Religions and babies with Hans Rosling

The Points Interview: Gina Barreca | Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society

The Points Interview: Gina Barreca | Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society.

Interview with UConn’s own humorist, Prof. Gina Barreca, talking about her 2011 book. Enjoy! And get the book.

University Press of New England, 2011

Editor’s Note: Continuing the attention to gender and drinking that we mustered up for women’s history month, Points is excited to welcome feminist author Gina Barreca as our twenty-second interview, talking about her recent anthology of writings by women on drinking, Make Mine a Double: Why Women Like Us Like To Drink (or Not) (University Press of New England, 2011). Well-known as a syndicated columnist and radio commentator, Barreca is a historian of gender and humor as well as a gendered and humorous subject. Her past scholarly books include They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor (Viking, 1991) and Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League (University Press of New England, 2011). When not hoisting a glass, she teaches English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut.

April 17, 2012 : She earns in 15.5 months what he earns in 12. Equal Pay Day.

The next Equal Pay Day is Tuesday, April 17, 2012. This date symbolizes how far into 2012 women must work to earn what men earned in 2011.

Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages.

Since Census statistics showing the latest wage figures will not be available until late August or September, NCPE leadership decided years ago to select a Tuesday in April as Equal Pay Day. (Tuesday was selected to represent how far into the work week women must work to earn what men earned the previous week.) The date also is selected to avoid avoid religious holidays and other significant events.

Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color.

For more information, see NCPE’s Equal Pay Day Kit 
or contact the NCPE.

Lunafest 2012, Wednesday, March 28, 2012

LUNAFEST

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 6pm – 9pm

Lunafest 2012

Storrs Campus Trachten-Zachs Hillel House Admission Fee:Pre-sale $5 (students) & $7 (staff, faculty, and community members). At the door $7 and $10.

LUNAFEST is a moving film festival comprised of a series of short films made for and by women. The main goal is to promote women filmmakers, help raise awareness for women’s issues, and support for the Breast Cancer Fund and local non-profit organizations. This year celebrates the 40th anniversary of The University of Connecticut Women’s Center, which is also this year’s local LUNAFEST beneficiary. The Women’s Center’s mission is to educate, advocate, support and promote gender equity amongst the women of the university community. The highlighted films for LUNAFEST are filled with stories of reflection and whimsy, hope and humor, grace and perseverance. Collectively, LUNAFEST films captivate audiences, compel dialogue and arm those who participate with both the knowledge and the motivation to make a difference in their communities. For more information about the films, please visit http://www.lunafest.org/the-films.cfm. Tickets for the filmfest are pre-sale $5 for students and $7 for staff, faculty, and community members.  Tickets at the door will be $7 for students and $10 for staff, faculty, and community members. Tickets may be purchased on-line at https://secure.www.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/UCN/event/showEventForm.jsp?form_id=119928&preview=UCN20120120112750_0 Beginning the week of March 19^th tickets will be available at the LUNAFEST table in the SU Lobby Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.  Outside of those days and times, they will be available at the Women’s Center during our regular hours of operation (M – Th 8 a.m. – 9 pm and F 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.) Sponsorship opportunities are available.  For more information contact Brittnie.Sutton@uconn.edu More information available at:https://secure.www.alumniconnections.com/olc/pub/UCN/event/showEventForm.jsp?form_id=119928&preview=UCN20120120112750_0

Contact Information

For further information regarding this event, please contact:

• Brittnie Sutton
• 860-486-4738
• Brittnie.Sutton@uconn.edu

How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks | Common Struggle / Lucha Común

this is a very thoughtful and thought provoking interview with bell hooks. randy lowens met with her in 2009 and this interview was reposted in his honor. read, think, marvel, and change.

Illustration by Bree Johnson

Randy: You’re known, especially within our circles, for popularizing intersectional theory as opposed to reductionisms. Can you say a little bit about how intersectional theory plays out in practice? That is to say, your typical class reductionist at least has a priority; a Black Nationalist has something to prioritize. How do you practice intersectionalism?

hooks: Intersectionality allow us to focus on what is most important at a given point in time. I used to say to people, if you’re in a domestic situation where the man is violent, patriarchy and male domination—even though you understand it intersectionally—you focus, you highlight that dimension of it, if that’s what is needed to change the situation. I think that, again, if we move away from either/or thinking, and if we think, okay, every day of my life that I walk out of my house I am a combination of race, gender, class, sexual preference and religion or what have you, what gets foregrounded? I think it’s crazy for us to think that people don’t understand what’s being foregrounded in their lives at a given point in time. Like right now, for many Americans, class is being foregrounded like never before because of the economic situation. It doesn’t mean that race doesn’t matter, or gender doesn’t matter, but it means that right now in many people’s lives, in the lives of my own family members, people are losing jobs, insurance. I was teasing my brother that he was penniless, homeless, jobless. Right now in his life, racism isn’t the central highlighting force: it’s the world of work and economics. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t influenced by racism, but when he wakes up in the morning the thing that’s driving his world is really issues of class, economics and power as they articulate themselves. I guess I wish we could talk about: what does it mean to have a politics of intersectionality that also privileges what form of domination is most oppressing us at a given moment in time.

via How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks | Common Struggle / Lucha Común.
 
 

Women legislators turn the tables and introduce bills regulating men’s reproductive health

Women legislators turn the tables and introduce bills regulating men’s reproductive health.

Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) isn’t happy with bills that seek to control women’s access to contraception and abortion. She has joined a trend across the nation by introducing a bill that would require men seeking a prescription for erectile dysfunction drugs to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and “get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency.” Sex therapists would be required to present the option of “celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”

Finally! Thank you Senator Turner! Women need to protect men from themselves and their wanton desires.

From Transgender to Transhuman: Fascinating reading on our “Apartheid of Sex”

Billions of Sexes (Part 1)

Martine Rothblatt

Martine Rothblatt
From Transgender to Transhuman

Posted: Mar 12, 2012

There are two sexes, male and female, right? Wrong! In fact, there is a continuum of sex types, ranging from very male to very female, with countless variations in between.

This startling new notion is just now beginning to emerge from feminist thinking, scientific research, and a grass-roots movement called “transgenderism.” In the future, labeling people at birth as “male” or “female” will be considered just as unfair as South Africa’s now-abolished practice of stamping “black” or “white” on people’s ID cards.

Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM): Is your project really improving women’s lives?

Working since 2002, GEM has provided groups working on improving the lives of women and children with ways to evaluate the effectiveness of their initiatives. In Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin American, GEM has assisted organizations which are working  to change gender power relations and help women fully participate in economic development while providing them with means to care for their families and themselves. See the video below and get more documentation at their web site.

Bravo, GEM!

Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM)

By LC for APCNews

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 08 February 2012

The APC has been refining its Gender Evaluation Metholodolgy (GEM) since it was first elaborated in 2001. GEM can help you determine whether your project or initiative is really improving the lives of women and promoting positive change in the community you are working in.

Visit GEM’s new site, where you can find basic information about this innovative methodology and the team behind it, tips and answers to frequent questions, read about lessons learnt, stories of change it produced and even download guides and other materials.

(END/2012)

Why the Komen/Planned Parenthood Breakup—While It Lasted—Was Good for Feminism: from The Nation

A box for the Sephora Collection Pink Eyelash Curler. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Thank you, Amy Schiller, for writing this amazing, illuminating, and clarifying piece. Perfectly phrased, spot on the dilemmas in this world of big marketing strategies and how it uses feminism for own capitalist, patriarchal, and neoliberalist goals. Bravo.

For the past decade, this has been the feminist’s lament: How do we identify the line where feminism becomes a marketing strategy for the very patriarchy it nominally opposes—selling a non-threatening agenda that doesn’t buck the status quo? It’s often hard to tell reclamation from capitulation, and easier to rely on shorthand symbols like, say, the color pink and “you go girl” sloganeering; it’s tempting to assume that everyone’s on the same ideological page. By the time you realize that’s not the case, you’ve already purchased hundreds of dollars of carcinogenic cosmetics and applauded NFL players accused of sexual assault for courageously donning pink shoes.

Read the entire article here –

http://www.thenation.com/article/166072/why-komenplanned-parenthood-breakup-while-it-lasted-was-good-feminism.

White Women’s Rage: 5 Thoughts on Why Jan Brewer Should Keep Her Fingers to Herself « The Crunk Feminist Collective

White Women’s Rage: 5 Thoughts on Why Jan Brewer Should Keep Her Fingers to Herself « The Crunk Feminist Collective.

Jan Brewer is not a favorite of mine and though I will be in the southwest this summer for several weeks, I am stubbornly avoiding Arizona until it becomes American again. Yes, that is my personal issue with what I consider to be going on in the government of that state.

This post from The Crunk Feminist Collection is so powerful. Please take the time to read through. Here’s a bit from the beginning.

What’s wrong with this picture?

1.)   He is the President. She is being disrespectful. As hell.  Period. Point Blank. End of Discussion.

2.)   White privilege conditions white people not to see white rage. However, it makes them hyper-aware of Black threat.   Newt Gingrich is white rage personified. And for it, he gets loads of applause.  So is Jan Brewer, but usually we think of white rage in masculine terms. Gender stereotypes condition us not to see white women as being capable of this kind of dangerous emotional output. We reserve our notions of female anger for Black women. Such hidden race-gender logics allow Brewer to assert that she “felt threatened,” even though she was trying to handle the situation “with grace.”  Now look back at the picture: who is threatening whom? Couple white rage with white women’s access to the protections that have been afforded to their gender, and you have something that looks ironically like white female privilege. Yes (yes, yes), the discourse of protection is based upon problematic and sexist stereotypes of white women as dainty and unable to care for themselves, and yes, these stereotypes have caused white women to be oppressed by white men. But remember, gender does not exist in a racial vacuum. It is performed in highly racialized contexts, and history proves that what constitutes oppression for white women in relation to white men, dually constitutes privilege for white women in relation to Black men. (I’m not spoiling for a fight today, so anybody who feels uncomfortable with such assertions should probably go read some Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics and then try again.)  What I know is this: 100 years ago (less than, actually) a Black man even standing that close to a white woman would’ve gotten him lynched.  (Seriously, …

Read the whole post at White Women’s Rage: 5 Thoughts on Why Jan Brewer Should Keep Her Fingers to Herself « The Crunk Feminist Collective