New Feminist Coalition Slams Sexed-Up Images of Girls

AlterNet / By Sarah Seltzer

Feminists launch a movement to push back at pole-dancing for preteens and hypersexed images of girls -- without being anti-sex.

It was the photo shoot that produced a thousand groans: a provocative, sexed-up Glee spread in GQ. Staged and shot by controversial (and notoriously creepy) photographer Terry Richardson, it featured Glee's three straight white stars in problematic poses: a fully clothed Cory Monteith flanked by his scantily clad female co-stars Lea Michelle and Dianna Agron. The two young women were seductively photographed with their mouths agape and skin showing, both dressed in outfits that seemed half porn film, half high-school.

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Anti-Choicers Hide Their True Aim: Jailing Women Who Have Abortions

RH Reality Check / By Amanda Marcotte

Chances are that if an actual ban were to be instated, anti-choicers would eagerly seek to punish women caught having abortions.

What kind of lessons are there to be learned at the end of the day when contemplating the verdict in the case of Tegan Leach and Sergie Brennan of Queensland, Australia?  The facts in the case were not in dispute---Leach did in fact procure RU-486 and performed a private abortion for the simple reason that she didn’t feel prepared yet for motherhood. 

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Women Are Dying From Hormone Therapy; Why Is Pharma Still Allowed to Push It?

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
Posted on October 21, 2010, Printed on October 22, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148572/

Want to increase your chances of getting, and possibly dying from, node-positive breast cancer? Take hormone therapy.

Pharma's lucrative estrogen plus progestin combo is already known to increase the chance of getting breast cancer by 26 percent. But an article in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows hormone therapy also increases the chance of dying from breast cancer, as followups are conducted on women who took it.

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How Religion Is Killing Our Most Vulnerable Youth

Bishop Gene Robinson

Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire; Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bishop-gene-robinson/how-religion-is-killing-o_b_764568.html

An increasingly popular bumper sticker reads, "Guns Don't Kill People -- RELIGION Kills People!" In light of recent events I would add religion kills young people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people.

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Is Female Sexual Dysfunction the Next Big Disease?

By Martha Rosenberg

Is Female Sexual Dysfunction the Next Big Disease?

Interview with Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals author Ray Moynihan

Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals: How Drug Companies Plan to Profit from Female Sexual Dysfunction, Ray Moynihan and Dr. Barbara Mintzes (Greystone Books; October 15, 2010; 978-1-55365-508-4; 17.95; Original Paperback)

Interviewer: You write in your new book Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals that alongside Viagra, Sex and the City and the media sexualization of girl children is a paradoxical sexual insecurity and that Big Pharma exploits this anxiety, transforming common sexual difficulties into medical conditions.

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How to Respect Sex Workers

Ms. Blog / By Monica Shores

Here’s a way to debate commercial sex while respecting the industry’s laborers. Here are some suggestions.

Most women have strong feelings about the sex industry, be they for or against. (And many, of course, remain undecided.) When dealing with such an emotionally volatile topic, it’s easy to inadvertently silence or even insult sex workers themselves. (As a participant in sex worker activism for the past four years, I’ve seen that in action and on the page.) There’s a way to debate commercial sex while respecting the industry’s laborers. Here are some suggestions:

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Will Obama's Paralysis on Gay Rights Issues Worsen the Enthusiasm Gap in November?

AlterNet / By Devona Walker

A handful of outspoken conservatives are tacking left of the White House on gay marriage. It's time for the White House to step up their game.

The White House’s decision to go middle of the road in a misguided attempt to keep moderates and independents in camp Obama has clearly backfired. Some speculate things could get even worse as outspoken conservatives come out and tack left of Obama on key social issues such as same-sex marriage. None hold elected office, of course, and the GOP platform remains unchanged. But even elected Republicans are quieter on LGBT issues than in previous election cycles.

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The Right-Wing Has Made It Next to Impossible for Many Women to Get Abortions

Daily Kos / By Kaili Joy Gray

For many women, getting access to abortion has become extraordinarily difficult. Conservatives' plan is to make it impossible.

They say it's too easy.

According to 48 percent of American voters, it's "too easy" to have an abortion in this country.

Too easy?

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Women's Equality Day: Time for Constitutional Guarantee of Women's Rights

Published on Thursday, August 26, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Statement by National Organization for Women (NOW)

WASHINGTON  - As students return to school this week, many will open their history books to learn that 90 years ago today women were given the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was signed into law. The history books will explain how this event began to radically transform the role of women in our society. Today, women have more opportunities than ever before. For the first time, more women attend and graduate college than men, and women now make up half the workforce.

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Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner Speak Out On Franzen Feud

Originally on Huffington Post

Jason Pinter

Posted: August 26, 2010 07:10 AM

With the publication of Jonathan Franzen's fourth novel, Freedom, which was extensively covered in the New York Times while Franzen himself appeared on the cover of TIME magazine, a controversy broke out online over whether Franzen's star treatment was indicative of the literary establishment's alleged shoddy treatment of commercial writers, in particular writers of what is commonly referred to as 'women's fiction.' Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult, both #1 New York Times bestselling authors, found themselves in themiddle of the fray. Weiner and Picoult were gracious enough to discuss with me their thoughts on what role gender plays in literary criticism, the importance of popular fiction in our culture, and whether progress is being made.

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Haitian Women Fight Sexual Violence

By Amie Newman, Managing Editor

August 26, 2010 - 7:00am

A small group of women in colorful shirts, jeans and skirts stands in a circle, singing and clapping. Some are smiling. All are dancing, shaking their bodies to the sound of their voices strong and loud. One woman dances in the middle, spinning. They are singing in French and it could be a celebration of some sort. In a way, it is. It's a celebration of their power, as they unify to protect themselves and all women who live in post-earthquake Hatiian displacement camps from sexual assault, rape and other gender-based violence

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NYT Piece on Candidate's Shoes Is Irrelevant, Trivial and Sexist--According to Its Author

08/26/2010 by Jim Naureckas

Originally posted on FAIR.org

The New York Times' Susan Dominus, writing an article (8/24/10) entirely about a congressional candidate's footwear, makes an attempt at self-inoculation:

I know. We, the news media, are not supposed to ask female candidates about their hairstyle or their choice of pantsuits over skirts or their shoes. It is irrelevant. It is trivializing. It is sexist. "You would never write about Chuck Schumer's shoes," Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand said in a New York magazine article in response to a question about her flats.

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"Mad Men" Gets Abortion Right

RH Reality Check / By Amanda Marcotte

We're closer to 1965 than we care to admit, where women with resources still have access to abortions, but women without face a gauntlet of obstacles.

Fans of the show “Mad Men” love it for many reasons, not the least of which is the pain-staking attention to historical detail and love of highlighting aspects of the sixties long forgotten by most people who aren’t historians.  Last Sunday, the writers used this aspect of the show to touch on abortion. 

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Why Gay Opponents Hated and Feared the Proposition 8 Trial

Conservatives are arguing against gay marriage in a very limited way.

— By William K. Black

This story first appeared on the New Deal 2.0 website.

Notre Dame Law School Professor Gerard Bradley criticized United States District Court Judge Vaughan Walker, who heard the challenge to the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 on the grounds that the judge was unfit to hear the case if the reports that he was gay were correct (see my post on New Deal 2.0: "Gay Judges Need Not Apply"). Proposition 8 sought to overturn the decision of the California Supreme Court that it was unconstitutional to forbid gays to marry. Bradley also complained that the trial that Judge Walker conducted demonstrated his bias. Bradley claimed that everyone:

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How Porn Can Help Your Relationship

Psychotherapy Networker / By Joe Kort

The argument that porn takes away from a relationship and encourages emotional distance doesn't do justice to the trust that can be created though honest discussions about porn.

In more than 25 years of practice, I've heard hundreds of stories of how pornography use can damage people's sex lives profoundly and ruin their marriages. I've personally had many couples describe the shame and secretiveness of one partner's involvement with porn. Time and again, I've treated people for whom viewing porn has become a compulsion and who've come to prefer it to being with a partner. Yet I've worked with many for whom porn isn't destructive to their relationship, but, in their view, offers a source of excitement and satisfaction they wouldn't otherwise experience.

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Judge Rules Against Prop 8: Huge Win Against Bigotry, But the Fight Is Far from Over

Mother Jones Online / By Celia Perry

As the daughter of a lesbian couple, my reaction is lukewarm. This is a significant milestone and a huge step forward. But much remains to be done.

Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco has overturned Prop. 8, California's same-sex marriage ban. His ruling reads, "Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples."

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Right-Wingers Are Wrong: CA Judge’s Prop H8 Ruling Upheld the Will of the People

Posted by Joshua Holland at 5:10 pm

Some people are worried about a backlash resulting from the Prop 8 ruling, and that’s probably a valid concern. But I just want to touch briefly on an over-arching narrative coming from those who oppose the decision: that it goes against the will of the people.

The truth is that a majority of Californians were opposed to Prop 8 when it passed, and a majority of Californians opposed it when it was ruled un-Constitutional this week. Not huge majorities, but majorities nonetheless.

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Only White, Straight, Attractive Women Allowed? The Strange World of Egg Donation

AlterNet / By Rachel White

Working at a fertility agency, I often had to turn down women who did not meet the surprisingly discriminatory criteria sought by most parents.

At 8:50am I'd get to the fertility agency and carefully hang my coat while the phone rang. Messages filled my voicemail, left in that window of night saturated with infomercials and irrational thought patterns. A voice would fumble “Yeah, um. I was wonderin’ about this egg donation that I read in the paper. It says I can make $7,000.”

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Does the World Evolve or Elove?

By Mitchell Jay Rabin

Host of A Better World

Mondays and Wednesdays at 6 pm

It is awfully striking that what our highest aspiration is, to consciously evolve as a species into the fullest expression of our human nature, involves a word so intricately intermixed with it: to Evolve and to Love...but a couple of letters off from each other. Is there a significance? Can we infer one, impute one? Can we simply gently forge a relationship between loving and evolving in our brains, through the dendritic relations, re-shaping our neuro-circuitry along lines most desirable? Can you imagine if our evolution was really predicated on our ability to love, love well, deeply, fully, always and everywhere, with everyone and all sentient living things?! Would that not just be one of the most fun ways to grow into our human fullness which we could then describe as nothing short of Divine?

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Conservatives Exploiting Health Care to Deprive Poor Women of Access to Abortion

ColorLines / By Michelle Chen

2010 has been a big year for health care reform, but the families on whose backs those legislative victories were won have little to celebrate.

The Obama administration is poised to extend the reach of federal restrictions on abortion funding to new high-risk insurance pools, a supplementary system for people at risk of being shut out of ordinary private insurance due to preexisting medical conditions. The pools will exist until 2014, when new rules that ban providers from rejecting people based on preexisting conditions begin. This basically means that the spirit of the notorious Stupak amendment, which would have broadly preempted any federally supported insurance program from covering abortion services in the new health care system, has become reality.

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