California Feminist Blogs

Let's talk about sex (workers) baby. This issue is one that even some of my most hxc feminist friends and I can get into pretty heated debates about. Fuckyeahfemmes recently posted a comment about whether or not porn actresses can be feminists. The commenter implies that most feminists would agree that porn actresses cannot be feminists, which Fuckyeahfemmes took issue with and invited a response from feminist porn actress Judy Minx herself. I LOVED Judy Minx's response so I'll post my favorite part here (although you should definitely read the article for yourself):

The commenter doubts that I can be both a feminist and a mainstream porn actress. What, because I am a worker in an industry, I can’t be aware of and opposed to its fucked-up aspects? It doesn’t make sense, unless you consider sexworkers are both victims and culprits in the case. Well, I plead not guilty. I need money, and I have chosen the way that I make money among the limited choices I had, neither of which seemed less exploitative or less patriarchal than sexwork. It seems obvious that although a factory worker participates in a capitalist industry, and is exploited by it, he or she can also be against capitalism. You can question the factory owner’s anticapitalism, and you can doubt whether someone who produces misogynist porn is a feminist. As a porn performer, I’m the workforce, not the boss. Whenever I can participate in feminist porn, I do it. Whenever I have space to criticize the sexism in mainstream porn, or put some of my feminism in my mainstream porn work, I do it. Luckily for me, I usually work in environments in which I can make money working in feminist environments, or at least making my feminist voice heard in mainstream porn environments. If I was able to work only in these environments and still make enough money to pay my rent, I would.

Hearing Judy's ideas about sex work was reminiscent of my own sense of worker's guilt. I've noticed after working in telephone communications for five years that certain tones of voice help to alleviate customers more than others. Although the men I've worked with have used more assertive tones, the same tone in my voice can be off-putting to customers. A sweet, almost flirtatious tone of voice coming from me yields the best results (big surprise).

Benefitting, intentionally or not, from the hypersexualization of women is something most women in all areas of a capitalist patriarchy share. For instance, a female server at a restaurant will receive higher wages if she exudes sex appeal, whether hourly, based on the restaurant's hiring policies concerning physical attractiveness (at Hooters, for example) or by earning more in tips (at Applebees, for example). The following photo is from a blog whose author's bio reads "I wish to be a country star but live as a college grad/Hooters Girl."

So what is the difference between a Playboy model and a swimsuit model? What's the difference between a "stripper" and a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys? What's the difference between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis making out in Black Swan and "lesbian" pornography? Looking into these questions can muddy the waters surrounding the topic of sex work.

I like to remind people who criticize sex workers that oppressed people don't have the privilege of choosing their valuable assets. For instance, countless woman-identified street kids, deliberately trying to remove themselves from our capitalist patriarchy, are forced into sex work at some point any way.

Here are some more resources for sex workers' rights movements. The following is a video by performance artist Sadie Lune.



The Ms. blog also published this article on "How to Respect Sex Workers." It fleshes out a lot of the ideas I touched upon and offers more resources for sex workers' rights movements. An excerpt:

For instance, referring to all sex workers as “prostituted” or “used” can be violating in and of itself if the person identifies
their work as a free choice.

Please utilize the links and leave me some feedback. And check out Sex Positivity Then and Now for some sex positive art activist resources.

This blog is cross-posted from ChoiceUSA’s blog.
Hannah Geyer, George Washington University Law School

So lately I’ve noticed that a lot of people categorize reproductive rights as Not Real Rights. Reproductive rights aren’t like voting, or free speech, or the right to access public accommodations. Reproductive rights are special rights, according to some – including Above the Law’s (snarky lawyer blog whose commentariat aren’t super into social justice or, um… just not being a terrible person when commenting) Ami Cholia.

Law Students for Reproductive Justice (bias alert: I’m the President of GW Law’s chapter) recently released a study that revealed that out of the 177 responding law schools, only 32 of them offered a course in reproductive rights. ATL’s Cholia wrote a post asking if lawyers-in-training really need these classes:

“Academic classes rarely give one a true representation of how the concepts we study play out in real life (think back to your middle school sex-ed class for a minute). That is usually learned on the job. You are trained to ask the right questions and argue your point effectively — a rounded understanding of law, then, should prepare you to take on a reproductive case, regardless.

Should we interpret the dearth of repro-rights courses as representative of gender-imbalance at schools and within the profession at large? Again, I don’t think so. It’s not about man v. woman or even life v. abortion. It’s about rights. And as a trained lawyer, you are taught about those rights. Reproductive rights aren’t special rights, are they?”

Call me a crazed feminist, but it seems that the “special rights” question was asked sarcastically, implying that all of us humorless wenches complaining about a lack of reproductive rights courses are being hypocritical, since men and women are equal, aren’t they? Marginalizing reproductive rights as “special” rights or “women’s” rights misses the whole point.

It’s true that laws and court decisions restricting the right to control one’s fertility, mandating surgical interventions for the “good of the fetus”, and using failure to comply with a doctor’s orders (despite no resulting harm to the delivered infant) as justification to declare a child neglected mostly happen to women. And the simple, snarky answer is that women make up slightly more than half of the population, so if anything, the “rights” that concern us shouldn’t be considered “special” rights, but rights that directly affect more than half of all humans. The real answer, though, is that though the denial of reproductive rights is a burden that falls disproportionately on women, it takes two to reproduce, and laws that restrict one half of a reproductive dyad’s rights will, indirectly, impact the other half.

And of course, now that the fact that men’s behavior prior to conception can adversely affect future children is somehow news (really people, how is this surprising?), it wouldn’t be totally strange if men’s reproductive decisions were interfered with in the future.*

This failure to consider reproductive rights an issue worth study teaches policy and law students that social justice work – particularly issues affecting women – is not an important field of study, nor is it a legitimate career choice. It’s evident by the language of the ATL post that the author considers reproductive justice-related legal work something that lawyers will only encounter once in a while, so developing a firm base of knowledge isn’t worth it. But if nothing else, half of law and policy students are female, and may encounter state intervention during or after their pregnancies for reasons which seem absurd, but have been legitimated by our idealization of motherhood, culture of “life,” and all those politicians who want to give a fetus legal rights from conception.

*Although I honestly don’t think this will happen, since mothers are supposed to be selfless and only acting in the best interests of their children, born and not-yet-delivered, but fathers… well OBVIOUSLY we can’t interfere with their behavior to the extent that we do women’s.

I've been thinking a lot about women behind the scenes in cultural production and wanted to pay homage to and spread awareness about Delia Derbyshire, composer of electronic music/musique concrète. Although she's probably best known for recording the original Doctor Who theme song while participating in the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, she was a sought after electronic music contributing to many areas of English culture and collaborating with several artists and musicians, including Brian Hodgson and David Vorhaus, her bandmates in experimental electronic music band White Noise.

In 1966 she formed Unit Delta Plus, an organization "to create electronic music and also promote its use in television, film and advertising" with Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinovieff. Their apogee of notoriety seemed to be in 1967 when they performed at the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave with the likes of Paul McCartney and John Lennon (who performed "Carnival of Light" at the festival).

The following is footage of Delia in the late 60's describing her creative process:



Go here to listen to her recordings. A few of my favorites are:
1. "Dreams", part of the Inventions for Radio series, which she created in collaboration with Barry Bermange. It recounts "spliced/reassembled" retellings of other people's dreams;
2. "Moogies Bloogies,"an "unreleased perv-pop classic" (which is kind of exactly what it sounds like) recorded with Joan Collins' husband, Anthony Newley;
3. "John Peel's Voice," as in a dissonant, absurdist take on the English dj who broadcasted from 1967-2004;

& this last one is a song she wrote and issued with experimental electronic music supergroup of which she was a member, White Noise, from 1969. The White Noise recordings sound a lot more sophisticated (& AWESOME) than knowledge of 1969's technology would imply.



Listen to more White Noise here. Some of her recordings are available on Amazon, including the BBC Radiophonic Music album and White Noise's Electric Storm. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Delia, women in electronic music, women and electronic music, and/or women and/or electronic music, or women participants in masculinized occupations in general.

Last month I had the pleasure of attending a breakfast with Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel hosted by Harvard’s LSRJ (the Boston LSRJs are all besties and its fantastic! I strongly recommend LSRJs in other cities become bffs with each other). It was a great event where Greenhouse and Siegel spent most of the time discussing their book, Before Roe v. Wade. The most poignant part of the discussion for me was when the authors/professors/superstars spoke about how the abortion issue was injected into political party platforms in the 1972 Presidential election. The gist of it is that in the ‘72 election Pat Buchanan, a strategist for Nixon, advised the Republican candidate to make abortion a central issue in his campaign as a way to attract Catholic and social conservative voters. Specifically, Buchanan recommended that Nixon portray Democratic candidate George McGovern as someone who favors “abortion, amnesty, and acid (the drug),” even though the candidates had SIMILAR VIEWS on abortion and neither had really spoken about those views during the campaign. Nixon employed the strategy, won the election, and a “pro-life position” became as embedded in the Republican platform as small government and lower taxes, and a “pro-choice position” became as embedded in the Democratic platform as social programs and gun control.

The point to take away from this moment in history is that abortion has not always been embedded in party platforms, and in fact it hasn’t been so for that long. I.e. there is NO inherent reason why Republicans should be pro-life, Democrats pro-choice, and more importantly that abortion should be a campaign issue at all.

Why is this history important now? Because I believe (as I’m sure many others do) there is a strong chance that somewhere in the near future we may have a viable third party and/or fourth party Presidential candidate. Here is my reasoning, which is not anything new: First, the Tea Party. Whether we like it or not, the Tea Party is a new reality in our politics as are other ‘anti-establishment’ groups (see the Coffee Party and Stewart/Colbert followers). Second, the midterms. Republican and Democrat incumbents were defeated in huge upsets and Tea Party candidates won and lost big. The consensus from the elections: there is no consensus and a lot people are dissatisfied with D.C. as is. And third, Bloomberg. I have been increasingly hearing that he is going to run in ‘12 or ’16 as an independent. He has the money and the reputation, I think, to be considered a serious candidate.

This all leads to two potential scenarios in 2012 &2016 Michael Moore laid out last week on Democracy Now (I added a little to it):
1. 2012 Presidential Election: Republicans run a more moderate/mainstream candidate and as a result the Tea Party (not liking moderation) runs a candidate. This causes a serious split in the conservative vote. If the economy is still struggling, the wars are still raging, and progressives are not happy with the Obama administration, they run a Nadar-esque candidate. The result: no one knows.
2. 2016 Presidential Election: A Democrat runs. A Republican runs. A Tea Party candidate runs. Bloomberg runs. The result: no one knows.

What’s important here is not the result, but that with a serious 3rd or 4th party candidate in the election, the repro justice movement could have an opportunity to dislodge or decenter “the abortion issue” from candidates’ political platforms. I don’t know specifically how, but if we are to learn from our history as described in Before Roe v. Wade, then a historic transformation of the U.S. two party political system could provide the opportunity for repro justice activists to capitalize on the Democratic and Republican parties’ need to re-think their current platforms, and new candidates need to formulate their political platforms and devise vote-getting strategies. In a multiparty political system, repro justice activists could transform the way abortion is talked about in this country.

I could be totally wrong on this, and I haven’t completely flushed out this idea. But this is a scenario repro justice activists, especially those with power and access in D.C. and NYC, should be (and I hope already are) thinking about. The repro justice movement cannot be two steps behind on this: better to be over prepared for something that doesn’t happen then underprepared for something that does. Especially when that “something” is a monumental change to the U.S political system, and the “fruit” of that change is the reframing of the “abortion as a political issue” discourse.

What are your thoughts? Do you think a 3rd or 4th party political candidate could transform the way abortion is talked about in American politics? Would it be beneficial to have abortion “dislodged” from party platforms?

Lara Shkordoff

I've always considered myself to not be one of those "hair and nails" girls who are constantly obsessed with makeup and looking in a mirror. Of course I wear makeup and fix myself up, but I'm not overly concerned with reapplying my lipstick throughout the day when it has worn off. So, I've not really paid much attention when women at work are selling Mary Kay makeup or Avon, except one time about ten years ago when one of my co-workers used Mary Kay product me which I did happen to like but never ended up buying.

When I recently was sent a copy for a review about the "true" story about Mary Kay over at Wild Women Reviews, I admit that I was initially inclined to pass it off to someone else on the team because I wasn't interested in reading about cosmetics. But then I started thinking that I AM interested in females who takes business by the balls and are successful, so I decided to read the book. Although it wasn't something that I would normally read, I'm glad I did.

I still don't know much about Mary Kay, the woman who created a billion dollar cosmetic company. The book just adds more mystery to her and makes her sound like a complete bad ass with disposable husbands. So naturally I am going to start investigating more about her and learning just who this woman was . Meanwhile, head on over to Wild Women Reviews and read my review of the book.