Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminist icon Alice Walker, has a piece up in the Daily Mail eviscerating her mother and the feminist movement. It’s a bit painful to read, mostly because it feels more like airing the family’s dirty laundry than an actual substantive critique, and I found myself cringing through a lot of it. I think what it illustrates more than anything is that a one-size-fits-all solution isn’t going to work for anyone; having a child didn’t bring happiness to Alice, but it apparently worked for her daughter. Rebecca, though, seems convinced that child-rearing is the best thing for every woman — and odd conclusion, considering her own memories of her childhood.
Almost 300 illegal immigrants are sent to prison in a federal effort to crack down. What makes the case unusual is that the immigrants were tried in criminal proceedings (as opposed to in immigration court) and were threatened with prison sentences instead of simply being deported back to their home countries. In the meantime, the owners of the plant where the feds conducted the raid sound like they were running an incredibly cruel and exploitative business — and so far they face no charges.
Two questions this week: (1) What have you written? (Leave links in the comments); and (2) if you’re in the US, what are you doing this lovely Memorial Day weekend?
I am sitting out at my fabulous room mates’ pool at her parents’ house, eating lots of BBQ, getting sunburned and drinking lots of vinho verde. That means that I’m not around to moderate comments — so please be patient if you’re stuck in moderation. I’ll clear the queue out Monday evening.
The Lithuanian Parliament is currently weighing an unprecedented bill that would legally redefine the concept of family and that would establish a government-sanctioned concept of family limited exclusively to the traditional notion of a married man and woman and their children. With the stroke of a pen, this new concept of the Lithuanian family would relegate other family forms-single mothers and fathers raising children, unmarried partners raising children, and grandparents caring for their grandchildren-to second-class status.
Demographic analysis demonstrates that the structure of the Lithuanian family is changing. In 2005, almost a third of all children were born to unmarried parents living as partners. The same year, the number of divorces per 100 marriages hit 56. This is evidence of the growing number of single parents, who in 98 percent of cases are women. Until recently, high unemployment in Lithuania also encouraged migration, and half of all workers who emigrated in 2005 were married men or women. As a result a new family structure-the long-distance family-emerged. A poll conducted in 2006 showed that all these different family forms are considered as families by a majority of Lithuanians. However, the new concept of family would have practical implications, as it could ostensibly be used to prevent nontraditional families from receiving the same level of government assistance and from benefiting from government programs meant to support and strengthen the family.
This bill, the first of its kind in Europe, has been applauded as a breakthrough by the Catholic Church and conservative politicians.
You mean conservatives and the Catholic Church support something under the guise of “family values” that is, in reality, really really bad for families and children? Well knock me over with a feather.
Contact information for members of the Lithuanian parliament is here. Email and tell them that the international community opposes turning women and members of non-traditional families into second-class citizens.
My feelings? Honestly? I think porn featuring real children is awful and should be illegal (and it is), and those caught making it, buying it, owning it? They deserve punishment via the law. This other stuff? Stuff that is computer rendered or altered? Humm. I don’t like it, find it disturbing…but…if it isn’t made with real children involved? Then it isn’t really child porn.
She hits on a big issue in the child pornography debate: Is the harm in child porn only to the child making it, or is it also a larger social harm facilitated by the people who consume it?
Obviously if you think the crux of the harm is in the making of child pornography, then it makes sense to just enforce existing age laws and call it a day. But a lot of people — including members of the Supreme Court — believe that the harm is not only to the exploited child, but to society and to the real children that pedophiles prey on. From that perspective, it is incredibly problematic to “age down” actresses so that they look like little girls. Whether that’s “really” child porn isn’t a closed subject, I don’t think. No, it’s not using actually children, but it is digitally altering adults to look like actual children. It is banking on the idea that pedophiles or people which pedophilic sexual urges will believe the images feature actual children. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to Wonkette I found out about the most asinine snippet of fabricated outrage since Falwell warned us all about that sinister homosexual Teletubby. This time, right-wing cheer squad Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson have frothed up at the mouth over the fact that Dunkin Donuts and Rachael Ray are colluding to support anti-Semitic terrorism.
Wait, what?
Look, right there! In the middle of the picture. No, above the “artificial sweeteners and skim milk are better for you” latte she’s hawking… she’s wearing a black and white scarf! Or more precisely, what the froth squad are calling a keffiyah — the traditional Arab headscarf that, in a particular black-and-white pattern, became a symbol of the Palestinian people and their struggles for sovereignty. Sadly, they’re not joking. Although I have to say I laughed out loud at the phrase “hate couture.” The thing is, if you look at the scarf Rachael Ray is wearing in that picture, it doesn’t even remotely resemble the pattern traditionally associated with the keffiyeh, which resembles an interlocking net or a chain-link fence. Look, here’s Yasser Arafat wearing one… a fairly iconic and well-known image. But Ray’s scarf doesn’t even have a regular geometric pattern on it. Read the rest of this entry »
The reason for this disparity? Study after study reviewed by Stanford University law professor Dorothy Roberts in her book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books/Perseus, 2002) concludes that poverty is the leading cause of children landing in foster care. One study, for example, showed that poor families are up to 22 times more likely to be involved in the child-welfare system than wealthier families. And nationwide, blacks are four times more likely than other groups to live in poverty.
But when state child-welfare workers come to remove children from black mothers’ homes, they rarely cite poverty as the factor putting a child at risk. Instead, these mothers are told that they neglected their children by failing to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, education or medical care. The failure is always personal, and these mothers and children are almost always made to suffer individually for the consequences of one of the United States’ most pressing social problems.
This article originally appeared in Ms. Magazine, and the author is Gaylynn Burroughs, an attorney at the Bronx Defenders who represents parents accused of child neglect. The point she makes in the above paragraph is crucial: These are national social problems, but instead of addressing them as such, we’re turning them in to individual failures and punishing individual women and children.
The comments at AlterNet are predictable — there was even one (now deleted) saying something to the effect of, “These people should be spayed and neutered.” Lots of commenters make the point that women shouldn’t have children until they’re financially stable, and the fact that a poor woman has a baby is automatic proof that she is a bad mother — because a “good mother” would not have a baby while poor. Others point out that having a child is poverty-inducing. That is certainly true — kids are expensive, and for women, having a child is a major risk factor for dropping below the poverty level.
But I’m not buying the line that being poor makes one unsuitable for parenthood. What does make one unsuitable is abuse or neglect — and those don’t depend on how much money you have.
Of course, it’s a problem if there’s not enough money to give your kids three square meals a day. But I’d suggest that it would be a whole lot better to increase welfare benefits or food stamps instead of taking the kids away. It’s a big problem if the kids can’t get medical care when they’re sick — of course, it’s also a problem that Mom and Dad can’t get medical care when they’re sick. There’s a pretty clear solution to that one, and again, it would be much better for everyone than to put the kids in foster care and hope the problem will go away. Obviously it’s problematic that kids from low-income families often have fewer opportunities when it comes to education and jobs — but that’s hardly the fault of their parents. These are structural and systematic problems, but it’s symptomatic of our society’s blind spots that we insist on blaming the mothers.
Family is not a privilege. Yes, in an ideal world every woman would be able to get out of poverty before she had babies; but not every woman is going to be able to escape poverty. And yes, in some situations women and girls have children which keep them in that cycle; but again, I’m not sure the problem is the kids as much as the lack of other options.
In another thread, someone mentioned the book Random Family. If you haven’t read it, check it out. One thing that blew my 20-year-old mind when I read that book back in a college journalism class was how all of my white-girl middle-class solutions don’t work across the board. Yes, contraception access is crucial — but it’s not going to stop a teenage girl who wants to get pregnant because for her, it’s the best option. Yes, it’s better for everyone to have health care, wholesome food, and a good education with every opportunity in the world available to them — but that isn’t reality, and until it is, we can’t be blaming individuals who are doing the best they can with all the odds stacked against them.
Black motherhood has long been demonized in this country, from slave owners viewing female slaves as simple cost-effective ways to create more slaves, to involuntary and coerced sterilizations, to ripping black children from their mothers under the guise of “protection.” Yes, it is abuse to starve your child, to neglect them, to beat them. It is not abuse if you’re too poor to pay to keep the lights on that month. And children are not objects of privilege that only the rich are entitled to.
Women who are good, loving moms but who can’t afford certain luxuries — or even certain basics — don’t deserve to suffer the burden of our societal failures.
Yuck. Purity balls are bad enough; purity balls in which the girls don’t even talk while the fathers explore their narcissistic fantasies of “protecting” their helpless daughters by crossing swords (hello, phallic symbol!) and having their daughters kneel under them are a new height of creep. And this part was just… gah:
Loss tinged many at the ball. Stephen Clark, 64, came to the ball for the first time with Ashley Avery, 17, who is “promised” to his son, Zane, 16. Mr. Clark brought Ashley, in her white satin gown, to show her that he loved her like a daughter, he said, something he felt he needed to underscore after Ashley’s father left her family a year ago.
Ask your county clerk if they were a Nazi officer during WWII and had been ordered to gas the Jews, would they? At the Nuremberg trials, they would have been convicted of murder for following this immoral order.
I have this running theory that most conservative actually have no idea what the Nuremberg trials were — they usually invoke Nuremberg when talking about how they’re going to prosecute abortion providers for murder, leading me to believe that they think “Nuremberg” just means “really really serious trial that had something to do with Nazis.” This just bolsters my theory.
As any of of the regular Friday Random Ten readers know, I am a huge Tom Waits fan. He occupies more of my music collection than any other single artist; and because of that, he appears almost weekly on my FRT. I love his old stuff, when he voice was smoother and had yet to develop that signature grit; I love his more experimental stuff, when he had established himself and was playing with sound and drama. I love and hate his persona — the can’t-quite-make-it, down-on-his-luck guy who turns to liquor and women for comfort. But I love his music. I’m not sure if it’s the tonality of his voice — there’s something about imperfection and grit and that smoker throat that I just adore — or if it’s because he was always on in the background when I was a kid, but I love his music. I have no direct memory of listening to his music growing up, the way that I do with Bob Dylan or Van Morrison or Miles Davis, but I guess he was just sort of on, quietly. Maybe that’s why I have such a soft spot in my heart for him, and why I find his stuff so calming.
So when it was announced that Scarlett Johansson was doing a cover album of Tom Waits songs, I got about 500 emails about it. And I’ve remained… apprehensive. But it’s gotten decentreviews, especially since I imagine music critics are dying to tear her apart on this one. And I’m pleasantly surprised that she’s covering some of my favorite Tom tunes — “No One Knows I’m Gone” and “Who Are You.”
So here’s her doing “Falling Down:”
And… I don’t hate it, even though I want to. Thoughts?
UPDATE: Yeah, I just went back and listened to Tom do the song (the live version off of Big Time), and… I still don’t hate Scarlett, but she really is no Tom. There’s a pain in his voice that she just can’t quite capture, and there’s a less predictable tone to it that makes it much more interesting. Hers, to me, sounds like background music. His is something that I actually listen to. Here’s his version for comparison:
Seems like that’s all everyone is talking about — and mostly, whether it would be a good idea for him to ask Sen. Clinton. Some say it would undermine his “change” theme; others argue that her campaign has been too disrespectful for him to consider offering her such a position.* It’s a position I can understand — I’m also disgusted by the racism and disrespect that’s been leveled at Obama by Clinton’s surrogates, and sometimes by Clinton herself. And I’m disgusted at the sexism that Clinton has faced at the hands of the mainstream media and Obama supporters. Some of the more jaded but accommodating Obama supporters make the “keep your enemies closer” argument in supporting Clinton as VP.
But personally, I don’t think it’s a terrible idea. I think this primary has created a lot of anger and division within the Democratic party — especially between the old guard and the new model. It would do Obama good to ask, if not Clinton, then someone closely affiliated with the Clintons. I know a lot of Obama voters who are so angry at Clinton that they say they’d never vote for her; and I know a lot of Clinton supporters who are now refusing to throw their support behind Obama (certain communities which are usually reliably Democratic also seem to be hostile towards one of them or the other). This would at least build a bridge between the two sides, and both bring more votes to the blue side and attempt to stem the growing split in the party.
Plus it would do good for voters like me, who cast their ballot for Obama but who still respect and admire Sen. Clinton, who hate the sexism that’s been thrown her way, and who are disheartened by the split this has caused in the party.** Yes, there are more progressive candidates — and I wouldn’t be opposed to Obama looking into some of them. But it seems like so far, everyone else is trotting out the list of the same old guys — Dodd, Nunn, Strickland, Edwards, Biden. And don’t get me wrong, I like some of those guys (Dodd in particular). But an Obama-Clinton ticket is, to me, more exciting, and certainly more historic.
If not Clinton, it would be nice to see another progressive woman on the ticket. I don’t I buy into the idea that Obama needs a southern white boy to win; I think just putting him on stage next to John McCain is more than enough.
But then, I’m a liberal New Yorker, so what do I know? Who do you think should be Obama’s running mate, should he be the nominee?
*And yes, I know his campaign hasn’t exactly been kind to her, either, but that’s not the focus of this post.
**To be clear, no, I do not think that Sen. Clinton is causing that split by staying in the race.
Could be a job for some Feministe readers looking to make a little extra cash. Apparently vegan potlucks in Minnesota are the locus of anti-RNC protest-planning, and the FBI wants to make sure that they’ve got some of their people in there to make sure that the local hippie-chick pie-wagons don’t get too out of hand. The FBI was apparently doing similar things during the RNC in NY — except then, they were also paying undercover cops to incite violence.
And of course, they’re doing this all under the name of “fighting terrorism.” Wonder if they’re also spying on conservative groups, a notable set of which have long histories of murder, arson, anthrax threats, acid attacks, and bombings?
Last week, Miss Sarajevo left a comment with a link to this series of articles in The Washington Post, and I’m just finally getting around to writing about it. The series, “Careless Detention,” is about the terrifying, unethical and downright inhumane medical treatment of immigrants imprisoned by ICE, generally while fighting or awaiting deportation for infractions that are usually non-violent and in fact so mild as to verge on the ridiculous. Since 9/11, Bush and his buddies have really stepped up anti-immigrant measures (which were already largely poor and in place), broadened definitions of who could be deported, increased raids and decided that those seeking asylum must do so while behind bars. Our government is imprisoning both documented and undocumented men and women (and though not mentioned in this series, also children), often without due process, and then, quite simply, killing them with medical neglect, or otherwise abusing/torturing them with inappropriate or an outright lack of medical treatment.
I took off the stupid hat and the hood. More cheesing for the camera here.
Yeah, I finally graduated from law school. Yeehaw. Now it’s bedtime since I have Bar class tomorrow,* and then hanging out with Moms all day.** But since it is certainly Friday somewhere, here is an FRT:
1. Tom Waits - Heartattack and Vine
2. The Bad Plus - Layin’ A Strip For The Higher-Self State Line
3. Cat Stevens - Father and Son
4. Les Savy Fav - Knowing How the World Works
5. The Kinks - Do You Remember Walter
6. Bonny Billy - A Dream Of The Sea (The Renderers)
7. Guided by Voices - The Best Of Jill Hives
8. Benjy Ferree - The Desert
9. The Mountain Goats - Palmcorder Yajna
10. Voxtrot - Ghost
*It started the day after graduation. Can you believe that?
**She already cleaned my entire apartment, and tomorrow she is bleaching my bathroom and making me dinner(!). Moms are the best.
Seriously, good on her. There are big-time reporters who wouldn’t be this direct and challenging.
And I love how uncomfortable he gets when pushed on the fact that he attempted to actively deny the woman sitting next to him the right to marry the person she loves. Politicians should be directly confronted with the fact that this isn’t just a political issue that you can use to score votes; it’s an issue that affects people. And if you’re a bigot in a position of power, at some point you’re going to have to sit next to one of the people you harmed. I’m glad John McCain had to do that in front of a whole lot of those “average Americans” whose votes he’d like to get. I’m glad Ellen was courageous enough to challenge him and to personalize it.
St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center on Tuesday reached agreement with lawyers representing Sonia del Cid Iscoa, ending an international legal drama over whether a legal immigrant could be forcibly transported from the country by a medical facility.
Iscoa, 34, did not have sufficient medical insurance to cover long-term care, St. Joseph’s could not offer it, and there were no apparent programs that could take her.
The hospital planned to fly her to a government hospital in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Iscoa’s family went to Maricopa County Superior Court to get a temporary restraining order, and all parties were scheduled to appear before a judge on Friday.
But Iscoa’s condition has improved so markedly in the past several days that the discussion has changed.
“She has begun to take semisolid food. She is on room air, as opposed to supplemental oxygen. And she’s not had dialysis for a week, which is a huge improvement,” said attorney John Curtain. “Because of this the hospital at present is not contemplating sending her to Honduras.”
Of course, I find it odd that St. Joseph’s is no longer contemplating forced deportation now that Iscoa is seemingly doing well without dialysis, but was more than willing to deport her to a hospital that had no dialysis equipment back when she did need it. There’s some ethics for ya. One almost has to wonder if the decision came out of newfound financial ability, a moral revelation, or just some really shitty publicity that needed to be plugged up.
Though not entirely clear from the article, it does seem like Iscoa’s family is still going to need money to pay off medical bills, and since she’s still in recovery, her struggle is far from over.
The fact that Iscoa’s immediate crisis has been resolved is also no reason to stop discussing the issue and go back to our happy lives like it didn’t happen. Because this isn’t and never was just about one woman — it’s also about the approximately 8 immigrant patients that this one hospital forcibly deports each month, and who knows how many others that are deported by other hospitals across the nation.
Breathe a sigh of relief for Iscoa, but don’t stop talking.
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