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

IT’S the end of the semester, and I’m emerging from under piles of exams and papers. That bedraggled middle-aged woman who sneaked into in my bathroom mirror is looking considerably more chipper now that I’ve been getting a full night’s sleep and, after a few deep breaths, I’ll be thinking about next semester, when I’ll be teaching my upper-level course on the U.S. women’s movement.

Teaching about something you have lived is like looking through that mirror, seeing your younger self waving at you. That self grew up and into political awareness with Ms. magazine, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this month. With the conviction that American women had concerns beyond cooking and cosmetics, its founders developed ideas for a publication that would reflect the growing feminist movement.

On Dec. 20, 1971, the first Ms. appeared, as an insert in New York magazine. While detractors found the idea of a wide-circulation feminist magazine laughable — TV newsman Harry Reasoner scoffed, “I’ll give it six months before they run out of things to say” — the 300,000 copies sold out in eight days, and the publication received 26,000 subscription orders and more than 20,000 reader letters within a few weeks. The first stand-alone issue appeared the following July.

Feminist activists had long been critical of the traditional women’s magazines. In March of 1970, about 100 had targeted Ladies’ Home Journal, storming into the male editor’s office, presenting demands and sitting-in for 11 hours. While only a few demands were met, writer Vivian Gornick noted: “It was a watershed moment. It showed us … that we did, indeed, have a (women’s) movement.” That movement needed a new kind of magazine.

In 1971, you may remember, married women could not obtain credit in their own names; job listings were segregated by sex; “marital rape” was considered an oxymoron; employers could freely discriminate against pregnant women; and equal pay for equal work was a new concept. There were no shelters for battered women or rape crisis hot lines, the term “sexual harassment” was not in the lexicon, and there was no Title IX banning sex discrimination in educational institutions.

Ms. tackled these topics and more. True to its activist origins, it went beyond reporting: explaining and advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment; rating presidential candidates on women’s issues ranging from child care to Social Security policy to women in prison; commissioning and presenting a national study on date rape.

Today’s Ms. covers international women’s issues, reviews books and music and deals with such subjects as the environment and the gender politics of emerging technologies. For most of its history, Ms. has supported itself with subscriptions and donations, eschewing the advertising that is the lifeblood of most mainstream magazines.

Along with Ms., another ground-breaking publication celebrates its 40th anniversary this year: the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” It filled an enormous need for accurate, nonjudgmental information about all aspects of women’s health and sexuality; in a parallel to the response to Ms. magazine, the first edition sold 250,000 copies.

A nonprofit organization, also called Our Bodies Ourselves, grew out of the book’s publication. It went on to advocate for women’s health issues worldwide, with a mission of “advancing health and human rights within a framework of values shaped by women’s voices and a commitment to self-determination and equality.”

The book, now in its ninth edition, is published in 26 overseas editions that are attuned to local cultures. It has sold 4.5 million copies and was recently named by Time magazine one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.

Through technology that we couldn’t have imagined four decades ago, I use the electronic version of Ms. in classes, and refer students to the Our Bodies Ourselves website.

As I will tell my students again next semester, another measure of the success of both Ms. and “Our Bodies Ourselves” is how often attempts have been made to ban them. But, they have endured and flourished and, along with them, the core feminist messages of equality, dignity and transformation.

Rhea Hirshman of New Haven is a freelance writer and adjunct professor at the Stamford branch of the University of Connecticut. Write to her in care of the Register, 40 Sargent Drive, New Haven 06511. Email: rheahirshman@gmail.com.

via FORUM: 40 years later, classics of women’s movement endure- The New Haven Register – Serving New Haven, Connecticut.

But I want to call attention to factors beyond programs that invest in human capital. In our 2009 book Creating an Opportunity Society, my Brookings colleague Isabel Sawhill and I conducted an analysis based on Census Bureau data on a representative sample of Americans. We asked the data to tell us how adult Americans were doing if they followed three elementary norms of growing up in a modern society: finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age 21 and get married before having children. The results were astounding: young adults who followed all three norms had a 2 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 74 percent chance of winding up in the middle class defined as earning roughly $50,000 or more. By contrast, young adults who violated all three norms had a 76 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 7 percent chance of winding up in the middle class.

via Mobility Is a Problem; Now What? – Up Front Blog – Brookings Institution.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Come join us at the Rainbow Center (Rm 403 of the Student Union) to celebrate Trans-awareness and honor those who have been lost to violence aimed at the Transgender community.

12:00-1:30PM Trans People’s Perspectives Panel (Pizza and Salad lunch served)

The transgender community is often a target of violence and hate crimes because of society’s prejudicial views. Over the years, many have been lost to the prejudiced violence surrounding the transgender community. Transgender Day of Remembrance allows us to honor those who have been killed and raise awareness of the prevalence of this targeted violence. In honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance at UConn, a panel of transgender people will offer their perspective on current issues and aspects of their personal lives.

2:00-3:30PM : Clocked – Film Showing (Light refreshments served)

Clocked is a film that tells the story of transgender activism based on personal stories and reflections. There will be a brief discussion following the movie, in which we will talk about the messages the movie conveys as well as what we can do as a community to be allies to the transgender community and help to stop injustice.

Sponsored by the Rainbow Center, Health Education & Women’s Center

When does human life begin, and a woman’s reproductive rights end? Depending on a woman’s location in the world, the answer can depend on her age, mental health, and socioeconomic status. Governments around the world have instituted a complex network of restrictions and exceptions in an attempt to negotiate the abortion question. Now, the Center for Reproductive Rightshas compiled them all in an interactive map of the world’s abortion laws.

Tool around CRR’s map of the world, and you’ll find countries coded red (abortion is banned except possibly to save the mother’s life), green (abortion is not restricted based on the justification behind the procedure), and shaded somewhere in-between (exceptions exist based on a woman’s health, age, or socioeconomic status). Click further and you’ll find that many countries have instituted abortion restrictions and exceptions rarely discussed in the United States.

From “About the Map”:

Since 1998, the Center for Reproductive Rights has producedThe World’s Abortion Laws map to visually compare the legal status of induced abortion in different countries-and to advocate for greater progress in ensuring access to safe and legal abortion services for all women worldwide.

The legal status of abortion is an important indicator of women’s ability to enjoy their reproductive rights. Legal restrictions on abortion often cause high levels of illegal and unsafe abortion, and there is a proven link between unsafe abortion and maternal mortality.

We offer this publication as a resource for human rights advocates working on abortion law reform-and as a means of both tracking progress and identifying the challenges that must still be overcome.

MAPPING THE TRENDS

Countries worldwide are liberalizing their abortion laws

Between 1950 and 1985, nearly all industrialized countries-and several others-liberalized their abortion laws.  In 1994, 179 governments signed the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action, signalling their commitment to prevent unsafe abortion. Since this important milestone, more than 25 countries worldwide have liberalized their abortion laws-while only a handful have tightened legal restrictions on abortion.

Read more at “About the Map“.

To view the map: The World’s Abortion Laws: Home.

The World at Seven Billion: Global Milestone A Reflection of Individual Needs

Responding directly to individual people’s needs and desires to determine for themselves whether and when to have a child will contribute significantly toward their ability to lead healthier, more productive lives. In turn, these benefits for individuals and families accrue to their communities and to society at large. Ultimately, the impact would be felt at the global level. Meeting the stated desires of all women around the world to space or limit births would result in the world’s population peaking within the next few decades—and then actually starting to decline.

The References at page end are excellent.

The Guttmacher Institute continually produces reports of great importance to women. Another report, “Adding it up,”  first published in 2009 and updated in 2010, has more research findings as well as supporting documentation.  Also an amazing set of references.

Find this report at : http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/AddingItUp2009.pdf

By Vivek Prakash

With the world’s population set to hit 7 billion on October 31, photographers in India have been on the move to tell stories that talk about what those numbers really mean in a country as large as India – with 1.2 billion people and counting, this is supposed to be the world’s largest democracy.

When you take a closer look at the statistics, you find some surprising and scary figures – the ratio of female children to males born actually declined here over the last 10 years – from 933 females for every thousand males in the 2001 census, to just 914 in 2011. The combination of cheap portable ultrasound technology and a decades-old preference for male babies — who are seen as breadwinners — has enabled sex-selective abortions and made worse female infanticide. In a place as wide and as vast as India, these are things that are hard to control, no matter how illegal.

Much more at the blog entry: A village of eternal bachelors | Photographers Blog.

Filed under: Bioethics, Discrimination, Gender Differences, Media, Violence against Women ]]> http://wsliblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/a-village-of-eternal-bachelors-photographers-blog/feed/ 0 Kathy An unmarried man sweeps the floor after serving lunch to a group of men living and working in the remote village of Siyani, about 140km (86 miles) west of Gujarat's capital Ahmedabad, October 5, 2011. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash http://wsliblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/stomp-holler-because-weve-had-enough/ http://wsliblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/stomp-holler-because-weve-had-enough/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:35:12 +0000 Kathy http://wsliblog.wordpress.com/?p=961 ]]> I want to thank all the women of color who have spoken up about the use of the term “slutwalk”. It offended me from the start because it’s meaning and purpose was certainly not obvious from this name. (See my previous post: Would a rose smell as sweet if you called it a slut?). Reference to “A rose is a rose is a rose” differs greatly from “A slut is a slut is a slut”.

Now I thank the Northampton group for speaking up on this topic and understanding the issue. See their site for more great photos to go along with their message below.

We, the organizers of Stomp & Holler; Because We’ve Had Enough Northampton, have decided to march in solidarity with SlutWalk. We believe that the word ‘slut’ was chosen in direct response to the cop’s statement in Toronto, but this movement is about addressing a global issue. We, collectively, felt uncomfortable with the call to ‘reclaim’ the word ‘slut.’ It is our mission to stand up and speak out against sexual assault and victim blaming, but we don’t feel that reclaiming this derogatory word accomplishes what we want to accomplish. In addition, there have been multiple critiques of SlutWalk in the past few weeks (including, but not limited to, the letter from Black Women’s Blueprint.) These critiques state that SlutWalk has not made room for people of color and has been predominately gender-normative. We, Stomp & Holler; Because We’ve Had Enough, want to make sure that our mission of inclusivity is known. We cannot fight sexism without working against all other forms of oppression. We must make a call for solidarity. Our first step may be changing our name, but the fight does not end with this march.

We continue to stand in solidarity with SlutWalk, because the message of the movement is clear: No one is ever ‘asking for it.’ No one deserves to be raped.

via STOMP & HOLLER : Because We’ve Had Enough!.

Dr. Rene Almeling, an assistant professor of sociology at Yale, is the author of Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (University of California, 2011), soon on the Babbidge Library shelves. The books description reads:

Unimaginable until the twentieth century, the clinical practice of transferring eggs and sperm from body to body is now the basis of a bustling market. In Sex Cells, Rene Almeling provides an inside look at how egg agencies and sperm banks do business. Although both men and women are usually drawn to donation for financial reasons, Almeling finds that clinics encourage sperm donors to think of the payments as remuneration for an easy “job.” Women receive more money but are urged to regard egg donation in feminine terms, as the ultimate “gift” from one woman to another. Sex Cells shows how the gendered framing of paid donation, as either a job or a gift, not only influences the structure of the market, but also profoundly affects the individuals whose genetic material is being purchased.

Find additional background at One Man Fathering 150 Children? Why Sperm Banks May Be Unethical | Sex & Relationships | AlterNet.

Looming behind any scenario in which millions of women shop for DNA from among millions of strangers based on characteristics such as looks, education, attainment, culture and class is the specter of eugenics: the pseudoscience — popular in early 20th-century America and Nazi Germany and elsewhere — of improving human populations via marriage restrictions, sterilization and selective impregnation. We don’t practice eugenics in this country anymore. Or do we? Is it the flipside of death panels?

What do you think?

Dr. Sandra Harding to speak at Konover Auditorium

A talk by Dr. Sandra Harding

• Scholar in feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology and philosophy of science.
• Professor, Social Sciences & Comparative Education University of California – Los Angeles

Wednesday, September 21, 2011
4:00 – 5:30 PM
Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center, UConn – Storrs

Here is a passage from Dr. Harding’s 2009 article Postcolonial and feminist philosophies of science and technology: convergences and dissonances.
Postcolonial Studies, 12:4, 401-421.

Gender and science themes

From its beginnings, gender and science projects in the West pursued five main research trajectories. These were often initiated by groups with different kinds of disciplinary, political, or institutional interests in scientific and technological research. (1) Where are (and have been) women in the social structures of modern Western sciences, and why have there been so few of them in the arenas of the design and management of scientific and technological research? (2) How and why have ‘sexist sciences’ taken on projects of providing empirical support for the claimed inferiority of women? (3) How have technologies and the applications of the results of scientific research been used against women’s equality? Women’s health, reproductive, and environmental concerns were among the earliest such focuses. (4) How do scientific and technological education*pedagogy and curricula*restrict women’s development as scientists and engineers? (5) What is problematic about the epistemologies, methodologies, and philosophies of science that produce and support such sexist and androcentric practices?

These issues all remain important almost four decades later*unfortunately. In some areas significant progress has been made*for example, in increasing access for women to scientific educations, publications, organizations, lab and classroom jobs, and at least token presences in policy contexts. Moreover, significant changes in health and reproductive policies have occurred for women in already advantaged groups. Yet the changes have been mostly for the worse for women in Africa, South Asia, and other places around the globe. Today it is widely recognized that Western and especially US economic and political policies have greatly contributed to the increased threats to environments, health, and life itself experienced by the vast majority of the world’s citizens who are women, and their dependants (as well as adult men), around the globe. An important achievement of feminisms has been their development of epistemological and methodological approaches that deeply transform ‘the logic of scientific inquiry’ and its familiar regulative ideals. These approaches have been widely adopted in the social sciences and some fields of biology and medical research. Nevertheless, such feminist work has been largely marginalized in the mainstream science studies movements in the North. If they are not ‘studying women,’ these researchers seem to think that gender issues are irrelevant to both the worlds they examine and the assumptions guiding their own work.

A book signing and reception will take place in the Dodd Center Lobby immediately following Dr. Harding’s presentation. The Coop Bookstore will have copies of Dr. Harding’s books available for sale at the book signing.

These events are free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program; the CLAS Fund for Innovation in Interdisciplinary Race, Eth-nicity, and Gender Studies; the Human Rights Institute; University of Connecticut Research Foundation; the Department of Philosophy; the Department of Sociology; and the Honors Program

For more information, please contact us at 860-486-3970 or wsinfo@uconn.edu.

Link to the full text of this article (for UConn affiliates).