Nimoy's Nudes

We all know what William Shatner's been up to these days, but who knew Leonard Nimoy (that's Mr. Spock, for those of you whose mothers weren't teenage Star Trek fans) was shooting nudes and showing his work?

Okay, actually lots of people knew. I just wasn't one of them.

Anyway, the Times Magazine piece on his latest work with women of size -- a collection of photos he's been working on for eight years -- isn't too terribly interesting, but it's a good summary of how he ended up taking photos of fat women and how he feels about it. It tries to give the reader a glimpse of fat activism, kind of, but it doesn't really.

I really want to see the photographs now. Luckily some of them are showing in Northampton (apparently the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the country, according to gallery owner Richard Michelson), where I will be in the middle of next week. At first I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get the beau to go with me, but then I remembered: he loves photography. Oh, and naked women.

Good Magazine: Pornographic Transparency

Over the past week I have fallen in love with Good Magazine -- and this video just solidifies that. Good is a magazine "for people who give a damn", and the current issue features articles on corporate greenwashing, innovative transportation solutions in Europe, and (this is novel) an unbiased look at women married to inmates. Their hard copy is even on recycled paper.

In the video, model/actress Kelle Marie's body is the canvas for a series of factoids about internet pornography. I think the term 'ironic' can be appropriately applied here. Via Fleshbot.

Pro-Choice Birth-Activist Reproductive Freedom Fighter

Radical doula Miriam Pérez believes that pro-choice activism and birth activism go hand in hand. Those who subscribe to the beliefs of either group don’t generally agree: pro-choicers are so caught up in protecting women’s rights NOT to parent, and midwifery groups so busy diligently advocating for pregnant women, that neither has the time to examine what the other has to offer (and, of course, not all midwives and doulas are pro-choice). But, Pérez points out, “Anti-choice activism and overly-medicalized birthing practices are both based on a lack of trust in women.”

Her Campus Progress article does a great job of pointing out the ways in which the two camps compliment each other. Both movements address “the narrowing scope of women’s choices.” They attempt to offer safety and support to women as they undergo difficult procedures, too often under difficult circumstances. And in both the delivery room and right-wing politics, the woman in question is forced to take a back seat to the fetus she carries. This, to Pérez, is the strongest correlation between birth- and pro-choice activism: “Both are attempts to fight back against rhetoric that prioritizes the unborn fetus instead of the adult woman.” The article also does a great job rounding up the basic facts and figures about home and hospital births.

But oh, these divisions! Pérez is right, birth activists and pro-choice activists have a lot in common. And they have a lot in common with those who advocate for comprehensive sexuality education. All three often have a lot in common with those who lobby for universal health care and for flex-time. When we talk about all of these issues, more often than not, we’re talking about the same thing: reproductive freedom. But abortion is a divisive issue, as are comprehensive sex ed and even universal health care for some. It’s true: allying abortion rights with universal health care would probably hurt the case for universal health care. So instead of getting together and agreeing that we’re all talking about the same thing (more or less), we divide it up into bits and pieces. In the end, though, all of those things affect reproductive freedom. It’s about the right to reproduce – or not – when and how we want, the right to affordable and accessible health care, the right to the knowledge we need to make informed decisions, the ability to make motherhood a viable part of our complex lives if we choose to, and the right (and the NEED) to be heard and supported when it comes to our reproductive choices – whether that means choosing not to continue a pregnancy or choosing to give birth naturally. All the little slivers of the overarching issue, put together, could mean huge advances for women’s equality.

Check out Miriam Pérez’s blog Radical Doula for lots more information on midwifery, reproductive freedom and progressive politics – it’s good stuff!

PS - thanks to Frank for the tip!

Gentleman's Quarterly? That's a laugh.

In their April issue, GQ is running an article titled Where to Find Her, 2007. The caption beneath the title reads, “A whole world of smart, beautiful women are out there, from the beaches of Uruguay to aisles of Whole Foods. We searched far and wide to discover the best spots on the planet to meet them.”

The article, which if full of pictures of women who are indeed beautiful (in the most current sense), contains a sidebar which describes where not to find her. The list is meant as a joke; for example, men are instructed not to look for her at the family reunion, in high school, or while on vacation with the wife and kids. They’re also instructed not to look in Hooters or a Red Light District window, since of course women who use their bodies to make money cannot be both smart and beautiful (nor would they be fit company for a gentleman – for more than a night, that is).

According to the article, men should also avoid looking for her at a goat show in Tijuana, on Mykonos, and at Smith College.

I suppose I don’t even need to tell you that Smithies are pissed. Well, some Smithies at least. The Facebook group “F*ck You, GQ: Smithies are Beautiful” has 487 members as of 1pm today, and that number has grown by more than a hundred since I looked last night. The group constitutes a call to action to Smithies to send photos of themselves showing off their inner beauty and confidence to the editor of GQ to demonstrate their beauty. From the website:

…while this list offends all different types of nationalities, sexualities, religions, hobbies, and age groups in addition to ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE, I feel that it is our JOB to stand up for our college. Smith does not get enough positive publicity. This article appears in a well-known, well-read magazine. It offends our school, our intelligence, our beauty, and our beliefs. It lowers us to a worthless thing. According to GQ, we are merely a place where smart and beautiful women cannot be found…

I am damn proud of my Alma Mater, and make a point of loudly declaring myself a Smithie whenever possible. Smithies are beautiful on many different levels, and it’s really hard to be at Smith if you’re not smart. But there’s another thing Smithies are, and it’s the thing that got the college landed in this article.

Smithies are Queer.

Okay, wait, don’t get mad at me yet. I know that not all Smithies like the ladies or identify with the queer community in any way. After all, some of my best friends are straight. But Smith has a reputation for being The Big Gay. Now, that reputation doesn’t go as far as you might think – in fact, it’s primarily known by people who went to other Small Liberal Arts Colleges in the Northeast. Students at SLACs like Dartmouth, Wesleyan (technically a University, I know), and our own beloved Amherst, as well as those at other women’s colleges know Smith’s reputation for being queer. I’d be willing to bet $20 that the person who contributed Smith College to the list either went to a Northeastern SLAC or to UMASS Amherst.

Although there are debates about how Smith got its gay reputation, I am proud of the atmosphere at the college that allows that reputation to thrive. Smithies are open-minded, tolerant, willing to learn from each other and politically and ideologically minded. It’s a tough place to be conservative, and I’d like to see both students and faculty make a more concerted effort to have those kinds of political discourses, but in general I think that Smith is a good place to learn how to be who you are. If that means that the “gentlemen” who read GQ don’t want to date us, so be it – we can do better than them, anyway. You know, like by having partners who respect us.

Linkage: Bad Vibes, Sex Ed, Veggie Love and More

Tristan Taormino's Pucker Up column has tackled the subject of phthalates in Dangerous Dildos (Part 1, Part 2). I like that she makes the distinction between "adult novelty" manufacturers and those who proudly craft and sell sexual aides:

When you look at the phthalate issue in a larger context, what you see is the current split within the sex toy industry between old-school adult novelty makers and new age sex-positive toy companies. The former are stuck in a model of "get it as cheap as you can from China, make it look like a penis (that's what women want, right?), and spend as little as you can on packaging." Toys from these companies scream, "Who cares if this looks good or actually works? No one's going to return it or complain, they'll be too embarrassed. Besides, it's just a dildo," reinforcing people's low expectations and shame.

In the article she mentions the Coalition Against Toxic Toys (badvibes.org). Their shopping guide gives fabulous advice for how to spot potentially hazardous toys -- take it with you on your next trip to the toy store!

At Mother Talkers, a group blog of "Rants and Raves on Modern Motherhood", Amy has written about her nephew's experience with public school sex education. Recounting a conversation between mother and son:

"What have you learned?" my sister asked.
"I learned about AIDS. That if you have unprotected sex, you get AIDS and die. But Mom, I don't even know what unprotected sex is. What is protected sex?"

Meanwhile, Oakland teens got so sick of cheesy sex-ed videos that they made their own:

The 15-minute movie was written, acted, filmed and edited almost entirely by students from East Oakland's Fremont Federation, a campus with four small high schools. With a hip-hop soundtrack and multidimensional characters — such as a peer educator who makes some poor decisions at a party — it was clearly made with its audience in mind.

The Condom Project has received support from the school district and had its premiere on Valentine's Day.

A Guardian piece discusses why rape charges so seldom lead to rape convictions in great detail, including the way stereotypes about women, previous sexual activity, and alcohol consumption on the part of the victim all contribute to the dismissal of the vast majority of rape cases. The whole thing goes right back to the Wilson case: why is the media championing this young man who was captured on film having sex with a semi-conscious woman? I'd really like to see some REAL journalism on the subject -- what evidence led to his acquittal on the rape charge? Did the alleged-victim recant, or was it simply a case of his word against hers? The whole thing makes me feel sick to my stomach.

HIV vaccine testing made the AP newswire this week. The article discusses how the test is being done on sex workers in the Dominican Republic. Since Phase 2 of the vaccine trial requires that it be tested on high as well as low risk groups, sex workers and injection drug users are obvious subjects. The tests are also being conducted in Haiti, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Jamaica and Peru. Merck, the company running the tests, is walking a thin public relations tightrope: If the trials are successful with no extreme adverse effects, they'll be heaped with praise. If something goes wrong, though, the papers (and eventually the history books) will be filled with scorn for the exploitative nature of the testing. HIV vaccine testing is a double-edged sword, but the impression that I get is that researchers are being as scrupulous as they can be in this inherently exploitative situation. Probably more to come on this soon.

The inaugural post is up on Veggie Love, the brand-new blog of my ever beautiful and brilliant roommate! Go check it out, and be jealous -- she cooks for me. Yeah, it's awesome.

Violet Blue is my Hero of the Day

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Slumming It: Family and the Pink Ghetto

I’ve been reading, and loving, Sexerati’s series on The Pink Ghetto. Lux Nightmare and Melissa Gira have expressed remarkably well the ways in which work around sex is made illegitimate and treated, often even by those doing the work, as a phase (for example, we use pseudonyms and keep two resumes in case we ever want to go “legit”). The series is already creating some dialogue in the sex positive community, and although in a lot of ways it’s depressing to think about, it’s an important conversation to have. Because I, for one, am pissed about the Pink Ghetto. I’m proud of the work I’ve done, and I want my bragging rights.

The thing about sex is that you’re not supposed to talk about it. I don’t know when I figured that out, exactly, but by the time I was sex educating in college I knew that my extracurricular activities were off limits for the family Christmas party. As sexuality education (and the history of sex, and the art of good sex, and sexual politics) began to take up more and more of my free time, my family probably began to think I was incredibly dull – I could talk politics, and gossip, and chat about my history classes, but I dreaded hearing “so what have you been doing with your free time?” What could I tell them? “Well, I teach women how to female ejaculate, and host events where students stand up and read erotica. Oh, and last weekend I dressed up as a fairy and handed out condoms and dental dams at parties! Yeah, that was fun.” Somehow, I just don’t think that would fly.

I’m occasionally reminded of how little my family knows about my interests and career goals. “I was talking to George the other day,” my aunt Marie said over tea last week, referring to her employer, “and I told him you had just graduated from Smith. He sounded very impressed.” I smiled and felt a little self-conscious. I’m a first generation college student and I always feel some strange balance between admiration and animosity from my family, like they’re proud of me and skeptical at the same time.

“He asked what you were going to do now that you’d graduated, and I told him that, you know, you weren’t really sure yet” she continued, and I bristled. I know exactly what I want to do. In order: work in health outreach, get a degree in public health, design sex education programs, own a sex toy store, live on a working goat farm and write a book. But because of the nature of the work I want to do (well, except for the goat farm), my aunt has only the vaguest notions of what my plans are. I protested mildly, trying to explain that I do have an idea of what I want to do, but I knew there was no way to explain.

This is where the pink ghetto has hit me the hardest. I love my family, and respect them; they’re interesting, and I love to talk to them. Unfortunately, they have no reason to think I’m interesting. I was an opinionated and passionate little girl, and I’m still that way, but few in my family get to see it because it just seems inappropriate to launch into a discussion of the way in which the media is treating the Genarlow Wilson case over tea. So instead, they think I’ve gone from strong-willed adolescent to strangely reserved goat-enthusiast and not much else.

Just as I could not boast to my family that I had been made coordinator of my peer sex ed organization, or that I had been hired to consult on the toy store’s web site, I will relinquish bragging rights about my health outreach position because I will not be able to go into any detail about what it entails. When I publish work on sex education, my excitement will be tempered by my inability to share it with my extended family. And lord, if I ever decide to write erotic fiction, I had better use a pseudonym or risk giving uncle Joe a heart attack.

34 Years of Choice

Happy Anniversary, Roe v Wade! It's also Blog for Choice day, so:

I've been pro-choice (or, as LadyRed of Postcards From Guyville puts it, against forced birth) since the second grade. It was Bush vs. Clinton, and I didn't know much about politics, but I did know that Bush wanted to take away women's right to have an abortion. And I knew that sometimes women needed abortions, and it wasn't their fault, and they should be able to not have a baby if they didn't want to have a baby. I remember sitting near the baseball field with Lily, Kristin, Kristen and Ayla and discussing how to make sure our parents were voting the way we wanted them to.

One night when I was in the third grade, my parents went to bed and left me in the living room watching nick at nite. I got bored with Mary Tyler Moore (I was more of an "I Love Lucy" girl at that age) and started flipping through the channels. I ended up watching Melrose Place. When it was over and I was upstairs kissing my mother goodnight, I guessed she had been watching Melrose Place too and I asked her if she thought that so-and-so was going to have the abortion. "I don't know, honey," she said, "But I think she'll make the decision that's right for her." I could tell by the look on her face that I wasn't supposed to be asking about abortion. The next day, Melrose Place joined 90210 on the list of TV shows that were off limits.

I was pretty young when I started having sex, and I was stupid about it -- for all my rhetoric about safer sex, I certainly wasn't having it. Sometimes I think it's a miracle I didn't end up pregnant, and sometimes I think I must be infertile (I'm hoping it's the miracle, though). Anyway, if I had gotten pregnant, I would have had an abortion. I talked to my mother about it once -- told her that although I supported other women's right to abortion unconditionally, I didn't think I could have one. I was 16. My mother calmly disagreed with me. She didn't push the issue, but she made it clear that I was going to be childless until after college, period. I didn't argue, because on some level I knew she was right.

Now, one of my 16 year old sisters is pregnant. This sister is my biological father's daughter; for most of our lives she's lived in upstate NY, and we don't see each other often. I cried when I found out she was pregnant, and I wish I could say they were happy tears. I felt like on some level I had failed her, by not being around to protect her, to remind her to be safe, to teach her about her options. But when we talked, I realized that for all of my pro-choice fervor, I had forgotten something: having a baby is a choice, too.

"People are so shocked when I tell them I'm having the baby," she said. "They feel bad for me. They try to tell me how hard it's going to be. And yeah, I know, it's going to be really hard. The timing sucks, the circumstances suck. But it's a baby, not the plague. I'm having a baby."

So my little sister made a choice, and she's having a baby, and I'm going to be an aunt. I am pro-choice because all children deserve to have mothers who chose them, and all women deserve to be able to make that choice.

Diamond Lee Person, and some nerdy academic sex links

This is the only substantial article I could find on the murder of Diamond Lee Person, a transwoman in Washington DC. Person's partner has been accused of the murder -- her body was only found after a 7-11 burglery led police to his apartment, where they discovered Person's body. This should be NEWS. How can anyone act up about violence against transpeople if they don't know it's happening? Here's an article from the Southern Poverty Law Center about violence against transpeople.

Willful Ignorance

If we want to change the toxic sexual culture on our nations’ college campuses, we need to start looking at the sex education our high-schoolers receive.

The New Prudishness

A resolution for 2007: No more punditry about our "oversexed" culture.

Pap Test, a Mainstay Against Cervical Cancer, May Be Fading Thanks, C!

[...]a newer genetic test that detects human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer, is starting to play a bigger role in screening. And other genetic tests are being developed. At the least, some experts say, women will no longer need Pap smears as often.

New Bill Proposes Parents Choose Kid’s Sex Ed

House Bill 311 would require a school district to obtain written consent of a parent before the student could take sex education. Currently, all Texas students take sexual education unless a parent requests otherwise. Under the bill, all parents would have to make a choice.

RKB-Love

So. The Village Voice has replaced Rachel Kramer Bussel with two new columnists, both married Brooklyn moms. Let me be perfectly clear here: I love women, married women, people who live in Brooklyn, and moms. I support their right to get busy. But this:

Editor's note: This week, the Voice introduces our new sex columnists, Nora Shelley and Essie Carmichael, two married women raising kids, living in Brooklyn, and still hoping to get lucky—preferably with their husbands.

This makes me nauseous does not sound like the proper column with which to replace Rachel's Lusty Lady. Where's the queerness? The kink? The beautifully written combination of sex-positivity and endearing humility? I'm so disappointed in the Voice. I'm sure the editors realize this new column won't appeal to the same demographic as Rachel's (although they're sure to have some overlap), so what are they doing? Mainstreaming. How disappointing. She's too good for them.

Anyone who reads me regularly knows that I'm a total Rachel Kramer Bussel Fangirl (seriously. It's kind of embarrassing). There's still lots of Rachel floating around on the interweb -- check out her Lusty Lady blog, which is choc-full of links to her other work and also a great read.

Dr. Laura on Sex as a Commodity

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Free Genarlow?

This story has been getting a lot of press lately: A young man in Georgia has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl when he was 17. Georgia law states that anyone engaging in oral sex with an underage female is committing a crime. There's more to it than that, though, even though "Free Genarlow" has become the rallying cry.

The whole thing went down like this:
Someone threw a really awesome party -- the kind you want to go to when you're 15, and the kind your parents don't want you going to ever. People were drinking, smoking up, and having sex -- and there was a video camera. Genarlow Wilson, the young man in question, was caught on tape having sex with a 17 year old who appears very drunk, or at least very sleepy. Later, he and several other young men are seen receiving oral sex from a 15 year old young woman, who says she wasn't drinking that night and that the acts were consensual. The next day, the 17 year old brought rape charges against Wilson and several others. Under Georgia law (and that of many other states), an intoxicated person cannot give consent, so sex acts occurring while a partner is drunk can be considered rape if that person later feels she has been violated and taken advantage of. Wilson was charged, went to trial, and found not guilty of rape in this instance, but found guilty on charges of aggravated child molestation for receiving oral sex from a 15 year old.

So, despite the fact that Wilson was an honor student, high school track and football star, and homecoming king, he wasn't exactly a prince, and there were social factors at play here -- not just the age of the young woman involved, but also her relative social status and the power-dynamics involved there. These factors contribute to sexual manipulation (of people of all ages and genders, although young women are particularly vulnerable) on a daily basis. It isn't surprising that he was charged, given the context in which the sex act took place; because of the way the law was written, the proof that he had in fact received oral sex from a 15 year old (the video, that is) meant that the jury had no choice but to find him guilty. Although he was acquitted of the rape charge in the case of the 17 year old woman, I'm still willing to go out on a limb and say: ew. I don't care if he wasn't convicted, what happened to the 17 year old was absolutely disgusting and a poor decision on his part. It speaks volumes that this part of the story is being swept under the rug by the media and Wilson is being painted as a hometown hero wrongly accused.

Jessica of Feministing is quite right in pointing out the incredibly sexist implications of the law that Genarlow Wilson, the young man, broke:

Consent laws are overwhelmingly enforced to "protect" young girls, even if some of them don't need protecting. I find it pretty insulting that any teen girl who has sex is an automatic victim.

She also points out that charges may not have been brought at all if it had been the young man performing oral sex, and not the other way around. Regardless of the fact that many are manipulated and violated, this particular young woman has not said she felt that way. Law states that she could not legally give consent (because she was 15 at the time), and that law denies that she, as a young woman, is capable of making decisions about her body and her life.

Back in the day, when I was a majorly sexually active minor, the idea that either myself or my partner were doing something illegal was inconceivable. What I was doing was punishable in the court of My Mother's House, sure, but in a court of Law? According to this article in The Sunday Times (UK-Scotland edition), many young people are startled to learn their randy behavior is punishable by law:

When Paul lost his virginity to an older girl, he never thought he might be committing a crime. Emma, his first girlfriend, was a year older than him at 15 and already sexually experienced. But when her parents discovered the nature of their relationship, it was 14-year-old Paul who was threatened with the law.

For the record, Paul was not charged, but under Scottish law he could have been.

In Georgia, Wilson recently lost his appeal. Meanwhile, Georgia lawmakers are in the process of rewriting the law under which he was convicted to match that which applies to intercourse. Under the new "Romeo and Juliet" law, teens within 3 years of each other in age will not be able to be charged for oral sex (unless, of course, it isn't consensual, but that's a whole other law).

In the meantime, a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute found that 9 out of 10 US citizens have engaged in premarital sex. I wonder how many of them were committing a crime at the time? In any case, the study provides ample evidence that abstinence only until marriage might not be the wisest of choices when it comes to sex education.

More:
Wilson's Attorney Answers Questions
NY Times Op-Ed: Free Genarlow Wilson Now
Why is Genarlow Wilson in Jail?
Interesting Debate in the Feministing Comments

This Feminist Likes It Rough

A Quickie from Noho -

Jessica over at Feministing posted about the myth that feminists don't like rough sex. The piece is filled with funny (and slightly unnerving and mostly unbelievable) quotes from two other authors. The discussion that followed in the comments was pretty interesting too.

I'm pretty sure that Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon are at the root of this cultural misconception about feminism -- or rather, I think that the simplification of their work as it's read is to blame. Interesting stuff.

A Thousand Tiny Sexes

Have you read Anne Fausto-Sterling's The Five Sexes? Written in 1993, it discusses intersexuality and the ways in which our Male/Female system of sex-categorization is insufficient. I was only 10, so I can't tell you how radical a notion that was at the time, but I can tell you that theorists and activists and scientists -- including Fausto-Sterling herself -- have taken the building blocks of The Five Sexes and used them to continue to evaluate and reimagine the way we think about sex.

A Thousand Tiny Sexes is a book project whose aim goes way beyond just five sexes. From the website:

To imagine that there are only two sexes - M & F - is an absurdity. There are at least 1000 sexes. The daily lived reality of transgender and intersexual people (and gay, lesbian, queer and all other people, for that matter) proves this over and over again, yet many people continue to operate as if 'M' and 'F' are the only sexes, the only options, the only expressions, the only goals, the only way ("the way it is").

The ideology behind A Thousand Tiny Sexes is quite radical. They're not just talking about gradiations of female and male; they're looking for submissions that "entirely reimagine sex as a biological, cultural, political, and social category." Really interesting stuff; I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Image: "Found Sex #1" by kanarinka, one of the editors of A Thousand Tiny Sexes.
Via sexblo.gs.

Sex in The Guardian

An editorial in The Guardian claims that "The west's attitude to issues of reproductive health, especially in the US, causes women's deaths all over the world."

Bravo. More:

The consequences of such moral superiority are grave - not only in the fight against Aids but across the whole field of sexual and reproductive health. We have the US preaching abstinence from sex as the answer to Aids in Africa and refusing funds to any family-planning clinics across the world that provide abortions or even counsel women about them. This head-in-the-sand attitude towards abortion leads directly to women's deaths. Every year nearly 20 million unsafe abortions are carried out on desperate women in ill-lit rooms and illegal clinics. You don't stop that happening by refusing to talk about it.

"Our moral superiority about sex is proving deadly," Sarah Boseley, Friday November 24, 2006

"Don't Bet on Barack"

I really appreciate this opinion piece posted on The Advocate's website. I had been feeling anxious and left out of all the "Obama '08" rhetoric because of his position on same sex marriage (namely, that he opposes it). An excerpt from the Advocate article:

“I was reminded that it is my obligation not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society, but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided,” Obama wrote in his recent memoir, The Audacity of Hope.

But Obama’s audacity is not only his unwillingness to support the issue, but also his misunderstanding and misuse of the term “gay marriage.” The terminology “gay marriage” not only stigmatizes and stymies our efforts for marriage equality, but it also suggests that LGBT people’s marriages are or would be wholly different from those of heterosexuals, thus altering its landscape, if not annihilating the institution of marriage entirely.

I'm already so nervous about '08. If my options are Barack, who opposes marriage equality, and Hillary, who (let's be realistic) doesn't have a prayer against McCain... lordy, I just don't know. Anyone more politically savvy want to weigh in? And maybe make me feel better?

damn.

I'm in a blogging mood today, what can I say? Via Hanne Blank's blog (and thanks to YouTube), this is Skinny by Lo-rider (the uncensored version). It's really freaking hot, and not work safe, unless you want to have to take an extended "bathroom" break.

Media gives Working Moms the Shaft

Elizabeth Vargas, co-anchor of 20/20 and former co-anchor of ABC's World News, gave up her coveted, well respected seat at World News this summer when she went on maternity leave. Her decision was met with protests by working mothers who felt that Vargas was sending a bad message about mothers in the work force. Vargas defends her decision by saying

I loved my job at "World News," but the prospect of doing it well, and still finding time to be a good mother to 3-year-old Zachary and my new baby, Samuel, felt impossible.

The quote is taken from an ABC.com article, written by Vargas herself, which introduces the topic of tonight's 20/20 special report: Can Working Mothers Have It All?

According to the article, the report is an investigation into why more hasn't been done to help working mothers. It discusses maternity/paternity leave, good/subsidized childcare, and workplace flexibility, all places where the US lags behind other industrialized countries.

But if all you knew about this report -- if all you heard in passing -- was its title, Can Working Mothers Have it All?... well, I don't know what you'd think, but I would think it was an attack on working mothers. Not an outright "get back in the kitchen and make me some pie!" attack, but the more lethal, subtle variety, the kind that makes it sound like it's in women's best interest to choose: children or career, ladies, you can't have them both. According to a recent report by the Center for Worklife Law, this characterization is common in news media. According to the report (pdf), women are often described as "opting out" of the workforce to become "full-time moms," when in fact they are being pushed out. Articles often describe a psychological or biological "pull" toward motherhood, when according to another study the Center for Worklife Law references, women most often cite problems like workplace inflexibility for their decision to leave (Ms. Magazine Newsbrief).

Then there's the Momtini crowd. According to a New York Times article called Cosmopolitan Moms (Stacy Lu, 11/9/06), moms across the country are sipping wine with friends at their children's playdates. I myself don't see anything terribly wrong with a woman having a drink with friends while their children play, and the article cites many women who feel that having a drink and some grown-up social time allows them to take back their adult life a little bit while still caring for the children. The article also points out the double-standard in drinking:

“In this culture there is a still a double standard,” said Dwight B. Heath, an anthropology professor at Brown University who has written extensively on alcohol attitudes. “It is more acceptable for men to drink, more often, and in greater quantities, and in public."

On the other hand, the article likens the Momtini crowd to bored, lonely 1950's housewives who turned to alcohol for consolation. Think Julianne Moore in The Hours:

“Is the drinking purely social or is this an underlying message that there is something missing?” Ms. Barash said. “This might be a happy event, but it certainly wasn’t for their predecessors. The drinking was just a coping mechanism for loneliness and unhappiness.”

Are a great number of home-working mothers unhappy? I have no idea. I wouldn't blame them if they were. A great number of many subcategories of people are unhappy. I guessI'd say that getting together with friends to share stories from the week (and maybe a drink) isn't a bad way of coping with unhappiness, though. There's something about this characterization of mothers that I object to.

In short: Dear Media, please stop making motherhood out to be a perpetual struggle. I'm all for lighting the way to better family policies in the US, but do we have to make moms look like hell along the way?

And if you're wondering what all of this has to do with sex, think of it this way: If the US gave mothers more support -- childcare options, maternity leave, tax breaks, etc -- becoming a mother might not be the life-altering, plan-changing, "dream-wrecking" event it is considered today. And if women didn't have to be afraid of what having a baby would do to their future, they would be less suceptible to terrorizing abstinence-only messages from the government, which would open the door to comprehensive sexuality education, and then... just think of all the awesome healthy sex you'd be having! As someone dear to my heart said recently, "It's a baby, not the plague."

Sony: World's First TV for Men and Women

This is without a doubt one of the more braindead ad campaigns I've seen in quite awhile. Sony's TV ads for the new Bravia television set advertise it as "The world's first TV for men and women." Having no idea what was even meant by that, I went to the website. What you get at the website is four different endings to the commercial: two for men, and two for women. Obviously, when you try to encapsulate the interests of an entire gender into a couple of 30-second clips, you've got to make some generalizations. Some disgustingly sexist generalizations, that mock women's with careers in medicine and make us out to be nothing more than a pair of pretty feet. The ads also make men out be ridiculous, violent, and women's only savior.

Am I taking it too seriously? Being one of "those" feminists? In my head I'm imagining an old friend laughing at my ire over these commercials, but his politics suck anyway, so what does he know? This ad campaign is so stone-age it's almost unreal.

HPV Politics: Tell Someone

I'm really peeved about the politics of Merck's "Tell Someone" HPV awareness campaign. If you haven't seen the TV ads, allow me to fill you in. Several women talk to the camera as though the camera-person literally just walked up to them and said "Did you know that cervical cancer is caused by human papillomavirus?" They describe HPV as "a common virus" (which, of course, it is), and say that while most women's bodies can get rid of HPV on their own, the virus can cause cervical cancer -- and other diseases.

By which, of course, they mean genital warts. There isn't a single reference to sex in the entire commercial, even though HPV is sexually transmitted. But any mention of sex would be read in popular culture as an assertion that women who get cervical cancer are sluts -- since, as we all know, only sluts get STIs. Merck doesn't want any flak from the religious fanatics, nor do they want to label their vaccine as The Slut Shot. What will really help prevent the spread of HPV is frank discussion of how it is transmitted, how it can be prevented, how precancerous cells are detected, and how any woman who has any genital contact with anyone is potentially at risk. It's not a scare tactic, it's the truth. And, I hope, knowing that HPV isn't only spread through sexual intercourse will help to break down the stereotype that only "sluts" get STIs.

The ads also don't mention Gardasil, Merck's newly approved vaccine which targets the two strains of HPV that cause 70% of cervical cancer cases (16 & 18) and those that cause 90% of cases of genital warts (6 & 11). The only vague reference to the vaccine is when a mother pats her daughter's head and tells the camera, "I'm going to talk to her doctor about way to prevent HPV infection at her next check up." I imagine this is intended to avoid making women rush to their doctors and demand the vaccine, which is recommended for women 9-26, but especially for 11 & 12 year olds, since the vaccine is most likely to be effective if administered before sexual activity begins.

You don't want HPV, obviously, but it's not worth worrying about 24/7. Just as a refresher: Have a pap test regularly, follow up on any irregular results, use condoms/ dams/ non-microwavable plastic wrap /gloves when you're doin' it, especially if you don't know your partner's STI status. There. Thank you for indulging the sex educator in me, she's been bored lately.

In other news, I watched a TV movie tonight called Satan's School for Girls, which was set at a New England women's college -- but I guess Satan's College for Women just didn't sound as sexy!