Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, May 1, 2009
Weddington's Betrayal of Women
by Serrin M. Foster, President, Feminists for Life of America
On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, many will focus on the undeniable humanity of the unborn child now seen clearly by millions through sophisticated sonograms on Oprah as well as in Life and Newsweek cover stories.
Meanwhile, I will be reflecting on the impact of the choice made by attorney Sarah Weddington in 1973.
As her arguments for abortion before the Supreme Court made clear, Weddington saw the discrimination and other injustices faced by pregnant women. But she did not demand that these injustices be remedied. Instead, she demanded for women the "right" to submit to these injustices by destroying their pregnancies.
Weddington rightly pointed out the unmet needs of students: "...there are many schools where a woman is forced to quit if she becomes pregnant." But Weddington didn’t argue against pregnancy discrimination or even for alternate solutions for a pregnant student.
Weddington did no better for women in the workplace. "In the matter of employment, she often is forced to quit at an early point in her pregnancy. She has no provision for maternity leave... She cannot get unemployment compensation under our laws, because the laws hold that she is not eligible for employment, being pregnant, and therefore is eligible for no unemployment compensation."
For women with serious medical needs, she further noted: "There is no duty for employers to rehire women if they must drop out to carry a pregnancy to term. And, of course, this is especially hard on the many women in Texas who are heads of their own households and must provide for their already existing children."
Weddington clearly saw the bind low-income women face when experiencing unplanned pregnancy: "At the same time, she can get no welfare to help her at a time when she has no unemployment compensation and she's not eligible for any help in getting a job to provide for herself."
Weddington repeatedly said that women need "relief" from pregnancy, instead of arguing that women need relief from these injustices.
What if Weddington had used her legal acumen to challenge the system and address women’s needs?
By accepting pregnancy discrimination in school and workplace and the lack of support in society for pregnant women and parents, especially the poor, Weddington and the Supreme Court betrayed women and undermined the support women need and deserve.
Since then, millions of women have paid the price, struggling in school and the workplace without societal support. After all, when "it’s her body, it’s her choice," it’s her problem.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, until recently the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion in America, half of all abortions are performed on college-age women.
Since 1994, Feminists for Life has worked to address the unmet needs of pregnant and parenting students and staff on college campuses. For the past decade FFL’s Pregnancy Resource Forums on campuses across the country have revealed the still-unmet needs of pregnant and parenting students — especially a lack of housing, child care, telecommuting options, maternity coverage and medical riders for additional children. FFL found there is rarely a central place on campus for pregnancy and parenting resources. Even when resources are available, they are often not publicized. For pregnant and parenting students kept in the dark about the help they need and deserve, perception is their reality.
This March, which is Women’s History Month, Feminists for Life is helping college students make history for women by hosting Rallies for Resources on campuses across the country - so that women don’t feel driven to choose between sacrificing their children or their education and career plans.
The proposed Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act, a bipartisan effort led by Senators Elizabeth Dole and Ben Nelson and Representatives Marcy Kaptur and Sue Myrick, would make grants available for up to 200 colleges and universities to host pregnancy resource forums, create resource centers on campus, and communicate available support on and off campus.
There was one thing Weddington got right. "Whether she's unmarried; whether she's pursuing an education; whether she's pursuing a career; whether she has family problems; all of the problems of personal and family life, for a woman, are bound up in the problem of abortion."
Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women.
Thirty-five years after Weddington capitulated to inherently unfair practices against pregnant and parenting women, those on both sides of the abortion debate should unite and say "no" to the status quo. Clearly women deserve better.
© 2008, Feminists for Life of America. This article may be reprinted in its entirety, including the author’s name and title, the organization name, and a link to www.feministsforlife.org.
On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, many will focus on the undeniable humanity of the unborn child now seen clearly by millions through sophisticated sonograms on Oprah as well as in Life and Newsweek cover stories.
Meanwhile, I will be reflecting on the impact of the choice made by attorney Sarah Weddington in 1973.
As her arguments for abortion before the Supreme Court made clear, Weddington saw the discrimination and other injustices faced by pregnant women. But she did not demand that these injustices be remedied. Instead, she demanded for women the "right" to submit to these injustices by destroying their pregnancies.
Weddington rightly pointed out the unmet needs of students: "...there are many schools where a woman is forced to quit if she becomes pregnant." But Weddington didn’t argue against pregnancy discrimination or even for alternate solutions for a pregnant student.
Weddington did no better for women in the workplace. "In the matter of employment, she often is forced to quit at an early point in her pregnancy. She has no provision for maternity leave... She cannot get unemployment compensation under our laws, because the laws hold that she is not eligible for employment, being pregnant, and therefore is eligible for no unemployment compensation."
For women with serious medical needs, she further noted: "There is no duty for employers to rehire women if they must drop out to carry a pregnancy to term. And, of course, this is especially hard on the many women in Texas who are heads of their own households and must provide for their already existing children."
Weddington clearly saw the bind low-income women face when experiencing unplanned pregnancy: "At the same time, she can get no welfare to help her at a time when she has no unemployment compensation and she's not eligible for any help in getting a job to provide for herself."
Weddington repeatedly said that women need "relief" from pregnancy, instead of arguing that women need relief from these injustices.
What if Weddington had used her legal acumen to challenge the system and address women’s needs?
By accepting pregnancy discrimination in school and workplace and the lack of support in society for pregnant women and parents, especially the poor, Weddington and the Supreme Court betrayed women and undermined the support women need and deserve.
Since then, millions of women have paid the price, struggling in school and the workplace without societal support. After all, when "it’s her body, it’s her choice," it’s her problem.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, until recently the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion in America, half of all abortions are performed on college-age women.
Since 1994, Feminists for Life has worked to address the unmet needs of pregnant and parenting students and staff on college campuses. For the past decade FFL’s Pregnancy Resource Forums on campuses across the country have revealed the still-unmet needs of pregnant and parenting students — especially a lack of housing, child care, telecommuting options, maternity coverage and medical riders for additional children. FFL found there is rarely a central place on campus for pregnancy and parenting resources. Even when resources are available, they are often not publicized. For pregnant and parenting students kept in the dark about the help they need and deserve, perception is their reality.
This March, which is Women’s History Month, Feminists for Life is helping college students make history for women by hosting Rallies for Resources on campuses across the country - so that women don’t feel driven to choose between sacrificing their children or their education and career plans.
The proposed Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act, a bipartisan effort led by Senators Elizabeth Dole and Ben Nelson and Representatives Marcy Kaptur and Sue Myrick, would make grants available for up to 200 colleges and universities to host pregnancy resource forums, create resource centers on campus, and communicate available support on and off campus.
There was one thing Weddington got right. "Whether she's unmarried; whether she's pursuing an education; whether she's pursuing a career; whether she has family problems; all of the problems of personal and family life, for a woman, are bound up in the problem of abortion."
Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women.
Thirty-five years after Weddington capitulated to inherently unfair practices against pregnant and parenting women, those on both sides of the abortion debate should unite and say "no" to the status quo. Clearly women deserve better.
© 2008, Feminists for Life of America. This article may be reprinted in its entirety, including the author’s name and title, the organization name, and a link to www.feministsforlife.org.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Palin's "Nobody's Dummy"
Liberals underestimate Sarah Palin's vitality and -- yes -- smarts at their own peril. ...
By Camille Paglia
... Yes, both Todd and Sarah Palin, whom most people in the U.S. and abroad had never even heard of until six weeks ago, have emerged as powerful new symbols of a revived contemporary feminism. That the macho Todd, with his champion athleticism and working-class cred, can so amiably cradle babies and care for children is a huge step forward in American sexual symbolism.
Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin's performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin's digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn't -- judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.
The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.
And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry -- including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.
One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.
As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English -- beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.
Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.
Even if she disappears from the scene forever after a McCain defeat, Palin will still have made an enormous and lasting contribution to feminism. As I said in my last column, Palin has made the biggest step forward in reshaping the persona of female authority since Madonna danced her dominatrix way through the shattered puritan barricades of the feminist establishment....
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/10/08/palin/index1.html
By Camille Paglia
... Yes, both Todd and Sarah Palin, whom most people in the U.S. and abroad had never even heard of until six weeks ago, have emerged as powerful new symbols of a revived contemporary feminism. That the macho Todd, with his champion athleticism and working-class cred, can so amiably cradle babies and care for children is a huge step forward in American sexual symbolism.
Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin's performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin's digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn't -- judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.
The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.
And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry -- including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.
One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.
As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English -- beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.
Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.
Even if she disappears from the scene forever after a McCain defeat, Palin will still have made an enormous and lasting contribution to feminism. As I said in my last column, Palin has made the biggest step forward in reshaping the persona of female authority since Madonna danced her dominatrix way through the shattered puritan barricades of the feminist establishment....
The next phase of feminism must circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother — without losing career ambition or power of assertion. Betty Friedan, who had first attacked the cult of postwar domesticity, had long warned second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem about the damaging exclusion of homemakers from their value system. The animus of liberal feminists toward religion must also end (I am speaking as an atheist). Feminism must reexamine all of its assumptions, including its death grip on abortion, if it wishes to survive.
The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey’s witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin’s cadences and charm, she can’t capture the energy, which is a force of nature....
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/10/08/palin/index1.html
Shelly Mandell, president of LA NOW endorses Palin
Palin was introduced by Shelly Mandell, president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organization for Women, who described herself as a lifelong Democrat.
In rarity for a Republican event, Mandell bragged about her efforts campaigning for the failed Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and her support for Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984.
"I know Sarah Palin cares about women's rights," Mandell said. "As vice president, she will fight for you. She cares about our children and she cares about women's lives."
(Fox news LA)
CARSON, Calif., 4 October 2008 -- This is not typical Republican territory, but Sarah Palin temporarily changed the demographics Saturday by filling the Home Depot Center with more than 13,000 enthusiastic supporters. The unusual location was matched with a surprise introduction by Shelly Mandell, president of the National Association of Women (NOW) Los Angeles chapter. "I'm proud to support Sarah Palin...a woman who will fight for woman's rights, a woman who will fight for the middle class" she said. "Sarah Palin has what it takes to lead [the] charge...This is what a feminist looks like"
Ms. Mandell made it clear she was speaking as an individual and not as a representative of NOW, which has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. Palin took the stage with a less rigid interpretation, however, as she thanked Mandell for both the "introduction" and "endorsement" from the self-proclaimed life-long Democrat.
(Huffington Post)
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