I had the amazing experience yesterday of attending NYC Reproductive Justice Coalition’s first Reproductive Justice Media conference in Manhattan. Listening and learning from the organizing, research and writing of reproductive justice activists and writers like Pamela Merritt, Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, Jamia Wilson and Belle Taylor McGee, was a rare opportunity for me to delve more deeply into a movement that is gradually reshaping my own thinking of women’s health. It’s also incredibly inspiring and enriching to be in a room full of badass, smart women who are making things happen. Being able to meet them outside of Twitter was even better.

NYC Reproductive Justice Coalition, an outgrowth of SisterSong NYC, organized the conference in collaboration with Women’s eNews in order to reframe the discussion of what reproductive justice means, how to create messages and communicate them to the media and public. In this spirit, the coalition created a Tumblr stylesheet for writers, activists and media folks to use when discussing reproductive justice. One entry, “Reproductive Justice, Reproductive Rights (difference),” states:

Reproductive justice is the theory, practice, and movement to ensure that people are supported in their decisions to create families—or not—in the most optimal situations possible.

Reproductive rights concentrate on fighting to keep abortion a safe, legal, and accessible reproductive choice with some discussions on birth control and and family creation. It also centers the sexual and reproductive capabilities of cisgender women to the exclusion/erasure of trans people and non-binary/genderqueer people because it defines the ability to give birth as a hallmark of “womanhood.”

Use it and share it! NYC Reproductive Justice Coalition is also live tweeting the entire conference (@NYC4RJ) (#RJmedia2012).

The House subcommittee on the Constitution is holding a hearing today without the presence of the city’s elected Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, on a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy in the District of Columbia. Oh, you know, just another day on Capitol Hill!

Based on similar bills modeled and promoted by the National Right to Life Committee, the bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) is a standalone bill in legislative talks that would grant D.C. autonomy over its budget. The bill – “District of Columbia Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” – is based upon the disputed claim that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks gestation or older. Although the AP reports the bill has no chance becoming law this year, six states have passed similar legislation.

In case you’re confused about what this debate is really about – fetal pain? D.C. budget autonomy? abortion? – let me save you the mental frustration. Republicans are trading D.C. women’s autonomy over their bodies and healthcare decisions for the city’s budget autonomy. Their asking price is a restriction on D.C. women’s healthcare and constitutional right to abortion. I’m sick and tired of the continual attacks on our healthcare and reproductive rights. And I’m sick of the undemocratic, oppressive tactic of baiting one group of Americans’ rights against another. Enough! On the Rachel Maddow Show last night, Holmes Norton forcefully called the bill out as a bullying tactic. Well done, Rep. Holmes Norton.

I know, I know. So much praise and criticism from entertainment and feminist bloggers has dominated the pop culture discussion of the new HBO series Girls since the pilot aired on April 15, that we get it. She’s a voice of a generation! No! She doesn’t speak for me!

So what else is there to say? Plenty. Driving back from D.C. yesterday, I was excited to catch Fresh Air’s interview with Lena Dunham, the creater, producer and star of Girls. It was the first time I heard her address the serious criticism toward the show that it doesn’t include any people of color as characters:

I wrote the first season primarily by myself, and I co-wrote a few episodes. But I am a half-Jew, half-WASP, and I wrote two Jews and two WASPs. Something I wanted to avoid was tokenism in casting. If I had one of the four girls, if, for example, she was African-American, I feel like — not that the experience of an African-American girl and a white girl are drastically different, but there has to be specificity to that experience [that] I wasn’t able to speak to. I really wrote the show from a gut-level place, and each character was a piece of me or based on someone close to me. And only later did I realize that it was four white girls. As much as I can say it was an accident, it was only later as the criticism came out, I thought, ‘I hear this and I want to respond to it.’ And this is a hard issue to speak to because all I want to do is sound sensitive and not say anything that will horrify anyone or make them feel more isolated, but I did write something that was super-specific to my experience, and I always want to avoid rendering an experience I can’t speak to accurately. 

Lena Dunham wrote what she knew – her own experience as a white, upper-middle class, 20-something educated girl – and as the show’s main writer and sole creator, she could write what she wanted and what she felt comfortable writing. She also wanted to avoid tokenizing the experiences and voices of people of color, which is a legitimate feeling as a young writer. Dunham is a young writer who created a TV show that is an extension of her lived experiences. Why are we placing so much expectation on her that she be everything to everywoman?

The tension and harsh criticism toward Lena Dunham tells me more about our collective desire and demand for the inclusion of many women’s voices and experiences in television shows from producer to writer, creator and star. This collective desire and demand is good and healthy – we should advocate for more TV shows that include women’s voices that aren’t overwhelmingly representative of young, white, cisgender, heterosexual women’s experiences.

The loud criticism against the show is also indicative of our growing cultural and social acknowledgement that we live in a multi-racial and gendered society that isn’t reflected back to us in television and media. I’m certainly aware of it. In my initial, mixed reaction to the pilot of Girls, I was annoyed by the privilege and sense of entitlement from Hannah, the main character of the show, and the unrealistic nature of the girls’ living situation. Seriously, what post-college, unpaid intern can live anywhere in New York City? I don’t think my high school and college friends in New York did that. And I’m supposed to believe that Hannah’s college professor parents are footing the bill? Yeah, right. More importantly, I thought, how can Hannah be a Millennial living in NYC and only have white friends? (Yes, some people do.) But after watching the first five episodes and having conversations with other feminist friends about these debates, I’m hooked. For me, the show is funny, bold, fresh and all too real in terms of navigating relationships, friendships and life after college.

So let’s leave Lena Dunham alone. Let’s take her show and her unique, singular experience that speaks to who she is – white, educated, young, middle/upper class – and leave it at that. Some girls will find themselves in it in varying degrees, and some won’t. That’s ok. Let’s focus on creating more opportunities for women of all backgrounds and experiences in television and not place such huge expectations on Lena Dunham to fix all of what’s wrong with women in media. If yesterday’s NPR interview is any indication, she’s intelligently aware of the criticism and seems intent on really addressing it in the show’s upcoming second season.

Watch Girls every Sunday at 10:30p.m. on HBO. 

This post also appeared on Rhyme et Reason. 

The Golden Rule doesn’t apply to the good Christian folks at Focus on the Family. Last week, The Washington Post ran an op-ed piece, “The Temptation of Tim Tebow,” by Esther Fleece, assistant to the president for millennial relations at Focus on the Family.

In the piece, Fleece chastised the Web site AshleyMadison.com for offering a $1 million bounty to anyone who offers proof of having sex with Tim Tebow, the New York Jets quarterback who is also known for being a 24 year-old Christian virgin, and the site’s CEO Noah Biderman for defending it. While I agree with Fleece that the actions of this Web site are crass and silly, she finally gets to the real point of her column: “…namely, that abstinence before marriage is an impossibility and/or a silly relic from the past.” After trotting out statistics to support her point that abstinence before marriage is more common than you think, she gets to her final point:

Here’s the bottom line: Noah Biderman is sadly representative of those who deeply underestimate the power of sex. It was not designed by God as a casual act to be shared indiscriminately with anyone and everyone. It was devised by our creator as the healthy byproduct of a healthy marriage, not the objective of a relationship…

Fleece then goes on to write that she agrees with people when they tell her that she has “missed out” on having premarital sex:

I have missed out on heartbreak, insecurities relating to my body, sharing the most precious part of my heart with someone other than my husband, STDs, unplanned pregnancy, etc. Not all my friends then, or now, understood or understand my commitment to purity. The difference between AshleyMadison.com and my friends, though, is that even though they don’t share my convictions, they respect me for the way I am living them out.

Uhhh, what? Just because a man or woman chooses to remain sexually abstinent before marriage, doesn’t mean he/she misses out on heartbreak, bodily insecurities and sharing his/her heart with someone else. All of these things can happen if you are a virgin or not. After all, you can love someone deeply and have your heart broken even if you haven’t had sex with him/her. We like to pretend that the bonds of matrimony automatically protect you from having your heart broken, STIs and unplanned pregnancy and it doesn’t. Some spouses cheat and use birth control inconsistently or not at all. And as a woman in this culture and society that constantly bombards me and you with gendered beauty norms, how has Ms. Fleece NOT had bodily insecurities?! It’s impossible. It’s clear she’s talking about heterosexual, vaginal intercourse as the only sex that’s worth discussing. But what about oral sex? Can you still be a virgin and have oral sex? If you answer yes, then I’m sorry – you can still be exposed to STIs.

Tim Tebow deserves that same respect. He not only believes, but boldly lives by the belief, that sex outside the context of marriage forms permanent bonds and memories from temporary relationships, and is therefore neither long-lasting or truly satisfying to the soul.

Fleece’s last claim – that Tim Tebow deserves respect for his personal decision to remain a virgin until marriage – is correct. He does. But her unwillingness to give the same respect to those who don’t fit her definition of “good sex,” (even if it’s a sleazy Web site and CEO) and who have sex in many social contexts outside the confines of heterosexual marriage, is hypocrisy. Tim Tebow and others like him have one view of sex and it doesn’t make it any better than other views of what sex is and isn’t. Fleece’s view is one that I happen to disagree with and don’t live by, but that’s what makes the world go around.

If Esther Fleece doesn’t like people judging her and not respecting her for her personal, sexual decisions that only concern her, then why is she doing the same thing to those of us who don’t think sex outside of marriage is wrong and can be long-lasting and satisfying to the soul? Spare me the morality lesson.

May Day: A Day without the 99%

Check out this interactive map from Mother Jones of May Day activities and protests across the country, including Baltimore.

Our political revolutions will not succeed unless they are accompanied by revolutions of thought — social, sexual, and cultural revolutions that topple the Mubaraks in our minds as well as our bedrooms.

• and some criticism of  Eltahawy’s piece since its publication.

• AlterNet has a great piece on Phyllis Schlafly’s 40-year history in leading the war on women in the U.S. (Schlafly’s hypocrisy and lies continue to astound me.)

•  Juliana Jimenez of Femination writes about the stereotypical image of the overly sexualized Latin American woman and its role and influence in the Secret Service prostitution scandal.

• The Nation has an inside look at Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign and her chances to beat Sen. Scott Brown (R) in Nov. Bottom line: don’t break out the celebratory champagne glasses yet.

• The Washington Post debunks 5 myths about women voters.

• The best critique I’ve read of the new HBO series, “Girls,” and its problematic depiction of the lives of 20-something women in NYC.

The Secret Service announced yesterday the retirement and resignation of three employees connected to the prostitution scandal last week in Cartagena, Columbia. Twenty-one Secret Service employees and military personnel are suspected of visiting strip clubs and prostitutes on April 11, two days before President Obama was scheduled to arrive at an international summit.

Although the men’s conduct violates the agency’s ethical and personal conduct rules, prostitution is legal and regulated in Cartagena. According to The Washington Post, all 21 Secret Service and military personnel are suspected of having women in their rooms at the Hotel Caribe on April 11. The only reason that the news broke at all last week is that one of the men was in a dispute over pay with one of the women, who stayed in the hotel room past the 7a.m. curfew. Hotel staff and Columbian police reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy, and here we are a week later, worrying about whether or not this incident compromised President Obama’s security, if these sex workers could have been spies, and speculating about the culture at the Secret Service agency. A CNN article flirted with the idea and wishful thinking that having more women agents in the Secret Service would change the agency’s macho culture.

Clearly, the behavior of the men involved in the scandal was never meant to get out. It leaves us wondering if these men had engaged in prostitution before Cartagena, and if so, for how long? The news that men who are sworn to serve and protect our President and nation buy sex from women abroad should not be surprising. For feminists who study international politics, there is a sexual politics that underlines and reinforces unequal relations between nations. For example, feminist international relations scholars have long studied and written about the prostitution that occurs around U.S. military bases in South Korea. (Check out Cynthia Enloe’s seminal work, Bananas, Beaches and Bases).

Prostitution may appear to be inconsequential and irrelevant to the workings of international relations, but it’s not. The commercial sexual transaction that happens between American men (whether they’re soldiers or federal employees) and local sex workers reinforces unequal power relations between nations and is often essential to the more powerful state’s military readiness and operations. Individual relationships across international borders that rely on social hierarchies of sex, race, gender and class also construct and influence international relations as much as the actions and decisions of nation states. The international becomes personal when looking at international relations through a feminist lens. In an interview with The New York Times, the woman at the center of the dispute (who identified herself as an escort), told the reporter that she had no idea that the presumably rich American man who invited her back to his hotel room was a part of President Obama’s security detail:

“They never told me they were with Obama,” she said, addressing published reports that some agents may have openly boasted to prostitutes that they were there protecting the president. “They were very discreet.”

What’s important about this personal, individual relationship between a man and a woman is not simply the commodification of sex and the agency’s embarrassment of having the news splashed across 24-hour news cycle, but the sexual politics of international relations. This scandal is not confined to the fleeting actions of one man and one woman, but rather it speaks to a larger pattern of gendered relations within an international system that has real political consequences.

As the prostitution scandal continues to intensify with rumors of more resignations coming in the next few days, the reason why the Secret Service employees and military personnel were in Cartagena has been overshadowed. Leaders throughout the Western hemisphere attended the sixth Summit of the Americas to discuss important anti-drug, monetary and trade policies – the stuff of international relations that defines the relationship between our country and our neighbors. Instead of wondering if the scandal compromised our national security, let’s talk about the ways sexual politics and gender underpin our own international politics and reinforce our standing in the international system.

Florida special prosecutor Angela B. Corey announced during a press conference Wednesday that the state of Florida is charging George Zimmerman with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. It’s about time. Zimmerman, who is expected to plead not guilty, faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.

Since the 17 year-old’s murder in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, the public outcry for justice for Trayvon and outrage that Zimmerman had not been arrested (until this week) has only intensified. Marches and rallies across the country have galvanized college students, parents of all colors and religious leaders, who call on others to denounce the racism in our country that makes a black teen wearing a hoodie and carrying candy “suspicious” and “up to no good” in the eyes of an armed neighborhood watchman.

The intense media coverage of the murder of Trayvon Martin and the public outpouring of anger and grief that it has generated has made me think about the relative invisibility in the media and public consciousness of another murder that involves race, gender, religion and nationality – the killing of Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi immigrant, wife and mother of five children.

Alawadi died March 24, three days after she was brutally and violently beaten with a tire iron in her home in El Cajon, California. Alawadi’s 17-year-old daughter Fatima found her unconscious with a note that said, “go back to your country, you terrorist.” According to police, the family found a similar note earlier in March and didn’t report the incident. Investigators thought the murder was a hate crime because of Alawadi was Muslim and wore a hijab. Soon after her death made news, her name was linked with Trayvon Martin’s in marches and rallies for justice and many people wore hijabs under their hoodies. Those seeking justice for Alawadi created a Facebook page in her honor, “One Million Hijabs for Shaima Alawadi,” which currently has more than 16,000 supporters. On Wednesday, college students across the country held a “National Day of Action for Shaima and Trayvon” and many more women wore hijabs in solidarity over the Easter weekend.

The circumstances surrounding Alawadi’s death are now emerging in media reports that claim that Alawadi was planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas. Police found court paperwork to file for divorce when searching Alawadi’s Ford Explorer, and court records also indicate that Fatima was distraught over an impending arranged marriage to her cousin. Although these circumstances surrounding Alawadi’s death complicates what we think was a hate crime, it doesn’t make her murder any less important or diminish the sense of urgency in finding her killer, just as the victim-blaming of Trayvon Martin wasn’t an acceptable reason not to arrest George Zimmerman sooner rather than later.

Shaima Alawadi and Trayvon Martin may have more similarities in their deaths than they did in life. Alawadi, a 32 year-old female, Iraqi immigrant, and Trayvon, a 17 year-old African-American male, occupied very different social positions in life, but they shared a dilemma that scholar Melissa Harris-Perry describes as, “What It’s Like to Be a Problem.” Harris-Perry states that Trayvon Martin was guilty of being black in presumably restricted public space. Teasing this idea out, Harris-Perry writes that being black in America is a constant awareness of being a problem to others, especially in public spaces. The violent policing of black bodies – whether it’s Jim Crow laws, curfews, stop and frisk laws or by others like George Zimmerman – is consistent throughout America’s racial history, according to Harris-Perry.

Looking beyond the black maleness of the problem that Harris-Perry correctly identifies, the violent policing of immigrant, black, Muslim, Asian, white, Latina, gay/lesbian/transgendered women’s bodies also occur, in public and private ways. One only has to look back at the murder of Tyra, a 25 year-old transgendered woman who was found dead in an abandoned home in Baltimore last year, or remember that veiled Muslim women in the decade since 9/11 have endured public insults as they go about their daily lives.

Shaima Alawadi’s murder is indicative of this. As a Muslim woman clearly identified by her hijab and who was from a country that the U.S. invaded and occupied for nearly 8 years, Shaima Alawadi and many women like her are seen as problematic as terrorists, radicals and oppressed, helpless victims who are prone to the whims of their supposedly terrorist radical husbands. Yet they remain invisible in our national dialogue and narrative about racial justice, equality and violence against women. The lack of intense media scrutiny and national pleas to find Shaima Alwadi’s killer illustrates this invisibility of violence against women. These women embody a racialized and gendered problem in America for those who use Islamophobic insults or physical violence to control them. If Alawadi’s murder is to be seen as a hate crime, then the note left next to her unconscious, beaten body – “go back to your country, you terrorist” – illustrates this.

The lack of intense national scrutiny compared to Trayvon Martin’s murder is perhaps a result of Shaima Alawadi’s beating and eventual death as an event that happened within the home, a private, domestic sphere that has always been associated with a woman’s place. Unlike Trayvon Martin’s murder, which happened outside his home in a semi-public area of his father’s private neighborhood. Add the alleged marital problems Alawadi was having with her husband, claims of her daughter’s unwanted, impending marriage, her own religious and cultural background and the situation surrounding Alawadi’s murder reads as a private, domestic affair (i.e., don’t interfere with other people’s business behind closed doors).

The narrative of Trayvon Martin’s murder reminds us of the worst of our historical and cultural struggle for racial equality as a nation. It’s touched a deep nerve and it’s also a stark reminder that we don’t live in a post-racial world after the election of President Barack Obama. The narrative of Shaima Alawadi’s murder is messier, complicated and less linear in motive and reason. But it underscores a need in our social justice movements (racial, gendered, faith-based, immigrant rights) that we take seriously the violence that occurs to the most marginalized and invisible in our society and incorporate them into our national narrative for equality. They deserve nothing less.

Ha! So great. From Texts from Hillary, on Tumblr.

Reblogged from Rhyme et Reason:

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Here at Rhyme et Reason, we like our TV shows: Mad Men, Downton Abbey, Dance Moms, Ringer, and Real Housewives come to mind. So, I’m going to add a few more shows to the list that I’ve recently started obsessing over and I think are worthy of watching on Sundays. (Feel free to disagree, dear reader, and comment below!) Get your remotes ready!

Read more… 627 more words

Many thanks to the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC for posting this piece I wrote for Rhyme et Reason on their Facebook page!