ABORSH FREE-FOR-ALL

JUST KIDDING. But seriously, now that OBAMACARE A.K.A. SOCIALISM has passed the House and Senate there have been a lot of awesome jokes going around, e.g. WELL LOOKS LIKE NOW ALL REPUBLICANS ARE REQUIRED TO HAVE THREE ABORTIONS BY THE AGE OF 12 and so forth. Which is hilarious, for literally millions of reasons, especially the one where the health care reform bill is actually QUITE RESTRICTIVE i/r/t abortion :(. Personally I made some jokes about how I am going to get pregnant just so that I can have an aborsh paid for by John Boehner himself, because that guy is so orange and so not down with lady power.

The Boehner lookin' all orange and hate-y with some other old white dudes that supposedly give a shit about what we do or don't do with our uteruses

OKAY BUT REALLY the main point is that HCR passed, and this is basically good for ladies! Because it bans insurance companies from denying you coverage/making you pay way more because you have a "pre-existing condition" known as a UTERUS! Also, anytime that the GOP is shown to really not give a single shit about women except to make sure that they're married and at home making/raising babies, I'm happy. I mean, why do women even NEED to be able to buy health insurance independently? Shouldn't they have gotten married to an actual person by the time they were 23/a college graduate and had been kicked off their parents' (a.k.a. father's) health insurance plan? And don't even get me started on divorced/single mothers. HOO BOY.

Alright, I'm pretty hungry and also full of coffee, which also makes me really angry-blog-y, so it's time for a sandwich. Click on the link in the first paragraph for the feministing.com take on all this, probably written by a person with somewhat less that 98% of brain power devoted to thinking about delicious cheeses/chocolate chip cookies/fresh-baked bread.

P.S. I also just got back from my annual GYN exam - first one in St. Louis! - at the local Planned Parenthood (totes discounted, y'all) and there were hella protesters with signs about how I shouldn't get an aborsh. They weren't yelling or else this blog probz would have included an anecdote about Stuart throwing rotten shrimp tacos at them or something of that nature. But I'll be headed back there every month or so for pill pick-up so expect further bulletins as anti-choice events warrant (the weather's getting nicer so I expect their activities will warm up too). I am mostly just jazzed to live in a place with PPs again. If I could I would mail one on down to little old Stillwater :(

P.P.S. I know the Queer/Women's Art Festival went down the other night though! Well done Stillwater ladies!

WHOO

OKAY so I FINALLY got around to watching this thing, but I had to do it in segments, because it is like two and a half hours long, and also this is TOTALLY OLD NEWS, but:

Lake of Fire is a good documentary! If you like thinking about abortion/watching other people think about abortion for almost three hours in very nicely shot black and white video, watch it.

And also, here is Nirvana performing Lake of Fire, because why not?

WTF

I check my Twitter account like once per like three months so this is "old" news. One of my "followers" is this thing which does a really good job of both implying that only WOMEN like talking about fashion, decor, and food AND that women ONLY like talking about fashion, decor and food (see what I did there?).

Anyway, how much you want to bet if you asked these ladies what their views on feminism are, they would be like OMG FEMINISM LOOOVE IT because, you know, "being feminine" is the same thing as being feminist :(.

P.S. HI FROM ST LOUIS! Not much to report save that my partner in stuff, Stuart, is helping the Women's Law Caucus at WashU with their website, and says that they're one of the most powerful groups on campus, which is cool. Related: East Coasters think that St. Louis is "backwater" when it comes to social issues, women's issues, etc. HA! HAHAHAhaha! ha. Oh dear. Right about then in the conversation is when I whip out various Sally Kern anecdotes, etc. Heart y'all.

Sally Kern wants you to stay together for the kids

I was going to write about the Gender and Women's Studies conference at OSU last weekend, but it was canceled due to it requiring ice skates or a dog sled team complete with Sarah-Palin-style moose chili to get there (Roads were icy in case that's not clear!).

Instead I'll post about Kern's latest bullshit legislation:

Scheduled for introduction in the 2010 legislative session by state Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, House Bill 2279 would restrict the "use of incompatibility as a ground for divorce" in Oklahoma.

The bill would not allow for divorce on the basis of incompatibility if:

* There are living minor children of the marriage
* The parties have been married 10 years or longer
* Either party files a written objection to the granting of a divorce

Pissed? She's up for re-election in 2010. Donate to her opponent or if you live in HD 84, VOTE! Brittany Novotny is, as Pearl said, the antithesis to Sally Kern.

FEMINI-STL

Another semester has begun in Stillwater, but it seems that only one of us remains to participate. I graduated in December and moved to St. Louis, where my partner in crime/relationship associate/Stuart is attending Washington University Law. BUT FEAR NOT: Mallory has a kickin' rad group of NOW ladiez making all kinds of cool shit happen on the OSU campus and beyond.

Here in the STL, activities so far have ranged from buildin' stuff

to receptions featuring local young women artists (and new coworkers!)

to visiting a ladie-run record shop specializing in local noise, zines, and alternative culture.

The most encouraging thing about all of this is that I believe it is TOTALLY POSSIBLE for Stillwater to have just as vibrant a feminist culture as a big ol' metropolis like St. Louis (not that me building shoddy furniture is really a cultural contribution). So GIT R' DUN STILLWATER!

JUSTICE FOR LOL

Monday, November 2 and Tuesday, November 3, the "Justice For All" exhibit came to the OSU campus. I won't post pictures here, because they are full of crazy bullshit unbefitting a rad blog run by ultra-academic feminists, but click on the link above to learn more about them. Suffice it to say their display was visible from about a quarter of a mile away. 

Of course, it sucks that this was up at all, but good did come of it: NOW set up a table with literature about Planned Parenthood, pamphlets detailing the fallacies and historical and medical inaccuracies in the Justice For All display and the group's rhetoric, and FREE CONDOMS!

People on campus responded well to our table, probably because the Justice For All does a better job of driving people away from their cause than drawing them in by scaring and intimidating them. A few people even expressed interest in joining us at the Pro-Choice Rally at the State Capitol on Friday and wanted to be on the e-mail list for NOW! GO US.

Thanks to everyone who helped us get this table up (and down) on such short notice:

Caitie, Paige, Danielle, Ally, Dennis, Matt, Amanda, Chelsea, Graeme, and probably a whole slew of other people who handed out pamphlets, taped messages to condoms and condoms to flyers, designed the printed materials - all in less than twelve hours. AWESOME! Make sure to check out Oklahoma For Reproductive Justice's blog and Facebook for pictures of all the feminist greatness from the past couple of days and continuing for the rest of this week.

Inhofe and Coburn Vote AGAINST the Franken Amendment

The Senate passed an amendment (68-30) to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill which would keep the government from signing defense contracts with companies that prevent employees from taking "workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." Instead these companies force employees to settle the dispute in arbitration where a supposedly neutral third party rules. The Franken amendment was inspired by the workplace experiences of Jamie Leigh Jones. Think Progress explains:

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Arbitration might be an adequate solution in some cases, such as money disputes, but when the "dispute" is rape, it's a problem. Franken argued that "The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court." This brings up scary questions. Rape is a felony and punishable with fines and jail time. What happens to a rapist in the arbitration process? I'm assuming the company pays a fine to the victim, but is there jail time for the attacker? Is the employee accused and found guilty of rape fired? I tried to find statistics relevent to these questions, but it was difficult. Most arbitration cases are confidential. The details and outcomes are never publicized, so it's hard to know how many sexual assault charges are actually disputed in arbitration and what happens to the accused.

I did find an NPR story from June 2009 about Jamie Leigh Jones' case. It's been four years since her ordeal and the Justice Department has declined to investigate. She also claims that her attackers continue to work for KBR. She never entered into arbitration with KBR (she is suing in civil court for the right to sue in criminal court - gotta love the American legal system), so we can't know if these men would've been fired once the arbitrator ruled. But even if she had entered into arbitration, we STILL wouldn't know what would have happened to her attackers because of the secrecy of the process.

Opponents of Franken's bill claimed that the legislation "overreached into the private sector and suggested that it violated the due process clause of the Constitution." Franken replied quoting the Constitution. "Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution gives Congress the right to spend money for the welfare of our citizens. Because of this, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, 'Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds and has repeatedly employed that power to further broad policy objectives,'" Franken said. "That is why Congress could pass laws cutting off highway funds to states that didn't raise their drinking age to 21. That's why this whole bill [the Defense Appropriations bill] is full of limitations on contractors -- what bonuses they can give and what kind of health care they can offer. The spending power is a broad power and my amendment is well within it."

Senator Franken and those supporting the amendment took a stand for rape survivors today, and BOTH our senators sided with corporations. This is obviously ridiculous. Tell Senators Coburn and Inhofe to take rape seriously!