Tuesday, April 07, 2009 - Posts
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Afghanistan's "rape law," translated here, subjects Afghanistan's Shiite women to Sharia, or Muslim law. It was signed into law by President Hamid Karzai but placed on hold by the country's Justice Ministry after Western objections. The law exempts a wife from household chores, unless requested in writing before the marriage. It also forbids the husband from preventing her from working if she was already doing so. But then it has this clause: "The husband, except when traveling or ill, is bound to have intercourse with his wife every night in four nights. The wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband." Sex positive, this is not. And coupled with this horrifying video of a woman in Pakistan being flogged by the Taliban for sleeping with a man who is not her husband, marital rape seems less like a remote possibility.
After Iraq, this is the next frontier. We are at war with Afghanistan, and we are in a strange dance in Pakistan. Navigating this mess will mean being very clear about what we will tolerate from our "allies" and what we won't. Hillary Clinton, in her first forays into Mexico and China, has always been very clear. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, less so. Here is her recent interview with George Stephanopoulos on the video:
George, I think obviously we'd be very. very concerned at any instance of abuse of human rights. And this would appear to be such an instance ... this sort of behavior would be inconsistent with that."
"Appear to be"? "Inconsistent"? Can we get some outrage here?
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Salon's Broadsheet has picked up on a sublimely cranky post by Washington City Paper blogger Amanda Hess on a strain of feminism known as "sex positivity":
If I have to endure another essay on the mysteries of the female orgasm in the name of feminism, I may never have an orgasm again. ... Of course, there are a lot of feminist issues involved in the porn industry, sex work, and in human sexuality; I just don’t think “sex positivity” is one of them. So you’re a feminist, and you like sex—well, that’s normal. So do a lot of people, including a lot of non- and anti-feminists. So what does that have to do with feminist identity?
I have to admit that while I appreciate the efforts of the consciousness-raising groups in the '60s and '70s to make women more comfortable with their bodies and selves, I find "sex positivity" to be a tiresome dead end. Yes, it's important, but it seems to get the lion's share of media and cultural attention for the obvious reasons.
Hess makes another good point about sex-positive feminism at the end of her rant. She wonders how sex positivity became such an entrenched part of the feminist movement and then posits: "If people who like sex see sex-positivity as a part of the feminist movement, maybe they’ll see feminism as less prude and scary and icky and straight-laced and serious and anti-man. And I think it’s condescending to the feminist movement that we have to bring orgasms in to be taken seriously."
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Pop the champagne! Vermont's legislature has just enacted a fully gender-neutral marriage law, overriding its governor's veto and enabling same-sex couples to enter the institution. That makes Vermont the fourth American marriage-equality state (after Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa)—and the very first to gender-neutralize its marriage laws via statute rather than court decision. It makes me want to cry ... or run up to Montpelier* and kiss every legislator who voted to treat me as an full human being.
Vermont proves that the incremental approach does work. Vermont's leg didn't start with full equality... nor is it the only one to have voted in favor of equality. ("Firsts" are always complicated.) Some history: A decade ago, Vermont's top court ordered the legislature to recognize same-sex couples some way, somehow. (I remember interviewing those first plaintiffs for Out magazine—seems like millenniums ago.) That decision led to the nation's first "civil union" law, roughly equivalent to what Scandinavia was then calling "registered partnerships." The predicted locusts and plagues failed to descend.
Meanwhile, all around Vermont, marriage bells started ringing. In January 2001, at Vermont's northern border, Canada started marrying same-sex pairs. To Vermont's south, Massachusetts enacted marriage on May 17, 2004 (the 50th anniversary of the SCOTUS's Brown v. Board of Education decision). And although the Massachusetts legislature didn't gender-neutralize marriage, state lawmakers repeatedly upheld the decision by overwhelming votes. Meanwhile, after California's population voted to ban recognition of same-sex marriage in 2000 (in response to Vermont's civil unions), its LGBT community started a long-term organizing project that resulted in a registered domestic partnership law as strong as Vermont's civil unions. The Golden State's legislature twice passed marriage bills, although lawmakers couldn't override the Governator's veto.
California's road toward marriage is too complicated to summarize—it involves several initiatives, a rogue mayor, a few court cases, and more than 35 million people. (Remember, California is more populous and demographically diverse than, say, Canada.) But my guess is that California will join the pro-marriage roster within five years. That might put it after New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, and who knows what other new state.
But today is Vermont's day—and proof that you can win if you aim for marriage, accept second-best temporarily, show your neighbors that having two legally coupled women next door doesn't scare the cows or turn children gay, and organize and lobby like hell for full equality. Hurray to my northern neighbors! Wish I could be there for the dance party! Iowa, Sweden, Vermont: What a cool spring it is to be gay!!
*Correction, April 7, 2009: The original post said "It makes me want to cry ... or run up to Burlington and kiss every legislator who voted to treat me as an full human being." A reader pointed out that Vermont legislators work out of the state capital, Montpelier, not Burlington.
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Emily, Levi's interview with Tyra Banks yesterday may have been catnip for haters, but it was mostly just a sad, sordid business. In the clip below (via HuffPo), Levi is just a moose caught in headlights. His affect is a combination of uncomfortable and dim, and it seems like his sister Mercede is running the show (which may explain the choice of interviewers). When asked why he no longer sees Tripp as much as he wants to, Levi told Tyra, "I think [Bristol] and my sister have got in some fights, and I don't think she trusts my sister." While he remained mum for the second part of the show, Levi did say that he and Bristol didn't always use condoms and that Sarah Palin did not force him to propose—nor did she force him to get "Bristol" tattooed on his ring finger. If Levi's learned anything from this experience, it's not to get someone's name etched on himself. "I wouldn't recommend it," he said. Check out Levi and his family below, and pray that Levi chooses to pull back from the press (and chooses to use condoms consistently). He would benefit from an injection of normalcy in his life, even if Sarah Palin continues to be in the public eye.
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Ann, I find it interesting that there was a burst of optimism (much of it over-optimistic) about neuroplasticity when it came to Baby Boomers staving off Alzheimer's by doing Sudoku and crossword puzzles. But there seems to be much less when it comes to assessing the effects of poverty stress on young kids. On the one hand, there's a powerful reason for that: It would seem tactless, and tasteless, to speculate (Never mind! Maybe their brains will adjust) when the problem is poverty and a solution needs to be found. On the other, it does reveal, at least a little, how many different assumptions we bring to these issues, how quick we are to succumb to fatalism or revert to the status quo...
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