OMG! Everything about this is so ridiculously amazing and adorable!!!!
===
Photographer Jaime Moore from Austin, Texas, took photos of Emma emulating real women worth admiring: Amelia Earhart, Coco Chanel, Susan B Anthony, Helen Keller and Jane Goodall.
Daaaaammmnnn. When an old Jewish white guy appointed to the judicial bench by Ronald Reagan legitimately schools the Obama administration on its discrimination against young women of color in the realm of reproductive freedom, you know that American politics have gone far off the rails …
===
“It turns out that the same policies that President Bush followed were followed by President Obama,” said District Court Judge Edward Korman on Tuesday morning, in a charged and dramatic two-hour hearing in which the Obama administration defended its arbitrary policy to limit contraceptive access.
Korman was explaining why, when previously ruling on access to Plan B emergency contraception, he had initially waited for the administration to act on its own and make the drug widely available based on scientific evidence, rather than on politics. “The process had been corrupted by political influence. I remanded because I thought with a new president” things would be different, Korman said. But in 2011, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled, with the president’s explicit blessing, the FDA’s recommendation to lift all age restrictions, which Korman ruled in March was a decision made in “bad faith” because of the politics around sex and contraception. He ordered the administration to lift all restrictions. Instead, it accepted a manufacturer’s petition to make Plan B available over the counter only with photo ID showing the purchaser was at least 15, and the Department of Justice is appealing.
This morning, Korman repeatedly slammed his hand down on the table for emphasis, interrupting the government counsel’s every other sentence with assertions like, “You’re just playing games here,” “You’re making an intellectually dishonest argument,” “You’re basically lying,” “This whole thing is a charade,” “I’m entitled to say this is a lot of nonsense, am I not?” and “Contrary to the baloney you were giving me …” He also accused the administration of hypocrisy for opposing voter ID laws but being engaged in the “suppression of the rights of women” with the ID requirement for the drug.
Frank Amanat, arguing on behalf of the administration, said that the court had overreached by ordering a particular policy rather than remanding to the agency for further review. But he could not say, in response to repeated demands from Korman, that the result would be any different if it were returned to the agency. Nor did he specify any harm that would come from making the drug more available.
“The irony is that I would be allowing what the FDA wanted. This has got to be one of the most unusual administrative law cases I have ever seen,” Korman said, adding, “I would have thought that on the day I handed down my decision, they would be drinking champagne at the FDA.”
Korman said the administration had engaged in a “choreography”: “First the president makes a speech to Planned Parenthood and throws them a kiss. The next day you grant an application from 2012″ to make it available with ID for 15 and up, in an attempt to “sugarcoat” the appeal of Korman’s order to lift all restrictions. (The decision was actually announced a couple of days after the Planned Parenthood speech.)
The government didn’t argue the merits of requiring a photo ID or that the drug only be sold in locations with an on-site pharmacy, but Korman made clear why he found that to be an inadequate compromise: “You’re using these 11- and 12-year-olds to place an undue burden on women’s ability to access emergency contraception. If it’s an impediment to voting, it’s an impediment to get the drug.”
He cited Brennan Center statistics — which he said Eric Holder had also cited in a speech before the NAACP — showing that 25 percent of African-Americans of voting age don’t have a photo ID, and also dismissed the government’s suggestion that 15-year-olds, who usually aren’t eligible for a driver’s license, could use a birth certificate, since that’s not a photo ID. ”You’re disadvantaging young people, African-Americans, the poor — that’s the policy of the Obama administration?” (He didn’t mention it, but immigrants would also face additional barriers.)
Hmmm … this sports website has a whole bunch of features on various athletes’ “WAGs” (wives and girlfriends) — including the “hottest” WAGs of college sports as well as professional golf, tennis, etc.
Of course, there is no comparable “HABs” (husbands and boyfriends) section on this website, despite the fact that women athletes exist and compete at all levels of sports, from college to professional. Nor are there any lesbian couples featured in the WAGs section.
In other words, female spouses get treated like public sexual objects; male spouses, not so much. Inversely, male athletes gain in prestige according to the “hotness” of their “WAG”, who are displayed like a trophy. Female athletes, on the other hand, are themselves judged according to their own “hotness,” while that of their male spouse is deemed irrelevant.
Can you say, sexist?
===
NCAA wives and girlfriends have historically never received much attention in the media. However, it appears that has all changed with social media web sites, such as Twitter, taking over the internet.
Anytime a hot wife or girlfriend appears in the stands during their significant other’s collegiate game, it is instantly trending on the internet. Brent Musburger single-handedly made Katherine Webb a household name, and jumpstarted her career in the process. Now, it appears other hot WAGs want to be the next big thing to appear on television.
It was pretty clear no team was prepared for the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles in the earlier rounds of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. However, what no one was really ready for was Andy Enfield’s model wife to appear in the stands. If college basketball was not already the most watched sport in the month of March, Amanda Marcum shot it to the top of the list. March Madness will never be the same after this year. Hopefully, UCLA can make a solid run during the 2013-14 so that Marcum will get more television coverage. At least her image has been plastered in enough places to fill the time until she makes another appearance next season.
Elizabeth Smart became a household name after she was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, UT at the age of 14 and held in captivity for nine months. She was forced into a polygamous marriage, tethered to a metal cable, and raped daily until she was rescued from her captors nine months later. Smart was recovered while she and her kidnappers were walking down a suburban street, leading many Americans who followed her story on the national news to wonder: Why didn’t she just run away as soon as she was brought outside?
Speaking to an audience at Johns Hopkins about issues of human trafficking and sexual violence, Smart recently offered an answer to that question. She explained that some human trafficking victims don’t run away because they feel worthless after being raped, particularly if they have been raised in conservative cultures that push abstinence-only education and emphasize sexual purity:
Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”
Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”
Now in her mid-twenties, Smart runs a foundation to help educate children about sexual crimes. She now believes that children should grow up learning that “you will always have value and nothing can change that.”
Social psychologists and sexual abuse counselors agree that comprehensive sex education can help prevent sexual crimes. Teaching children about their bodies gives them the tools to describe acts of abuse without feeling as embarrassed or uncomfortable, and it also helps elevate their self-confidence and sense of bodily autonomy. A shame-based approach to genitalia and sexuality, on the other hand, sends kids the message that they can’t discuss or ask questions about any of those issues.
Our society is a moralistic, sexist, repressive excuse of a civilization.
===
WTF. Obama has proven to be an absolute enemy of the movement for women’s reproductive freedom; from approving anti-abortion amendments in his health reform bill, to blocking access to the morning-after pill. he talks a big game at planned parenthood-sponsored events & galas, but talk is cheap. his actions speak louder.
===
The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it would appeal a federal judge’s order to make the most common morning-after contraceptive available without a prescription for girls and women of all ages.
The announcement came a day after the Food and Drug Administration said that one well-known morning-after pill, Plan B One-Step, would be made available without a prescription for girls as young as 15 — instead of only to girls ages 17 and over, as has been the case.
The Justice Department’s action will not affect that F.D.A. decision. Rather, the department is seeking to overturn a much broader order by the judge that removed restrictions for all ages and for generic versions of the pill, not just Plan B One-Step. The order, issued on April 5 by Judge Edward R. Korman of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, gave the F.D.A. 30 days to comply.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department also asked Judge Korman to stay his order pending the results of the appeal.
In his ruling, Judge Korman said the Obama administration had put politics before science in restricting access to the drug. The Justice Department’s decision to appeal was most likely based not only on the substance of that ruling, but also on the precedent it would set in countermanding an order by a White House cabinet member, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services.
In 2011, Ms. Sebelius decided that the pill should be available without a prescription only to girls and women 17 and older, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s finding that it was safe and effective and should be available without any age restrictions. Ms. Sebelius said the pill had not been studied for safety in girls as young as 11. It was the first time a cabinet secretary had publicly overruled the F.D.A.
Sexual Violence and Neoliberalism
Sponsored by Historical Materialism Conference 2013 - New York
SPEAKERS:
Tithi Bhattacharya
The Evil Dead remake makes you ask: Don’t horror film fans deserve more than empty carnivals of dismemberment and misogyny?
IF HOLLYWOOD can be said to have a preference for remaking and re-marketing old films—partly to avoid paying for new ideas and partly out of wanting to create commodities already proven on the market—then this predilection has been taken to ghoulish extremes in the industry’s approach to horror movies.
This tendency, combined with the genre’s inborn penchant for sequels and predisposition for style over substance has produced a seemingly endless flood of adaptations of “classics.” This thoughtless, battle-tested, money-making method is now such a reflex on the part of the studios that genre-partisans have become numb, cynical or left cleaving to our hope that some hapless executive might green-light a Sleepaway Camp remake without realizing the mind-bending consequences of such a slip.
This depressing state of affairs meant that when rumor circulated that cult hit Evil Dead was slated to be the latest flick plucked from the dusty shelf of ’80s horror legends and given a contemporary gloss, a chorus of skeptical scoffs could be heard resounding off the walls of hundreds of dank basements lit by the lonely glow of computer monitors.
But when it was officially announced that Sam Raimi, the original’s director, and Bruce Campbell, the chin-tastic face of the franchise, both agreed to oversee the reboot, horror-geeks across the Internet suspended their disbelief and dared to hope that this time things would be different. And in some ways, the new film does not disappoint: what Raimi, Campbell, and director Fede Alvarez have achieved with their remake is a modern day re-imagining featuring a remarkable fidelity to the spirit of the original.
With all of the bells, whistles and bottomless budgets for makeup and effects that come along with a major Hollywood production, Alvarez is able to transform the camp of his source material into the believable skin-crawling stuff of which nightmares are made. On the purely visual level, this is realized in terror-inducing mastery, and represents a very respectful nod to what the original could have done if its creators had even two nickels to rub together.
… THERE IS a second aspect of Evil Dead which deserves sharp criticism from those of us who love the horror genre and also happen to be interested in the struggle for human liberation: Namely it’s sexism. The torture-porny elements are failings largely passed on from the original, though cast in sharper relief by the recent global resurgence of activism in response to rape and sexual assault.
In some ways, the remake engages in meager attempts to improve upon the original’s problems in this area. For example, it includes a departure from the ’80s version that both challenges the prevailing moralism toward women’s personal choices and makes at least one of the female characters into more than a passive vessel for demonic forces to possess and for the male characters to chop into pieces.
Laudable as these changes may be, the more perniciously misogynistic features far outweigh any of the (only passingly) progressive elements.
A Canadian woman filing charges of sexual assault will be required to remove her niqab to testify against her alleged attackers. On Wednesday, a Toronto judge ruled that the woman’s niqab (or face veil) “masks her demeanour and blocks…effective cross-examination by counsel for the accused”. The decision applies to the preliminary hearings where she is expected to face her uncle and cousin, whom she accuses of sexually abusing her during her childhood.
The woman, known as “NS”, has fought the Canadian court to wear her niqab during hearings since the case began. A five-year series of decisions and appeals led all the way to the country’s supreme court, which ruled in 2012 that the issue should be decided on a case-by-case basis. The supreme court ruling requires the provincial court to consider both the weight of the individual’s “religious conviction” and the impact on trial fairness before issuing a decision for the niqab to be removed. “NS” plans to appeal the most recent decision.
The police are NOT your friend, nor do they “serve and protect” you if you are a woman facing domestic violence …
===
Last year in Norristown, Pa., Lakisha Briggs’ boyfriend physically assaulted her, and the police arrested him. But in a cruel turn of events, a police officer then told Ms. Briggs, “You are on three strikes. We’re gonna have your landlord evict you.”
Yes, that’s right. The police threatened Ms. Briggs with eviction because she had received their assistance for domestic violence. Under Norristown’s “disorderly behavior ordinance,” the city penalizes landlords and tenants when the police respond to three instances of “disorderly behavior” within a four-month period. The ordinance specifically includes “domestic disturbances” as disorderly behavior that triggers enforcement of the law.
After her first “strike,” Ms. Briggs was terrified of calling the police. She did not want to do anything to risk losing her home. So even when her now ex-boyfriend attacked her with a brick, she did not call. And later, when he stabbed her in the neck, she was still too afraid to reach out. But both times, someone else did call the police. Based on these “strikes,” the city pressured her landlord to evict. After a housing court refused to order an eviction, the city said it planned to condemn the property and forcibly remove Ms. Briggs from her home. The ACLU intervened, and the city did not carry out its threats, and even agreed to repeal the ordinance. But just two weeks later, Norristown quietly passed a virtually identical ordinance that imposes fines on landlords unless they evict tenants who obtain police assistance, including for domestic violence.
The new brochure for the Socialism 2013 conference is available here, with the full list of sessions:
http://www.socialismconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Socialism-2013-brochure.pdf
In addition to being hilarious, Louis C.K.’s latest HBO special includes some brilliant bits that are downright feminist. Let’s get married and have a million fat red-headed babies together — we all know how much you love being a father!
After Louis seemingly defended Tosh.Doh’s idiotic and scary rape non-joke, we were all a little on edge until he explained himself on The Daily Show:
I’ve read some blogs during this whole thing that have made me enlightened to things I didn’t know. This woman said how rape is something that polices women’s lives. They have a narrow corridor. They can’t go out late, they can’t go to certain neighborhoods, they can’t get a certain way, because they might get-That’s part of me now that wasn’t before.
Apparently he’s been thinking on it because, as David Haglund at Slate writes, his new special further explores those truths:
Halfway through the new special, C.K. starts talking about how dating is an act of bravery for all involved. “The male courage, traditionally speaking, is that he decided to ask” a woman out. (Note the careful caveat, “traditionally speaking.”) And if the woman says yes, “that’s her courage.” That kind of courage, he says, is beyond his imagining. “How do women still go out with guys, when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat to women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women.” A moment later he adds, speaking for all men, “You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.”
In an effort to get men to understand a woman’s experience on a date, he says “try to imagine that you could only date a half-bear, half-lion. ‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice.’ ”
It’s exciting because you rarely see this sort of reflection in comedy — and it’s still fucking hilarious.
Get Socialism Art Nature daily digest via email