subconciousevolution:

 

OWS - Where Does Feminism Fit?

As the Occupy Wall Street movement expands, women are working to make sure feminist issues are front and center.  What will it take to succeed?

Many feminists have greeted the movement with enthusiasm and the hope that it will be a substantial opportunity to advance many of the issues that we have been working on for so many years. 

Put bluntly, the harms experienced by women as a result of global and national economic policies are, in aggregate, different and often far worse than those experienced by men. For instance, here in the United States:

• Women are lucky to make 77 cents on the male dollar (women of color often earn far less than that).
• Women are still doing the overwhelming majority of unpaid work such as child and elder care and housework.
• Women are more vulnerable to intimate violence in times of economic stress when social services that could help them are being cut.
• Women are still paying more for health care, and our access to reproductive health services is under siege.
• Women still do not have equal rights under the Constitution.
• The United States is one of only six nations (including Iran, Somalia and Sudan) that have not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

For any real economic justice to be gained for the 99 percent, those issues certainly need to be addressed as an integral part of the Occupy agenda.

Unfortunately, those who seek to address these topics are finding themselves confronting many of the same obstacles that women often face outside of the Occupy movement—safety, sexism, misogynist power structures and a lack of gendered analysis.  Women report being harassed and labeled divisive for speaking out and pointing to issues that affect women’s lives. There have been numerous reports of women being physically and sexually assaulted, and of women being shouted down and denied a chance to speak, problems that sound all too familiar to longtime feminist activists working within political, social and progressive movements.

Wall Street is a manifestation and symbol of the much larger problem of patriarchal control and power that has been plaguing us for thousands of years and depends in large part on the exploitation, subjugation and control of women.  If we want to occupy Wall Street in a meaningful way, we also need to confront issues of patriarchy.

As a way to further that broader effort and discussion, there is a new website called Occupy Patriarchy.  We must formulate effective strategies for bringing a feminist perspective to Occupy, one that recognizes that we must address the needs of the 99 percent from a gendered lens. As Angela Davis so eloquently pointed out at an Occupy Philly march last month, it is a “complex unity.”  

In this country, conservative media outlets have seized on reports of sexual assaults in Occupy camps as a reason to shut down the movement, completely ignoring that these kinds of crimes continue to take place every second in every city and we need to insist that these calls to rescue the damsels are seen for what they are and not in our names.

As the Occupy movement continues, there is a real opportunity to develop a broader commitment from progressives to work on issues such as unequal pay, the ERA, better maternity leave policies and the many other issues that particularly affect women.

Read the Full Article Here.

sword-meets-rose:

kimyadawson:

This is Felix.

The other day his Grandma, Nina, posted this picture on Facebook with the caption:

today is felix’s first concert. we are going to see Kimya Dawson. he’s so excited he didn’t sleep at all last night and changed his clothes 3 times before he came upon the perfect outfit.

I reposted the picture on Facebook with this caption:

When I showed Panda this picture she said “Oh yes! He was really nice, but I was just shy at the show. Can he come over for a play date?” I said “Of course!” I told her that he would really like that and explained that he needs some nice buddies these days because sometimes people are mean to him because of his clothes.” She said “Why? His clothes are so nice! Sometimes I wear pants and shirts sometimes I wear dresses. Boys should be able to wear pants and shirts and dresses too.”

MY MOTHER left THIS comment on my post:

As panda’s Granny I so proud of her. Being so young and not being influenced by others stereotypical views. Both panda and Felix will be the leaders this World so desperately needs. By the way I wear men’s shirts all the time, they just feel more comfortable.We are who we are.we are not our clothes!!! Three cheers for Panda and Felix.

Now, for the record, I just need to say:

I AM SURROUNDED BY AWESOME.

This is going to be my child one day.

blackamazon:

cabell:

Sorry about the graphic—I couldn’t make Tumblr do tables so I had to do a screenshot from the PDF I’ve got.  This is excerpted from Race, Class, and Gender in the United States (ed. Paula Rothenberg), 2nd edition, 2003.  Obviously it’s old, but it gives a much more comprehensive view of wage inequality than the quote that’s been circulating.

It’s still misleading, however.  As karnythia and others have noted, unemployment for POC, particularly Black people (and Black men even more so than Black women) is about twice as high as for White people.  The “recession” that White people are currently experience is a depression for Black people, and it started in about 2000 and hasn’t really let up for them at all since.  POC, especially Black Americans, have about 12% of the wealth of White Americans, and that drops to 3% if you take housing out of the equation (Black Americans are much less likely to own a home in the first place, though).  This means that a short period of unemployment can really fuck them up, because they don’t have a cushion—or a family with a cushion—to get through the hard times.

Unemployment for Black men with a criminal record, which they are much more likely to have than White men due to racist policing, charging, and sentencing, is sky high, but even with no criminal record, a Black man in Milwaukee is slightly less likely to get called back for a job than a White man WITH a criminal record (Pager 2004; with a criminal record, the Black man’s chance of a callback is effectively zero while the White man still gets one 17% of the time).

The figures in the graph here are based on people who are in the labor force.  That means that POC who are unemployed are not part of the calculation.  A Black man with a bachelor’s degree will get paid more than a White woman with a bachelor’s degree for the same job—but he is vastly less likely to get that job in the first place.

Oh, and the bachelor’s degree.  Since standardized test scores are systematically lower for students of color, and college aid, as again, karnythia and others have been blogging about a ton lately, is significantly more likely to go to White students, POC have a much lower chance of getting that bachelor’s degree in the first place, let alone the master’s degree.  And of course, Black and Hispanic men STILL don’t make as much as White men even if they manage to get the degree and the job.

Statistics need to be contextualized.

I need a drink . A terrible  drink

dobbaaa:

lookoutsideyourself:

(via Finally a beer just for women!)

Gee whiz, I’m so glad that someone realized how alienating alcohol is to women, and came up with a nice gentle beer in a pretty pink package so that we can feel more included!

Because wimmenz don’t drink anything unless it’s packaged in pink. And apparently we don’t drink beer, because it’s a MANLY DRINK.

/facepalm

 but don’t you want to ‘witness the chickness’???

the design almost looks as if it’s meant to be aimed at children with that font and the whole ‘chick’ thing and just everything

and it’s light beer!