Ear Piercing Parties for 6 year olds…good or bad?
Leave a Comment(Los Angeles – June 25, 2009) – This new trend is disturbing to one mom.
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Meanest Mom Jana Matthews: A few days ago, my six-year-old daughter received an invitation in the mail to a friend’s birthday party. The party is being held at a children’s hair salon in town. After being educated in the art of prepubescent hairstyling, each of the party guests will be treated to a beauty treatment of her choice: a manicure, a pedicure, a classy “up-do,” or a free ear piercing. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a box labeled “tattoo,” because I would have checked it.
Question # 1: Who throws an ear-piercing party for six-year-olds?!!
“Mani, pedi, or hairdo?” I asked my daughter, pencil in hand.
“I want my ears pierced!” she cried. The panic rose in her throat as she realized that my omission of her desired choice was not by accident.
I reminded my daughter of our agreement: she could get her ears pierced when she was eight. This proved to be small consolation to a six-year-old with a penchant for glittery hoops.
A few days later, I was telling this story to my friend when she broke me off mid-sentence. “You’re not seriously thinking about letting your daughter get her ears pierced anytime soon, are you?” she asked.
That’s when I heard about nasty infections, imbedded studs, earrings that rip through ear lobes, and a host of other problems endemic to pint-sized pierced ears. To be honest, I had never thought about the “proper age” to get one’s ears pierced, but the more friends I spoke with, the more I realized that a lot of people have very strong opinions about when it’s okay — and when it’s not — to pierce your daughter’s ears.
So what’s your take?
Question # 2: When did you let or when do you plan to let your daughter pierce her ears and why?
A six-year-old with a fondness for hoops (and her mother) want to know!
LINK: http://www.momlogic.com/2009/06/ear_piercing_parties_for_6-year-olds.php
Courts Uphold VA Abortion Ban
Leave a CommentCourt Upholds VA Abortion Ban, Further Eroding Constitutional Protections for Abortion Rights
New York, NY – Today, in a 6-5 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a Virginia law that threatens doctors with criminal penalties for performing the most common method of second trimester abortion. The majority acknowledged that the ban will, in some circumstances, force physicians to stop a previability abortion mid-procedure, to the jeopardy of the patient’s health and well-being. Nonetheless, the court upheld the ban, further eroding the constitutional protections long given to women’s health.
“Today’s ruling is another stunning assault on women’s reproductive rights and on the doctors who provide abortion care,” said Stephanie Toti, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights who argued before the appellate court. “Forcing doctors to compromise women’s health for the sake of a previable fetus with no potential for survival is an outrage.”
The court also suggested that the case was premature and that the challenge should not have been filed until a patient undergoing an abortion was experiencing an immediate health risk as a result of the ban.
Five of the eleven judges dissented from the decision, pointing out that it “marks an alarming departure from settled Supreme Court precedent: it sanctions an unconstitutional burden on a woman’s right to choose.” In 2007, the Supreme Court ordered the Fourth Circuit to re-evaluate the constitutionality of the Virginia law after it upheld a more narrow federal ban in the Center’s case Gonzales v. Carhart. In May of 2008, a three- judge panel of the Fourth Circuit struck down the Virginia law finding that it was substantially broader than the federal law, such that “every time” a doctor set out to perform any standard second trimester abortion, “he faces the unavoidable risk of criminal prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment.”
The plaintiffs in the case, Richmond Medical Center v. Herring, are Richmond Medical Center, its staff, and patients. They are represented by Toti and Janet Crepps, deputy director of the U.S. legal program at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
More Men Against Rape Conference Tweets!
Leave a CommentContinuing from yesterday’s post, Celie at the Men Against Rape Conference (earliest tweets are at the bottom):
OMG ROSARIO DAWSON JUST WALKED BY ME!!!!!!!about 20 hours ago from txt
Celie Live-Twittering the Men Can Stop Rape Conference!
Following are Celie’s “tweets” so far. I’ll continue to update! Note that the oldest tweets will be at the bottom. You can read the tweets live by going to oob’s Twitter!
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So now I’m waiting for the luncheon to start and of course excited about seeing Rosario Dawson in the flesh!
9 minutes ago from txt
There are DEFINITLEY more women here than men! So much for allies! :-<
19 minutes ago from txt
Sneaked into another a workshop Research & New Trends in Prevention: Research on Forced Sex in Intimate Relationships Continuum of Coerc …
25 minutes ago from txt
Smita Varia Manager from Internet Services Advocates for Youth and she is stressing not to invite young people to us but to go where you …
about 1 hour ago from txt
Tanya Lovelace Project Manager for the Women of Color Network and she points out that its critical for anti-violence against women proga …
about 1 hour ago from txt
His open was stale and he used the term sex worker which is annoying…..
about 1 hour ago from txt
Tyrone Hanley is speaking first. He is from the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League!
about 1 hour ago from txt
If chosen a workshop: How Race, Class and Sexual Orientation Affect the Process of Creating Allies!
about 2 hours ago from txt
Ritu and Byron get awards from MCSR!
about 2 hours ago from txt
Byron recommended the doc The Price of Pleasure!
about 2 hours ago from txt
Ritu I believe is reinforcing gender binaries and disagree with Byron that its easier to get through to black men about gender because t …
about 2 hours ago from txt
Now they are taking questions from the audiance…
about 2 hours ago from txt
The dialog between Ritu and Byron is great!! Was expecting a dry speech but their back and fourth is lively and critical!
about 2 hours ago from txt
Ritu talked before about fear and competition among women Orgs for funding….
about 2 hours ago from txt
Ritu asks Byron about dynamics between men and why he was reluctant to let other men know he was getting into antisexism work
about 2 hours ago from txt
Understanding motivation is what is important when working with men for Ritu….
about 3 hours ago from txt
Ritu calls Byron out for saying that “We’re pregnant” in reference to he and his wife expecting a new baby…..
about 3 hours ago from txt
Byron accepts that suspicion and notes that women outnumber in the audience…
about 3 hours ago from txt
Ritu is talking about being suspicious of men doing antisexist work
about 3 hours ago from txt
Ritu Sharma is speaking I finally have a seat Its a full house!
about 3 hours ago from txt
B Hurt is talking about being encouraged by Jackson Katz to become an antisexist activist!
about 3 hours ago from txt
Im at MCSR listening to the keynote address by Byron Hurt
about 3 hours ago from txt
This is Celie and I’m SO EXCITED about attending the Men Can Stop Rape Conference tomorrow on Capital Hill!! Follow me at the oob blog …
about 13 hours ago from txt
The Facts About Women in Media
From an article by Jennie Ruby of the oob collective in off our backs, Vol. 37, No. 1:
- Only 37% of “behind the news” workers in radio, television and print news combined are women.
- Only 17% of radio news stories subjects are women
- Only 22% of television news stories subjects are women.
- 14% of Sunday morning television talk show guests are women.
- 83% of cable news hosts during television prime time (between 4 p.m. and midnight) are white men.
- Only 5% of the time are individual female athletes the main focus of sports journal articles.
- Only 3% of the time are female teams the main focus of sports journal articles.
- In print media, only 21% of news stories subjects are women.
- However, 60.3% of news reporters are women, and
- 72% of news photographers are women.
Male to female byline ratios at well-known print publications include:
- 13 to 1 male to female at the National Review
- 7 to 1 male to female at Harper’s and The Weekly Standard
- 2 to 1 male to female at the Columbia Journalism Review
- 3 to 1 at the New Yorker and Vanity Fair
A full 98% of female journalists felt they faced obstacles male colleagues didn’t, such as discrimination in receiving career-enhancing assignments and discrimination in promotion.
Heart
A Radical Vision for Women’s Media
From an article in oob, Volume 37, No. 1, entitled A Radical Vision for Women’s Media, by Martha Allen:
“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. — Simone de Beauvoir
In the 1970s through the 1980s there was a flowering of women’s feminist media…feminists developed a specific philosophy of women’s media that is very different from the corporate-profit driven views of today’s mainstream…[Following are] “The Eight Characteristics of Women’s Media,” which are derived from Martha Allen’s doctoral dissertation, “The Development of Communication Networks Among Women, 1963-1983.”
- The conventional journalism of male-owned media reports news in the third person. Women’s journalism reports its news in the first person, allowing the newsmakers to speak for themselves.
- Men tend to define “news” as conflict and violence — fights (political, economic, physical), murders, suicides, floods, fire and catastrophes..Attacks and name-calling usually guarantee a well-attended press conference and subsequent news coverage. Women-owned media define news differently…: “to transform the violent macho role models…creating media heroes and heroines who are intelligent instead of belligerent, cooperative rather than combative, nurturant rather than destructive.”
- Male-owned media claim a journalistic goal of “objectivity.” The journalistic goal of women’s media is the “effective use of media as an instrument of change.”
- Women-owned media are nearly all non-hierarchical.
- Women’s media would replace the competitiveness of male media’s “scoops” and financial rivalry with cooperation.
- Women-owned media tend toward a concept of journalistic function that allows an open forum for women.
- The greatest difference from male-owned media is women’s characteristic analysis of mass media as hostile to women.
- Content: Women’s newspapers report the news the male press finds unfit to print…”
The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, led by Martha Allen, maintains a list of hundreds of publications by, for and about women at its website.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands more incredible articles where this one comes from, the pages of off our backs.
Heart
Sixth Annual IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections
April 23 & 24, 2009
Female Fan Culture and Intellectual Property
American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Women and the Law Program, and Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law in collaboration with American University’s Center for Social Media and the Organization for Transformative Works.
Featuring projects and multimedia works reflecting on gender, copyright, fair use, freedom of expression and fan culture
Thursday, April 23, 2009, 7:15 p.m.
Multimedia Show: “WeTube: Women Transforming Mass Media”
Friday, April 24, 2009, 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Opening Remarks: Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University Law Center
- Is There a Text in This Work? Transformation Beyond the Written Word
- New Forms of Organizing: Women Reinterpret the Legal, the Educational and the Political
- Cui Bono? Economic Contexts
Go here for online registration, link to webcast and updates.
Note that Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors is speaking at this conference.
Heart
off our backs: the real deal
[off our backs] pleased me because it didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t. It wasn’t on glossy pages, it wasn’t offering up this issue’s celebrity. It was talking about the lives that we (women) live. You could identify with the women in the pages.
And maybe that was why it had publishing problems?
Maybe in our society we no longer want to identify, we just want to worship?
The above cover was actually my all time favorite. In it, the magazine explored what war meant to women. Women who serve, women who don’t. It was really an amazing issue.
You can click here to read some of it but, WARNING, if you do and you’re new to the magazine, you’ll immediately regret that it appears to now be dead.
After 2008, the year where women were openly scorned, ridiculed, put-down and attacked by the media, we need off our backs more than ever we did.
Welcome to oobtalk blog and Call for Submissions!
Call for Submissions!
Deadline: April 18, 2009
About off our backs
off our backs is a news journal by, for, and about women. It has been published since 1970, making it the longest surviving feminist newspaper in the United States. It is run by a collective where decisions are made by consensus. The mission of off our backs is
• to provide news and information about women’s lives and feminist activism
• to educate the public about the status of women around the world
• to serve as a forum for feminist ideas and theory
• to be an information resource on feminist, women’s, and lesbian culture; and
• to seek social justice and equality for women worldwide.
We are interested in articles that explore and engage contemporary feminist issues, news, ideas, theory and analysis from a distinctly feminist perspective. We are particularly interested in news, reports, personal accounts, analysis and theory-making around the issues of femicide, rape, violence against women, prostitution, pornography, trafficking in women, mainstream media treatment of women, media invasion of women’s privacy and internet feminism.
We are looking for manuscripts of 500 to 2,000 words.
Submit manuscripts to manuscripts@offourbacks.org
For contributor guidelines, click here.
If you are interested in writing a longer piece, please query first.
Questions, queries, comments? Please email.
