- AbstinenceOnly.com is amazing. Give it a look. Via Feministe.
- A good article in Bitch magazine talks about the politics, pro and con, of those “I Had an Abortion” t-shirts.
- Culture Kitchen discusses the “crisis of masculinity” in our culture right now, and compares it to the culture of pre-Nazi Germany. Via Blackfeminism.org.
- Saudi Arabia: Men “Behaving Like Women” Face Flogging. I’m so glad I don’t live there.
- Vanessa at Feministing has a good post, with a couple of links worth following, about the intersection between racism about Asians, violent misogyny, and pornography.
- Friday Turtle Blogging! I love turtles. And this particular one is a cute baby turtle.
- An interesting article on Frontline’s website discusses why it is Texas is so far in the lead when it comes to executions. Via The Daily Blatt.
- Confined Space describes how a “see a doctor in 30 minutes or we give you a $15 gift certificate” policy at a hospital led to bad medicine and the serious injury of a nurse.
- A bizarre and disturbing “vegitative state” case in Austrailia: A man assaults his wife and leaves her in a PVS. Now he’s demanding that she be kept alive so that he doesn’t have to face murder charges. (Visit bugmenot.com if you need a pass to read this site).
- Riba Rambles has an excellent post arguing that our cultural mythology of the 1950s has led us to misunderstand what women in the 1950s actually did. Riba discusses jobs – women were much more in the waged work market than we often hear described – and cake mixes.
- The New York Times editorializes against a sneaky middle-of-the-night attack on Title IX by the Bush administration.
- Interesting-sounding academic paper about the history of music copyright.
It is inevitable that people will detransition – no medical treatment has a 100% satisfaction rate. But 94% of trans…
But you missed Rivka’s big news.
The abstinence site is a riot!
I’d like to see accounts from women who have actually worn the “I had an abortion” t-shirts as well as guesses about the effects of the shirts. And, I think there should be shirts that say “I had an abortion, and I feel fine”, but I’m in the wiseass business.
I’m never impressed when someone claims that masculinity is in crisis. One of the first things one learns in the history of men as a gender is that masculinity is always in crisis.
A conservative might say it has more to do with today’s academy than it does with the masculinity of a given era. And I might even be inclined to agree.
A couple of thoughts on the “abortion” t-shirt:
– First of all, in a way, I sort of wish these people had boastful intentions. Because their lack of understanding about how communication and branding works is painful to behold. If you’re going to market a shirt like this, [i]at least[/i] educate yourself on how mediums like t-shirts communicate messages.
T-shirts by definition imply strong endorsement of the idea or product being advertised (unless the shirt is critical of a person or group. At that point, strong disdain is communicated). When we see a person wearing a Yankees shirt, we immediate assume not just that they are fans of the team, but that they are big enough fans to go out and purchase their shirt.
If a person wears a “Jesus Saves” shirt, we assume not just that they are Christians, but that they are enthusiastic about it.
The notion that the shirt would “remove the stigma” from the issue is absurd. All it removes is the notion that the person in question considers the issue to be worthy of any kind of depth or tact. Those that have called it “tacky, cavalier, simplistic, arrogant, cool, and shameful” hit the nail on the head, and I would add to that gleeful bragging which implies complete indifference to the gravity of the decision.
A psychologist I know describes such shirts as examples of “the need to be known.” Moree than anything else, The shirts are an example of people wanting or needing acknowledgement and attention. The issue portrayed on the shirt is secondary to the reaction it garners.
I found it interesting that Hyman suggests that the shirt has “power to belie the stereotype of the kind of woman who has an abortion” shortly after suggesting that women wear it, even if they hadn’t had one. It seems to me as though the latter confession would likely undermine such a goal. Plus, she assumes that people care enough to think about the demographic profile of the wearer. Odds are, people will only recall the shirt.
And the question is of course, what is the goal of the shirt? If it is as Hyman suggests “sisterhood,” then it merely preaches to the converted, while motivating the opposition to a greater degree, and inching fence-sitters towards the pro-life side.
The fact that it requires so much follow-up explanation shows just how poorly the shirt communicates its message.
Oh well, too bad us dumb feminist women don’t understand what it means to put something on a T-shirt.
The Theweleit book on which the “masculinity crisis” post is based is a fascinating and frightening book, which I would recommend to anybody terrified by the rise of the right wing in this country. There are actually two books but I recommend particularly volume 2, Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. It brings to light clearly the almost psychotic emphasis on masculinity (check out the artwork in that book and the metal/flesh contrasts…. creepy) in the rising Nazi state.
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