The good, the bad and the ugly below the orange Rorsach test.
Reproductive Rights:
The documentary After Tiller talks about abortion in America, and the doctors who are still willing to provide it after the murder of Dr. George Tiller.
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller proposed that all pregnant women have mandatory screenings for drug abuse. After the backlash, he is now denying that he ever said it. The transcript says otherwise.
A Michigan court ruled that a for-profit corporation cannot refuse to comply with the ACA's birth control coverage requirements on "religious" grounds. Or as Jezebel observed, if the organization is Catholic, how come it hasn't been baptized & gone to confession? (Come to think of it, there are a LOT of corporations that ought to be going to confession.)
Two of the human faces on the cuts to women's health care in Texas.
Violence:
While the topic of mass shootings tops the headlines once again, the less visible problem of guns and domestic violence continues to take its toll.
Vanderbilt football player Chris Boyd pled guilty to helping cover up a gang-rape of an unconscious woman. He received probation in exchange for agreeing to testify against his teammates.
A Texas sign company decided to advertise by putting a realistic-looking decal of a bound and gagged woman on the tailgate of a truck. The result was several passersby calling the police to report an apparent abduction. The company apologized and made a small donation to an agency to help abuse victims - but also bragged about how much business the stunt had brought them.
There was an international outcry after reports of an 8-year-old Yemeni girl who died of internal injuries after being forcibly married to an adult man. Local officials are denying the story as a mere "rumor," although many residents of the village continue to insist that it happened. There have been similar confirmed cases in the past. Yemen's human rights minister is now pushing to outlaw marriage before the age of 18. Currently Yemen has no minimum age of marriage.
More on the Naval Academy case where three men are charged with raping a female midshipman. Military trials allow questioning of victims that would not be legal in a civilian case; including in this case whether she wore a bra, how wide she opened her mouth during oral sex and whether she had apologized to another midshipman with whom she had intercourse “for being a ho.”
Economics:
60 percent of single women can't afford basic needs.
No surprise here: the proposed cuts in food stamps disproportionately affect women.
New Hampshire's Jim Rubens, who will be running against Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, explains how gun violence is caused by those meanie women taking men's jobs.
Intersectionality:
"Big Brother" host Julie Chen revealed that she was pressured by her former employer (an NBC affiliate) into having plastic surgery to make her eyes look less "Asian." The TV station, now under different management, has publicly apologized.
Racism, body image, and Miss America.
Some thoughts on street harassment and African-American women. And some more from Trudy at Gradient Lair, on how racism and sexism collude to pressure women into taking these violations in silence.
Good News and Action Items:
September 18th was Men for Choice Day. Check out #MenforChoice on Twitter.
As US involvement in Afghanistan winds down, let the Obama administration know not to trade away women's rights during the reconciliation and transition process.
The domestic violence law in Nicaragua is now facing "reforms" that would weaken it. Amnesty International has more information, and how you can help.
An interview with Birgitta Ohlsson, Sweden's Minister for European Affairs.
And an interview with Saudi Arabia's first woman film director. Her film, "Wadjda," is the first movie shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, the touching tale of a girl who wants something girls aren't supposed to have: a bicycle.
Some long-needed changes have led to a 50% drop in women dying in childbirth in the Congo.
I freakin' LOVE this: feminist pranksters redirected web traffic from Playboy's annual list of "top 10 party schools" to a spoof site that appeared to be sponsored by Playboy, on the theme that consent is sexy:
Somewhere in the countless hours we spent tallying up co-eds and scoring beer pong, we lost track of the most essential element of the Playboy lifestyle: sexual pleasure. Rape is kryptonite to sexual pleasure. The two cannot co-exist. For our revised party guide to live up to our founder’s vision, we had to put a new criterion on top. Namely, consent.
The best part: when people thought the site was really from
Playboy, the response was overwhelmingly positive. As Maya at Feministing comments:
Playboy could talk about sexual assault and enthusiastic consent in a way that’s in line with their brand. And people would not only buy it–they’d like it. As FORCE notes, “The culture of consent is already out there…It’s, in fact, already popular. Hopefully, the gap between the messages that people want and the messages that people get about consent and sex will continue to shrink.”
Seriously,
read the whole thing - it rocks.