ALL THE BABIES

Heh heh.

While the “every sperm is sacred” amendment is clever, I would like to propose something that can actually be enforced, and which would give the legislators in question a chance to put their love of children into practice. It would be an answer to this question here:

Between the years of 1907 and 2008, only 77 women have been elected to the Oklahoma state legislature, and currently less than 20 is serving out of a total 149. But who better to pass laws about women’s bodies than a group of men who will never have to worry about the consequences of their religious zealotry?

Who says they won’t have to worry about the consequences of their religious zealotry?

The next time a state legislature is frothing up one of these “defeat the scourge of women who are not perennially pregnant” bills, let’s attach an amendment that creates the following conditions:

1. The state will allow for Safe Haven dropoffs of infants up to 30 days. The state will similarly provide special shelters for homeless pregnant women and girls.

2. The state will release to the public the home addresses of all the state lawmakers who voted Yes on the bill.

3. All of those lawmakers’ homes will be considered Safe Haven zones for unwanted newborns AND special shelters for pregnant women and girls facing parental rejection, domestic violence and extreme poverty. Those homes will be held legally responsible for the safe placement of all newborns left at their doors and for the provision of shelter, food, clothing, medical care and protection from violent partners for all pregnant females seeking assistance.

You think babies are so awesome that women should be legally forced to gestate and birth indefinitely? They’ll be coming (both the women and the babies) to your doorstep. Have plenty of beds ready.

 

American Nuns > Vatican

I think it’s time for a new schism.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization which involves 80% of U.S. Catholic sisters, is having the hammer brought down on it by the Vatican for not being a pack of bigoted assholes. I wish that were an exaggeration:

The Vatican’s assessment, issued on Wednesday, said that members of the group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, had challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Yeah, I’ll bet they say things like, “A mother of four should not be left to die of pregnancy-related causes.”

The sisters were also reprimanded for making public statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” During the debate over the health care overhaul in 2010, American bishops came out in opposition to the health plan, but dozens of sisters, many of whom belong to the Leadership Conference, signed a statement supporting it — support that provided crucial cover for the Obama administration in the battle over health care.

Yep. Women who support universal health care need to STFU, while old guys in fancy robes, who would rather let Americans die by the millions of preventable causes than tolerate birth control coverage, are the “authentic teachers of faith and morals.”

“I’m stunned,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby founded by sisters. Her group was also cited in the Vatican document, along with the Leadership Conference, for focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping “silent” on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Oh, yes. Oh fucking yes. The nuns care too much about alleviating poverty, and not enough about demonizing gays or attacking women who think they get to control their reproduction.

Oddly enough, I don’t even recall Jesus saying anything about homosexuality or abortion. This is the guy who hung out with a bunch of single men and a woman of ill-repute. He did, however, have some strong opinions about how we treat the poor.

Sisters, you all are so much cooler than your church. Break away from those ridiculous bigots. Start your own religion: the Church of Actually Giving a Shit About Humanity. All the Catholics who are horrified at the Church for their homophobia, misogyny and support of child-raping priests but who keep making noises about “social justice” and “ritual” will have a better place to give their money and time. The ones who want their religion to be more focused on persecuting gays, letting pregnant women die, and preaching against using condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, can fend for themselves.

You’re better than they are, and they’re not even trying to hide how threatened they are by that. Let those assholes rot.

Wisconsin state Rep. Glenn Grothman hates women, but we knew that already.

There are some politicians in Wisconsin who don’t like to be told that pay discrimination is a problem that should be addressed by law. Therefore, Gov. Walker has recently repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act. I don’t really feel like talking about Gov. Walker, though. One of the major proponents of the repeal was Rep. Glenn Grothman, and what kind of stuff does he have to say about women being paid less than men for equal work?

“It’s an underreported problem, but a huge number of discrimination claims are baseless,” he says. “Most of them are filed by fired employees, and really today almost anybody is a protected class.”

Grothman to English: “Bitches be lyin’. They just want to punish their old bosses because they got fired. Also: political correctness.”

Whatever gaps exist, he insists, stem from women’s decision to prioritize childrearing over their careers. “Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” he says. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person.”

What he has to say about the vast majority of employees, who are not getting paid like lawyers and whose jobs do not regularly call on them to work 60 hours a week, is unknown.

He continues, “What you’ve got to look at, and Ann Coulter has looked at this, is you have to break it down by married and unmarried. Once you break it down by married and unmarried, the differential disappears.”

Yeah, he’s totally happy to listen to Ann Coulter, but…

A 2007 study by the American Association of University Women found that college-educated women earn only 80 percent as much as similarly educated men a year after graduation. Part of that is attributable to differences in life choices and family circumstances, but not all. “After accounting for college major, occupation, industry, sector, hours worked, workplace flexibility, experience, educational attainment, enrollment status, GPA, institution selectivity, age, race/ethnicity, region, marital status, and number of children, a 5 percent difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates one year after graduation was still unexplained,” it said. After 10 years in the workforce, there’s an unexplained 12 percent gap.

But that doesn’t mean anything because…

When I ran the numbers by him, he replied, “The American Association of University Women is a pretty liberal group.” Nor, he argued, does its conclusion take into account other factors, like “goals in life. You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”

I’m not sure I understand what being “money-conscious” has to do with how much you’re getting paid by your employer. I’m sure it has an effect on savings, investments and such, but this is supposed to be about salary, relative to other workers in the field.

And besides, AAUW is a liberal group, so their data don’t count.

Grothman’s name sounds awfully familiar, though. Where have we heard of him before?

Right. This is where we’ve heard of him before.

Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), a Republican in Wisconsin’s state senate, thinks that children from single parents are probably victims of child abuse.

Okay! There we have it. Women in Wisconsin can’t possibly be as ambitious or hard-working as their male colleagues, because they’re not thinking of becoming breadwinners some day. That’s what the men are for, amirite? You couldn’t expect to be a breadwinner some day, because that would mean you’re preparing for the possibility of single parenthood, and that would make you a shitty mom.

This is how it is in Glenn Grothman’s world: men are the providers. They’re the ones who pay the bills. Women are supposed to prioritize child-raising over salary-making, so if they do work outside the home, it’s just for fun and it’s not important to make sure their employers pay them appropriately. As for those women who do have to provide for their families and pay their bills, well they’ve obviously failed at life, so screw ‘em.

It is illegal to be female in Afghanistan.

That’s basically the message here.

Running away is considered a “moral crime” for women in Afghanistan while some rape victims are also imprisoned, because sex outside marriage – even when the woman is forced – is considered adultery, another “moral crime”.

[...]

The plight of a woman called Nilofar illustrates the problem. She was stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver in the head, chest, and arms by her husband who accused her of adultery for inviting a man into the house, the rights group said.

But afterwards, she was arrested, he was not.

“The way he beat her wasn’t bad enough to keep him in jail. She wasn’t near death, so he didn’t need to be in prison,” the prosecutor of the case told Human Rights Watch.

[...]

Once leaving prison, women and girls face strong social stigma in the conservative country and may be killed in so-called “honor killings”.

“I just want a divorce. I can’t go back to my father because he will kill me. All my family has left me behind,” 20-year-old Aisha, who was sentenced to three years for fleeing an abusive husband she was forced to marry, told researchers.

You can be forced to marry, and if your husband stabs you with a screwdriver, he will not be prosecuted, but you will be imprisoned for having provoked him. If you run away from your violent and possibly homicidal husband, you can be imprisoned. If you are a victim of rape, you are a criminal and will be treated as such. When you finish your prison term, you may be killed by your family for not having died at the hands of your husband or rapist first. Let’s just call this by its proper name: it is a crime in Afghanistan to have been born with a uterus, and that crime is punishable by death.

If an Afghan woman turns up sans husband in a less-terrible country, she should be allowed to stay regardless of documentation or immigration status. Any country that deports a woman back to Afghanistan is committing a human rights violation.

Don’t Make Us Uncomfortable: Dutch face-covering edition

Oh, yawn.

Via Jezebel,

One government official said that the law was designed to make everything more Dutch. “People should be able to look at each other’s faces and recognize each other when they meet,” he said.

Kind of makes you wonder how blind people ever manage to get through life.

I still think this “I must see your face” reasoning is pulled out of the ass to rationalize an act borne of mental discomfort. If the Dutch government is worried about men dressing in women’s coverings and carrying guns under their veils, then they should come out and say the law is about security. If they’re having issues with veiled women refusing to remove their coverings in places like courthouses, where facial identification is necessary, then they should freaking well write the law accordingly. If there’s an argument to be made about security, that makes a lot more sense than blithering about how we all have the right to see each other’s faces. No, we don’t. No one’s rights would be violated if I were to walk around Arlington with a burlap sack on my head. I’d look ridiculous, but it would be no skin off anyone else’s nose.

 

I suppose Caitlin Flanagan might like some aloe for that BURN.

Folks, this is not a vicious negative review. Blogger Allison Dayle is gentle as a pussycat compared to Irin Carmon at Slate, reviewing Girl Land by Caitlin Flanagan:

Of the many questions formed while reading Caitlin Flanagan’s “Girl Land,” most pressing is why it was written at all.

That’s just the very beginning.

But this is not a memoir, or it rarely is, and it’s not clear why. After all, a memoir might conveniently free Flanagan from one of her fiercest hostilities — her resistance to empirical data or any evidence at all.

Fellow writers, THAT is what it looks like when a reviewer trashes your work. Granted, Carmon is reviewing non-fiction, which makes her criticism quite a different animal from Dayle’s unimpressed reaction to Halpern’s book. But still. You want to talk about “DISCOURAGING PEOPLE FROM READING” a given book? Carmon will show you how it’s done.

Puah Institute, what is that I don’t even.

You may have heard about the medical conference in Israel that’s banning women from speaking at the event? Specifically, the gynecology-focused conference where women aren’t allowed to speak on stage?

The annual Innovations in Gynecology and Halacha conference of the Puah Institute for Medicine and Halacha is scheduled for Wednesday. Some 1,000 men and women are expected to attend the conference, which is geared to the Modern Orthodox and haredi Orthodox communities. Male and female participants are separated by dividers in the conference hall.

The conference has been held for the last 12 years, but this marks the first time that the absence of female speakers has become an issue. Women do not serve as speakers, according to the organization, in order to insure the participation of the haredi Orthodox, who are generally wary of medical advancements in fertility treatments.

Their rationale is this:

1. Haredi don’t like to see women speak to male audiences.

2. Haredi are ambivalent about fertility treatments.

3. The Puah Institute wants Haredi doctors to attend this conference and learn about advancements in fertility treatments, therefore,

4. Women must be strictly separated from men at the Gynecology & Halacha Conference.

Notice that no one is trying to keep women from seeing men speak on stage. It’s fine for female doctors to sit in the audience while men make presentations. It’s the question of male doctors watching presentations by female doctors on stage that’s a problem.

Am I missing something here? If letting women show themselves in public is such a problem for Haredi men, then…maybe, Haredi men should not be gynecologists? Think about this for a second: if it’s “immodest” for a man to see a woman speaking on stage about medical advancements, then how is it the least bit acceptable for a man to put his hands on the private parts of a woman whom he may have just met that day?

It occurs to me that if Haredi men followed through on their “modesty” requirements and just left gynecology to female doctors, this conference wouldn’t be an issue.

(Yes, I know: when they talk about “modesty,” they’re really talking about keeping women in the kitchen, which means female doctors are only tolerated because of secular pressures.)

All that said, though, the controversy is totally worth the trouble, owing to this hilarious fauxpology from Puah:

“We are sorry that instead of appreciating the great advances we have merited to see in women’s health in general, and in particular within the religious sector, as a result of our conferences, there are cynical, aggressive elements who try to block us by using the prevailing public ambience,” the organization said on its website. “These elements are riding on the back of the Puah Institute in order to advance their personal agenda.”

Shorter version: “You bitches are just JEALOUS! Waaaaah!”

 

Perhaps it’s because sex scenes are “feminine tosh.”

While it was fun to do a little yawn-and-snort at V.S. Naipaul for his “I’m so much better than all those stupid girls” posturing, today Douglas Barry points something out about the Literary Review’s nominees for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award: they’re a sausagefest.

Severely underrepresented in this year’s nominations? Women. Only Jean M. Auel and Dori Ostermiller made the illustrious list and if you’re thinking, “Well, the ladies can’t get all the best awards every year,” consider that, since the ‘Bad Sex’ award’s inaugural winner Melvyn Bragg, only two women — Wendy Perriam and Rachel Johnson — have ever taken home the top prize.

From the overwhelming preponderance of male authors in the ranks of Worst Sex Writers as designated by Literary Review, Barry derives the premise of his article, which is that male authors are overwhelmingly less adept than female authors at putting sexytimes in prose form. To explain the disparity, Barry offers the following hypotheses:

A clue to the dearth of women winners might have something to do with the fact that men still outnumber women at both commercial and academic publishing houses, according to The New Republic’s Ruth Franklin. In 2010, of the 13 large houses that TNR examined, Penguin’s Riverhead imprint came the closest to closing the gender gap between male authors, who accounted for 55% of books published, and female authors (45 %). And the house with the lowest percentage of female authors? That would be Harvard University Press, with a paltry 15%.

This is the first thing that came to my mind, but perhaps the publishing gap isn’t wide enough to explain the percentage of male authors on the Bad Sex list. It could be argued that male authors dominate the Bad Sex list to a degree that far exceeds their industry presence, and I think this is the theory that Barry really wanted to articulate when he wrote the piece:

I’d like to think that the overwhelming presence of male authors on the lists of winners and nominees has more to do with the fact that, since women had (and often still have) to actively wrest control of their own sexuality away from a patriarchy that often determines how the female body is used and represented, they are able to speak with greater comfort and authority about sex when they achieve sexual autonomy.

I don’t dismiss this idea, but as much as I love to see a male writer who can theorize in those terms, I think there are other, less ambitious factors that may explain the gulf between male authors getting attention for bad sex scenes and female authors escaping scrutiny.

It takes a brave man to put on a veil.

My first thought about this is that it’s not that much of a leap. It’s no accident that the veil is such a gendered custom. The idea that women must be covered up while men’s bodies are allowed free rein is a feature, not a bug, of cultures that expect women to cover their heads. It’s rooted in the idea that men see, while women are seen, and therefore need to conceal themselves ostensibly to control the terms on which men see them.

So, it doesn’t take a very radical mind to look at that asymmetry and say, “well, guys, if the veil is not a problem for women to wear, why don’t you try it on?” It’s not as unhealthy as four-inch heels or as uncomfortable as a push-up bra or as tedious as eyeliner—although one of the guys pictured is also wearing eyeliner!—but it is nonetheless sexist. It doesn’t take a Master’s Degree in Gender Studies to notice the double standard.

What really gets my attention, though, is that the guys who are posting their pictures here must have some serious guts. They’re not covering their faces in those photos. They’re easily identifiable, and that could make them extremely vulnerable.

Sperm from stem cells! The sky is falling!

I am telling you, this story is just…asking for the fertility-controls-you crowd to start losing their shit. More than usual, I mean.

Caroline Parkinson at BBC reports that Japanese scientists have successfully bred mice using sperm made from embryonic stem cells:

Japanese researchers successfully implanted early sperm cells, made from the stem cells, into infertile mice.

The working sperm which they made was then used to father healthy, and crucially fertile, pups, Cell journal reports.

A UK expert said it was a significant step forward in infertility research.

If you’re now thinking, “this is just begging for jumping to conclusions,” you’d be right.

But he said the Kyoto paper was “quite a large step forward” in developing a process by which sperm could be made for infertile men, perhaps by taking as a starting point a cell from their skin or from something like bone marrow.

He added: “Clearly more work needs to be done to refine this process, but it’s hugely exciting.”

That much is fine, but somehow, the comments on the Jezebel story are all about how this means men are about to become obsolete.