Tag Archives: women’s rights

Mind your own business: Why Marissa Mayer’s life is none of yours

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Just today two women on my twitter feed were openly criticizing one mom for taking off too much time for work meeting bus pick up and drop-offs, nursing a sick kid, and attending sport/school functions. A handful of others are criticizing Marissa Mayer for not spending enough time at home with her kid.

Here are the facts about Marissa Mayer:
1) She is Yahoo’s new CEO.
2) She had a baby two weeks ago, and has returned to her CEO duties at Yahoo!

The first one is awesome. The second one is NONE OF ANYONE’S DAMN BUSINESS.

The women I know and socialize with want the government out of our uterus. We shout, we protest, and we stand strong in our convictions that decisions about women are best made by women. And bravo! But when it comes to passing judgment or criticisms on each other we’ve got our minds up all sorts of places the sun doesn’t shine.

Whether Mayer’s hired schools of assistants to help raise her new bundle of joy, or she’s multi-tasking mommy/CEO duties like a boss is just not our business. So long as there is a baby who is healthy, well-fed, and clean I don’t really care how it’s happening. And neither should you.

It’s been said that Marissa Mayer’s aggressively short maternity leave and dedication to work set a scary precedence for the rest of women. Let’s be honest about this: this is only true if you do not think your voice counts. Because if you do think your voice counts you trust that the local and national politicians *you* elect in office will pass requirements like the FMLA, and more (better?) regulations protecting families and women. You will praise companies who recognize that women a) have a right to work; b) are THE ONLY ONES who can bear children and shouldn’t be penalized as if it’s a professional flaw to do so, and; c) can manage their own choices. You will demand changes at companies who treat women like a commodity. You’ll focus on the work that needs to be done to advance women’s rights and end the back-biting done to each other. We’ll all stand together and fight the fight that threatens to choke our voices quiet.

And what happens if we don’t?

Perhaps what they say – that women “can’t have it all” – will be the song sung. Not by men, mind you, but by our fellow sisters. We won’t have it all because we’re all too damn busy standing in each other’s way.

On Women’s History Month in 2012

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Happy National Women’s History Month, dolls!

There has been much happening in the way of women’s rights and women’s issues in RVA and nationally. I feel like we’re galvanized daily by someone trying to take away – or regulate until it’s impossible – our basic rights and freedoms while putting their fingers, nose, or ultrasound wand in our business. Politicians and political figures who wish they were influential enough to matter (looking at you Rush Limbaugh) dedicate their day’s energy to attempting to affix labels to women making decisions about their own bodies. It’s gross.

I’m not sure why, in 2012, and in the face of a nation struggling to overcome a crippling recession, much more powerful world issues (Syria, anyone??), and I don’t know – hunger, poverty, disease, etc, the people who lead the Commonwealth and the country are this consumed with the re-hashing of birth control and abortion regulations. It’s embarrassing – and perverted – that so many politicians and their lackeys are fixated on women’s vaginas.

This month as women all over this great nation celebrate the strides we have made we’ll also need to stand strong against the people who would threaten our very liberties and freedoms. If it feels contradictory to, at once, revel in women’s history while mulling over the contraceptive rights/abortion dichotomy because men in political power continue to be threatened by women’s rights – it’s not. This is a wake up call to women everywhere who became complacent: feminism is necessary.

The other weekend I attended a birthday party when a girl, about 5 or 6 years old, came up to me with two library books about Helen Keller she checked out from her school’s library. I grew up loving the biographies and stories about Helen Keller; she was one of my first female role models. I admired her tenacity, her spirit, her never-ending thirst for knowledge, and her absolute fearlessness. I listened as this young lady told me things she learned about Helen Keller, and as we talked about her life together I realized that this was    the new age of feminism.

I don’t believe, with the issues happening today, anybody can say that feminism is dead or women’s movements are a thing of the past. I don’t know that they ever will be. During National Women’s History Month, let’s honor our foremothers by keeping their legacies alive. Let’s celebrate the women who are carrying the torches today. And let us all be a role model to the young women looking up to us, because we’re the ones setting the tone. We’re the ones they’ll remember who taught them about the incredible courage, bravery, and dedication women displayed in the face of adversity, and we’re the ones who will be sharing the amazing feats these women overcame – for us and for them. It’s important because it won’t be long before these young women are the ones who will be carrying the torch of women’s rights.

Let’s make sure they’re ready.

The State of Virginia’s Vaginas

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I don’t really know how to begin here.

I’ve been writing this blog post for three solid days. I’ve been researching this topic for so long I have a wealth of information to throw at this blog post, but I’ve been struggling on my composition. I don’t know where to begin because I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about this. I don’t know how to write about this in a way that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense that these things are happening right now compelling me to write about them.

I have to write these things, however, because I haven’t seen my local TV or newspapers really give much light to this story. I have to write about these things because women need to know and most of them have no clue what’s going on right down the street in the General Assembly. Politicians in this state have religious beliefs that they’re confusing with their lawmaking jobs, and the liberties of all women are being threatened because a few people have decided that their religious beliefs trump any of our constitutional ones.

There is a real war on women’s rights. This is not some feminist agenda, or some political party loyalty mush. There is some scary shit happening in our state’s legislative branches, and it affects every single woman. All of it begging the question: just when the hell did the government start answering to the church?

The situation is dire in Virginia. Hear this ladies living in the Commonwealth: your state government is trying really hard to  strip rights away from you, and will be voting on measures next week. The Personhood and Trans-Vaginal Probe bills have already passed the House and are waiting at the Senate.

1) The Personhood Amendment:
For the life of me, I can’t figure out how we’re here again with this Personhood bill. It even failed in Mississippi – a much more conservative state than Virginia. Yet, this bill is dangerously close to becoming a thing, so let’s talk about it.

“Personhood” as it’s being defined by legislators means guaranteeing legal status as citizen and person at every state of development. So, from conception onward, every embryo, fetus, baby, child, etc etc.

The Personhood Amendment is NOT about guaranteeing a right to life. Make no mistake about it, it is about contraception and abortion. If the Personhood Amendment passes then you can kiss your reproductive rights goodbye in the Commonwealth. The bill’s author – remember Bob Marshall from our other post? – has ended the bill with these special words: Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as affecting lawful assisted conception.

Dolls, “lawful assisted conception” should scare the hell out of you. The Personhood Amendment has been struck down in other states because of its open-to-interpretation wording – there are very real dangers to women’s rights lurking behind the words that are not written in this bill. Under Personhood, if you’re getting IVF treatments and some of your embryos die or are destroyed as a part of the selection process, you could be liable for murder. If your IUD creates a pregnancy that isn’t viable, you could be liable for murder. If your birth control pills create an ectopic pregnancy, or you simply have an ectopic pregnancy which HAS to end – you could be liable for murder. If you have a miscarriage – you could be liable for murder.

Let’s really sit and think about what we’re doing here. This bill is not about protecting lives, it’s about taking away a woman’s responsibility to make decisions for herself. And if we’re respecting all life here, shouldn’t we start respecting women’s rights?

2) Rape by Instrumentation
The VA House has passed legislature saying that women choosing to have an abortion must submit to a trans-vaginal ultrasound. Regardless of whether she want to or not – no probe, no abortion, no matter what her constitutional rights are. This goes for nonsurgical abortions, and surgical abortions. This bill is a Republican backed bill and I am not going to mince words and try to play bipartisan – it’s a disgusting display of power. It is rape with instruments. There is zero purpose for this procedure except to humiliate a woman seeking an abortion.

Picture of a Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Probe

Virginia's legislative rape tool of choice.

Inserting an object into a person without their consent is rape. Obtaining consent under duress is also rape. These are facts.

Aside from being required of women who are exercising their constitutional rights on when and where they should have a baby – this rule goes for victims of rape and incest. Why? Because as one Republican put it “women already made the decision to be vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant”. I can’t make this up – these are real people making real decisions saying really stupid things.

This procedure is MEDICALLY UNNECESSARY. There is no reason, seriously absolutely zero reason, that it needs to occur prior to an abortion. It is NOT OKAY TO FORCE PEOPLE TO SUBMIT TO UNNECESSARY MEDICAL PROCEDURES.

If you are a doctor and it offends your religious beliefs to perform an abortion: get a new job. If you are considering becoming a physician, but feel that your religious beliefs cloud your ability to perform any task as a doctor: do not become a public servant. If you are a pharmacist and have a problem doling out prescriptions for contraception: do not work at CVS or Kroger, or any other openly public pharmacy, and oh yeah – GET A DIFFERENT JOB.

I’d really like to know which God says that it’s okay to invade someone else’s body against their will, for nothing else but the satisfaction of shaming someone?

There are things you can do.
On Monday, February 20th, there will be a silent protest: Speak Loudly With Silence for Virginia Women. The protest will be held on the grounds of the Capital Building. The protest will be silent because the Capitol prohibits chanting, signage, protesting, etc on its grounds – let your actions speak louder than your words! As of this posting, more than 1,800 people have signed up to attend.

If you can’t attend the protest, sign the Planned Parenthood petition, or the national petition – create your own petitions – get the word out and stand up for women’s rights.

Contact your local Senator – these people are elected officials and have sworn an oath of office to serve the communities they represent, your voice absolutely makes a difference. Find your local legislator here: http://conview.state.va.us/whosmy.nsf/main?openform

Talk about it.

Feminism Isn’t Dead and Gen Y Can Prove It

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The state of feminism is in an awkward place (when is it not, really?) and I speculate that we’re headed for a drastic movement within the next two decades.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the current generation of young women. The ones they say are globally connected, fickle, the “Instant Gratification Generation”; the gotta-have-its they label Gen Y. For these are the ladies who will carry the torch for women’s rights.

The young sisterhood is made up of “female chauvinist pigs”, a term Ariel Levy uses in her aptly titled book. There is no better label for this generation of everyday women who bare themselves to video cameras, exalt and seek to embody strippers and porn stars, and who have lent their lives to the “raunch culture” that thrives today. Somewhere along the line it became a woman’s goal to act like male chauvinists and objectify women. We laugh in the face of it all when we’re drunk and naked, exclaiming “I’m liberated! I am comfortable with my sexuality!” But let’s keep it real, the women you see dry humping across the stage and laying on their backs in triple-x films are not achieving orgasm. But the men do, each and every single scene. So tell me who’s free and comfortable now? And who put this idea in your head that in order to be in touch with yourself as a woman that you had to be flaunting your sexuality? Who capitalizes off of objectifying women?

A liberated, happy, modern woman it does not make you to screw your way through life and bare your body to jeers from men. Period.

The ladies, and I use that term loosely, that you see flaunting themselves, baring their bodies, and throwing good caution and sound judgment straight into the wind are reacting. Reacting to a surge of trends in their society that are forcing them to fit a particular make and model; they are reacting to an ideal that has been preset, and is now bombarding them from every angle. Don’t believe me? Know that breast implant surgeries have risen a staggering 700% within 12 short years (Levy, p.22). Women are cutting themselves, inflating themselves, and reshaping their bodies to fit into an ideal.

When you are trying to fit a mold or to be accepted by a group you will go to extremes to see that this happens. But at what cost? A generation of young women willing to compromise their values, their looks, and themselves on the belief that these are small prices to pay for self-worth, perceived and realized, is a dangerous ground. Equality does not mean subjectivity, conformity, and objectification. The decidedly un-ladylike acts and shows will come to a head (pun intended) and then you will see a resurgence in feminism and violent backlash against the ideal that has been put before us.

And this brings me to my point: people say that feminism is dead today for a number of reasons. We’ve achieved so much, they say, what’s their left to gain? Or, women can do everything that men can do, why continue to fight? Though I cannot dismiss the hard work our foremothers have done, I cannot ignore the simple truth: we are not equal. Men still very much control the status quo and the best example of this is exists in Gen Y females.

Feminism Isn’t Dead: Reason #1

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FACT: A woman earns $.80 to every $1.00 that a man earns, across the board. Same education level, same skill set, same job.

The US Government confirms this here: http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/womenspay.htm