Available For Free Download – “Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm” By Diana Russell.

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

againstpornography97.jpg You can download Diana Russell’s book here at a site hosted by NoPornNorthHampton. Via Sinister Girl.

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Rinsing Out The Sexism

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

This “collectible figurine” is on sale here:
spidey1.jpg

I wouldn’t buy this alternative universe version either, but it makes the point pretty well, I think. Read Amanda’s post about all this at Pandagon.
spidey2.jpg

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That Warm and Fuzzy Culture Of Life

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Eric Rudolph taunts his victims still:

Victims of Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion extremist who pulled off a series of bombings across the South, say he is taunting them from deep within the nation’s most secure federal prison, and authorities say there is little they can do to stop him.

Rudolph, who was captured after a five-year manhunt and pleaded guilty in deadly bombings at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and a Birmingham abortion clinic, is serving life in prison at the “Supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colo.

Housed in the most secure part of the prison, he has no computer and little contact with the outside world aside from writing letters.

But Rudolph’s long essays have been posted on the Internet by a supporter who maintains an Army of God website. The Army of God is the same loose-knit group that Rudolph claimed to represent in letters sent after the blasts.

In one piece, Rudolph seeks to justify violence against abortion clinics by arguing that Jesus would condone “militant action in defense of the innocent.”

In another essay about his sentencing, Rudolph mocks former abortion clinic nurse Emily Lyons, who was nearly killed in the 1998 bombing in Birmingham, and her husband, Jeff. He uses pseudonyms rather than naming the couple, but there is no doubt he is describing them.

Rudolph recalls how Emily Lyons, in court, described the pain of her injuries and made an obscene gesture at Rudolph as she showed off a finger mangled by the blast. Rudolph writes: “It was a great speech and one that the denizens of freedom should be proud to enshrine in a museum somewhere. Perhaps they could put it next to MLKs ‘I Have a Dream.’ They could call it ‘I Have a Middle Finger.'”

Jeff Lyons said he doesn’t often look at the website, which has had some items posted for nearly two years. But he said he is worried that Rudolph’s messages could incite someone to violence against abortion providers.

“He’s still sending out harassing communication. He’s still hurting us,” Lyons said.

Diane Derzis, who owns the Birmingham clinic that was bombed, killing a police officer, said someone should stop Rudolph.

Bureau of Prisons regulations give wardens the right to reject correspondence by an inmate for “the protection of the public, or if it might facilitate criminal activity.” That includes material “which may lead to the use of physical violence.”

The Bureau of Prisons failed to respond to repeated inquiries from The Associated Press about whether Rudolph’s writings violate prison rules.

But U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, who helped prosecute Rudolph for the Alabama bombing, said there is nothing the prison can do to restrict Rudolph or the supporter who keeps posting his writings, anti-abortion activist Donald Spitz of Chesapeake, Va.

“An inmate does not lose his freedom of speech,” she said.

Spitz said he corresponds regularly with Rudolph and posts some of his essays because of their shared desire to end abortion. As for those who might be offended, he said, “They don’t have to look at it on the website.” …

Via the Reproductive Rights Prof Blog.

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“Larry Flynt: The Right To Be Left Alone”

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Text of this post from this protest site:

…This latest documentary on Flynt has just been released as the “center frame” film at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, sponsored by Duke University, The New York Times and HBO. There were over 2,000 films entered, and apparently the Flynt documentary was the only film that escaped the critical review process in an otherwise scholarly environment. Full Frame gave Larry Flynt special protection where it could be assured that his critics were kept silent in defense of Flynt’s free speech. Full Frame’s motto is “How much reality can you handle?”, but the movie, which is a manipulative and superficial examination of Flynt that uses propaganda tactics, is a very unreal portrayal of Flynt which includes even “very little nudity” and hypocritically did not mention any of the massive amounts of racist, homophobic and misogynist materials he produced.

For decades Hustler, his hate magazine, has been on sale in almost every convenience store in the country. During that time, with each new issue every month he has declared war on women, feminists, people of color, Jews, the disabled, children, and animal rights activists, as well as any other group or individual who disagreed with him. He also constantly targets animals, women in general and ethnic minorities who have not even done anything to provoke his rage. A full generation of males have now been raised on his contempt and he loves it.

Dwayne Tinsley, close personal friend to Flynt, and the creator of the Hustler cartoon “Chester the Molester,” which depicted pre-teen girls of all races being molested, was convicted in 1990 of sexually abusing his daughter. When he was released from prison, after serving his time, Flynt hired him back on at Huster. In February 1996, Hustler publisher Joe Theron was arrested in Britain with 400 videos imported from South Africa, many of them depicting child pornography.

For all this Flynt is being promoted as a free speech hero instead of the greedy, exploitive, racist misogynist he really is. The right to be left alone? The right to be left alone? In his whole life Larry Flynt has never left anyone alone. Flynt has aimed hate speech and harassment against every oppressed groups you can think of. Big man. Big hero. Thanks Duke University, HBO, New York Times and Full Frame Documentary Festival! …

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Adam P. Romero, “Methodological Descriptions: “Feminist” and “Queer” Legal Theories”

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Here is the abstract:

This essay reviews Janet Halley’s new book Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism. While emphasizing Halley’s important insights, the essay argues Halley’s apparent queer break from feminism suffers from several fatal flaws. First, the definition of feminism that Halley offers is incredibly narrow: all feminism is collapsed into dominance feminism and cultural feminism, and then Catherine MacKinnon is allowed to dictate the former and Robin West the latter. Second, because the methodologies long engaged by many feminists do not necessarily entail the substantive commitments of which Halley is critical, the critique Halley seeks is possible without taking a break from feminism. Indeed, feminist methods invite and instantiate the rigor and critique Halley advocates. Third, the idea of a general queer domain, beyond but also critical of feminism, not only fails to account for a great deal of feminist and queer thought, it also incorrectly assumes there is a fixed, stable body of thought called feminism from which to take a break. In reality, feminism is too unsettled for the possibility of its general suspension to be realizable. And because the concept of queer is relational, a premeditated queer domain that is always already outside of or opposed to that which is feminist is problematic as a general, foundational, or unspecific matter. However, as I stress, specific texts can and do countenance a variety of characteristics, such as being feminist and queer, and queer yet not feminist. In making these points, I argue that the terms feminist and queer, when used to modify legal scholarship and legal theory, represent methodological descriptions that do not carry substantive commitments. Some feminist methods include asking the gender question, consciousness-raising, and contextualized reasoning. Queer methodology reflects a contrary positionality vis-à-vis the normative or dominant. If feminist and queer are best understood as descriptions of method, then we cannot know definitively what feminist legal theory and queer legal theory, as such, substantively are or do.

Part I summarizes Halley’s arguments, exploring some of Halley’s valuable insights and registering some important criticisms of her arguments. Part II discusses feminist methodologies and argues the critique Halley seeks is possible without taking a break from feminism. I illustrate this point using Vicki Schultz’s recent work on sexual harassment. Part III takes up Halley’s declaration that Duncan Kennedy’s 1992 article Sexual Abuse, Sexy Dressing, and the Eroticization of Domination is the only sophisticated legal analysis of American sexual regulation that [she is] tempted to call queer. More specifically, Part III considers two questions: What is queer legal theory? And, is a queer domain necessarily split from feminism truly queer and truly possible? By way of a conclusion, I argue that Halley should leave the take-a-break-from-feminism rhetoric behind. It is distracting from, and unnecessary to, the important points Halley makes, which I emphasize in Part I but do not repeat in the Conclusion. Those are: (1) everything feminist and everything spawned from something feminist should be subject to sustained critique; (2) the power feminism engenders and wields must be checked; (3) the inevitable costs that result from feminist projects must be taken into account even though they may not outweigh the benefits; (4) a single theory of sexuality and of power is unattainable and undesirable; and (5) there is value in theoretical, and political, uncertainty, inconsistency, and incommensurability.

The entire essay is available here. Via the Legal Theory Blog.

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Carnival of Radical Feminists

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

crones413.jpg

The very first Carnival of Radical Feminists is up at Women’s Space/The Margins. I’ve agreed to host the second one, both here and at Sivacracy.net. If you read or write something you’d like to see included in the Carnival, the submission form is here.

I do need to note that not everyone in the blogroll here would consider themselves radical feminists, and by some definitions I might not define myself that way either, though certainly in some ways I would. I love radical feminist bloggers because they constantly remind me what feminism is supposed to be about: materially advancing the status of women. I think the Carnival will help feminists find a lot of interesting things to read.

–Ann Bartow

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Website Accessibility for People With Disabilities

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The audio of the New York City Bar Association’s May 3 program on “Website Accessibility for People with Disabilities” is now available for listening and/or download here.

This program followed a recent New York City Bar report demonstrating that accessibility is required regardless of “bricks and mortar”: “Website Accessibility for People with Disabilities,” available here.

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Belle Lettre, “The Female Body, Dissected”

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Belle Lettre has an interesting post called “The Female Body, Dissected” at her excellent blog that you can read here.

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Patently Evil?

Posted on May 14, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Discourse.net points out a Guardian article that reports:

Internet giant Google has drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games.

The company thinks it can glean information about an individual’s preferences and personality type by tracking their online behaviour, which could then be sold to advertisers. Details such as whether a person is more likely to be aggressive, hostile or dishonest could be obtained and stored for future use, it says. …

… The plans are detailed in a patent filed by Google in Europe and the US last month. It says people playing online role playing games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft would be particularly good to target, because they interact with other players and make decisions that probably reflect their behaviour in real life.

The patent says: “User dialogue (eg from role playing games, simulation games, etc) may be used to characterise the user (eg literate, profane, blunt or polite, quiet etc). Also, user play may be used to characterise the user (eg cautious, risk-taker, aggressive, non-confrontational, stealthy, honest, cooperative, uncooperative, etc).”

The information could be used to make adverts that appear inside the game more “relevant to the user”, Google says.

Players who spend a lot of time exploring “may be interested in vacations, so the system may show ads for vacations”. And those who spend more time talking to other characters will see adverts for mobile phones.

The patent says Google could also monitor people playing on any game console that hooks up to the internet, including the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox. It says information could be retrieved from previous game details saved on memory cards: “Such saved information may be thought of state information, and offers a valuable source of information to the advertisers.” …

The article ends with mentions of “massive multiplayer” online games World of Warcraft and Second Life. I’ve played both and I have to wonder if Google will also document, or cater to any advertisers who care about, the horrific amount of sexism in those games. Over at Screaming Into The Void, Amananta, (who has been highlighting “Sexist Gamer Comment Winners of the Day”), writes:

… I don’t think male gamers are actually more sexist than the males in the general population – in fact, there seems to be a liberal bias among many – I just have come to theorize that since they know they are a large majority of gamers (about 84% male) they figure either no women or not many women are going to hear how badly they think of them, so it doesn’t matter because it won’t hurt their chances of getting laid, since the women who might hear them are probably hundreds of miles away anyhow. They presume their audience is always male. There are programs where you can talk to gamers in order to do some gaming activities better, and whenever I or any other woman gets on they always are vocally stunned to realize there is an actual female playing. Therefore I can only conclude this is how men really think, is how they speak to each other when no women are around, and the more polite conversation they use in front of women publicly is just so they get a better chance of getting sex…

So I wonder: While it is violating gamer privacy on behalf of advertisers, will Google collect and disclose data about gamer sexism? And would this convince the folks at Linden Labs to integrate into their product dependable, remunerative employment opportunities for Second Life players who don’t want to do sex work?

–Ann Bartow

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About Tenure

Posted on May 14, 2007 by Ann Bartow

At Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha posted “Straight Talk About Tenure” in which he criticizes the tenure system for giving powerful protection to lazy, under performing law professors. Every faculty has a few bad apples, but I think Tamanaha might underestimate the ways that many can be “persuaded” to move on, although admittedly they sometimes do this by becoming some other law school’s problem. In addition, David Luban replied in comments:

… The group most in need of tenure protection of their academic freedom is not law professors, nor left- or right-wingers in the humanities or social sciences. It is natural scientists – particularly in public universities – working on health and safety issues pertaining to Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Anyone. It takes little imagination to see that, with billions of dollars at stake, major industries would pressure boards of trustees to fire anyone studying bad health effects of (say) Vioxx, or petroleum emissions. Private universities might be somewhat more immune from special-interest pressure, but they too could expect economic clout to be wielded to silence their pesky scientists.

But set scientists aside, and turn to law professors. Here, the test case of what happens without academic freedom is the campaign against law school environmental clinics – at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Oregon, the Universities of West Virginia and Wyoming, and above all Tulane. (I wrote about this a few years ago in Taking Out the Adversary: The Assault on Progressive Public Interest Lawyers, 91 Cal. L. Rev. 209, 236-40 (2003).) Each clinic began projects that gored oxen of local business interests, and each was subjected to a withering campaign to destroy it or make its work more difficult.

I don’t disagree with you that some law professors take advantage of tenure to cut their responsibilities to a minimum. The way to handle that is through merit raises (or rather, their absence) – if the dean sees that the professor is an exploiter. Or by asking those who do no research to teach additional sections, or take on heightened committee work or administrative assignments. …

Luban is correct, and it isn’t only the environmental clinics that have been pressured. Classes like “Gender and the Law” or “Race and the Law” wouldn’t even get taught in some law schools if savvy deans couldn’t, in the face of politically connected hostility, diplomatically smile, shrug, and say of the professor offering the course, “S/he has tenure, what can I do?”

–Ann Bartow

Update from a helpful commenter: Catharine MacKinnon talks a little about tenure and the uses (and abuses) of academic freedom here, and the video of her lecture is here (though I cannot get the link to work for me, unfortunately).

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“Debt Collector v. Widow”

Posted on May 13, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Read this important post by John Pottow at Credit Slips:

I wanted to draw Credit Slips readers’ attention to a wonderful (front-page) feature a couple weekends ago (Sat. Apr. 28) by Ellen E. Schultz in the   Wall Street Journal regarding the above captioned.   Yes, it’s another depressing but highly humanized account of elderly debtors having their bank accounts drained by savvy creditors with garnishment writs.   But there’s an interesting twist regarding the garnishment of putatively exempt Social Security funds.   The funds, while exempt of course, lose their exemption once deposited into a bank account, unless the account owner (here, the elderly debtor, presumably having independent knowledge of this arcane legal requirement) affirmatively files an exemption notice.   Does the Social Security Administration help out by reminding of this legal hurdle, perhaps under its FAQ?   Nope.   How about the banks, out of a sense of customer service?   In hand washing that would make even Pilate proud, most of them (with some commendable exceptions) say that’s not their place to get involved in the private treatment of customers, etc., etc. …

Of course “widowers” would benefit from this information as well.

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“Alexandra Hai is the first woman with the right to operate a gondola in Venice, but only for one hotel’s guests.”

Posted on May 13, 2007 by Ann Bartow

That’s the caption to a photo accompanying this article. Here are the first few sentences:

For more than a thousand years, Venice has had gondolas but never a female gondolier. But now there is Alexandra Hai.

After a decade of struggle, Ms. Hai has won the right to be a gondolier : sort of. A court recently allowed her to paddle around the canals of Venice, but only for the residents of one of the city’s hotels.

Read the whole article here.

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Paula Rothenberg, “Feminism Then and Now”

Posted on May 12, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Accessible in full text here. Below is an excerpt:

… The Women’s Liberation Movement that began in the 60s was originally a radical movement seeking deep and fundamental change. It identified the ways in which male and other forms of privilege had been woven into every social, political, economic institution and cultural practice in our society and went on to challenge white supremacy, heterosexist privilege, class divisions as well as the images of gender that had been normalized and in this way rendered invisible The Women’s Liberation Movement I remember argued for the need for a radical transformation of all our institutions. It urged women to rethink every aspect of our lives, always asking us to reflect on whose interests were served by the ways in which society was organized and by the values we had been taught to embrace.

Central to this project was the distinction between sex and gender. In order to challenge the conservative view that women’s social role was determined by her nature, many feminists argued that while one is born either a man or a woman and that is a function of biology (and yes, many of us mistakenly thought that there were only two possibilities at that time), gender roles were determined by society. Women began to notice that how we were taught to define ourselves, what it meant to be a real woman, served the interests of men and capitalism. This made us suspicious of what we had been taught were our “natural” tendencies or inclinations and made us wonder about our so-called “free” choice.

A very important article of the period, a true classic, was entitled “Homogenizing the American Woman: The Power of an Unconscious Ideology” written by Sandra Bem and Daryll Bem. The authors pointed out that even if discrimination were to end tomorrow, nothing very drastic would change, because discrimination is only part of the problem. “Discrimination frustrates choices already made. Something more pernicious perverts the motivation to choose. That something is an unconscious ideology about the nature of the female sex….”… In other words, many of us began to realize that we had been socialized to want things that would replicate and reinforce the status quo.

The Women’s Liberation Movement of the Second Wave rejected prevailing standards of beauty, the Barbie doll image, (being thin and blonde), that were virtually unattainable by anyone who wasn’t white and by most of us who were white as well. The critique took the form of recognizing and challenging the ways prevailing standards of beauty and rules of dress and decorum both reflected and reinforced the existing race, class and gender hierarchy in society. Women of the Second Wave were tired of being turned into sex objects by the fashion industry and so they threw out their high heels (which were understood to be on a continuum with Chinese foot binding practices — a way of circumscribing women’s movement and keeping them dependent), took off their girdles and their bras, stopped trying to be a size 2, and focused on healthy eating healthy for them and the planet.

If we look at popular culture today what do we see? Well, Barbie is back with a vengeance. Little girls start dieting in fourth grade and never stop. This used to be more of a problem among white girls but it has spread to all ethnic groups. And dieting isn’t the half of it, anorexia and bulimia are occurring in alarming proportions. …

Via Sparkle*Matrix

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The First Carnival of Radical Feminists…

Posted on May 12, 2007 by Ann Bartow

…is up, at Women’s Space/The Margins. “Radical Feminism” gets defined different ways, at different times, by different people.   If I had to come up with something short and snappy, I guess I’d say, “radical feminists are the ones who don’t care what the boys think.” The radical feminist blogs are among the perilously few places on the Internet where you will see women doing not only doing the posting, but the majority of the commenting as well.   You might not agree with everything you read, but I think you’ll find the linked posts a lot more interesting and challenging than yet another round of “Republicans are so stooooopid.”   And I’d almost guarantee that   not a single radical feminist will disparage someone she disagrees with by calling them girly or gay, for a nice refreshing break from the Supposedly Liberal blogs. Happy reading!

–Ann Bartow

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Mother’s day complaint claims United States courts violate children’s and mothers’ human rights.

Posted on May 11, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From the FLP mailbox: a StopFamilyViolence.org PRESS RELEASE

On May 11, just before Mother’s Day weekend, ten mothers, one victimized child, now an adult, and leading national and state organizations filed a complaint against the United States with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. The case claims that U.S. courts, by frequently awarding child custody to abusers and child molesters, has failed to protect the life, liberties, security and other human rights of abused mothers and their children.

“For more than 30 years U.S. judges have given custody or unsupervised visitation of children to abusers and molesters putting the children directly at risk,”says Dianne Post, an international attorney who authored the petition. “These horrendous human rights violations have been brought to the attention of family court systems, and state and federal governments, to no avail. We turn now to international courts to protect the rights and safety of US children.”

The complaint details several cases with documented medical evidence of child sexual abuse, yet in each instance the abusing father was given full custody of the children he abused. Several of the mothers were jailed by the courts because of their persistent efforts to protect their children from abuse, several were ordered not to speak of the abuse and not to report abuse to authorities. Every mother was denied contact with her child for some period of time though none was ever proven to have harmed them.

“My life was completely shattered apart on that day and my childhood was destroyed,” said Jeff Hoverson, the adult child petitioner, about the day a family court judge ordered sheriff deputies to deliver him into the custody of his abuser. “It was as if I was just kidnapped. I was torn from everything I knew….I was made into a possession rather than a child.” Hoverson endured years of trauma and fear living in his father’s home before escaping and returning to his mother at age 17. He is haunted by years of feeling helpless to prevent his father’s night-time visits to his sisters’ bedrooms.

“The cases in this petition represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg,”says Irene Weiser, executive director of the national online organization Stop Family Violence. “We are contacted by an average of three protective mothers each week who have lost custody to child abusing fathers. This is a nationwide crisis of enormous proportion.”

“The lives of thousands of children and mothers have been irreparably harmed by family courts across our nation,”says Joyanna Silberg, Ph.D., executive vice-president of The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, another national organizations supporting the petition. “The years of trauma and psychological abuse because of the courts’ failings result in lasting emotional damage to the children they are supposed to protect.”

Studies of gender bias in the courts, conducted in the 1980’s and 90’s, found disturbing trends of courts minimizing or excusing men’s violence against women, and favoring the abusers. In 1990 the United States Congress passed a resolution recommending the prohibition of giving joint or sole custody to abusers. Seventeen years later, the practice continues unabated. Ten years ago today, leading national organizations were joined by members of Congress in a protest in Washington D.C. to again raise awareness about the problems in family courts. Today, petitioners say, the problem is systemic and widespread in family law courts across the nation.

The petition seeks a finding from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the U.S. has violated the Declaration of the Rights and Responsibilities of Man and the Charter of the Organization of American States and a statement of the steps that the U.S. must take to comply with its human rights obligations in regards to battered women and children in child custody cases.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was created in 1959 and is expressly authorized to examine allegations of human rights violations by members of the Organization of American States, which include the United States. It also carries out on-site visits to observe the general human rights situations in all 35 member states of the Organization of American States and to investigate specific allegations of violations of Inter-American human rights treaties. Its charge is to promote the observance and the defense of human rights in the Americas.

Dianne Post, a 1980 graduate of the University of Wisconsin law school, has worked on issues of gender based violence since 1976. In addition to private practice and legal aid, she has taught legal classes and been a consultant working or living in Russia, Cambodia, Hungary and some dozen other countries. She is currently in Vladivostok, Russia.

Additional national organizations supporting the international lawsuit include: National Organization for Women and the NOW Foundation, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Justice For Children, National Family Court Watch Project, Stop Family Violence, Legal Momentum, Family Violence Prevention Fund, National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, Domestic Violence Report, Sidran Traumatic Stress Institute, and the National Center on Sexual and Domestic Violence. The petition is supported by many state organizations as well.

In December 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a petition against the United States with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights for their failure to protect Jessica Gonzales’ three children from their abusive father, who murdered them. Their petition, the first of its kind, asserted that domestic violence victims have the right to be protected by the state from the violent acts of their abusers.

For additional information, or to review the petition visit http://www.StopFamilyViolence.org

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Anita Hill’s “Reclaim the Day” Media Campain

Posted on May 9, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

From the FLP Mailbox, this message from Professor Anita F. Hill:

Fifteen years ago, in a book defending Clarence Thomas’s selection for the Supreme Court, author David Brock described me as”nutty”and”slutty.”After making millions in book sales, Brock recanted and confessed that he was”blinded”by his own financial and political ambitions. Last month Don Imus described the members of the Rutgers Basketball team as”nappy-headed hos.”A week of protests resulted in Imus losing his lucrative television and radio contracts with MSNBC and CBS respectively. Yet, Imus is reported to be suing CBS for the $40 million remaining on his contract claiming the network encouraged him to be”confrontational and irreverent.”

Because the debasement of women continues to sell and derogatory terms for women have become part of popular discourse, I’m convinced that we need more than Brock recanting or Imus being fired. We need a movement to counter the verbal assaults on women that flow freely in modern media outlets and that have now crept into our workplaces and are increasing in our schools. In addition to our efforts to”Take Back the Night,”we need to”Reclaim the Day!”

I’m not talking about censoring artists or comics.   What I want is positive entertainment and educational programming that replaces or, at the very least, balances the negative.    

It is true that many women struggle financially and continue to suffer abuse and discrimination. Yet, today, women as a group are more economically self-sufficient and better educated than ever.   We can use our brains and our spending power to develop and support programming that portrays women (and men) realistically.  

Professor Hill asks that the public share with her “ideas about how this can happen.” (E-mail: Anita@womensmediacenter.com) “If you do, I promise to use all of the resources available to me to see that you are heard by those who can make them a reality,” she pledges.

-Posted by Bridget Crawford

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The Deleterious Effects of the Sexualization of Girls

Posted on May 9, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

Earlier this year, the American Pyschological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls issued its finding that “the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls’ self-image and healthy development.”   From the APA press release:

To complete the report, the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls studied published research on the content and effects of virtually every form of media, including television, music videos, music lyrics, magazines, movies, video games and the Internet.   They also examined recent advertising campaigns and merchandising of products aimed toward girls.

Sexualization was defined by the task force as occurring when a person’s value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another’s sexual use.

Examples of the sexualization of girls in all forms of media including visual media and other forms of media such as music lyrics abound.   And, according to the report, have likely increased in number as”new media”have been created and access to media has become omnipresent.  The influence and attitudes of parents, siblings, and friends can also add to the pressures of sexualization.

“The consequences of the sexualization of girls in media today are very real and are likely to be a negative influence on girls’ healthy development,”says Eileen L. Zurbriggen, PhD, chair of the APA Task Force and associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.”We have ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development.”

Research evidence shows that the sexualization of girls negatively affects girls and young women across a variety of health domains:

Cognitive and Emotional Consequences: Sexualization and objectification undermine a person’s confidence in and comfort with her own body, leading to emotional and self-image problems, such as shame and anxiety.

Mental and Physical Health: Research links sexualization with three of the most common mental health problems diagnosed in girls and women:eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression or depressed mood.

Sexual Development: Research suggests that the sexualization of girls has negative consequences on girls’ ability to develop a healthy sexual self-image.

According to the task force report, parents can play a major role in contributing to the sexualization of their daughters or can play a protective and educative role. The APA report calls on parents, school officials, and all health professionals to be alert for the potential impact of sexualization on girls and young women. Schools, the APA says, should teach media literacy skills to all students and should include information on the negative effects of the sexualization of girls in media literacy and sex education programs.

“As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings:ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls,”states Dr. Zurbriggen.”The goal should be to deliver messages to all adolescents:boys and girls:that lead to healthy sexual development.”

The full text of the APA’s report is available here.   Via FeministLawProf Vanessa Merton.

 -Bridget Crawford

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On Ireland, Women and Peace

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

The mainstream press has carried several news reports, like this one  from the NY Times,  of the formal establishment of a “power sharing” government in Northern Ireland.   Women’s role in the peace process is very rarely mentioned, if at all, by the major media outlets.  

Marie Besancon, Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s JFK School has done some interesting research on women’s formal participation in the Irish peace talks.   Her paper entitled “Women in the Northern Ireland Peace Process: A Novel Use of Expected Utility in Bridging the Gaps Between the Quantitative Scholars and the Policy Pundits” is available here.  

On the general significance of women’s role in Irish governance, feminist Margaret Ward has been quoted here as saying that “lasting peace will never be achieved unless positive action is taken to guarantee women an equal position in the development of peace agreements and in all post-agreement political and civic institutions.”

-Bridget Crawford

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De-Sexing the Disabled Is Wrong

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

Today the Washington Protection & Advocacy Program released its report on the removal of the breast buds and  uterus of a disabled six-year old girl at the request of her parents.   Failure to get advance court approval for these procedures violated the girl’s constitutional rights:

Due to the highly invasive and irreversible nature of the”Ashley Treatment,”growth-limiting interventions for individuals with developmental disabilities from a court of competent jurisdiction should be required in order to protect the privacy and liberty interests of children for whom such interventions are sought.

The report further notes that “getting court approval for this incredibly invasive procedures … would likely be quite difficult.”  

The full report from the Washington Protection & Advocacy Program is available here.   CNN carried the story here.  

-Bridget Crawford

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A Reminder That High Heels Mess Up Your Body

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Ann Bartow

WaPo graphic here. Below is an excerpt from a related article entitled On Your Feet:

… Among women’s shoes, fashion has truly trumped function. As the summer months approach, colorful sandals, flip-flops, wedges, high heels and ballet flats dot the sidewalks. One of trendiest shoes this season is YSL’s platform “Tribute” — with a tottering 5 1/2 -inch heel. Often painstakingly selected to complete outfits, shoes like these put stress not just on feet, but on ankles, knees and backs, contributing to the approximately $3.5 billion spent annually in the United States for women’s foot surgeries, which cause them to lose 15 million work days yearly.

While the noxious “women are so stupidly vain” undercurrent to the article is hard to miss, it still offers many good reasons to make the crucial switch to comfy shoes.

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Upcoming Conference – Sex Work: Culture, Policy, and Benefits: Exploring the Lives of Sex Workers and their Diverse Realities

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Some of the dishonest rhetoric used to criticize the recent Wheelock College Pornography conference was the demonstrably false claim that conferences featuring alternative views of sex work are never convened. Of course they are, and with plenty of porn industry financial support. For information about one that will be held in July in San Francisco, go here or here. The organizers appear to be accepting conference proposals through May 15th.

A similar conference was held by the same organization in 2006 in Las Vegas. CUNY’s recent”Women and Work 2007″ conference featured a panel on sex work. In March of 2006, the New School and a long list of prestigious universities co-sponsored a conference called Sex Work Matters. A couple of years ago the University of Toledo held a conference on sex work as well. There is a social construct that permits faculty members to convene conferences on any topic they like. It is called “academic freedom.”

–Ann Bartow

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Sweet Jesus Rosa Brooks Loves Bill O’Reilly!

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Well, her recent column was titled: “Sweet Jesus I love Bill O’Reilly!” anyway! Below is an excerpt:

… Three University of Indiana scholars just released a “content analysis” of O’Reilly’s trademark “Talking Points Memo,” the brief commentary with which he opens his daily Fox News show, “The O’Reilly Factor.” The authors begin by informing us, with some consternation, that four in 10 Americans actually think O’Reilly is “a journalist.” But after many charts and numbers, they conclude that he’s really just a big right-wing bully.

No, those aren’t their words. Being scholarly types, they favor phrases such as “O’Reilly injects fear into his commentaries,” and they punctiliously compare O’Reilly’s rhetoric to that used by 1930s radio broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin, whose pro-fascist rants made him infamous.

But O’Reilly leaves Coughlin in the shade. When it comes to “name-calling,” for instance (which the study helpfully defines as giving “a person or idea a bad label to make the audience reject them without examining the evidence”), Coughlin’s radio broadcasts averaged 3.42 incidents per minute, while O’Reilly managed an impressive 8.88 name-calling incidents per minute : an insult every 6.8 seconds!

In sum, the report concludes, “It is fair to say that O’Reilly emerged as a name-caller.”

Well, color me crazy, but I think we need to give the guy a little credit here. Do you think it’s easy to engage in name-calling every 6.8 seconds? It’s not. To match O’Reilly’s performance, I would have to insult people 35.52 times in the course of this column.

You do the math. The average column is 800 words long. The average American’s reading speed, I am chagrined to report, is a mere 200 words per minute. At 200 words a minute, it will take you four minutes to read this column (though I’m equally chagrined to report, dear Average Reader, that experts say you generally comprehend only 60% of what you read, so don’t blame me if you can’t make any sense of this!). Anyway, four minutes with 8.88 insults/minute requires a total of 35.52 insults per column, or one insult every 22.52 words.

I’ll be honest: That’s a pace I just can’t hope to maintain, unless I cheat. So hats off to Bill O’Reilly, that shameless, deceitful, irresponsible, propagandizing right-wing bully!

Hey … not bad, huh? How’s my average looking now? …

Read the rest here!

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Could You Pass 8th Grade Geography?

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Ann Bartow

I did pass it somehow, but this quiz is really difficult!

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CFP – Setting the Agenda: Examining the Critical Legal Issues Facing African-Americans and Minority Communities in the 2008 Election

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From the FLP mailbox:  

The Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy‘s 2007 Symposium is entitled “Setting the Agenda: Examining the Critical Legal Issues Facing African-Americans and Minority Communities in the 2008 Election.”

As the 2008 election draws near, what are the critical legal issues facing minority communities across the United States? How will the lives and needs of these communities influence and be influenced by electoral politics, the 2008 presidential election, and the next administration? What are the key problems and how can we effectively address them as we move towards the next phase in the nation’s political life?

On November 9, 2007, the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy (BJALP) will host a symposium focusing on critical legal issues facing minority communities in light of the upcoming 2008 election. Those wishing to participate in the symposium are invited to submit proposals for papers exploring a critical legal issue facing African-Americans and minority communities in the upcoming election. We are interested in papers in a diverse array of fields including, but not limited to, voting rights, health care, fair housing, environmental justice, family law, gender, education, and the criminal justice system. Similarly, we are interested in fielding multiple perspectives on these issues and would welcome proposals from academics, policymakers, practitioners, activists, and community members.

Papers selected for the symposium will be published in the Spring 2008 edition of the Berkeley Journal of African- American Law and Policy. Given the current legal, social, and political atmosphere, this is an opportune time to examine those issues that are most salient to minority communities and to begin setting an agenda aimed at effective change and reform. We invite you to be a part of the discussion.

The symposium will be held at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law on November 9, 2007. BJALP will cover the reasonable travel expenses of those selected to participate in the symposium. Proposals should include the title of the proposed paper, an abstract of approximately 250 – 500 words, and the author’s curriculum vitae. Please also include your full institutional affiliation, e-mail address, and phone number(s).

Proposals should be submitted via ExpressO or via e-mail to bjalp@law.berkeley.edu by June 8, 2007. Authors will be notified of the results of our selection process by June 20, 2007. As selected papers will be published in the Spring 2008 edition of the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy, we will require authors to submit drafts of their completed papers for editing no later than November 2007. Please contact us by e-mail at bjalp@law.berkeley.edu with any questions. We look forward to reading your proposals.

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Womenstake.org, the New Blog of the National Women’s Law Center

Posted on May 8, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Check out Womenstake.org here! The NWLC homepage is here. You can read more about its history of outstanding legal accomplishments here.

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“Leading Librarian Ends 400 Years of Male Tradition at Oxford”

Posted on May 7, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Via Marie S. Newman at Out of the Jungle:

Sarah Thomas ’70 broke more than four centuries of English tradition earlier this year when she became the first woman to lead Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the second-largest library in the U.K. In her new role, Thomas, who has also worked at the Library of Congress and most recently at the Cornell University Library, oversees more than 11 million printed volumes at 40 different sites. She is also responsible for modernizing the library system and bringing it into the digital age, while preserving the library’s long history.

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“The Sexual Politics of Google”

Posted on May 7, 2007 by Ann Bartow

At Balkinization, Jack Balkin notes:

When you type “she invented” into Google, it returns: Did you mean: “he invented”

The same, by the way, also applies for Google searches for “she created,” “she succeeded,” and “she led.” Lest you think that this happens for all active verbs, Google does not make the same suggestion for “she followed” or “she failed.”

Balkin spotted a description of this phenomena at Digg, where by the second comment the sexist “humor” is already flying. At Balkinization, the commenters instead are quite focused on explaining why it isn’t Google’s fault and isn’t sexist either, because darn it all, Google was just designed that way! Yeesh.

–Ann Bartow, via my awesome colleague Josie Brown.

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“Whistle-Blower on Student Aid Is Vindicated”

Posted on May 7, 2007 by Ann Bartow

A NYT article reports in pertinent part:

When Jon Oberg, a Department of Education researcher, warned in 2003 that student lending companies were improperly collecting hundreds of millions in federal subsidies and suggested how to correct the problem, his supervisor told him to work on something else.

The department”does not have an intramural program of research on postsecondary education finance,”the supervisor, Grover Whitehurst, a political appointee, wrote in a November 2003 e-mail message to Mr. Oberg, a civil servant who was soon to retire.”In the 18 months you have remaining, I will expect your time and talents to be directed primarily to our business of conceptualizing, competing and monitoring research grants.”

For three more years, the vast overpayments continued. Education Secretary Rod Paige and his successor, Margaret Spellings, argued repeatedly that under existing law they were powerless to stop the payments and that it was Congress that needed to act. Then this past January, the department largely shut off the subsidies by sending a simple letter to lenders : the very measure Mr. Oberg had urged in 2003.

The story of Mr. Oberg’s effort to stop this hemorrhage of taxpayers’ money opens a window, lawmakers say, onto how the Bush administration repeatedly resisted calls to improve oversight of the $85 billion student loan industry. The department failed to halt the payments to lenders who had exploited loopholes to inflate their eligibility for subsidies on the student loans they issued.

Recent investigations by state attorneys general and Congress have highlighted how the department failed to clamp down on gifts and incentives that lenders offered to universities and their financial aid officers to get more student loans. Under this pressure, the department is now seeking to set new rules.

The subsidy payments that Mr. Oberg uncovered are another corner of the lending system on which the department long failed to act, critics say, letting millions of dollars flow from the public treasury to about a dozen lenders. …

Thank you, Jon Oberg, for your integrity and persistence.

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“Is Stripping a Feminist Act?”

Posted on May 6, 2007 by Ann Bartow

That is the title of an essay by Sarah Katherine Lewis at Alternet. Below is an excerpt:

… Do I feel “empowered” by the very nature of the work I performed? No. Do I feel like sex work is an inherent vehicle for feminist expression, or a way to address historic gender inequality? Possibly. But not because I think it does any woman any particular good to prance around in complicated footwear, flirting with men for cash.

No — it’s the money, honey. The unglamorous truth about my experience as an adult entertainer is that I felt empowered — as a woman, as a feminist, and as a human being — by the money I made, not by the work I did. The performances I gave didn’t change anyone’s ideas about women. On the contrary, I was in the business of reinforcing the same old sexist misinformation you can see in any issue of Hustler or Girls Gone Wild DVD. I wasn’t “owning” or “subverting” anything other than my own working-class status. Bending over to Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” didn’t make me a better feminist. It just made me a feminist who could afford her own rent. …

Update: Kate Smurthwaite responds to this essay at the f-word blog here.

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Yes, Vile.

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Take a deep breath and read this post at IBTP. I watched the video, and it is going to haunt me for a long time.

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Not Funny, Part 12,567

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Ann Bartow

arialpel2.gif

From here and here.

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“How good jugglers become better students”

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Woman juggling.jpg

According to this article:

… Research shows the benefits of juggling can last for weeks and that it actually increases gray matter in the brain, according to Brennen physical education teachers and scientific studies.

“If you juggle in the few weeks before you take tests, it will help your scores,”physical education teacher Jan Scott told a pair of fourth-grade classes.

Students approached their juggling exercises in different fashions. Some employed broad, scissors-like arm motions; others engaged their entire bodies to propel and then catch the scarves and balls.

Yet their juggling shared a common trait: Students’ eyes shone with intensity as they tracked the flying objects.

Fourth-grader Daisha Blue exuded patience as she worked through the juggling steps listed on a large sign at the front of the gymnasium.

First, she tossed a scarf up several times from one hand, then the other. She moved into tossing the scarf up and clapping while it was in the air, to eventually using two scarves, then three, then juggling balls.

“I loosen up and let go of stress,”said Daisha, 10.

Brennen physical education teachers began teaching juggling about 10 years ago, and over time, scientific research has shown more and more educational benefits of the activity.

“The research validated what we were already doing,”Scott said.

Juggling engages both sides of the brain : which control different functions : and primes students for academic performance, said physical education teacher Susan Jordan. …

Do you think this would work for law students, or would there be too many regrettable jokes about clowns and balls?

–Ann Bartow

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“CBS.com has to shut comments down on Obama stories”

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Not surprisingly, in addition to sexual harassment, the dynamics of the Internet facilitate virulent online racism, as discussed by Pam Spaulding at Pandagon.

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Transgender Workplace Diversity Workshop – Wednesday, June 27

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From the FLP mailbox:

On Wednesday, June 27, 2007, a day-long workshop will be held at Ramapo College of New Jersey on the subject of transgender workplace diversity, specially targeted to the needs of human resources, diversity and legal professionals in New York and New Jersey.

This is especially timely in light of the new NJ law coming into effect on June 12, which amends the NJ Law Against Discrimination. The presenter, Jillian T. Weiss, J.D ., Ph.D., says that the workshop involves collaborative learning, using case study and role play methods. It is guaranteed to be interesting, exciting and challenging. All participants will receive a comprehensive training manual providing step-by-step guidance on gender transition issues.

The workshop will be held at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey. The college is located in northern New Jersey, close to New York City.

Registration is limited to 25 people. For more information, go to http://www.ramapo.edu/workshops/trans.

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The JD Project

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Feminist Law Prof Vernellia Randall writes:

The JD Project’s mission is to increase the racial diversity of the legal profession with specific attention on helping minority students excel in law school and pass the bar. I am writing both to provide you information about our program and to ask your assistance. We will be conducting a summer law school boot camp for incoming first year minority students. First, we would like to have your school send the attached documents to all their admitted students of color and we would like you advocate with your dean or admission office to have that happen. Second we would like you to become an individual supporter of The JD Project http://71.18.52.3/index.htm. If you are willing, please email me with your name, title and organization name. Please note your organization name will be listed for identification only. Also if you could provide a 100 to 150 word comment to be included on the following page: http://71.18.52.3/AboutUs/supporters.htm that would be appreciated but is not necessary.

Below is additional information about the project:

Description

The JD Project, Inc. is a non-profit organization licensed in the State of Ohio and located in Dayton. It is a non-membership organization directed by a five-member Board of Trustees. The JD Project was founded by myself and Mr. Tshaka Randall. I am a national expert in academic support and I ran a highly successful academic support program at the University of Dayton from 1995 through 2006. Mr. Tshaka Randall, in addition to his JD from University of Pennsylvania, his master’s in higher education and his post-graduate work, has more than seven years of experience in designing, managing and conducting undergraduate academic support programs.

The mission of the JD Project is to increase the number of traditionally under-represented racial/ethnic minorities in the legal profession. Our goal is to increase the number of traditionally-underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities who are admitted to law school, outperform their admission statistics and excel in law school, graduate, pass the bar exam, and achieve their professional goals. With appropriately structure academic support and appropriately motivated participants, most minority law students can outperform their LSAT and pass the bar the first time. When the JD Project is fully operational it will consist of the following programs.

  • LSAT Preparation Course
  • Legal Enrichment and Achievement Project (LEAP)
  • Passing the Bar!
  • Career Coaching
  • Community Lawyering
We are starting with the Legal Enrichment and Achievement Project (LEAP). LEAP is a comprehensive, integrated academic support program designed to improve students’ law school study, writing and test-taking skills. LEAP includes mini-seminars for college students, First Year Academic Enrichment Program and Online Academic Support Program for Law Students.
Mini-Seminars
The JD Project conducts mini-seminars on such topics as the “Top Ten Reasons Law Students Fail to Achieve their Personal Best!”, or “How to Really Prepare for Law School.” The seminars will be conducted on regional college campuses, at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Tribal Colleges. These seminars are free of charge and are conducted in collaboration with the minority law associations, law schools, minority law student associations and other appropriate entities on each campus. We conduct 10-15 seminars a year.
First Year Academic Enrichment
The First Year Academic Enrichment Project consist of the Law School Boot Camp (a 10 day summer residential program) and an academic enrichment program that uses distance learning technology during the fall to work on student’s exam-writing and analysis.
The first boot camp will be July 18 through July 28 in Dayton, OH. The targeted audience are minority college graduates who have been accepted into law school with priority given to:
  • minority students who live in or will be going to school in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia
  • minority students from groups that have the highest attrition rates (i.e. Blacks and Hispanics)
  • minority students who will be attending law schools whose academic support program is inadequate. A law school program is defined as inadequate if :
    • the school has no academic support program;
    • the program is not open to all minority students;
    • the program does not include a summer start orientation based on skill-building; or
    • the program does not include a fall program that has intense exam-writing with feedback.
For more information about the Boot Camp http://thejdproject.org/Excelling/BootCamp/index.htm.
Online Academic Support
The JD Project maintains an online academic support program because it takes more than intelligence to succeed in law school. Many students who fail to perform up to their potential do so because they do not have the timely access to the “information stream” that is so essential to law school performance. This website is designed to open access to the “information stream” and consequently to improve students’ adjustment and performance. This site provides academic enrichment for the law student on law school and learning, on how to study in law school and on how to prepare and take law school exams. This website is available to everyone without regard to race. There will be a membership-only component that will be offered free to any minority law student at any school. Furthermore, advising will be provided on a limited basis to minority students. (http://www.onlineasp.org/) Note the site that has been maintained on the University of Dayton Website will be moved. I will provide specific information when that has occurred. The need for support for students of color is great and we hope that you will join us and other’s efforts in reducing attrition and improving academic performance for minority students. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Thanks for your help!
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Garance Franke-Ruta, “Age of Innocence Revisited”

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From the WSJ.com:

Joe Francis, founder of the “Girls Gone Wild” video company, may be 34 years old, but these days he is barely legal.

The controversial impresario has built a $100 million soft-core porn empire based on filming college students flashing (mostly) their breasts and (at times) other forbidden zones. He now sits in jail on a 35-day contempt of court sentence. Mr. Francis, who had previously been prosecuted for failing to document the ages of the young women he films, was arrested in April after violating a judge’s instruction to peaceably negotiate with seven young women who had filed a civil suit against him. They had alleged that his company, Mantra Films Inc., had filmed them while they were underage in 2003 and visiting Panama City, Fla., for spring break. Since being jailed, Mr. Francis has been charged with other crimes. He has tax problems, too. All told, he is facing felony jail time of up to five years in Florida, and another 10 in Nevada.

Good. Joe Francis is a cultural pollutant. But as he contemplates life in prison, the rest of us ought to contemplate what he has wrought–or what kind of society we have allowed him to create on our watch. “Girls Gone Wild” and its skin-flashing antics–spring break, beach parties, Mardi Gras–may seem relatively harmless artifacts of our look-at-me culture, especially when compared with the mechanical bedroom scenes and stagey embraces of hard-core pornography. But that is precisely why they matter more: Mr. Francis’s cameras have constructed a huge business out of recording the semi-nudity of “girls” who are not in “the business” at all: naïve girls, canny girls, drunken girls, pretty girls and not-so-pretty girls–regular girls, if one may put it that way. Above all, young girls. Mr. Francis has made it socially acceptable for a freshman at, say, Ohio State–living in a dorm room in Columbus like thousands of freshmen before her–to participate in soft-core porn.

If that phrase sounds too momentous for giggling (and often crudely embarrassing) flashes of skin, consider how much has changed in recent years. Once upon a time, a picture was just a picture. Today it can be wirelessly beamed to computers that can email it to networks where, once it is posted, it can be downloaded and endlessly reproduced by anyone who wants it. The detritus of 50 years of television is now available on YouTube, as are highlights from many DVDs. Just as Google transforms us all into archivists of previously fleeting moments, so too does the new digital recording technology give youthful acts a permanent life. In the case of Mr. Francis and his empire of imitators–not to mention angry ex-boyfriends with digital flash cards and a long memory–it can transform the playful exhibitionism of young women into scarlet letters that follow them around for life. …

Read the entire column here!

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An Important Copyright Case About Photos of Naked Women, As Discussed By Men

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From the Tech Law Forum:

Counsel for Perfect 10 v. Google Square Off

On February 2, 2007, Justin Hughes, Director of the Cardozo Law School’s intellectual property program, moderated a panel discussion at Santa Clara University. The talk focused on the Perfect 10 v. Google case and its implications for Internet copyright.

The panelists include:

  • Andrew Bridges of Winston & Strawn is Google’s lead defense counsel in the case
  • Russ Frackman of Mitchell, Silverberg, and Knupp represents Perfect 10 in this case
  • Fred Von Lohmann is Senior Staff Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • Tyler Ochoa teaches copyright law at the Santa Clara University School of Law

Streaming video (Windows Media) with scrolling transcripts.

Previous posts about this case here and here.

–Ann Bartow

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“From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half”

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From the Center for American Progress:

Thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line. Millions more struggle each month to pay for basic necessities, or run out of savings when they lose their jobs or face health emergencies. Poverty imposes enormous costs on society. The lost potential of children raised in poor households, the lower productivity and earnings of poor adults, the poor health, increased crime, and broken neighborhoods all hurt our nation. Persistent childhood poverty is estimated to cost our nation $500 billion each year, or about four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. In a world of increasing global competition, we cannot afford to squander these human resources.

The Center for American Progress last year convened a diverse group of national experts and leaders to examine the causes and consequences of poverty in America and make recommendations for national action. In this report, our Task Force on Poverty calls for a national goal of cutting poverty in half in the next 10 years and proposes a strategy to reach the goal.

Read the full report (PDF)
Executive Summary (PDF)
Research Model (PDF)

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PSA For Anyone Who Is Interested

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Ann Bartow

anti-porn.JPG

And see also.

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NOW says “Tell the Media: Stop Sexist Campaign Coverage”

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From an e-mail from the NOW National Action Center:

The media are up to their old tricks. One of their favorite pastimes is judging presidential candidates on superficial traits:like their hair or weight:rather than their positions on important issues. A popular feature of this brand of reporting is assessing how well politicians fit into outdated gender stereotypes.

Action Needed:

Sign NOW’s petition telling the media that the presidential election is not “America’s Next Top Model”!

Background:

With female as well as male commentators getting into the action, here are a few of the burning questions of the 2008 race, according to our friends in the media:

Is Hillary Clinton’s voice grating? Chris Matthews has gone out of his way to portray Clinton as a nagging housewife, with a voice that makes manly men cringe. On NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show on April 28, he was at it again, asking this burning question about Clinton’s performance at the Democratic debate: “Did she have the right modulation? Was she calm and grown up? Or was there a little bit of stridency in the voice still?… [W]as she shrill? Was she strident? Or was she solid?” Panelist Katty Kay from the BBC Washington Bureau responded with the absurd accusation that Clinton was “shouting” in the debate and criticized her “tone of voice.”

Is John Edwards too feminine? The recent controversy over Edwards’ expensive haircuts allowed the press to pull out the old “Breck girl” nickname they hyped during the 2004 campaign. On April 23 Adam Nagourney of The New York Times took credit for introducing the public to this slur, which originated in the Bush camp, and then blamed Edwards for keeping it going. In an April 21 New York Times column, Maureen Dowd wrote: “Whether or not the country is ready to elect a woman president or a black president, it’s definitely not ready for a metrosexual in chief.” She added: “In presidential politics, it’s all but impossible to put the man in manicure. Be sensitive, but not soft. Effete is never effective.”

Is Barack Obama’s wife emasculating? When Michelle Obama portrayed her husband as an everyday kind of guy, members of the media twisted it into a threat to his masculinity. Matthews asked his panel of pundits: “Do you think Obama wishes he could dial Michelle back a notch?” For months now, Dowd has been fretting that Obama comes off as weak, calling him “Obambi” and “a Dreamboy” and comparing him to “Scarlett O’Hara” and “a puppy.” Dowd even fires off two gender-based insults for the price of one, with: “If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Barry is in touch with his feminine side.” (Yes, Dowd takes the liberty of shortening Barack to Barry.)

Is Al Gore too fat to run for president? Despite Gore’s achievements, and the belated credit he’s receiving for his work on global warming, the media can’t help but snicker at his weight. In an April 15 Washington Post article titled “Gore ’08: Does He Round Up or Down?” writer Sridhar Pappu declares: “Yes, we’ve certainly seen a lot of Al Gore lately. And there’s a lot of Al Gore to see. Calling Planet Girth!” He tells us that we’ll know Gore is serious about running for president when he loses some weight. Pappu gets in a dig at Obama, too: “There are moments where one fears that if Obama were to lose any weight he’d be on the cover of Us Weekly with Lindsay Lohan.”

Even the Republicans aren’t immune to this foolishness. Dowd claims that: “The Daddy Party, sick with desire for a daddy, is like a lost child.”

These petty criticisms take the place of substantive campaign coverage, and they play on our society’s lingering discomfort with women and men who step the least bit outside traditional gender roles or violate our national obsession with body image. Does this sound productive to you? If we are to elect a president who can help turn this country around, someone who will advance rather than dismantle women’s and civil rights, then voters need real information about the candidates and their platforms.

Sign NOW’s petition telling the media that the presidential election is not “America’s Next Top Model”!

And read our recent examination on the media’s coverage of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and other women in politics.

Take Action NOW, before another candidate lands in the White House because the press says they might be fun to have a beer with!

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“Law and the Emotions: New Directions in Scholarship” Website

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Ann Bartow
The “Law and the Emotions: New Directions in Scholarship,” conference held at UC Berkeley on February 8th and 9th now has a dedicated website here which has links to conference papers and abstracts, and a Papers of Interest page with links to topically related materials The site will remain active until late June.
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E.J. Graff asks: “What’s with the sexualized threats against women?”

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Ann Bartow

And gets some answers in the comments, though perhaps not the kind she was hoping for.

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Priniciples of Economics…

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

… by The Stand Up Economist. Via Christine Hurt.

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The He/She Ratio

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

There is an online tool called the He/She Ratio that tallies the ratio of how many times the words “he” and “she” are employed on a website.   For this blog it found: Usage of “he” vs “she” on feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/ (43%/ 57%). Uh oh, does that mean there aren’t enough posts about men? See how other websites fare yourself here. Via Dana Goldstein.

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Why Women’s Voices Aren’t Heard on Abortion

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

A supposedly liberal dood blogger (who is also affiliated with a disproportionately male media enterprise) writes about abortion:

“Ultimately, brave people are going to have to stand up and start talking about their personal experiences with these things in a way which communicates “this could happen to you” to people.”

Gee, why didn’t we feminists think of that? Oh wait, we did, as Ann Friedman points out, writing in pertinent part:

It’s not a novel suggestion that we combat abortion restrictions by sharing real women’s (and some men’s) stories about why they made the choices they did. This is something the pro-choice movement has done since its inception, starting with speak-outs about back-alley abortions in the pre-Roe era. In the past few years alone, there have been several books, at least two documentary films (“Speak Out: I Had an Abortion” and “The Abortion Diaries“), and an entire monthly magazine devoted to sharing women’s personal experiences. Ms. magazine recently published the names of thousands of women who declared, “We Had Abortions.” And stories of the “it happened to me, it could happen to you” variety appear in the mainstream women’s magazines fairly regularly. Planned Parenthood collects stories of women who have undergone abortions — and tries to publicize them whenever things like Gonzales v. Carhart make the news. And lest you think that only women have spoken out, read this very moving post by a man who had to make a particularly difficult decision about a D&X abortion because his wife was incapacitated.

We need more feminist women in blogging and in government, that’s pretty clear. But will it ever occur to supposedly liberal doods that women might know more about abortion than they do? Not likely! Garance Franke-Ruta has written:

… the officially pro-choice New York Times has hosted a conversation about abortion on its op-ed page that consisted almost entirely of the views of pro-life or abortion-ambivalent men, male scholars of the right, and men with strong, usually Catholic, religious affiliations. In fact, a stunning 83 percent of the pieces appearing on the page that discussed abortion were written by men.

Editors explaining the dearth of women on op-ed pages, a subject that has in the last year received a great deal of attention, will frequently point to the broader society for explanation: Congress is 86 percent male; very few women hold executive positions in the business world; the academy remains overwhelmingly male at the level of tenured professorships; military leaders, diplomats, world leaders — all are overwhelmingly male. Thus, they say, it’s not entirely the fault of newspapers that their op-ed pages rarely reflect women’s voices.

One topic on which it would seemingly be easy to find female authors, however, is abortion. The vast bulk of the pro-choice side consists of groups founded, staffed, and led by women, and every significant pro-choice advocacy organization is also in some measure a women’s group. That the issue even exists as public policy question worthy of discussion is a result of female agitation, legal strategy, and demands for autonomy. Abortion rights advocates, legal strategists, and political theorists together make up one of the rare political niches in which women predominate.

Because of this, you might think that those writing about this topic on the op-ed page of a liberal, officially pro-choice publication like the Times might similarly be largely female. You would also, however, be wrong.

A Prospect examination of the authors published between late February 2004 and late February 2006 found that 90 percent of writers — including staff columnists — who discussed abortion on the Times op-ed page over the past two years were male. These men wrote 83 percent of the op-eds that mentioned abortion. …

–Ann Bartow

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The Scholar & Feminist Online – Spring 2007 Issue!

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

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Issue homepage here!

About this issue:

As blogging has more widespread interest, especially vis-á-vis electoral politics, feminist activity on the internet has remained marginal to the mainstream. Thus, we were thrilled when Gwendolyn Beetham and Jessica Valenti proposed “Blogging Feminism: (Web)sites of Resistance” as a Scholar and Feminist Online journal topic, as well as a theme for a Barnard Center for Research on Women panel discussion. As Beetham and Valenti point out in their introduction, all too much feminist activity exists in the blogosphere invisibly. This theme runs through many of this journal’s contributions, and is taken up directly by Clancy Ratliff and Tedra Osell in the section entitled “Women and Politics in the Blogosphere.”

Another central aim of “Blogging Feminism” is bringing to the fore the innovative work developed by feminist bloggers, especially in the political realm. Marie Varghese’s piece, for example, insightfully points to the spaces available online for movement-making that are scarce or entirely absent in mainstream media, as she analyzes media representations of the horrific murder of Rashawn Brazell, a black gay teen. Mary Matthews, on the other hand, points to vlogs (video blogs) as another ripe site for feminist creativity. This issue of Scholar and Feminist Online aims to bring together feminist bloggers, vloggers, scholars and activists who create and analyze our virtual world.

Since the Internet is one of the main sites where young feminists articulate their vision, our web journal has often focused on topics that are particularly important to the lives of young feminists. Such issues include “Young Feminists Take on the Family” (Issue 2.3), “Feminist Television Studies: The Case of HBO” (Issue 3.1) and “Jewish Women Changing America: Cross-Generational Conversations” (Issue 5.1). “Blogging Feminism” continues to explore the wide range of activity to which young feminists devote themselves. Focal points for the works included in this issue include gender, cyber-activism, sexuality, race, class and globalization in the blogosphere and beyond.

We are particularly interested in how technological innovations help to transform the world by adding multiple voices to discussions and multiple forms of representations. As a result, this issue includes technological innovations for S&F Online. Taking full advantage of the interactive nature of the Internet, “Blogging Feminism” includes a new blog section where readers can post comments during the week following the journal’s launch (May 1-8, 2007). Prominent feminist bloggers, the issue’s contributors and our readership have been invited to participate. Additionally, this issue includes the video and transcript of the November 2006 panel discussion on blogging and feminism, featuring Lauren Spees, Michelle Riblett ’05 (Hollaback), Alice Marwick (Tiara) and Liza Sabater (Culture Kitchen), and moderated by Gwendolyn Beetham and Jessica Valenti. The video of the 2006 panel has also been posted on YouTube as an additional way to expand our audience and the conversation. We hope you will join the conversation.

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National Parity Day

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From an e-mail sent by “Wellstone Action”:  

Today, as part of National Parity Day, David Wellstone is meeting with members of Congress to urge them to finally pass legislation that his father championed for over a decade, a bill now known as the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.   The Wellstone bill is co-sponsored by a majority of members of the House, but unless action is taken in the next two months in committee, the bill will likely not pass this year.

Today,  please call  the national parity hotline (1-866-PARITY4) and ask to be connected to your member of Congress.  The message is simple:

“I am calling to urge you to support the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.   This is a bipartisan bill that is co-sponsored by a majority of House members.   It is common sense legislation that ends discrimination against people suffering from mental illness and addiction.   The Wellstone bill is fair, just, and long overdue.   Please support this bill and urge your colleagues to finally pass it out of the House this year.”

Thanks for your help in getting the Wellstone bill passed.   For more information about the bill and other things you can do to help,  click here.

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Summer Researchwear

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

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From here.

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“Many female lawyers dropping off path to partnership”

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

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From The Boston Globe:

… Female lawyers continue to face intractable challenges in their attempts to become partners, causing them to abandon law firm careers — and the legal profession entirely — at a dramatically higher rate than men, according to a local study to be released today.

The study echoes the findings of other recent major reports, but offers more detailed statistics and demographic data. It also aims to draw attention to the social consequences of this troubling exodus: As fewer women ascend to leadership positions in their firms, the pool of women qualified to become judges, law professors, business chiefs , and law firm managers is shrinking.

“This shows that we are reaching a crisis point when it comes to the retention and advancement of women in the legal profession, and therefore a crisis point when it comes to women leaders generally,” said Lauren Stiller Rikleen, a senior partner at the law firm Bowditch & Dewey and author of the book “Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law.”

For years, law firm leaders have insisted that as more women graduate from law school and enter private practice, the presence of women in leadership positions in the judiciary, in business, and in academia would grow correspondingly. But even though the gender gap in law firm hiring has been narrowing over the past decade, women are dropping off the partner track at alarming rates.

Of the 1,000 Massachusetts lawyers who provided data for the report, 31 percent of female associates had left private practice entirely, compared with 18 percent of male associates. The gap widens among associates with children, to 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively — reflecting the cultural reality that women remain the primary care givers of children and are therefore more likely to leave their firms for family reasons.

The dropout rate among women lawyers is overwhelmingly the result of the combination of demanding hours, inflexible schedules, lack of viable part-time options, emphasis on billable hours, and failure by law firms to recognize that female lawyers’ career trajectories may alternate between work and family, the report found.

The report, “Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership,” which was produced by the MIT Workplace Center in conjunction with several of the state’s major bar associations, is rife with devastating commentaries on law firm life, including one female lawyer’s remark that “I would not encourage my daughters to enter the legal profession.”

Among its findings:

Women make up only 17 percent of law firm partners.

Women leave the partnership track in far greater numbers than men.

Women stop pursuing partnership mainly because of the difficulty of combining work and child care.

Nearly 40 percent of women lawyers with children have worked part time, compared with almost no men, even though men in the profession have more children than women, on average.

Many firms have flextime policies but are “clever in discouraging their uses.” …

More about the report here, including:

The report tracks the career paths of nearly 1,000 women and men in Massachusetts law firms. The report shows revealing and inadequate firm responses to family factors affecting women:far more than men:which has resulted in a large scale exodus of women from the practice of law. The report also follows these women down their new career paths to organizations and companies that are more family-friendly:disproving the conjecture that women are choosing to stay at home rather than continue working in the legal field. Read the full summary of the report.

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Does The “Femininity” Of A Girl’s Name Affect Her Career Path?

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Ann Bartow

According to this article in The Guardian:

… [G]irls who are given very feminine names, such as Anna, Emma or Elizabeth, are less likely to study maths or physics after the age of 16, a remarkable study has found.

Both subjects, which are traditionally seen as predominantly male, are far more popular among girls with names such as Abigail, Lauren and Ashley, which have been judged as less feminine in a linguistic test. The effect is so strong that parents can set twin daughters off on completely different career paths simply by calling them Isabella and Alex, names at either end of the spectrum. A study of 1,000 pairs of sisters in the US found that Alex was twice as likely as her twin to take maths or science at a higher level.

Part of the reason is that names provide a powerful image of a person and influence people’s reactions to them. An Isabella is less likely to study maths, according to the theory, because people would not expect her to. ‘There are plenty of exceptions but, on average, people treat Isabellas differently to Alexes,’ commented David Figlio, professor of economics at the University of Florida and the author of the report. ‘Girls with feminine names were often typecast.’ Figlio pointed to the controversy that arose over the first talking Barbie’s phrase, ‘math is hard’. ‘It is a stereotype, and girls with particularly feminine names may feel more pressure to avoid technical subjects,’ he said. Not that they were any less capable. When the Isabellas, Annas and Elizabeths took on their tougher-named peers in science, they performed just as well. …

David Figlio‘s study will appear in the Journal of Human Resources. Marketing research and some of the theories underlying trademark law supports his contention that names can be powerful. Via the F-Word Blog.

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