Here are some of the day’s must-reads. More in depth posts covering some of these links coming soon!
Textual harassment, the newest form of domestic violence?
A great topic to discuss, but the NYT fails when it suggests that Sarah Palin’s a feminist.
Fathers are as stressed as mothers? So says the NYTimes.
Women will finally earn equal wages!…in 2024.
Image from moriza’s flickr
By Elizabeth Cooper
Editor emeritus of EW Chloe Angyal recently wrote a post and recorded an online TV clip for GritTV about how women and girls alarmingly prioritize beauty over health, and what we can do to change this problem. According to a study at East Tennessee State University, warning women about “the risk of age spots and other forms of damage to their appearance” was more effective to get them to stop tanning than warning them of the risk of skin cancer. She also discussed a report by the Girl Scouts Research Institute which found that of a thousand teenage girls surveyed, 47% think that “the fashion industry body image looks unhealthy,” yet 48% wanted to look like catwalk models.
In case you haven’t heard about this, a new EC drug is in the process of being approved by the FDA. This new drug is said to be effective up to 5 days after intercourse, unlike the current option which is only effective up to 72 hours. Also, the new drug, being marketed as Ella, maintains the same level of effectiveness throughout those 5 days. Here’s the latest on the FDA’s panel progress.
Also on the FDA’s schedule, a new drug to increase women’s libido. Are we really going to pathologize something like low libido now? Fortunately, the FDA advisory panel is not feeling it so much. We’ll see what happens…
Image from sparktography’s flickr
By Kelly Roache
This past Sunday, I arrived in South India – Hyderabad, specifically – where I’ll be living for the next 10 weeks, taking a course in Persian language. Although I have only been here a few days, some of the observations that have struck me the most are those about the different types of women (and girls) here. I wish to make it clear that I do not think these women can or should be “categorized,” as every individual distinctly embodies some combination of archetypes described below. However, I do think that there is value in studying the differences amongst them.
By Alison Thurston
My summer job didn’t start until two weeks after Princeton’s Reunions weekend ended, so I found myself with a little extra time on my hands. I ended up enthralled in episodes of MTV’s ’16 and Pregnant’ that the channel streams online. I hosted a one-woman marathon that lasted all afternoon, and I ended up enjoying the show and the thoughtful perspective it takes on teen motherhood. Though the relationships between the new moms and their boyfriends were often cringe worthy (you want to leave the birthing of your child to go get Mexican food? Really?) I never got the sense that MTV was exploiting its young stars, and I was a little surprised at the newspaper articles and blog posts that felt it does.
By Lisa Conley
The BBC reported increases in “Eve Teasing” in Bangladesh has led to an increased incidence of suicide among young women. According to the article, this form of sexual harassment is completely unchecked and constitutes “little rapes,” and is particularly damaging in Bangladesh because of weak sexual harassment laws. Victims are often stalked and ridiculed daily with little to no recourse. Many of the victims of Eve Teasing feel suicide is the only way out.
One such example is 13 year old Nashfia Akhand Pinky, known as Pinky, who killed herself after months of stalking, harassment, and torment by her 22 year old neighbor and his friends. After confronting the harasser, Pinky was beaten by her neighbor as other neighbors looked on but did nothing. In her suicide note she wrote, “When [my tormentor] pulled my scarf and harassed me physically in front of the house, onlookers at the scene laughed. Nobody protested. None of my family members are responsible for my suicide.”
Sunday June 13 has been declared Eve Teasing Protection day by the Bangladesh education ministry. If you’re interested in standing in solidarity with the victims of Eve Teasing, check out the group on Facebook and check out The Blank Noise Project to learn more about how to get involved.
by Lisa Conley
Today’s contribution to Huffington Post’s Politics page, “Why the pro-women movement should and will replace feminism” by Amy Siskind, President and Co-Founder of The New Agenda, not only illustrates a narrow definition of feminism but also peddles a junk pluralism that easily becomes apologetic for social discrimination.
First, the problems with her understanding of feminism. Siskind states that today’s feminism is “divisive, proactively exclusionary and [openly] hostile towards women of different ideologies.” She goes on to say that our society will never have gender equality because today’s feminists view some women “as less than equal.” Her case in point, Palin and the debate over whether Susan B. Anthony, one of Palin’s alleged “heroes,” would have been pro choice or not. Never mind that Palin has in the past made Alaskan women pay for their own rape kits, Siskind implies that having a debate over women’s choice is divisive for women and hence gender equality will never exist in the US because of divisive feminists who think themselves superior to certain women (read: politically right, conservative, religious women of which Palin is the supposed archetype).
By steering the conversation into this corner Siskind glosses over the most important fact that levels her entire critique of today’s feminism (which is actually more diverse than the one strand of thought she wants to believe): the difference between people themselves and people’s ideas. One can blast another person’s ideological arguments out of the water, yet still respect them as a person and even fight for their rights to make whatever choices they want. Siskind’s conflation of people and their ideas is the classic straw person argument. She builds up what is essentially a non-issue so that she can offer her “solution” to this issue, which leads me to the second point, Siskind’s junk pluralism.
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by Alice Zheng
On April 30, Tristan Taormino gave a lecture on her “life as a feminist pornographer.” I got so excited by this lecture that I bought two of her DVDs (the first porn that I’ve bought and owned) and her book of sex tips. Suffice to say, I loved her. I hung on her every word. I took notes. I got my DVDs autographed.
Before I listened to her lecture, I was skeptical about whether or not it was really possible to create feminist, ethical porn. I previously wrote about two anti-porn lectures leading up to her talk, and while I was not totally convinced by them, I was pretty sure that I didn’t like porn. Why not? From the point of view of an individual consumer, I could see the pros and cons of watching porn laid out in front of me.
Pro: getting off (which could be a significant point if I really value getting off and porn helps a lot, or could be pretty insignificant if I can get off without porn).
Con: possible moral/ethical considerations of how porn stars are treated in the industry, how well they live their lives and whether they like working in porn or feel that it damages their lives, how women are represented in porn, and how sex is represented in porn.
It seemed pretty clear cut to me.
And then I heard Tristan Taormino’s lecture. Taormino is confident, frank, and a really wonderful public speaker. I fell in love with Taormino immediately, not just because she’s so charismatic, but also because I really get her point of view. Like Taormino, I like open discussion about sex, I like trusting that people can tell reality from fantasy, and I don’t like censorship.
by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
A year ago today, Dr. George Tiller was murdered in the foyer of his Wichita church. His death was the culmination of a lifetime of threats and violence because of his work as one of the few late-term abortion providers in the United States. And after a year of increasingly serious inroads on abortion rights and accessibility, both on the state and national level, it’s more important than ever to honor his life and work, and the efforts of the countless pro-choice activists who strive to give women full reproductive freedom without shame, trauma, or needless expense. These people work daily under the risk of real physical violence, perpetrated by a well-organized network of people who will seemingly stop at nothing.
There are an incredible number of meaningful reflections on Dr. Tiller’s life, and I’ll link to a few of them here. Robin Marty collected a round-up of reactions at RH Reality Check, NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Nancy Keenan called on us to, like Dr. Tiller, trust women, Harry Reid spoke out against Dr. Tiller’s murder on the Senate floor, one woman wrote about her own experiences as Dr. Tiller’s patient, over 20 years ago, and at Alternet, Amanda Robb reminded us to remember the fact that Roeder was not working alone.
You can add your thoughts and reflections at IAmDrTiller.com.
This is a little late, but anyone who’s on campus today should go hear Professor Jill Dolan, the director of the Program in the Study of Women & Gender, talk about feminism at Princeton, today at 1 pm in East Pyne 10.
I was fortunate enough to hear the talk at Alumni Day in February, and I’m looking forward to hearing it again. The discussion centers around this year as the fortieth anniversary of coeducation at Princeton – and the talk, titled “Forty Years of Undergraduate Women at Princeton: Women and Gender Studies in the Classroom and Feminist Activism on Campus,” is illuminating and fascinating whether you were one of the first women who transferred to Princeton in 1969, or saw the last few all-male eating clubs admit women in 1991, or are simply a student at Princeton today. If you’re not on campus, the text of the lecture is online here.
