by Angry Mouse, SheKos editor
This Sunday is Valentine's Day. But it's not just an opportunity to buy cheap candy, overpriced roses, and trashy lingerie. It's also V-Day.
Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues, A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer, and screenings of V-Day's documentary Until The Violence Stops, to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities.
The V-Day movement was started in 1998 and has raised more than $70 million dollars to help women around the world by opening shelters, mobilizing opposition to bad policies and practices, and raising awareness of the conditions women face across the globe.
This year's V-Day focuses on raising awareness of rape and violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. V-Day has joined with UNICEF on this project.
V-Day has also established a Haiti Rescue Fund and is working with ShelterBox to help combat the devastation left by the earthquake and to honor the memory of Myriam Merlet, the Chief of Staff of the Ministry for Women in Haiti and one of Haiti's most prominent feminist activists, who was killed in the earthquake.
V-Day met Myriam in 2001 when she first requested to bring the V-Day movement to Haiti. Despite riots and coups, she brought The Vagina Monologues to the women and girls of Port Au Prince, raising the issue of violence against women and girls in a region where women suffer some of the worst poverty and gender-based-violence in the world. Myriam was a force of nature and one of Haiti and the Caribbean's most beloved leaders of the women's movement. As a true Vagina Warrior she was an integral part of creating the V-Day Haiti Sorority Safe House in Port Au Prince. She has been with V-Day through our small victories and our biggest moments, from building the safe house in Haiti, to joining thousands of women and men from all over the world in New Orleans for V TO THE TENTH. She was a leader, a warrior, a mother, and a friend. And she will be greatly missed by V-Day, and her fellow activists all over the world.
Remember: The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
SHEKOS FEATURE: Lady looks like a dude... and so what?
by LeanneB, SheKos editor
Way back in my early teens, I was hanging around after a YMCA youth sports banquet ended. The podium used for emceeing the event and presenting the awards was now untended as the crowd dispersed. Spying "David" from my neighborhood, a rough-and-tumble macho dude my cousins and I sometimes hung out with, an evil thought struck me. I glanced around to ensure no one was looking, stepped up to the microphone, and delivered the definitive insult of my age group at that time:
"David’s a woman."
Pockets of laughter could be heard as David’s face reddened in embarrassment.
That’s right – the most cutting insult available was not merely a feminizing label ("sissy," "pansy," "pussy,") but actually saying he was a woman, and as a woman-to-be, I played right along.
Fast forward a bunch of decades to Jan. 11, 2010, when conservative magazine writer Matt Labash adorns his inaugural post for Tucker Carlson’s The DailyCaller.com with this sparkling witticism:
I didn’t choose wisdom. It chose me. If I had my druthers, I’d have chosen another gift, perhaps the untold riches of Lil’ Wayne, whose teeth are made of actual diamonds, or to be the sexiest man alive, like Rachel Maddow.
This was such an obvious comedy goldmine that Carlson revisited it the following month. Pushing back on an alleged implication from Keith Olbermann that all Fox News on-air women are merely pretty faces, Carlson posted pics of attractive women from MSNBC, ending with a head shot of Rachel:
Whoops, how did that one get in there? Sorry, man. I mean dude. I mean Rachel! Sorry, Rachel.
And of course, Rachel is far from the first target of this tactic for dealing with taking prominent (read: "uppity") women down a peg. One of the most egregious for sheer nastiness came from John McCain, back when he was still all lovable and stuff, delivering this knee-slapper in 1998:
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno."
Get off his lawn? Try get out of his trough!
At first glance, it might appear that these stories and my prehistoric anecdote are merely flip sides of the same coin, that the same principle is driving them: Society deems it an insult to each gender to imply someone has characteristics of the opposite gender. But is that really the sum total of the societal machinations at work here? No, it isn't. You know it isn't.
When men are demeaned by suggesting they are like women, it is to portray them as emotional... as incompetent... as weak.
When women are demeaned by suggesting they are like men, it is to portray them as unattractive. Undesirable (by men). In other words? Worthless. Or at least, worth less.
Meanwhile, a man who is masculine is strong, competent, and virile. A woman who is feminine is pretty, desirable (to men), and enhances the status of the man to whom she is attached.
Within this model, men achieve power by following cultural gender stereotypes, while women are granted limited power that is dependent on appealing to men and obtaining male approval. To say that the deck is stacked against us is to assume that we're players rather than the merely played.
It's really power, balance, and respect (or lack of it) that determines whether a joke like the one I played on poor ol' David is funny or not. And it was funny, because David was a very masculine boy. Had he been effeminate or bad at sports, it never would have even occurred to me to do the "he's a woman" joke, even though it would have gotten a much bigger laugh.
Because it would have been mean. It would have been a genuine insult rather than a playful one between friends.
And this is exactly why Matt Labash's "sexiest man alive" crack didn't crack me up, and why Carlson's "dude" was a dud. Rachel Maddow is not only openly gay but openly butch and acknowledges that she has a masculine appearance. But Matt Labash seems to think that, alone, exonerates him and makes it okay for him to poke fun at her appearance:
Still, who do I think I am, implying that Rachel Maddow has a somewhat mannish appearance? What kind of frat-boy mouth-breather would say that in public? Where would I get such an idea? I honestly don’t know. I can’t imagine anybody else saying such a thing. Wait a second. Actually, I can:
"I am what I am, I look like a dude." – Rachel Maddow, as quoted by The New Yorker, October 17, 2009
"I’m a big lesbian who looks like a man. I am not, like, Anchor Babe, and I’m never gonna be." – Rachel Maddow as quoted in GQ magazine, November 2008
Please go easy on her, Media Matters. I’ve watched her show. She’s a good person. I don’t think she meant anything by it.
Just one thing missing from this, Matt - any sense at all of friendship between you and Rachel, or indeed, of respect for her. Friendly jibes really only work when the parties are actually... friendly.
No, the intention behind these jokes is sickeningly clear. Rachel Maddow is a smart, strong, assertive woman, and a prominent progressive media presence, and on top of all that, she is a woman who does not fit the cultural norm of feminine beauty. Attacking her "lack of femininity" is the most obvious tactic for attempting to dehumanize her, to neutralize her effectiveness and eventually - they hope - to silence her.
What people like Carlson - as old in his mind as he is in his neckwear - is that Americans are increasingly less concerned with that kind of stuff. Hell, the kind of people who do care probably have never heard of Rachel Maddow. All he and his frat brother Labash have done is piss off her support base while painting themselves as assholes.
So while things are sort of in a lull and the podium is untended, let me just sneak up to the mike to direct a quick shout-out to Matt and Tucker, and even Grandpa John McCain:
You guys are all nothing like a woman. At all.
It's funny because it's true.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
THIS WEEK IN WOMEN'S HISTORY: Pioneers With a Pen, and at the Polls
by joedemocrat
To commemorate this week in women's history, we celebrate the birthdays of a trio of amazing authors. And we note two milestones--a century apart--on the road to elbowing our way into the voting booth.
- This week in 1851, author Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother's family was of French Canadian descent. She settled as an adult in New Orleans, which became the inspiration and setting for much of her writing. Because of her strong female characters, she is regarded as a forerunner of 20th century feminist authors.
- This week in 1867, novelist Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in a Wisconsin log cabin. She accepted a position as a school teacher at age 15, and later became famous for penning the Little House on the Prairie series of books, about family life on the frontier. She also died this week in 1957.
- This week in 1944, writer and activist Alice Walker was born. Her powerful best-seller The Color Purple (1982) also became an acclaimed movie. She was involved in the civil rights movement, was arrested in March 2003 during a protest against the Iraq war outside the Bush White House. She is also known for writing a a very open and moving letter to president-elect Barack Obama, whom she supported.
- This week in 1870, women gained the right to vote in Utah. That right would be lost again in 1887, and restored in 1895.
- This week in 1971, women gained the right to vote and stand in Parliament through a national referendum in Switzerland.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: The Recession Gender Gap
by pat of butter in a sea of grits
Much has been written about the recession gender gap. Reportedly, the recession is hitting men harder than it is hitting women. Of course, it is difficult to separate the two, since many women's household incomes are partly or fully reliant on men, just as an increasing number of men are reliant on women's incomes. About 2 million women are married to a man who has lost his job in this recession, and 1.4 million women have themselves lost a job. Life is especially rough for those who fit into both categories, as does one of my friends; she and her husband both lost their jobs around the same time, and they've had to take their kids out of school and move several hundred miles away where her husband (who is in construction) could find a job.
Women represent an increasingly large proportion of the workforce, 49.8 percent of all jobs in the United States, and women's job numbers are growing. Men have lost about three-quarters of all lost jobs during this recession.
The unemployment numbers back up these findings. In July, Marketwatch reported that men's unemployment was 10.6 percent, while women's was 8.3 percent. By September, both were up, but men's slightly more; male unemployment was 11 percent versus 8.4 percent for women. For those who are employed, men's wages also grew more slowly than did those of women (2 percent wage growth for men versus 3.2 percent for women). However, that increase for women masks a pre-existing lower pay rate for women workers. Women on average earned $657 a week during the third quarter of 2009, while men earned $812 a week on average.
A hard look at the numbers shows that the recession has been worse for men overall, particularly because so many were employed in construction, but the way the recession has been written about in some places (a "mancession," etc.), you'd think women had an unemployment rate of zero percent rather than 8.4 percent. Women may be doing slightly better than men, but we're feeling the pain too.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
GLBT NEWS THE KAT DRAGGED IN: Unexpected Consequences?
by KentuckyKat
During the Bush years, I stumbled across some cases dealing with GLBTs seeking asylum based on fear of harm...even one where the asylum seeker could show that he would not be able to receive treatment for AIDS if he was forced to return to his country of origin. The one thing that all of the cases had in common was that the request for asylum was denied and the denial was upheld by the courts. So, it was a pleasant surprise to find this article while deciding what to discuss with you this week.
In this instance, the asylum seeker is a gay man from Brazil. According to the article:
Brazil has one of the highest rates of hate crimes against GLBT people in the world. Grupo Gay da Bahia, the leading GLBT rights organization in Brazil, reports that between 1980 and 2009 there were 2,998 reported murders of homosexuals in Brazil. In 2008 alone, over 190 GLBT people were murdered, and the actual number is likely to be much higher since many of these killings go unreported.
In his own words, here is the basis for the asylum request:
"In Brazil, I lived in constant fear for my life," said Augusto Pereira de Souza, 27. "I tried to hide that I was gay, but still faced repeated beatings, attacks, and threats on my life because I was gay. At times I was attacked by skinheads and brutally beaten by cops. After the cops attack you and threaten your life for being gay, you learn quickly that there is no one that will protect you. For me, coming to the U.S. was a life or death decision."
As I said above, I am heartened by the fact that asylum was granted in this case and hope that this is a portent of things to come for other asylum seekers. I also can't help but wonder whether this change would have happened but for the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. I wonder if by finally having a federal law protecting GLBTs, we haven't received benefits beyond our imagining. And I wonder what other unexpected benefits will come from additional GLBT-friendly legislation such as repealing DADT and DOMA, and enacting ENDA and UAFA.
Other important GLBT news from this week:
Gay marriage opponents fail to repeal same sex marriage law in New Hampshire.
Iowa lawmakers fail in bid to amend constitution to end marriage equality.
Lt. Dan Choi recalled for active duty.
◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇
IN THE MEDIA'S WEB
by chicating
An interesting mix of topics this week, from torture on TV to Caitlin Flanigan providing an ironic moment of sisterhood.
- While not specifically about women viewers,Amanda Marcotte's article on torture as a television trope is a must-read. Even liberals write as if it works. Where's the Captain Picard face-palm when you need it?
- Right-wingers call Rachel Maddow a man, then bitch when many sentient beings perceive those remarks as "cheap shots." Umm...so you just meant she is smart, calm, and authoritative, right, guys?
- Here's adefinitive take on the Vanity Fair Young Hollywood cover controversy. dodai juxtaposes Ebony's March 2010 a beautiful quote from Oscar-nominated
"I don't try to live up to the standards of Hollywood or any of that – I know that I'm different and I celebrate it. In a weird way, I kind of really, really love being the alien in the room. I dig it."
And it's good that Gabby doesn't care about living up to Hollywood standards. Because judging from the VF cover, the "Hollywood" standards need to change.
- This last article is a bit dated, but I included it becauseCaitlin Flanigan's bile and damning with faint praise helped me find a moment of feeling for women with whom I thought I only shared an X chromosome, namely Helen Gurley Brown and Rielle Hunter. I think I have read articles about Eva Braun that didn't condemn her this much.