The Femmostroppo Awards honor (what this group of judges deems to be) the best 40 feminist or womanist blog posts of the year. Congratulations to everyone who made it in. I’m happy to see several of the posts that I personally nominated, and so many bloggers whose work I regularly read.
I’m also happy/proud to see so many Feministe writers and alumni. Special congrats to Jill, Zuzu, Jack and La Lubu* . . . and thank you to the judges for including me.
Give yourselves a pat on the back, everyone — and then get back to work!
“When we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it’s probably time to reexamine our criteria for manhood.”
A gravely ill woman at risk of being removed from the country for lack of adequate insurance coverage awoke from a coma Tuesday.
The hospital has been seeking to return her to her native Honduras; her family took the hospital to court.
[. . .]
Iscoa, 34, has a valid visa and has lived in the United States for more than 17 years. She has no family in Honduras.
But St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center sought to have her sent to Honduras when she went into a coma April 20 after giving birth to a daughter about 8 weeks premature. Iscoa has an amended version of Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System coverage that does not cover long-term care, Curtin said. But her family worried that the move would seriously harm her, or, at the very least, prevent her from ever returning to the United States.
Iscoa’s mother, Joaquina del Cid Plasecea, obtained a temporary restraining order to keep her from being moved. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Carey Hyatt also ordered that the family post a $20,000 bond by Tuesday to cover St. Joseph’s costs of postponing the transfer.
However, Curtin said that the hospital gave the family three more days to come up with the money before a hearing Friday.
If the family can prove that Iscoa would suffer irreparable injury by a move, the bond will be refunded and Iscoa will not be transferred. But if Hyatt determines that Iscoa is not in imminent danger by a move, the family will forfeit the bond.
A stipulation to a court order issued by Hyatt Tuesday evening said that the parties were “actively exploring alternative sources of securing payment for the medical bills of Sonia Iscoa.”
(For the newbies: In the comments, link to a blog post — or several blog posts — that you’ve written recently, along with a short description of the post(s). Please don’t just link to your whole blog. Have fun!)
Judge Stephen Glithero sentenced the 55-year-old St. Catharines construction worker to one day in jail Thursday for the death of 29-year-old Stephine Beck.
The one-day sentence is in addition to time Ryczak already served in jail since his March 5, 2007 arrest - time the judge said was equivalent to 30 months.
“Devastated, we’re devastated,” Beck’s mother, Alice Dort, said from her home in Nova Scotia shortly after a police detective broke the news by phone. “This is just so unbelievable.”
“There’s no justice. None whatsoever. I’m just so disgusted.”
The Crown asked for seven to 10 years in jail. Ryczak’s lawyer requested two years less a day to be served in the community.
After deliberating for 20 minutes, Glithero said a 30-month sentence in the penitentiary would be appropriate and Ryczak had already served it. Ryczak was also given three years’ probation.
He was released from the Niagara Detention Centre Thursday around 6 p.m.
How could this be? Well, to start out with, he not only pleaded guilty to manslaughter rather than go to trial and risk a conviction on second-degree murder, he also testified that Beck broke into his trailer, attacked him, and he acted in self-defense. And apparently, the judge bought it.
I’ve been having a series of discussions lately with a friend about the minimum wage. It’s got me thinking about several issues, namely how increasing the minimum wage affects corporations and how lower class families are often blamed for their poverty on the grounds that they shouldn’t have had so many children. My friend states that he’s against raising the minimum wage because it’s nonsensical when you look at the “big picture.” First of all, I’m curious to know if there are any feminist ways to look at the issue of the minimum wage, and whether it should be raised or remain static.
Secondly, there seems to be a kind of evasive classism in the notion that low-income families should have only a small number of children, or none at all. Often it’s not just classism, but racism and sexism as well, as women are often seen as the purpetrators (especially when they are single mothers), and as much of the shame is often levelled toward families of color. I’m having a hard time explaining to my middle-class friend why criticizing low-income families for having children is wrong, perhaps because though it personally affects me (as one of five daughters in a low-income family) I can’t quite articulate my grievances. I call it an ‘evasive’ classism because defenses like, “they should’ve known better/been more responsible” or “how did they plan on feeding you/giving you a decent education?” etc. seem so airtight to the white, middle-class sense of reason. I’m not quite sure how to approach this problem, though I believe very strongly that low-income families have every right to a family, regardless of whether they can provide a life with all of the accouterments the middle-class sees as “necessary.” I also see a lot of classism coming from middle-class people talking about women from 18-21 having children. Anyhow, I’d like to hear some views on these issues.
These are big, complex questions, but well worth discussing (and certainly not discussed enough). Thoughts? Resources? Suggestions?
If you have not read it, Autumn at Pam’s House Blend linked the decision in In re Marriage Cases, the California Supreme Court case that made marriage equal for all Californians irrespective of sexual orientation. She has up a long quote which I will not repeat. I liked this part from page 6:
[W]e conclude that … the constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process. These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish – with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life – an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage…
(Emphasis in original.)
What might get overlooked, I wanted to highlight under the legal maxim of est majorifico fuckin dealio:
[W]e must determine whether sexual orientation should be considered a “suspect classification” under the California equal protection clause, so that statutes drawing a distinction on this basis are subject to strict scrutiny. As pointed out by the parties defending the marriage statutes, the great majority of out-of-state decisions that have addressed this issue have concluded that, unlike statutes that impose differential treatment on the basis of an individual’s race, sex, religion or national origin, statutes that treat persons differently because of their sexual orientation should not be viewed as constitutionally suspect and thus should be subjected to strict scrutiny. The issue is one of first impression in California, however, and for the reasons discussed below we now conclude that sexual orientation should be viewed as a suspect classification for purposes of the California Constitution’s equal protection clause and that statutes that treat persons diffeently because of their sexual orientation should be subjected to strict scrutiny under this constitutional provision.
(Opinion at pp. 95-6, footnotes omitted.)
This isn’t “just” marriage equality. This is full equality, as far as California law can effect it.
So often, our nation’s, our people’s and our institutions’ reach exceeds their grasp; we fail or refuse to live up to our promise and potential. But on this, in one state, on this day, we did the right thing.
(Thanks to Holly, Jack & Co. for letting me guest-post occasionally. I very much appreciate the privilege.)
INCITE! is one of my favorite feminist organizing projects and I’m excited to spread the word about their gorgeous new website. If you don’t already know about their amazing anthology, The Color of Violence, I highly recommend picking it up (especially since I helped craft the chapter that intersects with trans issues, toot toot.) Even if you don’t have a copy, the website is right at your fingertips, right now. Go check it out!
I especially want to draw your attention to one of the centerpieces of their website launch, the Organizing Toolkit To Stop Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color & Trans People of Color. If you have any doubts as to whether police brutality is a feminist issue, their analysis does a much better job of explaining than I have recently. Their toolkit highlights the fact that law enforcement violence against women and trans people often becomes invisible, while at the same time stressing the need to work in coalition with other organizations that struggle against the police state, institutionalized violence against people of color, immigrant rights, and so forth. (See in particular the joint statement put out by INCITE! and Critical Resistance, the prison abolitionist organization founded by Angela Davis and others.) They’re simultaneously working to integrate a gender analysis into conversations about police brutality, and also raise awareness that this isn’t just a problem that happens to young, straight black men.
INCITE!’s toolkit addresses everything from law enforcement violence against marginalized women and trans folks on the streets to violence in immigration practices and against native communities, police brutality against sex workers, and strategies for community accountability — which could be an alternative to calling the police, especially for people and communities who can’t always do that. I’ll quote a couple of my favorite sections after the jump.
NARAL President Nancy Keenan explains why the organization chose Obama out of the two strong pro-choice Democratic candidates.
UPDATE: The responses are already coming in. EMILY’s List president Ellen R. Malcolm says in a press release:
“I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton - who held up the nomination of a FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe vs. Wade - to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process. It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them.”
The final DVD of Season 4 of The Wire is scheduled to arrive at my apartment on Thursday. After that, I’ll be waiting around for Season 5 to come out before I can NetFlix it. In the meantime, I need something else to keep me occupied. My other TV addiction is LOST, and I still re-watch the first two seasons of The West Wing with some regularity. So anything in that vein is great. I decidedly do not like anything Science Fiction or Fantasy-like — I know this is going to make you all hate me, but I can’t stand Buffy or Battlestar Gallactica. I’m leaning towards The Office or 30 Rock, as those seem to be good, light summer watching. Comedies are good — Curb Your Enthusiasm is an old favorite — but I really can’t stand shows like Everybody Loves Raymond or Monk.
But I am wide open to suggestions. What do you all watch and love?
I’m a high schooler who’s recently become interested in feminist/LGBT issues, and since I won’t have anything to do this summer I figured I’d spend the time reading some books on the topic. Can you recommend anything? I’m interested in historical things (I’m probably going to try to read The Second Sex, at least,) but I’d also really love to find some good recent books.
In other news, you can now find out who’s stalking you on Facebook. Or maybe not. Anyway, you can type a period into the search box and get a drop-down list of five names that mean… something. First person on my list is someone whose profile I stalk the hell out of out, but #2 is someone who I don’t think I’ve ever searched for — although I did peruse through her photos when they came up on the Feed and I was bored during finals, so who knows. Long story short: It’s a mystery, and I suspect some sort of fluke. But if it really is the people who search you the most, then I’m glad to know that at least some of my stalking is mutual.
And am I the only one who wastes several dozen hours every week playing Scrabulous? Best/worst finals distraction ever.
“I didn’t know what to do. My own dad was so tough on us — always saying things like “Be a Man!”
My father’s voice cracks with grief as he continues. “I thought I had to — like he used to say — whup the sissy out of you.”
His eyes are watery, and I feel hot tears rolling down my face too. I’m surprised by how sad I feel, for both of us. I never thought, before that moment, that I’d be able to forgive him for all the yelling, the anger, the bullying. Especially for the few times he paddled me hard–much harder than he ever whacked my sister. I didn’t even understand why until that day; I didn’t even know that there was a why behind the way he acted towards me when I was growing up. It never occurred to me that he felt an overwhelming, internalized pressure to make sure I conformed; to make sure I stopped screwing up my gender so badly.
That moment when we sat looking at each other in my living room was almost five years ago now. It was the first time he came to visit me, the first time we saw each other, since I started going through life as a woman. I remember the complex play of emotions on his face throughout that weekend: as we went out to dinner, while he was buying me a dress, when I gave him a goodnight hug. A startled mix of confusion and relief, struggling with the feeling he was tying to describe to me in that conversation, the feeling like he had failed as a parent not once but twice. First, at his traditional duty of raising me to be a man — obviously, that didn’t work out so well.
My father was a little too unorthodox to simply accept that socially-mandated responsibility that rode along in his unconscious baggage. By the time I came out, he was no longer a young and scared first-time parent and now feels like he failed me more by not noticing and understanding that I was different. My parents both feel guilty about this, and I still don’t know how to set their minds at ease about it. “I should have known,” my mother said. “If I had paid attention I would have seen all the patterns. I could have made it easier for you to talk to me.” I can’t blame them for this; who expects to have a transgender child? Who wants to? I grew up in the 80s and the 90s, long before Barbara Walters started her own misty-eyed coverage of the subject.
All this came flooding back to me when someone sent me a link to this NPR story about two families struggling with their kids’ gender non-conformity. I realized that there was something different about me, that I didn’t fit right into what I was supposed to be, before I ever went to preschool… I guess I must have been three or four. But I realized just as quickly that I was in big trouble if anyone found out. I quickly became terrified and secretive. These two kids, Bradley and Jona, are not like I was. For whatever reason, they wear their gender differences on their sleeves. It’s hard for me to see that as a bad thing, especially since I don’t think I’ll ever fully heal all of my own scars — the ones a child gets when they internalize the notion that they, as individuals, are monstrously and fundamentally flawed.
It was very hard for me to read Bradley’s story — about a kid who’s basically being straightjacketed into a designated gender, and growing increasingly distressed, sad, and burdened. But I’m glad NPR told these stories side by side, because their Q&A with each child’s psychologist illuminates a vast divide in how gender non-conforming children are treated. Ken Zucker of Toronto’s Clarke Institute represents the widespread, traditional approach, where the goal is to eliminate cross-gender behavior and the desire to be a different gender. He basically describes his success rate as the number of kids he’s managed to steer away from becoming an adult trans person; as he’s said elsewhere, he wants to “help these kids be more content in their biological gender.”
Which sounds all right on paper, but how far do you go in denying a child’s perfectly innocent inclinations? Diane Ehrensaft, on the other side of the continent in Oakland, sees Zucker’s methods as “trying to bend a twig”:
I would say that I think that there is a subgroup of children who, if we listen to them carefully, will tell us, “I know who I am. And if you let me be who I am, I will be a healthy person. And if you try to bend my twig” — which is what I think Zucker does — “then I will be a repressed, suppressed, depressed person who will learn to do what other people expect of me and I’ll hide who I really am.”
McKnight is one of about 200 women who have been arrested for the crime of using drugs while pregnant. The women who are brought to trial are usually charged with either child abuse or drug trafficking — the “trafficking” act happening in utero. This is an issue of particular interest to me, and I’m tempted to write a long post about it, but a final paper calls. So, check out these old posts for background:
And I would be remiss not to mention the fantastic work of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, who have worked tirelessly to put this issue in the spotlight. Check out this piece in particular about Ms. McKnight’s ordeal.
Richardson’s title march began with field events on Friday when she won the high jump (5 feet, 5 inches), placed second in the long jump (18-7) and was third in the discus (121-0).
On Saturday, she won the 200 meters in 25.03 seconds and nearly pulled off a huge upset in the 100 before finishing second (12.19) to defending champion Kendra Coleman of Santa Anna. Richardson, a junior, earned a total of 42 team points to edge team runner-up Chilton (36).
And in three days, after I turn in this one last paper, I’ll be done with law school.
It has been a good run (law school and blogging — although I think blogging has been slightly more enjoyable). I officially graduate next week, and I’ll probably return to full-time blogging here after that.
It’s been an excellent three years, and I’m eternally grateful to Ms. Lauren for starting such a great community here and inviting me to join it. I’m also incredibly lucky to share this space with such great co-bloggers, past and present. I’m looking forward to coming back. And as soon as the rest of my life is settled, I’ll start planning all kinds of fun things for Feministe this summer — including a return of Project Guest Blogger so that we can highlight more voices and build a wider-reaching community.
So, happy anniversary! Here’s hoping this year is a good one.
The Nation does a better job in pointing out that this is indeed a somber anniversary, and that, like American society, the people of Israel remain deeply divided about their country’s leadership and the choices that leadership has made. They also remain deeply divided and conflicted about their own identities. There’s no question that the history (and ongoing reality) of persecution of and discrimination against Jews makes a strong moral case for the creation of a Jewish state. And the fact that Israel is home to 41 percent of the world’s Jews suggests that many Jewish people have themselves decided that such a state was needed.
But the creation of that state came at great expense, and its conservative leadership continues to place major roadblocks in the way of any sort of peace. The unwillingness to grapple with history — a history of moving onto someone else’s land, which Americans too share — leaves many wounds wide open. And the refusal to allow Palestinians to pick their own leadership and to define their own existence makes it impossible to accomplish anything. There are certainly huge numbers of extremists on both sides, and I’m often tempted to say “a pox on both their houses.” But there are enough people invested in some sort of equitable and human rights affirming solution that we shouldn’t give up hope quite yet — true justice may be impossible (and I’m not even sure what that would look like at this point), but an acceptable solution isn’t. Of course, that’s going to require some representations and voices other than the “Greater Israel” religious right-wingers and the Suicide Bomber stereotypes.
So I’m glad to see publications like The Nation highlighting the voices of people from the Palestinian diaspora. One thing Edward Said highlights in The Question of Palestine — and something that probably feels familiar to a lot of people in marginalized groups — is the media’s decisions to constantly talk about the Palestinian people instead of talking to them, or listening to them. So entire articles will be written about Israel/Palestine without a Palestinian voice. It’s nice to see The Nation countering that. Maybe one day the New York Times will follow suit.
An Atheist Goes Undercover to Join the Flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee. This article is written by Matt Taibbi, which gives it a whole lot of sneering elitism and progressive entitlement to mock fat people, gays, women, Christians, and basically anyone Matt deems not as cool as himself. The story itself, though, is a good one.
