Are you a woman? Friend of women? Child/spouse/sibling of women? Have something to say about it? Ever had a few thoughts on women and the law, women and health, women and gardening? Then step on up and write for SheKos. Submissions and ideas are more than welcome, from double Xers and XYers alike. Drop us a line at shekosdkos@gmail.com.
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THIS WEEK IN WOMEN'S HISTORY: Four Centuries of American Heroines
by joedemocrat
- This Week in 1617, Pocahontas passed away. She was a Virginia Indian who is well known for unselfishly helping the Jamestown colonial settlers by bringing food and supplies.
- This Week in 1638 Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her "crime" was holding a popular Bible study in her home that allowed people to read and interpret the Word of God for themselves. Among the topics that generated controversy: examining the subordinate role of women and the inhumane treatment of native Americans. For example, she looked at how the story of Adam and Eve was used to justify the male-dominated structure in the church. At first, she invited only a few neighbors, all of whom were women. But Hutchinson’s studies became very popular, grew to include men, and eventually had to be moved to a church. Her teachings put her in direct conflict with church leaders in Boston, causing them to consider her a heretic. They put her on trial at age 46. She was in her 15th pregnancy, and yet was forced to stand for several days while interogators tried to get her to confess to blasphemy. She was ultimately convicted and banished from the colony. However, history ultimately judged her to be a symbol of religious freedom, and Christian feminism. She was put on trial not so much for her teachings, but because her Bible study was so popular, and a threat to the church's male patriarchal structure. In 1987, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned her.
- This Week in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Fugitive Slave Law, passed in 1850, made it illegal to help a runaway slave. This law motivated her to write the book, which became a best seller. The powerful story made the slavery debate real and influenced public opinion. Abraham Lincoln once remarked, "So you're the little lady who started this great war!"
- This Week in 1931,Ida B. Wells passed away. (I prematurely included her in a previous SheKos diary, but her tireless anti-lynching crusade justifies a repeat. She studied lynching, and in 1892 published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. She believed Southerners fabricated violent crimes to conceal their real reasons for lynching: ideas about the inferiority of blacks and fears that black economic progress would come at the expense of whites.
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SAGE AND SWEETGRASS: Healing Our Communities
by Aji
Those of you who have read my diaries know that Native health issues are very close to my heart. (For an example, see my diary on the diabetes epidemic in our communities, here.)
Certain illnesses and conditions disproportionately affect Indian women:
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The leading cause of death among Native women is heart disease;
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Their second leading cause of death is cancer;
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Native women are twice as likely as white women to suffer a stroke;
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Native Americans are more than twice as likely to develop diabetes as non-Hispanic whites, and the rates are higher among Native women;
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In 2005, the tuberculosis rate among Indians was seven times higher than among the white population - and that rate went up in 2006;
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A CDC study found that Native women were more than "three times as likely as white women to have had serious mental distress in the last month";
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And among people age 15-24, Indians have the highest rates of suicide.
At times, the sheer volume of bad news becomes overwhelming. So while I want folks to be aware of the obstacles we face on the health front, I also want to highlight some good news that too often goes unreported. Let me introduce you to a few amazing Native women who deserve headlines:
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Dr. Anna Miller (Cherokee), leader of a team of medical professionals in Florida treating Haitian refugees fleeing the devastation of the earthquake;
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Lynn Malerba (Mohegan), former nurse, hospital administrator, and business executive, appointed the first woman chief in nearly three centuries; health care and education are among her top priorities for her term as chief.
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Patty Iron Cloud (Oglala Sioux, 1945-2007), a Pipe Carrier who devoted her life to improving the health of Native peoples, with special emphasis on women and children. In her memory, the Association of American Indian Physicians administers the Patty Iron Cloud National Native American Youth Initiative, an intensive program for high school students pursuing careers in health and biomedical research.
- And on one final and somber note, former Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller is in the final stages of her battle with pancreatic cancer. For those so inclined, please join me in offering prayers as she prepares to begin her final journey.
Miigwech.
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GLBT NEWS THE KAT DRAGGED IN: Canonization of a Bigot?
by KentuckyKat
Jesse Helms ranks with Ronald Reagan as the politicians to have the most detrimental effect on the GLBT community. Between them, they ignored the emergence of HIV/AIDS and sought to limit funding for research into cures/treatments for it. Now, the Jesse Helms Center Foundation is trying to change Helms's legacy to turn him into an advocate for equal rights for GLBTs. This is not only blatant revisionist history, it is yet one more slap in the face to those who we have lost and those who have lost someone to HIV/AIDS. It is up to us to keep the truth of Helms's cruelty alive. To that end, I want to share some of Helms's more egregious statements and acts.
"There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy," he once said.
link Yup...teh evil gays are all to blame for HIV/AIDS...oh, yeah, and they got what they deserved.
"We've got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts."
Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), on why he opposed approval of the Ryan White CARE act, which provides funding for AIDS research.
Helms opposed needle exchanges that could have slowed the spread of the disease.
While Helms softened his views on the need for AIDS assistance in Africa, he never came around on domestic AIDS issues, which he still considered to be caused exclusively by gays.
"I don't have any idea on changing my views on that kind of activity, which is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) said he will oppose the nomination of San Francisco gay rights activist Roberta Achtenberg to be assistant secretary for fair housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development "because she's a damn lesbian. I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine," Helms told the Washington Times.
link
Please click on this link for a wonderfully moving description of Helms's career and the lives that it ruined. And if you would like to read some first-hand experiences of fellow Kossacks who have lived, loved and lost with HIV/AIDS, check out last week's WGLB.
Finally, I implore you to speak out against the canonization of this bigot. Talk to friends and family about the hate and destruction that Helms wrought. Write a letter to the editor explaining why you object to the efforts to remake his legacy. Speak out and make yourself heard!
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WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: Our Elected Officials
by pat of butter in a sea of grits
What with Nancy Pelosi leading the revolution that was televised on Sunday, I thought it might be interesting to look into how women are doing as far as representation among our elected officials.
According to this link, we Democrats are better than Republicans at electing women. In 2009, women represented about 23 percent of Democrats in the House, and 22 percent of Democrats in the Senate, while among Republican representatives, women are just 10 percent in both the House and the Senate. The United States ranks 70th in the world in terms of the percentage of women in its legislature. In state legislatures, the number of women representatives grew rapidly during 1971-1999 and since then has leveled off. There are currently six women serving as governors, in Hawaii, Michigan, Connecticut, Washington, North Carolina, and Arizona -- we're down one since Sarah Palin resigned.
The number of women running for political office in California is declining -- although we do have two female senators, and a pro-choice woman, Meg Whitman, is likely to lead the Republican ticket for governor. Meg Whitman is kind of a typical California Republican these days: socially moderate but a fiscal whacko. If elected, she claims she will fix education and cut spending at the same time, including cutting 40,000 state workers, many of whom work for the University of California. That ought to solve our education problems here in the Golden State. Personally, I'll be voting for the same guy my parents voted for for governor in 1974, Jerry Brown.
A new study (PDF) by Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics looked at how to increase the number of female elected officials. Their findings include: (a) women need to be recruited or encouraged to run; (b) women candidates need support of their political parties; (c) organizations such as women's organizations could play a larger role in recruiting female candidates; (d) the pool of potential female candidates is large; and (e) fundraising remains a concern for all candidates but particularly women.
Elect Women is an organization aiming to increase the number of female elected officials from all parties. If you're interested in running yourself, there are resources available at their website. Good luck!
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
by Oke
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In Abortion History: From This Woman's Work To.... Men's Choice?, Purple Priestess, in a well-researched diary, lays out the history of abortion from Eqyptian times through to the modern era. In addition to following the arc of abortion methods and cultural norms surrounding it, she also outlines how it went from an exclusively female concern to one controlled, in large part, by men. Not to be missed.
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In Sisters Unite to retire Stupak/Pitts, Spedwybabs blogs about the efforts, just beginning, to remove Stupak and Pitts from Congress for their attempts to derail HCR in order to "protect the unborn." As Spedwybabs says, "if you bargain with women's rights you are bargaining with your political careers." And these two women, Connie Saltonstall (MI-01) and Lois Herr (PA-16), intend to make that statement come true.
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In RIP Liz Carpenter, LBJ's press secretary 1920-2010 updated with photos, Ripeness Is All talks about an amazing woman, an early feminist and a tireless political powerhouse, Liz Carpenter, who passed away this week at the age of 89. From her time in the Johnson administration through her work on the Equal Rights Amendment, she was "a force of nature," as one of her good friends, Luci Johnson, said. She will be missed.
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In How regulation came to be: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, dsteffen tells the story of a tragedy in the early 20th century, at a time when manufacturers conspired with politicians to thwart regulations which would guarantee worker safety. But there's a story behind the story -- the attempts by workers' groups, many of them women's groups, who attempted to prevent such occurrences, and who worked for worker's rights in the face of entrenched hostility. A must-read.
And from outside the Orange:
- Self-Immolation in Afghanistan
The Whitney Biennial has an unprecedented gender balance this year, an exciting new development. It comes as no surprise, then, that subject matter like this is part of this year's show. American photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair has a devastating documentary photography series titled "Self-Immolation in Afghanistan: A Cry for Help." Since 2005, over 700 women have set themselves on fire in Afghanistan. According to Planet, most incidents were caused by repeated abuse, fear of their husbands and petty household disputes.
- Swim Coaches Molest Female Swimmers, Go Unpunished for Decades
A suit filed in California alleges that the the governing body of U.S. competitive swimming has failed to address widespread sexual abuse of young girls at swim clubs across the country. According to the Associated Press, the suit alleges that "more than 30 coaches nationwide have engaged in sexual misconduct with young females, and says there is a culture in competitive swimming of condoning inappropriate relationships between coaches and swimmers."
1972 Olympic champion Deena Deardurff Schmidt has spoken out on behalf of the victims by sharing her own abuse story. Her story reflects what the lawyers in the case also allege: "damaging and disturbing information about how the swim world operates."
- A Right to Life for the Living
.....The Tuskegee study was initiated in the rural South during a period of great economic distress. It preyed on vulnerable communities with few medical resources and little political power. It employed a cynical racist strategy of encouraging black compliance by deploying black spokespeople to claim that the study's efforts were in the best interests of African-Americans.
Georgia Right to Life has revived this racial masquerade by portraying its opposition to reproductive rights as a campaign for racial justice.
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They need a billboard declaring Inadequate Education Is Genocide. Black children are significantly more likely to live in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty and residential segregation and, therefore, to attend schools with inferior resources, lower-quality instructors and larger class sizes. Children in these schools are vastly more likely to drop out, to be arrested, to be the victims of violent crime and to die prematurely.
- Writers Reveal Newsweek’s Continued – If Subtle – Sexism
Forty years after female employees of Newsweek sued the magazine for employment discrimination based on gender, three young reporters detail how working there has changed for women, and how it hasn’t. The piece provides an honest, nuanced, and thoroughly researched illustration of the working world today’s women face – even after all the significant gains that we have made over the past half-century.
Along with some bleak statistics – including the fact that men wrote all but six of Newsweek’s 49 cover stories last year – the writers deftly articulate what women of my generation find increasingly difficult to voice: the fact that sexism may be less explicit than it was 40 years ago does not lessen its power. In fact, subtle bias can be the hardest kind to fight:
- Need a Good Spanking? Try Christian Domestic Discipline Marriage
Just when I think I have seen it all, I stumble upon something called Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD) marriage, a rising trend in conservative Christian households. A CDD marriage, for the uninitiated, is "marriage is one in which one partner is given authority over the other, and has the means to back up that authority, usually by spanking." And, of course, that one partner with authority is always the man and always in reference to a heterosexual relationship. I guess the LGBT community has to miss out on all the domestic violence fun.
You see, according to this popular CDD website, modern culture with its "radically selfish feminism" and its "wholesale bias against true manhood" is undermining good old fashioned Christian heterosexual marriage. Clearly, this can all be fixed with spanking.
- Tell CNN: Keep Anti-Gay, Racist, Sexist Commentators Off the Air
CNN has decided to hire Erick Erickson as a political contributor to their upcoming new show, "John King USA". Erickson, an editor at redstate.com, is meant to talk about political issues from a Republican point of view. While CNN should certainly be welcoming diverse political voices on their network, Erickson's history of inflammatory comments are dangerous and inappropriate for a news network.
In the past, Erickson has called women's rights activists Nazis, called Michelle Obama a "Marxist harpy wife," said that President Obama only won his Nobel Peace Prize because of "affirmative action," and called the U.S. Department of Education's Safe Schools Czar "profoundly sick and immoral" beacause of his sexual orientation.