women’s rights

Which is More Old Fashioned: Mad Men or Congress? Christina Hendricks Knows

Earlier this year, during President Obama’s State of the Union Address made a Mad Men reference that got him a lot of attention:

“Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work. She deserves to have a baby without sacrificing her job. A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship – and you know what, a father does, too. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a “Mad Men” episode.”

Well, now Funny or Die has an awesome new video up with Christina Hendricks of Mad Men talking about today’s modern offices

Modern Office with Christina Hendricks from Funny Or Die

Hey Scott Walker What Good Are Boner Pills If My Girlfriend Can Get Pregnant

Another video coming at you from our friends over at LadyPartsJustice.com holding Governor Scott Walker accountable for hatin’ on the ladies. In this episode, one dude wants to know why Walker lets pharmacists refuse to give you birth control pills but they can’t deny dudes their boner pills? Anyone have any ideas why this might be?

BREAKING: Hobby Lobby allegedly fires worker for being pregnant

This just in from our friends at RHRealityCheck.org who has done an outstanding bit of investigative journalism exploring further Hobby Lobby hypocrisy. RHRC reports that Flowood, Mississippi Hobby Lobby employee Felicia Allen was about to pop and not surprisingly asked for her medical leave. Instead Hobby Lobbycanned her after her baby was born and then tried to fight her filings for unemployment.

What would Jesus say, folks?

Not that it matters, but everyone in Ms. Allen’s Hobby Lobby store agreed this was messed up, as I’m sure many of us do.

So just to clarify:

Hobby Lobby believes it is against their religion to pay for a woman’s birth control,
Hobby Lobby believes it is totally fine to invest their pension plan in the pharmaceutical company that makes the birth control they oppose their employees using,
Hobby Lobby believes it is OK to pay for vasectomies and Viagra for male employees, and
Hobby Lobby does not believe it should give family leave to a pregnant mom and allow her to keep her job.

So, basically, your religion is not Christianity. It’s actually just the Church of the Asshole. Read the whole story at RHRealityCheck.org – it’s worth it.

A Guide for Dudes: Here’s What to Do and What Not To Do

I’d just finished a fun dinner with my bestest girl friends, jumped in my hot car and took off the shirt that I was wearing over my low cut tanktop and cranked on the A/C. I stopped on the way home at a 7-11 to fill my car up with gas, but before I got out of the car I grabbed the shirt and put it back on over my tanktop. Why did I do this?

As a Millennial woman, I was raised in a culture that has taught me that if I don’t want to get raped I need to take steps to prevent the rape. In the sex-ed classes across the southern states like the ones where I grew up, we spread lies in abstinence only education, we shame girls and women for what they wear, God forbidyour breast be exposed during the halftime game at the Superbowl. But we never teach our sons and men this key message: ASK CONSENT FIRST.

Here’s one way to do it:

This is why I hugged a “notorious” abortion doctor

I had never even heard of the so-called “notorious” abortion doctor George Tiller. When I crossed the Kansas-Oklahoma border for my first year at the University of Kansas, it wasn’t as if there was a billboard along I-35 saying “ABORTIONS” with a lit up arrow pointing and flashing. In fact I didn’t hear about him until several years later when I took a year off from school to work on my first political campaign. My candidate got a big check from Tiller and wondered if she should give it back. I didn’t want to show my ignorance not knowing who this major donor was, so I looked him up later wondering why it mattered. Ah how I miss my adorable liberal innocence.

Several years later, EMILY’s List came to Wichita to do a training for state and local women running for office, in part funded by the generous donations that Dr. Tiller made to their causes and candidates. By then I was well aware of the good doctor.

I was excited to participate, not as a candidate, but as a staffer who wanted to learn state level campaigning and meet other female leaders. The training was held in a Unitarian church they had rented out and I arrived very early. I pulled along the curb, grabbed my backpack, and began to walk inside. There were two older people across the street with a video camera on a tripod filming me. I had no idea why they were there but it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

Toward the end of the training a small trim man came into the room as we shared drinks and cookies. Women seemed to gather around him shaking his hand and saying hello. Dr. Tiller was introduced to the room and took a moment to say a few words. He spoke about being the father of daughters, about being a husband, about his life being surrounded by women. “Women are smart,” he said. “They are strong, they are brave, and I trust them to make their own healthcare decisions.”

I think I was the youngest person in the room, or near to it, so when I heard the male voice say hello while we both perused the lemonade, I was nervous and excited. I reached to hug him (southerns are huggers no matter which state we’re in). I told him thank you for helping Kansas women, Kansas candidates and activists, and for being a strong contributor for protecting a woman’s right to choose.

Later that night while having drinks with the EMILY’s List staffers at their hotel, I talked about hugging him and feeling like he was wearing a bunch of layers of clothes or something. Padding maybe, I wasn’t sure. One of them smiled at my innocence, “That’s his bullet proof vest, he wears it everywhere. He’s been shot in his arms and legs by anti-choice people.”

Five years ago today, Dr. Tiller was gunned down while greeting friends at his church on a beautiful Sunday spring morning. For a short time the clinic closed, but now in its place stands a new one, still providing women’s health services that these activists killed him for. Friend and ally Julie Burkhart is bravely leading the cause in his place, reminding us to “trust women.”

Dr. George Tiller Trust Women

Rant: Your Messed Up Christian Tradition is Fetishizing Little Girls

I hate to break this news for all the folks writing this story, but Purity Balls aren’t new. This isn’t some fancy modern trend like hipsters or fondu. It’s something right-wing girls and their weird-ass families have concocted to glamorize controlling the sexuality of women and fetishizing the idea of women as little girls.

The first ever official Purity Ball was in the late 1990’s out of Colorado Springs. Before that, there have been beautiful ceremonies from aristocratic traditions presenting debutant daughters to “society.” Freemasons have a charity and community service focused club and event/ball for it’s International Order of the Rainbow for girls. And I suppose there are always Bat Mitzvahs, celebrating the transition of girls into womanhood with bad DJ’s and enough teenage drama to make Romeo and Juliet want to kill themselves … again.

But unlike all of these coming of age traditions, a Purity Ball is the only one that attempts to repress girls by taking all of those padded bras, the red lipstick and lady-part desires and shoving them deep down where they belong.

All of this, an effort to remind girls that until Daddy gives you away, you’re owned by him. Daddy symbolizes this with a ring for his little girl wear to show her purity for him. His little girl pledges that she’ll never go on a date, kiss a boy, or hold his dirty, sweaty awkward hand. Oh and his little girl gets a pretty frilly white dress to dance in with Daddy. One such Daddy named Ron told his little girl as he placed the ring on her finger:

“This is just a reminder that keeping yourself pure is important. So you keep this on your finger and from this point you are married to the Lord, and your father is your boyfriend.”

Now if you’re a grown ass woman and this is your fetish of choice, then rock on with your bad self. If, however, you’re one of the girls portrayed in the new book by Swedish photographer David Magnusson (as seen in the top right), something ain’t right.

Women, regardless of their age, aren’t owned by men, even their fathers. This kind of thinking is a throwback to the days when having a daughter was devalued over a son. Yes, there was once an era when girls were seen as property and “given away” by their fathers at their weddings for a price the family paid (dowry). Women were essentially sold to husbands.

As well-intentioned as these misguided fathers might be, claiming that these girls are “owned” by men teaches daughters they are only “things.” By focusing on sex being “sacred,” they’re teaching girls that when they turn out to be like the 95% of the rest of the world that has sex before marriage, that they are now impure and dirty… worthless… and that they have broken a vow with their father… like they cheated on him or something.

That doesn’t make a father loving, compassionate, cautious or over caring. It’s emotional manipulation. And it’s wrong. This breaking news might be hurtful to some, but a man’s penis isn’t that powerful or that important. A man’s penis can’t devalue anyone, in fact no one can devalue you. And if a man chooses to devalue a woman for being powerful enough to own herself, it makes the man nothing more than what he wishes he had – a giant prick.

H/T: Guttmacher