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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Palin Hits the ‘Motherload’
Posted by crustyriotgrrl on October 2, 2008
I was driving to school to pick up the kids, listening to conservative talk radio. The subject was, of course, Sarah Palin, and the villains were, of course, liberals. Not just any liberals, but feminist journalist turncoats who preach gender equality until Republicans practice it.
I was, it turns out, among them.
I’m not telling this story to brag of my notoriety — I was far down the list — or to boast about being the Good Mommy. As my kids would be delighted to tell you, I’ve been anything but recently, as the national conventions collided with the start of school.
But the moment captured the topsy-turvy nature of the Palin debate: The loudest voices in the usual stay-at-home chorus cheer Palin’s careerism, while many working moms wince at the thought of a vice presidential mother of five.
Like a Picasso portrait with body parts askew, nothing in this political set piece is in its accustomed place.
My colleague Sally Quinn put it most provocatively. “Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job?” Quinn wondered. “When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick, what choice will she make?”
Quinn was skewered, but she’s hardly alone in her conflicted response. I watched a focus group of undecided married women convened in Las Vegas by a Democratic-leaning organization (Women’s Voices Women Vote) react to Palin’s speech. It took just a few minutes for the mommy debate to erupt, unbidden but fierce.
“She felt like she was one of us,” said one woman, an office manager mother of four. “She has family, she works, she has earned what she’s gotten instead of marrying into it. . . . I know there’s some controversy . . . but a lot of us work and have babies and all that.”
“But can you be president with a tiny baby and a big family and give both what they deserve?” interjected an accountant who works from home.
“Well, what if it was a man? . . . That’s where it’s a double standard,” the office manager said.
“I’ve heard there are plenty of high executive women — the job is first, the children have the nanny, the dad helps out, and they survive,” offered another woman, a grandmother. “I think she can do it.”
“Not if she’s really committed to her family,” said a recent retiree. “I think she’s bitten off more than she can chew.”
This is part of the never-ending conversation among mothers, working and stay-at-home, full-time and flex. Is there a mother around who heard Palin’s story and didn’t reflect on her own choices?
I don’t question whether Palin can pull off the most impressive juggling act in the history of working moms, balancing, as she told People magazine, BlackBerry and breast pump. But I do wonder — somewhat to my astonishment — why she’d choose to, and I suspect many mothers feel the same.
Looking over my female friends — educated and accomplished — it is hard to think of one who has not trimmed her career sails to accommodate family life. Amazingly, I know more women who have opted out than who work full-steam ahead.
This is not what I expected. Fourteen years ago, pregnant with my first child, I listened to two female friends, then high-powered Capitol Hill lawyers, discuss their dream part-time schedules.
“Not me, ladies,” I thought, smugly certain. Eight months later, maternity leave up, I was in my editor’s office, announcing that I wanted to scale back to four days a week. In a few years, I was down to three — and my friends had left their Hill jobs. Now I work full time, but not without ample agonizing and only because of a flexible boss.
My husband is a terrific dad, but the stark truth is that he does not feel the same homeward tug. He did a great job managing during the conventions, except for the unfortunate incident with the wrong doctor form for school, but when Julia needed to make lemon squares right away, I gave long-distance instruction from St. Paul — on deadline, naturally.
I would not, in truth, have it any other way. Wondering about Palin’s choice does not make me less of a feminist — just a realistic one. When I got home, I took the day off to clean the kids’ closets and get some meals in the freezer. Like Sarah Palin ditching the executive chef, I felt much better.
Source: Wasington Post, September 10, 2008; A15
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Changing Hearts And Minds On Gay Marriage
Posted by grrrlriot on July 13, 2008
Changing Hearts and Minds on Gay Marriage
This story comes from Alternet.
Young activists are trying to reach out to conservative voters.
A famous Chinese proverb teaches that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
For Meg Sneed, a 25-year-old Arizona lesbian, journeys to change a thousand hearts begin with a single thought: There’s power in sharing personal stories.
In 2006, she and other young activists in Soulforce, a gay-rights group devoted to the kind of peaceful confrontation practiced by Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, traveled eight weeks by bus to evangelical colleges to share what it’s like to be gay.
The next year, Sneed, who was fighting cancer, was weak from chemotherapy but walked 60 miles to help raise money for breast cancer research.
Now, with her home state set to vote on banning same-sex couples from marrying, Sneed is back on the move: Starting Aug. 8, she and other young Soulforce activists will walk 96 miles to the state capitol to share touching accounts of how the amendment would hurt real people.
She picked 96 miles for the six-day trek through egg-frying heat because that’s the number of years gay Arizonans haven’t had equal rights. (Arizona became a state in 1912.)
“Walking 96 miles,” Sneed says of her bold adventure, “is nothing compared to a gay or lesbian person being told they can’t see their partner in their dying moments at a hospital because they don’t have full marriage rights.”
Posted in activism, activist, activists, equal rights, human rights, news, Uncategorized | Tagged: activism, activist, activists, alternet, alternet.org, equal rights, human rights, issues, lgbt, lgbt issues, lgbt rights, news, rights | Leave a Comment »
Riot Grrrl Retrospective Part 8
Posted by grrrlriot on June 28, 2008
The Riot Grrrl Retrospective series has 11 parts to it and it tells all about riot grrrl. Feel free to watch all 11 videos, which I will be posting up some. This is Part 8 of the series.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: grrrl, riot grrrl, riotgrrrls, riot grrrls, riotgrrrl, riot grrl, riot grrls, riotgrrls, riotgrrl, grrrls, grrl, grrls, youtube, video, videos | Leave a Comment »
Boy
Posted by grrrlriot on May 19, 2008
This is another article from my Riot Grrrl Online website.
Boy
i will never be a rockstar.
i will never be rich.
i can’t take back my tenth birthday or the love i felt for you. there are no words for the hands that’re running all up with a liars veins, voice, words moist, so moist i believed. i believed that my best friends wouldn’t lie to me.
i will never be what the world wants me to be or have sex right. i will never open my door cuz in the eyes of the law it means i just spread open my legs and closed my eyes and said “c’mon in.” and i will never explain this to anyone i like cuz it’ll get used against me. the fact that i am not dead makes me an open target for murder. i swallowed your pride, i swallowed your heart, i swallowed your cum, guess that’s all part of it. there’s no justice and i’m really mad that people keep acting like there is. i don’t want to be a girl eaten up by your world, how can i watch girls eaten up by your world? how come i get hit and no one sees it? how come, bloodied, i am explaining to the man who hit me what he has done? why am i taking care of him, why oh why do i still love him…?
if you took away this lipstick would i still have a mouth underneath? is it true i’m only crying because i’m afraid to go to sleep? i will never be rich, not cuz rich doesn’t matter, but because i am crazy because i am full of hate… crazy means you don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.
when i was little my parents sent me to charm school and ballet. i don’t remember what recital it was fat-stomached and eight years old i was getting photographed in a bikini and a crown. now i’m crazy, fulfilling the american dream and being hated for it, they are just jealous. i don’t care.
i am in protest against the whole world. my body says it, slung into my clothes. i won’t stop talking, i’m a girl you have no control over. there is not a gag big enough to handle this mouth. i’m gonna tell everyone what you did to me. and sometimes i’ll tell it dramatic and sometimes i’ll blurt it out. and the hand you laid on my bare ass will be invisible as it spills right out of me. i will still bear the brunt of it, your smell. they will tell me i am inappropriate with their eyes. i’m not writing to please you, i’m not giving you a clean little hole to stick your dick in, a nice smooth arrangement.
pick me up, open me, put me down.
so sorry, i’m no hemingway, i’m writing for survival, my kind is being killed off, in fact i’m not even sure i exist. these words on this page mean something, if only that i was here and my fingers made this mess. i don’t know luxury, what it is to be carefree. that was your fantasy, remember?
Posted in rgo, riot grrl, riot grrl online, riot grrls, riot grrrl, riot grrrl online, riot grrrls, riotgrrl, riotgrrlonline, riotgrrls, riotgrrrl, riotgrrrlonline, riotgrrrls, Uncategorized, zines | Tagged: article, articles, grrl, grrls, grrrl, grrrls, kathleen hanna, kathleenhanna, riot grrl, riot grrls, riot grrrl, riot grrrls, riotgrrl, riotgrrls, riotgrrrl, riotgrrrls, writing, writings, zine, zines | Leave a Comment »
Feminism Friday: Anti-Abortion Measures on November Ballots in South Dakota, California
Posted by grrrlriot on May 16, 2008
Anti-Abortion Measures on November Ballots in South Dakota, California
Anti-abortion extremists are targeting states with ballot initiatives for November. A South Dakota initiative banning abortion garnered enough signatures to be placed on the state’s November ballot. The measure has only a few minor modifications from the abortion ban pro-choice activists defeated in 2006.
Anti-abortion groups are also pushing so-called “personhood initiatives” in several states. These measures declare that a fertilized egg is a “person” who enjoys “inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of the law.” They would threaten not only abortion itself, but IUDs, emergency contraception, in vitro fertilization clinics, and stem cell research. The measures failed in Georgia and Oregon. Signatures have been submitted for the Secretary of State to validate in Colorado, and petition drives are still underway in Montana and Mississippi.
A parental notification initiative, which California voters rejected in 2006, will again be on the ballot in November. In Missouri, both anti-abortion ballot initiatives failed to gather signatures to qualify for the November ballot, according to NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri release. In essence both initiatives were abandoned.
Media Resources: Feminist Majority Foundation; Feminist Daily Newswire; NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri release 5/13/08
This news story was taken from: Feminist Daily News Wire.
Posted in feminism friday, health, news, politics, Uncategorized, women | Tagged: abortion, california, feminism friday, news, pro choice, south dakota, united states, us, usa | Leave a Comment »
Feminism Friday: The Anarchafeminist Manifesto
Posted by grrrlriot on April 18, 2008
The manifesto below was taken from: http://www.powertech.no/anarchy/maf.html.
Manifeste Anarchoféministe
Anarchafeminist Manifesto
Translated from French (Bulletin C.R.I.F.A. No 44 mars -avril 1983 p. 12)
The Anarchafeminist Manifesto
All over the world most women have no rights whatsoever to decide upon important matters which concern their lives. Women suffer from oppressions of two kinds: 1) the general social oppression of the people, and 2) secondly sexism – oppression and discrimination because of their sex.
There are five main forms of oppression:
- Ideological oppression, brainwash by certain cultural traditions, religion, advertising and propaganda. Manipulation with concepts and play upon women’s feelings and susceptibilities. Widespread patriarchal and authoritarian attitudes and capitalistic mentality in all areas.
- State oppression, hierarchical forms of organization with command lines downwards from the top in most interpersonal relations, also in the so-called private life .
- Economic exploitation and repression, as a consumer and a worker in the home and in low-salary women’s jobs .
- Violence, under the auspices of the society as well as in the private sphere – indirectly when there is coercion because of lack of alternatives and direct physical violence.
- Lack of organization, tyranny of the structurelessness which pulverizes responsibility and creates weakness and inactivity.
These factors work together and contribute simultaneously to sustain each other in a vicious circle. There is no panacea to break the circle, but it isn’t unbreakable.
Anarcha-feminism is a matter of consciousness. The consciousness which puts guardians off work. The principles of a liberating society thus stand perfectly clear to us.
Anarcha-feminism means women’s independence and freedom on an equal footing with men. A social organization and a social life where no-one is superior or inferior to anyone and everybody is coordinate, women as well as men. This goes for all levels of social life, also the private sphere.
Anarcha-feminism implies that women themselves decide and take care of their own matters, individually in personal matters, and together with other women in matters which concern several women. In matters which concern both sexes essentially and concretely women and men shall decide on an equal footing.
Women must have self-decision over their own bodies, and all matters concerning contraception and childbirth are to be decided upon by women themselves.
It must be fought both individually and collectively against male domination, attitudes of ownership and control over women, against repressive laws and for women’s economic and social autonomy and independence.
Crisis centers, day care centers, study and discussion groups, women’s culture activities etc. must be established, and be run under womens’s own direction.
The traditional patriarchal nuclear family should be replaced by free associations between men and women based on equal right to decide for both parts and with respect for the individual person’s autonomy and integrity.
Sex-stereotyping in education, media and at the place of work must be abolished. Radical sharing of the work by the sexes in ordinary jobs, domestic life and education is a suitable mean.
The structure of working life must be radically changed, with more part-time work and flat organized cooperation at home as well as in society. The difference between men’s work and women’s work must be abolished. Nursing and taking care of the children must concern men just as much as women.
Female power and female prime ministers will neither lead the majority of women to their ends nor abolish oppression. Marxist and bourgeoisie feminists are misleading the fight for women’s liberation. For most women it is not going to be any feminism without anarchism. In other words, anarcha-feminism does not stand for female power or female prime ministers, it stands for organization without power and without prime ministers.
The double oppression of women demands a double fight and double organizing: on the one hand in feminist federations, on the other hand in the organizations of anarchists. The anarcha-feminists form a junction in this double organizing.
A serious anarchism must also be feminist otherwise it is a question of patriarchal half-anarchism and not real anarchism. It is the task of the anarcha-feminists to secure the feminist feature in anarchism. There will be no anarchism without feminism.
An essential point in anarcha-feminism is that the changes must begin today, not tomorrow or after the revolution. The revolution shall be permanent. We must start today by seeing through the oppression in the daily life and do something to break the pattern here and now.
We must act autonomously, without delegating to any leaders the right to decide what we wish and what we shall do: we must make decisions all by ourselves in personal matters, together with other women in pure female matters, and together with the male fellows in common matters.
***********
The origin of the Anarchafeminist Manifesto.
8 March, International Women’s Day, is a special relevant day to remember the Anarchafeminist Manifesto. The origin of the Anarchafeminist Manifesto is in Norway. The Anarchafeminist Manifesto is the summary of the feminist political program unanimously agreed upon by the third congress of the Anarchist Federation of Norway 1 – 7 of June 1982. The manifesto was first published in Norwegian in Folkebladet (IJA) no 1 1983 pp. 4-5. Soon after the Manifesto was published in CRIFA-Bulletin no 44 mars-avril 1983 in French (p. 12) and English (p. 13) language. Later on the French version was used as the basis for a translation to English that was published on the Internet, see above. The Manifesto is also translated to other languages.
Posted in feminism, feminism friday, feminist, feminists, Uncategorized | Tagged: anarcha feminist, anarcha feminists, anarcha-feminism, anarchafeminism, anarchafeminist, anarchafeminists, anarchism, anarchist, anarchists, anarchy, feminism, feminism friday, feminist, feminists | 1 Comment »
Riot Grrrl Cincinatti’s Mission Statement
Posted by grrrlriot on April 10, 2008
I got the mission statement from here from archive.org
Mission Statement
We are riot grrrls. We come in all shapes, sizes and colors. We are womyn, men, grrls and bois that are coming together to discuss what’s real in our lives. We are tired of our punk scene being dominated by the same standards the rest of our society is dominated by. We are sick of not seeing people like ourselves represented in our music/art/society/media/lives. We are tired of waiting for someone else to start a revolution. We are going to do it ourselves. We want to listen, learn, talk, and help each other. We aren’t a stereotype. We are female, male, young, old, rich, poor, white, black, from all ethnic backgrounds and upbringings. We are pro-choice. We are pro-womyn. We are pro-men. We are pro-queer. We are pro-womyn’s rights. We are pro-animal rights. We are pro-human rights. We are pro-freedom. We are pro-sisterhood. We are pro-change. We are anti-racist. We are anti-sexist. We are anti-classist. We are anti-weightist. Riot Grrrl Cincinnati is on its feet. We are ready for a place where we can come together, work together for a revolution and a common cause. We want equality. We don’t hate men. We aren’t all dykes. We want people to take a second look at womyn today and our place in the future. We are here to listen, discuss, act. Our plans as of now are to work along side Food Not Bombs, help out at women’s shelters, possibly put together a conference, and get involved with other chapters, like Indianapolis and Cleveland, put together a zine, compile pamphlets on things like rape, abortion, sexism, the media, etc., host workshops, maybe some spoken word… If you’re ready to make a change and stand up for the womyn around you, come to one of our meetings and share your ideas. Our actions will speak louder than words.
Posted in equal rights, riot grrl, riot grrls, riot grrrl, riot grrrls, riotgrrl, riotgrrls, riotgrrrl, riotgrrrls, Uncategorized | Tagged: grrl, grrls, grrrl, grrrls, mission, mission statement, riot grrl, riot grrls, riot grrrl, riot grrrls, riotgrrl, riotgrrls, riotgrrrl, riotgrrrls, statement | Leave a Comment »
