These D-Cups are all I have room for on my chest, so let me unload some shit…

There are a few current events that have been bugging the shit out of me & since I’ve been occupied with the whole moving & schooling things, I haven’t had a chance to speak on them. Now that I’m bored & suffering from a bout of insomnia, I’ll do just that.

First, this broad with the 14 kids that the media is all up in arms about? Yeah, it’s actually none of our fucking business. I personally believe that Nadya Suleman is a masochistic nut job for carrying & delivering octuplets, not to mention the fact that this enormous super-birth brought her total number of offspring to fourteen (a wholly unmanageable number of rug rats, in my opinion) and she is doing the parental thing solo, which is tough for women with only one child to rear. BUT… just as my reproductive decisions are mine to make, her crazy-ass reproductive marathon is her own business. Anyone concerned about the kids draining public resources because Mommy isn’t wealthy enough to pay their entire way through life can chill the fuck out – since I’m not gonna’ have any, we’ll just say I gave her my Right To Bear A Working Class Kid Passes. It all will even out in the end. For more insightful discussion on this topic, see the following bloggers posts.

  Bitch Magazine’s Blog: The War on Choice: When Life is Chosen (Eight Times) and Update on Mother of Fourteen: Nadya Suleman

Bitch Ph.D. : Punching Bags (this one has some pretty interesting links to still more discussion of Suleman’s uterine abuse)

 

Second, to all my fellow Starving Students, there is a really good piece up on Easily Distracted about soaring textbook prices that might make your ass blow a gasket. Fucking over priced, god damned…

Third, I was very intrigued by a post over at Progressive Historians entitled White Washing History-No Queers Please. I was intrigued because I’m a nerd like that, but you non-history buffs may be interested in the subject, so I thought I’d mention it. Basically, the gist of the piece is that conservative folks hell bent on censoring higher education are using the economic crisis as an excuse to eliminate courses they deem unnecessary or inappropriate or morally bankrupt. As if being broke means you also have to be ignorant…

Finally, I think it’s beneficial for everybody to take a second & read Maritzia’s Thoughts post entitled Claim Your Privilege, People.  We all have to be aware of the place we each come & how our perception of reality effects our world view before we toss out judgment on others, y’know? I, for one, was born white in a culture that assumes white skin is the default setting. I may have crappy parents, but I was born into a family that values education & that certainly gave me a heads-up. Think about it for a second &, possibly, reconsider some of the preconceived notions or unfounded opinions you maybe lugging around… Hmmm…

Speaking on Domestic Violence

My last long-term relationship showcased my worst qualities on a regular basis – my violent temper, a penchant for drowning my problems in alcohol, and an inability to address emotional issues before they become unavoidable roadblocks to my own happiness. It is true that violence begets violence and my abusive behavior directed towards my former beau sprang from the internalized messages learned during my own abusive childhood, but at some point we all become responsible for our actions and the abuse I suffered does not justify or excuse my abusive behavior. Thankfully, I am a female without much muscle mass or physical prowessness, so the amount of damage I caused was minimal and, more often than not, evoked laughter from my target instead of the intended fear response. Never the less, abuse is abuse & this type of behavior is not all that uncommon. A recent study on the subject suggest that men are battered by their partners more often than we might expect, given the relative invisibility of male victimization in American pop culture and the media’s one sided attention to battered females. In the United States, according to this study, men and women are equally as likely to report having hit their partners in the past 12 months, so the whole “Men are more aggressive” line is obviously a fallacy & should be dismissed as a stereotype.

While men might be victims of intimate partner violence as often as women & their experiences should not be discounted or ignored, the truth is women are more likely to be seriously injured, killed, and suffer greater consequences at the hands of their domestic partners than men are. When one considers the biological fact that most men are larger, stronger, and more capable of inflicting pain upon their partners than most women are, it is obvious why abuse against women is the central focus of most domestic violence activism. Injuries sustained by battered women are more likely to result in hospital visits than those of battered men. Of the people murdered by a domestic partner, 74% are women and according to FBI statistics, domestic violence claims the lives of more than four women everyday. The Bureau of Justice reports that 30% of women murdered are done in by their domestic partners, compared to 5% of murdered men being killed by their partners. Men are also more likely to be in an advantageous financial position than their female contemporaries, making escape from an abusive situation easier & more likely to be successful. Another statistic that should be acknowledged is the fact that most intimate partner violence against women occurs to those separated from their abuser. It is often cited that women attempting to leave an abusive situation are in the greatest danger, but it is worth repeating since blaming the victim in these situations is still very popular in some circles. Additionally, violence against women has been justified by various religious, social, and cultural norms in a way that violence against men has not. After all, the bible does not advocate violent disciplinary action against one’s husband and there hasn’t been legal guidelines on the books to regulate how much force a woman can use when beating her man. Until the women’s liberation movement of the 1970’s made the personal political, domestic violence wasn’t even considered a social issue in need of our attention, so the issue is far from exhausted & the recent Chris Brown / Rihanna incidence illustrates how the subject is still in need of some serious discussion. Ill Doctrine posted an interview on the topic with journalist Elizabeth Mendez Berry that addresses domestic violence within & without the hip hop community that raises some scary statistics (See below).

African American women, aged 20-24, are more likely to experience intimate partner violence than are similarly aged white women, and murder by their partners is the number one cause of death of black women in that age group. Damn. Reflect on that for a minute. Young black women are more likely to die at the hands of the person they love than they are to die from any other fatal situation. Why is this?

For more discussion on the subject see the following pages:

Elizabeth Mendez Berry’s article “Love Hurts” from Vibe magazine

Bitch Magazine talks about how we address the Chris Brown / Rihanna issue

Domestic Violence Way Up says Shakesville

A blurb about Wrigley's response to Chris Brown's behavior vs. the corporate sponsorship backlash against Michael Phelp's pot faux pas

Tequila is like kryptonite to Ms Maryjane Foxie

For whatever reason, I conveniently forget this fact when presented with an opportunity to drink the devil booze. I then re-learn the lesson, without fail, by the end of the evening. Yesterday’s foray into Drunk-ville ended quite early, since my alcohol consumption started earlier than usual, and the homies were left to fend for themselves while I got reacquainted with my toilet bowl. My bad.

Now that I’ve regained consciousness, I’m ready to start the day’s complaints with a new found sense of irritation.

* According to the New York Times article HERE, American hospitals nationwide have been snitching to the INS about injured or ill illegal immigrants seeking medical care. Since they lack insurance & most nursing homes won’t accept these patients, the hospitals will assist in their deportation to avoid the financial responsibility of treating them. I can’t help but think how fucked up it would be to get hurt or sick and seek treatment, only to be deported by people uninvolved with immigration matters. That would be like catching an STD and when you went to the clinic, your ass got fired from your job. Unrelated & unnecessary double Fuck You’s for folks already in a screwed up position.

* The House of Representatives passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would require employers to disclose employee salaries so that women will know sooner if they are being paid less for equal work. This Act was written in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. The Ledbetter ruling stated that employees have to file discrimination charges within 180 days of the initial unlawful employment practice, meaning a female employee getting shitty wages must sue within 180 days of her first unequal paycheck…even if she isn’t aware of what her contemporaries are making. You have to sue before you know your being screwed? Sounds fucked, huh? The Paycheck Fairness Act intends on rectifying the problem, but Bush has vowed to veto the legislation if it makes it through the Senate. What a dick…

* This headline made me puke in my mouth: “More Rapes Linked To Young Women on Drinking Binges”. WHAT!?! Obviously, the editors of San Diego News don’t realize that rapists commit sexual assault, therefore are at fault, and the alcohol consumption of their victims doesn’t change that fact. Women have a right to exist in the public sphere, intoxicated or not, without being subjected to sexual violence. Our police forces are supposed to protect the community, drunk or not, and arrest the rapists without blaming the victimized women in the media. This isn’t 1956, after all.

Title IX: The amendment that changed our world

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”    -Start of the original Title IX law

The story of Title IX sounds like it was made up as a leftist-feminist conspiracy tale, intended to prove just how fucked up gender discrimination was (is) in America. But, I kid you not, this is how it happened:

In 1965, presidential Executive Order 11246 prohibited federal contractors from discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, or national origin. President Johnson later amended the Executive Order to include discrimination based on sex in 1968. Soon there after, Bernice Sandler of the University of Maryland realized that, as federal contractors, most universities and colleges were subject to the Order and her efforts to bring this to light caught the attention of Rep. Martha Griffiths (D-Michigan), who then gave the first Congressional speech about discrimination against women in education on March 9, 1970. The conversation that the speech started inspired Rep. Edith Green (D-Ohio) to draft anti-discrimination legislation and hold the first congressional hearings on discrimination against women in education and employment during June and July of 1970. Senators Birch Bayh (D-Indiana) and George McGovern (D-South Dakota) managed the bill in the Senate and after several months of debate and compromise, the Education Amendments of 1972, including Title IX, were signed into law by President Nixon without much fanfare. Supporters of Title IX intentionally kept mum on it’s benefits & relied heavily on the ignorance of it’s would-be opponents. What they didn’t notice, wouldn’t piss them off until it’s too late! Sorta’ like the strategy used to pass the Patriot Act, except instead of circumventing the freedoms of Americans, Title IX expanded them. It is a common misperception that Title IX only applies to women’s participation in sports programs. It did open the Wide World of Sports to the fairer sex, but it also prohibited the common practice of steering girls away from science or math programs and into Home Economics courses against their will. It did forcibly open up the Debate Teams, the student government, and all those extra-curricular programs that colleges look for on student applications. Educational institutions receiving federal money were no longer allowed to keep women from receiving higher education, less they jeopardize their grant funding. It did de-gender scholastic subjects making it easier for American girls to become Mathematicians, Scientists, Engineers, and Intellectuals in traditionally male-dominated fields. It is difficult for me, a girl born into the post-Title IX era, to imagine what the educational system looked like prior to 1972. We certainly didn’t have to attend our Mamma’s high school! That maybe why I can’t hem a skirt, but that’s another story!

The wording of the Education Amendments was intentionally vague, since any specifications in the initial bill would jeopardize it’s passage, and it took three more years before the specific regulations of Title IX were signed into law by President Ford on May 27, 1975. These specific regulations/ protections required school districts (or other such systems) to appoint at least one Title IX coordinator, who’s name & contact information is available to all students / parents / staff members, to oversee compliance efforts and investigate any sex discrimination claims. Districts were also required to make grievance procedures and discrimination policies public. After these regulations were announced, districts (and the like) were allowed to undertake a one-time self evaluation of discriminatory policies and were given the opportunity to layout plans to rectify bias, this way the schools weren’t slammed by a wave of lawsuits they were unprepared to face. Title IX went largely ignored and under enforced during the politically conservative Reagan and Bush Sr. Administrations, but since the 1990’s it has become an indispensable piece of gender-equality legislation.

Title IX has since been renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, in honor of the late Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii), the co-author of the original bill. Thirty-six years after Rep. Mink and Rep. Edith Green watched their historic legislation signed into law, we are still reaping the benefits of their hard work. The drop-out rate for pregnant teens and young women with children has dropped 30% since the 1970’s, largely because Title IX prohibited the automatic expulsion of mothers or would be- mothers. In the 1970’s, only 18% of American women completed four or more years of higher education. But, for the first time in American history, women now outnumber men in undergraduate programs & women receive 55% of all Bachelor’s Degrees. Women went from earning only 7% of all law degrees (in 1972) to a whopping 43% (as of 1994); they formerly held only 9% of all medical and 1% of dental degrees, but as of the early nineties women have received 38% of the degrees in both fields. There has been a four-fold increase in women’s participation in athletics since 1971, undeniably a result of Title IX’s protections. Probably more important than any tangible statistical comparison is the change in social beliefs about women and education. Many modern American families want their sons AND daughters to participate in sports programs, successfully complete high school, and go on to an institution of higher learning to earn their degrees. Prior to the ‘70s, this was necessarily the case in households across America. There isn’t exactly a study or bar graph I can cite to prove the change in American attitude toward women & education, but the proof is unnecessary if your mother, your grandmother, your aunts, or other ladies educated in prior generations are available to talk about the subject. This month marks the 36th anniversary of Title IX’s passage and I suggest we take a moment to reflect on how we have benefited from it’s existence. Devote a minute, an hour, an afternoon to thinking about how education has impacted your life and consider the not-so-distant past when women, just like you, were denied the opportunity to learn. Threats to equality never cease to exist, so peep yourself up on game about the campaign to Save Title IX at the EXercise My Rights webpage.

 

Facts and information cited in the above post was gathered from the following sites: Historical info found in the WEEA Digest from August 1997 located HERE, progress statistics were found in an archived progress report from the U.S. Department of Education dated June 1997 located HERE. Sorry, I couldn’t find more recent information on the subject.

George Carlin tellin’ it how it is