OK, this is the most outrageous thing I have heard of since, well. . . there’s been lots of outrageous things these past 8 years. But, this is pretty bad.
N.C. hospitals are requiring rape survivors to pay for their own rape kit examinations when they go to NC hospitals to collect evidence– at a cost of approximately $1,600! Here’s the News & Observer article that documents this. Infuriating.
You may have already seen this but if not:
Tina Fey, gotta love her, just blasted a hole in those who have been calling Hillary a b*tch and other nice phrases. Check out this skit from last Saturday’s Saturday Night Live. The piece on Hilary starts about halfway through the skit.
I love it up until the point where she ends with “Bitch is the new Black” (uh duh, let’s not forget our race-politics for the sake of feminism), but up ’til that point, it rocks! While I am an Obama supporter, the blatant sexism that Hillary’s run has incited has got me riled up.
We hope! See the article America’s Election: Daddy’s swagger vs. Mommy’s Care for analysis of what Ruth Rosen hopes is a change in political tenor from macho swagger to real family values. I don’t like her framing of it as Daddy vs. Mommy (since men can be caring and women macho too) but overall she hopefully is right about the shifting political tides. . .
One of the tactics that helped legalize abortion in the first place (or at least made its legalization more accepted by the general public) was a campaign that U.S. feminists put on in the 1970s in which famous women and everyday women openly admitted to having abortion. The idea was that familiarity, seeing someone you know as potentially affected, would allow people to humanize (and not demonize) the decision to have an abortion.
Brazilian feminists (where it is not legal unless you have been raped) are currrently using this tactic in their legalization campaigns , in which celebrities discuss their abortions in magazine articles and appear on the cover saying so.
So the time has come for a second attempt at the campaign in the U.S. Ms. Magazine is currently asking women who have had an abortion to sign on and will have a special issues devoted to this. So, anyone who feels comfortable sign on and if you you haven’t had one, well, you can sign in support too.
Last night, Tom and I went with some friends to see the Carolina Rollergirls take on the Sin City (Las Vegas) Rollers ! I had never been to a women’s roller derby game and I gotta say I loved it!
Complete with black fishnets, cheerleader skirts or hot-pants (depending on the player’s persona) along with knee and shin-pads and helmets these chicks kicked some ass! We beat the Sin City Rollers about 130 to 60. (I’m not good at remembering scores.)
I encourage everyone to check-out some women’s flat-track derby games if you can. For those of you in the Bay Area there are the B.A.D. girls (Bay Area Derby Girls) or in Boston, the Boston Derby Dames . It looks like the next Bay Area game is Sept. 30. Here in N.C. we gotta wait ’til November 19.
In case any of you have missed the brouhaha over the LAME Forbes piece telling men not to marry career women (well, at least women who make more than $30,00 a year), check out these links (and the links they follow) at Boing Boing and Feministe. My fave from the original article is how the tag-line validates his sexist opinion citing the work of “social scientists”. . . so, it must be true!
Especially given the feminist victory with Plan B, check out this Slate piece discussing posts on Plan B and the Forbes article debate.
So Plan B (emergency contraception) was finally approved for over-the counter sales today! A huge victory given the current status of women’s reproductive rights in our country. See this link or here for more info.
An addendum to this: Apparently Plan B has been made legal only for women over 18. So there is still an issue of access for many young women and pharmacists can still refuse to sell Plan B for religious reasons, the reasons given that they can “refer women to someone else”. Which misses the whole point that Plan B prevents pregnancy because it stops the egg from implanting to begin with!!! But, small victories, one at a time . . .