Originally appeared on Left Standing Up.

Ten minutes. I was hitting the ten minute mark of just standing in front of the freezers, seemingly debating whether to buy a quart or a gallon of milk. Or perhaps unsure of which kind I wanted. Skim or whole? Maybe 2%? I had a pensive look on my face.

It’s the look I get when I’m frozen inside. Generally from shock. Often from fear. Almost always after a harrowing experience that’s left me momentarily paralyzed.

My allergies had been just horrific, but I’d decided to brave the run across the street to the little bodega anyway because I’d been out of dishwasher soap and milk and coffee filters for three days. As I walked up the steps to the entrance, two men walked out. Because I’m a woman who’s been trained by society not to look strange men in the eye when its dark out and they look potentially threatening, I didn’t. But they stopped in the doorway and came up close to me, speaking far louder than was necessary. “Whoa mama, look at those tits.” “Daaaaamn. Naw like really dog, daaaaaaamn.” One started masturbating and pushed up close to my face as I stared at the ground, trying to navigate around them. He rubbed himself and licked his lips as he undressed me with his eyes and loudly proclaimed what he’d do to me.

“Guys, stop it.” I said in my tired, exasperated and slightly pissed off voice.

Hollaring back is something I’ve been doing lately, but only from afar. To those men who – in broad daylight – yell at me as I pass by on the sidewalk. From a fairly safe distance I might add. When others are around.

Never before have I fought back – even verbally – to men (plural) who’ve gotten up in my face and harassed me so loudly so late at night in utter isolation.

They were pissed. One pushed me into the doorframe as I tried to pass. Both started screaming at me – “You f—ing ugly a– b—-!!” “Who the f— you think you are?!” “You’ll take it and like it!!”

I got into the store as I heard them trample down the stairs, still yelling obscenities at me. Nonchalantly, I went straight for second aisle, grabbed the soap, and moved to the freezer section.

Where I froze up completely.

And where I now found myself with a slightly pensive, mostly blank expression on my face, just staring. It wasn’t that I couldn’t decide between a quart and a gallon, or whole or skim.  It was that I couldn’t remember what I was looking for. It was that I was paralyzed with fear. After a minute the thoughts flowed, and they only made me more petrified.

They had screamed awfully loudly at me. What if they were waiting for me outside? What if they jumped me from behind the stairs as I came down? I’m carrying my house keys and my wallet – my wallet with my ID, which clearly says I live exactly across the street. What if they simply walked up behind me with a knife or a gun and forced me to open my front door for them? What then?

I didn’t have my phone so I couldn’t call or text anyone. The store owner had gone to the back stock room and wasn’t someone I’d have sought help from anyway. Minutes ticked by and still I stood and stared at the fridge. What was I doing there? Why had I come to the store in the first place? How long should I stay?

More minutes passed. I started to sneeze again, and to sweat.  Finally I looked around and thought: I have to get home. I grabbed the wrong size and type of milk, sauntered to the front, paid for my purchases, and headed to the exit.

Crossing the street, my eyes were like daggers as I took in all the potential warning signs, jumping at every leaf that crackled behind me.

I quickly bolted both my gate and my front door. Sliding down to the floor, I slowly let the tears go.

Why had they had to say anything at all? Why had they had to block my way and masturbate in front of me? Why did they have to yell at me? Why did they have to make me feel so unsafe and so vulnerable and so scared?  Why?

The ironic thing is that I had just returned from a happy hour, celebrating women’s rights and choices and power and freedom with friends and allies. After which I’d given a friend a ride home. We chatted the whole way back about street harassment. About how our male friends – allies though they were – just didn’t understand. It wasn’t just about how often it happened. It was about how often we had to think about it, and how bad it was when it did happen.

Street harassment is about power. It’s about making women feel unsafe and unwelcome all the time. It’s an extension of rape culture that results in making women feel frozen in fear of the “what if.” That fear is what has chained us for so long, its iron grip piercing our skin and invading our minds and making us feel like we’re crazy as we stare and stare at the freezer, waiting for the waves of panic to pass.

An hour later, feeling calmer and more grounded, I look back and wonder why and how it was so bad. Because few such encounters are so bad when you look back on them instead of as you experience them. And now, with the very minor distance of time, I can’t help but wonder about so many women for whom home is not a safe haven. Who wouldn’t have had anywhere to go. Who didn’t have a sister to call immediately afterwards, or a front door to bolt and lock. For most women in the world, their home is the most unsafe place for them to be.

I’m very lucky. I know that. But I’m still angry. I’m still hurt. I admit it – I’m still even a little scared. I’ve looked out my window more than a few times in the last hour, because knowing you’re being irrationally paranoid about such a thing doesn’t actually prevent you from being that way.

Another 20 minutes later, and I realize I’ve forgotten the coffee filters.

But I’m not going back out again tonight.

Photo Credit: Abigail Collazo

Last year, Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman being treated in a hospital in Ireland, was denied a life saving abortion because of the country’s strict Catholic code of conduct.  She died. The world was outraged as it came face to face with the horrifying truth that when religion guides your government, the death toll rises. Now we are again facing a situation in which a woman is being killed by her nonviable fetus, and the country in question adheres to strict standards that do not consider women’s lives a priority.

22 year old Beatriz – already a mother of one –  is suffering from lupus and kidney disease, conditions made even more dangerous by her nonviable pregnancy. The fetus she has been carrying for 4 1/2 months has no brain and only a partial skull. It has virtually no chance of survival. The fetus is also killing Beatriz.

But in El Salvador, all abortions are illegal. There are no exceptions, no extenuating circumstances, no options. If Beatriz’s doctors were to perform an abortion anyway, they could all face years in prison. For Beatriz herself, it could be even worse. After enduring these harrowing conditions and the trauma of such an abortion, she could be penalized by up to 50 years in jail.

A Catholic Country
Religion has always played a huge role in the inflexibility of the pro-life stance, declaring a life to begin at conception and that nothing and no one should kill that child for any reason. But when I think of El Salvador, I think not just of the iron grip of these strict Catholic teachings. I think also of the doctrine that grew out of the understanding of a few brave priests, who determined that in order to serve their people, they needed to interpret the Bible from a place of solidarity with the poor. This is liberation theology.

Liberation theology grew out of the desperate poverty, fear, and injustice imposed on the El Salvadoran people after centuries of colonial domination and then decades of military dictatorship, followed by civil war that disproportionately punished the indigenous and the poor. Traditional Catholic teachings said that the poor’s only hope for salvation was through obedience and acceptance. But Jesuit teachings and those priests who worked among the people knew that such doctrine could not and would not ring true with a population so marginalized and so terrorized. Instead,  they joined with the workers and the poor to fight back against structural hegemony that threatened the very lives and livelihoods of the country’s people.

How is this relevant? Financial hardship, lack of access to comprehensive sexual education, and no health care make poor women disproportionately affected by the need for reproductive health and abortion services worldwide. Once again, we see the institutional privilege of the church overwhelming impacting poor people – in this case, women – by devaluing their lives and their very humanity in order to preserve ancient customs and power structures that support the Catholic Church’s influence on the El Salvadoran government.

And so what is interesting about Beatriz’s story is that the same Catholic doctrines that are preventing her from receiving this life saving medical procedures are the ones that have traditionally oppressed the people of El Salvador. These teachings aren’t about compassion or justice. They are – as they have always been – about propping up the control of the Church and sacrificing the lives of the poor in order to do so.  Beatriz needs an intervention of liberation theology to save her life.

Woman, Criminal, Felon
The hospital where Beatriz is being treated has petitioned the Supreme Court to allow their doctors to perform this life-saving abortion, but months later, they’ve received no response.  This isn’t surprising considering not just the grip of the church on public life, but also how very brutally strict the anti abortion laws are in El Salvador. In 2006, the New York Times published an article called “Pro-Life Nation” that speaks of horrifying methods of control over women’s bodies and criminal prosecution for anything that seems to consider the word abortion. Doctors are required by law to report to the authorities if they see a patient whom they suspect of having had an abortion. And then there’s this:

In the event that the woman’s illegal abortion went badly and the doctors have to perform a hysterectomy, then the uterus is sent to the Forensic Institute, where the government’s doctors analyze it and retain custody of her uterus as evidence against her.”

During the course of an investigation, a woman’s body is literally considered a crime scene. This is all even before a woman (and her doctors and anyone associated with the “crime”) is put through the trauma of a trial and convicted. Because believe it or not, it can get worse. In El Salvador, longer sentences are considered more prestigious ”wins” for the prosecutor, and so we’ve seen an increase in the number of late term abortions being classified as aggravated homicides.  Aggravated homicide can carry penalties of up to 50 years in prison.

How the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Movements Can Work Together to Save Beatrice

Working with our allies over at RHRealityCheck and Care2, I started a petition to the government of El Salvador to allow these doctors to perform this abortion and save Beatriz’s life.  As of now, the petition has over 21,000 signatures from outraged men and women all over the world who are in shock and disbelief that our global community is allowing this to happen yet again.  But what’s struck me though is not just the outpouring of support for this woman, but the support that is coming from people who self-identify as pro-life.  Read the petition and its signatures here  and you’ll see what I mean.

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post for Fem2.0 about finding common ground with the pro-life community. About how I’d be more willing to work with them if the movement itself wasn’t almost entirely rooted in punishing women for having sex. That’s what it means when you are anti sexual education, anti birth control, etc.  Of course, there are rays of hope.  All Our Lives is an inspired organization that should really get more attention than it does.  From their mission statement: 

Are you pro-birth control? Pro-sex education? Pro-LGBT rights? Pro-every-life, before and after birth? Welcome to All Our Lives! All Our Lives defends women’s right to voluntarily make all non-violent choices about sexuality and reproduction. We defend a woman’s right to choose her own sexual partners without shame or coercion or discrimination, to have no sexual partners at all if she so desires, to choose to attempt conception or to prevent it by the methods that work best for her, to raise any children she might bear in safety and with dignity, and to be free of dominance and violence. We promote a sexual ethic that combines freedom with responsibility toward not only one’s self and one’s partner, but also toward any children who might be conceived.

These are the kinds of people who are also standing behind Beatriz.  Who are calling on the government to have compassion and concern for this woman, to save her life. In this, when the fetus is nonviable and is responsible – like a parasite – for killing the mother, in this we can all surely stand together.  Because there is nothing pro-life about allowing Beatriz to die.

Gaining Support
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights have called on the government of El Salvador to save Beatriz’s life.  Both El Salvador’s Minister of Health and Attorney General for Human Rights support allowing an exception to save Beatriz’ life, yet still  the Supreme Court has delayed making this literally life and death decision. Now this impoverished young mother has entered early stage renal failure as her pregnancy steadily destroys her kidneys.

The UN is behind her, El Salvadoran government officials are behind her, even pro-life advocates in the United States are behind her. It’s imperative that we keep up the pressure and demand they save her life. I don’t know about you, but I can’t allow another Savita Halappanavar to die. We can save Beatriz – we must save Beatriz.

We may only have days. Please, share this story and sign the petition: bit.ly/savebeatriz.

Beatriz hasn’t given up hope yet – we shouldn’t either.

Photo Credit: Vernon Shaw via Creative Commons

The Virginia State Board of Health voted just yesterday to adopt stricter building regulations for abortion clinics. These new regulations are designed to – you guessed it – force the clinics to close as it is virtually impossible to comply with the new standards in the time frame allowed.

This is the new front of the abortion battles – anti choice lawmakers pushing through legislation with absurd building requirements so as to force abortion clinics to close when they can’t comply. It’s not just in Virginia, either. Four days ago, Alabama’s Governor Robert Bentley signed a TRAP bill (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) requiring these clinics to have such things as wider hallways and bigger parking lots, as well as be staffed only by doctors who have admitting privileges at local hospitals. (For what it’s worth, these restrictions are so severe that even most hospitals would not be able to obey the regulations.)  Mississippi is another state whose TRAP law makes such strict requirements.

But back to Virginia.  Where do all these laws come from? In Virginia’s case (which as I mentioned is just the latest state to pull this trick), it can be traced to Ken Cuccinelli.  If you’re not familiar with him, if his name doesn’t roll off your tongue (as you sport a look of total disgust of course), practice saying it a few times. Because if you don’t start paying close attention to him, he’s going to be Virginia’s next Governor. And he’s going to bring the 1950s back with him.

This is pretty much what we mean when we talk about “extreme” – extreme abortion restrictions and extreme politicians.  ”Extreme” should really be Ken Cuccinelli’s middle name as far as the pro-choice advocacy community should be concerned. Because it goes much farther than his recent efforts to overturn a court’s decision deeming the Virginia’s anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional.

Let’s just take a quick look at some of his choiciest anti-choice sentiments:

Here’s a sample of what he thinks about women’s decision-making capabilities when it comes to their own bodies:

Here he is bragging about trying to deny women access to basic health services:

And my ultimate favorite: here he is comparing the fight to combat abortion with the fight to end slavery.

Yes you read that right -SLAVERY.

And so we see where we are – a man who thinks the Catholic church is too dependent on government, who thinks there’s no such as thing as safe homosexual sex, and who is proud of his efforts to deny medical procedures to women in need. And make no mistake, he’s been making his mark on Virginia.

The majority of the members on the 15 person VA Board of Health were appointed by Governor Bob McDonnell, another gem in the anti-choice movement’s roster of politicians who just want to “protect women.” However, even these members thought the call for new restrictions was too much, and they tried to amend the regulations by grandfathering existing clinics from the new building requirements.  Here’s what the Richmond Times Dispatch reports happened next:

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli refused to certify the regulations saying the board lacked the authority to make a change that in the attorney general’s view was inconsistent with the original law. The memo from Cuccinelli’s office also suggested that board members might not qualify for representation from the office if they deviated from the legal advice that had been offered.

I’ll give you one guess as to whether the Board members stood their ground (hint: the answer is no). Luckily, there was at least one Virginia government official who took a stand here – Karen Remley, the Health Commissioner (in case you’re wondering, appointed by pro choice advocate Tim Kaine, current VA Senator and former VA Governor).  For Commissioner Remley however, it wasn’t just about standing up for women. She ended up resigning her position over the issue, declaring that the regulations had “created an environment in which [my] ability to fulfill [my] duties is compromised.”

Duties such as promoting the public interest? Protecting the public’s health? Yes, I agree, Ken Cuccinelli’s involvement does seem to bring about an inability to do that job.

Now that the Board of Health has voted to adopt the regulations, they will again return to Ken Cuccinelli and Governor Bob McDonnell for final review. And we can add yet another state to the list.

This piece was originally posted on the Left Standing Up Blog and it’s cross-posted it here with permission

Photo credit: KenOnTheIssues.com

As the firestorm over the Adria Richards story has only increased, a poem from one of my favorite artists – Alix Olson - keeps reverberating in my head.

Still we’ve tried being patient,
collected, calm, nice
trying praying, tried laying you
paying the price,
we’ve learned to scream
until our throats throbbed
what else do you do
while your cunt’s being robbed …

And I hear you saying
“subtle, sister,
less bite, more bark
you can make your point without leaving such a mark.
subtle, sister,
stop your seething,
I think we got it, I think we’re even:”

It’s a poem about feminism and anger, about why women are so abrasive and so loud and so obnoxious. And its meaning is never more relevant than when we examine the public’s response to Adria Richards.

For those just catching up, Adria Richards is a woman of color who was exhaustified by being surrounded by straight while males in the world of technology who didn’t see any need to recognize that they weren’t in a locker room. These are the kinds of men who like to make jokes about big dongles and forking, consistently going out of their way to make women feel alienated and unwelcome and unsafe in what they perceive to be their space (I’ve just linked to it, but seriously, if you haven’t read A Woman Walks Into a Tech Conference, do it right now.)

Adria turned around and tweeted a photo of the two men at this particular conference, calling them out for their sexist behavior, which also happened to be a violation of the conference’s code of conduct.  One of the men was later fired, and the internet turned against Adria.

You may be wondering what this means. This means Adria Richards has been subjected to the online trolling masses – the ones who feel that when a woman steps out of her place – a woman of color no less – it’s time to put her back. By force. This means death threats. This means rape threats. This means the most vile, hate-filled, misogynistic material you couldn’t imagine even if tracking it was part of your daily life. Richards has been “called practically every name under the sun. Some Twitter commenters demanded she kill herself.” One posted this photo of Richards tied up and gagged with the caption “Adria Richards when I’m done with her.”

Adria Richards has since been fired by her company and the internet has exploded once again.

Would I have done what Adria did?

Too many people have been phrasing their support for Adria with sentences along these lines: “I wouldn’t have done what Adria did, but she doesn’t deserve death threats.” Or “there are better ways Adria could have handled that, but I still support her.” Or “It would have been more professional for Adria to confront these men and politely ask them to stop, but she shouldn’t have been fired for her actions.” (Deanna Zandt has a great piece over at Forbes about why asking what Adria could have done differently is the wrong question because it focuses on victim-blaming in the same way as critiquing a rape victim’s clothing).

I admit it – at first, I was one of them. I’m fairly certain some of my first comments about the incident were like that. Why?

When I finally realized it, I was ashamed of myself.

The reason we are couching our support for Adria in those terms is because we want to send a message to our listeners. That message is this: “I’m a rational and reasonable person, so I totally understand where you are coming from and why you think she was wrong. But rape threats are still wrong.”

We want you to buy into us, to believe that we aren’t one of those “crazy women” who are burning our bras and marching around with signs that say Death to the Patriarchy! all day, instead of having rational and calm and informed discussion. We want men to take us seriously. We think “maybe if they realize how rational I am, they will hear me better. Maybe if they realize I respect them and I’m being polite, they will listen to what I have to say and actually try to understand.”

Let’s be clear – this method doesn’t work.

Women who stand up for themselves are constantly being told that we’re crazy. That we’re overly emotional and we’re too loud and we’re too obnoxious about our fight for equality. And it’s because of how we approach our fight for equality that we’re constantly being overpowered and shouted down and threatened and assaulted.

And yet the average person still wants to know: why can’t we just tone it down? Why are feminists so angry?

Why aren’t we softer? Why aren’t we calmer? Why aren’t we more subtle?

Simple.

We’re living in a world that hates women. And there is nothing soft, calm, or subtle about it.

A world in which rappers brag about drugging and raping women, magazines feature women solely as ornamental objects, 18 year old boys rape 13 year old girls, 28% of women on U.S. campuses are assaulted, female children are brutally killed to preserve a family’s honor, 13 year old girls are forced into prostitution, 3 woman a day are murdered in the US by husbands or boyfriends, 33% of women in the military have been sexually assaulted, rape is a weapon of war, 1 in 3 US adolescents is a victim of dating abuse, fashion outlets glamorize sexual violence, women who suggest men not rape receive rape threats . . . oh this list could go on and on and on.

I wouldn’t have done with Adria did. Not because it was the wrong way to handle it, not because her anger wasn’t deserved, not because there were more “effective” ways of handling it.

I wouldn’t have publicly called out these two men for their behavior simply because I would not have had the courage that she did.

Do People Really Respond Rationally?

I know. You think of yourself as calm and reasonable and rational. We all do. And we often wonder to ourselves, why aren’t more people like us?

But the truth is that people aren’t calm and cool and collected and gracious and polite and reasonable all the time.  And I’ll tell you who especially isn’t like that - men who are confronted with their own sexist behavior.

I know. You think you are like that. You think your friends are like that.  You think your coworkers are like that.

But none of us is as we imagine. William Halaten writes in his New York Times review of the book, The Righteous Mind,

the problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. The problem is that their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others.”

Even our personal life experiences tell us this. People do not like to be wrong. We prize rationality and reason (not coincidentally, I think, traits normally associated more with men than women), and scorn emotions and gut feelings and instinctive reaction.  And so even when we do things because of our emotions or our feelings, we convince ourselves that we are being rational. We convince ourselves that if someone interacting with us had done something a little bit differently, we would have reacted entirely differently, too.

Except life isn’t like that. I’ve even written blog posts in the past about how to calmly and rationally approach well-intentioned men about their sexism (yes, I’m kind of embarrassed about that now). But it doesn’t work.  We see this a lot in the judgement of rape victims – people who say “if she had just said “no” more clearly or more politely, I’m sure he would have stopped.” The men who were called out by Adria make the same claim – “if only she had nicely asked us to stop, we would have!”

Oh please.  Just like the rest of us, men don’t like to be wrong. Men don’t like to be denied their place of power and privilege. Don’t tell me that these two men who made Adria Richards feel unwelcome and unsafe in a public space deserve to have been spoken to politely, or asked nicely. The idea that they would have politely smiled and apologized and gone about their way is a fantasy.

It’s fiction. It’s the same people who tell me that I don’t need to hollaback! at street harassers. If I just approach them and ask them nicely not to do that, they’ll stop.

Know what? They don’t. I’ve tried. We all have. It’s not working. Men who are making jokes like that do  not deserve the courtesy of respectful, polite discourse. Men who violate women’s space do not deserve the courtesy of respectful, polite discourse. Men who try to control what happens to my body do not deserve the courtesy of respectful, polite discourse.

Not every man who makes a mistake is a sexist misogynistic jerk who deserves to be publicly called out. But please don’t call yourself a feminist or an ally if you don’t want to trust women to know the difference.

We do. We know the difference between a man who compliments us on the street and a man who is sexually harassing us. We know the difference between a man who uses a word that unintentionally offends us and a man who is embracing his privilege and actively making the world an unsafe place for women.

If Adria Richards says she knew she had to speak up because these men were clearly hiding behind deindividualization in order to make their jokes, then I trust her. If Adria Richards says she thought about it and gut-checked it and considered the code of conduct in place at this conference, then I trust her. If Adria Richards says she was going to let the whole thing go on because she was just too weary to deal with it, but that a photo of a young girl who had participated in the Young Coders workshop inspired her to take action, then I trust her. If Adria Richards says the best way to have addressed this issue was to call out their behavior, then I trust her.

So should you.

If these two men just made an honest mistake, if they really didn’t mean anything by it and truly are “good hearted” people who meant no harm and want to learn from their mistakes, then help me out here. WHERE ARE THEY?

Where is their outrage at the way Adria has been treated? Where is their public statement saying “as we’ve said, we wish she’d brought this to our attention first, but the most unfortunate thing is that she didn’t feel safe doing so. Adria didn’t feel comfortable doing so. And now it’s clear why. Adria would have had no way of knowing that we would have been accepting of her critique or request. She would have had no way of knowing that we aren’t like everyone else who has treated her with such hate and disrespect.  The fact that she didn’t feel safe is explained entirely just by seeing the vicious attacks on her, and we publicly condemn those who are attacking her.”

Where’s that statement from these poor victimized guys who totally are good people???

Adria Richards didn’t do what any of us would have done. Instead, she did what needed to be done.

Alix Olson’s poem ends by bringing to mind what is obvious to everyone who is fighting for gender equality. To everyone who has ever tried to combat rampant sexism and blatant misogyny with courtesy or respect. Anyone who has ever been told it would be better to just be more . . . subtle.

Subtle like a penis pounding its target?
Subtle like your hissing from across the street?

Subtle like the binding on my sisters’ feet?
Subtle like her belly raped with his semen,
draped in his fuck, funny,
doesn’t seem even.

See, sometimes anger’s subtle, stocked in metaphor
full of finesse and dressed in allure
Yes, sometimes anger’s subtle, less rage than sad
leaking slow through spigots you didn’t know you had.
and sometimes it’s just

fuck you.
fuck you.
you see, and to me,

That’s poetry too.

Patriarchy isn’t subtle.

Unsafe spaces for women isn’t subtle.

Misogyny and sexism aren’t subtle.

This time, Adria Richards decided that she wasn’t going to be subtle either.

*Addendum: For those who are concerned about her health and well-being, I have it confirmed that Adria is safe. She released a public statement yesterday, which you can read here. I know that you’ll be as impressed with her courage and grace as I am.

This post is originally published on Left Standing Up and it’s cross-posted with permission

Photo credit Betsy Weber via Creative Commons

****SPOILER ALERT!****

Dear Sybil:

First of all, you aren’t alone.  Now in 2012, in July of 1920 when you died, and all the years before that, you weren’t then and aren’t now, alone.

Because even today, every 90 seconds a woman in the world dies from childbirth.   As has been written in other blog posts, of the estimated 210 million women who become pregnant each year, 20 million will experience life-threatening complications.  And 50% of maternal deaths take place in the 48 hours after delivery - just like yours.

You may be wondering what, exactly, killed you. It’s a condition know as eclampsia.  First, you had preeclampsia, evidenced by high blood pressure accompanied by a high level of protein in the urine. Untreated, preeclampsia becomes eclampsia, which is the final and most severe phase, often leading to seizures, coma, and death. We don’t know – even now – exactly what causes it.  Only that being diagnosed early with preeclampsia and being treated for it lessens your chance of it developing. As one of your doctors noted: “once the seizures begin, there’s nothing to be done.”

Here in the United States, pregnancy is still a huge risk to both mother and child.  The U.S. is ranked 50th in the world for maternal death rates, and that’s just because we’ve been steadily declining (death rates nearly doubled  between 1990 and 2008. Compare that to the fact that worldwide, maternal death rates were nearly cut in half during approximately that same period). Every year there are 6 million pregnancies, which basically means every year almost 6 million women are exposed to an enormous number of life-threatening conditions. In recent years, an average of 875,000 women have experienced one or more pregnancy complications in the United States. It’s just one reason why we are so incredulous every time another law passes permitting abortions only in the case of a “threat to the life and health of the mother.”

All pregnancies – as you’ve discovered – potentially threaten the life and health of the mother. Pregnancy is incredibly dangerous for a woman.

But back to you.  The strange thing is that you were living just on the cusp of a revolution in maternal health care. Maternal death rates began to drop dramatically and uniformly in developed countries around the 1930s, mostly due to better training for doctors (trained and experienced midwives had performed the deliveries in the past), and the introduction of a drug which effectively attacked a strain of fever that had been one of the leading causes of maternal death. Both sadly and ironically, conditions such as yours went from being the 3rd leading cause of death in developed nations to the first.

My friends had strong reactions to your death, and not just because we’re invested in your family and in your lives.  But because you were the one who got away. My smart, strong, independent, politically active and feminist friends had barely a chance to get to know you well before you were off to rallies for women’s rights and then to Ireland, having shrugged off your upper class upbringing and married the chauffeur whom you had always loved.

Now it’s true that a lot of us have since become interested in Edith – poor Edith – who is not quite as beautiful as you or Mary and has struggled as the middle child to find her place in the world. When she’s offered a position as a writer for a newspaper column shortly after your death, all we could think was “because that’s what unattractive women without husbands do – get jobs.”

But even so, you were the one who ultimately suffered the greatest punishment of all. You weren’t to be allowed your freedom and your happy life with your loving, working class husband. And truth be told, the pain and fear you went through touched a nerve for so many of my friends – even the middle class, healthy ones who are more likely to come through a pregnancy without complications.

I haven’t been through that stage of my life yet, but as a young woman in her late 20s, I am surrounded by friends who have. Becky has been trying to get pregnant for almost 4 years, and has suffered two miscarriages already. She didn’t see your death coming, and it impacted her deeply.  Jamie’s cousin had had placenta previa, a dangerous condition which left both mother and child fighting viciously for their lives. She, also, was struck silent and then deeply upset by your death.

Jessica Valenti, a feminist author and activist, wrote a compelling article in a magazine called The Guardian about a year ago which has stayed with me. In it, she details her own unexpected battle with pre-eclampsia, and the war she and her newborn daughter each fought to survive.  And how mother and child had then later struggled to bond as naturally as she had been led to believe they would.

On the fringes of such stories, I can hardly imagine such fear and pain for my life.

The risks are many, even almost 100 years after your death.  Today, three of the “Four Horsemen of Maternal Mortality” as they are called, are severe bleeding, infections post childbirth, and high blood pressure (preeclampsia and eclampsia, as you experienced).

The fourth is, of course, unsafe abortions. Every year, 42 million women seek abortions to terminate unwanted and unplanned pregnancies.  Half of those procedures are deemed unsafe, and 68,000 women die as a result each year, accounting for 13% of the global maternal mortality rate.  Of those who undergo an unsafe abortion and manage to survive, 5 million of them suffer serious, long-term health complications. Where you live in the United Kingdom, abortion wasn’t legal until 1967 – and even then, the law didn’t extend to Ireland.  It is only recently, after the death of a woman named Savita Praveen Halappanavar, who was denied an abortion at an Irish hospital and later died from pregnancy-related complications, that the country is considering altering their strict laws regarding abortion.

Of the hundreds of thousands of women who died last year due to complications from pregnancy, most of them suffered deaths that could have been fairly easily avoided. 35% of babies around the world are still delivered without the aid of a nurse, midwife, or doctor, significantly increasing the chances that mother or child or both will die.  Too many are delivering children with no prenatal care, no electricity, and in locations prone to infections and disease.

One of your doctors insisted that all was well, and both you and your baby would be fine. The other appropriately diagnosed you and claimed that your life would be at risk unless you were rushed to the hospital and the baby immediately delivered. As it turns out, the latter was right.

Better information, increased access to health care facilities, and the attention of competent health care professionals all dramatically increase the chances of survival and dramaticallydecrease the chances for complications and health problems for both mother and child.And some studies show that increased access to contraception and family planning could decrease maternal mortality rates by almost 1/3.

It’s too late to save you.  And I don’t know how my friends and I will feel as we wait for next week’s episode to show us how it is possible for a family to come through such a tragedy – even though hundreds of thousands of families do, every year, all over the world.

But what we can do is press on.  We can continue our work to end maternal mortality, which we’ve had quite a lot of success at over the past decade especially.  True, we have a long way to go before we are able to say that we have reduced these deaths by 75% from 1990 to 2015, as the United Nations Millenium Development Goals declare. But 13% of countries are on track to meet that goal and since 1980, there’s been a 35% decrease in maternal deaths globally.  This is progress.  Although it’s slow, we are at least heading in the right direction, increasing access to contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place, expanding health care services to the most vulnerable (poor, rural women in developing countries), and training health care professionals in maternal care.

We’re better off now than we were at the time of your death. But the truth is that your death could have easily happened in the world we live in today as well.  And saving the lives of the 210 million women who will get pregnant this year needs to remain one of the highest and most urgent priorities of the global community.

We’ll miss you, Sybil.

- Abigail, a fan.

This post is originally published on Left Standing Up and is cross posted with permission.

Photo credit: homestilo via photopin cc.

This post is originally published on Role/ Reboot.  It is cross posted with permission.  

The New York Times wants us to believe the End of Courtship is a disaster for young people, especially women. But new types of relationships—in which men and women are equal partners—inevitably require new ways of seeking them out, says Abigail Collazo.

The bizarre plethora of articles that has been published lately regarding young, single “millennials” and our dating/sex lives is mind-boggling. The Atlantic (not surprisingly) tops it out I think with recent pieces such as “A Million First Dates,” “Forget Online Dating: Here’s Something That Might Really Hurt Monogamy,” and “The High Price of Being Single in America.” Bloomberg presented us with “‘Intellectual Meat Market’ Makes Washington Long Odds for Single Women.” The Wall Street Journal recently published “Hacking the Hyperlinked Heart.” And of course, The New York Times just released “The End of Courtship,” an obituary to traditional dating and a cry for help for millennials who just don’t know how to navigate this new, tricky, casual, and tech-infused world of dating.

There has already been lots of criticism launched at The New York Times’ most recent attempts to use a few anecdotes as evidence of some sort of trend, and they’re spot on. So we’ll skip over for now the hetero-normative, cherry-picked, and unscientific aspects of this article and address the real concern: Does the new way of dating prevent the building of healthy relationships?

The End of Courtship and The Expansion of Women’s Rights

Courtship has traditionally been the period in which a male suitor pursued a female with the intent of marriage. A suitor’s family, wealth, and social standing were all major factors in whether the courtship would be encouraged by the woman’s family, leading to a prosperous marriage, or not. A woman of certain standing would be presented as ready to accept suitors at a “coming out ball,” and men dance with her and commence calling on her.

But our society is way, way beyond that now. Because of economics, technology, and of course expanded rights for women, we’re no longer even remotely close to that format of relationship-building. Times have changed.

Even as recently as a half century ago, women were no longer sold to the highest bidder, but we were still trapped in a system that prevented women from being fully engaged actors in the courtship ritual. I’m not saying a woman could never refuse a suitor, but we were hardly as free to pursue the relationships we wanted.

We were not permitted to act on our interest in a man, afraid we’d be considered “bold.” Contraceptives were not available to married women nationwide until the Griswold v. Connecticut case in 1965, and unmarried women until the Eisenstadt v. Baird case in 1972—meaning women didn’t have control over their reproductive cycles and were unable to fully explore their sexuality.

Women weren’t given the opportunity to be financially independent and therefore were forced to consider a man’s ability to care for them and any future children. We weren’t afforded the rights to leave a relationship that had turned abusive, and it wasn’t until 1993 that spousal rape was criminalized in all 50 states. All of this means that the traditions of courtship as we’ve understood it over the centuries has become radically outdated in today’s world.

Frankly, I’m delighted that the idea of courtship is being upended. For sure, my parents and many other couples from that generation are happily married. Then again, many aren’t. But this myth of “the good old days” is one that has been paraded around for generations—you know for sure that our parents, growing up in the free-love sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, also heard about their damaging relationships from their own elders.

This New York Times article isn’t about the end of courtship—it’s about how the end of courtship is ruining our lives and any chance at happiness. And that’s where it completely loses credibility. We are dating now via text message and websites, “hanging-out” and group activities. And it’s supposedly destroying us,“leaving a generation confused about how to land a boyfriend or girlfriend” because we don’t “know how to get out of hookup culture” and are fooled by “a false sense of intimacy.”

The conclusion is that somehow this leaves us all unfulfilled, confused about how to date, and ultimately completely screwing up the dating, and ergo the “marriage and relationships” thing. That the combination of hookup culture and technology has led to an inability of my generation (especially women) to form normal, healthy relationships.

But the truth is, as an intelligent and well-educated young woman, I’m just as concerned with avoiding an unfulfilling and unhealthy relationship as I am with finding a strong and healthy one.

Why has dating changed? Simple. Because marriage has. Relationships have. Our expectations for ourselves and our society have. And perhaps most importantly, for me and my girlfriends, our options have.

Despite the GOP’s War on Women and the attacks on women’s health and rights around the country, things have gotten astronomically better for women over the past few centuries or so, and certainly over the past 50 years. My friends and I are being taught the warning signs of abusive relationships. We no longer need to marry a man who can support us financially. We can delay childbirth until we’re ready. And in response, men are changing their expectations. Gender stereotypes are alive and well, but the men we know want a woman with a career, with ambitions and goals, who can carry her end of the conversation. One who doesn’t rely on their paycheck (recession, anyone?), and with whom they have something in common. As sexually liberated women, we want a man who respects and pleases us. Men want a woman who has some idea of what she wants, isn’t afraid to ask for it, and enjoys physical intimacy as much as they do.

If reporters at The New York Times are going to comment on how millennials are going about dating, they should take a closer look at what we’re trying to get out of dating. The game of traditional courtship is dying because its participants are no longer playing for the same ends.

How Women Are Navigating This New World of Dating

One of my girlfriends recently got out of a 10-year relationship she’d been in since college. We were chatting the other day about her intrigue with just this topic—how to flirt, the appropriate ways of reaching out to men via text/technology, how to decide whom to go to bed with and when, etc. I reminded her that working so hard to throw out the rule book for women—on what we could and could not do and should and should not do—meant that she could write her own rules. For what she wanted. For what would work for her and for her relationship alone.

What were her own qualifications for who she would sleep with? What were her boundaries? Did she want to explore a real relationship again, in a more formal way, or was she really looking to just have fun out on the town, meeting new people?

These are the questions of the new relationships and the new interactions in which men and women are engaging. How can anyone possibly say this is more damaging than the days in which women were bought and sold like cattle to the highest or most respectable bidder?

Society bemoans all of these different, more casual relationships as damaging and dangerous, but they’re simply an extension of the changing gender roles we’ve been experiencing for the past half century and more. And that’s not a bad thing—even when it comes to redefining relationships. Those of us with higher educations who get married later in life tend to stay married more often. The national divorce rate is higher now than it was a century ago, suggesting that people are getting out of marriages that aren’t working for them anymore, and yet the divorce rate has also been declining for the past two decades. And marriage equality has completely opened up such public relationships to an entire generation of people who’ve been denied their civil rights for far too long, while rebuilding our own perceptions of what marriage “should” be like.

So yes, my friends and I are upending the traditional courtship rituals. I admit it. And it certainly is messy and confusing at times. There’s no doubt that “The End of Courtship” resonated with many of my friends in its assertions that it’s hard to tell a date from a hangout from a get together from a potential meeting of soulmates. But traditional courtship offered me far fewer options and far less control over my life. These new relationships are the relationships of a new world of men and women, seeking what they want when they want it on equal footing and on equal ground.

If a man isn’t engaged enough, doesn’t want what I want, or doesn’t treat me the way I want or know I deserve, for the first time in history, a woman can just walk away.

Messy? Yes. Confusing? Definitely. Tricky? You bet.

Such is life. And I’ll take it.

Photo credit: **Mary** via photopin cc.

1. I’m wearing too much makeup
2. I’m not wearing enough makeup
3. It’s Sunday
4. It’s Tuesday
5. I’m walking too quickly
6. I’m walking too slowly
7. I’m too pretty to not let you enjoy a piece of it
8. I’m not pretty enough to occupy the space marked “female”
9. I’m wearing boots
10. I’m wearing flip flops
11. I haven’t let you have sex with me before
12. I’m not letting you have sex with me right now
13. I won’t be letting you have sex with me in the future
14. I’m in a public place after dark
15. I’m in a public place before dark
16. I’m looking at you
17. I’m not looking at you
18. I’m with a friend
19. I’m alone
20. I’m talking on my phone
21. I’m listening to my ipod
22. I’m holding a green bag
23. I’m holding a purple bag
24. I’m in a new neighborhood
25. I’m near my home
26. I’m a virgin and you can tell
27. I’m not a virgin and you can tell
28. I’m dressed up
29. I’m dressed down
30. I’m wearing an engagement or wedding ring
31. I’m not wearing an engagement or wedding ring
32. I’ve seen you before
33. I haven’t seen you before
34. I’m smiling
35. I’m not smiling
36. I’m frowning
37. I’m not frowning
38. I’m feeling something that I’m not expressing on my face and you don’t have any way of knowing what it is
39. I’m lost
40. I’m not lost

Or more likely, you just believe that you own me.

That you are entitled to my attention. You believe that you have a right to my body. You believe that as a woman, I owe you whatever you want whenever you want it. You are insecure in this belief, and so you feel the need to assert it. To assert your power and privilege over me in a space that belongs to men and in which I have no right to be unless it is on your terms. You believe that you are superior to me, and that I do not have the right to choose when and where and how and on what terms we will engage.

You believe that you have little to no control over yourself and your body, and ergo any behavior in which you engage is the direct result of my manipulation of you. That if I want to maintain my privacy and my control over my own body and my own life, then it is up to me and me alone to defend it. Because I should expect to be bothered, interrupted, attacked, or violated.  It is not about me and whether or not I am a woman and whether or not a woman is a person, entitled to the rights of other people. It is about the world and how the world is – how you created it, for yourself and for your fellow mankind.  And since it is neither my space nor my place, I should expect no rights, no privacy, and no respect once I am in it.

And if, as a man, you find yourself uncomfortable or not in full agreement with any of the statements above, then mind your own business.  Do not ask me how I like that book, just to entrap me in a conversation with you. Do not leer at me, tell me to smile, ask me why my boyfriend doesn’t travel with me, or whistle honk and yell at me.

In short, leave me alone. I’m on my way somewhere, I’m thinking about something, I’m engaged in my own world and my own life.  And it has nothing – nothing – to do with you.

This post is originally published on Left Standing Up.  It is cross-posted with permission.

photo credit: king of monks via photopin cc

Nobody warned me.

When I started to “come out” as a feminist activist – not just talking with friends, but sharing articles on Facebook, writing extensively about women’s rights, and participating in advocacy movements – nobody warned me.

Nobody warned me that friends, friends of friends, acquaintances, and sometimes total strangers who’d come across my writing online, would come to me with their stories. With their problems.  With their worries.

And come they did.  First it was Susan, who had seemed in a perfectly happy and healthy relationship. Except that as it turns out, her boyfriend pressured her to have sex with him every night, and was aggressive when she refused.  She was petrified of him. Then it was Rachel, who read about the tweet chat Fem2.0 hosted a few months ago at #EndtheSilence, where survivors of domestic violence spoke out on twitter about their experiences using anonymous Twitter accounts.  Rachel wanted to learn how to use Twitter so she could share her story, too. Then it was Nick, an acquaintance who sent me a Facebook message because one of his best friends from high school never spoke about her husband, but kept showing up at the emergency room with suspicious bruises.  Another time it was Roxanne, who’d been to court twice already to get restraining orders against her former boyfriend who was by all definitions of the word, stalking her.

And then there were the rapes.  My friends will sometimes talk as openly about the second time they were raped as my male friends will about the second time they had sex.  My girlfriends post social media updates about the sexual harassment they face on a daily basis (often detailing the exact intersection where it happened so as to warn others), will caution one another about the violent and controlling tendencies of a particular guy they met online, or else ask each other about the safety of a new neighborhood – particularly for a woman living alone.

The truth is, violence against women is everywhere. And not just in India, Syria, Somalia, Sri Lanka, or Ghana.   Here in America, it is a pervasive part of our society.  Even for those of us who believe our friends, our circles, are less susceptible to such violence than are others – still, it is everywhere.  When we open our eyes, when we are exposed to what is happening around us, in even the most seemingly unlikely of corners, we realize that none of us is immune to it.  Violence against women has come to be seen as almost inherent to the female experience.

And like the rest of society, the House of Representatives chose to not provide additional help and support to female survivors of violence for one reason – they don’t recognize it as a real problem.

I know what some of you are thinking – the House Republicans were just trying to derail President Obama’s agenda.  Or else they were using women as a political football, and it was all strategy.  These things aren’t false.  But the truth is that just as the establishment of the Republican Party doesn’t believe in government spending or in education for undocumented children or in investment in clean energy alternatives, they also don’t believe that women need and therefore deserve special protection or assistance.

The Violence Against Women Act

First, some quick background.  The Violence Against Women Act has been renewed with overwhelming bipartisan support since its inception in 1994.  This bill strengthens the criminal justice system and provides support to survivors of domestic violence.  Unfortunately, it also expired in October 2011, and with the 112th Congress officially finishing at the close of 2012, the Act is officially dead, requiring the 113th Congress to start from scratch.

VAWA is, quite literally, a life-saver for millions of women.  The bill has funded the training of 500,000 law enforcement officials in relevant issues, established the National Domestic Violence Hotline which receives 22,000 calls each month, and has led to a significant increase in not just the reporting of such violence, but also in the strengthening of legal protections and services for survivors.

This year, we wanted to do more.  The Senate version of the reauthorization bill included increased protections for LGBTQ, undocumented, and Native American women, all of whom are at significantly higher risk than other demographics. The reauthorized bill would have expanded protections to 30 million more women.

But the question of equality and human rights is what is really the issue here.  Because apparently these Republican Representatives who blocked the bill from coming to a vote believe that being gay, entering the country without a visa, or else living on a Native American reservation are all crimes that prohibit you from being entitled to protection and assistance in the event that you are assaulted.  Or maybe it’s just that the crime of being a woman simply means that there’s no such thing as a gender-based crime being committed against you, because your crime in existing means that frankly, you got what was coming to you.

Republicans did not want to extend special protections or resources to these special groups of women.  But the truth is that just as not all men are created equal, neither are all women created equal.

Does “Equality” Help or Hurt Our Cause?

In her 2006 book, Are Women Human?, feminist advocate and law professor Catherine MacKinnon explores the legal difficulties inherent in seeking “equality” for women. She writes:

Aristotle defined equality as treating likes alike and unlikes unalike. Treating those who are the same the same, first class equality in this approach, is termed gender neutrality for sex, colorblindness for race. Its secondary rule, accompanied by an aura of inferiority, treats diffrently those seen as different; it is typically termed “special benefits” or “special protection.”

So here we are with an understanding of the 14th Amendment, or more specifically the Equal Protection Clause, which states that the law cannot deny protection and rights to one person or group of people that is enjoyed by another person or group of people.  If you are alike, you must be treated alike.  If you are different, and you experience that difference in a way that is degrading or violent, it does not defy “equal protection” because you are experiencing that difference in a context of different.  MacKinnon explains further:

Sexual violence seems assimilated to the difference between the sexes, so a woman is not considered treated unequally when she is sexually victimized, just treated differently for her differences. Sexual assault is seen as inevitable. The fact that women are generally victimized and men generally perpetrate is not considered subject to equalization. When women are treated “differently” from men, from sexual objectification to sexual murder, the traditional equality rule is not seen as violated because the distinction made by the practice fits the empirical definition of the group. Women being defined as rapable, raping them doesn’t violate them; it merely treats them as women – unlikes unalike.

What does any of this have to do with the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act? Quite a lot, actually.

When the House of Representatives put forth their own version of the VAWA, the provisions and protections for these additional groups – LGTBQ, undocumented, and Native American women – had been stripped.  When asked about it on NPR, Representative Sandy Adams (R-FL) responded as follows:

Let’s not look – let’s not have a solution in search of a problem … What we have to remember is you start listing the groups. Eventually, you’re going to get to a point where you’re excluding people. 

And that’s the real problem, isn’t it? That Republicans don’t want to acknowledge that women are different – and not “good” different.  Different in the fact that we face scenarios and life style requirements that they can never understand or appreciate.  And that even within that very broad definition of “women,” there are specific demographics of women who experience violence at higher rates and in different ways.

Republicans refuse to understand this.  These legislators – almost exclusively men – who control our government and our public policy.

Why were additional protections and assistance written into the law for these demographics of women? Because these demographics of women are facing higher risk of violence and lower rates of support than other demographics of women.  This is what the evidence shows.

While the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs estimates that the rate of domestic violence for homosexual couples is roughly the same as heterosexual couples, the former are significantly less likely to seek or receive help, and women are the overwhelming majority of the victims when such cases end in death. Native American women suffer from violent crime at some of the highest rates in the U.S., particularly at the hands of non-Native American men, because the tribes have no authority over such men.  And as I’ve written about before, immigrant women face unique challenges in seeking aid for domestic violence cases. Immigration status is just an additional tool used by abusive spouses or partners to control their victims and exert power over their lives.  If the abuser has legal status in the United States, he can use that status to his victim’s disadvantage, often by threatening to report her to authorities or refusing to file the petitions and paperwork that would give the victim legal status in the U.S.

But Republicans don’t want to acknowledge this.  In their view, women are either the same, equal to men, or they aren’t.  But we can’t have it both ways. They don’t support affirmative action because they don’t want to acknowledge or officially recognize that racism and poverty and class do, in fact, play a role in higher education admissions or in hiring practices.  Even though we all know they do.

So what’s really going on here?  As far as I can see it, Republicans who blocked the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act from coming to a vote simply do not see this as an urgent need.  Or as a problem at all really, it seems.

Maybe it’s because they secretly don’t really believe that women are really victims here.  Maybe, like the New Delhi police, they secretly believe that women who are the victims of rape really deserved it.  Maybe they are all like Democratic Congressman Jim Moran, who, after his son was arrested for beating up his girlfriend, released a statement calling it “an accident,” instead of a crime.

One way or another, these Republicans didn’t view the safety and lives of women as being worthy of protection or support.

The 113th Congress

Less than two weeks ago, with the 112th Congress coming rapidly to a close, the 12 Democratic women serving in the Senate sent a letter to all 25 Republican women serving in the House of Representatives.  ”We are reaching out to you to ask for your help,” they wrote.  The letter urged the House Republican women to pass the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act, which included the increased protections and aid for the three additional groups of women. Because the truth is that despite differences, there exists a shared experience of being female in a male-dominated world.  A shared experience that women serving in government recognize.  And this extends beyond even just the officeholders – the Women’s Congressional Staff Association has over 100 members from both sides of the aisle, providing mentorship, guidance, support, and shared professional fellowship in their quest to support one another, regardless of party affiliation.

This morning, a record number of women were sworn in to serve as part of the 113th Congress: 20 in the Senate and 81 in the House of Representatives.  In fact, all kinds of gender-related records were broken in the 2012 Election cycle: women who filed for Senate races (36), women who won primaries for Senate seats (18), women who filed for House races (299), women who won primaries for House seats (166).

And, as has been documented, the women from both sides seem to have a way of coming together civilly (not, for instance, screaming the F word at one another on the floor), to actually get things done.  Women in Congress have crossed party lines – happily – to pass legislation not just on issues relating to women specifically, but also on children’s safety, national security, public health, transportation, and recommendations for Supreme Court nominations.

Senator Patty Murray, a longtime advocate for the bill, has vowed to absolutely bring up the Violence Against Women Act in the 113th Congress. Will her new female colleagues – from both sides of the hill and the aisle – aid her in its passage?  This new Congress is the most diverse Congress in history – it includes 19 new people of color, the first Hindu Representative and the first Buddhist Senator, the first openly gay Congressman of color, and the first openly bisexual Congresswoman, that our federal government has ever see.

Perhaps this new diversity will bring about the change we wish to see in the world.  Perhaps this new, diverse Congress with more female members than ever before, will be able to move forward on protecting and providing for survivors in a way that the previous Congress refused to do.

Maybe we can stop saying that “gender issues have to take a back seat to other priorities… [because] there is no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project.”  Because after all, even with the fiscal cliff negotiations, Sandy relief funding, and other issues that faced the 112th Congress in its dusk, can we really continue to claim that the health and safety – the lives – of women, aren’t worth the effort it takes to protect them?

Every two minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.  Every 15 seconds, somewhere in America, a woman is battered, usually by an intimate partner.  But every day, we also have a chance to do more to support and protect women, uniquely at risk for unique types of violence.

I don’t mention here the costs associated with violence against women.  What it costs us – in billions of dollars a year, what the court costs add up to, what the lost economic productivity of battered women amounts to.  Is it important? I suppose.  But ending violence against women and prosecuting perpetrators and providing help to survivors isn’t about cost.  It’s not about capitalism and about making our country as financially robust as possible.

It’s about women being people and people being women.  It’s about women’s rights being human rights and human rights being women’s rights. It’s simply the right thing to do.  Because women shouldn’t need to be men to be considered human.  For their rights to be considered as worthwhile.

Women are different from men.  There’s no doubt about it.  But being different doesn’t mean being less human.  It doesn’t mean violations against our minds and bodies, the denial of our freedoms or our liberties, aren’t human rights violations just because they didn’t happen to men – that status quo of humanity.

The 112th Congress failed in its quest to represent the American people in its failure to pass the Violence Against Women Act.  Let’s make sure the new Congress does better.

Lives – human lives – depend on it.

Photo Credits: PolicyMic and EMILY’s List

In John T. Bristow’s What Paul Really Said About Women, the Seattle Pastor sheds light on much of what the Judeo-Christian religions have interpreted to be the will of God when it comes to women’s roles.  One of the most enlightening sections addresses the idea that women should cover their heads while in public, particularly while in prayer.  Why is this? Bristow writes:

Jewish women were required to wear their hair bound up whenever they left their homes. Unbound, flowing hair was regarded as sensual and almost a form of nudity. If a woman let her hair down in public she was seen as tempting men to sin.

Women who wore their hair uncovered were thought to be either prostitues or Pagan worshippers.  While in prayer, Christian women of certain faiths are supposed to cover their heads not just because it would be temping to the men, but also to the angels who look down upon them.

And so this idea that women’s sexuality is a temptation that no man can withstand against goes back far in our culture.  It is, I believe, one reason why we constantly judge what women wear when they are being raped.  Or what a woman did to entrap a highly respected man in her web of sexual misconduct.

It is why, when Wired Magazine put together a list of the 15 Most Dangerous People in the World, they decided to include Paula Broadwell.

Because let’s be honest, this temptress – who couldn’t know her place and at least be gracious enough to have kept her desire to ruin a man’s career to herself – is a threat to one and all of us.

Now, don’t get me wrong. While I’m the last person in the world to claim that what someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom should be subject to the judgment of the public, there is a caveat there – and that is to those lives who are given up to the public.  General Patraeus was a public servant, and of the highest-rank.  It wasn’t just his commitment to serve the public, which I believe demands a level of moral leadership, but also his specific case that made this affair so troublesome and so dangerous, exposing the CIA to blackmail, among other potential landmines.

But in looking at Paula Broadwell – the biographer behind a bestselling book about the General, and a self-described National Security Analyst – one has to wonder if a certain point hasn’t escaped the writers over at Wired Magazine.  Paula Broadwell is not a public servant. Nor is she a four star General.  Nor is she a member of the President’s cabinet. Nor is she entrusted with the safety and security of the nation. She’s a woman who pursued an affair with a married man.

Surely, I have as little love for a woman who commits adultery as anyone else, but is she really the dangerous one? Wired Magazine admits that “she didn’t mean to wreck any careers.” But her actions – daring to become involved with one of the most respected military men of his generation – put the entire country at risk.

And yet, here’s what I’m missing: Where was General Petraeus in all this? When we look at cases of sexual misconduct – from adultery to assault – we are always looking for where to place the blame.  Whose fault was it? Who can we tar and feather in a public forum to show our moral outrage and indignation?

And it seems to me that the person to blame is always the woman, and the person to sympathize with is always the man.  Our society is rampant with this idea that men are all sexually aggressive little boys who can’t control themselves in the presence of a woman, and anything a man does with said woman is her fault. Women shouldn’t wear short skirts because it is tempting to men.  Women shouldn’t leave the house with their faces uncovered because it is tempting to men.  Women shouldn’t flirt with men because they won’t be able to help themselves.

Personally, I wonder that even men aren’t insulted by this.  Paula Broadwell did no one any favors here, but to put her on a list of the 15 Most Dangerous People in the World implies that her sexual wiliness is far too much to expect any normal man to handle.  It was she who lured General Petraeus into her den and entrapped him in her secret web of treachery and deceit.

After all, what is General Petraeus, but a man? A highly decorated 4-star General who then served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (let’s leave that irony for another time) and a member of President Obama’s cabinet.  And we expect a simple, plain-spoken man such as this to avoid the overpowering sexuality of a woman? Nonsense.

And so we’ve acknowledged that Paula Broadwell – the only woman on this list of the 15 Most Dangerous People in the World – is a serious threat.  Let’s take a quick look at just two others who made the list:

Joaquim “El Chapo” Guzman – a notorious billionaire Mexican drug lord who runs the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for much of the bloodshed, murders, and violence related to the narco-trafficking trade.

Bashar al-Assad – Current President of Syria, originally hoped to bring change and reform to his country, but instead who has continued human rights abuses and brutal government crackdowns in a civil war that has claimed  between 40,000 and 55,000 thousand lives.

Let’s be honest, when it comes to luring a man into behavior that is not only sexually inappropriate but also a threat to national security, funding the drug war and brutally cracking down on civilians don’t really seem all that bad, right?

General Petraeus has resigned from his position as Director of the CIA and publicly apologized to his family and the public at large.  Ostensibly, he used “poor judgement.”

But I have to wonder when the public will start to be as outraged at him as we are at Paula Broadwell.  When we will start to hold him responsible for his actions, instead of blaming them on a woman who surely could not have had more to do with the affair than he did?

If Wired Magazine is going to put together a list of the 15 Most Dangerous People in the World, and is determined to mention the Broadwell-Petraeus affair as wrecking havoc on the globe, perhaps the author and editors should have considered General Petraeus, the man who betrayed his country and exposed us to such risk, instead of a woman who had pledged neither her life nor her career to the American people.

Photo Credits: NRC Online, ISAF via Getty Images.

As much as Republicans wish that this election was only about the economy and what Obama has or hasn’t done, immigration reform and women’s rights are very much front and center.  But those issues aren’t mutually exclusive, and it’s time that the rights of immigrant women specifically were a part of the national conversation.

Immigrant women in the United States face challenges that those of us who were born and raised here can only marginally identify with and understand.  Yes, many of us experience domestic violence, sexual harassment, unequal pay, and other such injustices, or at least know someone who has.  But while I’m championing the provisions in Obama’s health care law that provide most of us with increased access to birth control, immigrant women are facing much higher levels of serious and life-threatening challenges that no one is talking about.

Enter Breakthrough and the #ImHere for Immigrant Women campaign.  In their own words, Breakthrough is an organization that uses innovative media & technology to change the world: producing video games, music videos, animations, and films for human rights.  Operating in both the United States and India, Breakthrough campaigns to raise public awareness and advocate for the most vulnerable among us have won awards and changed the way we think and operate.

Their newest campaign is an inspiration and a gamechanger.  There are so many ways in which immigrant women have been – and are – invisible to us.  Invisible to our politics, to our public policies, to all the conversations our community is having about feminism and gender equality and social justice.  But they can’t be.  They can’t be invisible, and we can’t allow them any longer to live in fear in the shadows.  Here are just a few situations immigrant women are facing:

Unequal Pay: Many immigrant women are sole breadwinners for their families, particularly in this economy.   But they earn 13 percent less than their male counterparts and 14 percent less than female U.S. citizens.

Sexual Assault and Harassment in the Workplace:  Immigrants trying to eke out a living here in the U.S. often operate in the shadows of employment law.  Women who work as factory workers, sweatshop laborers, nannies, home care workers, and so many other low-paid positions are frequent, easy targets for sexual predators.  As women in the United States have slowly but surely entered the workforce and climbed the career ladder, leaving their homes and earning degrees to provide them with better paying jobs, a vacuum has emerged, to be filled with immigrant women.  Immigrant women have now replaced white, more educated women in the homes and in low-wage jobs around the country.  (It’s worth noting that as recently as 2010, New York passed the very first Domestic Workers Right law in the nation that spelled out protections for workers such as elderly care givers, housekeepers, and nannies).

Agriculture is a field in which female workers are particularly vulnerable.  A report issued by Human Rights Watch just this past May concluded that immigrant farm workers face high risk of sexual assault and harassment in the form of rape, stalking, unwanted touching, exhibitionism, and more by their employers, supervisors, and others in positions of power.  An estimated 630,000 of the 3 million people who perform migrant and seasonal farm work are women, and the federal government estimates that 60 percent of them are undocumented immigrants.  Some reports indicate that up to half have experienced some form of sexual assault or harassment.

Domestic Violence: Immigration status is just an additional tool used by abusive spouses or partners to control their victims and exert power over their lives.  If the abuser has legal status in the United States, he can use that status to his victim’s disadvantage, often by threatening to report her to authorities or refusing to file the petitions and paperwork that would give the victim legal status in the U.S.

The Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) compromise brokered in the Senate this past spring included increased opportunities for undocumented immigrants facing domestic violence to apply for U visas (a specific type of visa given to victims of specific types of crimes that gives them temporary legal status and work eligibility for up to 4 years).  However, this provision (along with many others) did not make it into the version voted on by the House of Representatives.  While immigrant women stay in homes that remain a threat to their life and safety, under the control of abusive spouses or partners, the Violence Against Women Act has stalled in Congress due to Republican opposition.

It’s not surprising that Breakthrough is taking on this issue.  Their past work for immigrant rights includes the video games ICED (ICEDgame.com), America 2049 (America2049.com), and Homeland Guantanamos (homelandgitmo.com), through which 25 million people worldwide have seen the importance of understanding the injustices and abuse that is rife in our immigration system.  Breakthrough is also well-known for its long standing work on advocating an end to violence against women: their longest-running campaign, Bell Bajao (“Ring the Bell”), has called millions of men and boys to stand up against domestic violence and trained more than 75,000 young people across India to advocate for equality in their own homes and communities.

Now, Breakthrough is spotlighting its innovative media work on the intersection between these two social justice issues: the plight of immigrant women.

Breakthrough is the work of CEO and Founder, Mallika Dutt.  I had the chance to talk with Mallika last May, when she was awarded an honorary degree from our shared alma mater, Mount Holyoke College.  We talked about the future of feminism and the role that young women like me and the Fem2 community are playing in the fight for women’s rights.

She cautioned me not to get too caught up in the long-held accusation that US feminism has always been a wealthy, white women’s world.  Understanding the complexities of feminism means understanding the complexities of culture, of wealth, of family and community perception.  It means not just seeking more diversity and the input of more women of color and diverse experiences, but also actively addressing the needs of individual communities of women who face unique challenges.  Challenges such as those facing immigrant women – both those who are here in the United States legally and those who are undocumented.

The truth is, all of us are either immigrant women or descendent from immigrant women.  Women’s issues aren’t just about blanket social justice reform and equal rights – we need to recognize, acknowledge, and bring to light the unique communities of women in this country and take active steps to ensure that human rights are their rights, and their rights are human rights.

The 2012 election is just 71 days away, and we need to ensure that the plight of immigrant women is finally heard.  Now is the time to show widespread, public support for true justice and all the people who reside within our borders.

Here’s how you can join the #ImHere campaign:

1) Take a photo of yourself holding a sign that says “I’m here.”

2) Go to the #ImHere Tumblr’s “submit” page.

3) Upload your picture, write a caption, and confirm.

4) SHARE AND SPREAD THE WORD!  Post your photo and caption to your Facebook wall and be sure to tag @Breakthrough. Then, tweet: #ImHere to support the rights of immigrant women. Are you? http://ow.ly/bKlar #waronwomen @breakthrough.

Mallika Dutt reminds us: “The women facing these fears daily aren’t in Juarez or Kabul. They are here.”

And that means that as their neighbors, colleagues, and friends, we need to stand with them.  Will you?

Photo Credit: Associated Press, 2011.