Feminism in News and Popular Media

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON — Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, was sitting in her large, sunny office recently, riffling through the contents of her black leather purse.

After several moments, she laughed and produced a neon-pink earplug.

“Here’s an earplug from the helicopter,” she said, still searching through the bag she had bought from Ilze Heider Leather Design in Lanesboro, Minn. “That is not a normal thing that a woman might have in her purse. That is a military earplug from a Blackhawk.”


Ms. Klobuchar had just returned from a national security trip and was in the middle of what she jokingly said was a “post-recess-organize-the-purse-mode,” transferring the contents of a brown leather backpack that she had carried on her Middle East tour into her everyday carryall.

The Congress of yore might conjure images of spittoons and old male politicians with briefcases, but the 113th has ushered in a historic number of women — 20 in the Senate, and 81 in the House — and with them a historic number of handbags. In some ways, the female legislator’s purse or bag has become one of the most outwardly physical manifestations of the nation’s changing deliberative body.

“What a woman senator slings over her shoulder is the next tangible and Technicolor proof of how the esteemed body has changed and is changing,” said Tracy Sefl, a Democratic strategist. “Today’s purses and bags are as new and interesting of a visual as the red power suit once was. They pop on the C-Span cameras, they serve a purpose and — intentionally or not — they make a statement.”

Or, as Bethany Lesser, a press secretary to Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, pointed out, “The cloakroom is no longer just for coats.”

Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of Britain, wielded her handbag like a cudgel, a potent mix of femininity and her famed iron will. To be “handbagged” by Ms. Thatcher even became a verb, well known to rivals, journalists and political bumblers alike who all found themselves ruthlessly dismissed by her when they displeased her. (In 2000, a black Salvatore Ferragamo bag of hers sold at a London charity auction for roughly $130,000.)

But until recently, at least, Ms. Thatcher’s ability to elevate her purse into an object of both fame and fear was the exception. For many female politicians, a purse was seen as more of a nuisance and even a possible sign of weakness; Geraldine A. Ferraro, the first female vice-presidential nominee for a major political party, garnered attention for the mere act of handing her pocketbook to an aide before she took the podium.

“Historically, bags were, quite literally, unwanted baggage in the halls of Congress and Parliament,” Robb Young, the author of “Power Dressing: First Ladies, Women Politicians and Fashion,” wrote by e-mail.

On the HBO series “Veep,” the general absence of a purse is even a punch line: Julia Louis-Dreyfus instead relies on an aide, who carries around his own giant bag (nicknamed the Leviathan), so he is always ready with eyedrops, lipstick or even a Fig Newton.

But Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been much scrutinized over the years for her pantsuits and her changing hairstyles, professed her love of a great handbag in a 2011 interview with Harper’s Bazaar.

“I have this Ferragamo hot-pink bag that I adore,” she told the magazine. “I mean, how can you be unhappy if you pick up a big pink bag?”

Many female politicians, though, would prefer to tout practicality over labels.

“Frankly, my purse selection is more about utilitarian than how it looks,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, explaining that her bags are always “big enough to carry one or two iPads, an Air book, a Hotspot, and a little bit of extra reading for irritating times I have to turn off my devices when we take off and land.”

“I think most of us, while we may look at the cute little purses, our lives don’t fit a cute little purse,” she said. “Our lives fit something that is in between a purse and a briefcase, and that’s what I carry.”

Their bag, female lawmakers said, might help add a splash of fun and fashion to what can be a tedious daily routine. But it must befit a member of Congress. Meaning: appropriately modest. Even the classic Birkin, for instance, would likely draw unwanted attention to its owner because of its five-figure price tag.

“There’s no magic formula, because looking glamorous or elegant for some political women in certain circumstances can be an advantage, while looking more demure, matronly or even dowdy can be an advantage for others,” said Mr. Young, the author. The one universal rule, he said, is “being able to anticipate what a broad base of her constituents find appropriate and authoritative while still looking distinctive.”

“What that looks like as a handbag,” he said, “is probably going to be a very different thing if you’re a grass-roots congresswoman from rural Missouri or if you’re representing city dwellers in New England.”

Still, some basic trends have emerged on Capitol Hill.

Clutches are frowned upon. “It has to go over my shoulder, so my hands are free,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, toting a very sensible-looking black purse while waiting for the subway recently.

Representative Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, said she has upgraded her purse size three times so far, ending up with a green-and-blue checked Franco Sarto, in order to fit all of her Congressional needs into one bag: a pager, two phones (“my official and my personal”), a voting card, a spiral-bound briefing book, white notecards with a summary of coming bills and how she plans to vote, and makeup for unexpected television appearances. “I have to have concealer, I have to have the powder, I have to have the lipstick,” Ms. Duckworth said.

Ms. McCaskill owns both a bright orange and a bright green purse.“It’s a little daunting sometimes how discouraging you get about making real progress on problems you care about, so I’m always like maybe just subconsciously looking for a little dose of cheer,” she said.

Perhaps no model of purse, however, can signify status as much as having someone willing to carry it.

When Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, represented Texas in the Senate, she had her purse trotted through the Capitol by a rotating cadre of young male aides, to some raised eyebrows.

But now some version of the so-called “purse boy” is almost commonplace.

On the first day of this session, a young male aide to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat and House minority leader, juggled the coats of female members as he tried to snap a group photo. And on the night of President Obama’s State of the Union address, Representative Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, was trailed through Statuary Hall by a male staff member holding her bag.

After expertly picking her way through the crowd, Ms. Sinema turned to her aide and asked, “Do you have all of my stuff?”

He did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/fa...anted=all&_r=0

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I think it is so cool for women in politics to be addressing fashion preferences.

We have been socialized to judge a persons competence and personality based on their manner of dress. So many women in power have had to adhere to a conservative style in order to be taken seriously and to not undermine people's impressions of them. Seems they may have had to do be careful of what they wore to also not "distract" their male colleagues.

It is a huge boost to women, to feminism, to impressionable young females, and to society at large for women in power to be able to embrace their own individual styles and preferences.

And, I am liking that it is getting a positive spin. Or, maybe it is just me seeing it as a positive spin.

Hillary and her hot pink Ferragamo bag? I love it!

[Kobi]

Andrea Nerone lost her home and later was denied welfare to support her family after her husband abandoned her and their four children late last year.

Unemployed and no longer able to pay the rent on their previous home, Nerone crowded with her kids into a modest house owned by her mother and collected welfare for a few months. But the payments were cut off when the government determined that the children's father was employed and thus able to support them.

The big problem: the family was no longer in contact with him and he wasn't giving them any money.

A decree recently issued by Argentina's female president could help keep other women like Nerone from falling into similar straits if their partners leave. After spending billions on welfare to families that keep kids vaccinated and in school, President Cristina Fernandez has made a key change: From now on, mothers will collect welfare payments instead of fathers.

The measure announced last month is a victory for the Argentine housewives union, underscoring the growing role of women in a patriarchal society while also trying to resolve the financial problems caused by profligate fathers. It is also the first major change in the country's per-child welfare payments, a cash transfer program similar to those that have brought millions out of poverty across Latin America.

Nerone welcomed the decision to put government aid into the hands of women.

"It's a desperate situation because the father of my kids sold even their bed," Nerone, 46, said in her current home in the Buenos Aires suburb of Villa Adelina. She shares one room with her children: Candela, 10, Malena, 9, Sebastian, 6, and Ailen, 17, who recently had a baby of her own. "The government assumes that if the father is working then you have an income," she said.

Fernandez said in a speech announcing the change that it is not designed to punish men, but rather to protect women.

"We have many complaints by women who are abandoned by their husbands but the guys keep on collecting" welfare payments, Fernandez said. "So we want the mother to always get the money, except in cases where courts give legal custody to the father. This is fair."

Unemployed Argentine families get 460 pesos ($85) per child and 1,500 pesos ($278) per disabled child through monthly payments. Adults receive 80 percent of the funds directly deposited into a bank account. The remaining 20 percent of the allowance is paid to families once annually after they prove they got their children vaccinated and kept them in school.

"It's well-known that transferring the resources to women results in a greater empowerment for them inside the household and a better use of resources, including food and clothing for their children," said Nora Lustig, professor of Latin American economics at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Lustig said Argentina would do well to follow the example of countries like Mexico, which delivers social aid for families to mothers rather than fathers through its Plan Progresa.

Argentina's state pensions agency estimates that the conditional cash transfer program Fernandez created by emergency decree in October 2009 has grown into a nearly $3.5 billion a year transfer of wealth to Argentina's poor. It benefits 3.3 million children.

The new decree giving the aid directly to women "is the guarantee that the money will go to the child and recognizes the work of stay-at-home moms," said Carmen Flores, secretary of the Argentine housewives union.

Giving women control over their household finances could prove critical to poor families in Argentina, where inflation is eating away at earnings. Officially, inflation remains under 10 percent, but few Argentines trust those statistics and instead accept the 25 percent estimate by private analysts.

The World Bank recognizes the key role of women in Latin America's economic development. In a report last year, it said that their participation in the labor market rose 15 percent from 2000-2010.

"The reduction of poverty in the region might be due to the fact that more low-income women joined the workforce than those of higher income," the Bank said in its report, "The Effect of Women's Economic Power in Latin America and the Caribbean."

The recent presidential decree will especially help Argentine women who are victims of domestic abuse because they will no longer be dependent on their husbands, said Flores, of the housewives union. She said it should also reduce the number of lawsuits filed against fathers for child support claims.

Under the new measure, Nerone's welfare payments are to resume in July.

Critics argue that the cash-transfer programs have been corrupted, and some Argentine opponents say that low-income women get pregnant to benefit from welfare.

Even a proponent such as Lustig said "they need to be complemented with other initiatives to create transformative processes and avoid creating cultures of dependency."

But such programs have helped pull millions of people from poverty in 18 Latin American nations. Brazil's Bolsa Familia program alone has helped about a quarter of that country's more than 190 million people.

"Conditional cash transfers are the most important social innovation of the last 15 years," Lustig said. "They have allowed millions to live a little better, they have redistributed income and helped combat poverty where the market fails."

[Kobi]

The Founding Fathers lorded it over the Founding Mothers in a million ways, but none annoyed Abigail Adams more than the legal degradation that 18th-century women faced the moment they got married.

A spinster or widow had essentially the same property rights as a man. But once women married, their property was "subject to the controul and disposal of our partners, to whom the Laws have given a soverign Authority," as Adams complained to her husband John in a June 1782 letter.

But Abigail didn't simply complain about the government's denial of married women's property rights. She also defied it. Around the time of the Battle of Yorktown, in 1781, she started setting aside a portion of her husband's property and declaring it her own.

"This money which I call mine," as Adams called it, came from some surprising sources.

During the American Revolutionary War, Abigail had persuaded her husband, who was serving as an American diplomat in Paris, to send her textiles and other merchandise to sell. On several occasions, John got cold feet, and with good reason. The British navy ruled the waves, and King George III was bent on choking off trade between his French and American enemies. Abigail conceded that some of the packages that John sent her would be captured, but she emphasized that "If one in 3 arrives I should be a gainer." High risks meant high rewards.

Abigail took great pains to keep her second major enterprise secret, and it is easy to see why.

To an even greater extent than later conflicts, the War for Independence had to be fought on credit. Overborrowing led to runaway inflation that explained why the paper dollars that George Washington distributed to his soldiers on payday were "not worth a Continental." So Congress paid the soldiers again at the end of the war -- but not with real money. Instead they got "final settlement certificates," which were government securities that weren't too different from modern savings bonds. Congress promised the soldiers that some day their certificates could be exchanged for real money.

The soldiers' problem was that they couldn't wait to eat or clothe their families "some day." They needed real money right away. Many had to sell their bonds to speculators at a fraction of their face value. One veteran, Joseph Plumb Martin, had served in the Continental Army throughout the war. But he received only enough money for his final settlement certificates to finance a new suit of clothes and his trip home to Connecticut. His experience wasn't unusual. It was a terrible betrayal of the men whose sacrifices had set the country free.

For Abigail Adams, it was also an opportunity. During the deep recession that followed the war, few Americans had what Abigail's import business had given her: "Cash to spare." She bought bonds yielding 6 percent interest for as little as one-fourth of their face value, which meant her annual rate of return was 24 percent. Eventually she was able to redeem them at 90 percent of their face value.

Adams steadily increased the size of her "pocket money," as she sometimes called her private stash, and by Nov. 11, 1815, when she turned 71, it had grown to more than $5,000 -- about $100,000 in modern currency.

On the morning of Jan.18, 1816, having contracted a severe illness, Abigail became convinced that she was dying and sat down to write her will. Today that would be considered the responsible thing to do. But during the founding era -- and right up until the middle of the 19th century -- married women like Adams weren't allowed to make wills.

Adams wrote one anyway. All but two of her children had died by this time, but four had lived long enough to have children of their own. None of Abigail's children had married money, and by 1816 her grandsons were mostly poor. Most of her nephews had likewise fallen on hard times.

She gave these impoverished nephews and grandsons . . . nothing. She bequeathed all of her property to her granddaughters, her nieces, her daughters-in-law and her female servants.

Adams never said why she had decided to give all of her money to women. But here's one clue: Many of her heirs were, like her, married. Under the legal proscriptions placed on married women, they were no more entitled to receive this money than she was to give it.

Perhaps that was just her point. Having spent the previous 30 years asserting ownership of property in defiance of the law, she now wanted to give these other women the opportunity to make the same bold claim.

Adams began her will by affirming that she was distributing this property "by and with the consent" of her husband. Actually, though, John Adams's signature doesn't appear anywhere on the document. Abigail died on Oct. 28, 1818. When John found "Abigail Adams's Distribution of Her Property" (as she called it) among his deceased wife's papers, he would have been well within his rights in simply casting it into the fire.

Instead, Adams complied with his wife's will to the letter. In doing so, he turned a worthless sheet of paper into a legally binding document. Married women were allowed to give, receive, buy and sell property with their husbands' consent. By complying with Abigail's property distribution, John made it, in the eyes of the law, his own.

During their 50-year marriage, the Adamses had worked together on a variety of important projects. But this collaboration -- in which the wife, not the husband, took the leading role -- may have been the most extraordinary one of all.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...es-echoes.html

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This woman just freakin fascinates me. Amazing couple.

[Kobi]

Jackie Johnson-Smith, 33, a stay-at-home mother from Ankeny, Iowa was celebrating her 33rd birthday on Sunday at Fong’s Pizza in Des Moines with her husband and their three kids, ages 4, 3, and 12 months, when her youngest started fussing. “I usually don’t go downtown for dinner because lots of places aren’t family-friendly but I had heard good things about Fong’s,” Johnson-Smith told Yahoo! Shine. “It was chaotic—I had one kid licking the honey container on the table, another standing on his chair, and my baby was fussing.”

So Johnson-Smith threw on a nursing cover and began discreetly breastfeeding her 12-month-old. “I usually don’t like to breastfeed in public because people can be judgmental,” she says. “The waitress kept walking by, and I was worried she didn’t want me nursing in the restaurant.” Eventually, worried that her baby would continue crying, Johnson-Smith left the restaurant and finished nursing in the car.

Shortly after, Johnson-Smith’s husband walked out with a huge smile on his face. “He handed me the dinner receipt and at first I was confused—why is he showing me how much my birthday dinner cost?” said Johnson-Smith. To her surprise, there was a handwritten note on the paper: ‘I bought one of your pizzas. Please thank your wife for breastfeeding!’

“I was in total shock and started tearing up,” said Johnson-Smith. “After dealing with people’s reactions for so long, it was like the universe was giving me a pat on the back. I was too stunned to go back inside and thank the waitress.”

When Johnson-Smith got home, she posted a photo of the receipt to her Facebook page with the message: “I have breastfed three children... I have breastfed them in a countless number of places both pleasant and unpleasant, discreetly and out in the open. I have gotten many looks and stares, but tonight erases any negativity I have ever received. I ate at Fongs for the first time tonight. Having a fussy baby I nursed him for awhile in the booth and eventually left the table early as to not disrupt the restaurant. The waitress gave this receipt to my husband. I was speechless and emotional. Although I don't need a pat on the back for feeding my child, it sure felt amazing. It is amazing how we women can make each other feel when we empower each other."

As of Thursday morning, the photo has been shared over 2,000 times and received more than 100 likes on Facebook.

Waitress Bodi Kinney, 33, told Yahoo Shine, “I noticed Johnson-Smith nursing and was so thrilled she did it. I tried not to stare because I didn’t want to seem creepy or make her feel uncomfortable, but I felt like doing jumping jacks.”

Kinney, a mother herself, is familiar with the burden of breastfeeding in public. “Although I nurse my baby no matter where I am—at the supermarket, in clothing stores—people often react negatively. Recently, I had to leave my daughter’s school play to nurse my 8-month-old for fear of offending someone. I wanted to let this woman know in some shape or form, that she was doing the right thing.”

That meant to the world to Johnson-Smith. “She has no idea what that note meant to me,” she said. “I just want her to get the recognition she deserves.”

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/bre...164047499.html

[Kobi]

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Nah, it was just nonconsensual sex.

[Cin]

http://www.alternet.org/judge-calls-...-old-predatory

Judge Calls 13-Year-Old Girl Who Was Sexually Assaulted by a 41-Year-Old "Predatory"

This week in the UK, Judge Nigel Peters gave a suspended sentence to 41 year-old Neil Wilson after he pleaded guilty to “making extreme pornographic images and one count of sexual activity” with a 13 year-old girl. The judge explained his leniency as stemming from the fact that “the girl was predatory and was egging you on.” During the trial, the prosecution had declared the girl was “sexually experienced” and that “She appeared to look around 14 or 15 and had the mental age of a 14 or 15 year old despite being younger than that. There was sexual activity but it was not of Mr. Wilson’s doing, you might say it was forced upon him despite being older and stronger than her.”