I Heart Jane Lynch

This is irrelevant, but I love Jane Lych and I loved her acceptance speech so am posting it.

Yay! Good News for Trans People in Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is finally recognizing peoples' gender identity on their driver's liscenses.

The department and Equality Pennsylvania announced a settlement Wednesday that allows people to change the gender on their licenses if they are living full-time in their new gender and it can be verified by a licensed medical or psychological caregiver.

The previous policy only allowed changes in gender for drivers who could prove they had sexual reassignment surgery. PennDot said about half the states already have adopted a similar policy. The policy takes effect immediately.

The Invisible Young Feminists

Apparently it has once again been stated that young feminists don't exist. I know I talked about my frustration with this a little in response to Eve Ensler's new book of monologues, but given this recent article I think it bears repeating. In a conversation in the NY Times between Gail Collins and Stacy Schiff the subject of young feminists came up. Here is what they had to say:

Gail Collins: Every time I go on a speaking tour I get questions from sad middle-aged women who want to know why their daughters all insist they aren’t feminists. They might be planning to devote their lives to healing fistula victims in Somalia, but they won’t let anyone call them feminists because they think it means being anti-man, or wearing unattractive shoes.

Stacy Schiff: Partly the word has been deliberately sullied, like “liberal” and “progressive.” It spells man-hating, militant, and, especially, no Manolos.

If it makes you feel better, I just texted my 17-year-old to ask if she considered herself a feminist. “If by feminism, you mean equality,” she answers, “then yes.” It’s not a word that appeals, because her generation thinks the work has been done. They’ve been reading articles about the End of Men. Somehow the news that men who work full-time make on average 23 percent more than women do seems to have escaped them.

Well, I am aware of the inequalities between men and women, am 20 years old, and I call myself a feminist. Apparently Female Impersonator and the rest of the lively young femnist blogosphere escaped their attention. It is really annoying that myself and so many other young women are feminist activists online and outside cyberspace but have yet to be recognized by the 2nd wave feminists that we admire so much.

That being said, I acknowledge the frustration over some (but nearly as many as was implied by Gail and Stacy) young women my age who are feminists, do feminist work, but refuse the name. One of my friends once told me that she didn't want to identify as a feminist because she didn't want to associate with anything like a political party. So yes, misunderstandings about feminism exist in my generation. However, I don't think it is fair to point this out without acknowledging how many young women do identify as feminists and how many young feminists are working to end all those misunderstandings about it. The purpose of Jessica Valenti's book Full Frontal Feminism was to erase any bad connotations with the feminist movement that other young women might have.

So anyway, in response to this article, Shelly B has called for young women to post the link to their feminist blog in the comments section of her blog post and to include the above image on their blog. If nothing else, the comments on her post have given me a great list of new blogs to take a look at. We encourage you to include your feminist blog on her site, but also in the comments of this post. We want to know what you're writing!

Today is the 90th Anniversary of Women Gaining the Right to Vote

It is really discouraging to do feminist work sometimes. It seems like there are a thousand people working against equality for every person working towards it. When I talk to my peers, it becomes obvious that a lot of people have accepted sexism as a fact of life. But looking back on important milestones in feminist history helps. It helps to know that despite the fact that a lot of bigoted policies are still out there, the feminist movement has made huge advances in the last 100 years. A woman nearly won the democratic nomination for president, we now head two-thirds of American families, and we have a female Speaker of the House.

Speaking of which, Nancy Pelosi wrote an article today celebrating this anniversary while urging women to vote. I did a lot of voter registration work this summer and I can attest that not nearly enough women (particularly young women) vote in off-year elections. So celebrate this anniversary by voting and reading the below Susan B. Anthony quotes which I included out of hero worship.

"It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union."

"The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it."

"[T]here never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers."

"I can't say that the college-bred woman is the most contented woman. The broader her mind the more she understands the unequal conditions between men and women, the more she shafes under a government that tolerates it."

When Capitalism and Feminism Meet

So I have been looking at feminist merchandise all morning and fell in love with this T-shirt. I also might have become infatuated with this bumper sticker and this blogger-loving T.

So post your favorite pieces of feminist merchandise in comments and we can shop while working to end patriarchy together.

Equal Opportunity Public Toplessness

I found Lori's post on feministing about public shirtlessness very thought-provoking. I didn't really take the issue that seriously at first, but then I started thinking about women breast-feeding. Breast feeding isn't obscene, but the sexualization of this pretty utilitarian part of us is what makes it so mothers can't post pictures of themselves nursing their infants on Facebook.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Should feminists take seriously the equal opportunity public toplessness issue since "it's small things like these where big gains can be made"? Or is it just a little too small of an issue to be worthy of our attention?

Study: Behavioral Differences Between the Sexes Not Hard-wired

Thank God! Finally science is showing what feminists already suspected for years:

...There are no major neurological differences between the sexes, says Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender, which will be published by Icon next month. There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, added Fine, a researcher at Melbourne University, but the wiring is soft, not hard. "It is flexible, malleable and changeable," she said.

In short, our intellects are not prisoners of our genders or our genes and those who claim otherwise are merely coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility. It is a case backed by Lise Eliot, an associate professor based at the Chicago Medical School. "All the mounting evidence indicates these ideas about hard-wired differences between male and female brains are wrong," she told the Observer.

"Yes, there are basic behavioural differences between the sexes, but we should note that these differences increase with age because our children's intellectual biases are being exaggerated and intensified by our gendered culture. Children don't inherit intellectual differences. They learn them. They are a result of what we expect a boy or a girl to be."

Thus boys develop improved spatial skills not because of an innate superiority but because they are expected and are encouraged to be strong at sport, which requires expertise at catching and throwing. Similarly, it is anticipated that girls will be more emotional and talkative, and so their verbal skills are emphasised by teachers and parents.

"Step Up and Step Back" - Hugo Schwyzer discusses men's role in feminism

My second most-recent post at Feministe (The Masquerade: I call myself a feminist, therefore I am a feminist) generated some interesting discussion. One comment by Hugo explained some guidelines for men's participation in feminist spaces, called "Step Up and Step Back."

This is exactly what I want all men who are interested in feminist work to understand, and I think it's an important read.

Hugo elaborates on his ideas here.

The Latest in Sizeism

A nail salon reportedly charged a customer $5 more for her manicure because of her weight:

Michelle Fonville tells WSB.TV that the owners of Natural Nails in DeKalb County, Georgia charged her extra for her manicure, claiming that damage to salon chairs had been done by overweight patrons, and that the extra $5 was to cover the potential cost of a replacement chair. "I said, Ma'am, you can't charge me $5 more. That's discrimination because of my weight," Fonville says, noting that Kim Tran, the manager of the salon, brought up the broken chair issue in response: "Do you think that's fair when we take $24 [for manicure and pedicure] and we have to pay $2,500? Is that fair? No."

But the salon was seemingly set up to discriminate to begin with; the chairs they're so concerned over only have a weight capacity of 200 pounds, and claiming that anyone over 200 pounds is responsible for chair damage, after already inviting them to sit on said chairs, is a very shady means of getting an extra five dollars through completing the manicure and then slapping on the extra humiliation charge. If the salon is so concerned about its precious chairs, perhaps it should order some that accommodate all of its customers, instead of blaming the patrons for "breaking" chairs that were not designed to support their weight to begin with.

The Masquerade: I call myself a feminist, therefore I am a feminist.

(cross-posted from Feministe - wording edited slightly to reflect being posted here)

There’s this guy at my college who calls himself a feminist and, well, I just wouldn’t feel right calling him anything remotely close to a feminist.

I blogged about this student after he attended his first meeting of the feminist organization on my college campus (Students Against Sexism in Society, or SASS), tried to tell its largely female membership how to best run the organization, dominated the conversation, displayed an alarming lack of concern about triggering survivors of sexual assault, told stories of assault experiences that were not his to tell, then called out, by name, people he believed to be rapists.

As someone who has taken on several leaderships within this organization, I had to deal with the aftermath of this situation in which this student (let’s call him Mike) decided to make himself out to be a more involved pro-feminist guy the following term. I was co-president of SASS, but due to class scheduling conflicts, I was unable to attend SASS meetings, so my co-president ran them.

SASS’s major event that term was Take Back The Night and Mike first showed his disrespect for the organization he claimed to want to be a part of when he, on his own initiative, created flyers advertising TBTN as a march “against anti-LGBT violence” (he explained later that he was attempting to attract a larger crowd, not seeming to care that he was doing so by misrepresenting our event). He sent electronic copies of these and several other flyers out to the SASS e-mail list, instructing people to hang them up. I was forced to counter his e-mail, telling the group that those were not the flyers that were meant to be hung up, that Mike was not in charge of publicity, and members would be notified when the correct flyers were ready to be hung up.

I got an angry e-mail from Mike about this. He called me rude, stupidly hostile, “an immature insecure leader intent on doing nothing but touting her title around and impeding progress” and ended on this note:

Are you going to do ANYTHING for Take Back the Night? Or are you just going to impede the progress of smarter, more political members of the club you are a tyrant of?

Interestingly, the language Mike utilized in his e-mail was very similar to language in e-mails I had received earlier in the year from a female SASS member who fundamentally disagreed with my leadership style. I felt that both e-mail attacks were unwarranted, as they took place after I exercised due responsibility as an elected officer of SASS. The difference lies in the fact that the female SASS member who criticized me (however harshly or unjustly) could clearly be viewed as acting in what she felt was the best interest of SASS as a feminist organization that she cared about. Mike, however, could not be said to have had the same motives.

He showed a worrisome disregard for survivors of sexual assault (the same people he claimed to want to help by taking part in TBTN), disrespected SASS (by misrepresenting one of its events), and insulted an elected leader of an organization that is legitimately concerned about the interests of women after that leader took measures to ensure the integrity of the group. He made it clear that his interest lied not with SASS or even helping women.

The worst part is that in three separate e-mails that Mike sent me, none of which offered a fair critique and which seemed to be nothing more than a backlash against me acting as an officer, he insinuated time and time again that he was a better feminist than I am.

I’ve been trying to write this post for months now, but I’ve found this situation incredibly difficult to deal with. Being insulted is never easy, but when it comes from someone who claims to be an ally it’s not only confusing but incredibly hurtful. It stings to be called a bad feminist by a guy who doesn’t even seem to understand what feminism is and who showed little respect for women, some of the people that he should have been interested in fighting for.

I know I should just brush off these insults. I usually can. But it really bothers me when someone like Mike takes on the label of feminist, a label I wear with pride, when it just doesn’t apply to the type of actions he has undertaken. This is the kind of thing that undermines the work of people who actually want to make the world a better place for women and other oppressed groups. When people like Mike can call themselves feminists, I usually end up going to bed frustrated and a little hurt.

True Blood Rolling Stone Cover- Possible Interpretations

My first reaction when I saw coverage of the bloody, naked Rolling Stone cover featuring three True Blood stars was that True Blood was once again combining sex and violence in a really disturbing way. I hadn’t watched the show until this season, but after seeing a really graphic rape scene and other, subtler sexist elements that fetishized violence against women I was disgusted. I realize it is a vampire show and some amount of sex intermingled with violence is inevitable. However, the violence was almost always erotic when committed against women and not nearly as often when committed against men.

So like I was saying, seeing the True Blood cast naked and drenched in blood just seemed like another instance of sexualizing violence. But Stephanie at Ms. Magazine’s blog has another, more interesting take on the cover.

By mixing sexy bodies with blood, Stephanie argues, that the cover serves to remove some of the taboo surrounding menstruation and “period sex.”

Most often in popular culture, the only images of naked people we see are in sexual situations (other possibilities include naked people bathing and as babies). And because sex + menstrual blood = an absolute no-no for mainstream media, then blood and naked bodies–especially women’s naked, bloody bodies–are not likely to appear together.

So when I saw the True Blood cover I was surprised and a little thrilled. I knew I was supposed to be seeing sexy vampire stuff, but immediately I started to think about other situations in which you might be naked and bloody. And what did I come up with? Period sex. Which is an even bigger taboo than menstruation itself.
…
And that brings me to why I think this cover is so fantastic. Though Anna Paquin (likely) isn’t menstruating in this photo, we are seeing blood, sex and bodies in the same frame, forcing us to consider the mingling, seeping and blending of these very human things. If we can look at these sexy, naked actors covered in blood and still think they’re damn fine, we’re one step closer to getting over the menstrual
taboo and taking part in the joys of loving our girlfriends while they’re bleeding.

Frankly, I still stick by my first analysis of the cover though I think Stephanie’s thoughts are really interesting. So what do you all think? Does the cover fetishize violence the way many True Blood episodes have, is it a celebration of menstruation, or something else?

Parental Advisory: Explicit, Unladylike S**t

(Cross-posted from Feministe)

It's true. I swear a lot. It's a fact that gets brought up frequently at random times by people who have spoken with me.

Apparently, I shouldn't swear.

Why is this?

A) It makes me sound unintelligent
B) It makes me sound angry
C) It makes me sound trashy
D) It's unladylike

Trick question. It's actually all of the above, according to a number of people I've spoken to.

I understand that swearing is not appropriate in every situation. I make sure to censor myself when I am at work, around people I am not acqainted with, or around people I know are offended by my language. However, when I have been told that swearing makes me sound unintelligent, angry, trashy, or unladylike, it has not been because the person making these statements has been offended by my language. It seems to come from a place of concern about how I will be perceived if people hear me using vulgar language.

Fair enough. Certain segments of the society I live in have problems with women doing "unladylike" things like wearing pants, having sex with multiple partners, drinking, and swearing. Women being looked down upon for engaging in what some deem unacceptable behavior is not an uncommon experience.

I know that that, quite frankly, is bullshit, and when people express their concern about what people will think about me because I swear, I tend to laugh it off.

Then I met a girl a few days ago who is a few years younger than myself. She didn't talk much, but when she did finally open her mouth, some of the first words she

spoke were what some people would consider vulgar. I was shocked by this, and when I thought back on this later, I was surprised that I felt this way.

I swear. My friends swear. I listen to music that comes with parental advisory labels. In none of these situations am I ever shocked by or give a second thought to the "vulgar" language. But when a girl in her teens swore the first time I met her, I froze.

I was thinking about this. I don't have a problem with women swearing, so did my reaction have to do with this girl's age? If so, does that mean I buy into the idea that young girls are innocent, and that violating that sense of innocence somehow violates the essence of their girlhood?

I hope not. The idea of the innocent, virtuous woman plays into patriarchal ideas that women needing to be protected by men, the only people who can stand guard over all that is good about them. And that's certainly not how I want to think about young women who use words in the same way that I do.

Consent and coming out

(cross-posted from Feministe)

Knowing your preferences and your limits is an important part of having a satisfying sex life. For most of my life as a sexually active person, I could have talked about these ideas, but it wasn't until more recently that I was finally able to practice what I often preached.

This is tied to the fact that I came out (selectively) as queer in 2009.

Coming out was not easy for me. I starting coming out to myself late in my first year at college, but I distinctly remember looking myself in the mirror and seeing "QUEER" stamped across my forehead. For a while, thinking of myself in that way was so difficult that I shoved myself back in the closet, determining that what had just happened must have been a weird symptom of stress or something. In the meantime, I was in a long distance relationship with a boyfriend I'd been with since high school. We'd see each other about once a month and we almost always had sex when we were together.

Fast forward one school year and I had come around to certain things about myself.
I was definitely queer. I came out to my boyfriend right away as bisexual (which is no longer a label I use). He was supportive and we stayed together because this did not appear to change our relationship. There was a problem, however. I still was not terribly interested in sex with my boyfriend.

This was something I didn't realize fully until I had a new partner, but I had never been very interested in the sex I had had with men in the past. My boyfriend and I did have sex, and it was something I had convinced myself (dishonestly) that I wanted. I had bought into the idea that I was supposed to want to have sex with my boyfriend, even when I could tell that I was not truly interested. The sex was not terrible or selfish on his part, but my interest only seemed to hold for a very brief time. This created a situation in which I rarely initiated sex. It also meant that enthusiastic consent was not something that was practiced in our relationship.

I knew my boyfriend wanted sex because he almost always made the first move. While he did not often check in with me during sex, something that may have given some indication of my lack of interest, he was good at asking me if I wanted sex before we did anything. I always said I did, whether or not it was really true, but I was aware that this wasn't the kind of consent that should take place in these situations. I knew about enthusiastic consent and I often spoke to people about the idea. I just couldn't bring myself to amend the situation with my boyfriend. It would be messy to explain that what had become a common practice did not actually fit with my personal definition of consent.

Our relationship ended a few months later for reasons unrelated to sex. I don't want it to sound like my ex was a bad guy. He did practice affirmative consent (having sex when I said, yes, I wanted to), but it didn't change the fact that I just wasn't into having sex with him and he didn't seem to notice.

Once that relationship was over, I had the time to come to terms with my queerness. I quickly realized that while I had thought that I had enjoyed sex with men before, I had not been completely honest with myself. It was a bit shocking to realize that the sex I had had in the past didn't fit my personal ideas about proper consent, but in a way it makes sense. If you can't be honest with yourself about your desires, then it's hard to be honest about what you want sexually, and not being honest about what you want makes consent very tricky. Once I was able to be true to my desires, I found myself wanting sex more often and being able to enjoy it on new levels. This gave me the freedom to navigate new rules of consent.

I've been with my current partner for almost a year now and something that I am incredibly pleased with is how effortlessly we've been able to have awesome, feminism-informed sex, and how easy it was to communicate my ideas about consent. We practice enthusiastic, affirmative consent with ease and for the first time in my life I can consider myself truly satisfied.

Emotional Creature

Eve Ensler (Of Vagina Monologues fame) has a new book of monologues out, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World. MTV has been promoting the work through posting videos of young women reciting segments of five of the monologues on their website. I am predisposed to like everything Eve does and really appreciated large portions of these pieces. However, there are a couple of elements of the monologues that annoyed and offended me a little. Below are my thoughts on the video segments I saw and monologues I read.

The first monologue listed on MTV’s website for the series is “You Tell Me How to Be a Girl in 2010.” The parts of this monologue that I really like are how Eve takes on homophobia with lines like “And if the hetero nuclear family is so great/how come everyone is fleeing it” and how she highlights the world’s violence against women problem (“Women are burned, raped, bludgeoned, sold,/starved, and buried alive/and still don’t’ know they are the majority.”) However, neither of these aspects were highlighted in the video clip read by Aubrey Plaza. What is highlighted is the part of the monologue that calls my generation apathetic, “What happened to teenagers kissing/instead of blogging and dissing?/What happened to teenagers marching/and refusing/instead of exploiting and using?” That really made me angry. As Stephanie Herold wrote for Campus Progress, young activists do exist despite the lack of “teenagers marching.” And part of the way we are working to bring about change is by doing some of that blogging.

The second monologue “I Dance” I found very powerful, especially when it speaks out against society’s attitudes towards a young woman’s body “I dance past your lustful eyes/Your dirty interpretations of my teenage body.” However, again, what was chosen to be highlighted in the video was the part that speaks against technology, “I dance ‘cause it’s better/than sexting.” I realize that technology has been utilized as a way to abuse women, but the theme of technology-bashing in these monologues is really disheartening for someone like me who does most of their activism through it. Sure, we should highlight what is wrong with it (it makes it easier to bully and emotionally abuse people) but not without also displaying the awesome ways young people are using it.

The third monologue “Asking The Question” is just awesome, both the part emphasized via video and the entire thing. Adorable and happiness inducing.

The fourth monologue “It’s Not a Baby, It’s a Maybe” was a really thoughtful look at how one young woman might think about an unplanned pregnancy. However, I was once again disappointed with the segment they decided to highlight in video. The video seemed to deliberately avoid the central conflict in the monologue, which was whether or not the speaker would get an abortion.

The fifth monologue “Dear Rihanna” was hard to read, but I appreciate how it captures some of the troubling reactions people have to dating violence. The video segment seemed well chosen.

If any of you get a chance to see any of the videos or read any of the monologues let me know your thoughts in comments.

Domestic Abuse Survivor Granted Asylum

**Trigger warning for description of domestic violence**

L.R., a 43 year old Mexican woman, was repeatedly abused by her common-law husband. This abuse included repeated rapes at point of guns and machetes and an attempt to burn her in her bed. Knowing Mexican authorities would not help her and there was no place where she could not be found by her abuser in Mexico, L.R. filed for asylum in 2005. On August 4th, an immigration judge approved asylum for L.R. as well as her two sons, now 22 and 20 years old, after a favorable recommendation by Department of Homeland Security officials.

Before this case, domestic abuse survivors seeking asylum were often dismissed by immigration judges. This was partly because until recently, the Department of Homeland Security did not have clear required criteria for domestic violence survivors seeking asylum. Unfortunately, with this new criteria “hurdles remain high for battered women” seeking asylum. However, this case at least clarifies what those hurdles are and makes it a little easier for people like L.R. and her sons to receive asylum.

If not granted asylum, L.R. would have faced insurmountable obstacles to be protected from her abuser in her homeland of Mexico. When she asked Mexican courts to protect her, a judge only “offered to help her if she would have sex with him.” If she were to continue working as a schoolteacher in Mexico, she would have to post her current address online in a public registry that her abuser could easily access. The Mexican police would also likely been of little help given the “‘enormous social and cultural tolerance of this abuse, resulting in the virtual complicity of authorities who should prevent and punish these violent acts.’”

While it is unfortunate that it still remains difficult for domestic abuse survivors to be granted asylum in the U.S., L.R.’s case at least helps to specify what the criteria is and shows it is possible to be given asylum. To learn more about the state of violence against women on a national and international scale, visit Amnesty International’s “Stop Violence Against Women Campaign” page.

Lily Allen Rocks my Socks

This song is fantastic.