Basketball Star Nancy Lieberman Challenges Obama to a Game

In an open letter to the President, Basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman challenges President Obama to a game -- a game which would tell the nation that, um, women can too play basketball with the men. Because Lady Magic knows that abolishing sexist stereotypes and gender segregation is change we women are waiting for.

Mr. President:

Let me be frank. Some women are saying you need a time-out. Your men-only basketball games have been scrutinized—and criticized for consistently leaving women out.Your defenders call that charge ridiculous, saying everyone knows that women can play golf with men, but not basketball...which of course only annoys women more. Well, I have a solution. To score some real points with the public, stop arguing and just play ball—with the best. Shoot some hoops with yours truly.

That’s right. Today I am declaring myself eligible for the presidential pickup games. Please allow me to present my credentials. I am no stranger to being on court with the boys. In high school and college, I played pickup with guys at Harlem’s Rucker courts and also played in summer leagues with NBA stars from the L.A. Lakers and the Utah Jazz (and I’m still pals with those teams’ then-coaches, Pat Riley and Frank Layden). I was also the first and only female player in the all-male United States Basketball League. I’ve played against the most famous team in the world, the Harlem Globetrotters. I'm fortunate to have been an Olympic silver medalist in women's basketball, and honored to be a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Plus, your right-hand man Reggie Love, the former college basketball star who plays in your games, can vouch for my reputation as a former college player who still has serious skills.

And here’s your PR bonus: Everyone at the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Women's Sports Foundation, the WNBA and the NBA would have smiles on their faces, because it’s always good for sports when new barriers are broken.

I would be honored to get on the court with you, Mr. President, not just to play but also to help you make change. It's what I've done my whole life as a woman in sports and it's what you've done your whole life as a politician and now as our Commander in Chief.

Warmest regards to you, the First Lady and your daughters. If invited to play at the White House, I solemnly vow to protect, preserve and defend the basketball until my team wins. Let me know if I've got a game.

Sincerely, Nancy Lieberman
Basketball Hall of Famer, ESPN Analyst

via USA Today

"Nancy Lieberman was the first high school student, male or female, to make a U.S. Olympic basketball team, the first woman to play in a men's professional league, and the first woman to tour with the Washington Generals (foils for the Harlem Globetrotters)."

“Most men I talk to say, ‘What’s the big deal? So a guy can’t play basketball?’ But many, many serious thinking women say, ‘Let’s call this for what it is: This is a networking opportunity. This is a political event.”

-- Savannah Guthrie, NBC White House Correspondent

[Thanks Zee!]

Feminist News Gender Politics Obama Boys Club Patriarchy

Frat-Boy Anheuser-Busch Sued For Sex Discrimination

A former Anheuser-Busch CEO says that working for Busch is like working at a "Frat Party." Who would have guessed? Busch - the world's largest brewer - is only infamous for its decades of lowbrow sexist Budweiser advertising campaigns.

Francine Katz charges that "Anheuser-Busch pays women less than their male counterparts and encourages a 'locker room' and 'frat party' atmosphere while removing responsibilities from women, blocking their career paths and excluding them from informal social networks."

The woman is doing the world a favor by suing the sexist company for gender discrimination:

It turns out that the beer company that recently ran an ad campaign about how great it is to "get it in the can," and that has for decades relied on hot babes in bikinis to peddle its gassy brews might—get this—allow a "locker room and frat-party atmosphere" to pervade its corporate headquarters. That is how Francine Katz characterizes the situation at Anheuser Busch-InBev's (ABI) offices. . . The lawsuit claims that male executives are paid more than women, and that men are routinely given preference for top jobs.

Feminist Politics News Gender Sexist Budweiser

Violence Because of Gender, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Disability

Yesterday I searched old and new media for some acknowledgement that the long-awaited historic Hate Crimes Prevention Act does include gender, or women. Other than the National Organization for Women and Violet Socks, I found no such acknowledgement. The surrealness is much like the futility of tuning into the cable news pundits for a discussion of gender during last year's historic election for women.

As Violet so aptly describes it:

The problem, as I’m sure you already know if you’re reading this blog, is that there is an overwhelming bias against acknowledging that hate crimes against women even exist. Male violence against women — battery, assault, rape, murder — is so pervasive, so interwoven into the very fabric of patriarchal society, that people resist seeing it for what it is. Hey, that’s not some freaky exotic hate crime! protests the confused patriarchal tool. That’s just life!

Feminist Politics News Gender Terrorism Violence Against Women Hate Crimes

Are Women Human? by Catharine MacKinnon

In acknowledgement of the fact that women are actually included in the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, but our mostly male media and our President forgot to notice, Catharine MacKinnon's Are Women Human? seems painfully appropriate. Read the essay -- or an excerpt:

Fifty years ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defined what a human being is. It told the world what a person, as a person, is entitled to. Are women human yet?

. . . If women were human, would we have little to no voice in public deliberations and in government? Would we be hidden behind veils and imprisoned in houses and stoned and shot for refusing? Would we be beaten nearly to death, and to death, by men with whom we are close? Would we be sexually molested in our families? Would we be raped in genocide to terrorize and destroy our ethnic communities, and raped again in that undeclared war that goes on every day in every country in the world in what is called peacetime? If women were human, would our violation be enjoyed by our violators? And, if we were human, when these things happened, would virtually nothing be done about it?

It takes a lot of imagination -- and a determinedly blinkered focus on exceptions at the privileged margins -- to envision a real woman in the Universal Declaration's majestic guarantees of what 'everyone is entitled to'. After fifty years, just what part of 'everyone' doesn't mean us?

The ringing language in Article 1 encourages us to 'act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.' Must we be men before its spirit includes us? Lest this be seen as too literal, if we were all enjoined to 'act towards one another in a spirit of sisterhood,' would men know it meant them, too? . . . And now that 'everyone' has had a right 'to take part in the government of his country' for the past fifty years, why are most governments still run by men? Are women silent in the halls of state because we do not have a human voice?

When will women be human? When?

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CA Gang Rape: "Women Are Portrayed As Pieces of Meat" (Video)

The young men laughed and shot photos with cellphones as they took turns assaulting the girl, police said. . About 200 students, teachers and community leaders rallied outside the campus after school Wednesday to condemn the rape and to say they wanted people to know the crime was not representative of their campus, the Chronicle reports.

CA Gang Rapists: "They Think It's Cool. They Weren't Raised to Respect Girls"

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Kucinich & Krugman: Health Care Reform Moment of Truth

Quotes of the Day

Dennis Kucinich:

Providing health care to all Americans is the moral responsibility of our government, consistent with the Preamble in the Constitution. Yet we are being told that it is not possible to have the kind of single payer health system which every industrialized democracy in the world has.

We compromised on single payer by backing a public option, and now we are being asked to compromise the public option with negotiated rates. . If this is the best we can do, then it is time to ask ourselves whether the two-party system is truly capable of representing the American people or whether the system has been so compromised by special interests that we can’t even protect the health of our own people. This is a moment of truth for the Democratic Party. Will we stand for the people or the insurance companies? [via The Confluence]

Paul Krugman:

It’s not a perfect bill, by a long shot, but it’s a much stronger bill than almost anyone expected to emerge even a few weeks ago. And it would lead to near-universal coverage.

For this is the moment of truth. The political environment is as favorable for reform as it’s likely to get. The legislation on the table isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as anyone could reasonably have expected. History is about to be made — and everyone has to decide which side they’re on.

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Levi Johnston Hopes to Show His Penis on Day One of Sarah Palin's Book Tour

Levi Johnston keeps on proving that Bristol was wise to dump him. Not content to take cheap pot shots at the mother and grandmother of his baby, now the deadbeat dad wants to do his full-frontal nudity photo shoot for Playgirl on the same day that Sarah Palin appears on Oprah.

With boys like Levi Johnston out there, it's a wonder all the girls don't believe in abstinence only.

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CA Gang Rapists: "They Think It's Cool. They Weren't Raised to Respect Girls"

[Strong trigger warning] Police are now saying that as many as ten "people" likely joined in the rape of the 15 year old girl outside her high school in Richmond, California. The 15 year old girl wore a sparkling purple dress and faux diamond baubles to the Richmond High School homecoming dance before she was gang raped, robbed and severely beaten for two-and-a-half hours and left unconscious under a bench.

The "people" laughed, took pictures of, and reportedly filmed the assault of the 15 year old girl while they waited for their turn to join in the gang rape fun. A better name for the "people" who raped the girl and the "people" who stood by and enjoyed the show would be "monsters." Barring that, at least we could admit that the "people" were boys and men.

Police believe as many as 10 people ranging in age from 15 to mid-20s attacked the girl for more than two hours in a dimly lit area. As many as two dozen people witnessed the rape without notifying police. Dara Cashman, head of the Contra Costa District Attorney's Office sex crimes unit, told the Contra Costa Times, a Bay area newspaper, that those who witnessed the alleged rape and did not report it could face aiding and abetting charges. .

Police received a tip about a possible assault on campus from a former student, who heard two males bragging about it. Officers found the girl semiconscious and naked from the waist down near a picnic table. Margarita Vargas, who was watching television Saturday night with others at her home two blocks from the school campus, told the newspaper she reported the assault as soon as she heard about it. The newspaper did not say whether Vargas was a student at the school.

"They think it's cool," Vargas said of the alleged perpetrators. "They weren't raised to respect girls."

Richmond High School is accepting cards and donations for the victim and her family. They can be mailed to the school at 1250 23rd St., Richmond, CA 94804-1011. Make checks out to the Richmond High Student Fund.

Feminist News Gender Politics Terrorism California Gang Rape

Obama Signs Hate Crimes Act: A Victory for All Women & Girls

President Obama signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act yesterday. This is a long awaited victory for the LGBT community!

And it is a long overdue victory for all women and girls. Perhaps now we, as a society, can finally begin to come to grips with the still largely unacknowledged fact that violence motivated by misogyny is rampant. God knows we'll never solve the problem if we don't first acknowledge it. As Bob Herbert's lone voice in the wilderness observes: "We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected."

From the National Organization for Women (NOW):

In a campaign promise fulfilled, President Obama signed the first significant pro-lesbian, pro-woman, pro-disability rights legislation today. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act expands the 1969 federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.

"This is a true victory, especially for women," said NOW President Terry O'Neill. "NOW's activists have worked tirelessly for years to have gender-based and sexual orientation-based hate crimes included in federal law -- hate crimes that warrant federal prosecution and federal punishment," said O'Neill. Federal authorities will now have the power to pursue hate crimes when individuals are targeted for sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability -- authority the federal government never had before.

This legislation is especially important for the girls and women of this nation because it extends existing federal hate crimes laws beyond the narrow scope of protected federal activities and also includes -- for the first time -- violent crimes committed on the basis of actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, disability and gender identity.

"[T]here would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women — not so much of an uproar."

"Life in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent. But we should take particular notice of the staggering amounts of violence brought down on the nation’s women and girls each and every day for no other reason than who they are. They are attacked because they are female."

-- Bob Herbert

Feminist Politics News Gender Terrorism Violence Against Women Hate Crimes

U.S. Ranks #31 in Global Gender Gap Report

The annual Global Gender Gap Report is out. The report ranks the world's countries according to how well they do gender equality. The usual egalitarian countries are at the top of the list: Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

The U.S., which never does well in world-wide measures of gender equality, comes in at #31. The U.S. actually fell "three spots lower than it was last year."

The top 15 countries are: Iceland; Finland; Norway; Sweden; New Zealand; South Africa; Denmark; Ireland; Philippines; Lesotho; Netherlands; Germany; Switzerland; Latvia; United Kingdom.

There's more and an interactive map at Economix:

The World Economic Forum yesterday released its annual Global Gender Gap Report. This report tries to assess how well countries “are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities.”

[Thanks Caroline!]

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Mad Men in the White House

Bonnie Erbe comments on the recent news about the White House boys club culture and notes the remarkable transformation of Michelle Obama:

President Obama drew heat last week for a story that surfaced outing his private White House male-only b-ball games. The story was that even though two female members of his cabinet were members of their college basketball teams, they were excluded, as were all women, from this most private of male-only clubs. The story became a metaphor for how the president views women generally and threatened to reveal some inconvenient truths about the man. . .

Whether it was his treatment of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail (as in his condescending remark that she was "likeable enough") or his clearly career-oriented mate who has been toned down and remorphed into a Stepford Wife, I just don't get the impression this man is comfortable with women. Nor do I believe he cares about them beyond needing women's votes. It's an act and a thoroughly see-through, amateur one at that.

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Former Letterman Writer Reveals Sexist Frat Boy Culture at Late Night

Over at Vanity Fair, Nell Scovell talks about the sexual politics and "hostile work environment" that she experienced as a former writer for David Letterman. Never mind that women who take these jobs should be given hazard pay, Nell Scovell belongs to a rare club. She is one of 7 women writers hired by the David Letterman Boys Club in 27 years!

Oh, but we're making progress, right? Um, no. The number of women writers currently working on the 3 hot late night comedy shows combined is "exactly zero." It makes sense. The late night shows are and always have been hosted only by men. As long as the planet revolves around men, the planet will revolve around men. At least, until they burn it up.

According to Scovell's theory, keeping women writers unemployed is about keeping the writers' room safe for "fart jokes and jerking-off-to-Angelina-Jolie’s-face-on-a-magazine jokes." In other words, it's about maintaining the patriarchy, aka the culture's mindless lowlife frat boy status quo.

Letterman and Me - snippets:

At this moment, there are more females serving on the United States Supreme Court than there are writing for Late Show with David Letterman, The Jay Leno Show, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien combined. Out of the 50 or so comedy writers working on these programs, exactly zero are women. It would be funny if it weren’t true.

There’s a subset of sexual harassment called sexual favoritism that, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, can lead to a “hostile work environment,” often “creating an atmosphere that is demeaning to women.” And that pretty much sums up my experience at Late Night with David Letterman.

I was the second female writer ever hired at Late Night. When I applied for the job in 1988, I had no way of knowing how much the odds were stacked against me. In 27 years, Late Night and Late Show have hired only seven female writers. These seven women have spent a total of 17 years on staff combined. By extrapolation, male writers have racked up a collective 378 years writing jokes for Dave. .

See: Rachel Sklar: Nell Scovell Is My New Hero -- Nell Scovell has . . created the TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and has written for Coach, Murphy Brown, Monk, N.C.I.S., Charmed, The Critic, The Simpsons and Newhart. Also see: Melissa McEwan, James Joyner and Ed Driscoll.

Feminist News Gender Politics

Lieberman Will Filibuster Health Care Bill With Public Option

Attention starved Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says he would support a Republican filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill, reports Politico.

Yeah, this is the same Joe Lieberman who was endorsed by Obama back in the 2006 primary. Obama could have endorsed the progressive Ned Lamont, but like Obama keeps telling us, he is not a liberal.

Lieberman added that he’d vote against a public option plan “even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."

Progressive Politics Liberal News Health Care

Feminists On Women's Unhappy Status (Video)

In this video clip, Carol Jenkins, president of the Women's Media Center, and Judith Reagan, talk radio show host, talk on HLN's new Joy Behar show about women’s unhappy status. Why on earth would women be unhappy? Subjects the women cover include: the second wave feminist movement, the second shift or 'having it all,' the national disgrace of no affordable child care policy, etc.


Feminist News Gender Politics

Obama Surrenders, Plays Golf With a Woman

After a week of criticism, President Obama surrendered and played golf with a woman.

From a Sunday New York Times front page story -- "Man's World at The White House?" -- we learn that "the president has played 23 rounds of golf since taking office, none of which have included women."

When asked to respond to the charge of gender discrimination - or the criticism that access to the president is granted more often to men than women - President Obama said: "I think this is bunk."

Obama may think that, but on Sunday, White House chief domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes became the first woman to join the boys on the golf course. I wonder if the sexists in charge of the Masters (sic) Tournament will take a cue from the White House.

If it’s Sunday, expect to find Obama golfing at Fort Belvoir. This week, though, his foursome includes Melody Barnes, President Obama’s chief domestic policy advisor — and the first woman who’s played golf with Obama during his 24 trips to the links since taking office.

Barnes, wearing a baseball cap, dark long sleeve shirt and beige pants, joined Obama the same day that the New York Times is running a front page story, Man’s World at White House? No Harm, No Foul, Aides Say, the latest in a round of similarly stories triggered by a high-profile, all-male basketball game the president played in earlier this month.


[C]hief of staff Rahm Emanuel, senior adviser David Axelrod, and press secretary Robert Gibbs -- are known by women at the White House as "the Boys."

“Most men I talk to say, ‘What’s the big deal? So a guy can’t play basketball?’ But many, many serious thinking women say, ‘Let’s call this for what it is: This is a networking opportunity. This is a political event.”

-- Savannah Guthrie, NBC White House Correspondent

"Yeah, I've got to say I think this is bunk."

-- President Barack Obama

Feminist News Gender Politics Obama Boys Club

Protesters Bust Into Bankers Convention (Video)

Irate and angry protesters crash the American Bankers Association (ABA) conference in Chicago. In the video clip below, protesters chant, "Bust Up Big Banks."

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Boys Club in the White House

The Times has yet more news about the depressingly 1950s style boys' club in the White House. So what else is new? The White House has always been a boys' club. But in 2009, at a minimum, half the people in the White House should be women -- excluding housekeepers and baby-sitters.

A cabinet that is 75 percent male does not remotely resemble progress. Throw in a president who spends his leisure time networking with the boys and you have a president who has a woman problem.

[Obama] presides over a White House rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities like Rahm Emanuel, the often-profane chief of staff; Lawrence Summers, the brash economic adviser; and Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, who habitually speaks in sports metaphors.

Obama's Boys Club

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CNN's 'Latino In America' Stokes Anti Lou Dobbs Fury (Video)

In response to the documentary -- "Latino in America" -- which aired on CNN this week, protesters in 18 cities demanded that CNN fire Lou Dobbs.

CNN was mum about the protests even though protesters were camped out on its own doorstep.

CNN stoked the already rising anger by airing a documentary about Latinos that totally ignores the elephant at CNN. "Latino in America" does not discuss or even acknowledge the CNN news anchor infamous for his obsessive-compulsive fixation on "illegal aliens."

Some, including the newspaper pictured above, suggest that CNN has a hypocrisy problem.

CNN's Problem: Lou Dobbs

Stop Lou Dobbs
CNN WON'T AIR "Drop Dobbs" ad

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Not a Woman's Nation

Everyone is not buying the Shriver Report. Don't miss this must-read Times Op-ed by Joanne Lipman - The Mismeasure of Woman:

FINALLY! I hear we’re all living in a women’s world now. For the first time, women make up half the work force. The Shriver Report, out just last week, found that mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the House and a female secretary of state. Thirty-two women have served as governors. Thirty-eight have served as senators. Four out of eight Ivy League presidents are women.

Great news, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, it couldn’t be more spectacularly misleading. The truth is, women haven’t come nearly as far as we would have predicted 25 years ago. Somewhere along the line, especially in recent years, progress for women has stalled. And attitudes have taken a giant leap backward.

I never expected that we would be in this predicament. My generation of professional women took equality for granted. When I was in college in the 1980s, many of us looked derisively at the women’s liberation movement. That was something that strident, humorless, shrill women had done before us.

. . . During the presidential primaries, while the news media was on their best behavior to avoid racial stereotypes, it was still O.K. to discuss Hillary Clinton’s “cankles.”

Read more . . .

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Glenn Beck on Hillary's Communist Plot to Provide Free Vaccines to Children (Video)

In a country full of sane grown-ups, Glenn Beck would be confined to ranting to his therapist. But here he is, brought to us by that Fox Lunatic Channel, condemning Hillary Rodham Clinton for her evil commie ways of taking care of children.


via Media Matters

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Bushisms Continue: In Montreal Bush Regrets that "Mission Impossible" Banner

Effigies were burning and shoes were flying in Montreal while George W. Bush was speaking, sort of, inside the posh Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The miserable failure of a president told the Canadians that he did not sell his soul and that he regretted standing in front of that "Mission Impossible" banner.

Actually that infamous banner read: "Mission Accomplished."

Vancouver Sun:

MONTREAL — About 300 protesters outside a downtown hotel blew plastic horns, tossed shoes and burned George W. Bush in effigy Thursday as the former U.S. president spoke to a luncheon of the Montreal Board of Trade. Facing the crowd were dozens of Montreal police tactical squad members and while there was plenty of noise, there were only five arrests and no injuries. . . Joan Hadrill of the Raging Grannies said she was on the street because Bush was "an alleged war criminal for his invasion of Iraq and torturing prisoners of war."

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The Public Option: Singing Protesters Break Into AHIP Conference (Video)

via Sam Stein

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Liberal Groups Call Out Rahm & Obama on Public Option

An alliance of liberal groups is calling on the White House to show some leadership by taking a strong stand in support of a robust public option. The liberal groups include, ahem, the NAACP.

And MoveOn, the Campaign for America’s Future, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Progressive Congress Action Fund.

Given that Rahm Emanuel appears to be a driving force behind many of Obama's neoliberal policies, the liberal groups address their letter to President Rahm. The letter goes to the White House today.

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The 30 Shameless Male Senators Who Voted Against Rape Victims (Video)

In case anyone has forgotten, Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker are 2 of the 30 Shameless Male Senators who voted against protecting rape victims. The 30 senators voted for the rights of Haliburton and against the rights of women, or rape victims. Scroll down or watch the video clip for the names of the 30 male GOP senators who clearly have no sense of decency. They will not be forgotten.


The 30 Shameless Male Republican Senators: Alexander (R-TN); Barrasso (R-WY); Bond (R-MO); Brownback (R-KS); Bunning (R-KY); Burr (R-NC); Chambliss (R-GA); Coburn (R-OK); Cochran (R-MS); Corker (R-TN); Cornyn (R-TX); Crapo (R-ID); DeMint (R-SC); Ensign (R-NV); Enzi (R-WY); Graham (R-SC); Gregg (R-NH); Inhofe (R-OK); Isakson (R-GA); Johanns (R-NE); Kyl (R-AZ); McCain (R-AZ); McConnell (R-KY); Risch (R-ID); Roberts (R-KS); Sessions (R-AL); Shelby (R-AL); Thune (R-SD); Vitter (R-LA); Wicker (R-MS). [via Think Progress]

Call Out the 30 Male Senators Who Voted Against Rape Victims - send a letter to your senator (and sign a petition).

Also SEE: ANTI-RAPE AMENDMENT HAS LOBBYIST FOES ; Inouye to shield federal contractors from rape cases? ; Franken's anti-rape amendment in trouble?

Are Alexander and Corker on the side of the military contractors? Or is this just another example of treating women’s issues as secondary concerns?

-- Carol Kemp, Crossville TN Chronicle

Update: Republicans for Rape

Feminist News Gender Politics Rape Culture

A Female Dominated Workforce

Most of the workers are women. Most of the voters are women. Yet women are a paltry 17 percent of Congress and earn 77 cents for every patriarchal dollar that men earn. This cannot continue.

Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes in women's roles and massive job losses for men during this recession. . At the current pace, women will become a majority of workers in October or November.

On average, women work fewer hours than men, hold more part-time jobs and earn 77% of what men make, [labor economist Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research] says. Men also still dominate higher-paying executive ranks. . the boost came from a severe recession that has been brutal on male-dominated professions such as construction and manufacturing.

via Jezebel

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White House Tries to Freeze Fox News Out of Press Pool

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration’s treatment of “one of our sister organizations.” . . .

Progressive News Media Politics

MSNBC Mistakes Jesse Jackson for Al Sharpton (Video)

I bet they never got Reverend Jesse Jackson's name wrong over at Fox News. If Fox News had done this, MSNBC would be playing the video clip 24/7 and screaming "racism" from the highest rooftops. This was not pretty.

Yes, mistakes happen, but this one is an especially disheartening reminder that once upon a time we thought that if we ever got a 'liberal' cable news channel, it would be so much more classy than MSNBC. I voted for Jesse Jackson when he ran for the Democratic nomination in 1988. Today, the Reverend looks as disillusioned as I feel.


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Oprah Going Rogue for the Ratings

Who doubts that the whole wide world will tune into Oprah on November 16 to gaze in adoration or horror at Sarah Palin?

Love her or hate her, people just can't get enough of Sarah Palin. That's what Oprah is counting on as she tries to win back some of those baby boomer women who tuned her out back when she said "He's The One."

Palin's book -- "Going Rogue: An American Life" -- debuts on the 17th and has only been at the top of Amazon's best seller list since forever.

You may have noticed that the appearance by the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate is happening smack dab in the middle of the November ratings derby.

[T]his is a brilliant move on Oprah's part. Last year she suffered some of her lowest ratings ever, and, while the drop may not have been driven primarily by her virgin foray into big-p politics, it couldn't have helped: Oprah's biggest pool of viewers are white women over the age of 55--and older white folks weren't exactly Obama's demographic sweet spot.

Feminist News Gender Politics

Yahoo Hires Lap-Dancers for Tech Conference

For the second year in a row, Yahoo paid lap-dancers to entertain techies at its male dominated "inclusive" Hack Day conference. In something meant to resemble an apology, Yahoo says "this incident is regrettable" and "it won't happen again."

That's what Yahoo said last year. Cory Doctorow is righteously pissed.

Feminist News Gender Politics

Health Insurance Company Tells Woman to Get Sterilized (Video)

Here's more proof that sexism is the pre-existing condition that matters. Golden Rule Insurance Company -- a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group -- rejected Peggy Robertson's application because the woman has had a C-Section. The company told Peggy Robertson that she would be eligible for health insurance coverage if she would just get sterilized!

So there you go, if the women of America would just get sterilized, we might get some health care. When was the last time they told a man to get castrated, or to lay off the Viagra? Currently more than half of health insurance companies don't cover maternity care because more than half of American health insurance companies are stinking with sexism.

Today, Peggy shared her story before a Senate committee. Her experience mortified everyone, including Sen. Mikulski, who called it "bone-chiling" and the insurance policy "morally repugnant."

Being a Woman Is a Preexisting Condition

via The Democrats' Missing Message For Women and Health Reform

Feminist News Gender Politics Health Care

Quote of the Day

"By the time it's all over, my guess is that [Hillary Rodham Clinton will] be widely regarded as one of the most consequential secretaries of state in the postwar era."

-- Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

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