The Burnt-Out Feminist

I must admit that one of my biggest pet peeves when dealing with those of older generations than yours is when the person minimizes my stress or level of exhaustion simply because of my age. Just because I am 24 years old does not mean that I do not have anything to worry about besides painting my nails, flat-ironing my hair, and stalking the latest trend on Facebook. The fact is I am 24 years old, do all of that, AND also go to graduate school full-time with two internships, waitress part time for some type of income, have two classes to worry about and take care of a dog, boyfriend, friendships, and family in my "free time". Not to mention the piles of folded laundry that seem to never be able to get back into that bureau, the dishes that never seem to put themselves away, and the other mundane chores that are simply overlooked. Oh, and how could I possibly forget how much fun it is to deal with the student loans and pressure to find full-time employment to pay such loans, as well as simply live and function in life, in this sad economy.

I am young, yes, but I am stressed like any other person in America today. According to this article, though, women are really falling prey to such stress and exhaustion, especially those 30 years or younger! Check it out & school yourself! Don't let yourself become another one of the fallen...

Women: Do You Think Your Uterus Makes You Less Funny?

I can't believe I'm posting an article from the NY Post on this blog. But I read this one and thought, wow, something positive about women in the NY Post. Cool.

The movie Bridesmaids clearly has many people pondering the 2007 "women aren't funny" article by Vanity Fair writer, Christopher Hitchens. You can read it, here. I just read it, and think I need to absorb it. He makes a connection between women's ability to give birth and their ability to be funny. Because we have that ability, it makes us less funny?? Hmmmm... Tina Fey, anyone?

I will continue to mull it over. I think Hitchens wanders deeply where he probably shouldn't.

Props to Kathy Griffin. Wasn't really a fan, but her comments in the below article have changed that.


Getting the last laugh
They’re the laugh-riot girls! Women in comedy are finally getting their due

By MANDY STADTMILLER
Last Updated: 12:19 PM, November 8, 2011
Posted: 11:29 PM, November 7, 2011



Comedian Kathy Griffin likes to tell tales out of school — perhaps no more so than when she’s talking about what it means to be a high-level woman in the traditionally male-dominated field of comedy.

“Once I was in this meeting a few years ago with this guy, Ben Silverman,” says Griffin of the former NBC Entertainment chief. “And I was talking to him about going from my Bravo show to a more scripted show. And I was really complimenting him on ‘30 Rock,’ and I said, ‘What’s so great is it’s really proven that just like the shows I grew up with — “Phyllis” and “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Rhoda” and all these female-driven comedies — Tina [Fey] has kind of brought that back in a way that’s so wonderful and successful.’  ”


Funny ladies Kathy Griffin and Wanda Sykes will headline this year’s New York Comedy Festival alongside Sarah Silverman — and it’s about time women in comedy make waves, they say.

Griffin — who is one of three female headliners for the New York Comedy Festival, which marks the most women ever on the top billing of the lineup — gets right to the punch line about the closed-doors meeting. After she was told “30 Rock” didn’t make that much money, and after she countered that it had garnered so many Emmys, she heard a line she’ll never forget. “He said: ‘And — it’s really Alec [Baldwin]’s show,’  ” says Griffin, 51, laughing in disbelief. “It’s based on Tina Fey. It’s based on her life. She wrote it. It’s based on her own personal experience that no one ever had, which is to be the first female head writer on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ so I never forgot that phrase. ‘It’s really Alec’s show.’ So I was like, ‘Buh-bye, Ben. Thanks for your time. I’m going to go back to my little cable show and be really, really funny.’  ”

[A representative for Silverman said, “Ben denies Kathy’s statement and is proud that he has worked alongside super-talented comediennes including everyone from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to America Ferrera and Sofia Vergara.”]

Indeed, as Griffin knows better than most, to be a female comic is to work harder, jump higher and get past more misconceptions. Happily, though, it’s finally starting to pay off. Over the summer, Kristin Wiig’s movie “Bridesmaids” shattered box-office records. Highly rated female-centric comedies dominate the fall lineup, from “New Girl” on Fox to Whitney Cummings’ double-header with “Whitney” on NBC and “Two Broke Girls” on CBS. And over on E!, Chelsea Handler’s fempire only continues to grow as she wields unprecedented power in upcoming contract negotiations.

“We’ve entered a new age of the female comedian,” says Caroline Hirsch, the owner of Carolines on Broadway and organizer of the New York Comedy Festival, which runs tomorrow to Sunday.

"These are no shrinking violets. We’re seeing a new generation of strong and influential female voices in comedy.” Indeed, the success of “Bridesmaids,” which had a budget of only $32.5 million and boasted a spectacular $287 million in global ticket sales, flew directly in the face of these long-standing stereotypes.

“What really excites me about ‘Bridesmaids,’  ” Griffin says, “is the fact that so many of my straight dude friends were recommending it to me. They’re not [usually] going to see a chick flick.”

Griffin also points to the inspiration she sees in this season’s sitcom It girl, her friend 29-year-old Cummings. “She and I have been e-mailing back and forth a lot, and I said, ‘Look, it’s not lost on me that what you’re doing is unprecedented in the history of television. Which is basically to be doing the Seinfeld-ian model for starring in a network show that you’re also writing or co-writing. And then it’s doubly impressive to have another network show on the side that you’re co-writing with Michael Patrick King.’ ”

Funny ladies Kathy Griffin and Wanda Sykes will headline this year’s New York Comedy Festival alongside Sarah Silverman — and it’s about time women in comedy make waves, they say.

Of course, Cummings isn’t escaping without plenty of barbs along the way, including one viciously funny taunt from another festival headliner this year, Norm Macdonald. He said, in a thinly veiled reference to Cummings’ attendance on a Comedy Central roast in an interview he gave to “Opie & Anthony” this year: “Hey, guess what, there’s a young girl that’s middling attractive that swears a lot. Let’s get her.”

Cummings’ response? “Norm is hilarious,” she told a reporter.

Amy Schumer is yet another pretty, raunchy comic to break out of the celebrity roasts this year. Schumer, 30, just sold pilots to CBS and Comedy Central, and she’s also executive producing a reality series about women in comedy — so she knows whereof she speaks.

“I think people who say ‘Women aren’t funny’ are just sad and misinformed . . . I think they didn’t have sex until well after college and have an off relationship with their mothers,” she says. “This is a great time for women in comedy or just women in general. I love the things we are allowed to do now. Like vote and have consensual sex.”

A new documentary out next month on the subject, cheekily called “Women Aren’t Funny,” inspired by the infamous 2007 Christopher Hitchens essay in Vanity Fair, was created by a female comic who broke out on “Last Comic Standing,” Bonnie McFarlane and her comedian husband, Rich Vos.

Why do fewer women do stand-up? “Women like going to the bathroom together, so going on the road for three weeks alone isn’t usually at the top of their bucket lists,” says McFarlane, 42.
While Griffin calls Hitchens’ piece a “shock jock” tactic, McFarlane says, “I think guys say things like that to make women mad, and then point and say, ‘Look! See?’ ”

Comedic digs about women not being funny don’t bother Griffin. “I don’t really get bothered by the old fogies who say chicks aren’t funny. A lot of people made a big fuss about Jerry Lewis [who said in 2000 he didn’t like ‘any’ female comedians], too. What bothers me is when a currently working executive who signs the checks and makes the decisions about what goes on a TV slate, when those people don’t think chicks are funny. But what’s great is that it’s finally getting to the place where it should be in comedy. Which is: You should be judged on whether or not you’re funny.

“I mean, I’m doing four hourlong specials for Bravo this year, and that’s a record,” she concludes of her mind-boggling feat of material generation that puts even a prolific comic like Chris Rock to shame. “It’s never been done — by a male or a female.”

Mississippi 'Personhood' Amendment Vote Fails

Mississippi 'Personhood' Amendment Vote Fails

Emily Wagster Pettus Huffington Post posted 11/8/11 11:17 PM ET

Interesting article about yesterday's election.

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi voters Tuesday defeated a ballot initiative that would've declared life begins at fertilization, a proposal that supporters sought in the Bible Belt state as a way to prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide.

The so-called "personhood" initiative was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters, falling far short of the threshold needed for it to be enacted. If it had passed, it was virtually assured of drawing legal challenges because it conflicts with the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion. Supporters of the initiative wanted to provoke a lawsuit to challenge the landmark ruling.

The measure divided the medical and religious communities and caused some of the most ardent abortion opponents, including Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, to waver with their support.
Opponents said the measure would have made birth control, such as the morning-after pill or the intrauterine device, illegal. More specifically, the ballot measure called for abortion to be prohibited "from the moment of fertilization" – wording that opponents suggested would have deterred physicians from performing in vitro fertilization because they would fear criminal charges if an embryo doesn't survive.

Supporters were trying to impose their religious beliefs on others by forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies, including those caused by rape or incest, opponents said.
Amy Brunson voted against the measure, in part because she has been raped. She also has friends and family that had children through in vitro fertilization and she was worried this would end that process.

"The lines are so unclear on what may or may not happen. I think there are circumstances beyond everybody's control that can't be regulated through an amendment," said Brunson, a 36-year-old dog trainer and theater production assistant from Jackson.
Hubert Hoover, a cabinet maker and construction worker, voted for the amendment.
"I figure you can't be half for something, so if you're against abortion you should be for this. You've either got to be wholly for something or wholly against it," said Hoover, 71, who lives in a Jackson suburb.

Mississippi already has tough abortion regulations and only one clinic where the procedures are performed, making it a fitting venue for a national movement to get abortion bans into state constitutions.

Keith Mason, co-founder of the group Personhood USA, which pushed the Mississippi ballot measure, has said a win would send shockwaves around the country. The Colorado-based group is trying to put similar initiatives on 2012 ballots in Florida, Montana, Ohio and Oregon. Voters in Colorado rejected similar proposals in 2008 and 2010.
Barbour, long considered a 2012 presidential candidate before he ruled out a run this year, said a week ago that he was undecided. A day later, he voted absentee for the amendment, but said he struggled with his support.

"Some very strongly pro-life people have raised questions about the ambiguity and about the actual consequences – whether there are unforeseen, unintended consequences. And I'll have to say that I have heard those concerns and they give me some pause," Barbour said last week.
Barbour was prevented from seeking re-election because of term limits. The Democrat and Republican candidates vying to replace him both supported the abortion measure.
Specifically, the proposed state constitutional amendment would've defined a person "to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof."

The state's largest Christian denomination, the Mississippi Baptist Convention, backed the proposal through its lobbying arm.

The bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi and the General Conference of the United Methodist Church opposed it.

Bishop Joseph Latino of the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, a church traditionally against abortion, issued a statement neither supporting nor opposing the initiative. The Mississippi State Medical Association took a similar step, while other medical groups opposed it.

Mississippi already requires parental or judicial consent for any minor to get an abortion, mandatory in-person counseling and a 24-hour wait before any woman can terminate a pregnancy.

Don't Forget to Vote Today!!!

With the whirlwind of the past 10 days, it is important that voting today does not slip to the bottom of everyone' to do list! Given that many towns are still dealing with power outages, several polling locations have been changed. To simplify the process, this link will provide you with your updated polling location!!

In case you needed a little more motivation, here is some food for thought:

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote."
~George Jean Nathan

Women Own 1% of the World's Property -- Occupy That

Soraya Chemaly Huffingtonpost Posted: 11/4/11 04:00 PM ET

It must be what they're wearing.

1%
One Percent.
O.N.E. P.E.R.C.E.N.T.

That's the number between ZERO and TWO. Plus a "%" symbol behind it.

There must be a good reason for this startling fact. Especially since, according to UN gender reports, women perform 66% of the world's work, produce 50% of its food and earn a whopping 10% of its income. Could it be that Occupy Wall Street really is afeminist movement camouflaged to make it palatable?

Nah! Besides, I know; women don't want to own property, it's a hassle. They know intuitively that property is overrated. It can't help that women aren't as good at math and find it harder to calculate closing costs. And it really doesn't help that clothing standards are dropping. If women would just dress for success, banks will take them seriously. Besides, their husband's provide everything they need and they shouldn't worry their pretty heads about crass things like property. In addition, if they're liberated, which we all know they pretty much are these days, they need to work harder and stop expecting things to be handed to them on a platter like the princesses they all secretly want to be. Phew, all done.

But, maybe it's because girls and women:

• Don't get to go to school when their brothers do
• Get married off (don't worry, at a good price)
• Are deprived of food when it's scarce
• Aren't allowed to own anything themselves
• Don't inherit
• Aren't paid for their labor
• Are property. Duh.

How much poorer do we want women to get in the world? It's really hard to imagine. They already make up the overwhelming majority of the world's poor. And, despite the successes of feminists (yes, men and women) during the past century, even in the U.S. we have a persistent and growingfeminization of poverty.

If you doubt what I'm saying just because you have to then look at Half The Sky, or We Are Equalsor The Girl Effect or any number of readily available sources. These organizations are not fly-by-night hobbies for people with not enough macrame to occupy them. These are big, serious international movements created by thoughtful, kind and empathetic thinkers and doers dedicated to changing the world.

I know, I know, Oprah and the Queen are both on the Forbes List. I love Travie McCoy, too. It just bums me out that he had to point those two out in particular. Because then I had to, sigh, explain catchy women-rule-the world agitprop to my patient children. Oprah and the Queen are the only two people mentioned in his song, even though out of the top 100 Richest People in America only 10 are women. Neither O. or HRH are on that one.

But there are several lists, one for Women and another for the real people (there is no "Richest Men's List"), which is just called the Forbes Rich List. On that list there are eleven women in the Top 100, including one self-made woman, Wu Yajun, whom I imagine might be in possession of underwear enhancing prosthetics of some sort. Half of the women are listed by their name followed by "& family" which sounds like Forbes Code for "see, her dad/husband/brother did it). Of the top 50 men listed, only seven are listed "& family." Do the other guys not have families? If you took away the "& family" would these women be on the list at all? In any case, it's seems awfully lonely to be a billionaire male. And yes, I know, American and European women have made pay and income gains during the last 50 years. Although every Tuesday I say a pay equity prayer because that is the day that women's salaries catch up with the previous week's salary earned by their male peers.

Which goes to show, money isn't everything. Why does it matter if women aren't earning, saving and investing it? It doesn't make you happier.

It does, however, make you healthier, make you safer, mean you live longer, you don't die in childbirth, you don't work til you die, you aren't subjected to the constant threat of violence or violence itself. It means you are an agent in your own life.

I understand that lots of people feel that women have enough and that men are now getting the short end of the stick. If that's the case why NOT let women spare men the onerous task of being workhorses in charge of their own destiny and having responsibility for the women and children around them. Men should stop paying for brides, educate their daughters, let women do paid work and allow them to inherit property. I say, throw out the stick. Look at the frigging mess we're in.

But, before I go to worship at the foot of my Marilyn Waring statue we should consider Dominant Forces of Behavior. The societal rules, formal and informal, that continue to enslave and oppress girls and women, and by logical extension the men and boys they "belong" to, are hard to change.

It's important to mention here that I'm a serious Trekkie (not so serious that I dress up, but serious enough that most of fourth grade was spent perfecting raising one eyebrow). What does that have to do with anything? I really actually believe that, on this planet, we're all the same. It's hard to keep in mind as we obsess over the duration of Kim Kardashian's marriage or the final score of Sunday's game (pick a game, any game). As long as one more female child gets sold into marriage, one more girl gets stoned for being raped, one more mother dies giving birth for lack of hot water, one more widow goes into hiding to save her own life -- we, women, all do.

And we, men and women both, get to live with that. It's why I sometimes can't bear to read Nick Kristof's column and why I don't have much patience for the male right's movement this morning. And, since I always say this, to be clear, this is not an exercise in male-bashing. I know that it's been a downer for guys growing up in the past 50 years to learn that maybe men do bad things to women because they're essentially taught to. This is a description of poverty and inequality, of worldwide, gender-based social injustice based on traditions and laws that are archaic and hard to change. And, the fact that they overwhelmingly benefit boys and men is not the same as being good for them.

If the rules are hard to change, do we stop trying? So, my real question isn't how much poorer can women get, it's if we don't radically empathize and stop confusing gender with destiny, who will?

Oh, and one last thing, the idea that the Occupy Wall Street movement is feminist at it's core is just not something we're comfortable with. It's a lot more acceptable if we just keep hiding those people. As Daphne Muller points out: "Men's visits... have been consistently reported -- just perform a basic internet search for Michael Moore, Russell Simmons, Kanye West, Cornel West or Chris Hedges. But what about Naomi Klein, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eve Ensler and Susan Sarandon, to name a few?" Except for articles about sexual assault being a problem, that is. But, that's not because mainstream media is way into highlighting women primarily for being sexual and vulnerable. I'm going now.

Follow Soraya Chemaly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/schemaly

Know a Connecticut Woman Vet who Needs Health Care?

VA Needs To Do Outreach To Treat More Women Vets
by Peggy McCarthy

October 28, 2011

A female Marine Corps veteran, who was in desperate need of mental health services, didn’t know she could get help from the VA until 17 years after she left the service.

Trina Parker of West Haven, said many women like her, who were in the military in peace time think that VA services are just for veterans of war, and they often don’t even see themselves as soldiers.

Another woman veteran, Juliet Taylor, who served in Iraq, said many female vets don’t take advantage of health services at the VA in West Haven because they connect it with “old men” who are Vietnam War veterans. They envision the women’s health center there as a “dungeon” since it’s in a basement. As a result, many don’t get any health care. “While the services are great at the VA, it’s not a place where we go. There’s a stigma attached to the VA. I didn’t care what they had there. I didn’t want to go,” she said.

The two women spoke at the VA Connecticut Homeless Veteran Summit attended by service providers and veterans. The conference, at the VA’s Errera Community Care Center in West Haven, focused on services for female veterans.

Out of more than 15,000 women veterans in the state, 2,752 go to the VA for health care, said Jane Sarja, women’s program manager for VA Connecticut. In an interview, she admitted that it’s a challenge to attract more women vets partly because of misconceptions that “the VA doesn’t know how to take care of women.” She said a separate women’s health center opened at the West Haven VA in 1996 in a basement to give women privacy. The center will move to an upper floor next year, and will still be separated from men’s services, she said. “It will provide the same privacy and good care,” she said.

“We’ve made great strides, but we have a long way to go,” she said. VA health services are provided at the main health facilities in West Haven and Newington and in outpatient clinics in New London, Danbury, Stamford, Waterbury, Windham and Winsted.

Parker, the Marine Corps vet, served from 1982 to 1986. Afterward, she suffered from anxiety, alcoholism and PTSD, which she attributed to “unwanted sexual advances” while in the service. She couldn’t hold a job and was homeless at times, living with friends. In 2003, she applied for welfare and was sent to the state Dept. of Labor for employment assistance.

The staff member happened to be a female veteran who referred her to Errera, where she received mental health care. “If I had the opportunity of mental health treatment 17 years before, it would have saved me 17 years of aging with alcohol,” she said. “I didn’t know about the VA. Nobody was out there letting you know,” she added.

Parker has worked at Errera as a peer specialist for five years, the longest she’s held a job. She has been sober for eight years. In an interview, she said she is starting a new job in late November in Bedford, MA, helping women veterans. She’s passionate about reaching out to women from her peacetime era who, she said, are “falling through the cracks.”

But, Taylor, the Iraq War veteran, said many women veterans, regardless of their era, aren’t getting health care because they refuse to go to the VA. She said she finally went for dental care five and a half years after she left the Army. She had been rejected by two clinics for insurance reasons, then referred to a facility that only treated male veterans.

She said she received such good care at the VA, she has since brought other women vets there for help. One hadn’t had her prescription eyeglasses checked for 15 years.

She urged VA officials to “get out into the community” to reach out to women veterans. She suggested community colleges because many women veterans, herself included, attend the schools because it’s paid for under the federal GI Bill, and there’s often money left to pay for housing.

Others at the conference said they had never thought of community colleges as resources for reaching veterans and now plan to tap them. They also suggested contacting domestic violence centers which may serve female veterans, using personal contact instead of relying on events to spread the word, and changing language in publicity so it refers to people who served in the military, so there is no confusion about wartime vs peacetime service and the definition of the word “veteran.”

Sarja, the VA women’s program manager, said the VA is “committed to working very hard” to convince women to take advantage of its services. She said that although West Haven is the only VA facility in the state with a separate space for treating women, there are doctors in each VA location that are “specially trained in women’s health.”

“We know that tens of thousands of women will be coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are not going away. The numbers of women vets are rising,” she said.

2011 Global Gender Gap Report: The Best (And Worst) Countries For Women

2011 Global Gender Gap Report: The Best (And Worst) Countries For Women


Interesting article from the Huffington Post. I would live in Iceland!


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/global-gender-gap-report_n_1070466.html?ref=women#s446644&title=135_Yemen


If you've been itching to take a sabbatical overseas, now may be the time to up and move to Iceland. That's right, friends: That not-actually-so-icy isle may be the best country in the world to be a working woman, according to the World Economic Forum's newly released 2011 Global Gender Gap Report. The report ranked 135 countries -- and Iceland topped the list.
The report gets its rankings by measuring the gap between men and women in four key areas:
1. Economic participation and opportunity, which covers the wage gap as well as the percentage of women working and women working in high-skill jobs. 2. Educational attainment, which includes access to all levels of education.3. Health and survival, which measures life expectancy and mortality rates.4. Political empowerment, which measures how women are represented in decision-making structures (i.e. the government).

All 135 countries were assigned a numerical score between 0 (complete inequality) and 1 (complete equality). These scores were calculated by taking the average of 14 different ratios, each based on a specific indicator that falls under the heading of one of the four key areas. The indicators included the ratio of female to male literacy, the ratio of female pay to male pay for similar work, the ratio of female legislators and senior officials to male legislators and officials, and the number of female heads of state to male heads of state in the last 50 years.

The U.S. managed to squeeze into the top 20 for the second time since the report's inception in 2005, sandwiched between the U.K. and Canada. While over 90 percent of gaps in life expectancy and access to education have already been closed worldwide, women continue lag behind men at work and in politics.

Click here to see which countries made the top 20 -- and bottom 10 -- when it comes to equality between the sexes.