feminist blogs in english

So far, I have avoided writing about trans subjects. Though that’s what I’m best known for here in Internet Land, it’s far from my only (or even dominant) interest in politics. I have layers, you know, like an onion or a parfait. Still, I have something that probably needs to be said. It’s basic, but so many cis people don’t even realise its necessity.

This one’s for those cis readers who have progressed past Trans 101, who might know and love the trans people in their lives. Sometimes cis people quite innocently out the trans people they know, or sometimes they mention them so as to demonstrate their allyness or even to make themselves more interesting (cos you know, all trans people simply must be fascinating by sheer virtue of existing).

When I out myself, or am outed, I never know what the reaction will be. Before hormones, and early transition, my transness was noticed quite frequently. Now, I have to be outed—by my documents most often, or by my friends, family and acquaintances. Which is where y’all come in. So here’s the deal: if you out us, you can do more damage than you can possibly imagine.

You can expose trans people to violence. You could get them fired. You could make it impossible for them to find work–word of mouth travels quickly in small towns or closeknit industries. They could be harassed so much they need to quit their job, or to need to move, or all kinds of things. You don’t know, because you’ve never had to live with the consequences. Just because you know and trust someone, doesn’t mean that I can. It doesn’t mean that they won’t be hateful to me, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they will be respectful of my confidentiality.

For most people, “trans” erases the bit that comes after. This is why you never ever see a headline that says “transsexual woman” [blah blah blah]. No, it just says “transsexual” and is used as a noun rather than the adjective it is. It conjures the ever present “really a man” transphobic trope (quick mental test: see if you can describe a trans person without using it). For women like me, living our lives as a woman is constituted as untruthful. When most cis people become aware that I’m trans, they start treating me different. I can see the change immediately – when pronoun “slips” start “accidentally” happening, when I stop being counted with the right group. Because it’s ingrained, isn’t it? In a cissexist culture, only cissexuality (or a trans person’s ability to appear cissexual) is truly real, and any hint of anything else invalidates the whole.

One time, I inadvertently outed myself to a group of students. I’d been teaching a tremendously interesting media studies class to first years; that is, mostly 17 and 18 year olds. The first three weeks went pretty well. We talked video games and violence, Hollywood, what they actually did with media. The discussions were engaged, it was all going fine. Then, a month in, I came down with a cold. My voice suddenly dropped an octave, because I couldn’t vocalise at my usual pitch. And like that, you could see the lights go on in their eyes. They’d realised I was trans.

Now, as these things go, it wasn’t truly awful (how low my expectations have become on that score). The next week, we did adbuster style cut-ups to jam dominant media messages and several groups turned in transphobic assignments, giggling their arses off. They were laughing at me. Another student spent the lesson interrupting me, telling the class how everything I was saying was stupid. And of course, a number of students stopped attending my classes altogether, trying to get into classes in the same unit run by other teachers. I was losing control of my classes.. and I was still bloody sick.

The point is, the mere fact of their knowing that I am trans meant that they, 17 and 18 year olds with scant knowledge of the subject they were taking, suddenly felt entitled to talk over me, to mock me openly when previously they had been respectful. Of itself, being subjected to ungendering takes its toll, especially if it’s something you experience frequently.

But that’s not the worst case scenario by a long shot. In April this year, a trans man teaching at CSU Long Beach was attacked in the toilet on campus, and had “it” carved on his chest. The victim didn’t recognise his assailant, and yet his attacker knew him by name, asking his name, and then attacking him. In other words, the attacker knew the name of a trans person, and then sought him out to attack him with a knife. Luckily, he survived.

So you see, what might seem like incidental detail to a cis person can be a matter of safety to a trans person. So, I ask you, dear cis readers of Feministe, please respect the confidentiality of the trans people you know. They might want to be out, and they might not. But either way, the risks are not yours to assume. Only a trans person can make that call.

I had a fight with my boyfriend last night. About Elena Kagan’s sexuality. Note: for the remainder of this post I’m going to write as if, hypothetically, Elena Kagan is gay. I don’t know if she is or isn’t and I don’t really care, but just for the sake of argument. So earlier this week, [...]

You know, remember just yesterday, when a committee of British lawmakers said "The privacy fears raised by the deployment of full body scanners at airports are overblown." They also said " the technology was no more of a threat to passengers' rights than pat-downs or bag searches." (Don't you love how a pat-down is no worse than someone seeing every single part of your body? And really, it's definitely not worse than someone looking through your bag.)

Ah, yesterday. The good ol' days. The day before an an airport security guard at London Heathrow told a woman coworker, who walked through a scanner, that he "loved those gigantic tits." Apparently a "first instance harassment warning has been issued" to the man.

Now sure, she wasn't a passenger getting ready to go on a flight, so I have no doubt we people who just want to fly somewhere still have "nothing to worry about." Because we don't have to work with people who think it's OK to comment on a woman's body as she goes through a scanner. We just have to trust them not to say things like that to us -- all along wondering what they're thinking that they aren't saying to us, and, ya know, maybe wondering if they're busy looking at people's bodies instead of looking for things like explosives.

People have raised all kinds of concerns about body scanners and privacy, and rightfully so. From implants to prosthetic body parts to transgender issues to disability issues to women whose religious beliefs require they cover their bodies (which would be seen in a body scanner), there are many privacy problems with the scanners. Stupidly, I had never considered one of the problems would be sexual harassment of a coworker.

And now I'm left with this: if a terrorist has explosives inside a breast implant, which is inside their breast, as has been reported, then what? According to the story, a "typical" body scanner wouldn't catch that. I think it might be time to admit that we can never make air travel 100 percent safe, no matter what we do. We can make it safer, yes. But pretty soon we're going to have to figure out how much privacy we're willing to give up, and when the "safer" has plateaued to "as safe as it can be."

Has anyone been through a body scanner? What was your experience?

This is what the new bout of anti-terrorism hysteria has brought us. The European Union is planning to force all of its members to adopt these intrusive and humiliating scanners in airports.

Some European countries that have somehow been able to preserve certain remains of human dignity and mental sanity - Spain and Germany, for example - are still resisting the madness. Others, like the Nederlands and Italy, are falling all over themselves in their desire to appease the United States by any means necessary.

It is still unclear whether anybody on the planet honestly believes that these invasive procedures will really do something to stop terrorism. We have been removing our shoes in airports for a while now but somehow I don't remember hearing any reports about hundreds of terrorist attacks being stopped by these measures.

The whole mess of this last failed attempt to blow up an airplane is a competition in ineptness. The terrorist is so inept that instead of exploding the airplane he blows off his own junk. The counterterrorism agencies are so useless that they never figure out he might be dangerous in spite of warnings. Obama-haters are so stupid that they blame him for the fact that this terrorist managed to board a plane in Amsterdam. They must honestly believe that Amsterdam is part of the US. The European Union is so silly that it is willing to strip itself not only of clothes but of the last shred of dignity to make the US happy.


This is how we are willing to be seen by airport security.

This is where our fear is taking us.

P.S. The people at airport security can easily adjust the resolution on the scanners to achieve a much better visibility of any area of the body, including the genitals.

P.P.S The third picture has been pulled since the reader Mike pointed out that it is fake. Thank you, Mike, for your vigilance!

From my mailbox, an announcement that Jeannie Suk, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, has published At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Transforming Privacy (Yale University Press). Here’s a description of the book from the flyer.

In the past forty years, the idea of home, which is central to how the law conceives of crime, punishment, and privacy, has changed radically. Legal scholar Jeannie Suk shows how the legitimate goal of legal feminists to protect women from domestic abuse has led to a new and unexpected set of legal practices.

Suk examines case studies of major legal developments in contemporary American law pertaining to domestic violence, self-defense, privacy, sexual autonomy, and property in order to illuminate the changing relation between home and the law. She argues that the growing legal vision that has led to the breakdown of traditional boundaries between public and private space is resulting in a substantial reduction of autonomy and privacy for both women and men.

The book is available on the YUP website and at bookstores.

Reyna breaks it down for us about how the new Oklahoma abortion law is a violation of privacy laws.

Full text of the script is available for you after the jump.

If you haven’t heard, Oklahoma has passed a law which violates privacy rights, gives doctors and clinics more paperwork, and increases the probability of violence against abortion clinics. That’s right, this law will take demographic information from EVERY womyn who has an abortion in Oklahoma… and then this information will be available on a website.

That’s right ladies, if you get an abortion- everything but your name will be out there on a website for all the world to see. Maybe next we can create a website of all fathers who abandon their partners and children. I mean- what is the Purpose of this law? This law will require doctors to ask specific demographic questions of their abortion patients, document the answers, then send them to the state to be posted on the website.

When I first heard of this new law, I thought they were also posting their names—I was happy to hear of the 34 questions they are asking and the 34 questions they are posting—the patients Name is not attached. But who cares, this is still a violation if HIPAA- or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. A major goal of the Privacy Rule is to assure that individuals’ health information is properly protected while allowing the flow of health information needed to provide and promote high quality health care and to protect the public’s health and well being. This law does quite the opposite. Instead of protecting patients this law puts these womyn in danger.

To understand the violations of privacy, lets take a look at some of the questions asked for the website. Date of abortion, county in which abortion is performed, AGE of mother, Marital Status of Mother, Race of Mother, Years of Education of Mother State or foreign country of resisdence, total number of previous pregnancies- including live births, miscarriages, and induced abortions, Approximate gestational age in weeks as measured from the last menstrual period of other, of the unborn child subject to abortion, Method used, If life-sustaining measures were taken, if anesthesia wa administered, the method of fetal tissue disposal, REASON for the abortion, Method of payment, Type of INSURANCE, sum of fee collected, speciality area of medicine of the physician, If a ultrasound was used, If portions of the new law was provided to the mother, how it was provided, … then if she was a minor—she must give her age, if a parent was given the new law, if informed consent was obtained, .. then at the end of all the questions, it states- In accordance with subsection F of Section 1-738d of Title 63 of the Oklahoma Statutes, public reports based on this form will not contain the name, address, or any other identifying information of any individual female.

WHAT?! Are you fucking kidding me? How is age, race, marital status, years of education, number of previous births, LOCATION of the CLINIC- NOT identifiable marks?! If I live in BFE—which I did, I don’t suppose it would be too hard in a small town to figure out who the 26 year old, single, latina female with a masters degree and no previous births… is… Not to mention this website will give all the Con-choice extremist something else to gawk at! This is a ridiculous violation of Privacy as HIPAA sums up in their basic principle statement, which states A major purpose of the Privacy Rule is to define and limit the circumstances in which an individual’s protected heath information may be used or disclosed by covered entities. A covered entity may not use or disclose protected health information, except either: (1) as the Privacy Rule permits or requires; or (2) as the individual who is the subject of the information (or the individual’s personal representative) authorizes in writing. Required Disclosures. State that A covered entity must disclose protected health information in only two situations: (a) to individuals (or their personal representatives) specifically when they request access to, or an accounting of disclosures of, their protected health information; and (b) to HHS when it is undertaking a compliance investigation or review or enforcement action.

The new Oklahoma law is a clear violation of HIPAA and I’m still unsure as to why this law was created in the first place. I hope this is over turned, for the life and protection of Oklahoma womyn who make choices. Thanks again for listening to me speak. `

As Kristen reported last week, the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act, (passed in Oklahoma last spring) is being challenged in court on the grounds that it covers more than one subject and, thus, is a violation of the state constitution. Since Kristin already did such a great job summarizing the bill, I won’t bore you with those details—check out her post if you want to read more!  We at FFC sincerely hope this challenge (as well as any others that come forward) is successful and that this horrible piece of legislation meets its end before it can be implemented.

Given the particularly heinous nature of this bill and the potential it has to do long-term harm to the rights of women all over the country, plus the fact that it is really only one example of the shenanigans state elected officials will pull in order to ensure that I am not the one to control the destiny of my uterus, I think it makes sense to subject it to all sorts of scrutiny, courtesy of the blogosphere.

And since I am all about karmic justice, I decided that the idiots behind this colossal piece of crap should be subject to an equal level of scrutiny as well as varying forms of public ridicule.  Sadly, it isn’t within my power to cart them off to the town square and place them in a pillory everyone to mock.  I will just have to settle for posting their profiles here.  Including their phone numbers and email addresses.  All of this is public information, of course.  But I thought it might be interesting to see how they feel about having the details of their personal lives uploaded to the web for all to see.

Unfortunately the list of folks who supported this bill is fairly long, so I won’t be able to do all of my pseudo-pillorying in one post.  I’ll have to drag it out a little.  I thought, for a few minutes, I would just list them alphabetically—fairly democratic, I feel.  But not as fun as starting with the initial author of the bill, then moving on to the list of co-authors and, finally, ending with the “little people”—a.k.a., the asshats who voted for it, but didn’t breed it.

*Drum Roll Please* And the OKLAHOMA’S TOP ENEMY OF CHOICE AND WOMEN EVERYWHERE award goes to…

OKLAHOMA STATE SENATOR TODD LAMB (R), DISTRICT 47

Senator Lamb was elected to the State Senate in 2004 and continues to serve today.  He is currently the Majority Floor Leader, but has much higher aspirations.  The good senator, you see, announced his candidacy for Lt. Governor of Oklahoma in August of this year.   His campaign website is pretty darn droll, but it is clear that our Mr. Lamb has set his political sites on bigger and better things than being a State Senator.

A quick little whitepages.com search (its easy, anyone can do it!) turns up Mr. Lamb’s home address and phone number.  Ordinarily, I am staunchly on the side of privacy protection.  In this case though, Mr. Lamb is willing to force women seeking abortion services to furnish the details of their private lives and have them published on the ODHS web site, so it seems fair to expect that he will be OK with his info being published to the web too.  Of course, he’s not seeking an abortion.  But he is seeking elected office.

I humbly urge FFC readers to call, write and email Mr. Todd.  Do let him know exactly how you feel about his efforts to ensure that the women of Oklahoma do not have access to safe, legal and affordable abortion services—as well as his work to make sure that the private medical decisions of women are subject to review and made public by the Oklahoma Department of Health Services.  And be sure to point out that the pro-choice community, both in and outside the state, intends to fight his bid for the post of Lt. Governor of Oklahoma.

Mr. Todd’s home address and home phone number are:

801 Glenlake Dr.

Edmond, OK 73103-1811

(405) 752-5262

lamb@oksenate.gov

Do be civil people. My intent is not to encourage anyone to threaten, harass or intimidate Senator Todd or his family.  Do not call their house at all hours of the night; in fact, be as polite as possible—just as you would if you were calling the Oklahoma capital switchboard.  Do not fill his email box with spam or  his snail mail box with junk; simply offer your opinion of his policies and of this bill.

The point is to voice our opposition to his work and to convince Senator Todd of the error of his ways.  Bringing this pressure to bear in a way that is intended to demonstrate the importance of personal privacy is simply a method.  Sure, its a method fraught with irony and karmic justice—but it is still only a method.

This morning I had a total meltdown. Last night, the dog barfed all over the place, my daughter continually is pooping and peeing her pants and nothing else seemed to be going right. But I managed. We went to bed and I slept.

It's funny how some days you can take it all and other days you just can't.

But I woke up this morning to the same stuff, and then my daughter said to me, "Does your dad do crack?"

I looked at her and was like, "WHAT??!!"

She smiled and said, "Crack. Drugs."

I asked her where she heard that and she said her dad told her.

I told her my dad does not do drugs. I left it at that.

When I repeated the story to my husband, first he thought it was funny and then he gave me a lecture. And then I lost it.

Who is he to give me a lecture about anything? Where has he been? I was supposed to be on my Vegas Vacation this week, that he bought me for my birthday. But I didn't go. I can't leave my kids now. They are a mess. And there is barely money to pay our bills so it seems insane to me to go anywhere. But that didn't stop him from going to San Francisco for the weekend with his buddies. And I told him, "If anyone should be going on vacation right now, its me." I am beyond exhausted from dealing with all this crap.

But I'm just gonna have to suck it up.

In the midst of all that, my son let the dog out, who desperately needed to be groomed, and we had to look for him for 15 minutes that we didn't have and I just started crying.

So it seems that sucking it up isn't working, but I'm trying.

I got on my husband's case about spying on me and he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. He said he just happened to be driving by when I got home on Sunday, which is probably the most insulting lie he has ever told me.

Then he said that he doesn't read the blog anymore and I told him he did last week. At this point, I don't care.

He sent me this ridiculous Bible verse today: "A friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17:17" A few texts after he told me to "Get off my fucking back!!!!"

Why is he sending that to me? Look at yourself! And since when does he read the Bible? Seems to me he's too busy reading my blog!

In case you didn’t know it, I think Gloria Feldt is a rock star. The four-part book review of The War on Choice should have been a giveaway that I really respect all the work that Feldt has done for women’s health. Feldt is the former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She is the author of many books, including Behind Every Choice is a Story, and a contributor to Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female, and Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love and Leading Roles. Gloria blogs regularly on her own site, GloriaFeldt.com. I caught up with her this week to ask her some questions about what the future of the pro-choice movement will look like.

Much of the information in The War on Choice seems specific to the Bush administration. In fact, while I was reading the book I felt I could breath a sigh of relief since Bush is no longer in office. But do you feel that it would be a mistake for pro-choice activists to assume that having Democratic control of the White House and Congress means that reproductive rights are no longer under attack?

It is always the biggest mistake for advocates to celebrate for more than 5 minutes after winning an election. First of all, as I pointed out in Beyond Roe, we have merely lived to fight another day. It’s our job now to keep putting forward the initiatives we need to secure reproductive rights, health care, and justice and to restore the access that has been lost in the past decade. Plus there are always places where opponents of choice will try to do damage.

A good hot topic example is health reform. On the one hand, we have the opportunity to expand access to birth control and to rectify the injustices of the Hyde amendment that outlaws coverage of abortions in government health plans. But we must be both vigilant and proactive.

What do you say to the Democrats who are willing to sacrifice reproductive health coverage in order to get a health care package through Congress?

I believe in the iron fist in the velvet glove principle. I would always be respectful but ratchet up the constituent pressure enough and as is needed to remind them who helped get then elected and what you want them to do. It is always helpful to send personal letters and e-mails, have constituent visits especially ones that include campaign donors, get letters to the editor, op eds, and posts on political blogs published, etc. Thank them for every good vote too. Provide them with personal stories they can use to justify their votes. It’s been said that the job of advocates is to make it impossible for politicians not to do the right thing. They need to know they are going to feel more pain if they don’t support you than if they do.

You talk about the impact of judicial appointments in “The War on Choice,” and in your article “Beyond Roe.” What can pro-choice advocates do to encourage the Obama administration to appoint pro-choice judges to the federal courts?

Stay on his radar screen. I wish the advocacy groups were being much more vocal and demanding of him. He has backed away from his promise that FOCA would be a priority and (and if you believe the White House and Sotomayor) that he wouldn’t appoint a justice who wouldn’t affirm support of reproductive rights. Why aren’t the groups calling him on that? So I think a little internal conversation needs to be had to shore up our own activist muscles.

If Obama hasn’t become more visibly pro-choice or lived up to his campaign promises by 2012, should pro-choice activists back another candidate?

It’s too soon to start supporting another presidential candidate for 2012–we need to focus on keeping the pressure on this one. If all else fails that’s always an option–but only useful as a lever if you can really follow through. With regard to U. S. representatives and state legislators who are elected every two years, by all means keep the fear of losing their elections palpable.

In “Beyond Roe” you talk about the importance of re-articulating the pro-choice agenda from within a human rights context, rather than relying on the right to privacy as the foundation of the pro-choice movement. Can you expand on what that would look like?

First and foremost, passing the Freedom of Choice Act at the state and local levels. Check out the language in it. Originally in the 1990’s when it was first drafted, FOCA was a codification of Roe’s right to privacy. But when I was president of PPFA, we rewrote it with Congressional staff as a civil rights bill that guarantees a person can’t be discriminated against for choosing to have or not have a child. (As you probably know, when dealing with putting human rights into law, the language shifts to civil rights.) That is a language shift that changes everything. In order to get to the point that such legislation can be passed, it will be necessary to frame the public discourse in human and civil rights terms. That’s a big heave, but I believe it is absolutely essential. And I believe Americans fundamentally believe in fairness, equality, and justice which are the basis for human rights.

Perhaps Hillary Clinton will lead the way by expanding upon her famous “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights” speech to explicitly include reproductive rights. She will have many opportunities to do this in the global context as secretary of state. Gains have been made in international human rights law to include reproductive rights within this framework. Also, we now have the experience of some other countries, such as Mexico, that are in the process of legalizing abortion based on human rights principles. In the U.S., the Center for Reproductive Rights has done the most work to advance the idea of reproductive rights as human rights. And Equality Now has done groundbreaking work on getting language into international agreements.

I treasure the cobalt blue mug Dr. Tiller gave me, with his signature “Trust Women” slogan. That in the end is what reproductive rights as human rights would look like.

Via Feministing, a post by Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones tells us that one of Palin’s last acts in office was to accelerate a parental notice and consent law for women under 18 who are seeking abortion.

We see this shit all the time: my sisters’ rights to our own bodies are routinely taken away in the name of paternalistic “protection.” We saw it in the conservative media hoopla when the FDA approved over-the-counter access to emergency contraception for women 17 and older, as opposed to an earlier 18 and older policy (my favorite Mike Galanos quote: “With Plan B, they can do it now and deal with it later”). And we’re seeing it again with Palin. Nevermind that young women who don’t tell their parents about their abortion have damn good reasons for keeping quiet.

Before news of the resignation, Beverly Wooley and Jay Butler, two of Alaska’s public health experts, were essentially forced out of office for meddling in Palin’s anti-choice crusade.

Both [Wooley and Butler] made the critical mistake of wanting to present scientific evidence on the impact of parental consent laws to the state Senate. They never got the chance; the Senate “ran out of time.” From the Anchorage Daily News:

Wooley said she also intended to answer questions from legislators and said she would rely on data, not anyone’s personal beliefs. Whether she personally agreed with the governor is beside the point, Wooley said.

She intended to refer to studies from states that already had passed similar legislation, she said. Some of the research shows that, with parental involvement requirements, girls tend to get abortions later in their pregnancy, which is riskier and more expensive, she said. Other research shows fewer girls get abortions, which abortion foes like Palin likely would applaud. Wooley cautioned that the studies are small and not definitive because such laws are still fairly new.

…

That was enough to get her canned. And guess what? The next day, the very day that Palin resigned:

A proposal to require parental notice or consent before a female younger than 18 could have an abortion was certified Thursday by the state so that its backers can seek enough signatures to get the initiative before voters next year.

So, Sarah Palin may be gone soon. But her policies live on.

I’d just like to say: this is outrageous. Not only that Palin is so clearly shaming young women for having sex (how crazy is that? Women having sex?! News to me!); not only that she is firing staff for, in Clara Jeffery’s words, making the “critical mistake of wanting to present scientific evidence…to the state Senate” (I mean, I know Palin is scared of science, but come on!); but also that a young woman’s fundamental right to control her own body is being set aside in favor of abortion statistics.

Even if the stats show that requiring parental consent for teenagers’ abortions lowers rates — party at the Palin anti-choice mansion, anyone? I love me some barbecued moose — I still need the right to get the procedure without my parents knowing! Statistics and evidence are of course vitally important to crafting effective legislation, but reproductive rights and bodily integrity should not depend on whichever survey is being considered. They are fundamental.

Cross-posted at Women’s Glib.