Texas NOW Blog

Irony of the day: the BBC reports that Paul Wolfowitz, former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Bush, has branded Singapore as "authoritarian" for banning protesters. Um, yeah. Anybody but me remember 'free speech zones?'

Snark of the day: Operation Rescue has lost its tax-exempt status because of illegal political activities during the 2004 election cycle. Let me just take a moment to smirk with glee about that.

Cool event of the day: Gloria Steinem will be speaking in San Antonio next Thursday at the 25th anniversary of San Antonio College's Women's Center. Happy anniversary, y'all! Gloria is a wonderful speaker and such an inspiring woman. If you're in SA, don't miss it!

Posted by Carrie at 1:25 PM | Permalink

Major kudos to Jordan Smith over at the Austin Chronicle for this great story on Texas state funds going to crisis pregnancy centers. I do love to see our hard-working pro-choice friends over at NARAL Pro-Choice Texas get quoted on this issue, because they've done a huge amount of work on it. And I was very glad to see Smith reference Rep. Henry Waxman's report on crisis pregnancy centers and how they spend your money to lie to women about the effects of abortion.

Lying? Surely not, you say. No, really. They're flat-out lying. The following four assertions are the most common:

• Abortion causes breast cancer. Crap. Planned Parenthood puts the smack down on this one. Don't trust them? The National Cancer Institute backs 'em up. Considering all the cultural attention paid to breast cancer, and the fact that breast cancer accounts for 1/3 of all cancer diagnoses in women and killed about 40,000 women last year, it's cruel to fudge the facts on this terrible disease to a woman who's already upset and vulnerable because of an unplanned pregnancy.

• Abortion is extremely dangerous for women. Nope. According to the most current stats on the DSHS website, there were 76,019 abortions performed on Texas residents in 2003 without a single maternal death. Zero. Nada. In 2004, Texas women had 72,440 abortions with one death. In 2002, there were 76,277 abortions and one maternal death. So in the last three years, the death rate for abortion has been 2 in 224,736 - less than .0001%, and less than 1 per every 100,000 procedures. In fact, in the 1,444,809 abortions performed in Texas between 1986 and 2003, only nine deaths resulted. So having an abortion is slightly less safe than having your appendix out - which is to say, extraordinarily so.

• Abortion makes you infertile. Nope. Big honkin' lie. The National Institutes of Health list a bunch of causes of infertility, but abortion is not among them. It's tough to find statistics on the incidence of infertility, but NIH estimates 10-20% of couples trying to conceive won't get pregnant at the end of one year. They also say that 15-20% of those couples will successfully conceive a child without seeking treatment - in other words, sometimes you just have to try for a while. So that knocks the rate of persistent infertility down to a max of about 16%. It is true that there are some rare complications of abortion that can affect fertility. But use some common sense here. One, look how rare the complications are - all of them are under 1%, most well under. Two, think about it just for a minute. About 40% of women will have an abortion at some point in their lives. If abortion reliably caused infertility, wouldn't we expect to see a lot more than a 10 or 15% rate of persistent infertility?

• Abortion makes you crazy. For years. Again, Planned Parenthood debunks this decisively. They cite authorities ranging from the American Psychological Association to former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stating that abortion has minimal lasting mental health effects. Of course women are going to have some feelings about it. But there is no good scientific evidence to support the notion of a 'post-abortion syndrome.' The study most often cited by anti-choicers has a serious sampling flaw: it only included women who had high-stress abortion experiences. That's like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and concluding that there is a massive epidemic of alcohol abuse. In that room, of course there is! But it's irresponsible to apply that conclusion to the general public.

The state of Texas is paying crisis pregnancy centers $5 million over two years to tell women this garbage. You know where the money came from? It's a set-aside in the family planning budget. You know. The money that should be going to fund the services that would keep women from facing unintended pregnancies in the first place!

Does all this make you mad? It infuriates me. Remember in November, people. It is a reprehensible use of state funds to pay contracting agencies to lie to citizens. Ask your candidates what their take is on this. Ask your rep if he or she voted for Senator Williams' budget rider, called Alternatives to Abortion, which started all this mess. And let 'em know you won't stand for it again.

Posted by Carrie at 1:46 AM | Permalink

The second annual BlogHer Conference was fantastic! What an amazing group of smart, funny, articulate women. I had a great time, met some great women, and learned a lot.

What a thrill to meet Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin of Body Impolitic, makers of the wonderful book Women En Large. Laurie mentioned that she will be in Austin in October! With some luck we'll be able to bring her to UT to speak. More as things develop on this. And it was wonderful to see Susie Bright speak; I recommend her blog entry, linked above, on the need for the conference and why blogging is a feminist issue.

The panel on identity and obligation was FABULOUS. Panelists Karen Walrond, Dawn Rouse, Marisa Treviño, and Carmen Van Kerckhove, along with moderator Maria Niles, started us off, and the crowd discussion got very lively indeed. It was such a joy to listen to a group of women who were mostly strangers talk thoughtfully, honestly, and wisely about some tough topics. Do we have to disclose marginalized identities? Should we? Does that help us gain allies or not? Fascinating discussion that taught me two new phrases: "racial spy," a person of color whose appearance doesn't immediately make that identification clear and thus has a unique opportunity to observe race and racism in multiple communities, and "sneaky racist," someone who waits for 'safe' territory (read: no people of color around) before starting to disclose racist ideas.

So much fun to see so many amazing women using the web to make themselves heard!

Posted by Carrie at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It can be easy to think that Asian Americans don't experience racism. After all, they have lower poverty rates, higher rates of education, and higher average household income than other racial or ethnic minorities. They're successful, ergo they don't experience prejudice, right?

Wrong.

As long as there have been Asian Americans, there has been racism and discrimination against them. They are often thought of as a so-called 'model minority,' but that's a damaging phrase in many ways. First, it perpetuates a myth that they are universally successful at achieving the American Dream. But statistics don't really bear that out. And this myth glosses over ethnic differences and promotes an idea that all Asians are the same. Second, that's a hell of a lot of pressure to place on real individual human beings! Many folks, including South Asians, find it stifling and impossible to live up to.

Filmmaker Grace Lee addresses these two issues in her highly entertaining and very thought-provoking documentary, The Grace Lee Project. It's a political film, but not in an overbearing, bash-you-over-the-head-with-a-message, Michael Moore kind of way. What Lee does is explore the ideas of sameness and stereotypes by ruminating on the strangely high incidence of the name Grace Lee among Asian Americans, seeking out those who share her name, and making sense of their stories in the context of US culture and of her own experience.

Warning! Spoilers after the fold

Continue reading "Movie recommendation: The Grace Lee Project" »

Posted by Carrie at 9:43 PM | Permalink

So all sorts of folks have commented on Laura Bush's recent assertion that she's a feminist.

I am slightly appalled at many of the responses I've seen. Whether we as feminists agree with Laura Bush's political or personal choices or not, there is absolutely no excuse for tearing down and insulting another woman. Whatever we think of her choices, we owe her sisterhood - or at a bare minimum, respect. You gotta wonder if every firebreather who said something like, "Laura Bush thinks she's a feminist" or questions why she's married to a "woman-hater" realizes how much s/he sounds like a patriarch when s/he says that.

I give props to Salon's Broadsheet for bringing attention to the good things that LB has done for women around the world. But here's my favorite response from Hugo Schwyzer:

Is Laura Bush "my kind" of feminist? Perhaps not. Is she someone whom we traditionally associate with feminism? No. Do her views line up with the majority of self-described feminists in the world? No. But her views on women's empowerment and education place her somewhere on what I've long argued is the broad and diverse spectrum of feminisms. To paraphrase the Gospel, "In the feminist house, there are many rooms", and Laura Bush has made it clear she considers herself to be living in one of them.

What heartens me about the First Lady's use of the term to describe herself is that it serves as a useful corrective to the "I'm not a feminist, but..." view we hear so often from conservative young (and not so young) women. By embracing the word feminist -- and at least some basic feminist principles (like the right to education and self-determination) -- Laura Bush gives women who might previously have paused before calling themselves "feminists" permission to take the leap and use it to describe themselves. By making the term more acceptable to women on the center and the right of the political spectrum, she does more traditionally progressive feminists a huge service. How many feminist organizations, how many women's studies classes, may see a boost in interest and enrollment now that the immensely popular First Lady has given feminism her explicit imprimatur?

Amen, brother. Checklist feminism gets us nowhere. Let's keep the conversation open, people.

I would add, too, that liberation isn't a destination, it's a journey. I've considered myself a feminist since I could pronounce the word, but I'm by no means done with figuring out exactly what that means or what actions I need to take to put my beliefs into action. Before I joined NOW and attended a Women of Color and Allies Summit, I had no idea why many women of color, especially African-American women, see reproductive rights differently. I knew about forced sterilization, but I had no idea how prevalent or recent it had been. Was I a feminist before I knew that? Yep. Am I better feminist now that I know it? You betcha. So on this journey, let's respect where everyone else is right now, and always be willing to reach a hand out to help other travelers along the road.

Posted by Carrie at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Big batch of feminist love going out to Lufkin Daily News columnist Cynthia Hall Clements for her fabulous article on the local Planned Parenthood clinic's efforts to provide quality preventive healthcare for low-income women. Those of us who work on women's health issues know that our friends at PP, here in Texas and nationwide, and their colleagues in local family planning clinics are the backbone of healthcare for low-income women and, as new PPFA pres Cecile Richards has said, "do more to prevent abortion in one week than the South Dakota legislature will in a lifetime." But it sure doesn't get said often enough. Thanks, Ms. Clements! Allies are awesome!

Posted by Carrie at 11:26 AM | Permalink

ABC News interviewed First Lady Laura Bush a few days ago. Mrs. Bush touted her advocacy for women and girls worldwide and identified herself as a feminist.

Hmmm.

I'm thrilled to see her claim the label. Love her focus on educating women and girls. Love that she's for reproductive rights. Not so thrilled by her silence in the face of so many of her husband's anti-woman policies and choices. I'm glad to see her claim the feminist label in public; I hope she does it in private with just as much gusto. In the meantime, from me to you, Mrs. B., please consider joining Republicans for Choice. I'm just sure they'd love to have you.

Posted by Carrie at 11:13 AM | Permalink

Diane Heavin of Curves recently received the Women's Chamber of Commerce of Texas 2005 Businesswoman of the Year Award. I'm not kidding. The article includes the following gem:

Diane Heavin is also a philanthropists [Ed. note: she's apparently plural, too!], providing funding for healthcare and health education for women, family abuse prevention, adoption services, and more.

HEALTH EDUCATION?! Is this a joke? Yes, all that health education is just swell. Except for the part where the Heavins donate millions of dollars to nutball anti-choicers whose idea of health education is telling pregnant women that getting an abortion gives you breast cancer. I wonder if the Women's Chamber of Commerce of Texas counted those donations in their calculations.

Here's some health education for you: ladies, please don't support businesses that give 10% of their profits to crazy people who spend their lives working to take away your reproductive rights and scaring pregnant women. It's bad for your health - in so many ways. Might I suggest you join a different women-only gym? Austin has Premiere Lady Fitness. You'll find Lady USA in several Dallas suburbs. My hometown, Richardson, has Trophy Fitness for Women. Lady of America has several locations in towns across Texas, including Amarillo, The Woodlands, San Antonio, and some D/FW area towns. Many other gyms have women-only sections, and these nice folks have a little database you can search to find one in your town. Curves has a cuter name, for sure, but they're doing us wrong after hours. Y'all go do some crunches somewhere that's not owned by people who want to keep your belly big in that one particular way, okay?

Posted by Carrie at 1:29 PM | Permalink

Today's New York Times (login required) includes a positive profile of Cecile Richards, new head honcha at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, founder of the great Austin nonprofit Texas Freedom Network, and daughter of our former governor Ann, of blessed bouffant.

The profile talks about what's up with Planned Parenthood in these dark days and Ms. Richards' previous career (though boo to them for not mentioning TFN). I would pay dearly to see the Annie Leibovitz portrait of the Gov that's in Ms. Richards' office, which is described as "Ann Richards wearing chaps and a can-do glare." Yeeee-haw! Now that's an image to inspire a girl! It was also nice to see this in our paper of record:

Planned Parenthood serves five million Americans and concentrates 90 percent of its efforts on preventing unwanted pregnancies, Ms. Richards, says, not terminating them.

"No one does more to reduce the need for abortions in this country than Planned Parenthood. I would welcome legislators, including those from South Dakota, to work with us on family planning instead of focusing on making doctors and women criminals," she adds...

I'm thrilled to see Ms. Richards get the accolades she deserves. I just wish that immediately following this, the NYT hadn't felt it necessary to include:

...rearranging the artfully mussed and gelled cap of platinum blond hair that, combined with her statuesque carriage, inspires stares from strangers mistaking her for the pop chanteuse Annie Lennox. She takes that as a compliment, too.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I have rarely read a profile of a male community leader that mentioned his use of styling products or referred to him as 'statuesque.' Cecile's a lovely lady, but why can't we focus on her achievments and the challenges of her new gig instead of on her hair?

We here at Texas NOW would also like to take this opportunity to extend our best wishes to Governor Richards and her family. Cancer, schmancer, Gov. We know you can beat it, and we'll be holding a good thought for you.

Posted by Carrie at 11:24 AM | Permalink