One of the biggest stories this week in
The War on Women is Florida's domestic violence victim Marissa Alexander being freed from prison to home detention. This has been ably diaried by
Leslie Salzillo. I'll have more to say below. Unfortunately, the Republican Congress is back to the abortion business and we are once again looking at vaginal ultrasounds as punishment for seeking an abortion. Now that I've had one, I agree that it is punishment and a kind of physical invasion that does resemble rape. So my topics for this week are following:
Marissa Akexander
Republican Congress & Abortion
Jonathan Chait and PC Talk
Vanderbilt Rape Case Verdict
Celebrations
Women Explorers of National Geographic
Ruby Bridges at her half-year birthday
Follow me beneath the orange squiggle and I'll tell you more.
Marissa Alexander
Part of the very best news of the week was Marissa Alexander's release from prison. This domestic violence victim, who fired a warning shot at her estranged husband. Rather than being able to use the whites and near-whites only male excuse of Stand-Your-Ground, Alexander was prosecuted and convicted on three counts of aggravated assault, each carrying a twenty-year sentence. Florida Prosecutor Angela Corey asked that the sentences be served consecutively instead of concurrently, resulting in a 60 year sentence. Some rule of law. A white or near-white male can use this defense; a black woman cannot. Alexander's release was predicated on her pleading guilty and agreeing to serve two more years of in-home detention, wearing an electronic ankle locator. Victoria Law explains the situation in The Nation. A petition is up from Color of Change to fire the prosecutor Angela Corey, who, indeed does have input in deciding how the sentences should be served.
This is a double shot: racism and sexism all in one package. It is also an extraordinary differential application of law. The organization formed to support Alexander has published Free Marissa Now this call to free her from home detention. They cite journalist and blogger Maya Schenwar. Schenwar also notes academic analyses of surveillance and Women here may want to think about Michel Foucault's analysis of Foucault Info. For all that Foucault was a French academic, his analysis of surveillance is mighty applicable to police and prosecutorial strategies with prisoners and the accused. I think Discipline and Punish is the most accessible of his books. Worth a read.
The Republican Congress and Abortion, Again
As we know, the Republicans in Congress have returned to one of their favorite issues, abortion. Once again, we are talking about forcing women to have vaginal ultrasounds when considering an abortion. A petition to Congress is up at UltraViolet. Having just had the procedure myself, I had NO idea beforehand. I have a couple of (thankfully) small ovarian cysts and my doc thought I needed further radiological study, an ultrasound. I thought of the ultrasounds I had had in my pregnancies, an odd, giggly combination of cold conductor on my stomach and a wand that rolled over my abdominal area. But that isn't a vaginal ultrasound. When I arrived at the site, I was informed what the procedure was. I said, haltingly, "But that's the controversial procedure that Virginia legislators wanted to perform on all women in Virginia seeking an abortion." The tech responded, "No, that's to find those sweet little babies, little angels." Not a good start. I was lectured about my inadequate preparations: not enough water soon enough. And it was brutal and hurtful. I think the tech made sure it was that way. It also took almost two hours. Never again will I have anything radiological done there. But it really fired me up about the procedure's abortion status. In my case, it was medically necessary to get an accurate size on the cysts. It is not medically necessary for a woman seeking an abortion. Ideologically necessary for Republicans, however. Please, please sign.
Jonathan Chait and Whining about "PC" Talk
"Liberal" (of the New Republic type) Jonathan Chait used New York Magazine to whine about "pc" talk, which, of course, includes feminist talk. He is so afraid of being silenced by activists, a bit of an irony for someone publishing in New York Magazine. Two women respond appropriately in other venues. Michelle Goldberg responds in The Nation's blog and Amanda Taub responds at Vox. We know that these women may receive brutal and scary comments, but I want to highlight one response at The Nation that I find deeply irritating. See the block quote below.
The distance between what writers—or, at least, some writers—say to each other and what they say publicly is growing. That’s not oppression, but it is a loss.
This is not about writers you dope.
It's about jobs being lost because of a stupid tweet.
It's about bullying of students in high school.
It's about thought control in so called liberal arts classes where the point of the class is to learn to consider all ideas.
It's about the ACLU moving from defending the speech of Nazis to defending only certain speech that they feel is politically correct (see Wendy Kaminer)
It's about being able to push back on the notoriously debunked feminists statistics of 1 in 5, 77 cents etc that hurt all of us, and hurt feminism.
It's about being able to defend students caught in a sex crimes tribunal.
It's about "free speech" being watered down by liberals into "first amendment" and if it ain't the gov't restricting you then you ain't got no problem.
Stop being a narcissist Goldberg, what writers do to each other? Who gives a crap?
This is
* whatever, a frequent commenter at
The Nation, who has made
1,789 comments at the magazine.He (I'm quite sure) doesn't strike me as a fan of
The Nation's usual list of issues. So we have a gremlin/troll sitting on a website, this one progressive, just waiting to attack people who hold feminist views. So what this commenter objects to, really, is
male jobs lost
male students being bullied
male students mourning the loss of all male authors in liberal arts classes
males not defended by ACLU for hate speech
males having to listen to statistics showing economic damage to women
males accused of sex crimes
males being surprised that the First Amendment doesn't apply to them personally
Another male (I'm sure) responds a study similar to the Chait material on
The Daily Beast. He says:
Wow.. thank you, this article says it perfectly - it's simply not a gendered problem (I personally doubt it's much of a problem at all, as long as people who legitimately believe they are in danger can get help from the police). Whenever I hear about what a terrible patriarchy our society is, something like this reminds me that in reality, women's priorities, concerns, fears and desires are usually at the center of our cultural discussions. It's a natural evolutionary consequence of our history as hunter-gatherers, scarily dependent on our limited ability to reproduce, and for that it's ultimately fine. But I don't think it's a stretch to say that industrial feminism is preying on these instincts we all have to get more eyeballs on content and to continue to generate outrage so they can prop up and justify their own existence. That being observed, I think the more interesting phenomenon here is the broad failure of society to have any compassion for, let alone acknowledgement of a full 50% of the abuse online. I looked for almost an hour and this was one of only a handful of articles that even dared to question the consensus of how awful the internet is for women, much less actually provide some worthwhile counterpoints. Despite all the awful things people say on the internet, it is ultimately just words on a monitor; if you are careful and deliberate in determining a threat is legitimate, there is already a working system to address such a problem: the criminal justice system. Otherwise, people should be free to say what they want, feelings be damned. No one has a right to never be offended. Any 'danger' that comes with such an incredible platform for free expression is easily outweighed by the social value of the marketplace of free ideas, the inherent value of broad communication, and the importance of decentralized journalism in giving citizens the (sometimes classified) information they need to make informed decisions about the world they live in.
WhoTheHell_Cares Sep 4, 2014
This is a certain type of male, a male holding a constant grievance about not being able to order women to be quiet anymore. These guys strike me as being every bit as hateful as those who threaten violence, but present themselves as reasonable guys, "just sayin', yah know" when their rhetoric is nearly invisible when the violent writers are there but just as insidious.
Vanderbilt Rape Conviction
Another bit of news this week was the successful conviction of two male Vanderbilt students in a rape case. In part, their conviction was successful because cellphone photos of the group rape were taken and distributed by both the perpetrators and onlookers. But, never say die . . . the defense will be asking the judge to vacate the verdict as described in Salon because one of the jurors had experienced a sexual assault. If the stats are anywhere accurate about the number of women who have experienced a sexual assault, I would imagine getting a jury free of women who fit this description is very difficult.
As always, there is someone, to blame women, as reported on Salon, this time in a Fox interview. Big surprise.
Celebrations
I don't want to leave without something celebratory. First, National Geographic offers a beautiful and compelling set of women explorers doing amazing things. Where can we sign up?
Second, let's celebrate Ruby Bridges' half-year birthday. As a child, she was walked to integrate her elementary school classroom by federal marshals, as depicted here on Facebook Timeline. She was such a cool, poised girl child that I thought it would be just fine to celebrate near the half-year birthday.
Have a good week everyone! Keep fighting!