Quotation fragment from this article in which Andy Rosenthal defends the NYT’s hiring of Bill Kristol as a regular op-ed columnist. Welp, that would make ten columnists, as I count them. Eight men and two women, and only one of the women, Gail Collins, could fairly be described as liberal. Because the NYT has”this weird fear of opposing views.”
I saw the new documentary, “The Business of Being Born,” at the Tribeca Film Festival. It will soon screen in Manhattan at the IFC theater on Sixth Avenue in the Village and, I assume, elsewhere with a DVD likely to be released in a short while. It’s a probing challenge to medical practices that often are more based on economic considerations and convenience (the doctors’).
Here’s one take, from the review by Faye Penn in New York magazine (full review available here):
Ricki Lake’s documentary, The Business of Being Born, features her most revealing role yet: naked in the bathtub of her West Village apartment, delivering her second child, Owen. She wants to call attention to what she sees as the shortcomings of giving birth in hospitals, which she believes push for a Cesarean too readily: Some New York hospitals’ Cesarean-section rate tops 40 percent. Lake wasn’t always the Al Gore of natural births:only after the drug-assisted delivery of her son Milo at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt did she look into alternative practices, which led to the tub birth that gave her”an indescribable high.”But being filmed doing it?”It’s not flattering in any way,”admits Lake, 38, whose movie will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. For the event,”My publicist said I needed to be in the best shape possible, so I just lost 24 pounds. I’d look pretty good naked in a tub now.”Still,”to this day,”says Lake,”my assistant talks about how she had to clean up my bathtub afterward.”
-Ralph Michael Stein
Read this post at Journey to Ithaca. And, see also.
Accessible here. The abstract says:
Security underwear is a protective cover for female genital and anal opening against illicit sex and risk of contracting venereal diseases. It is made up of a unit for the genital which has an opening for urine passage and another unit for anal opening which allows free passage of stool. The cover for the genital is further composed of urine receiving channel and flaps to cover the said opening. The cover for anal opening has a lid which is hinged to a frame around anal opening which is in turn fastened to the back side portion of the belt. The two units are connected at the crotch. The channel, the flap and the lid, each opens and closes on its own by spring action. This enables the wearer to urinate and pass stool without taking off the protective covers. The unit for the genital can be worn either in combination with the anal cover or without it. In deployment the unit for genital cover is fastened by a strap to the front portion of the belt. All components of the device are made of materials very hard to cut or break. Padding is used to make the protective cover comfortable to wear.
Here is one of the associative drawings:
Via here. Ugh. How about someone invents and patents a scary, physically intrusive device that keeps men’s gonads away from women.
Despite reports like this and this, the Snopes account is quite different. Via the Hathor Legacy. Naturally crap like this is for sale, but obviously feminists are supposed to be intimidated into silence about it.
Cartoon from here.
–Ann Bartow
As this NYT article, “A One-Way Ticket To Disaster,” aptly demonstrates, one of the only areas of the entertainment industry where women are proportionately represented (at a minimum) is in “scandal coverage.” The story is even accompanied by a “timeline of disasters” framed by these words:
“So many careers ran off the rails in 2007. And didn’t we enjoy the view?”
No, some of us don’t find “displays of personal collapse” all that edifying. And we can’t help noticing the messages that are being communicated: If you get fat, grow older, or simply wear the wrong clothes, your career and maybe even your life is over. Remember actor Tara Reid? Want to read about her “bloat,” her substance abuse challenges, her difficulties finding work now that she is over 30, or her “botched plastic surgery”? Go Fug Yourself has an entire blogroll category dedicated to tearing her apart. Here’s the text of one of the nicer posts:
Not too bloated, nothing popping out, hanging out, or trying to escape, no mascara dribbling down her face like strained carrots from the mouth of a baby… Yes, okay, I still think she’s lying about not getting a facial tweak or three when she went in to drain those godawful sandbags, but on the whole, it looks like her resolution to be less terrifying has indeed taken hold.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s start a slow clap for Ms. Tara Reid, potentially (please forgive my reluctance to go full-bore on the optimism) a guttersnipe no more.
That’s the kind of thing women in the entertainment industry can look forward to if they become successful enough to be noticed by the media. While there probably isn’t any way to quantify the phenomena, it’s certainly my impression that women get hit a lot harder than men by “journalists,” and I’m not the only one. And while they are at the extreme end of a very nasty and superficial continuum, entertainers are not the only women who are made to suffer to avoid nonconformity.
I recently had a startling conversation with a group of college aged women about feminism, and their impression that feminism had accomplished little in terms of deemphasizing the importance of convention feminine female attractiveness. They felt that investing a substantial amount of time, money and effort into looking stereotypically “pretty” is a requirement for both social and career success, and that this message is almost universal. Where, they wondered, is the mainstream feminist response to Go Fug Yourself values? (Go Fug Yourself is far from the only misogynistic celebrity site but it is notable, regrettably in my view, for having a following among some women who define themselves as feminists, see e.g. links in this post). As this case demonstrated, employers have a legal right to require female employees to submit to the trappings of femininity, which are if not defined, at least communicated and legitimized by the “celebrity journalism,” that dominates tabloids, the Internet, and also the self proclaimed Paper of Record.
Feminism is risky to generalize about, but I feel very confident asserting that it does not require make-up, thinness, buffness, well coiffed hair, high heels, expensive clothes, hairlessness or youth, and it does not support anyone or anything that mocks or derogates women based on their appearances. Yet somehow this message is not being delivered to women who are very anxious to hear it.
–Ann Bartow
The SC State Board of Education has withheld approval of two biology texts on the basis of creationist objections. Unfortunately, we all saw this coming, though how to fight it us still unclear. Via South Carolinians for Science Education (SCSE) over here’s a post that gives the details; below is an excerpt:
… The two books held back for further study were the Miller & Levine”Biology”(Prentice Hall) and the Raven, Johnson, Losos & Singer”Biology”(Glencoe/McGraw Hill). Both of these titles enjoy sterling reputations nationwide; the latter is a college-level text suggested for use in HS advanced placement courses. Both texts were approved in September by the state’s high school biology textbook evaluation committee, a panel of 11 educators, most with 20+ years of experience in the classroom.
During October and November, the texts approved by the state Evaluation Committee were sent out for public review to 28 sites – mostly colleges and universities with teacher education programs. It was during this period of time, that Ms. Kristin Maguire (or one of her colleagues) apparently contacted two outside referees to review the texts, a Dr. Joseph Henson and a Dr. Horace D. Skipper.
Skipper and Henson are young-earth creationists. Dr. Skipper is listed on the Institute for Creation Research website among the colleagues of Carl Fliermans, an ICR”Associated Scientist.”Henson is on the faculty at Bob Jones University. …
I know this isn’t a feminist issue per se, but I felt compelled to blog about it because it needs attention, which it probably won’t get from main stream media sources that want to write South Carolinians off as a bunch of hopelessly ignorant crackers. Creationists have a long history of treating women like second class citizens, so I anticipate the worst, in terms of more linearly gender related “reforms.”
I’d also like to note the following from “Thoughts From Kansas“:
… A semi-regular theme of TfK’s coverage of polling on evolution is the effect of gender on views of evolution. A Pew poll a year ago found that women were much less likely than men to accept evolution, even when they controlled for education, religion, age, and income.
Which is why I was surprised that the major study of views of evolution published in last week’s Science found no such effect. Gender does have an influence on religion, but when you control for those sorts of causal interactions (using more sophisticated techniques than I expect Pew attempted), the pure effect of gender is almost non-existent. Men are significantly more likely to accept evolution in a statistical sense, but the difference is so small as to be practically unimportant. …
–Ann Bartow
Heather Armstrong has a post here, and her husband Jon has one here. Liz Spikol’s contribution is here.
No, Virgil won’t be there, but Dr. Gregg Bloche will. On Sunday, Dr. Bloche, senior health care policy adviser to the Obama campaign, will be speaking in Columbia, SC. If you’re in the area, come and seek answers to your health policy concerns. For more information, go here.
-Susan Kuo
It’s a few days early, but I figured I’d try something fun here in lieu of public resolutions. I encourage other feminist law professor bloggers to join in with their own. And, if I knew how to start one of those lawprawf internet memes, I’d try that, but I don’t, so I won’t (unless someone elsewhere somehow picks this up, which they certainly can).
Here I’m going to give you four headlines for the upcoming year, somewhat related to being a feminist law professor. They fall in the bolded categories below.
Headline I’m most fearful of seeing in 2008: Justice [Stevens or Souter] [Dies or Retires]; Bush to Appoint One Last Justice Before Leaving Office.
Headline I most want to see in 2008: Hyde Amendment Repealed; Medicaid to Fund Abortions for All Enrolled Women Who Want One.
Headline I most expect to see in 2008: First [African American or Woman] Elected President of the United States.
Headline I least expect to see in 2008: In Stunning Reversal of Long-Standing Trend, Abortion Clinics Now Available in All Counties In United States Making Abortion Easily Accessible for All Women.
May all your feminist dreams come true in 2008! (And all your feminist nightmares be avoided!)
Happy New Year!
– David S. Cohen
From the AFP:
Uruguay on Thursday became the first Latin American country to recognize gay civil unions, after President Tabare Vazquez signed a law granting certain legal rights to cohabiting couples of any gender.
The new law guarantees heterosexual or homosexual couples who have lived together continuously for more than five years social benefits enjoyed by married couples such as joint property ownership and hereditary rights.
The text recognizes “two people — of any sex, identity, orientation or sexual option — who maintain an emotional relationship sexual in nature, that is exclusive, stable and permanent, without being united in matrimony.” * * * Uruguay’s law takes effect nationally at the start of 2008.
The full AFP article is here.
-Bridget Crawford
Albuquerque has seen a rash of abortion clinic violence in the past few weeks. One clinic was burned to the ground, another was set ablaze but suffered minor damage, and a third, a family planning clinic, had its windows broken.
Although major violence against clinics has decreased over the years, Dr. Curtis Boyd, the surgeon whose clinic was destroyed in Albuquerque, summed up the situation perfectly:
“After working on the abortion reform movement for 40 years, I wake up and I still can’t believe we’re still where we are. When will it stop? . . . I’m going to have to accept the fact that I’m going to die before the rights of women are secured, and the violence against providers and staff comes to an end.”
– David S. Cohen
While visiting family in Brooklyn, I took a trip to Manhattan to show my 2 year old Rockefeller Center at Christmas. We all had a blast, especially the little one who warmed up to the crowds and had fun watching the ice skating, toy soldiers, and especially the snow-people display at Sax.
Being the curious people we are, my wife, my father-in-law, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to explore the American Girl Place, which was across the street from Sax. Simply put, it was hell. Now, I can certainly imagine worse places that might exist – a Barbie store highlighting the “Math Is Hard” era would definitely qualify.
But a four floor department store hawking expensive dolls with matching clothing (for kid and doll!), advice books, makeup, and accessories is pretty bad. Add in the story line of empowerment of young girls (“American Girl celebrates a girl’s inner star – the little whisper inside that encourages her to stand tall, reach high, and dream big [and to] grow up to be the women who make a difference tomorrow.”), the store is even worse. When empowerment means rampant consumerism, there’s much to be questioned. But consumerism is endemic to almost any social movement in this country, so alone it’s not enough to constitute what I’m calling hell.
What made the store hell was the combination of consumerism and race. How did race enter the equation? Almost all of the families shopping were white, while almost all of the people employed by the store were black. The racial divide was most trenchant at the service portions of the store — at the Doll Cafe (where tea is served for the girls and their dolls) and the Doll Hospital (for dolls needing repairs). But the worst scene was the long line of white girls between the ages of 6 and 12 waiting for the eight adult black women at the American Girl Hair Salon. Once the girls got to the front of the line, they had the pleasure of having adult African-American women style and cut their dolls’ hair (yes, their dolls‘ hair, not their own hair). The store teaches, through the obvious racial lines throughout, that adult African-Americans are there to pamper young white girls’ dolls. That, to me, is hell.
There’s certainly immense value in teaching young girls, through the variety of dolls available (for a hefty price!), about diversity, both ethnic- and gender-based, and in encouraging young girls to choose their own path in life. And American Girls does that to some extent. And the company has, in the past, stood up to right-wing anti-choice groups.
But, there’s no value in empowerment through belittling racist consumerism.
– David S. Cohen
In this post Sokari at Black Looks recommends two books:
A Citizen’s Reflections on Race, Violence and Power by Cynthia Boaz
Remembering Celia, 19 & enslaved: hanged Friday 21st, 1855
While we’re on the topic of international news, Women’s eNews has a good article today about Women in Black, a group of Israeli women who have protested the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land for the last 20 years. Tomorrow marks the twentieth anniversary of their weekly Friday protests.
Their protests are important for highlighting that there are diverse opinions about the issue among Israelis as well as for showing that women can be active participants in the dispute, especially in an area of the world not known for challenging traditional notions of women’s roles. From the article:
A sociology professor at Israeli’s Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva disagrees. Sara Helman says Women in Black blazed a trail by crossing national boundaries during the first Palestinian uprising and calling for an end to suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians.
“You can live in Israel your daily life as an Israeli Jew perfectly and forget” about the occupation, she says. “What Women in Black did, they didn’t let the issue of occupation be ignored . . . They brought it to the fore. They brought it to public attention.”
A 1997 study that Helman co-authored with Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Tamar Rapoport found that Women in Black’s protest methods “embodied an open challenge to deeply ingrained notions of femininity in Israel” and offering an alternative interpretation of a woman’s place in Israeli politics and society.
Each woman, they found, created a new space that challenged and subverted the political, social and cultural categories that relegated women to marginality.
“They brought women’s bodies into the public sphere,” Helman says. “They stood there in the public sphere outside, quietly, silently with only signs that said ‘Stop the Occupation.’ The only means to protest was their bodies. That was also path breaking.”
Keep up the amazing work!
– David S. Cohen
Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s Former Prime Minister, was killed this morning. CNN has live news here.
-Bridget Crawford
A post about underwear. Below is an excerpt:
… I discovered accidentally, about 10 years ago, that men feel entitled to wear comfortable underwear that covers their entire ass. The whole thing.
Can you believe it? They feel entitled to comfortable underwear that covers their whole ass. Both cheeks entirely. They don’t feel they should shrink their ass – they feel the makers of underwear should provide enough fabric to serve its function. I’m just saying – that’s a different relationship than women have with our skivvies….
From this post by Laina Dawes at blogher.com:
As with many holidays, there is quite a fair bit of criticism about Kwanzaa, partly because it a relatively new holiday. There is a fair bit of controversy surrounding founder [Maulana (Ron)] Karenga and his ties to a Black Nationalist party during the Civil Rights era, during which he reportedly held some Anti-Semitic beliefs. One of the other issues is that Kwanzaa is thought to be a ‘secular’ holiday – that only blacks can celebrate it (on a side note, when researching for this post it was amazing how many websites I came across that called the holiday racist – and some other rather unflattering language).
There is a growing concern that Kwanzaa is becoming too commercialized which is more of a concern than you would think, as Kwanzaa is considered a cultural practice, which in theory no one should profit from. Also, commercialization goes against the seven principles that Kwanzaa is founded on. Some naysayers have charged that the holiday is grounded in Marxist principles, and while that might be a tad harsh, there are certain trains of thought within the holiday that do have a more ‘socialist’ bent than other cultural observances. But like many other culturally-grounded holidays, it is open to anyone to celebrate not only the holiday, but to observe the seven principles in that the holiday is centered on. The focus is that the holiday should be respected for what it is – a time for unification and the reaffirmation of values geared to build self-empowerment within the African Diaspora.
From President Bush’s official White House Kwanzaa greetings:
Established in 1966, Kwanzaa is celebrated each year as an opportunity for African Americans to honor African traditions of family, community, and culture. During the seven days leading up to the New Year, millions of individuals reflect on the past and renew their commitment to the principles of Kwanzaa — unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
As family and friends gather to celebrate Kwanzaa, our citizens are reminded of the many African Americans who have contributed their talent and strength to this great Nation. I commend those observing this holiday for taking pride in your rich heritage. May the coming year be filled with the blessings of health and happiness.
I’m hoping to avoid what Christina at feministe calls the”We’re So Lefty But We Can Make Fun of Kwanzaa Anyways”spirit today.
-Bridget Crawford
From cnn.com, this video report on “Love, Marriage, Divorce and a New Marital Property Law in Japan.”
-Ralph Michael Stein
Earlier this month, I read an opinion column in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The author, a fundraiser at a small college, articulated the difference between leadership and management:
While some elements of good leadership and good management overlap, I think the two are fundamentally different concepts. A leader operates on a higher plane, providing inspiration, vision, commitment, and passion. A manager is more grounded, offering stability, solutions, equity. A leader dispenses wisdom; a manager, advice. A leader asks, “What if?”; a manager says, “How so?”. A leader lights fires; a manager stokes the flames. Simplistic differentiations, perhaps, but that’s how I define them.
You may assume it’s easier to become a good manager than a good leader, though I’m no living proof of that. I don’t think my years of management experience have made me a better manager. Perhaps that’s because I have little patience for sweaty details, for personality conflicts and petty office politics and budget adjustments and process re-engineering and schedule monitoring. I need help with all that. It’s mighty important, mind you, but a big part of me sees all of that as pure tedium.
The “what if” vs. “how so” distinction has poetic appeal, but in workplaces – many non-elite law schools included – small staffs and budgets mean that administrators need to be leaders and vice versa. It is fabulous to have a visionary Director of Admissions, for example, but the person at the top of the pyramid sometimes has to read some admissions files, too. A Director of Career Services can spout lofty rhetoric about expanding employment opportunities for graduates, but that may mean making lots of phone calls to cajole employers into showing up at the on-campus recruiting fair. An Associate Dean may articulate “new” ideas about the future of legal education, but sometimes his or her vision needs to be applied to getting that sink on the third floor fixed – fast. Why? Because good leadership and management of small organizations usually go together. If we have no idea how things actually get done, all the vision in the world won’t inspire others to follow. And if we only see details and not a bigger, different picture, we will always do things the same way.
Another potential pitfall of the leadership/management distinction is gender stereotyping. Workplace culture can encourage men to “light fires” (e.g., come up with ideas) and require women to “stoke the flames” (e.g., do committee work, execute others’ plans, do the “housekeeping” work for the school). We lack enough employment models in which women and men do both.
The full Chronicle article is here.
-Bridget Crawford
Essay by this title here, via Witchy-woo.
Edited to add: If you are a Supposedly Liberal Dood, the concept of a woman being sold is actually quite hilarious, apparently.
–Ann Bartow
This. About which NY Magazine notes:
Hey, it turns out that despite their policy of sending out dismissive rejection letters to any women who dared to apply for animation jobs, golden-age Walt Disney Pictures was actually totally on women’s sides. How can we tell? This long-lost 1946 animated Disney film, The Story of Menstruation, a Disney/Kotex co-production, which used an adorable, footless animated lass to set young ladies of the forties straight on the real story behind the mysterious changes their bodies were going through. Without Disney, our mothers and grandmothers never would have learned that:
1. The vagina is a long, antiseptic tube leading from the uterus to … somewhere!
2. “Once you stop feeling sorry for yourself and take Those Days in your stride, you’ll find it’s easier to remain even-tempered.”
3. “There’s nothing strange nor mysterious about menstruation. All life is built on cycles,” and menstruation’s part of this one: Baby => Young woman => Menstruation => Dancing with a boy => A big white wedding dress => Baby.
4. Menstruation has nothing to do with sex.
–Ann Bartow
A must read at Leiter’s Law School Reports.
Bonfire of the Princesses at Barbara’s Blog
Oh, Oh, Oh Socially Conscious Hip Hop at Angry For A Reason
From the Heart… at Angry Black Bitch
From the Husqvarna Owner’s Manual at Painful Discharge
Happy Winter Solstice at Reclusive Leftist
You’re Consenting To Being Raped For Money at The Guardian
Scoldmas: Rosanna Capolingua Can Bite Me at Hoyden About Town
Mrs. Claus Strikes Again at One Good Thing
From the Feminist Weekly News:
The omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and sent to the White House yesterday includes $75,000,000 for programs that aid Afghan women and girls. The final language in the bill also requires that the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA), and Afghan women-led nonprofit organizations receive funding. The final bill restores the language originally passed by the House. The Senate language watered down the House-passed language requiring funding for Afghan women and girls and eliminated the AIHRC and the MOWA altogether as recipients of this bill.
Second row, center — that’s how I feel after grading exams all day.
-Susan Kuo
My Internet connection is so slow all I can do is link. (I’m someplace so rural there isn’t any DSL or cable. Dial-up stinks!)
–Ann Bartow
The New York Times reported back in 2005 that up to 20% of college students were abusing prescription drugs like Ritalin and Adderall to get through papers and exams. My unscientific guess is that the percentage among law students is probably higher than that. But professors abusing prescription narcolepsy drugs? That’s news to me, courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s report on a study by two researchers at Cambridge: “While caffeine reigns as the supreme drug of the professoriate, some university faculty members have started popping ‘smart’ pills to enhance their mental energy and ability to work long hours.” The full Chronicle article (available here; subscription site – sorry) goes on to make the analogy between professional athletes and junior academics:
Revelations about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball have stirred public interest recently, and [one of the Cambridge researchers] sees parallels between athletes and assistant professors.
“You’re expected to publish and teach, and the stakes are high. So young professors have to work their tails off to get that golden nugget of tenure.”
Students and faculty who are jazzed on Red Bull, caffeine, ADD meds or narcolepsy drugs are trying to stay awake. The drugs may or may not enhance anything more than concentration. But if HGH made more likely that students could get high grades or for junior profs could get those elusive Top 20 law review article placements, I can imagine lines forming now.
-Bridget Crawford
Bridget’s mother is one of the smartest people she knows. But her mother often proclaims,”If I had a brain, I’d be dangerous,”after making a mistake.
Tony’s mother dropped out of high school and later earned her G.E.D. Yet, she had a life-long love of reading. When his parents bought a set of encyclopedias when he and his sister were in elementary school, they consulted them occasionally, but his mother read them from cover to cover—just for the pure enjoyment of it. Nonetheless, she was wont to say, “I would forget my head if it weren’t attached,” and “If I had another brain, I’d be a half-wit.”
Do fathers say these things, too?
-Bridget Crawford & Tony Infanti
Abstract:
This article examines the drastic organizational changes that have taken place in law firms and law schools in the last thirty years and how they have seriously disadvantaged women.
Women have been almost 50% of law school graduating classes nationally for the last fifteen to twenty years. They have graduated with all the traditional indicia of success, including law review participation and high honors. Many have been judicial clerks, although not in proportion to their numbers and academic success. However, women have not progressed in proportionate numbers to the highest ranks of the legal profession – equity partnerships and law firms and tenured full professorships in law schools.
In the 1960’s, it was seven years up or out to equity partner in law firms and to tenured full professor in law schools. Today, many large firms have extended the partnership track to nine to twelve years to a new category of non-equity partner, with another three to five years to equity partner. Billable hours did not exist in the 1960s; they are now between 2,000 and 2,500 and growing.
A young woman graduating from law school at twenty-five loses her child bearing years if she goes for equity partner. Successful professional men are married with children. Successful professional women are too often unmarried and without children. Women who want a life are presented with several new options at law firms. They can go part-time, they can become permanent Associates, non-equity Partners, Of Counsel, Legal Specialists, non-partner Administrators, or members of the new expanding category of Contract Lawyers. Agencies now supply hundreds of temporary lawyers to large firms.
At the same time there are fewer and fewer equity partners, thereby upping the “earnings per equity partner.” The gap between the highest paid lawyers in a firm and the lowest paid has grown larger.
Law schools have also changed drastically in the last 30 years. Full time faculty now consist of a limited number of tenured and tenure track professors with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary and research expertise, growing numbers of full time specialized clinical, legal writing, and other skills teachers, expanding numbers of lower level administrators with some teaching responsibilities, and exploding numbers of adjuncts teaching both substantive and skills courses.
Status, money, and job security go to tenured and tenure track teachers. There are strong indications that this category is reverting back to being a white, male preserve. An individual will be hired as an entry level tenure-track Assistant Professor only with an already established publication record. Few women with family responsibilities can manage this. Additionally, highly qualified women of all colors are being steered to lower paying, lower status, less secure contract and at will positions.
I hosted a birthday party for my friend K. last night and it was terrific. I ended the party with more food and wine than I had when I started, because everybody brought so much stuff. That’s how my friends are, and it’s one of many reasons I love them. They infuse a lot of joy into my life here in South Carolina, and I’m awfully grateful for them. Hoping all y’all are similarly blessed.
I’ll be traveling again through the second week in January, and at times I won’t have Internet access. So apologies in advance if comments take a long time to make it through moderation.
If you will be at the AALS, try to find me and say hello at the Gala! Or stop by the South Carolina reception for some free food. Can’t promise grits, though.
Warmest wishes,
Ann Bartow
This is a copy of a poster distributed earlier this semester at an East Coast college campus (not our own). Our reaction to the poster was generally positive: young women are making their personal pleasure a central aspect of their lives; women are encouraging each other to learn about their bodies; women are creating women-only space to discuss issues of importance. And who can be against “self-love” and “self-respect?” Not these FeministLawProfs!
Does this poster tells us anything about feminism today? We agreed that, in the main, this poster tells us that women interested in women’s issues are alive and well on college campuses. It is never too early (or too late) to claim the importance of one’s own sexual pleasure. Women in particular need to learn and re-learn this lesson, because we are socially conditioned to elevate men’s pleasure and preferences over our own.
But one’s comfort level with attending a sex-toy party, talking about a sex-toy party or even looking at the advertising for a sex-toy party should not be a proxy for “open-mindedness,” “progressiveness” or “feminism.” It is perfectly reasonable to feel uncomfortable walking into a roomful of strangers — even if they are all women — for a discussion of sexual techniques and personal satisfaction. Discomfort does not mean you are a “prude” or lacking some sort of special feminist credential.
We raise several questions. How is this type of “advertising” on a college campus perceived by the students themselves? Do students’ views of the poster differ by gender? If so, how should women and men be educated about the meaning of a women’s “sex-toy party” on campus? Do “sex-toy parties” contribute to a hypersexualized atmosphere? Are women (and men) flourishing in this atmosphere? Are they feeling pressured to be more sexually adventuresome than they otherwise might want to be? What is the relationship between a sex-toy party and centralizing women’s pleasure? How does moving a sex-toy party into the mainstream of campus discourse impact the choices that women and men make?
BTW, we’ve blocked out the name of the school where the flyer appeared because we want to focus on the ideas issues raised by the poster, not the particular college involved. Feminism can inform many different viewpoints. Sex-toy parties exist, but an “approved” feminist “party line” does not. We don’t have conclusive answers to any of the questions, and we don’t even agree between ourselves on possible hypotheses.
-Bridget Crawford and Audrey Rogers
From the FLP mailbox:
Hamline University’s School of Law is at a propitious moment in its 35-year history. The next Dean will be asked to build on the law school’s qualitative strengths and to provide comprehensive leadership that will result in transformative institutional growth. With over 700 students and a full-time faculty of 43, the law school is an integral part of Hamline University, located midway between the downtown centers of the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. As Minnesota’s first institution of higher education, founded by Methodist pioneers, Hamline is a high-quality, nationally ranked, comprehensive university with more than 4,500 students.
True to its founding vision, the School of Law stresses ethics, civic responsibility, and justice for all people, while reinforcing the principles of fine teaching, extensive scholarship, and active engagement for its faculty. A strongly student-centered culture continues to provide a supportive and collaborative learning environment for student success. In 2007, Hamline’s bar passage rate was 93.4 percent, placing its students second among all Minnesota law schools. Distinctive educational initiatives at the law school include the Dispute Resolution Institute (now ranked third nationally by US News & World Report), the Health Law Institute, five ABA-approved international study programs, and the highly regarded Journal of Law and Religion.
As a part of Hamline’s academic leadership team, the Dean will have an opportunity to engage a new university-wide strategic plan and a fresh alignment of Hamline’s graduate and professional schools. At the same time, the Dean’s focused leadership will be expected to result in improved qualitative benchmarks for the law school, a significantly enhanced philanthropic base, further clarification of the law school’s distinctive vision, an integration of its diversity, and the further strengthening of the law school’s sense of community..
A complete Search Profile is available at www.academic-search.com/search.html and additional information about Hamline and the School of Law may be found at www.hamline.edu. Prospective candidates are encouraged to review the Search Profile and to consult the outline presented there for the application process.
Just the other day, a friend of mine was dubbed ‘smart’ by her 10-year-old son’s classmate because she successfully assisted her son in completing his math homework. The complimentary context went something like this:
My friend’s son’s friend: You’re smart. Must be because you’re not married.
My friend: Ummm… huh?
My friend’s son’s friend: If you were married, your husband would do the thinking for you.
***
Stinkin’ thinkin’?
-Susan Kuo
Samantha Power, one of Senator Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, spoke at the law school last week about the crisis in Darfur. I blogged about it here.
-Susan Kuo
From the NY Times:
Each day about 1,700 juniors at an East Coast college log on to Facebook.com to accumulate”friends,”compare movie preferences, share videos and exchange cybercocktails and kisses. Unwittingly, these students have become the subjects of academic research.
To study how personal tastes, habits and values affect the formation of social relationships (and how social relationships affect tastes, habits and values), a team of researchers from Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, are monitoring the Facebook profiles of an entire class of students at one college, which they declined to name because it could compromise the integrity of their research. ***
[I]t is Facebook’s role as a petri dish for the social sciences : sociology, psychology and political science : that particularly excites some scholars, because the site lets them examine how people, especially young people, are connected to one another, something few data sets offer, the scholars say.
The full NYT article is here.
FeministLawProfs previously has noted points of intersection between and among Facebook, law and the legal profession (e.g., here, here and here). Just as these social scientists are using Facebook to study human connections, legal scholars could use Facebook to explore a variety of questions:
-Bridget Crawford (here, here and here)
Essay here at the f-word in which Rosalyn Ball looks at how girls and boys toys are segregated along strict gender lines. Below is an excerpt:
… There have been various authentic scientific studies on these subjects but let me give you a few of my own experiences on one visit to Toys R Us. There is a very obvious area designated for girls and these aisles are a sea of candy pink plastic and fluff. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that what can be found in these aisles is make-up kits, dolls, dressing up clothes including ‘Dream Dazzlers’, angels, princesses (all pink) and a witch outfit (black with pink trim!). In these aisles I found many ‘baby’ dolls and many ‘teen’ fashion dolls, all packaged in pink. In a less pink aisle I found a play-kitchen and a play-ironing board. These items were not in pink boxes but unsurprisingly had pictures of girls on the boxes. So to recap, girls toys reflected motherhood, domestic chores, physical appearance, passive activities and PINK!
To the boy’s aisles and the contrast is marked. Most products, like the pink in the girl’s aisles, are distinguished by their ‘boyish’ red, black and dark blue colours. There are cars, wrestling figures, toolkits with only pictures of boys on the boxes, weapons like the very unpleasant and large ‘Ninja Sword’ with sound effects. Costumes included a fireman, Power Rangers, cowboy and pirate hats, ‘Fantastic 4′ character outfits complete with rippling padded biceps and six-pack. These aisles suggest boys play involves mechanics, action, fighting and athleticism. …
There will be a Hot Topic panel on “Reproductive Justice after Carhart” at the AALS Annual Meeting in New York. Here is the information:
Friday, January 4, 2008
10:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Petit Trianon, 3 rd floor, New York Hilton
Moderators: Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford Law School
Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School
Panelists: Michael C. Dorf, Columbia University School of Law
Reva B. Siegel, Yale Law School
Kenji Yoshino, Yale Law School
Angela P. Harris, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
This roundtable will discuss Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision upholding the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Panelists will focus on the ways that Carhart has emerged from and is reshaping debate over questions of reproductive justice in popular movements, the academy, state legislatures, and the courts.Carhart suggests a new understanding of the state’ s interest in regulating abortion, as well as a new understanding of the abortion right itself. Discussion will explore how the abortion right might be grounded in principles of sexual freedom and gender equality. Drawing on examples of abortion regulation now in state legislatures, the roundtable will examine the constituent elements of the government’s interest in regulating abortion, including the government’s asserted interest in protecting women from psychological harms associated with the abortion decision and the equities of imposing more extensive and value-laden informed consent requirements, as many states are now contemplating. The group will also discuss changes in the structure of abortion-related litigation, such as the distinction between as-applied and facial attacks on abortion regulations, especially as this bears on the requirement of a health exception.
Today’s entry would be a site called “Teen Pissing” offering “Pee Free Pissing Videos Piss On You…” Pretty sure I’m going to pass. Not going to link, either. Bleh.
That’s the first sentence of this article and I hope it is true. The media coverage of this case has been very confusing; compare this with this, this and this. Initially it seemed like press and blog attention was making the situation worse for the woman, but in the long run, if the pardon really happens, it seems to have helped.
–Ann Bartow
