Long time, no post. I've been real busy lately. And by "busy" I mean "lazy!" My brother hooked up the Xbox to the HD television, so I've been playing Virtua Fighter 5 all week. You can see the pores on the back of Akira's hand! Exciting, right? Anyway . . . .

Tell Beef Northwest to negotiate with their union workers.

Tell Eagle Industries, which makes military gear, to allow their employees to form unions.

Stop so-called "pro-life" pharmacies. The petition is being sent to the Virginia Board Pharmacies, but anyone can sign.

A federal court upheld free speech rights after two anti-choice propoganda mongers were sued for driving a truck with pictures of what they call aborted fetuses (but we all know are stillbirths) around a middle school. Traumatizing children with propoganda. Pro-life indeed! Somehow I doubt the same court would have upheld free speech rights if someone drove around with a picture of a woman and a man "making a baby," if you catch my drift.

Remember the story of the undocumented teen who got an abortion with the help of a federally-funded Catholic organization in Virginia? A bishop in Virginia apologized for the incident. Guess how many times the young woman was mentioned? Once -- "I join my sadness to yours at the loss of the life of an unborn child whose teenage mother was in the foster care of Commonwealth Catholic Charities." So she only exists in relation to a fetus. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

The Associated Press wonders, "if there are two grooms, who kisses the bride?" Yes, important question indeed *eye roll*. The last sentence of the article says it all: “I just say, ’You may now kiss,”’ said [Rev. Neil] Thomas. “I don’t want to get into all that patriarchal stuff.” :D

Diane Negra of the University of East Anglia in England analyzes the media coverage of troubled women celebrities, such as Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse. “When we use female celebrities this way, we see them failing and struggling, they serve as proof that for women the work-life balance is impossible. Can you have it all? The answer these stories give again and again is ‘absolutely not.”’

And this isn't necessarily feminist, but a woman in China rescued over 100 dogs that were trapped in the rubble after the earthquake. A-dorable!

 I'm supposed to send this video to five of my friends, but I'm posting it here because I bet more than five people read this. Right?

Anyway, it's pretty scary how few people know John McCain's record on family planning issues, but it's not surprising, since he's been painted by the media as a maverick. The above video shows the Planned Parenthood team clearing up some misconceptions.

Help increase funding for family planning.

Tell investors in Darfur to stand up for human rights.

Show Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) and members of other human rights organizations your support.

Support Pre-K for every child.

Tell Trader Joe's to ensure that their suppliers follow the law by providing water, shade, and bathrooms to their farm workers.
 

 What's that saying about women having to work twice as hard to get half the credit of men do? It doesn't really matter what the saying is, because Jim Rome expands on it when it comes to Candace Parker who dunked for the second time the other night. She's the second WNBA player to dunk and the only WNBA player to dunk twice.

Look, I like Candace Parker a lot. She’s a class act and a great athlete. But, if all you have to sell is a layup that you’re calling a dunk, that’s not much at all, is it. It’s basketball! People “throw it down”! Why are you giving yourselves credit for something they do in high school all the time? And in local runs down by the beach? And it would be even more impressive if she didn’t go in all alone, late in a blowout, with a smaller, bi-colored basketball.

Look, I’m not looking for her to take off from the free throw line, or to go off the glass through your legs and throw down a “windmill jam”. But, if it’s not too much to ask, I need to know what I just saw is an actually [sic] a dunk. The WNBA…they’ve got to next. And, two people who can dunk! Sort of!

Don't you just love it when assholes make typos? I love it when that happens. Anyway, Jim Rome is an asshole for other reasons. First, he denies that what Parker did was even a dunk. Um, yes it was, mustache. It was obviously a dunk. He further belittles Parker's achievement by pointing out that she made the dunk with a smaller ball, smaller in comparison to what the men play with in the NBA. It doesn't occur to Rome that WNBA players use a smaller ball because they have smaller hands. He believes that it's unfair that WNBA players use a smaller ball than NBA players, but it would be unfair if WNBA used the same sized ball because they wouldn't be able to handle it as well because it's too big. So basically, Rome wants the game to be unfair to women. He also doesn't like the circumstances of the dunk, since the Sparks were winning by a lot of points. But he didn't seem to think that was a problem after the NBA Finals when the Celtics creamed the Lakers in the final game, calling it "a great win for [the Celtics]" and saying that the Celtics were "much better" than the Lakers. Apparently, it's only okay when men wipe the floor with the other team. Finally, he says that he isn't expecting some sort of theatrical dunk, when that's exactly what he's looking for. Call me when you make up your mind, mustache. In the meantime, shut up.

 Tell your Congressperson to support The TRADE Act.

Urge your Congressperson to increase family planning funding.

Voice your support for same-sex marriage.

Help expand the U.N. arms embargo to all of Sudan.

Tell House leadership to restore affordable birth control.

 As much as I would love to point out the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, I think there are more problems with this story than that.

A 16-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatamala living in Virginia was helped by workers from Commonwealth Catholic Charities get an abortion in January. One of the workers must have posed as the young woman's parent, since Virginia law requires parental consent for minors to have abortions. Four of the workers for the organization were fired, and the federal government is looking into the matter since this organization gets over $7 million a year in federal funding. And thanks to Henry Hyde, federal monies can't be used to pay for an abortion. So what are the many things wrong with this situation? Basically, lots of things could have been done to prevent this.

1. Abortion is illegal in Guatamala in almost all cases. If this young woman was in the United States specifically to obtain the abortion, this wouldn't have been necessary if abortion were legal in her home country.

2. The Global Gag Rule restricts family funding to any clinic or hospital that even mentions abortion. Contraception is the best way to prevent unintended pregnancy and, therefore, abortion. Even though abortion is illegal in Guatamala, she probably wouldn't have been able to obtain contraception because of this legislation.

3. Like I said before, the Hyde Amendment keeps federal funds from being used to pay for an abortion. If not for that law, this wouldn't be a federal crime. If not for that law, a woman's reproductive system wouldn't be under government scrutiny. It's really none of the government's business who has an abortion and under what circumstances, but dead white guys like Hyde still have control over women in America.

4. Virginia has parental consent laws for abortion. There's a possibility that this young woman's parents aren't in the United States. Commonweatlth Catholic Charities has a refugee minors program who came to the United States without their parents. If her parents are in the United States, they're here illegally. Furthermore, she would have had to attend "pre-abortion counseling" designed to discourage her from having the abortion and then wait 24 hours. I'm going under the probably false assumption that she's aware of the restrictions in the first place. And that doesn't even include the possibility that this young woman would be abused or disowned if she told her parents or that she was afraid of being deported. Obviously, the system failed her and she had nowhere to turn.

5. Federal funding shouldn't even be allocated to religious organizations in the first place. That $7 million could be used to support family planning in Virginia.

I'm not going to say that what Commonwealth Catholic Charities did was a noble thing. I am not sure under what circumstances this young woman got the abortion. I am suspect of any organization that provides "crisis pregnancy counseling," since they are in the business of deciding what a woman will do for them and not letting the woman decide what's best for herself. And how do I know that they didn't decide for her that it's best that she get an abortion? It might not even have been this young woman's choice. Hopefully, more details will come of this story so we can keep up with it.

 This is pretty creepy. A high school in Massachusetts recently saw a spike in teen pregnancies, 17 in all. It's suspected that about half of them were part of some pregnancy pact where the teens vowed to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Of course, Jamie Lynn Spears was blamed for having the nerve to have a kid. It's funny. First, Jamie Lynn is congratulated for "doing the right thing" by remaining pregnant and having the baby, and now she's being singled out for the same reasons. Those are the kinds of mixed messages that confuse teens and grown-ups alike about how they're supposed to handle their sex lives.

What was never mentioned in the above clip is sexuality education. They talked about the possibility of making contraception available to students, but that doesn't really help when the girls actually want to get pregnant. I also don't agree with the idea that these girls are looking for unconditional love or anything like that. It struck me as kind of odd that these girls were making a pact with other teen girls, so they do have a sense of friendship and togetherness, maybe even sisterhood. It's almost as if they don't even expect any guy they make a baby with to support the kid. That's pretty sad. I think if these young women learned that their worth wasn't measured in how many babies they have and that they're good people in and of themselves, that things like this wouldn't happen.

 Since I have science to back me up when I say that sexist jokes are, in fact, not only unfunny but damaging, I don't really give a shit if people label me as a humorless feminist when I say that this advertisement for the Planet Green television network is sexist. It stars Ludacris and Tommy Lee trying to one-up each other when it comes to conservation. At one point Ludacris says:

You know the hotel we're staying at? Remember the hot tub, right? I filled it up with all women instead of water -- saved 150 gallons.

I know that this is supposed to be a joke, but this commercial joins basically everything that PETA does by putting women's dignity on the back burner to promote another cause. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for animal welfare and protecting the environment. But I know how to support these causes without treating women like objects. I recognize that animal cruelty, the destruction of our environment, and the second-class status of women are not mutually exclusive. Is it a surprise that there's a link between domestic violence and animal abuse, or that Mother Nature or Mother Earth gets no respect for everything she does for us (like give us life and provide us with food)? As much as I would love to, I don't really expect Planet Green or PETA to realize that the way we treat women, animals, and the environment intersect and that we can achieve all of our goals much easier if we join forces. But is it really that difficult to go 30 seconds without making a sexist joke?

 There was a real freaky article in the Washington Post today about so-called "pro-life pharmacies." They're just like regular pharmacies, except they refuse to do everyday pharmacy-type stuff, like fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception and sell condoms. They believe it's in women's best interest to refuse perfectly safe and legal forms of hormonal birth control in order to prevent pregnancy, relieve menstrual cramps, and regulate menstrual cycles. Thanks a bunch! Here's how they neglect their responsibilities:

Pharmacists at eight pro-life drugstores contacted by  The Washington Post said they would not actively interfere with a woman trying to fill a prescription elsewhere, but none posts signs announcing restrictions or offers to help women get what they need elsewhere.

"If I don't believe something is right, the last thing I want to do is refer to someone else," said Michael G. Koelzer, who owns Kay Pharmacy in Grand Rapids, Mich. "It's up to that person to be able to find it."

That's contrary to the American Pharmacists Association's Code of Ethics, with guidelines like "A pharmacist promotes the right of self-determination and recognizes individual self-worth by encouraging patients to participate in decisions about their health . . . . In all cases, a pharmacist respects personal and cultural differences among patients" and "A pharmacist avoids discriminatory practices, behavior or work conditions that impair professional judgment, and actions that compromise dedication to the best interests of patients." So while one might say they're simply "trying not to leave our faith at the door," they're doing just that to the responsibilities of their profession and, more importantly, the people they're supposed to serve.

 I've been reading like a mofo this whole week for my Multicultural Counseling class, so sorry for the lack of updates. My inbox was filled with take action-y stuff for me to share with all of you. Yay!

Sign the sympathy card for Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old pregnant farm worker who died of heat stroke recently.

Contact the Men's Warehouse Board of Directors and demand that they keep their Montreal factory open.

Support the United Nations Population Fund Restoration Act.

Say no to warrantless wiretapping.

Tell your Congressperson to help reduce child marriages.

Support the Employee Free Choice Act.

 For most liberals, today is a happy day, because Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination (here's the YouTube video of his speech, which I'm listening to now, and it's great). For slightly fewer liberals, it's time to suck it up and vote for the candidate who might be (should be, really) your second favorite. Hillary Clinton supporters, with a crappy economy, slow housing and job markets, an ongoing occupation and war in Iraq, the possibility of more war in Iran, and the nearly 8-year-long erosion of our human and civil rights, it is NOT the time to be bitter and risk having another 4 years of the same by staying home on November 4 or voting for John McCain. Besides, voting for John McCain would make you a gigantic moron. Sometimes, when your favorite gets the boot, you have to vote for your second favorite. This goes for presidential elections and American Idol, and I'm going to compare the two right now (and I'll do a better job than John McCain did).

Season 7 of American Idol ended just a couple of weeks ago, and it showcased fantastic talent that wasn't seen in any of the preceding seasons, except maybe Season 4 when Bo Bice should have won, but Carrie Underwood did. My favorite of this past season was Jason Castro, the dreadlocked, sensitive Colombian folk singer with blue eyes like the -- alright let me stop before I float away. I voted my little fingers off for the guy every week since his first performance and I fell in love with him over and over again, week after week, no matter how much the judges bashed his style. Unfortunately, Team Castro dropped the ball (well, so did Jason), and Jason placed fourth. Many Dreadheads (clever, no?) vowed to never vote or watch the show again. I, like so many other American Idol fans, had a second favorite: The tall, faux-hawked, scruffy Mid-Western rocker, David Cook. And I felt torn between making a statement by boycotting the show and possibly inadvertantly sealing the deal for either baby-faced snooze-fest David Archuleta or screechy diva wannabe Syesha Mercado. I went back and forth -- "I'm gonna boycott!" "No! I have to vote for Cook!" -- for an entire week. It was stressful.

I decided not to watch and not to vote. I was secure in my decision, until I realized something. How successful would my boycott be if I didn't vote and my inaction caused someone that I didn't want to win, to win? Wouldn't that be a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts? Wouldn't it just piss me off even more if neither of the performers that I liked and that I thought deserved to win got voted off? Wouldn't it be just like Taylor Hicks winning all over again? (If you don't know what it's like for Taylor Hicks to win American Idol, just remember how you felt when George W. Bush was reelected. It kind of feels like that).

So at the very last minute on Top-3 night, I voted for David Cook for two full hours, and he made it to the top 2. The next week, I voted for David Cook again. So did a lot of Dreadheads, even those who initially said they wouldn't vote after Jason got voted off. And you know what happened? David Cook won by 12 million votes, and Cook's fans are forever grateful, because they know he couldn't have won without help from the Dreadheads (those Archies play dir-tay.). And overall, the Dreadheads seem very satisfied with David Cook winning, as he was a second favorite of many.

The moral of the story? It can hurt when your favorite candidate doesn't win the grand prize, but if you can help the other guy who shares your views and rocks just as hard, it'll still be much more satisfying than if some boring guy who's the same as everyone else and appeals to the over 60 set wins. Or something like that.

I say "of the day" as if I have one of these every day. But this person is probably one of the dumbest people in America right now.

Her name is Koryne Horbel. She claims to be a feminist. After she said this, I have to respectfully disagree:

"I don't care," Horbal said of the possibility that [having loads of people write in Hillary Clinton's name in the November elections] might cost Obama votes. She said she also would not be bothered if the write-in campaign indirectly helped elect John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. "Let McCain clean it up for four years, and then we can have Hillary run again," she said.

Clean up what? Reproductive rights? Gay rights? Veterans benefits? Iran? If you'd rather have a war mongering, anti-choice, heterosexist asshole in the White House than Barack Obama -- or any liberal other than Hillary Clinton, for that matter -- then you need to hand back your feminist card . . . pronto.

Defend online freedom in China.

Tell Tyson foods to denounce discriminatory hiring practices.

There's a way to support an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without crazy proclimations from Pat Robertson and weird prophecies from John Hagee. Sign this petition and learn more!

Show your support for permanent marriage equality in California.

Congratulate farmworkers for their successful fight for a pay raise from Burger King.

Thank the presidential candidates for promising to do something about the genocide in Darfur once elected (yes, John McCain too.).

Promote diversity in media ownership.

Tell your Congresspeople to vote for the Save Medicare Act.

Test your reproductive rights knowledge. 

Anyway, the band Against Me did another video for their song Stop. It takes place outside a voting booth, and show what people base their vote on, like the war in Iraq, healthcare, immigration, and poverty. It's an admirable attempt, and I think they succeed in almost all of these depictions. It's a pretty great video. Where do they fail? Why, reproductive rights, of course! The director's idea of basing one's vote on reproductive freedom (or lack thereof) is a pro-choicer and an anti-choicer going at it holding signs. I don't know about any other pro-choicers (and trying to speak for the antis will just make my head explode), but my desire for reproductive freedom doesn't really encompass my freedom to hold a "Keep Abortion Legal" sign.

This depiction takes women out of the equation. Ultimately, the loudmouths outside of Planned Parenthood are completely irrelevant to women seeking birth control. There are better ways to illustrate this issue. I mean, they didn't show someone against immigration and someone supporting immigration pointing their fingers at each other and yelling. Instead, there should have been frightened young people walking into the voting booth with a bunch of pro- and anit-choice demonstrators on either side. It would show people how difficult it is for women and men to get birth control and other reproductive healtchare services, which is why people need to vote for these issues in the first place.

On the plus side, they show an interracial gay couple kissing. *thumbs up*

 Meet the Press had four women on the show today! Which means it was a very woman-friendly show with no sexism, right? Maybe? No, not really.

What really bothers me about the role of women in this country is that we're supposed to be really happy with what little we have all the time, and pointing out any completely reasonable negative feelings you may have makes you a real killjoy. Hillary Clinton said this to a reporter for the Washington Post last week:

The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted. And I think there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when and if it ever raises its ugly head. But it does seem as though the press, at least, is, is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments and the actions of people who are nothing but misogynist.

I do think that Clinton has a bit of a point here, although I don't totally agree with it. I think the way people react to being called a sexist ("Pfft. Yeah, right. Whatever.") and the way people react to being called a racist ("What?! How dare you imply that race even exists in order for someone to even make a racist statement to begin with!") doesn't leave any room open for meaningful discussion either way. Neither does getting getting into any oppression Olympics. Anyway, first, Maureen Dowd's response:

I think it's poppycock, really.  I mean, Hillary Clinton has allowed women to visualize a woman as president for the first time, in the way Colin Powell allowed people to visualize an African-American.  And she dominated the debates, she, she proved that a woman can have as much tenacity and gall as any man on earth.  We, we can visualize her facing down Ahmadinejad.  But the thing is, Hillary hurts feminism when she uses it as opportunism.  And she has a history of covering up her own mistakes behind sexism.  She did it with health care right after health care didn't pass.  She didn't admit that she was abrasive or mismanaged it or blew off good advice or was too secretive.  She said that she was a Rorschach test for gender and that many men thought of a female boss they didn't like when they looked at her. And now she's doing the same thing, and it's very--you know, in a way it's the moral equivalent of Sharptonism.  It's this victimhood and angry and turning women against men and saying that the men are trying to take it away from us, in the same way she's turning Florida and Michigan and riling up and comparing them to suffragettes and slaves.  And it's very damaging to feminism.

And now, part of an editorial by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post:

Hillary Clinton isn't going to be elected the first female president--not this year, anyway.  The reasons for this outcome have gratifyingly little to do with her gender.  The notion that Clinton was the victim of unrelenting, vicious hatred because she is a woman--is it safe to call this reaction overwrought?  Clinton managed to win more votes than any primary candidate in either party ever had before. It's hard to square that result with the notion that her candidacy exposed a deep vein of misogyny.  From a feminist perspective, Clinton's was not a perfect candidacy.  Part of this stems from a fact outside Clinton's control, that her route to power was derivative, the Adam's rib outgrowth of her husband's career.  Hillary Clinton had been elected to the Senate, twice, in her own right, but the fact that her road to the White House involved standing by her man, no matter how badly he behaved, made her a flawed vessel for the feminist cause. And Clinton's least attractive campaign moments came when she took up the gender card and chose to play it as victim instead of a trailblazer.  The notion that the male candidates were ganging up on her because she is a woman instead of--remember back when?--because she was the front-runner was silly. The complaint that asking her the first question in debates was evidence of a double standard was even sillier.

Both responses could be summed up in six words: "Look on the bright side, Hil!"

And why not look on the bright side, when people accuse you of rolling back women's rights for having a human gaffe machine for a husband (because Obama's wife never said anything potentially damaging)! I mean, don't you like living in a society where you're judged based on your relationship with your husband? Don't you like people judging your leadership abilities based on your adherence to gender roles? Don't you like people worrying about the inevitable PMS-induced nuclear bomb attack if you become president, despite the fact that you're 60 years old? Don't you like people expecting even a powerful and intellectual woman like you to get back in the kitchen or iron shirts for a living? Don't be such a Debbie Downer!