Monthly Archives: October 2010

This Week: Black Women Voters, Miniskirts, & more

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Black Women Could Swing November’s Vote
Women’s Media Center: “Analyst Page Gardner, founder of Women’s Voices, Women Vote, follows women’s voter enthusiasm.  Her review reveals a recent increase in interest among unmarried and minority women. And small blocs of voters can be decisive.”

Advocates Hope That Transgender Identity Is Not a Defining One
New York Times: “But she is not the only transgender person campaigning for public office this fall. And unlike in years past, when such candidates were often considered mere curiosities, several are within striking distance of historic victories.”

Miniskirts ban planned by Italian resort
The Guardian: “The new rules, which were approved by the town council yesterday, drew outrage from local centre-left politicians, who mounted a sit-in outside the town hall. ‘The Bobbio administration is male chauvinist,’ the organisers of the protest said in a statement. ‘This town does need decorum, but not the decorum that is measured by a tape measure held against women’s clothing.’” Continue reading →

Obama Speaks Out About Violence Against Women

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This afternoon, we marked Domestic Violence Awareness Month with the President and Vice President by highlighting the Obama Administration’s unprecedented coordination and cooperation across the entire government to protect victims of domestic and sexual violence and enable survivors to break the cycle of abuse.

Read Valerie Jarrett’s full White House blog post on the event here…

Heterosexism, Sex & Sexuality: A Conversation about Black Male Privilege

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On Wednesday, November 3 Steven G. Fullwood, project director of the Black Gay & Lesbian Archive Project, will engage Jewel Woods, author of The Black Male Privileges Checklist, in a discussion about, you guessed it, black male privilege.

Jewel Woods

Woods, the founder and director of the Renaissance Male Project, an organization committed to building a community of practice around men’s issue while addressing intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women, has committed his life to pursuing “the paradox of men’s lives.”  On his Web site, Wood asserts that examining black male privileges offers black men and boys an opportunity to go beyond old arguments of “personal responsibility” or “blaming the man” to gain a deeper level of insight into how issues of class and race are influenced by gender. According the Woods, The Black Male Privileges Checklist can be applied to all men. However, because of the specific privileges that black men have in relationship to black women, there are specific items that apply only to black men.

The event, which is hosted  by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, is free and open to the public. For more information visit the Schomburg Center’s public programming schedule here. For more information about Jewel Woods and the Renaissance Male Project visit here and here.

-Nydia Swaby

Racialicious Introduces Culturelicious

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We at RE/VISIONIST are big fans of Racialicious, a blog that focuses on the intersection of race and pop culture.  Editor Latoya Peterson summarizes their new project, Culturelicious:

When I first described the idea to Arturo, it took me close to ten minutes to relate my frustration with our limitations, the problems with our ever growing inbox, the desire to expand our content mix, and the ultimate goal of creating a space which showcased the work and creations of artists and creators of color.

Arturo thought for a minute, then summed up the entire project in one sentence:

“So, if Racialicious is the adversary, Culturelicious is the advocate.”

Racialicious focuses on pop culture critique and essays on identity. This tends to serve us pretty well. But over the last couple of years, we’ve noticed a huge glaring gap in our content – arts and culture reviews. This is partially because a volunteer blog relies on people to volunteer to review/write about a piece and that can be a pretty lengthy commitment.

Peterson goes on to explain more specifically some of the books, television series, films, comics (and more!) that Racialicious would like to tackle and review but has little resources to do so.  She then introduces the $2 challenge to readers:

As part of the $2 challenge, we will create some posts around Culturelicious, which take a deeper look at art and media, and create a different type of content dynamic for the site.

If you’d like to see more, please help us by pledging your support.  We’re asking everyone for $2 – but feel free to give more! – which will go a long way in helping the blog reach its goals.

We hope some of our readers consider this challenge.  Please make your $2 pledge here.

Good Men Project: Confronting Life

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This is an excerpt from an article by Aaron Gouveia at The Good Men Project.  You can read the full post at The Good Men Project.

My wife, suddenly serious, pointed out a women entering the clinic. Within minutes, she said, that woman would be making a serious choice. Whether she kept her baby or not, it didn’t matter—what matters is that she can make the decision that’s right for her. And she can make it without people screaming at her.

My wife and I wanted our second child. We loved her. We even had a name for her, Alexandra.

You never know the circumstances surrounding this kind of decision. Consider this my plea: stop terrorizing women. Stop adding trauma to their trauma.

Read the full article here.

Monday Night: The Assassination of Dr. Tiller on MSNBC

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Tomorrow night, MSNBC will air its documentary “The Assassination of Dr. Tiller” at 9pm EST.  Rachel Maddow narrates this story of the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller at his church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31, 2009.

The video above is a segment of The Rachel Maddow Show introducing the documentary and trailer.

This Week: Mothers in Prison, Women & Economics, & more

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New report on the treatment of mothers and pregnant women in U.S. prisons
Feministing: “According to the report, there are more women behind bars than ever before in U.S. history and, thanks to the mandatory sentencing laws of the war on drugs, the majority of those women are non-violent, first-time offenders. They are also mothers. Two-thirds of women in prison have at least one child under age 18.”

Rachel Maddow Breaks Down How the Racist Political Past is Present
Colorlines: “This election season we’ve seen political candidates drop offensive racially charged comments with such casual impunity that cataloguing them all, let alone mustering up the anger to react, has become a daunting task. But last night Rachel Maddow summarized this election cycle in a historical context that made for must-see TV.”

Americans Say Religious Messages Fuel Negative Views of Gays
Huffington Post: “Nearly three-quarters of Americans (72 percent) say religious messages about homosexuality contribute to “negative views” of gays and lesbians, and nearly two-thirds (65 percent) see a connection to higher rates of suicide among gay youths.” Continue reading →

Ginny Thomas reminds women we should be thanking Anita Hill

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Anita Hill

This is an excerpt from an article by Devona Walker posted on AlterNet. You can read the full article at AlterNet.

The Anita Hill case was a turning point for American women, who have endured sexual harassment and gender bias on the job. Even though they dragged her name through the mud, she was unflappable on the stand and gave women everywhere in the U.S. courage to stand up and say “enough is enough.” Subsequent to her testimony the U.S. Supreme Court made employers more liable for sexual harassment in 1998. The Society for Human Resource Management has reported that 62 percent of companies now offer sexual harassment prevention training programs, and 97 percent have a written sexual harassment policy.

For those of us who knew Anita Hill told the truth, the appointment of Clarence Thomas was a defeat, a slap in the face.

But because she had the courage to speak out there were long-term consequences. There soon was national awareness about sexual harassment in the workplace. Between 1991 and 1996, awards to victims of sexual harassment under federal laws nearly quadrupled, from $7.7 million to $27.8 million.

Another repercussion was that women started getting involved in politics. The following year, in fact, the media heralded the 1992 election as the “Year of the Woman.” A record number of women ran for public office and won. In the U.S. Senate, eleven women ran and five won seats. In the House of Representatives, twenty-four women won new seats. Why? Because women across the country realized that the only reason her grievances were not taken seriously is because she was being judged by a Congress, not an electorate, who was 98 percent male at the time.

Read the full article here.

This Week: GLBT solidarity, College rapists get off the hook, & more

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Another LGBT Youth Suicide–and the Love that Can Stop This

ColorLines: “How many times did Rutgers student Tyler Clementi hear friends, fellow students, even adults hurl anti-gay slurs like “that’s so gay” and “stop being a fag” without hearing a challenge to them? How often did Aiyisha Hassan hear that she was loved for being a lesbian, not just tolerated? What unspoken shame lurks inside those Bronx boys that would allow them to rape another human being with a plunger? How many grotesque caricatures of manhood were they fed, unchallenged, before they came to believe such behavior is masculine? How often do jerks like Paladino spout off around a dinner table or a water cooler or a locker room without somebody saying, hey, that’s not right?”

[Note: as the author of this article mentions a vigil at Howard University, we'd like to remind you about the vigil at Sarah Lawrence on October 20th.]

Judge Orders U.S. Military to Stop ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

New York Times: “Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court for the Central District of California issued an injunction banning enforcement of the law and ordered the military to immediately “suspend and discontinue” any investigations or proceedings to dismiss service members. In language much like that in her Sept. 9 ruling declaring the law unconstitutional, Judge Phillips wrote that the 17-year-old policy “infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members” and violates their rights of due process and freedom of speech.”

Shocking: College Rapists Almost Always Get Off the Hook

AlterNet: “A 2002 report [PDF] commissioned by the Department of Justice found a number of inherent problems with university policies and practices regarding sexual assault, including a tendency to “unintentionally condone victim-blaming.” Only 38 percent of schools require sexual assault sensitivity training for campus law enforcement, while only 37 percent fully comply with federal regulations about reporting crimes. The CPI investigation similarly found that even when college administrators deem a student guilty of sexual assault, they are reluctant to expel the perpetrator:

Verdicts are educational, not punitive, opportunities. … Not every sexual offense deserves the harshest penalty, [administrators] argue; not every culpable student is a hardened criminal.” Continue reading →