This week ended with Valentine's Day, the Hallmark holiday to end all Hallmark holidays.
It has become a day when those of us not in relationships feel inadequate, and those who are can compare their partners to some ideal as well. In other words, it's a day when a certain romantic ideal is held up and all of us can realize how we fall short.
Ideals realized of course, do not always turn out the way we picture them. Here's an interesting look at some women encountering themselves in photoshopped ideal form after a professional modeling session, and at how they react:
http://jezebel.com/...
In Canada, this February 14th marked the 23rd March of Remembrance, where indigenous women march to bring attention to and commemorate the thousands of indigenous women who have disappeared and/or been victims of racial/sexual violence.
For some years now Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, has made this V-Day, where v stand for vagina rather than Valentine. This has become One Billion Rising, aimed at calling attention to, and for an end of, sexual assault and domestic violence. It organizes events all over the world. This has become an international event, which raises large amounts of money, and is recognized as a major voice for women.
The two events clashed when Ensler went to Canada and began to organize a V-Day even highlighting indigenous women, but did not acknowledge the existing tradition, and became angry at indigenous women who favored their tradition over hers. I read about this in this article:
http://modelviewculture.com/...
It's a very long and disquieting article, pointing out that women of color, indigenous and otherwise, face social/structural oppression of which gender oppression is just a part. Mainstream feminism does not recognize that it cannot speak for all women. That possibility tears at the assumptions, largely white and affluent, of this feminism. That cultural and racial realities of women of color are minimized.
This is a troubling idea, and as a white woman I found the article difficult to read. I am reading "King Leopold's Ghost" about colonialism, slavery, and horrors in the Belgian Congo, while the king spoke of the civilizing influence. Do mainstream feminists really see ourselves as the "Great White Mother" who will show the way to personal healing?
Of course, personal healing has little meaning when one is under continuous oppression. If we consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there are many levels of need that must be met before anything concerning individual psychology can even be considered, and this can lead to a serious failure of empathy. In any instance of different perceptions I always listen to those who feel oppressed before anyone else.
Do read this article and consider it carefully, even while squirming in discomfort.
On to other subjects.
Women's Health
I got an email yesterday from Elizabeth Warren who takes a different message from Valentine's Day. Her mother's birthday was on February 14th, and her mother died from undiagnosed heart disease.
Later the autopsy showed that she had advanced coronary disease. Despite her regular trips to the doctor for check ups and her repeated trips for "that gas pain," Mother had never been checked for heart trouble.
Every year on Valentine's Day, I still bake a heart-shaped cake. I think about my mother and about the millions of women who have died from undiagnosed heart disease. And every year I email my female relatives and friends and ask them to check out the risks because heart disease kills 1 out of every 4 women in America.
I ask the people I love to take care of themselves -- and I hope you'll do that too.
But there's more we can do. Medical science has made great discoveries in the treatment of heart disease, but those discoveries aren't free. At a time when we're on the brink of powerful breakthroughs, funding for the National Institutes of Health and other research investments has been strangled. As a proportion of our GDP, the federal government is spending about half what it was spending the late 1960s.
When NIH was hit with the sequester that slashed another 5% out of its budget, the Framingham Heart Study -- the world's premier longitudinal heart research project -- was threatened. Even now, over 83% of promising research proposals -- proposals seeking to combat some of our biggest health challenges like Alzheimer's, autism, ALS, and diabetes -- go unfunded. Young scientists, seeing how hard it is to get their research funded, are beginning to leave research work for other fields where they see a more promising future.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Paul Ryan is at it again:
http://jezebel.com/...
And good news from Montana:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
New Ohio law would be disastrous for women's health:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Violence Against Women
The latest case of foot-in-mouth disease among Republicans:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Prison rape petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/...
Petition to interim president of Egypt to stop kidnapping and torture of women in the Sinai:
https://secure.avaaz.org/...
Horrible story of rape used as a punishment for love:
http://www.express.co.uk/...
Economic Justice for Women
Whole Foods worker loses her job because of unclear snow day policy:
http://www.thenation.com/...
An important discussion by some amazing women of the need for a different kind of diversity on the bench:
http://www.afj.org/...
And please remember that minimum wage legislation will greatly affect women, since women are more likely to hold low-wage jobs. If you haven't read "Nickled and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich, as I hadn't until recently, it's an important book on this subject.
Woman of Valor
I never heard of her before reading this:
http://www.dailykos.com/...