Kathleen Hanna Likes When Guys Write Songs Supporting Feminism, But She Might 'Barf a McDonald's Salad' if You Ask Her What Feminism Means...


Kathleen Hanna is a rock’n'roll icon, and she’s also a modern feminist idol. She recently sat down to write NME this short, sweet an thoughtful op-ed about feminism in song from the male perspective. You should read the whole thing, but in case you don’t, here is the bottom-line of her argument:

In terms of men being feminist allies, it’s just important to speak from your own place. I’d love to hear men singing about masculinity and the damage it does to them. I think men having conversations with each other and through songs about the way traditional gender roles cut them off from having the full range of emotions, that it puts them in a place where they’re supposed to be the breadwinner when maybe that’s not what they want or can do, and that it teaches them that the only way to bond with each other is through sexism or racism or homophobia.

The thing that really bugs me isn’t men writing songs about sexism — it’s when they come up to me after shows or lectures and say, “What is feminism?” And I’m like “Why don’t you go on fuckin’ Google and type 'feminism’ into the search engine?” Or when dudes send me email interviews for their college newspapers with 500 questions like “What are the different waves of feminism called and why?” and I’m supposed to give them an online Feminism 101 class. GO TAKE A CLASS AT YOUR OWN FUCKING COLLEGE. It’s not my job. Read books! That’s why they’re there! I especially don’t want men coming up to me and asking IF SEXISM STILL EXISTS. It’s like, I’m seriously gonna barf a McDonald’s salad on the next person to do that.

By Sasanka Jinadasa

see, #solidarity is a word more easily
tagged than practiced
and I don’t know how I feel about using
a #hashtag in a poem
but I build bridges in soundbites now

they’re a little less heavy on my back

#zami
a Carriacou word for women who are
lovers and friends
my girl is Black just like Audre
Caribbean just like Audre
Dangerous just like Audre
and she tells me that lesbians straddle that
fine line between lovers and sisters
and then when I straddle her we speak
(silently)
about our brown #solidarity and I
eat her
stories about South Brunswick
like vegetable roti and fish

island sisters
island lovers
the South Asian sisters in her hood
have skin like me, curry-colored
and we speak of a radical food revolution
dropping spices in the salt between us
sweat like oceans
we remember our mother’s cooking
too spicy for tongues, thick with accents
rich with history
we remember how her love
carried our conception across so much water

and we sweat until our oceans
bleed together
we were birthed in those oceans
home has the sediment of
colonizers and the colonized

so we fish and we salt
the Antilles and Sri Lanka
finding love like #zami
#solidarity let’s trend that
and build our voices in those oceans
echolocation bounce back to me
click your tongue
and I will pull your echoes into my mouth

#sisterhood
#love
let’s trend that
when Snoop Dogg reps my hood
does he rep my sisters
parts of the LBC sit below sea level
submerged women give birth to
baby girls, the signs around the city
tell you in Khmer and Spanish and English
they whisper inside those painted lines
they say, we’re here
and our language is a revolution
we are black on white signs
we are rust on your barbed wire
and we are water taking back our earth
no more gang wars in front of
white people

give us more and give us free
#solidarity
women are more than wombs
women are more than bodies
women are the spirit stolen
from la Malinche
from Eve
from Kali

my love they cannot drown our sorrows
we are bridges
we are water
we are oceans
and we are always home

http://thefeministwire.com/2013/09/sisters-and-lovers/

Sex positivity: The sacred tenet of liberal, white, feminist dogma that no one has dared to question. Sex-positivity is an attitude that embraces and promotes the open expression of sex. A lot of women of color have ventured to question inherent whiteness in the way sex-positivity is imagined in our culture. One recent example of this questioning of the widespread acceptance of sex-positivity was a group of women of color’s critique of the Slut Walk movement. “Slut” is a racialized term that not all women can “reclaim” and “liberate themselves” from as easily as white women can. In this way, the Slut Walk movement, though motivated by principles of gender justice and sexual liberation, actually reproduced a lot of racism. You can read about this critique and online dialogue through a simple google search.

On a personal level, however, I have always felt that sex-positivity was inadequate. For one thing, it universalizes a narrative of sexual liberation. The more sex you have, the more “liberated” you are. The less sex you have, the more “repressed” you are (and perhaps, in dire need of some liberal feminist saviors to save you from this state of being). This is the dominant and overarching theme of sex-positive rhetoric.

So, what’s wrong with the generalization that more sex = liberation? It locates sexual liberation in an experience of white heterosexual femininity. It does not take into the account the different experiences of racialization and sexualization of women, queer and trans people of color. For example, while, straight, middle-class women have been stereotyped as pure, asexual virgins, while women of color have been hypersexualized as exotic, erotic beings (see: Hottentot, harem girl, lotus blossom, fiery Latina, squaw, etc.) For racialized people, adopting a sex-positive attitude does not “liberate” them of such stereotypes, in fact, it fuels them further. In addition, the framework of sex-positivity does not offer a critique of capitalism and the way our sexualities are commodified and exploited, preventing the “free expression” of sex, in the favorite words of sex-positive feminists. Sex-positivity is also ahistorical; it does not take into account the ways attitudes about sex are related to histories of colonialism, especially the colonial imposition of gender and sexual norms. None of this is a particularly new way of thinking by the way, many feminists of color have critiqued sex-positivity for similar reasons.

What if it’s hard to discern the difference between your desire/attractionality and your oppression? In fact, what if our desires are enablers, through which such oppression takes place? Sex-positivity ideology tells us to blindly submit ourselves to such constructs, rather than interrogating and critically exploring them, seeking out our own unique paths toward true sexual liberation. After all, sexual liberation does not exist in a vacuum; it is entangled with the ongoing project of liberation from coloniality. I don’t even want to call it sexual “liberation,” because that word suggests that there is a magical point when we will be “free.” There is not such a “point;” if coloniality is ongoing, then “liberation” is ongoing as well.

- See more at: http://cornellsun.com/section/opinion/content/2013/09/04/john-rethinking-sex-positivity#sthash.qvKDr6dm.dpuf

Things are looking pretty bleak in the world of abortion care. A wave of states has already been disturbingly successful at shutting down abortion providers by passing medically unnecessary restrictions on clinics, despite the new laws frequently being blocked in court. In the past three years, 27 states have lost 54 clinics, and while not all closures were due to anti-abortion regulations, plenty were. Considering how few abortion clinics are left in the country—a count in January by The Daily Beast found only 724 left—this loss represents a dramatic decrease in abortion accessibility, especially in states like Texas and Arizona, where huge numbers of clinics shut their doors.
Because of this, pro-choice efforts to increase abortion availability have become all the more important. Luckily for pro-choicers, there is one advantage they have in the abortion arms race: In the first trimester, at least, abortion is incredibly safe and quite simple. Particularly in the era of the abortion pill, you don’t actually need expensive equipment, separate facilities, or even necessarily a medical doctor in order to provide one. As reproductive-rights advocates in the pre-Roe days understood, early abortion is safe and easy enough that even people who were previously not too familiar with the human body can be trained to do it. It’s this straightforwardness that has allowed pro-choice activists to come up with some innovative options to expand access.

The state of California, bucking the anti-choice trend in most legislatures at the moment, is about to pass a new law that would increase the number of people who can perform a legal abortion in the state. Recognizing that one doesn’t need high-level surgical skills to administer a pill or perform a one-minute vacuum-aspiration abortion, lawmakers in the state have passed a bill, which Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign, that would allow midwives, nurse practitioners, or physician assistants to perform first-trimester abortions after taking a training course in how to do them.

A move like this could not only increase the number of abortion providers available to women in California—and to women from neighboring states like Arizona, where clinics are rapidly being closed—but it opens up the possibility of integrating abortion into everyday health care, making it both more normalized and harder to attack with predatory regulations. While the abortion-clinic model of care initially arose to make women’s lives easier as a one-stop shop for a rare procedure, the existence of stand-alone clinics has made them sitting-duck targets for restrictive laws. Part of what “sells” the claim that abortion clinics need to meet ambulatory-surgical-center standards and have hospital-admitting privileges—two regulations that are being used to shut down clinics—is this widespread but utterly false belief that abortion is an intense and dangerous surgery. Allowing a nurse practitioner or a midwife to offer abortion services would drive home the reality that first-trimester abortion really is a relatively minor medical procedure that hardly merits the term “surgery,” especially in cases where it’s just a matter of taking a pill. This move could also help lower the price of an abortion, much in the same way these types of providers offer a bevy of more affordable care.

Imprisoned for Miscarriage: A Young Mexican Woman Gets 23 Years for Losing Her Baby and Advocates Call for Help

The Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network (LACWHN or Red de Salud in Spanish) is calling for solidarity in support of a 21-year-old Baja California (Mexico) woman sentenced to 23 years in prison for losing her baby. Red de Salud is a regional network of women’s health and rights organizations in existence since the mid-eighties.

In what Red de Salud calls “a serious case of discrimination and violence against women,” the young woman was sentenced to serve a prison sentence of 23 years for the crime of aggravated homicide (specifically, parricide) for what the accused says was a miscarriage in 2008.

This is the direct result of laws that claim to “protect life from the moment of conception,” or “personhood laws” as they are known in the United States. These laws establish rights of personhood for fertilized eggs that trump the health and rights of women.

Red de Salud reports that:

On December 26, 2008, amendments to the Constitution of the State of Baja California were adopted to protect life from the moment of conception, similar to reforms promoted in 15 states throughout the Republic. Thanks to such acts of dogmatism and ignorance, contrary to the principle of equality and fundamental rights in general, authorities from three states so far have sought to imprison women who have made decisions with regard to their bodies, exercising their rights to equality and freedom from discrimination and their sexual and reproductive rights.

- See more at: http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/02/01/imprisoned-miscarriageyoung-woman-gets-years-losing-baby/#sthash.a6P10sTw.dpuf

Speaking before a conference on tackling online abuse, which will be attended by high-profile victims including the MP Stella Creasy and feminist writer and campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, Polly Neate, chief executive of Women's Aid, said the links between domestic violence and online abuse were too often ignored.

"It is critical that we make the link between this vicious online harassment and cyberbullying and real-life violence against women," she said. "We need to understand that this is part of a domestic violence spectrum and we have to challenge this type of misogyny because it is the backdrop that allows that violence to take place."

The "decimation" of domestic violence services was also leaving providers struggling to provide basic support to victims, and unable to tackle complex problems such as online abuse, she added.

Women's Aid supports 350 services throughout the country. Its survey of 307 domestic violence survivors showed 48% had been harassed or abused online by their ex-partner once they had left the relationship and 38% reported online stalking. A further 45% were abused online during their relationship.

Three-quarters of women were concerned that police did not know how best to respond to online abuse or harassment, while 12% had reported abuse to the police and said they had not been helped.

Decades ago in the twentieth century, there was a genius black choreographer named Katherine Dunham. She has been called the “matriarch of black dance,” and she introduced West African dance to North America. Honestly, she is as important to American dance history as Twyla Tharp.

Dunham influenced generations of black and white choreographers. Most importantly, Dunham helped to create respect for the field of dance influenced by the African Diaspora and its spiritual and cultural practices. Dunham pioneered the Western dance concept of “isolation”—keeping one part of the body still while moving another—and incorporating fluid pelvic moves into mainstream dance.

Pelvic moves. Sound familiar?

But those moves were ancient and Dunham just made them modern. They were West African dance moves. Moves that had been expressed for hundreds of years. Moves that were brought over on the Middle Passage, the journey of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. For example, while in Senegal, I saw “twerking” at a wedding being set up outdoors. No one treated it as “naughty” at all, either—or “American.”

Many of us blacks who have seen Dunham’s version of West African dance here on the stages of college auditoriums, community centers, gymnasiums—or in a Hip Hop video—but have no idea that what we are witnessing are Diasporic expressions that she worked for nearly seventy years to bring to us and thus, reconnect us with the culture from across the water.

You know what white people do with their profound, European cultural expressions from across the Atlantic?

THERE ARE MANY PROBLEMS

Often, when discussing the issue of sexism and misogyny online, many – of all sexes – are quick to draw and stab their swords of banality into every open thread. Dismissal, jeering, mockery, snark: as someone who doesn’t experience sexism directly, it is primarily these reactions to sexism I do experience.

My identity is not important and I’ve tried to always distance myself from it, in my writings. Who I am matters less than whether my arguments are sound.

Or at least it should.

As I’ve slowly and painfully learnt, what should be the case doesn’t align to what is. Laurie Penny, who is around my age and also grew up with the Internet becoming increasingly part of daily life, identifies this hallmark of anonymity and erosion of identity as a central feature of the Internet.

As she writes: “Why would it matter, in this brave new networked world, what sort of body you had? And if your body didn’t matter, why would it matter if you were a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, or something else entirely?”

Instead, as Penny and others discovered, it wasn’t the erosion of identity to a default that vaguely resembled a sexless, non-racial humanoid. The default wasn’t a chalk outline lying on roads well-trodden.

The default wasn’t mere “person”: it was male.

Deviations from this, “opened up” avenues for dismissal, hatred and threats: the hallmarks of fear.

Penny writes, “It turned out the Internet wasn’t for everyone. Not really. Not yet. It was for boys, and if you weren’t one you had to pretend to be, or you’d be dismissed.” She points out that media theorist, Clay Shirky, refers to this as “the gender closet”.

This one’s gonna be REALLY long. Sorry folks. May want to skip this one altogether, in fact. It’s just me mud-wrestling with someone who doesn’t deserve the attention, because I have a stake in this particular fight.
Previously, I showed how AVfM, Paul Elam and Birric Forcella must absolutely know that men getting thrown in jail or otherwise having their lives ruined is a mathematically miniscule problem compared to the problem of unpunished rape, using some basic math intentionally skewed to advantage the claims of MRAs. Even with all of the tilts in their favour, I calculated that 10% of innocent men would end up in jail, while less than 5% of actual rapes would result in rapists seeing even a day of jailtime. While those numbers are appalling, the problem of 95% of rapes going unpunished is slightly larger than (the artificially inflated) 10% of innocent men going to jail.
That essentially proves AVfM are fighting the wrong demon, and they must know it. This sort of math is inescapable.

But what’s more is, they’re doing it because they think that feminists are fighting for 100% of rape claims to result in convictions. I know of absolutely no feminist who’s ever said that a person should be damned based on a mere accusation, not even the most radical of feminists, whom I’m sure recognize that such a structure could result in them being thrown in jail by a spiteful accuser out for revenge against them. I’d personally rather have less of ANY sort of crime, either false rape claims or rapes. I’d rather justice be served as close to perfectly as humanly possible, in absence of a sky-daddy to do all the omniscient judging for you.

But you simply can’t fight false rape claims by loosening the system such that it’s impossible for ANY rapes to see justice. Nor, vice-versa — you can’t tighten them to the point where false rape claims land innocent men in jail. The problem here is, there’s precious little evidence that innocent men ARE landing in jail, and there’s plenty of evidence that real rapists are walking all the damn time.
In fact, this idea that feminists are demanding that anonymous claims be believed without any corroborating evidence is the lynchpin of their entire argument — and the event that has gotten them so keen to throw me, a man who experienced a fake rape claim, under the bus is of course exactly the event you’d expect. And I’m the target for exactly the reason you’d expect.