The ever-amazing Sociological Images posted recently about the undeniable fact that in the fashion world, "nude," "skin," and "natural" equals Caucasian, and I went hunting for some examples. I found three of them in all of five minutes.







Lesson learned: white people are the default, and people of color are the other.

When will the fashion industry learn that there is no one color that can be associated with "skin"?

Saw this French McDonald's ad posted on Feministing, and I actually kind of love it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave a statement on the Senate floor last week, honoring former Dr. George Tiller. The one-year anniversary of his murder was just this past Monday. Here is the statement:

A community in Kansas still shakes one year after the brazen murder of one of its own. This weekend will mark the first anniversary of Dr. George Tiller’s death. He was gunned down in front of his Wichita church the day before last Memorial Day.

Dr. Tiller was killed at point-blank range, at his place of worship, in the middle of a Sunday morning, while his wife sang in the church choir just yards away.

He was murdered by an unrepentant assassin who took a life in the name of protecting life. It was an indefensible crime and an incomprehensible excuse.

Just as despicable as Dr. Tiller’s death was the fact that his murder wasn’t an isolated incident. It wasn’t even the first time someone tried to kill him. His clinic was bombed in 1985. He was shot twice in 1993. And over the next 16 years, seven clinic workers would be killed before Dr. Tiller would become the eighth. More than 6,000 other acts of violence have been launched at clinics and their workers – bombings, arsons, assaults and other attacks.

The last doctor killed before Dr. Tiller was a husband and father from Buffalo named Barnett Slepian. He was an OB/GYN who also helped poor women access safe, legal abortions. Because of that, he was murdered in his home. I didn’t know Dr. Selpian, but I knew his niece. She came from Reno, Nevada, and she once worked in my office.

The tragedy of Dr. Tiller’s death, and of Dr. Slepian’s death – and of every atrocity like it – is independent of the issue of abortion. It’s not about the legality of abortion or funding of abortion. These are emotional debates, and ones on which people of good faith can disagree.

What so shook that Kansas town was rather an act of terrorism. What reverberated out to our borders and coasts from the center of our country was the violation of our founding principle: that we are a nation of laws, not of men.

Everyone in America has the right to disagree with its laws. Everyone has the right to dispute and protest its laws. But no American has the right to disobey them.

Not all of us would choose Dr. Tiller’s profession. Not all of us would seek his services or agree with his philosophy. But it is the responsibility of every American to respect another’s right to practice his profession legally.

Those who believe in the sanctity of life cannot be selective. We must value every life – not just those with which we agree.

I've stated before that I'm not the biggest fan of the institution of marriage. To sum it up: I don't need a piece of paper from the government to validate who I'm allowed to love, and I don't feel comfortable being a part of a patriarchal and exclusive institution that I feel wrongfully dominates our society. That being said, I don't judge anyone who chooses to get married, feminists included.

Anywho!

For those who dig the idea of challenging holy matrimony, check out Liz Langley of AlterNet's Eight Reasons Marriage Doesn't Matter. I applaud anyone who's gutsy enough to take on the ginormous institution of marriage.

I'm encouraging everyone to head over to AlterNet to check out a recent article, "My Boyfriend Stole My Birth Control": When Men Force Women to Get Pregnant Against Their Will.

Scary new evidence is showing that a significant number of women experience their partners trying to steal away their bodily control through "reproductive coercion," or the act of forcing a pregnancy onto someone.

In the largest study of this phenomenon to date, “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy,” published in the January issue of the journal Contraception, lead researcher Elizabeth Miller and others surveyed nearly 1,300 16- to 29-year-old women who’d sought a variety of services at five different Northern California reproductive health clinics. Among those who had experienced intercourse, i.e., who could be at risk of unintended pregnancy, not only did 53 percent of respondents say they’d experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, but one in five said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches. These figures were consistent from clinic to clinic.

Currently, this phenomenon is little-known, and the prevailing stereotype is still "the woman—call her the femme fertile—who conspires to get pregnant, perhaps by 'forgetting' to take her birth control pills, as a way to 'trap a man' and force marriage—or at least keep him in her life." But people need to know that there is another scarily common situation out there: the boyfriend or husband who, disgusted by a woman's ability to have reproductive control, goes to heinous measures to force pregnancies, abortions, or miscarriages onto his partner.

This is some seriously fucked-up stuff. Spread the word, feminists. Please.

The first advertisement for abortion services to run in the United Kingdom hit the air earlier this week, and will run about 25 times throughout the next month. Specifically, it advertises Marie Stopes International, which is one of the world's leading family planning organizations.

The ad doesn't mention abortion services - it just refers viewers to MSI. Wow, 2010 and we're just seeing the first family planning services ad now.

After finding out about the wonderful Genderfork.com (via Feministing) I had an urge to post an ode to gender-bending, because I just love it so damn much. First of all, if you haven't been to Genderfork, visit it ASAP! It is a lovely blog with user-submitted photos...


...and quotes from those who find beauty and pleasure in androgyny and ambiguity:

"Some days I wish I could set my gender on Facebook to 'It's complicated.'"

"People think they're being invasive when they ask me questions some might consider 'personal'— questions about my body, my gender, the way I look, think, etc. They don't seem to understand I love being able to tell people there's a different way of existing out there. Not everything is black and white, just 'this' or 'that.' There's a 'Thiat' and a 'Thast' and every combination you can possibly dream up."

"I bound and buttoned up for church; I wore a fancy dress that showed off my hairy armpits for dinner. This Easter is one big pastel-colored drag show."

I want to cry at the sheer beauty of people being able to express who they are, despite being a part of an entire society that tells them to conform. Some days I wonder if I would present myself in a more androgynous manner if I had questioned gender more while growing up, or if I wasn't so intimidated by society's reactions. Still, last year when I attended a drag ball, I had a blast trying a different gender on for size:



Genderfucking just... rules.

I've thought a lot about gender, and I know that some may argue that the world we should strive to live in is a genderless one... but my thoughts are that instead of abolishing gender altogether, let's have more gender! People take pride and pleasure in gender expression and identity, and I think the world might be a bit boring if we take that away. Let's have thousands of genders, millions, billions! Imagine a world where instead of checking "man" or "woman" on any mundane form or online profile, you're given a blank line on which to write whatever you want. My body tingles just thinking about it.

So I raise my glass to genderqueer, genderfuck, genderbend, unisex, androgynous, ambiguous, fluid, transgender, butch, and everything else.

I want to conclude with some worthwhile videos, first one of spoken word artist Kit Yan performing an amazing piece on the fluidity of gender:



And, because someone on Genderfork.com mentioned it, the music video for "I Want to Break Free," by one of my favorite gender-bending bands, Queen. Think of it in terms of breaking free from binary gender roles :D

My college graduation is rapidly approaching, and it's final project/exam time. For my wonderful Masculinities class, we're required to do a "liberating action," that is, some kind of activism that draws on what we've learned throughout the class. I've chosen to make small cards that can be carried around and given out to street harassers - whether they cat-call, make inappropriate comments, unwelcome sexual advances, or any unwarranted physical contact. I explain my reasoning for doing this in my accompanying paper:

Every time I have to walk down any street alone, I find myself preparing to be harassed. It’s sickening that I should have to prepare myself for such a thing, but the truth is that I cannot remember the last time I walked down Main Street by myself or with girlfriends, and was not at least honked at by a car full of men. When I go to the bars, I see men standing to the side of the dance floor, watching the women dancing, picking out which one is the hottest or the sluttiest, and then making their moves, which always consists of latching onto her backside without so much as a “hello.” The worst part is that I can’t even really hate them for what they do, because I know that it isn’t entirely their fault; they were just taught in a variety of ways by a variety of people that to be a “man” is to treat women as objects to be ogled. The sad truth is that, “Men learn that to effectively perform masculinity and to protect a masculine identity, they must, in many instances, ignore a woman’s pain and obscure her viewpoint” (Quinn 397). To the harassers, the cat-callers, and the gropers, there are no feelings or souls attached to our bodies, and we could not be their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, or friends because we are not really people, and that is what allows them to continue to do what they do.

It’s time to start reminding these men that, contrary to what they have been forced to believe, what they do does affect us. A honk or a “hey sexy” might seem harmless, but I know that every time I get that attention on the street, it hurts me. It hurts even more when I can’t respond to this inexcusable behavior because it just gets too exhausting to say something to every jerk on the street. Therefore, for my liberating action, I want to make it easier for me and every other woman to call harassers out on their behavior, and for the harassers to realize that their actions affect us.

I'm sure some people might argue that this isn't the best way to handle harassment, and I think it is important to discuss what the best way to respond to being harassed is, but these are for the women who feel that this method is the best for them.

You can download the cards I made as a Word document here.

Please note that the cards are intended to be printed double-sided so that one side has English text, and the other side has the same text in Spanish. Feel free to make any adjustments you see necessary and to post these to your own blog/site (I just ask that you link back to here). And I would love to hear your experiences with carrying these around and distributing them - whether through comments on this post, or through e-mail.

Good luck, and stay safe.

So, Sarah Palin recently spoke at the Susan B. Anthony List breakfast - for those of you who don't know, Susan B. Anthony List is "a political action committee helping pro-life women gain election to Congress." I watched some of the video of her speech but I couldn't get too far into it because my body wouldn't stop cringing whenever Sarah Palin mentioned the "new conservative feminist movement."



...Wait, what?

Isn't that an oxymoron? I respect people's individual political opinions, and I'm certainly not one to render feminism an exclusive movement, but I will until the day I die assert that a person cannot claim to want the best for women when they do not trust women to make the right choices for their own bodies.

I have met people who admit that they would never get an abortion themselves, nor are they particularly 100% comfortable with the idea of abortion, but they understand the importance of this right remaining intact because they know it is what is best for the emotional and physical well-being of women. To me, that is a true feminist: someone who, despite any personal hang-ups they might have about a particular issue, will always support the position that protects our needs and rights.

Sarah Palin is not that type of feminist. She isn't a feminist.

Here's what Taylor Marsh, of HuffingtonPost.com, had to say:

You simply can't be a feminist if you don't support a woman's individual rights. Announcing a "new conservative feminist movement" without acknowledging the individual freedoms of women won't cut it. This feministic facade that actually takes aim at women's rights should be seen for what it is.

Anything less than supporting women's full individual rights simply renders you a pretender, a fake, a feminist fraud.

I sincerely hope this "conservative feminist movement" doesn't gain momentum. I might have to *headdesk* repeatedly.

As someone who's gotten more than her fair share of blank stares and outright laughter when I tell people I meet in bars that I'm a feminist, I more than understand the plight of finding a partner who doesn't cringe at the mention of the "F" word.

If you have some experience in this area, take a few minutes to read two posts in the Ms. Magazine blog by Alexandra Tweten on her mission to find a feminist date-worthy dude via CraigsList. Here is her original post, and here is a second post she wrote yesterday, giving an update on the situation.

How does everyone else deal with trying to find romantic partners who support/hold feminist values? It ain't easy.