Feminism Is For Everyone

Aug 31, 2008,5:52 PM

Sarah Palin...the first female VP of the US?

Says newly nominated VP candidate Sarah Palin of her status as a woman, "It was rightly noted in Denver last week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

Read the rest of the article here.

As for my personal viewpoints: I'm sorry, but an anti-choice woman is not an advocate for women's rights. Just because you are a female does not mean you are pro-women. To insinuate that women are going to be comparing your obscure nomination to the Republican Party as VP to Hillary's largely popular campaign for Presidency in the Democratic Party is just incorrect. But that's just me.

3:06 PM

book excerpt

An excerpt from Paulo Coelho's Brida that I think is interesting, pertains to feminism and that I thought I should share with everyone:

May she [Virgin Mary] bless us because we are women and live in a world in which men love and understand us more and more. Yet still we bear on our bodies the marks of past lives, and those marks still hurt.

May the Virgin Mary free us from those marks and put an end forever to our sense of guilt. We feel guilty when we go out to work because we're leaving our children in order to earn money to feed them. We feel guilty when we stay at home because it seems we're not making the most of our freedom. We feel guilty about everything, because we have always been kept far from decision making and from power (103).

*As a side note to whomever finds this, no copyright infringement is intended.

Labels: books, quotes

Aug 29, 2008,11:53 PM

losing your virginity

I'm sure most of us refer to the end of virginity as "losing it." But never before had I considered the negative connotation of the phrase before I stumbled upon what others had to say on the subject. Generally and out of context, when you lose something it is rarely considered a positive action and neither is it considered something done by choice. The same can be said for "taking someone's virginity;" to take something implies the use of force and lack of choice. I strongly feel like this phrase applies more to women than men (I think men would usually say something like "The first time I had sex..." Then again, I'm not a man so I don't know how men discuss the subject amongst their friends.), as if having sex for the first time is something shameful. Thanks, society, for implementing that degrading idea into my head. Likewise, it is also interesting how society suggests that it is shameful for a man to not have had sex before marriage. Some might view all this as pure semantics, but I'm just sayin'....

Labels: sex, virginity

Aug 27, 2008,9:04 AM

terrorist patriarchy?

i found this article on CNN very interesting.

it seems to me that the end of the article touches on something a little more profound. it doesn't really surprise me that al Qaeda is taking advantage of the fact that men cannot search women in iraq. it is really unfortunate, however, that these women are obviously in vulnerable positions- widowed, have lost children, or are simply young and overwhelmed by promises of spiritual reward or money.

my first reaction to the theme of the article was: "Of course women can be terrorists; women can be just as fanatical about fundamentalist causes as men can." But after reading the article, it is clear that these women are not being given an opportunity to dedicate themselves to a cause, but are being used as valuable pawns for the war waged by al Qaeda.

Aug 26, 2008,5:24 PM

Happy Women's Equality Day!

from the Feminist Majority Foundation, www.feminist.org

Aug 23, 2008,12:30 AM

observations on marriage dynamics

So, there's a specific AT&T commercial about rollover minutes that keeps coming to mind whenever I think about feminism. You know, that milky minutes commercial. It makes me think about the dynamics of the male and female in a marriage. In this commercial I see the wife as the voice of reason while the husband undermines it by asking if his wife's sister is lactose-intolerant. Even though the husband is nonchalant about wasting minutes, his sons seem to respect him more in this situation than they respect their mother's viewpoint.

Anyway, I'm sure not all marriages are like this and that others would tell me not to waste my time, but I wanted to point out that it bothers me that girls must mature into adult women while boys can mature into adult boys. I've heard from many women--teachers, parents, my own mother--that "boys never grow up." It's like we have to grow up to demonstrate that we are just as good as men, but it doesn't matter because then they shove responsibility on our shoulders, act silly, and still get respect for it...at least as is illustrated in this commercial.

Speaking of marriage dynamics, I witnessed the marriage "blame game" while at work today. I was waiting for the husband to find his credit card and when he couldn't find it he blamed his wife, who replied that she had put it back in his wallet after she had used it earlier that week. He was so quick to blame. I don't know if he would have done that in the privacy of his own home; maybe it was because it happened in a public setting. But he found it...in his own wallet. It kind of made me wish that she had said, "I told you so."

Aug 22, 2008,10:40 AM

Some Pro-Choice Internet Activism! (from Carly's Blog)

So, many of you probably get NARAL or NOW email alerts or something to that extent, but basically what's going down right now is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is proposing some regulations that aim to give health care professionals the right to refuse women abortion or abortion-referall services. Now for those of you unaware, abortion is legal in the U.S. and is considered a legitimate medical option for women who are pregnant and don't wish to be.

The ACLU has a press release that really taps into how I feel about this:

For years, federal law has carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients' access to reproductive health care. The proposed regulations appear to take patients' health needs out of the equation.
At a time when more and more Americans are either uninsured or struggling with the soaring costs of health care, the federal government should be expanding, not hampering access to important health services.

click here for a quick and easy form letter to fill out and send to your legislators that states that you are against the regulations! Internet activism: soooo easy!

(this post was originally on Carly's personal blog, a farmhouse year.)

Labels: abortion, politics

Aug 13, 2008,1:43 PM

Stay-at-home wives

Thanks to my bff for showing me this article about being a stay-at-home wife (sans children). The article sort-of posits choosing to stay at home as a feminist ideal (the epitome of your right to choose). Thoughts?