A few things to get your week started right:
150 Years of Vassar: A photo spread. Thanks, Lauren, for the link.
I know a lot of us are WikiLeaks-ed out, but there are two more pieces worth checking out: This one from the New Statesman that discusses the liberal values that are in conflict in the WikiLeaks document drops, and this one from Amnesty International breaking down the freedom of expression issues that WikiLeaks raises. Both are worth reading to gain a more complete understanding of all the factors at play here.
The Supreme Court is going to decide if the largest sex discrimination case in U.S. history will be allowed to proceed. The Court here isn’t deciding whether Wal-Mart discriminated or didn’t; it’s looking at whether the 1.5 million(!) female employees claiming discrimination have similar enough claims to be considered a class for purposes of class action litigation. This matters not just for gender/sex discrimination issues, but for all class actions going forward. How to define a “class” for the purposes of class action suits is key in allowing workers or others claiming harm, whose individual claims may be too small to reasonably pursue, to band together as a single class of people and pool their resources to assert a large, collective claim against an entity.
Tony Porter issues a call to men at the TED conference, urging them to break free of the “man box” and emphasizing how stereotypes of masculinity hurt all of us.
The always-fantastic Lori Adelman puts together a slideshow of the 10 least misogynistic rap lyrics of 2010.
Conservatives in the House kill a bill that would protect against child marriage – because groups that oppose child marriage may also be pro-choice, and because the bill calls for supporting the rights of girls and making sure that they have access to health care.
Peter King, a House Republican, is planning to use the U.S. Congress as Ground Zero for his anti-Muslim inquisition. He’s calling for Congress to open an inquiry into the “radicalization” of Muslim communities in the United States
Anti-abortion positions are gaining momentum in the House, and anti-choice Congressmen are expecting 2011 to be a big year. They’re focusing on three goals: (1) Banning late-term abortion based on bogus fetal pain claims; (2) Requiring women seeking abortions to obtain unnecessary and costly ultra-sounds; and (3) Barring any insurance coverage of abortion — even coverage by private insurance companies.
And on that note, check out Frances Kissling’s article about all the things you can do this holiday season to support pro-choice and rights-affirming positions. Go a step further and make sure you write and call your Congressperson, and urge him or her to support abortion rights and push back against the anti-choice rush in the House.
Similar Posts:
- Stuff to Read by Jill October 31, 2008
- The First Pro-Choice Carnival by Jill January 1, 2008
- Daily Feminist Reads by Jill July 13, 2007
- Memorial Day Reads by Jill May 26, 2008
- More Good Feminist (or Feminist-Infuriating) Reads by Jill March 13, 2008
Oh what have you done? Now I’m going to spend the rest of the day looking for my grandmother (’32), me (’02), and my friends in these Vassar pics.
I found the David Allan Green blog piece rather unconvincing. The three liberal values he espouses as being denigrated by Wikileaks: accountability, legality, and privacy. But there are hundreds of thousands of non-profits, advocacy groups, lobbies which are not accountable to any more than a few members or so but will claim to be upholding the public interests of many more members than that (if not the entire public general). These organizations are held indirectly accountable by what people think of the quality of their work and production and how they choose to act on it in both public and private spheres. As far as legality, in an ideal world, he’d be right. But we live in a world in which lines of legality are bent or destroyed outright by many in power, who often draw up rules to prevent exposure of this fact. If everyone adhered to a stubborn literal reading of rules to lead their lives, many important progressive and necessary stories/changes would not have come to fruition. And as best I can tell, which may very well be wrong, Wikileaks has not coerced anyone into yielding documents or information. I can most agree with the value of privacy as many of the cables have released embarrassing information about allies and pseudo-allies which could put significant burden on strained relations in addition to the fact that Wikileaks has not done nearly enough to protect civilian names in war zones. And it could very well be that Wikileaks has not done enough to protect the names of its sources, in addition to not doing enough to support the likes of people like Bradley Manning. That said, we live in an era of incredible government secrecy, where we often put undue faith in our government officials to do the right things with our tax dollars with no accountability for these actions. Wikileaks has thus far served as an important counterbalance to this usurpation of power, and I hope that it will survive a potential Assange indictment/guilty verdict.
Great collection–a couple things:
Men or other women besides the mom can also participate in kangaroo care.
The Tony Porter speech is powerful, but consider a trigger warning for what he discusses beginning around 7:30.
150 years? Wow, time flies! Growing up my aunts, grandmother, and various older relatives always told us our great-great-grandfather was the first president of Vassar. I didn’t really get a handle on what that meant till I was much, much older. It wasn’t till this summer when I went to New York to look up old family history that it really sank in what a big deal the school was.
figleaf
Yes!! Shad is one of my favorite artists, and as soon as I saw the title of that Top 10 list I was hoping that he would be at the top. Keep Shining is a fantastic song, but all of his TSOL album is great.