feminist blogs in english

Just got this news via the fine folks at CounterQuo:

The DC firm, Burke PLLC, is preparing to file a class action suit on behalf of those harmed by the military’s failures to address military sexual trauma. They are interested in speaking with anyone who has been assaulted or raped while in the military or by a member of the military. They plan on filing in the near future so if you know any victims/survivors who may be potentially interested in participating in this lawsuit, please have them contact Susan Sajadi at ssajadi at burkepllc dot com.

If this is you or someone you know, please do get in touch. Here’s some context, from playwright Carolyn Gage:

According to the website of the Military Rape Crisis Center, one in three women in the military will be sexually assaulted. Two out of three women in the military will be sexually harassed. Congresswoman Jane Harmon from California has done the math: “A woman who signs up to protect her country is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.”

Over 90% of all females that report a sexual assault are discharged from the military before their contract ends. From the 90%, around 85% are discharged against their wishes. Nearly all 
of the 85% lose their careers based on misdiagnoses that render them ineligible for military service and ineligible for VA treatment 
after discharge.

This case has the potential to not only win some small bit of justice for the victims/survivors that have already suffered at the hands of an (at best) uncaring military (trigger warning on that link), but may also have a real impact on the way the U.S. military policy deals with sexual violence in its ranks, hopefully saving many people from ever being so traumatized.

(Cross-posted at Yes Means Yes)

Via the LA Times:

Elena Kagan, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, won approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee on a nearly party-line vote Tuesday, her next to last hurdle before gaining a lifetime seat on the high court.

The vote was 13-6, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) joining the majority Democrats.

If she is confirmed by the Senate as expected early in August, the nine-member court will have four Democratic appointees for the first time since 1971. And for the first time ever, three of the justices will be women, and none will be a Protestant.

Yes, three women would be the most on the 9 seat court at the same time ever. So I guess that's progress.

Argentina has passed a bill that allows same sex couples to marry and adopt children. It is the first South American country to pass this type of legislation.

via Reuters.

Following more than 14 hours of charged debate, during which thousands of Argentines protested outside the Congress, the upper house voted 33-27 for the proposal, with three abstentions.

"I believe this has advanced equal rights," Senator Eugenio Artaza told reporters after the debate in which many lawmakers in the upper house invoked their Roman Catholic beliefs to explain their stance.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez supports gay marriage on human rights grounds and is expected to sign the bill into law after her return from a state visit to China. It cleared Argentina's lower house in May.

Word.

An update to my post yesterday about the vote in the French Parliament to ban burqas: The French lower house today passed the bill by a 335 to 1 margin.  (335 to 1???)  The bill must still be approved by the French Senate, which is expected to vote in the week of September 20.

You’d think this was one of those mythical laws from one of those Puritan colonial states, but it’s not. D.C. police confirm that carrying a condom, while with another person, can contribute to cause to arrest for prostitution.

Making condoms a factor for arrest, discourages prostitutes (or anyone, really) from practicing safe sex — this is especially terrifying news for the District, which has the highest HIV infection rate in the U.S.

Sign the petition to keep condoms from being used as evidence.

Hat tip to Tyler for the link.
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Kate is guest blogging for the week at Feministe. She’s a part-time journalist and a full-time law student. Follow her on twitter @itscompliKATEd.

The day has finally come.  It has been more than a year since French President Sarkozy first proposed a ban on wearing burqas in public places.  Tomorrow, the French Parliament will vote on the proposal.

After some initial wavering, I came to my position on the proposed ban last July and have not changed my mind.  I think the French government should ban the burqa. I say that knowing that it is clear that that the proposal is anti-Islam and is intended as a means of slowing the growth of the Muslim population.  My position is that the wearing of the burqa is an assault on women’s rights and that it is more important to free women from the burqa than it is to adhere to concerns about freedom of religion or the freedom for a woman to wear anything she wishes.  Can anyone really believe that the wearing of a burqa is a free choice by the wearer?  As I quoted in that post:

Some women -even feminists–decree that the burka should be a personal choice. Some women, in fact, claim that they are set free from the unwanted stares of men under the burka. That freedom, alas, comes at a price–assent to a system that subordinates women in the public sphere and relegates them to purely domestic power. Feeling comfortable on the streets in a burka is too high a fee to pay for one’s own oppression, however unfair this seems. (Of course in countries where women are beaten if they appear in public without a burka, they have no choice but to wear it.)

The burka is a symbol of the male power to compel women to behave in ways that speak of men’s right to own female bodies and to restrict female action. It’s in the long line of dreary cultural artifacts that include foot binding, chastity belts, female circumcision, honor killings, concubinage, and the sex trade.

Unfortunately, most feminists, including my co-blogger Emily, disagree with me.  One article that does agree with me is this one today from Salon:Broadsheet.  The author first says: “You would be hard pressed to find an American feminist clamoring to see the burqa outlawed, and that perspective has certainly been absent from Broadsheet — until now.”  The article then gives the views of Mona Eltahawy, who is described as “an Egyptian-born journalist who calls herself ‘a liberal, a Muslim and a feminist.’”  Eltahawy agrees with me that the burqa should be banned.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow in the French Parliament.

I have written a number of posts about the attempt to eliminate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.  In my view, President Obama and Congress should simply have defunded enforcement of the policy and, thus, effectively ended it while the far more more difficult elimination of the law unfolded slowly though Congress.  That, of course, did not happen.  Obama was perfectly happy to drag out the process.  And, therefore, Obama allowed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to announce a one-year “ thorough, objective, and systematic assessment of the impact of such a policy change.”  In my view, this was an obvious delaying tactic.  If there was truly a need for the Pentagon to have a review before implementing changes, it would have been far better to pass legislation that would go into effect immediately but mandate a one-year review before the actual changes went into effect.

On the other hand, the cynical side of me thought that these delaying tactics were just a smoke screen and that Gate and the Pentagon were trying to find a way to keep the policy in place.  Yesterday’s reports of the questionnaire sent to 400,000 service members makes this seem more likely.

Of course the questionnaire is biased.  With all of its resources and time, the Pentagon should have been able to create an unbiased one.  The answer to why it didn’t could be confirmation that the Pentagon doesn’t want the policy to change.  In other words, Gates’ “assessment of the impact of such a policy change” could be that the change would have too much of an impact and, therefore, shouldn’t be done.

Leaving aside the bias, the real question about the questionnaire (and the one-year review itself) is what will the Pentagon do with the results?  There are questions about “room, berth or field tent.”  There are questions about “bathroom facilities with open bay shower.”  There is a question asking whether the service member would move from his or her military housing if a gay or lesbian member moved into the same housing with a same-sex partner.  There is even a question about shopping in a commissary.

Well, what will the Pentagon do with this information?  The first possibility, of course, could be that it decides that the existing policy cannot be changed at all.  The second possibility is that it will implement different facilities for gays and lesbians.  (Essentially “Separate but Equal” in the eyes of the Pentagon.  They couldn’t be that stupid, could they?)  But that seems unworkable.  For example, I assume that the military now has separate bath facilities for men and women.  (Am I right on that?)  How would that work out for separate facilities for gays and lesbians?  Wouldn’t there have to be four separate bath facilities?  (One bath facility for straight males.  One for gay males.  One for straight females.  One for lesbians.  That would work out well on a submarine, wouldn’t it.)  And why the questions about military housing and commissaries?  Even the Pentagon wouldn’t want to have separate facilities of those types, would it?

(What the Pentagon will do with the answers to the question about “room, berth or field tent” has problems similar to the bath facilities.  But it seems to me that the basic question is whether you allow the soldiers to choose who they share a room or tent with or whether you mandate sleeping arrangements.  If people are satisfied with how the current policy works for males and females, it will continue to work after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is repealed.)

My point is that there has never been any legitimate reason for the one-year review and, in particular, there is no legitimate reason for the questionnaire.  Just repeal the law.  Everything will be fine.

Human Rights Watch continues on their mission to uncover the pathetic rape kit testing rates through out the United States. You remember their report last year about the 13,000 untested rape kits in L.A., right? Depressingly, despite a lot of talk by the mayor and police department, little has changed there (the whole city is in budget meltdown). Well, HRW set their sights statewide in Illinois, collecting comprehensive data from 127 of 267 jurisdictions and found that only 1,474 of the 7,494 rape kits booked into evidence since 1995 could be confirmed as tested.

It's all in their new 51-page report, "'I Used to Think the Law Would Protect Me': Illinois's Failure to Test Rape Kits." Sarah Tofte, badass author of the report says:

Illinois's failure to test DNA evidence is not only an insult to rape victims - it puts all women at risk by leaving rapists who could be identified at large, some of whom may attack again. The data suggests that Illinois law enforcement just doesn't see rape as a serious crime that's worthy of time and resources.

Pissed off? Yeah, I thought so. Well, there's actually some direct action we can take here. The 2010 Sexual Assault Evidence Submission Act (thank you Attorney General Lisa Madigan!), which passed the state legislature this spring, would make Illinois the first state in the nation to require that every rape kit booked into evidence by law enforcement is sent to the crime lab for testing within 10 days of its collection.

BUT, and this is a really big BUT, it (a) hasn't been signed by Governor Pat Quinn and (b) includes a provision that testing of every kit within the time frame specified will only occur "if sufficient staffing and resources are available."

You know what to do. Contact Gov. Quinn and let him know that women deserve justice. And while you're at it, let Attorney General Lisa Madigan know that she's supremely appreciated.

Yesterday, a judge in Boston ruled that the federal gay marriage ban is unconstitutional, taking a huge step in the right direction for marriage equality.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Same-sex unions have been legal in Massachusetts since 2004, as many happy couples that have made the Mass or Bust wedding pilgrimage well know. The state argued that the federal law denied benefits, like Medicaid, to gay married couples in Mass., forcing the state to discriminate against its own citizens. This is a huge breakthrough in precedence for future rulings.

Even so, there's a long fight ahead, but we've got a lot to be thankful for and hopeful about. Evan Wolfson, Executive Director of Freedom to Marry, explains:

Today's ruling affirms what we have long known: federal discrimination enacted under DOMA is unconstitutional. The decision will be appealed and litigation will continue. But what we witnessed in the courtroom cannot be erased: federal marriage discrimination harms committed same-sex couples and their families for no good reason. Today's ruling provides increased momentum to the national movement to end exclusion from marriage...The crucial work of changing hearts and minds and winning the freedom to marry in more states is more urgent than ever as we build on today's momentum and encourage other decision-makers to do the right thing and end exclusion from marriage.

Image via Guanabee.

Finally. AP reports:

The U.S. Justice Department is filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's new law targeting illegal immigrants, setting the stage for a clash between the federal government and state over the nation's toughest immigration crackdown.

The planned lawsuit was confirmed to The Associated Press by a Justice Department official with knowledge of the plans. The official didn't want to be identified before a public announcement planned for later Tuesday.

The lawsuit will argue that Arizona's new measure requiring state and local police to question and possibly arrest illegal immigrants during the enforcement of other laws, like traffic stops, usurps federal authority.

We'll keep you posted on the announcement, which is supposed to be made by Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano later today.