Uh, has this already been all over the web? I haven't seen it, a Google image search isn't giving me any matches to it, and the letter-to-the-editor writer (the email they sent is in a thread that mentions http://whatreallyhappened.com and alaskacafe.blogspot.com, though I can't find it on either site) hasn't gotten back to me. It's gotta be fake, right?

Did anyone else just put on Hall & Oates' "Sara Smile"?

I don't care how old Target: Women's meme is—it isn't polite to discuss a lady's age.

Just watch the yogurt installment again for the very first time:

More Target: Women here.

(Thanks to Slog tipper Matthew R.)

This woman--a 23-year-old who writes, "I'm 23. I'm knocked up. And I don't want to keep it. You can fuck yourself, Judd Apatow"—has started a blog to document the process of getting an abortion. It's smart, funny, and surprisingly informative.

I’m trying to get some advice and info that isn’t off a bulletin board style fact sheet. When I google “abortion blog” —because we all know blogs are a great repository for facts and rationality— i get these terrifying pro-life, abortion regret websites. One is called ” silent rain”. UGHHHHH.

WHERE IS THE JUNO OF THE ABORTION WORLD?!?

Read it.

In an open letter seeking votes from Ron Paul supporters (!!), Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi compared letting pharmacists refuse to dispense emergency contraception (and actually, by extension, any drug including regular old contraception) to letting hardware store and grocery owners decide what kind of goods to stock.

"Just as government shouldn't tell grocery store owners that they have to sell certain types of groceries, or hardware store owners that they have to sell certain types of tools, it shouldn't tell pharmacists which drugs to sell," Rossi wrote.

You know why that's a shitty analogy? Because no one's health--no one's right to choose not to get pregnant and have an abortion (which wouldn't be necessary if they got Plan B) or raise a unwanted child (gee, now that's a pro-life stance)--depends on their ability to buy a certain fucking brand of eggs. If you were ever looking for evidence that the forced-pregnancy brigades don't give a shit about women's health or lives, look no further than Dino Rossi.

_{Anybody ever tell you you look like She-Ra? Haw! Haw! Hey, come on back to my castle. I'm a real Beast-Man in the sack!}

Kevin Church's blog has news of what he considers to be pervasive sexism in the comic book convention-going community:

Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: “These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, ’cause I wanted to see what her reaction was.” This was only one example of several instance of harassment, stalking or assault that I saw at San Diego this time.

1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.

2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the “prettiest girl at the con.” They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.

I'm not exactly shocked at this news, but I think it's an important conversation to have, especially since this year's news coverage of SDCC seems to be all about how it's the pop-culture event of the year. The fanboys might have to stop acting like douches when the whole world's paying attention.

Doris Probst has become the first woman to win the annual hog calling contest at the Illinois State Fair in the US.

Her underwear? Expensive and crotchless.

A pair of Queen Victoria's bloomers, with a 50-inch waist, were snapped up for $9,000 by a Canadian buyer at a central England auction Wednesday. Auctioneer Charles Hanson said Queen Victoria's underpants belonged to "a very big lady of quite small stature with a very wide girth." She was said to be 5 feet tall.

The handmade knickers—which date back to the 1890s—bear the monogram "VR" for Victoria Regina. They are open-crotch style, with separate legs joined by a drawstring at the waist....

Five feet tall with a A 50-inch waist? That's spherical, right? Reading on...

[Victoria's] reign is noted for both imperial expansion and the decreasing political power of the monarch.

You don't say.

Apropos of Dave's post, I give you...

Abstinence thongs!

In case you can't read the text on the crotch, it says: "Earn your right to wear white. Abstain."

Here's the text from the designer: "Panty-minimalists love our casual thong that covers sweet spots without covering your assets; putting an end to panty-lines. This under-goodie is "outta sight" in low-rise pants. Toss these message panties onstage at your favorite rock star or share a surprise message with someone special ... later."

The best part: It also doubles as a hymen!

From The New York Times:

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for awhile.

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

[...]

The Joint Economic Committee study cites the growing statistical evidence that women are leaving the work force “on par with men,” and the potentially disastrous consequences for families.

“Women bring home about one-third of family income,” said Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York and vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. “And only those families with a working wife have seen real improvement in their living standards.”

The proportion of women holding jobs in their prime working years, 25 to 54, peaked at 74.9 percent in early 2000 as the technology investment bubble was about to burst. Eight years later, in June, it was 72.7 percent, a seemingly small decline, but those 2.2 percentage points erase more than 12 years of gains for women. Four million more in their prime years would be employed today if the old pattern had prevailed through the expansion now ending.

The pattern is roughly similar among the well-educated and the less educated, among the married and never married, among mothers with teenage children and those with children under 6, and among white women and black.

The women, in sum, are for the first time withdrawing from work with the same uniformity as men in their prime working years. Ninety-six percent of the men held jobs in 1953, their peak year. That is down to 86.4 percent today. But while men are rarely thought of as dropping out to run the household, that is often the assumption when women pull out.

“A woman gets laid off and she stays home for six months with her kids,” Ms. Boushey said. “She doesn’t admit that she is staying home because she could not get another acceptable job.”

Senators Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton wrote the following joint letter today to Michael Leavitt, head of Bush's Health and Human Services Department, which just proposed new regulations that would deny federal aid to groups that refuse to hire people, including nurses, who object to abortion or birth control. The proposal's insanely broad definition of "abortion" includes many common types of birth control.

Dear Mr. Secretary:

It has come to our attention that the Department of Health and Human Services may be preparing draft regulations that would create new obstacles for women seeking contraceptive services.

One of the most troubling aspects of the proposed rules is the overly-broad definition of “abortion.” This definition would allow health-care corporations or individuals to classify many common forms of contraception – including the birth control pill, emergency contraception and IUDs – “abortions” and therefore to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.

As a consequence, these draft regulations could disrupt state laws securing women's access to birth control. They could jeopardize federal programs like Medicaid and Title X that provide family-planning services to millions of women. They could even undermine state laws that ensure survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

We strongly urge you to reconsider these regulations before they are released. We are extremely concerned by this proposal’s potential to affect millions of women’s reproductive health.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely yours,

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
Senator Patty Murray

Clinton and Murray have been tireless advocates for women's rights, including reproductive rights, most recently fighting to make emergency contraception (Plan B) available over the counter. Senator Barack Obama has not issued a response to the Bush Administration's proposal.

The Bush administration wants to require all health programs, including women's clinics, that receive federal funding to certify that they won't refuse to hire nurses and other employees who object to abortion or birth control.

In other words, if Planned Parenthood wants to keep its federal funding, it has to agree to hire people who object to its core mission of family planning.

Even worse: The proposal, citing a 2001 Zogby poll (!!), defines "abortion" as any drug, procedure or action that "results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation." Because hormonal contraception (emergency and otherwise) can, in theory, prevent implantation of a fertilized egg (as, by the way, can menstruation), the proposal effectively defines birth control as abortion.

How much more can this man fuck up in his remaining 187 days in office?

Brad, as you may have heard, has been at the Stranger for 14 years, ending today. I've been here something more like 14 months. So I don't have as many Brad memories as some of my colleagues, and thanks to the pot, a lot of the Brad memories I do have are hazy at best. But there is one time I can semi-coherently recall hanging out with Brad outside of work.

Grand Archives were playing the Triple Door. I was going because that sort of thing is kind of my beat here (and because, hey, Grand Archives). Brad was going because he knows all those dudes form back in Jesuit school or whatever. So we combined forces to seek out somewhere to drink downtown before the show. After being rebuffed at a few overcrowded yuppie bars, we ended up down at the Alibi Room, drinking bourbon at the bar. We talked about the ladies. We talked about life. We were about go watch Grand Archives. You know, real guy stuff. And it was sweet. I get the feeling that, if I had come around a little earlier, or if Brad was sticking around a little longer, he might've imparted a lot of dudely wisdom upon me. Or at least more bourbon.

Now it's gonna be all ladies and fags around here. Thanks, Brad.

In case you hadn't heard, there's a bit of a blow-up over two editors at the Gawker-owned feminist web site Jezebel.com, Moe Tcakik and Tracie Egan, who appeared, representing Jezebel, an event called "Thinking and Drinking" last week. The host of the show, Lizz Winstead, says she asked them to do the onstage interview because "their work on Jezebel has made them role models for young women everywhere." She wanted to talk to them about Hillary and sexism, women's magazines and whether they "feel any obligation to write about responsibility and safety when they write graphically about their sex lives." But things quickly went off the rails, as you'll see when you watch the video.

On safe-sex choices:

Moe: Withdrawal has always worked for me.

Tracie: One hundred percent.

On rape:

Tracie: People are always saying it's not safe to go home with strange men, blah, blah blah, like Mr. Goodbar whatever.

Moe: What's gonna happen??

Lizz: You could get raped.

Moe: That's happening too, but you live through that, you know?

Lizz: Sometimes you don't.

Moe: That's true, if they have weapons.

Tracie: I'm not going to bring someone home and be like, not tonight.

Lizz... But that's just not how rape works! If you bring a guy home and you want to fuck him and he's like guess what, I'm a psycho, and when I look in your face I want to kill you...

Tracie: I live in Williamsburg, there aren't very, um, assertive men there.

Moe: The thing about the rapists of our generation, is that they're not very assertive men, but they all use drugs, they all have some sort of drug they use on you, so it's good to feel, and I don't know if this has happened to me or if I just drink too much but there are times when... It's really hard to prosecute them (rapists), so you should try to avoid them at all costs. But you know, I don't know, it's a very strange line.

Tracie: I moved to New York when I was 18 and you think you would encounter more rapists in this big city , but, I don't know, I haven't. I always, I don't know if I attract, like, dudes that want to be dominated or something?

Moe: I attract rapists.

Tracie: I once paid someone to rape me once.

Lizz: Well, first of all, you cannot pay someone to rape you. You are a willing accomplice. You have said, rape me now, it's not rape. ..

Tracie: I think even though I'm a feminist I just have this issue where I naturally dominate everybody and so I had this like fantasy where I like wanted to be dominated so I paid someone--well, I didn't pay someone, I had a magazine pay for it—

Lizz: That is two steps removed from rape.

On date rape:

Moe: I've totally been like victimized, and I think that I kind of must broadcast something. But the point is that, like, I think you were saying what do you regret in terms of sexual experiences and I guess I regret like being date raped.

But, you know, it seems like in terms of kind of bad sexual experiences that you've had the worst ones always seem to be in countries where sex is not accepted. I mean, that is the good thing about New York, it's like, I've never has any problems with anyone here

I guess third guy, I ever had sex with, date raped me, and I got very mad at him, but I wasn't gonna fucking like turn him in to the police and fucking go through shit.

Lizz: Why not, you see that's the problem, why not, I am just curious?

Moe: Because it was a load of trouble and I had better things to do, like drinking more.

On how to not get yourself raped:

Tracie: I have to honestly say that like, I know that it happens to girls who are smart, who know what they're doing, and blah blah blah, but like, I've never ever been in that situation and I've had lots and lots and lots of sex with a lot of people in my life. Maybe it's about education or something.

Lizz: Maybe you're lucky.

Tracie: I think it has to do with the fact that I am like, smart. Don't hiss! When I see myself in a situation that's not cool--I get wasted and stuff but like when I see myself in a situation I'm out. I've never hung around with frat guys. I took self-defense classes.

Moe: Yeah but it's like that Holocaust poem, you know...

Tracie: I'm just saying I've never been in that situation.

Moe: I always felt very like, safe around this guy even after he date raped me.

Lizz: You're digging yourself a huge hole, darlin'. You were not safe with him, he raped you!

Moe: All I'm saying is that he didn't seem like a guy who was like a date rapist.

Lizz: You can't identify where latent rage and anger and all that is. It doesn't have a look, it doesn't have a style, it doesn't have any of that.

Moe: But it's also, like, ridiculous to be like, you can never know, you have to be on guard at all times, it's like, the war on terror.

On being role models:

Tracie: Anybody that would emulate someone else is not with it completely.

Lizz: Hello? We have a, like, 75 bazillion dollar television budget that is based on emulation! What are you talking about? Your whole blog is based on people emulating you. Regardless of whether you think they should! That's like when football players say I am not a role model. You're a de facto role model.

Tracie: That's like undermining their intelligence to make their own decisions.

Now, it's not like I've never said dumb shit when I'm drunk. But you know what? I've also never gone onstage, wasted, representing the Stranger, and made a complete ass of myself in front of a bunch of people who paid to see me speak. If I was their employer--hell, if I was their friend— I'd be sad as hell to watch these two smart, funny ladies make themselves look and sound like complete fucking assholes. If you're gonna be a public person, you've got to take responsibility for your public actions. And tossing up a whiny post about how bad your hangover is ain't gonna cut it.

A text message from my friend Hester:

Just passed a nerdy dude wearing a shirt that said "I'm a Keeper." Is that something other than a gross device for catching my period?

Thanks for the offer, guy!

And it can be yours for a mere $15.00:

The seller is a company called Tshirts.com, which also stocks a large number of political T-shirts, band shirts, and "humorous" shirts like this one:

Amazon's seller policy prohibits the sale of items that are "illegal, inappropriate or offensive," which "includes any good or service that violates local, state, or federal laws or regulations or that would be generally offensive to others."

I think the "anti-abortion, pro-date-rape" T-shirt almost certainly qualifies--and so do the many customers who reviewed it.

So raves Slog tipper Nicholas, who writes:

A friend captured Dina Martina riding a bike in P-Town! How funny would it be to see her on a bicycle?!

Find out the answer here. (And God bless you, Nicholas.)

Really—touch her breasts, roll her back and forth in her bed, throw the silk sheets off her body. All with your cell new phone and our special Stalker Rate Package.

Via JoeMyGod.

One of the stories I mentioned was about how Blue Shield is raising premiums for female members--even though the insurer doesn't cover pregnancy and maternity care.

Perhaps this is partly because women are more likely to seek preventive care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But this should make them better insurance risks. After all, they're proactively working to stay healthy.

And isn't that exactly what insurers encourage people to do?

"It doesn't make any sense," said Alice Wolfson of United Policyholders, a San Francisco-based advocacy group. "The insurers aren't assessing risk. They're assessing how much healthcare is used, even when it's preventive treatment."

Anyway, some commenters seemed to think that penalizing women for living longer and taking better care of themselves was basically the same thing as charging men more for car insurance because they're bigger accident risks. I didn't address it further at the time, but to my pleasant surprise, one of the ladies at Jezebel did just today. Turns out charging women more doesn't just make no sense--it makes no sense in a whole shit-ton of different ways. For example, insurers are charging women more based not on HOW they use it, but WHETHER they use it--a decision that actually costs them more in the long run.

So, if you're a young single woman on birth control who goes to the doctor when you have a mild case of bronchitis instead of going to the emergency room if it becomes pleurisy (a real disease! my friend had it last year) or pneumonia, then you're supposed to be in better shape price-wise because you're being cost-efficient. But if insurance companies are pricing insurance based on if you use it — as has happened in other insurance fields, such as homeowner's insurance — then any usage, even if it's efficient in the long-term, will ratchet up your costs over time and discourage you from utilizing the very insurance you're paying for. Gotta love a market failure!

The writer also posits that this ain't a problem that's going away any time soon. More and more insurance plans are being marketed specifically to men, "if for no other reason then than 29 percent of women are dependent on someone else's insurance and only 13 percent of men are." In fact,

fully half of men are primary insurance holders, while only slight more than a third of women are — meaning even if they're less than half the population, they're the population for whom insurance plans will most likely be designed and to whom those plans will most likely be marketed. And then they'll just charge us extra for all that stuff that guys aren't using, and because they can.

So even if you're not technically using it, just having that uterus will cost you extra.

So ladies—in addition to the cost of birth control ($260 a year if you've got a $20 copay like I do), the fact that insurance companies won't let you get more than one pill pack at a time (don't want the ladies getting all hopped up on progestin!), and the fact that routine preventive care like lab tests at the gynecologist is frequently subject to a large deductible even though it saves the insurance companies money—add this one to your list of Reasons the "Health Care" Industry is Fucking Evil.

I'm a little late getting to this (no time to Slog these past two deadline days), but did folks read the Public Editor column in last Sunday's New York Times? The column poses the question that's suddenly trendy now that Hillary Clinton is safely out of the way: Did sexism color media coverage of the Clinton campaign? Specifically, did it color the NYT's coverage? The answer, Public Editor Clark Hoyt concludes, was mostly no -- except for one notable exception: Editorial columnist Maureen Dowd, whose columns

were so loaded with language painting [Clinton] as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism, right along with the comments of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson or, for that matter, [William] Kristol, who made the Hall of Shame for a comment on Fox News, not for his Times work.

What I love is how he lets Dowd hang herself--and how effectively she does so.

“I’ve been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years,” Dowd responded. She said nobody had objected to her use of similar images [uh, not true] about men over seven presidential campaigns. She often refers to Barack Obama as “Obambi” and has said he has a “feminine” management style. But the relentless nature of her gender-laden assault on Clinton — in 28 of 44 columns since Jan. 1 — left many readers with the strong feeling that an impermissible line had been crossed, even though, as Dowd noted, she is a columnist who is paid not to be objective.

So, by feminizing male politicians so she can call them fags (or "chick," or "weak sister," or "Breck girl", or "effete," or "Scarlett O'Hara," or "so feminized ... he's practically lactating," or a "debutante") Dowd is actually twisting gender stereotypes! Same thing for when she calls female politicians icy, manly, ball-busting bitches. Ridiculing men by calling girls isn't sexism--it's editorial license. Good to know.

Every word of this story is fascinating.

Especially check out the slide show.

Apropos of Josh's post yesterday about the "pg. 856,000 NYT story" on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meeting with Hezbollah... Bush's own secretary of state, in her capacity as the chair of the UN Security Council, gave a moving speech yesterday just before the council officially classified rape as a "tactic of war."

According to the BBC, the resolution

described sexual violence as "a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group".

The document said that the violence "can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security".

AFP has more from Rice's speech.

"Rape is a crime that can never be condoned. Yet women and girls in conflict situations around the world have been subjected to widespread and deliberate acts of sexual violence," she said.

"Today's resolution establishes a mechanism for bringing those atrocities to light," the US chief diplomat said.

She stressed the resolution directs the UN secretary general to prepare an action plan for collecting data on the use of sexual violence in armed conflict and then reporting that information to the council.

Rice cited the example of Myanmar where she said "soldiers have regularly raped women and girls even as young as eight years old.

"What is tragic also in that country is that instead of being allowed to take the office as the elected leader of Burma's government, (opposition leader) Aung San Suu Kyi is marking her (63rd) birthday this very day under house arrest," the US chief diplomat said.

"We cannot forget as we examine this issue other women activists who struggle for freedom under violent environments," she added.

Rice also referred to widespread acts of sexual violence in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan.

The US diplomat highlighted acts of sexual violence perpetrated by UN peacekeepers in several countries around the world.

"As an international community we have a special responsibility to punish perpetrators of sexual violence who are representatives of international organizations," she noted.

Amazing as it is that this (like Rice's meeting with officially designated terrorist group Hezbollah) is coming from the Bush administration, I won't really be impressed until they start taking seriously the fact that one in three women in the US armed forces has been a victim of sexual assault.

Last summer, US Army Specialist Kamisha Block was killed in Iraq in an incident the Army categorized as "friendly fire." Except that, as Jezebel points out, the man who shot her, Brandon Norris was an obsessive, jealous ex (the relationship was reportedly not serious) who had been physically abusing Block without punishment for months. Despite the fact that witnesses reported Norris's assaults on Block to military officials, the only action the Army took was to move him slightly farther from her barracks--to new housing a five-minute walk away. That wasn't enough to keep him from walking into her room, asking her roommate to leave, and then shooting her five times in the head and chest before turning the gun on himself. No one has been punished for failing to do anything to protect Block from her known, well-documented abuser, nor for lying to cover up the fact that Block was murdered.

John McCain's erstwhile spiritual advisor John Hagee--the preacher who blamed gays for Katrina, said Hitler was doing God's work, , and openly bashed Catholics from the pulpit--had some interesting insights into God's "ideal woman"--and what the "secular humanists" want her to turn into.

Partial transcript:

God paints the portrait of the ideal woman and he takes time to mention that she is a mother. If the secular humanist of the 21st century took his brush to paint the portrait of the thoroughly modern Millie, it would be with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, smoke twirling out of her nostrils, language that would make a sailor blush – even Rosie O’Donnell. Her breath would smell like a brewery, a condom in one hand and the feminist manual in the other, listing the local abortion clinics to snuff out the life that was within her body. Her allegiance is always to her career. Her children are latchkey children who come home and who live alone until mother and daddy finally arrive after dark.

Women can render service in many secular fields, but God says her highest and best field—in God’s opinion!—is that of being a mother. [... ] When mothers instill into their children honesty, responsibility, integrity, truth, industry, and a sense of honor, America’s future is secure. But when mothers abandon those principles, America is finished it’s over.

Neat! I can't reveal any of the super-secret details about the Feminist Manual, but suffice it to say it's right there on my bookshelf next to the Loose Girl's Guide to Your Best Abortion Ever! and Lesbian Sodomy for Dummies.

So the news media doesn't think the news media is sexist. What else is new? (Next week: Fox News declares Fox News fair and balanced!) Meanwhile, here's the photo the New York Times used in its story acquitting the media, including the New York Times, of focusing on cackles and cleavage.

I just read Eli's post about Hillary's concession speech this morning. I knew it was coming, and I've never felt like a Hillary loyalist.

And yet, I've got a lump in my throat. A lump. When is the next woman coming up? What have we lost here?

A state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in California—and forcibly divorce thousands of gay and lesbian couples that will have married between June 17 and November—isn't the only problematic constitutional amendment being placed before voters this fall. Colorado voters are being asked to approve a constitutional amendment that will make a fertilized egg—not an implanted egg, just a fertilized egg—a "person" under the law. From the Denver Post:

A proposed amendment to the Colorado state constitution that would define a human egg as a "person" from the moment of fertilization would go far beyond its intended purpose of outlawing practically all abortions.

Philosophers may debate when human life begins, but scientists are unanimous on the subject of when pregnancy begins: it's when a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus. But the proposed Amendment 48 specifies that the egg be considered a "person" in the eyes of the law even before it is implanted in the uterus. That means, effectively, that those forms of birth control that prevent such implantation would be classified as homicide under the proposal.

Even without the use of drugs, many eggs just naturally fail to implant in the uterus. Likewise, many eggs are implanted only to result in a miscarriage in the early days or weeks of pregnancy — often before the woman is even aware she is pregnant. Should a woman who suffers a miscarriage be charged with negligent homicide because she failed to protect a fertilized egg she may not have even known she carried? Should a man who fertilized an egg be entitled to file a civil lawsuit against a woman who miscarries, charging her with the wrongful death of his week-old fertilized egg?

Hm. If a fertilized egg—even one that hasn't gotten around to implanting itself yet (negligence!)—is a person, with all the legal rights and, presumably, responsibilities of personhood, perhaps our response to the latest effort by the religious right to seize control of women's reproductive organs should be this: A fertilized egg is a person? Great, then women who don't want their uteruses inhabited by these microscopic fertilized egg persons should be able to have them evicted. If eviction isn't possible—because these microscopic fertilized egg persons would presumably perish in the process (just like some fully grown evictees, but whatever)—then women should be able to at the very least charge these egg persons rent.

So let the state of Colorado declare fertilized eggs to be persons—but let's be fair, folks. A woman's a person too, with certain legal rights. And just like I couldn't squat in some woman's apartment rent-free, a microscopic fertilized egg person shouldn't be allowed to squat in a woman's uterus for free either. So it seems to me that any woman whose uterus is being occupied by an egg person should, at the very least, qualify for federal Section 8 Housing Subsidies.

For those of us who grew up in the decades after Roe v. Wade, the right to a safe, legal abortion is as easy to take for granted as our right to buy condoms or get treated for STDs. But for decades, the only recourse for pregnant women and girls was to carry the baby to term--often a ruinous decision, for obvious reasons--or to seek (or give oneself) an illegal abortion.

In today's NYT, Dr. Waldo Fielding--a gynecologist from the time before Roe v. Wade gave women the right to choose--writes about his experience caring for women who had illegal abortions. It's worth remembering, 35 years after Roe v. Wade, what those days were like.

The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it.

[...] However, not simply coat hangers were used.

Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.

[...]The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional.

It is important to remember that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.

What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their doctors to treat them as such.

This is what things were like for women in the days before Roe v. Wade assured a woman's right to a safe, legal abortion. It's those halcyon days to which John "Immediately Overturn Roe v. Wade" McCain would like to see us return.

Northwest Film Forum just happened to be playing a pair of films about Yves Saint Laurent the weekend he died.

If you'd still like to pay tribute to the inventor of the pantsuit, you still have time.

NWFF is playing the biographical documentary Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times again this Friday at 7:15 and 9:15 pm, and Yves Saint Laurent: 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris, a doc about the designer's old-school, labor-intensive atelier in the year before it closed, on Friday at 7 and 9 pm.

Kmart--last seen selling classy "light-hearted" shirts promoting domestic violence—is now marketing abstinence-only pants . Think "True Love Waits"? Now you can emblazon it across your (virginal) ass:

According to the accompanying copy, "Whether she is lounging around the house, going to practice, or doing her chores. ... These athletic pants boldly proclaim just where she stands by pointing out that 'True Love Waits' in a large screen print on the front and back of these pants."

Not available in boys' sizes.

From Slog tipper Angie comes the bizarre story of an event at EMP called "Freedom of Expression Through Film," billed as "dinner and a presentation featuring a keynote speech by an actress of note." The event, sponsored by the respected League of Women Voters, seemed like a standard appetizers-booze-and-mingle affair. That is, until the main event, which turned out to be a promotion for Botox--the pharmaceutical injection best known for turning the once beautiful Nicole Kidman into an expressionless, bat-faced freak. (See Fig. 1, below)

And the "actress of note"? None other than Virginia Madsen, last seen expressing herself freely (well, except in the eyebrow region) alongside Matthew Broderick in the Alzheimer's caper "Diminished Capacity." According to tipper Angie, both Madsen and her mother spoke fondly about the wonders of Botox; afterward, "an increasingly thinning crowd" listened to a pitch by the League of Women Voters about its "Vote411" web site, billed by the League as "a 'one-stop-shop' for election information including a national polling place locator, general and state-specific information on voter registration, absentee ballot rules, early voting provisions and ID requirements." Then they got a bunch of Botox schwag, including a rhinestone-encrusted Botox T-shirt.

Here's the pitch, from the collagen-enhanced mouth of Madsen herself:

Today’s women have so many ways to express themselves. As an actress, I have the opportunity to convey my views through the projects I choose and the characters I play. But like many of you, I’m also a daughter, a mother and a professional. One thing we all have in common is that we have more choices available to us today than ever before – choices that the generations before us didn't have.

Today, we dictate our career paths, how we raise our children and our role in the political arena. We’ve also changed our overall approach to managing our health, which today includes everything from eating right and exercising to new approaches to beauty and “aging gracefully.”

As you know, I have been very open about my treatment with BOTOX® Cosmetic (Botulinum Toxin Type A) to the astonishment of many in the industry. For me, the decision to share my experience and beauty insights was one I made for myself and not something I felt I should have to defend or hide. I approached it as I do all things in my life – I informed and educated myself, and made the right decision for me.

This is why I have chosen to support the Freedom of Expression through Film campaign in partnership with the League of Women Voters and Allergan, Inc. – the makers of BOTOX® Cosmetic. The campaign encourages women to express themselves openly and honestly – something I do in both my personal and professional life – and underscores the importance of making educated, informed choices about life and beauty.

So, basically, if you're a liberated, modern woman, you should feel free to go right ahead and express yourself by using Botox. It's basically the same thing as running for office! And elective cosmetic procedures? Why, those are right up there with volunteering and balancing work and family.

It's unclear why, exactly, a venerable institution like the League of Women voters would participate in a campaign like this. To say that encouraging women to purchase an expensive cosmetic procedure promotes "women's expression" is like saying that high heels promote women's mobility. You want to lose the ability to make a range of facial expressions, be my guest--but don't sell it to women as a transformative experience along the lines of, say, taking part in a political movement or choosing to work outside the home. That's just condescending. And bizarre.

(Fig. 1)

The five creepiest things in Sunday's Times article on "purity balls," in no particular order:

1) The idea that girls are "waiting for" their fathers in the context of an event that tells girls to wait to have sex. “'Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,' Mr. Wilson, 49, told the men. 'They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.'''

2)

3) "Each father and his daughter walked under the arch and knelt before the cross. Synthesized hymns played. The fathers sometimes held their daughters and whispered a short prayer, and then the girls each placed a white rose, representing purity, at the foot of the cross. Mr. Lee and Rachel walked away holding hands." Yep, A WHITE ROSE. Because little girls' virginity is a delicate flower--and only their daddies can keep the eeevil boys from plucking (heh) all the petals away.

4)

5) The conclusion: "The fathers took their flushed and sometimes sleepy girls toward the exit. But one father took his two young daughters for a walk around the hotel’s dark, glassy lake." Nah, nothing creepy about taking two "flushed, sleepy" young girls for a creepy walk around the creepy, glassy lake. Nothing creepy about that at all.

The blacker the labial the sweeter the juice?

Johnnie Worker Black Labial courtesy of China. Photo courtesy of "Yotam from Israel."

What is it we see when a Westerner wears a head scarf? A fashion critic at The Calgary Herald offers this answer:

It evokes the fashions of the faraway cultures we see on the nightly news: the brilliantly coloured sarongs worn by graceful African women; the head scarves Muslim women drape over their hair for modesty's sake; the shawls female foreign correspondents wrap themselves in to respect their conservative subjects. It is exotic, easy, adventurous and casual, perfect with jeans or techno-chic layers.

Sugar Land, Texas, making me proud:

Skimpy prom dress lands teen in cuffs

HOUSTON—Marche Taylor’s prom night experience wasn’t what you would call “the norm.”

That’s because instead of a night of dancing and hanging out with friends, the Madison High School senior ended up in a confrontation with school officials and escorted out in handcuffs. Officials said her dress was inappropriate for the prom.

If things in Sugar Land are anything like they were in my day, school officials ought to be spending more time, oh, worrying about drunk driving, heavy drug use, and the suicide rate than checking prom dresses to make sure they don't reveal TEH BOOBIES.

And seriously, these days? What prom dress ISN'T revealing these days? (And how many of those skimpy dresses were allowed inside the Marriott before Taylor was hauled off to jail?) Check a few of these dresses out">out if you don't believe that times have changed.

Worth noting: The high school Taylor goes to is 58 percent black; Sugar Land, in contrast, has a black population of just five percent.

Arianna Huffington fans, get out your calendars: The onetime Republican turned online media mogul will speak at this year's (11th annual) Planned Parenthood Votes! Washington luncheon at the Bell Harbor conference center downtown. The event's on May 20 at noon; tickets and more information available here.

You can have it all!

Violet Socks at Reclusive Leftist--probably the most ardent Clinton supporter on the Internet after Robin Morgan--has a post up today explaining why she won't vote for Obama even if he's the nominee. And while I don't agree with her conclusions--as I wrote this week, I think it's time for Democrats to unite around a nominee and get to work building the case against McCain--her reasons for sticking it out with Clinton struck a chord.

Imagine this scenario:

The shoe is on the other foot, and Obama, not Hillary, is the punching bag of the media — a media that is blatantly and unapologetically racist. And I do mean blatant. Jokes every night on the cable news shows about Obama’s hair and his fondness for fried chicken. Pundits laughing about what a problem uppity Negroes are.

Across the country, racists openly ridicule Obama and his candidacy. In mainstream stores there are gag gifts playing on racist themes: maybe a (water)Melon Baller with Obama’s head on the handle, maybe a Barack Obama Shoeshine Set — you get the picture. 501c groups invoke the most grotesque racist slurs with their advertising; T-shirts say “Quit Running for President and Shine My Shoes!” Anybody who protests is branded a fool and a spoilsport.

Online, Hillary’s supporters constantly refer to Obama and his supporters as n—–s and c— -s and all the other epithets I refuse to type out. Blogger Boyz blog about those stupid lazy Negroes who are still wallowing in memories of the Civil Rights era, too dumb to get with the program and vote for Hillary.

And the lies: Obama is constantly lied about, belittled, demeaned. His record is distorted, his character impugned. Every day the pundits and the Blogger Boyz urge him to drop out of the race, to remember his place, to give up his seat to the white woman. All in the interest of “party unity.”

And nary a word of reproach from Hillary herself. No denunciation at all of the relentless racism. In fact, she actually cracks a few racist remarks herself, albeit subtle ones. She jokes and nods with the media about “letting” Obama run as long as he wants to. And when she makes speeches about American values, she talks a lot about women’s rights but never mentions civil rights. She’s strikingly silent on the subject. Even when she delivers a major address on the importance of rooting out bigotry, she neglects to mention racism at all.

And the Democratic Party goes along with all this, pushing Hillary as the nominee, ignoring the anger of African-American voters, smugly assuming that they’ll “come back to the fold” by November. After all, say the pundits and the Blogger Boyz, where else are they going to go? The Republicans are even worse.

I've said it before--but because some Slog readers seem to still think I believe any attack on Clinton is a sexist attack, I'll say it again: The misogyny from the media, from supposedly liberal blogger doodz , commenters on this blog, and just about everywhere during this campaign has been despicable. This kind of shit ought to be behind us: Hillary Clinton is a bitch. A big ol' bitchy bitch. And a cunt. A "big fucking whore." Fortunately, you can "call a woman anything." She's "Nurse Ratched." She'll castrate you if she gets a chance. She would like that. She's a "She-Devil." She's a madam, and her daughter's a whore. She's frigid, and she can't give head. She's a "She-Devil." A lesbian. A nag. When things get tough, she cries like a big dumb GIRL. In fact, she's just that -- a "little girl." In FACT, she wants to "cry her way to the White House." To be, ahem, "Crybaby-in-Chief." That proves that she's not tough enough. But she's also not feminine enough. She's "screechy." She's an "aging, resentful female." She's "Sister Frigidaire." She really ought to quit running for President and stick to housework. She basically spent her entire times as First Lady going to tea parties. She's a monster whojust won't die. In fact, she really should just die. You can buy a urinal target with her face on it to express what you really think of her. OMG she's got claws! She's crazy. In fact, she's a lunatic. She's petty and vindictive and entitled. She's a washed-up old hag. She's "everybody's first wifestanding outside probate court." She's a "scolding mother." She's shrill... shrill... shrill. She can't take it when people are mean to her. She's a "hellish housewife." She's Tanya Harding. She CAN'T be President, what with the mood swings and the menses.Any woman who votes for her is voting with her vagina, not her brain. Women only like Hillary because she's a fellow Vagina-American. And because they vote with their feelings. Frankly, anyone who still thinks we need "feminine role models" should get over it and move on, already. Oh, and men who supporters are castratos in the eunuch chorus. You shouldn't make her President because she wants it too much. She's totally just banking on support from ugly old feminists. And she looooves to "play the victim." She cackles! And cackles. And cackles. It's like she's a witch or something! She's definitely"witchy." And now you can buy her cackle as your ring tone. Her voice, too, is "grating"--like "fingernails on a blackboard" to "some men." She's hiding behind her gender. She isn't a "convincing mom" because she's too strident. She never did anything on her own. Her husband keeps her on a leash. She hates men. Her campaign is a "catfight." She makes people want to kill themselves, is like a "domineering mother," and is cold. And OMG she has boobies! All of which are reasons to hate her. (And boy, could I go on.)

Oh, and if you even mention any of this, you're either silly or a bad person.

So yeah, while I'm ready to get on the Obama welcome wagon, I'm also angry. And I'm not ready to "get over" the blatant, ugly misogyny that so many Democrats--Democrats!--have displayed throughout this campaign, thank you very fucking much. (Of course, Republican shitbags did plenty of dishing, too, but the sexist statements by Democrats and otherwise liberal columnists have been the most disappointing). You can't be intellectually honest if you give lip service to "equality" in one breath and guffaw at how "caustic" and "shrill" Clinton is in the next.

I'm fiercely disappointed in many of my fellow Americans. I've long hoped that the daughters of the generation that follows mine would grow up thinking that even they could be President someday. If I ever have a daughter someday, I'll tell her that, just as my parents did. But after seeing what happened to Hillary, I doubt they'll have reason to believe it.

we can turn our attention to the celebrity deathmatch being waged between former View host Star Jones and View creator and star Barbara Walters.

Round One: While appearing on Tuesday's Oprah Winfrey Show to promote her new, adultery-admitting memoir, Barbara Walters reveals that Star Jones required her View co-hosts to play dumb about her obvious-to-anyone-with-eyes gastric-bypass surgery. "We had to lie on the set everyday because she said it was portion control and Pilates," Barbara told Oprah. "Well, we knew it wasn't portion control and Pilates."

Round Two: The day after the Oprah broadcast, Star blasts Babs to US magazine: "It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book. It speaks to her true character.”

Round Three: Contacted by US for a statement, a rep for Barbara Walters said, "I will not dignify this with a comment. Barbara's written words say it all."

As for choosing a winner and a loser: Star's zinger about Barbara's impending death was indeed impressive, but still, it came from the yap of Star Jones, so—WINNER: Barbara Walters! (And who knew she was a checkerboard chick?)

(Image from People.com.)

Remind me again: Why do "pro-lifers" say they're against abortion when everything they do seems geared at forcing more women to become pregnant?

(Side note 1: Although Gregoire has at times been less than vocal on the Plan B issue, her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi, supports allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense prescriptions they disapprove of.)

(Side note 2: "Pro-life" nutsos have announced a national day of action against birth control, cleverly titled "Protest the Pill Day: The Pill Kills Babies." Yes, by all means, let's oppose birth control, ban medically accurate sex education, eliminate access to emergency contraception, ban abortion, and then shame girls and damn them to hell when they get pregnant anyway. That'll show 'em. Sluts.)

A lot has been written about the "Open-Source Boob Project"--wherein female participants at a software/sci-fi convention were invited to wear either a green button (signifying "hey, mouth-breathing sci-fi nerd who has never been within 40 feet of a real woman--feel free to grab my tits") or a red one (signifying "sorry, boys, I have autonomy over my body and am not going to give it up by letting random dudes grope me")--so instead of responding myself, here's a brief roundup of blog posts about it.

From Feministing:

So apparently at a software convention called ConFusion, a bunch of guys were standing around and talking about how awesome the world would be if they could just reach out and grab any woman's boobs. And a woman near them piped up that they could touch her breasts, and they all proceeded to grope her. Then, according to a post by some dude who calls himself the Ferrett, pictured above [and here], they asked other women:

It was exciting, of course. I won't deny it was sexual. But it was a miraculous sexuality that didn't feel dirty, but clean.

Emboldened, we started asking other people. And lo, in the rarified atmosphere of the con, few were offended and many agreed. And they also felt that strange charge. We went around the con, asking those who we thought might be amenable - you didn't just ask anyone, but rather the ones who'd dressed to impress - and generally, people responded. They understood how this worked instinctively, and it worked.

Did you catch that? "The ones who'd dressed to impress"? Almost as if they were "asking for it"? That because they were wearing a tight shirt, their breasts were practically public property, anyway?

By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. "My breasts," they asked shyly, having heard about the project. "Are they... are they good enough to be touched?" And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry."

Because what could be more intoxicating than the approval of a room full of tech dudes?

We talked about this. It was an Open-Source Project, making breasts available to select folks. (Like any good project, you need access control, because there are loutish men and women who just Don't Get It.) And we wanted a signal to let people know that they were okay with being asked politely, so we turned it into a project: The Open-Source Boob Project.

For those of you not technologically inclined, "open-source" software means the code is available for anyone to use. All-access. Everyone has a right to it. Just like women's bodies! (Get it? They're so clever!)

Oh, but it doesn't stop there...

Apparently Ferrett and friends were so blown away by their ability to demand access to women's bodies that they decided to make buttons to distribute at an upcoming software and science fiction convention:

At Penguicon, we had buttons to give away. There were two small buttons, one for each camp: A green button that said, "YES, you may" and a red button that said "NO, you may not." And anyone who had those buttons on, whether you knew them or not, was someone you could approach and ask: "Excuse me, but may I touch your breasts?"

And if you weren't a total lout - the women retained their right to say no, of course - they would push their chests out, and you would be allowed into the sanctity of it. That exchange of happiness where one person are told with gropes and touches that they are desirable and the other is someone who's allowed to desire.

Understandably, this puke-worthy "project" was instantly denounced by many, many others in the open-source software and science fiction community. The Ferrett issued a sputtering "clarification" that was just as bad as the original post. (It included the defense that because women were among the gropers, it couldn't be that sexist, right? Nevermind the fact that only women were the gropees.)

From Jezebel:

When people first started imploring us to weigh in on the Open Source Boob Project we had this scary image of a website featuring a picture of a pair of fake tits that registered computer programmers could modify and reshape and manipulate with nanotechnology or whatever else until the resultant pair of tits reflected the internet's consensus of the ideal pair of boobs. (The consensus would, of course, change and grow over time, reflecting an anthropological study in the ever-changing depiction of breasts in the media, anime and videogames; that's how the project would get academic funding.) Anyway: why did I give the geeks so much credit? The Open Source Boob Project was actually just a consensual gropeathon that went down at PenguiCon, which is, naturally, a science fiction convention, though its genesis happened at ConFusion, another science fiction convention, when one geek, probably inspired by a booth babe, said to another geek:

I wish this was the kind of world where say, 'Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts,' and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.

At which point — another "friend" spoke up. (Who is this friend? And will the blogosphere hear from her? One can only hope.

We were standing in the hallway of ConFusion, about nine of us, and we all nodded. Then another friend spoke up.

"You can touch my boobs," she said to all of us in the hallway. "It's no big deal."

Now, you have to understand the way she said that, because it's the key to the whole project. The spirit of everything was formed within those nine words - and if she'd said them shyly, as though having her breasts touched by people was something to be endured or afraid of, the Open-Source Boob Project would have died aborning. But she didn't. Her words were loud and clearly audible to anyone who walked by, an offer made to friends and acquaintances alike. [...]

We all reached out in the hallway, hands and fingers extended, to get a handful. And lo, we touched her breasts - taking turns to put our hands on the creamy tops exposed through the sheer top she wore, cupping our palms to touch the clothed swell underneath, exploring thoroughly but briefly lest we cross the line from 'touching" to "unwanted heavy petting." They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched.

At which point the whole crew decided that an awesome tradition had been born, and next time, they would just print up buttons saying "Yes, you may!" or alternately "No, you may not."

From Misia, on LiveJournal

Like other Open Source projects, the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (OSSKBP) relies on a wide pool of volunteers working together for the common good.

The Project has very simple parameters and it basically works like this:

Men who are open to being given a swift kick in the balls need do nothing. Women will simply assume that any man not clearly indicating his position vis-a-vis being kicked in the balls with an approved OSSKBP badge or pin is open to being kicked in the balls, as any progressive, free-thinking, feminist man ought to be, by any woman who wishes to do so.

However, we also recognize and affirm that not all men will be so willing to serve. Therefore the OSSKBP provides two other options.

1. Men who would like to be asked for permission before a woman administers one or more swift kicks to their balls shall wear the offical OSSKBP "Ask First Pin" at all times. This is a black lapel pin with a lavender question mark on it.

Because of the serious and comprehensive respect with which women's desires vis-a-vis having their bodies touched by others are uniformly greeted in our culture, women will sometimes abide by any given Ask First Pin wearer's stated preference about getting a kick in the balls at the time that he is asked. At other times, however, women may make their own decisions as to whether or not to give him a quick kick in the nuts regardless of the male's expressed preference. Fair's fair.

2. Men who do not wish to be kicked in the balls at all must wear a large visible official "No Kicks, Thanks" badge at all times, including when swimming, showering, and sleeping. They may also wish to avoid areas where large numbers of women are present, particularly at night. Some men may also wish to invest in assertiveness training, sympathetic female bodyguards, body armor, or sessions with a personal self-defense trainer to increase their ability to resist undesired kicks. As these methods have long been considered completely adequate for women who wish to avoid sexual predation we feel that they are all that is necessary here.

From Machineplay (via Hoyden About Town):

I'm tired of the assertion that this is opt-in, because it's NOT. Not fundamentally. Everyone is participating because everyone there has a body. I can't opt out of my boobs. I can't opt out of people making a value judgment about me when they see I'm not wearing a button, even if I never knew about it when I got there. Having your breasts touched is optional -- WHAT A NOVEL IDEA. Being ranked as 'unwilling to play along' is not optional. I wear