Wait, feminists aren't angry man-haters? Since when?!?!

Well, since always. But still, we needed a study to prove it (hat tip to Feministing). According to the abstract:

Despite the popular belief that feminists dislike men, few studies have actually examined the empirical accuracy of this stereotype. The present study examined self-identified feminists' and nonfeminists' attitudes toward men. An ethnically diverse sample of college students responded to statements from the Ambivalence toward Men Inventory. Contrary to popular beliefs, feminists reported lower levels of hostility toward men than did nonfeminists. The persistence of the myth of the man-hating feminist is explored.

It's sad that we need a study to assert this, that people can't just listen to feminists when we say that we don't hate men, or heaven forbid, even meet some feminists and see that many of them are, in fact, dating or marrying men.

I suppose proving it over and over again couldn't hurt. Still, I see it as unlikely that the opinions of people like Rush Limbaugh are going to change anytime soon, regardless of scientific studies.

Liar is a new young adult book by Justine Larbalestier that tells the story of a young compulsive liar, described in the book as a black woman with short, nappy hair. But you wouldn't know that from the U.S. cover.


Clearly, the cover depicts a pretty white girl with long silky hair. But Larbalestier is known for never having white protagonists in her books. As the author herself explains, authors of books often get little to no say on their book covers:

The US Liar cover went through many different versions. An early one, which I loved, had the word Liar written in human hair. Sales & Marketing did not think it would sell. Bloomsbury has had a lot of success with photos of girls on their covers and that's what they wanted. Although not all of the early girl face covers were white, none showed girls who looked remotely like Micah.

I strongly objected to all of them. I lost.

This is why those who were upset over the cover of Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti, which depicts a white, naked, flat-stomached woman, were wrong to attack Valenti herself.

Why did publishing companies of both Larbalestier and Valenti's books choose the covers that they did? Simple. Because they sell. White women sell. Naked women sell. Pretty girls on covers sell.

Upsetting, to say the least. Unfortunately, such habits are not subject to change until we can change what society views as "beautiful." The most direct thing to do is contact Justine's publisher and Jessica's publisher and state your disapproval for their cover choices. But ultimately, what creates the most change is celebrating all different types of beauty. Women are beautiful, whether they are black or white, or with short natural hair or long silky hair. Hopefully one day the rest of society will realize that.

(Thanks to Tiffany for the story tip)

I haven't written yet about Barack Obama's comments on the Gates arrest because I haven't quite been able to put how I feel about it into words. But thankfully, journalist Greg Palast (who I saw speak at my school a little while back) did it for me. From his piece in The Huffington Post:

He's in hot water now. For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!

Last week, when his buddy "Skip" Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America's conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.

Instead, Obama, the excruciatingly middle-of-the-road President, was seized by Barack the militant State Senator from the South Side of Chicago, who reminded us that cops bust Black guys for no goddamn good reason all the goddamn time.

Truth. Obama shouldn't have had to apologize for his comments; the police did act stupidly, and there is a history of people of color being persecuted by cops more often than white people. President Obama said what we were all thinking, and all the other people who want to pretend that racism doesn't exist need to get the hell over it.

While watching BET, I saw this commercial:



I knew right away what it was, and going to their website confirmed it: a directory of crisis pregnancy centers. This commercial is designed to manipulate scared pregnant women, especially women of color, hence the fact that the ad was on BET and featured all black actresses. Oh, and there is the window that popped up when I clicked on the link to view the commercial on their website:


They titled the commercial "pregnancyline-black." The other advertisement features diverse actresses, though they are not all black, and it's entitled, "pregnancyline-english."

It's the perfect plan! Since black women are constantly getting knocked up and they are often poor with absent baby daddies, Pregnancy Line is there to direct them to "choose" adoption so their baby can go to a nice middle-class suburban white family that can give it a great life!

There are more crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. than abortion clinics. To help eliminate these harmful and misleading establishments, get involved with FeministCampus.org's Campaign to Expose Fake Clinics. I held a protest against a local CPC and it went really well. I'm sick of seeing their bullshit advertisements and knowing that they are misleading thousands of pregnant women.

There are a few new things that I'm thinking of bringing to Appetite for Equal Rights, but first I want input from my fabulous readers. I wouldn't want to bring you something that you didn't like. So please take a minute to answer the questions below. Thanks, friends!

So much has happened. Some good news, some bad news.

• At the World Outgames, a multi-sport event for LGBT people, small bombs were thrown onto the track at the start of the relay run. Police are holding two suspects. Hopefully they're the assholes that did it, because I want them to pay.


• A Fox News host, Glenn Beck, stated on MSNBC that Obama is a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." How these nutjobs get on news channels is beyond me.


• Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) introduced a horrifying amendment to ban all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Thankfully, it was defeated in the House by a vote of 247 to 183.


• Colin Powell commented on the Gates arrest, stating he's suffered from racial profiling "many times."


• Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY) announced yesterday that a Senate hearing on "don't ask, don't tell" will be held in the fall. Contact your senators now to tell them to do everything they can to eliminate this discriminatory policy!


• Governor Schwarzenegger line-item vetoed close to $52 million in funding to the State Office of AIDS, which would've been used for services such as education, prevention, and testing. Nice.


• File this under: "hypocrisy." A Tennessee senator and abstinence proponent, resigned after admitting having an affair with a 22 year-old intern. Good riddance.

What have you all been reading this week?

"Hitched or Ditched" is a new reality show on the CW. After seeing commercials for it, reading about it, and watching an episode, I've realized that the main message of this program is, "OMG YOUR RELATIONSHIP IS NOT VALIDATED AND/OR GOING ANYWHERE UNLESS YOU GET MARRIED!!!!!1!1!!1" Seriously. Read the synopsis on the show's webpage:

"Hitched or Ditched" is a one-hour reality show focusing on couples who are in long-term relationships but have not yet taken that big leap into marriage. Nominated by a friend who believes it's either time for the couple to tie to the knot or break up, each episode features a different couple who accept their friend's proposition to set a wedding date in one week's time.

Essentially, a couple is sent an invitation to their own wedding. I'm glad that other people who are not in the relationship can decide for a couple when it's their time to get married. And it's wonderful that marriage is forced upon these people, who quite often seem either not ready or not even open to the idea of marriage, which is a quick and easy way to end up in the divorced half of the U.S. population.

Overall, this sad excuse for primetime television seems to be just another way to make marriage the norm and filter out the problematic people who decide to (HEAVEN FORBID) abstain from marriage. Blech.

Abortion rights in Nicaragua don't exist. Since the country revised the penal code in 2007, abortion has been made illegal regardless of any circumstances, such as rape, incest, or when the mother's life is in danger. After sending researchers to Nicaragua to study how the ban is affecting people, Amnesty International put together a detailed report (PDF) on the situation, and called the ban a "cruel, inhuman disgrace."




Girls and women can end up in jail for obtaining abortions. And they can share a cell with the doctor or nurse that provided it. Medical professionals are often hesitant to treat pregnant women for illnesses such as malaria or HIV/AIDS out of fear that treatment could cause death or injury to the fetus, and they could be charged with providing an abortion. Many women and girls are terrified of having a miscarriage and being falsely charged with obtaining an abortion. One woman who was admitted to hospital following a miscarriage asked doctors to avoid treating her, frightened that it would look like she had deliberately asked them to terminate her pregnancy.

How did it come to this? In the January 2007 elections, President Daniel Ortega of the left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) backed the law banning abortion to win important conservative Roman Catholic support. When the ban was first signed into law, the presidency's website stated the the ban would help protect the "right to life." According to the website, legal abortion in Nicaragua "allowed the daily execution of innocent children in their mother's womb, in open violation of the Constitution which protected the unborn child."

Has anyone read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? It's a dystopian novel, depicting a future in which women have no reproductive choices; their only value and purpose comes from their "duty" to bear children. As a naive high school senior reading that novel, I insisted that it could never happen.

There are important things that we must do. Your first task is to hit the button below this post that will allow you to tweet it. If you don't have Twitter, post it to Facebook. If you don't have Facebook, pick up the phone. Spreading the word is the next step after educating yourself. Next, visit Amnesty's "Take Action" site that allows you to send a letter to the Nicaraguan presidency. You need to register with Amnesty to send it, but registration takes all of one minute.

What else can we do?

Great news:

"The Senate Judiciary Committee voted, 13 to 6, on Tuesday to endorse the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, easing her path to likely confirmation as the first Hispanic member of the tribunal."

Wooooooooo!

Saw this posted in Sociological Images and I found it chilling. This is a 50-minute documentary, entitled Guys and Dolls, that is about men who form full-on relationships with high-end sex dolls.



Haven't watched it yet, but I plan to quite soon. If anyone has watched it, leave your thoughts here. I took a look at the Real Doll website however, and "disturbed" doesn't even begin to explain how I felt. You can create a custom woman, choosing everything from her eye color to her amount of pubic hair. A clean-shaven vagina is standard; pubic hair is $100 extra. You have one body type choice: 5'3 and 70lbs with a C cup. For some men, it is the perfect woman. She is sexy, always in the mood, and never speaks. It is the ultimate objectification.