Lyssa Strada

New at Lyssa Strada...

2006-08-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

The moving van has already arrived at the new site...

2006-08-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

We have moved, lock, stock, barrel, laptop and wi-fi... to our new home, arriving ahead of schedule.

If you link to us... our new address is: http://lyssa-strada.bloggyland.com

Please be patient while we deal with new keys & configurations.

Any difficulties encountered in entering the site are probably due to my trying to figure out where all of the light switches are.

Praise the goddesses for our great-- and I mean great-- new tech support!

FYI... to Lyssa Strada's readers and contributors...

2006-08-06T12:55:00.001-07:00

...sometime during this next week, assuming all goes according to plan [crosses fingers, knocks on wood], the contents of this blog will be migrated to a new site. The new site will have, once we get things configured and formatted, some features that I think everyone will appreciate.

For example, the most recent comments will scroll down a section of the screen, and no matter how old the relevant post is, you will be able to see that there is a new comment. In addition, you'll be able to find/search for other posts by someone whose work you like (or perhaps don't). We'll also be able to keep important stories, or even just ongoing features, prominently displayed on the "front page."

After the migration is complete, there will probably be formatting to correct, and perhaps images to re-load. Minor details, but we will deal with them. We do ask for your patience during this transition.

If you are a regular contributor, the plan is to send you a new log-in and a temporary password that you can change when you first log in. Commenters may register, too, and then will receive a temporary password, as well, which can then be changed to something you prefer. Of course, commenting will be possible without registering, but there are advantages to registering (and we don't really care what name you use). For example, once all of the configurations are properly set, you'll be able to see what you have read and what you have not, i.e., whether any of the new comments are ones that you have not read.

I am not going to ask anyone to cease posting or commenting during this time, since the nature of the activity-- as well as of the news itself-- means that it is not always easy to schedule online time when something is topical, or when we just have to get something off our chest. Most of us, I suspect, just take advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves. Should there be any posts entered after the migration process has already begun, we can always copy and paste them in after the fact. Just like those last few precious items you always end up moving in your car.

Once the process is underway, we'll start a thread for taking leave... eventually starting one, as well, for a welcoming party at the new site, including virtual refreshments. ;~)

...they're only Arabs, after all, right?

2006-08-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

The conclusion of Riverbend's most recent post at Baghdad Burning...

[...]
And the world wonders how ‘terrorists’ are created! A 15-year-old Lebanese girl lost five of her siblings and her parents and home in the Qana bombing… Ehud Olmert might as well kill her now because if he thinks she’s going to grow up with anything but hate in her heart towards him and everything he represents, then he’s delusional.

Is this whole debacle the fine line between terrorism and protecting ones nation? If it’s a militia, insurgent or military resistance- then it’s terrorism (unless of course the militia, insurgent(s) and/or resistance are being funded exclusively by the CIA). If it’s the Israeli, American or British army, then it’s a pre-emptive strike, or a ‘war on terror’. No matter the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. No matter the children who died last night- they’re only Arabs, after all, right?

Right?

[photo image: (AP) The Decatur Daily]

Where's the Outrage?

2006-08-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

(Yeah, I know I said I was taking a dandelion break ... I'm working on it.)

Mel Gibson's completely outrageous behaviour during his arrest for drunk driving has captured a lot of attention, especially the anti-semitic commentary, which I am not going to dwell on.

What I want to know is where are all the feminists? Is this not enough to raise our ire even just a little?

A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"

franken-bill or do-nothing-congress? ...a dilemma that epitomizes American political life for average citizens

2006-08-03T20:51:00.001-07:00

I don't always catch Harold Meyerson's columns, but when I do they never disappoint...

Yesterday, he autopsied, more elegantly than they deserve, the GOP's craven attempt to join a bill to increase the minimum wage to another-- yes, another! --estate tax cut.

I hope you will read the entire column, but just in case you don't, here's a paragraph and a bit more in which Meyerson characterizes the [current] GOP's entire approach to partisan politics:

[....] The whole point of the exercise was to come up with a bill that might force some Democrats to vote for an estate tax cut they would otherwise oppose, and enable Republicans to claim they weren't really the Dickensian grotesques that many of them in fact are.

Which may be why the Republicans' midnight orations in favor of raising the wage bore minimal resemblance to, say, the Sermon on the Mount. Their tone was best captured by Tennessee Rep. Zach Wamp, a Mayberry Machiavelli if ever there was one, who could not restrain himself from telling House Democrats, "You have seen us really outfox you on this issue tonight." [emphasis added]

However, rather than paint too negative a picture, lest we forget how to get up in the mornings... Meyerson is careful to mention some hopeful markers to hearten us:

So the solutions for national problems get kicked downstairs. To date 23 states have passed minimum-wage standards higher than the feds' -- and none of them in statutes designed to subvert themselves or play gotcha with the opposition party. States have begun to enact universal health insurance plans, while cities are passing living-wage ordinances. And just this Monday, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Blair signed an agreement between the sovereign state of California and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to curb greenhouse gas emissions, promote clean fuels and fight global warming. "California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming," said Schwarzenegger, who understands that for a Republican to win election in Democratic California, he has to be a down-the-line environmentalist.

Why is the story of this particular bill an important story here at Lyssa Strada?

One, because, as we've written before, the minimum wage bill is a bill that will significantly affect single and divorced mothers and their children.

Two, because the passing of even one more unneeded estate tax cut will benefit very few, and many of them have already significantly benefitted financially from the global war on terror, for which they are contributing far less in the way of resources-- whether funding or bodies in the field-- than they are receiving, since the war is being purchased on credit. Long term credit.

UPDATE: The GOP-controlled senate failed to pass this misbegotten bill, despite their best efforts at arm-twisting. Kudos to Harry Reid for his leadership in keeping the bill from coming to a vote before the full senate, where a simple majority might have passed it.

This story is not over, though, because the Democratic minority (for now) is still dedicated to passing a minimum wage bill without any strings attached. Even waiting for a turnover in congress might not delay it much longer than the GOP's three-step phase in would have. Assuming, that is, that the Democrats take over at least one chamber of congress.

Now, if we could just get the politicians to start thinking in terms of $10 per hour as a more reasonable minimum wage...

[photo of Rep. Zach Wamp from here]

Dandelion Break Anyone?

2006-08-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

I feel like my heart is going to explode into a million tiny pieces, because of stories like these:

Robert Fisk on Qana

When I arrived there, there were a number of, maybe 20, 30 children, the corpses of children, lined up outside the government hospital, hair matted, still in their night clothes. The bomb that killed them was dropped at 1:00 in the morning.
But the odd thing is the idea that for the Israeli military that somehow it’s okay to kill all these children; if a missile is launched 30, 90 feet from their house, that's okay then. ... I’m sitting here, for example, in my house tonight in darkness -- there’s no electricity -- next to a car park. What if someone launches a missile from the car park? Am I supposed to die for that? Is that a death sentence for me? Is that how Israel wages war? If I have children in the basement, are they to die for that? And then I’m told it’s my fault or it’s Hezbollah's fault? You know, these are serious moral questions.

WalMart in Chicago

This is absolutely a very popular ordinance, and it’s popular because people realize that the federal government is not going to do anything, at least in the near future, to raise the minimum wage, and it’s absolutely appalling that it's as low as it is. [emphasis added]

(This is not to miss the point of the story which is that workers got a victory in Chicago with this ordinance requiring big box retailers to pay a living wage if they intend on doing business within the city limits of Chicago.)

Haitian Prisoner So Anne

So Anne’s case is even more scandalous than that of Yvon Neptune, because Neptune was arrested on an arrest warrant, you know, as flawed as it was, whereas So Anne was arrested in the dead of night by U.S. Marines, you know, which had no legal mandate to operate such an arrest, and she's been in jail for even longer than Mr. Neptune.

And the charges are preposterous. They’ve ranged from, as you know, squashing a baby in a mortar and pestle, which was so ridiculous that, of course, nobody could consider that ...

The No Blood for Oil 12 - who oppose the war in Iraq - were convicted of obstruction and third-degree trespassing for protesting outside an armed forces recruiting office in Lakewood [CO] in November.

Not to mention the ongoing bombing in what Jon Stewart calls "Israfghyianonanaq", the US' stance on not pressing for any type of cease fire ... well, read the headlines anywhere, turn on the radio or television, talk to people during your break ... simply live and breathe on this tumultuous planet. There seems to be no escaping it.

I'm declaring a brief dandelion break for myself.

ALL SISTER TONGUES

2006-07-31T19:11:00.000-07:00

Books: Iran Awakening

2006-07-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted from Logs of the Written Word
Book Name: Iran Awakening
Author: Shirin Ebadi with Azadeh Moaveni (website in Persian)
"The moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work.

"Best known in this country as the lawyer working tirelessly on behalf of Canadian photojournalist, Zara Kazemi – raped, tortured and murdered in Iran – Dr. Ebadi offers us a vivid picture of the struggles of one woman against the system. The book movingly chronicles her childhood in a loving, untraditional family, her upbringing before the Revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah, her marriage and her religious faith, as well as her life as a mother and lawyer battling an oppressive regime in the courts while bringing up her girls at home.

"Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She rose quickly to become the first female judge in the country; but when the religious authorities declared women unfit to serve as judges she was demoted to clerk in the courtroom she had once presided over. She eventually fought her way back as a human rights lawyer, defending women and children in politically charged cases that most lawyers were afraid to represent. She has been arrested and been the target of assassination, but through it all has spoken out with quiet bravery on behalf of the victims of injustice and discrimination and become a powerful voice for change, almost universally embraced as a hero.

"Her memoir is a gripping story – a must-read for anyone interested in Zara Kazemi’s case, in the life of a remarkable woman, or in understanding the political and religious upheaval in our world."
From: Random House

Ebadi tells a story of conviction and courage. She is determined to bring democracy and equality to the oppressive rule of Iranian fundamentalists. As with all heroes, she does not believe she is doing anything special, only that which must be done. She is one tough cookie who can throw the teachings of the Quaran and its specific interpretations back without hesitation. She has tested the boundaries of the Iranian court system and been punished with jail time and death threats for her determination to see fairness restored to Iran.

Favourite passages:
On the "new" statutes imposed by the Khomeini regime after the Revolution of 1979:

The grim statutes that I would spend the rest of my life fighting stared back at me from the page: the value of a woman's life was half that of a man (for instance, if a car hit both on the street, the cash compensation due to the woman's family was hlaf that due the man's); a woman's testimony in court as a witness to a crime counted only half as much as a man's; a woman had to ask her husband's permission for divorce. The drafters of the penal code had apparently consulted the seventh-century for legal advice. The laws, in short, turned the clock back fourteen hundred years, to the early days of Islam's spread, the days when stoning women for adultery and chopping off the hands of theives were considered appropriate sentences. [p. 51]
The komiteh, or morality police, harassed all Iranians - Muslims as well as Iranian Christians and Jews, old people as well as the young - but they preyed upon women with a special enthusiasm. Slowly we learned to cope with the obstacle course that was public space. Dating couples socializing ahead of marriage, for example, would borrow a young niece or nephew on their evenings out, to appear as a family, and pass through checkpoints unmolested. We monitored everything from our personalities to our wardrobes, careful not to express opinions in public, to wear socks with our sndals. But often the harrassment was arbitrary and senseless, and thus impossible to anticipate. When most look back on those years, their memories are of antagonistic scenes that left them with headaches and a reservoir of resentment. Some recall encounters so wounding that neither their bodies nor their spirits every quite recovered. [p. 56]
The suicide rate amont women rose after the Islamic Revolution, commonly taking the form of self-immolation. This tragic exhibitionism, I'm convinced, is women's way of forcing their community to confront the cruelty of their oppression. Otherwise, would it not simply be easier to overdose on pills in a dark room?
Sometimes I think this is the one of the saddest realities of being an activist or an intellectual in a place like Iran. When dissidents or just regular old intellectuals come out of prison, often they are not celebrated for simply being brave and having survived but are pruriently examind for their conduct in prison. Did they succumb and agree to videotaped confessions? Did they sign letters? Did they make lists of their comrades? By judging what ethically should be immune from judgment - the response of an individual to a form of torture - we enable the interrogator's tactics. We legitimize the sickness of the whole enterprise, as though when forced into the wretched position of sustaining torture or breaking down, there is such a thing as a right response. [p. 173]
... from the day I was stripped of my judgeship to the years doing battle in the revolutionary courts of Tehran, I had repeated on refrain: an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith. It is not religion that binds women, but the selective dictates of those who wish them cloistered. That belief, along with the conviction that change in Iran must come peacefully and from within has underpinned my work. [emphasis added]

I have been under attack most of my adult life for this approach, threatened by those in Iran who denounce me as an apostate for daring to suggest that Islam can look forward and denounced outside my country by secular critics of the Islamic Republic, whos attitudes are no less dogmatic. Over the years, I have endured all manner of slights and attacks, been told that I must not appreciate or grap the real spirit of democracy if I can claim in the same breath that freedom and human rights are not perforce in conflict with Islam. When I heard the statement of the [Nobel Peace] prize read aloud, heard my religion mentioned specifically alongside my work defending Iranians' rights, I knew at that moment what was being recognized: the belief in a positive interpretation of Islam, and the power of that belief to aid Iranians who aspire to peacefully transform their country. [p. 204]
I can think of no scenario more alarming, no internal shift more dangerous than that engendered by the West imagining that it can bring democracy to Iran through either military might or the fomentation of violent rebellion. [emphasis added] [pp. 214-215]

An American/Iraqi Affair?

2006-07-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

I was reading a Broadsheet story this morning, and then tonight found myself wondering... What if the Iraq War were compared with an abusive man/woman relationship?

An already powerful, but still power-hungry, man with plenty of women of his own, sees an exotic and beautiful woman of substance and culture, and decides he wants her too. And not just because she's rich, either, but because he thinks he can convince them both that they are soul mates. Really, he thinks of himself as Higgins to her Eliza, but he cannot say that metaphor out loud without risking being humiliated by his buddies.

Only one problem... she already belongs to another abusive man, and our guy is the one who introduced them in the first place. For some men, such an awkward circumstance might cause them to show just a bit of restraint, if only for the sake of appearances. But not our guy. It doesn't matter to him what winning her might cost him or her or their friends or family... or even their respective communities, so sure is he of her eventual and undying gratitude. So, he makes many grandiose promises about all of the wonderful things he has to offer her, while simultaneously sabotaging even further her already abusive relationship with the other man.

Unbelievably, she declines, but undaunted, he refuses to take no for an answer. It is a testosterone-driven and very ugly scene, including the part that was supposed to be so wonderful when his gang bests the other guy's gang. Unfortunately, our guy's friends get a little carried away with themselves, and the other guy's friends totally flip out.

Too bad that he didn't get better acquainted with her volatile family first, because now her brothers, and their friends, and some cousins, and the neighbors have all gotten involved in what has become a horrific brawl, the like of which has not been seen in some time, even in that neighborhood.

Sadly, yet very true to form... now that the luster has worn off this doomed-from-the-beginning relationship, he is already casting his eyes elsewhere for fresh meat.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

2006-07-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

In another comment at Political Physics, the author of our previous post, sane yet not, offered a link to a speech by Arundhati Roy, "Confronting Empire," which concludes with the following:

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

~ Arundhati Roy ~ Porto Alegre, Brazil ~ Jan 27, 2003 ~

* * * * *

Roy's words certainly speak to our intentions at Lyssa Strada, if not yet to our results. So, as we approach our third-month anniversary, we are still inviting other voices we admire to join us, hopefully for some very serious play. (See Dr. O's comment on play in the comment section of this post.)

Unfortunately, there are some voices that we are unable to coax to our pages because they are busy with other responsibilities, while still trying to keep up with their own writing, as well as blogging. For example, this writer, who inspired Dr. O's comment above, is not just one of my favorite bloggers, but one of my favorite writers. Sam's daily writing, the stuff with which she feeds us, embodies Roy words... words that bear repeating:

To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

And the rockets red glare...

2006-07-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

Back in the 1980s when I began to actually care about the world outside my idyllic existence in suburban Massachusetts, I observed something then that continues to be true today...

...whenever I encountered the words "Middle East" in TV or print, the word "crisis" was never far behind. Today, with the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the word "crisis" may soon be replaced with "conflagration" as the conflict threatens to widen and involve other countries in the region.

The responsibility for this latest escalation has been laid squarely at the feet of Hezbollah, and in a narrow sense, it is responsible. Yet diplomacy demands that all who are interested in a solution examine more closely the region and its complex dynamics of politics, religion, and culture.

It is just such an examination that appears to be lacking in America if one believes the recent public opinion polls that show about 65-70% of Americans support Israel's actions. Though the rest of the world seems to be in agreement that Israel response has been "disproportionate," Americans and its leaders continue to utter the inane comment that, "Israel has the right to defend itself."

Perhaps better said would be, "Israel has the right to defend itself with reasonable force against specific, non-civilian targets." The claim that Hezbollah militants hide among the civilian population can not and should not justify random bombardment of civilian areas. As noted bby Mary Ann Sieghart, journalist for the Times, UK:
The War on Terror is too easy a pretext for Israel to hide behind. It does not give free licence for a state to bombard the innocent citizens of another in the hope that a few terrorists might be killed in the process. Imagine if we had bombed Dublin in the same way, with more than 300 deaths in a week and half a million people displaced. That would surely have been seen as a war crime.
---TheTimesOnline-UK, "The Shocking Silence from No 10," 7/21/06
Another international newspaper expressing the world's consensus is The Daily Herald, Canada. Journalist Dan Leger writes,
[PM] Harper's statements failed to recognize the disproportionality of Israel’s response to what was really a minor incursion by Hezbollah fighters. I think any fair-minded person would agree that the destruction of Lebanon’s airports, bridges and roads and the killing of hundreds of civilians is a wild overreaction to the immediate threat from the militants..
---The Daily Herald, Halifax, Canada, "Why Canada's Response Has Fallen Far Short," 7/24/06
Another paper questions the "neocon mentality" that seems to dominate some policymakers' decisions in Washington and Israel:
You might say that the mindset of the neocons is very September 12. It has not altered one jot since that day in 2001. It is as if we have learned nothing from the debacle in Iraq about the limits of military force in changing culture and politics in countries we do not fully understand and do not have the expertise or manpower to micro-manage...
---The Australian, op-ed piece, "Neocons Face Right Rebellion," 7/24/06
UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland, in Beirut this week also weighed in:

"This is destruction of block after block of mainly residential areas. I would say it seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many citizens." ..."It [Israeli bombardment of civilian areas] makes it a violation of humanitarian law."
---CNN Report, 7/23/06
Other world leaders, notably Jacques Chirac of France and Vladimir Putin of Russia, have called for an end to hostilities by both parties and have also criticized Israel for a "disproportionate" response. Indeed, at a United Nations emergency meeting last week, out of 192 member nations, 189 supported an immediate ceasefire in the Israel/Hezbollah/Lebanon conflict. The three who did not support such an effort: the United States, the UK, and Israel. Even Pope Benedict has essentially said enough already.

There was another time that the United States stood in defiance of the international community when it invaded Iraq three years ago. And today, even with a democratically-elected government, Iraq descends into escalating violence and civil war. What is interesting to note is that American public opinion at the beginning of the Iraq war was about 70% for, and now only about 35% agree it was the right thing to do. So today, American public opinion about Iraq has finally coalesced with the rest of the world's. What will it take for it to catch up with the world's opinion on the current Middle East conflict?

Re-posted from Political Physics with permission of sane yet not.

photo: source

Who Are the Terrorists?

2006-07-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

"Regrettably, Suzanne Swift is not the first," says Anita Sanchez, communications director of the Miles Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides services to victims of military violence. "There have been several young women who have been declared AWOL for seeking treatment due to sexual assault, but most of them are too scared to speak out."
...
Another recent case involved a young American woman who was raped by an Afghan soldier in a rural area. Sanchez says it took two weeks to get to a one-room medical facility in Kabul. "They had no facilities to do a rape testing, so they couldn't test for pregnancy or HIV. An American doctor literally handed her high dose antibiotics and told her, 'This will kill anything you've come in contact with.'" The young woman is now recovering in the states.
...
"This administration justified going to war because we said we wanted to stop Saddam's rape rooms. This administration said we can't afford to have priests raping and yet in the same breath and lack of action, our own military leadership are free to rape at absolute carte blanche. This has been going on for too long. We must hold the government accountable for refusing to deal with this issue."
[ Female Soldiers Treated "Lower Than Dirt"]

I think commentary from me would be extraneous.

She's a What?

2006-07-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Sebelia, one of the designers on season 3 of Project Runway just needs to go. He's a creepy little man with an arrogant attitude that exposes his small mind and sexist bs at every turn. (Yes, I can hear my co-workers now, "but how do you really feel?")

I suppose I should also introduce Angela Keslar who is ham fisted in her attempts at manipulating situations and, oddly for a designer, doesn't sketch.

There are several designers I just don't care for and whose work has yet to show they actually deserve to be there. It's only because someone's work was even worse than theirs, that they are still in the competition. Angela and Jeffrey are 2 of those designers.

Episode 2's challenge was for teams of 2 to create a gown for Miss USA to wear to the Miss Universe pageant. I can't even find a picture of Jeffrey's gown to remind myself what it looked like. Angela "worked" with Vincent Libretti who kept shoving her away, making it a one-man show full of pouting and anger.

(Believe it or not, I am actually getting to the point of this post.)

As designers are busily sketching their ideas to present to Miss USA, Angela is trying to convince Kayne Gillaspie who has pageant experience to choose her as his teammate. To no one's surprise, Angela is the last designer standing and, by default, goes to Vincent.

In the apartment Vincent is bitching up a storm about Angela and Jeffrey pokes his head out of the bathroom and says, "I have one word for you ... feminazi." (You can see a clip from the video mashup I created at Project Runway's website.)

What the ......? Feminazi? Angela is a lot of things but feminazi? Just so we are clear, here's the Wikipedia definition of feminazi

Feminazi (also spelled femme-nazi) is an invective neologism used predominantly in United States political rhetoric to characterize women whose ideas are believed to be vehemently misandrous; i.e.- having an irrational and extreme hatred of men.
...
The term feminazi has developed various connotations. To some pro-life conservatives, it equates feminist advocacy for abortion rights with promoting a holocaust. Others use the word rhetorically to suggest feminist views are being expressed in a unilateral manner. Others see the term as an example of hate speech.

In the extreme formulation, feminazis are seen by some as women who persecute men or who desire their elimination from the public discourse and any involvement into public affairs. The term is often used as a derogatory term for feminist.

It is clear that Jeffrey is simply using this word in a derogatory manner, the same way he would have used "bitch." It is also clear that he does not understand the true meaning of the word and has just decided to use this word to slander Angela and her character.

In this particular episode, Angela does not espouse feminist rhetoric of any sort, in fact she is quite delighted they will be designing for Miss USA. She does not express hatred for men, and is in fact married to one.

I was disgusted by Angela's behaviour and really felt she should have been the one to be eliminated. But she in no way was doing it out of a feminist mindset, she was only being Angela.

Jeffrey, on the other hand, offends me. As do all men who are quick to write all women off based on the personality flaws of one woman.

[cross posted from Blither Blather Boviate]

Serendipitous synchronicity

2006-07-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

Karen's post about Dr. Ben Barres was a serendipitous post of synchronicity. The roomful of clerks were just discussing something similar.

What woman among us can say that she has not experienced some of these gender-based reactions regardless of her academic background?

I have often fallen into the trap of not believing certain episodes were sexism. I too believed that if I could do it, anyone could. It was not only a lack of faith in my ability but a blindness to sexism as well.

It has been only a few short years since I began to flower into the more aware feminist whose words you now read. Not only is it important for all of us regardless of gender to wake up and read the statistics, it's also important to learn to value each other for the contributions we all make.

It is Barres' unique perspective that leads me to understand this:

You write that as a man, you can complete a sentence without being interrupted.

I hadn't given any thought to my experiences with this as particularly sexist, I merely thought they were being rude. On a personal level, maybe they just are. On a larger level, are they sexist? Having not seen this in action where my interrupters and other people are concerned, I can't say for sure but it does give one pause. And it makes me wonder what other experiences may be systematic sexism. But how does one go about rooting those out?

I applaud Dr. Barres for his willingness to speak from his own experiences and to have persistently pursued his goals, both as a woman and now as a man.

Another modern-day Tiresias speaks out...

2006-07-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

...but this time it's not about who--men or women?-- enjoys sex more, but rather about the bias against high-achieving women in Science.

Ben Barres' experience of life as both a woman and a man-- a gift of Science, not the gods-- makes him uniquely qualified to speak to this gender controversy... and he has been thinking about it ever since Harvard President Larry Summers made his unfortunate remark about the lack of women in Science.

Read Barres' perspective...

photo: from NYTimes, courtesy of Ben Barres

Perhaps... Laurastrata?

2006-07-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

A blogger's greatest hope, whether he or she admits it or not, is to have some impact on the status quo. Perhaps this blog has had an effect on the First Lady-- but more likely not. Regardless, we do have to wonder now whether she might have given her husband a deadline on her own. Something along the lines of... Nothing doing, George, until you get those young men and women out of Iraq and we can stop being responsible-- whether directly or indirectly-- for all of those civilian deaths. For crying out loud, George, how can you possibly expect War not to be a mood killer?
For, unlike her husband, I suspect that Mrs. Bush, who is an intelligent woman, must be aware of the fact that most of the deaths in modern wars are not of soldiers, but of civilians, and that most of these are of women and children. And, truly, how can that not be a mood killer?

To be honest, the notion of Mrs. Bush enacting her own version of Lysistrata did not occur to me until I was trying to think of a possible explanation for her husband's allowing himself to be videotaped massaging another woman's neck and shoulders. Although I don't disagree with the other analyses, I still felt the need to discover a catalyst that could make it actually happen. Nor am I particularly interested in the Bushes' personal life. I've never been one to speculate on such things for any couple, whether I know them or not. It's simply my temperament that I prefer to shield both others' privacy and my own sensibilities...

Yet, how can one not be curious about such a video clip? There, in broad daylight-- with cameras running!-- the so-called leader of the (once-)free world, THE self-proclaimed Decider, decides, as it were, to lay his hands upon another world leader, who happens to be a woman not his wife, in a manner that is generally reserved for one's intimates (even though the expression on his face was not particularly inviting or intimate, and Chancellor Merkel appeared to be appalled at being so accosted)! Was it just his typical arrogance? Or an ignorance of the normal boundaries among civilized peoples when conducting important state business? Perhaps frustration because his wife has been less affectionate lately, or maybe for much longer? One cannot help but wonder what would make a man in such a position of power once more show to all the world how little he values exercising restraint in using his power.

Of course, we cannot really know what Laura Bush must be thinking about her husband's public performance-- whether knowing or not-- at the G-8 Conference... but we certainly can speculate, as I did earlier today in an email exchange with Mark Hoback when he posted the lyrics of "Creep" juxtaposed with altered stills of Bush with German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

"Thank god! He's finally bothering someone else instead of me!"

"Good grief! What was he thinking?! Idiot!"

For the full picture, see Taylor Marsh's post, complete with stills, video, links, and updates; be sure to check out Wolcott's link in one of the later updates.

photo: source

Women Need to Clean Up Their Own Act

2006-07-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

(Thanks to NotSoccerMom and the link from her blog.)

This is one reason women get a bad reputation and so few take us seriously. Calling the 911 dispatcher to ask for a message to be passed on to a cute deputy is just wrong on so many levels. Last time I looked, the emergency services were not dating services. As long as women pull stupid stunts like this, men will continue to think we are nothing but desperate and not to be trusted. (Wide sweeping generalizations to be taken with a grain of salt.)

creep

2006-07-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

When you were here before,
couldn't look you in the eye.
You're just like an angel,
your skin makes me cry.
You float like a feather,
in a beautiful world
I wish I was special,
you're so fucking special.

But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.

I don't care if it hurts,
I want to have control.
I want a perfect body,
I want a perfect soul.
I want you to notice,
when I'm not around.
You're so fucking special,
I wish I was special.

But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?.
I don't belong here

She's running out the door,
she's running,
she run, run, run, run, run.

Whatever makes you happy,
whatever you want.
You're so fucking special,
I wish I was special,

but I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here,
I don't belong here.

Women for Women International...

2006-07-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

...matches up women from around the world with their sisters in war-torn countries in order to support them in their efforts to recover and become self-sustaining citizens, as well as advocates for other women.

What does it take? Just $27 per month for a year, to help a woman get back on her feet. Not only that, but her children benefit, and so does her community. But any donation is welcome.

Read just two paragraphs from their site, on the page where they explain "Why we do it:"

Across the globe, undeclared wars and internal armed conflicts have reached an unprecedented number. There have been more than 250 major wars since the end of World War II, resulting in over 23 million casualties. Modern warfare is no longer confined to battlefields; around the world, non-combatants are in the direct line of fire, suffering greatly and becoming the anonymous and undercounted casualties of violent conflicts. In today’s wars, 90 percent of casualties are civilians, 75 percent of whom are women and children; a century ago, 90 percent of war casualties were male soldiers. [emphasis added]

As never before, women are disproportionately affected by war and civil strife. Women are targeted for ethnic cleansing and subjected to rape as a tool of war. They lose male family members who leave to fight and are killed. Many are displaced from their own homes. When widowed by war, they are thrust into the role of sole provider, often without marketable skills or a viable means to earn an income and often in communities that do not value their place in society."

Believe it or not-- this worldwide safety net for women in dire need was the vision of a 23-yr old Iraqi woman who was going to school in the U.S. after being stranded here when Kuwait was invaded and she could not return home. She already knew from personal experience what it was like to live with war as part of one's daily life...

"Women who survive war are strong, resilient and courageous – they just need some support dealing with the aftermath of conflict,” Ms. Salbi says. “So, we give them the tools they need to help themselves and their families, while providing them with the education to be leaders and advocates in their communities.” - Zainab Salbin, founder & CEO of Women for Women International

Thanks to Urania's 9th House for the link to Women for Women ~~~ photo: source

Women of the Storm

2006-07-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

from a press release:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- An alliance of South Louisiana women calling themselves "Women of the Storm" today traveled to Washington to invite federal officials to visit Louisiana and see first-hand the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. More than four months after the deadly storms struck Louisiana's coast, only 13 percent of Congress and 30 percent of the Senate have visited the site of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

"Historians will look back on this period of time following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as a defining moment for both our state and nation," said Anne Milling, Founder of Women of the Storm. "To neglect the needs of this vital region sets an unimaginable precedent for America's response to future catastrophes in our nation. Our elected leaders need to see for themselves -- block by block, mile by mile -- the immense devastation and the pressing challenges still faced by so many people in this region."

link to more of their story ~

Why feminisim and being anti-war intersect so fiercely...

2006-07-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

Women all over the world-- as a group-- have the most skin in the game when it comes to wars, even if they aren't formally fighting on the front-lines... Children they have already born and raised are expected to become cannon fodder-- willingly; children they are still raising may become cannon fodder merely by accident; and yet, women are are expected to be innocent enough to be eternal optimists, expected, as such, to reproduce even more cannon fodder, in order to keep the machines of war (and its attendant industries, for that matter) humming along. *

In addition to losing their children, or their own fathers or brothers, they may also lose their children's fathers, leaving them to explain it in some way, that will allow them to preserve whatever might be left of their children's own innocence.

In some wars, women's and girls' own bodies have been used as repositories for acts of ethnic cleansing, making rape, finally, an act of war or terror, and punishable as a war crime. In other wars, women and girls are raped and tortured-- if not to gain some sort of "actionable intelligence"-- then merely for sport or as an outlet for soldiers' rage.

Knowing these things, perhaps you, too, feel as utterly outraged as I do that rightwing ranters, who still feel entitled to support this misbegotten war in Iraq, feel equally entitled to mock the women of CodePink and their supporters during their Fast opposing the war, just because it does not fit all of their (the right-wingers') parameters of what constitutes a proper Fast! They mock them because they can. Because they are mocking women (mostly), who are unprotected by humvees, flack jackets, and automatic rifles, and "armed" only with their uteruses (and their minds and hearts?) to distinguish them from the war mongerers. (Yes, I know there are some right-wing women who support the war-- and I ascribe that enigma to a dominant Athena archetype in their personalities.)

What I really want to know is whether the under-documented, but well-anecdoted, cases of innocent civilians, especially those including women and girls being raped, tortured and murdered will allow this same war to fall within their own parameters of a well-thought-out and -executed war? Just wondering...

However, given the lack of coverage of the real Iraq in the MSM, perhaps one should give the War's supporters the benefit of the doubt, in case such ranters are not aware of the "situation on the ground" as it is now for most Iraqi women. If so, and if you know any, you might invite them to read some of the following...

In spite of rape being vastly under-reported in Iraq, reports of horrific abuse are beginning to accumulate, and are listed and summarized in this report on "Sexual Terrorism and Iraqi Women," by Ruth Rosen (author of The World Split Open) on TomDispatch.com.

Mostly likely the war-supporting ranters were/are aware of the story of the young Iraqi girl/woman who was raped, murdered, her body burned, and her family slain, but still consider such an outrage to be a rare occurrence. Perhaps it was, since her family was slain, too. However Rosen's writings, as well as other sources cited just prior to her article indicate that the problem is much more wide-spread, but vastly underreported. Underreported, because these rapes occur in a culture where the shame of rape attaches itself, not to the perpetrator, but to the woman, often resulting in honor killings, not just of the perpetrator, but often of the woman (or girl!) herself.

Tom Englehardt also links to the most recent post by Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman blogging from Baghdad. Who can even begin to comprehend what that must be like? Riverbend's eloquent prose explains it to us, including these two paragraphs:

Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.

It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?

I know what my own rage feels like when I read of these atrocities... to think that this is being done in our names! (We need to invent new punctuation just for this outrage about war) How much more rage is it possible for a human to feel? Perhaps it's now ironic that I am opposed to the death penalty, for I would, under similar circumstances, undoubtedly feel as she does: hand them over to the locals.

The problem is that those who really should be handed over to the locals are safely ensconced in Washington, where they have plenty of air conditioning to buffer them from the heat, and even the necessary equipment to rescue themselves and their surroundings when there is something as unusual as a flood, and plenty of electricity-- day and night-- as well as potable water, fuel for their cars, and relative security to go about their business each day, rather than hunkering down in their homes, unable to leave for fear of being kidnapped, raped, murdered. Yet, they are the ones who have brought down this fate upon tens of thousands (or more?) of Iraqi people, especially women. So much for the much-lauded "liberation" of Iraqi women, who were already leading more secular lives than the rest of their Islam-dominated sisters.

It is a small comfort, but it is something, that at least one member of Congress feels similarly. Rep. Jim McDermott, writing at the Huffington Post, makes an excellent case for Bush's keeping Rumsfeld instead of accepting his resignation... but transferring him to Baghdad. For the duration.

Great idea, but I think there a number of others who should be required to go with Rumsfield, which brings up a technical point: Does Congress have the power to send Bush to Iraq, as well, as a condition of approving any additional funding? Again, just wondering... After all, he is the Commander-in-Chief, or as he prefers to call himself: the Decider. Shouldn't the Decider also be present?

* Pretty ironic, isn't it, when you consider the numbers of self-righteous, right-wing men who would deny a woman the right to choose whether she wants to continue a pregnancy? To put it in their own terms: How can they know whether her "means & ends" equations are any less valid than their own?

[photo: from Feminist Law Professors]

So... who's covering the Fast for Peace?

2006-07-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly, the rightwing blogs are having a heydey, focusing primarily on Cindy Sheehan's participation as they further burnish her media image, and on the fact that not all of the Fasters will be fasting continuously. (Yes-- some people who wish to protest the war do have other responsibilities that mean lesser commitments. So?) And... a lot of the conservative blogs don't even get all of the facts right-- but what else is new? Nor did I come across any that mentioned that the women of CodePink are planning-- not necessarily to cease their Fast in September, but-- to up the ante, by encouraging acts of civil disobedience.

Nor is it a surprise that the majority of the MSM outlets have not given this story much coverage-- if any. However, there are a lot of stories in smaller papers (e.g., Charleston Daily Mail, Half Moon Bay, Killeen Daily Herald, Portsmouth Herald,) and other online news sources. For example, this one on Axcess News and elsewhere, by A. N. Hernandez, has a bit more detail about Diane Wilson, and her previous fasts, as well as some of the other higher-profile fasters.

The most interesting thing about the coverage is that many of the smaller and regional papers' stories about the Fast are actually about local residents joining in the CodePink hunger strike in Washington. Remember the protesting multitudes before and during the run-up to the War, standing on street corners and main streets all across the country? And the candlelight vigils? And-- the lack of coverage in the MSM, or the degree to which the opposition to the War was downplayed whenever there was a story? I think this story could be something similar. Except... local papers, who are less beholden to the ways of Washington, may actually lead the way in covering this anti-war effort, just as the MSM should have done. Before the War.

Movies and Fasting

2006-07-07T15:55:00.000-07:00

I watched the riveting HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels last night. It begins in 1912 with Alice Paul and Lucy Burns leading the next generation of suffragettes through 8 years of activism that finally leads to the ratification of the 19th amendment on August 20th, 1920.

This is a powerful, important movie. While a fictionalized version of events, it stays true to the heart of those infamous events led by a group of dedicated activists determined to gain the right of voting for everyone. It's horrifying to actually see activists stoned for quietly, and peacefully, picketing in front of the White House. Women are egged, stoned, attacked and spat upon by spectators.

Inside those hallowed halls, politicans are plotting how to get rid of them. One telling scene has one man saying they ought to be jailed for treason because of the remarks stitched onto the women's banners. The other man in the room points out that the women are quoting President Woodrow Wilson himself.

The most inspiring, yet most terrifying, scenes are the ones set in Occoquan, a Virginia women's "workhouse." This is where the hunger strikes come in. Alice Paul refuses to eat. When taken out of solitary and returned to the general population, she still refuses to eat and inspires the rest of the suffragettes at Occoquan to join the hunger strike. Paul is force fed in the most horrifying ways and the story does not flinch from this horror.

It is not hard to draw parallels between a movement that happened not quite 100 years ago to a movement that is happening now. Especially when things like this happen.

Geoffrey Millard, 25, an Iraq War veteran who served on active combat duty for 13 months, walked into a break in the parade with a sign that read: “Support the Troops, Bring Them Home Now.” He was dressed in his military jacket with “Iraq Veterans Against the War” on the back and his many medals pinned to the front. He was stopped by the police, and when he tried again to enter the parade with his anti-war message and was subsequently arrested.
Also arrested was Chloe Jon-Paul, 71, of CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She attempted to enter the march with her sign after Millard, and was also arrested by the police.

While she was being arrested, Jon-Paul said to the police, “I’m a 71-year-old woman. I don’t want to be arrested. But if you’re preventing our veterans from speaking for peace by arresting them, well, you’ll have to arrest me too.”

GW isn't the first to have people arrested for exercising their 1st amendment rights and disagreeing with him. But he should learn from the history books, Wilson changed his position and supported the 19th amendment, called the Susan B. Anthony amendment.

The current administration needs to learn that you can't keep the discontent quiet and the energy of dedicated activists is not a power to be fooled with.

It Bears Repeating

2006-07-06T23:47:00.001-07:00

Women in Iraq are getting the shaft when it comes to rights. Terri Judd's article For the Women of Iraq, the War Is Just Beginning last month covered some of the many atrocities anyone not of the male gender faces. It's horrifying to think things were better for women under Saddam Hussein's regime.

Under Saddam, women played little part in political life but businesswomen and academics travelled the country unchallenged while their daughters mixed freely with male students at university.

Now women are being shaved bald for not wearing a scarf or are stoned for wearing make-up. Wearing pants is considered a killing offense.

It is clear that fundamentalist Islamic men, like their fundamentalist Christian counterparts, are not reading their holy books and remembering their religious history. They have forgotten

Muhammad became a merchant. One of his employers was Khadijah, a forty-year-old widow. She was impressed with Muhammad's character and intelligence, and proposed to him in the year 595. Muhammad consented to the marriage, which by all accounts was a happy one. [1]

Yes, you read that right. Muhammad's (peace be unto him) wife was a business woman and proposed to him. He worked for a woman, married her and had children. When he began to receive revelations from Allah, she supported his work and converted, helping to spread the word of Islam.

There is no way I can be sure, but I'll bet both Muhammad and Jesus are seriously angry at what is happening in their "name" right now.

Source: [1] Wikipedia - Mohammed

Always read Barbara Ehrenreich when you get the chance...

2006-07-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

...especially when she takes on the those who would undermine Feminism, or undervalue its gains...

Feminism, as you've probably been reading for the last 20 years, is dead. Most women today want to smash through the glass ceiling, run for the Senate, and buy contraceptives at will (not to mention abortions, at least if the fetus they're carrying turns out to be "defective.") But feminism? It's just a bunch of hairy-legged, man-hating, harridans screaming slogans that were already obsolete in the era of Charlie's Angels.
The latest nail in the coffin comes from Ana Marie Cox, the famed blogger known as "wonkette," in her snarky review of Katha Pollitt's new book Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Times. (New York Times Book Review, July 2.) All right, I have a personal stake in this: I wrote a blurb for the book, I'm a friend of Pollitt's, and I'm a little on the strident side myself.

Enjoy the rest of Ehrenreich's response...

Cox's piece is also available online, and here is a telling excerpt:

Progressives have certainly seen setbacks in recent years— from the creeping war on contraception to the perception that they lack the stomach for pragmatic policy calls. One could view these as losses in a continuing debate, but Pollitt's columns evoke a siege. "The truth is, most of the good things about this country have been fought for by liberals," she warns in a 2004 pre-election column. "If conservatives had carried the day, blacks would still be in the back of the bus, women would be barefoot and pregnant, medical care would be on a cash-only basis, there'd be mouse feet in your breakfast cereal and workers would still be sleeping next to their machines." [emphasis mine]

Cox's sentence that I emphasized above is just one of those examples of a so-called progressive pundit accepting, without question, the Right's framing of an issue to their own benefit. First: that such losses are merely "part of a continuing debate," rather than an accurate reflection of the actual shift of the political center toward the Right. Second: that Pollitt would "evoke a siege" with her writing, when one of the main epithets the Right hurls at the Left (especially progressive women) is that we are angry. (In order to forego a discussion of the validity of such anger?) That she mentions that the quote which follows is from a 2004 pre-election column, perhaps instead demonstrates Pollitt's prescience. If you actually read Cox's blog in the past, and can contrast her material with Ehrenreich's, which one of them would you rather have speaking for the Left and for Progressives?

Women to be Admired: Sophia Loren

2006-07-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Objectification is bad, whoever's doing it.

A (now former) friend, who was in the habit of openly saying "wow!" loudly and staring whenever a handsome young (and I do mean young) man came into her field of vision, and I were having lunch one sunny afternoon. The topic of objectification came up. My unsurprising egalitarian attitude is that objectification of either gender is wrong.

She said, "Well, I figure they've been doing it to us for centuries so it's okay for us to do it." My jaw dropped and then I wondered why I had been so surprised by this comment. She stared me down from across the table, "I'm not wrong," she challenged. There's nothing that can be said to this so I closed my mouth and concentrated on lunch.

But, when Pirelli tires announced that none other than Sophia Loren will be posing nude in their 2007 calendar, my first thought was, "You go girl!"

In a world that equates youth with beauty and has forgotten the wisdom to be found in the elder population, it seems refreshing to know that somewhere there is someone who is not afraid to honour a 72 year old woman who once represented youth and beauty and now represents age, beauty and wisdom.

for a banquet-like Fast... that is, both festive & elegant...

2006-07-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

...just check out these photos on CodePink's website ...about their fast to protest the war. Their demands are simple-- not easy for this administration, I'll grant, nor for this Congress, either, apparently-- but still they are simple:

The fasters are demanding that we bring our troops home from Iraq. They want the White House and Congress to call for:
The withdrawal of all U.S. from Iraq;
No permanent bases in Iraq;
A commitment to fund a massive reconstruction effort but with funds going to Iraqi, not U.S., contractors.

And be sure to read Lyssa Strada contributor Stephanie's account of her fast. The link is in the post just below this one.

And, if any Lyssa Strada readers are also inspired to follow suit, please tell us about it in comments or via email, and we'll post your story, too.

Fasting for Peace

2006-07-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

I fasted on the 4th of July for peace.

A political fast is about making a statement. Since I was quiet about my fast until now, my political fast was inner driven. I used it to concentrate my energy on thinking about peace and independence, in all the modes I could think of. I’m extending that process into 2 days of eating MRE’s. Today is about the experience of what soldiers in the field eat, while extending my emotional energy toward peace and support for troops deployed all over the world.

My entire journal of the process is in 3 parts at Blither, Blather, Bloviate. I'm still processing the effects this has had on me. I can say I'm definitely not sorry for the experience, nor am I regretting the MRE's. I would be less than honest if I didn't say I was looking forward to regular food on Friday!

If It Makes Sense, Just Ignore It

2006-07-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

The roomful of clerks solves the ills of the world on a regular basis. Of course, they know no one will listen to them because the solutions make so much sense. Who knew that someone as wise as Molly Ivins was listening? In her article, Politics or Insanity?, she suggests some of the very things the clerks have been discussing.

You want to shut down illegal immigration? You want to use the military as police? Make it illegal hire undocumented workers and put the National Guard into enforcing that. Then rewrite NAFTA and invest in Mexico.

Hello? The reasoning behind this is similar to what the clerks have been saying.

Mexican immigrants keep crossing the border because they can get jobs here -- and most of those jobs are provided by companies whose CEOs support George W. Bush. That's where he can have an impact on the problem, should he choose to do so.

Help Mexico have a viable economy and everyone wins. This is so common sense, the clerks don't understand what those in power don't understand about this. Evidently, as Ms. Ivins points out, they are all living in fantasy land.

OH BEAUTIFUL

2006-07-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Most Americans can remember the first stanza or so of America's other national anthem, AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL. The spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, the fruited plain, and so on from sea to shining sea. Unlike the STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, its tune is easy enough that most people can actually sing it and hit all the notes. AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL was written by a woman named Katherine Lee Bates, inspired by the view from the top of Pike's Peak, a 14,000 odd ft. peak that overshadows Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was the daughter of a Congregationalist Minister; she herself was deeply religious but as an adult could find no home for her faith in any church. She was a prolific poet, and a professor of English at Wellesley, but other than this unofficial national anthem, her work and her name are forgotten.

Katharine Lee Bates lived for twenty-five years with Katharine Coman in a committed partnership that has sometimes been described as a "romantic friendship." Bates wrote, after Coman died, "So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I'm sometimes not quite sure whether I'm alive or not."

Many Americans who mouth the remembered words of her love song to her country would condemn this woman today, three ways from Sunday, as my Grandmother would put it. Today, many good Christians in these United States would deny her faith as false, see her hope as evil, judge her love as sinful.

But there are other words in Katherine Bates' song that are not sung or remembered by Americans on days like today, the 230th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (which also has a lot of words to it that most American citizens don't bother to read or remember).

Words like:

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

or:

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!

or:

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

or:

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

or:

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

Goddess Archetypes in Everywoman

2006-07-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

I came across this link while perusing this blog's stats. (You just never know what you will find.) However, since the link is to an interview with author Jean Shinoda Bolen, and discusses her very interesting book, Goddesses in Everywoman: a new psychology of women, I thought it merited its own post.

The interview is short, but worthwhile. Here's an excerpt:

MISHLOVE: You know, Freud once wrote towards the end of his career that in spite of all his investigation into the psychology of men and women he was never able to answer the basic question, what does Woman want? It seems as if in your psychology of the goddesses, you really are addressing that question. These goddess archetypes represent the different things that women want.
BOLEN: Yes. And it varies from woman to woman, that's the other thing.
MISHLOVE: And varies from time to time for a single woman, also.
BOLEN: Yes, because at different times in your life a goddess pattern will be much stronger. For example, if you're a teenage girl, it could be that you are a horse-crazy Artemis, who just wants to go ride horses, be a backpacking Girl Scout in the wilderness. Or you could be an Aphrodite that is really boy crazy. Or you could be a scientific-minded, chess-playing Athena, or a meditative Hestia, or something like that. And it's pretty clear at that time that there's one or two goddesses that really run the show for a while. And then, come your adult years, it may be that you will get married, and Hera will get a vote, or may not. It may be that you'll have a baby, and Demeter, the mother, will be evoked; or it might not. You know, when Demeter is not evoked, it can be very sad. I had a number of people say to me, "Go see Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People. Then you'll realize what my mother was like." Basically what they were saying is: "I had a mother who was my biological mother, but at some deep level she didn't bond with me, and I knew it." And what is said is that often the woman knows it too. She may know that she felt it for another child, and isn't bonded at this deeper level with this particular one.

However, you may also want to check out Bolen's own site: jeanbolen.com for information about the Millionth Circle initiative, and her other books, especially this one:

Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World "Gather the women, save the world" is a message from Mother Earth, Mother Goddess, Mother archetype. The words evoke an intuitive recognition, a wisdom whose time has come. Women as a gender, not every woman but women generally, have a wisdom that is needed. This is a call from the Sacred Feminine to bring the feminine principle which most women and some men embody into consciousness and culture. When there is a critical mass and the tipping point is reached, gender balance ends patriarchy,and peace becomes possible.

[Image: Hestia]

Victoria's Secret Breasts

2006-07-03T22:45:00.000-07:00

This post is a follow-on to Karen M's post about breastfeeding.

It's kind of ironic that Victoria's Secret, which plasters breasts everywhere, is offended at seeing breasts used for their intended purpose.

And here we are again, with another mother being asked to use the bathroom to nurse her baby because breastfeeding makes someone uncomfortable. This incident happened in Racine, WI.

The nursing mom's solution? One so radical and subversive, it deserves attention and applause. About 20 women and children staged a "nurse-in" in front of the store as part of a national "nurse-in."

40 US states have some form of legislation regarding breastfeeding. Wisconsin exempts breastfeeding from criminal statutes.

This is not the first time Victoria's Secret has had complaints from nursing mothers. Massachusetts and Ohio stores have also had issues. According to a spokesman who must be frustrated at having to spend so much of his time apologizing and explaining company policy, Victoria's Secret allows nursing mothers in their stores. Apparently the staff isn't getting the message, and are actually telling nursing mothers that it's against company policy.

Good for the moms for standing up for the health of their children and good for Victoria's Secret's official company policy. Bad for the employees who don't get it and keep insisting that moms feed their children in the bathroom.

Educate, educate, educate!

image: Hipp Organic Baby Food

The first woman bishop of the Catholic Church?

2006-07-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

NPR's Krista Tippett introduces this week's edition of "Speaking of Faith:" "In over 50 years as a Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister has emerged as a powerful and uncomfortable voice in Roman Catholicism and in global politics. If women were ordained in the Catholic Church in our lifetime, some say, Joan Chittister would be the first female bishop."

Quote: "How many snowflakes does it take to break a branch. I don't know, but I want to be there to do my part... if I'm a snowflake." --Sr. Joan Chittister, on the process of women creating change within the Catholic Church.

From Tippett's online journal:

Always on the go, she had squeezed me into her schedule during a three-hour layover at Chicago Midway airport. She was, I wrote in my notes, "a whirlwind in purple." Several times she whisked out a miniature dictaphone and recorded questions and reminders for herself and her assistant. She'd published four books already that year alone. And she was as fun as she was formidable. "I've never missed a party," she told me, "and I don't like to be left out of one." If I possessed any lingering stereotypes about nuns, I left them forever behind in that airport lounge.
For some, the words that describe Joan Chittister might seem to be a contradiction in terms: Roman Catholic monastic, interfaith social activist, feminist. But I understand Joan Chittister to be at one and the same time engaged with worldly reality and with the sense of paradox often found at the heart of religion. She is a modern woman who draws her sustenance and vision from immersion in a 1500-year-old monastic tradition.

Listen to the interview. No matter what your faith, or lack thereof, Joan Chittister is fascinating, perhaps because of what she gained as the product of a "mixed" marriage-- a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. In one anecdote she describes becoming fascinated with monastic women at her biological father's funeral when she was about three years old. In another she describes the day she learned in school that her beloved step-father and his Protestant relatives were not eligible for entry into Heaven.

It is astonishing that this author of more than 30 books thought as a young nun that she must give up her greatest passion-- writing-- and did, for some decades.

I hold no brief for Catholicism, or for that matter, for most branches of organized religion. Still, I can only admire this woman's dedication to her own paradox of being both a Catholic nun and a feminist, and her efforts to change the degree to which women are included in the Church. If we must have a Catholic Church, then it should be one that does not, to paraphrase Sr. Joan, use only one half of its population, its heart, and its mind. (I'm going to re-listen and correct that.)

~~~~~

I was only half-awake while listening to this show, my usual routine, since it airs Sunday mornings at 7:00 a.m., but I missed the end of it when I finally went outside to try and get our neighbor's attention-- to ask him if he knew what time it was-- it took a few minutes, because he couldn't hear me over the roar of his gas-powered hedge shears. Another potential bullet item for our agenda: Noise Pollution.

Kuwait: (Some) Women Get the Vote

2006-06-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

It was a big day for Kuwaiti women yesterday. For the first time ever, women in Kuwait were allowed to exercise the duty American women take for granted. American women shouldn't though because we've only had the vote for 86 years. That's right, less than 100 years.

Kuwaiti women voted yesterday. Didn't hear about it? Didn't seem to make a big splash in the US and what few stories that were released about it didn't emphasize the fact that only women who follow Islamic law were allowed to vote. Not even NPR used that fact in their story.

In the first 10 results in a Google News search, only 1 US news source is listed. Why? According to Adam Hanft at Huffington Post, it's all about Iraq.

It's hard to explain away the fact that it took 15 years after we went to war to liberate Kuwait, to finally give women the opportunity to vote. And not all women, mind you, only women who follow Islamic law. If it's taken this long to change a tiny slice of the culture in Kuwait, what message does that send about the timeframe in Iraq?

What indeed?

This only illustrates how woeful women's rights are around the world and how American politicians just don't care ... or get it ... or something. This is why it's so important for us to keep speaking up, keep going to the polls, letting those in power know that we are fed up and it's a time for change.

Tell Me This Isn't What We Really Want

2006-06-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

A Bush & Co. promo featuring a pre-pregnant mother popping vitamins and scheduling just-in-case "pre-conception care services"—neither of which she can afford because she's paid far below a living wage—while sending her kids off to sex-segregated public schools.

Let's not forget that in Bush World her children return home from their sex-segregated schools with "knowledge" about abstinence and creationism, and some sporty brochures they got from an army recruiter in the cafeteria.

Complete the picture with a local pharmacist who denies our struggling mother emergency contraception, and a senator who thinks she shouldn't get birth control either, and an administration whose idea of small government is taking up residence in her vagina.

NOW's president, Kim Gandy, writes about the latest right-wing runway fashion show and identifies the latest couture from the "Bush & Co collection."

So maybe this is what Lyssa Strada is really all about?

2006-06-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

I came across the excerpt below in my usual way... there's a German word for when a book reaches out from the shelf to claim you... it was something like that. The inimitable Digby had posted something on the "kerfluffle" about blogger-turned-political consultant Jerome Armstrong's being an actual astrologer and how outraged so many progressive bloggers are about it. There followed, as one can imagine, a heated-- yet generally civil, by blogging standards-- debate on the almost universally agreed upon lack of merit of astrology and myriad other so-called pseudo-sciences, which are to be distinguished from real science, in my opinion, not just on the basis of their objectivity, but also by their degree of male dominance. But that's just my opinion. Or so I thought. Apparently, there are some men who are aware of both the price and the cost of the lack of visibility of the feminine in western culture. (What about eastern culture? They don't really discuss that.)

The following paragraphs are from The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View, by Richard Tarnas, which I had read about, but have not yet read. I found the link, courtesy of Dewey in Digby's comment thread, to this conclusion of the epilogue of Tarnas's book:

This is the great challenge, yet I believe it is one the Western mind has been slowly preparing itself to meet for its entire existence. I believe that the West's restless inner development and incessantly innovative masculine ordering of reality has been gradually leading, in an immensely long dialectical movement, toward a reconciliation with the lost feminine unity, toward a profound and many-leveled marriage of the masculine and feminine, a triumphant and healing reunion. And I consider that much of the conflict and confusion of our own era reflects the fact that this evolutionary drama may now be reaching its climactic stages. For our time is struggling to bring forth something fundamentally new in human history: We seem to be witnessing, suffering, the birth labor of a new reality, a new form of human existence, a "child" that would be the fruit of this great archetypal marriage, and that would bear within itself all its antecedents in a new form. I therefore would affirm those indispensable deals expressed by the supporters of feminist, ecological, archaic, and other ountercultural and multicultural perspectives. But I would also wish to affirm those who have valued and sustained the central Western tradition, for I believe that this tradition-- the entire trajectory from the Greek epic poets and Hebrew prophets on, the long intellectual and spiritual struggle from Socrates and Plato and Paul and Augustine to Galileo and Descartes and Kant and Freud-- that this stupendous Western project should be seen as a necessary and noble part of a great dialectic, and not simply rejected as an imperialist-chauvinist plot. Not only has this tradition achieved that fundamental differentiation and autonomy of the human which alone could allow the possibility of such a larger synthesis, it has also painstakingly prepared the way for its own self-transcendence. Moreover, this tradition possesses resources, left behind and cut off by its own Promethean advance, that we have scarcely begun to integrate--and that, paradoxically, only the opening to the feminine will enable us to integrate. Each perspective, masculine and feminine, is here both affirmed and transcended, recognized as part of a larger whole; for each polarity requires the other for its fulfillment. And their synthesis leads to something beyond itself: It brings an unexpected opening to a larger reality that cannot be grasped before it arrives, because this new reality is itself a creative act.

But why has the pervasive masculinity of the Western intellectual and spiritual tradition suddenly become so apparent to us today, while it remained so invisible to almost every previous generation? I believe this is occurring only now because, as Hegel suggested, a civilization cannot become conscious of itself, cannot recognize its own significance, until it is so mature that it is approaching its own death.

Today we are experiencing something that looks very much like the death of modern man, indeed that looks very much like the death of Western man. Perhaps the end of "man" himself is at hand. But man is not a goal. Man is something that must be overcome--and fulfilled, in the embrace of the feminine.

[Image: source]

Books: Bluebeard's Egg

2006-06-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

I have just finished writing up my notes and thoughts about Margaret Atwood's Bluebeard's Egg over at Logs of the Written Word.

Atwood is definitely a feminist who once said in an interview when asked "So, you're a feminist. Does that mean you hate men?" Her reply was a quick-witted, "Do you mean all of them or just some of them?" (If memory serves, which it sometimes does not. She could just have easily said, "Why don't you ask them?")

The themes of feminist vs. feminity, invisibility with or without a splash of body image insecurity struck me most fiercely in this collection of short stories, which are excellent in nearly every way.

The minimum wage scandal is a working woman's Issue... as well as her children's

2006-06-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

Update: Economic Record: Federal minimum wage is set to break two records:

"adjusted for inflation [minimum wage] is at its lowest level since 1955,"

"[when] 2006 comes to an end - it will mark 10 years - the longest time the minimum has gone without an increase."

but...

Economic Report: Dems Say Minimum Wage Workers Get a Raise or Congress Doesn't
By Doug Cunningham
Senate Democrats are threatening to block the latest $3,300 pay raise for Congress unless Republicans give minimum wage workers a raise. The federal minimum wage has stayed at $5.15 an hour since 1997. Congress has had raises of more than $31,000 in that time. The minimum wage of $10,400 a year is $6,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of three. Campaigns are underway in several states to get minimum wage increases on the November ballot.

Following is an excerpt from the Econonomic Policy Institute ~ dated almost seven years ago. What are the disparities now? [Read this paper from the Children's Defense Fund for an idea. ]

September 16, 1999 Issue Brief #133
The Minimum Wage Increase
A Working Woman's Issue
by Jared Bernstein, Heidi Hartmann, and John Schmitt
As Congress considers raising the federal minimum wage from its current level of $5.15 per hour to $6.15, it is important to understand who will benefit from this increase. An analysis of low-wage workers shows that the main beneficiaries of this one-dollar increase would be working women, almost one million of whom are single mothers. In fact, of the 11.8 million workers who would receive a pay increase as the result of this higher minimum wage, 58% would be women, simply because, as a group, they earn lower wages than men. As a result, a minimum wage increase would help to reduce the overall pay gap between women and men.

Since the minimum wage is not indexed to inflation, when Congress fails to raise the minimum wage, these workers' purchasing power declines, as was the case over the 1980s. Even with the two increases thus far in the 1990s, the minimum wage remains 19% below its inflation-adjusted 1979 level. This decline in the minimum wage helps to explain the growth of wage inequality and the diminished earnings of low-wage female workers over the last two decades.

In 1979, a woman working at the minimum wage earned 70% of the hourly wage of the median female worker (the woman right in the middle of the female wage scale). By 1998, that ratio had fallen to 52%. Similarly, in 1979 a single mother working full time at the minimum wage earned enough to lift a family of three (herself and two children) above the poverty line. By 1998, however, the same family would be 18% below the poverty line. [1]

And, still, our GOP-controlled congress is unable to see how they might be perceived as penurious by others who would judge them for their own questionable salary increases, which are, in fact, tied to the cost of living (their living, not ours), juxtaposed against their willingness to ride on the coattails of welfare reform that forced many young, and under-educated mothers of young children into the workforce, and into jobs where the low pay, and lack of health care benefits, continue to push them even further below the poverty line. Ah me...

Yet, there is hope in the final paragraph of this story from last week's Christian Science Monitor:

After Wednesday's vote, Kennedy found a bright spot, even in the defeat of his measure: eight Republican votes in support of his position. "We have doubled the number of Republicans who supported the minimum wage this time. We may have to wait until November, when Democrats take control.... One of the first acts of legislation will be a freestanding minimum-wage bill."

Finally, this related story, also from the Christian Science Monitor, erases any doubt about the benefits to working mothers and their children that would result from an increase in the minimum wage.

My only question is why $7-something an hour? Wouldn't $10 an hour be more realistic?

"Loose Change"

2006-06-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

...is an absolutely must-see documentary.

Books: Born of a Woman

2006-06-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

(Hey, thanks Thursday for the invite!)

I'm currently reading Born of a Woman. You can follow my thoughts as I read it, here at Logs of the Written Word. It's a fascinating look at how the male-dominated church has treated women through the centuries by changing how Jesus' birth has been interpreted.

So far what I love most about Bishop Spong's writing is his unwavering faith all the while re-analyzing one of the most revered tailes in Christendom. The conclusions he reaches are the same that I have come to, rather independently. It will prove to be a good ride.

The Naming of Things

2006-06-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

NPR's series This I Believe allows people to share their ideas and their beliefs. Eve Ensler (yes, she of The Vagina Monologues) says it's the naming of things that leads us to a healthier life.

Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior and redirect our thinking. I believe in naming what's right in front of us because that is often what is most invisible.

By naming vagina repeatedly in her show, a world movement to end violence against women began.

Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the most dangerous, terrifying and crucial work. This has to happen in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it.

Here is my list of things that need to be named:

incest
sexual molestation of children
sexual abuse
rape
anti-choice
No Child Left Behind
low literacy and numeracy rates among the poor
racism
ageism
sexism
discrimination based on body size or shape
discrimination based on religion
homophobia
arguments based on guesswork not facts
The Emperor Has No Clothes
Anne Coulter et al. - Cite Your Sources! (This goes for Jason Leopold at truthout as well)
war for oil
Where is Osama bin Laden?
Global warming
the ozone layer
gas guzzling SUV's
Rick Santorum
Rwanda
Darfur
Pharmaceutical companies
Plan B
FDA
EPA
North Korea
Iran
Iraq
Afghanistan
The 1st Amendment
Really, The Emperor Has No Clothes! Neither does any of his staff

I know I have left out many things that need to be named ... what are your things to be named?

on torture and fashion and couture and fasting...

2006-06-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

I may have been a bit hasty in my comment to Thursday's post, responding to my post, about fasting... even though I meant everything I wrote.

But, shortly after posting my comment, I followed a link from Broadsheet to this MSNBC story about the link between couture and torture. There's even a website called coutorture. Really.

Diane Mapes writes:

First, it was the corset. Now, the fashion industry has brought back skin-tight jeans, disco leotards and 7-inch platforms. And for accessories? Look for corns, bunions, sprained ankles, bruises, yeast infections and chafing.

Yes, for many of us, beauty and pain often walk hand in hand. But how far are we willing to go for fashion? For some, it’s all the way to the emergency room.

She continues with a litany of broken bones in feet and ankles and torn ligaments, and concludes with this:

What can be done? For some women, like Renee Sedliar, a 35-year-old San Francisco editor who blames a pair of 4-inch red leather sandals for her sprained ankle, it’s a matter of making the tough choice.
“After years of heels, I’ve become almost exclusively dedicated to flats,” she says. “Let’s face it, there’s nothing like walking around in really sexy, fabulous shoes, but if you can’t hide the grimace of pain or oozing blood or swelling toes…”

Although I rarely wear high heels and may not even own a reasonably fashionable pair as of this moment, and I abhor the idea of wearing a thong, or anything restrictive around my mid-section, including tank tops that are "too-tight," (forget about corsets!), I recognize there is a least a grain of truth in the article's comparison of our relationship with clothing to Stockholm Syndrome. Whether I like it or not.

Following that line of reasoning, one must then really question the value of a site like Lyssa Strada, where we exhort women to quit shaving their armpits and legs as a protest against the war, to withhold their uteruses from men--another war protest-- even if they cannot bear to give up sex themselves, and yet-- really stretching the envelope here-- to breastfeed in public as often as, and wherever, they can, if they should prove equally unsuccessful in withholding their uteruses-- just to keep mothers from becoming so invisible, and therefore, less powerful.

Perhaps Aristophanes' play had some effect on that war he was criticizing, but it really did not do much to advance the cause of women when he equated our fair sex with his society's lower creatures in order to make his point. So! Must that mean that a site like Lyssa Strada really cannot hope to be more effective in challenging the current status of women in the world than its ancient counterpart was?

Nooo waaaay!!!

We shall continue to suggest that women really can have fun and be subversive, that we would merely be following the lead of such impressive women as Dorothy Parker, Molly Ivins, Roseanne Barr, Katharine Hepburn, Tina Fey, Gilda Radnor, Joy Behar, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arianna Huffington, Jane D. Schaberg, Pippi Longstocking, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Penny Marshall, Marge Simpson, Ellen Degeneres, Phyllis Diller, Paula Poundstone, Kate Clinton, Wendy Wasserstein, Helen Thomas...

[tick-tock, tick-tock-- still adding more names-- check back later]

[stiletto heel boot: wikipedia]

Continuing the Conversation: On Fasting

2006-06-22T00:04:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, here's an interesting overview of fasting, both religious and political.

Codepink has a really good article called Hunger Strike History.

To answer Karen's question about women suffragists and fasting:

British women were the first to fast in prisons for the vote. Alice Paul was one of the first American women to fast for the vote. (She was also author of the Equal Rights Amendment.) It seems to have speeded up the process because now politicans understood that women were willing to die for their beliefs, but that was only after they realized that force feeding wasn't going to win them any brownie points. I plan on viewing Iron Jawed Angels as soon as possible.

The tone of this article at Hermenaut is weird and hard to take serious at first. But if you hold on and keep reading, some very good points are made about fasting and women. The last paragraph really brings it home:

There was a time, you see, when a woman starving herself represented a dangerous and courageous political tactic. Today all self-denial represents for women is an effete, cowardly pity-party. Imagine a woman starving herself today to draw attention to real contemporary examples of injustice against American women—like the lack of adequate protection for victims of domestic abuse, the pervasive sexual abuse of female prisoners by male guards, or the ever-present earnings gap. Pacing in front of the White House, her pelvic bones jutting stylishly through her slacks, old high school chums stop her, exclaiming, "Omigod! You look fantastic! What's your secret?" Anxious parents and body image counselors circle around: "You don't need to do this. You have our attention." Jenny Jones stops by: "Don't you know you're hurting the people who love you very much?" No matter what your political aim, anorexia means that women's bodies can never be anything but sites of ghettoized women's issues.

A Revolution They Can Dance To

2006-06-21T23:26:00.000-07:00

Feminism doesn't mean being anti-sex with a sense of humour by-pass; some of us are demanding the right to be sexual and safe. Saintly womanhood leaves a lot to be desired. It can be boring and lonely on a pedestal. And growing old doesn't mean growing more conventional - women of every age want a revolution they can dance to.

From: Chumbawamba - Tubthumper

I clicked on a link at Broadsheet, and sent the following...

2006-06-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

To Rep. Curt Weldon:

We live certainly live in crazy times when the government expects a woman my age (50+) to consider herself pre-pregnant-- since most pregnancies are considered suprises-- just because she hasn't yet reached menopause.

And you can imagine that it seems especially ironic to me, because of when I came of age, that groups who say their main goal is to prevent abortion are now attacking women's rights to proper reproductive health care, including access to contraception, and that hugely controversial boon to women, Plan B, (which is NOT an abortifacient, but really, according to the SCIENCE, just emergency contraception).

And, finally, imagine the plight of a poor woman who has already fallen through the cracks, either because of the lack of access to contraception, or because she was in the small percentage for whom her method failed, or had an uncooperative partner.

She sees a billboard offering help to women in circumstances such as hers (poor? too many children already? a high-risk for pregnancy? alone? under-age? over-age? etc? etc?) and decides to call for help in getting her pregnancy terminated, only to find herself in a Kafka-esque episode:

[NOW]: Fake pregnancy crisis centers attract women to their clinic through deceptive advertising.

Once the women arrive at the so-called "Crisis Pregnancy Center" they are provided with biased and inaccurate information designed to persuade them not to obtain an abortion. Women deserve unbiased complete medical information about their pregnancy and their reproductive rights. In order to achieve this I am asking you to support Rep. Carolyn Maloney's bill referred to as "Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women's Services Act" (H.R. 5052).

The Maloney bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to create rules that prohibit any organization from advertising with the intent to deceive the public into believing an organization is a provider of abortion services if they don't in fact provide abortion services. Please help ensure through your support that this piece of legislation makes it to the floor. Women deserve to hear the truth.

It's the right thing to do, Congressman Weldon.

Sincerely,

Karen M

[original post at Broadsheet]

[I decided to embellish NOW's message, figuring that the target audience must get tired of reading the same things over and over.]

California Politics

2006-06-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

[Stephanie at Blither, Blather, Bloviate asked me to cross-post this here. She felt it might have some relevance to our community as well.]

I firmly believe that it is the duty of every American citizen to become a registered voter and to exercise their voice at every poll. But, I would be less than honest if I didn't tell you that I almost skipped voting earlier this month.

Harold Meyerson's article at The American Prospect Online titled, "A Not-So-Super Tuesday - Voter fatigue sets in, in California," says this about the process:

If the states are laboratories of democracy, as Louis Brandeis called them, then Californians have become guinea pigs in a vast failed experiment. Hold a major election every year -- complete with a torrent of attack ads and mailings and recorded phone messages from a startling array of personages attesting to the virtues of your state assembly candidate -- and eventually nobody will vote. The relation between permanent campaigns and voter participation, it turns out, is inverse.

I didn't like the mainstream democratic choices running for the privilege of running against the incumbent Ahnold. The mud-slinging during the campaign was taken to such heights that I felt like I needed to shower every time I turned the tv on. There were days I swore there was mud on the tv before I even touched it.

The answering machine at home was inundated by recorded calls pleading for my vote. Feh.

It was bad, folks, really bad. I spent the entire day at work complaining and moaning and muttering that I just couldn't get myself worked up to go vote. An older co-worker kept telling me, "you don't get to complain about the outcome, if you don't vote." Something I have been fond of telling others who don't vote. And I am telling you, I was almost willing to give up the right to complain because I so didn't want to vote.

And then there were the State Propositions. Oy.

There were 2 on the ballot, one a proposal to tax the rich in order to pay for pre-school education for 4 year olds. Fine in theory, unfair in practice. Find another way to do this please.

Another was a bond for libraries, a fundamental necessity in my eyes. But, in this state, as in others across the country, it seems that everything can be twisted into supporting illegal immigrants.

We are going to be told how important libraries are, and how we have to borrow the money again. These politicians want our children and our grandchildren to keep paying more and more, so they can keep giving more and more of their money to illegal aliens and self-indulgent bureaucrats.

There is not way you can argue with an ideologue, especially one who is going to turn everything around like that. Whatever.

Finally, I held my nose and voted. Me and 30% of the state's eligible voters. They really should have handed out nose plugs at the polling places. Then, I did a really scientific thing ... I voted for the first woman listed on every candidate list. Yup, that was how I made my decision. No way in hell was I gonna vote for either of those male idiots running for governor. I knew one of 'em was gonna win, but I wasn't gonna help.

This state really needs a "none of the above" option.

It is the Summer Solstice!

2006-06-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

[Image: Source]

Do you have a headache from too much Ann Coulter?

2006-06-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

Then, just watch this video of (Republican) Chuck Hagel twice... and call me in the morning.

Stalking: A True Story

2006-06-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

Bitch Ph.D.'s well-written commentary on fear of stalking and the differences in attitudes between men and women struck an uncomfortable note in my heart. My own adrenaline started pumping as I read.

I wager that, with the exception of rape, men are more likely to be the victims of random street crime. But all the precautions about avoiding it are aimed at women, and they are all implicitly about avoiding rape. Even though we know that most rapes are not random street crime, but are committed by friends, dates, acquaintances, and so on. So not only is this advice bad advice to women, the unspoken corrolary--that men don't need to worry as much as women--is really bad advice to men. And the problem is, by giving women but not men this advice, we perpetuate the idea that violence is sexualized (and therefore men, who are not sexualized, do not have to worry about it), and we turn reasonable things like walking home with a friend into things women do out of fear and men don't do at all.

This brought home something I already inherently knew, even random violence is sexualized.

A little earlier in another post she writes:

But most "advice" to women focuses on avoiding *situations*, rather than trusting yourself and avoiding *people* who make you feel uneasy. I think that's exactly backwards.

Yeah, it took me far too many years to begin to understand this ... far too many.

The story that started this commentary is this from Letters From A Broad, in which Chanson describes being stalked by her boyfriend and the danger her life was in because she had been conditioned to not to trust her instincts and to believe that she must help those in trouble before she helps herself.

So when he started behaving in a pathological manner, I felt frightened and angry, but I also felt sorry for him because he was someone I knew and had some feelings for, and I could see that he was having serious problems. Additionally, I felt somewhat responsible because I knew basically from the beginning that the relationship was more serious for him than it was for me. So I felt guilty when he accused me of having led him on.

It's compelling reading and does sound, as Chanson admits, like it was something that would happen in a movie or a book. But it happened.

My own experiences with a sociopath (now called antisocial personality disorder by the psychiatric community) match the experiences Chanson had an ocean away in France. Although my life was never in physical danger; the phone calls, the anger, the manipulation were all very real and very demoralizing. My situation was compounded by the fact I could not move out and when I demanded he move out, he would go to my roommate who owned the place and hated confrontation so much he would say anything to get out of it.

After 18 months, it took 2 very large men who loved me and were far more ruthless to get this punk out of the house and out of our lives. The phone calls didn't stop completely for almost a year but they were less of the "how could you, you owe me" sort and more of the "I need this from you so I can repay the money I owe you," which was never repaid, of course.

The lesson I took away from this, is the same the Bitch Ph.D. and Chanson reiterate, listen to your instincts and don't feel that you owe someone just because they have had a crappy life. Their crappy life is not your responsibility and if they aren't willing to treat you with the respect and dignity you deserve, run away.

Roomful of Clerks: A New Life

2006-06-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

The clerks buzzed around, wondering where their leader was. It's not like him to be late. As they settled down and began to work, they nervously watched the clock and wondered out loud if today had been The Day. Finally, the phone in the room rang and one of the clerks answered it. Today had indeed been The Day. A new little girl entered the world this morning at 0740 Pacific Time. 6 lbs, 7 ozs and 17 inches long. The room erupted into applause as this momentous news was relayed. Welcome to the world little one! May life be easier for you than it has been for those who have gone before you but may it be difficult enough for you to understand what the fight is all about.

Tiana's daddy returns to work a few days hence to continue his watch over the roomful of clerks.

a carbon-based fast... would you participate in one?

2006-06-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, when I was discussing CodePink founder Diane Wilson's planned fast via email with Lyssa Strada contributor laughingcat, I began to think that perhaps I did not give enough weight to Bush's fascistic tendencies... Following are a few paragraphs from his email [emphasis mine].

Having studied Gandhi and his techniques for years, I doubt a fast will work to achieve its stated ends, because of the callous indifference of Bush and those in his circle. Remember, Gandhi said nonviolent non-cooperation only worked against the British because they were a civilized opponent; he openly admitted they would NOT work against Nazis and Fascists. And unfortunately, Bush IS a Fascist, in that he is totally committed to state-sponsored corporatism. Bush, a narcissist if ever there was one, probably won't care if someone who doesn't agree with him dies. And being so freakin' mean spirited, would even gloat, unless I misjudge the extent of his pathology.

I also hope these women use Gandhi's techniques for fasting, i.e., oranges and orange juice. He never did a total fast. He always took a little orange juice, to stretch out the time and therefore effectiveness.
And they need to find a voice in the national media so that one of the networks follows the fast, day by day, keeping the nation's attention on it. That's how Gandhi did it. Kept the world's attention on it. Only then will they get any notice that might make it effective. They also need to have talking points ready through spokespeople to counter the RWNM that will inevitably attack the fasters for all the wrong reasons, state lies and inferences, and resort to character assassination through mockery and derision. (I believe one of the only reasons the Iranian hostage crisis became a crisis was because "Nightline" kept it in the news all week every week).
[Editor's note: what about Helen Thomas? Wouldn't she be the perfect journalist to cover this story?]

They need to send daily, or weekly press releases to every major news outlet and wire service, nationally and internationally, so even if they're ignored by our own media, they can get the story in the news overseas. If Reuters picks it up, we'd have a chance that other US media would cover it as well.
HOWEVER: If I were to organize a nationwide "fast," I would recruit everyone I could to begin a conscious boycott of the oil companies that give money to Repubs, and engineer a massive letter writing campaign to let them know we are consciously going to choose to drive less and walk or bike more for the set period of the fast so they'll get the message the only way they care about. I would keep a record of everyone who volunteered to "fast from oil," and tally the numbers and extrapolate for those who said they would participate. Coordinate it with MoveOn and any other progressive org who has the connects.

That way, America would use millions of gallons of gas less than average, and with constant barrages of emails to the boards of directors, they would wake up to the reality that millions do not support the war or Republicans, and therefore we won't support their company.

Laughingcat's email made me wonder about the possible impact of two parallel carbon-based fasts-- a more traditional fast of food, and one that boycotts oil-- and whether either one would be successful, given that our own culture is not as civilized as the British empire that Gandhi so successfully humbled.

By laughingcat's measure, an oil fast would likely be more successful, since corporatists are motivated to change only by potential financial loss. Still, I'm not totally prepared to give up on GWB's potential for both psychic and physical revulsion when confronted by fasting, grieving women. After all, with so much repressed grief of his own, he must be ready to burst.

At a minimum, I predict he is going to need some therapy... but will he get it?

[Ribs & Corn by Epicurious]

Follow Up on Joe Galloway

2006-06-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

Lyssa's post about Joe Galloway, What Joe Galloway Learned From War, touches on some of the things he has seen and written about in 41 years of war reporting.

NPR interviewed him this morning and asked about some of the things he has been witness to. With genuine tears in his voice, Galloway described what it was like to watch men pull their comrades out of a mud pit where a helicopter had crashed in Iraq. He spoke of the love and gentleness on these soldiers' faces as they found the bodies of their fallen comrades and then, with tearful anger, he excoriated those in power who do not take responsibility for their failures in leadership (Donald Rumsfeld to the white courtesy phone for an important message please).

Galloway's retirement from Knight-Ritter as military correspondent will be missed. But this is a man who is not going to go quietly, we'll be hearing more from him.

Most Right Reverend (Elect)

2006-06-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

There have been many great schisms in Christian religious history:

The Great Schism between Western (Roman) & Eastern (Orthodox) churches in the 1054 CE.

The Western (or Papal) Schism in 1378 CE. At one point there were 3 popes claiming ultimate control of the Catholic church.

Martin Luther and his 95 theses nailed to a church door in Wittenburg, Germany in 1517 CE, which marked the beginning of the Protestant movement.

Now, the US Episcopal Church seems to be headed down the path to its own schism from the world Anglican community. 3 years ago, openly gay priest Gene Robinson was elected as bishop to New Hampshire.

This weekend, Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected to be Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church. Churches in the international Anglican community are very alarmed as the US church continues to embrace and promote those other organized religions want to exclude.

Politics being what they are, there could be a Great Anglican Schism for future history books to refer to.

Where the grandmothers are in charge...

2006-06-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

Read this post at Political Physics on the "Spiritual Unity of Tribes-Gathering of Eagles."

Two excerpts:

For thousands of years Elders, Grandmothers, Medicine men and women on many islands of our planet have known that someday all races would be reunited and would bring healing to our Mother Earth. Indigenous peoples who have retained a spiritual way of life would teach their brothers and sisters all over the planet how to renew these ways and live in humility, having respect for all and a sense of oneness with each other and their Creator.

Women of Political Physics-note that the grandmothers are running things. They are from several races and nations. We even have some grandmothers here from Australia. Down under they are known as "aunties." Wish you all could be there with us. We will make prayers for each and every one of you around the sacred fire. This solstice do your own ceremony, even if you live in the city. Go outside and look up at the stars and the moon. Know that your ancestors are looking back at you. Also know that everyone's ancestors lived tribally, including the caucasians. So Spiritual Unity of Tribes really does include the entire human race. We are all related. Joann Shenandoah, a wonderful traditional native singer from the six nations tribes in upstate New York has said for years that if you want to stop the wars and killings,
put the grandmothers in charge. See you all in two weeks.
dcu

"I'm just a shrimper whose gonna stop eatin' to stop the war!"

2006-06-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

So says Diane Wilson-- shrimper, peace & labor activist, and experienced faster-- in an interview with Medea Benjamin. Both women are co-founders of CODEPINK whose own efforts, as well as those of their supporters, will be the focus and political center of a fast scheduled to begin on July 4th, and continue until September 21st, International Peace Day. If by then, there is not a satisfactory plan in place to end the war, they will up the ante...
An excerpt, three questions from the interview:

Why don't you use other tactics, tactics that aren't
potentially damaging to your health?

We do. We've been marching, lobbying, getting arrested. I just did 3 months in jail for hanging a banner-120 days and $2,000 fine. We did a 4-month vigil in front of the White House. But it hasn't stopped the war, so we have to go further. We have to reach down into our souls. And during the fast, we're going to work with other campaigns-Voters for Peace, Cities for Peace, Declaration of Peace-and ask people to join these efforts.

The Declaration of Peace says that if there is not a satisfactory exit plan by September 21, International Peace Day, we'll engage in massive civil disobedience around the country to end the war.

How does the fast fit into this?

We will be encouraging people to commit acts of civil disobedience around the country that week. Fasting, engaging in civil disobedience, these are all "unreasonable" actions to ramp up the anti-war momentum. We've been too well behaved. I always say, "Reasonable women adapt to the world. Unreasonable women make the world adapt to them." It's well past the time to be unreasonable.

Will the fast really accomplish anything? Do you really think George Bush is going to bring the troops home because some people are refusing to eat?

I've seen throughout history how people have used hunger strikes. Gandhi won independence for India without firing a shot. The suffragists did a hunger strike to win the vote. Mitch Schneider fasted to call attention to the homeless. People in Belfast fasted till death to try to get the British out of Ireland.

Some fasts are successful, others aren't. You never know. There's certainly no guarantee of success. But I damn sure know that if we don't do anything, nothing will change. And I damn sure know that it's a time for action, not navel-gazing.

When you fish, you have to use your instincts. That's what the sea teaches you. I've learned to trust my instincts, my gut feelings, and my gut tells me that with this fast, we can create the space for change to happen. I don't know exactly what that will be. But I know that boldness can be magical. I believe that we can create miracles when we put the intent out there. And I'm willing to stake my life on it!

~*~ *~ *~

My own gut reaction is that such an action could have a huge impact... if publicized enough that GWB actually hears of it, and if enough people participate in it and/or support it. That doesn't mean that we will necessarily hear about the impact it has on Bush's psyche, but it will be there.

What makes me so sure? Even though we don't usually discuss astrology at this site, in this case it seems highly relevant, given that Bush's birthday, July 6, is just two days after the fast is scheduled to begin. What that means metaphysically is that the fast will start just two days before the Sun returns to the same place it was in the cosmos when Bush was born. A birthday is a sensitive cosmic event for each of us, essentially a personal New Year. His will be pre-empted by protestors fasting for Peace.

However, in Bush's case, there are many more factors at play. Cancer Sun Sign people often have a great fondness for food and drink. It is both security and a comfort for them, as well as nourishment. The very idea of someone refusing to eat is shocking... unless it is to manipulate someone else or to punish one's self, and perhaps these are the same. Whether young George ever manipulated his parents by refusing food, I have no idea, but his natal chart has three planets in his 3rd house-- the sector that includes siblings, early schooling & communication-- squaring his Sun in the 12th house.

The Square is considered a hard aspect, and, in fact, often requires obstacles, in order for the planets' energies to be made manifest. Astrologers often note that Bush's Cancer Sun is in the 12th house, and that its energy is not easily expressed; yet, others interpret this placement as someone who requires much private time. However, Bush's 3rd house with its stellium of three planets is very busy, and because it is ruled by Libra, a sign that constantly seeks to find balance and keep the peace, could easily create a lot of tension for him. Ironic, I know, but didn't I say that it wouldn't be easy for him? Actually, though, he has had, at least until the the second term of his presidency, a reputation (deserved or not) for communicating well with others. More likely, though, that had somethng to do with the natures of those 3rd house "planets:" Jupiter, Moon, and Chiron.

Jupiter here could help or hinder. My own observation is that a person's Jupiter placement often reveals an area where they tend to be overly generous, perhaps in a way that serves neither party in the long run. Yet, Jupiter is most often considered a beneficent body, and for Bush it might be the reason he has been able to connect so well with the public, which is also represented by the Moon.

The Moon, which is the key ruler of Bush's 12th house Cancer Sun is not especially helpful to him here, personally, simply because it is square to the Sun, an aspect that often represents parental conflict. Yet, it does bode well for communicating with both siblings and the public.

Chiron, more properly referred to as an asteroid, is the symbol of the wounded healer, and shows up for each of us in an area of our birth chart that represents a type of very deep wound, whether psychic or karmic. And... Bush did lose a younger sister to leukemia when they were both very young children. By all accounts he never really had an opportunity to deal with the grief, and, in fact, was actively discouraged by his parents from doing so. Over time, there can become a kind of strength in Chiron's placement, but it requires going through things, not around them.

What does it mean to Bush that this cluster of planets can represent the source of unresolved personal grief and yet provide him with the means to reach beyond his family? It sounds exceedingly painful to me, especially if you consider the rigidity of his personal schedule... early riser, vigorous daily exercise, and early to bed.

What will it mean to Bush to witness ordinary people, not merely letting go of their own lifes' structures, but literally starving themselves, out of a deep frustration with his unwillingness to listen to them? That people will be using such graphic means to communicate their grief so publicly-- remember, he is very private-- will truly shock him. Unlike the recent suicides at Guantanamo, a well-publicized fast or hunger strike by a critical mass of American citizens truly will be an act of asymmetric force.

We can only hope that the story reaches him.

More Shrillness from the Right

2006-06-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

Two Words: Michelle Malkin

She makes Ann Coulter look reasoned and clear headed. And she misses the point by an even greater margin than her idol.

Yikes!

Humorous Women: Ann Coulter

2006-06-17T17:04:00.000-07:00

Humour and Ann Coulter, in the same topic? Oh yes, after watching her on Jay Leno the other night, I hopped over to her website and found things that were actually laugh out loud funny.

Honestly, I had hopes of seeing some fur fly on Leno, what with George Carlin being the other guest that night. But both Leno and Carlin failed us ... maybe. Or maybe they were smart enough to just let her sink her own ship. Carlin's certainly smart enough for that. And he was certainly gracious as he sat next to her and only raised his eyebrows at some of her more "interesting" comments.

Leno fumbled along for a lot of the interview, she is quick-witted and direct, that's for certain. From what I gather, she was also very polite because she actually waited for him to finish his thought before speaking. One of Leno's more fumbling ... "I mean ... I've found .... catch more flies .... you can catch more flies with honey ..." questions was, "In your book, you call the 4 women 'broads,' why?"

Coulter's quick response was, "Well men have been calling women broads for years." As if that made it all right and explained everything.

Here are some of the things on her website (I am not posting a link to it here) that made me laugh so hard I startled some of the grammar bugs right out of the latest book I am working on at Spec Ops:

... let's pause for a moment to observe that two facts are now universally accepted: Liberals are godless and Hillary's husband is a rapist.

My book makes a stark assertion: Liberalism is a godless religion. Hello! Anyone there? I've leapt beyond calling you traitors and am now calling you GODLESS. Apparently, everybody's cool with that. The fact that liberals are godless is not even a controversial point anymore.

She is really baffled by the fact we liberals are concentrating on "one chapter" in her book about the New Jersey widows and aren't completely outraged that she is calling us godless. She apparently thinks liberals should be jumping up and down and wreaking havoc around her head because of this statement. She also thinks liberalism is a religion, and it is what we worship. How can it be both a religion and the god?

Oh and the Bill Clinton is a rapist thing? There is a woman named Juanita Broaddrick who claims she was raped by then Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton in 1978 but no one has been able to come up with enough evidence or corroboration to prove or disprove this claim. Yet Coulter continues to call him a rapist. (Note: Do I think Clinton has a problem with his zipper? Without a doubt. Do I think he's a rapist? Not really, but that's an opinion not proven fact.)

When I first heard about Coulter's latest diatribe, I advocated a shunning. Part of me thinks we still need to turn our backs on her but another part of me thinks we need to keep talking and writing about her and her ilk, so we can "expose" a more rational approach to life.

But that's just me, a godless liberal broad.

She Couldn't Help Herself!

2006-06-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

Darn those bookstore coupons and their alluring offers ... I keep telling Stephanie (of Blither, Blather, Bloviate and the somewhat stale Breathing History) she could just go to the library but she refuses to heed my wisdom. Something I am quite used to at this point but then, good friends are difficult to come by and she doesn't think I need to be shuffled off to the loony bin whenever I talk about work and that counts for quite a lot.

Anyway, the bookstore. There she was, coupon in hand, in a large chain bookstore promising to come out with one, and only one, book. "Hah!" I told her, as she continued to not listen to me. 6 books later ....

Her choices were not unpredictable and fell right in line with her interests and her studies, and right into what we discuss here at Lyssa Strada.

Born of a Woman - A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Treatment of Women by a Male-Dominated Church by John Shelby Spong
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Iran Awakening - A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi (one of Stephanie's heroes)
Three Cups of Tea - One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (this one had a picture of 3 muslim girls reading, so of course she had to pick it up and see what it was about).

I am sure there will be much dialogue about these books as the summer goes on.
(The other 2 books were a collection of Annie Proulx's short stories and a biography of Augustine.)

OJ AND ANN PULL UP TO THE ALTAR

2006-06-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

(By The Dromedary Syndicate) Author, commentator, syndicated columnist, one time lobbyist litigator, and all-round Queen Bitch Ann Coulter can add another name to her many titles—Wife. An unnamed source close to the action has revealed the revered-by-the-rabid-right and the lassie-lefties-love-to-hate 55-year-old fascistanista and iconic infotainment artist wed celebrity ex-murder suspect O.J. Simpson in an unnoticed ceremony at a drive-thru chapel in Las Vegas, while on a drunken spree celebrating the success d’estime of her new book, Godless. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his escort of the evening, along for the ride in the rented mirror-windowed black SUV, served as best man and bridesmaid.

"I've fallen in love with a very warm, gentle, understanding and focused person," said the clown princess of rightthinkery of Simpson, who she reportedly met the night of the wedding. "It was love at first sight. A new experience, a new day for me, ebony and ivory—I couldn't be happier!"

defending the Enlightenment...

2006-06-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

Like Sara, I, too, am a fan of Digby and rarely disagree with him. I actually missed the post that she is writing about here, but was fascinated by her experience, and thought other Lyssa Strada readers would be, too. - Karen M.

"We progressives have to honestly deal with al-Qaeda, and what it represents. Humor and Cynicism don't do it."

Contra Digby By Sara, cross-posted from The Next Hurrah

Most of the time, I don't disagree or question much of what Digby posts, but today I got bothered by the tendency to deal with the challenge presented by Jihadist Islam with a mix of Cynicism and Humor. I don't think that is helpful, progressive, or enlightening. Much as I am a critic of things "western" or "American" -- I also am determined to defend the Enlightenment, and one really cannot do that without becoming anti-Jihadist. My point in earlier posts here [at The Next Hurrah] defending the something like 80% Majority in Denmark who believed Danes had rights to draw cartoons about any damn thing they wanted to draw about were essentially defenses of enlightenment rights. And we should know that the upshot of the Cartoons matter was 44 dead protesters, lots of cheese unsold, and lots of Danish Flags burned -- and not much more. But it was about much more.

The essential matter is the extension of Sharia Law to Muslim populations in Europe -- and beyond that, into the US by indirection. And beyond that -- it is about demands that such law be considered legitimate or valid.

Jihad has two meanings -- one, the understood notion of human perfectability attained through self examination and criticism, but the other, and the one that should concern us, is the idea that man can judge man (or know the mind of God) and kill in the name of perfection. That's what we saw on 9-11, and what many we encounter as belief. The first fits well into Enlightenment, the second, is way outside that idea set.

What bothers me about Digby's post is non-recognition of reality. We progressives have to honestly deal with al-Qaeda, and what it represents. Humor and Cynicism don't do it.

Let me be concrete. Back at the break between 1984 and 85 I was staying at Dean's Hotel in Peshwar Pakistan, between two archeological tours. Having spent 13 years taking care of parents, and having a small inheritance, I decided to spent part on a 3 month tour (or tours) in India and Pakistan. In the early 60's, (Kennedy Days) I had done some administrative stuff with the first Peace Corps in Pakistan, and in the 80's what I discovered (on site visit) was that our schools built with AID funds and staffed by Peace Corps had been turned into gun factories. Under Zia, our teachers run through an AID Funded teacher training academy in the 60's and 70's, could only do private tuition. They were political out's -- And they had to be very careful if they wanted to keep alive. But these are the guys who showed me the buildings which had become gun factories run by the Imams.

Between Archeological tours, I stayed at Dean's Hotel in Peshwar, and attended to interests from there. I had made early connections with two nurses who were funded by the World Council of Churches, WCC -- and were running a huge DOT (Directly observed Treatment) program for women and kids with TB in the Refugee camps around Peshwar. What I wanted was to observe, and I got much more. About a third of the women in the camps had TB, as did many kids, and what was on offer was 23 hundred calories and the proper drugs. But shortly after I observed, the TB Lab and X-Ray van was blown to kingdom come by Afghani Arabs. WCC did not replace.

When I was at Dean's Hotel in Peshwar in very early 1985 I came to understand that Doris Lessing, along with about a dozen Afghani women who had re-located to London and who were trying to found a magazine for refugee women, were also at the hotel. Now someone my age knows the "Golden Notebooks" and the rest of Lessing's importance, so an invite to tea with her and her women was something to be attended. Actually the Afghani women were mostly Doctors, who had managed re-training in GB and were not part of the National Health Service -- in Islamic Countries women are medically trained only to deal with women. If a woman has a breech birth and only a male MD is available, she dies most times. Anyhow the women with Doris Lessing had all been trained to British Standard, and that is not discriminatory.

It was the statements of these women who introduced me to what ultimately became al-Qaeda. They described how the Arabs were taking over the camps and defining the culture. They described how harsh it was. They outlined the religious-political motivation. Eventually Lessing wrote about it lightly in her book, "The Wind Takes Away Our Words" and while she notes, she says little. The point is that she said something about it in the 1980's, and in tune with the women she took to Pakistan and the camps -- supposedly refugees from the Soviets she was more than perceptive than the CIA -- but maybe somewhat more so.

[Originally posted at The Next Hurrah; click on the first link if you would like to read the comments.]

UPDATE: A passionate thread of comments/letters at Salon discusses, among other things, the nature of Islam.

Women to be Admired: Mary Cheney

2006-06-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

On the surface, there only seems reason to pity Mary Cheney. She is the lesbian daughter of parents who do not support gay marriage and will only say that the states should decide if gay marriage is legal. Her father is one of the most reviled men in US politics, possibly 2nd only to Karl Rove. Mary Cheney's life became instantly public and overly-scrutinized the second she became a campaign aide for her father's re-election as Vice President. People wondered who she really was and why was she so willing to stand by her father and his boss, when they were seemed to be against people like her.

This week, Cheney spoke up on NPR's Fresh Air in an interview with Terry Gross. Mary Cheney is on a book tour in support of her memoir, Now It's My Turn.

These are the points she made in her interview that made me understand and come to admire her:

Yes, she's a lesbian. Her parents love her very much and she, them

As far as she is concerned, she and her partner, Heather, are married and have been for 14 years now. They own property together and plan on spending the rest of their lives together.

She does believe that a constitutional amendment for marriage would incorporate discrimination into law of the land and pointed out that other amendments have expanded the rights of others, not restricted them.

The 2004 election was not a one-issue election, it was about more than gay marriage (although interviewer Terry Gross kept trying to bring the conversation back to the topic of "family values election.") and, in Cheney's mind, her dad and President Bush were the best candidates to protect the country.

She did not appreciate the ham fisted efforts of John Kerry and John Edwards of trying to make her the poster child for gay rights in their campaign.

But mostly, I admire Mary Cheney because:

She is forthright and knows who she is and what is important to her (as well as who) and stands up for that. She disagrees with her famous Republican parents (as do all children), but she does it lovingly.

Agree with her about any number of things or not, she deserves respect for her willingness to stand up for her beliefs and loving her family with a devotion that more families could use.

The Earth must have stopped, reversed itself, and begun to spin backwards...

2006-06-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

What else could possibly explain the rash of new legislative proposals storming the continent like some time-traveling virus yanking us bass-ackwards? (If I could have, I would have mixed & mangled the metaphor even further...)

This story is just the latest, and quite possibly the worst... so far:

June 13, 2006 - COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A proposal to ban abortion in Ohio under any circumstance is an outrageous attack on women, their families and their doctors, opponents said Tuesday.
Opponents criticized the bill, which is not expected to pass, from the Statehouse steps, ahead of a hearing Tuesday that was expected to draw an overflowing crowd.
The proposal would go further than a South Dakota abortion ban - considered the most restrictive in the United States - by outlawing abortions even when a woman's life is in danger. Like the South Dakota ban, the Ohio proposal would make no exceptions for rape.
The bill would also make it a felony to transport a woman to another state for an abortion. [There's more... just click on the link above.]

Tell me why...

when the world is full of so many thirsty & hungry children whose prospects continue to dwindle in no small part because of our own over-consumption,

when women all over the world need help in providing for the children they already have,

when women in Iran are beaten in public by police, merely for demanding the natural rights due any citizen,

when girls and women throughout the middle east and in Afghanistan are still being denied free and secure access to education,

when most reputable scientists agree that within a matter of decades we may no longer be able to reverse our climactic crisis,

when we already have one of the lowest rates of infant mortality among first world nations,

....why would those who call themselves "Christian" possibly think that their highest priority should be to initiate legislative stirrups and restraints for women, in order to force them to have more children than is probably good for them or for anyone else?

I really don't even approve of utilitarian arguments, in general, but I still have to wonder... how can this particular political stance reconcile itself with Christian values, when all of the above circumstances and many more, could rightfully be claiming their spiritual attention?

~*~*~*~

Ironically, childbirth (unlike abortion) carries many risks to women's health, some of which might last for the rest of her lifetime. Sex, on the other hand, has been shown to provide many health benefits for both women and men, as long as one avoids contracting any STDs (and, in some cases, pregnancy).

Wouldn't common sense dictate that both contraceptive and prophylactic precautions should be a much higher public health priority than forced childbirth, especially when most families' current economic conditions require two incomes just to keep everything afloat?

Haven't these folks considered that burning all of those extra calories might be a good thing, given that we also have a weight crisis in this country? Or is that still up for debate, too, along with global warming? And that just maybe if we all lost some weight, it would ease up on the pressure we put on the earth's land masses? Maybe they're really just concerned about the effects that even more unbridled sex might have on the climate. You know... all that additional CO2...

Don't be deluded into thinking that eliminating abortion is their ultimate goal. It ain't. They also plan to go after his condoms and your pills, and anything else that you and he might use to prevent a blind date between any one of his sperm and your eggs. Consenting or not.

[This post was not intended to exclude anyone who might prefer a same-sex partner, but merely to address the #4%@*%! idiocy of the right-wing's current pregnancy politics.]

[photo source]

but one man & many women is okay because... ?

2006-06-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Considering all of the hoopla about defending marriage from the vagaries of two consenting, albeit same-sex, adults, one wonders why there is not more steam gathering about another deviation from the one man-one woman convention delivered unto us by the ReligiousRighteous...

Why is there not a comparable story in either the NYTimes.com or the WashingtonPost.com to this BBC story about Iranian women being beaten for their activism? In fact, they were being beaten so badly that men on the street were complaining about it.

Perhaps the powers-who-be, the ones who decide what is news, don't want to touch that one, because then they'd have to do a story on our own version of that scenario.

Granted, it's already being covered, tho' fictionally, on HBO, but still... perhaps it nips just a little too closely at the heels of Bush's base?

Instead, there was a story in the Washington Post on Saudi women defending their preference for wearing a veil, and their fear that our liberal, western ways might erode their own brand of conservatism.

Note that this story does help to frame our administration's no doubt upcoming shift of the goal posts on women's rights in the middle east.

Update: There is hope in need of nurturing and support... in another story from last fall and also from the BBC, in which "Islam feminists urge gender jihad." At the end of the article, the BBC includes comments & letters from viewers/readers/listeners all over the world.

[Big Love family photos from HBO]

More From the Room of Clerks - Lasting Impressions

2006-06-10T18:19:00.000-07:00

The older woman is back at her station in the back of the room. The younger woman sits at the front of the room and often speaks of politics and feminism and racism. She types and words fly about what it is like to be dark skinned and thin, how she's volunteered for various "get out the vote" groups. The latest effort is for a bill on the ballot that would increase funding to one of the community college districts.

As she regales the clerks with stories about how she spent election day, she says the older woman's name. "My boyfriend made a rude remark about Busby," she says. "I called him a sexist and told him that if you had been around you would have ripped him a new one."

Unseen by the younger woman, the older woman's eyebrows raise in surprise. Her fingers don't falter as she keeps working but her thoughts whirl around wondering what it is the younger ones think of her. Ripping people new ones isn't her style, unless it's absolutely necessary. Nor is she "super feminist."

She is middle aged and becoming more willing to speak up when she sees or hears things that are wrong. She is driven by the knowledge that there are girls in her extended family who need as many positive role models as they can get. Role models who can show them the world is full of possibilities, including the possibility of equality between the genders.

She tries to show by example. Show that one doesn't need a man to be a whole person, that you are born whole and remain that way your entire life. Show that it's never too early or too late to pursue your dreams, even if others think differently. Show that love exists, unconditionally and proudly, expressing itself at every turn. Sometimes she falters and sometimes she is lonely, wishing for more companionship, but she does her best and keeps the next generation in her heart praying fervently they will progress past where hers seems to have stalled.

It bothers her that the impressions gathered by her co-workers are what they are and sits in contemplation wondering if it really matters. If she has inspired one to call sexism what it is and another to learn the power of speaking up, does it matter what they think? After all, they're not entirely right but they're not necessarily wrong either.

SCRIPT PROPOSAL FOR A REMAKE OF "LOOK WHO'S COMING TO DINNER"

2006-06-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

Final scene: Excerpts from the father's closing speech:

(played by Spencer Tracy in the original)

After some preliminary guessing games, at which I was never very good…

it was explained to me by my daughter…

that she intended to get married.

And that her intended, whom I had never met, was a young woman…

who happened a lesbian.

I think it’s fair to say that I responded to this news in the same manner any normal father would respond to it…

unless, of course, the father at the very same moment found out his daughter happened to be a lesbian too.

In a word, I was flabbergasted. And while I was still being flabbergasted…

I was informed by my daughter—a very determined young woman, much like her mother—that the marriage was on…

no matter what her mother and I might feel about it.

snip

And the mother of this young woman says that like her husband I'm a burned-out old shell of a man…

who cannot even remember what it's like to love a woman the way her daughter loves my daughter.

And strange as it seems, that's the first statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue...

because I think you're wrong, you're as wrong as you can be.

I admit that I hadn't considered it, hadn't even thought about it, but I know exactly how she feels about her.

And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that your daughter feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina.

Old—yes. Burned-out—certainly, but I can tell you the memories are still there—

clear, intact, indestructible, and they'll be there if I live to be 110.

Where Joanna made her mistake I think was in attaching so much importance to what her mother and I might think...

because in the final analysis it doesn't matter a damn what we think.

The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other.

And if it's half of what we felt—that's everything.

As for you two and the problems you're going to have, they seem almost unimaginable, but you'll have no problem with me, and I think when Christina and I and your mother have some time to work on him you'll have no problem with your father, Joanna.

But you do know, I'm sure you know, what you're up against. There'll be 150 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives.

You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say "screw all those people"!

Anybody could make a case, a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them.

But you're two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to be the same sex, and I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse:

And that would be if—knowing what you two are and knowing what you two have and knowing what you two feel—you didn't get married.

Now, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner?

Violent Delights ~ Endgame

2006-06-10T00:20:00.000-07:00

There was the inevitable moment on the Thames Embankment this afternoon when, suddenly, it was all over. Just after the last performance, as the girls & Matt put the masks back in the red bag & bound the sticks together with duct tape & I lashed the ghetto blaster to the trolley, I stopped being a teacher. My actors were ready to disperse & I was ready to take the 5 minutes walk over to the Hayward Gallery to join Emma’s Art party for the journey back to Letchworth. There were hugs all round & off they went – Ania, Poppy & Maudie to their respective homes to pack for the school trip to Kosovo; Isa to Singapore on holiday; Aletia & Matt back to family & TV. I watched them go – my last student charges - & then headed off to find the others…

It had been a good day – a cloudless sky & temperatures in the upper 20s & the best for the performances themselves. The Embankment leading east away from the London Eye is a very broad pedestrian boulevard. A line of mature maple trees runs down the centre of the walkway, each one positioned at about 8 yard intervals. We chose a spot equidistant between a motionless gold-clad angel & a guitarist &, once again, we fired up, presenting the piece four times with 10 minute intervals, netting small but appreciative audiences. By now the fights were very slick. In fact, knowing that with two spare sticks available & no more performances after today there was nothing to lose, they really laid into each other &, although practice had honed the routines to a high point of precision, there was a real sense of danger. And as I watched that last presentation of Violent Delights, I listened to the sounds of post 7/7 Central London – ambulances & police vehicles shrieking along the Strand & the chatter of helicopters hovering overhead. A small but telling irony, a group of 16-year-olds presenting a 15-minute reflection on the phenomenon of male violence against that distant aural backdrop.

So now I’m a civilian & I must find my way in the world again. There are few real regrets, but of those that prevail the sharpest must be the loss of the company of young people. It’s been a privilege to share time & space over the years with students working on endeavours with an energy, commitment & overall passion that, all too often, have long since burned out in adults. Just before we parted company there on the Embankment, I told this little group, so representative of that excellence, that I couldn’t have wished for a better way of bringing to a close nearly four decades of teaching.

This account was originally posted to Dick Jones’ Patteran Pages between July 1st & 13th, 2005. Since then, somewhat to his surprise, Dick Jones has taken up a post as Head of Drama at St Francis’ College, just around the corner from St Christopher School.

Violent Delights ~ Part Four

2006-06-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

Back to Cambridge today. So far our casualties comprise Ania’s nose, everyone’s fingers & two sticks, but these are seen as the inevitable & appropriate consequences of battle & spirits were high. (In the minibus, Maudie wryly suggests that the cast is falling vicitm to the very attitudes & tendencies it seeks to expose.!)

We performed first on the edge of the meadow opposite Scudamore’s famous rental punts, all bobbing up & down on the Cam. We were watched solemnly by a large group of Spanish students who, like a flock of starlings, turned & wheeled away just before the end of the piece. We moved to our old spot by the market & had a lot more success, with members of the audience approaching us afterwards with praise & questions.

Sadly, we also drew the brief attention of some local pondlife & had to cope with rather primitive barracking. This is, of course, part of the territory for any kind of performance that seeks to engage the attention of passers-by & turn them into an audience. At one point, however, I had to employ the full range of my powers of concise repartee & I was pleased when the hecklers did indeed fuck off as requested.

Tomorrow we head for London by train for our last set of performances. We’re accompanying Emma’s Art group, who have an appointment at the Hayward Gallery for a guided tour of the Rebecca Horne exhibition. The general vote amongst the Art people seems to have been that the journey between King’s Cross & South Bank should be made by bus rather than London Underground. My lot were contemptuous & opted for the tube. Decisions tomorrow.

Ghost writer wanted...

2006-06-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

...to write an anonymous blog from POV of the First Lady.

Requirements are only these two: An abundance of compassion & excellent writing ability. No compromising on these two attributes.

Any applicant with more than a passing familiarity with Dostoyevsky's, The Brothers Karamazov, would be given special consideration.

In the meantime, in Baghdad Burning...

2006-06-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

Riverbend writes-- so eloquently that it hurts both your mind & your heart-- about what it really is like to be in Baghdad, but not in the Green Zone, waiting & wondering if/when/what/who/how/why...

Go to the beginning and read her early posts, and you'll find another view of GWB's "history" and his legacy and you won't have to wait until we're all dead.

Do you suppose Laura Bush has ever read her blog?

Do you ever wonder if Laura Bush has her own blog and we just don't know about it? I wonder what she would write...

Perhaps Thursday was showing just a little too much restraint...

2006-06-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

...considering that there are other-- much stronger-- opinions of Ann Coulter that would most certainly not meet with Judith Martin's approval either?

Still, we shall present none of those highly-charged & rude opinions here, but simply allow Ms. Coulter's own words to represent her. If you wish to see what else has been written on her most recent moue du jour, you must find it on your own. As for the card suit and rank... at least she's not depicted as the Queen of Spades, and she should be grateful for such small favors, although the creators are guilty of mixing their metaphors. For which they should be soundly reprimanded. Especially for completely missing the whole "Red Queen-off-with-their-heads" thing that her rhetoric should have suggested to them.

Of course, when one actually girds one's loins-- and one's stomach-- long enough to read some of Ms. Coulter's most outrageous & oft-quoted attacks, one wonders how & where she fits into the administration's plan to win the minds and hearts of the Iraqis, not to mention the rest of the middle-east?

Queen of Clubs from: Deck of Republican Chickenhawks

Not For the Squeamish

2006-06-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

[Warning: this post contains grownup language, proceed at your own risk. You have been warned.]

I am going to say this only once, Ann Coulter is a bitch. Cold-hearted, mean and nasty. She should be ashamed of herself.

In the latest round of "any publicity is good publicity," Coulter's new book takes aim at the widows of 9/11 victims. Specifically, the 4 widows from New Jersey who have been pushing for the investigation of governmental failures before that attacks and changes in how the government prepares for future attacks. [1]

Coulter calls them "The Witches of East Brunswick" and says things like:

I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.

Both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and the wives themselves have quite publicly lambasted her for her mean-spirited diatribes. If anyone deserved a shunning, this person is a ripe candidate.

[1]CBS News - Hillary Lashes Out at Ann Coulter

Violent Delights ~ Part Three

2006-06-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

The Rhythms of the World festival seemed the ideal venue for the debut of Violent Delights. Although the emphasis was on music, & largely music from outside Europe, we felt that crowds bathed in culture (& Mediterranean sunshine) would be amenable to a bit of high energy Shakespeare laced with mega-violence. As it turned out, it was not the perfect environment. Hitchin was heaving with potential audience, but not only had they filled up every available bit of space, most of them were in transit between events. Eventually we seized a piece of pathway alongside the river right in front of the beautiful St Mary the Virgin Church & - suddenly feeling very exposed – the cast swung into action.

Poppy & Maudie were responsible for reeling in an audience. The whole piece begins with Mercutio’s goading of Benvolio, attributing to his steady, balanced, even-tempered friend all of the febrile excitability & hot temper that so identify himself. From the start both girls went at it with a will, bringing voices up to a level of projection & clarity appropriate to the surroundings (in this case, splash-over from the acoustic stage in the churchyard). Apart from a chav-ette on a mobile phone bawling so loudly as to render the instrument largely redundant, we had an attentive audience. Two more performances increased confidence sufficiently for Ania to break two sticks in succession & pick up an heroic nosebleed from a collision with Matt’s knee during the wrestling sequence. We returned home, delighted that the piece worked & that the passages of dialogue that top & tail it weren’t out of equilibrium with the two sustained fights.

This morning we took the train into Cambridge & made our way to the marketplace. It’s set on a square island surrounded by a road & overlooked by shops, a couple of banks & the town hall. Because the road serves only the Market & has no direct access to any of the surrounding streets, there was no traffic. We set up the ghetto blaster (a brand new CD/cassette player that would have difficulty blasting all four corners of a broom cupboard), checked with the stallholders & then began to perform.

The three performances here were much more successful. We picked up a fair-sized audience for two of them & the rapt attention & subsequent applause raised the ante of the performances significantly. At the conclusion of the final one we were approached by a guy in his 20s who was anxious to know which of the drama colleges the performers attended. He turned out to be a photographer who was contracted to several of them & was keen on photographing our piece in action. Partially on the strength of that offer, we decided to return to Cambridge tomorrow instead of going down to London, which we’ll do on Wednesday, the last day of our week’s run.

I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made. Violent Delights has been mounted virtually from scratch in two days. Now we must maintain momentum & not allow familiarity with words & action take the edge off the performances. And, as the fighting becomes more audacious with practice (& there are some genuinely hair-raising moments), we must preserve the safety of both limbs & sticks for just two more days.

A Woman's Place is in the House....

2006-06-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

...of Representatives!

Salon is running a feature story today about Francine Busby, who is running to fill the seat recently vacated by Randy "Duke" Cunningham. James Verini begins his story with the debate between Busby and Republican Brian Bilbray, and includes this quote:

"I'm running to restore honesty and integrity to the representation of this district and in this country," said Busby, 55, a school-board official and local professor of women's studies."

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty excited by the possibility of a women's studies professor raising a ruckus in the House of Representatives.

Photo by AP/Lenny Ignelzi

OUTLAW LOVE

2006-06-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

Those who oppose gay marriage say that legal and sacerdotal recognition of the abiding love between a man and a man or a woman and a woman somehow degrades marriage between a man and a woman, and even threatens the social order.

I think love is outside and above the social order. If there is a higher law, love is that law.

I think denying gay people the sacrament of marriage degrades heterosexual marriage. I think that the refusal and the legal legitimization of the refusal to recognize the union between two people of the same sex degrades any claim we have to being a free society, and threatens the institutions that protect all our freedoms. There’s nothing "civil" about it.

I am married and my wife and I enjoy all the rights and benefits of any married couple. I have never thought that my marriage would be in any way diminished by the legal recognition of the union of two people who happen to be the same sex. In fact, I think all citizens having the right to legally consumate their intimate partnerships without regard to sex enhances the institution of marriage, strengthens the commonweal of our society, and promotes and protects families.

Banning gay marriage makes a mock of God’s love, and a mockery of the idea that we are all God’s children. It is an attempt to outlaw love. It is an attack on families that protect and nuture love in a dangerous world. Abraham Lincoln said, "Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." I say those who would deny family to others don't deserve it for themselves. Denying marriage and family rights to some is no defense of the freedoms we so proudly, and loudly, proclaim. People who propose such a ban should be ashamed.

You cannot outlaw love. As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, love never fails. Love is greater than faith and outlasts hope. Love abides, as Paul says, when tongues and prophesies fail. Love will prevail.

In the meantime the senators will have their dog and pony show. The red meat is in the doggie dish for the God-loving fag and lesbo haters. I would be offended if I were them, to be appeased and used so transparently by guys who are otherwise busily engaged in rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

Read Mr. Bush's diversionary hate speech on the "marriage protection" amendment here. See if it pisses you off as much as does me.

Violent Delights ~ Part Two

2006-06-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

We’ve done two days of intensive preparation & rehearsal, working solidly from early morning & into late afternoon with only the shortest of breaks. The piece is now very roughly finished. Both fight sequences have been carefully structured so as to accommodate that fascinating paradox of theatre - apparent spontaneity achieved only through the application of rigorous planning.

The first battle – principally between Tybalt & Mercutio, but also incorporating Benvolio, Romeo & Tybalt’s two henchmen – is a whirlwind of flying sticks. Each fighting pair has a routine worked out comprising a sequence of specific set pieces based on broadsword or quarterstaff techniques. These are embellished with various elements unique to each pair – swings at the head or feet, sticks locked together, one stick trapping the other on the ground, lunges, swipes, parries & blocks. The flurry of activity is accompanied by all sorts of Wimbledon centre court grunts & gasps & a brutal musical soundtrack. When Romeo suddenly steps between Mercutio & Tybalt to stop the fighting the vigorous action ceases instantly & the mortal wounding of Mercutio is done in dreamlike slo-mo.

The second fight – between Tybalt & Romeo – starts with a stick routine & then, with the loss of both sticks, breaks into wrestling. The technique used here is called ‘sticky bodies’. It’s based on a simple principle whereby the combatants have to ensure that their bodies are always touching at some point. So arm will stick to arm & then back will attach to back, head to head, leg to leg & so on. It’s remarkably effective because there is created a sense of wild, flailing fighting without any need for grips, holds or blows. At a signal Tybalt trips Romeo & seizes a stick from the edge of the circle. Romeo scrambles up & grabs one from the opposite side & there is a blur of quarterstaff combat (the sticks held in the centre with the hands a couple of feet apart & pushed towards each other at alternating angles) the ends clashing together in a very rapid criss-cross routine. After six of these sallies, Romeo’s stick hooks Tybalt’s away from his body, tips over & stabs Tybalt in the side.

We have the fight sequences more or less organised now & on Sunday we shall tidy up a couple of the dialogue sections & then bolt the entire piece together. I’m enormously impressed at the actors’ feel for the language. I’ve had to do very little basic comprehension explanation; I’ve been able to work on interpretation of text from the start. And their appetite for the fighting is almost frightening. Given that the piece is implicitly a female commentary on male violence, it’s been fascinating to watch the five girls throwing themselves into the physicality of the routines with such gusto! Most of all, I’m impressed with (even a little alarmed by) the girls’ acuteness of perception & focused analysis of the way in which appetite feeds inclination in respect of male violence. Shakespeare provides it in the text, of course, but the girls’ work is underpinned by a consciousness that is all their own.

On Sunday afternoon, if we complete performance rehearsal during the 4-hour morning session, we’ll take Violent Delights into Hitchin to road test it. It’s the Rhythms of the World weekend – an annual free world music festival - & the town will be full of willing audience material. On Monday we’ll go to Cambridge to perform in the market square & on Tuesday & Wednesday – train services permitting – we’ll go down to London & present Violent Delights on the Thames Embankment, just under the London Eye. We’ve discussed the unintended relevance of the themes of the piece in the light of the events of yesterday & are sure that their dark irony won’t be lost on whatever audiences we may attract so relatively close to the sites of the bombings.

It’s a good way to wind up the entire career carnival – working on a small production with a group of dedicated kids, free of all distractions, with unimpeded access to both theatre & studio from 9.00 to 5.00.

Violent Delights ~ Part One

2006-06-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

In July of last year I posted a series of diary entries tracking the progress of what was to be my last drama production – a small-scale physical theatre piece - on which I was working just prior to my retirement from teaching. Because of its essentially feminist theme & treatment, Karen thought that it might be of some interest to Lyssa Strada readers. I shall post the records in chronological order over the next few days.

~*~*~*~

I am rehearsing intensively with a group of six 15 & 16-year-olds on a street theatre project. We start with a 5-hour orientation session tomorrow & some 2-hour sessions at the beginning of next week. And then, from the Thursday we begin a series of five 8-hour rehearsals for a piece called Violent Delights. It’s a 15 – 20 minute treatment of the first part of Act III of Romeo & Juliet – essentially the combat sequences involving Tybalt & Mercutio leading to the latter’s death, & the subsequent fight between Romeo & Tybalt in which Tybalt dies.

Although there is only a brief span of two weeks between being a working stiff & pipe & slippers by the fire, I have this one last project to undertake. I’m pleased to be going out with a final performance project, even if the school will never get to see the fruits of the week’s work. I’m working with six excellent students & I can’t think of a more fitting or rewarding way to wind it all up. For me it’s always been about working with kids outside the standard structures & protocols that obtain within school. It’s worthless unless you stand to learn as much as the people with whom you’re working; & it’s a soulless & arid experience unless you have the sense that there’s an equality of endeavour & achievement. And with this small company – Poppy, Maudie, Isa, Aletia, Ania & Matt – I’m looking forward to that synthesis for one last time.

Here’s how it works. In the final week of the Summer Term at my school, all class work ceases & a range of widely varied activities begins. This miscellany that absorbs the entire school is called the Late Summer Programme, or LSP. This year groups are off on expeditions to Switzerland, Kosovo, our own South Coast & the Lake District. Many other students are involved in work placements; others are taking part in a large-scale Art project; one group is remaining at the school to redecorate to their own specifications the 6th Form Common Room.

Violent Delights was devised originally for, & performed by, an all-female cast for an LSP a few years previously. This time around a cast of five girls is joined by one boy. We are delighted to have Matt with us, but it should be pointed out that a significant component in the thematic character of Violent Delights is female commentary on the masculine drive towards violence – on the joy taken by men - or boys - in both the preparatory threat & actual implementation of physical conflict. Although the almost entirely female cast will physicalise & vocalise as men (& this will be major direction focus of the enterprise), the simple fact of the parts being played by females conscious of the thematic processes they are setting out to illustrate will inform the nature of their performances. Because Tybalt as a a character represents the undistilled essence of the male appetite for conflict, the piece accommodates comfortably a male actor in the role without significantly compromising or diluting the original intentions.

The immediate preamble to the encounter between Mercutio & Benvolio & Tybalt is uncut: the speeches & action run much as they would in a full production of the play. As soon as battle is joined we switch first to a massively edited version of the script containing only key lines & words followed swiftly by pure physical action – a melee involving combat with sticks. The sticks are 5’ long broomsticks, especially robust ones made for industrial brooms, & the fighting with them has to be full-on – blows are real blows, dealt with real force, stick on stick. Obviously all of this is organised within specific techniques of stage combat & health & safety considerations are paramount. But the conflict must appear to be absolutely real & punches can’t be pulled. Any kind of physical theatre carries an element of risk; that is a necessary part of its dynamic in respect of its impact upon an audience & the students are fully aware of both the performance requirements & the preparatory processes.

After the very intensive rehearsal period in the Theatre (conducted exactly as if we were a professional company, working as we will be without diversion or distraction), we shall load up our sticks, our rudimentary costumes – different coloured tops for Capulets & Montagues & black jeans/jogging pants - & our ghetto blaster (for the accompanying music) & head off to perform in the streets. On Monday we’ll go to Cambridge, which is only 24 mile north of Letchworth, where we’ll set up & perform around the marketplace. And on Tuesday & Wednesday the plan is to present Violent Delights on the walkway of the Thames Embankment just below the London Eye.

why I don't love misogynistic humor (yet)

2006-06-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Eventually, I might find it pretty funny, but I don't yet. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I must also admit that I'm not a big fan of bathroom humor or any other kind that prominently features farting. That doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humor, just that my funny-bone wears a filter that's either a leftover from my upbringing or something inherently me. Nurture/nature... maybe both.

But, as to reasons why I'm not (yet) crazy about woman-hating humor...

I'm pretty tired of the whole daddy party vs mommy party name-calling game that the GOP--and their minions-- insist on playing, and of course, it's always the Democrats who are the mommies, and thus, weak and ineffectual, and the Republicans who are the daddies, i.e, strong and competent.

I'm pretty tired of the worst thing that can ever be said about a man by his peers being almost invariably something horribly, disgustingly feminine, like throwing or running or cursing like a girl (not even a woman!).

And I'm even more tired of women's private body parts being used so indiscriminately to describe something or someone considered disgusting and/or weak. So far, I haven't heard about any women's private body parts being used to commit crimes of war or rape, unlike men's. (Okay, so there are some women (tho' very few) who are pedophiles. I took Maddox's test, and got a better than average grade. But, ethnic cleansing still remains a male thing, as does rape of a non-consenting adult.)

Ultimately, there's nothing like having your entire gender identity, or any of its many parts, be considered the ultimate insult or epithet...

Imagine if Shakespeare or Swift or Twain, or Aristophanes (who more or less invented comedy as satire) or any other comedic or satirical genius had decided to write about the people in power making fun of those people with less or little power. Do you think their work would have survived and thrived for so many centuries? What do you suppose history will make of GWB's attempts at humor: "Please don't kill me!" "Some might call you the haves (have mores) but I call you my base!" --and joking about not being able to find those WMDs about which he lied in order to exert his power to wage war?

So, I'm guessing that I'll finally be just about ready to appreciate some woman-bashing humor about the same time that women all over the world are wreaking the same havoc that power-abusing men are visiting upon the world right now, primarily upon women and children, the poor and the elderly. Once that happens, it will definitely be time to poke some good-natured (or worse) fun at women, sort of like Stephen Colbert did last month at the WH Correspondents dinner. Wait, now, that I think of it, most of those powerful people in that audience didn't want to talk about how funny he was... maybe I won't either. If I'm ever that powerful.

Comedy, properly used-- and especially when it is most shocking-- is an antidote to abuses of power and/or ignorance. With so much abuse of power (and ignorance!) running rampant and amok in the world, Maddox decides that's okay to pick on women? Go figure... sure, to a child or a younger man, women might seem to have more power than they actually do, but a real man, i.e., a grownup, knows better, and also knows how to be magnanimous and to show restraint with those who are less powerful.

[An aside: I also live with a man who works at a computer most of the day, but can also fix just about anything, and he's a vegetarian, too, unlike me. Go figure...]

I posted this comment earlier on Salon, in response to this story and the other comments, but without the links.

Girl Power at the Spelling Bee

2006-06-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

For the first time in 8 years the National Spelling Bee Champion is a girl and her name is Katherine "Kerry" Close.

Kerry was named the Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion in the 20th round after correctly spelling the word "ursprache," which is defined as "a parent language, especially one reconstructed from the evidence of later languages."

According to the stats, there were 275 spellers, the most ever in the National Spelling Bee's history. Of those 275, 136 were girls.

Of course, everyone who competes in the spelling bee at the national level is already a winner because they have had to win several bees on their way to the nationals.

And yes, I'm a word geek and was able to get clear enough reception at SpecOps to watch the last 45 minutes of it.

Way to go girls!

More From the Room of Clerks - Elizabeth Vargas

2006-05-31T22:06:00.000-07:00

In the room of clerks again. Discussion begins with the huge deal that is being made about Katie Couric's departure from "The Today Show" and heads to anchor CBS Evening News. Meanwhile, someone says, women's groups are giving Elizabeth Vargas a hard time.

One bright young women gets a hard edge in her voice. "Wasn't the woman's movement about getting maternity leave so women could choose to have a family? Isn't the women's movement about giving women choices?"

The older woman standing a few feet away says, "That's my point exactly."

Are the women's groups applauding Katie for becoming the next anchor at CBS, or are they too busy raking Elizabeth Vargas over the coals?

Misogynist Music and the Feminist Who Loves It

2006-05-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

What is wrong with me? I don't like most music performed by women unless it's Heart or a group like that. Women are too sappy for me. Tori Amos makes me shudder.

ZZ Top? Half of Eminem? Kid Rock? That's part of what I listen to. And I feel like I should be embarrassed about it, but I'm not. And something tells me I should be embarrassed for thinking Adam Ant and Prince are sexy on a stick.

What self-respecting feminist is going to admit to liking ZZ Top with their fast cars, long-legged women and songs full of not so cleverly hidden metaphors?

And Eminem? He's too busy writing songs about killing people, especially his wife. Loads of anger up in there baby.

Kid Rock ... skinny white trash musician that calls women names and sings/raps about doing things to them that verge on rape.

What is it about these men and their music that makes me dance around in my chair like a goldfish without a water supply?

I've seen ZZ Top twice in concert and they put on a darned good show. Flash, but not without substance. Yes, there are scantily clad women on stage and that bothers me more than just a bit. It could be the driving drum beats of Frank Beard (ironically the only Topper without a beard), the Louzeeana Zydeco guitar riffs that meet Texas drawl that draw me in. I can imagine it's me in the back of that big old caddy on the way to LaGrange, smokin' a ceegar and bein' cool.

Eminem? I have no clue why I like him. Maybe it's his beats and his anger, because his anger seems to speak to mine and I find myself thinking, "Yeah, I know what that feels like."

Kid Rock puts on a heck of a show and he is, no doubt, a very talented musician with a black woman as his drummer. Strippers doing pole dances? They were there. Joe C in memoriam sticking his middle finger up for the whole world to sit on and spin, that was there too. And I was there, singing "bah wa dit ba" until I was hoarse.

I can't identify with Sheryl Crowe, Shania Twain, Shakira and definitely not Christina Aguilera. Pink and Missy Elliott, them I can identify with and enjoy.

Is it that there's such a dearth of hard-driving music performed by women? Music that shows the "Take no prisoner" style that ZZ Top, Kid Rock and especially Eminem demonstrate.

Where female artists are concerned, there seems to be a connection lost. They seem to believe that the only way they are going to be heard is to use their sexuality. And this may be true, but it turns me off. It makes me want to avoid their music completely. I want the women who are real and not concerned with what the men think (or the women, for that matter).

Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Chrissie Hynde, Christine McVie, Nancy Wilson, Grace Slick, Grace Jones ... where have you gone? Come back and teach the next generation what it is to take on a barracuda.

"War Widow Holds Service for Wiccan Husband"

2006-05-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

From AP writer Tom Gardner, comes this story (via Salon):

A war widow who wants the government to put a Wiccan religious symbol on her husband's memorial plaque held an alternative service Monday as a protest, hours before an official Memorial Day ceremony nearby.

The story concludes with:

Approximately 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics.

Perhaps the Defense Department objects because the Wiccan religion is not warlike enough?

Connecting the dots...

2006-05-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

Not to put to fine a point on it, but...

...because GWB was not permitted to grieve the death of a younger sister, at least 1600 American children must now mourn the loss of a parent. And who knows how many more children will lose a parent before this ill-begotten war has ended?

Update: just one more example of the federal government's lack of commitment to military brats.

What it will take... perhaps more breastfeeding?

2006-05-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

A number of women's groups are protesting Elizabeth Vargas's stepping down as co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight." I wish them good luck, but I think they may be taking the wrong approach. For one thing, it may be that Vargas actually prefers to step down. But how can we know? Pregnancy, both pre- and post-, is still such an unmentionable in this country-- except when we want to offer unsolicited and unwanted advice to a pregnant woman-- that one wonders how so many women manage to work while pregnant or breastfeeding as well as they do. And then there's the question of how many of us would be willing to run the post-pregnancy gauntlet of millions of critical eyes calculating how many more pounds we still need to lose?

Whether or not ABC is family- or woman-friendly is not enough of a factor, or at least not the only factor, in Vargas or any other woman choosing or being asked to leave a high-visibility job, due to pregnancy or the demands of motherhood.

So, what will it take to change the status quo? In my opinion, more breastfeeding in public would be an excellent start. The day that we can expect to see a female news anchor breastfeeding a baby while reading the news, or running an executive board meeting, etc., is the day we can expect to see women keeping their high-visibility jobs when they become mothers.

I can just imagine the hoots and hollers and jeers, and the uneasy looks about the possibility of obscenity charges (y'know that whole Janet Jackson episode just won't go away anytime soon), and I have to say that compared to the not-so-distant experiments of news readers either being nude or else reading the news while stripping... well, feeding an infant is hardly on a par with that depraved behavior. Yet, breastfeeding women are often expected to pump their breast milk-- or even feed their infant!-- in the restroom. Ewww! How gross! I don't know when you last ate a meal in a restroom, but can you really recommend it as a proper dining experience or environment for an impressionable infant who might learn to associate those sounds and smells with having breakfast or lunch? ...just so that the American psyche's obsession with the naked breast as sex object can be accommodated without inconveniencing anyone over the age of 18 by making them re-examine their values? Really?

[True, a breastfeeding infant is also a reminder of a possible consequence of unprotected sex, but in that case, wouldn't you then expect that this administration would actually get behind the idea of lactating mothers in high-visibility positions?]

We may not be able to do much from the top down for women like Vargas, who may or may not even want such attention. However, from the ground up, we can, if we are in such a position, breastfeed our own infants in public, encourage our friends, coworkers, family members, even strangers, to do the same. It's way past time for a little national desensitization program that would benefit, not just working mothers and their infants, but in the long run, all of us.

image: aunaturelbaby.com [clothes for nursing mothers]

If you need some hope for a reality check...

2006-05-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

...check out this site: Republicans for Humility.

Fashion Sense Hope

2006-05-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it, a month ago I wrote this about women's underwear. A whole month.

I am here to tell you there is hope for comfort. A package arrived from Decent Exposures and it occurred to me that I needed to share with the world, the place that makes some of the most comfortable undergarments in my world.

First, all their literature reads: "Designed for women by women." That's what drew me in years and years ago. Each garment is handsewn, made to order.

If you are looking for lacy, frilly, underwire bras with straps that slip and give you that "torpedo tit" look, this is not the place for you. If, however, you are looking for comfort that comes in an array of pretty colours in cotton or cotton/lycra this is definitely the place for you.

SpecOps keeps me hopping and trust me when I say that I need something comfortable with support so I don't hurt myself or someone else. Decent Exposures has me covered. Expensive, yes. Worth it, definitely.

They also make other items of clothing; leggings, undies, shorts, skirts, dresses ... a whole range of comfortable clothing designed by people who understand the foibles of a woman's body. Check 'em out!

"She's All Super Feminist Like You"

2006-05-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

Back in the room full of clerks. Chatting about this, that and the other thing. The new guy is trying to find a room to rent and the clerks are offering suggestions. His horror stories are truly appalling. The couple who wanted to rent the room but didn't want anyone to know he lived there, promising to hold onto his check until he returns with cash a week later and then cashing the check anyway. Or the man who signed a written agreement and then reneged when new guy said he was gay. Appalling what people do to each other without a thought.

Outrage was expressed. He fixed his sweet young face with those blue eyes on the person facing him and told the story of his friend's roommate who is ready to call the housing authority on the last landlord. "She's all super feminist like you ..."

Eyes met eyes and laughter bubbled out, "Oh honey. I am nothing compared to other women who call themselves feminists."

Equality is the call of the day. Equal to make choices and equal to celebrate the true differences.

What Joe Galloway learned from war...

2006-05-27T08:08:00.001-07:00

While GWB may have been recently reconsidering his tone, if not his policy, others with far less culpability have been expressing both their own regrets and ours far more poignantly.

From Editor & Publisher, via the Daou Report, I am posting these excerpts from Joe Galloway's email exchange with Rumsfield aide Larry DiRita:

DiRita: “Again, what bothers me most about your coverage is your implication that the people involved in all of this are dumb or have ill-intent or are so sure of what they know that they don't brook discussion. That's the part you're just way off on, friend. This is tough stuff, and we're all hard at it, trying to do what's best for the country.”

-- Galloway concluded: “i like to think that is what i am doing also, and it is a struggle that grows out of my obligation to and love for america's warriors going back 41 years as of last month.

Later, Galloway continues: "there are many things we all could wish had happened. i can wish that your boss had surrounded himself with close advisers who had, once at least, held a dying boy in their arms and watched the life run out of his eyes while they lied to him and told him, over and over, ‘You are going to be all right. Hang on! Help is coming. Don't quit now...’ Such men in place of those who had never known service or combat or the true cost of war, and who pays that price, and had never sent their children off to do that hard and unending duty.

“i could wish for so much. i could wish that in january of this year i had not stood in a garbage-strewn pit, in deep mud, and watched soldiers tear apart the wreckage of a kiowa warrior shot down just minutes before and tenderly remove the barely alive body of WO Kyle Jackson and the lifeless body of his fellow pilot. they died flying overhead cover for a little three-vehicle Stryker patrol with which i was riding at the time. i could wish that Jackson's widow Betsy had not found, among the possessions of her late husband, a copy of my book, carefully earmarked at a chapter titled Brave Aviators, which Kyle was reading at the time of his death. That she had not enclosed a photo of her husband, herself and a 3 year old baby girl.

“those things i received in the mail yesterday and they brought back the tears that i wept standing there in that pit, feeling the same shards in my heart that i felt the first time i looked into the face of a fallen american soldier 41 years ago on a barren hill in Quang Ngai Province in another time, another war. someone once asked me if i had learned anything from going to war so many times. my reply: yes, i learned how to cry.”

Galloway's column for Memorial Day

photo: USAirForceAcademy

Because It Worked So Well for Hitler and Hussein

2006-05-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

A man in a roomful of clerks went on a tirade about illegal immigrants. Of course, living in California, he meant Mexicans. "I think we ought to tattoo their foreheads orange before we deport them. Of course that will never work because they'll just turn around and come back."

Forget solutions like helping Mexico, and South America, with economic growth so people who live in abject poverty don't have to risk their lives coming to America to take jobs no one wants in order to help their families who live in villages with no electricity, no indoor plumbing and no paved roads.

Let's just label everybody that's different like Hitler did with his pink and yellow pieces of cloth that made homosexuals and Jews targets. Let's just put people we don't like on the edge of pits and shoot them so their bodies will fall backwards into them, why don't we?

As Graham Nash wrote, "In a land that's known as freedom / How can such a thing be fair?"

The few clerks that were paying attention were stunned into silence leaving me to ask, "How does one deal with such monstrous comments when they are made in your presence?" No one was quick enough on their feet to even call him a racist to his face. How does one make a difference in situations like these?

The story on the Constitution being more...

2006-05-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

...than "just a piece of parchment," has been updated with links to some very telling stories about McCain's appearance at The New School.

In memoriam...

2006-05-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

From the DemocraticUnderground.com, via the Daou Report , we have this memorial wall of names...

A Cry from the Heartland- Stop the War Now!

2006-05-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

My Brother's War. My War.
By Michael Melius

The news today was of a bus carrying teachers stopped near Baghdad, the teachers lined up on the ground and every other one shot dead. Last week it was the women and children at an open market, killed by a bomb hidden among sacks of flour.

How do you turn away from this news? You who support the war, how do you intend to stop it? Did you not promise these people security when you overran their country? Those innocent people--however hard their lives might have been without us, it's only a might-have-been. What is certain is that their lives would not have ended the way they did if we hadn't brought war to their land. We are responsible for this war.

Read the rest.

We read this letter at one of favorite sites, Political Physics, and asked if we could cross-post it here at Lyssa Strada. ...read the rest here, as well as something about its origins and the passionate comments it elicited.

Sure, it's a hairy job, but we really oughta do it...

2006-05-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

We are always grateful to the women at Broadsheet for keeping us up to date on the really interesting, humorous, and sometimes horrifying, stories that women need to know about... whether we want to or not.

This particular story could almost encompass all of those attributes all by itself... but we would like to consider taking it further... much, much further.

First, anyone who has spent anytime at all reading Broadsheet's comment threads-- as I have-- is well aware that, in addition to the women one would expect to find, quite a few men frequent them, as well, including those who most relish complaining about Broadsheet's very existence. (Oedipal? Beats me.) Anyway, although it's a broad spectrum of male types-- from the ones you might like to know, to your brothers' friends, to former lovers who broke your heart, or whose hearts you broke, and yes, to those guys that creep you out-- one can still predict which topics will rouse the most heated online debates.

During the discussions on parenting & gender roles, one learns that a surprising number of men are very angry that they do not have the same options that women do when considering whether or not to become parents, and in fact, some of these very men have spent significant hours of their time trying to draft potential legislation or templates for contracts that would allow them "some say" over the bodies into which they deposit their sperm, regardless of marital status. (Which is why I first had this still-beng-developed thought. See?)

The most vociferous discussions, however, have been reserved for-- what else?! -- women's bodies, our grooming or lack thereof, weight, size, shape, muscle tone, breast size & perkiness, butt cheekiness, and the degrees to which each of these attributes are affected by pregnancy and childbirth... and most importantly, our body hair! To be more precise, we'll refer to it as monstrous body hair because, apparently, a full-grown woman with hair growing from her body in all of the usual places is truly monstrous to many, many men. (To those of you who really couldn't care less, our deep appreciation!)

So, what does this weird, yet oddly appealing, ad campaign that plans to use hairy women to arouse male perceptions of grossness, in order to shame them into shaving, have to do with furthering our aims at Lyssa Strada? It's just tangential, because frankly, most men and women in relationships manage to negotiate their own acceptable, if only tolerable, levels of hirsuteness. So, the notion of encouraging groups of women to such levels of grossness, merely to affect the grooming behavior of individual men does not seem very compelling, when the goal is just to get the men to shave, or in this case, really, to buy a new razor. Besides, we already know, even if Gillette does not, that many men will often fail to make those crucial cognitive connections between their own "perfect male bodies" and their "completely realistic" expectations of their girlfriend's or wive's bodies. Think of George Costanza feeling entitled to date a super model. Got it?

But, what if we really up the ante, to something that truly is worthy of such levels of grossness? What if-- instead of threatening to withhold sex to get men's attention; instead of restricting the use of our uteruses to bear men's children only to have them become cannon fodder; instead of taking professional sports teams hostage by storming the sports stadiums, in order to get men to make significant political and social changes, beginning with ending the war-- what if we use as a stick, that which men most fear-- our grossness, i.e., our unshaven legs and armpits, untweezed brows, too, if you like-- in order to motivate them?

In order to motivate them to end the war. To cease the killing of innocent civilians, including women and children and old men. To cease allowing other men to use women's bodies as weapons of war by committing ethnic cleansing, when they're not allowing genocide.

Wouldn't you think that our grossly hairy bodies would finally be enough grossness to allow those men who don't see it yet, how truly gross the world appears to so many of us now, and how much psychic energy it takes just to get up and start anew each day, and how we have to compartmentalize our feelings-- i.e., act like men, just so we can function, and do our work, and attend to our families-- and how exhausting that is?

Don't you think they'll finally "get it", and more importantly, finally begin to change what they have been doing wrong in the world, if we finally gross them out?

Tomorrow is Lyssa Strada's one-month anniversary...

2006-05-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

Open thread: any comments, questions, suggestions, directions, links, ideas, notions, possible contributions... ?

In progress

2006-05-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

I'm working on the ultimate "I am woman, hear me roar!" soundtrack/mix/iTunes list to post here, and hopefully to host for podcast, along with comments from the people who love the songs. So feel free to send suggestions to megATmegfowlerDOTcom...

The Constitution: It's more than just a piece of parchment

2006-05-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

See update at the bottom of this post...

This weekend's Huffington Post happens to feature two commencement speeches, one because Jean Sara Rohe, the student speaker, at the commencement exercises at The New School, in New York, delivered a stirring speech that not only preceded Senator McCain's speech (in its third delivery in a commencement setting) but critiqued it mercilessly, and the other because Catherine Crier used the opportunity of her speech at Case Western University to discuss the importance of our Constitution, concluding with these words:

I am going to add my voice to the many other commencement speakers who call upon you to take up the torch, to confront the many challenges of our time and to make the world a better place. But I must say to you that these are not platitudes, they are mandates. You can try to remain safe by ignoring the warning signs. You can join the ‘system’ and hope to get yours before things tumble out of control. Or you can use your knowledge to wield the power of a free people to protect and defend this great democracy and the rule of law. Choose wisely, because our future is literally in your hands.

And finally, I leave you with these words from Ernest Hemingway. “The world kills people who are particularly gentle, courageous or brave. Now, if you’re none of these, the world will kill you too. It just won’t be in such a hurry.”

Jean Rohe's post discusses her reasons for rewriting her speech the night before her commencement, and includes the complete text of her speech as well, which began with a lyric:

If all the world were peaceful now and forever more,
Peaceful at the surface and peaceful at the core,
All the joy within my heart would be so free to soar,
And we're living on a living planet, circling a living star.
Don't know where we're going but I know we're going far.
We can change the universe by being who we are,
And we're living on a living planet, circling a living star.

Welcome everyone on this beautiful afternoon to the commencement ceremony for the New School class of 2006. That was an excerpt of a song I learned as a child called "Living Planet" by Jay Mankita. I chose to begin my address this way because, as always, but especially now, we are living in a time of violence, of war, of injustice. I am thinking of our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in Darfur, in Sri Lanka, in Mogadishu, in Israel/Palestine, right here in the U.S., and many, many other places around the world. And my deepest wish on this day--on all days--is for peace, justice, and true freedom for all people. The song says, "We can change the universe by being who we are," and I believe that it really is just that simple.

There's more, and it's well worth the read, as is Crier's.

UPDATE: two additional links that relate to the story of McCain's appearance at The New School...

In the first one, "My husband was racially profiled at the New School Graduation," appeard as a diary on the Daily Kos, and relates the experience of the Arab husband of writer when he was denied admission to his own graduation, after six years of hard work and sacrifice.

The second one, by creative writing teacher Jan Clausen, which actually led me to the first one, relates a lot of the background story surrounding McCain's selection as commencement speaker, including the fact that, in future, such selections will not be made solely at the discretion of the institution's president, but must be approved by the same academic committee responsible for awarding the honorary degrees.

Muslim Modesty

2006-05-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

As usual, the starting point was this story on NPR about a bill in Indonesia that not only tries to outlaw rampant pornography but includes things like making it illegal for spouses to kiss in public, a woman showing her navel and sunbathing.

Let's break this down a bit shall we?

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. Yes, we have all been led to believe it's those countries in the Middle East that contain most of the world's muslims. They don't, Indonesia does.

As such, Indonesia is an Islamic country and follows the laws of Islam, which do not demand women wear burqas, only that they as well as the men, dress modestly in accordance with the customs of their community. Some women choose the scarf or the burqa as an outward declaration of their faith, but this is not a requirement.

Islam is about faith as taught by the Prophet Muhammed (Peace be unto him), muslims must not do things that distract them from practicing their faith. This is the reason for modesty and seperation during pray services.

It was explained and demonstrated to me on a visit to a local mosque by a wonderful outreach director named Sister Dyan. During a prayer service, she knelt facing away from me and touched the floor in front of her with her forehead. This motion automatically puts the behind right up in the air. As she turned back to face me, she told me that the very act of praying in a mixed gender environment could lead to distractions. Yes, I conceded, I could understand that. So it is with dress, for both men and women.

And yes extremists, as is their wont, take this farther than the actual intent, insisting the women cover themselves from head to toe with only a slit across the eyes. What strikes me about this is that burqas are protecting the men from being tempted by the beauty of women. Have men so little self-control? Do they realize what power they are giving women by this proclamation? How do women take this power and use it for their own advantage? Another implication is that women could not possibly be enflamed by the sight of a man whose face and hands are not covered.

So then, there is a serious problem in a muslim country whose government turns a blind eye to pornography which is so rampant that it can be bought from street vendors. Even more disturbing:

There are, for example, few western countries that would show a posse of secondary school students watching a porn film in mid-afternoon and becoming so aroused they pair off couple by couple to go and have sex. Yet this scene appeared recently on an Indonesian soap opera. The fact that it was broadcast in the evening means little in a country where few children go to bed before 9pm.

Studies have shown that pornography has detrimental effects on both those who view it and who create it. Further, studies of those in the industry show they suffer from a range of mental health problems including a history of incest, molestation and sexual abuse as children.

How then, does making it illegal for women to do any number of things stop the flow of pornography?

But the biggest gripe is with the articles on what is known locally as pornoaksi, or pornographic actions. These, the opposition argue, massively curtail individuals' rights, and particularly those of women.

In America, Larry Flynt bless his perverted little heart, is the most ardent supporter of the 1st Amendment. Agree with him or not, he has a point.

But Indonesia has no such constitutional right and although there are laws on the books to keep pornography off the streets and away from children, they are rarely enforced. Opponents of the Indonesian anti-pornography law say that better enforcement is what's needed, not new laws.

What's happening in Indonesia isn't unique. All over the world, laws that are supposedly about one thing (in this case pornography) are also about curtailing the rights of women. How does this help anyone? And why do women keep letting this happen?

Stand up, stand up, stand up! Everyone stand up and tell someone, anyone that we're not going to take this anymore. Women are not the source of all that is evil and wrong in this world. Nor are men for that matter. Regardless, something must be done. So stand up for yourself, for your neighbour, for those who can't quite do it yet. Each one of us has a responsibility to make this world better for all of us.

from a comment thread at Firedoglake...

2006-05-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

angie says: May 20th, 2006 at 4:04 pm

Just saw a bumper sticker WMD– Women Making a Difference.

the grassroots

2006-05-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

A slightly rougher version of this little essay originally appeared in my own blog.

I've spent time recently re-reading portions of Howard Zinn's 1995 book, A People's History of the United States. It's quite fascinating, and in my life, quite timely.

The sweet Jeffersonian gloss of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" notwithstanding, Zinn conceives of all American history as a dialectic, on the one hand, between the self-serving of big government and big money, and on the other, the struggles of every-day people for self-determination. Zinn examines the antislavery, labor, women's, and antiwar movements as examples of "pesky" popular reform efforts that have nevertheless shaped government, and the lives of every-day people, for the better.

The book jibes with my old gut sense that the contributions of the grassroots are marginalized all the time. The existence of the grassroots is rendered invisible, by those whom change threatens, and by those who should know better.

In my teens, my father came upon me reading The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan's best-seller of some twenty years before.

"I tried to read that book once, I thought it was the most boring thing," he sneered. "I had to put it down after a few pages."

I was, maybe, fifteen, sixteen, at the time. I was bright enough, but I was not extraordinary.

"Don't you think the demonstrations by women had something to do with the gains women have made in society?"

He was silent for a couple of seconds.

"No, I think they're unrelated. We'd be in the same place, with women becoming doctors and lawyers and all that, if women had never demonstrated." Then he strode out of the room.

Exactly how his views on women's advancement have affected my father's marriages, or his dealings with his daughters, we won't speculate here. But I wasn't to question his general pronouncement about grassroots self-help for a long time. I didn't question it through the 80s, when 60s-holdover progressive activism I saw on campus struck me as "nutty," did not engage me personally. I didn't question it in the years after college, when I became enveloped in the "recovery movement," a then-popular culture of self-help that actively disparaged involvement in social causes as "trying to save the world."

Outside my personal cocoon, the 80s saw the flowering of the Christian Right, the marriage of authoritarian fundamentalist religion and big politics. The Christian Right instilled a unique brand of despair among progressives, a hangover that still seems to plague the movement.

I have not yet read Michelle Goldberg's new book, Kingdom Coming. I did not even finish her article in Salon, but I did hear her Terri Gross interview. Not doubting the integrity of her journalism, or the value of her research, I worry about Goldberg's cynicism.

Is the influence of the New Right, in fact, "growing," as she asserts? Perhaps, in terms of the arrogance of New-Right-aligned politicians and their appointees, and the grave dangers to American freedoms their reach represents. But in terms of sheer numbers?

When you say the New Right is "growing," it's vital to distinguish between the agenda of big politics, and the will of the masses. I'm not sure Goldberg ever really does. The New Right has appealed to many, who have sought "change," but there are critical signs its influence may indeed be waning among the rank-and-file--making them susceptible to movements that advance their own self-interest.

George W. Bush, who was elected in part because he "speaks for God," is currently being humiliated with presidential approval ratings hardly seen since Watergate. The hard-sell of "free-market capitalism" and "the ownership society" notwithstanding, Americans have rejected his "Social Security reform" in droves, also his failed war on Iraq. They are disgusted by the scandal in his administration.

Americans, a religious lot, aren't liking what they're getting from big politics these days. They're ready to go another way--maybe in the direction of the evangelical Christian conference earlier this year that came out with a statement against global warming. The evangelicals interpret the bible literalistically, they defer to worldly authority--and, on the global warming issue, we saw numbers of them rush in where big politicians had thus far feared to tread.

The evangelical global warming statement is not much, all by itself, but maybe it's a tap on the shoulder progressives would have to be "dogmatically despairing," or blinded, to ignore.

I see it as a portent, like all the others.

The will of big government is one thing. Let's remember the grassroots breathes all on its own, independently, and may have to be heeded and nurtured for the future to turn out better than the present.

Something is stirring in Connecticut-- both anti-war and pro-woman--

2006-05-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

...where Ned Lamont, a truly progressive Democrat, has challenged Joe Lieberman successfully enough to be guaranteed a spot on the primary ballot this fall.

Lieberman must be pretty dissatisfied with his own tactics right about now. Borrowing a page from Bush & Co, he tried his hand at creating expectations, but instead of lowering them for himself, he set a pretty high bar for Lamont, twice what he needed to get on the ballot. Ooops! Lamont surpassed even Lieberman's intentionally high expectation of getting 30% of the delegate votes when he garnered 33%! Incredible!

There is a lot of buzz lately, not just in the blogosphere, but also in the MSM, about the Democrats' chances for taking either house of Congress this fall. If tonight's result is any indication, the odds are at least even/steven, if not better for, the Democrats to recapture at least one house; but let's be clear... if it happens, it won't be because of anything done by the consultants advising the Democratic leadership. No, it will happen because of the netroots, and the organizing power of Firedoglake, and MyDD, and Digby, and the Connecticut blogs, among others, because they were able to inform, organize and inspire the troops on the ground.

So, what was it, really, that caused the netroots to swarm, and target Lieberman so fiercely? Was it really all about the war and Lieberman's continually providing cover for the Republican party? Or was it the dissatisfaction at feeling ignored* in small Connecticut towns? Or that Lieberman is simply a primary enabler and appeaser of the GOP? Sure, all of those things. But, Jane Hamsher also attributes it to three words: "a short ride," and I think she's right. Lieberman just doesn't get it, and apparently, neither do his advisors.

Why is it so easy for a man like Lieberman to say something stupid and insensitive like "it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital?" He simply doesn't get what's wrong with suggesting that a Catholic hospital's principle should take precedence over a rape victim's need for standard health care. [Like those pharmacists who want to decide which prescriptions they will fill. Get into another line of work!] With that short sentence, Lieberman demonstrated that he-- and the rest of the lip-service-only liberals on women's rights-- have sorely misunderestimated the fury that is rising in women everywhere... because of the assaults on our autonomy and because of the grossly mistaken decision to let GWB wage war. Among other things.

* "We asked for a visit from Lieberman in February and we’re still waiting for a call back. Southbury proudly casts 5 votes for Ned Lamont." quote from the convention via Firedoglake