anyone is "putting out" information, it's the media - reporters like you, Ms. Peyser.

Two alternate pictures are emerging of Ashley. In one, she's a survivor - of abuse, homelessness and drug abuse. This, of course, was before Ashley was nearly forced against her will to command $1,000 an hour to escort rich men from their clothes.

In another version, she's a spoiled brat whose stepdad bought her a Porsche that she wrecked. So she ran away from home at 17. For this, Eliot Spitzer lost everything. Ashley and Eliot deserve each other. One is mentally challenged by accident of birth. The other is that way by choice.

I would like to know where Peyser found the grounds to call this woman "mentally challenged." I would also like to know what kind of evidence she has to back up her claims - having never even met Ashley before. The media is filled with pettiness, but this is by far the worst I've seen. Can't there be some decent journalists out there that are above all this bullshit?

If you agree with me, you can see the whole story here, along with Peyser's e-mail address. Let her know how you feel. The best part of the New York Post is that they have a discussion board to provide a platform for hundreds of people to call Ashley a "slut" and a "whore."

Some people might argue that in sleeping with the governor of New York, she had to have known that there was a risk she would be exposed. But it was discovered that Spitzer went by a fake name, and she didn't recognize his face. It wasn't until their last encounter that she knew he was the governor. So many people (see: Andrea Peyser) are unnecessarily disgusted with her, when in reality, we should be disgusted with Spitzer, who was not only risking his own reputation, but the reputation and privacy of another person.

But no magazine or newspaper wants to focus on that. Because topless pictures sell more magazines.