Hello and happy weekend, Disruptors!
I want to apologize for not posting a “what we’re reading” last week. To be honest, it’s very time consuming on a day of the week when I’, usually very busy with other plans. So we’ll be making some changes.
Each week, I’ll post just 10 links from the many that the DDP editors email to each other. Then, the other editors will comment with any other posts they feel we should share. You, as always, are not only welcome but encouraged to comment with links to articles you read this week as well as any blog posts or articles you’re written that you think our readership would enjoy. Promote yourselves!
Today, I’ll post about 20, from last week and this. Enjoy!
- TW for reactions to rape: “Twelve things no one told me about sex after rape.”
- Bridie said, “This article is pushing my revolutionary buttons!” On the rise of unpaid work and classism: “Meritocracy is a zombie reanimated by debt.”
- A queer parent’s love letter to the (female) father of her kids
- What LGBT rights and pro-choice movements have in common:
“Both of our movements seek to define, build, and celebrate a diversity of families. This includes the right to control what you do with your body, the agency to choose whom to love and be intimate with, the ability to decide how and when to build a family, and the power to build a community that reflects and protects these values.”
- If you’ve been wondering what rape culture is, just read this article. It’s dripping from every damn line. If you’re ever like, “Yeah, but do people really think entering a bedroom is consent? I mean, come on, feminists- it’s a total straw man to claim that peaople think leaning your head against someone while you’re asleep is consent to a sexual activity!” then read this article.
- Praise for “Man of Steel” and criticism of the boring cliched romances in most superhero movies.
- Some detailed historical background for tension between the trans community and HRC.
- Obama’s administration has made a small change to the Social Security Administration that could be a huge boon for the trans community (written by Mara Kiesling, who is mentioned in the article above).
- A tumblr for queer Muslims
- Turns out if you don’t treat rape victims like they are suspects, they will be a lot better able to recount enough of the story to catch their rapist. Also flat affect, trouble piecing together a story line, and not fighting off an attacker are signs of trauma and fear, not signs that the survivor is lying. Science!
- Powerful piece on the slings and arrows of life immersed in a sexist culture. Seriously worth the read.
- Adorable six-year-old Coy Mathis, who is transgender, has won a court case allowing her to use the girl’s bathroom at school.
- A letter to allies about actually being allies (re: street harassment)
- Privilege 102: It’s not just about classism! One of our editors’ friends wrote this! Woot!
- This Supreme Court decision limits the legal options for people harassed in the workplace.
- An adorable collection of family photos of multiracial families, in a photoblog formed to combat the racist backlash to this Cheerios ad.
- DOMA is dead! Hurray! Celebrate with this heartwarming collection of wedding photos.
- This Effing Dykes post is aimed at queer ladies with little sexual experience, but is really relevant to anyone who needs a reminder that good sex = enthusiastic about pleasing your partner + enthusiastic about your partner pleasing you
- Immigration reform passed the US Senate– will it pass the House?
- We have been reading a lot about Rachel Jeantel‘s testimony in George Zimmerman’s trial, and the classism, racism, and othering apparent in people’s reactions to it.
I liked this article, which points out how ridiculous all the commenting from some supposed feminists like Hanna Rosin was after that study came out on female “breadwinners”: thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/06/26/relax-the-rise-of-so-called-breadwinner-moms-does-not-portend-a-coming-matriarchy/
The moral of the story is, no, we don’t really have many female breadwinners in families at all, sorry, sexism and the gender pay gap still exist.
It’s not just Vance v. Ball State that came down today. There’s also the UT Medical Center case: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2013/06/two-big-employer-title-vii-wins-at-the-supreme-court-today.html
We’ve had a bunch of really, really bad, reactionary Supreme Court cases in the past couple weeks. One good case on DOMA, one case that the feminist internets seems to think is good on Prop 8 and I can’t for the life of me tell why, and then a whole slew of cases striking down voting rights, getting rid of workplace employment discrimination protections, gutting consumer rights, hampering states’ ability to put limits on environmentally-destructive developments, etc.
I read Alyssa’s article you linked to above on Man of Steel before I went to see it, and was pretty excited for it, partly as a result. I was somewhat underwhelmed, though. I don’t know if it even passes the Bechdel test. Even aside from that, the film was more about aerial fisticuffs than any interesting plot or character development.
Thanks for your comment, Dave! I’ve heard the basic reasoning behind the Prop 8 non-decision, and that it weakens the initiative system, but coming from a state that doesn’t have a strong initiative tradition, I’d love for you to expand on why the decision was so damaging.
I’m sorry Man of Steel disappointed you. I didn’t see it- I’ve kinda stopped watching superhero movies, though I’d start again if there were a Wonder Woman movie or a movie with a 50/50 women to men ratio, or any reasonable expectation that it would pass the Bechdel test with flying colors. One movie I *am* excited to see (today!) is The Heat, a buddy cop movie with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. I heard it’s hilarious!
Ok, I’ll elaborate a bit. Incidentally, I’ve heard good things about The Heat, too, and hopefully will go see it sometime soon.
So what happened before in the Prop 8 decision was, the Court of Appeals wrote a somewhat masterful decision, in my mind, by one of the best progressive legal minds of our time (Judge Reinhardt, the most often-reversed judge at the Supreme Court level). What it found was, the defendants had standing to appeal the District Court’s ruling striking down Prop 8, and Prop 8 was unconstitutional because it took away rights with no rational basis. It was a decision that was crafted to get the Supreme Court behind it, because nobody thinks Kennedy would go full-marriage-equality, but he might be amenable to the argument that once a state has granted marriage equality, it cannot constitutionally then take it away.
So if nothing happened, and the Supreme Court didn’t take the case, Prop 8 is unconstitutional in all of California, and there’s a good Ninth Circuit case saying that states can’t take away marriage equality. But now we’ve just got a district-court level opinion favoring marriage equality, since the appeals decision is vacated. Furthermore, finding that the defendants lack standing essentially gives the state government the ability to annul certain initiatives. What the Court said is, nobody can defendant an initiative except the government unless they have suffered a concrete harm that they can demonstrate. Which is fine in this case. But, what if there’s a reactionary governor in a state who convinces the legislature to put a 20-week abortion ban in place. And the legislature passes that law, but then there’s an initiative by the people overturning the ban. Say there’s some sort of procedural issue with the initiative, or even worse, somebody claims it unconstitutionally infringes on fetus’s rights. The governor can simply refuse to defend the initiative, and it basically dies there, unless somebody has suffered a concrete harm as a result (ie, gets or performs an abortion after 20 weeks and is prosecuted for it, good luck trying to find a plaintiff there).
After reading this, now I’m scared…
MoJo thinks it’s not that big of a deal, because Prop 8 was pretty unique in that no one can show they’re hurt by marriage equality: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/supreme-courts-ruling-prop-8-problem-probably-not-big-problem
I think Kevin Drum is probably right that it’s not a situation that’s very likely to happen often. But he’s also right that it’s not a good decision, and in general, stopping people’s ability to challenge laws on standing grounds can be pretty damn undemocratic. You might think that anytime nobody can show they’re hurt by a law, then the law’s probably a good thing. But that’s not always the case– for instance, I probably couldn’t show that I was hurt by a public school posting the ten commandments on a wall, especially if I don’t go to school there, or by a law allowing religious employers to opt out of certain health care coverage, etc.