Quick Read: Feminism is not a religion

Susan Henking at Religious Dispatches wrote a really interesting article on the recent court case against Columbia University trying to have feminism established as a religion, and thus federal aid for Women's Studies classes were a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The lawsuit was dismissed, but Henking raises important questions of definitions and why it matters what we call things, especially in a legal setting. Context matters.

She concludes with this:

The plaintiff in the recently dismissed case was making a specious case rooted in a frivolous legal argument. His views are repugnant. Yet, in raising the issue once again of what religion is, he served an important role. While frivolous and meanspirited, his spewing reminds us that the contest is not done. We remain a nation where not all are convinced by the simple argument that women, too, are fully human and that we, like men, are the legitimate topic of academic inquiry. We remain a nation where it does matter how we define religion. Critical engagement with the various contexts within which we (especially in Western culture but increasingly globally) have struggled to understand religion, both as phenomenon and as a category, is as crucial to the our world as Women’s Studies (and feminist work more generally).

It's an interesting article for anyone concerned about intersections of law and religion or religion and feminism.

Quick Read: Saudi judge says if wives spend money wastefully, they deserve to be hit

Headline from MSNBC:

Saudi judge says it's OK for men to beat wives
He makes the comments at a conference on domestic violence

Quick Read: Ex-soldier convicted of rape, murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl...

...and the soldier, Steven Green, could be facing the death penalty for the gruesome 2006 act.

(trigger warning)

Quick Read: President Obama officially recognizes April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month

To read President Obama's full remarks go here.

And to learn more about Sexual Assault Awareness Month, go here.

Thanks to Feministe for the links.

Quick Read: Rachel Maddow is awesome

Rachel Maddow to Replace Dan Abram on MSNBC:

Just in time for the closing rush of the presidential election, MSNBC is shaking up its prime-time programming lineup, removing the long-time host –- and one-time general manager of the network — Dan Abrams from his 9 p.m. program and replacing him with Rachel Maddow, who has emerged as a favored political commentator for the all-news cable channel.

The moves, which were confirmed by MSNBC executives Tuesday, are expected to be finalized by Wednesday, with Mr. Abrams’s last program on Thursday. After MSNBC’s extensive coverage of the two political conventions during the next two weeks, Ms. Maddow will begin her program on Sept. 8.

MSNBC is highlighting the date, 9/8/08, connecting it to the start of the Olympics on 8/8/08, as a way to signal what the network’s president, Phil Griffin, said “will be the final leg of the political race this year.” He added, “We making that Rachel’s debut.”

Just so you know I haven't dropped off the face of the planet, I've been busy this week visiting my family. I've got some posts planned about family relationships in The Dark Knight and questioning how we display strong female bodies.

Quick read at The Root

Check out this piece at The Root today: Double Take. It's about a mother's perspective on having fraternal twins with different skin tones. It's really interesting. She writes,

When the Western World starts ignoring our skin colors and starts getting real, maybe we'll see these "miracle twin" stories for exactly what they are: living proof that it's time we rethink the concept of "race."

Ethnicity and culture will always be real, but the concept of race is not that straightforward. In America, there are some truths to face. We can start by facing a history many people are still too ashamed to talk about directly: slavery, miscegenation, class, caste and rape. Any American that looks at two siblings of different colors and is confused doesn't just reveal their ignorance of race, they show their lack of understanding of the history of this country, and where their own story fits into it.

Good stuff.

Quick Links

Some quick hits for you:

Are Blue Jeans a Feminist and Lesbian Uniform? hilarious h/t to Pandagon.

Women for John McCain (unofficial)

What Would Unicorn Do?

Reusable Produce Bags

Barnabas Group about eating healthy and staying motivated, written by the loveliest lady who has ever given birth to me and who happens to have her 29th birthday today - Happy 29th Birthday, Mom!

Quick Read: A Womyn's Ecdysis

Sudy at A Womyn's Ecdysis shares about a morning she had recently in the Philippines. She visited a garbage heap and the people who scavenge through the scraps to make money. She writes:

Many of them were displaced from the homes and placed here by the government. Now that foreign development companies want to develop the land, they are trying to move them out of their homes. Some of the families take the small amount of money they offer because they do not know what else to do and the government moves them again with promises of stable homes and better conditions. Instead, they are put in flooding areas with tents. No water, no electricity. Their promise of a better life is unfulfilled.

Not too long ago, one of the garbage mountains grew too high and collapsed from the weight. Three hundred people were buried alive in the garbage and left there to die. Many of them were husbands and fathers looking through the trash for survival. When the story broke, billions were raised and donated to the families for aid. The families have not yet seen one peso of that money. Strangely, any money that passes through the government never sees its intended destination.

After this, she experiences hypoglycemia, but at the end, she concludes:

I thought about how simple the problem was: not enough food, not enough sugar. And yet, truthfully, felt like I was possibly dying. Shit, when all your senses are disappearing and everything around you is reminding you of death and survival is on a thumbnail, it's an easy thought to conclude that death is the next step. Even with what happened, in which I had never been so frightened in all my life, I am glad that I saw what I did. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn, even if it took everything out of me.

It is a privilege to be able to visit, because to visit means I am free to leave.

No one there had that same choice.

Check it out.

Women aren't Human

As much as I would like to deny it, some people really do think that women aren't human.

Really.

Consider the Humanist. He or she says that they are opposed to Feminism. They object to the "raising of one gender above another" and would rather spend time crusading for human rights. Among those that profess such lofty sentiments are MRAs, intellectuals, liberal dudez, anti-feminist women, and control-troll writers.

So how do I know that they think women aren't human?

Simple! If they profess those who are for women's rights are against or not for human rights, they are operating under the premise that the movement for women's full agency is somehow in opposition or contrary to the movement for full human rights. The only way that an ideology that speaks for the female gender, or 51% of the global population, is not for human rights is if women are not human.

So next time someone tells you that they think feminism is anti-human rights, or that it is too myopic, tell them that you don't associate with morons who think the prerequisite for humanity is a penis.

(Cross-posted)

Quick Read on images of male sexuality

Came across this older post at don't ya wish your girlfriend was smart like me?. I'm glad I (eventually) found it because lindabeth is right on about so many things - how male sexuality becomes obscene in the eyes of other males. lindabeth writes,

Finally, what I’m also quite interested in regarding this video news story, is that the campaign included images of girls, depicted in much the same way as the guys are…yet he never mentioned being bothered by the “obscenity” of those! When we take this reaction, and think about the male anxiety around male nudity in general, and especially gay male sexuality (but of course, not lesbian sexuality), it it very clear that, in popular culture, sexuality becomes ‘obscene’ when it does not reinforce heteronormative masculinity. Images are only seen as improperly sexualized when it’s the male body on display for a (presumed) het female audience.

Check it out.

(By the way, I love the name of lindabeth's blog - I always tell my friends "daaaamn, you got a nice personality!")

Some Quick Reads

A man from Englad paid $40,000 on eBay for a date with Scarlett Johansson. The money will benefit Oxfam International, a "confederation of 13 organizations working together with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice" according to Oxfam.org. Great idea, right? But why do famous women see "selling themselves" as being the easiest way to get people to donate to charity? (Charlize Theron did the same thing in 2002.)

An 83-year-old lady, Bernie Garcia, refused to give her purse up to a would-be thief, even after she was dragged on the ground.

Looks like people are beginning to realize that women have money. And they buy cars, too. But are the things women want in cars really that different than what men want?

Quick Reads

First, everyone please say hello to my new fellow co-blogger, Kate!

Now for some things that have been in the news.

New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer, has been linked to a prostitution ring. The first term Democratic Governor's political future remains unclear.

The Victory Fund posted this video about Oklahoma State Representative, Sally Kerns, who spewed anti-gay hate speech when she thought only 50 people were listening.

The Independent Women's Forum (of which Charlotte Allen had been a part at one time) responds to her awful Washington Post editorial.

Explain this to me. Women in Amsterdam, Netherlands run a race in stilettos for a prize of $15,000. The race's motto? "Shopping is a Sport." A sport the race's sponsorers must think that women are surely experts at. And one that requires stilettos.