Supreme Court to women workers: 'Make me a sandwich'

This article originally appeared on The Kasama Project on 1 July 2014. Reposting here to preserve a broken link. It can also be accessed here.

By ISH
The religious beliefs of business owners are more important than the health of women workers. That was the gist of a ruling out of the US Supreme Court on Monday, on the last day of the court's annual session. The court pretty much told women they should put up with whatever their bosses think is best for them, because the bosses have "sincerely held" beliefs about what is best for the health of their female employees.

In a familiar 5 to 4 vote, the court divided along conservative and liberal lines, with the court's three female justices leading the dissent. The ruling was on a case brought by the Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft-supply stores run by right-wing fundamentalist Christians. Forced by Obamacare to offer standardized health insurance to their employees, Hobby Lobby's owners objected to having to cover birth control expenses, supposedly against their religious beliefs. No allowances for the religious beliefs or non-beliefs of the covered employees were made, and, ironically, the Hobby Lobby owners raised no objection to insurance coverage of erectile-dysfunction drugs like Viagra. Women's gynecological health was completely trivialized as something entirely subject to whim. Previously, religious organizations were granted exemptions to birth-control coverage; this ruling was the first to extend those exemptions to “family” or “closely-held” businesses. Hobby Lobby may be family-owned, but it has almost 600 locations and over 20,000 employees. The ruling is also considered a blow to Obamacare, though in truth it just seems to make make it even more obvious what a pathetically pale imitation of actual universal healthcare Obamacare actually is.

It's not immediately clear how much of a legal precedent was set by the Supreme Court's ruling, which cannot be appealed. Liberal justice Ruth Ginsburg, in her dissent, worried that “In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”  If that turns out to be true, this court decision could be a goldmine for businesses to claim all sorts of religious exemptions from participating in workers' legal protections.

What is clear is that once again, the government has revealed how it exists to enable and justify the corporate exploitation of working people. Laws are tailored, snipped, changed, or scrapped, entirely to suit the interests of the capitalist system, and frankly it's all so much bullshit.

What is also clear is that women are second-class citizens whose healthcare can be treated like so much waste paper. Even in a country whose laws profess to transcend antique religious views, when the interests of business come calling, exceptions must be made, even if they defy the conventions of the system's own stated legal logic. And it's interesting to see how at the same moment these courts and politicians are widely opening laws across the country to recognize same-sex marriages, they're constricting women's access to healthcare, and to legal abortions. It's as though there's recognition that marriage is an institution of social control based fundamentally on capitalist property relations while women's reproductive health potentially challenges everything about women's role in the labor force. (In another recent Supreme Court decision the justices unanimously ruled that anti-abortion protesters terrorizing patients at women's health clinics could no longer be held to a buffer zone away from clinic doors.)

What is unfortunately not at all clear is what happens next. While there is so much anger and disgust among women, predictably the liberals are rushing to the defense of Democratic party politicians. And here the case of Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis should be a cautionary tale for people who think the democrats are any kind of line of defense: Davis' response to the vicious Republican attacks on her and on women's reproductive health has been to wave around her commitment to bans on late-term abortions. She's a sellout in waiting. And don't get me started on Hillary Clinton. We're about to see a massive opportunistic campaign to convince us that the next election is the most important in our lifetime, and that the only way to defeat the conservative “war on women” is to elect whoever the Democrats anoint. But that's not gonna do it. Frankly we need a whole lot less voting and a whole lot more revolution.

This defeat for women — for workers — at the Supreme Court shows the limitations of the liberal attempt to use the court for social engineering. Just as legal civil rights advances are eroding in the capitalist courts, so now are women's rights. What is done there can be undone later. The constitutional framework of the supreme court was established by slaveowners who cheered on native genocide and didn't recognize the full humanity of women. This is the framework we're supposed to use to defend ourselves?

Some are issuing feeble calls for a boycott of Hobby Lobby. But gross as Hobby Lobby's owners are, that one company isn't the source of our problems. And as a friend of mine said on Facebook, “I've been boycotting Hobby Lobby for my entire fucking life. What fucking difference did that make? Fuck consumer politics. That's just Ronald Reagan for fucking hippies. Does anybody get mad about anything anymore?...Do something!”

Indeed. It's time to do something. We need a revolutionary women's movement that stops playing by somebody else's corrupt rules, and we need it soon.

Ding dong . . . the “witch” is dead?

Margaret Thatcher died today, and celebration is the order of the day. She was a monster: a partner in crime of Augusto Pinochet and Ronald Reagan; she joined Reagan in calling Nelson Mandela a "terrorist." This is setting aside all the horrible things she did to working people in the U.K. Amid the celebration, I did notice something, and this article by Bay Area revolutionaries Advance the Struggle really caught my eye, so I'm reblogging it here. While I'm still working out my opinion on the works of Marxist-Feminist Sylvia Federici (author of Caliban and the Witch), I know quite a bit about witches and this article gets it exactly right. —ISH

Witch Side Are You On?

I dont intend to attack anyone for their word choice, but would like to raise a little bit of consciousness on this word choice of calling Thatcher a “witch” as a form of insult.
 
Margaret thatcher was the opposite of a witch. By referring to thatcher as a witch, one denigrates the real witches of the late middle ages (and other women whose independence was

slandered by patriarchy as witchcraft) whose genocide (witch hunts) was intimately bound up with the subjugation of the new proletariat and colonizing missions.

The witch hunts culminated in a triumph for the bourgeoisie, in the form of a division of labor at the heart of which was a stark divide between productive labor and reproductive (domestic) labor. Workers outside of the home (predominantly men, but women too) were waged slaves whose productivity was under-valued through the fetishism of commodities (money hiding the unequal exchange of equivalents). Workers inside the home (exclusively women) were not paid at all, the most extreme fetish (illusion) this new capitalist order would produce. At the heart of this illusion that women’s domestic/reproductive work did not merit a wage, was the false belief that women are genetically prone to do this work for free as loving mothers and loyal wives. Male wage earners were given a position, imposed on them and enforced by law, of domestic overseer with all the tools of coercion they might need, from the right to rape to the right to beat “their” wives who regarded as dependents on the man. Thus the male proletariat was coopted by the bourgeoisie in a scheme to keep the total wage bill of that class half of what it should have been. In this sense, all of us male proletarians have a duty to honor our sisters as pillars of the class at every available opportunity. Part of that is learning the history of women as workers inside and outside the home. That history includes the heroic chapter of witches’ resistance to capitalism at the very dawn of its existence. [the book Caliban and the Witch is a good place to start]

Margaret thatcher was a traitor to her gender. Witches were the most loyal members not only of their gender but also of a far reaching pan-european anti-capitalist/anti-patriarchy movement from the 1300s-1700s, that is, during the period of capitalism’s maturation as a world system.

Death to Thatcherism!
Long live women’s liberation and proletarian revolution!

International Women's Day, 2012

In getting used to the idea that women's rights to control their own bodies, including the right to have abortions, would remain a social battleground, I can't say I ever really expected the field of battle would actually shift backwards. But so it has done, and now it seems that even women's right to contraception is under attack. At the extreme end may be the putrid neanderthal spokesasshole Rush Limbaugh and his verbal assault on Ms. Susan Fluke, suggesting she was a "slut and prostitute" and out to get the government to support her licentious lifestyle, but at the other end are all manner of politicians including both Republicans and Democrats who think that it's high time that society controls women's genital organs. Apparently the small government types have problems with regulation of pollution and corruption but no problem at all with regulation of women's bodies. That they yearn for a time when women were nothing but baby machines says so much about their general worldviews.

I counter this 1950s style assault on women with a classic propaganda image from the other 1950s, the era of Soviet/Chinese solidarity against the American-led Cold War. Against a field of multilingual banners labelled "Peace," a Chinese and Russian woman gaze determinedly and resolutely against all odds. One boldly grasps a red banner, and yet almost tenderly they grasp hands between them. While certainly representing a different shade of stereotype, these women know that even peace is something that might require a battle to defend. And there remains so very very much to defend.

Happy International Working Women's Day. Stand shoulder to shoulder with your sisters.

The Right Wing's Prescription for Women

Planned Parenthood has been a target of the right wing for years. The current congress has gone to great lengths to demonize the private non-profit agency which provides millions of women, poor and otherwise, with health services including contraception and abortion. For all the insistence on the part of the rightwingers that the issue is preventing government-funding of abortion, the facts show that this is a smokescreen. There's a pie-chart floating around that clearly shows that abortions represent a small portion of Planned Parenthood's services. Given the legal hostility from many Republican and Democratic congresspeople in recent years, Planned Parenthood has worked very hard to follow the letter of the law and isolate the federal funding it gets from those abortion services. But it's futile to present either of these facts to the foes of Planned Parenthood, because the truth is that abortion is only the tip of the iceberg of their objections.

The rightwingers claim they are waging a battle based on moral and religious opposition to abortion based on the "sanctity of life." But what is actually quite clear is that these right wingers are actually waging a battle against something much bigger. And this is revealed by the current controversy over the initial Obama administration insistence that healthcare reform means that religious employers must include access to contraception in the insurance plans they offer to non-clerical employees like the teaching and medical professionals who work for churches and hospitals run by religious institutions. While it seems tragically likely that the Obama administration will concede this argument, the current controversy forces the right wing to admit that contraception itself is their actual problem, even knowing that contraception is a proven abortion preventative. Yes, that's right, the right wing does not want women to have access to the means to control their own bodies.

The right wing wants to defund Planned Parenthood not out of concern for some moral abstraction, but because it wants to preserve the dependency of women, especially poor and working-class women. The Sarah Palins and Michel Bachmanns of the far-right fringe notwithstanding, independent women who are not dependent on men are societal threat to the way the far right wants the world to look. And more fundamentally working-class women who rely on the affordability that government-funded healthcare provides are to them simply expendable.

The recent flap over the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure's shameful temporary plan to withdraw financial support of Planned Parenthood is illustrative. The Komen Foundation is less an institution concerned with women's health than a money-making scheme, a front for fake concern about the inadequate funding of women's healthcare. Forget how an organization allegedly concerned about women's health could sponsor pink buckets of the Colonel's greasy chicken, how could an organization allegedly concerned about women's health, full of smart people who know every last detail of those financial distribution pie-charts, claim that pulling the plug on poor women getting breast screenings could have anything to do with abortion at all? Who actually believes that? Only right wing ideologues with an agenda, that's who.

Here's the truth: This is yet another front on the class war being waged by the privileged classes on regular people. They don't want to pay for abortion, for contraception, for breast screenings, because they don't want to fucking pay for anyone's healthcare at all. Well, except their own.

Funny, it always comes down to the same problem....and the same solution.

Nafissatou Diallo: Raped Twice, First by DSK Now by the "Law"

The New York Times recounts today's meeting between prosecutors from the New York City DA's office and rape victim Nafissatou Diallo and her lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson:

'Mr. Thompson said that he and Ms. Diallo entered a conference room where the three main prosecutors on the case, Artie McConnell, Joan Illuzzi-Orbon and Ann Prunty, sat.

According to Mr. Thompson, when he and Ms. Diallo sat down, Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon said something to the effect of: “Nafi, we’re going to dismiss the case. You have lied to us repeatedly We can’t win the case.”

Mr. Thompson said he asked Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon what she was talking about and that Ms. Diallo asked how she lied. As Ms. Diallo was trying to ask questions, Mr. Thompson said, the three prosecutors stood up and walked out of the room without answering.

“The meeting lasted no more than 30 seconds; it was probably 20 seconds,” Mr. Thompson said. “It was disrespectful, it was absolutely disrespectful. They didn’t have the common courtesy to answer one question that the victim posed.” '

And so the vile rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the rich white international business executive, gets off, and the African maid who was bruised and assaulted, gets accused of being a liar and a criminal. The American Justice system does what it does best, serving the interest of the rich, white and powerful.

Ms. Diallo was found to have severe bruising on her genitalia. Semen from her mouth, clothes, and the wall of the hotel room in which she was assaulted matched Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Numerous other women have come forward to document Mr. Strauss-Kahn's lecherous, predatory and rapine behavior: he clearly believes his power and privilege gives him the right to do to women whatever he pleases, whenever he chooses. And yet Cyrus Vance Jr., an alleged liberal from a respected political family, has chosen to let Strauss-Kahn get off scot-free, because of Diallo's alleged history of lying during the difficult process of her immigration to the United States.

Cyrus Vance Jr. is now guilty of rape along with DSK: in choosing to let drop the prosecution of a case he has said to all women that if there are any mistakes in your past, any wealthy or powerful man has the right to rape you, to damage and bruise your genitalia, to cover you with his personal filth, with total and absolute impunity from the law.

For a demoralizing exercise in the disgusting racism and misogyny in American society, read the comments on the cited New York Times story. Readers compare Ms. Diallo to Tawana Brawley, notorious nearly thirty years ago for making improbable claims of rape in a completely different case under completely different circumstances, related perhaps in the eyes of white racists for the shared color of their skin. They call for Ms. Diallo's deportation, prosecution, virtually for her very lynching. The anger against Diallo is disturbing: her vilification is near complete while a man of utterly dubious reputation goes free, back to his mansions and his millions and his wife who has learned to look the other way at his hobby of molesting women.

Despite the facts and evidence of the case, which are related to Ms. Diallo's past actions not one iota, Cyrus Vance's office have punted.

This is not only an injustice but an outrage. Cyrus Vance must be forced to resign, and a special prosecutor should not only continue the prosecution against Strauss-Kahn but investigate the DA's office for corruption.

Once again, New York's City says "fuck you" to its weakest and most vulnerable.

Anti-war Anthems: Ursula Rucker

A few weeks ago when jazz poet/prophet Gil Scott-Heron passed, I asked "who would tell the truth" in his absence. I realized shortly after that I had a prime candidate in mind in Ursula Rucker, a Philadelphia-based poet and singer. She's recorded three conventional albums, released two digital-only albums, and has worked as a featured guest with a host of important artists on the cutting edge of socially/spiritually/politically conscious music.

The video above is "Awakening," from the 2007 album Play with the Changes by the genius British duo 4hero. The chill-out groove is pure 4hero but the lyrical message is all Ursula Rucker: a sort of dialogue between mother and daughter about carrying the torch to the next generation.

"Sister girl wanna tell you about this thing
that's been weighing heavy on my heart
haunts both my dreams and my first breath,
hmmm where to start well
Revolution it seems has become an antique when
in my youth revolution was what we rose with the sun to seek
we were fierce

Now, our glory days are nothing but a page,
in an edge worn book
an afro a raised fist,
a black beret, black pride
set aside to mere history,
it saddens me,
hmm it saddens me,
but will these words fall on deaf ears cos my tears won't
fill up the riverbed of resistance and change,
it's gone dry
and gone and unkown are the names which gave that river its
tranquility, its beautiful force and godspeed
rise up out of the complacency induced sleep
we need, an Awakening.

Bring the noise daughter
now is the time for you and your generation to put this universal
chaos in order...

But Mama, the resistance seemed so futile,
when all the while, government and media massacre my dreams,
We, my brothers and sisters and me,
are at the mercy of Dotcoms,
Bombs that kill at least 30 daily
the constant downward spiral of music and humanity,
a general lack of concern, knowledge and history,
our potential leaders and spokespeople are chasing
materialistic ideals
seems our fates have been sealed with a Bling Bling kiss...

Mama, i still question the meanings of freedom and peace
but i will not retreat, i will instead meet
this challenge head on and heart strong.
Sing my protest songs..."

Rucker's poetry is often political like this, delivered in a beautifully eloquent shifting hybrid of poetry slam, singing, rap and confession: it's hip-hop at its most creative and conscious. I saw her perform once in New York City backed by only a guitarist with a sequencer: I was spellbound. She's angry sometimes, righteously indignant; she really knows how to preach. But if she can channel an angry Mother Earth as she does in 4hero's "Loveless" (another great video on youtube), she can also be vulnerable and even maternal.


"Release" from Rucker's 2003 album Silver or Lead, featuring music by NY Latin/groove DJ Little Louie Vega, is her 9/11 song:

"And blue that day
When, everything changed
What changed?
Who really changed?...

When towers be falling
And Babylon be calling your name, my name
How will we answer?
How will we answer?

With dread?
With faith?
With misplaced power or power of prayer?
With bigotry?
With humanity?
With love?
With love
Release

Release your heart"

She reverently follows the footsteps of important, and too often forgotten, female voices like Sonia Sanchez and Jayne Cortez who married poetry, music, feminist consciousness, and political commitment. Importantly she brings a youthful accessibility and hipness like Dana Bryant and Jill Scott, though I find her focus sharper and her edge harder. Aside from 4hero and Louie Vega, she's worked with Jazzanova, the Roots, King Britt, and even slick UK acid jazz group Incognito. Her recitations marry well with the European techno-groove sensibility that harvests American jazz-funk of the 1970s for inspiration, which also means she's perfect for my own taste in music.

While not all of her work is political, when she makes a statement I can't think of anyone else who presents the politics of social justice and liberation in such a profoundly spiritual way. From her perspective these things are not separate: the way human beings treat each other is called to a higher level of respect and consciousness. While these songs are not single-issue anti-war tunes, her observation of the blights on our world and society is unsparing and far-reaching.


This song is less overtly political, but a live version of the highlight title track from her most recent album "She Said," this one borders rock and roll. It's impossible to forget that hers is a woman's perspective, where love and hope share space with hope, bitterness and frustration. She specializes in, well, the truth.

As she sings on her recent album: "Wake the fuck up, cause t'ings have run amock!"

DSK & IMF: Rapists not Socialists

This smiling man standing in front of the fisted-rose logo of the French Socialists is Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He, of course, is the incredibly wealthy French businessman currently under house arrest in New York City for allegedly attempting to rape the hotel worker assigned to cleaning his room. I haven't discussed Mr. Strauss-Kahn's arrest here mostly because even the regular media seems ripe with repulsion over his alleged crime, and I didn't think there was much to add. I'm quite sorry he used his considerable wealth to buy his way out of Riker's Island jail: evidence once again of who has the power in our "free" society.

But I would just like to add one thing: Mr. Strauss-Kahn's rape attempt of the as yet publicly unnamed hotel worker is not unique; she herself is apparently an African immigrant, and Mr. Strauss-Kahn has years under his belt raping the people of Africa. Until he resigned in the wake of the charges against him, he was the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, an organization that functions something like a follow-up rapist to the poorer nations of the world. After countries in the second and third world have been robbed blind by international mega-capitalism, the IMF moves in to rape the impoverished corpses of these nations, ensuring that no matter what happens, these nations will remain naked and bleeding slaves to the rich nations of the world.

While I'm gratified to learn that DSK is at least a member of the right wing of the French Socialist Party, the very thought that such a monstrous individual with such a vile career would consider himself a socialist blows my mind. He was even once seen as a possibly successful socialist electoral challenger to the current French president. Here in the United States where "socialism" is something akin to a curse word, many people are confused about what a socialist might be. Let me say loud and clear that DSK is not it.

Let justice take its course. Hopefully he will stand trial and be convicted. Might I suggest he serve his punishment in the poorest prison in the poorest country the world can find?

Happy International Working Women's Day

Above is a Soviet poster from 1961 for International Women's Day -- originally International Working Women's Day. Although the holiday was originally celebrated later in March, this year marks the centenary of the celebration. Not intended as a sentimental holiday a la mother's day, International Women's Day was a political holiday created by the world socialist movement not only to honor women and their struggle for equality and civil rights, but to advocate for the transformation of society along lines of political and economic justice. Disturbingly it was less than a hundred years ago in the United States that women were considered fully human enough to be able to vote in elections.

In honor of the holiday here is a passage by Alexandra Kollontai, the under-sung forward-thinking heroine of women's liberation in the Russian Revolution. This is from her essay "Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle," written way back in 1921. Her challenging essays break out of the mold of simple moral arguments: she advocates a revolution in human relationships inexorably linked to that economic and political transformation, away from the inequalities of class society.

"The “inequality” of the sexes – the inequality of their rights. the unequal value of their physical and emotional experience – is the other significant circumstance that distorts the psyche of contemporary man and is a reason for the deepening of the sexual crisis. The double morality inherent in both patrimonial and bourgeois society has, over the course of centuries. poisoned the psyche of men and women. These attitudes are so much a part of us that they are more difficult to get rid of than the ideas about possessing people that we have inherited only from bourgeois ideology. The idea that the sexes are unequal, even in the sphere of physical and emotional experience, means that the same action will be regarded differently according to whether it was the action of a man or a woman. Even the most “progressive” member of the bourgeoisie, who has long ago rejected the whole code of current morality, easily catches himself out at this point since he too in judging a man and a woman for the same behaviour will pass different sentences. One simple example is enough. Imagine that a member of the middle-class intelligentsia who is learned, involved in politics and social affairs – who is in short a “personality”, even a “public figure” – starts sleeping with his cook (a not uncommon thing to happen) and even becomes legally married to her. Does bourgeois society change its attitude to this man, does the event throw even the tiniest shadow of doubt as to his moral worth? Of course not.

Now imagine another situation. A respected woman of bourgeois society – a social figure, a research student, a doctor, or a writer, it’s all the same – becomes friendly with her footman, and to complete the scandal marries him. How does bourgeois society react to the behaviour of the hitherto “respected” woman? They cover her with “scorn”, of course! And remember, it’s so much the worse for her if her husband, the footman, is good-looking or possesses other “physical qualities”. “It’s obvious what she’s fallen for”, will be the sneer of the hypocritical bourgeoisie.

If a woman’s choice has anything of an “individual character” about it she won’t be forgiven by bourgeois society. This attitude is a kind of throwback to the traditions of tribal times. Society still wants a woman to take into account, when she is making her choice. rank and status and the instructions and interests of her family. Bourgeois society cannot see a woman as an independent person separate from her family unit and outside the isolated circle of domestic obligations and virtues. Contemporary society goes even further than the ancient tribal society in acting as woman’s trustee, instructing her not only to marry but to fall in love only with those people who are “worthy” of her.

We are continually meeting men of considerable spiritual and intellectual qualities who have chosen as their friend-for-life a worthless and empty woman, who in no way matches the spiritual worth of the husband. We accept this as something normal and we don’t think twice about it. At the most friends might pity Ivan Ivanovich for having landed himself with such an unbearable wife. But if it happens the other way round, we flap our hands and exclaim with concern. “How could such an outstanding woman as Maria Petrovna fall for such a nonentity? I begin to doubt the worth of Maria Petrovna.” Where do we get this double criterion from? What is the reason for it? The reason is undoubtedly that the idea of the sexes being of “different value'’ has become, over the centuries, a part of man’s psychological make-up. We are used to evaluating a woman not as a personality with individual qualities and failings irrespective of her physical and emotional experience, but only as an appendage of a man. This man, the husband or the lover, throws the light of his personality over the woman, and it is this reflection and not the woman herself that we consider to be the true definition of her emotional and moral make-up. In the eyes of society the personality of a man can be more easily separated from his actions in the sexual sphere. The personality of a woman is judged almost exclusively in terms of her sexual life. This type of attitude stems from the role that women have played in society over the centuries, and it is only now that a re-evaluation of these attitudes is slowly being achieved, at least in outline. Only a change in the economic role of woman, and her independent involvement in production, can and will bring about the weakening of these mistaken and hypocritical ideas.

The three basic circumstances distorting the modern psyche – extreme egoism, the idea that married partners possess each other, and the acceptance of the inequality of the sexes in terms of physical and emotional experience – must be faced if the sexual problem is to he settled. People will find the “magic key” with which they can break out of their situation only when their psyche has a sufficient store of “feelings of consideration” when their ability to love is greater, when the idea of freedom in personal relationships becomes fact and when the principle of “comradeship” triumphs over the traditional idea of inequality” and submission. The sexual problems cannot be solved without this radical re-education of our psyche."

Take THAT, trash TV.

What Feminism Looks Like

Yes, I posted a similar PSA from Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions just a couple days ago. I'm putting this one up not to beat the drum again about Palestine, but because of what this video says about women. In a brief minute it forces the viewer to confront one's prejudices about what feminism looks like. In my post about enforced standards of beauty on the Jersey shore ("American Burqa") I tried to chop away a bit at the superficial notion that American culture is synonymous with female empowerment. This video is the perfect companion, chipping away at the notion that female empowerment has to come with cultural transgression.

There are many women prominent in American politics, and they're not limited to one side of the issues. At some point all these women get judged on the basis of their physical appearance. How much energy is wasted discussing the appearance or clothing of Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton? Or of Maggie Gallagher, spokesperson of the anti-gay hate group "National Organization for [sic] Marriage"? Or even of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann? Palin and Bachmann are outspoken women (with revolting politics) who project a certain strength and independence; but are they feminists?

Show a picture of a Middle-Eastern woman in some kind of religiously modest clothing and an assumption is immediately made -- by Americans, anyway -- that she is submissive, oppressed, docile, controlled by men. And yet compare hijab-clad women in the protests in Palestine or Egypt with Sarah Palin. Who's more feminist? Who's more involved in fighting for human dignity, justice and liberation?

It's not about appearances; it's about substance and values and program.

American Burqa: a Night Out on the Jersey Shore

There is a place where women are forced to dress all alike. It's a kind of uniform of submission: all women are forced to wear this uniform or be shunned, whether they are young and shapely or middle-aged and chubby. Black is the preferred color, though this is not rigidly enforced. What's going on inside a woman's head, her own vision of who she is and what she thinks and what she wants is irrelevent: individuality and freedom of thought is suppressed and propaganda carefully herds women to a standard of sameness. If you think I'm talking about the Middle East you're wrong. I'm talking about Friday night on the Jersey Shore; Atlantic City to be precise. Perhaps I need to get out more, though: I'm thinking it is possible that the horror I witnessed is common throughout suburban heterosexual nightlife. Perhaps in news coverage of the Egyptian revolution you have witnessed the clucking tongues of baiting neocon pundits worrying about whether Islamist activists will somehow hijack the revolution and force Egyptian women into forced modesty. Well here's what I've realized: the concern of American culture for the fate of women in predominately Muslim countries is nothing but a big-fat crocodile tear, because American women, especially young ones, have already been sent down a path of objectification and posed hypersexuality every bit as dehumanizing as what some claim has happened to women in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.


There's something fascinating about Atlantic City. The combination of wishful thinking and seediness is honed to a fine edge. The casinos are full of people and yet they're not doing great financially, just as most people spending time there -- me included -- are calculating the enjoyment of the place not in massive gambling winnings but in whether the time was worth the price. We spent a night there this past February weekend. The worst of the winter seems to have passed for now and the indoor social life of the casinos seemed to be jumping. Atlantic City isn't the setting for the MTV "reality" show The Jersey Shore, but it's in close proximity to that show's location, not only physically, but spiritually.

We arrived on a Friday night, just as the crowds seemed to shift from elderly retired people to young adults out to party. As I and my companions sat down for a late dinner we realized that practically every woman we saw was dressed identically: in uncomfortably high heels, and shockingly tight shoulderless cocktail dresses coming down a barely calculable measure below the crotch. These dresses were all about ass threatening to burst out of tight confinement. We began to play a tasteless game we called "hooker or slut." Of course there was simply no way to tell. These women had been completely absorbed into the aesthetic of prostitution.

As we walked around the casino it became almost absurd. Small groups of identically dressed women only occasionally in the escort of calculatingly-casually dressed young men moved about through the halls from bar to gambling room to club. I never saw one try to sit down, I can't imagine what would have happened to their dresses if they tried. At some point I looked at three women leaning over a counter: all had identical hair and makeup as well, the same cut, the same strange-looking false sunstreaks dyed into identical patterns. I realized that while most of these women were young and fit with curves that successfully filled out their tight little dresses, I was also seeing older women or women without such studied bodies who couldn't quite pull off the look but were doing their best to try. Sleeves and leggings accessorized those who feared the exposure of a little flab or wrinkle.

Now granted as a gay man I don't spend a lot of time staring at women. But I don't think my horror at what I saw was driven by prudery or disdain for female sexuality. In the uniformity of what I saw there was something so forced and un-sexy about the professed sexiness of the uniform. All of these women might as well have had signs pinned to their waists saying "you can almost see my vagina." Their outfits pulled attention away from their faces and turned them into automatons of base male gratification.


So when the media shows excessively veiled Muslim women in its condescending or fearful tone, I now have to ask: do you want women to be free to express their individuality? Their sexuality? Or are you just complaining that you can't ogle the flesh of these women? Is the issue the right of these women to live their lives in the way they choose? Or is the complaint that these women might have secret inner lives that are not available to your observation?

I think if I was a woman and a Muslim I would not choose the extreme forms of Muslim hijab like the burqa or abaya. And I do understand that in our harsh world, excessive hijab can be a form of oppression. And I think if I was a young woman looking for love, or for fun, on a night out on the town in a New Jersey beach town, I would not choose to make myself uncomfortable and identical to all my friends. But the choice is not really between covering up and dressing like a prostitute. This is a false choice: a false choice that the women of the Jersey Shore are apparently unable to see.

I was reminded of my visit last summer to an Orisha ceremony and to two jazz concerts in Brooklyn, all of which I described on this blog. At the Santeria ceremony, attended by people of every imaginable race and ethnic mix, the women radiated beauty and strength and individuality and even sexiness. Gay and straight women alike projected a spiritual centeredness and pride. Hair was worn naturally, sometimes very short or in locks. Clothes were not flashy, but neither were they shapeless potato sacks. Some wore African-inspired finery but everyone projected her own being. At the jazz concerts, the overwhelmingly African-American crowd ran the gamut from young to old. There was certainly flashiness there, but the fashion was consciousness and self-empowerment. If there was flirtation it was chosen, rather than a blatant neon sign of objectification and neediness.


It is not the lack of modesty that concerns me, nor the display of sexuality. It's something else. Oh I hear a voice in my head that sounds like the mean old man telling those darn kids to get off his lawn in some early 1960s youth culture flick. But I don't think what I was seeing was youth rebellion; on the contrary, I think it was the fruit of some kind of media hypnotism. To me it looks empty and false.

I miss feminism: when women were empowered to make choices for themselves, to be freethinkers, to be unabashedly sex-positive. Those tight little cocktail dresses strike me as the Burqas of our age: prisons of subjugation and objectification. I've read Middle-Eastern feminists criticize the abaya and the burqa because a woman must spend so much time hanging on to her clothes she couldn't possibly work at a physical job and must therefore change her orientation to the home. And so it is with crotch=length dresses: how can one even think if all one is doing is ensuring something won't pop out?

Bad television like "The Jersey Shore" is good for a laugh. But I'm starting to think it's not so funny. What happens when life starts to imitate this terrible, demeaning "art"?

(Atlantic City booty photos by me. Sorry for using your butts to make a point, ladies.)

Anti-American Art: This Is My Rifle, This Is My... Shell

"The Vietnamese People Must Win!" reads this oddly blocky 1960s Chinese poster. A Vietnamese soldier and a militiawoman gaze loftily into the distance as American planes fall from the reddened sky in the background. But it's hard to remove one's gaze from the remarkably phallic artillery shell the soldier holds with his chunky hand. His companion has her own weapon but his is clearly the most powerful.

The lip service Cultural Revolution-era Chinese propaganda paid to gender equity is commendable. Women were shown to be the equals of men quite matter of factly in posters like this one. It's interesting that since downfall of Mao's widow Jiang Qing shortly after the Chairman's death, the Chinese Communist Party seems, at least to the casual outside observer, completely male dominated. For all Madame Mao's vanities and excesses her role in the cultural aesthetic of classic Maoism was remarkably proto-feminist. I wonder what the political future of women is in capitalist road China.

Time to Castrate Testicular Metaphors And Bring Back Some Feminist Clarity

"If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two." James Carville on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008

“If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, he’d have two,” James Carville in Nov. 2010

"[Arizona governor] Jan Brewer has the cojones that our president does not have." - Sarah Palin to FoxNews, August 2010

"Obama and the Democrats have no balls!" - a million commenters in the liberal blogosphere, December 2010

Okay, I am a gay man, and as an admirer of the male anatomy let me say I have a fond appreciation for a nice pair of low-hangers. A nice pair of high and tight ones ain't bad either. Whether mysteriously and tantalizingly bulging inside clothing, swinging wild and free, or squeezing out behind a misplaced strap or seam, the lovely and delicate male appendage known as testicles, balls, nuts, cojones, or junk is a monument of natural wonder and sensual pleasure. But what it is not is a useful political metaphor.

IT'S STUPID
The vulgarity and stupidity of using the term "balls" for political leadership or courage should be immediately self-evident from the nature of the people who use it the most. Vampire-like underminer and enabler James Carville and quitter/ignoramus Sarah Palin are now pioneers among the political class "daring" to bring such a vulgarism into everyday political discussion, and FoxNews, the great moral arbiter of our time, thinks that's fine. It is positively insidious that a linguistic moron like Sarah Palin should be setting cultural discourse by planting her finger so firmly up the anus of American media culture. It was she, of course, who uttered the barbarically cynical line, "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for you now?" A quotable line which has started to work its way not only through low-information right-wing regurgitators, but through liberal ones now manipulated into feeling betrayed by Obama.

But this is bully talk. Talking about politicians showing "balls" is an attempt to avoid actual discussion of issues. It's an attempt to oversimplify issues with dark intent, to silence deeper questioning. To narrow issues of immigration, as Palin has done, down to a testicular level is not only to evoke fear, but to suggest that immigrants themselves are somehow sapping America's "manhood," that the correct response is defensive crotch grabbing, and that it's all a schoolyard contest to see whose swagger is the widest. And these bullies are counting on intimidating those who secretly worry about their own testicular inadequacy into shutting up and going along with loud, empty-headed braggarts.

This is utter stupidity. Which might be expected from the ilk of Palin and Carville. But it's even worse that the vulgar idiocy of right-wing morons is seeping leftward as progressives react to Obama's response to a new political reality.

IT'S OFFENSIVE
This equation of political power, determination, ability, and leadership with testicles is profoundly sexist and misogynist. There's a word I try very hard to avoid: it's "hysteria." And why? Because "hysteria" is a linguistic migration from crackpot sexist psychology into popular usage: it describes women losing control, shrieking and flailing about because of uncontrolled natural urges provoked by their genitalia. "Hysterical" in its original sense means acting like a woman who has lost control of herself; she has allowed her womb to take over and turn her into an irrational, raving animal: the cure for hysteria is a good slap from a stern man, or failing that, being sent away for a while. Somehow "hysterical" has been confused with "hilarious" and people use "hysterical" for something so funny they lose control of themselves. I choose not to perpetuate the notion that it is some inner "female" defect that causes us to lose control. Well I feel the same way about "balls."

Even in the backhandedly complimentary way being applied to Hillary Clinton, courage and leadership should not be considered "male" properties. It's always struck me as deeply ironic that patriarchal male-dominated society insists female submissiveness is the natural order when history shows us both the repressive origins of male dominance and thousands of examples of female leadership.

People on the left should know better than to fall for this crap. It's really a shame that feminist theory and analysis has been so marginalized and discredited with accusations of "political correctness" (always a vile, slanderous, and right-wing dodge) that disgustingly sexist language -- and the intent behind it -- is creeping back through popular culture. For a disturbingly eye-opening experience read the comments about any (probably right-wing) woman on a gay blog and start counting the c-words and the b-words and worse. Using sexual stereotypes is such an easy thing to fall into; but it only requires a little effort and sense of respect and human decency to restrain oneself.

And questioning a male leader's "balls," as is being done about Obama, isn't it rather a lot like calling him a f*g? Perhaps no one is saying Obama is literally gay, but in demasculinizing him aren't they sissyfying him? It's the same thing they mean when they, these multimillionaire rightwingers, call him an "elitist." They mean a pansified, glasses-wearing, sissy who thinks he's too rarified to hang out with the boys, with the real men. Bully speech. Kick his ass!

And let's not even go into why these people think it's cute to call balls "cojones," especially when they're plotting against Hispanic immigrants.

IT'S WRONG
But perhaps what irks me the most about questioning Barack Obama's, or the Democratic Party's, metaphorical balls is that I think it is a facile argument and an incorrect interpretation of what's happening in Washington.

People on the progressive left wanted very much to believe that Obama and the Democrats are on their side. But in truth the Democrats' consensus and Obama himself are much more middle-of-the-road than all the glorious hype of the 2008 elections. But if the Democrats and Obama are a first line of defense against the advancing right-wing resurgence, it does not mean they are actually themselves left-wing.

Let's look briefly at the issue of education reform. Most on the liberal left think it means defending schools against cutbacks, defending education against bizarre testing standards, restoring quality and priority to childhood education. But to the political center (and right) education reform also means busting teacher's unions. That is a crucial difference of position. And anyone can look into Obama's rhetoric to see that he is committed to both the humanistic value of improving education and the corporate value of busting unions. This will lead him to both good and bad policies. And so it is with the economic crisis and his solutions and compromises. What the left perceives as weakness is actually a difference of position, a divergence between what we really wanted a symbolically game-changing president to be and who Obama actually is.

Obama is not a leftist. And let me add, outside of a Bernie Sanders/Dennis Kucinich fluke here and there, leftists will not be elected to government anytime soon in the kind of numbers that will make an actual difference. That is just the way it is. Hopefully, I might add, not forever. But for now.

So when the left accuses Obama of not having "balls," that is, the leadership and courage to stand up to the Republicans on the economy, I think the left is missing several crucial points. And in missing these crucial points I think the left continues to disarm itself. There is a left-wing solution to the economic crisis. And you know what? Cancelling the Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires is an insignificant teeny-tiny-tip of that iceberg. It's symbolically hugely disappointing, sure. It was nice to think that a President might draw that kind of line in the sand. But in a world where the "defense" budget will not be surrendered to right the economy, where banks and corporations will continue to be encouraged to rape the population, what's more important? That symbol -- or the extension of unemployment benefits to millions of people and a modest second economic stimulus?

The left needs to find a way to articulate its vision, advance its agenda, and pragmatically react to the reality of the times. Why are Americans not out in the streets? Right now it's a very one-sided class struggle and our side is losing. Badly and without putting up much of a fight. And we're accusing Obama and the Democrats of being weak?

So fondle some testicles today. It's fun for everybody, except, well, Lesbians (sorry, Sapphic sisters!). But stop talking about them like they're more than a random body part. It doesn't make you sound tough, it makes you sound stupid. And worse, it makes you act stupid.

(Art of anonymous nuts snagged from the excellent nostalgic gay porn blog "BJ's gay porn-crazed ramblings." It's from his post on the dread "mooseknuckle" phenomenon.)

International Women's Day: Fantasy v. Reality

Above, a Sandinista billboard in Managua. "Por la igualdad de participacion de la mujer": "For the Equality of Participation of Women." Below, women on a train returning home from the market in Managua to Diriamba. Both photos by me, both from 1986. I guess the lesson here is that it takes more than good intentions to change oppressive class relationships. Legal equality, which technically even the United States has failed to embrace, is one thing; the breakdown of gender roles is quite another.

March 8 is International Working Women's Day

What don't you see on these stamps from the early years of the (Soviet-backed) Democratic Republic of Afghanistan? The top stamp celebrates the International Year of the Child, 1979. The bottom, celebrates Mother's Day in the Revolution from 1980. What's missing? The burqa!

Yes, the full-body covering for Afghan women, face concealed behind a mesh mask, so condemned by Western feminists, was not the fashion under Afghanistan's progressive secular government in the years of, and before, the so-called Soviet invasion. Women worked, served in government, served in the armed forces, went to school, and didn't wear the burqa. You may thank the Western-backed Mujahedeen, and its primary backers Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and Saudi Arabia, and the Taliban for the burqa.

With respect to all the well-intentioned do-gooders on the coattails of the continuing US invasion of Afghanistan trying to undo some of the Taliban's oppressive anti-women policies, one wonders what the state of Afghan women might be had not the superpowers and regional powers decided to spend the last thirty years mucking Afghanistan up.