While collecting data on women’s juridical and economic agency in colonial Spanish America, I came across this fantastic bit of analysis:
Women who brought suits against men, for whatever reason, might have their sexual behavior scrutinized or even be accused of promiscuity, tying sexuality to their credibility.
Hot diggity, that sounds pretty darn familiar! It continues:
And not all women merited protection under the law. Only “honorable” women’s safety was defended by Spanish courts. Women whose sexual conduct was in question could not demand justice for rape or physical mistreatment. They were tainted and not deserving of legal protection, no matter the circumstances.
And of course:
Lastly, Spanish gender ideologies dictated that women be much more harshly punished for sexual crimes than men.
Hold the phone here, kiddos.I feel like I’ve heard this before somewhere… By golly, I do believe it’s in contemporary Western ideology surrounding law, gender, and sexuality (aka rape culture). Do you know what that means? I’ll tell you what it means, and I’ll tell you with bolded text and an isolated paragraph that I hope indicates just a smidgen of how pissed off I am. Ready? Here goes:
Western Europe, Australia, and the Americas have had the same exact bullshit rape culture ideology about female-sexed bodies and gendered behavior and creating piss-poor excuses for enacting violent crimes for six goddamn hundred years at a goddamn minimum. I mean, Jesus Christ on a cracker, people.
Granted, the Americas and Australia may have had— and did have, if I recall my pre-colonial history correctly— a marginally less abhorrent example of the ideologies of human, especially female, sexuality.
(Source: Women in the Crucible of Conquest - Karen Vieira Powers)
Though Catalogue - 10 Things You Should Never Say To A Woman In Her 20s | http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/10-things-you-should-never-say-to-a-woman-in-her-20s/
I had to post this. They took the words directly out of my brain. I always have to awkwardly avoid conversations with people who know I’m a feminist who want to immediately talk about 30 rock or parks and rec or the mindy project. Sorry, I can’t keep up with the latest middle class enlightened comedies out there. I respect the fact that women are taking a bigger portion of the comedy pie, but…
(via newwavefeminism)
Because they kinda do.
“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said, referring to conception following a rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
-representative todd akin on abortion in the case of rape.
whole article here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-rep-todd-akin-no-pregnancy-from-legitimate-rape-20120819,0,7447581.story
File Under: Apparently Someone Skipped Sex Ed
Even with a persistent gender gap in a presidential election year, House Republicans have not given up on their campaign to narrow access to birth control, abortion care and lifesaving cancer screenings. Far from it.
A new Republican spending proposal revives some of the more extreme attacks on women’s health and freedom that were blocked by the Senate earlier in this Congress. The resurrection is part of an alarming national crusade that goes beyond abortion rights and strikes broadly at women’s health in general.
These setbacks are recycled from the Congressional trash bin in the fiscal 2013 spending bill for federal health, labor and education programs approved by a House appropriations subcommittee on July 18 over loud objections from Democratic members to these and other provisions.
The measure would bar Planned Parenthood’s network of clinics, which serve millions of women across the country, from receiving any federal money unless the health group agreed to no longer offer abortion services for which it uses no federal dollars — a patently unconstitutional provision. It would also eliminate financing for Title X, the effective federal family-planning program for low-income women that provides birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and testing for sexually-transmitted diseases. Without this program, some women would die, and unintended pregnancies would rise, resulting in some 400,000 more abortions a year and increases in Medicaid-related costs, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a leading authority on reproductive health.
On top of that, the bill would prevent implementation of most of the Affordable Care Act, wiping out its numerous advances for women’s health. It would seriously weaken the requirement that employee insurance plans cover birth control and other preventive health services by allowing any employer to opt out based on personal religious beliefs or moral objections.
" - Editorial, “Republicans Vs. Women,” in the New York Times (via barackobama)
edit: this article was submitted to the Feministing community and accepted (exciting!!) and you can read it right here!
Since Anne-Marie Slaughter published her cover story in The Atlantic, ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have it All’, the Internet has been abuzz with talk about women and the workforce. Slaughter argued that societal barriers still prevent women from being able to balance work and life. The article has spawned dozens of reaction pieces, and some of these pieces have been part of a disturbing trend, blaming women for reaching too high, and believing that personal choices alone are responsible for the work-life balance being harder for women than for men.
One of these reaction pieces, by Lori Gottlieb in the Atlantic, suggested that women complaining about wanting to work and have a family life at the same time is akin to 6 year olds whining about wanting to go to gymnastics and a birthday party at the same time. Another one of these responses, published in the Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente, suggested, absurdly, that women trying to balance work and life is a ‘white people’s problem’ just like “running out of Starbucks Coffee at the Cottage”. Both of these articles, and many others like them, argue that ‘having it all’ (balancing work and family life) is impossible for anyone, regardless of gender. According to them, both men and women just need to understand that you can’t have your cake and eat it too! The problem is, men have been having their cake and eating it too for centuries, and as much as Gottlieb and Wente want to deny it, women are far more likely to be disadvantaged by the work-life balance than men.
All over the world, examples are rife of mothers being disproportionately disadvantaged by the way we structure our work practices than fathers. Perhaps the most extreme example is in South Korea, where more women are entering the workforce in a society that frowns upon flex-time and career breaks. As a result, fertility rates have fallen faster than nearly anywhere else on earth because this situation has forced women to either stop working or to stop having children.
Someone stickerbombed (is that a word?) a Birthright bus ad with Planned Parenthood info. Ha!
This is great!
File Under: Fucking Fantastic Things
Brownmiller, Susan. Femininity. Linden Press, New York. 1984.(pg. 16-17)
ok no. All women have not been defined this way. Does this narrative ring true with certain women in certain social classes and groups? yes. But what about women who’s histories and legacies fall outside of this reality? In one fell swoop their entire lives are de-legitimized and erased because “most women” can empathize with this narrative and these same women fail to realize that people outside of their social group exist. This is what I was talking about yesterday when we kept pressing upon the fact that there is a danger when major feminist discourse and womanhood is shaped and managed by people who can not acknowledge the privilege of their point of view.
The slave woman? The maid? The housekeeper? The sex worker? The woman who isn’t heterosexual? The woman who immigrates from one country to another? The refugee woman? The woman who has kids OUTSIDE of traditional marriage? The woman who isn’t western (because that exist too!)? There’s an entire myriad of cultures, class positions, countries and histories - all women. But this Susan Brownmiller quote takes her specific experience with being a woman and takes it upon herself to say that this is the only experience/narrative that matters.
Now do you understand the danger of basing everything off of feminist thinkers who were around IN THE 80’S?! The mainstream American woman has yet to end her love affair with this singular narrative & everyone is quick to try and market this narrative to all of us just to remind those who fall outside this narrow frame how “unwomanly” we inherently are.
(via newwavefeminism)
Okay. Deep breath. You’re about to watch something really bad. So bad you’ll think at first it’s a parody. Then you’ll want to scream.
Ready?
Ready.
I have no idea what the hell I actually just watched. Seriously, if you watch it without context, it just looks like a make-up commercial of some kind.
Sometimes I forget the details of why I’m generally distrustful of males, and then something like this happens to remind me.
(Courtesy Mary Gonzalez)
Mary Gonzalez told them she was the best candidate to represent them and El Paso voters agreed, but along the way, the 28-year-old doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin broke her share of barriers.
Three things to know today:
Women still make only 77 cents for every dollar men make. The Paycheck Fairness Act is up for a vote this afternoon. And Republicans in Congress have promised to block it.
THIS IS ONLY TRUE FOR WHITE WOMEN AND WHITE MEN. WHY IS THE PRESIDENT’S CAMPAIGN TUMBLR NOT RECOGNIZING THIS?
