by Darrah de jour



All over the United States, a band of activists has sprung up to take the law into their own gloved hands. “Real life Superheroes” are anywhere from 18 to 62 years old, run the gamut of ethnicities, backgrounds, and gender expressions, and have no real training in fighting crime. However, captured in the Michael Barnett documentary Superheroes, they appear to be part of a movement that’s taking flight.

“The film touches on a zeitgeist-y moment. I think we’re in a very troubled time right now as a society,” Director Barnett tells me over a whisky on the rocks in the dimly lit Santa Monica bar, The Yard. “#OccupyWallStreet is a very power to the people movement. People are fed up and they feel like they don’t have control and they don’t have a voice. And they’re trying to create one. This movement is so on par with that. Though a little more eccentric, it is a protest,” he asserts. “It’s saying ‘I don’t think government is efficient, I don’t think they’re helping us. I don’t think that help is coming from the top down.’”

The perky waitress seems thrilled to interrupt us to refill empty glasses and eavesdrop. The subject of our banter, which careens into after dark street patrolling and hand-made weaponry, is no secret however. In fact, there are a plethora of online forums (such as RealLifeSuperheroes.org) where you and I can engage with these Stan Lee-esque vigilantes, and now, they are under a worldwide spotlight.

Having just returned from a London screening, Barnett, a commercial director who self-funded the film, reluctantly reveals that Superheroes has won multiple awards. Accolades include The Audience Award at Calgary Underground Film Festival and The Grand Jury Award at the Los Angeles United Film Festival, among others. Shot over 15 months, this lauded and still slyly hip documentary shines a well-balanced light on a growing phenomenon, which is spearheaded by people who are self-sacrificing but not martyrs, unassuming but politically-conscious, proactive but not reward seeking.

During the day, RLSH are security guards, teachers, tattoo artists, and stay-at-home dads. But, at night, not unlike Clark Kent’s famous transition into Superman, these young men and women transform into “Dark Guardian,” “Amazonia,” “Mr. Xtreme,” “Zimmer,” and “T.S.A.F” – which stands for The Silenced And Forgotten, and belongs to one of the three female Superheroes represented in the doc.

Their real identities remain under wraps, as do their faces. Wearing sunglasses, baseball caps, head scarves and then, of course, their masks (with the exception of Zimmer, an out gay New Yorker for whom a mask would be too much like crawling back into the closet) none of the crime fighters reveal their true selves. Who they are during bank hours is less important – sometimes even to them – than who they are after dark.

***

In 1964, a 28-year-old Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was stabbed multiple times in the New York neighborhood of Queens, and left to die. She was brutally assaulted – physically and sexually – and left to bleed out. Another shocking aspect of this violent crime is that a number of neighbors saw or heard the attack in progress – and did nothing. Rather, they chose to turn out their lights and draw down their curtains. Allegedly, one neighbor even turned up his radio to drown out her screams. They simply “didn’t want to get involved,” one witness said. Kitty’s death made international headlines. In our own backyard, our most defeatist trait was killing women. Apathy.

The memory of Genovese’s death, and what is now termed “the bystander effect,” served as a call to arms for Mr. Xtreme, a San Diego superhero and a central figure in the film. He told me, “Genovese is an icon. There’s a lot of Kitty Genovese’s out there, and whether male or female, young or old, I see this happening all the time. It gets us fired up and outraged.” A mentor for youth and would-be Superheroeshe explains, “We want to show young people an alternative to gangs, drugs and the criminal life. Saving a life is the most rewarding part of being a real life superhero. And inspiring people.”

The 35-year-old activist and founder of The Xtreme Justice League, who has a working relationship with police, was recently recognized as a key tool in the capture of the Chula Vista Groper – a man who for five years groped and possibly sexually assaulted women in the area. San Diego Deputy Mayor Rudy Ramirez commended Mr. Xtreme’s help in spreading public awareness. Ramirez said, “The work that Mr. Xtreme has done with posting the fliers certainly contributed to…the capture of the Chula Vista Groper.”

While some dismiss these Superheroes as just outfitted danger seekers, the truth is, many are soldiers for the homeless population in their neighborhood. “Zeta Kits” – Ziplock bags filled with twenty-dollars worth of ‘must-haves’ like deodorant, socks, toilet paper and lip balm, are purchased out of pocket, and passed out by Portland power couple Zetaman and Apocalypse Meow. Irony beware, during Comic-Con, while caped wannabe’s paraded their latest and greatest, winning awards and recognition, the humble RLSH population banded together on the streets in shady intersections, helping the down and out improve their luck.

Filmmaker Barnett and I continued our tete`-a-tete´ well past the first drink, adventuring about the technical and philosophical facets to life as a superhero. Listen in.

Darrah de jour: Let’s start with a technical question. What type of camera did you use?

Michael Barnett: Canon 5D mark II.

Ddj: Do you think that your film has resulted in an upsurge of real life Superheroes?

MB: Definitely. Mr. Xtreme of the Xtreme Justice League in the beginning of our film was an army of one. Now, I think there’s fifteen in his unit in San Diego and they’ve opened a branch in Oregon.

Ddj: Are there any international Superheroes?

MB: There are a ton of international Superheroes. They’re all over.

Ddj: I noticed that a lot of Superheroes in the film had a traumatic upbringing or events that turned them into crime fighters as opposed to being criminals themselves. What are your thoughts on that?

MB: I think it’s an astute observation. I don’t often make generalizations about this community because each person does it for their own reasons and they do it in their own way. But the one thing I really did discover is that by and large – not every one of them – but a large percentage, had some tragedy or trauma happen to them and it’s now manifesting itself as a need to do good for others.

Ddj: One of the Superheroes mentioned that he traded in alcohol for fighting crime. Do you think that a lot of these guys are adrenaline junkies?

MB: Some of them are adrenaline junkies, some of them abide by the law, some of them are fearful in their approach. Some of them really are in it to have a physical encounter with other people.

Ddj: Stan Lee is in the film, and he mentions that none of them have actual superhero powers and that they are putting themselves in danger. What do you think is the greatest danger they are encountering at night on patrols?

MB: These guys patrol in terrible neighborhoods. And America is hurting right now. It’s a tough time for this country. There are very dangerous places all over this country, in every city, and these guys go right to the epicenter of the worst parts of their communities. So it’s not the safest job in the world.

Ddj: Is there any level of in-fighting or politics in the group?

MB: There is. These guys do this because they’re really fed up. They’re fed up with bureaucracy and society status quo and they’re looking for a way to make grassroots change. And in the end there’s no rulebook or manifesto, so they’re trying to make their own rules as they go and they don’t always agree with each other about what those rules should be.

Ddj: A lot of them had handmade weapons. I have a list: a flashlight that doubles as a stun gun, or a 16” baton Amazonia had, a ring of Pharaoh’s fire, bear mace and a sonic grenade. Which weapon was your favorite?

MB: My favorite weapon was Master Legend’s Iron Fist. It can do incredible amounts of damage. It could be a cautionary tale and I think it will be in the near future with one of them getting hurt in a situation.

Ddj: Dark Guardian had a very protective costume. Who do you think had the most appropriate costume for crime fighting?

MB: Master Legend had a costume like a tank, a bullet proof vest, helmet, boots.

Ddj: The animation in the film made you feel like you were watching a comic book. Who did the animation?

MB: We wanted every character to have their own very distinct look. Mr. Xtreme felt very indie comic, very Ghost World. So we hired Jeremy Arambulo. New York Initiative felt very dark and sharp, so we got the well known Rev. Dave Johnson to do that. Master Legend – the art there was so beautiful. That was Andy Suriano. Captain Sticky was very retro. So we went with an old school comic book artist, Richard Pose. They drew the panels and then we handed them to Syd Garon who brought it all to life. I think fanboys will specifically respond to this film.

Ddj: I really appreciated the fact that there were multiple ethnicities reflected as well as women who are RLSH. You introduced Stan Lee talking about a comic book where a female protagonist was running in heels and he thought that her legs looked good in heels, but that wedgies would be more realistic. Was there any subliminal feminism or commentary in why you entered with that?

MB: I just thought it was very funny. Women are drawn in comics so specifically. I had fantasized as a kid about so many women in comics. Rogue from X-Men. Stan’s 90 years old and I thought it was great that he’s still so aware. I thought it was perceptive and nostalgic. He knows his audience.

Ddj: Mr. Xtreme’s family wasn’t extremely supportive of his life choice to be a RLSH. If you were a parent, how would you feel about your child being one?

MB: It would be a mixed bag. I would do everything I could to get them trained properly.

Ddj: The New York Initiative used “baiting” as a tactic during night patrols. What are your thoughts on having a flamboyant, gay character like Zimmer played to trap a homophobe? Do you think it’s ethical?

MB: It’s hard to be present for crime. The police deter crime and solve crime after it happens. Very rarely are they there for crime. You have a team of very young, ambitious, intelligent, motivated RLSH in the NYI and they don’t want to sit around and wait for crime. They want to root out criminality in a courageous way, that’s rarely been done. It was super unsafe and terrifying to shoot. They’re risking their lives.

Ddj: If you could have any superpower what would it be?

MB: The power to stop time.

Superheroesthe movie is playing on HBO and in select theatres nationwide. It’s also available on DVD. For more info visit: www.SuperheroesTheMovie.com

***
Post-feminist sex and sensuality expert Darrah de jour is a freelance journalist who lives in LA with her dog Oscar Wilde. Her writing has appeared in Marie Claire, Esquire and W. In her Red, White and Femme: Strapped With A Brain - And A Vagina columns for SuicideGirls, Darrah will be taking a fresh look at females in America. Hear her being interviewed about female sexuality on the WingGirlMethod.com, visit her blog at Darrahdejour.com/srblog, and find her on Facebook.



Related Posts:

Red, White and Femme: The Girl Zone – Whore Meet Madonna Part 2
Red, White and Femme: The Girl Zone – Madonna Meet Whore Part 1
Red, White and Femme: When Mean Girls Grow Up
Red, White and Femme: Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Polyamory, Part II
Red, White and Femme: Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Polyamory Part I – With Annie Sprinkle
Red, White and Femme: America is FUGLY
Red, White and Femme: Trusting The Ring of Purity - Faith vs Sex Education
Red, White and Femme Fearless Femme Spotlight: Mia Tyler

by Aaron Colter

There are so many cool things to read online other than my dribble, so please check out all the neat links of stuff I found interesting this week. Next week, I'll write about beer. That'll be fun. You like beer, don't you? Good. Me too.

1. Watching the Murder of an Innocent Man

This feature in the NY Times Magazine is one of the most captivating stories I've read in a long time. The commentary of poverty, globalism, religion, politics, families, and strangers combines into a stunning narrative about the consequences of actions, both big and small. I know, you're going to scroll down to the end of the first page and think, "Holy fuck, ten more pages, I'm not reading this shit." But trust me, read it. Print out the pages and carry them with you for reading while on public transit, or late at night while ignoring the awful bile that's on television, or in the morning while eating breakfast, or in the bathroom while taking a shit - I don't care, just read the damn thing.

2. Ilegal Photo Tour of New Orleans Six Flags

This link is a little older, but maybe you haven't seen it yet. It's a large collection of photos, each worth a thousand or so words, so my writing about them is futile – just take a look.

3. Commission a Sketch for Justice

You probably heard the story about a Texas cheerleader who was kicked off the squad for refusing to specifically cheer for a student who sexually assaulted her only weeks prior. But recently, that young girl lost her case against the school, which she sued for kicking her off the squad. One of the more fucked-up parts of our judicial system is that, sometimes, if you lose a case against someone, you have to pay their legal fees. While this notion is intended to stop frivolous lawsuits (because we all know that's happened), unfortunately it sucker-punches the victim, as in this case, who has little financial resources. So, this teenager is now on the hook for $45,000 in legal fees acquired by the school. One comic artist is commissioning sketches to help pay for those fees. Please donate or order a sketch today.

4. Top 10 Overlooked Bob Dylan Songs

Hey, look, the title says what it is. And, so it is. Written by Douglas Wolk, who is something of a freelance genius here in Portland, and around the country, nay, the world!

5. Transmetropolitan: Around the World - Art Book

Transmetropolitan is quite possibly my favorite comic of all time, and there are so many incredible artists in this book, so the steep $50 price tag is totally worth it, even if the shipping fees aren't included. I wish I had more images to show, but here's an awesome one from Camilla d'Errico that I really love.



That's all for this week, and seriously, read the NY Times feature, it'll change your life. Oh, and here's a bonus link to some free music from Point Juncture, WA.

by Keith Daniels

A Texas high school cheerleader has lost her appeal on a lawsuit against her former school that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The legal action stemmed from the school district's reaction to her rape, which was perpetrated by Rakheem Bolton, a star basketball player from her school, at a party she attended in 2008, when she was 16.

In 2010, Bolton eventually pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge in exchange for a $2,500 fine and a two-year suspended sentence.

Before that, this being small-town Texas and the issues involved being high school sports and women's rights, you can guess how sensitively school authorities handled the situation:

The cheer she refused to perform couldn't have been better designed to humiliate her:

No one believed the victim's allegations:

Her family sued the Silsbee school system for denying her constitutional freedom of expression and lost. They appealed, and the motion went all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to review it on Monday. A federal appeals court had earlier ruled that:

Again, she had "no right" not to cheer for her admitted attacker to "put it in".

To make matters worse, the cheerleader's family must pay over $45,000 to cover the school district's legal costs.

by Darrah de jour

On Saturday night, the bold and the brightest came out (both literally and figuratively) to support the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center's Evening With Women, raising almost $500,000 for its many programs, including LGBT youth advocacy and HIV/AIDS healthcare. It coincided with the non-profit establishment's 40th anniversary, cementing it as a stronghold in the movement toward queer and women's equal rights.



Performer Cyndi Lauper, a buoyant supporter of gay rights, whose history with philanthropic causes dates back to the '80s when she sang "We Are the World," appeared at the Beverly Hilton gala to fly her freak flag with pride.

"It is not always a popular cause," said Lauper, who sported a bun full of bleach blonde dread locks and a head-to-toe black leather pant suit for the event. "We can't call ourselves a free society when a certain group of people have civil liberties that are up for grabs," she continued, tears welling as she spoke.

Drawing a red carpet full of talented, artistic, and strong women (and a couple gents), music producer and third year event co-chair Linda Perry stopped by to chat with SuicideGirls. She told me about what it was like to grow up punk rock in the straight world, and her relationship with singer Pink.

Of the evening, Perry said, "It's a human event to me. It's not just a gay and lesbian event. There's so much to do in our community as humans, to help each other out. The Center provides healthcare, legal and domestic care, a senior program, and a monthly youth program. Kids are being thrown out every day for going to their parents and telling them 'hey Mom Dad I'm gay.' And instead of their parents embracing them like a parent should, they say 'Get out. You're sick. There's something wrong with you.' And the child is growing up on the street, prostituting, drug addicts. The Center offers all these wonderful things for them to help make their life better."

The petite (and very tatted) brunette was soft spoken and confident. Her advice for those of us who don't quite fit in with the mainstream cookie cutter mold of how women "should" look or act? Stay strong - and sweet: "When I was a kid people looked at me differently because I was a punk rocker, but my personality made up for it. If an older person looked at me funny, instead of being mean and agro, I would be really sweet and be me, and they would completely look at me differently...I feel that to overcome obstacles you can't throw more obstacles at them. Being defensive is just another obstacle."

Wearing chunky black Ani Difranco-esque boots, the former 4 Non Blondes singer, who's now more known for her songwriting skills, gushed about her good friend, Pink. Referring to the pregnant pop star who revealed she was 'with child' on Ellen last November, she said, "Alecia's going to be a great mom. Alecia and Carey will be great parents because they are going to accept their child for who they are. If their kid comes home one day and says they are gay, they will be okay with it."

Perry is currently touring to support her new album 8 Songs About a Girl, with her band Deep Dark Robot.



Rocker/actress Juliette Lewis let loose on the red carpet and inside, and looked stunning in a short white satin dress. She divulged to us why she's drawn to dark roles, and also rapped especially for SG:

"I'm always drawn to character work, interesting stories, and something that's out of the ordinary."

Her new film Sympathy for Delicious (in theaters April 29), tells the story of a wheelchair bound DJ who discovers a Jesus-like ability to heal the wounded and dejected of Los Angeles - although not himself. Of the controversial film, which is Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut and stars Orlando Bloom and Laura Linney, she says, "It's totally unique, strange, adventurous. It's about healing and faith and letting go of ego, and also about a rock & roll band. I play a bass player in the band."

(Some fans of Ruffalo, who charmed in the Oscar-winning film The Kids Are All Right, will be keen to know that the upcoming flick Normal Heart has him playing a gay man.)

Creating an on-the-spot quasi-rhyme for our site, Lewis offers this gem:

"Be loud and proud and always recognize the power of your own voice. Not just looking outside, you gotta look inward. Recognize your own strength."

Lewis, who roused the crowd of 600 with a three-song set which included a table dance during an apropos cover of the CCR/Tina Turner hit "Proud Mary," says she's crossing her fingers she'll be working musically with Linda Perry soon.

Next to pass us on the red carpet was George Gray. Game show geeks will be pleased to know that he's the new announcer for Drew Carrey's latest undertaking; veteran hit show The Price is Right. Gray also happens to be an avid SG fan, and raved that we're.... "Edgy! You know what to expect from mainstream stuff, but with [SG] I think Bettie Page, lava lamps and a vintage car parked in the drive."

Well thank you.

Twilight and comic book fans will recognize the name Jackson Rathbone, who played Jasper Hale in The Twilight Saga and Sokka in The Last Airbender. Also a musician, the suave 26-year old (who hearts SG) will be on tour with his band 100 Monkeys starting August 28. He enthused, "I love the SuicideGirls. I've always been drawn to that punk attitude. Not letting anyone else define who you are except yourself." The proud owner of nine tattoos, he admits that if he weren't an actor, he'd have more. On his iPod right now? The band Mr. Heavenly.

Just before going in to spy on the auction, which offered up a Kat Von D tattoo to a lucky bidder (who paid over $10,000), I spoke with country singer Chely Wright, who attended with fiancée Lauren Blitzer. She said that coming out for her was a matter of life or death:

"It was a big decision to come out. I had been hiding it for a long time. It wasn't a new realization for me. The balance sheet of my life became irreconcilable. It was a big decision. I knew that it might affect my career negatively. Now, my life is fuller. I did the right thing. I think I'm learning that I still have friends in Nashville."

Wright is the first and only openly gay country singer to date.

The documentary about Chely's coming out, Wish Me Away, premiered in Nashville. In it, she says, "Here's the Achilles heel of hiding. When you're bewildered, stumped and scared. When you're in hiding. You have nowhere to turn. Because nobody knows your secret and when you're in pain you can't reach out to anybody. I have a network now. That is the beautiful benefit of living in the light."

Of shows like The Real L Word, Wright says, "any time you can get a positive image of people like us in TV and the media, it's important because young people are looking for people with whom they can identify."



The always unpredictable Sarah Silverman was in the house, and earned the wrath of a drunken heckler who blurted obscenities when she dared to bring up religion in her comedy act - specifically, when she talked about Christians who question her about why the Jews killed Jesus. She rolled with the interruption, segueing into a conception joke about having once shot out of her father's pee hole. Seemingly off-putting given the overwhelmingly lesbian crowd, in the end she saved the day, spouting the clever punch line, "I can't believe I was ever that skinny."



An Evening With Women, celebrating art, music and equality is an annual fundraiser thrown by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. For more info and to donate, visit: www.lagaycenter.org/.

Photography: Lok Hwa, Lydia Marcus, and Faye Sadou
***

Darrah de jour is a freelance journalist who lives in LA with her dog Oscar Wilde. Her writing has appeared in Marie Claire, Esquire and W. In her Red, White and Femme: Strapped With A Brain - And A Vagina columns for SuicideGirls, Darrah will be taking a fresh look at females in America.

by Keith Daniels

The Bible is often presented by believers as a monolithic creation, as if it descended from Heaven whole, perfect, and in King James' English. The truth, as in so many things, is so much more complicated and interesting. The text of the Hebrew Tanakh which became what Christians dismissively call the "Old Testament" began as an oral tradition that was eventually written down in Hebrew and Aramaic by unknown scribes over hundreds of years in what's called "abjad" script - a system of writing in which only the consonants are set down and the reader is intended to fill in the vowels. These individual writings were eventually collected into a generally accepted canon by around 400 BCE and finally codified at a later but unknown date, probably by 100 CE.

And that's just the "Old Testament".

Similarly, the New Testament is a disparate collection of texts from numerous and mostly unknown authors - despite traditional ascriptions - writing from between around 50 to 200 CE. None of the books of the New Testament were written during the lifetime of a historical Jesus. And according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the popular conception of one singular ancient council of the Church that decided what books were in and what were out is inaccurate:

That Tridentine Council didn't happen until 1545, at which point the 27 books we now know as the New Testament were finally confirmed. There are other books, though. Among them are texts which describe teachings of Christ that the modern Christian religion would find awkward to say the least, like the Gospel of Mary, which rejects the traditional depiction of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute, argues for female leadership in the church, and depicts Jesus as a Buddha-like philosopher urging his followers to find salvation in their own minds.

There is a theory that books like the Gospel of Mary were rejected from the New Testament by the male hierarchy of the early church who sought to cement their own dominance. Many of these books were deemed heretical and only existed in the references of their orthodox condemnations until the rediscovery of caches like Nag Hammadhi.

Similarly, the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrated that the Hebrew Bible in its early incarnations was much more varied before its codification than had been supposed. What if the early Jews or the scholars who translated their writings also omitted any subjects which might have been politically inconvenient? What if, for example, God - Yahweh - once had a wife?

Well, University of Exeter senior Theology and Religion lecturer Francesca Stavrakopoulou believes just that.

Stavrakopoulou isn't the first to make this claim, and other religious scholars agree with her. J. Edward Wright, president of both The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research says:

Hat tip: RichardDawkins.net Happy birthday, Mr. Dawkins!

by Darrah de jour

With the hypocritical and oppressive ‘beauty machine’ of America in full-swing, girls are getting “thinspiration” off food blogs and Pro-Ana sites; detouring off the deep end instead of finding their way into recovery. Even Portia de Rossi’s memoir Unbearable Lightness and the stick figures of Black Swan can serve as a “how to” for low self esteem. And this begs the question. Women – aren’t we just too dang valuable to level our self-worth by countable ribs?



America The Beautiful

A smart, candid documentary America the Beautiful has hit Amazon and Netflix with a profound message. It features 12 year old model Gerren Taylor and the adventures of her high fashion modeling career, against the backdrop of “normal” kids her age – and the advertisers targeting them.

Playwright Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues mastermind (whose work to end violence against women in Congo is admirable, to say the least) appears in ATB, with some powerful words. “Stop fixing your body. It was never broken.” She’s right. We, as Americans, as women, are absolutely obsessed with fixing shit that was never broken. Our “flabby” arms, our “cottage cheese” thighs, our “thin” or (depending on your ethnicity) “puffy” lips, our “sheet white” or (depending on what Cosmo says) “leathery” skin, or our “poochy” stomachs (we hold babies in there for Chrissakes!). If we so choose.

If we so choose, we can run governments, give breath and life, stop traffic, and start wars and end wars. Make men come and make men breathless, make women beg, make children laugh, make poems leap. We weaken the smug with a disarming smile and turn the defeated into victors. We are great mediators and yet our diplomacy fails us when we need it most. In the face of the “ideal woman” in our head, we stand before the bathroom mirror, and feel ugly and torn. And yes, those freckles are cute. Not ugly.

Manifesto aside. Seriously ladies, if we don’t stop badmouthing ourselves, our daughters, nieces and girls everywhere who emulate us, will do the same and then we’ll all have to suffer from the endless reign of the prevailing truths behind those Dove campaigns. (I’m a Caress gal myself.)

Pretty Thin

In 1920 American women were gifted the right to stand inside a 36″ x 12″ voting booth, slide closed a curtain and choose the next president. Eerily, one year later, the primero beauty pageant Inter-City Beauty Contest (now Miss America) was founded. Taking women’s minds conveniently off the politics of… well… politics and onto the politics of the supreme bathing suit contest. Go figure. Skip to 1963′s feminist classic The Feminine Mystique and Betty Friedan will tell ya, the staggering amount of at-home moms mixing highballs and Valium – with their psychiatrist’s go-ahead, was nearing 50%. Fifty-percent. Whoa. That’s a lot of hammered hysterical housewives crying over their Easy-Bake Ovens.

As American women, we may no longer be confined to mind-numbing housework and bouts of daytime isolation, but has the 1950s-style “desperate housewife” mentality only morphed? “By adjusting to this ‘comfortable concentration camp,’” Friedan wrote, a woman “stunts her intelligence to become childlike, turns away from individual identity to become an anonymous biological robot in a docile mass. She becomes less than human, preyed upon by outside pressures.” Sound familiar?

Fast forward to vivacious Gerren Taylor, the star of this striking documentary, who at 12 thought – along with Marc Jacobs – that she was the next Naomi Campbell. By film’s end; a mere three years and endless rejections later, at 15, unequipped to handle the cocktail of shitty modeling industry standards and nature’s universal curveball puberty, she loses her confidence in a final proclamation: “I’m ugly. Period.”

Mad Women Detour ->

Mad Men television star, firecracker Christina Hendricks was recently named Esquire’s “Sexiest Woman Alive.” Despite this, she stated that she couldn’t get a designer to make a dress for her 5’8″ size 14 bombshell of a body. “I’m still struggling for someone to give me a darn dress,” she said before the 2010 Emmys. “I would take my clothes off in front of the mirror and be like, ‘Oh, I look like a woman.’ And I felt beautiful, and I never tried to lose it, ’cause I loved it.”

Another power player is 22-year old Florida native Whitney Thompson, who took a hand-held hammer to television’s glass ceiling when she won season 10 of America’s Next Top Model – the first (barf -pun intended – I hate this term) “plus-sized” model to win. She is now a cover girl for “Love Your Body Day” and a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorder Association.

Thompson admits, “People don’t realize that we have a billion-dollar diet industry working against our self-esteem. There is always a new product out selling us happiness if we ‘finally’ shed those pounds,” she says on her blog.

Last, 24-year old model Crystal Renn beat anorexia and is now trying to beat the modeling system – from the inside. She says, “I have made it my life to speak about feeling completely beautiful no matter what size you are.” From her book Hungry:

My self-acceptance led to a return of the intellectual curiosity I’d had as a child, before I got on the weight-loss express. It led to a better career. It led to romance. I’m proof that life doesn’t have to wait until you’re skinny.

(Hungry maps Renn’s appetite and those who tried to squander it.) Sing it sister.

->Back on Track

I caught up with America The Beautiful filmmaker Darryl Roberts. He had some cool enlightening stuff to say about Revlon and their pesky phthalates and the sometimes death-defying tricks chicks use to stay youthful, beautiful and thin.

Darrah de jour: You’ve created a marvelous film and won many awards for your social commentary. Congratulations! What were your initial goals when you began and what did you set out to capture?

Darryl Roberts: I initially set out to make a film that was therapeutic and examine why we’re so obsessed with beauty, but I ended up tackling a much larger social issue.

Ddj: What inspired your work?

DR: I was in a 4 year relationship with a woman that was awesome and very good to me. When it came time to commit to her, I passed, thinking I could find someone just as wonderful but more attractive. One day I was sitting in a McDonald’s thinking about this unfortunate tale when I thought it would be great to do a documentary exploring why we’re so obsessed with beauty.

Ddj: What was most striking to you about women’s relationships to their bodies, and how do they differ from what most men find attractive about women?

DR: I had no idea that the vast, vast majority of women wished they had a “better” body. Advertisers have pulled the wool over women’s eyes regarding what’s beautiful in the female form. This differs greatly from what I’ve found that men like in a woman’s body. Most men don’t like the stick thin women that advertisers believe is beautiful. One day I polled 100 men and 74% said they preferred women of an average size as opposed to models in the magazines. I believe the attraction to models that men have has more to do with perceived status than an actual beauty preference.

Ddj: The meat-heads you interviewed had me laughing (and crying) with pity. Do you find Chris Keefe to be a product of society or simply somebody who chooses to under-value the smart, beautiful women around him? What type of women do you think are attracted to arrogant men?

DR: I think that Chris Keefe undervalues smart, beautiful women because he is a product of this society. When you think about it, if advertisers have women thinking that they have to look a certain way to be beautiful and then they have men believing that the women that they date should look a certain way the both are victims. Just different sides of the coin. From what I’ve noticed mainly women with low-self esteem are attracted to really arrogant men.

Ddj: Have you found love again?

DR: Well not yet, though I will say I have been dating some awesome women over the last 3 years. And it’s only a matter of time before I meet the right woman and walk down the aisle. I can feel it.

Ddj: What do you think advertisers and magazine editors can do to help women, as opposed to target them? Aren’t they just doing their job?

DR: I believe magazine editors can stand up to advertisers and convince them that women want to see a wider range of body types and standards of beauty. Imagine if a magazine put an average size woman on the cover with articles featuring average sized women then went back to the advertisers and told them how much positive feedback they’d gotten. The editors are on the front lines with the consumer. They stand the best chance of getting advertisers to realize that they’re alienating a large percentage of women by promoting a monolithic standard of beauty. Yes, I suppose they’re just doing their jobs, but I believe social responsibility should be infused with the requirements of capitalism.

Ddj: What was the strangest thing you found women did to “improve” their bodies?

DR: While making the film, I saw a woman go into a plastic surgeon’s office and ask him to make her vagina look like a woman in Playboy. That was the strangest thing I saw. BY FAR!

Ddj: You tackled parts of a big, consumeristic, hedonistic, capitalistic issue of retail products that kill women slowly. Have any companies stopped using phthalates since ATB came out?

DR: I believe two companies have stopped using phthalates since the film came out. The rest of the companies keep harmful ingredients in their products because we haven’t voiced a loud enough concern about it. Remember – the entire economy of the beauty industry is driven by our dollars.

Ddj: First impressions: How did you find Gerren Taylor and what was most notable to you about her upon meeting? What were the positive and negative aspects of her involvement in the modeling industry, starting so young, at 12 years old?

DR: I met Gerren at a fashion show in Los Angeles. I think the negative aspect is developing one’s self esteem from something so transient. Just the concept that an industry could tell you that you’re hot and beautiful then change the standard is scary. That’s what happened to Gerren. When the industry decided that she was no longer what they craved, it was all downhill from there. And I don’t see anything positive about someone modeling in runway shows half-naked at 12. I’m sorry.

Ddj: Did you find Gerren’s relationship with her mother to be healthy?

DR: Well it depends on how you define healthy. I’m sorry I can’t answer this question, it’s way too controversial.

Ddj: Technical Question: How long did the documentary take to film, start to finish and what kind of camera did you use?

DR: The documentary took a total of 5 years from start to finish. I used the Panasonic DVX-100a camera.

Ddj: Did you find the red carpet – backstage fashion show – E! Entertainment world you crashed, with questions about social consciousness, to be intimidating?

DR: I’ve done two feature films and I’ve been to several of those kind of functions. And at the end of the day, Paris Hilton brushes her teeth just like I do. Just with a more expensive toothbrush.

Ddj: I loved the moment when you talked with Anthony Kiedis. He’s a hero of mine. What did you take away from that?

DR: Anthony Kiedis got me to realize that every one living has something unique and beautiful about them.

Ddj: What are your future projects and please tell our readers – both women and men, anything else you’d like to share about life, liberty and the pursuit of the perfect nose:

DR: My next project is a documentary dealing with health that shatters the whole BMI myth. The film is called America the Beautiful: Health for Sale. As far as life, liberty and the pursuit of the perfect nose, don’t do it. The nose that you have is just fine!

To learn more about America The Beautiful doc, visit: AmericaTheBeautifulDoc.com/.

If you or somebody you like a lot suffers from disordered eating contact: National Eating Disorder Association or Monte Nido Treatment Center.

***

Darrah de jour is a freelance journalist who lives in LA with her dog Oscar Wilde. Her writing has appeared in Marie Claire, Esquire and W. In her Red, White and Femme: Strapped With A Brain – And A Vagina columns for SuicideGirls, Darrah will be taking a fresh look at females in America.

Can a man represent women's interests as well as a woman? So asked the New York Times a couple of days ago, in an article about Obama's campaign for women's votes. It's the question at the center of all the arguments that come up any time someone says that women should support Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign--plenty of folks are quite happy to transform that claim into one that the *only* reason to support Clinton is because of her sex, or that the *only* women can represent women's interests. Plenty of folks are prepared to argue that it's just as sexist to support Clinton because she's a woman as it is to oppose her for that reason.

Those claims are obviously false.

So then, why should women support Clinton?

Here's why:

The reason Obama has to court women--in particular, feminist women--isn't just because women are 54% of the electorate, as the NYT explains. It's because for the first time in American history there's a candidate whose presence in the race makes women's issues and feminist issues a primary focus of the campaign. Women voters don't have to choose between two men who may (or may not) give a shit about women's issues based on their positions on everything else; we get a real choice between a candidate who, not coincidentally, is herself a woman and for whom women's issues are central, rather than peripheral, and male candidates who have not, to date, made women's issues central to their political careers.

The question, then, is this: does Clinton's candidacy make enough of a difference? If Clinton isn't the nominee, will Obama or Edwards or Dodd or Richardson continue to focus on women voters and women's issues? Or are they doing so now only in order to win the nomination, and will they, if they win, then go back to the old boy business as usual, in which women's issues don't matter as much as everything else?

Will they explicitly reject "abstinence only" provisions in AIDS funding? Will they see an interview with the authors of Our Bodies, Ourselves as an important platform for their presidential aspirations? Will they insist that FDA nominations be held up until decisions are made about approving contraceptives? Will they introduce legislation to help caregivers access support services?

Clinton has a page on her Senate web site devoted to women's issues. Obama doesn't, nor is there one on his campaign website. Edwards has one on his presidential campaign site; his senate page no longer exists, so I don't know if he had one when he was a senator rather than a presidential candidate.

Yes, there are other issues. Yes, those issues matter to women as well as to men. But it also matters--a lot--that women stop being taken for granted because we don't have a real choice. Whether or not you ultimately decide to vote for her, you should know that Clinton's candidacy does give us that choice.

Bitch_PhD still isn't sure if she'll vote for Clinton in the primary. But by God, I'm glad she's running.

Dig this email I just got.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!

Details thinks "uber-boobs" are unattractive! I bet all the girls are just falling on their knees thanking god that we've got permission from Details magazine not to get breast implants.

Isn't that white of them? No lady wants to have "out of control" boobs!

I just feel so much better about my feminism now that I know that Details doesn't approve of breast implants. Whew.

The article, if you're bored shitless and don't have anything else to read, is here. I have no idea if it's hilarious, inane, or wrath-inducing, because I can't be bothered to read some wanking article from Details about breasts. But hey, if you're so inclined, there's the click.

(P.S. to A. from DETAILS Magazine: actually, we bitches don't care what you think of our bodies. Sorry about that. Go buy yourself something nice and feel better, honey.)

Bitch_PhD thinks that men who expect her to care what they find attractive are unattractive and have gotten out of control.

I have a confession which will please some and dismay others.

When I first read reviews of Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, I thought, "Oh dear, 9/11 is a feminist issue? That's taking it too far."

Reader, I was wrong.

What's at stake in this book isn't the argument, as the reviews I read seemed to be saying, that 9/11 in and of itself was a feminist issue. That's not what Faludi's saying. She takes pains in her introduction to point out that she's looking, not at the event itself: "This is not a book about what September 11 'did" to women or men." What she's examining are our *reactions* to it, specifically the way "we were . . . enlisted in a symbolic war at home." Faludi argues--and it's a provocative argument, even to this feminist--that that symbolic war was largely (if not exclusively) about an American myth of invincibility that is, and has always been, deeply gendered.

Taken straight, that argument seems both insufficient (oh, come on--gender matters, but it's not at the center of *American* identity any more than any other nation!) and obvious (well duh, of *course* American invincibility is all about cowboys and frontiersmen). What's great about this book is the way it marshals a lot of specific, thought-provoking evidence in support of that argument. In the end, I think the project Faludi's aiming at is, by definition, too huge for a single book to contain, but she does a lot to make open-minded, and even reluctant, readers start thinking, hard.

The Terror Dream does three things. First, it collects a fair bit of evidence that post-9/11 popular discourse *about* 9/11 (and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) was weirdly focused on gender. From the director of Idaho Chooses Life, who said, bizarrely, that

(cited on page 23) to Sarah Wildman's intellectually bankrupt implication, in The New Republic, that feminists were ignorant of (or silent about) the oppression of women in some Islamic countries (page 42), Faludi collects a number of completely wacko statements linking 9/11 to feminism--not by feminists, but by anti-feminists. The ludicrous argument that 9/11 was a feminist issue isn't ours; it's theirs.

Faludi goes on to detail a number of really heartrending, infuriating, and frankly amazing examples of how this ridiculous meme distorted the news, and our reactions to the event. There's an upsetting chapter about how all the fuss over the "heroes" of 9/11, the NYFD, were in fact some of the Twin Towers' most pitiable victims:

Even worse was the radio failure that kept rescue workers inside the second tower from communicating rescue plans, knowing the first tower had collapsed or hearing the fire chief's order to evacuate before the second tower went down--a problem that had been known to the city since the 1993 bombing of the WTC and that was repressed, after 9/11, for three and a half years by Giuliani's office even in the face of protests by the family members of dead rescue workers. (God I hope the Dems will hammer on this in the general election if Giuliani is the Republican candidate.)

There's a chapter about the focus on 9/11 widows that talks about how widowers were marginalized, apolitical women or those supportive of the War on Terror were trotted out in front of the media, and the Jersey Girls--a group of stay-home moms led by a former Republican who, after her and their husbands died in 9/11, became vocal critics of the Bush administration's failures leading up to and after 9/11 and helped form the 9/11 Commission--were praised by Congress but dismissed by the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, and (of course) the assholes on Free Republic and other conservitive jackoff sites. By this point of the book, though, those assholes don't seem so marginal any more; they're merely saying, in less decorous language, the same things that Faludi's been documenting from more mainstream sources for over 100 pages.

That said, the chapter on widows is the weakest, because Faludi seems to tiptoe around the story of Lisa Beamer, the widow of one Todd Beamer, who was broadly considered the hero who had led the passenger rebellion on Flight 93. In an earlier chapter, Faludi points out the fact that no one really knows what happened on that flight, since there were no survivors, and reminds us of the way that the male passengers on that flight were lionized as heroes while little attention was paid, for example, to the fact that mothers and wives encouraged the men to attack and that apparently two flight attendants boiled hot water they intended to use to scald the hijackers. (Faludi also mentions, in passing, that one of the attendants, CeeCee Lyles, was "a former police officer trained in hand-to-hand combat", something I don't remember having heard about before reading this book.) Because she's doing cultural criticism rather than conventional history, Faludi isn't making an argument one way or the other about Lisa Beamer's actions or intent--but the question kind of hangs in the air. What Faludi thinks of Beamer shouldn't matter, but the argument comes across, at this point, as somewhat equivocal because she doesn't tell us.

In a way, though, that problem highlights the book's strength; one of the reasons we wonder is because we're aware throughout of Faludi's presence as a woman and a feminist, and so we want to judge the merits of her argument by assessing her character in terms of whether she's sympathetic (or not) to the real women she talks about. In other words, she's right: we *are* preoccupied with gender. The chapters about Jessica Lynch and the last election's "Security Moms" reminded me, anyway, of how easily I bought into gender norms when it came to those two stories. I thought the Security Moms were nuts, but it never occurred to me that they didn't exist. Faludi shows that the argument that married women voters were preoccupied with the war on terror was bullshit.

The Lynch story I'm more familiar with, so that in that chapter I could see most clearly the way that Faludi's analysis was working: she points out, again, the ways that Jessica Lynch was first lionized as a hero, then cast as a damsel in distress (complete with staged rescue), and how the rumors that Lynch had been (or could have been!) raped worked to reinforce the "dark threatening male vs. fair endangered woman" stereotype. Faludi even points out the way that mainstream press neglect of Lori Piestawa (who was, in Lynch's words, "the real hero" worked in recasting Lynch as the damsel who needed to be saved by men.

(I can't resist throwing in a tidbit about Lynch's and Piestawa's relationship--in Janauary of this year,

Piestawa is Hopi, not Sioux, so the anecdote doesn't entirely counterbalance the racism of the way Lynch's story was told, but it's a really touching story on a more personal level.)

The last third of the book, I thought, should have come first, evidence-wise; but undoubtedly reorganizing the book to postpone the current events angle would have severely affected readership and sales. That said, make sure and read the last three chapters, which give a good thumbnail sketch of early American Indian captivity narratives, Indian wars and witch trials, pioneer stories and the glorification of Daniel Boone, all by way of demonstrating that the "(white) male protector" aspect of American security (and its correlates, the damsel in distress and the threatening Indian/black rapist) is a well-established trope in American mythology.

To Americanists, historians, and much of the English department, this is old news; if I'd thought about it when I first heard of Faludi's book, I would probably have been less skeptical. But presumably the general audience to whom she's really writing aren't familiar with this stuff, and beginning with it might have made the founding claim that gender matters to "America" easier for most readers to swallow. In a sense, The Terror Dream has dessert first, by talking about contemporary culture while postponing the meat-and-potatoes argument about history. Then again, Americans might be said, like children, to be impatient and fond of sweets. In any case, Faludi's book does a pretty good job of demonstrating that we're not entirely past the Oedipal stage.

Today begins the 16 Days Campaign against gender violence.

This year's goals include:

• Demanding and securing adequate funding for work against VAW;
• Calling for greater accountability and political commitment from states to prevent and punish all forms of violence against women in practice, not just in words;
• Increasing awareness of the impact of violence against women, including engaging in measures to end it by men and boys;
• Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of work to prevent violence against women;
• Securing the space for advocacy and defending the defenders of women’s human rights in their work to end gender based violence.

You can get an action kit here, find out what's happening locally here, and educate yourself here. That last link has an absolute *ton* of information about the connection between reproductive rights and violence against women, and some really interesting links about the relationship between torture and gender-based violence; do check it out.

I think it's fascinating that they've chosen to call it activism against *gender* violence rather than activism against violence towards women. Why? Because gender violence includes not only violence against bio-women, but also violence against transsexuals and gay men, prison rape, and the shaming of men who are victims as "pussies." Think about it: violence is coded as macho, and victimization is coded as feminine. (Remember the brouhaha when Bill Maher pointed out that flying planes into the Twin Towers was hardly the work of cowards? How dare he "credit" terrorists with courage?!?)

Violence is simply violence. And victimization has nothing to do with being weak. As long as violence continues to be seen as a demonstration of "power," and victimization as fragility, and as long as power is coded as strong and manly and fragility as delicate and feminine, violence will remain a gendered issue.

And I shouldn't need to tell you how wrong that is.

Bitch_PhD thanks Feministe and the Women of Color Blog for the heads up.

Now that travel season is in full force, this news from Salon's Broadsheet is especially relevant.

What is housekeeping work like?

- Hotel housekeepers are facing increasing injuries due to heavyworkloads. In most hotels, housekeepers must clean 15 or more rooms per day.

- Hotel housekeepers must rush to meet a daily quota of cleaned rooms. They frequently skip rest periods and meals in order to finish, and even work off the clock to meet their quotas.

- In recent years, corporate hotel chains such as Hilton, Hyatt and Sheraton have increased both the pace and the amount of work performed by housekeepers.

- Most hotels have recently introduced new room amenities without reducing the number of rooms assigned to housekeepers each day. Luxury beds with heavier mattresses and linens, triple-sheeting, duvets, and extra pillows are increasingly common. Other add-ons like coffee pots, exercise equipment and large hard-to-clean mirrors make room cleaning more difficult and time-consuming.

- Hotel workers have a 40% higher injury rate (5.9%) than workers in the service sector (4.2%).

- According to a recent study of company records covering thousands of employee injuries, hotel housekeepers face an injury rate of 10.4%, almost double the injury rate for non-housekeepers (5.6%).

- Sprains and strains are the most common housekeeper injuries (44% of all injuries in one study) often resulting from demanding tasks like bed making—lifting mattresses, adding extra sheets, and stuffing multiple pillows and duvets—and pushing heavy carts full of linens and amenities.

- In a recent survey of more than 600 hotel housekeepers in the U.S. and Canada, 91% said that they have suffered work-related pain. 77% said their workplace pain interfered with routine activities. Two out of every three workers visited their doctor to deal with workplace pain. 66% took pain medication just to get through their daily quota.

- Hotel housekeeper injuries are debilitating. Back injuries, housemaids’ knee (bursitis), and shoulder pain can lead to permanent disability.

- When injured workers try to return to work, most hotels do not offer them lighter tasks to do, forcing them to choose between getting hurt again or not working at all.

You can support the housekeeper's campaign by reading and agreeing to a pledge that you will:

- avoid hotels where workers are on strike;

- support union hotels (the site, unfortunately, requires you to enter the name of a specific hotel in a specific town; it would be a lot nicer if you could just search by city, assuming a full list would be too long to effectively navigate).

- TIP YOUR MAID $2-$5/day*

- be considerate by putting trash in trash cans, leaving dirty towels on the counter or racks so the housekeeper doesn't have to bend over to pick them up; and stripping your own bedsheets;

- leave complimentary comment cards if you are happy with your maid service;

- keep a copy of the pledge in your suicase to remind you of it when you travel.

After you sign the pledge, you can buy a luggage tag to remind you of the pledge, plus make your luggage identifiable. 75% of the cost of the tag is tax-deductible. And maybe, if you're lucky, occasionally give you an opportunity to talk to other travelers about the campaign.


*I always try to tip $1-2, but I often forget, and apparently I've been being a cheapskate. I'll do better in the future. I find a lot of people don't know that you should tip the maid, and I'll always remember the woman who cried and hugged Mr. B. because, after cleaning the rooms of Mr. B.'s entire class of Air Force Weapons School guys for an entire summer, he was apparently one of the very few people who tipped her--$100. For three months of maid service.

Bitch_PhD hates housework.

Over at my other blog, where I reposted Sunday's adoption post, a commenter asked,

Excellent question. What *should* society do, if we wanted (crazy feminist pipe dream, but bear with me) to live in a world where pregnancy and motherhood were recognized as simple facts of life, rather than as abnormal? In other words, where we granted women full humanity?

Lots of things. But since I'm not writing an encyclopedia here, let's focus specifically on some of the things that directly affect pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering young children.

First, let's decide that birth control is absolutely the responsibility of *all* heterosexually active people of whatever age. If you do not want children, and you are a man, you are responsible for using birth control. If we, as a society, *really* believed that, you damn well know we'd have a lot more birth control options for men than we do now. Shit, people, the only reason anyone talks about condoms is because of AIDS. Condoms sure as hell weren't on the radar before then. And if we really believed that sexually active people should be responsible for birth control, then we wouldn't even have these fucking arguments about whether or not we should tell young people about it or make it available to them.

Second, let's also recognize the corrolary: that if sexually active people are responsible for birth control, then they are *also* responsible for deciding if and when they don't want to use it. And that this, along with the fact that no birth control is 100% effective, means that women will get pregnant if they are sexually active--not all women, but some women, of all ages, and from all walks of life. And that since this is the case, scolding women for being pregnant "too young," or "too poor," or "when they're not ready" according to us, or because they're addicts or alcoholics or crazy or "unfit," in our minds, will simply not happen--because if sexually active people are responsible for using, or not using, birth control, then it is NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS if they don't.

Third, we would recognize that human beings (1) *will* be sexually active, and (2) *will*, therefore, get pregnant. Because human beings are living creatures, and one of the essential qualities of being "alive" is being able to reproduce. So reproduce we will. Reproducing is not a moral issue, or an occasion for passing judgment; it is a simple fact of life.

Fourth, because of this, we would structure our world around this basic fact and the things it involves: pregnancy, childbirth, and the demands of caring for young children. We wouldn't expect young women to quit school if they got pregnant; we would acknowledge that sometimes young women *will* get pregnant before they are finished with their formal educations, and we would accommodate this: schools would have nursing rooms and changing tables, we would provide daycare and allow young women and men with children to bring them to class (if they weren't disruptive), to step out (when and if they became disruptive), and to schedule their classes around elementary school hours--which would themselves be based on research in child psychology and development, rather than on agricultural seasons or the "9 to 5 workday." If this meant that young parents took a little longer to finish high school, college, or graduate school, that would be just fine, and there would be no sanctions for not finishing in the "average" amount of time (which would probably be higher than it currently is, since young parents would be better able to stay in school).

Fifth, the 9 to 5 workday wouldn't exist. Work would be reconfigured, since we'd recognize that "the worker" wasn't a 19th-century factory worker who needed to be physically present in the factory in order to take his place on the assembly line; instead, we'd define work in terms of projects, tasks, processes, and results. Where work required one to be in the same physical place as other people at the same time, we would of course provide workplaces for that to happen, and when it was better to have the material aspects of work (paperwork, hardware, merchandise, etc.) in one place, employers would build those things or rent space. But when a job didn't require that, we'd let people do the work when and where they were able--at home, in the workplace, wherever. Perhaps employers would subsidize employees renting private or shared office space under some conditions, in order to shorten their commutes, make their work time more efficient, and save money on infrastructure. Employers would certainly provide changing tables and nursing rooms in official workplaces, and taking children to work would be just fine--again, as long as doing so was safe and not disruptive. Where it wasn't, we'd set up formal and informal daycare arrangements of all types: private centers in high-density work areas; employer-provided daycare for very large employers who required many or most of their employees to be in the workplace much of the time; public daycare and preschools; round-the-clock availability when this was cost effective, some kind of economic support (like medicare will pay for hiring a private nurse) when it wasn't.

Sixth, we'd recognize that some people, because of physical or mental disabilities, personal preference, dangerous or neglectful behavior, and even death, would not be able to be their children's primary care providers. Where they were willing and able to provide *some* of their children's care, we'd prioritize their doing so, but we'd accept, encourage, and where necessary provide supplementary care, preferring (in order): extended family members, friends and acquaintances, and--where absolutely necessary--strangers. When these accommodations needed to be made, we'd provide supplemental caregivers with training, material support, and social services if those things were needed.

Seventh, we'd recognize that even primary care providers cannot--and should not--be solely responsible for their children's welfare, because children, too, are human beings, social animals, and by definition members of society. So parents, too, would receive supplemental services when they needed them. Also, children would be accepted in all public and private venues, and we'd accommodate their needs and limitations just as we do those of people with disabilities. Recognizing that they need adult supervision, that childhood is (in part) a process of socialization, and that the developmental, psychological, and physical needs of children are different than those of adults, we would of course provide alternate forms of entertainment for them where appropriate, sympathetically excuse them (and their parents or supervising adults) from situations where they became disruptive, and be patient with their social lapses. Being supportive of primary caregivers would be a basic social expectation, like holding the door open for someone carrying a heavy package; this would mean that all sorts of rare politenesses would become matters of course: correcting misbehaving children ("young man, you should listen to your mother"), lending a quick hand ("let me help you get that stroller down the stairs"), and providing public amenities that recognized that children are members of the public (low toilets and sinks, family restrooms, barriers between walkways and streets). Breastfeeding, it should go without saying, would be a perfectly acceptable and unremarkable public activity.

If we did these things, then it would be a lot easier to raise children, and most of the "special" burdens of motherhood would be ameliorated or erased--and where it wasn't possible to do this, we'd consider them human burdens, and take them into account, rather than scolding, judging, or punishing women for having to bear them.

A Bitch_PhD can dream.

Feministing offers the heads up on the latest god-awful reality show, "Little Beauties: Ultimate Kiddie Queen Showdown":

Hmm. Not comfortable with the juxtaposition of "gorgeous," which has definite overtones of very grownup beauty, and "Pixie Sticks," which is obviously intended to cuteify the whole thing.

On the other hand, you know, is it really so bad to have what are, in effect, organized games of dress up? Dress up is a perfectly fine childhood pastime, one that--for the record--little boys ought to be allowed, even encouraged, to play as well. After all, kids like sparkly things, they like pretending, they're pretty narcissistic; let 'em don the Hello Kitty nail polish and rhinestone crowns and mama's "real gold!" jewelry. Ooh and ahh over how adorable they are--god knows I tell my son he's adorable, cute, and/or beautiful about a thousand times a day.

So okay, maybe

and it's not worth getting all worked up over.

But then again.

Nope, back to creepy. "The circuit"? Spray tanning? Fake teeth fittings?

Come on, people. Dress-up is harmless play. Turning dress-up into a for-profit industry, where elementary-school kids are indoctrinated with expensive "beauty" treatments and the implication that there's something wrong with how they look (omg, you're six years old and you're missing a tooth! omg, you're a light-skinned kid and you need a tan!) is just godawful.

Not to mention the bigger issue: the investment by grownups--"the fabulous Mr. Tim," "the incominatble Miss Nikki" and, needless to say, these kids' own parents--in the Vital Importance of Looking Pretty!!! Little girls do not need that shit, people. That shit is fucked up.

Even my own kid, who is not above raiding my jewelry box or asking me to paint his nails, recognizes that "even if foofy things are fun sometimes, it would suck to feel like you had to be foofy *all the time* for people to like you."

Amen. Let the kids be kids: give 'em a box of costume jewelry, a rhinestone tiara or two, a couple silk capes they can pretend to be superman or a fairy princess with. Paint their nails, help them braid their hair. Don't forget to let them turn cardboard tubes into swords, shoebox tops into shields, the bottom of the shoebox into a robot mask, and paint whiskers on their cheeks with eyeliner after you put their hair into high ponytail "ears." Hell, let 'em watch you put makeup on before the babysitter gets there on the one night a month you go out, and go ahead and let them try a little lipstick and mascara too--it won't hurt them, and you can wash the pillowcases later.

But for heaven's sake, people, remember that you're adults; your job is to give them something to admire and aspire to other than the reflection of their own (bizarrely doll-like) faces in the mirror.

Bitch_PhD's son actually thinks she looks kind of "weird" with makeup on.

I'm watching Oprah the other day and before you start yelling at me, hang on! I was not home twiddling my twat at 3 p.m. on a weekday. I'm a functioning member of society with many jobs. I was watching her show, on my time, on the DVR. Anyway, I recorded this episode because the topic of discussion was about intersex folks, or hermaphrodites if you want to be old school about it. There was a girl who was born as a woman with male hormones. She had breasts but not her period. She was born with testicles that were inside her body, lodged up near her bladder. Ouch.

Obviously the testicles were removed and she lives a normal life now. She's married to a man and has always identified herself as a straight woman. I found myself wondering, "Does she have a...?" Then Oprah broke the ice and said, "So, do you have a va-jay-jay?" The audience squealed with delight. Wheeee! Our sassy black friend said, "Va-jay-jay" and cocked her head! Tee-hee! We're all old enough that penises have entered our vaginas and babies have come out of our vaginas but we fully support the term va-jay-jay! Let's applaud!

I decided that I was being a snob. Who am I to judge Oprah's audience? I'm watching the show too, aren't I? If these ladies want to get loose and giggle at Oprah's slang, well then fine. Perhaps Oprah's producers don’t want moments to get too tender or technical. Perhaps Oprah is encouraged to say silly words that infantilize the way women talk about their bodies to lighten the mood and ease into commercial.

And then I stumbled across an article in the New York Timescalled, "What Did You Call It?" Oprah's va-jay-jay moment was not just some weird one-off thing that I happened to see. Apparently, this is like a huge thing. Oprah says "va-jay-jay" every chance she gets.



Just in case that clip was unclear, Oprah said, "My va-jay-jay is paining me."

I don’t really have a huge problem with that particular clip. Oprah is doing some stunt and trying to be funny. I'm not the comedy police. My issue has nothing to do with whether or not this clip is funny. (For the record, it is not funny.)

The problem I have is that Oprah uses the word "va-jay-jay" when she's not joking. She looked in the face of a transgendered person, who has had enough shit to deal with regarding her sex organs, and referred to this woman's hard-earned vagina as a va-jay-jay. What is wrong with the word vagina? Is it too clinical sounding? They were just discussing penises and testicles in that intersex segment. Why does the word vagina need to be cutesified?

My beef is not with "Grey's Anatomy." I've never seen the show. It's absurd that adults can't say vagina twenty-thousand times an hour if we want to but whatever. Oprah has done countless shows with Dr. Oz about men's health where the word penis is said over and over. She's done shows where she had someone describe to her what "tossed salad" means. You know there are no censors telling Oprah what she can and can't say.

In fact, I remember back when Howard Stern was fighting the FCC he often brought up that Oprah was allowed to talk about certain body parts without getting fined and he wasn’t. Stern couldn’t say "anal sex" but Oprah could because her show is considered educational. Why this refusal to say vagina? Oprah was sexually violated as a kid. She fought the odds and grew up to be a billionaire, trend-setting philanthropist and this is what she wants to do with her power? She wants to build schools for girls in Africa and say va-jay-jay?

Gloria Steinem weighed in on this issue:

Oh Gloria, you optimistic, slightly out-of-touch first wave feminist. Of fucking course that is not the reason Oprah and her audience object to saying vagina. Oprah and her drones think that they are the epitome of irreverent and adorable with their slang. Maybe it's stupid of me to be up in arms over a word. But not saying the word is a subtle implication that there is something wrong with discussing your body and something inherently wrong with your body, especially when there really isn’t a male equivalent to va-jay-jay. I suppose there is pee-pee, but who says that after age eight? In my opinion, embracing the term "va-jay-jay" as an acceptable way to refer to the vagina in an otherwise serious conversation is the equivalent of arguing that taking your shirts off for Joe Francis is a form of feminism. We can do what we want with our bodies! We can talk about our body parts like we're little kids! Now, if you'll all excuse me, I have to go tinkle out of my front bum.

So which of the current presidential candidates is probably going to be best for women?

Now, blah blah it's possible to have the utmost respect for women, of course, without actually, you know, giving them jobs. And as we all know, there really just aren't that many women out there who really understand politics or who've reached the very top of their professions, and this fact has nothing to do with discrimination, necessarily--maybe women just choose to do other things with their time. Like shopping and cooing over infants, for example. And it certainly isn't the candidates' fault if, for reasons of their own, women are happy earning less than $9000/year or doing things other than being interested in who governs the nation.

Still, though, with all those necessary caveats in place, it seems reasonable to assume, as a starting point, that

Right? I mean, even though there's no reason why men can't represent women's issues just as well as women, and it's nothing more than rampant reverse sexism to assume otherwise, it doesn't seem entirely crazy to guess that probably, on average, women are probably slightly more likely to care about women's concerns.

Of course, we all know that ideally, there'd be no such thing as "women's issues". And I'm sure we all know enlightened individuals who are completely indifferent to gender and think that paying attention to this stuff just undermines equality.

Okay fine.

Now let's talk about the real world.

For those of us who haven't entirely evolved past noticing that people have bodies and that these bodies actually make a difference in the world, the Huffington Post released some interesting information a few days ago:

Kudos to Mike Huckabee. Still, given his hostility to women's reproductive rights, well, nope.

Romney? Nope.

Richardson passes. So, needless to say, does Clinton.

If you're one of those hyper-enlightened souls who thinks that caring about gender in politics is just as sexist as the fact that, oh, every president throughout American history has been a white man, then fine; vote "purely on the issues." (Actually, in all seriousness, OnTheIssues is a good site for that kind of research.) If you're a straw woman who "only" votes based on gender equity, then hey, cast your ballot for Huckabee.

If, however, you live in the real world, realize that a given candidate's issues will flex (or not) in the context of party politics and actual day-to-day governance, and give a shit about women's equality, then consider Richardson if you like. If you're only paying attention to the frontrunners Obama, Edwards, and Clinton, then keep in mind that, as Matt Yglesias points out,

That shit matters, people.

Bitch_PhD has put herself on the record as leaning towards Edwards, actually, but keeps thinking she might change her mind. If not, though, she'll console herself for voting for a white man in the primary by voting for Clinton in the general election.

Such a cool idea: two young women, 22 and 23, setting out on a cross-country road trip to interview other young women about feminism.

The results promise to be really interesting, and I love that these women are taking the conventionally male device of the road trip to frame their research.

Nona does the writing, I gather, and Emma takes fabulous photos (link available at the website, above). They've got a schedule of where they'll be and when, and a discussion board for folks to talk about the questions that their travels bring up--right now, the discussion board's sadly unused, but it's definitely worth checking out and contributing to, methinks.

I personally love their description of their interview with Andi Zeisler, the woman behind Bitch magazine.

But what's really awesome is the way that their posts about the different women they meet demonstrate the broad tent of feminism. In Flint, MI, Melodee, Crystal, and Krystal

In contrast, the women they meet in Detroit talk about white, rich feminism’s sense of exclusion again and again while Colleen, in Seattle,

I think, though, that Sprina in Portland--despite her hesitation--gets it exactly right:

Don't we all? I can't wait to read the GIRLDrive book.

Bitch_PhD loves road trips.

Go figure. Apparently feminists and their partners have better relationships than the rest of y'all

Science Shows Women Who Consider Themselves Human Aren't Ugly!!!

Surprisingly, men who think women are human beings are nicer to be with! Who knew?

Wow! Men who respect women and who date women who respect themselves are more likely to have relationships that involve respect!

Even old chicks have sex, one; and two, old chicks who date or live with guys who respect women are more likely to have actually decent sex and not have to put up with bullshit, including their own seething resentment of having to do all the housework.

Dudes who date or live with self-respecting women are less likely to have to deal with game-playing, seething resentment, or women who have hangups about sex.

I'm SO GLAD science proves that feminists don't hate men. 'Cause god knows, my own personal experience and that of all my friends sure would never have suggested that was the case.

Bitch_PhD has been married for fifteen years and still thinks her husband is a pretty okay guy most of the time.

Lorraine Rothman died a couple of weeks ago, though the mainstream press is only now publishing obituaries.

Who was Lorraine Rothman?

Menstrual extraction was, and is, truly revolutionary. Using a simple device, which Rothman made with

women could perform early abortions on one another and on themselves. With simple training, the procedure was safe and effective, and it was used by women in the days before legal abortion in this country to help one another terminate unwanted pregnancies.

Rothman was also a pioneer of the movement, radical in the 1960s and 70s, to teach women to look at and be familiar with their own sexual and reproductive organs. With her friend Carol Downer, she established the Los Angeles Feminist Women's Health Center; later she wrote Menopause Myths & Facts, which argued--correctly, as it turned out--that "hormone replacement therapy" was unhealthy and unnecessary for women undergoing normal menopause.

Rothman's legacy is especially pertinent nowadays, for reasons that should be obvious. Witness, for example, what is happening now in Nicaragua, where abortion is now illegal, with no exceptions for a woman's health:

And of course González is not the only one.

As Echidne of the Snakes points out,

Criminalizing doctors for performing safe--and necessary--medical procedures creates an atmosphere of fear and reluctance around those same safe--and necessary--procedures; in such an atmosphere, women die. links to evidence that some anti-abortion activists will argue that

which is clearly not true; aside from emergencies like ectopic pregnancies, there's the very real and ugly fact that women *will* do dangerous and even fatal things to abort unwanted pregnancies.

Which is why women like Lorraine Rothman were, and are, heroines.

Bitch_PhD thinks more people should know how to perform menstrual extraction.

Apparently the head of Warner Brothers has declared that WB won't be making any more movies with women in the lead. And you all thought this systemic sexism thing was just a myth! Ha! (Notice that the url is "catfight with girls" and the headline uses the word "bitchslaps"--one could probably come up with a more dismissively sexist way to title the story but it would take some thought). Gloria Allread summarizes the issue in a nutshell:

Obviously all decent human beings will be boycotting the WB. On the upside, it's fall, and we should all be catching up on our reading instead.

So by way of making this task easier for everyone--because I am nothing if not a giver--here are a few links to Recommended Feminist Reading for all of you. I hereby declare that no one is qualified to argue about feminism unless and until they've read everything on these lists, okay?

First, normal British women talk about their favorite formative feminist reading. Biggest winner? Simone de Beauvoir, specifically The Second Sex, which badly needs a new and better translation but is nonetheless my own personal favorite feminist book in the entire world.

Second, a forthcoming book that, for once, looks at rape from the rapist's point of view: Joanna Bourke's new Rape: Sex, Violence, History. (If you're at all interested in cultural studies, her other books are excellent, by the way). From a review in the Guardian:

Just in case it isn't clear, not naturalizing rape means not talking about it as if it's just some force of nature that will inevitably "happen" to women if they aren't careful enough. Someone is doing the raping. That someone is usually men. Stopping rape means dealing with rapists, not victims. The end.

But not really; I've got one more book to recommend. I'm looking forward to reading Sisterhood, Interrupted, which is a history of the women's movement that, according to reviews I've read, puts to rest the idea that somehow there's a new generational divide that's somehow destroying or disrupting feminism. Deborah Siegel's book reportedly shows how feminist disagreement over supposedly "new" issues (e.g. sex) has been around since the beginning of the movement, and how anti-feminist critics have picked up on these conversations to present them as "infighting" in order to misrepresent and undermine feminism as a whole. If you're inclined to buy into the argument that so-called Radical Feminazis (or whatever you want to call them) are ruining the movement for the Good Feminists Who Don't Hate Men, you really should pick up this book.

Because like I said, I forbid you from discussing feminism until you have.

Bitch_PhD is TOTALLY NOT KIDDING. And yes, this will be on the test.