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kameelah writes
little black book
RGV goes to the AMC
cripchick
Writeous Sister Speaks
Mamita Mala
Tigera Consciente
A Womyn’s Ecdysis
Having Read the Fine Print

From the Allied Media Conference Website: http://alliedmediaconference.org

In a survey this week, by Marketing magazine the respondents’ top five most loved celebrities were men - Paul McCartney, Lewis Hamilton, Gary Lineker, Simon Cowell and David Beckham. Of the five most hated, the top four were women - Heather Mills, Amy Winehouse, Victoria Beckham and Kerry Katona.

“There has been a conspicuous trend in the last five years towards the production of negatively-valued women in the public sphere. People respond to the pleasures of hating these kinds of figures.

“There is incredible ambivalence in a post-feminist culture towards women in the public sphere.”

In a nutshell, despite years of equal opportunities, the media - and the people who watch and read - prefer the stay-at-home mother over a woman who lives her life in public, particularly one who is overtly ambitious or successful in making money. There is great satisfaction among many people in seeing them humbled, Ms Negra suggests.

*There are several important points made in this article, but the author seems to assume that the majority of people have a vested interest in celebrities in general.  I hope this isn’t true!  And when will we ever leave the notion of ‘post-feminisim’ behind?   

From BBC News

Even as same-sex couples across California begin making plans to tie the knot, opponents are redoubling their efforts to make sure wedding bells never ring for gay couples in the nation’s most populous state.

A conservative group said it would ask California’s Supreme Court to postpone putting its decision legalizing gay marriage into effect until after the fall election. That’s when voters will likely have a chance to weigh in on a proposed amendment to California’s constitution that would bar same-sex couples from getting married.

If the court does not grant the request, gay marriages could begin in California in as little as 30 days, the time it typically takes for the justices’ opinions to become final.

“We’re obviously very disappointed in the decision,” said Glen Lavy, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is pushing for the stay. “The remedy is a constitutional amendment.”

Below, several San Franciscans dance in the street after the Supreme Court decision is announced.  Shake it!*

From Yahoo! News

Crossposted on Hermana, Resist

McALLEN, May 14 - If a hurricane hits the Rio Grande Valley this season, residents evacuated via school buses will be prescreened for citizenship by Customs and Border Patrol.

Hurricane season starts June 1. In the event of a hurricane in the region, emergency officials predict more than 130,000 evacuees will leave the Valley by school bus. They will be checked for identification and citizenship before they can board.

Anyone who is not a citizen or is not a legal resident will be held in specially designed areas in the Valley that are “made to withstand hurricanes,” said Dan Doty, a Border Patrol spokesperson for the Valley sector.

Those specially designed areas include the Border Patrol facilities in Edinburg and Harlingen, Doty said.

By pre-screening evacuees before they board the buses, there will be less of a bottleneck at the Falfurrias checkpoint.

Read more »

Melanie Ross thought Daniel Day, her college classmate, was fun and a decent date - until they were having sex and she told him he was hurting her. She asked him to stop - and he didn’t. After that, Ross broke up with Day, and avoided him.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Day from raping her a month later.

Her lawsuit against Day is now on appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, in part because of the victim-blaming actions of the trial court judge. Judge Phillip Brown, despite a Georgia rape shield law, compelled Ross to disclose every person she had ever dated, or engaged in any sexual activity with, including their names, dates of interaction, and contact information.

Oh yeah…there’s more. Feministing has a blog with the details

Though women make 85 percent of all consumer purchases, marketers rarely recognize the extent of women’s buying power, technical savvy or confidence.

As a journalist who writes about issues of interest to women, I receive a steady stream of pitches from public relations and marketing agencies:

The problem with pitches like this, many of which trade on women’s anxieties, is that they seem to assume women are mainly in the business of buying trifles. And that extends to the general marketplace.

Read Sheila Gibbons article from Women’s eNews via AlterNet

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court’s 4-to-3 decision striking down state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman makes California only the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days, is certain to play a role in the presidential campaign.

From The New York Times

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Barack Obama has apologized to a Channel 7 reporter Peggy Agar for calling her “sweetie” and dodging her question about autoworkers.

Agar shouted a question to the Democratic presidential candidate during Obama’s appearance Wednesday at a Chrysler LLC plant in Sterling Heights.

Agar asks Obama what he’s “going to do to help American autoworkers.”

He replies, “Hold on one second, sweetie, we’ll do a press avail, thanks” but didn’t get back to Agar.

Hour later, Obama left a voicemail for Agar. Obama apologized for not getting back to her. He also told Agar he has a bad habit of calling people “sweetie.”

Obama then said: “I mean no disrespect, so I am duly chastened on that front.”

From WXYZ TV

The video is hard to turn away from. A sobbing 16-year-old sits in her bedroom and, staring into a camera, says she has been raped.

The teen, whom CNN interviewed but is not identifying by her last name, is among dozens of young people who are turning to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to talk about sexual assault.

Some people are seeking legal advice and medical information, and many younger victims believe they can warn others about their accused attacker, counselors say.

There also are people like Crystal, whose case was dropped by the Orange County, Florida, state attorney’s office, who feel slighted by the justice system.

“Young victims, particularly girls, turn inward. They are going to reach out and try to connect in the isolation of their dorm room or their bedrooms,” said Jennifer Dritt, the director of the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence.  “Most young women feel like they want somebody to know that someone did this to them.”

From CNN

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
RAPE

By Eve Norman
Founding member: Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women

(Circa 1971) — More then thirty years ago, I settled in one evening to watch Germaine Greer substitute as host for Dick Cavett, on vacation, for his late night television program. This was decades before Oprah or Rosie were household names. This was, in fact, the very FIRST time a woman had hosted a national TV program.

Germaine Greer’s scheduled interviews were exciting viewing for feminists across America. Ms. Greer’s first guest, hidden behind a curtain, appearing only in silhouette, was a rape victim. I was outraged, and a bit confused by the interview and the rape victims demeanor of shame.
Read more »

The New York Times reports that since 2002 the Pentagon has cultivated several dozen military analysts in a campaign to generate favorable coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.

The retired officers have made tens of thousands of appearances for television and radio networks, holding forth on Iraq, Afghanistan, detainee issues and terrorism in general.Records and interviews show that the Bush administration worked to transform the analysts into an instrument intended to shape coverage from inside the major networks.

The analysts, many with undisclosed ties to military contractors, have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior government officials, given access to classified information and taken on Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, The Times reported.

A spokesman for the Pentagon said the briefings and all other interactions with the military analysts had been suspended indefinitely pending an internal review.

From the New York Times

Take action to demand accuracy in reporting!

Sign the petition at Media Matters for America

INCITE! announces the exciting launch of our newly re-created website.

Beautifully designed and engineered by Tumis, a fantastic bilingual design studio dedicated to global social justice that is woman-owned and run by people of color, INCITE!’s new website features an overview of INCITE!’s history, analysis, news, and projects. The site also includes organizing resources, more detailed information about INCITE! chapters and affiliates, photos of INCITE! members engaging in organizing work, and ways to get involved in radical women of color organizing.

Additionally, an Organizing Toolkit To Stop Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color & Trans People of Color has been integrated into the new site. This toolkit provides critical organizing resources to address police brutality, immigration police violence, and militarism targeting women and trans people of color.

From INCITE!

The South Carolina Supreme Court yesterday overturned the 2001 conviction of Regina McKnight for the homicide by child abuse of her stillborn child. The stillborn baby had tested positive for cocaine.

McKnight will get a new trial because of mistakes made by her attorneys, chiefly concerning the medical evidence introduced in the trial. “Regina McKnight was convicted on junk science and was not fairly represented at trial,” Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told Myrtle Beach Online. Lawyers for McKnight did not dispute the prosecution’s medical expert and did not include the autopsy of the baby as evidence in the trial.

from RH Reality Check

Blogged by Feministe

When Holly Kearl was researching her master’s thesis on street harassment last winter, she was pleasantly surprised that lewd remarks were few and far between. Then spring rolled around.

“Suddenly it was April, and I was getting yelled at everywhere by men in cars,” says Kearl, who has since completed a degree in women’s studies and public policy from George Washington University.

As part of her research, Kearl conducted an anonymous, informal e-mail survey of 225 women on the subject. She found that 98 percent of respondents experienced some form of street harassment at least a few times, while about 30 percent reported being harassed on a regular basis.

Read more at CNN

Blogged by Angry Black Woman

Rape victims across the country too afraid or ashamed to tell police immediately after the attack will soon have the same option as women in Cecil County.

Starting next year, they can undergo an emergency-room forensic rape exam, and the evidence will be kept sealed in case they decide to press charges.

Cecil County started offering “Jane Doe rape kits” four years ago, after a rape victim recanted. Anne Bean, clinical director for a rape and sexual assault counseling program in the county, said giving women the option of removing police from the crisis until they are ready to press charges is crucial.

from Washington Post