Women's Equality Forum

Just a quick jubilant heads-up that my post for The National Council for Research on Women's blog The Real Deal was quoted in Linda Basch's article over at The Huffington Post!

Check out the whole forum here (and comment!) and you can find my post here. A little excerpt:

I don’t know much about politics, but I do know a little bit about equality. And I know that right now the two terms don’t really mix. Still, I have this fantasy about the American political system, and I can’t decided if it’s more disheartening to think that it’s still a fantasy or more frustrating to realize that some people don’t see a problem. Is it too much to ask for a political stage on which candidates are challenged based on the strength of their ideas, not the strength of their jump shot; where debates are waged over the economy and health care instead of necklines, pant length and shirtsleeves? Is it so difficult to imagine a female politician holding political office without first weighing the advantages and disadvantages of having a woman in power? When we consider each new candidate, the question shouldn’t be, “Is this woman right for the job?” but “is this person right for the job?” After all, do we often consider the merits of a male politician’s manhood?

Check it out!

"The Streep Effect": Meryl Streep and Economics

In another of my series of posts wherein I throw short little tidbits at you to cover for the fact that I'm not really posting these days (it's a temporary hiatus, I promise!) due to my dissertation (oh, that old thing?), here's a great article from The Independent, which I found, as I often do, browsing Women and Hollywood.

The article, "The Streep effect: Why economists love her," expounds on Meryl Streep's recent "career renaissance," and then tracks the compelling economic effects her films have had, from increasing the sales of ABBA records (post-Mamma Mia) to pushing Virginia Woolfe's Mrs. Dalloway to number 1 on Amazon's best-seller list after her portrayal of Clarissa Vaughan in The Hours.

Streep, who turned 60 in June, has carried off a unique feat among contemporary Hollywood leading ladies: she has sustained a long, A-list career without a break, and moved into roles that have the authentic prestige of the grande dame without settling for matronly support slots. The achievement is all the more impressive considering how many of her best contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, suffered patchy careers, or bowed out, weary of sub-par roles...

Check it out.

The Rights 5: LGBT Rights in Colorado

A new-ish ad I just saw for the first time here in Colorado, made by Progress Colorado:



Bonus points for the racially-diverse cast of superheroes!

The website can be found here.

Women in Combat

Really interesting article in the NY Times today about women in the military, and their increasing roles in combat.

The article is accompanied by an equally compelling video essay.

What do you think about women in combat roles?

It's Complicated, the trailer

Melissa just posted this over at Women and Hollywood and seeing as I will happily watch Meryl Streep in anything and this actually looks like it'll be good, I had to re-post.

Enjoy!

Please say it ain't so, Colorado

"Colorado "Personhood" proposal's 2010 ballot title approved"

Am I losing my mind? Am I experiencing deja vu? Did we or did we not just shoot down this amendment last year?

Abortion opponents are one step closer to putting a "personhood amendment" on the 2010 ballot after the title of their proposal was approved Wednesday.

The next step is getting approval for the language on petition forms, and then gathering 76,047 valid voter signatures over the next six months.

The proposal differs from the failed 2008 "personhood amendment," said Leslie Hanks, vice president of Colorado Right to Life.

That proposal defined a fertilized human egg as a person, which proponents conceded confused the public. The new one refers to "the beginning of the biological development of that human being."

Sigh. At least this past year's amendment was defeated 73% to 27%, so I don't have to start glaring at all of my neighbors. Although I was stuck in traffic behind a car yesterday with the following lovely decorations: 1) a "right-to-life" pro-"personhood" bumper sticker, 2) an "America is number one" type sticker, 3) two American flags, one fluttering from each front window and, 4) the kicker, a bumper sticker which read "One Nation, One LANGUAGE, One God." Did I mention that there are a lot of Mexican immigrants in Colorado? Yeah.

Sotomajority!*

Congratulations to new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic person and the third woman to serve!


See the NY Times for more.

* Full credit for this term goes to my friend Jenny.

ABDC: Beat Freaks

And now for something completely different:

Since I have a weird guilty-pleasure sort of thing going for America's Best Dance Crew and I'm lacking the time and energy for a more insightful post AND who doesn't want to procrastinate for a moment while watching awesome videos, I decided to post a quick little tribute tonight to Beat Freaks, the all-female dance crew that made it to the ABDC Season 3 Finale. Sadly, they were still beaten out by Quest Crew, but I'm pretty sure Beat Freaks was the first all-female team to make it that far in the competition. And, besides, they're awesome.

A Gates-Gate Update

I've been astoundingly remiss in blogging these days and again the only excuse I can offer is that I've been frantically working towards the completion of my dissertation. What about the other FWF contributors, you say? I'm sure they're also equally busy with work and/or summer vacations. Rest assured, come Fall I'll be back in the full swing of things and (hopefully) blogging up a storm.

That said, as a sort of peace offering for my absence, here's a little update on racial politics in America vis-a-vis Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest, or, as my parents and I like to call it, "Gates-Gate."


You've all probably heard--billions and billions of times on every form of media imaginable--about how President Obama referred to the police officer's decision to arrest Gates as "stupid"...and boy is he regretting his words. The President's choice of words has, somewhat inexplicably, become the hot topic this past week, prompting President Obama to offer an apology and invite the two men over for a beer, in a time-honored tradition of male bonding.

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Of course, putting aside for the moment that the President certainly has better things to do right now, a significant player in all this has been completely left out. Linda Whalen, the woman who called 911 and started the whole chain of events leading to Gates' arrest, has been seriously maligned by the media. After her 911 call was released, it became clear that Whalen never mentioned the race of the alleged burglars in her call nor is she the "privileged racist white neighbor" many bloggers made her out to be:

Tapes of the call released earlier this week revealed that Whalen, a first-generation Portuguese-American who doesn't live in the area, did not mention race. When pressed by a dispatcher on whether the men were white, black or Hispanic, she said one of them might have been Hispanic.

"Now that the tapes are out, I hope people can see that I tried to be careful and honest with my words," Whalen said. "It never occurred to me that the way I reported what I saw be analyzed by an entire nation."

Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas acknowledged that the police report contains a reference to race, but said the report is merely a summary of events. The arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, has said his information on the race of the suspects came during a brief encounter with Whalen outside Gates' house; she contradicted that Wednesday, saying she made no such description.

Has Whalen received an apology for her vilification by the media or been asked over to the White House for a beer? What do you think?

Update (Aug. 3): I just found out (thanks Lauren for the heads up) that Gates' did thank Whalen for her call to the police, offering her flowers in a "gesture of gratitude."

On another racist-icing-on-a-racist-cake note, a Boston PD officer sent a vehemently racist email in response to an article by a Boston Globe reporter calling Henry Louis Gates Jr. a "banana-eating jungle monkey" (several times) and insisting that the female author of the article was such a "fool" that she is only good for serving him his "coffee and donuts on a Sunday morning." You can read the full email here. While the officer in question has been suspended pending a hearing, some are arguing that his email falls under the auspices of free speech.

What do you think? Where does free speech end and hate speech begin?