November 10, 2009
Question of the Day
From John Cole at Balloon Juice:
Why is it always helmet-haired old white guys who are such busybodies when it comes to a piece of anatomy they don’t have?
Posted by jnfr at 07:39 AM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2009
The Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act
Here is President Obama, speaking this morning at the signing of the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. The remarks are about ten minutes long, but every word is beautiful. We have a President now who, to a great degree, understands women's issues.
Many thanks to FireDogLake for posting the clip.
Posted by jnfr at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2008
Women Know
Just how cynical McCain's VP Pick is. Emily's List did some polling of women voters, comparing the VP picks of Obama and McCain. Here's what they found (full details at the link).
First, this selection puts John McCain squarely in the realm of politics over principle in women voters' eyes.
Second, Sarah Palin's background and personal narrative are not particularly appealing to women voters, and she matches up poorly against Joe Biden in terms of the potential to establish a compelling narrative.
Third, Governor Palin's inclusion on the ticket squanders John McCain's previous advantage over Barack Obama with regard to experience and readiness to lead.
Fourth, several of Governor Palin's positions on issues, including her position on abortion, alienate large segments of the women's electorate and add to the perception that the GOP ticket is out of step with women voters' views and priorities.
Fifth, even with the historic inclusion of a woman on the Republican ticket, women voters conclude that the Obama-Biden ticket is more in step with the issues and concerns that are important to women than is the McCain-Palin ticket.
Finally, as these survey findings confirm, the Democratic presidential ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden continues to benefit from strong support of women voters.
The graphic tells the story.
This one is good too.
So, in addition to viewing her as a cynical choice by John McCain, women generally aren't impressed by her background, and most don't agree with her on the issues. As I said before, the Republican party and John McCain have a serious problem with women voters, who happen to be a majority of the electorate.
Posted by jnfr at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2008
Rape Isn't a Joke
But John McCain seems to think it is.
Posted by jnfr at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
The New Paternalism
Here's a round-up of a few of the best posts I've read so far about the Supreme Court's ruling which eviscerated women's rights.
From Sarah Blustain at TAPPED:
"...Now Kennedy has bought their narrative hook, line, and sinker, writing that it is "self-evident" that "a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she did not know." His twisted remedy, though, is not to ensure that a woman has adequate information; it’s to ensure that she has no option. Her moral judgment is completely eviscerated. "This is," writes Jack Balkin, "the New Paternalism that is now central to the rhetoric of the pro-life movement. Either a woman is crazy when she undergoes an abortion, or she will become crazy later on."
And from Ezra Klein, also at TAPPED:
"...It is hard, in all of this, not to grow increasingly enraged at the makeup of the Court generally and the conservative bloc specifically. Kennedy could theorize all he wanted about female reactions to abortion: Within the group that voted to uphold the ban, there was not one woman. Five men made this decision for 150,000,000 women. Five men obviated the moral judgment of 150,000,000 women. And it is no surprise, surely, that the retirement of the conservative bloc's only female -- O'Connor -- finally permitted the deemphasis of maternal health in abortion cases, and that not one of the conservatives had the humility to retain O'Connor's insight after her exit."
From Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:
"...Dealing with these issues is more than a little weird. The grabbiness around the uterus is disconcerting—when you have one, it doesn’t seem like that big a deal to simply accept that it belongs to you. All these weird old men obsessed with laying claim to it is just strange, but then again, I grew up in the shadow of a feminist revolution. My first inclination is to say that it’s mine because I have to, you know, take care of it. I’m the one who has to do the maintenence work on it and I’ve got to carry it around whether I want to or not. Much as I’d like to put it in a box and mail it to Justice Kennedy if he wants it so bad, it’s not like I have much of an option there. But thinking about it, from a sexist point of view, that’s the natural order of things. Men own things and women do the shit work of maintaining male property. Men own houses, women clean them. Men lead churches, but women do all the bake sales. Men make babies, women simply bear and keep them. Men own uteruses, and women have to handle the care and cleaning part...."
And everyone's pointing to this article by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate:
As a matter of law, the majority opinion today should have focused exclusively on what has changed since the high court's 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart. Stenberg struck down a Nebraska ban that was almost identical to the federal ban upheld today. That's why every court to review the ban found the federal law, passed in 2003, unconstitutional. What really changed in the intervening years was the composition of the court: Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted to strike down the ban in 2000, is gone. Samuel Alito, who votes today to uphold it, is here.
What hasn't changed is that Anthony Kennedy finds partial-birth abortion really disgusting. We saw that in his dissent in Stenberg. That's what animates and drives his decision. His opinion blossoms from the premise that if all women were as sensitive as he is about the fundamental awfulness of this procedure, they'd all refuse to undergo it. Since they aren't, he'll decide for them.
Posted by jnfr at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2007
Mmmmm... Audrey
I don't really care what Pelosi wears on her head, I just had to have this picture, because I love it.
Posted by jnfr at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2007
Blog Against Sexism Day
The Private War of Women Soldiers...The female soldiers who were at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, for example, where U.S. troops go to demobilize, told me they were warned not to go out at night alone.
"They call Camp Arifjan 'generator city' because it's so loud with generators that even if a woman screams she can't be heard," said Abbie Pickett, 24, a specialist with the 229th Combat Support Engineering Company who spent 15 months in Iraq from 2004-05. Yet, she points out, this is a base, where soldiers are supposed to be safe.
Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. "The knife wasn't for the Iraqis," she told me. "It was for the guys on my own side."
I know there's a lot going on these days, but we can't ignore this. These women are our soldiers. We're failing them as long as they are not safe in our military. Contact your representatives and senators. Tell them this has to stop.
Several soldiers I interviewed told me that if a commander won't tolerate the mistreatment of women, it will not happen, and studies back this up.
The commanders can make this stop, and they have to. This is a disgrace, and it's gone on far too long already.
Posted by jnfr at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)