I have two tattoos. I want more! I love wearing art that is important to me, carrying with me the memories and experiences that went into my choice of tattoo. Even though my first tattoo was flash picked off of a wall, I smile at the eagerness of my just-turned-18self, that the fact that I was getting a tattoo was more important than what I put on my body. Even that crappy tattoo has its place.
All sorts of people get all sorts of tattoos for all sorts of reasons, and in recent Western culture we have placed judgement on the types of people who get tattoos, what those tattoos are, and even where they’re placed. If you get a tattoo you’re a punk who will never amount to anything, you’re defiling your body because teh bible. If you get a highly visible tattoo you’re an idiot who will never get a respectable job. There might be a few instances where it’s okay for a man to get a tattoo – military tattoos come to mind. But if you’re a woman, well, it doesn’t really matter why or where you get tattooed – you’re a skanky whore.
Critink has a post about this perception of women who get tattoos. The author justifiably took exception to an article which mentions the phrase “Skank Flank: The New Tramp Stamp”. With very little digging Critink shows that judging women who have tattoos is just one more instance of body-shaming and the idea that women should be told what we can and can’t do with our bodies:
Here is how the same douchebags would like us to view tattoos:
I felt out of place in a recent conversation about this story from CNN about two women who beat a Muslim cleric who approached them in public because he felt they were not dressed properly:
He told one of the girls to cover up, the report said.
“She responded by telling me to cover my eyes, which was very insulting to me,” Beheshti said. So he asked her a second time to cover up and also to put a lid on what he felt was verbal abuse.
She hit the man of the cloth, and he hit the ground.
It’s August and as far as I know there’s only one April Fool’s Day every year. Right?
RIGHT?
I went to Google to see if this “Associated Press” article that I saw on Twitter was real (Ohhhh… you say you’re <air quotes>Associated Press</air quotes> Sure ya are. Got ID?), and found that the story is being carried by several other news sources including the Washington Post, HuffPo, and about a kazillion bajillion blogs. So here it goes:
What do you do if you’re a man who is forbidden by his religious doctrine from having contact [edited per comment 3] with the majority of women in this world? Well, you start by making women invisible in your society. That makes it totes easy for you, and you’re the man so why shouldn’t life be easy for you? So you pressure your women to dress ultra-modestly and forbid them to interact with you; that goes a long way toward your goal. But you know… you can still see them.
Hmmm…
What if a button breaks and you catch a glimpse of a lady’s neck? Or an ankle – gasp! And what if she purposely tries to tempt you by…oh I don’t know…by letting a stray hair slip from her head covering? You have to trust the women to follow your clothing rules so that you’re not tempted into lusting after them! *groan* And let’s not even get started on the women outside of your community who don’t have to follow your rules. You have absolutely no control over this situation!
But wait – you do!
Take some regular glasses and put stickers over the lenses. No not just any stickers – that would be silly. You have to buy special fuzzy stickers that allow you about 10 feet of clear vision, and beyond 10 feet everything fuzzes out – including your repressed sexual desire!
Problem solved!
So that takes care of that. Except… for those times when you need to cross busy roads or read street signs or – nahhhhh. You’ll be fine. And secure from unexpected lust that’s totally not your fault or responsibility! Everybody wins!
Damn. I’m too old for this and it sounds like a great opportunity.
If you are or want to be a reproductive freedom activist, NARAL is advertising a leadership conference in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) metro area on June 8-10 for young adults aged 18-30.
According to the website, the institute is at no cost to participants. Meals will be provided. Travel and lodging stipends are also available (funding comes from the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota). People of color, queer people, gender non-conforming people and trans people are strongly encouraged to apply.
The application due date is coming up quickly. For more information check out the web pages linked below:
The Choice Leadership Institute and Fellowship (CLIF)seeks to develop, educate, and empower emerging pro-choice leaders. Twenty pro-choice young adults, aged 18 to 30, will go through a full weekend of reproductive freedom and leadership trainings, followed by the opportunity to create a self-directed community engagement project.
Training sessions include Inequity in Access, Advocacy 101, and the Current Landscape of Reproductive Health in Minnesota. Presenting organizations include women winning, Take Action MN, and Pro-Choice Resources.
Applications for this exciting opportunity are due by May 23.
The future of choice is in your hands – apply today!
NPR reported on a story this morning about a Catholic* school in Arizona that chose to forfeit a state championship baseball game, rather than play while a child-bearing machine…oops, I mean little lady…err…teenage girl was on the field. It was because the school had too much respect for the female player, of course.
“Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty,” the statement read. “Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls.”
The Associated Press reports that Paige Sultzbach, a 15-year old from Mesa Preparatory Academy, had voluntarily sat out two games against Our Lady of Sorrows earlier in the season in order to accommodate their dumbfuckery. She wasn’t, however, willing to sit out for the state championship. w00t!
A Moroccan law, and likely societal pressure, was recently used to force Amina Filali, a 16 year-old girl, to marry her rapist. The LA Times is reporting that on Saturday Amina swallowed rat poison and died to escape her situation:
The suicide of a Moroccan teenager who reportedly had been forced to marry her rapist has spurred calls from around the world to change criminal laws long lamented by Moroccan feminists.
Human rights groups complain that Moroccan law has been interpreted to allow someone who rapes a minor to escape punishment if he marries the victim. Moroccan media reported that was what happened to Amina Filali, a 16-year-old who reportedly swallowed rat poison Saturday.
[…]
The Moroccan government has argued that the law applies only if the victim agrees to marry, but activists say young women can be pressured into marriage to protect family honor. Her father told a Moroccan news website that the courts had pushed the idea, the Associated Press reported.
The idea behind allowing rapists to avoid legal prosecution by marrying their victims is a disgusting example of a women being treated as property, a woman’s worth being measured by her purity, and a warped societal agreement of what constitutes “honor”. The law and society is telling the rapist, “You break it, you buy it.”
Maryam Namazie, one of the bloggers here at Freethought Blogs had the idea for the project, and has description of the #nudephotorevolutionary Calendar and inspirations for the project at her website.
I am absolutely stunned by this demonstration of activism. My breath is taken away by the bravery and boldness of the women who participated in the #nuderevolutionaries Calendar. I can only imagine the depth of conviction that led Aliaa Mada Elmahdy to to post the first #nuderevolutionaries photo.
Women Deliver is a global advocacy group that works to enable safe motherhood, gender equality, girls’ education, poverty reduction, combating HIV/AIDS, maternal and newborn health, and other issues that are related to helping women lead healthy, happy, fulfilling lives.
Women Deliver has been hosting a contest called Women Deliver 50, in which they received over 500 nominations of projects that are meant to benefit women in the areas of
This made me see red. I haven’t seen such an egregious, obvious, reprehensible case of victim-blaming on a major news program in a while.
Liz Trotta says that if women want to serve in the military they should expect to get raped. She says that the increasing incidence of sexual assault is just a case of feminists wanting to be both warriors and victims. She says that we’re wasting our tax money paying for sexual assault and rape prevention services. She says that we don’t need to protect our military personnel because it’s their job to protect us, not the other way around.
This is so twisted, so vile. Trashing the military or the troops seems like such a politically incorrect thing to do, but I guess trashing women trumps the “supporting our troops” sentiment. This whole piece is “She was asking for it”. I don’t know how this woman sleeps at night.
Work is eating my brain!!! For the last two weeks I’ve been working 9-12 hour days, commuting home, having a quick snack or fast food and sitting on the couch for one episode of Futurama – which is less about unwinding and more about submitting to my cat’s demand for lap time after not seeing me all day – then sleeping for about 6 hours, waking up and doing it all over again.
In addition to my all-(brain)consuming current work assignment, Mom has been in town since June 19th! Every spare minute not spent at work, on the couch with the cat, or sleeping has been spent adventuring around Minneapolis and the Twin Cities. So far we’ve gone to the Minnesota Science Museum, roof-top dining at Stella’s Fish Cafe, on a makeup shopping spree at Bare Escentuals, to the Vali Hi Drive In in Lake Elmo (Green Lantern and Super 8), the Minnesota Zoo, wine and cheese shopping, the Twin Cities Gay Pride Parade and exploring cool restaurants so we have an excuse not to cook. Seriously, I’ve got so much photo editing to do that my Mac is going to crash before I get to it.
Life is good. Chaotic, crazy busy and good.
So, the blogging has been light here, but I’ve been wanting to post this article for about a week now. May I present:
Pregnant Barbie!?
I was chatting with some friends a couple of weeks ago about women and careers. Barbie was brought up as an example of a toy that has changed over time with women’s evolving career choices. Nowadays you can find Barbie in almost every line of work and lifestyle choice. Someone in the group said that you could even get a “Pregnant Barbie”. My first thought was, “Cool! Pregnant Barbie”, which was followed by my second thought, “Uh-oh…Pregnant Barbie”.
It was mentioned that Pregnant Barbie could even “give birth”. Double uh-oh. Please, I thought, please don’t let it come out of the belly button. The friend who was speaking didn’t remember if the baby did in fact come out of the belly button, but we all agreed that the chances of an anatomically-correct vaginal birth for Baby Barbie was probably not part of Mattel’s plans.
I came home and googled “Pregnant Barbie” and learned a couple of things:
This is old hat. Mattel’s pregnant doll was introduced in the early 2000s. A good many of you may have seen or remember commercials for “Pregnant Barbie”. I had just graduated college around this time and wasn’t watching a lot of television then, so I completely missed the entire preggers Barbie doll.
Second, Barbie herself has never been pregnant. Mattel’s prize hog doll was spared a potentially image-crippling pregnancy; they decided to let Barbie’s friend Midge take the normal social risks of being a pregnant woman. And the public outcry against Midge’s pregnancy was predictable: How dare a doll address something wicked and dirty like pregnancy? Wouldn’t a happy, healthy pregnant doll promote promiscuity and a desire to get pregnant in young, impressionable girls? After a few years Midge was discontinued and is now considered a collector’s item.
I found this fabulous and moderately annoying YouTube video about Pregnant Midge. The analysis is decent, but the sound effects are pretty awful. Mike Mozart raises some excellent points that are worthy of a bit of good ol’ feminist outrage:
Midge was originally released with a bare hand, but a later version shows Midge wearing a wedding ring. There’s no unwed teen mothers in Mattel’s family-friendly clan!
Pregnant Midge’s feet are molded for high heels. Because women in their third trimester always wear heels.
The belly is attached by magnents – Barbie can get pregnant and have kids again and again and again!
The thing that annoys me most about Mattel’s pregnant Midge doll is the misinformation that it spreads around to its target audience. If you are going to address pregnancy in a doll, why confuse a kid with a full-grown baby tucked in Mommy’s interstitial space? Sure, there is a great deal of suspension of disbelief when dealing with Barbies, but why do this weird kind-of delivery? Why not just create a nice, sterile third-trimester lump above Barbie’s nice sterile genitals? The “baby bump” is probably about as much as young kids usually get exposed to anyway. I think it was a cool idea for Mattel to introduce a pregnant Barbie. However, I think that they should have treated Barbie’s pregnancy with the same general vagueness as they do Barbie’s life in general – just smooth over the “ucky stuff”.
