Women's Equality Day

Today is Women's Equality Day designated by Congress in 1971 (thanks to Congresswoman Bella Abzug) to commerate the passing of the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution --the Woman Suffrage Ammendment--which gave American women full voting rights in 1920.

And, there is still much more to do to achieve full equality for women. . .

http://www.nwhp.org/resourcecenter/equalityday.php

Women's Liberation 21st Century Style

Nicholas Kristof writes:
"IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape. "
To continue reading...from the August 23rd NYT Magazine
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?emc=eta1#

Raise your voices!

". . .it is far from clear how much of the vocal opposition to reform represents wider popular feeling and how much is a mobile mob of gun nuts, birthers and teabaggers paid for and organized by lobbyists and Republican outfits like Americans for Prosperity, Conservatives for Patients' Rights and FreedomWorks. Several polls show a majority of Americans still want reform. But polls don't mean much politically if everyone stays quiet." (italics are mine)
Katha Pollitt on Healthcare: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/14

If healthcare is reformed:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141916/10_awesome_things_that_would_happen_if_health_reform_passes/?page=entire

Targeting Women, II

Bob Herbert's Column today "Women at Risk" talks about "the deadly mix of misogyny and guns." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=1
"We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected. . ." He writes". . .Life in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent. . .[women and girls] are attacked because they are female."
Herbert touches on not only the Pennsylvanian gym killings, the Amish school killings but also the Virginia Tech killings. He also mentions the pornography industry, battered wives and girlfriends, and attacks against women in our armed services. An expert he interviews says that most of the attacks are based on the attackers trying to regain or prove their manhood, and committing a violent act is one way.

Herbert concludes noting the we need to "acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem. . .combined with absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions."

We need better gun control laws and gun safety laws.
We need to teach our children that violence is not the appropriate response to anger or frustration.
We need to see and treat women and girls as equals.

Targeting Women

The recent shooting in Pennsylvania targetted women. Can we say misogyny? Yet, the main stream media is not focussing on this aspect, just on the shooter's sad life.
It seems Bob Herbert noted (Oct 16, 2006 after the shooting at the Amish School) that the media and society does not focus on misogyny because as he stated "The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock."
The only article I have found that actually defines misogyny in connection with this shooting is in the Christian Science Monitor,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0806/p02s05-ussc.html

Congrats on Associate Justice #111

Congratulations to Justice Sottomayer!