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With Women’s Rights On the Line, Groups Demand Supreme Court #StoptheSham

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By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

The U.S. Supreme Court, with one vacant seat, heard oral arguments on Wednesday in what is widely believed to be the most consequential reproductive rights case since Roe v. Wade, one which observers warn could dramatically alter abortion access for women across the country.

The case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, questions whether a Texas law that set stringent requirements for abortion clinics, with the intention of forcing the shutdown of women’s health providers, is actually legal. Observers say that a high court ruling on the law could set a binding precedent as similar Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP, laws have beenimplemented by Republican governments in a number of states.   [Read more…]

What Has Influenced Your Feminist Perspective?

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By Krizia Puig

My feminism goes beyond gender. It is about demolishing the oppressive present structures of power through intellectual and activist work, because everything that is socially constructed can be socially deconstructed. My feminism is about believing in utopias.

My Feminism is about believing in the right of owning and defining our bodies. My Feminism is being against the normalization, the serialization, of human beings. It is about being conscious about the fact that “everyone’s body is a battleground.” My Feminism is thinking that any sort of discrimination because of human variable body features is an abomination.   [Read more…]

They Call Me ‘Battling Bella’

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“I’ve been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prizefighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella,” Abzug wrote in a journal of her first year in Congress in 1971. “But whatever I am … I am a very serious woman.” —excerpt from Women Politicians and the Media by Maria Braden

By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

I grew up in a world where women were breaking down the doors into politics.

A world where women like Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan were elected to Congress. Growing up as a New Yorker, one of the fiercest role models of them all was Bella Abzug. She was a feminist, a staunch anti-racist and as a result of the cold-war, she became a leading voice in what would become a mass movement. In 1961 she co-founded Women Strike for Peace “after over 50,000 women across the country marched for peace and against above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.”   [Read more…]

What the GOP’s Supreme Obstruction Means for Women

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Senate Republicans are leaving women in limbo on several crucial issues.

By Martha Burk / OtherWords

Senators, constitutional scholars may tell you, must “advise and consent” on the president’s Supreme Court nominees. But apparently the official GOP policy is to “refuse and obstruct.” They’ve vowed not even to give President Obama’s nominees a vote.

These Republicans claim that leaving the Supreme Court understaffed is no big deal. Well, it’s certainly a big deal for women. Pending cases on abortion, birth control, education, and public employee unions are all sitting before a divided court.

The scariest case is Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole.   [Read more…]

International Women’s Day: A Google Doodle, 79 Cents on the Dollar and a Dollop of Socialist History

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We should all be thankful that retailing moguls haven’t been able to figure out a way to make International Women’s Day a sales event.

In San Diego, a mid-day downtown (7th & B) demonstration heralded the struggles of Immigrant Women around the world, calling out poverty, abuse and exploitation in the janitorial workforce.

Today we’ll take a look around the media world to see what is happening with regard to women on March 8, 2016…UPDATED, plus there is coverage of today’s demonstration.   [Read more…]

When Does the Violation of Women’s Bodies Become a ‘Red Line’?

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If people divide their understanding of militarized violence into normal and not normal, acceptable and not acceptable, it makes a terrible kind of sense: violence against women has been “normalized.”

By Lauren Wolfe / Common Dreams

Two years ago I was on vacation in Maine when I started getting really, really mad. I’d been working to track sexualized violence in the Syrian war for a long time and had gotten very little response from policy makers despite many meetings with those in our government and the UK’s and at the UN.

Cases piled up, and response remained nil. And now suddenly President Obama was responding—but not to cases of rape, or torture, but to the possible use of chemical weapons. It was his so-called “red line”—the thing that would make him do something.   [Read more…]

Cable News Now: All White, All the Time?

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MSNBC pulls plug on Melissa Harris-Perry show

By Thandisizwe Chimurenga / Daily Kos

Cable network MSNBC might be going back to “all white, all the time.” That’s what the Washington Post seems to be implying with their headline, “#MSNBCSoWhite.” Unless you’ve been under a rock, you should know that Melissa Harris-Perry, the professor and author most recently known for her news and public affairs show on MSNBC, has effectively ended her relationship with the network.   [Read more…]

The Case Against ‘Saving’ Marriage

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Married nuclear families are the gold standard against which we are all judged

By Nicole Rodgers / AlterNet

Marriage rates have been declining for more than half a century and single women now outnumber married ones. There are few guides better at navigating this new landscape than Rebecca Traister. In a recent New York Magazine article, adapted from her soon-to-be-released book All the Single Ladies, she offers an insightful, nuanced analysis of the plight and power of unmarried women “taking up space in a world that was not designed for them.” Traister argues that the current democratic policy platform may be more liberal than it has been in a generation in response to the growth of unmarried women. It’s about time. Public policy has lagged almost criminally behind in meeting the needs of single women, and especially single mothers, for decades.   [Read more…]

Feeling a Need to Stand with Planned Parenthood After Watching “The View”

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I was watching the women on The View the other day talk about a video of John Kasich saying, in reference to a campaign he had won in Ohio years ago, that he had been victorious because “many women left their kitchens” to go door to door for him.

A woman didn’t take well to his remark and let him know that she would, never-the-less, come out to support him but wouldn’t do so from her “kitchen.”

“I gotcha,” Kasich replied, a bit embarrassed by his “a woman’s place is in the home” kind of faux pas.   [Read more…]

Women Vs. Men: Prepping For That First Date

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Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. We all know this. But there’s a pretty key difference in how women prep for dates — especially first dates — and it’s way bigger than shaving our legs, trying on multiple outfits multiple times or otherwise attempting to look cute.

In a “so sad it’s funny” social commentary, the YouTube channel Unsolicited Project offers up its newest video, How Women Get Ready for First Dates. In it, the woman tells her roommate: “Just remember exactly what I’m wearing right now just in case I go missing.” By contrast, the guy throws on a jacket and heads out the door.   [Read more…]

John Oliver Takes on Abortion. Yes, He Goes ‘There’—and He Goes There Well

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By Leslie Salzillo / Daily Kos

Talk show hosts are not known to expand on the subject of abortion. But John Oliver is not the average nighttime host and wades his way into a plethora of deep controversial issues. The Last Week Tonight political humorist started off his Sunday night show with an interesting attention-grabber and segue.   [Read more…]

Two Los Angeles Cops Charged With Raping Multiple Women Over Years

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Veterans of the force allegedly targeted victims who were most unlikely to report or be believed.

By Kali Holloway / AlterNet

According to a statement released yesterday by Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey, some of the assaults took place in the officers’ patrol car, and nearly all of the alleged assaults were carried out while the cops were on duty.

James Nichols, a 15-year veteran of the force, and Luis Valenzuela, on the force for 18 years, face multiple charges, including “forcible rape, rape under color of authority, oral copulation under color of authority and oral copulation by force.” Valenzuela is also being charged with assault with a firearm for pointing a gun at one of the women.

The four alleged victims, who range in age from 19 to 34, all told investigators similar stories of sexual assault by the officers. Citing information contained in the arrest warrant, the Los Angeles Times reports the women, often after being threatened with jail, were taken by car to desolate areas where they were forced to perform sex acts on one officer while the other “kept watch.”   [Read more…]

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