JoAnn Wypijewski:

"If there is an upside to the right's latest, seemingly loony and certainly grotesque multi-front assault on women, it is the clarion it sounds to humanists to take the high ground and ditch the anodyne talk of 'a woman's right to choose' for the weightier, fundamental assertion of 'a woman's right to be.'

That requires that we look to history and the Constitution. I found myself doing that a few weeks back, sitting in the DC living room of Pamela Bridgewater, talking about slavery as the TV news followed the debate over whether the State of Virginia should force a woman to spread her legs and endure a plastic wand shoved into her vagina.
....snip....

"....Since that conversation in Pamela's living room, the anti-woman spring offensive has come on in full. Virginia lawmakers ended up imposing a standard ultrasound mandate rather than the 'transvaginal' version, one of at least ninety-two new regulations or restrictions that states have imposed on abortion since 2011, and one of at least 155 introduced in state legislatures since the start of the year.
Rush Limbaugh revealed himself to be astoundingly ignorant of female sexuality. Rick Santorum demonstrated many times over that, for him, no idea in 'the sexual realm' is too outlandish. They and their anti-woman allies have lobbed so many bombs it's easy to get distracted, to assume a posture of defensive, and sometimes politically dicey, defense: but no federal money pays for abortion; women who delay child-bearing are more productive; the Pill eases painful periods; most of what Planned Parenthood does has nothing to do with abortion; contraceptives help against rheumatoid arthritis; Mrs. Santorum might have died under the fetal personhood platforms her husband touts; Sandra Fluke is not a slut…

What of it if she were? By any other name, ain't she a woman? A human being? The descendants of slave masters have no more right to control her sexuality and reproductive organs, to deny her self-determination, than did their predecessors. Mother or slut, prostitute or daughter, law student or lazybones who just wants to have sex all day, she is heir in her person to a promise of universal freedom, one that does not make such distinctions but that recognizes an individual's right to her life, her labor, her body and self-possession all as one. Forget trying to shut up a gasbag on the radio; there is a basic constitutional liberty to uphold."

Read the whole thing: [Link: www.thenation.com...]

By TourÉ:

1. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Blackmaleness is a potentially fatal condition. I tell you that not to scare you but because knowing that could possibly save your life. There are people who will look at you and see a villain or a criminal or something fearsome. It's possible they may act on their prejudice and insecurity. Being Black could turn an ordinary situation into a life or death moment even if you're doing nothing wrong.

2. If you encounter such a situation, you need to play it cool. Keep your wits about you. Don't worry about winning the situation, your goal is to survive.

3. There is nothing wrong with you. You're amazing. I love you. When I look at you I see a complex human being with awesome potential but some others will look at you and see a thug. Even if their only evidence is your skin. Their racism relates to larger anxieties and problems in America that you didn't create. When someone is racist toward you—either because they've profiled you or spat some slur or whatever—they are saying they have a problem. They are not speaking about you. They're speaking about themselves and their deficiencies.

4. You will have to make allowances for other people's racism. That's part of the burden of being Black. We can be defiant and dead or smart and alive. I'm not saying you can't wear what you want. Your clothes are a red herring. They'll blame it on your hoodie or your jeans when the real reason they decided that you were a criminal is you're Black. Of course, you know better. Racism is about reminding you that you are less human, less valuable, less worthy, less beautiful, less intelligent. It's about pre-judging you as violent, fearsome, a threat. Some people will take that prejudice and try to enforce their will on you in order to make sure you feel like a second-class citizen and to make certain that you get back to the lower-class place they think you're trying to escape. The best way to counter them will not involve your fists but your mind. You know your value to the world and how awesome you are. If you never forget that, they can't damage your spirit. The best revenge is surviving and living well.

Read more: [Link: ideas.time.com...]

TourÉ is the author of four books, including Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?

Sarah Seltzer details five areas in which the GOP has negatively affected women's freedoms in recent years:

1-Women are losing ground--fast--on abortion rights in states that were previously neutral.

2-The assault on birth control isn't over, and some want to deny women the right to use it at all.

3-The Violence Against Women Act is under threat in the Senate.

4-Abortion doctors and pregnant women are being targeted.

5-We're defending ground we shouldn't be defending.

Sarah Seltzer:

On Thursday morning, the Guttmacher Institute released some shocking data--although it's less shocking for those of us who have been following the war on women. What it revealed? The record number of abortion restrictions passed in 2011 has meant a massive shift for women in terms of which states were supportive of reproductive rights and which were overtly "hostile:

As a result, the number of both supportive and middle-ground states shrank considerably, while the number of hostile states ballooned. In 2000, 19 states were middle-ground and only 13 were hostile. By 2011, when states enacted a record-breaking number of new abortion restrictions (see box), that picture had shifted dramatically: 26 states were hostile to abortion rights, and the number of middle-ground states had cut in half, to nine.
...snip...
As Guttmacher notes:

The implications of this shift are enormous. In 2000, the country was almost evenly divided, with nearly a third of American women of reproductive age living in states solidly hostile to abortion rights, slightly more than a third in states supportive of abortion rights and close to a third in middle-ground states. By 2011, however, more than half of women of reproductive age lived in hostile states. This growth came largely at the expense of the states in the middle, and the women who live in them; in 2011, only one in 10 American women of reproductive age lived in a middle-ground state.

Now some of this shifting ground has to do with the fact that in these now-hostile states, Tea-Party and conservative legislatures have taken over. In other words, the sharp political divide in our country has actually had a dire effect on women's health access on the ground. And they just keep coming. Some of the proposed laws don't even fit into the Guttmacher categories due to their extreme absurdity, such as Utah's "don't say sex" bill--which would forbid mentioning sex-related topics in schools--and Kansas's "let doctors lie" bill which would protect doctors who don't tell pregnant women information that might lead to an abortion.

As Gloria Feldt told Irin Carmon at Salon this week, advocates for reproductive rights need to talk freedom, too, by advancing the "Freedom of Choice" act, a bill that would forbid discrimination against women based on their "reproductive status." Instead of just reacting to the volley of misogyny, we need to keep advancing our own agenda of equality. The pushback against Komen, against Limbaugh, against the Blunt Amendment should just be the beginning.

Read it all here: [Link: www.truth-out.org...]

Jennifer Granholm is the former governor of Michigan. She is now host of 'The War Room' on Current TV. She is also a visiting public policy and law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Guys, I'm thinking it's hard for you to imagine what it's like to have your most private decisions made for you. By women.

Let's put it this way: Imagine that you need Viagra. Imagine that a law passed by an 80 percent female Legislature mandates that to obtain a prescription, you have to procure an affidavit from a sexual partner verifying that you are indeed incapable of an erection.

Or maybe, before obtaining a vasectomy, you have to undergo an ultrasound on your testicles — wherein a technician must apply gel and press a hand-held transducer on your private parts. The legislation mandates that you watch images of your sperm on a monitor as a doctor describes the millions of pre-human lives you are about to end.

Far-fetched? A female legislator in Virginia introduced an amendment to the ultrasound bill that would have required men to undergo a rectal exam and cardiac stress test before getting prescriptions for erectile dysfunction drugs. It was narrowly defeated 21-19. There were just not enough women in the Legislature to make the point.

The 'war on women' can be measured, in one sense, by the volume of demeaning and physically violating measures that not only force women to undergo procedures against their will, but force doctors to perform procedures that are medically unnecessary.

Virginia may have backed away from the invasive transvaginal ultrasound law, but requiring a standard ultrasound runs contrary to the guidelines of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Nine states now mandate this 'overreach' of government into a very personal and private decision between a woman and her doctor.

Look, it's obvious that abortion is the most sensitive of public policy issues. Women deeply understand the wrenching trade-offs they must make in weighing such a personal decision. So, in addition to legislatively forced physical procedures, it should come as no surprise that women are angered by patronizing bills mandating waiting periods or forced 'reflection' on images or on text written by legislators — bills that assume women are empty-headed children.

So much for 'trusting' the citizens. So much for Republicans as the party of small government.

Read more: [Link: www.politico.com...]

Victoria Dahl:

(Clarification: 'troll' is not an insulting term for a conservative. A troll is a stranger who posts an insulting or deliberately aggressive comment on your blog or Internets in an attempt to anger, embarrass or put you in your place.)

I've been pretty outspoken on Twitter lately about the birth control debate (Really? This is a thing? In 2012?) and Rush Limbaugh. Of course, this sort of talk attracts trolls and I have yet to have one who seems to know anything about anything. I'm getting tired of repeating the same facts over and over, so I decided to write up a little primer, so I could simply point them toward it, pat them on the head, and tell them to educate themselves so they don't have to weather the shitstorm I'm going to rain down on them.

I'm a layperson, in the sense that any woman can be a layperson about birth control, and I'm also pissed, so please excuse any messiness or disorganization or vulgarity in the delivery. And warning: there be snark in them thar hills. Snark. And maybe bitchiness.

1) Why do you think you deserve free birth control?

I don't think that word means what you think it means. This debate is about insurance coverage of birth control. Is your insurance free? Mine isn't. Mine costs a buttload of money every month. When you go to your doctor for a check-up that would cost, say, $300 out of pocket and you pay nothing, do you consider that free? Do you pat yourself on the back for pulling one over on the man? Do you dance your way to the parking lot, shouting, 'I'm the most wily welfare queen in a world of welfare queens!!!!'? Somehow I suspect you don't. It's not free, it's a service provided by a policy I pay premiums for.

Except when it's not. Since the dawn of time, many insurance policies haven't covered all of women's prescriptions. Why? I don't know. Because they haven't had to? Because discrimination is fun? Regardless, many states (24, I believe) have enacted laws requiring plans to cover birth control if they cover other prescriptions. A new federal law will make this true in all states. It's about time.

2) Why do you think you have a right to use my tax dollars to subsidize your birth control?

Assuming you've dropped the whole 'getting it for free' issue, I assume you're referring to the zero cost for preventative health care issue wherein I won't have to pay a co-pay for birth control? I don't think it's subsidized by the government, I think it falls to insurance companies. They seem to be fine with this, as birth control coverage costs them a lot less than pregnancy visits and childbirth. Regardless, 50% of the taxpayers in this country are women, and 98% of women have used birth control in their lives. So I think we've got our share of it covered, thanks. You can use your tax dollars to 'subsidize' no-co-pay preventative checks for prostate cancer, chief. Draw the imaginary lines in your head and feel better. Your tax dollars protect your little man down there. My tax dollars go to prevent the pregnancies that women would otherwise generate on their own without any fault or responsibility of men, whose magic sperm only ever create pregnancies when both parties are ready and prepared. Tricksy women.

More (including rebuttals 3-9) at:
[Link: victoriadahl.tumblr.com...]

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Breitbart.com on the theories of Derrick Bell:

Bell was one of the chief proponents of Critical Race Theory, a radical doctrine that holds that American legal institutions--including our civil rights laws--perpetuate white supremacy. Bell's ideas were not only radical, but bizarre.

This is only "bizarre" and "radical" to people who are willfully blind to American history. I don't agree with it, and it's far too sweeping for what I would argue. But white supremacy is actually in the Constitution, the whole Constitution, not the abbreviated one the Republican party read after taking the House in 2010. The laws of this country, until, the 1960s actively promoted white supremacy.

Moreover, I suspect that a critical race theorist would argue that the criminal justice laws in the country--post-1960--have themselves promoted white supremacy. I would not, mostly because I think their implications are much broader. But the point I'm driving at is that making such an argument is not hair tonic.

"Radical and bizarre" is a political movement which can't face up to evolution; is campaigning for president while standing in front of a flag of treason; is "Kenyan anti-colonial behavior" and "a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists," Asserting that white supremacy haunts our legal institutions is mainstream for anyone with a serious knowledge of our history."

More at The Atlantic: [Link: www.theatlantic.com...]

"The finest portion of Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama
was when he made [the point] that not only is Obama not a Muslim, so what if he were?"

Igor Volsky:

Conservative lawmakers around country have introduced legislation that would not only limit women's access to abortion services, but also severely interfere with their reproductive health decisions. The bills — ranging from requiring women to hear ultrasounds before undergoing an abortion to significantly limiting when physicians can perform the procedures — would significantly expand state government regulations and, in some instances, severely interfere in the woman-doctor relationship.

ThinkProgress has created an interactive map of the most restrictive measures moving through state houses around the country and has broken down the legislation into five categories:

– ULTRASOUND: Requires women to submit to or be offered ultrasounds before undergoing an abortion.

– REFUSAL: Allows health care providers to refuse to perform abortions and other medical procedures they may find morally objectionable.

– PERSONHOOD: Declares that life begins 'at the moment of conception' and that zygotes have all the rights of citizens, effectively outlawing all abortions and even some methods of birth control.

– PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Targets and defunds Planned Parenthood by limiting funds to the organization.

– 20 WEEK BAN: Outlaws abortions after 20 weeks gestation and punishes providers with prison sentences and fines for failing to uphold the ban.

Move the mouse over the map for short summaries of the bills, click on each state within the categories to read the legislation.
Link to map: [Link: thinkprogress.org...]

Tom Watson
"Forbes contributor on the confluence of social ventures, media, and change."

So much for post-feminism.

The world of networked hurt that descended on the spiteful media enterprise that is Rush Limbaugh revealed a tenacious, super-wired coalition of active feminists prepared at a moment's notice to blow the lid off sexist attacks or regressive health policy. When Limbaugh called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a 'slut' and 'prostitute' in response to her testimony before Congress on contraception costs, he may well been have surprised by the strength of the response. But he shouldn't have been.

At latest count, nine advertisers have pulled the plug on Limbaugh. Each was effectively targeted on Facebook and Twitter by an angry and vocal storm of thousands of people calling for direct action. The campaign was almost instantaneous, coordinated by no individual or organization, and entirely free of cost. Prominent feminist organizers told Forbes that it was social media's terrible swift sword, led once again by Twitter and Facebook-savvy women, that dealt Limbaugh the worst humiliation of his controversial career, and in many ways, revealed the most potent 'non-organized' organization to take the field on the social commons in the age of Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous.

'Given that much of the increased vocabulary and awareness about gender in the national discussion comes through social media and from young people, I think that instances like this one should give those who claim that young people don't care about feminism pause!' says Rebecca Traister, a contributor to Salon and author the important feminist history of the 2008 Presidential race, Big Girls Don't Cry. 'Young people are the ones who know how to use social media in this way, and look at the kind of impact it's having.'
.......
I think the feminists were always out there, but often isolated from one another or overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done and lack of time in a day,' says feminist writer Kate Harding. 'Social media allows us to work together quickly and publicly for something like a boycott or twitter campaign–(mostly) without the distractions of in-group politics or disagreement on any number of other issues–and that creates an energy that makes it feel so much more like a unified movement, even when people are still quite loosely connected.'

More, at
[Link: www.forbes.com...]

zunguzungu:

'A popular exercise among High School creative writing teachers in America is to ask students to imagine they have been transformed, for a day, into someone of the opposite sex, and describe what that day might be like.

The results, apparently, are uncannily uniform. The girls all write long and detailed essays that clearly show they have spent a great deal of time thinking about the subject.

Half of the boys usually refuse to write the essay entirely.

Those who do make it clear they have not the slightest conception what being a teenage girl might be like, and deeply resent having to think about it.'

–David Graeber, 'Beyond Power/Knowledge: An Exploration of power, ignorance and stupidity'

Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, in short, because her voice threatens to reconstitute the nature of the American public: if she were heard — if the specificity of woman's health were publicly speakable in the hallowed halls of Congress — then we could no longer pretend that this is simply an abstract and legalistic question of 'religion,' 'government,' and 'medicine.' It would suddenly be apparent that the female public and the male public actually have different interests and concerns when it comes to issues like sex and contraception, that contraception means something different to people with different reproductive organs. The fact that (heterosexual) men's enjoyment of consequence-free sex is dependent on the privilege of those consequences being borne by someone else might become thinkable, if those 'someone else's' had a public platform to speak about it.

This, after all, is why 'privilege' is so importantly different from power or bigotry:

privilege must remain ignorant of itself, because it's the right to enjoy benefits which you aren't even aware that others get denied.

And in this sense, while Rush was and is indirectly policing the boundaries of where and how a woman's reproductive organs come to be of public concern — and real human suffering is indeed at stake — it's the boundaries of whose concern gets to be publicly voiced and heard that concerns him, who gets to be heard when the public debates itself (as it inevitably will when we start talking about things like religious freedom and the state).

And this is also why it's not surprising that Rick Santorum wants nothing to do with what Limbaugh is doing, precisely because Limbaugh is simply taking Santorum's own position to its logical conclusion. Santorum needs people to overlook the reductio ad absurdum Limbaugh represent — to misunderstand it so that they can still think he might represent them — but Limbaugh is in the business of policing the boundaries between 'us' and 'them,' of describing 'them' in shameful terms which expel them from the public that 'we' see ourselves as part of. The more bitter and contested this expulsion can be made to be, the more effectively he plays his role as culture warrior.

More, at:
[Link: zunguzungu.wordpress.com...]