'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.

read the entire article ==>> CLICK HERE

'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.

read the entire article ==>> CLICK HERE

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.

read the entire article ==>> CLICK HERE

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.

read the entire article ==>> CLICK HERE

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.

read the entire article ==>> CLICK HERE

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.

read the entire article ==>> CLICK HERE

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.”

read the entire article ==>> CLICK HERE

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