I can't believe that at a time when the right wing is spending its time obsessing about rape, and Iowa legislators are hoping to send women to jail for having a period, and NARAL has spent the last twenty years so paralyzed with fear about Roe being overturned that they've refused to contest any of the misogynist laws being passed in the Bible Belt states, that anyone is still talking about marital name changes.

And yet here we are. Still. After all these years.

Want to know why I changed my name when I got married lo these twenty-six-and-a-half years ago? It's not because it's easier, because it isn't. It's not because of any kind of retrograde patriarchal notion of assuming my husband's identity, because it isn't. It's not because I wanted to pass for Italian. It's not because it would be an easier signature, because my last name has two "Z"'s smack in the middle. It was really very simple. I spent my entire childhood being at the front of the line when it was by height, and at the back of the line when it was by last name, and I wanted to shake it up a bit.

My name isn't "Bernstein" because my mother changed hers when she married my father. Her name wasn't "Brum" because HER mother changed HERs when she married my grandfather. And that's about as far back as I know, thanks to Hitler and his minions. So what does the name I grew up with really mean as a "feminist statement"? Nothing. Unless we can go back and find an ancient relative who never changed her name, or who had a baby out of wedlock from whom we are descended, our names that some so-called feminists are trying so hard to keep are derived from the patriarchy anyway. So you might as well pick the name you want.

After all these years, and all the backward-pedaling that far too many legislators want us to do, why does anyone still think this is important?

Labels: faux feminism, tempests in a teapot

I'd never been able to much get into Mad Men, but this season I started watching and found myself getting sucked into it. Part of it is that we're in familiar territory this season, since I was about the same age in 1964-65, when the season takes place, as Don's daughter Sally. But I think much of it is that this season is more about the women than about a bunch of Guys Behaving Badly.

Part of what's fascinating this season is watching the interplay between the women and the men, as the early glimmerings of change start to take hold. Joan, the whispery-voiced somewhat aging sexpot who's the office manager, seems stuck in the previous decade, while Peggy, the secretary-turned-copywriter, sees a glimpse of a new way of being at a boho party, starts to find her own voice and begins to assert herself. I'm not sure that Peggy actually existed in 1965; her rise seems somewhat unlikely until a couple of decades later. But in this week's episode, when Peggy fires a freelance copywriter whose filthy drawing about Joan truly IS beyond the pale, Girl Solidarity backfires right in Peggy's face:

Peggy and Joan are in their own ways trying to find a way in a world that's still very much controlled by men and the rules (or lack of same) that men make.

The feminism for which Joan and Peggy are just a few years too early gave a lot of lop service to being about toughness. It had to. Look at the world that women who were trying to fight their way out of being baby-making appendages lived in. It's no wonder that the Rogers and the Dons and the Joeys of the world laughed at the women who dared to challenge the established order and called them ugly...and they still do.

The rise of Victim Feminists like Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell is perhaps a natural consequence of the fatal mistake that the 1960's feminists made -- of not realizing that "the system" that they felt enslaved them in the 1950's also enslaved men. As massive jerks as Don Draper and Roger Sterling and Henry Francis are on Mad Men, it's hard to argue that they're kings of the world. Roger and Henry have young pretty trophy wives, but they're still unhappy. Roger and Don are clearly alcoholics (though Don, being the show's protagonist, is starting to show signs of getting his shit together). These guys, like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Revolutionary Road, have lives of mind-numbing sameness that were only marginally better than the stifling lives of 1950's housewives in the suburbs. EVERYONE was oppressed by the budding culture of consumerism that was given life after World War II. But the minute early feminism claimed the mantle of oppression, it lost any semblance to an empowerment movement and paved the way for Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell. That's why I was so disturbed last night to hear Howard Fineman opine that part of the reason for O'Donnell's victory last night was that Mike Castle, known in Delaware as a Really Nice Guy, hammered at O'Donnell too hard and that made women voters upset.

Of course Joan and Peggy don't know about feminism yet, but in the exchange in the elevator, Joan seems to be aware that in firing Joey, Peggy has succumbed to this kind of victimology. I don't know if pornographic drawings of the office manager were a commonplace pastime among the creative department in 1960's ad agencies, but I do know that when I was a secretary in an ad agency as late as 1980, I arrived every morning to find one of the bosses standing by the coffeemaker, mug in hand, waiting for me to make the coffee, and then expecting me to break into meetings any time his girlfriend was on the phone for him (but not if it was his wife). Peggy may think she's sending a message that this sort of behavior will no longer be tolerated as of today, but I suspect that the remaining assholes in SCDP's creative department are going to be testing their limits, asserting their dominance over Joan (who rightly knows that they see her as a "meaningless secretary" and treating Peggy like a "humorless bitch."

Fast-forward forty years and you have Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell, two mind-bogglingly stupid and unqualified women, wrapping themselves in the mantle of poor, put-upon fragile flowers being picked on by mean old men like Mike Castle and others who dare mention the obvious -- that if one is to participate in government, one is at least supposed to be coherent and not sound like the early boot on Survivor, kicked off for being useless in challenges AND around camp. Because for all that Sarah Palin talks about Mama Grizzlies, what stares us in the face is the smoking ruin of feminism -- and it looks a lot like corseted Victorians fanning themselves on fainting couches.

Sarah Palin came into the public eye with her guns and her talk about field dressing a moose and shooting wolves out of a helicopter and her aura of dominatrix. But it quickly became about the imagery of the soccer mom tied to her minivan, the Downs Syndrome mom, the poor widdew goilie being bullied by the "lamestream media." Any scrutiny of Sarah Palin was just mean old media men being mean to a girl. Palin appropriated the mantle of feminism as her own, but she's twisted it into a gargoyle of victimology. Palin feminism isn't about toughing it out in a man's world, and it isn't even about changing that man's world. It's about playing the victim card every time someone dares ask you to play on the same field as the guys. Christine O'Donnell has clearly studied her Sarah Palin very carefully. She looks like Palin (only without the psychopathic eyes), she dresses like Palin, and she won just like Palin -- by playing to victimhood. This is a woman who thinks masturbation is adultery, who checks the bushes outside her house for her political enemies, hasn't held a real job in years, pays her living expenses off her campaign donations, rails against people sucking at the government teat, but is running to collect a taxpayer-funded paycheck herself.

This is what feminism has come to? Last night in her victory speech, O'Donnell threw down the gauntlet when she talked about ordinary people being able to run for office without fear of "character assassination." This is a worthy goal regardless of party, but somehow I get the feeling that this goal is not going to apply to her Democratic opponent, who is a man and is no doubt already wondering how he's going to run against her when any criticism, no matter how minor, is going to be be met with cries of "character assassination." Because in the feminism of conservatism, women are just little fragile flowers, wilting under the slightest breeze.

Labels: faux feminism, Mad Men, pop culture, Sarah Palin, Teabaggers, television, wingnuttia

Being disheartened is such a usual state of mind for me these days it's surprising that this one gets to me so much. But I decided to do a quick spin around some of the alpha dogs of the so-called feminist blogosphere to see what is being said about the USPSTF's new mammography guidelines. You know what I saw?

Almost nothing.

I guess that when you're young (instead of old like me and leaving the house between 6-7 AM and getting home at 6:30 PM, then doing 2-3 hours of work every night and all weekend), you just don't have TIME to handle TWO issues about women's health care. After all, there's advertising to talk about, and the Sarah Palin Newsweek cover, and when combined with the Stupak amendment, well, the poor dears just have to pick and choose.

Kudos to Nordette at Whose shoes are these anyway? and jluther over at Feministing for actually realizing that they too will be over 40 someday and that this will become their problem.

Other than that? Crickets.

I'm not going to shame the so-called feminist bloggers who have chosen instead to write about divas with no pants or webcomics or the Sarah Palin Newsweek cover or why there are no women in Pirate Radio by naming them publicly. They know who they are. And to those bloggers, I have just one question: Why do you think this is not your issue?

Pregnancy hasn't been a concern for me since 2005, but I still write about the importance of access to abortion and contraception. Reproduction is an issue in my PAST, that I will never have to worry about again, at least not in this particular incarnation. But for the feminist bloggers in their twenties and thirties, this latest assault on women's health care is in YOUR FUTURE -- and that future is coming faster than you can even imagine.

So why the silence? Is it because this plan to ration health care services to older women is coming directly from Barack Obama's Department of Health and Human Services and you're afraid to criticize it? Is this what we've come to, selling our own sisters down the river rather than criticize a Democratic president?

I want to know: Am I wrong? I realize that with 20 minutes to blog this morning after I head in for a 7 AM meeting I don't have time to look at ALL the feminist blogs. But where is the feminist blogosphere on this? If you're a feminist blogger and you're writing about this, or if you're just a blog reader and you find a post about the new mammography guidelines, post the links in the comments. I'll bump them up into their own post tomorrow along with my crow eating (but the consumption of the bird only happens if the posts are timestamped BEFORE this one). And if I don't hear from anyone, I'm done writing about abortion. After all, it isn't MY concern, right?

Labels: abortion, faux feminism, health care, rant, Women's bodies

Today's honoree: Kate Harding, who says all there is to say about Roman Polanski. Because "artistry" does not mitigate raping a 13-year-old.

Labels: faux feminism, movies, rape, Why Is There Even Argument About This

So...was it enough?

I'm not sure. My gut tells me no. It's never enough when you're dealing with people who have become unhinged; people who have become so entwined with their grievances that they can't see straight. This is how we get women who can come up with the conclusion that the way to make a feminist statement is to vote for a misogynist who thinks jokes about wife-beating and rape are funny, whose wife seems to be injured a lot (just sayin'...) and with his support for overturning Roe v. Wade and his silence on the Bush Administration's upcoming HHS rule that would define many methods of contraception as abortion, WILL set women's rights back forty years. This is how we get people like Alex Jones, hardly a leftist, in Denver to stir up trouble by baiting another grievance-crazed nut, Michelle Malkin.

But some people are determined to cut off their noses to spite their faces no matter what, and I still believe that Hillary created this monster that has now spiralled out of her control. The speech was good, but I don't think she was emphatic enough that a) she is OVER IT; b) this election should NOT be about HER; and c) that she vehemently opposes so-called supporters who do not fall into line. She left just enough of a crack in the door for her own ego to sneak through, and that's enough to keep her grievance-crazed supporters foaming at the mouth. Today's New York Times is reporting that a number of Clinton fundraisers are still angry and unlikely to help Barack Obama. And check out one of the reasons why:

The lingering rancor between the sides appears to have intensified at the Democratic convention, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, credentials and the like. Tensions were already high, particularly in the wake of revelations that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice-presidential pick.

Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech.

More broadly, a consensus appears to have emerged among many major Clinton donors that the Obama campaign did not do enough to enlist their support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Clinton fund-raisers.

“I’ve had more contact from the McCain campaign since the nomination than from the Obama campaign,” said Calvin Fayard, a New Orleans lawyer, major Clinton fund-raiser and longtime Democratic donor who is not in Denver this week.

Mr. Fayard said he was considering supporting Senator John McCain, the Republican, citing what he perceived as Mr. Obama’s inexperience.

With all due respect, Mr. Fayard, if you do this, then I would argue that not only should you turn in your Democratic credentials, but I would question whether you are smart enough to even vote. I mean, getting pissy about where your hotel rooms are? Is there anything more indicative of the screwed-up priorities of the so-called Feminism of Affluent White Women than thinking that the Obama campaign isn't bowing and scraping and genuflecting before you quite enough?

I remember early feminism. I remember the feminism of the affluent suburbs during the early 1970's, when women whose husbands had high-powered jobs or had inherited money, who in the stately colonials of Westfield, New Jersey, held consciousness-raising groups about how oppressed they were. Early-stage feminism had little common cause with the women slinging eggs over easy at the diner, or cleaning the bedpans in the hospitals and nursing homes, or the ones teaching their children. It was about restrictive country clubs and examining their own vaginas. You could almost understand this in the early stages of a movement. Those who need it the most are too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads and don't have time for activism. But even after all this time, these women are willing to sell their daughters' right to control their own bodies and the lives of their sons who will become cannon fodder. They're willing to do this just because they're pissed off that an affluent white woman who was able to jump directly into the Senate without having to be so much as a County committeewoman because her husband was president; an affluent white woman who was humiliated by said husband on a national stage, isn't going to get to be president.

Clinton alluded to this disconnect last night, but I think she wasn't emphatic enough that these WATBs who are clinging to their anger as if it were the most cherished of possessions should just grow the hell up. She talked about the woman who adopted two autistic children and had no health insurance and was dealing with cancer. She talked about the young boy whose mother was on minimum wage. But she assumed that a bunch of people who think that they were dissed on their hotel rooms and to what lobbyist parties they were given passes, even care about these people. Because these Clinton fundraisers, and the PUMA crazies, and the rest of these self-involved, self-indulgent, narcissistic people, don't care about the woman working two part-time jobs with no health insurance. They don't care about the woman who goes into people's homes and takes care of the elderly and the sick, being paid minimum wage while the agencies for which they work charge the clients four and five times that. They don't care about the woman emptying the bedpans in the hospital, or the one cleaning the room in the very hotel where they're bitching about the rooms. They don't care about the fourteen-year-old impregnated by her father who can't get an abortion because that father would have to give permission. They don't care about the lunch lady at their child's school whose husband was just laid off in his fifties and they have a disabled adult child at home and continued health coverage under COBRA is $1200 a month -- which is almost her entire take-home pay.

No, all that matters is that they feel Hillary Clinton -- a woman who will be able to back to the Senate and perhaps be the successor to Ted Kennedy, who can go home weekends to her nice house in Chappaqua, who never really HAS to work again -- didn't get the nomination for president.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Labels: batshit crazies, faux feminism, Hillary Clinton

Talk about "you know....morons" -- meet Debra Bartoshevich, the Hillarion Rove dupe who thinks John McCain is pro-choice.

Hey Debra, you stupid twit: What part of “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned” do you not understand? How does it feel to have fallen right into Karl Rove's trap? How does it feel to have your ignorance exposed in front of the entire nation? And how does it feel to know that your tantrum about your so-called feminist icon may very well set back women's rights by fifty years?

It's probably a bit late for you to wake up, Debra, since all you know is your grievances, but you might take some time and read up on who your PUMA buddies really are.

Labels: faux feminism, icepick meet forehead, idiocy, Wake Me Up When It's Over

Meet the new "faith-based" drugstores:

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That's because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John's and a Kmart, will be a "pro-life pharmacy" -- meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients' rights against those of health-care workers who assert a "right of conscience" to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

"The United States was founded on the idea that people act on their conscience -- that they have a sense of right and wrong and do what they think is right and moral," said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Society, a Chicago public-interest law firm that is defending a pharmacist who was fined and reprimanded for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. "Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing," Brejcha said.

But critics say the stores could create dangerous obstacles for women seeking legal, safe and widely used birth control methods.

"I'm very, very troubled by this," said Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, a Washington advocacy group. "Contraception is essential for women's health. A pharmacy like this is walling off an essential part of health care. That could endanger women's health."

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

The most common, widely publicized conflicts have involved pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception. They say they believe that such methods can cause what amounts to an abortion and that the contraceptives promote promiscuity, divorce, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other societal woes. The result has been confrontations that have left women traumatized and resulted in pharmacists being fired, fined or reprimanded.

In response, some pharmacists have stopped carrying the products or have opened pharmacies that do not stock any.

"This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable," said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill such prescriptions. The group's Web site lists seven pharmacies around the country that have signed a pledge to follow "pro-life" guidelines, but Brauer said there are many others.

"It's just the tip of the iceberg," she said. "And there's new ones happening all the time."

So just go to another drugstore, you say? Like which one? You mean the one at Wal-Mart, where the pharmacist can refuse to fill your contraceptive prescription if you're unmarried, or black, or just because he thinks you should be barefoot and pregnant, or that you should suffer the "consequences of your sins"? Why is it that women should have to shop around to get basic health care, while these very same drugstores that won't sell contraception are perfectly willing to sell Viagra? Who are these men who are taking Viagra supposed to be fucking?

All the WATBs like these idiots, who think they're somehow going to get revenge on the candidate they think "stole" (but never explain quite how) the Democratic nomination from Saint Hillary the Faux Feminist Warrior Queen by voting for a guy who is perfectly willing to turn them and their daughters into brood mares had better wake up and smell the fucking coffee. Because this is the Christofascist Zombie Brigade in action -- and they are NOT going away quietly. And when push comes to shove, they will be good little Republican foot soldiers and vote for John McCain. And these sulking tantrum-throwers are ready to help them do it.

Labels: contraception, faux feminism, John McCain