It's been nearly two years since I
wrote about the failures of Big Feminism to effectively fight to protect and expand women's rights:
I'm talking about FeminismTM, as in the largest feminist advocacy organizations in the country raising millions of dollars to fight on behalf of women.
And I'm wondering if FeminismTM is really such a good investment.
You know those emails? The ones from NOW and NARAL and Emily's List that declare, with great urgency and lots of ALL CAPS and exclamation marks, that you must give money right now? Stop this bill! Block this nominee! Protect Roe! Save the Supreme Court! And give, give, give!!!
And since you often agree -- why yes, I do want to stop this bill; why no, I do not want that nominee confirmed -- you click and give. It won't stop this bill or block that nominee, but you will get another email at the next crisis.
And it's always a crisis. Even under a Democratic president, with a Democratic supermajority in Congress, the nation's biggest feminist organizations are in crisis mode, raising money but unable to deliver results. They're just as effective as they were under Bush. Which is to say, Not. At. All.
And you know what's changed in those two years? Not a damn thing.
Take the latest battle to defeat the Personhood Amendment in Mississippi. Thankfully, voters defeated the heinous attempt to give rights to eggs, and the national discussion about the absurdity of this amendment no doubt helped to deliver that defeat.
But just days before the election, something caught my eye. It was this headline at Huffington Post from NARAL President Nancy Keenan:
The War on Women You Haven't Heard of
Less than a week before we find out the fate of one of the battles in the War on Women, and there's another battle we don't even know about? As if our efforts aren't already spread thin enough—trying to keep House Republicans from defunding women's health care, for example, or trying to educate the country about the very real problem of sexual harassment—now there's a new front in the war?
Right now, they have their sights set on Mississippi. This Tuesday, Mississippians will go to the polls and vote on Initiative 26, a so-called "personhood" ballot measure.
Oh. This war Nancy Keenan thinks we haven't heard about is, in fact, a war that feminist writers have actually been writing about ad nauseum for weeks months years. Name a feminist blogger, and I guarantee you she's been pounding the keyboard non-stop about the movement to define a fertilized egg as a person.
But thank god NARAL sweeps in, just days before the election, to educate us about something we apparently know nothing about. Excellent timing, isn't it? Because if we are really as ignorant as Nancy Keenan thinks we are, a few days is plenty of notice to launch an effective campaign to defeat the bill, isn't it?
I'm not saying Keenan and her organization don't mean well. Or that the big feminist advocacy organizations of this country serve no purpose at all. But this post reflects the kind of ineffectiveness and tone deafness that is so prevalent among those who monopolize so much of the conversation about women in this country. Far too little, far too late. With zero recognition of the work that a new generation of feminists is doing to fight for women:
My challenge to you is to bring up what's happening in Mississippi and across the country with your friends -- including people with whom you've never discussed abortion. Starting the conversation is the first step in helping connect the personal with the political. If they value women's freedom and privacy, then they have to speak out against measures like the one in Mississippi.
But we don't need challenges from on high in order to start the conversation—because we've already been having the conversation, even without Keenan's instruction. Does she really not know that? Or does she think a conversation isn't really started until NARAL steps in to suggest it? And if she really believes that, why wait until the very last minute to start that conversation? How the hell are we supposed to mobilize an effective effort to defeat such a ballot initiative just days before the vote?
Keenan mentions that Mississippi isn't the only state attempting to legislate rights for eggs:
The anti-choice groups behind Initiative 26 are pushing similar ballot measures for 2012 in Florida, Ohio, Montana, and Nevada.
So at least she gives some notice to fight in those states. But guess what she doesn't even bother to mention at all:
That's right. Now Republicans in Congress want to pass a
federal Personhood Amendment. As
Mother Jones reported:
Sixty-three House Republicans, or over a quarter of the GOP conference, are cosponsors of HR 212, Rep. Paul Broun's (R-Ga.) "Sanctity of Human Life Act," which includes language that directly parallels that of the Mississippi personhood amendment.
And Rep. Duncan Hunter's very similar HR 374 has 91 co-sponsors. And in the Senate, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) has introduced a companion bill to HR 374, which already has the support of more than a quarter of the Republicans in the Senate.
Not a word, though, from Keenan about this federal attempt at a Personhood Amendment. No warning whatsoever about how we must start pressuring our congressional representatives to block these attempts. Nope. Apparently, this is a war on women Keenan hasn't heard about yet.
Or maybe she's just waiting until the moment before the House brings one of these bills to a vote. Because, as we learned two years ago with the Stupak Amendment to block reproductive health care from the Affordable Care Act, why bother rallying the troops in advance, when you can wait until the last minute and all but guarantee yet another failure in the fight to protect women?
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This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.
- Happy birthday, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
- Sometimes being a female blogger really sucks:
Right as I sat down to write this post, my phone beeped.
It does this! For some reason, it is broken so that its “ring” settings are reduced to either “silent” or “beep every time you get any sort of message whatsoever including Twitter @s.” It’s been beeping a lot these past few days. But since all of these, including the Twitter @s, are often work-related, I check it every time. This one was from Twitter.
“I will fuck your ass to death you filthy fucking whore, ” it read. “Your only worth on this planet is as a warm hole to stick my cock in.”
That's not an exceptional story, by the way. It's par for the course for women bloggers. Check out #MenCallMeThings on Twitter to see what other lovely slurs we women of the net endure. Hell, check out today's hate mail:
Damn you liberal skank, you should shave those pits, you know they cause you to smell like the "from under cheese" on MOOchelle's butt? Women's Studies HAHAHAHAHA, what a skank liberal punk you are! Need big government because no real man will come within 50 feet of your disgusting nasty arse! Now go shower, but before you do that you have my permission to eat a pine cone, hug a tree, and since you are in limp wrist land, go protest a happy meal!
- In response, Amanda Marcotte offers some really good advice:
That's my main piece of advice: don't go away. And when these guys dish it out, try to imagine who it is cowardly hiding behind his fake name and fake email address, dishing out crap. Imagine them in their stained underwear, shoving cold fried food in their mouths while they whine online that women keep overlooking them for dates, inscrutably choosing to go out with guys who take frequent showers and don't spend hours online combining and recombining the words "cunt" and "dyke". Imagine how truly pathetic you have to be to spill the vicious, woman-hating shit these guys spill. They attack you because they know how much they suck, and it's easier to shit on women than to strive to be a better person. That makes it easier to hang in. And the longer you hang in, the more they realize their bullshit isn't going to work. And eventually, it starts to fade. It never goes away completely, but it does get better. Just don't let them win.
- Reproductive rights are about more than just the right to terminate a pregnancy. They're also about the right to be a mother.
- Newsflash: Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan and Rick Perry's postcard tax plan would be especially bad for women.
- Sigh:
As ThinkProgress has reported, anti-abortion activists are increasingly taking their crusade to high schools and middle schools, frightening students with disturbing graphic images as they make their way to class.
Now, the creators of a movie that compares abortion to the Holocaust are taking this tactic a step further and are lobbying to screen their film in high schools. The group’s press release touts the film’s ability to change minds, and makes no distinction between the actual Holocaust and modern abortion. In fact, the creator promotes the film as the solution to a lack of education about the Holocaust in American schools[.]
- As Vanessa at Feministing writes, "It's about damn time."
- Two very serious male reporters ask a very serious question: Is It Offensive For A Lingerie Company To Make Salesgirls Put Bra Size On Their Name Tags? You'll be shocked—shocked!—to know that these two very serious male reporters conclude that hell yeah, those sales girls (also known as, you know, women) should totally have to advertise their bra sizes:
Making salesgirls write bra size on their name tags is first of all a sexy concept.
Secondly we think it is a useful idea, which will help men figure out what bra size to buy.
Okay, ladies, fess up. Haven't you always wished bra shopping were a sexier experience for men?
- Speaking of dress codes:
After winning a long fight to get into the Olympics, female boxers are at the center of a dress code debate ahead of the 2012 London Games, including whether they should wear skirts in the ring.
The International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) said Friday that officials will meet in January to discuss the issue and draw up recommendations.
"AIBA is seeking a consensus from the worldwide boxing family and the wider public for reference purposes," the statement said.
The federation said it was responding to recent media reports suggesting that female boxers would be forced to fight in skirts rather than shorts.
"AIBA has not made any final decision on boxers' uniform for women," the governing body said.
And in case you were wondering, no, they are not considering whether to make male boxers wear skirts.
- MSNBC reports that half of working mothers get paid maternity leave. You know what that means? The other half of working mothers don't.
- Congratulations to our very own Elisa Batista (a.k.a., Markos' wife) and this year's winner of the Best Latin@ Inspirational Blogger award. In case you're not familiar with Elisa's awesomeness, check out her recent post Memo to Men: There ARE Women Leaders.
- In case you missed it, Dahlia Lithwick wrote a fantastic piece about conservatives and sexual harassment:
Sexual harassment is now nothing. Welcome to the era of gender harassment denialism. The harassment skeptics claim that harassment, like racism, used to exist but is now over. Twenty years ago, when charges were leveled at Clarence Thomas, supporters of the accused refused to take the accuser seriously. Now supporters of the accused refuse to take the accusation itself seriously. We have gone from not knowing what sexual harassment is to not believing it still happens. All in less than 20 years. [...]
It bears repeating (again): We don’t and may never know the full details of the allegations against Cain. Yet brushing them away as failed jokes or benign compliments to greedy women doesn’t comport with what witnesses are describing: Reports of Cain’s “aggressive and unwanted” behavior toward a subordinate that were “persistent” and spanned “several incidents” may not strike you as serious. But for a young woman, afraid for her job and her reputation, they are career-defining. Nobody is suggesting these claims are necessarily true. But to claim that they must be false because all women lie and all harassers are just joking is a terrifying proposition. Even more than the outright antagonism of so many conservative pundits, what’s worrying to me is the indifference of so many Republican voters: New poll results show that 70 percent of Republicans say the sexual harassment scandal makes no difference in their vote. It’s no longer just a Republican war on women. It’s a war on the idea that any woman might ever tell the truth.
- But of course it does exist, and it starts early:
Nearly half of 7th to 12th graders experienced sexual harassment in the last school year, according to a study scheduled for release on Monday, with 87 percent of those who have been harassed reporting negative effects such as absenteeism, poor sleep and stomachaches.
- I can't believe I'm saying this, but go read this piece about why Kim Kardashian's divorce is good for women.