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!

Euphemisms for Strong Woman

First, Senator Graham predicted that Judge Sottomayor would be confirmed unless she had a "meltdown." Was that a euphemism for unless she acted like an emotional, hysterical woman?

And, yesterday Senator Graham said that anonymous lawyers who had appeared before her had said she was "temperamental" "a bully" "nasty" and "difficult and challenging." These I believe are euphemisms for being a professional and strong woman who is not maternal-acting on the job.

Many women, in many professions encounter the same euphemisms cum criticisms if they are strong, rational, fair.

Studies have shown that women are perceived as maternal, emotional while men are paternal and rational. Women are supposed to be accessible and accepting of all excuses, men are busy (not always accessible) and firm.

There is much work done on gender bias in evaluations. The bias may be subtle-- but it is significant, and leads to the entrenching of a double standard.

The most recent study was reported out in Newsweek (6/25/09): http://www.newsweek.com/id/203458?from=rss

A Place on the Bench

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the place on the Bench for women:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?_r=1

Here is a website to follow for Sotomayer's confirmation hearings: The Thinking Women's Guide to the Supreme Court Hearings, published by the National Women's Law Center
http://www.nwlc.org/details.cfm?id=3624&section=JCWR

On Burqas and Liberty

Hardly any women in France wear burqas, but like habjib (see Joan W. Scott's book The Politics of the Veil), these coverings are seen as symbols of women's oppression.


http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=burqa_politics_in_france

This begs the questions: What is the relationship of religion and women? Religion and oppression?

In yesterday's NYT there was an article about the Vatican conducting two investigations of American Nuns who the Vatican thinks have become too modern and involved in the real world.
These nuns are no longer "“promot[ing]” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation. " But these "American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests. "


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02nuns.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=church%20vatican%20nuns&st=cse