California Feminist Blogs

I've had mixed feelings about the "it gets better" campaign meant to address teen bullying/gay-bashing. "It gets better" is successful in raising awareness to the issue of queer teen abuse in the media, a necessary step in a long term agenda of recognizing non-straight people as legitimate American citizens, but it doesn't propose a great short term solution to this exigent issue.

The problem I have with the campaign is largely rhetorical. Is the dismissive "it gets better" the most comforting message Americans can offer queer youth? Instead of socially reprimanding "bullies," the slogan calls on the victims of sexual discrimination to simply adjust their outlooks on life and think of what the future *might* hold. It comes off as ignorant of the institutionalized heterosexism that marks instances of LGBTQ youth suicides as unique. This is not to say teen suicide is unimportant in itself; the age-based hierarchy that leaves even the most otherwise privileged teens powerless over many aspects of their lives is another area that requires research and public attention, but do LGBTQ teens ever grow out of their oppression?

What if they're killed before they reach adulthood when it (supposedly) gets better, like murder victims 15-year olds Lawrence King and Sakia Gunn? And a more realistic question is: what if it never gets better? In cases involving adults Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena, and Brian Betts, middle school principal killed earlier this year, the heterosexism that fuels bullying led to death.

So how can we utilize the awareness surrounding LGBTQ abuse that the "it gets better" campaign has afforded us to elaborate on the message? How can we make America's message to queer youth more comforting; how can we create community and inspire activism rather than apathetic patience?

I'm really inspired by openly gay rapper Kaoz who, in his recent track "(Keep It) Human (Rmx)," addresses LGBTQ teen suicide with empathy,

Even throw a heavy hand in ya weddin’/
Insecurities always emerge when we’re threatened/
Hate and oppression replicates like an infection/
Level 5 biohazard, man I feel it spreadin’/
I tend to look at this as mental Armageddon/
Trying to swim a few laps, but still we only treadin/
Blood is on our hands, the body count is so upsettin’/
We jettin towards our ruin, hold ya head keep it Human

and with an invitation into a community of LGBTQ rights activists:

You're not alone and you don't have to be/
I’ll be the hip hop branch from the olive tree/
And I’m doing this here, so you can rock with me/
This Revolution, it’s time for our equality/
Right now, this hour, our voices get louder

I like this song because I think it's important for oppressed people to have a sense of community, & to hear affirmation and acknowledgment of their concerns. "It gets better" is more hopeful than it is sincere at a time when gay and lesbians are dying on account of their sexual identities. I don't want to hear an ambiguous "it gets better," I want to hear that someone is working on it! "You're not alone, I'm fighting for you" is more comforting and inspires a more productive mentality, an invitation into a revolution. A goal and a plan.

About the song, he says,

"This song is dedicated to each and every young adult, teen and person that we have lost and may continue to lose as a result of the increasings acts of violence & hate that eats away at so many of us, internal and external. Hate based on class, race, size, "difference," bullying, discrimination, disenfranchisement, disappointment, despair.

With this, I lift their voices. I call on the many voices bellowing from the lungs of those still alive. Us. The change. The chance. Lets go...'"

You can download the track free of charge at Fans of Kaoz and BandCamp. As always, I'd appreciate the feedback.

For many of us who are drawn to reproductive justice, social justice, and human rights work, the reality of law school can be hard to reconcile with lofty notions we brought with us about lawyering for social change or training to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.

We find ourselves in first-year classes being introduced to the “foundations” of our legal system in the form of civil procedure, torts, and property law—subjects often taught with little critical attention to how the concepts we study come to bear on real people’s lives. We often have to wait until the second or even third year before being able to enroll in a clinic, where we finally have the opportunity to work with individual clients and confront the challenges people face in navigating the legal system. At schools where courses on women’s rights, civil rights, and human rights do exist, they are often in such high demand that we are subject to randomized lotteries, end up on waiting lists, or must beg and plead at the professor’s office door.

In short, many law students find they must work extra hard to secure the opportunities they need to prepare for careers as social justice advocates. This is particularly true in the context of reproductive rights and justice. Indeed, Law Students for Reproductive Justice’s recently released course survey confirms what many already knew to be true about the limited availability of reproductive rights law and justice courses at law schools around the country. Among the most significant findings:

– Only 18% of U.S. law schools have offered reproductive rights law courses at some point over the last seven years.

– During that time period, there have been 37 separate courses and instructor-led reading groups taught at least once, offered at 32 schools located in 17 different states.

– Forty-nine percent of courses have been taught only once.

– Fifty-one percent of courses have been taught by full-time faculty.

Despite the fact that reproductive rights law courses have only been available to a small minority of law students, the LSRJ study does offer some reassuring news for those who believe that reproductive rights and justice have an important place within mainstream legal education. In particular, the study suggests that law schools may slowly be heeding the call for more course offerings: 41% of all courses were first introduced during the last two years, and more than one-third of known courses have resulted from on-campus advocacy by LSRJ chapters. The fact that law students themselves are responsible for such a significant number of existing reproductive rights law courses reflects the dedication and passion of RJ-oriented law students, who are taking charge of shaping their own legal education, honing their advocacy skills while they expand opportunities for all law students.

Having dedicated reproductive rights law courses in the course catalog is critical—not only as important training for those law students who will pursue careers in reproductive justice and social justice work, but also as an opportunity for all future lawyers to be exposed to the many complex and compelling reproductive justice topics that raise issues of criminal law, constitutional law, property law, contract law, health law, family law, bioethics, and more. We miss entirely too much when discussion of reproductive rights is limited to a day’s worth of Griswold and Roe in con law class.

This course survey highlights the dedicated, forward-thinking professors who already teach reproductive rights and justice courses—and have for a number of years, in some cases—and enables us to celebrate their contributions to the training of new leaders in the field. (Check out the Reproductive Rights Prof Blog!) The survey provides useful information for law school administrators and faculty who care about providing quality legal education and who are responsible for making decisions about their schools’ course catalogs. It also helps to shed some light on the position of reproductive rights law within legal education for non-lawyers in the reproductive rights and justice movements. Finally, and most importantly, the survey results present a stark reminder of the work that remains to be done within law schools to make sure we’re getting the education and training we need—a call to action for law students themselves to work to change the master’s tools even as we strive to change the system itself.

Liz Kukura

Note: For more on the importance of training and the great work LSRJ members are doing, check out Defending Your Rights? Study Finds Few Law Schools Offer Training in Reproductive Justice, on RH Reality Check.

This post is about Liz Henry, voice for the Riot Grrrl movement in the '90s/writer, blogger, poet, literary translator, and web developer for BlogHer. Before I get to her plethora of achievements though, some background information is necessary (at least to understand the history of her digital feminary about which I've become very excited).

First, Les Guérillères is French avant-garde lesbian theorist Monique Wittig's "epic celebration of women." This novel was controversial in form and concept, using only the female pronoun for "they," "elles," in its original French translation (unfortunately in English it reads "the women," which downplays Wittig's efforts of legitimizing a universal female pronoun). It follows women warriors and sympathetic males through a bloody battle against patriarchal enforcers. It seems to me that the novel has inspired much of Kathy Acker's work in Pussy, King of the Pirates (not to mention my own matriarchal, tech-ritualistic performance art).

Approximately 585 women's names are used throughout the novel at a rate that, at first glance, makes the usages seem arbitrary. Occasionally when you're reading you might stop to look a few up, like Amaterasu (one of the principal Shinto deities) for instance, but names like "Alice" and "Edna" don't spark as much curiosity to most. Here's where Liz Henry comes in: Notes on the names in Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères is the grrrl g33k's attempt at building a "digital feminary." Liz catalogues a good portion of, if not all 585 names to provide a "point of entry to feminist history." In her own words,

The names are keyholes that I look through to see facts, biographies, imagined future history, goddesses, and might-have-beens. At times, researching one name has led me through the keyhole, or through the looking-glass, to let me see whole communities of feminist women; in some cases my whole concept of the history of a time and place has shifted. The names and their possible meanings have been useful tools to dislocate my ways of knowing.

Liz Henry holds a special place in feminist history as well. She blogs at several places (parenting blog Badgermama, Geek Feminism, Feminist Science Fiction, and Hack Ability) but Composite, "a blog about computer stuff, poetry, activism, gender, and translation" (on the blogroll), seems to be somewhat of a home base for her.

Liz's posts raise awareness about women throughout history that have been overlooked and underrated, like 19th century female Cuban poet, Mercedes Matamoros, Argentinian feminists in the early 1900's, or Harlem Renaissance writer Marita Bonner. I also recommend her posts regarding ableism (like this one about traveling while disabled) as well as one this awesome tutorial on DIY book-binding. And if you thought Liz couldn't get cooler, you'd be shocked to learn that she also edited a feminist science fiction anthology called The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 3: Carnival of Feminist SF. She's also done a lot of work attempting to get the word out about WisCon, the world's leading feminist science fiction convention (and the first one I've heard of).

If you're into women & technology and/or science fiction, DIY publishing, ability politics, and/or feminist history, you'll absolutely love Liz Henry. It's a lot of fun to browse her sites, read interviews with her, etc. She's pretty link-liberal so an interview could eventually lead you to (as was in my case) a thread on white woman syndrome.

I recommend utilizing every link I've left you with, including looking your name up in Liz's digital feminary. You'll get something like this (entry for Alice):

Old German: Adalheidis, "noble cheer". Some other forms: Alys, Alix, Alse. Became a popular name in the mid to late 19th century with its use by romance writers and after the 1865 publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland in 1865.{Withycombe}

Alice Schwarzer - 20th century German feminist writer and publisher. Author of The Little Difference and the Consequences. {Schwarzer}

As always, I'd appreciate the feedback and would love to respond to comments. Happy browsing!

I have a dozen obstetricians to choose from, but going to the clinic means I am not guaranteed to get the one I pick. I take the bus to my prenatal appointments; it takes around 45 minutes round trip. I have to schedule them around classes, but they always run late and I’ve missed two lectures. I have to approve all screening appointments with my insurance carrier, which is such a hassle. When I have any odd cramps, I have to wait on hold for almost half an hour to talk to the nurses. Pregnancy books and magazines are so patronizing. I suddenly hate cheese, have to eat more potassium, and I have no idea how I’ll make it through finals with this backache.

And, in case you couldn’t tell, I can’t stop smiling! This girl has got. it. all!!!

I have an obstetrician at one of the best hospitals in the country. Transportation to and from this hospital is available hourly right outside my apartment building. I have the freedom and privilege to finish my degree. I have health insurance (theoretically . I have a highly skilled nurse waiting to answer all my questions. I am informed about how to take care of myself, and the means with which to do it. I am going to live. I am going to have a healthy baby.

I’d like to encourage everyone to heart safe motherhood with me. Around the world, right now, one woman dies every 90 seconds from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Amongst them are two women per day in the United States. And these figures don’t hold a candle to the number of women who nearly die in childbirth, many of whom suffer long-term or permanent injuries (including sterility and severe pain). Every woman should have the luxuries I have been afforded. Every woman should be able to experience pregnancy and childbirth knowing that it will be safe and dignified. Let’s spread the word and make it happen!

Some Helpful Resources

Get informed and start a conversation! The World Health Organization maintains both sobering statistics and hopeful strategies on its website. Ms. Magazine is currently doing a series on maternal mortality. The latest issue has a remarkably vivid article about childbirth in Tanzania.

The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood has some short, informative, and engaging videos about maternal mortality around the world (post one on your Facebook page!). I also strongly recommend reading through the “Stories of Mothers Saved” for instant inspiration.

LSRJ Chapters: request our Easy Event in an Envelope – “Maternal Mortality Here & Abroad.” In it, you will find some great resources for tabling events and informative fundraisers.

Sara Taylor

Someone victimized me this week. Someone stole my purse. I have been struggling with feelings of violation, anger, hurt, fear, and sadness ever since. Upon reporting the theft to a police officer, he engaged in “blame the victim” rhetoric, telling me that I made it easy for the person to violate me by leaving my purse unattended. Without negating the fact that no one should have stolen my purse because it wasn’t his or hers to take, I want to emphasize how safe I felt until the moment I realized the purse was gone. I left it alone for a short period of time at a bar I go to regularly with a group of people I know well and attend law school with in a town of less than 2000 people on a night that was not busy. I thought I knew everyone in the bar and trusted each person enough to leave my purse while I went to listen to a friend on the back porch. But when I came back in, it was gone.

If I ever needed another reason to keep fighting for reproductive justice, it was this incident. The big-picture reality check is this was just a purse. The stuff I lost was only stuff. What if someone had raped me that night? Or forcefully sterilized me? Or told me I couldn’t get married or adopt children? What if someone denied my access to healthcare? Or told me I could not get an abortion I was seeking? While the thief did get my driver’s license and other personal information, that person didn’t steal my rights. And everyone recognizes that what happened to me should not have happened.

If someone had raped me, I would likely be experiencing similar “blame the victim” sentiment. People might have said it were my fault. To report it, I would risk character assassination and would have to expose my personal practices. The rapist would have physically, mentally and emotionally violated me. The law would not necessarily be on my side. It would be an uphill battle against the person and our rape-allowing culture. It might have happened at a time when I felt I was with someone I could trust, with whom I was comfortable. The rapist might have taken advantage of my comfortable state of mind to push his agenda upon me. The current system does not serve those who have been sexually victimized.

Men and women are being denied access to their reproductive health, safety and rights all over the world on a daily basis in a multitude of ways. When it happens in this country, based on ideals of freedom and access to information, it becomes especially personal to many of us. For me, there is something about my privacy being violated in that place I felt especially at home that made my purse snatching especially painful. When reproductive justice is unavailable, it is personal and sorrowful. Personal liberty and privacy are essential pieces of our culture that we need to continue to fight to respect. This lesson will stick with me throughout law school and beyond. How can we make the changes in law policy that uphold all people’s reproductive freedoms and rights?

Jess Wilkerson

With Republicans picking up 60 seats in the House last Tuesday, it would appear that the Tea Party's anti-Obama strategies were effective (campaign funding provided by BP, Bayer and racism). Some of this anti-Obama sentiment has made its way to Dems who have posed a question to the Chief, in the words of Janet Jackson, "what have you done for me lately?"

In response, a few Obama supporters are making efforts to enlighten the public as to WTF Obama has done so far. In addition to the folks responsible for the now-notorious WTF website, Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone wrote a compelling case for Obama and Mark Morford has issued a humorous letter to young Democrats. The following is an excerpt:

Hey, I understand. We're an instant gratification culture, and you're an ADHD
generation. Who wants to hear that serious enviro legislation might take a decade or two to fully come to fruition? Who wants to hear about Obama passing rather amazing student loan reform? Or even financial reform? Or health care, the Iraq drawdown, saving a million jobs at GM, or all the rest of his rather astonishing achievements to date? Dude, so boring.

Chock it up to lazy Democrats and progressives, obtuse Republicans and racists, or members of any particular party who didn't take the threat of Tea Party takeover seriously. Regardless, when it comes down to it these Tea Party candidates are now in office ($%#@!). So what exactly does that mean for those of us in the belly of the beast?

Rachel Maddow does an awesome job outlining the results of the recent election and what the Tea Party takeover will mean to Obama supporters and Tea Party supporters alike (read: Republicans, they lied to you).



You may have thought conservatives were sending Tea Partiers to congress to, I don't know, lower the budget deficit?!, create jobs?!, and you may have even gotten those *crazy* ideas from Tea Party candidates running for office themselves. Judging from their stark opposition to wealth redistribution and health care reform, Tea Partiers seem to have run on a promise to back anything bordering genocide as a fiscal plan. Behind the scenes, however, Tea Party-backed congresswoman-elect "tough-on-welfare" Vicky Hartzle received "$774,325 in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2009." What a commie!

Okay, okay, so "tough on welfare" was a teensy exaggeration. But what about job creation, a cornerstone of the Tea Party movement? Come to think of it the renewable energy market sure needs some help getting off the ground! Too bad Joe Boehner, our new speaker of the House, has been quoted saying the "idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical." Double too bad that for the last two years, Republicans have actually wasted taxpayer time and money ("you mean we're paying these assholes?") blocking every bill that would support renewable energy.

So if they've lied about limiting government and ignored prime areas for job creation, what are Tea Partiers doing in office? According to Tea Party supporters at the National Freedom Forum, newly elected congress officials are working "to end the Obama Presidency not work with Obama to make the United States a Socialist country" (sorry, the missing comma from the quote is killing me too).

Yes, that's right. The agenda proposed by Tea Partiers has NOTHING to do with middle class voters' concerns and everything to do with reversing all policies that have been enacted to protect voters for the last century!

In fact, our goal is roll back 97 years of Socialism by electing Conservatives that support free market capitalism, limited government, lower taxes and less regulation, a balance budget, term limits, real energy independence and health care reform, a strong national defense, including securing our border and fighting Terrorism, the right to bear arms, the sanctity of life and family values. (emphasis mine)

Oh YEAH! The 97 years of Socialism...(WTF?!) In real news, according to the US Census Bureau, "we now have the highest number of poor people in 51 years. The official US poverty rate is 14.3 percent or 43.6 million people in poverty. One in five children in the US is poor; one in ten senior citizens is poor." Well, everyone's going through a rough time, right? Not according to a report published in Forbes Magazine on September 22, 2010 showing that "the wealth of the richest 400 people in the US grew by 8% in the last year to $1.37 trillion." Hmm, rich getting richer, poor getting poorer...sounds a lot like American capitalism (and nothing like socialism).

So why on Earth would Tea Partiers want to overthrow the Obama administration? And why did Tea Party hecklers call Rep. John Lewis the N-word, or Rep. Barney Frank a "faggot"? And, um, the guy below? He's just the founder of TeaParty.org. Is it starting to make sense now?

Eugene Robinson at RealClearPolitics breaks it down for readers. Throughout the American political history, there have been certain cues associated with racist movements. Traditionally, political gains made by non-whites or women have been met with backlashes/attempts at reverting power to white men. The Tea Party has adopted this "reclamation rhetoric." For instance, Tea Party-backed Kentucky Senator Rand Paul ran on the promise of "taking the government back" while Mike Huckabee urged his supporters to help "return American government to the American people." Mmmhmm...

In the words of Robinson, if Obama's concern for the well-being of poor and otherwise uninsured Americans is enough to cause an uprise, why didn't the Bush administration's "surveillance of domestic phone calls and e-mails get the constitutional fundamentalists all worked up?"
One of my favorite points from Robinson's article is the following:

I wonder how he can be seen as "elitist," when he grew up in modest
circumstances -- his mother was on food stamps for a time -- and paid for his
fancy-pants education with student loans. I wonder how people who genuinely
cherish the American dream can look at a man who lived that dream and feel no
connection, no empathy.

My only hope is that Democrats and progressives will remember the fruits of inactivity come the Presidental Election in 2012. I'd also like to see some of the fiscal conservatives with socially progressive leanings who may have voted for Tea Partiers, like LGBTQ Republican group GOProud, apprehend the true character of the Tea Party movement. Check out some of the articles for yourselves and as always, let me know how you feel below.

On page 12 of the September/October, 2010 issue of Mother Jones, an inset feature called “Conspiracy Watch” details the efforts of various pro-life groups to propagate the idea that abortion is a racist genocidal plot. This is, sadly, not a belief confined to the lunatic fringe of a shadowy misogynist far-right coalition. Unfortunately, there is a very real and unsettling history of reproductive injustices that range from Planned Parenthood’s early ties to the eugenics movement to the Supreme Court’s notorious holding in Buck v. Bell (upholding the forced sterilization of a woman said to be mentally retarded, an opinion in which Justice Holmes famously wrote “Three generations of imbeciles is enough”). If these tactics were embraced by pro-choice movements today, it would legitimately be seen as a dangerous movement, circumscribing the rights of populations of women who tend to be low income and/or people of color. But it is much worse than misleading to imply that the pro-choice movement continues to hew to such ideals.

The brutal reality is that many people, governments, and social movements have used (and continue to use) technology and medical treatments in ways antithetical to human dignity, and such treatment is certainly not limited to women. The Tuskegee Experiments, during which black sharecroppers were unknowingly infected with syphilis, is one of the most well-known examples of clinical misuse of human subjects. Recently, a similar situation was uncovered in Guatemala. But it is emphatically not the project of the reproductive justice movement to limit women’s choices about their own lives and bodies. Women have been systematically deprived of the right to make decisions about their own bodies and those deprivations have come from many sources. Whether that means they have been denied their ability to have children, or their right to choose not to have children, the larger struggle of the reproductive justice movement is a struggle for complete self-determination. Forced reproductive “choices” of any kind must be resisted. We can only accomplish this by coming together in solidarity to protect each woman’s individual preferences and choices about her intimate activities and the life-shaping decisions she makes.

The notion that the pro-choice movement is genocidal, or similar in any way to forced sterilization, is of course false. This argument is a mechanism for dividing women in order to diminish their potential collective political power. To combat these strategies, women of all ages and backgrounds need to listen to each others’ stories – the good stories and the tragic. The CUNY chapter of Law Students for Reproductive Justice is proud to co-sponsor with the Center on Latino and Latina Rights and Equality (CLORE) in their presentation of La Operacion, a documentary film detailing the appalling government sanctioned forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women in the 1970s. Following the screening of the film there will be a panel discussion with the director of the film. The presentation will take place on November 8th from 6-8pm and is free and open to the public.

Moira Meltzer-Cohen
2L, CUNY School of Law

This post originally appeared on the National Women’s Law Center’s blog Womenstake

Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel, NWLC

Last week I spoke on a panel at UDC’s Law School on Domestic Violence and Reproductive Justice. Much of what I spoke about can be found on this factsheet, but I learned so much from my co-presenters. Larisa Kofman is with the District Alliance for Safe Housing and Tabitha Joyner, who is currently at NARAL, used to work at Break the Cycle.

Did you know that many shelters for battered women will not allow male children (sometimes as young as eight) to stay with their mothers? So a woman is left with three options: 1. Don’t use the shelter and continue parenting while in an abusive home situation; 2. Use the shelter to escape the abusive home and leave her son with the abusive parent; or 3. Identify another source of housing that doesn’t provide the additional security or support provided by the shelter, but allows her to stay with her son.

Some choice, huh?

Fortunately, Larisa and other advocates have fought hard for a law that prevents such discrimination (see section 404). Unfortunately, as with all good laws, enforcement is a serious problem, and boys continue to be excluded from shelters.

The Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement supports the right of individuals to have the children they want, raise the children they have, and plan their families through safe, legal access to abortion and contraception. And yet a system intended to help women escape dangerous relationships actually contributes to reproductive oppression by hindering their ability to parent.

I’d like to thank the members of UDC Law Students for Reproductive Justice, especially Megan Challender for her insightful questions, as well as my co-presenters for contributing to my understanding of these incredibly complex issues.