Just days since a massive campaign was launched by a coalition of more than 40 groups and individuals, advertisers have already begun to act swiftly about seeing their ads adjacent to images depicting rape and violence against women on Facebook. Indeed, the response has inspired hope that the demands in the Open Letter to Facebook may just be met.

For those who missed it, organizers of the campaign are asking Facebook to take action about gender-based violent imagery and pages that proliferate on the site, while its moderators act quickly to remove similarly graphic and hurtful content that is racist or homophobic. Examples of these pages include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus and Violently Raping Your Friends Just for Laughs. This is not new. Back in November 2011, I wrote about several pages on Facebook, including It’s Not Rape if you Yell Surprise and Kicking Sluts in the Vagina Because it’s Funny Watching Your Foot Disappear. When you combine this with tolerance, or even implied approval, of photo memes that depict violence against women with taglines like, “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up,” it adds up to a long history of a corporate culture that is a willing participant in spreading gender-based hate speech and rape culture.

As the coalition explains in an official statement:

Specifically, the group demands that the social media giant take three specific actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that Facebook will not tolerate this content.
2. Train Facebook’s content moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

The message to Facebook is accompanied by a massive social media campaign, calling on advertisers such as Dove and American Express to pull their advertising from Facebook until they can be assured it won’t appear next to content that promotes rape or domestic violence.

And so far, several advertisers are not just listening, but reacting to the campaign. Half-a-dozen companies, including Candyopolis and Nissan UK, have pulled their ads after receiving campaign information released on May 21. At least as many companies have responded and have said they are looking into the situation, one of which being American Express. Unfortunately, a few companies including Dove, VistaPrint, and Audible, have declined to take action.

It’s time for Facebook to change and we’re glad to see that so many advertisers agree! (You can get updates on where companies stand on the Women, Action & the Media campaign page.)

We at Feminism 2.0 are proud to have signed on to this campaign (as well as this author, as The Sin City Siren) and we want to thank the campaign organizers for their diligence and hard work to launch and follow through with this seminal campaign, which may just change the landscape of Facebook and social media.

Follow the latest on the facebook campaign here and by using the hashtag #FBrape on twitter.

Image by Geoff Livingston, via Creative Commons.

On May 9th, thousands of  Canadians traveled to the nation’s capital and took part in the ‘Campaign for Life’ - an annual gathering of the anti-choice community to protest Canada’s pro-choice stance. In ‘solidarity’, regional chapters of the Campaign for Life coalition organized similar small-scale protests that will occur throughout the month of May.

Last week was New Brunswick’s turn.

A few hundred anti-choice protesters met at our provincial legislature in Fredericton and engaged in a walk throughout the downtown corridor ending at the ‘Women’s Care Clinic’,  the aggressive New Brunswick anti-choice headquarters that is disguised as a women’s center. As New Brunswick lacks a law protecting women from anti-choice harassment, this ‘center’ is  conveniently located next to the Morgentaler clinic, the province’s only public abortion provider.

Yet I hesitate to even use the term ‘protesters’. The group, although dominated by adults, contained many children who were forced to walk alongside their parents. Forced to take a day off of school to protest a social issue for which they lack understanding. Forced to hold signs projecting hate – with faces of children, outlines of fetuses, and frightening words.

Forced to convict the 50 or so of us pro-choice activists who formed a human chain of protection around the clinic as ‘murderers’.

But for many children who group up in anti-choice households, associating abortion with murder is the only reality they know. In their eyes, there are only two options that are morally just: motherhood or adoption.

In their eyes, it’s really that simple. Isn’t this, after all, what women were ‘made’ to do?

But for those faced with an unwanted pregnancy, and for those stemming from the result of one, their reality is anything but.

I have accepted that I am the product of an unwanted pregnancy.

I was not wanted. Was unintended. Unexpected.

I won’t lie: to write that, say it, even think it, hurts. And it would for anyone. Most of us fear rejection from our family, friends, and partners. But for adopted children, like me, we were just that: rejected. And right from the get go. Some refer to this as the ‘ultimate rejection’ or the ‘first trauma’. But, over time, I’ve come to accept my reality, just as my birth mother had to accept her reality that the child she was bearing was completely and utterly unwanted.

In 1984, when I was born, my birth mother didn’t have a lot of reproductive options. It wasn’t until 1988 that Canada saw the introduction of a law that supported a woman’s right to an unrestricted abortion. While I don’t know the specifics of her situation, I assume my birth mother saw three options available to her at the time – an illegal and potentially life-threatening abortion, raising a child she did not want to raise, and adoption.

And so she ‘chose’ (if we can call such limited options a choice) the latter, and here I am. In my eyes, her decision to pursue an adoption was brave, selfless  and loving. I imagine the social stigmatization she faced. The discrimination she feared. The isolation she more than likely encountered. And following months of such unjust treatment, not to mention the pure physical torment of pregnancy, she then had to give me away and say goodbye for good.

Maybe leaving the hospital without me was easy, and perhaps it wasn’t. But the process she was forced to endure resulting from a lack of reproductive choice was definitely anything but easy. Anything but ‘simple’.

Neither is the reality of adoption. Living life, as a twitter friend of mine so brilliantly coined, as the ‘Elephant in the Room’.

It’s the issue that no one wants to talk about and no one really understands. As a result, there is a lack of discussion about adoptive issues: rejection, isolation, a general lack of knowing about oneself. Adoption seems to make people uncomfortable, as if an adoptee has an illness that lacks societal compassion. People view us as shunned, unlucky, and ‘injured’, as if we all inherently have someone wrong with us.

They see us, as many adoptees continue to see themselves, as unwanted.

So no, adoption is not ‘simple’. Not for the mother, or the child.

Adoption is a wonderful choice, and a choice that I am beyond proud that my birth mother ‘chose’ for both of us. But adoption is not the right choice for everyone. Not all women are wanting or able to proceed with the challenges associated with adoption.

And even if they all wanted to, or if all were forced to, the harsh reality remains: there are not enough loving families in the world to adopt all the children that result from unwanted pregnancies. MILLIONS OF CHILDREN would grow up without families, would remain unloved and, just as they were born, would continue to live their lives unwanted.

A world without abortion hurts women and children. It’s as simple as that.

This is why abortion is such an important reproductive option. This is what the anti-choice community needs to understand. But perhaps more importantly, this is what the children of anti-choice families, like the ones I witnessed today, need to learn. A world without access to abortion is a world where ‘choice’ does not exist.

Photo credit: alexandralee via Creative Commons

*Trigger warning*

Starting on May 21, a coalition of more than two dozen organizations — including Led by Women, Action & the Media, The Everyday Sexism Project, and author Soraya Chemaly — are calling on Facebook to end its complicit approval of memes and pages that promote violence against women and gender-based hate speech.

As the coalition explains in an official statement released today:

Specifically, the group demands that the social media giant take three specific actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that Facebook will not tolerate this content.
2. Train Facebook’s content moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

The message to Facebook is accompanied by a massive social media campaign, calling on advertisers such as Dove and American Express to pull their advertising from Facebook until they can be assured it won’t appear next to content that promotes rape or domestic violence.

Examples of these pages include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus and Violently Raping Your Friends Just for Laughs. This is not new. Back in November 2011, I wrote about several pages on Facebook, including It’s Not Rape if you Yell Surprise and Kicking Sluts in the Vagina Because it’s Funny Watching Your Foot Disappear. When you combine this with tolerance, or even implied approval, of photo memes that depict violence against women with taglines like, “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up,” it adds up to a long history of a corporate culture that is a willing participant in spreading gender-based hate speech and rape culture.

Indeed, the ubiquitous nature and incredible cultural power of Facebook has been leveraged as a unique tool for rape culture and to promote violence against women. Last month, Retaeh Parsons killed herself after more than a year of cyber bullying following her sexual assault in 2011. Her very attackers posted photos of the incident on Facebook and proceeded to use that evidence to mock and harass her for months on end until, finally, she could take no more and ended her life. And she is not the only one.

That alone would be enough. The very fact that the power of social media sites — Facebook being nearly the king of the hill, so to speak — can be harnessed for such malevolence is a testament to its power to harm. So, when a brand like Facebook allows the “humor” sites like What’s 10 Inches and Gets Girls to Have Sex With Me? My Knife to proliferate, there is a very real consequence to that act.

And let’s be clear. For all its hand-wringing and cries of First Amendment rights, Facebook has a history of acting to remove anti-Semetic, Islamophobic, and homophobic speech. Facebook is a public forum, yes. But it is governed by the same rules and laws that prohibit me from walking into a crowded movie theater and shouting, “Fire!” when there is none. We have Freedom of Speech, but speech is not free.

Further evidence to the misogynistic culture that Facebook is either willfully or indirectly complicit in is the fact that the company has a long history of removing another kind of page and photo memes: That of breast-feeding women. It’s a curious thing that the Facebook will protect the rights of misogynists who want to promote rape culture but not the rights of women who want to promote a biological act which feeds infants.

This is a fight we can win. Facebook is not too big to listen, just ask the UFC. Two years ago, I joined a coalition of organizations to take on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to get them to enact a code of conduct to address rape jokes and homophobic speech that fighters were proliferating on social media. There was a lot of resistance from UFC CEO Dana White, until advertisers like the US Marines started pulling their ads and support for the organization until they cleaned up their act. Earlier this year, the UFC enacted a code of conduct, and used it to suspend a fighter for transphobic comments. If a brand like the UFC, which has built itself partially on a kind of hyper-masculinity that tends to dovetail into rape culture, can change its ways, so can Facebook.

In an open letter to Facebook, feminist coalition partners said the following:

In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence. We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue.

It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Be a part of the solution, Facebook.

Photo by Chase Carter via Creative Commons

Read here  the open letter to Facebook

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

My antenna zoomed up in February when Loretta Ross, currently Activist-In-Residence, at Smith College, in her key-note address at the Take Root conference, spoke about how Reproductive Justice framing had been stimulated by women of color’s exposure to and interaction with the international women’s community. The human rights framing that international activists spoke from was not commonly used among US based groups at the time, in the early 1990s. As a kind of side comment, Ross mentioned that their Reproductive Justice concepts were now beginning to expand and deepen international human rights work.

Two simultaneous images popped into my mind’s eye. One was the significance of learning from and being exposed to groups in other countries and cultures. Second, is how good old American ingenuity, in this case personal is political experiences of women of color, can deepen the human-rights-political context.

Since stepping into my present work to galvanize, and resource, the US based women-lead media community with a long term aim to encourage its interaction with the international women’s media community, I had instinctively known a part of this equation of global interactions. Suddenly, Ross’ comments provided me a new framework in which to explore and deepen an analysis of women’s media within a gender justice frame. Most critically, I began to see how points of evolution within the trajectory of Reproductive Justice can propel growth of gender justice media forward.

“We were making double time to keep up. It made us very humble. Something most Americans are not used to,” recounted Loretta Ross when I spoke with her on the phone in March. She was describing how American women of color health activists were behind the curve at the 1994 global meeting in Cairo, UN International Conference on Population and Development.  Ross described how a number of these women of color “de-briefed” shortly after the Cairo meeting at the Illinois Pro-Choice conference.

Zakiya Luna, MSW, PhD, University of California, President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at the School of Law, has been documenting the history and evolutions within the Reproductive Justice movement since 2007. About the Black Women’s Caucus at the Chicago Pro-Choice conference in 1994, she writes “reproductive health integrated into social justice” became the new framing that these women crafted from the combined lessons of their own practice and their interaction with international human rights activists. This new theory was midwifed from practical, experiential activism.  Over time, and through creation, and evolutions, of a national network, SisterSong, the 1994 phrase has been shortened to Reproductive Justice.

In Ireland, I called Niall Behan, Chief Executive of the Irish Family Planning Association, the country’s leading sexual health charity. “We are always looking to the international community for what new issues are emerging.  A few years back Loretta Ross gave a very informative seminar,” Behan recalled. He explained how the complications of a blanket ban on contraceptives makes achievement of their mission “promoting the right of all people to sexual and reproductive health information and dedicated, confidential and affordable healthcare services” challenging.

“Loretta gave us a framework in which to look at all these issues. Also on class issues, how failure to have comprehensive reproductive health care impacts most severely on poor women. People can see the links, that there is a common thread between poverty and health care, for instance.”

Behan concluded our conversation with this important comment, “Anti-choice work in Ireland is borrowed from evangelists in the U.S. So, it is good to get something back. Loretta’s analysis is very very helpful.”

Luna points to various other developments and international organizations that are crafting Reproductive Justice concepts into their work. Resurj is an international network of global young women “realizing sexual and reproductive justice” with a very powerful vision statement.  Among their work is a Call to Action in which they seek a revisit of Cario@20 platform originally formed two decades ago.  Especially in light of today’s youth demands for “fulfillment of human rights, including sexual and reproductive rights” they desire a fuller, more comprehensive analysis.

In Oakland, CA Core Align has a mission to “build a network of leaders working innovatively to change policies, culture and conditions that support all people’s sexual and reproductive decisions.”

Also, Luna outlined how new laws, for instance in California prevent all shackling of pregnant women. This evolved from a better understanding of what it means to be a pregnant incarcerated woman.

A sprinkling of brand new academic programs such as the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice, at the Yale Law School and Program for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice (SRRJ) at the University of Michigan are addressing reproductive justice analysis in their studies. A third program is the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law where Luna leads the center’s working group. She joined Kristin Luker and Jill Adams in “founding and shaping the first – and to date the only – multi-disciplinary policy research center dedicated to reproductive rights and justice.”

For women to see their many layered, lived experiences as the fundamental impetus for their actions is the true benefit that reproductive justice is bringing to women, not solely women of color. This was abundantly clear in story after story that unfolded at Take Root. The integration of many issues—economy, housing, education, information, etc—into an over-arching analysis is re-invigorating activism, going back to original roots of the early women’s liberation movement. As Luna states, “The problems are mutli-faceted, so therefore the solutions need to be multi-faceted, as well.”

A conference, Reproductive Justice: Activists, Adocates and Academics in Ann Arbor at the end of May is a strategic meeting ground for formulating new research that is informed by applied projects and advocacy.

There is lots of organizing to do, papers to write, systemic change to make in women’s real lives that the dynamic theories of reproductive justice can foster. There is a vital role for gender justice media making – as a cacophony of women’s voices, visions and information exchange – to play in broadcasting these processes and women’s lived experiences.  The good international gathering place to shop that energy around is the next International Forum of AWID, in Spring 2015 spurting a big learning curve for all of us! Check out AWID’s Resource and Learning Hub: Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women’s Rights and Justice, as a first step.

Ariel Dougherty, national director of Media Equity Collaborative, writes about the intersections of gender justice media, women’s rights and their funding. Research and documents she has developed over the past years can be found  at http://www.scribd.com/ariel_dougherty

Credit: Charlotte Cooper, under Creative Commons

Monday, May 20 is the 20th Anniversary of the signing on the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Let’s celebrate! Join us Monday, May 20 at 1 PM ET for a Twitter chat on #NVRAat20.

Join Project Vote, Demos, Fem2pt0, Asian American Justice Center, Fair Elections Legal Network, Advancement Project, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, League of Women Voters, and others for the #NVRAat20 tweet chat on Monday, May 20 at 1 PM ET. We’ll discuss how Americans register to vote, the importance of this cornerstone law, how Project Vote and partners are taking action to improve enforcement of the NVRA to help more Americans register to vote, and what is the future for voter registration in the U.S.

Prior to the NVRA, there were widely divergent and confusing state laws that hindered voter registration. States each had their own forms, systems, requirements, and procedures for voter registration and voter list maintenance, creating too much confusion and too much potential for partisan manipulation. Voting rights, civic participation, and citizens pushed for the NVRA to make it easier for all Americans to register to vote and to maintain their registration.

The major provisions of the NVRA require:

• That registration services be offered at driver’s license bureaus; public assistance and disability agencies;
• The creation of a simple, national federal voter registration form that could substitute for the state forms that local officials had controlled (with the added mandate that states allow for mail-in registration); and
• Safeguards on the procedures for purging voters already on the rolls.

Thanks to the NVRA, an estimated 141 million Americans have applied to register to vote through their DMV or public agencies.

More work needs to be done to make voting free, fair, and accessible for all!

Take action in support of reducing barriers to voting. Let’s make Same Day Registration universally available. Sign the petition: http://chn.ge/10pAR2H

The NVRA has fulfilled its promise of streamlining voter registration and offering more access to voter registration through government offices. Now is the time for voters and advocates to push for Same Day Registration (also known as Election Day Registration), the next step in reducing barriers to voting caused by registration requirements. Same Day Registration means that eligible Americans can register when they go to the polls and cast their ballots. A national law was introduced this year, and we’ve created a petition to demand action to bring Same Day Registration to every state on the occasion of this important anniversary.

Photo by DH Parks via Creative Commons license

When I read about Angelina Jolie’s announcement this week, I cringed.

I have greatly admired her willingness to speak out on important issues over the years. Her public announcement about her mastectomies will certainly reassure some women that losing a breast to breast cancer isn’t quite as frightening as it had once seemed. But Ms. Jolie is a powerful role model to millions of women. What are the unintended consequences of the role she is modeling regarding breast cancer?

Is breast cancer so frightening that it is better for a woman to remove her breasts before she is even diagnosed? Obviously, that isn’t what Ms. Jolie is saying. She has one of the breast cancer genes (BRCA1), and that greatly increases her chances of getting breast cancer.

However, the extremely high risk that she quoted from her doctor (87 percent chance of getting breast cancer) was based on old, small studies. Newer studies have found that the risk of getting breast cancer for an average woman with BRCA1 is 65 percent. Since being overweight and smoking increase the risk and exercising and breastfeeding lower the risk, Ms. Jolie’s risk of breast cancer, even with the BRCA1 gene, could be considerably lower.

Of course, the lifetime risk of breast cancer would still be high, but it wouldn’t be nearly as high a risk during the next 10 years or even 20 years. According to experts, a 40-year-old woman with the BRCA1 gene has a 16 percent chance of getting breast cancer before she turns 50. That’s not nearly as frightening, and with regular screening and all the progress in breast cancer treatments, the survival rate from breast cancer is higher than ever. Many breast cancer patients live long and healthy lives. And, it is possible that by the time Ms. Jolie (or any other woman with BRCA1) got breast cancer in the future–if she ever did–the treatments available would be even more effective than they are today.

Thanks to mammograms, women are getting diagnosed with breast cancer at much earlier stages, making it safe to undergo a lumpectomy (which removes just the cancer) rather than a mastectomy (which removes the entire breast). And yet, American women are undergoing mastectomies at a higher rate than women in other countries–many of them medically unnecessary. Breast cancer experts believe that many women undergoing mastectomies don’t need them and are getting them out of fear, not because of the real risks.

As an actress whose appeal has focused on her beauty, surgically removing both her breasts when she didn’t have cancer was a very gutsy thing to do. But if we care about women’s health, we need to stop thinking of mastectomy as the “brave” choice and understand that the risks and benefits of mastectomy are different for every woman with cancer or the risk of cancer. In breast cancer, any reasonable treatment choice is the brave choice.

Nobody can second-guess Angelina Jolie’s choice–it’s hers alone to make. Fortunately for her, she has access to the best reconstructive surgeons in the country, and they will keep her breasts looking as natural and beautiful as possible, an advantage that most implant patients don’t have. If she has any of the common problems with her breast implants, she can afford to get those problems surgically fixed whenever she wants to. She can also afford breast MRIs every other year ($2,000 each), which the Food and Drug Administration recommends as a way to make sure that the silicone from the implants is not leaking into the lymph nodes.

Angelina Jolie is not in any way an average woman, and what felt right for Angelina Jolie might not be right for most women who are afraid of getting breast cancer, and not even for most women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene.

I thank Ms. Jolie for speaking up about her decision, and I thank the many cancer experts who are doing their best this week to explain why double mastectomies are not the best choice for most women. Let’s use this teachable moment to have a frank discussion of the treatment choices for breast cancer and to encourage women to make decisions based on their own situations, not on the choice of a celebrity, however admirable she is. For each woman, it’s important to weigh her own risk of cancer–in the next few years, and not just over her lifetime–and the risks of various treatments, and to make the decision that is best for her.

Diana Zuckerman is the president of the National Research Center for Women & Families and the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Fund. She received her PhD in psychology from Ohio State University and was a post-doctoral fellow in epidemiology and public health at Yale Medical School. After serving on the faculty of Vassar and Yale and as a researcher at Harvard, Dr. Zuckerman spent a dozen years as a health policy expert in the U.S. Congress and a senior policy adviser in the Clinton White House. She is the author of five books, several book chapters, and dozens of articles in medical and academic journals, and in newspapers across the country

Photo Credit: TipsTimes via Creative Commons

This piece was originally posted on Huffington Post and it was cross-posted here with permission.

Cross-posted here with permission from Bitch Flicks. 

Superhero films often exhibit assertive, outspoken female characters. Yet they often simultaneously objectify women’s bodies, reduce them to ancillary love interests or perpetuate gender stereotypes. So when I heard that Pepper Potts would have a more active role in Iron Man 3, I was excited yet remained cautiously skeptical.

Gwyneth Paltrow eagerly talked about putting on the Iron Man suit and getting tired of the “damsel in distress”:

“I was really hoping that Pepper would be more engaged in this movie…So I was really happy, not only that she was wearing the suit, but that you see her really on equal ground with Tony in their interpersonal dynamic, and as a CEO, and then she’s got all this action… I think in order to move things forward and keep it fresh, you can only be the damsel in distress for so long, and then it’s old.”

Producer and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige also said they wanted to “play with the convention of the damsel in distress…there is fun to be had with “Is Pepper in danger or is Pepper the savior?” over the course of this movie.” Okay, okay, this all sounds awesome to me.

Now I’m all for subverting gender norms. But is Pepper really empowered? Or does she really remain a rearticulation of the Damsel in Distress trope?

When Pepper puts on the Iron Man suit, it’s not of her own volition. It’s not because she cleverly thought of it. Tony, who can now recall his arsenal of Iron Man suits on command, remotely puts it on Pepper to save her during an attack. Once she’s in the suit of armor, Pepper does make the most of it as she gets scientist Maya (who of course has to have had a sexual past with Tony) to safety and protects Tony from a falling ceiling as well.

However, when Gwyneth Paltrow discussed putting on the suit, I envisioned an assertive move by Pepper — that she boldly decides to put on the armor so she can go out and save Tony. Not something she passively has placed on her body by a man. What could have been an interesting exploration of Pepper and gender becomes a wasted opportunity.

Just because Pepper donned the Iron Man suit for like two minutes, doesn’t mean she isn’t a “damsel in distress.” She still is for a majority of the film. Archvillian Aldrich Killian kidnaps Pepper and ties her up, using her as bait to lure Tony and blackmail him. Yep, that sounds like a passive damsel to me.

In Iron Man, Pepper is Tony’s personal assistant and according to him, his only true friend. In Iron Man 2, she becomes the CEO of Stark Industries. By The Avengers, they co-exist as a team, partners both in romance and work as Pepper helps Tony develop Stark Tower and the Arc Reactor. In each film, Pepper grows and progresses to have a more important role. So how did Pepper — Tony’s friend, partner and brilliant CEO of Stark Industries — get reduced to an objectified and victimized “damsel in distress” yet again?

“So the damsel trope typically makes men the “subject” of the narratives while relegating women to the “object.” This is a form of objectification because as objects, damsel’ed women are being acted upon, most often becoming or reduced to a prize to be won, a treasure to be found or a goal to be achieved…The damsel in distress is not just a synonym for “weak,” instead it works by ripping away the power from female characters, even helpful or seemingly capable ones. No matter what we are told about their magical abilities, skills or strengths they are still ultimately captured or otherwise incapacitated and then must wait for rescue. Distilled down to its essence, the plot device works by trading the disempowerment of female characters FOR the empowerment of male characters.”

Surprisingly, as it revolves around Tony, Iron Man 3 passes the Bechdel Test. Huzzah! A brief conversation transpires between Pepper and Maya, the botanist who invented the Extremis virus. Maya laments being naïve about science, just wanting to help people and how her ideals became distorted. Pepper reassures her, telling her that Stark Industries once carried out military contracts so she shouldn’t be so hard on herself. What a nice moment. But don’t get too cozy. This moment of sisterly bonding shatters when Maya betrays Pepper. Sidebar, it’s interesting that Maya has a change of heart not after talking to Pepper but after talking to Tony later in the film.

There’s a telling exchange near the end of the film when Killian tells Tony he injected Pepper with the Extremis virus because he wanted to make Pepper perfect. Tony, ever the good boyfriend, retorts, “That’s where you’re wrong. She already was perfect.” This could have been a nice albeit clichéd message about accepting and appreciating people how they are, rather than trying to change them. But 5 minutes later, when Pepper asks if she’s going to be alright because she’s got the unstable virus in her, Tony says he’s going to “fix” her because that’s what he does, he “fixes things.” Ahhh the mechanic imagery strewn throughout the film comes full circle.

It’s a strange juxtaposition between “she’s perfect the way she is” and “I’ll fix you,” especially in proximity to one another. This dialogue could have easily been altered to show Pepper’s agency — that either she wanted to keep the virus and harness the superpower or have it removed. We could have seen things from her perspective. But instead, it’s all to convey how Tony is decisive and protective of his woman and how he’s grown emotionally.

Taking place after The Avengers, we see a changed Tony Stark. Due to the stress of combating aliens and traveling through worm holes, Tony suffers anxiety, insomnia and PTSD. I was pleasantly surprised at the film’s respectful depiction of mental illness. Although its treatment of people with disabilities is abhorrent. We see the weight of Tony’s obsession creating Iron Man suits straining their relationship. Pepper is frustrated that his suits come before her. But they never resolve their issues. It’s as if Pepper said, “Oh I almost died, got injected with some fiery shit and now you fixed me? Okay, we’re good now!” Um, no.

So what’s the lesson here? Don’t worry, ladies. The right man will fix you and all your problems.

Pepper isn’t an empowered, self-actualized character in Iron Man 3. Instead she’s used as an object for the two dudes to fight over. She’s used to show that Killian is a villain who never really loved her while she’s used as an incentive for Tony to fight and to realize what truly matters in life. Tony and Killian battle it out with Pepper as a trophy to the victor, aka the better dude.

As film critic Scott Mendelson said: “For Potts, the movie was about other men giving her temporary agency/power and then quickly taking it away again.” Despite her intelligence and success, she possesses no agency of her own. Men bestowed power upon Pepper. Any power she appears to exert stems from men. Now some superheroes (Spiderman, Wolverine) have their powers given to them by others, either by accident or against their will. But once they have their powers, they decide what to do with them. They decide through their intelligence or cunning how best to utilize their powers. But Tony and Killian make all the decisions for Pepper. She doesn’t make any for herself. Pepper doesn’t choose to don the suit. Tony does. Killian decides to inject her with the Extremis virus that grants superhero powers. She doesn’t choose to keep the Extremis virus or have it removed. Tony decides to remove the virus. Even though she has a brief romp with superpowers and briefly kicks ass, Pepper somehow remains less empowered in Iron Man 3 than in the other films. Men decide her fate.

If the film really played with the conventions of a “damsel in distress,” rather than playing out every other superhero trope, Pepper wouldn’t have been kidnapped or if she had, she would have saved herself, rather than needing Tony’s rescue. At the film’s climax, we do see Pepper, injected with the Extremis virus, kick ass and save Tony. Oh and of course she does it in a skimpier, sexy outfit. So even in the shadow of empowerment, Pepper must be anchored as a sex object, intertwining power and sexuality. Again, it isn’t about Pepper’s growth and development. It’s about how Tony sees her.

While she acknowledges it “isn’t perfect on gender issues,” Alyssa Rosenberg posits that Iron Man 3’s “progressive gender play is noteworthy when you consider the kinds of roles actresses in superhero movies usually get stuck with.” But no, no it’s not progressive. Did we watch the same movie? Having women scientists and women CEOs in your film, while a good start, isn’t smashing gender stereotypes if you ultimately reinforce the same old tired gender tropes and clichés. It isn’t actually showcasing powerful women if you continually undercut women’s agency.

While action sequences are enjoyable, fighting is probably not what audiences find empowering. It’s characters’ decisiveness, assertiveness, ingenuity, struggle to survive — all of which can be conveyed through a visual manifestation of action sequences.

Sure, it was nice to see Pepper kicking ass. But let’s be clear here. Just because a female character wields a sword or shoots a gun or uses her fists to punch a villain, doesn’t automatically make her emotionally strong or empowered. Possessing agency to speak her mind, make her own decisions, chart her own course — these are what make a character truly empowered.

The problem with the Damsel in Distress trope is that it strips women of their power and insinuates that women need men to rescue or save them. And yet again it places the focus on men, reinforcing the notion that society revolves around men, not women.

Maybe I’m a greedy feminist but four minutes of ass-kicking does not automatically make an empowered female character shattering gender tropes, nor does it satiate my desire for a depiction of a nuanced, complex, strong female character. Sigh.

Photo credit: Marvel.com

If you had asked me when I was a first year in college, would I personally have worked in politics or run for office, I would have laughed, like hysterically.  Well the joke was on me, three years later, I ran to be Vice President of the Student Council at my University. I was compelled to be part of changing how things were done on campus, and the only way to do that was to run for leadership in student government. I had no idea what I was doing, was TERRIFIED of public speaking to the point of shaking, and while I volunteered and organized events on a committee for Student Council for 3 years, I worried people would doubt my qualifications, but I set my mind to it. Little did I know that that experience would begin to lead me away from a career in journalism and toward a career in politics and public service.

Recently, perhaps with women like me in mind, Emily’s List, a PAC dedicated to encouraging and electing pro-choice Democratic women, launched their new campaign to help elect a woman to the highest office in the land, President of the United States.

Also called MPOTUS, the campaign inspired Emily’s List from research produced by Anzalone List Grove Research: Almost unanimously (90%), voters in the battleground states would consider voting for a qualified woman candidate from their party… 72% believe that it is likely that America will elect a woman president in the next presidential election including 86% of Democratic primary voters.”

Regardless of political affiliation there is still a gap in political leadership for women but the ground is shifting. Despite Hillary Clinton not winning the Democratic nomination in 2008, her run did leave 18 million more cracks in the ceiling to the highest-ranking public office in the US.  And it appears so did Sarah Palin, with her run for Vice President on Republican John McCain’s 2008 Presidential ticket.  After the election in 2008, it didn’t seem extraordinary for women to put their names forward to be considered for President. Michele Bachmann expressed interest and did run for President in the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary and  Sarah Palin toyed with the idea of running herself.

In the year of 2013, we have 18.5% representation of women in Congress. While there are many women’s organizations dedicated to recruiting, training and encouraging women candidates to run for office that have been instrumental in game changing the arena for women in politics like the National Women’s Political Caucus, Women’s Campaign Fund, or Emily’s List the gap is not decreasing significantly.

Why?  Current Director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University and Associate Professor of Government Jennifer Lawless researched this for a 2008 Brookings Institution report, “Why are Women Still  Not Running for Office?”  Her report reviews women in the highest tiers of their professional expertise Men enjoy more encouragement and confidence and support to run for office. “Women are less likely than men to be willing to endure the rigors of a political campaign. They are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. They are less likely than men to have the freedom to reconcile work and family obligations with a political career. They are less likely than men to think they are “qualified” to run for office” the report stated.

I’ve seen this all play out in many different scenarios working on campaigns for many women candidates, volunteering in the community, and advising other women who are thinking of running for office. I know this feeling myself.

A young woman who was the Virginia Young Democrats President at the time recruited me to run for a state officer position in the Young Dems. Though I was thinking of it, I was greatly buoyed by her encouragement. Years later, I went from the state chapter leadership to the national level in the Young Democrats of America, (YDA) an organization who can count among its alumni, Congressman Barney Frank, Minority Whip and Congressman Steny Hoyer, and Congressman Jim Clyburn. I now serve as one of YDA’s National Vice Presidents and I’ve embarked on a new journey, running to be President of the Young Democrats of America.

In Facebook COO’s Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” she discusses why she thinks women achieving leadership roles across the various sectors has stalled. The key premise in her various offered solutions is that women need to “lean in” to life’s opportunities not step back. For me, I took a deep breath and believed I had a right to take a seat at the table of leadership like anyone else. Too many women have fought for our right to vote and be considered equal citizens in society to not take that seat. So women don’t be afraid to claim that seat.

Don’t be afraid of campaigning you never know what you’re made of until you try. Turn to others who’ve done it before for help.  Go to campaign trainings.  Seek counsel from others. I’ve counseled many other fellow young women who’ve run for public office or run for party leadership positions. And many have counseled me along the way.

Studies show that women need to be asked a total of seven times before they will consider running for office. Don’t wait to be asked. Don’t get me wrong, it’s flattering to be asked and considered. But men don’t wait to be asked. Seriously, if I had a nickel for every guy I knew in college who wanted to “Guvnah of V-uhgini-ah” I’d have paid for half my tuition easy. If you have demonstrated commitment, and you think you have perspective to bring to the table and  you think you can make a difference, well by all means step up. Have some faith in yourself, because no one else will, if you don’t.

Sheryl Sandberg also emphasized the need to make your life partner a real partner. “The single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a partner and who that partner is. I don’t know of one woman in a leadership position whose life partner is not fully—and I mean fully—supportive of her career. No exceptions” I CANNOT agree more. I would not have made it this far in my life working all hours on political campaigns or traveling around the country running for a national position in a national political organization if I had not had the unyielding support of my fabulous husband. I urge fellow young woman with their eye toward public office to seek partners who are as equally supportive of their ambitions as you would be of theirs, especially straight women. Straight men for years have sought wives that are perfect “political spouses”: a steady rock who is supportive of their ambitions, and is able to spend more time helping to manage the family. Straight women, I strongly encourage you to settle for no less either, because they wouldn’t.

I often look to the past and think of the women who rose to leadership in much harder and legally restrictive times to be a woman and I am inspired by Ann Richards or Shirley Chisholm and so many others. We are the generation that has the privileges and power that the women before us never commanded. Let’s be fearless and use it.

On Friday, I got a wonderful Happy Mother’s Day wish from Fem2.0 in Twitter.  Of course, that meant that some random man asked in a mean-spirited tweet whether the wish included “abortive pro-choice mothers of dead babies.”  I didn’t respond, because, well, why would you respond to a person who rudely interrupts, willfully chooses to ignore reality and is an arrogant jerk with what appear to be controlling tendencies. What people like this person refuse to acknowledge, indeed probably simply cannot afford to for a whole host of reasons, is that being a good mother includes not only knowing when you are capable of bearing and caring responsibly for children but, as importantly, when you are not.

Fully six in 10 American women who have abortions already have at least one child, and more than three in 10 already have two or more.  Being able to regulate our fertility and manage unwanted and unplanned pregnancies means being responsible people and, for the majority, responsible mothers. It may be the difference between completing our educations and seeking better lives for ourselves and our families.  It may be the difference between being safe from abusive spouses and physical trauma.  According to multiple Guttmacher Institute surveys:

• Three-fourths [of women who have abortions] cite concerns for or responsibility to other individuals, including children;

• Three-fourths say they cannot afford a child;

• Three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents;

• And half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

Just because some women think rationally and decide quickly about the right course of action doesn’t meant they’re callous idiots.  Just because women don’t suffer as a result of their decisions doesn’t make those decisions ethically wrong.  The only people in this equation who seem incapable of rational, unprejudiced and realistic thought are those, often with power, who refuse to consider and respect the nuances of lives being lived on earth as human women.  Women understand life and compassion and responsibility.  When girls and women get pregnant the profound responsibilities of parenthood and the lifetime consequences of early childhood and family life are clear to them.

Women having abortions, it turns out, are religious people, too:

More than seven in 10 U.S. women obtaining an abortion report a religious affiliation (37% protestant, 28% Catholic and 7% other), and 25% attend religious services at least once a month. The abortion rate for protestant women is 15 per 1,000 women, while Catholic women have a slightly higher rate, 22 per 1,000.

These facts – you know, based in empirical, observable reality – are true of all women, regardless of race, ethnicity, social class.

No racial or ethnic group makes up a majority of women having abortions: 36% are non-Hispanic white, 30% are non-Hispanic black, 25% are Hispanic and 9% are women of other races.

It is true that people who need to have abortions are the poorest.

Women with family incomes below the federal poverty level ($18,530 for a family of three) account for more than 40% of all abortions.[32] They also have one of the country’s highest abortion rates (52 per 1,000 women). In contrast, higher-income women (with family incomes at or above 200% of the poverty line) have a rate of nine abortions per 1,000, which is about half the national rate.

And, apparently, as a society, we want to make sure that stays the case, since the cost of contraceptives is higher in many poorer neighborhoods than in wealthy ones.

I imagine that Mother’s Day is especially poignant for the small percentage of women do have abortions very late in their pregnancies. In the United States, only about one in 10 abortions happens during the second trimester of pregnancy, whereas more than nine in 10 take place in the first 12 weeks, and more than six in 10 during the first eight.  The circumstances tend to be complicated, difficult, sad and often dangerous. So, what is the “pro-life” movement doing, state by state? Making them more complicated, more difficult, sadder and even more dangerous.

Patriarchal fuzzy thinking is particularly bad for girls and women. Why patriarchal and not religious or ethical thinking?  Well, just a simple example: if this weren’t a matter of control over women, their bodies and reproduction we would have a well developed and commonly used male contraceptive that wasn’t based on 12,000 technology by now.

People like this man need to stop talking about things they don’t understand and find another hobby or expression of power and  identity – one that doesn’t hurt girls and women and their families and futures. Too bad legislatures don’t have a “Block User” feature.

So, in closing, Happy Mother’s Day to women who think for themselves and make decisions about what is good for them and their families!