Live tweeting abortion: summing up today's news

Blogger Angie the Anti-Theist started live tweeting her medical abortion last week, in what she explained was "not for some publicity stunt or attention or to justify this to myself. I am at peace with my decision. I'm doing this to demystify abortion....I want people to know that it's out there." Angie Jackson gives the full video introduction here:


As Salon said, "women should thank her." "Considering that abortion is so prone to politicized distortions and outright lies, Jackson is doing women a real favor."

RU-486 causes a medical, rather than a surgical abortion by blocking progesterone. In an interview on The Mark News, Angie explained why she chose to make her abortion public, describing this as an extension of her blogging, which already makes her private life public. She sees it as an added bonus that the public is educated about "the need for women to have rights to their bodies and the right to make their own medical decisions" and her followers and commenters have been celebratory and supportive.

The Frisky has a demystifying Q&A with Jackson that answers any of the remaining questions that readers may have, and further articulates her motivation to publicize her abortion: "There’s a lot of misinformation and lies [about abortion]. They do attempt to terrify women. They try to make abortion sound so scary that women are too terrified to do it. And that’s really what I wanted to say, from my personal experience, this was not as bad as labor and birth." 

You can read Jackson's twitter feed here, where she says very clearly that it's not that bad--but she gives an honest day by day account of a medical abortion, and the accompanying pain (and Vicodin). The Lady Finger is grateful to Jackson for giving women, and all others, the opportunity to learn more about her experience. -TLF

The Paterson saga continues: summing up today's news

Remember last week's big let-down of a story about New York Governor David Paterson, whose aid David Johnson allegedly beat up women? Remember how the blogosphere pooh-poohed the allegations, whining that the story's incredible build up belied a minor scandal? Well, things have changed. Several key details have come to the fore about an incident last Halloween, in which Johnson menaced a woman he was seeing, ripping her costume off, smashing her against a dresser, and later preventing her from reaching a phone to call for help. Paterson claimed to have known nothing about the attack, saying it was a "bad breakup."

But, it turns out, Paterson did know about the attack. The woman, who was twice granted orders of protection against Johnson, claimed in court "the State Police had been harassing her to drop the matter," according to another article in the Times. And Paterson himself spoke with her on the phone the day before she was scheduled to appear in court to acquire another order. "She did not show up the next day, resulting in the dismissal of the case."

Another top aid to Paterson, Public Safety Deputy Denise O'Donnell, was so disgusted by what may have been unlawful contact between state officers and a victim of domestic violence, that she resigned today, saying "it is particularly distressing that this could happen in an administration that prides itself on its record of combating domestic violence," according to the New York Daily News.

Johnson, for his part, has been suspended without pay pending the results of an investigation by the state attorney general. And now, Paterson may not run for reelection. The Village Voice is calling for his immediate resignation, saying it would be a wise tack for the governor to take, just like his philandering predecessor, Eliot Spitzer. "There's nothing sympathetic about a slugging sidekick, especially one who's driven a blind and reckless governor down so many dark alleys that the governor decided to take a trip down one for him. Now that Paterson's attempt to suppress a police complaint against constant companion David Johnson is unraveling, it's time for the governor Eliot Spitzer gave us to do a Spitzer. Spitzer had the good sense, within hours of his exposure, to quit. That may have saved him from indictment."

Amid the calls for Paterson's resignation, the Times' Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, is dying to know the name of the woman in the Halloween incident. "There remains another intriguing journalistic question: The Times agreed not to name the woman involved in the Halloween incident because, the article said, she works in a public hospital and feared retaliation. But as a central figure in a scandal engulfing the Paterson administration, she is a natural object of intense curiosity. And with Johnson suspended, Paterson weakened and the attorney general investigating, she would seem to be in a pretty secure position. Will The Times name her? 'I think we are open to reconsidering that,' [managing editor Jill] Abramson said."

Here's The Lady Finger's two cents on that last issue. Please, New York Times, don't cajole this woman into revealing her name. She's already been doubly victimized by Johnson, and later the State Police and Paterson. A Paterson indictment doesn't rely on the public knowing her name. And there's no need to throw her to the media hounds. -TLF

*UPDATE*

Paterson will not resign, according to this article. But he will not seek re-election either. 

Criminalizing miscarriage: summing up today's news

A feticide bill that criminalizes miscarriage has made it through the Utah legislature to the governor's desk awaiting passage or veto. RH Reality Check offers up background information on the bill, explaining that "the basis for the law was a recent case in which a 17-year-old girl, who was seven months pregnant, paid a man $150 to beat her in an attempt to cause a miscarriage."

The bill's language is distressingly vague, holding pregnant women accountable for feticide if they miscarry after "reckless behavior." Jezebel expands, noting that advocates fear "that women will be brought up on murder charges for drinking, failing to wear a seatbelt, or falling down the stairs." Feministing also notes the dangerous line that this bill crosses; currently, feticide laws in many states hold third parties accountable, but none hold mothers accountable for unintended miscarriages.

Feministe was right in describing the bill as a "punishment" for women, and also ponders the philosophical logic behind supporting such a bill: "[Pro-lifers assume that] a fertilized egg is a unique, individual human being, and that the death of that egg is like the death of a person. If that’s the truth, then why no activism around trying to find a cure for the close to 50 percent of fertilized eggs that naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the woman’s body?"

In The Stranger, Dan Savage quips, "lots of women miscarry before they even realize their [sic] pregnant... so Utah will have to pass another law, one that compels all sexually active women—actually, let's just say all women, Utah, since some sexually active women claim they're chaste—to come in for mandatory monthly pregnancy tests." Sarcastic though he may be, Savage gets at the heart of the issue: denying women their privacy and the right to make their own choices regarding their bodies and their health. -TLF

NPR covers rape on campus

Trigger Warning:

The rape epidemic on college campuses--one in five women is sexually assaulted--has been publicized in Take Back the Night protests and consensual sex workshops that have proliferated in recent decades. But on-campus rape has not diminished, in no small part because campus authorities do next to nothing to deter it.

Common wisdom holds that prosecuting rape is difficult because it often boils down to one person's word against another's. But that notion obscures the fact that rape prosecution often stalls because of a lack of political will. According to a story on NPR today, colleges are legally bound by the federal government to publicize crimes that happen on campus. But it's a loosely-enforced law, one that has been used to fine schools only six times. Even when colleges do report crimes such as rape, they can still deal with rape internally by submitting the alleged rapist to a panel of college professors or administrators. These individuals more than likely view informal campus courts as a venue for student growth and reflection, rather than a place to mete out punishment. This means that rapists--even if they are found guilty--are rarely expelled from school. And that means that the women who were raped--and their friends--must see and interact with the people who violated them, sometimes on a daily basis. Some of these women drop out of school. Others suffer silently or even face threats and taunts from the rapist and his friends.

The NPR story made me cry. But it also made me a bit hopeful that things will get better. In it, the Department of Education assistant secretary for civil rights,  Russlynn Ali, commits to prosecuting universities that don't appropriately deal with rape by removing some of their federal funding. That is something that her predecessors never did. -Naomi

Apple bans boobs: summing up today's news

What Apple giveth, Apple taketh away. At least that's what it feels like to Jon Atherton, the wildly successful developer of Wobble, an iPhone app that allows one to attach "wobbly bits" to a photo of a woman's breast so that they jiggle when one shakes the screen. (It's quite unrealistic, I might add, though around 970,000 people are using it.) But now the jig is up for Atherton's boob business since Apple has outlawed all sexual applications from its store, according to TechCrunch.

According to the BBC, women and parents complained to Apple, saying that the apps were too degrading or risque, and Apple responded with the loosely-defined ban. Atherton's company, ChilliFresh, posted a list of the no-no's online, which includes no images of women or men in bikinis and no sexually arousing pictures. ChilliFresh claims that more than 5,000 apps have been banned. But for some reason, Playboy's and Sports Illustrated's sexy apps remain.

TechCrunch has rushed to Atherton's defense, citing the slippery slope argument that Apple could ban, well, anything, including songs with sexy lyrics on iTunes: "Apple is now one of the world’s largest gatekeepers to content, with a store that encompasses music, video, applications, and soon, books and magazines. And it’s shown before that it’s a totally inconsistent hypocrite when it comes to which content it’s willing to sell. Have exposed breasts in an R rated move? Sell it! Jiggling boobs in a silly iPhone application? Banned. Apple previously blocked an iPhone application that allowed users to access the Kama Sutra. What happens if it gets too many complaints about iTunes making it too easy to purchase books and magazines with sexual content?"

Over at Heartless Doll, Andrea Grimes isn't quite so nettled, saying, "Fine, Apple. Way to kind of stand up for not offending women, I guess...Apple deleted this content because of customer complaints, but we don't know if that's women complaining that these apps are sexist and stupid, or if it's a result of parents complaining that their kids have access to sexy apps. I suspect it's more likely the latter."

And I Blame The Patriarchy worries about feminists being blamed for censorship: "...Apple has elected to scapegoat those pesky women complainers. That’s right. Humorless, Puritanical feminists supposedly whined so loudly about being offended and degraded by iBoobs that Apple just couldn’t ignore’em, and out went Wobble faster than you can snap a G-string...Which, if it were true, would be the first time any major corporation has ever listened to feminists about anything, let alone pornography." -TLF

Climbing a different career ladder

Though more women than men have held onto jobs in this recession, here's more proof that women climb fewer rungs on a steeper employment ladder: Women with M.B.A. degrees, especially women with children, are less likely to nab above-entry level positions, be promoted, or be paid as much as their otherwise equal male M.B.A. holders, according to a new study of 9,000 M.B.A.-holding respondents.

According to the study, released Friday by the New York-based nonprofit research organization, Catalyst, 60 percent of women took entry-level first jobs, as opposed to 46 percent of men with the same amount of past work experience, and women earned about $4,600 less than the men. Thus, women take longer to rise up the ladder.

"Findings reveal that instead of women and men being on equal footing and their career trajectories gender-blind," reads the report summary, "inequality remains entrenched."

The discrepancy, experts explain, stems from several factors. Managers are less likely to support women in their first jobs, and women are more likely to switch jobs, which doesn't necessarily allow them to "move up." Employers also assume women will eventually leave the company to have children and thus are not placed on the primary track to promotion. Echoing this, ironically, women themselves sometimes imagine the time and energy required for them to have a family--perhaps--and do not lobby as hard as men for promotions or raises. The Wall Street Journal quotes Ann Bartel, an economics professor at Columbia Business School, who says companies aren't looking to be unequal, per se. But they "have to redesign jobs so flex-time and working from home aren't negatives for the fast track."

Given our cultural norms, and that the majority of caretaking and housekeeping still falls to women (here is a great piece on this at Forbes Woman), it makes sense that women assume they will be the primary caretakers of children, at least more than their partners. Thus, they demand flex time and opportunities to work from home. Unions, such as AFL-CIO, and various women's lobbying groups, including the National Women's Law Center, have proposed similar structures. They're very real, very necessary solutions Americans should embrace.

But these solutions ignore the root of the problem, the question of why women today must act as the default caregivers and men the breadwinners, and more bizarrely, why only the latter merits higher pay and promotions. In a world where the roles were switched--a notion explored earlier this week when the New York Times' Gail Collins and David Brooks lobbied for more "househusbands"--women might be paid more, but more likely, men would demand and earn equal pay, and be guaranteed flex-time and alternative work solutions. In a better world, both sexes would be both caregivers and breadwinners, impartially regarded by employers, and receive the same pay, promotions, and benefits to care for their families. We all need a new ladder. -Jean

Sexy spam

A quick aside: I just received a spam email entitled "stimulate your nether attacker" for a male-enhancement product that will "be know to all the girls around" (sic). Take note boys. There's nothing sexier than the thought of having my nether attacked by your "ehnancing" member (sic). Rape reference anyone? Sheesh. -Naomi

Feminism: relevant and local

In a sharp, statistically packed op-ed in this weekend's Washington Post, Jessica Valenti of Feministing wrote a persuasive call to action. "Most people seem to think that outside of a few lingering battles, the work of the women's movement is done," she writes. The work is far from done, and among the salient facts to prove it are:

• More than 1 million women in the U.S. were raped in 2008.
• One third of all women murdered in the U.S. are murdered by their husband or boyfriend.
• Women serving in the military in Iraq are more likely to be raped by a fellow-soldier than they are to be killed by enemy fire.
• 85% of U.S. counties have no abortion providers.
• Women earn 76 cents to the dollar earned by men.

Valenti addresses the needs of women internationally, but points out that "this isn't a zero-sum game, and we can fight for our rights while fighting for women internationally as well... There is so much more work to be done. The truth is, most women don't have the privilege of being able to look at gender justice from a distance; they have no choice but to live it every day." -Sara

Women and sexism at CPAC: summing up today's news

On the heels of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference, held in Washington, DC last week) there is forward-looking momentum among young leaders of  conservatism.  Among the many troubling visions to emerge from CPAC is one to quash feminism. As CBS reported, one first year college woman said that "the female movement has gone on towards feminism and liberalism and really taken the wrong track." Although she wasn't present, Sarah Palin was admired as a leader, and Sarah Huckabee, Mike Huckabee's wife, addressed conference attendees: "Asked if she had experienced sexism in politics, Sarah Huckabee told the audience said she hadn't encountered much hardship working as a political operative out of the public eye, quipping that 'women can do a lot more than any man…We're naturally born multi-taskers.'" To celebrate one's own achievements is laudable, but to presume that socially constructed gender roles are fixed and to conclude that womanly skills are a fair trade-off for oppression runs full circle back to propagating sexism.

Besides the high-level anti-feminist messaging, there was a more insidious sexism lurking. The Daily Caller made a movie featuring some of the young women at CPAC, which, as Salon wrote, was designed to "illuminate The Caller's opinion on their reason for being there: Boys, boys, boys! Also: Looking cute."



In a snarky post about the video, Pandagon wrote, "Attention young losers! Are you sick of hot women running away from you because they see that copy of Atlas Shrugged under your arm and that anti-choice sticker on your backpack? Have you decided all of femalekind is just too simple-minded to understand your incredible intellect, your John Galt-ish superiority? Do you blame your lack of a sex life on the feminists, who have poisoned women into thinking they can just date who they like, and that they deserve men who do emasculating things like listening and respecting their intelligence?...Then come to CPAC, where we round up all sorts of hot ladies pre-screened to make sure they share most of your views!"

Also among the glaringly gendered CPAC festivities: bashing a Nancy Pelosi piñata (for the ladies) and smacking a Harry Reid punching bag (for the gents), according to Think Progress. -TLF

Once a year. Period.

Without Sarah Haskins to provide us with biting, hilarious commentary on products marketed toward women, we'll just have to go with Sarah Haskins' recommendations. Which I'm doing today because I just saw Sarah speak in Manhattan! Her tip for birth control satire: 



-Naomi

Universal Feminism

The user-friendly design approach known as Universal Design is gaining popularity, and for good reason. More inclusive (and often more aesthetically pleasing) than the old approach to accommodation, Universal Design dictates that “products and environments be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without adaptation or specialized design” (Univeral Design Alliance). Examples in physical environments include buttons that can be distinguished by sight and by touch, wide hallways and aisles, and one smooth inclined main entryway to a building instead of a set of stairs in front and a ramp off to the side. I’m grateful to bloggers who provide transcripts for video and audio material. It’s important for people who are hearing impaired to be able to access the material, but it’s also helpful for those of us with a slow internet connection or a fussy computer.

A key difference between Universal Design and other types of accommodation is that the needs of all people have been considered from the beginning and have been integrated into the design to the greatest extent possible. This avoids the stigmatizing effect of modifications that are added on later for the benefit of a certain type of person. Those of us who participate in social justice movements should keep this in mind as we set goals, plan events, and determine where and how to dedicate our resources. Rather than wait until someone points out that they’ve been excluded, we should try to anticipate from the beginning that a variety of people might like to be involved, and seek ways to make this possible. The ”Principles of Universal Design”, which include Flexibility in Use, Simple and Intuitive Use, Perceptible Information, and Tolerance for Error, are instructive for those of us who want to design physical, virtual, and intellectual spaces that are open to all people.

I think the definition of feminism that bell hooks gives in Feminism Is For Everybody fits the principles of Universal Design: “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” Who’s perpetrating the sexism? Lots of people—men aren’t the enemy. Whose oppression are we trying to end? Everybody’s. By leaving her definition open-ended, hooks includes all people as both potential perpetrators of sexism and as potential beneficiaries of the feminist movement.

I’m arguing that we use Universal Design as inspiration for a variety of changes we want to see in society. I’ve written previously about the need for gender-neutral restrooms in public places. We don’t need to have separate facilities designated “Men” and “Women;” we can have common spaces that are available to anyone regardless of gender. Other areas where I’ve seen this concept gaining ground within feminist movement are the efforts to win maternity/paternity leave and in the recognition that beauty standards for men are increasingly unrealistic and unhealthy. Most feminist spaces are not as inclusive as they should be for trans and genderqueer folks (indeed some, such as the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, are explicitly discriminatory), but I’m seeing progress in this area.

What we might call “Universal Feminism” is the approach to feminist movement I hear young feminists promoting most often, but I think we can be more intentional and more vocal about it. It has plenty of advantages, including its appeal for people of all genders (compare this post) and the inherent recognition of intersectionality among social justice movements. For example, efforts to combat sexual assault that recognize the prevalence of rape among incarcerated males must logically support reform (or abolishment) of the prison system, an issue that has large racial and class components. Of course, individuals within such movements are not obligated to dedicate their resources to combating rape among males in prison, but acknowledging the common problem is the first step to building coalition between individuals and movements dedicated to change.

This approach to social change carries some risks, however. We already have to combat the myth of post-feminism, so some may be hesitant to take steps that could make the movement look less cohesive or less dedicated to women’s issues. The fact is there never was a singular cohesive feminist movement anyway. Part of the power and the success of feminist movement lies in its lack of central leadership, its increasing openness to a variety of perspectives, and the ongoing redefinition of what “women’s issues” actually are.

Some will react by asking, “But why call it ‘feminism’ if it benefits everybody?” The debate over the term “feminist” is understandably contentious but for me the answer is that the term acknowledges the fact that we live in a patriarchal system that disproportionately harms women and anyone else who is not cisgendered-male. Maybe there will come a day when we live in a truly post-feminist society, but it’s not here yet, and in the meantime we can work to make feminist movement more inclusive and more accessible to all people. It’s time to expand feminism further, not lay it to rest. The principles of Universal Design provide an easy analogy for one way to make this happen. -Adrienne