San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Gender

Penis Control Before Gun Control

by

By Will Falk

My position on gun control is simple. As long as the police, soldiers, and rapists have guns, we should have guns, too.

As long as one in four women in this country are raped in their lifetimes, women should have access to guns. As long as people of color are gunned down in the streets, they should be capable of defending themselves. As long as theft of native land continues alongside genocide of native peoples, they should be able to arm themselves against their invaders.

People – mainly white, male people – tell me that I take too extreme of a view. They tell me they just do not see the violence.   [Read more…]

SDSU Students Fight Fraternity Rape Culture

by

By Doug Porter

Students at San Diego State University participated in a march and sit-in on Tuesday, demanding the school take action in response to sexual assaults and harassment. The protest was triggered by reports of people associated with fraternity houses yelling  obscenities, waving dildos and throwing eggs at a Nov. 21st  anti-rape march called Take Back the Night.

Their demands included an open forum with  SDSU President Elliot Hirshman during the spring semester, along with the resignations of fraternity members of the Sigma Phi Epsilon and Delta Sigma Phi from various posts on the campus. The protesters cited the need for a planned Women’s Resource Center to serve as a rape crisis center and for CSU and UC colleges to release all statistical data on the investigation, adjudication and sanction of cases involving sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking.

As is the case with police-linked killings around the country, the protests are the local manifestation of a much larger problem, and today I’ll try to give this story some context.   [Read more…]

Torture Tuesday: A Study in Manufacturing Consent

by

By Doug Porter

If you are unfortunate enough to be aware of the news today, you’ll be a witness to our country’s greatest exercise in what Walter Lippmann and subsequently Noam Chomsky called ‘manufactured consent.”

I’m referring to the release of the heavily redacted summary of the the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture. By the end of the day, via the conclusions of the chattering class, the American public will know three things:

  • US policy following the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks included broadly worded permissions to engage in torture.
  • There is controversy over whether torture was effective.
  • Oversight of the intelligence apparatus in the government is a danger to our national security.

  [Read more…]

December 4th Fast Food Strikes: Part of a Much Bigger Picture

by

By Doug Porter

Fast food workers in San Diego and 150 other cities will be walking off the job this Thursday demanding an industry-wide base wage of $15 per hour and the right to form a union.

This nationwide protest comes on the heels of Black Friday protests at 1600 WalMart stores in 49 states. Workers in stores in walked off the job in advance of the protests on Wednesday in California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C.

Demonstrators angered by events in Ferguson, Missouri targeted malls in cities around the country (including San Diego) urging shoppers to skip shopping to show solidarity with their cause.

The particulars of these events are not as important as what they represent: a growing sense of frustration with economic and social conditions. These actions are symbolic, intended to break through the “everybody knows” noise generated by the mass media.   [Read more…]

Women’s Perspectives and Changing Roles In the US and Iraq War

by

By Lori Saldaña

In March 2010, Katherine Bigelow made history at the Academy Awards, by winning in the Best Director category. This was the first time a woman had done so in the Academy’s history. She won for her film “Hurt Locker,” about men who disarm IED’s (improvised explosive devices) in Iraq.

“Hurt Locker” was also was named Picture of the Year, and won for Best Sound Editing- so congratulations for all that, too, Ms. Bigelow. Well done.

If you haven’t seen it, “Hurt Locker” is an amazing and suspenseful film — with hardly a woman character in it. Ms. Bigelow managed to capture the drama, setting, heat and dust of Iraq very well. Yet you would never know the reality of women in Iraq from this movie.   [Read more…]

Why Is Feminism More Offensive Than Rape, Inequality and the F-Word?

by

By Annie Lane

Feminism comes in many shapes and sizes, though if you ask author Karin Agness of the Time Magazine article Seriously? This Is What Passes for Feminism in America it appears that it should only ever manifest itself in the form of an 11-year-old girl who was shot in the head, as was the case for Malala Yousafzai.

Thankfully, Yousafzai survived the senseless and depraved attack on her life by the Taliban in 2012, and has gone on to be the voice for women’s education and rights in Pakistan. And the world is better because of her.

But according to Agness, American girls, such as the ones who appeared in the controversial FCKH8 video that went viral last week, don’t even graze the surface of what it means to be a Feminist, and instead are merely some part of a cheap marketing ploy to sell t-shirts.   [Read more…]

The Pernicious ‘War on Drugs’ Is Behind America’s Staggeringly High Female Prison Population

by

U.S. prisons incarcerate more than a third of all female inmates worldwide, many of them for drug offenses.

By Cliff Weathers / Alternet

Women make up nearly 9% of the U.S. prison population and about a third of them are serving time for drug offenses, according to two recent studies. Moreover, with just over 200,000 women behind bars, U.S. prisons incarcerate a third of all female prisoners worldwide.

According to the latest report on women detainees by the International Center for Prison Studies, some 625,000 women and girls are held in penal institutions throughout the world. This includes remanded (pre-trial) detainees and those who have been sentenced. China, with 84,600 female women in detention (and 5.1 percent of its prison population), is a distant second to the U.S, followed by Russia (59,200), Brazil (35,596) and Thailand (29,175).

  [Read more…]

Gov. Brown’s Bill Signing Binge Brings Changes to California

by

By Doug Porter 

Governor Jerry Brown’s been busy over the last few days, signing off on a variety of measures passed by the Legislature during its last session.

Legislation concerning sexual consent, subcontractor standards, the initiative process, degrees at community colleges and legal assistance for immigrant minors were all approved.

Today we’ll take a look at some of those new laws. The Governor vetoed additional funding for California colleges, along with a group of bills aiming to promote transparency in governance and provide greater disclosure in political campaigns.

  [Read more…]

The War on Women: More Than Just a Political Slogan

by

By Doug Porter

While the words and actions of various (mostly Republican) politicians give plenty of credence to the underlying misogyny on the right, a couple of items in this week’s news feeds illustrate the big picture when it comes to the baked in sexism of our society and culture.

Actress and UN Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson addressed the General assembly on September 21st on the subject of gender discrimination and how it harms both society and individuals. Now she’s facing threats, simply for daring to speak up.

HBO’s John Oliver took on the Miss America beauty pageant on the same day, blowing away their claims of philanthropic benevolence towards women; specially their claims about colleges scholarships. It was an excellent example of how corporate spinmeisters can take even the most base and degrading institution and present it as something wholesome and appealing.

  [Read more…]

Women’s Equality Day: No Cause for Celebration

by

By Doug Porter

More than four decades ago Congresswomen Bella Abzug introduced legislation to designate August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.” The bill says that “the President is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation annually in commemoration of that day in 1920, on which the women of America were first given the right to vote.”

In 1972 the Equal Rights Amendment passed, having been introduced in every session of Congress since 1923. The amendment required ratification by 38 states, but fell three states short. While there have been various legal maneuvers extend the ratification deadline, along with attempts to re-introduce the amendment over the years, it is, for all practical purposes, dead.

Think of it: more than half the human beings in the United States are subject to legally sanctioned discrimination. Buried beneath all the justifications and rationalizations for this fundamental injustice is the belief that women are (or should be) chattel.

  [Read more…]

Kate Loves a Parade

by

Editor’s Note:  Women in the United States were granted the right to vote on August 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was certified as law.  In 1971 at the urging  of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day,”calling attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality. 

By Anne Hoiberg

“Kate Sessions” herself, the Mother of Balboa Park, will be on hand to speak and to greet at the Annual San Diego Suffrage Rally and Parade coming up on August 26 in Balboa Park. Thus, San Diego will kick-off the 8th annual women’s rights event starting at 5pm. The crowd will gather, appropriately enough, at the Kate Sessions Statue on the 6th Avenue side of the Laurel Street Bridge to hear a 30 minute rally prior to marching en masse across the Laurel Street Bridge.

The parade will be lead by enthusiastic women’s rights activist, Judy Forman, owner of the Big Kitchen. Marchers will be dressed in 1900s suffragist outfits along with those fabulous 1900s hats, outrageous enough to make any dame at Del Mar jealous. All San Diegans and visitors are invited. Many local women’s organizations and activists will participate. The event is produced by the Women’s Museum of California.   [Read more…]

Groups Call ALS Bucket Challenge a Baby Killer

by

By Doug Porter

Talk about your buzzkill.

Everybody, it seems, has been doing the ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) challenge lately. Actor Charlie Sheen, San Diego Chargers safety Eric Weddle and even Mayor Kevin Faulconer have had buckets of iced liquid dumped on them as part a nationwide fundraising campaign.

While public figures locally have gone out of their way to be conscious about the drought faced by Californians, there’s always a crank somewhere looking to be a spoiler.

In the case of the ALS challenge it’s a certain Catholic Archdiocese and the we’re-not-a-hate-group types at the American Family Association (AFA). You might remember the AFA from their ‘don’t buy Harvey Milk stamps campaign’.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry