Archive for Feminism

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

April 3, 2006 / / 7 comments

Ampersand has an excellent post up about the Duke rape case. In it, she discusses the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and has some very smart things to say:

But “innocent until proven guilty” is a courtroom standard. My opinion is not the same as a courtroom, and blog posts don’t put anyone in prison. Nothing about the American system of justice requires ordinary citizens to refrain from having opinions; and it’s not inconsistant to want Courts to adhere to “beyond any reasonable doubt” while holding my personal opinions to a less stringent standard.

Some time back, we (my then-husband and I) were aware of a member of the Pagan community who had been accused of child molestation. The case was working its way through the courts and no verdict had been reached. We found out that the accused was going to be at a Pagan event during which children were ordinarily given a lot of freedom to roam. We contacted people in charge of both the event and the property, asking that this person be banned from this event. We were refused, and what the people we spoke to all said was “innocent until proven guilty.”

I was furious. Livid is a good word. If you’ve ever seen me mad, you might have come up with livid as the right word.

And what I said to my husband is “innocent until proven guilty” is for courts. For parents, the rule is dangerous until proven safe.

Pagans are so pluralistic, so free, that they sometimes fail to see danger in their midst. They bend over backwards to be fair, because we are a people who have suffered too much unfair treatment. But as a mom, I don’t bend in that direction. I bend over forwards, in a protective huddle. I make my child, and my community’s children, safe to the best of my ability. That’s my job.

The accused was convicted, and served some years in jail. He is now free and again has access to Pagan events. A glitch in the registration system causes him to show up on some sex offender lists but not others, affording him more freedom of movement than I, for one, find comfortable.

But again, the law is not community. People feel they have to make him welcome at events, because he served his time, and is legally able to attend the events. But legal is not personal. He’s still dangerous until proven safe.

The Sweet Spot of Reproductive Rights

March 10, 2006 / / 8 comments

I am mumblefortymumblemumble years old. I am young enough that I never experienced adult sexuality pre-Roe. I am old enough to be (voluntarily) past my childbearing years, now when Roe is threatened. I lived my fertile years in the sweet spot of reproductive freedom, in that, every single time I had sex and was fertile, abortion was available to me.

And as hard as it is to admit in public, I needed that freedom. I availed myself of that right.

I admit it now because younger women are profoundly threatened, and I feel it is up to people my age, people who have been blessed and are now on the safe side of fertility, to fight even harder. Easy enough to be young and to fight for what you might lose, for what you might desperately need, for what you should have; easy enough to sit back and relax because it’s not “your” fight, because you’re not the one endangered.

At a guess, more than half the adult women I know between, say, 30–50, have had at least one abortion. A similar number of men in that age range have gone through the experience with a woman who was important to them. I don’t have to bang a drum here. I don’t have to explain why. Most of the time, I haven’t even asked why. These aren’t stories we’re happy to tell. These aren’t stories we’re comfortable with. They’re dark moments in our lives, but we know that we were saved from the true darkness of no legal options.

So it’s time for those of us who are “safe” to stand up for our sisters and daughters. To be brave. To make admissions that others will hate to hear, that others will try to shame us with. It’s time to say, I will not let the lives of these younger women be made infinitely worse than my own. I will not take my privilege for granted. I will not walk away from the mothers and grandmothers before me who fought for these rights.

It’s wrong, it’s just wrong, that there’s this select group of women who have had this freedom, and who can opt out of the struggle. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

Men Aren’t Really From Mars

March 8, 2006 / / 5 comments

Today is International Women’s Day, as well as Blog Against Sexism Day. I had something else vaguely planned for today, but these thoughts started running through my mind late last night.

When I was a teenager, I knew a couple of girls, my own age, who were lesbian separatists. When I first met them, I thought this meant they just wanted to live apart from men. But no! They believed that the human race was originally female. They believed that men were invaders from outer space, who had stolen women’s natural partheogenic abilities to control us. They believed if we could kill off or drive away all men, partheogenesis would reemerge on its own.

Even when I was fourteen, this made my brain hurt. Besides being, y’know, whacky, I thought it was pretty high risk. I mean, what if you did get rid of all the men, and the partheogenesis thing didn’t happen?

But what I want to say here is: That isn’t feminism.

Isn’t.

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Why is there exactly one answer?

February 24, 2006 / / 7 comments

In the abortion debate, sooner or later someone will bring up the “when life begins” canard. Now, on one level it’s bullshit, because the whole idea that “pro-life” is “preserving the life of the unborn” is not pro-life. It’s not. If it was pro-life then the lives of adult women would be important. If it was pro-life then unmarried women who had babies would be celebrated rather than shamed. But I’ve posted about that before. Here, I am posting about something different.

When does life begin? We cannot talk about it without dancing on the edge of the soul or spirit, and that’s pretty religious, even for non-religious people. I do think this whole “pro-life” (insert eye-roll here) discussion comes perilously close to establishment, because it takes some religions’ views over others’. But moreover, we’re working from a rigidly monotheistic paradigm.

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Domesticating Women

February 19, 2006 / / Comments Off on Domesticating Women

Guys and Dolls was on TCM last night. I’m a freak for musicals, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s also one of the most sexist things ever written, and it’s all about the war between the sexes (hence the title). I’ve been thinking about this musical and its implications, on and off since I was twelve years old.

One of the themes of the musical is that women tame men. Men are wild and adventurous, and women are domestic. Women will steal men’s wildness, and this threatens men. The “wild men” in this story are outlaws; gamblers one step ahead of the cops. Women seek marriage; and marriage, being of society, will reinforce social bonds. Women want “wallpaper and bookends;” if their man strays:

Slowly introduce him to domestic life
And if he ever tries to stray from you
Have a headache
Have a pot roast
Have a baby
Have two!

This story is seven thousand years old.

It starts in Mesopatamia, with Enkidu. In one of the oldest pieces of writing yet discovered, we are told of Enkidu, the wild man of the forest. He is destructive to grazing and hunting grounds, so a hunter seeks out Gilgamesh for advise:

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Hot Singin’ Babes

February 17, 2006 / / 32 comments

Jane Monheit is an up-and-coming voice in the world of American standards. Joss Stone has one of the best set of pipes I’ve ever heard applied to soul music, and strong interpretive skills. Fiona Apple is a kickass songwriter with a jazzy sensibility and a rich voice. Sheryl Crow is an uneven singer, but a creative, quirky, and fascinating songwriter with a unique style. What do they all have in common?

They are all gorgeous. They are babes. They have clean, even, symmetrical features, gorgeous smiles, bitchen bods, and shampoo-commercial hair.

This disturbs me.
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Decorators, Dancers, and Figure Skaters

February 15, 2006 / / Comments Off on Decorators, Dancers, and Figure Skaters

A few of years ago (probably four years ago, in relation to the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics) I read an article about young male figure skaters in the U.S. Seems they are subject to harrassment and even gay bashing because they skate. There was an interview with a teenage skater who had come here from Russia, and he just couldn’t understand it. In Russia, skating is a sport like any other.

Indeed, this is something that strikes close to home, as my son is a heterosexual dancer, and while there has been no bashing or danger, there have been…remarks. And for him, there was a difficult choice: His love of dance won out over the discomfort of being thought gay; not an easy experience when you’re eleven or twelve.

There’s a wonderful article in the New York Review of Books that said a great deal of what I want to say about whether or not Brokeback Mountain is a “gay movie.” A parenthetical remark in that article really struck me:

Had this been the story of, say, the love between two closeted interior decorators living in New York City in the 1970s, you suspect that there wouldn’t be full-page ads in the major papers trumpeting its “universal” themes.

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Interview with Dan Savage

February 9, 2006 / / 6 comments

Dan Savage writes a weekly advise column for The Onion‘s AV Club. This week, AV Club interviews him. It’s a joy to read from start to finish. It’s smart, it’s weird, it’s funny, it’s incredibly diverse. In fact, I insist you read the whole thing.

Here’s an excerpt.

I actually think the solution to homophobia is eradicating misogyny. I think a lot of homophobia is hatred of women repackaged, ’cause gay men seem to preoccupy homophobes the most. It’s usually about anal sex, and gay men are perceived as taking on the woman’s role, and women are despised. The woman’s role is less-than. And in a male-supremacy culture, men who take on the woman’s role willingly kind of freak out some of the dudes. If you could eradicate misogyny, homophobia would evaporate. That’s why I always tell women, “If you’re dating a homophobe, you’re dating a guy who’s secretly a misogynist, who secretly hates you. And you shouldn’t.”

Target Does the Right Thing

January 29, 2006 / / Comments Off on Target Does the Right Thing

From Pandagon I learn that Target is doing the right thing, and has fired a pharmacist for refusing to fill a Plan B prescription, and even refusing to refer customers to another pharmacist.

Since I had previously written to complain to Target, I now have written to thank them:

Dear Target:

In choosing to fire a pharmacist for refusing to do her job, Target has done the right thing. I applaud your decision and am happy to shop in my local Target.

Kind regards,

Deborah Lipp

It’s not easy to find contact information, by the way, but through long and arduous menu clicking, I eventually found an email form.

Blogging About Choice

January 23, 2006 / / Comments Off on Blogging About Choice

I missed Blog About Choice day yesterday, what with the time limit on using the Internet at the library (yes, the computer is STILL broken grrrrr). Wild Hunt, however, has this totally great collection of quotes about Paganism and Choice that’s worth reading.

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