Monday Reads: Women’s Day Edition
Posted: March 10, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 61 CommentsGood Morning!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a woman in a society that only values you under specific circumstances. It’s probably related to the passage of yet another Women’s day on March 8 where I look around and see more lost ground than ground gained. The stereotypes we identified in my women’s studies group in high school are still alive and flung across the internet.
I didn’t watch the Oscars–having no interest in celebs or movies–but I did notice the next few days were filled with the usual snipes and compliments on dresses. Then, there was the hooplah on the plastic surgery of Kim Novak and Goldie Hawn that many deemed’ pathetic and unrecognizable. Novak is 81.
The Internet gasped in horror—or was it amusement? —when the Vertigo star took the stage with Matthew McConaughey to
present the award for Best Animated Feature to Disney’s Frozen (an unfortunate coincidence, generating countless rudimentary puns on social media). A sampling of tweets, including several from well-known figures in the entertainment and media industries: Comedian Nick Youssef joked that “Kim Novak was just safely transported back to the Hollywood Wax Museum”; Chelsea Lately writer Fortune Feimster quipped, “I’m assuming Kim Novak was representing the movie ‘Mask’”; Huffington Post editorial director Howard Fineman broadened the mockery: “#AcademyAward for worst plastic surgery: tie between Kim Novak and Goldie Hawn.”
And blowback against the comments was equally fierce. Newly minted MSNBC host Ronan Farrow shot back, “Half the people being cruel about Kim Novak are ten years away from being Kim Novak.” Actress Rose McGowan tweeted a picture of the actress in her heyday as a sex symbol, adding, “Self-obsessed and disrespectful, that sums up the Oscar audience.”
In a way, by tweeting a picture of Novak sprawled out on a bed in a scene from the 1958 film, Bell, Book and Candle, McGowan was unwittingly acknowledging that we should judge actresses by their looks—because beauty is indeed one of the most important attributes for a Hollywood actress, young or old. Had Novak not won the genetic lottery, she could have easily lost her breakout role in Hitchcock’sVertigo to a prettier face (Novak was a good actress, but not a great one). So why are we surprised when, years after being out of the limelight, viewers continue obsessing over the face that once made her famous? And we should be no less surprised that Novak is obsessed with her face.
Goldie’s dress and face didn’t fare much better. I’ve been thinking of both of them in light of Diane Keaton, Helen Mirren, and Dame Diana Rigg who are still trodding the boards and have passed on certain enhancements. Diana Rigg is one among many devious women starring in HBO’s Game of thrones. She’s a fiesty delight and I enjoyed reading this interview with her.
Diana Rigg is trying to cross the Fulham Road in London. Elegant from two-tone shoes to circular, tinted glasses, she is thwarted by the traffic. “Good timing,” she says after I introduce myself. “You can help me get across.” In the 60s, when she played Emma Peel in The Avengers, a catsuit-wearing Rigg would have vaulted across car bonnets, and if any male driver had remonstrated, she would have karate-chopped him in the throat and kicked him in the crown jewels. But not today.
“It’s my damned tin knees,” she says as we link arms and hobble across the street. She had an operation on one of them recently. I had heard that she damaged her knees with those lengthy tap-dancing routines in the 1987 West End production of Sondheim’s Follies? “No, it’s genetic. My brother, who is 80, has the same problem.”
Not that the 75-year-old actor is unhappy with her lot.”The older you get, I have to say, the funnier you find life,” she says. “That’s the only way to go. If you get serious about yourself as you get old, you are pathetic.”
We settle in the garden of a French cafe. A few years ago Rigg would have sought out the garden to indulge her 20-a-day habit, but Dame Diana gave up smoking a couple of years ago, and today wants to catch the early spring rays and feed crumbs to the birds.
“I found myself talking aloud to the pigeons in the park the other day,” she tells me. “The male pigeons were busily pursuing the female pigeons. I said: ‘You silly farts. Can’t you see they’re not interested?’ And then I realised there were people listening to me.” And what applies to birds, she reckons, applies to elderly men and women. “I think women of my age are still attractive.” She removes her glasses and faces me down with brown eyes that have turned strong men – and, indeed, women – to jelly. “Men of my age aren’t.” Why? “They’ve got their cojones halfway to their knees,” she says, giggling. “They have the same descent as tits.”
Aging is not an easy thing in a society that values women for their looks and their fertility. But, you’re either invisible or you’re fertile and thereby potential property of men and state. Here’s a list of the crap Lousiana legislators are proposing for the women in my state.
HB 388: Requires doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospital before performing abortions.
HB 401: Prohibits advertising of abortion services and distribution of abortofacients.
HB 727: Requires provision of psychological health information prior to abortion.
HB 590: (Constitutional amendment) Prohibits the use of public monies for abortion and provision of public monies to providers of abortion except as may be required by the federal government as a condition of federal financial participation in a public medical assistance program.
HB 348: Prohibits termination of life-sustaining procedures for pregnant women.
HB 305: Prohibits providers of elective abortions and their affiliates from delivering any instruction or materials in schools.
As you can see, the obsession with lady parts is ongoing. In fact, any kind of focus on the state of women in this country brings to focus exactly how unkind of a country we can be.
According to the African American Policy Forum, black girls are suspended at a higher ratethan all other girls and white and Latino boys. Sixty-seven percent of black girls reported feelings of sadness or hopelessness for more than two weeks straight compared to 31 percent of white girls and 40 percent of Latinas. Single black women have the lowest net wealth of any group, with research showing a median wealth of $100. Single black men by contrast have an average net wealth of $7,900 and single white women have an average net wealth of $41,500. Fifty-five percent of black women (and black men) have never been married, compared to 34 percent for white women.
This situation is dire at every level. But perhaps the most troubling thing of all: The report indicates that while over 100 million philanthropic dollars have been spent in the last decade creating mentoring and educational initiatives for black and brown boys, less than a million dollars has been given to the study of black and brown girls!
Several years ago, in line with the rise of the field of Girls Studies in academe, a group of students asked me to teach a course on Black Girls Studies. The number of books and scholarly articles barely added up to enough for a full course syllabus.
It’s amazing to me how many women are still invisible. And, it’s still amazing that we can’t seem to gain ground on any particular front. Here’s a bit from Robin Morgan that’s worth a read on dissent within the feminist ranks. She has some ground rules.
But I have standards, seasoned over 40 years of activism. I don’t waste time debating patriarchy’s defenders. I don’t practise or tolerate personal trashing. I don’t engage with faux feminists who, whether under the aegis of religious fiat or sexual libertarianism, refuse to understand that all women deserve full reproductive rights, all women deserve to love whomever they choose, all women deserve freedom from violence, poverty and illiteracy, that the buying and selling of any human being is slavery. Feminism is for all women and girls, not a privileged few or one ethnicity, religion, age, sexual preference, ability, region or hemisphere. Women born and raised on this fragile planet have more uniting us than dividing us – and it’s the job of feminists to help us realise that. Those are my standards.
Women are still universally treated like chattel.
Around 14 million girls, some as young as eight years old, will be married in 2014.
An estimated 1.2m children are trafficked into slavery each year; 80 per cent are girls.
In 10 countries around the world women are legally bound to obey their husbands
Only 76 countries have legislation that specifically addresses domestic violence – and just 57 of them include sexual abuse.
It makes me dizzy thinking that my 40 years as an activist really haven’t led to much change at all. I did find that there are a few places I can take refuge should I decide to move to a matriarchal society.
The Nagovisi community of South Bougainville, New Guinea is matrilineal with matriclans. The women of the Nagovisi holdpositions of authority and power, traditionally in regards to the cultivation of their gardens. These gardens are the woman’s sphere, and are inherited by daughters. The community is largely based on crop cultivation. With this control of the food, like sweet potatoes and coconuts, woman may remain independent and men are dependent on the women for that food.
The man eating the woman’s food is a symbol of their marriage, and if he were to stop, it would be a sign of divorce. Men typically move into the woman’s family for marriage, and the women are the breadwinners. Men take care of the clearing of the lands, but typically follow the instructions of the woman.
That sounds interesting!
Well, I suppose taking stock of something where progress depends on the very people that benefit from the status quo is a lot to hope for. Especially, when you look at the CPAC attendance and see how many women are willing to collaborate with the the worst of the worst.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today.
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
There are so many issues to address in this wonderful post, that hardly know where to begin. The first point I need to address is:
I respectfully disagree. It’s better now than it was 40 years ago. In the very early 1980’s, I took my resume and my still fresh Econ degree to interview at a brokerage firm. They were thrilled with my credentials and were offering me a job on the spot. The woman who interviewed me took me to the area, literally a large area partitioned off from the rest of the office, where “the girls worked”. I explained that I wasn’t there to apply for a clerical position, I wanted to be trained as one of the brokers. She looked at me with widened eyes and mouth agape and said, “Oh no, that’s for the men. The girls work here…”
That kind of thing would be far less likely today, and activists like you and me and all of the other activists, have made that difference. We can never stop, never give up, but also, we can never let ourselves believe that we aren’t making a difference. Change is incremental. It’s happening. It’s better for our daughters than it was for us.
Yeah. The first two jobs in banking I had I had to keep explaining to people that I wasn’t “that kind” of administrative assistant or analyst” so save your typing for some one else. I nearly cried when they gave me the uniforms that made the tellers and the secretaries wear but found out later I was exempt from them. Much confusion around me most of the 1980s.
However, my daughter with her newly minted bs in finance is at Ameritrade, They dump them all at the call desk to sell mutual funds and bonds for about 6 -months to a year before they put them some place else. When she got called in to be asked what she wanted to do next and said she wanted to be a trader, the guy said he struck her more as the type that should be in market. Kid has all the advanced math, finance, and analysis classes possible. She can do a black shoales equation and my guess even the VP’s can’t do that because of the math. But yet, taking orders in what passes for a broker these days is where they wanted to dump her. She’s a credit analyst now which means she manages the high risk accounts with the probability of having extensive margin calls–mostly day traders–but she still is suspect despite all.
Dak, like you mention up top: Take Action Now – Amnesty International USA Don’t Let Rapists Escape Prosecution in Mozambique!
Done, thanks JJ.
Gawd, a black woman is doing this to us
Lamar White, Jr @CenLamar 2h
That sure didn’t take long. @Salon already picked up my blog post on @RepKJackson’s bill: http://www.salon.com/2014/03/10/louisiana_lawmakers_want_to_keep_a_state_database_of_people_who_have_abortions/ …
Lamar White, Jr @CenLamar 4h
.@RepKJackson Here’s what I gather: You don’t know who wrote this bill, & you don’t know what it does or says. Jindal just hand it to you?
Mark Moseley @moseleylensnola 4h
In twitter thread, @CenLamar tells @RepKJackson to “Stop outsourcing your law-making.” https://twitter.com/CenLamar/status/443025846865887232 …
Fucking special hell for her.
Peter Daou linked to this on Twitter yesterday. I thought it was helpful to have all these stats in one place.
That’s grotesque! Think I’ll borrow it for facebook.
Just be sure to credit Daou.
Can this be right? John Cook of Gawker to be the editor of The Intercept?
http://www.mediaite.com/online/gawker-editor-john-cook-joins-greenwald-scahill-at-first-look-media/
Must be a mistake. Maybe he’s going to start a gossip site.
I listened to the last chunk part of Snowden this morning. I didn’t hear him say anything too outlandish in what I heard. Mostly about securing personal comms so they aren’t accidentally swept up without being encrypted. Seems to me a lot of people see this as a money making proposition what with selling more security software and services.
Did you listen and, if so, what is your opinion of what he had to say?
I haven’t listened to it yet, but I saw this howler from Snowden on twitter:
Well, that’s moronic but not really outlandish.
Suggesting that other countries don’t already do what the US does? I think it’s bizarre. China and Russia do much worse domestic spying than the U.S. does, and they also hack into U.S. corporations and government websites.
That was acknowledged. There was a local guy on stage, don’t know who he was, that seemed to keep things straighter.
These hackers are all obsessed with encrypting everything for their own selfish reasons. But once everything is encrypted, what happens to law enforcement?
Anarchy
I don’t think so and, from what he said, neither does Snowden. His point was that, even with encryption, the NSA would be able to break it with some work and they could do that with valid warrants. However, all the intercepted communications for which there was no specific warrant would be safer from prying because it would be more trouble than it’s worth to crack them for the hell of it.
I was doing something else while listening so I could have misunderstood them but that’s how it came across to me. That seemed not altogether unreasonable to me.
i agree this is what Snowden seems to think, but it is a really odd claim, not least since he is arguing that his own encryption protocols are so impermeable that nobody “bad” has gotten any access to his materials.
the claim that encryption is airtight and crackable is strange, and depends on a current state of affairs that may or may not obtain in the future–I don’t know how we’d figure that out, to be honest. If we take Tor as a baseline, it’s clear that law enforcement of the regular, ordinary sort (forget the NSA for the time being–I am thinking of plain old, fully-warranted policing) would be much more difficult if everything went through Tor, not least because the “metadata” to which the pen register law provides some forms of access (again, thinking not NSA but police) would be lost. Tor already worries me because of how much it is obviously being used by the major drug cartels in the world (which, it should be noted, murder thousands of people each year outright, and contribute directly to the devastation of many more lives via the drugs they sell). The fact that the same people screaming about the damage caused by the NSA are creating a tool that is implicated in so much destruction and promoting its widespread deployment and even ubiquity is a little hard for me to reconcile.
Tor worries me too. I don’t like the idea that child pornographers and drug dealers can set up shop on the internet protected by encryption. I was very glad the feds were able to hack into
Tor and catch some of these criminal recently. It’s ironic that Tor actually runs on federal grants and was originated by the military.
I don’t believe Snowden’s encryption claims at all. As far as Tor is concerned, I would just as soon it disappear.
It has definitely been weakened by those two busts.
Interview with Adam Lanza’s father:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_solomon?currentPage=all
I read it this morning when it was first published. It is disturbing…from the standpoint that they ignored Lanza’s behavior…and the advice from doctors about his medications. Well, and that the father is pretty much an asshole, who could not be bothered by a normal kid much less a fucked up one. I really do feel that there were so many bells going off, it is strange no one made a report about him to authorities.
But what would the “authorities” have done? You can’t arrest someone who hasn’t done anything violent. And families can’t force other family members into treatment.
Methodists won’t prosecute NY minister over same-sex wedding – CBS News http://dlvr.it/56Vzmx
lol
ROFLMAO! Beep beep beep, what?
That was equally confusing!
🙂
It sounded like “Beep, beep, beep, Rosebud.”
Seems like a mind-blowingly powerful series. Sorry I missed it.
Did he say Hezekiah? Not so much the what, but how, sure to smell those flowers.
Dan Murphy listened to the Snowden interview (Murphy is not a kool-aid drinker)
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2014/0310/Listening-to-Edward-Snowden-at-SXSW
We do need better oversight of the national security apparatus. That’s a no brainer and it’s fucking pathetic to deny it. Congress and the courts have fallen down in their responsibility since 9/11 without doubt.
I didn’t catch all the talk so I didn’t hear any comments on the Boston bombing or that he had improved national security with his leaks. National security certainly hasn’t been improved by his actions. As for the bombing, there’s usually a case to be made that being selective in intelligence gathering yields a clearer picture than throwing everything into a big pile and giving it equal weight. It’s highly possible to miss the forest while you sort out all the individual trees.
I agree, but Snowden was saying we need some other group or organization that would have oversight over Congress. That isn’t how our system works.
I don’t really see how NSA could have prevented the Boston bombing. Both the CIA and FBI had been warned about Tamerlan and he was on at least 2 no-fly lists. They probably could have gotten a warrant to listen to his phone calls–maybe they did. Russia listened to them.
What might have helped is if the FBI had shared info about Tamerlan with the Boston and Cambridge PD’s. But again, that’s not NSA’s fault.
I still suspect that Tamerlan was an informant for either FBI, CIA, or both. It’s the only explanation I can think of for how easy it was for him to travel to and from Russia. Why Russia let him go, I have no idea. Maybe he was helping them too.
Certainly the metadata collection is the one thing that will probably change. FISC has said they can’t keep it indefinitely, and some in Congress want to stop it altogether. I guess they can save a day or two by having a searchable database, but they can also request phone data from the TelComs. If Americans don’t want the metadata collection, then we’ll just take the risk of missing a day or two of info on a suspected terrorist. OK with me.
Blaming the NSA for not stopping the Boston bombing is really dumb. The problem is most likely too much bureaucracy and too few “boots on the ground”, of whatever kind, be they field agents or analysts. DHS was supposed to cure communications problems between agencies but, if I were to guess, I would assume it hasn’t because of the bureaucratic fiefdoms inside DHS itself and the individual agencies. If they wanted them to work efficiently, they would flatten the structures and make them leaner and meaner within the legal limits. The only way to get important information to the people who really need to have it quickly is to remove managerial roadblocks so information can flow upward.
Well it’s also a problem that it’s not always possible to predict human behavior. The FBI did talk to Tamerlan multiple times.
The communications between agencies problem was supposed to have been solved by having them all have access to the intel database. But intel experts said that would lead to more leaks and it did.
In Boston, the BPD had officers who had access to the database, but they weren’t told by the FBI that Tamerlan existed (He lived in Cambridge anyway, not Boston). But even if they knew about him, how would they know what he was planning? What would have been the basis for a warrant to tap his phones or search his house? We’re just not Russia. We trade some risks for rights.
It’s not possible to predict most human behaviors but it is possible to pick up clues in conspiracies or from really weird behaviors prior to an event. The fact that multiple reports of Islamic men taking flight training, and not seeming to care about learning to land the plane, were sent to the FBI in DC and yet they moldered because no one could think what to do with them and they were sent to different managers who didn’t share is the prime real life example.
They needed at least one of two things to spot the pattern. Computer systems that communicated with each other, and the project to put that in place had failed due to disparate and too much really old hardware. A method for the field agents to either bypass their chain of command to send the reports to a central intelligence function or simultaneously send to intel and their own SAIC. Bypassing the chain of command was/is a big no-no.
replying to RalphB’s correct observation about corporate communications already being encrypted (at least for major corporations)–my impression is that these are still tracked through central communications offices within each corporation and therefore subject (at least in theory) to metadata scrutiny, discovery and subpoena within the proper legal contexts. The kinds of overarching end-to-end encryption Snowden recommends (as evidenced by a service like Tor) strikes me as far more extensive and far less observable by law enforcement *when it has a proper warrant* than are current, institution-specific practices, which (again via my understanding) currently match certain legal recordkeeping requirements. Any thoughts? I continue to think that end-to-end, across-the-board encryption is anathema to any society that pretends to honor any sort of rule of law or constitution and that the failure to understand this is a major gap in the Snowden/Appelbaum et al “analysis,” especially since that analysis is predicated specifically on a reading of the same Constitution that end-to-end encryption will pretty much toss out the window entirely. Citizens do not have an absolute right to privacy even in the face of a legal warrant, and anyone who has ever been the victim of a crime or even civil wrongdoing should think very carefully about the picture of a society where it is made effortless to hide and make untraceable the bulk of our communications.
David, I think that is absolutely correct. In the face of a true warrant, no corporation or individual should be able to avoid disclosing information. There is little legal difference between an everyday law enforcement warrant and a FISA warrant, other than scale in that they are both ex-parte. If the court really operates well, more transparency should alleviate a lot of the public fears, I would hope.
Tor for me is also a non-starter and the internet should not become some encrypted zone. I rather like the current model and it serves us well, Since we have a Constitution, that should set our expectations of privacy. We certainly have no right to absolute privacy but I would like to see more of an opt-in approach taken to business collection of personal data.
On the encryption issue:
Should someone tell him that most important corporate communications are already encrypted? Those from my former employer certainly were for sure.
MaddowBlog: Rand Paul has a plan for Ukraine
In which Rand Paul proves he’s a complete idiot who shouldn’t ever be taken seriously!
Jon Chait: Rand Paul’s Plan to Save Ukraine Is Completely Nuts
LOL
What a dope. And yet the dudebros are defending Rand on twitter because he is for drug legalization.
Anyone who is Standing with Rand is also a dope. I have no respect for the dudebros or any associated dudettes.
Aqua Buddha’s plan for Ukraine is bat-s**t crazy. I can’t believe anyone takes him seriously.
I would pay good money to hear Rand sing a duet of “Blueberry Hill’ with Putin though. Just a couple of out-of-touch with reality guys, getting together to jam. Priceless.
LOL. That cracked me up.
I think Aqua Buddha every time I see him. He’s really quite dim.
Jon Chait: Republican Learns Obamacare Won’t Kill Her After All, Refuses To Believe It
Good grief, totally wedded to partisan delusions.
This is so sad. Joe McGinniss has died at 71.
Damn.
The nation’s most miserable states
The bottom 10.