Nikki Haley Calls Battered And Raped Women ‘Distractions,’ Vetoes Legislation

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.from addictinginfo.org;

Raped and battered women “are distractions” that only represent a “small portion” of South Carolina’s population. That’s how Governor Nikki Haley explained her decision to veto critical funding that goes to programs that work to prevent domestic abuse and rape.
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New Book by Liberal Fix founder Dan Bimrose You CAN Go to Church on Sunday AND Vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday CLICK HERE
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Last week, Haley threw women across the state under a bus by abandoning funding that prevents domestic abuse and sexual assault and then added insult to injury by explaining that battered and assaulted women are a “small portion” of society and are mere “distractions” who don’t matter.

“Each of these lines attempts to serve a portion of our population for which we extend our sympathy and encouragement,” Haley said. “But nevertheless, it is only a small portion of South Carolina’s chronically ill or abused. Overall, these special add-on lines distract from the agency’s broader mission of protecting South Carolina’s public health.”

As a woman, you would think Governor Haley would make preventing rape and domestic abuse a major legislative and executive initiative. It’s bad enough that women already have to deal with male politicians who don’t care about women’s issues, but for a female politician to demonstrate how little she cares about curbing violence against women is even more detestable. The only real reason I can think of why she would veto this important funding is because she wants to prove how hardcore conservative she is. For many months now, Republicans have made it their mission to belittle women’s issues and reverse women’s rights.

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Nikki Haley Calls Battered And Raped Women ‘Distractions,’ Vetoes Legislation

Marty Golden, New York State Senator, Cancels Etiquette Workshop For Women Constituents

By Patrick Svitek from HuffingtonPost.com;

Under pressure from his chief political opponent, a state senator cancelled a taxpayer-funded event that purportedly would have taught his female constituents to behave in a more lady-like manner in the modern workplace.

New York state Sen. Marty Golden, a Republican, sent out a flyer this week inviting women in his Brooklyn-centered district "to Refresh [their] Business Etiquette and Social Protocol Skills" at a "Polish Professional" workshop later this month. The advertisement, which was provided to the blog of New York government publication City & State, offered session attendees the opportunity to learn about "handshakes and introductions," as well as "posture, deportment and the feminine presence."

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Marty Golden, New York State Senator, Cancels Etiquette Workshop For Women Constituents

VAWA : A Whittled-Down Violence Against Women Act Could Mean Life or Death for Immigrant Women

By Alissa Bohling, Truthout;

The Senate's reauthorization of VAWA, S1925, passed in late April and includes improved protections for Native Americans and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. It also does more to help immigrants, including expanding the U visa program to 15,000 annually. The 15 Republican votes in favor included all five GOP women.

But on May 16, the House passed its own version, HR 4970, which, along with stripping the Senate's new protections, cuts back on existing safeguards.

Among a long list of criticisms, NIJC decries a section in HR 4970 that would require self-petitioners to be interviewed at least twice at their local immigration office, a process NIJC says could add months of waiting time. Current law allows petitions to be evaluated without an interview, which is only required later when the victim, from the more secure position of holding an approved petition, applies for a green card or permanent residency. Hidalgo said delays can be a matter of life and death: "The most dangerous moment for a victim of domestic violence is when she looks for a way out of her situation" - as Silvia discovered.

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A Whittled-Down Violence Against Women Act Could Mean Life or Death for Immigrant Women

'Vagina Monologues' demonstration draws thousands

by Lindsay VanHulle from lansingstatejournal.com;

Amid the rhetoric and the partisan back-and-forth about a particular part of the female anatomy and whether its name can be spoken on the House floor, a debate that last week left Capitol Avenue and spiraled into national news, is this message:

Vagina is not a dirty word.

That’s the message of a crowd of thousands, who gathered at the Capitol on Monday to rally behind two female state representatives who say they were barred from speaking in chambers because they uttered the words “vagina” and “vasectomy” while debating a package of abortion bills.

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'Vagina Monologues' demonstration draws thousands

Mitt Romney and the Women Who Don't Love Him

—By Stephanie Mencimer from motherjones.com;

Mitt Romney has a particular effect on voters of the opposite sex—and it's not a good one. During the heated final days of the GOP primary, female Republicans in many states favored Rick Santorum. Romney's dismal luck with the ladies was more apparent in April, when, according to a Washington Post poll, he was trailing President Barack Obama among women voters by 19 percentage points. Romney's female appeal hasn't improved much in the past month. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this week still puts him 15 points behind Obama.

His numbers are particularly dismal among single gals. While Romney leads Obama among married women by about 9 points, Obama blows him away among single women by 36 points. This matters: There are 55 million single women in the United States. If they got motivated, they are a big enough block to swing the election.

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Mitt Romney and the Women Who Don't Love Him

A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You

by Soraya Chemaly from huffingtonpost.com;

Fear is why they insist there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Don't believe them. Fear is why they want you to cover your body. There is nothing wrong with your body, and your body is not to blame. Whether you chose to expose your body or to cover it up, consider the degree to which either choice is defined by a reduction of your character to narrow sexuality by a culture that refuses to hold men accountable for their actions and requires you to either radically display ourself for men's pleasure or withdraw from the world and be held in reserve. Either way, ask who is defining your worth and by what measure. Fear is why they tell you you are so different from boys. You, and the boys you know, understand that your bodies are different, but that you are far more alike than dissimilar. Threatened, insecure, adult men say otherwise. Don't give in. Even if you're quiet. The differences these religious authorities exaggerate are simply pillars of oppression used to teach boys and girls that women's subjugation is "natural" and "divine." Reject them and their ideas.

This is hard to do. It requires that you, individually, be brave, strong, determined, fearless and confident. It requires that you demand that the adults around you pay attention and change their behavior. This is even harder.

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A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You

Fox News contributor laments ‘mistake’ of letting women vote

By Stephen C. Webster from rawstory.com;

That “truth,” it would seem, isn’t just about liberal women, or even women in general. Peterson made headlines in January after telling a Huffington Post reporter that he would like to see black people put “back on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working… They need a good hard education on what it is to work.” On his website, Peterson has published an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that advocates the arrest of New Black Panthers members.

In another post, he explains what he calls “the end of one-sided defense,” in which Peterson insists that men should re-take the right to physically strike women. “While I certainly do not sanction men attacking women, neither is it right for men to allow themselves to be beaten by a woman,” he wrote. “It’s time for men to re-assert their right to self defense.”

Peterson has also been on the leading edge of racially-motivated Republican attacks on Planned Parenthood, alleging at a press conference in 2008 that the group is responsible for killing “over 1,500 black babies” every day.

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Fox News contributor laments ‘mistake’ of letting women vote

Top Republican Strategist Denies Women Are Paid Less Than Men

By Igor Volsky on thinkprogress.org;

This morning, during a heated discussion with Rachel Maddow on Meet The Press, GOP consultant Alex Castellanos denied that women make 77 cents for a man’s dollar in the workplace and noted, “there are lots of reasons for that.” Maddow expressed shock at the assertion, but concluded that it explained why Republicans and Mitt Romney are so hesitant to embrace the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, a law that helps women hold accountable employers who discriminate in the pay practices based on gender.

“Now we know, at least from both of your perspectives,” Maddow said, pointing to Castellanos and Romney surrogate Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), “women are not fairing worse than men in the economy that women aren’t getting paid less for equal work.” “It’s about policy and whether or not you want to fix some of the structural discrimination that women really do face that Republicans don’t believe is happening,” she added. Castellanos responded to Maddow’s policy argument by remarking on her passion, to which the MSNBC host took offense.

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Top Republican Strategist Denies Women Are Paid Less Than Men

How the War on Women Became Mainstream

By Staff, People For the American Way from truth-out.org;

Since the rise of the Tea Party movement, the Right has found stunning success in its attempts to turn back decades of gains in the rights and status of women. The efforts to turn back the clock on American women focus on reproductive rights but also attack the changing roles in the workplace, in the family and in government that reproductive rights have helped to allow women to assume.

Anti-woman proposals that have been percolating in the right-wing fringe for years – such as “personhood” measures – are suddenly supported by mainstream presidential candidates. Rights that women have come to take for granted – like the right to access birth control – have suddenly come under attack for the first time in decades.

These renewed attacks on women are unacceptable – and they can be stopped. As the impassioned response to the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy showed, American women aren’t ready to see their hard-won rights slip away, and they aren’t willing to be painted as scapegoats for the nation’s problems.

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How the War on Women Became Mainstream

Maddow to GOP: Women notice when you try to take away our rights

By David Ferguson from rawstory.com;

Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow highlighted the remarks of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) who urged Republican men to go home and ask their wives and daughters whether they feel like the GOP is waging an all-out assault on the rights of women.

On Thursday, current RNC Chairman Rance Priebus said that the perception that Republicans are waging a war on women is as absurd as declaring that they have declared a “war on caterpillars.” On Friday, RNS spokesperson Sean Spicer said that for the Democrats to use the word “war” in describing the assault on women’s reproductive freedom “borders on unpatriotic.”

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Maddow to GOP: Women notice when you try to take away our rights

Romney Losing Support From Women

By Morgan Little from latimes.com;

The key to these results is the sizable departure of independent women from Romney’s camp over the last few months to Obama's. In polls conducted between October and December 2011, Romney led Obama 48% to 43% among independent women. But since then, the aggregated data from February to March bode well for Obama, with independent women now preferring the president 51% to 37%.

That’s a whopping 19% swing – Romney down 11 percentage points and Obama up 8 – and it was seen within the male independent electorate as well, with a 12% swing accounting for Obama’s current slim 46% to 45% lead.

Interestingly, though the initial thought would be to chalk up the shift to the recent debate over contraceptives and health insurance, 8 out of 10 independent women polled were unaware of Romney’s stance. Of those who were aware of Romney’s position on contraception, the majority disagreed with him, by a 2-to-1 margin.

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Independent women lead exodus of support from Romney