Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Kobi]

Not every Republican learned Todd Akin’s lesson from 2012 – and Democrats noticed.

This week alone: Sen. Saxby Chambliss blamed sexual assaults in the military on hormones, conservative pundit Erick Erickson credited biology for male dominance in society and Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said working moms are making kids fail in school.

Democrats and liberal groups are seizing on these comments to reignite their 2012 strategy — rally the base to raise big money and put Republicans back on defense with women voters ahead of the mid-term elections.

“Women voters are paying attention — this week was a big reminder that the GOP assault on women’s rights continues,” said Jess McIntosh of EMILY’S List.

The group, which helps pro-choice women get elected to office, is planning to use Chambliss’ remark in an email blast and social media campaign called “Great Moments In GOP Women’s Outreach.”

Inside the Senate, Democrats are beginning meetings to strategize their messaging on the issue, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

“This is not an issue for Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer to jump into. This is an issue for Patty Murray and Claire McCaskill and the women senators to jump into,” the aide said. “We will take advantage of it, but this is the mold of the Planned Parenthood fight and the Blunt amendment fight. The female senators will take the lead. Part of the advantage of having a large number of women in your caucus is having people who are effective messengers on issues like this.’

Republicans pushed back at the moves, accusing Democrats of politicizing issues like military sexual assault that should be bipartisan.

At the National Republican Senatorial Committee, GOP operatives sought to squash the controversy, trying to head off a rehash of lessons learned from the last election cycle, after which Republicans promised to be more sensitive when talking about women’s issues.

“As a woman, the politicization of sexual assault or rape is offensive in and of itself. This is an important conversation to be had in congressional committees – it shouldn’t be used as a page in Democrat politicos’ playbooks looking to exploit this tragedy for political gain,” said Brook Hougesen, NRSC spokeswoman.

“If Democrats want to debate the ‘war on women’, look no further than the agenda set by Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer,” Hougesen said, turning the issue to the economy. “Women have had a difficult time finding work, and juggling multiple jobs and their personal lives with Democrats controlling the economy and the government for the last five years.”

Still, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is cooking up state-by-state releases calling on possible GOP Senate candidates to condemn remarks from GOP leaders.

“These comments make Todd Akin look moderate. Republicans have offended women across the country,” said DSCC spokeswoman Regan Page. “This was a defining issue in 2012 and will certainly be a problem for Republicans again in 2014.”

The playbook worked well for Democrats in 2012, when they turned controversial comments about rape by then-Senate candidates Akin and Richard Mourdock into a national discussion that contributed to Reid hanging onto his majority.

Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway acknowledged the comments don’t help Republicans with women, but she argues it will be difficult for Democrats to harness electoral victories off of them.

“These unfortunate, untoward completely baseless comments are unhelpful in an environment where the left still seems to be obsessed with a war on women,” Conaway said, who was quick to point out that the 2012 election was really about abortion politics. “Rape is four a letter word, so is debt to many women.”

But Republicans have a lot of explaining to do.

At Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on military sexual assault, Chambliss appeared to dismiss the severity of the issue when he cited hormones as a factor in the high rate of incidents.

“The young folks that are coming in to each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22-or-three,” said Chambliss, a two-term Georgia Republican who plans to retire in 2014. “The hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur.”

Erickson stepped into the fray this week by saying on Fox News that “when you look at biology, look at the natural world, the roles of a male and female in society, and the other animals, the male typically is the dominant role.”

And Bryant, speaking Tuesday at a Washington Post forum, blamed poor academic performance among youths on “both parents started working. The mom got in the workplace.”

While Chambliss also said “we simply can’t tolerate” sexual assaults, and he’s a cosponsor of two bipartisan bills that try to deal with the latest spike in violent crimes, the Georgia Republican’s comments nonetheless prompted rebukes from Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The Florida Democrat slammed the GOP and argued that their public remarks are a better indication of where the party stands on women’s issues.

For a United States senator or anyone to write off sexual assault and the personal violation of a woman or man to raging the hormones of youth shows just how dramatically out of touch the Republican Party is,” she said on MSNBC.

Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the lead sponsor of legislation that would take prosecution of military sexual assault out of the normal chain of command, during a separate appearance Tuesday on MSNBC, also took aim at Republicans.

“Rape and sexual assault are crimes of violence, crimes of dominance. More than half of the victims are men. These are not crimes of lust. They’re not crimes of romance. They’re not dates that have gone badly,” she said. “They’re not issues of the hook-up culture from high school or hormones, as my colleague said. We’re talking about predators, often serial predators who are targeting their victims in advance, making them vulnerable through alcohol or other means and actually stalking them.”

Even some Republicans looked to distance themselves from Chambliss and other conservatives.

Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) declined to comment Wednesday when asked about the recent remarks from her GOP colleagues.

“You’re going to see a bipartisan effort here today in the Armed Services Committee,” she said just outside the Rayburn Office Building hearing room where the panel held an all-day markup of the Defense Authorization bill.

Votes on several amendments dealing with sexual assault were expected Wednesday.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham conceded Chambliss could have spoken more eloquently about sexual assault but still defended his GOP colleague.

“I think what he was saying is you’ve got a lot of young people in the military and we just have be realistic,” Graham told POLITICO. “I don’t know where you were at 17 to 23. I don’t know how you were. But these are formative years. I know Saxby very well. Anybody knows Saxby is not suggesting that he’s justifying rape.”

To address the issue, Graham said any sexual predators serving the military “need to be sought out and pounded, driven out of the service in such a fashion to deter others.”

The South Carolina Republican also warned about “off-color jokes being told, where there’s an uncomfortable work environment where you’re showing disrespect for your female comrades in arms.”

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said Chambliss’ remarks are part of a larger problem with the makeup of Capitol Hill.

“The reason these guys say these things is because they really believe them,” she said in an interview. “When you still have 80 percent of Congress that’s guys, you’re going to have people in leadership positions who think these things. It’s a shame because it really hampers our efforts to make sure we have a system that really works for all the victims of violence.”

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky said the Republicans’ remarks won’t just hurt them politically — it might also make for trouble in recruiting women to join the armed forces. “Women, particularly women contemplating going into the military, would be very offended and also put off by that comment,” she said. “Because it sounds like it tolerates, it understands that these young men can’t control themselves. That’s just counterproductive and really offensive.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/0...#ixzz2W2M9bZbR

[Greyson]

Calif. teacher blames job loss on abusive ex

By JULIE WATSON
Associated Press
Thursday, Jun. 13, 2013 - 5:30 pm

SAN DIEGO -- A San Diego-area teacher says she is losing her job for being the victim of domestic violence.

The attorney for Holy Trinity School teacher Carie Charlesworth told The Associated Press on Thursday that she had received a letter notifying her that her 14-year contract would not be renewed because her ex-husband's violent history posed a risk to the school.

"We feel deeply for you and about the situation in which you and your children find yourselves through no fault of your own," Beecher wrote. "It serves no purpose to go through your husband's legal history, except to say that his threatening and menacing behavior has not changed but has actually increased over the past 20 plus years."

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/06/13/549...b-because.html

[Greyson]

SOCIAL JUSTICE

A City of Widows: Pictures From India’s Town for Discarded Women
When a woman’s husband dies in India, she can be subjected to stigma, loss of family and exile to a small city of 4,000 temples.


The Widow At The Door
A widow poses for a picture inside her room at the Meera Sahavagini ashram in the pilgrimage town of Vrindavan in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Thousands of temples devoted to Krishna make up the town, and devotees come from all corners of the Earth to walk the streets that Krishna walked.

People greet each other on the street by saying “Hare Krishna” (Praise Krishna) or “Radhe Radhe” (the name of Krishna’s favorite wife), and chant Krishna’s name with other believers for hours on end.

It is assumed that if you are in Vrindavan, you are attending to business with Lord Krishna.

But Vrindavan is also home to hundreds of Indian widows.

How did the widows all arrive at this sacred spot? What are they doing here? What does their presence say about India and the treatment of women in general? Click through this photo gallery, and all will be revealed.


http://www.takepart.com/photos/city-...ow-of-her-self

[Kobi]

LONDON – In the first major global review of violence against women, a series of reports released today found that about a third of women have been physically or sexually assaulted by a former or current partner.

The head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, called it “a global health problem of epidemic proportions,” and other experts said screening for domestic violence should be added to all levels of health care.

Among the findings: 40 percent of women killed worldwide were slain by an intimate partner, and being assaulted by a partner was the most common kind of violence experienced by women.

Researchers used a broad definition of domestic violence, and in cases where country data was incomplete, estimates were used to fill in the gaps. WHO defined physical violence as being slapped, pushed, punched, choked or attacked with a weapon. Sexual violence was defined as being physically forced to have sex, having sex for fear of what the partner might do and being compelled to do something sexual that was humiliating or degrading.

The report also examined rates of sexual violence against women by someone other than a partner and found about 7 percent of women worldwide had previously been a victim.

In conjunction with the report, WHO issued guidelines for authorities to spot problems earlier and said all health workers should be trained to recognize when women may be at risk and how to respond appropriately.

Globally, the WHO review found 30 percent of women are affected by domestic or sexual violence by a partner. The report was based largely on studies from 1983 to 2010. According to the United Nations, more than 600 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not considered a crime.

The rate of domestic violence against women was highest in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where 37 percent of women experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner at some point in their lifetimes. The rate was 30 percent in Latin America and 23 percent in North America. In Europe and Asia, it was 25 percent.

Some experts said screening for domestic violence should be added to all levels of health care, such as obstetric clinics.

“It’s unlikely that someone would walk into an ER and disclose they’ve been assaulted,” said Sheila Sprague of McMaster University in Canada, who has researched domestic violence in women at orthopedic clinics. She was not connected to the WHO report.

However, “over time, if women are coming into a fracture clinic or a pre-natal clinic, they may tell you they are suffering abuse if you ask,” she said.

For domestic violence figures, scientists analyzed information from 86 countries focusing on women and teens over the age of 15. They also assessed studies from 56 countries on sexual violence by someone other than a partner, though they had no data from the Middle East. WHO experts then used modeling techniques to come up with global estimates for the percentage of women who are victims of violence.

Accurate numbers on women and violence are notoriously hard to pin down. A U.S. government survey reported almost two years ago that 1 in 4 American women said they were violently attacked by their husbands or boyfriends, and 1 in 5 said they were victims of rape or attempted rape, with about half those cases involving intimate partners.

Some experts thought the rape estimate was extremely high but said it may have to do with the definition of assault. The results were from a survey that did not document the claims, which were made anonymously

In a related paper published today online in the journal Lancet, researchers found more than 38 percent of slain women are killed by a former or current partner, six times higher than the rate of men killed by their partners.

Heidi Stoeckl, one of the authors at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the figures were probably an underestimate. She and colleagues found that worldwide, a woman’s highest risk of murder was from a current or ex-partner.

In countries like India, Stoeckl said “honor killings,” where women are sometimes murdered over dowry disputes or perceived offenses like infidelity to protect the family’s reputation, add to the problem.
She also noted that women and men are often slain by their partners for different reasons.

“When a woman kills her male partner, it’s usually out of self-defense because she has been abused,” she said. “But when a woman is killed, it’s often after she has left the relationship and the man is killing her out of jealousy or rage.”

Stoeckl said criminal justice authorities should intervene sooner.

“When a woman is killed by a partner, she has often already had contact with the police,” she said. Stoeckl said there should be more protection for women from their partners, particularly in cases where there is a history of violence.

“There are enough signs that we should be watching out for that,” she said. “We certainly should know if someone is potentially lethal and be able to do something about it.”

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...629950/-1/NEWS

[Kobi]

The Supreme Court is poised to release its opinion on an affirmative-action case that could forever change the way public colleges and universities consider race in admissions. But even if, as some predict, the justices issue a broad ruling slapping down the use of race in admissions, an open secret in higher education—that many colleges lower their admissions standards for male applicants—remains unchallenged and largely unremarked upon.

For years, the percentage of men enrolled in college has been declining, with women making up nearly 57 percent of all undergrads at four-year colleges last year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. While schools are prohibited under the federal Title IX law from discriminating based on gender, some admissions officials have admitted in recent years that male applicants get a leg up from colleges hoping to avoid gender imbalances on campus.

Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the dean of admissions at the private liberal arts school Kenyon College, was among the first to admit this when she wrote an op-ed titled "To All the Girls I've Rejected" in The New York Times in 2006.

"The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants," she wrote, adding that two-thirds of colleges report that more women than men apply for admission. "What messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges?"

Delahunty Britz's acknowledgment opened the floodgates, and reporters began looking closely at schools that admitted a much higher percentage of male than female applicants.

Of course, these gaps don't necessarily mean that women are being discriminated against. It's possible that the male applicant pool is better qualified on average, though that's hard to ascertain when colleges generally resist releasing their admissions data.

The University of Richmond, a private liberal arts school, acknowledged in 2009 that it attempts to keep its gender balance at about 50-50, which meant women's admit rate was about 13 percentage points lower than men's over the previous 10 years. Admissions officer Marilyn Hesser told CBS that men and women had about the same standardized test scores, but that male applicants' GPA was lower on average. (The college's admission rate suddenly became more gender neutral the following year, in 2010-2011, when men's acceptance rate was only 3 percentage points higher than women's.)

The same year, the College of William and Mary, a public institution in Virginia, accepted 39.4 percent of its male applicants and 27.2 percent of female applicants. The school's admissions dean, Henry Broaddus, said men have slightly higher standardized test scores but lower GPAs than women, on average.

Broaddus defended the policy, insisting that William and Mary's female students want the college to to be gender-balanced and that colleges in general risk becoming less attractive to both men and women when the gender balance tips too far toward women.

"Even women who enroll ... expect to see men on campus," Broaddus said at the time. "It's not the College of Mary and Mary; it's the College of William and Mary."

In 2005, some trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reportedly wondered whether they should instate "affirmative action for men," to counteract the declining percentage of men on campus. (The school is more than 58 percent female.)


The stories prompted admissions consultants who charge $200 an hour to caution on their website that female applicants must try harder. "The best advice we can give female applicants is to follow the same advice we're giving everyone—only more strictly: start your college applications early, apply to an appropriate number and range of schools, and prepare each one of your applications carefully."





Interestingly, none of these revelations prompted a wave of lawsuits, or even much outrage, from feminist organizations or other groups. It's even more surprising because the issue is probably more clear-cut, legally speaking, than race-based affirmative action.

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 case that set current law around race-based affirmative action, the Supreme Court ruled that in order to achieve a "critical mass" of underrepresented minority groups, colleges can use race as a limited factor in admissions decisions. The court said at the time it believed affirmative action would no longer be necessary after 25 years, an argument the Supreme Court is now reconsidering with Fisher v. University of Texas, a case brought by a white student who was rejected by the university.

Many legal experts expect the court, which is more conservative now than it was in 2003, to rule against UT, which could mean public colleges could have to stop considering race in admissions as a way to increase on-campus diversity.

But with men, there's no "critical mass" argument to make. Men are outnumbered by women on campus, but not so vastly that they can be considered an underrepresented minority. The Constitution does allow for more discrimination based on gender than race. (The courts treat any classification based on race with strict scrutiny; gender-based classifications get a more relaxed degree of review.)

But Title IX pretty clearly forbids any admissions decision that discriminates based on gender, meaning Congress has already made gender-balancing admissions decisions effectively illegal. In the one known case on this issue, plaintiffs challenged the University of Georgia in 2000 for both race and gender admissions preferences, and a federal circuit court found that gender preferences were illegal and struck them down. The school declined to appeal.

Why haven't there been more lawsuits?

Gail Heriot, a conservative law professor at the University of San Diego and a member of the federal U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said it's partly the murky politics of the issue. Liberal, feminist groups tend to support affirmative action for racial minorities and could be wary of attacking gender preferences for men lest it leads to attacking racial preferences.

Meanwhile, conservative groups that reject race-based affirmative action would rather draw attention to the "boy crisis" they believe harms men than seize the chance to deal a blow to both race and gender admissions preferences.

Heriot began a commission investigation into whether colleges were discriminating against female applicants in 2009, but the eight-member panel voted to end it at the suggestion of a Democratic appointee in 2011. Several schools had refused to hand over their admissions data to Heriot, which made the investigation difficult.

Heriot dismissed the argument that women would rather attend gender-balanced schools, even if it means they had to get better grades in high school than their male peers to get in.

"It strikes me as a very troubling argument to say, 'Gosh, women want to be discriminated against,'" she said. "You're going to have to prove that to me."


She still believes that a case against gender preferences at public schools could win.

"I'm a conservative so I tend to be on the other side of issues from Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. But I'd be happy to argue this one to her. I think I have a shot," Heriot said.


Meanwhile, admissions officers who do not want to give a leg up to men are left to find other means to attract men to campus. Brandeis University (57 percent female) tried offering free baseball caps to its first 500 male applicants, according to Heriot.

Eric Felix, an admissions officer for the University of San Diego, a small liberal arts school that is 45 percent male, says he tries to encourage qualified men to apply by tailoring applications materials to them, highlighting the school's engineering programs and sports teams instead of the beautiful campus shots sent to women. He also visits all-boys schools and ROTC programs to recruit.

Felix, who said he does not use gender preferences, said male applicants can often make up for their on average lower GPAs through "noncognitive" factors such as leadership roles in extracurriculars. "We're only going to admit students that we feel are successful," Felix said. "Once you get to the nonacademic pieces then men start to shine, because they put an emphasis on extracurriculars."

Felix said that although men might not be an oppressed minority, they are often discouraged from emphasizing academics because they are expected to get a part-time job or join the military. Felix also argued that gender is part of diversity on campus.

"Students need to be able to interact with a diverse population, and part of that diversity is gender," Felix said. "If there's a discussion about rape and sexual assault in court cases [in class] and there's not men to add a voice, that's a conversation that's really missing.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/c...182205509.html

[Soon]

Male Fox News guest to female Democratic consultant: “Know your role and shut your mouth”
Bill Cunningham also asked Tamara Holder, "Are you going to cry?

A finger-pointing political argument on Fox News Channel boiled over when a male conservative talk show host shouted at a woman to “know your role and shut your mouth.”

The man, Bill Cunningham, later asked Fox contributor Tamara Holder, “Are you going to cry?”

Fox on-air personalities on Friday were talking about the exchange on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show the night before. Commentator Juan Williams concluded that Cunningham “obliterated the line” of civil discourse in his argument with Holder. The two had been brought on by Hannity to discuss whether Attorney General Eric Holder — no relation to Tamara — had committed perjury.

Cunningham, sitting next to Tamara Holder in a New York studio, called her “one of the stooges of the left that will always be there to excuse away criminal behavior.” He said she had the “incurable fatal condition of liberalism that caused people like Eric Holder to be the consulary of Barack Hussein Obama.”

He was jabbing a finger at Holder, who returned the favor.

“I really hope that when you speak to a judge, you don’t point your finger in the person’s face the entire time,” she said. “Your finger does not make your point.”

Cunningham is a former assistant attorney general in Ohio whose wife is on the Ohio Court of Appeals. He hosts radio and television talk shows.

“Whose finger is in my face right now?” Cunningham asked.

Replied Holder: “Mine, because I’m telling you to shut up.”

“You shut up!” Cunningham said. “Know your role and shut your mouth.”

Cunningham could not be reached for comment Friday.

It was only three weeks after another exchange on Fox, where daytime host Megyn Kelly said she was offended by a male colleague’s suggestion that children of working mothers don’t fare as well as children with stay-at-home moms. One Fox contributor, Erick Erickson, said that in nature, males were traditionally dominant.

Later, Cunningham repeated his assertion that Holder was a “liberal stooge and an excuse-monger for the Obama administration.”

After Holder paused, Cunningham asked, “What, are you going to cry?”

“No, I’m not going to cry,” Holder said.

Admonished by Hannity at the end of their segment to shake hands, they refused. “I don’t shake hands with trolls,” Holder said.

Things were still smoldering on Friday when Fox returned to the argument. Daytime host Martha McCollum hosted a segment with Williams and Fox contributor Mary Katherine Ham on whether the combatants had gone too far.

“The merits of the argument might be on the Cunningham side,” Ham said, “but I’m on Team Tamara on the comment of knowing your role.”

[Greyson]

Viewpoints: Injustices against women hidden for too long

By Camille Hayes

Published: Saturday, Jul. 6, 2013

DUBLIN, Ireland – On paper, Martina Keogh's life reads like a tragedy – but don't tell her that. When you meet her in person it's hard to reconcile the facts of her early life, which included her quasi-legal incarceration in one of Ireland's notorious Magdalene laundries, with the warm and funny grandmother she is today. I met Martina on a recent trip to Ireland, when she agreed to talk to me about her experiences in one of the slave-labor workhouses operated by the Catholic Church – with an as-yet-unknown degree of government complicity – from 1765 to 1996.

The Magdalene asylums, as they were formally known, weren't unique to Ireland. They existed in other European countries and there were a few in North America, but Ireland had the largest number and kept them operating longest. The mission of these institutions was ostensibly to rehabilitate women the church deemed morally compromised, like prostitutes and unwed mothers. But that mission, such as it was, was lost in the Irish facilities, which were run as commercial laundries staffed by unpaid inmates and generating profits for the church.

Read more here:

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/07/06/554...#storylink=cpy