Category Archives: Women’s Issues

Susan G. Komen, Will You Please Go Now?

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Latest — donations to Planned Parenthood in the past few hours have made up more than half of what they received from the Komen Foundation last year. Keep those donations going!

One of Komen’s biggest corporate sponsors is Ford Motors, Check out some of the comments (including mine) on the Ford Warriors in Pink Facebook page. Please leave more comments.

It turns out that only 24 percent of funds received by Komen actually goes into research. The Fund has turned into a huge money-making racket that spends more promoting itself than in actually being “for the cure.” Ironically, some of their promotional products contain potential carcinogens.

The makers of this new documentary probably are high-fiving this morning (thanks, gulag).

I agree with Tbogg that this bonehead move is destroying Komen’s “brand.”

Now the Komen people have spent a tremendous amount of time and money (using donation/sponsorship money) marketing themselves, tracking down new contributors, and maintaining relationships with long time contributors in order to feed the beast. Since the intersection of contributors who support both Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation is in all likelihood an almost complete overlap because they are both primarily associated with women’s health issues, the fall-out has to be huge. Somewhat larger than whatever value they think Karen Handel brings to the table, I assume. Think of this as a divorce between a couple who have been dear friends of yours for years and now you have to decide whose side you want to take. Based upon what I’m seeing and hearing, women see the Komen people as the bad guys because they’re the ones who threw out their partner in order to sleep with wingnuts for strictly political and, more importantly, not medical reasons. If I’m in the marketing department at Komen… I’m pissed. I’ve spent years developing a highly successful very lucrative cash vacuum and now either by executive fiat or fear of a marginal fringe group, potentially millions of dollars from longtime contributors is lost forever over a $600,000 grant. And for those who think those dollars are going to be made up by conservatives who are already hostile to the idea of providing adequate healthcare to their fellow citizens, much less the needs of only women, well then you’re whistling past the graveyard.

Let’s help make Komen radioactive. And may I add, I don’t think Komen will be able to rehabilitate itself, even if it fires the executives who made the decision.

Update: See Charles Pierce.

Susan G. Komen and the Meaning of “Pressure” (Updated)

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Steal This Graphic!

You’ve probably heard that the Susan B. Komen Foundation has caved to pressure from right-wing organizations and de-funded Planned Parenthood. This will result in more breast cancer deaths, since it cuts millions of uninsured women off from any possibility of breast cancer screenings.

According to Sarah Kliff, the Komen Foundation says it is de-funding Planned Parenthood because it is under congressional investigation. Of course, the only reason it is under congressional investigation is that wingnuts in Congress are subjecting it to a witch hunt.

I think the Sarah B. Komen Foundation is about to learn the true meaning of the word “pressure.” My suspicions are that the bulk of its supporters are mostly feminist, and pro-choice, women. Not necessarily activists, but at least several degrees to the left of Phyllis Shlafly and Sarah Palin.

As Joan Walsh tweeted, “The Komen Foundation just destroyed its brand, and it’s going to be very, very sorry.”

Mistermix:

I’m confident that Komen’s funding will be replaced, and also that Komen will be a pale pink shadow of its former self unless it reverses this stupid decision and fires the people responsible. Check out list after list after list of Komen’s corporate sponsors. Do you think New Balance, Ford and Georgia-Pacific signed on for a public fight over Planned Parenthood? When Yoplait put a pink lid on its yogurt, did they do it to make it easier to boycott their products? Because that’s what’s going to happen. Unlike most boycotts, it’s easy to figure out which products you shouldn’t buy: anything that displays a pink ribbon with the Komen name.

When Komen starts losing corporate sponsorship, it will re-think its decision. No more pink ribbons.

Update: I second Tbogg —

We’ve done this before, but you can make a donation to Planned Parenthood and request a thank you card be sent to

Karen Handel
Senior VP of Fail
c/o Susan G. Komen Foundation
P.O. Box 650309
Dallas, TX 75265-0309

Catholic Bishops: Boo Bleepin’ Hoo

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I wish I had more time to write about the fact that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have their cinctures in a twist over the Obama Administration’s recent decision about birth control — namely, that Catholic institutions that employ non-Catholics have to provide birth control coverage under the health care law. I agree entirely with Nita Chaudhary and Shaunna Thomas, and also Digby, so go read what they said.

Mississippi: The Land That Time Forgot

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I had heard something about Gov. Haley Barbour releasing a woman from prison on condition that she donate her kidney. Wow, what will small-government conservatism come up with next, I thought.

But today I read the details in Bob Herbert’s column. Two sisters named Jamie and Gladys Scott have been serving double consecutive life sentences for taking part in a robbery in which $11 was stolen. That’s right, $11. No one was harmed during the robbery, Herbert says, and the sisters had no prior criminal record. The Scott sisters have been in prison for 16 years.

This is from Human Rights:

The Scotts, who were 19 and 21 when the robbery occurred, have been incarcerated for 16 years. Meanwhile, three male acquaintances also convicted in the robbery are free after serving just a couple of years in prison. The men reportedly received lighter sentences in exchange for providing the prosecution with incriminating information against the Scotts.

“The authorities did not even argue that the Scott sisters had committed the robbery,” writes Bob Herbert of the New York Times. “They were accused of luring two men into a trap, in which the men had their wallets taken by acquaintances of the sisters, one of whom had a shotgun.”

Jamie Scott now has a life-threatening kidney disease. In his announcement of the suspension of the sentence, Gov. Barbour expressed no concern for Jamie Scott’s health. Instead, he said, “Their incarceration is no longer necessary for public safety or rehabilitation, and Jamie Scott’s medical condition creates a substantial cost to the state of Mississippi.”

So, the only reason the outrageous sentence was suspended — not commuted — is that Jamie Scott’s health care was costing the state too much money.

(But I assume the sisters have no insurance, and Mississippi is notoriously chintzy with Medicaid. So I suspect they may have to rely on charity to pay for a transplant. We’ll see.)

Bob Herbert wrote today that the sisters were not informed of the suspension, but learned about it on television. Nor was Gladys Scott consulted about donating her kidney, although she said it was something she wanted to do, anyway.

Herbert continues,

I was happy for the Scott sisters and deeply moved as Gladys spoke of how desperately she wanted to “just hold” her two children and her mother, who live in Florida. But I couldn’t help thinking that right up until the present moment she and Jamie have been treated coldly and disrespectfully by the governor and other state officials. It’s as if the authorities have found it impossible to hide their disdain, their contempt, for the two women.

The prison terms were suspended — not commuted — on the condition that Gladys donate a kidney to Jamie, who is seriously ill with diabetes and high blood pressure and receives dialysis at least three times a week. Gladys had long expressed a desire to donate a kidney to her sister, but to make that a condition of her release was unnecessary, mean-spirited, inhumane and potentially coercive. It was a low thing to do.

I posted a photo of the sisters just so we’re all clear about where this contempt is coming from. You might recall Gov. Barbour’s recent bout of amnesia regarding the civil rights movement? And this guy is considered by some to be one of the GOP’s more respectable potential presidential candidates in 2012.

And then there’s the gender issue. In 2009, Randy Radley Balko reported in Slate that Gov. Balko Barbour had “pardoned, granted clemency to, or suspended the sentences of at least five convicted murderers, four of whom killed their wives or girlfriends.” (emphasis added).

Well, you know, killing a wife or girlfriend is not like real murder. They probably had it coming. (/sarcasm) Note that all five of these men had been in a prison program that assigned them to do odd jobs around the governor’s mansion.

See also: Scott Sisters Kidney Donation Threatens Organ Transplant Laws

Update: See E.R. Shipp in The Root:

The judge who essentially sentenced the Scott sisters, Jamie and Gladys, to life in prison was downright lenient in 2005 when it came to sentencing one of the ringleaders of the lynching of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 — Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. That despicable human being was given 60 years — 20 years for each murder? — but left free while appealing his conviction.

Jeebus, people, you might as well go back to wearing sheets and burning crosses and stop pretending. You aren’t fooling most folks.

Tweet Madness

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I actually have a Twitter page, but I pay no attention to it. My blog posts automatically get fed through it. I get a notification now and then that somebody is following me (which sounds a bit sinister). Otherwise I really don’t “get” Twitter culture.

Anyway, today William Jacobson, the hyper-partisan gadfly who writes the blog Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, has found proof of sexism among progressives in their tweets. Referring to what even I think is a stupid non-story that Sarah Palin was caught with speech “crib notes” written in her hand, some persons identified as “progressives” had fun tweeting about Palin’s “hand job.”

Some blog posts are linked also, although I never noticed that TMZ was “progressive.” I thought it was just a celebrity news site. And the Daily Kos entry linked was written by a woman. Further, I question whether a comment is necessarily “sexist” just because it links sex to a woman. Sometimes such comments are just cheap and juvenile.

I mean, there’s a whole website dedicated to Tiger Woods jokes; is that sexist? Or racist (and, if so, which race)?

Even Little Lulu has a post up about the crib notes titled “Hand Jive,” which I understand to be a euphemism for “hand job.” So while I’d say the comment is a bit sexist, it’s a borderline case of sexism.

However, if you want to see real sexism in tweet form, check out Erick Erickson’s “ugly feminists return to their kitchens” remark. Now, that’s sexist.

Wingnuts and Women

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© <a href='http://www.dreamstime.com/Rcmathiraj_info'>Raja Rc</a> | <a href='http://www.dreamstime.com/'>Dreamstime.com</a>

How Wingnuts View Women
© Raja Rc | Dreamstime.com

R.S. McCain–the guy who thinks it’s perfectly normal to raise girl children to be sex slaves, as long as you’re Christian–shows us how a male wingnut understands women — not as human beings, but objects that men do things to.

I agree with Jesse Taylor — there’s a lot of pathology on display here.

Update: It’s astonishing to me that I have to spell this out more explicitly, but apparently I do — If you want to know what shocked me about McCain’s post, please read again what I wrote above — the male wingnut understands women not as human beings, but as objects that men do things to. Note also the photograph. These are clues.

Basically, what McCain says in his post is that women are objects who must be either used or protected by men. He gives women no respect as autonomous human beings. To McCain, women are projections of men — of lust, scorn, idealism, whatever.

I bolded the two sentence above because it gets to the heart of my problem with McCain’s post. He may see himself as “chivalrous,” but his attitude toward women is the same as a rapist’s attitude. That he has assigned himself the role of “protector” makes little difference; it’s just the flip side of the same uber-patronizing coin. McCain may not rape women physically, but he is a rapist nonetheless because he denies their humanity.

Now, let’s walk through McCain’s post. This paragraph:

Who cares that she’s not even old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes legally? Get her drunk on wine coolers, get what you want, then the next morning, take her to CVS to get Plan B and make sure there’s no chance the slut will show up in a few months talking child support payments and DNA tests.

First off, the narrative above describes what is commonly called “date rape.” Let’s be clear about that.

Second, who is not actually participating in this narrative? The woman is not participating. The man gets her drunk, uses her body, and then takes her to CVS for Plan B. At no point in this narrative is the woman presented as a person with free will who can decide for herself what to do. The man is the only participant. The woman is just a doll. She is not a human being, but an object. This is a rapists’ attitude, of course.

Next paragraph:

So guys, if you screw a 17-year-old and “forget” to use a condom, remember: Nothing says “thanks a lot, you cheap whore” like the gift of Plan B!

As joan 16 says, “cheap whore” was a slip of the mask. It may be that he was mimicking the attitude of a man using a 17-year-old for sex, but where is his concern for the 17-year-old who has been used? Does he think 17-year-old girls were never used for sex before Plan B was available? Does he think that denying Plan B to a 17-year-old who has been raped is an act of compassion for her? Does he think that men who date rape women are thinking of long-term consequences at all at the time?

Further, does he think that all 17-year-olds who have sex do so in a date rape scenario? Isn’t it possible that two teenagers sometimes give in to nature’s most compelling temptation? One may not approve of sex outside marriage, but the girl who gives in to the temptation is no less a human being afterward than the boy, and she is entitled to the same respects and considerations due to any other human being.

Instead, McCain is saying girls must conform to his projected expectation of being “pure,” or he will re-assign them the alternative projected status of “cheap whore.” Out of his sight, she has no reality at all. He has no perception of or empathy with her life and the realities of an unplanned pregnancy.

For those of you who didn’t see that, I rather doubt that my spelling it out is going to make any difference. But there it is.

Post-Rational

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One thing’s for sure; McCain’s going to get the idiot vote. What will the PUMAs do when Senator Clinton campaigns against the McCain-Palin ticket? And do they know that Palin wants to criminalize abortion even in cases of rape and incest?

Rachel Maddow keeps calling former Hillary Clinton supporters who now support McCain “post-rational.” Maddow is being kind.

Real Sexism

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Thanks to the Clinton campaign, sexism in media is an issue. It’s not like it wasn’t there before, which makes some of the nouveau evangelistic zeal about it more than annoying to me. Still I hope sexist language will be less socially acceptable in media going forward.

However, if you want to see what harm real sexism can do, check this out. Apparently the new trend in “criminal justice” is not to allow rape victims to use the word rape, or even sexual assault, in court. Instead, a woman testifying against someone who has raped her is supposed to say “when the defendant and I had sexual intercourse.” In one case, the woman could not call herself a “victim” or the alleged perpetrator an “assailant.”

The reason given for this nonsense is that the word rape is prejudicial. By the same logic, words like theft, fraud, and murder ought to be banned from trials, too.

Yes, the accused has a presumption of innocence, but it seems some judges presume the complainant must be lying. Fair trial? I don’t think so.